Split (1)

train · ~970k rows (showing the first 140k)

decoded_text stringlengths 4.18k 47.6k
key cooperator in their investigation and revealed that they are keenly focused on the actions of President Trump, pictured, and his inner circle Mueller incorporated several active investigations within the Justice Department including those of Trump campaign contacts with Russia, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's business activities and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The details of the expenditures related to Mueller's investigation were laid out in a report released publicly by the special counsel's office. The report covers from May 17, the date of Mueller's appointment, through Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year. According to Mueller's report, the special counsel's office spent about $1.7 million for salaries and benefits and more than $223,000 for travel-related expenses. The majority of the travel costs stemmed from the relocation of Justice Department employees temporarily assigned to the expanding investigation. The office also spent nearly $734,000 on equipment and about $363,000 on rent, communications and utilities. Previous special counsel investigations, including probes of President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s, have also spent millions over a few months' time. A 1999 General Accounting Office report, for example, showed that independent counsel Kenneth Starr's office spent $6.2 million in the last six months of 1998, though it's unclear if that amount included both direct expenditures by the special counsel and supporting agency costs. In the report released Tuesday, Mueller's office noted that previous special counsels only reported direct costs and not those incurred separately by the Justice Department on their own expenditure reports. Paul Manafort accompanied by his lawyers, arrives at U.S. Federal Court, in Washington last month The four-and-a-half year investigations headed by Starr and his successor, Robert Ray, cost more than $52 million in taxpayer funds as they probed Clinton and then-first lady Hillary Clinton. A 2000 General Accounting Office report that detailed those figures said that $36 million came from congressional appropriations and $16 million from other federal agency costs. Starr's predecessor, Robert Fiske, spent an additional $6 million investigating the Clintons' involvement in the Whitewater real estate deal, according to a May 1999 GAO report. Starr's investigation turned over documentation to the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee, which impeached Bill Clinton in December 1998 on single charges of perjury and obstruction of justice related to his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky. A Senate vote in February 1999 failed to convict Clinton on those charges. So far, Mueller's team has charged four people as part of the ongoing investigation. So far, Mueller's team has charged four people as part of the ongoing investigation Last week, Flynn pleaded guilty to a felony charge of lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with Mueller's investigators. George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, made a similar plea deal with Mueller's prosecutors in October. Both men admitted to lying to the FBI about their contacts with Russians related to their work for Trump. In addition, Manafort and his longtime business associate, Rick Gates, are currently facing several felony charges brought by the special counsel's office. Those charges involve allegations of money laundering and other financial crimes related to their political consulting work in Ukraine. In its report, Mueller's team notes that it draws its funding from a revolving 'permanent, indefinite' appropriation for independent counsels provided by Congress, as well as from non-reimbursed Justice Department agency expenditures and from intelligence agency appropriations. In a statement, the special counsel's office said it will release a similar expenditure report after March 31, 2018.Joshua Hambley arraignment Judge Kenneth Post (Press File Photo) Joshua Blanchard HUDSONVILLE, MI - A judge who was suspended from the bench for 30 days in 2013 by the State Supreme Court is being targeted again by the same attorney, who now claims the Hudsonville jurist made a threatening phone call. Greenville attorney says he has filed a complaint with the claiming that Hudsonville District Court Judge Kenneth Post left an inappropriate and threatening voicemail for a client. Blanchard is representing 23-year-old Philip Andrew Mallery, a well-known person at the Hudsonville court who has had a slew of traffic complaints, misdemeanors and a couple of felony charges. On Friday, June 12, Mallery failed to appear in court after he was arrested by Ottawa County Sheriff's deputies for allegedly driving an unregistered moped without a license and for possessing less than 25 grams of heroin. Mallery was caught on the moped around 2 a.m. April 27 near 28th Avenue and Port Sheldon Drive. The drug charge stems from a February investigation, according to court records. Mallery was supposed to show up at 9 a.m. Friday for arraignment on these charges, but failed to do so. Mallery then received a message on his voicemail with a timestamp of 9:31 a.m. from a person saying "Mr. Mallery, this is judge Kenneth Post calling." The message goes on to say that Mallery's then-attorney is in the courtroom and tells him he has missed a court appearance and a court-ordered drug test from the day before. The message states that a bench warrant is being issued for Mallery's arrest. "My strong suggestion is that you... when you get this message, you keep going because if I find you, it will not be pleasant," the message says. "Have a good day." Court records show that the judge issued a $5,000 bond for Mallery, to be in effect whenever he was brought into custody. Mallery then contacted Blanchard, who filed a motion on Tuesday, June 16, calling for Post to recuse himself from the case. Mallery turned himself in at the jail that same Tuesday and was released on a personal recognizance bond, with a return court date of July 7. Mallery has a court record that includes misdemeanor operating while intoxicated from 2010, breaking and entering into a vehicle in 2008 - both in Ottawa County - and a January misdemeanor in Wyoming for which he was fined $750. Hudsonville District Court records show seven traffic violations on file for Mallery. Mallery faces a maximum of four years in prison if he is convicted of the heroin possession. Meanwhile, Post is in possession of the motion to disqualify the judge, which accuses Post of engaging in "actions that demonstrate it is biased or prejudiced against Mr. Mallery." The motion claims the judge's admonition that Mallory "keep going" because it "will not be pleasant" if he is caught shows the bias. The complaint states that the phone call itself from a judge to a defendant appearing in front of him is highly irregular and shows at least the appearance of impropriety. Blanchard said if Post refuses to recuse himself, Blanchard will appeal the decision to the 58th District Court's chief judge and beyond to see that the allegations are addressed. Related: These are the same allegations contained in a complaint to the Judicial Tenure Commission in Detroit, which Blanchard says he sent out Wednesday, June 17. That same body in 2012 prosecuted Post for improperly holding attorney Scott Millard in contempt after the attorney objected to the judge's demanding to know if a client would pass a drug test, allegedly in violation of the client's right against self-incrimination. Blanchard filed the complaint that led to a 30-day suspension, which the judge served in the summer of 2013. Once a complaint is filed with the Judicial Tenure Commission, no information is available unless the commission decides to seek formal charges against the judge. This is a process that usually lasts more than a year and often longer until it a final adjudication. Judge Post was not available for comment. E-mail Barton Deiters: bdeiters@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/GRPBarton or Facebook at facebook.com/bartondeiters.5Many Americans are optimistic about the future of space travel, but they don’t necessarily want to pay for it. It’s been that way for some time, actually. A Harris survey taken in 1970 – less than a year after the first moon landing – showed that a majority (56%) thought the landing was not worth the money spent. A separate Harris poll, in 1971, however, found that 81% of Americans agreed with the statement that “nothing can equal seeing the astronauts land and walk on the moon as it happened live on TV.” In fact, as we dug through data archives of the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey — which has been asking the public for 40 years about their views of space exploration and federal funding for it — we found that Americans are consistently more likely to say that the U.S. spends too much on space exploration than too little. At no time has more than 22% of the public said that the U.S. spends too little on space exploration. Still, that doesn’t mean Americans aren’t optimistic about exploring the possibilities of space. In a Pew Research Center/Smithsonian magazine survey released last week, a third of Americans said they believe there will be manned long-term colonies on other planets by the year 2064, despite evidence suggesting the difficulties of accomplishing that. Also, 63% of respondents to our 2010 survey said that they believe astronauts will have landed on Mars by 2050. More than half said that ordinary humans will be able to participate in space travel. And it’s not as though Americans have a dim view of NASA, which overseas the government’s space program. About three quarters of Americans view NASA favorably – second only to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention among federal agencies – according to a 2013 Pew Research survey. Despite these positive opinions of the space program, just a two-in-ten Americans in the 2012 GSS survey said that the U.S. spends too little on space exploration. Four-in-ten believed the current spending was adequate, while three-in-ten believed further cuts should be made to the program. Instead, Americans strongly preferred increased spending on programs closer to home, including education (76%), public health (59%), and developing alternative energy sources (59%). Currently, total funding for NASA accounts for 0.5% of the federal government’s budget. Of that funding, the space exploration program accounts for roughly 22% of NASA’s budget. The disinclination to spend money on space exploration has already had an impact when it comes to ambitious projects like space colonization. In 2012, the NASA budget took a 20% hit to its planetary science programs, severely crippling NASA’s Mars exploration program. This year, the budget for Opportunity, NASA’s decade-old Mars rover, may be eliminated. Update: A previous version of this blog post said no more than 20% of the public said the U.S. spends too little on space exploration. Some data sources have conflicting data and we have updated our post to reflect the higher figure, at 22%. Topics: Federal Government, Emerging Technology Impacts, Science and InnovationThe Sight has been in Norco's lineup for five years now, a period that's seen mountain bike technology progress at a whiplash-inducing pace. Need proof? The very first Sight had 26” wheels, narrow handlebars, and a front derailleur – you won't find any of those things on the 2017 models. Instead, the latest Sights have a carbon front triangle and seatstays, wide handlebars, a single ring drivetrain, and the option to choose either 27.5” or 29” wheels. We tested the big-wheeled version, which has 130mm of rear travel and 140mm up front. There are three complete models in the lineup, with prices ranging from $3,899 USD to $6,499. Norco Sight C 9.2 Details • Intended use: trail / all-mountain • Travel: 130mm • 29" wheels • Carbon front triangle, seatstays, alloy chainstays • 67° head angle • 435 chainstays (size L) • Boost spacing front and rear • Sizes: M, L, XL • Weight: 30 pounds (size L) • Price: $4,999 • www.norco.com • Intended use: trail / all-mountain• Travel: 130mm• 29" wheels• Carbon front triangle, seatstays, alloy chainstays• 67° head angle• 435 chainstays (size L)• Boost spacing front and rear• Sizes: M, L, XL• Weight: 30 pounds (size L)• Price: $4,999 Norco's Gizmo internal routing design was rattle-free, but the plastic covers don't quite fit in with the sleek look of the rest of the frame. Norco's Gizmo internal routing design was rattle-free, but the plastic covers don't quite fit in with the sleek look of the rest of the frame. Bolt-on thru-axles are in place at the front and rear of the bike. Bolt-on thru-axles are in place at the front and rear of the bike. Frame Details The Sight's suspension layout has been updated, with a more horizontal rocker link attached to a metric, trunnion-mounted RockShox Deluxe. The Sight's suspension layout has been updated, with a more horizontal rocker link attached to a metric, trunnion-mounted RockShox Deluxe. Suspension A thick plastic guard keeps the underside of the frame safe from flying rocks. A thick plastic guard keeps the underside of the frame safe from flying rocks. The Deluxe rear shock performed admirably, but there's also enough room to fit a piggyback rear shock, something that wasn't possible with the previous generation Sight. The Deluxe rear shock performed admirably, but there's also enough room to fit a piggyback rear shock, something that wasn't possible with the previous generation Sight. Geometry The 29” wheeled Sight is available in three sizes (medium, large, and extra-large), with the chainstay length increasing by 5mm for each size, from 430 up to 440mm. According to Norco, this helps preserve the optimum weight balance across the entire range of frame sizes. A 67-degree head angle, 74.1-degree seat angle, and a reach of 458mm for a size large are all thoroughly modern numbers that put the Sight right in line with bikes like the Santa Cruz Hightower and Trek Fuel EX. Specifications Specifications Release Date 2017 Price $4999 Travel 130mm Rear Shock Rockshox Deluxe RT3 Trunnion, w/Debonair Fork Rockshox Pike RC 140mm Boost 110x15 Cassette Shimano 11-46T 11sp Crankarms Shimano XT w/30T Chainguide One Up S3 FD mount chainguide Bottom Bracket Shimano Pressfit BB92 Rear Derailleur Shimano XT 11sp Chain Shimano XT 11sp Shifter Pods Shimano XT 11sp Handlebar Race Face Atlas 35 800 mm 20mm rise Stem Race Face Aeffect 35 50mm ext. Grips Race Face Half Nelson lock on grip Brakes Shimano XT hydraulic disc w/180mm rotor Hubs Shimano XT Boost Rim Race Face AR 30 Tires Schwalbe Nobby Nic rear/Magic Mary front 29x2.35 Seat SDG Circuit Mtn w/chromoly rails Seatpost Rockshox Reverb Stealth Compare to other All Mountain/Enduro/XC Setup Climbing Its handling is very intuitive, and it was only a matter of minutes rather than days to before I felt completely at home. That feeling remained over the following months, and the Sight continued to deliver on all types of terrain, everything from rough, steep singletrack to flowier jump lines. Descending The 140mm Pike was smooth and trouble-free, but I could see some riders going with a 150mm fork. The 140mm Pike was smooth and trouble-free, but I could see some riders going with a 150mm fork. Schwalbe's 2.35" Magic Mary was a good choice for damp, loamy trails. Schwalbe's 2.35" Magic Mary was a good choice for damp, loamy trails. Component Check • RockShox Pike RC: • XT drivetrain: • Magic Mary / Nobby Nic tires: • Non-QR axles: Pinkbike's Take When you're shopping for a new bike it's easy to find yourself sucked into a confusing world of numbers; grams, millimeters, angles – they all start to blur after a while, making it difficult to differentiate one model from another. With the Sight, there's only one thing you really need to remember: this bike is all about fun. Uphill, downhill, and everything in between, the Sight C 9.2 is an all-mountain bike in the truest sense, with the right angles and parts for it to excel almost anywhere. — Mike Kazimer About the Reviewer Stats: Age: 34 • Height: 5'11" • Inseam: 33" • Weight: 160lb • Industry affiliations / sponsors: None Twenty-two years deep into a mountain biking addiction that began as a way to escape the suburban sprawl of Connecticut, Mike Kazimer is most at home deep the woods, carving his way down steep, technical trails. The decade he spent as a bike mechanic helped create a solid technical background to draw from when reviewing products, and his current location in the Pacific Northwest allows for easy access to the wettest, muddiest conditions imaginable. Age: 34 • Height: 5'11" • Inseam: 33" • Weight: 160lb • Industry affiliations / sponsors: None The Sight 9.2 tested here comes in at $4,999 USD, with a build kit that includes a 1x11 Shimano XT drivetrain, a RockShox Pike RC, and wide Race Face rims shod with a Schwalbe Magic up front and a Nobby Nic in the back, all components that are in line with the bike's aggressive trail / all-mountain designation.The Sight's yellow and British racing green paint scheme works much better than I would have expected – my preferences lean towards a more subdued palette, but given how dark and gloomy this past winter was, the bright color served as a welcome reminder that the sun would one day return. Underneath that glowing paint is a carbon front triangle and seatstays that are joined to aluminum chainstays.Technically, it is still possible to run a front derailleur on the Sight, but Norco wisely chose to spec all three models with 1x drivetrains and a small upper chainguide from OneUp instead. The brake, derailleur, and dropper post housing are routed internally, save for the portion of shift housing that loops under the PF92 bottom bracket, and the brake housing that runs along the chainstay.The new Sight still uses Norco's take on a Horst link suspension design, but the rocker link now sits in a more horizontal position than before, with a trunnion mounted RockShox Deluxe RT3 serving up 130mm of travel.The previous Sight had a fairly high level of anti-squat, enough to cause the rear shock to move rhythmically under hard pedaling, especially during out-of-the-saddle climbing. That issue has been addressed on the new model by reducing the amount of chain growth, which Norco says should improve the bike's pedaling performance and also allow the shock to more easily absorb impacts.I ran five pounds less than my body weight in the rear shock, which equated to a little under 30% sag. Up front, I stuck with the stock 2-token configuration of the Pike due to the softer trail conditions that persisted during the test period. For drier conditions, I'd probably toss in another token in order to gain a little more bottom-out resistance and mid-stroke support.The last few seasons have seen more and more do-everything 29ers hit the market, and the Sight falls squarely into that category. At 30 pounds it's not exactly a featherweight, but given its sturdy parts spec and how well it can handle rough terrain I'm more than willing to overlook a few extra grams.The Sight has an excellent blend of quickness and comfort that makes it well suited for those all-day adventures where you don't exactly know what type of trails you'll end up on. On long grinds up steep fire roads I'd flip the shock's compression lever into the middle setting, but even in the fully open position, the rear end stays nice and calm, free from the oil-pump-style bobbing that was present on the previous version.Compared to the YT Jeffsy, the Sight feels a little less snappy on the climbs, likely due to in part to its longer wheelbase, but it's no less adept at getting up tricky sections of trail. If anything, I'd give the edge to the Sight when it comes to the really technical stuff – the balanced geometry and the amount of traction the RockShox Deluxe provides is a potent combination that keeps the rear end glued to the ground.The very first note I jotted down about the Sight reads, “Holy f#ck, this thing rips.” Needless to say, my inaugural outing on the yellow machine was a good one. Its handling is very intuitive, and it was only a matter of minutes rather than days to before I felt completely at home. That feeling remained over the following months, and the Sight continued to deliver on all types of terrain, everything from rough, steep singletrack to flowier jump lines.At the moment there are a number of bikes that share fairly similar geometry to the Sight, and for good reason. The 67-degree head angle and 435mm chainstay length create a bike that remains composed on the steeps while remaining lively enough for carving quick S-turns through tighter sections of trail. The 458mm reach for the size large is roomy without feeling unwieldy, and it allows for riders to go shorter than the stock 50mm stem if they'd like.What exactly makes the Sight so fun? It's a mix of things, but part of its appeal is the amount of grip it has on wet, loose trails. Here in the Pacific Northwest, shiny, polished roots are a near constant presence in the winter time, serpentine obstacles waiting to pull unsuspecting riders to the ground. The Sight exhibited an uncanny ability to find traction where I fully expected things to go sideways. The rear wheel dug in tenaciously when necessary, hugging the ground without getting hung up, but it was still easy enough to pop the bike up and over bigger roots and holes.When the Sight did reach the end of its 130mm of travel, it did so without any harsh clanging or scary noises, and in most cases I didn't even notice it until I looked down at the end of a ride and checked the shock's o-ring fun-o-meter. It is possible to add more volume spacers to create more end stroke ramp up, but the stock configuration worked well for my needs.It was only at higher speeds on extremely rough tracks where the Sight began to lose some of its composure and get knocked around by bigger hits, but that's to be expected, and the Sight's handling in those type of situations was right on par with contemporaries like the Fuel EX and the Santa Cruz Hightower. All of those bikes have their limits, but they perform at a higher level than what you'd expect from a bike with 130ish millimeters of travel.Norco's BC roots really shine through on the Sight's parts kit, and it's clear that whoever chose the final spec put some thought into equipping the bike with components that are capable of handling aggressive riding in all conditions. The Race Face cockpit, XT drivetrain, and beefy Schwalbe tires all have a well-deserved reputation for being durable and reliable, the type of parts selected by hard chargers looking for high performance without an exorbitant replacement cost when that time comes.At the front of the bike, the 140mm RockShox Pike RC felt well matched to the 130mm of travel provided by the Deluxe shock, but I could see some riders swapping out the Pike for something like a 150mm Lyrik to create an even more potent machine. Sure, Norco has the Range for riders looking for a long-travel trail smasher, but not everyone needs (or wants) that much travel – the Sight is more manageable on tight terrain, and its liveliness helps keep things entertaining at slower speeds. Bumping up the front travel by another 10mm would slacken the head angle a touch, while also providing a little extra cushion for when things get really wild.The Shimano XT 11-speed drivetrain lived up to its workhorse reputation, and it survived months of mud and grime without any issues. I still think the jump from the 37 to the 46-tooth cassette cog is too drastic, but it does provide an easy bail-out gear for those leg burning climbs.Remember when there were barely any decent tire options for 29ers? I do, and I'm so, so glad that those days are over. The Magic Mary / Nobby Nic combo was fitting for the wet conditions that prevailed during testing, and they easily set up tubeless on the 30mm-wide Race Face rims.The Sight's fork and the rear wheel both require a hex wrench to remove them; make sure to bring the right tools with you, lest you run the risk of finding yourself cursing whoever forgot to include a 6mm bit on the multi-tool you tossed into your pack. That little incident aside, I'm actually a fan of bolt-on thru-axles – it's one less part that can hang up on a rock or a tree.C heck to see if you're actively registered to vote V iew your elected officials Check your current party enrollment Administering Elections In Monroe County The Board of Elections Department of Monroe County is responsible for administering all aspects of elections in Monroe County to maintain and facilitate participation in a democratic system of government. The Monroe County Board of Elections conducts all national, state, county, city and town elections. The structure of this agency, its responsibilities and duties are mandated by New York State Election Law. Guidelines for procedures are provided by the rules and regulations defined by the New York State Board of Elections. The Monroe County Board of Elections is administered by two Commissioners of Elections who serve four year terms. The Commissioners are elected by the county committees of each political party and their appointment is confirmed by the Monroe County Legislature. The Commissioners, each assisted by a Deputy Commissioner and a full-time staff (with equal representation of Democrats and Republicans) provide the technical, clerical, and mechanical skills necessary to provide services; bilingual assistance; information and statistical data to county legislators, other county departments, governmental agencies and to the public. New York State Board of Elections 40 North Pearl Street, Suite 5 Albany, New York 12207-2729 Phone: 518 474-6220 TTY: Call the New York State Relay 711 (Hearing Impaired) Visit the New York State Board of Elections. Elections Defined What is a Primary Election? A “Primary Election” is one in which only enrolled members of a party may vote for the purpose of nominating party candidates and electing party officers. In any election district, if a race is uncontested, no primary is held. A “Primary Election” is held on the first Tuesday after the second Monday in September before every general election unless otherwise changed by an act of the legislature. Polls are open for voting from Noon until 9:00 p.m. The board of elections canvasses the returns of the primary elections as early as possible within nine days from the day upon which the primary election is held. The board tabulates the number of votes cast for all the candidates for nomination to each public office or for election to a party position, and the number of votes cast for each such candidate. The candidate receiving the highest number of votes shall be the nominee of his party in the general election for such office or will be elected to a party position. *To vote in a primary election you must be currently registered in the constituted political party (Democratic, Republican, Conservative, Green, Working Families, Independence, Women's Equality or Reform) that is running the primary election. If you choose to write-in a party or not enroll in a party, you will not be able to participate in a primary election. What is a General Election? A “General Election” is an election that is being held throughout the state or country on the same day. The most prominent example is the Presidential election held every four years. Examples of statewide general elections include the races for the New York State Governor and New York State Senators. Monroe County Voting District Maps The Board of Elections is now able to provide voters and the community with high quality, full color maps. All district maps are available for purchase at the Board of Elections office, however, some are also available for viewing online (see below). Visit the New York State Board of Elections for maps encompassing state and/or federal jurisdictions.First gift received, second exchange. Success. Finally. So I have a pretty large owl collection (jewlery, figurines, shotglasses, gold balls, etc). I had said I liked owls in my wishlist (among a variety of other things), but hadn't talked about it a lot on Reddit in general. My person found a ridiculously awesome wooden box with 3 cute owls on it. I don't have any owl boxes in the collection, so this is a perfect addition! Inside the box was really a pretty necklace and earrings set, along with a Dalek xmas tree card! The Doctor Who touch was awesome since I was a Dalek for halloween and when I signed up for the DW gift exchange, I never got a gift (womp womp). Really, really awesome. Made my day.The Netherlands is making a major effort to ensure it makes European tax agreements which are transparent, junior finance minister Erik Wiebes said on Thursday. At the same time, the Netherlands is keen to ensure companies want to locate in both Europe and the Netherlands, Wiebes told the Financieele Dagblad. He dismissed claims made in Thursday’s FD which said the Netherlands has played a ‘notorious’ role in efforts to boost tax transparency. The Netherlands has for years waged a campaign to keep the tax advantages it offers multinationals despite EU efforts to phase them out, the paper said. It based the claim on an analysis of the minutes of the Code of Conduct Group, set up in 1998 to make sure EU countries did not use damaging tax rulings to compete to attract multinationals ‘It reads like a history book. It is all old news,’ Wiebes said, adding that political thinking about the tax climate has changed. ‘We oppose constructions which allow companies to avoid paying tax,’ he said. Wiebes said he and finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem were working to ensure as broad support as possible for new European Commission proposals on tax transparency.By Andreas Rinke BERLIN (Reuters) - In a recognition that Germany needs to rethink its relations with Russia as a result of the crisis in Ukraine, the foreign ministry plans to invest millions of euros in a new institute devoted to the study of post-Soviet states. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is the driving force behind the think tank, which is to receive 2.5 million euros a year in government money, and focus on themes -- Russian society, the economy, and its regions -- that are not covered in depth by existing institutes. The think tank, which does not yet have a name or a director, will be launched this year, according to officials familiar with the plans, who declined to be named because details have not been finalised. "Strengthening our understanding of eastern Europe has been a top priority of the foreign minister," said one official close to Steinmeier, whose party, the Social Democrats (SPD), rules in coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives. "This is all the more important given the paradigm shift in our relations with Russia since the annexation of Crimea." The SPD's attitudes towards Russia were shaped by former chancellor Willy Brandt's "Ostpolitik" engagement policy in the 1970s and the crumbling Soviet Union's support for German reunification. Steinmeier is a protege of former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who was close to Vladimir Putin while in office, and celebrated his 70th birthday with the Russian president last year while the Ukraine crisis was raging, drawing criticism in Germany. Russia's annexation of Crimea and its support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine have been an eye-opener for the SPD, and Steinmeier has jettisoned his soft approach, aligning himself and his party with Merkel's conservatives, who have backed EU sanctions against Moscow. The founding of a new think tank focused on Russia and other former Soviet republics, excluding the Baltic states, is an acknowledgement that they are not infant democracies moving slowly but surely towards the West, but complex states driven by forces that are not fully understood. "We need to understand better what makes them tick," said a second official. Merkel and Steinmeier have taken the lead in trying to forge a deal with Putin, with the German chancellor floating the idea last week of an economic pact between the European Union and Eurasian states if the Russian leader cooperates on a ceasefire, border controls and other demands in eastern Ukraine. But they have been repeatedly frustrated by Putin, and are now considering further sanctions against Moscow in response to a new offensive by pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine. (Writing by Noah Barkin; Editing by Giles Elgood)There is a witch-hunt in the British Labour Party. Britain’s Opposition party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is being hounded for not rooting out alleged anti-Semitism in his party. Those leading the charge are pro-Israel Zionists and their supporters within the party, members who are mostly allied with the former Prime Minister, the largely discredited pro-war Tony Blair. The Blairites are quite unhappy that Corbyn, who won the party’s leadership election last September with a landslide victory is a non-elitist politician, with a deep-rooted grassroots activist past, and, yes, a strong stance for Palestinian rights. Corbyn has been subjected to all sorts of attacks and ridicule from his own party, many members of which have been busy plotting to push him out, but remained hesitant because of his popular appeal. The Labour party had, in fact, lost much of its credibility since the days of Blair’s ‘New Labour’ and following the US lead in waging an immoral and illegal war on Iraq. Blair’s supporters changed the priorities of the party, which was ‘Labour’ by name only. Corbyn’s advent galvanized young people around fresh ideals, and renewed the shaky faith of the party’s traditional supporters. But since he became a leader, the man’s agenda of anti-corruption and greater equality in Britain has been slowed down, or even entirely halted, by some most bizarre controversies. He was attacked over such things as his supposed poor sense of fashion, his alleged lack of patriotism, and more. The attacks have been so ridiculous, yet omnipresent, that they became the subject of popular memes and much satire. And when it all failed, he was hit with another manufactured controversy, that of alleged anti-Semitism within his own party. The recent attacks have been the most organized, yet. They involve Israel supporters, British politicians, the media and other sources. The media has tried to paint him as an embattled leader who is not able to control the uncontainable Jewish hate oozing from his party members. British Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, known for his strong support of Israel joined the fray, charging that the lid has been lifted on bigotry within Labour and that investigation into anti-Semitism must be more than a ‘sticker plaster.’ The investigation and the preceding outcry of anti-Semitism, however, targeted those who were critical of Israel, not Jews, in general, or Judaism. Former London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, who was suspended from Labour for suggesting links between the Nazi party and early Zionists, was not making any reference to Jews per se, and certainly not to Judaism. Arguably, if he was wrong, then it is a mere question of history, not race. In its coverage of the controversy, even the BBC, delinks both concepts: “Anti-Semitism is ‘hostility and prejudice directed against Jewish people’, while “Zionism refers to the movement to create a Jewish state in the Middle East.” Indeed, the first is a racist ideology, while the latter is an entirely political and historical question, especially since early Zionists were largely atheists. Israel’s Zionist-Jewish contradiction was phrased skillfully by Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, when he wrote: “The secular Jews who founded the Zionist movement wanted paradoxically both to secularize Jewish life and to use the Bible as a justification for colonizing Palestine; in other words, they did not believe in God but He, nonetheless, promised them Palestine.” But the Rabbi, and many of those who unscrupulously joined the charge against Labour pretend that Zionism, a late 19th century political movement is the same as Judaism, a religion that dates back millennia. However, there is nothing new here, and the manufactured ‘controversy’ is hardly limited to Britain or the Labour Party. The message that Israeli hasbara (propaganda) has been steadily sending to its critics since the establishment of Israel over the ruins of the Palestinian homeland in May 1948: if you are critical of Israel, however slightly, you are a certified anti-Semite. If it happens that you are Jewish, then you are a self-hating Jew, and if you are an Arab, you must abandon the idea that you are, yourself, Semitic and Arab, by merely opposing Israel’s ethnic-cleansing of Palestinians who are all anti-Semites, anyway. I doubt there is a self-respecting Palestinian intellectual who has not fended against accusations of being anti-Semitic for merely advocating Palestinian rights, and demanding accountability of Israeli violations of human rights and war crimes. Many independent Jewish voices, too, have found themselves on the defensive, although within a different category. The classification of a ‘self-hating Jew’ has been ever so popular these days, especially as many Jewish activists have righteously joined the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS). The once-marginalized voices are now a large and growing crowd. Unable to defend Israeli action based on logical arguments, international law or common sense, Israel’s supporters use other means, threats, smears and vilifications, and also by fabricating non-existing controversies. And no one is immune. Daniel Greenfield engaged in a bizarre diatribe in the Jewish Press on March 8, in an article entitled: “Bernie Sanders is NOT a Jew“. In the same familiar tone of distortion and self-pity, Greenfield theorized: “While Bernie Sanders invoked his last few drops of Jewishness and the Holocaust in support of a Muslim anti-Semite’s cry bullying, he didn’t feel the need to do so for the Jewish State when it
Church. “These self-appointed saviors of the Christian West who are looking for an absolute Antichrist should take a look in the mirror,” editor-in-chief Ingo Brueggenjuergen of the Catholic broadcaster Dom Radio said. The editor added that in his view, Woelki is “in good company” with Pope Francis and his immediate predecessors who talked about Muslims as brothers in faith. In recent days, support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as well as the xenophobic and anti-Islamic PEGIDA movement has surged. The AfD party has benefited from anti-immigrants public discourse, winning seats in eight of Germany’s sixteen regional assemblies. Meanwhile, mainstream politicians are worried about right-wing attacks on migrants. German police near Dresden recently arrested five people they suspect of forming a far-right militant group and preparing attacks using explosives on asylum seekers. Germany has Europe’s second-biggest Muslim population after France, and Islam comes third in Germany after Protestant and Catholic Christianity. It has between 3.8 and 4.3 million Muslims, making up some five percent of the total 82 million population, according to government-commissioned studies.Vibram's FiverFingers shoes creep me out, but I understand the appeal of footwear that feels like it's barely there. The Swiss Barefoot Company thinks the same way, but has instead created an ultra-durable sock that's worn like a shoe. The socks are made from 8 percent spandex, 10 percent cotton, 32 percent polyester, and the most important ingredient, 50 percent kevlar. The bottoms have also been reinforced with a PVC laminate that helps make them cut-resistant. So your feet will feel as close to being naked while still having some level of protection. Just remember, the socks aren't cut-proof, so walking on broken glass or jagged rocks is still going to be risky. Each pair runs about $78, and apparently requires a bit of practice to get used to walking in them. And while I like the general idea, I can't think of anything worse than the feeling of walking around in wet socks. So I'll stick to my sneaks thank you. [The Swiss Barefoot Company via Gizmag]During the mayoral campaign, Sandy Stimpson said if elected, on his second day in office he would take down the mayor’s door. Not only did he do that on Nov. 5, he removed even more barriers. As staff, councilors and local media watched, Stimpson used an electric drill to take down the wooden door to the mayor’s office. “Some of you may think this is just a symbolic measure, and it is in a way, but this is about the City Council knowing they have access to the mayor. It’s not just the City Council, but also the city employees and citizens,” Stimpson said. Advertisements The mayor also said the two bulletproof glass doors leading to the mayor’s office would remain open. Those doors are controlled by an electronic system in which an access card or button must be used in order to open the doors. “It’s again to send the signal we’re open,” Stimpson said. The openness didn’t stop there. The conference room for the mayor previously had curtains over the glass doors leading into the room. Stimpson took the curtains off and said, “Now everyone can see who is meeting in here.” The mayor spoke to Mobilians about openness as well. “I would challenge the citizens of Mobile to think about the doors you’ve got in your life and think about taking them down,” Stimpson said. “If we want to be one Mobile, that’s going to be necessary.”Welcome to vaporizerwizard.com! Below you will find a complete list for 2015 Black Friday and Cyber Monday vape deals. I’ve put together this list with vaporizer brands and stores that I have personally used and/or worked with. You can buy vapes and accessories on sale without having to worry about fake units or bad deals. I got you. (This article is a work in progress, and I am adding/updating sales as I find them) 11/21/17: To see the current sales, check out my new 2017 Black Friday and Cyber Monday Vaporizer sale article. If you don’t quite know what vaporizer would suit your needs, I recommend checking out my portable vaporizer buying guide for a great introduction into the types of units and their various strengths and weaknesses. If you already have a pretty good understanding of herbal vaporizers, you can check out my best portable vaporizer article to see my favorite units within different categories like portability, vapor quality etc. You can also check out my youtube vaporizer reviews and hit that subscribe button to get the latest vaporizer reviews in 4K! BLACK FRIDAY – CYBER MONDAY VAPORIZER SALES! PuffitUp Has some of the best sales this season on the lower priced units, if you are looking to spend around $100 or less there are a handful of choices this year. Paxvapor is running a “Buy Pax 2, Get $80 Site Credit from 11/25 – 11/30. Valid through Cyber Monday. (This is the best deal I have seen YET on an authorized Pax 2 with warranty since it has been released) VapeXhale is running a pre-black Friday Give Thanks “Cyber Weekend” Starter Kit sale and you can pick up a $700+ CloudEVO package for $399.99 $349.99. No lie. Includes 1 VapeXnail attachment, 2 herb baskets and you get a FREE HydraTube. They list the different choices for Hydratubes on their website. Enter the CloudEVO coupon code “CYBRWKND” at checkout to snag this amazing deal. Vapeworld is running a 30% off sale on select vapes with code ‘VAPE30’ (Most of the vapes are not ones anyone would be looking for, but they do have the Haze V3.0 for 30% off (Currently out of stock at vapeworld, check vapornation.com) bringing it down to $175 which is the best Haze V3 Deal Also the MFLB Muad-Dib is legit at 30% off. HazeVaporizers.com (Haze V3 manufacturer) is giving a $50 gift card with any purchase of a Haze vaporizer. VaporNation is running 30% off site wide for Cyber Monday. 30% OFF Coupon code = “CYBER” V2Cigs has 25% off the V2 Pro Series 3 and Series 7 which are the cheapest 3 in 1 vapes on the market. They also have 30% V2 e-cig vape starter kits TheFirefly.com is running 20% off the Firefly AND you get a FREE colored lid. The discount will show up with you add both items to the cart. So total for Firefly + Free Lid = $215.96. Jojowoodworks is running 35% off everything until next Monday. Get yourself a beautiful hand made wood stand for your Arizer Air, E-nano, or he even makes custom stands for other vapes and glass/stems/accessories. Planetofthevapes will be taking an addition $10 off the already heavily discounted Arizer products. You can also get 20% off most other vapes with coupon code “blkfri20”. Here are some of the prices: Air – $159.95 Solo – $139.95 Extreme Q – $149.95 Alfa – ~$159 7thfloorvapes will be running 30% off all Vaporizers, Vape Packages, Grinders, and Jars. 40% off ALL Water filters, recyclers, and custom glass accessories. You can also add a bubbler to your Sidekick order for only $25. Definitely worth if you are thinking about picking up the Sidekick. Can’t wait to get my hands on one. Also 30% off cosmetic refurbs which might be their best deal! E-Nano is running 15% off all standard models (no exotics) and 25% off all accessories. Might be a good time to pick up an E-Nano. Firewood vapes is running $30 off while supplies last.(Currently sold out but keep checking back) You can get an unfinished maple Firewood 3.0 for $105 + shipping. That’s awful cheap for a battery powered convection unit! *Please not that all orders placed using these codes will ship by Friday December 4th, 2015. Use code “blackfriday15” and “cybermonday15” for the respective days. Vapir is selling the Prima at $199! TheVapeLifeStore is running 20% off on almost everything in their store (including grinders/glass) except the Volcano Digital and the Herbalizer if you use the code “blacknow”. Delta3DStudios is running 15% off + Free Shipping ($20 min). Use Code: “GobbleGobble15”. Lotusvaporizer is running 15% off. Use Code: “Black”. The Hammer Vaporizer is running 50% off until the end of the year. Use Coupon code: “1HAMMER”. Image says 40%, pretty sure it’s 50%. SantaCruzShredder is running 20% off All Shredders/merchandise 25% off all OMNI products. Discount code: “Cybershred”. OilVaporizer.com is running 45% off sale when you use Code: “Oil Vaporizer” this site is more for concentrates, but they have some really cheap options. VaporTownUSA.com is running various black friday sales. Generally 20-30% off products. UK READERS: Vapefiend is running 25% off select VapeXhale packages and giving 10 off the Dabbie which brings it down to 89. VapeXhale w/ Glass Mouthpiece – 269.00 VapeXhale w/ HydaTube Package – 349.00 AUS READERS: Australianvaporizers is running a few different sales: Flowermate 5.0S – $99 \| Code: BLKFLWR 20% Off Arizer Products \| Code: BLKARIZER $50 Off Volcano, Crafty, Mighty and Plenty Vaporizers \| Code: BLKSB 30% Off Grinders \| Code: BLKGRIND Hit me up on the contact form or comment section if you have come across any deals that I missed, even if it’s something else weed/mmj/420 related like apparel or glass let me know.June 15, 2016 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Kathleen Byrne, 215.348.6366, kgbyrne@buckscounty.org A pawn shop owner who stalked and harassed a police detective who had cited his Lower Southampton business for violations was sentenced Tuesday to serve one to two years in state prison. John J. D’Angelo, 49, successfully schemed to have strangers sent to the detective’s residence seeking everything from scrap metal to gay sex. The malevolent pranks, executed through anonymous Craigslist ads, “put at risk the entire justice system,” Bucks County President Judge Jeffrey L. Finley said in imposing the sentence. In addition to the prison term, Finley sentenced D’Angelo to a consecutive three years of state probation. D’Angelo, of Trevose, had pleaded guilty Feb. 17 to felony charges of unlawful use of a computer and criminal trespass, as well as misdemeanor counts of stalking and retaliation against Lower Southampton Detective Gerald Scott. On Tuesday he also pleaded guilty to failing to verify the identity of a precious metal seller at his pawn shop, Gold N Stuff, on Bustleton Pike in Feasterville. In July 2015, Detective Scott had issued D’Angelo two non-traffic citations for violating township ordinances at the pawn shop. D’Angelo pleaded guilty to one of the citations in September, which resulted in a 21-day suspension of business operations the following month. Seething over the shutdown, D’Angelo spent his suspension hatching a plot to retaliate against the detective. On Oct. 2, he purchased a pre-paid Verizon TracFone at a Warminster Wal-Mart store. He then used the phone – and a neighboring business’s wifi connection – to set up a Gmail account. Using that account, he placed an anonymous ad on Craigslist the following day, soliciting sex with men. The Oct. 3 ad read, in part: “Wife’s away. Glory hole set up and ready – totally discreet – m4m. Wife’s away again and I have the glory hole set up. It’s all wood not a flimsy sheet. I’m a married white guy in good shape. Single home, very private. I’m good till about 6 a.m.” A “glory hole” typically is a small opening made in a wall or partition, through which men can engage in anonymous sex. The same day, a man responded to the ad, indicating his interest by using a reply link on the Craiglist site. D’Angelo answered anonymously, emailing the man Detective Scott’s home address in Warminster. He told the man to open the side door when he arrived and to enter the residence. The man went to Scott’s house at about 11:30 p.m., found the door locked, and posted another inquiry. D’Angelo replied anonymously that someone was inside the house and that the man should come in. Sensing that something was awry, the man left, but not before a neighbor observed him trying to enter the house and called police. D’Angelo continued his harassment by placing two more ads on Craigslist on Oct. 8 and Oct. 9, advertising various household items for free around the back of the house, as well as free scrap metal. “Don’t mind the dog (it’s inside the house). Any time day or night is fine,” the first ad said. The second ad specifically told visitors to arrive between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. At 10:30 p.m. on Oct. 8, a male stranger knocked on Scott’s door when the detective’s wife was home alone with the couple’s three children, inquiring about the free items. She called her husband, who came home and posted signs in his yard stating that the ad was a hoax. An investigation by Bucks County Detective Eric Landamia and Warminster Township Detective John Bonargo traced the advertisements back to D’Angelo, his email and his TracFone number. In court, Detective Scott told Judge Finley that, had the man mistakenly seeking sex entered his house, he likely would have shot and killed him as an intruder. “This was more than a game,” Scott said of D’Angelo’s ruse. “Probably what would have happened is if that man had walked into my house…he would have found a threshold where he would not have walked out.” “You’re still stunned, even though I am a cop,” he said. D’Angelo portrayed himself as a decent, charitable man who had succumbed to 80- and 90-hour work weeks spent establishing his business, and who became irrationally angry when the police citations forced it to close. “We couldn’t believe that we didn’t at least receive a warning,” he said, acknowledging that he wanted to get even. “I only meant to annoy, not to harm, Your Honor.” D’Angelo said he was “deeply, deeply sorry,” and promised “that I won’t do anything remotely like it again.” He said that he had initiated a number of charitable endeavors since being charged, including counseling and finding jobs for former county inmates and writing a prison handbook to help orient those who are incarcerated. Finley responded that D’Angelo might now have a chance to write additional books about life in state prison. In retaliation for Scott having done his job as a police officer, Finley said, “You took time, and you developed a sophisticated plan to harass, to stalk, to abuse, to threaten, to intimidate Detective Scott.” By trying to lure gay men to Scott’s house, the judge added, “you even singled out a particular community for derision.” Finley ordered D’Angelo to have no further contact with Scott or any of the witnesses in the case. Approved for release by Matthew Weintraub, Chief of Prosecution.Alex Proyas says Knowing is sort of a prequel to Dark City I love Alex Proyas’ Dark City. I saw it when it first came out and thought it was brilliant (although the soundtrack was a tad overpowering). I mean, you have Rufus Sewell waking up in a strange room, with no memory of what has gone before. Then you have Richard O.Brien and Ian Richardson as weird bald dudes making the entire city fall asleep and then it gets really weird. Seriously, if you haven’t already seen it then go check it out. Proyas also directed 2009’s Knowing. That is the one with Nicolas Cage and Rose Byrne and an incredible plane crash. Nic stumbles across some numbers that warn of huge disasters and things get weird by the end. I won’t give any spoilers about it. It had its moments, but the film did not really grab me. However, it appears there may be a connection between the two films as Proyas had this to say about them: I made this movie called KNOWING which was intended as a kinda sorta prequel to DC and it did very well commercially, so give it some love as well. I hadn’t realised this, but can sort of see how they could be linked after the events of Knowing. Events at the end of the film do take a turn to the cosmic. Mind you, I had thought Proyas had come on board the film after a few other directors had been involved so I am not sure if the link was originally there. Still, it is always cool to find links between films that you had not seen before. Apologies if this is nothing new to you, but I’d not heard of the link until now. What are your thoughts on Knowing being a sort of prequel to Dark City? Does it make you reassess the film?Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2014/05/tlf-version-1018-released-treasure-trove.html Version 1.018 is out, and I hardly know where to begin, this one is so large.- The way that races are born, mature, and die has been tuned quite a bit, and is more interesting and better balanced. A lot of folks won't notice much effect from this directly, but it's a subtle thing that does have a big impact on the overall flow of the game when an organic population is trying to rebound from attacks for instance.- There are a number of new political deals, including a way to finally stop the Andors from attacking someone, and options for Lauding or Denouncing other races to the friends of the race doing the speaking. Very cool tools to have in terms of manipulating attitudes.- The way that ground invasions and resistance fighters work has been heavily (heavily heavily) updated to bring all of that stuff together more. It's still very similar to how ground invasions have worked recently, but killing armadas no longer kills ground troops that they landed, among other things. Personnel transport production and other numbers have been tuned in light of the new changes, and there is now a home field advantage in ground combat when defending a planet of your own (which makes good sense).- There are a whole slew of screens that now let you get at a bunch more detail info on just where a given multiplier came from. Why the heck is the science rating of the Burlusts 41.37, for instance? Hover over it and see.- The way that armadas are constructed and improved has seen a huge adjustment as well. Previously this was working like I wanted in terms of the general result, but there were odd edge cases where a race would basically build nothing for extreme amounts of time. This was to do with the range of the math multipliers in use, and so this has been rebalanced completely in order to try to get something near the previous effect, but without the edge cases.- Science and Manufacturing stuff had a ton of bugs, turns out. A couple were obvious in the prior version, but others were more subtle and never were found before now. Why? The opaqueness of the multipliers. The numbers were close enough to be plausible, even though they weren't correct. Now that we all can see the breakdown of how those numbers are arrived-at, I was noticing a number of glitches that I fixed. A couple of those glitches were things that had bubbled up to the attention of players in seemingly-isolated bugs, but really it was a symptom of one of those larger issues that are now resolved.- There are two new buildings added to the game, which only show up right at the start on random planets, and which are destroyed if the planets get taken: The Ark and The Mire. These basically give a boost to one race and a penalty to one other race. This layers on top of all the other procedural circumstantial randomization, of course, but it's one way of helping to make sure that there is extra uniqueness from game to game, versus stronger races tending to dominate weaker ones unless they just happen to get a very unlucky planet. Now there are more variables in play with these, and thus more variance.I've done dozens and dozens of tests of this stuff, and it's feeling pretty darn good. It's definitely a huge amount of stuff for one day, so there are likely some issues somewhere. Apologies in advance, but I'm not pushing this into a beta branch because I do feel like this is an across-the-board better version than the prior one, and that's a big part of my criteria.Some interesting notes: the Burlusts and the Thoraxians have reclaimed their rightful place as the most fearsome races in the solar system (the majority of the time). Additionally, with the way that things build up now, there are fewer armadas, but they tend to be tougher. This actually gives you more power to affect things through your missions, since taking out an armada or two means a bit more. And with the shifts to birth/death rates, maturation rates, ground combat rates and mechanisms, science and manufacturing rates, armada construction and improvement rates, and personnel transport construction rates... well, the overall length of time with the games is feeling about the same as it was before, when I run it in observer mode.Anyhow, I'm really pleased with how this turned out, if you can't tell. Hopefully there aren't any major things you find overnight before I wake up, but anyway I'm off for the night. I've been paying close attention to mantis, but if you've been putting responses in the forum on the last thread, I'm afraid I missed those today as (as you can tell) I was running about a mile a minute to try to get all this done. If there's something important I missed, it was not intentional -- just shoot me a response on today's main forum post, and I'll do my best to actually read that thread this time around. ;)--------------- Ongoing Updates All This Month ---------------The support of the community, and the growth of it, remain amazing to me. I've been promising daily new features, but since launch it has became clear that there are other things more on your mind. Things like added interfaces, new AI behaviors and options, and things like that. So, you know what? I'm just going to go with that -- those count as features, really, in that they help to make the game more interesting and easier to understand and play.So what else is going on? Well, we're going to be working at this pace on the game for at least another month, which means that you're going to be seeing lots of good things coming. If you've liked what you've seen in the last few weeks, you can imagine what another month of that will be like. We do have two other things in the works as well, but we're not quite ready to reveal either one of them (although I am betting that most long-time Arcen fans can guess what both of them are). Suffice it to say, neither one of these two other things are going to impact the general updates, improvements, and free additions to TLF that are coming over this month.More to come tomorrow. Enjoy!This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.What Ron Paul meant Ron Paul’s statement this afternoon about his future plans is so suitably vague that it’s open to interpretation. While it's been reported that he's now out of the race, there’s no mention in the announcement of ending his campaign or even suspending it -- the preferred language of candidates who are dropping out but want to retain their delegates at the convention. But by choosing not to campaign anymore “in primaries in states that have not yet voted” – a list that includes the biggest prizes on the election calendar, Texas and California – it looks like Paul is moving to preserve the gains of his movement before they begin to erode. His campaign has achieved a remarkable degree of success this year: His share of the vote has increased in most states – dramatically, in many cases – and his supporters have ascended into positions of party leadership. Yet for weeks now, the bulk of news reports have focused on disorderly GOP state conventions where his supporters shouted down and booed speakers supporting Mitt Romney. This past weekend alone, there were unruly episodes in Arizona, Virginia and Oklahoma. To many in the party, the Paul movement is looking less like a committed and well-organized insurgency and more like an uncontrollable mob. While the Romney campaign has wisely stayed out of the fray, the reports have raised questions about the effect it will have on the national convention in Tampa, where the GOP has an interest in a smooth-running affair that’s free of televised chaos. My own sense is that Paul is sending a tacit message to the GOP establishment that he’s not interested in subverting the convention – he’s made his point and is standing down. But he is bound by unique constraints as to what he can say, and how he can say it. He can’t publicly drop or formally suspend his bid as long as so many of his backers continue to harbor the belief that he can still win the nomination. He doesn’t have an interest in playing by the established rules anyway – he never has, and would lose credibility with his base if he tried. In any case, the ball’s in the GOP’s court now -- next up is the discussion for the party platform and a convention speaking slot for the Texas congressman.This article is about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement specifically. It is not to be confused with Boycotts of Israel A BDS demonstration outside the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, April 2017. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (also known as BDS) is a global campaign promoting various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets what the campaign describes as Israel's "obligations under international law",[1] defined as withdrawal from the occupied territories, removal of the separation barrier in the West Bank, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and "respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties".[1] The campaign is organized and coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee.[2] Protests and conferences in support of the campaign have been held in a number of countries. Supporters of BDS compare the movement with the 20th century anti-apartheid movement and view their actions similar to the boycotts of South Africa during its apartheid era, comparing the situation in Israel to apartheid.[3][4][5] Critics of BDS reject its charge that Israel is an apartheid state, asserting that in Israel (outside of the West Bank) "Jews and Arabs mix freely and increasingly live in the same neighborhoods...there is no imposed segregation."[6] Critics have also argued that the BDS movement is antisemitic[7][8] in the form its opposition to Zionism takes,[9][10] drawing analogies to the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses[11][12][13] and accusing it of promoting the delegitimization of Israel.[14][15] Background One of the objectives stated at the founding of the Arab League in 1945 was to "frustrate further Jewish development in Palestine by means of boycott against Zionist products". A central boycott office was established to coordinate this effort. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, the boycott of Jewish products from Palestine was transformed into the boycott of Israeli products and services. The boycott was conducted on a primary level (as a direct boycott of Israeli products), a secondary level (though direct pressure on states and institutions not to deal with Israel), and a tertiary level (to prevent companies from uninvolved third-party states from dealing with companies that had relationships with Israel).[16] Zachor Legal Institute founder, Marc Greendorfer argued in the Roger Williams University Law Review that the BDS movement originated in the Arab League's boycott of Israel in name, in function, in tasks, in methodology and in goals.[17] Historian Alex Joffe agreed and added the General Union of Palestinian Students, Muslim Brotherhood activities within the United States, and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign as historical antecedents. Accordingly, Joffe wrote, unresolved issues originating in the Cold War relationship between pan-Islamism and Communism are driving historical forces behind the BDS movement.[18] During the Second Intifada, Palestinians began developing international solidarity and support that could be used to apply pressure on Israel through non-violent means.[19][20] In 2002, organizations in Europe, Australia, the United States, and the Palestinian territories called for a boycott of Israeli institutions, including a boycott of academic and cultural institutions.[21] Palestinian academics and intellectuals also called for a boycott in October 2003.[21] In 2004, an attempt to coordinate the boycotts gained momentum following the start of the construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier.[19] In April 2004, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) was founded.[22] One of the founders was Omar Barghouti.[23][24] There is disagreement over exactly when and how the BDS movement began. According to the BDS movement's website, on 9 July 2005, the first anniversary of the advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice in which the West Bank barrier was declared a violation of international law, a broad spectrum of over 170 Palestinian non-governmental organizations initiated a campaign for a boycott, divestment and international sanctions against Israel until it complied with international law and universal principles of human rights.[25] A number of scholars with differing perspectives concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict, from the right-wing Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs to the left-wing historian Ilan Pappé, dispute the BDS movement's account of its origins. Some of them have asserted that the BDS movement has been active since at least 2001, that some of the Palestinian NGOs referenced in BDS literature do not exist, and that a significant percentage of the NGOs that do exist come from countries outside of Israel or the Palestinian territories.[26] At the first Palestinian BDS conference, held in Ramallah in November 2007, the BDS National Committee was established as the Palestinian coordinating body for the BDS campaign worldwide.[25] The movement's main example and source of inspiration is the international boycott of South Africa by anti-apartheid activists.[27] Goals of the campaign The BDS campaign urges various forms of non-violent punitive measures against Israel until it complies with the precepts of international law.[28] These measures should bring about:[28] The BDS campaign is organised and coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee.[2] The committee cites a body of UN resolutions and specifically echoes the anti-apartheid campaigns against white minority rule in apartheid era South Africa;[29] the BDS campaign calls for "various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law".[1] Methods The BDS Movement advocates the boycott, divestment, and sanctioning of Israel. It has found the most success in university settings where Israel may be judged in the court of public opinion.[30] The campaign has organized demonstrations and protests targeting companies that have contracts with the Israeli military or with companies in Israeli settlements.[31][32][33] Actions may also target prominent individuals who openly support settlements businesses.[24] At the grassroots level, social media, petitions, articles, and on-campus events pressure individuals to cancel their participation in events in Israel or in Israeli settlements, such as concerts or academic events.[34] These activities are intended to link Israel to negatively-charged words such as "apartheid" and "racism."[26] At the same time, Israelis are pressured not to take part in activities outside Israel or the Occupied territories.[35] Participants in events are sometimes demanded to declare solidarity with the Palestinian cause.[36] Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is a series of such events normally held in February or March.[37] Since IAW began in Toronto in 2005, it has since spread to at least 55 cities around the world including locations in Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Austria, Jordan, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Botswana, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, the United States, South Africa, Mexico, Norway, Australia, and Palestine.[38][39][40][41][42][43] Its opponents argue that at official university levels, the BDS movement inundates university organizations and departments with various and recurring anti-Israel resolutions, often without notice or time for open debate. They say that BDS supporters bring outsiders to influence opinion or to vote on university resolutions even when this is unauthorized.[44] Whether or not a resolution passes is not as important as keeping the debate alive at official university levels. The goal is to influence future policy makers to find fault with Israel.[30] Financial and organizational ties The BDS movement is diverse enough that no single organization controls the entire movement. However, some opponents of the movement have criticized what they argue are close ties to militant organizations in the Middle East. In February 2019, the Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministry released a report which stated that a number of current or former members of designated terrorist organizations, Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), were financially and organizationally involved in the BDS movement.[45][46] For example, Rasmea Yousef Odeh a former PFLP member who participated in a bombing that killed two students in 1969, participated in meetings organized by Jewish Voice for Peace and National Students for Justice in Palestine in the United States.[47] BDS organizers said that the report was "wildly fabricated" and declined to respond.[48] Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former terrorism finance analyst for the U.S. Treasury Department, has argued that there are links between American supporters of Hamas and the BDS campaign. In April 2016, Schanzer testified before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade that "in the case of three organizations that were designated, shut down, or held civilly liable for providing material support to the terrorist organization Hamas, a significant contingent of their former leadership appears to have pivoted to leadership positions within the American BDS campaign."[49][50] Academic boycotts Universities have been primary targets with the BDS movement, according to English professor Cary Nelson, "because faculty and students can become passionate about justice, sometimes without adequate knowledge about the facts and consequences.... [U]niversities also offer the potential for small numbers of BDS activists to leverage institutional status and reputation for a more significant cultural and political impact."[51] The campaign for academic boycotts of Israel has been led by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which has been endorsed by nearly 60 Palestinian academic, cultural and other civil society federations, unions, and organizations, including the Federation of Unions of Palestinian Universities' Professors and Employees and the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) in the West Bank.[52] Sari Nusseibeh, former president of Al-Quds University, opposed a boycott of Israeli universities in 2014. A handful of Palestinian scholars oppose cutting academic ties and have differing views on what practical results the boycott on Israel will have.[53] Academics in a number of countries have signed on to support the campaign.[54][55][56][57] In December 2013, the American Studies Association (ASA) joined the boycott of all Israeli academic institutions.[58][59] Israel is the only nation ever boycotted by the ASA in the 52 years since the organization's founding. As of March 2018, resolutions to endorse BDS had not had any effect on college investment decisions, according to Nelson. The effect they do have, he says, is the promotion of anti-Israel (and sometimes antisemitic) sentiment within student bodies, faculty, and academic departments.[60] After previously agreeing to write a letter of recommendation for a student, a University of Michigan professor declined to write the letter after discovering the student was planning to study in Israel. After critics called a letter to the student anti-semitic, the professor said he supports BDS for human rights reasons and rejects antisemitism. Guidelines from a Palestinian organization associated with BDS says faculty "should not accept to write recommendations for students hoping to pursue studies in Israel".[61][62] 58 civil rights, religious, and education advocacy organizations called for the university to sanction the professor.[63] University officials ended the controversy by disciplining the professor[64] and issuing a public statement that read in part, "Withholding letters of recommendation based on personal views does not meet our university’s expectations for supporting the academic aspirations of our students. Conduct that violates this expectation and harms students will not be tolerated and will be addressed with serious consequences. Such actions interfere with our students’ opportunities, violate their academic freedom and betray our university's educational mission."[65] Business boycotts Effects of business boycotts on Palestinian employment Opponents of BDS argue that BDS destroys employment for Palestinians. They argue that companies in settlements are beneficial for Palestinians. They claim that they offer employment with high wages compared with Palestinian factories and that the Palestinians are happy with their jobs and do not feel exploited.[24] Proponents of BDS allege that in 2011 many Palestinians worked in settlements without permits and earn less than the Israeli minimum wage or even less than half the minimum wage.[66] In the former SodaStream factory in Ma'ale Adumim, for example, for entry-level employees there was not much difference in the salaries between SodaStream and Palestinian factories. The majority of Palestinian employees at SodaStream had renewable seasonal contracts that last only three months each. According to a study conducted by Al Quds University, 82% of Palestinians working
powerful and opens amazing workflow opportunities, it also requires more hardware than a small post facility would want to invest in. The collaboration-only preview shows how we can provide the collaboration component and rely on the existing house network to access local shared media. We are going to keep pushing to make collaboration something that every Creative Cloud subscriber uses daily. Adobe has been a pioneer in the tackling of technical challenges these past few years. What are the new challenges ahead? It can be summed up in an acronym: UHD (Ultra High Definition). We see three interesting challenges in UHD related to our work: Larger raster images Higher cadence frame-rate Larger gamut Aside from changes in resolution, the home experience has not altered much since the advent of color broadcasting. We are on the cusp of delivering more color and light to the home at a higher frame rate, which is going to be incredible to watch. This does come with substantial challenges, the biggest of which will be the co-existence of SDR and HDR devices in the home. Today, most home devices have the luminance capability of around 100 nits (brightness units). Going forward this will get broader. Today it’s been shown around 1500 nits, but some see this reaching 6000 nits. With such a spectrum of possibility, content distributors won’t want to put out different streams for different devices. For the first time the content stream will handshake with the viewing device and a deferred ‘grade’ will be applied by the device itself to optimize the viewing experience. Luckily, users will be able to target a specific profile for the SDR devices and a target nit profile that can be extrapolated to service the variable spectrum of capabilities of the new devices. Mastering for this reality will initially be the domain of high value content, but as the technology gets more established in the home, there will be a need for more content. Therefore, mastering needs to be simple. Users need to be able to understand what is happening at each phase of the creative process (see below). One could argue that one of the reasons 3D hasn’t really picked up is because we haven’t fully mastered its powers and avoided its technical dangers, and that they have added little artistic value. What do you think is key to these new technologies avoiding the same pitfalls? Technologies that are successful should work for all content, all the time and don’t incur a massive increase in cost for the producer. This was the problem with Stereoscopic television. Firstly, the benefit was interesting but for ‘day-to-day’ content (documentary, news magazine, sport, etc.) it did not deliver enough benefit in experience. Secondly, the active shutter systems forced users to wear glasses (which were expensive and prone to loss or breakage) and lenticular never worked well for a group situation. Lastly, the costs of production were much higher. Combined, it meant that stereoscopic was only well suited to event content. It was for this reason that Adobe took a partner approach for these workflows. We made sure that our architecture correctly supported stereoscopic workflows and allowed our partners, such as Vision 3, to provide professional tools for those with with these types of needs. UHD however is a different proposition. When large raster is combined with high frame rate, everything looks better. If you add extended dynamic range to the mix, it’s truly and amazing experience for all gathered around the screen. The whole production and distribution chain is organically migrating to enabling technologies: Cameras are extending gamut and frame rate Software can deal with the increased processing required for HDR and HFR content Home TVs are reaching price-points where it would appear that UHD sets will become the norm This is an area where Adobe is investing heavily. Lars Borg, our Principal Color Scientist is the chairman of the drafting group Dynamic Metadata for Color Transforms of HDR and WCG images at SMPTE. Additionally, he is working with Dolby to ensure that the Dolby Vision workflow can deliver amazing techniques utilizing an XMP sidecar to carry the deferred grading information. Outside of this change in home experience, the thing that gets me most excited is the increasing use of mobile technologies for content creation. As the computing capabilities of mobile devices increases, we end up with not only a powerful computer in our pocket, but also a powerful camera with network connectivity. This allows creativity to be truly mobile. At Adobe, we pushed and explored this space on many fronts. Recently, we developed Adobe Premiere Clip for video. This app isn’t trying to put Premiere Pro into a 4-by-6 inch screen. Instead, it’s an experience tailored to the screen size of the device and an interaction model using your finger as a pointer. You can do amazing work right in the palm of your hand, but if you want to take your work further, it syncs to Creative Cloud. This means when you sit down with Premiere Pro CC on the desktop, you can pick up the same project and continue with a richer set of tools for more editing power and control. The mobile experience extends out to other aspects of production. As discussed earlier, color and light as a creative function is key for our users. We’ve taken advantage of the incredible camera in the iPhone to create Adobe Hue CC, which allows you to capture the mood of a moment and create a “Look” that is instantly available to you via Creative Cloud Libraries. Imagine watching a glorious sunset at the beach with your family and being able to capture the essence of that moment by creating a complex 3D color transform with the push of a button. It’s pretty special.RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - It appears North Carolina legislators will soon send to Gov. Roy Cooper a more meticulous savings method to prepare for that next big state government fiscal emergency. The Senate approved unanimously Monday night legislation that would direct how much money must be put annually into the state’s rainy day reserve and restricts how money inside it can be spent. It also requires legislative supermajorities to spend reserves beyond a certain amount or for non-emergency uses. A version of the measure already passed by a wide margin in the House, where it needs one more affirmative vote before heading to Cooper’s desk. The reserve currently contains nearly $1.5 billion. The legislation directs state budget experts to set a fund target designed to prepare state government to cover shortfalls in economic downturns. Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC.We have a good feeling about this. Shooting has begun on the untitled Han Solo Star Wars movie, and here’s the proof: The first cast photo from the eagerly awaited film directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The LEGO Movie) and starring Alden Ehrenreich (Hail, Caesar!) as the young scoundrel (that’s Lord and Miller with their hands on the Millennium Falcon’s controls in the front; Ehrenreich is in the leather jacket). Filling out the cast: Woody Harrelson, Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke, Atlanta auteur Donald Glover (as Lando Calrissian), Westworld actress Thandie Newton (not shown), and Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge, with Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca. Shooting started Feb. 20 on the spin-off, which is written by Star Wars veteran Lawrence Kasdan and his son Jon. “Watching such inspired people from all over the world, with such unique voices, come together for the sole purpose of making art, is nothing short of miraculous,” Lord and Miller said. “We can’t think of anything funny to say, because we just feel really moved, and really lucky.” The untitled Han Solo Star Wars story is currently slated for release on May 25, 2018 — just five months after the release of The Last Jedi Episode VIII on Dec. 15, 2017. For ongoing Star Wars scoop, follow EW’s Anthony Breznican.I haven’t given much attention to the passing of David Bowie, mostly because I didn’t think it was that important. To the extent that it is, and what we may learn from his history on earth, Joseph Pearce has a nice requiem: Fame, Fashion & Fascism: The Many Masks of David Bowie. Over at Future Primaeval, Harold Lee brings us The Hippie-Conservative Synthesis—a call to conservatives to be the real counterculture. As Jim predicted, bitcoin would not scale. Always seemed a little implausible to me. I know my BTC client bogs down my machine. But I figured smart people would “figure it out”. Over at Dissident Right, August Richter pulls back the curtain on Trump, the Antifragile. Esoteric Trad considers The Beauty of Rome—experienced first hand it appears. Social Pathologist’s Picture Du Jour sums up Islam’s (and Europe’s) problems almost perfectly. Slumlord also takes stock of the (current) year that was: 2015: Raisins and Turds. (LOL at that title. Must be an Aussie thing.) Sydney Trads seem to have found a steady source of meme posters in @WrathOfGnon. Here’s another: Beauty is God’s Handwriting. And then a general hat tip: @WrathofGnon, Thanks for all the Fish!. Also, something we alluded to on the last Descending the Tower podcast: Brazilian Founder of Femen renounces Feminism, Embraces Christianity. Not sure dat haircut bespeaks a “reversion to normalcy” doe. Speaking of pictures, Nick Land has another: Progress for Richard Dawkins. Superb line from Nick Land: Chronic lying is hard. Eventually, it results in mistakes. Alrenous has an Update to Progressivism Diagnostically. I assume he means to lampoon the line of reasoning rather than contend for it. Everyone is not a wizard and spells do often fizzle. Also this happened. A new blog from an old friend. He’s dropped a huge volume of stuff in just the past couple weeks. Most of it excellent. Some of it unnecessarily hyperbolic. Free Northerner is has a word or two about Alt-right Ethics: Is being a low-melanin gene-controlled meat sack pumping out more low-melanin gene-controlled meat sacks and fending off higher-melanin gene-controlled meat sacks so your particular phenotype becomes dominant among meat sacks really the base good upon which all other good is measured and for which all evil is justified? However, just because God is not a consequentialist that does not make him a deontologist. Northerner hints in the above about a forthcoming post on Nationalism, which he drops here. And it is I think a perfect expression of the neoreactionary view on the matter. Or as nearly perfect as I’ve seen at any rate. Nationalism grew out of Westphalia and the French Revolution, and is a part of the enlightenment and liberalization. When it began, nationalism was the ideology of radicals and 1800’s nationalists were often the liberals, until Cthulu swam past them both. Nationalism resulted the destruction of local culture for a more universalist national culture and the end of traditional authorities. Nationalism, or at least modern nationalism, is too liberal for me to accept as an ideology. So I support unified communities, nations, and believe that generally each individual nation, whether based on ethnicity, language, religion, ideology, etc., should have self-determination and should govern itself by its own authorities in accordance with its own local culture. Free Northerner takes home the ☀☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Award☀☀ for his efforts here. E. Antony Gray brings us an ode: Aeons Cambria Will Not Yield has an ode to particularity in If We Forget Europe: Try as he might, no European can ever return to paganism. Odin and Thor were fine fighting men, and when seen as precursors to the one true God they are inspiring. But it is pure fantasy to think we can invoke those pagan gods in our war with the liberals. It is Christ or oblivion. It would seem that the Europeans have chosen oblivion. This Week in Social Matter Media watcher—i.e., watcher watcher—Ryan Landry kicks off the week over at Social Matter with Nightcrawler Is Journalism’s Here And Now. It is about the increasing lengths the Fourth Estate is going to attract eyes (or clicks), whilst obscuring, when not altogether disregarding, the facts. Last summer, Megyn Kelly attempted to derail the Trump train by smearing him as misogynistic and calling upon white knights to make Trump’s treatment of Kelly proof of misogyny. The media and protest-rioters in Ferguson, Missouri, were in a symbiotic relationship. Reporters for CNN and MSNBC were practically begging for the first Molotov cocktail. The rioters needed the media to portray them as oppressed citizens crying out, and the media needed the rioters for ratings. How much further does the media go before they become Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler: setting up shootouts, or even worse, paying criminals to commit crimes to capture on film? With the media’s actions in Ferguson or Baltimore, is the media not already there? David Grant’s attorneys are in negotiations with the gods of libertarianism. Unless You’re An Atom, Principled Libertarianism Is Not For You. [W]hen people come into conflict, someone’s pursuit of happiness must be thwarted. When hundreds of young men in the street start eying dozens of women, should we prioritize the good of many or of the few? There is no set of principles that will not require you to sacrifice someone’s good for another’s sake. The question is “Whom are you willing to sacrifice?” Mark Citadel returns to Social Matter with Battling The ‘Aesthetics’ Of Modernity, but beware the R-rated image, which I find difficult to look at even for a moment. It’s presence is, however, very much relevant to Mark’s point in this ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ Just as there is an organic moral base for mankind, there is also an organic aesthetic base which at the very least extends to the broad spiritual race. On average, people from Belarus have similar concepts of beauty to the French. It is very possible for an Italian to marvel at St. Basil’s Cathedral, and a Russian to admire the Coliseum, even though both are culturally distinct architectural styles. I think this is exactly right. There are logical, principled, and moral reasons to oppose abortion. And they are completely correct. But none of them smacks you quite as hard as Abortion is Ugly. Now one might counter that brain surgery is ugly. This is true, yet brain surgery is an attempt to restore natural healthy function. What natural healthy function does abortion restore? Consequence free sluttery? No. Abortion is ugly all the way down. Landry returns Wednesday with Episode 8 of his preternaturally regular podcast. Friday brings another newcomer, Margot Ford, up to the Social Matter Amplification System. She peels back several layers of subterfuge on Anarcho-Tyranny In Germany. This Week in 28 Sherman If you needed help with his Nightcrawler Is Journalism article, Ryan Landry provides a review of the film to kick off the week over at his home blog. Sounds like he watched on a lark, thanks to zero overhead Netflix. Overall he loved the movie, “a great film that I heartily recommend.” Still, there are a few things that Nightcrawler gets (rather predictably) wrong: The journalism angle is well represented for gore but there is a miss. The sell is that crime creeping into white burbs plays well for cameras. We know this is a lie. Hollywood wants you to think the media is not on the side of criminals and trying to frame crime as a bad thing. This is a lie since the dindu crimes of break-ins are suppressed while the Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin shootings get national coverage. Where was the national outrage for Amanda Blackburn? Unfamiliar with that name? She was the pastor’s wife raped and murdered in front of her toddler. They couldve just robbed her but they did not. they raped and killed her. That did not get trayvon or michael brown treatment, but if we are in the start of a national crime wave and incarceration policies are being debated, what better symbol to push to be tough on crime? She is not used since she does not fit the prog narrative. He has moar on David Bowie’s Footsie With Fascism. Whether Bowie was, as he later averred, in a drug-crazed attention-whoring episode or not is, to me, beside the point. (Turns out a whole lotta 70s era artists when through that phase too.) What’s interesting is what drug-crazed attention whore celebs used to be able to get away with? It’s not that they can get away with less these days. Certainly, they can get away with more, generally speaking (e.g., Miley Cyrus). But it is a very special kind of more (e.g., not Mel Gibson). Landry ventures out to TRS this week with Bloomberg’s Loathsome Jew Trilogy. Now before we accuse ol’ Ryan of going all Natsoc on us… I like capitalism and the free market, but I am also smart enough to know that usury laws were put in for a non-theological reason. Usury laws were put in because one cannot price for all risks. There are two schools of thought: “A price for every risk” and “some risks cannot be priced”. The second approach is not just pricing something so that the market can sustain it, but pricing the actual, underlying risk. Your loan and return requirement for a particular risk will be too high for some projects to operate and pay you for your risk. Those projects should not be funded until they can be engineered, designed or altered to fit a lower return, signifying a safer risk. Usury laws are not anti-capitalist. They are pro-capitalist: merely a signal that the sovereign is unwilling to take the risk of unbounded risk pricing. This Week in WW1 Pics: Dead Macedonian In The Snow. Finally, Neoreaction’s most productive worker, Landry posts his own personal week in review. He does them every week, but I thought I’d go ahead and link it since he’s putting more and more meat in there. This Week in Kakistocracy Porter begins with the intriguing assertion: Maps Don’t Show Borders. Well, not the real borders. Between peoples. They used to mostly. He reports on the interesting developments among the Visegrad Four (V4) nations of central Europe: “The Visegrad states are coalescing around a common rejection of Soros-style, petri-dish globalism. And these are just the liberals.” Here he has an open letter to Dear Solipsists. I’m personally ambivalent about trans-racial adoption. But not when you use it to score moral points against your huwyte, non-violent, and anti-racist neighbors. Here’s some classic Porter on that: It’s gratifying to see she’s impartial to her own biological offspring–neither of whom I imagine will ever be called a strong white man by their mirror-gazing mother. Though to the preening white–ummm–parents of African accessories, I’ve been wrestling with talking to you about some things I think you need to know. God or Gaia did not fashion this world as a stage for your exquisite morality. This being a play best produced away from those who must be harangued to heed it. There is a reason you did not choose to raise your Liberian–ummm–son in his native habitat far from the predations of suburban white professionals. It is the same reason your hollow ethics didn’t compel you to decamp to at least an American black ghetto, where the non-racist neighbors would have been regarded with calm composure. This Week in Evolutionist X Evolutionist X goes all Do-it Yerselfer on a Tentative map of Neanderthal (and Denisovan) DNA in humans. Next she wonders Why is India so dark? This was a little more navel gazy than usual, but Mrs. X definitely has some interesting stuff on actual autism spectrum disorders: The Big Bang Theory is not “My People”: aspies, tribalism, and the development of nerd politics. Like I’ve said, the development of the unpopular smart nerds vs. popular dumb jocks dynamic is a very recent cultural trope. It has little basis in human biology and I in fact have speculated that it may very well be a ((((Jedi)))) mind trick. The Professor was the smartest and most desirable man on Gilligan’s Island. More on the subject here. Evolutionist X rounds out the week with another edition of Kabloona Friday. This time we meet a homosexual Eskimo. And since DePoncins’ book was published in 1941—before the stereotype that stereotypes are always wrong took hold—stereotype validation is refreshingly abundant herewith. This Week… Elsewhere Matt Briggs has a few Predictions Relating To Racist German Women Taunting Innocent Migrant Men. In which, he links to Ed Feser’s long comprehensive take on Liberalism & Islam. Speaking of Feser’s article, Bonald takes his own excursion on that here: Liberalism and Islam, Christianity and paganism. So, in a sense, liberalism and Islam are opposites. In another, they are cousins. Christianity posits two orders, each largely defined by the opposition of the other. Liberalism takes one, Islam the other, but if you’re just left with one order which covers everything, does it matter so much what you call it? It’s just like we know whenever somebody starts going around teaching that everything is sacred, one knows with certainty that anyone who believes it will promptly lose his sense of the sacred entirely, since the sacred only exists for us in opposition to the profane. Back to Briggs… He examines an honest-to-God peer-reviewed paper in an honest-to-God academic (well, “academic”) journal and wonders What Could Feminist Physics Possibly Mean? About what you’d think, apparently… not that it would be physics. He also has one up at The Stream: Obama Warns: Global Warming Deniers Now Face the Disapproval of … Business Leaders! But back to Bonald… He questions the thesis that Assimilation of French Muslims impeded by zombies (aka., nominal Catholics). Meh. Correlations are too easy to find. But back to Briggs… This was crucial: When Philosophy Lost Its Way Discussion The effect of the retreat of philosophers into incomprehensible and practically useless sub-sub-specialties is to elevate science to the place theology once stood, where it doesn’t belong. It is to let scientists adapt faddish philosophies, since they never are forced to confront their philosophical views and prejudices. Introspection isn’t necessary by definition if philosophy is of no use. About all scientists can recall is some vague ideas of falsifiability, which are of little practice value. Briggs gets an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ for that one. Filed under Worth it For the Featured Image Alone, Briggs also says: When They Come For Your Cash, It Will Be For Your Own Good. But also worth it for updates on the Global War on Cash. Whenever Voegelin comes up, I always expect heavy. Over at Imaginative Conservative, Eric Voegelin’s Redemption of Modernity appears to be an attempt to get Voegelin and Kant to play nice. Evaluating whether that works is above my paygrade. Must’ve been Voegelin Mashup Week over there because here’s another: The Burkean Tradition of Strauss and Voegelin. Also there, more on McLuhan’s Thomist realism: Technological Servitude & Marshall McLuhan’s Proposal for Liberation. I’m not convinced of the terms of the debate. “Technological servitude” for example means what exactly? “We” humans have “needed” the plow to survive for going on ten-thousand years. Does that mean we are The Plow’s servants? There’s also an implied collectivism in some of this that doesn’t ring true. For example: By spotting the patterns of our servitude, we can arrive at not simply a realistic appraisal of the challenges of our new environment; we can also arrive at the sort of meditative thinking, traditionally encouraged by the liberal arts, which will enable us to liberate ourselves from our technological slavery. Well, agreed on principle but confused as to extent. Is it “our” (whose) duty to “liberate” (how much) everyone by meditative thinking. Or is this liberation only for the few? And if only for the few, then who’s to say that a few aren’t already liberated? And of course given the current state of the liberal arts, it seems even to begin this project that the entire edifice would have to be torn down and rebuilt to provide any support to genuinely free thought. Finally a view from married Roman Catholic priest (because formerly Anglican priest) Dwight Longenecker on The Reformation: The Mother of All Revolutions? (The question mark I think is purely rhetorical.) We’re approaching the 500th anniversary of that event next year. Over at West Coast Reactionaries, new (to me) author Cato Disapproves has very fine essay on The Decline of Community. And another: The Happening and Leviathan. That which cannot be sustained usually ends. But knowing when is always the hardpart. With all due respect to Thrasymachus, whom I respect and usually like, this is almost 100% wrong, that is to say, in the places it makes any substantive claims at all. Our current problems—the decay of the west—are chiefly structural. Argue with that, or don’t argue at all. Here too we have what would amount to an argument with Christensen’s Civilization post if only the two were logically or thematically related in some way. An encouraging sign, Chris Gale thinks We need a second reformation. Involving the Prots and Romans. Since the first one didn’t actually reform anything, but rather split the Western Church in two (and then in 35,000) and carve out space for the so-called Enlightenment, perhaps we can call this a “first one”. Mark Richardson asks Who do the German Greens blame for the Cologne attacks? David Grant engages in a bit of speculative analogical fiction at his home blog: The Gate of Gnon. Coontown University is an excellent and enjoyable (thus far by both metrics) discovery. This week, Dr. Swaggins brings us Eyferth the Cat. The good doctor’s first post in December, predating my knowledge of the place, was a tour de force (and music to my ears): Fecundity is Immortality. Also at Coontown U., here’s one On the Neural Basis of Political Belief. There is some. But it’s not quite the way the media want to spin it. The fact that we have both conservatives and liberals means that both phenotypes (or underlying genotypes; a four repeat allele of the DRD4 gene has been shown to correlate with conservatism and identical twins raised apart generally share political beliefs) have helped our survival at some point. If one of these two phenotypes were less fit than the other, this would mean one of two things: We’re living in a potential multicultural paradise wherein different groups pose no significant threat to one another’s safety or prosperity, and to be concerned with an incalculably massive horde of illegals effortlessly crossing our southern border, rapists migrating to Europe and so on is tantamount to basing one’s worldview off of paranoid delusions, or There are people out there who outright lack the mental hardware necessary to understand these threats even after hearing about the Rape of Cologne, the Paris shootings, the San Bernardino shooting, the Boston bombings, the Rotherham rape ring, the attempted bombing at Hanover, and the Chattanooga shooting. I’m not given to hand out an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ to just any ol’ Johnny-come-lately onto the seen, but this is that good. JM Smith is fantastic here: Duffers and Fanatics—an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀: [I]magine a hiking club that is comprised of true hikers and duffers. The true hikers love hiking, the duffers are happy to hike, but only because it is an agreeable way to exercise, socialize, pass the time, build an appetite, or what have you. And to the extent that the duffers take over the club, the club will cease to be a hiking club and degenerate into a social club that happens to hike. Socializing, not hiking, will become what the club is “all about.” Book clubs are often destroyed by duffers. To find out why that’s important you’ll just hafta RTWT. While hooliganism will play no role in a proper restoration, it’s sometimes difficult not to admire their strategy. Brett Stevens notes Why diversity trumps feminism every time. Feminists are really between a rock and a hard place. The perpetrators of actual rape are overwhelmingly “diverse”. Fixes for that will involve disparate impact. And that’s rayciss. He also says, “Blame democracy, not the rapefugees”. Not that we can’t blame both, of course. And, of course, it isn’t as though people voted for Muzzie rape gangs, nor in fact that a majority of Europeans (on any given day) are all that gung-ho to accept migrugees. Europe is quite famously undemocratic, eevul EU-n-all that. And that’s the entire point about the occult power of democracy: it allows the powerful to manipulate the opinions of people to act, in general, against the interests of those same people. The answer is not Moar Power to the People, but rather far less. Guest author, Daisy Belden, explains at The Mitrailleuse: No, I’m not a feminist. Well looky that… It’s still Monday. On the west coast of America. We’re declaring this: On (Freaking) Time!! See you next week. Til then, keep on reactin’! TRP… Over and out.Praise for Neopenda! Our mission: improve newborn survival and health in the developing world We are developing cutting edge healthcare technologies for where they’re gravely needed and will have an incredible impact—vulnerable populations in low-resource countries. Annually, over 46 million newborns in developing countries around the world need interventions for complications that happen at or around birth, 600,000 in Uganda alone. Every Neopenda device has the potential to save the life of a newborn for less than $1, once it is produced at scale. What we’re building Neopenda is a baby hat with a novel sensor array that measures the four most important vital signs for newborns: heart rate respiratory rate blood oxygen saturation temperature We’ve melded the ease of wearables like Fitbits with the medical accuracy of finger clip pulse oximeters in the hospital. It’s small, it’s simple, and most importantly it’s validated—and we’re making it cheap and suited for the tough environment of a hospital in Uganda. Hats on up to 24 babies in a single room will send the vital sign data wirelessly to a tablet running Neopenda's custom software. There, it is displayed for the doctor or nurse, and alerts them when something is wrong with one of the babies. Why Neopenda is needed Nearly 3 million babies die every year in their first month of life and 98% of these deaths occur in the developing world. Too many newborns continue to die each year, even when there are interventions available to combat the primary causes. The problem: hospitals in resource-constrained settings are severely challenged by limited manpower, supplies, and equipment. Newborns are especially vulnerable in their first few days of life, and suffer from the strain on resources. These hospitals lack sufficient resources for the devices seen in American neonatal units, and lack sufficient staff to manually measure newborns’ vital signs at the necessary intervals. Babies in distress often go unnoticed while nurses are occupied elsewhere. Neopenda fills this gap in care by giving a voice to newborns in danger. After a year of learning about these challenges, speaking with stakeholders, visiting hospitals in Uganda, and lots of prototyping, we are excited to launch our creative solution that is going to revolutionize newborn care in low-resource hospitals. Sona, CEO, with staff at St. Francis Mutolere Hospital in Uganda in 2015 Where we are today An early 3D printed sensor prototype We are currently rounding the corner on the prototyping stage and are beginning testing and small scale manufacturing. CAD Animation of how the sensor device fits together While we are still iterating (and shrinking) the wearable device design, the software component of the system is fully built out. Our app displays multiple babies’ vital signs, has adjustable alerting thresholds, generates trend plots, exports patient histories, and alerts when vitals are out of range. The Neopenda software platform Dashboard Patient trends feature, including history plots for each vital sign in 24 hour or 1 hour time periods Adjustable alerting thresholds for each patient Neopenda is not classified as a medical device because it’s not diagnostic, and it does not fall under FDA regulation because the application is outside the United States. That being said, we are performing rigorous evaluation for safety and have to demonstrate it for the regulatory process in Uganda. The device is completely safe for newborns: it uses a Bluetooth Low Energy transmitter that is FCC-approved and complies with all safety recommendations. Sona and Teresa checking out prototype drawings and meeting with Catapult Design Studios to talk about the move to small-scale manufacturing. How we’re going to bring Neopenda to the world This Kickstarter will fund the first field deployment of the Neopenda device, but that's only the beginning. Mulago Hospital Special Care Baby Unit in August 2015 Our vision to success includes demonstrating the feasibility and impact of the technology in Ugandan NICUs, scaling deployment and sales in Uganda, and expanding to comparable regional and global markets over the next 3 years. We are partnered with the Uganda Pediatric Association, who will be instrumental in helping us navigate the process of testing and deploying in Uganda. Ultimately, Neopenda is a social enterprise with a double bottom line approach that focuses on achieving social impact while maintaining financial sustainability. Why Neopenda needs you We have a strong team of engineers, healthcare professionals, and experts in global health and entrepreneurship. However, getting a global health startup off the ground and getting our product across the world to where it’s needed takes a lot of time and a bit of money. We want to accelerate the journey and start field deployment of Neopenda this year. Most importantly, we care a whole lot about helping these babies, and we think the Kickstarter community does, too. Many thanks to g martinez cabrera for making our video, check out his work.Labour's former law chief tries to dodge drive ban Excuses ignored: Former MP Vera Baird leaves Pontypridd Magistrates Court where she was banned from driving for six months yesterday The former Labour Solicitor General tried to dodge a driving ban yesterday by claiming 'hardship' after being kicked out as an MP at the General election. Barrister Vera Baird - who occupied the £125,000-a-year post for Gordon Brown until last month - was caught on camera speeding at 98mph. But she claimed a ban would cause her 'excessive hardship' because she needed her car to wind up her affairs after losing her seat in Redcar, Cleveland. And she told magistrates the punishment would cost taxpayers more money, as she is still eligible to claim MPs' expenses and would have to file a bill for taxi fares for the delivery of her paperwork. The QC tried to persuade the court to allow her to keep her licence after researching the speeding laws. But magistrates banned her for six months for the offence on the M4 near Cardiff. Baird lost her seat to the Liberal Democrats with the highest swing against any Labour candidate in the country. She told the court: 'I need my car because I have up to 800 files dealing with cases involving my former constituents. 'They didn't expect me to stop being able to assist them and, frankly, neither did I.' She said she needed her car to deliver the case files back to people who had asked for her help. And she added that the cost of sending them by taxi would have to be met from the public purse through the 'winding-up allowance' for MPs who lose their seats. 'There does not seem a lot of point in that,' she said. Magistrates at Pontypridd, South Wales, decided the widow, who is also an author, would not suffer hardship because she has an employee to carry out the work. The barrister already had seven points on her licence and was given a further five, which earned her the driving ban under the totting-up procedure. She was also fined £400 after admitting speeding in her silver Hyundai coupe. The court heard she was driving to visit an elderly female friend who had been injured in a fall. She said: 'I had driven from Redcar to London, then on to Limeslade Bay west of Swansea. I was visiting my 67-year-old friend who had fallen and we were due to go on holiday the next week. 'She was hurt and feeling guilty about the holiday and depressed. I was uniquely the person to go and cheer her up. 'I can only imagine that somewhere toward the end of my journey unfortunately I went too fast.' The court heard three of Baird's speeding points expired yesterday - the day of her hearing. However the totting-up procedure still applied because they were on her licence when she was caught last August. After the case, Baird, of Crouch Hill, London, said: 'It was a fast bit of driving. I have no complaints, the magistrates listened carefully and were perfectly reasonable. 'I did think they were good arguments of mine but the magistrates considered with care and I can't ask for any more than that.' Baird was criticised last year when she attempted to put through controversial expenses claims. She put through a £286 for'miscellaneous items' but Commons officials refused to pay after spotting the receipts were for Christmas decorations.For the last two years, Kishore Biyani has been crying himself hoarse saying the e-commerce opportunity in India was vastly overstated. And when he’s finally being proven right, he isn’t about to let up. “It’s stupid to be in the online space,” Biyani has just said. “In lifestyle, the e-commerce industry revenue in India will be around Rs 2,500 crore, and losses too will be of equivalent amount. Mobile and electronics, too, do not make money online.” His predictions might seem dire, but he’s been right thus far. Biyani had been famously dismissive of e-commerce startups over the last few years, saying that none of the online grocers would survive, and that 90
Motera Stadium in Ahmedabad. Here’s what happened at the Wankhede:By Rob Broomby BBC World Service, Olkiluoto, Finland The turbine is the world's largest and will generate about 2m horse power When it is finished, Finland's Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) nuclear reactor will be the biggest the world has ever seen, the excavation site alone is the size of 55 football fields. It was to have been a pilot project for bigger, better, cleaner, Generation III reactors, which would lead the charge back to nuclear power in a continent which had gone cold on atomic energy after the accidents at Chernobyl and Thee Mile Island. But hopes of an early nuclear dawn on the Baltic coast are fading - the May start up date came and went and the OL3 is now not expected to begin pumping out electricity until 2012 - three years later than planned and about $2.4bn dollars (1.7bn euros) over budget. The soaring cranes tell the tale: this project is far from complete. There have been a string of problems starting with the concrete, then the welding. Now, the safety regulator is questioning the designs for the reactor's nerve centre - the Instrumentation and Control system. If Greenpeace had said at the start that... its going to be three and a half years late and 60% over budget, everybody would have laughed Steve Thomas, Greenwich University STUK - the Finnish safety regulator - has shown signs of irritation with the French company Areva who want to build many of Europe's future reactors. For Jukka Laaksonen, director general of STUK, getting the instrumentation and control right is absolutely critical to the safety of the plant. He says the experts at Areva understand the problem but, "the company's management is not going along". Areva, which is mainly owned by the French government, says it is "strengthening" its team to help implement STUK's requests, with a "significant increase" in the taskforce working to sort out the problem. It says part of the problem lies with the regulator who has been slow in approving design documents. Disappointment For his part, Jarmo Tanhua, chief executive of Finnish utility TVO, the ultimate end customer of the plant, admits to being disappointed. Delays with the project could have European, even global ramifications "A lot has been going wrong," says Ariane Sains of Platts Nuclear Publications. "They have had many problems with subcontractors who simply have not understood the very strict requirements for delivering to a nuclear project." Even Philippe Knoche, Areva's chief operating officer, admits things have not been going well. "It's no secret that Areva is losing money on this project," he tells me. The two sides are now fighting over compensation for the delays. TVO is trying to claim back $3.3bn (2.4bn euros) from Areva for the soaring costs, not least to cover having to buy-in electricity to plug the gap until the plant is finished. On the other side Areva is claiming $1.4bn (1bn euros) from the Finns and the relationship on the Baltic has shown signs of icing. "If Greenpeace had said at the start that after four years of construction its going to be three and a half years late and 60% over budget everybody would have laughed at them," says Steve Thomas, Professor of Energy Policy at Greenwich University in the UK who has been monitoring the project. "But that's what has happened. It's hard to think of it going more wrong than it has." 'Teething troubles' Britain's safety regulator, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), now seems to be echoing Finnish concerns. The NII must decide whether to approve the design of Areva's European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) for use in the UK. In a letter to Areva, the NII has warned that if questions regarding the instrumentation and control systems are not resolved it could, "prevent a successful outcome". We are clearly confident we can answer these requirements Philipe Knoche, Areva In the worst case, the EPR could be struck-off the list of reactor designs approved for use in the UK, a devastating blow to the French company and the British nuclear programme. Areva's Philippe Knoche says it is not that "black and white". By knowing the requirement of the regulators upfront, he says they can solve the problems. "We are clearly confident we can answer these requirements," he adds. The French say what they are encountering are just teething troubles, and that when the problems are solved, the EPR will be rolled-out as a global energy solution. They have invested so much in the nuclear future they are unlikely to walk away, but if the safety questions are not adequately answered, the delays could occur yet again in both Britain and Finland. The Finns may be frustrated but they are showing no sign of losing confidence in the nuclear option and they may even go ahead with another reactor after this one. And at least they have a plan and a location for their underground nuclear waste repository and that does put them among the world leaders. The nuclear dawn may be delayed but like the returning sun after the long northern winters, it will eventually come. The question for Finland is when and at what cost. Bookmark with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionDid Les Miles make a good decision in dismissing Ryan Perrilloux from the LSU football team? Bill Smith: The only thing worse than having one bad apple in a barrel is having a pusher in the locker room. The only choice Miles had was to dismiss Perrilloux and hope he had done so before the drug habit rubbed off on the other players. Eric Geier: The way it sounded Perrilloux didn't really care about his team, he just wanted to show up on Saturdays without having to put in any extra work. I think Les Miles made a good decision even though it may hurt his team. Pete Quint: Yes. Hopefully this is a wake up call for Perrilloux and the young man turns his life around. LSU didn't need the off-field distractions. Ryan Leonardo: No. I don't care to know much about the Tigers, but Miles was sending a message. How ironic would it have been if he went to Michigan? Steve Patterson: On eScoutRoom.com it was reported that he had a possible four convictions pending. That seems like three too many for any college player. I think he was forced to let him go.Texas state legislators reached a compromise late Sunday on a controversial measure to bar transgender people from using the bathrooms of their choice after months of pressure from business and civil rights groups aimed at killing the bill. The bill, which cleared a key procedural hurdle in the state House on Sunday, would bar transgender students from bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity, unless other children are not present. Students would be required to use single-stall bathrooms instead. Civil rights groups criticized the measure, which they say is likely to lead to discrimination and bullying against transgender students. ADVERTISEMENT “Transgender youth deserve the same dignity and respect as their peers, and this craven attempt to use children as a pawn for cheap political points is disturbing and unconscionable,” said JoDee Winterhof, a senior vice president at the Human Rights Campaign. A stricter measure, more in line with North Carolina’s House Bill 2, passed the more conservative state Senate earlier this year. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), who sponsored the Senate version, had been at loggerheads with state House Speaker Joe Straus (R), who said the measure was unnecessary. Patrick had threatened to hold up other legislation, including the state budget, if the House did not act on the bill. Business groups and sports leagues both voiced concern about the Senate’s version of the bill when it passed in March. The Texas Association of Business estimated the state could lose $8.5 billion in economic activity if the bill passed, though those numbers have been questioned by fact-checking organizations. Major Dallas-based companies like American Airlines and Dell came out publicly against the transgender bathroom bill. The NFL said it would reconsider hosting future Super Bowls in Texas if the bill passed, though the league does not have any Super Bowls planned after February’s game in Houston. The spotlight is now likely to fall on the NCAA, which is scheduled to host the Final Four in San Antonio next year. The NCAA pulled several events out of North Carolina after its version of the transgender bathroom bill passed last year. The compromise easily cleared Sunday’s procedural hurdle on a virtually party-line vote. It requires a final vote in the state House, then a vote in the state Senate before it heads to Gov. Greg Abbott (R) for a signature. The bill is likely to clear those hurdles by Friday, when this year’s Texas legislative session is scheduled to come to an end.President Trump has told several people close to him that he plans to leave the Paris climate change agreement, according to a new report. Axios reports that Trump, who has said publicly he hasn’t yet made up his mind the pact, has told multiple people, including EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, that he plans to remove the U.S. from the agreement. Pruitt’s EPA has been working to build public support for withdrawing from the Paris pact, the news outlet noted, adding that top EPA staffers were “relieved” when Trump refused to join other G7 leaders in reaffirming their commitment to the agreement. ADVERTISEMENT Trump reportedly told French President Emmanuel Macron that he was under “heavy pressure” in the U.S. to stay in the deal. Trump tweeted on Saturday that he would make his final decision on the agreement next week.We're not really sure what's going down at Tesla Motors, but it ain't pretty. Martin Eberhard, co-founder of the electric sports car company, says at least 26 people have been fired, some of whom were canned without severance. Eberhard got the boot in the fall, and according to his blog, he's looking at starting "a new company (possibly even an electric car company) in the energy/clean technology space... Bubble or not, I am optimistic about my own ability to raise money from high-quality investors for my next venture." From what we've seen, he's got good reason to feel optimistic. We recently spotted the guy at Buck's where he was getting the royal treatment. VC types were approaching him and shaking his hand, and he was talking with some dude about how lots of people would like to start a car company now. Photo: Courtesy TeslaFounders.comBennett’s wife, Siggi, softly interjects: “Like Goldilocks. But tell him what’s different.” “Right,” Bennett says, leaning closer. “Here’s the thing: The pages? They’re blank. I want the kids to be able to draw what the characters look like however they imagine them.” He pauses for a moment: “You see? It’s written by me, but illustrated by you.” He sits back in his chair, hands raised triumphantly in the air. This happens a lot with Bennett. The title on his business card is supposed to reflect “the fact that I’m all about coming up with cool” stuff, Bennett says. His ideas flow nonstop. Sometimes he cannot sleep at night because he is thinking too much. “I keep a journal by my bed so I can just write it all down,” he says. “Then sometimes I write poetry.” In addition to being a fifth-year N.F.L. player who left Dallas to join the Giants in March, he is involved in a project to develop a new social network (“It’s like Facebook but better”); working to expand his art portfolio, which includes large canvases (“I don’t like small things”); and polishing a novel that he likens to “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “Harry Potter.” “Honestly,” he says. “People might want to make the movie before they even publish the book.” Bennett’s latest hope, though, is to create a design firm that does everything from collectibles to coffee tables. “I have an idea for a kids table that is round and has cup holders built in,” he said. Photo He envisions specializing in limited-edition items — perhaps 85 units at a time, since he wears No. 85 — and wants to have an office space that includes an “imagination lounge,” where people can feel free to just brainstorm. “I believe in dreaming,” he says through a mouthful of ice cream. 2. He somehow turns a story about a childhood fight into a moment of silence for Bill Nye the Science Guy’s TV show. Bennett was born in San Diego and moved to the Houston area after elementary school. As the new kid, he says, he was often a target for those looking to fight. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Once, a group of 10 boys challenged Bennett and his brother Michael, who now plays for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Bennetts had no choice but to “take off our shirts and go,” he says. His description of the scene — empty schoolyard, circle of adversaries around them — is compelling, but as Bennett begins to describe how the chaos unfolded (“It was like a Royal Rumble or something”), he is stopped by a friend coming over to the table to say hello to Siggi. The friend notes the bowls of ice cream on the table and says, “What flavor?” Siggi starts to introduce the woman, but before she can finish, Bennett seizes upon the mention of ice cream and launches into a recollection of how his father used to work for Dreyer’s, which meant Bennett and his brother often served as taste-testers. Being in the Dreyer’s offices also allowed them to learn about dry ice — “we learned how to blow things up and burn people,” Bennett says. And suddenly, 30 seconds after he was describing a fight, Bennett has dropped his head so he can pay respects to Bill Nye the Science Guy, whose PBS show went off the air in 1998. “I would love to have a show like that one day,” he says softly. “Bill Nye the Science Guy was awesome.” Finally, someone asks: So what about the fight in the schoolyard? “Oh, we did it W.W.E.-style on them,” Bennett says, raising his head. “There were bodies everywhere. I swung around and hit a dude in the face with like a 10-speed bike.” 3. He once started a gang whose main purpose was to steal dessert. Bennett’s enterprising spirit has early roots. In second grade, he says, he formed a gang that dabbled in black-market toy distribution — “we would jump kids and take their toys and sell them” — but was focused on relieving the ice cream man of his wares. The plan, as concocted by Bennett, was simple: “I would take a dollar and go to the ice cream truck. I would tell a few kids to bang on the other side of the truck. The ice cream guy would turn around and look out that side, then the rest of the kids would run in on this side and grab all the ice cream. When he turned back, I’d still be standing there with my dollar and be like, ‘They went that way!’ It worked every time.” The memory makes Bennett smile — until he is asked the name of the gang. “We were the Ocean View Gangsters,” he says quietly, sending Siggi into hysterical fits of laughter. Photo “Ocean View? Ocean View?” she says, struggling to catch her breath. Bennett looks sheepish. “O.K., the name wasn’t the best,” he says. Advertisement Continue reading the main story 4. He might become a music icon, at least on YouTube. On any given day in the Giants’ locker room, at least one person screams “Cap’n Crunch!” at Bennett and laughs. Bennett does not mind. “It’s a compliment,” he says. “They love the video.” “The video“ refers to a grainy 1-minute-49-second opus uploaded to YouTube on July 23, 2009, and titled “Cap N Crunch Rap.” It features Bennett, sitting in front of his house, expounding on his unshakable love for the breakfast cereal and the bizarrely jovial, seafaring mascot that graces its boxes. Among Bennett’s lyrics: “Cap’n Crunch with no berries / Just ain’t right / I’m addicted to the Cap’n / He’s my crack pipe.” There are also sequences in which the cereal pours onto his head, as well as a faux-1980s video game backbeat with what sounds like the coin-gathering effect from “Super Mario Bros.” periodically infused over the hook: “I love Cap’n Crunch / It’s my favorite kind of munch / I love Cap’n Crunch / I could eat a whole bunch / Cap’n Crunch!” Bennett played trombone and trumpet in his school band, he says, and even learned the clarinet because “that’s what all the girls played.” “Oh, you need to practice?” he says to Siggi, as if she were an innocent high school freshman. “You want to practice together?” He laughs. “All the girls played the clarinet or the flute, but I couldn’t really get down with the flute.” 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. Music is important to Bennett. He and his brother Shaud have a rap album called “Fast Food,” which is on iTunes with tracks like “House Partayyy” and “The Dopest.” And, after the Cowboys fined him in 2009 for making a video that contained coarse language, he apologized — in yet another video. “Why they hating on me? / It was just a song / I was only rapping / I ain’t do nothing wrong.” 5. He is not subtle. Bennett met Siggi at a party at the House of Blues in Dallas in November 2008. A mutual friend introduced them. Siggi, who would go on to graduate from Sarah Lawrence College in 2010, learned Bennett played for the Cowboys only after her mother Googled him. Their first date was to see “Yes Man,” a romantic comedy, and they quickly fell in love. Photo A little more than two years later, Siggi joined Bennett in Houston for his birthday weekend celebration. One morning Bennett got up and disappeared, saying he had a meeting with his agent. He came back several hours later and found Siggi doing her makeup in the bathroom. Advertisement Continue reading the main story As she stared, he took out a giant bottle of jewelry cleaner and put it on the counter in front of her. “You might need this,” he said and walked away. Two hours later, Bennett proposed. 6. He has no filter. Bennett has compared himself in interviews this season to Kim Kardashian, Mahatma Gandhi and the Greek god Atlas. While Giants Coach Tom Coughlin may not always be thrilled with Bennett’s unrestrained commentary, Siggi says even she does not have a mute button for her husband. “I poke him in the ribs sometimes,” she says. “It usually doesn’t work.” Bennett readily acknowledges his departure from the persona of the standard athlete, and certainly that of most Giants players. His explanation is that he refuses to be a phony — “I’m the same way with the media as I am to everyone else” — and so it would be unnatural to self-censor. “My teammates always tell me: ‘I saw what you said in the article and I loved it. I didn’t really understand it, but I loved it,’ “ Bennett says proudly. Siggi describes Bennett as raw and real, saying: “He just says what he thinks. He’s very fair.” At one point, Bennett is asked about playing basketball at Texas A&M. His coach was Billy Gillispie, who has been accused of using abusive coaching tactics at Texas Tech, like encouraging injured players to practice. “That’s not new,” Bennett says, adding: “My first shootaround before we were getting ready to go to a game, I come in with my shoes untied, thinking it’s real casual and guys are getting taped. We had a two-hour practice before we left for a game!” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Still, Bennett says, “I respected Coach Gillispie.” Besides, he says, being a jerk does not mean someone isn’t good at what he does. “Some of the greatest people in the world are.” He pauses, then brightens. “I mean, Steve Jobs was, right?” Photo 7. He is not the only person in his household with an abiding attachment to a mythical creature. Whatever he accomplishes on the field for the Giants, Bennett will always be able to claim that he created one of the most compelling nicknames in franchise history. Asked in training camp about his speed downfield, Bennett described himself to reporters as a “black unicorn.” Predictably, the name stuck. Many assumed the label was just another example of Bennett’s eccentricity. In truth, fictitious animals are a staple for Bennett and his wife. The black unicorn is a character in Bennett’s novel — which also includes talking walls and a plot that Bennett will describe only as amazing — while Siggi, originally from California, has a healthy affection for mermaids. This year, Bennett even had a birthday cake made for his wife that featured a likeness of her, complete with a mermaid’s green tail, atop the icing. Bennett’s den contains a collection of other unusual beings — he recently ordered a Mickey Mouse toy wearing a gas mask — and he says that the often macabre film director Tim Burton is “one of my favorite people ever.” He is partial to ghosts and warriors like the hero of the film “Kung Fu Panda.” “Basically, I like cool stuff that becomes cooler when you make it a ninja,” he says. He is quick to add, however, that the black unicorn and the mermaid will always occupy a special place in the Bennetts’ souls. The couple smile at each other. “It’s kind of a nice love story, isn’t it?” Siggi says. 8. It is only now, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he is completely comfortable. The ice cream is gone. The children playing inside the shop have left. Dinner hour is approaching, and the river walk is quieting. “I like it like this,” Siggi says, and Bennett holds her hand as they walk toward their car. Texas will always be meaningful to them. They met there. They have family there. Bennett’s career began there. But it was not the place for them. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Since signing with the Giants, Bennett has done more than score a touchdown in each of his first two games. He and Siggi have been to fashion shows and art galleries. They have been to museums. They have taken the ferry to Manhattan and they have lingered over dessert beside the water. “In some ways, it felt like maybe we ran out of things to do in Texas,” Siggi says. “In New York, we never will.” The true value of their new home, though, does not lie in its cultural array. In Dallas, Bennett says, he never was truly at ease. People would say to him, “ ‘You’re a metrosexual’ because I dress nicely or because my favorite thing to take pictures of is our outfits,” Bennett says. “I like art, photography, film — all that creativity.” He hesitates before saying, “I don’t think people here are as judgmental as back in Texas.” He laughs because he knows he is not alone here. New York is filled with people who wear fedoras, filled with people who crave color and culture and something more than 8 yards on third-and-7. In New York, there are visionary architects everywhere. Bennett reaches the car. “It’s one of the first places I’ve been in my life,” he says, hand on the door handle, “where I really, honestly, feel like I belong.”It’s the dead middle of the NFL offseason and yet the Bears are still taking loses. Chicago traded a million picks Thursday night to move up a single spot to draft Mitch Trubisky, a guy who only played 13 total games in college, and even worse, didn’t even know what a hard count was until last month. The reactions among Bears fans back in Chicago watching the draft summed the pick up perfectly… — Riley Pollard (@rileypollard_) April 28, 2017 @barstoolsports @BarstoolBigCat I guess you could say my Dad didn’t like Bears trading for Trubisky pic.twitter.com/e6zS2ymonZ — Brady (@BradyCraw32) April 28, 2017 Bears fan living in Detroit reaction to that Trubisky pick 😂 pic.twitter.com/r9SU2budki — Kyle Richards (@KyleJRichards) April 28, 2017 Bears fans were not happy about the Trubisky pick pic.twitter.com/OLB9m9TNc2 — Deadspin (@Deadspin) April 28, 2017 Even fans in Cleveland were upset that Chicago would be the ones to ruin a promising QB’s career and not the Browns.How Giving an eBook Away Skyrocketed my Mailing List Signups 1. The Experiment I have been thinking of writing a small eBook for quite some time – and my new focus on growing my email list was a great excuse to do just that. Put two and two together and I wrote the book on Building REST Services with Spring, and am now giving it away to readers that trust me enough to signup to my email list. Since I don’t like hiding the actual numbers and I like scrolling even less – here’s the end result: my signups jumped a cool 625% after giving the eBook away. So let’s jump right into it. 2. The Before and After Here is how my signup form looked like before the eBook: The copy was generic and entirely untested: Subscribe to receive email updates or follow us on stuff: And here’s the new form after adding the eBook: Notice that I am using the exact same widget – the only change is the new copy: Free eBook on Building REST Services with Spring + regular content about building stuff ( ~1 email a week. ) 3. The Results On to the numbers – first, let’s look at the last 30 days before adding the eBook: This comes out to a grand total of 4 signups to the mailing list – impressive, I know. After the change, the new signup form with the free eBook was live 28 days. Here are the results: Over the 28 days the new form, there were 29 signups to my email list – just over one signup per day. That represents the 625% increase in my email signups I mentioned early on – which is nothing short of cool. 4. The Conclusion This experiment was a good step towards converting more of the casual visitors of my blog into into regular and engaged readers, getting actual value out of the content I put out. And finally, it’s good to finally have hard numbers for this – giving an eBook away does wonders for your email signups.Aside from wanting to play around with nitric acid, [Ben] really didn’t have a reason to decap a few 74xx and 4000-series logic chips. Not that we mind, as he provides a great tutorial at looking at a bare IC that isn’t covered in epoxy and resin. Most ICs are encased in a hard epoxy shell making it very difficult to look at the circuits within. [Ben] tried to grind this epoxy off with a Dremel tool, but didn’t have much luck until he moved over to a CNC mill to remove 0.040 – 0.050″ of epoxy without breaking the bond wires. After carving out a nice pocket above the die, [Ben] put a few drops of nitric acid on the chip to dissolve the epoxy coating. This worked very slowly at room temperature, but after putting the chips on a hot plate the acid was able to reveal the die underneath. After successfully removing all the epoxy and giving them an acetone bath, [Ben] took his chips over to the microscope and was able to check out the underlying circuit. He doesn’t have any idea what he could do with these decapped logic chips, but the bond wires are still intact so he could still use these chips in a build. We’d like to see a few decapped MEMS devices, but if you have a suggestion on what [Ben] can do with his decapped chips, drop a note in the comments.Television review: 'Wonders of the Solar System' Hunky nerd physicist Brian Cox makes science cool — and mostly understandable. Often called a "rock-star scientist," not just because of his hair and his energy, but because he actually was in a couple of semi-successful pop bands (Dare and D:Ream — I had never heard of them either), Cox is also the cheerfully awestruck animating presence of "Wonders of the Solar System," a stimulating five-part BBC series that begins its American run Wednesday on the Science Channel. It's "the story of the creation of order out of chaos," a thematic exploration of universal causes and effects that highlights the similarities of the "ball of rock" we call home to the other balls of rock in orbit around the big ball of gas that gives the solar system its shape and its name and sustains us through "an umbilical cord of sunshine." Physicist Brian Cox is the nerd who is cooler than you. In the parallel universe known as Britain, which occasionally intersects with ours, he is a media star, the figure of choice for explaining science to the people — a Carl Sagan with a Britpop haircut, a Lancashire accent and a permanent toothy smile. He's less well known here, though you may have seen the online TED video in which he describes his work at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. (His "main research interest" there, he writes on his website, "is the FP420 R&D project, aimed at upgrading ATLAS and CMS with forward proton detectors 420m away from the interaction points." Just so that's clear.) And last year, People magazine named him one of the planet's sexiest men. "If you think that this is all there is, that our planet exists in magnificent isolation," says Cox flatly, "then you're wrong." The series keeps him on the move: He's in the desert, he's in the arctic, he's in the jungle, flying in a helicopter, piloting a boat, driving a snowmobile. In Death Valley, Cox calculates the energy of the sun using an umbrella, a thermometer and bucket of water. He sculpts Saturn in the sand of an African desert, and in an American convenience store makes a model of the solar system with a cigarette lighter for the sun and what look like peanut M&M's for planets. He's in Norway to see the aurora borealis, in India for a total eclipse of the sun, in Oklahoma's Tornado Alley to illustrate the conservation of angular momentum that has something to with... well, I forget now, but I understood it at the time. The cumulative effect of all this globe-trotting can be like something out of "Monty Python" ("I've come to this glacial lagoon in Iceland.... "). But it does look quite beautiful — it's a little arty, in fact, but only to emphasize the loveliness of things — as do all the pictures of and from our planetary neighbors and their many moons. Indeed, the series is a kind of love letter to the plucky spacecraft that send those pictures back to us, as they head out to where "the solar wind meets the interstellar wind." Even when you can't follow the science, you can coast on the poetry. robert.lloyd@latimes.comFor his 18th birthday, some older friends took Taylor Powell to a nightclub in Nashville, as he was living in Shelbyville, about an hour away. Sara Andrews was working at the club that night, as she had for quite some time, and when she came out on stage to perform, Powell was instantly smitten. Powell immediately told his friends that Andrews was going to be hiseven though Powell didn't even know her name. They laughed at Powell and said that Andrews was too pretty, too old and way out of Powell's league. "I had never seen a trans person, so I was very confused by the fact that this drag queen had breasts. Anyway, I didn't care. I knew that there was a beautiful person standing on that stage that I wanted to know more about," Powell said. "I was trying to think of ways to talk to her, or have her notice me. I heard over the microphone that they were holding auditions for drag kings and decided, 'What better way to talk to a drag queen than to be a drag king?'" A week later, Powell threw on a button-down shirt, glued some hair to his face and headed back to Nashville to make his debut as "Nathan Blaze." "I made the cast and had my first show the very next week," Powell said. "I went backstage and we just started talking about nonsense and instantly connected in my opinion. She claims she thought nothing of it. Either way, the next week I showed up with flowers. The week after that I brought my guitar and sang her a song that I'd written for her." Three years laterand now living and working in Chicagothey are engaged to be married, though Powell still likes, and actually prefers, to simply be labeled as, boyfriend and girlfriend, which "sounds way cuter," he said. Powell, now 21, is a trans man who is a manager at Dive Bar in Lake View, and he still enjoys dabbling in music, playing his guitar and singing the first things that come to his mind. Andrews, 34, is a trans woman and works as a national drag artist and entertainer, and a diva at The Kit Kat Lounge and Supper Club. Andrews also admittedly is a big video gamer who has received international mainstream media exposure a few years ago for supposedly "championing gay rights for gaymers," she said. In fact, if you look at Wikipedia for the definition of the word 'gaymer,' you'll find her name. Andrews transitioned at about 21, while Powell just recently started hormone replacement therapy, though he has lived as a boy for the past three years. Their first date was three years agowhile Powell was still in high school, which Andrews didn't know at the time. Powell was working the night shift at Burger King, so, needless to say, money was scarce. He borrowed $50 from his mom and picked up Andrews as they were going to a movie. "I tried to take her to dinner beforehand, but she wouldn't let me," Powell said. "We went to see 'The Woman in Black.' I still don't know what happened in that movie because she was much more interesting. "I'm a firm believer in the saying, 'Happy wife, happy life.' [So,] whatever she wants, she gets. It's been that way from the beginning. Now, she's a spoiled brat, but I guess I've got no one to blame but myself. I can be bull headed and have a tendency to argue sometimes, but at the end of the day she ultimately wins out. I'm cool with that." Powell said their 13-year age-difference has not been a major obstacle. In fact, "I love the age-difference," he said. "I've always been quite the little cougar-chaser anyway. I always had crushes on my English teachers in high school. Sara is older and she's well spoken with a big vocabulary. Just my type." Andrews laughed. "What can I say? I'm a cougar," she said. "I think the age-difference works because I'm basically a big kid with Peter Pan syndrome; I refuse to grow up. And it doesn't hurt that Taylor is way more mature than I ever was at 21 … or am now, to be honest. He keeps me from getting too crazy, and I make sure he acts a little crazy sometimes. It works." Powell said his family has been very supportive of his transition. Some of his longtime friends, though, are a bit small town-small minded, he said. They say to Powell, "I love you, but you will always be a girl to me." "But they love me regardless, so I guess that's the silver lining," he said. Andrews admitted that a lot of her friends were at first "very freaked out" by her relationship with Taylor. "They didn't understand it," she said. "It's funny how, even in the gay community, people can be less open-minded than you would think they would be." The loving trans duo truly are role-models for a younger generation of trans, trans-curious and trans-questioning. But each is modest in that spot. "I don't think I'm anyone's idol," he said. "I'm just a lucky guy [who] had a little hurdle to jump over in the beginning. I just feel lucky to have a great job, a loving family, and a person who loves me to share my life with. I don't think I should be idolized for that. I just want the younger trans people who are scared to transition to know that they can make it through whatever life throws at them. Work hard, think hard, try hard, and love hard. That's what we all have to do, trans or not." Andrews added, with a smile, "Oh gosh, I pity the poor soul [who] would look up to me as a role model." But still, Andrews has had quite a few girls over the years tell her that it was seeing her onstage that inspired them to start their transition. "That's pretty awesome to think that I had something to do with inspiring others to live their lives the way that they want," she said. "I've always believed that drag queens are sort of like muses. We inspire people. And that's why I think it's important to have transgender drag queens in the mix. Chances are, there are going to be some young trans individuals in that audience that just happened to discover their sexuality before discovering what it means to be transgender and that need a little inspiration and courage." Andrews definitely has helped Powell with his transition, without question. "She was a tremendous help to me," he said. "When we first got together I was still in
Press in 2001, which originally appeared in Spanish in 1999 under the title Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria: Congo, and Guevara’s notebooks, written in 1965 and 1966, published by Ocean Press (based in Australia) and the Cuban Centro de Estudios Che Guevara in 2006, under the title Apuntes críticos a la economía política. As in the case of the Apuntes, all translations from Spanish are my own, unless stated otherwise. In my conclusion, I draw together some of the major themes in my analysis of Guevara’s politics and restate the need for a political process that brings together the politics of revolution, socialism, and democracy.Rachael D'Amore, CTV Toronto Police are trying to identify a suspect after a woman says she was pulled off her bicycle by her hair and robbed downtown. The woman told police that she was riding her bike near College Street and Spadina Avenue on Nov. 1 shortly before 9 p.m. when a man made some sort of comment as she passed by him. She said the man then began to chase her and eventually caught up with her, where he pulled her off her bike by her hair. Police allege the woman was assaulted and robbed of her personal possessions. The man then fled the area. Police describe the suspect as a black man who is between 25 and 30 years old, approximately five-foot-nine with a slim build. He was last seen wearing a black jacket, a grey sweater and a black toque. In an effort to identify a suspect, police have released security camera footage that appears to show four men walking in the area on the evening of the alleged assault. Anyone with information is being asked to call police at 416-808-5200 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477).Get the biggest Daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email A 10-year-old boy had to be airlifted to hospital after he was struck by a tree and telegraph pole. Football mad Kieran Blakey broke several bones in his body after being injured while walking in Alford. The road was closed for a number of hours on Saturday, May 27 while emergency services dealt with the incident. Lincolnshire Police say a nine-year-old boy, an 18-year-old woman and a 67-year-old woman all went to Boston Pilgrim Hospital by land ambulance. An air ambulance took the boy to Lincoln County Hospital before he was transferred to Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham. Kieran has broken his tibia and fibula in his leg, broken his arm and fingers and has fractures to his spine, and will be in hospital for several weeks. Dean Trewick, a friend of Kieran's family, has set up a fundraising page to help raise money for the 10-year-old and his family. On the Justgiving page, he states: "Please can we help the family out and pull together as a community and dig deep to at least ease the financial burden at this sad time." He hopes to raise £500 to help the family following the "freak accident" because Kieran will "need operations and support at home." Dean told Lincolnshire Live: "I know how expensive travelling and living on hospital food is. It can also help financially when he comes home." He explained that Kieran had been walking along South Street on Saturday, May 27 at around 3.30pm when he was struck by a tree and telegraph pole. "He was walking [with other people along the street] when they were walking past an old tree. "It started to collapse and, in falling, also made a large telegraph pole collapse as well, striking Kieran and the grandmother. She has suffered head injuries." Dean says the 10-year-old football lover will be in hospital for "at least a few weeks". Kieran has so far had operations on his leg and has had his armed pinned, says Dean. "He's being so brave," he said. Kieran has a "loving family" supporting him. "The family are such a loving, close family," said Dean. "All are hurting for him. He has an older sister and brother." To donate via JustGiving, see here.Roy, a founder member of the TMC, was inducted into the BJP yesterday. \| Photo Credit: ANI New Delhi: A 'Y+' category of armed VIP security cover has been accorded by the Centre to Mukul Roy, a day after he joined the BJP after quitting Trinamool Congress. The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has been entrusted with the task of safeguarding the former railway minister under the UPA regime, official sources said. "A contingent of armed CRPF commandos will take charge of the new protectee in the next few days. Roy will have about three to four commandos with him, whenever he is in West Bengal," a senior official said. He said a threat analysis report, prepared by central intelligence and security agencies, favoured granting of such a cover to Roy. The CRPF has a special VIP security wing and it secures around 70 dignitaries. Mukul Roy, former TMC leader, joins BJP, says 'It's a secular, not communal force' Recently, the higher category of 'Z' cover of CRPF commandos was extended by the Centre to newly appointed special representative on Kashmir, Dineshwar Sharma. Roy, a founder member of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), was inducted into the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) yesterday. TMC co- founder Mukul Roy joins Bharatiya Janata Party, delivers massive snub to Mamata Banerjee He had resigned from the Rajya Sabha and quit the TMC earlier this month. The former TMC ledaer was suspended from the party for six years for indulging in alleged anti-party activities after he announced that he would quit the party.Email Share +1 508 Shares SPANISH FORT, Ala. — It was a typically humid July evening on the Alabama Gulf Coast on Monday when a hostess at Laps on the Causeway, a seafood restaurant that overlooks Mobile Bay, brought Lane Galbraith to his table on the outdoor deck. Galbraith ate crawfish tails and drank a Corona as the sun set over the western horizon. Tractor trailers and other vehicles on nearby Interstate 10 drove on an elevated causeway across the bay as he and others finished their meals. “They call me Lane here,” Galbraith told the Washington Blade during an interview at the restaurant, referring to the manager’s support of his decision to transition from a woman into a man. “[The restaurant is] affirming who I am as a human being.” Galbraith, who grew up in Mobile, in May announced on Facebook that he is transgender. The 50-year-old who in 2009 founded LGBT Wave of Hope, a local advocacy group that conducts public education and other campaigns out of his Mobile home, told the Blade he felt compelled to share his story with “his community.” He made the announcement after he received a letter from his counselor that said he had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and needed to begin receiving hormone therapy — testosterone shots twice a month for the rest of his life. The document also told Galbraith’s endocrinologist that his counseling would continue through his transition. He told the Blade that Alabama law requires a trans person to receive a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria before they can receive hormone therapy. “I wanted to tell somebody,” said Galbraith. “I work for this community who I constantly say live your truth. So I had to speak mine.” Coming out as lesbian in boot camp ‘liberating’ Galbraith attended a Southern Baptist church throughout his childhood and early adulthood. He told the Blade he is “not necessarily associated” with the denomination, but he remains spiritual. “I’m thankful for my faith,” said Galbraith. Galbraith enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1988 when he was 24. He came out as a lesbian when he was in boot camp. “It was liberating,” said Galbraith. “It was me coming out of a struggle.” He told the Blade that he did not date anyone while enlisted in the Navy between 1988-1992. Galbraith said the only two people he connected with were heterosexual women. “Because of my upbringing and respect and all that kind of stuff, I didn’t act upon it because I was like this didn’t make any sense,” he said. “I was young. This doesn’t make any sense because you can’t connect with me because you’re heterosexual and you know that I’m a lesbian.” Galbraith left the Navy a year before then-President Bill Clinton signed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” into law. He referred to “witch hunts” that sought to kick gay and lesbian servicemembers out of the military because of Clinton’s position. Galbraith said he shared an off-base apartment with a male friend during his last two years in the Navy because people had grown “suspicious” of his sexual orientation. “He knew my story and he did his thing and I did my thing and we were good roommates,” he told the Blade. “It just kind of got that off of me because people just assumed, of course, because we lived in the same place, but I let them believe what they wanted to believe. It wasn’t my place to tell them my business.” ’I noticed oppression and it was just not okay’ Galbraith, who works in the shipbuilding industry, lived in Hawaii and other states after leaving the Navy. He lived in Houston for 13 years until moving back to Mobile in 2006. “I just came here and I noticed oppression and it was just not okay,” said Galbraith. “So little by little it’s almost like I had to educate myself because in Houston I didn’t do any advocate work. I wasn’t oppressed.” Galbraith said there was an LGBT organization in Mobile when he returned in 2006, but “it just had kind of fell to the wayside.” He told the Blade he decided to form LGBT Wave of Hope three years later after he saw what he described as a lack of education and dialogue. “I didn’t want to get into the rut of a lot of fundraising,” said Galbraith as a waiter brought the crawfish tails he ordered to the table. “I wanted to gain people’s trust because the truth had been broken over here with this other organization. So my main focus has been just to constantly promote any kind of education piece if possible.” One of the issues on which Galbraith works is to educate same-sex couples about securing legal protections that ensure their assets are protected and their final wishes are respected. He cited the example of a woman who was dying of cancer whose family did not allow her gay pastor to see her in the hospital. “The family was like, she never flaunted it (her homosexuality) in front of us, so we don’t want to see it,” said Galbraith. “We’re taking care of her and making her comfortable.” Alabama’s hate crimes and anti-discrimination laws do not include LGBT-specific protections. Voters in 2006 by an 81-19 percent margin approved a state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman and prohibits the recognition of unions between gays and lesbians legally performed in other jurisdictions. A lesbian woman from Birmingham, who married her partner in D.C. in 2013, earlier this year lost custody of the two children she had with her ex-husband after a Georgia judge ruled in his favor. “I think after they got married it was when the problems started with the father; him wanting the custody,” said Galbraith. Cari Searcy and Kimberly McKeand of Mobile, who have been together for 15 years and legally married in California in 2008, in May filed a federal lawsuit against Alabama’s marriage amendment under which their son cannot receive legal protections and benefits because the state does not recognize their union. The health insurance policy that Galbraith receives through his employer, BAE Systems, covers hormone therapy and other transition-related care that he has begun to receive. He told the Blade his mother is on “everything,” but he acknowledged they have disagreements. “I’m well protected if I pass away,” he said. “I work for a great company that takes care of their employees upon death. The reality is if I put in writing this is what I want, do I want to put that on my mother who does love me, but we don’t always agree on certain things.” Galbraith added he does not want to overburden his mother and stepfather with executing his end-of-life decisions and put them “out of their comfort zone.” “My mother is a loving person,” he said. “She’s a person of compassion like me. She’s always welcomed anybody that I’ve taken to the house or whatever, but I think that’s a little much to ask her to do if it came to that. I’m hoping to work it out to where I can give responsibility to people that I really, really trust.” Alabama Gulf Coast is ‘what I know’ Galbraith told the Blade he left Houston, in part, because he felt “claustrophobic.” He said he also wanted to return to his hometown to be closer to his family. “It’s the Gulf Coast,” said Galbraith as he ate. “It’s what I know. I love the water.” He further stressed he remains proud of Alabama and the people — LGBT and otherwise — who live there. “These are people that are hard-working and they have families,” said Galbraith. “They’re here for a reason. They don’t want to move because somebody doesn’t accept them or doesn’t have tolerance towards who they are and their family they’ve created. They’re here for a reason. They want to be a contributing factor to this city and town and the Gulf.”On behalf of my family, I would like to thank all of those who have supported the track over the years, both locally and worldwide, for their enthusiasm and use of the facility. TOOELE — One of Larry H. Miller's dreams is coming to an end. In an unexpected move, Miller Motorsports Park will cease operations on Oct. 31, the Larry H. Miller Group of Companies announced Friday. “On behalf of my family, I would like to thank all of those who have supported the track over the years, both locally and worldwide, for their enthusiasm and use of the facility," Larry H. Miller Group owner Gail Miller said in a statement released by the organization. In its press release, the Miller Group announced it had decided not to renew its lease on the land in Tooele County and to close the track, as was first reported by the Deseret News. Tooele County Commissioner Shawn Milne called the company's decision not to renew the lease "absolutely news to me," when contacted late Friday morning. "How unfortunate," he said. Milne described a meeting later Friday between commissioners and Miller Group representatives as "cordial and professional." He declined to speculate about why the Miller Group made the decision it did. "We are either being given a completely new business unit or an opportunity to recruit a very unique business," Milne said. "I think counties are not normally in the business of running a race track — a world-renowned and beautiful race track," the commissioner continued. "So we can keep to our core competencies and look for someone else to pick up the LEGO pieces and build something of their own, or we can try to invent the wheel." Commissioners hope to attract another entity to take over operation of the facility, Milne said, and the Miller Group has agreed to take part in the process. "It was part of our conversation this afternoon," the commissioner said. "They have assured us and we are faithful that there will be a smooth transition." The Miller Motorsports Park will remain open throughout the racing season. The full schedule of summer racing events, driving schools, public karting and group activities will be held as planned, the organization announced. An all-day season-opening party is set for May 16. Miller Motorsports Park opened in 2006 and was touted as being one of the finest racing facilities in the world. However, it was also a huge financial drain on the Larry H. Miller Group of Companies, losing millions of dollars since its start. At the time of its opening, the 511-acre facility featured North America's longest road-racing track for motorcycles and all cars, except Formula 1 race cars. The park also had a 4.5-mile course divided into western and eastern tracks of about equal lengths, along with a 0.89-mile track for go karts. Over the years, the Alan Wilson-designed track has hosted high-profile events, including the American Le Mans series, a NASCAR race (Grand National West Series), the FIM Superbike World Championship and the AMA Superbike Championship, among others. While its decision may have seemed somewhat sudden, a Miller Group spokesman said it had been a long time in the making. “We were facing a land lease renewal deadline and made the decision to transfer the land, track and buildings to Tooele County,” said Linda Luchetti, executive vice president of communications for the LHM Group. “We made a significant investment in the facility over the years and tried a variety of business approaches. We had some of the best talent in the motorsports industry working to make the park viable.” Despite those efforts, she said the property was never able to reach profitability. “This decision helps us to position ourselves for long-term success, which is in line with other recent changes in our management structure,” Luchetti added. “As a multi-faceted company, our focus continues to be on the core businesses where we excel.” When it opened, Larry H. Miller said the track was “a realization of a dream.” But it was an expensive dream — $100 million to be exact, Miller said in his biography written by Doug Robinson. That expense continued long after it began operation, Miller said. “To tell you the truth, the motor speedway has been an ugly stepchild for The Miller Group company,” Miller said. “It’s losing $2 million a year. It’s just too far ahead of its time. Auto racing has taken the country by storm in the last few years, but not Utah. It’s just difficult to get people out there for race events as spectators. The track has worldwide recognition, but few know about it in Utah.” Former company CEO Greg Miller said of the racetrack, "It was bad timing. Sponsorships have been cut back and entertainment dollars are not being spent. But my father held it close to the vest. He wouldn’t involve the sports entertainment group (of The Miller Group). He did it personally." In the end, those close to Larry Miller were philosophical about the track. “Some people build swimming pools in their back yards or tennis courts,“ Greg Miller said. “He wanted a racetrack and his yard wasn’t big enough." Robert Yardley is worried about how the closing of Miller Motorsports Park will impact his own small business. He launched Yardley Racing in 2014, building and selling high-performance go-karts for races at the Tooele track and elsewhere around the West. "I'll have to sit down, make some plans and see how I can save my business," Yardley said. "Larry would be devastated." TWITTER: DJJazzyJodyIt’s not uncommon when you develop a hacking cough from deep down in your lungs to cough up a gel-like substance known as phlegm, or sputum. While you may think nothing of it, simply associating it with your sickness, the color of the mucus can tell you some things about the pathogens invading your body. The body is a mucus-making machine, producing about 1 to 1.5 liters of phlegm every day, even when you’re healthy. “In health, phlegm/mucus is mostly clear and minimal,” Dr. Matthew Exline, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, told Medical Daily in an email. “If you are coughing up significant amounts of phlegm you could have an infection or allergies.” Read More: Coughing Up Blood: 5 Possible Causes, And What To Do While coughing up only a little clear phlegm is considered normal, larger amounts of phlegm may indicate a developing infection. This occurs as a result of the respiratory tract becoming inflamed, which also leads to coughing. In turn, this coughing speeds up the rate for which the infection affects a person. So, now that we’ve gotten clear phlegm out of the way, what do other colors of phlegm mean for our health? Wikimedia White or Gray Phlegm Coughing up white or gray phlegm is often an indication of an upper respiratory tract infection or sinus congestion. Dr. Steve Okhravi, an emergency physician and founder of DocChat and Emergency Medical Care, says this type of phlegm drains from the sinuses. “Normally, your sinus doesn't drip, but when there's inflammation, either viral or bacterial, it can cause a drip from your sinus into your throat,” he told Medical Daily in an email. You might have heard consuming dairy products can cause white mucus to develop. This isn’t true. However, dairy can make it thicker, and therefore more troublesome for the body to drain. This causes the mucus to stagnate and dry out, leading to a white discharge. Meanwhile, coughing up gray phlegm may be a sign that the body is trying to get rid of resins or tars that accumulated from excessive smoking or inhalation of large amounts of air pollutants like smog or dust. Read: 5 Things Your Fingers Say About You, From Penis Size To Sexuality Green or Dark Yellow Phlegm A thick and dark yellow phlegm may be a sign of a viral or bacterial infection, sinus infection, or lower respiratory tract infection. Typically, this occurs when the immune system sends white blood cells, known as neutrophils, to the area of infection. These cells contain a green protein, which, when present in large quantities, turn the mucus into a greenish hue. A 2011 study published in the European Respiratory Journal, however, found that green or yellow phlegm does not always signify an infection. After some tests, researchers found only 59 of every 100 samples of green phlegm contained bacteria while only 46 out of every 100 samples of yellow phlegm contained bacteria. “Contrary to popular belief, having greenish mucus does not necessarily mean you have a bacterial infection,” Exline said. Read More: Chronic Throat Clearing Damages Your Vocal Cords Brown Phlegm People who smoke tend to produce more brown phlegm, which often comes out combined with saliva in a grainy texture. Excessive smoking can cause phlegm to turn brown because of all the resin, tar, and other particulate matter in cigarettes, which the body tries to cough back up, according to Exline. When cigarettes aren’t the culprit, people may cough up brown phlegm because of the foods they’re eating, including chocolate, coffee, and red wine. Pink Phlegm Pink-colored phlegm is anything but pretty. Coughing up pink phlegm is an indicator of pulmonary edema, also known as fluid in the lungs. It can also be a sign of bleeding when seen in small amounts, which show up as a stain or streak. This type of phlegm can also have a frothy texture, which usually occurs in people with pre-existing heart problems, according to the UK’s National Health Service. Bloody Phlegm Blood found in phlegm is known as haemoptysis, while streaks of blood in phlegm is a benign sign of bronchitis. Coughing up a significant amount of blood could also be a sign of tuberculosis, pneumonia, cancer, or pulmonary embolism, Okhravi said. If there’s excessive bleeding, more blood than phlegm, or it doesn’t stop, you should seek medical attention immediately because it could mean you’re dealing with a more serious health problem. See Also: The Best Medications For Every Common Cold Symptom Why Spicy Food Causes A Runny NoseDell's XPS 13 is one of our favorite Windows laptops, and today the company is upgrading the sleek PC's internals with the latest 7th generation Intel processors and other improvements that Dell claims lead to a boost in battery longevity. The XPS 13's exterior is also seeing some change; it's now available in "highly anticipated" rose gold — just like every other 2016 gadget. It looks like pretty standard gold in these product shots, but maybe the "rose" part is more visible in person. Like previous revisions of the XPS 13, you can choose between a Quad HD+ touchscreen or Full HD 1080p display (which also offers an optional touchscreen SKU), with the latter capable of hitting 22 hours of battery life according to Dell's claims. Focusing on video and web browsing alone, Dell estimates the new XPS 13 can last for 13 hours straight. That'd be wonderful if true, but Dell tends to fall a bit short of its figures, so we'll need to test the machine directly to see if it actually reaches that target. The move to Kaby Lake brings Dell up to par with some other laptops we've seen debut over the last couple months, notably Lenovo's Yoga 910 (which features a tiny bezel similar to the XPS) and Razer's Blade Stealth. You can choose from Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 configurations, with 4GB / 8GB / 16GB options for RAM and 128GB / 256GB / 512GB / 1TB for flash storage. Intel's HD Graphics 650 handles the video end, and the company is also talking up fast Wi-Fi performance thanks to the Killer 1535 AC hardware inside. The refreshed XPS 13 will begin shipping October 4th for prices starting at $1,499.99 for rose gold, or $799 if you're someone who can settle for plain old silver aluminum.Another month, another $ales Talk, Superior Believers! The merry month of May was for the most part a quiet month with no big surprises. May continued the 2016 trend of weaker sales compared to the same month in 2015, with about 15% less total volume sold comparatively (after adjusting for 2015’s Loot Crate sales). Civil War II had a big launch with #0, but nothing can match the staggering 738,485 units sold with last May’s Secret Wars #1 and #2. Meanwhile the much talked about summer event over at the Distinguished Competition kicked off as well, with DC Universe Rebirth #1 taking the number one spot on May 2016’s top 300 chart with about 236,000 units. We’re going to break form for a moment and talk about Civil War II before we drive straight into the two main Spider-Man books. How did Civil War II do against other event titles past? Did #0 get the same push as #1 did? Will sales be higher for #1 or are we going to see #1 perform like a #2? (that is, a second issue, not – you know what, never mind) First let’s see how the past few summer books have done at Marvel (and their zero issue, if they have one). Secret Wars #1, Rank: 1, Est. Sales 527,678 Original Sin #1, Rank: 1, Est. Sales 147,045 Original Sin #0, Rank: 8, Est. Sales 73, 024 Infinity #1, Rank: 1, Est. Sales 205,819 Age of Ultron #1, Rank: 2, Est Sales 174,952 Avengers Vs X-Men #1, Rank: 1, Est. Sales 203,181 Avengers Vs X-Men #0, Rank: 2, Est. Sales 134,509 So we can see that Civil War II #0’s 177,283 puts it in the middle of the #1 issues, being outpaced by Avengers Vs X-Men and Secret Wars, and just barely surpassing Age of Ultron. But looking at the generally much weaker sales for the #0 issues of AvX and Original Sin compared to their #1 issues, it would be safe to guess Civil War II #1 will post around 300,000 issues, which would make it the second biggest event #1 in the past five years. While two samples doesn’t make for much of a pattern, Civil War II #1 also has about twice the variant covers of #0 so it’s safe to say that there’s going to be a significant bump in units moved. On to Amazing Spider-Man! ASM #12 recovered somewhat from #11’s long-time low, gaining about 10% and putting it at about 1,000 units higher than #10. Aside from March’s spike and April’s dip, Amazing has hovered around the mid-to-low 70k’s since January, so I think it is safe to say that the title will bounce around there for at least one or two more months before jumping back up with “Dead No More”. Since Amazing is not crossing over with Civil War II (getting a tie-in mini instead), the title will be unaffected more-or-less by the greater happenings in Marvel, from the looks of things. The “Amazing Grace” Point One series returns after a month hiatus to post lower, but still decent numbers despite a story that falls mostly flat. The Miles Morales Spider-Man dips nearly 20% on the heels of rumors that it will move to a once- every-other-month release schedule. A disappointingly large drop for a title with promise, especially since it carries the last of the Ultimate universe with it. Spider-Man will fly under the Civil War II banner though, so this loss will be recovered shortly. The other big losses come from the tail end of the “Spider-Women” crossover, with Spider-Gwen, Silk, and Spider-Woman all taking big steps back to their previous numbers, implying that perhaps orders for the first half of “Spider-Women” were a little generous in wake of the demand. That being said, all these numbers are still a lot more solid than what these titles were posting before the crossover, so I would call this a win. The gap widens between Venom: Space Knight and Web Warriors, two books that for the most part have sold within a stone’s throw of each other. As both these titles creep closer and closer to quad digits, I can’t help but think their days are numbered unless there’s an angel out for them in the Marvel offices. The good news for the rest of the titles is that, for the most part, everything is saying the course and maintaining a level that we could call attrition rather than free bleed. Amazing Spider-Man #1.5, Carnage #8, Spider-Man 2099 #11, Spider-Man/Deadpool #5, Spidey #6, and the aforementioned Venom: Space Knight #7 and Web Warriors #7 all posted about a 5% loss or less. All-New All-Different Avengers #9 actually gained 300 units, thanks mostly to its solidly consistent numbers; it’s sold in the mid to low 50k’s since its third issue. Also worth noting is that every initial issue of Spider-Man/Deadpool has sold out and the reprints regularly appear on the top 300 charts, something I have been neglecting to mention (Spider-Man/Deadpool #1 came in at rank 220 this month with 7,601 units solid and Spider-Man/Deadpool #3 came in at 287 with 5,235). Last but not least is the digital-first, print-second Amazing Spider-Man and Silk The Spider-Fly Effect #3 which actually dropped about 10% of its units sold from its sophomore issue. Since Marvel does not release figures for its digital sales, it’s difficult to gauge the meaning behind these numbers and if they match the digital comic. Looking at Amazing Spider-Man #1.5, it’s easy to see that just putting the wall-crawler’s name on something can give it decent enough numbers, so what’s hurting this title? Is the Point One style of numbering that much more appealing than the miniseries numbering? Is Silk somehow a toxic brand (she seems to be doing okay for herself in the “Spider-Women” cross over)? Are that many people buying the digital comic instead? With only a piece of the puzzle these questions are frustratingly difficult to answer. That’s it for May, folks. Like I said, it was a fairly uneventful month but with Civil War II starting up proper in June and the tie-ins following up after that, we’ll start to see some shifts and changes that we can plot. Like always, all figures and data come straight from Comichron.com, a fantastic source for those who might want to delve into comic sales past Spider-Man. I couldn’t recommend them more. Until next month, Superiorites!Submitted byCharles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds "Big Idea Solution": Radically Lower The Cost Basis Of The Entire Economy Our choice is simple: either continue on the State-cartel path of complexity and rising costs that leads to a death spiral, or re-energize the forces of the market and community. We are constantly told all our problems are too complex to be addressed with simple "big idea" solutions. Complex problems require complex solutions, we are assured, and so the "solutions" conjured by the Central State/Cartel Status Quo are so convoluted and complex (for example, the 2,319-page Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act or the 2,074-page Obamacare bill) that legislators say they must "pass the bill to see what's in it." (What If We're Beyond Mere Policy Tweaks? February 6, 2012) The real "solution" is to see that complexity itself is the roadblock to radical reformation of failed systems. Complexity is the subterfuge the Status Quo uses to erect simulacra "reforms" while further consolidating their power behind the artificial moat of complexity. Over the next three days, I will present three "big idea" solutions that cut through the self-serving thicket of complexity. Nature is complex, but it operates according to a set of relatively simple rules. The interactions can be complex but the guiding principles can be, and indeed, must be, simple. Big Idea One: Radically lower the cost basis of the entire U.S. economy. The cost basis of any activity is self-evident: what are the total costs of the production of a good or service? The surplus produced is the net profit which can be spent on consumption or invested in productive assets (or squandered in mal-investments). We can understand surplus by way of simple examples. If it costs two barrels of oil to extract one barrel of oil from a well, there is no surplus at all to this activity; rather, it is a losing proposition. If it costs $100 to plow, plant, nurture and harvest $50 of crops, there is no surplus generated by this economic activity. Anyone pursuing these kinds of zero-surplus activity will soon go broke and be eliminated from the financial "gene pool" of investors. Central States and cartels by definition face no market forces on their cost basis. Central States (governments) have no competition and so there are no market pressures to contain costs. As a result, governments are intrinsically incapable of radically reducing the cost basis of their activity. Cartels (the sickcare industry, the defense industry, etc.) by definition profit by fixing prices, not by adapting to competition, and so rising costs are simply shifted to consumers, with the aid of an over-regulating, moat-building "complex" Central State. I cover this dynamic in depth in my books Survival+: Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation and Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change. Unproductive layers of activity are essentially friction within the economy ( How Much of Our Economy Is Essentially Friction? September 20, 2011), and as with a machine, when the friction consumes all the surplus, the machine freezes up. Greece is an excellent example of this dynamic. As I explain in Resistance, Revolution, Liberation, there are three fundamental forces in society: the State, the market and community (i.e. the non-market social order). As friction from the State and its crony-capitalist partners, the various cartels, inevitably rises, the surplus left to distribute via entitlements or invest shrinks. The State has two mechanisms to counter this decline in surplus: it raises taxes on the productive enterprises and people, and redistributes that money to less productive dependents of the State via entitlements. Secondly, it prints money and redistributes the new cash. Both are short-term expediencies that inevitably lead to collapse. Once taxes skim the economy's surplus for consumption, there is not enough left over to invest in productive assets that increase productivity. This triggers a death-spiral (positive feedback loop): as productivity stagnates, so does the surplus generated by economic activity. This leads to lower tax revenues, so the State raises taxes on the remaining productive elements, further bleeding the economy of funds that could be invested in future productivity gains. Printing money debases the purchasing power of the existing currency, and over time this destroys the value of the currency and the wealth of those holding the currency. As people retreat to gold and land, the liquid capital necessary to invest in new ventures dries up, adding to the death-spiral described above. In essence, the State and its cartels raise the cost basis of getting by from $10,000 to $40,000 by letting unproductive friction absorb all the economy's surplus. Layers of bureaucracy, paperwork and outright fraud consume roughly half of the funds spent on healthcare in the U.S.--not coincidentally, this aligns with the fact that the U.S. spends twice as much per person on sickcare compared to our developed-world competititors.(The "Impossible" Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash July 29, 2009) The State overcomes this by raising taxes on the productive and printing money. The State's "solution" isn't to reduce its own fiefdoms' spending or dismantle the high-friction cartels: it's to tax or print $30,000 and send this money to those making $10,000, so they can consume as much as those earning $40,000. As noted above, consuming the nation's surplus in consumption and friction starves the nation of market-driven productive investment, which then leads to the death spirals of lower productivity and rising unproductive friction. The only way to lower the actual cost basis of the economy is to reduce the role and power of the Central State, dismantle its favored cartels and re-
soon after leaving office. He wants to be recognized in public, during his choreographed stops outside the White House, and during "major speeches" that lead to applause but no discernible change in affairs, and during appearances on talk shows, the more mindless the better. He likes intimate gatherings of rich and famous people, people who enjoy notoriety—though not nearly as much as he—people of means, people of uniform opinion on the state of the world, the economy, and, most importantly, the state of Barack Obama. He is interested in good food, in good company. He likes golf. And he is interested in television. He watches HBO. Last winter, when the network’s CEO visited the White House for a state dinner, the president asked him for copies of "True Detective," and of "Game of Thrones." Obama watches "House of Cards." He subscribes to the theory that we are living in the rather oxymoronic "golden age of television." According to CBS, "His go-tos include ‘Breaking Bad,’ ‘Mad Men,’ and ‘Homeland.’" So we know how Obama has spent at least 275 hours of his presidency. Did he punch out before watching Carrie go crazy? This is the life: international travel, motorcades, sycophants and courtiers, tables at the best restaurants, round after round of golf, parties in a cool house, watching the best television shows, meeting all these renowned figures—and having them kiss up to you—ruminating over your legacy, over the causes of polarization, over the geopolitical situation, understanding other peoples’ motivations better than they do. Kramer has nothing on Obama. Politics, terrorists, Iran, Putin, Congress are all distractions. Best to enjoy the experience to the utmost. You are only president once. In the 1990s, America had a holiday from history. Today, it has a president on holiday. The boundary separating vacation from vocation has disappeared. The party won’t end for years. And the hangover will be severe.Image caption Maria de Villota has said she missed driving during her recovery F1 testing is being carried out at Duxford in Cambridgeshire nine months after a test driver lost an eye in a crash. Maria de Villota was seriously injured while testing for Marussia at the track in July 2012. After treatment at Addenbrooke's Hospital, she recovered in Spain and was cleared to drive again in February. The testing by an unnamed team on Friday is the first of five test days at Duxford this year. 'Getting on well' According to witnesses, De Villota's car "suddenly accelerated" into the back of a support lorry during her test debut for Marussia ahead of the British Grand Prix. The team has said its own investigation has ruled out a fault in the car as a cause of the crash. In an interview in February, De Villota said she still had headaches and "felt weak", but was "getting on well" and had missed driving. The Imperial War Museum (IWM) at Duxford is open as usual on Friday, with visitors able to see the straight-line speed testing on its runways. Up to 180 runs are completed between 08:00 and 18:00, under terms agreed with South Cambridgeshire District Council in 2010. 'Fine-tuning' Esther Blaine, of IWM, said testing at Duxford was a "well-run, efficient system". The airfield has its own fire and security teams, which were praised for their involvement in dealing with the immediate aftermath of the crash, she said. She explained that drivers took the cars out at speed with the the team "fine-tuning" between tests. "We have this wonderful straight line runway and it's that they'll be testing on," she added. "It's really about getting the car as perfect as it can be for the next race test." The Health and Safety Executive said it was still investigating the Marussia crash.Late last week, Public Policy Polling dropped the results of its latest poll, with quite a few shocking-but-not-shocking results. Among supporters of Donald Trump in North Carolina, 48 percent blamed President Obama for the combat death of Humayun Khan, even though the Muslim-American soldier was killed in 2004 when Obama was a state senator from Illinois who had spoken out against the war. 36 percent, by the way, aren't sure whether Obama was to blame. Likewise, 47 percent of Trump supporters claimed that they, too, watched nonexistent Fox News B-roll footage of $400 million being unloaded from an airplane in Iran, as Trump famously claimed to have seen. Worse, though unsurprisingly, 41 percent agree that Hillary Clinton is literally the Devil. As if that wasn't horrendous enough, 40 percent -- two out of every five Trump voters believe that ACORN still exists and is therefore plotting to rig the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton. To repeat: ACORN doesn't exist, except in the twisted noggins of Trump's people. Advertisement: Perhaps they missed the news. Shortly after President Obama's inauguration, a prankster named James O'Keefe released a series of fraudulent videos alleging to show how the community organizing group ACORN was engaged in voter fraud. The videos were aired practically around the clock on Fox News and throughout the conservative entertainment complex, and eventually members of Congress seized upon the controversy in order to push for the de-funding of ACORN. The problem? The videos were fake. Indeed, fact-checkers up and down the internet thoroughly debunked the videos, but it was too little too late. The lie had already become the truth inside the Fox News bubble, so congressional Republicans successfully blocked funding for ACORN and, in the process, bankrupted the organization, which filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in 2010. The Republicans, however, continued to demonize the group as if it still existed by voting on further legislation to de-fund the group after it was already dead. Then, throughout the 2012 election, the GOP engaged in not-so-whispery whisper campaigns about ACORN tampering with that year's election as well. No wonder Trump supporters believe what they believe. They've been osmotically absorbing falsehoods for the better part of a decade. Over the weekend, the Trump campaign (if one can call it a legitimate "campaign") rolled out a sign-up page in order to muster and deploy a goon-squad who will apparently monitor polling places on Election Day as a means of stopping "crooked Hillary from rigging this election." The Washington Post reported: Anyone who fills out the form is added to a list of people who will be used to staff as many polling places as possible. Monitors will report any irregularities they observe to the strike force of lawyers, who, according to Evans, would be able to judge what was and was not a problem. “I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the eighth [but] go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it’s 100 percent fine,” Trump told supporters in Altoona, Pa., on Friday. “We’re going to watch Pennsylvania. Go down to certain areas and watch and study, make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times.” It's unclear what Trump's goons will achieve since they won't be allowed to electioneer inside polling places. Mainly, Trump's call-to-action is the newest prong in his defeatist plan to delegitimize the would-be Clinton presidency by laying the groundwork for a fraudulently achieved victory. One thing's for sure: in addition to preemptively insisting without evidence that Hillary will try to rig the election, Trump is giving his people a blank check to intimidate voters any way they see fit, beginning with shouting incoherent platitudes at Hillary voters — disrupting what would've otherwise been an orderly process in most cases. We can also count on the fact that Trump's people will target predominantly minority precincts due to the dual ACORN and Black Panther myths. With past as prologue, it wouldn't be unfair to predict episodes of violence breaking out on Election Day due to deranged white male Trump bros who realize, paraphrasing Elizabeth Warren, they're about to lose badly to a girl. While we're here, I suppose we have to do this again: Among all federal elections between 2002 and 2005, the rate of voter fraud was 0.00000013 percent. This according to a five-year probe by George W. Bush’s Justice Department. Put another way, around 26 people out of 197 million were convicted of attempting to vote illegally during all of those elections. And yet Trump continues to point to voter fraud anyway. (They’re willing to believe that voter fraud exists, even though it doesn’t, and yet the climate crisis, with its 97 percent scientific consensus, is clearly fiction.) In Ohio, following the 2012 election, the Republican Secretary of State, Jon Husted, uncovered a possible 20 cases of voter fraud during the 2012 election out of 5.6 million votes cast. That’s 0.00035 percent of the vote. In Iowa, the Republican Secretary of State found a possible eight cases out of 1.5 million votes cast. That’s 0.00053 percent of the vote. In Wisconsin, possible fraud amounted to 0.00023 percent of the vote. Advertisement: So, let's review. Trump needs thuggish poll watchers to serve as potentially illegal bulwarks against fraud that doesn't exist — fraud that's allegedly perpetrated by an organization, ACORN, that also doesn't exist. Put another way, Trump's goons will defy the law in an attempt to thwart nonexistent voter fraud by nonexistent ACORN so a woman who they believe is the Devil, an entity that doesn't exist, won't be elected. Get that? This is only one of literally hundreds of examples illustrating Trump's berserker campaign, and it's only August.A Shrimp That Can Kill With Sound Is Named After Pink Floyd It has nothing to do with a persistent urban legend, however. Enlarge this image toggle caption Arthur Anker/Courtesy of Sammy De Grave and Oxford University Arthur Anker/Courtesy of Sammy De Grave and Oxford University Legend has it that the band Pink Floyd once played so loudly at a show that the sheer volume had killed all the fish in a nearby pond. Now there's a new species of shrimp, named after Pink Floyd, that can kill fish by making a loud noise. Synalpheus pinkfloydi rapidly opens then snaps closed its large claw, creating a sound that can reach up to 210 decibels — louder than a typical rock concert and loud enough to kill small fish nearby. It turns out, however, that its new name has nothing to do with that urban myth about Pink Floyd's volume. Dr. Sammy DeGrave, head of research at Oxford University Museum of Natural History, says the inspiration for the shrimp's name was really the color of its claw: pink. "The reference is to the line, 'By the way, which one of you is Pink?' from the song 'Have A Cigar'," DeGrave told NPR when reached over the phone. "The story is when Pink Floyd first went to America, people thought one of the band members was actually named Pink. A reporter asked, 'Which one of you is pink?" so that's what stuck in our mind and that's where [the name] came from." Enlarge this image toggle caption Shinko Music/Getty Images Shinko Music/Getty Images DeGrave said he'd never heard the story about the deathly loud Pink Floyd concert. "Yeah," he says, "that doesn't really sound possible." He's probably right. The story has endured over the years in no small part because of Nicholas Schaffner, who wrote the biography A Saucerful Of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey. In describing a 1971 show at London's Crystal Palace, Schaffner says, "The performance climaxed with the emergence of a fifty-foot inflatable octopus, shrouded in dry ice, from the little lake separating the audience from the stage, while fireworks exploded overhead. Unfortunately, the music's volume was such that the real fish in the lake expired from the trauma." The more likely cause of death, in retrospect, was the dry ice the band dumped in the water, and the underwater explosive flares used to inflate the Octopus. This isn't the first time Dr. DeGrave and his colleagues have named crustaceans after their favorite bands — there's another species of shrimp named Elephantis Jaggerai, after Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.Out For Delivery is the world's first and still ONLY podcast for delivery professionals. You will want to pay attention to the opening song's lyrics. They're biographical for many of us. Jason has a cold that progresses into a feverish fit of malaria and the boys are all sick from allergies. Is Firecracker lazy or not? The Colonel clears it up. It's time for video game talk and Col. Brian isn't having it, so he accidentally shoots himself in the head with a nerf gun to disrupt the conversation. Mayor Bruce has a physics question about real guns since we were talking about the fake nerf guns and the incident in the room. Dog issues at work are always complicated. "Please don't spray Buster!" Freestyle Fred blasts through the garbage cans. Feels like a set-up. Thank you for using our amazon link on the website, www.eldoradostudio.net! ALL of the proceeds will help keep the show rolling strong! Skin tag lady is back and is superstitious as hell. Now we've got ourselves a ghost story, by god! Tony Danza stinks. Jason has some sort of sneezing fit. Brian declares he will NEVER sleep on another air mattress, so look out everybody. Wolf Kid shoehorns in a couple pieces of gold despite all the fast talking going on. Jason updates the crew on the guy who fought an invisible man and the case of the Crazy Croatian. All quiet on the dopehead front. It's ghost run/haunted house season but it's actually scary for unintended reasons. Hoodsquatch is back to work, of course, and the boys feel he escaped justice. But that's just their own dumb opinions. No one knows how it happened. Thanks again for choosing Out For Delivery, the number one professional delivery guy - amateur broadcasters show in the galaxy.(Newser) – This tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada will not stand for Internet trolls. The country's legislators have approved a bill that makes it a crime to offend people through sites such as Facebook and Twitter. According to the bill, the first of its kind in the Caribbean, complaints about offensive comments would be filed with police. A judge would then decide if the message was offensive. Those found guilty could be fined up to $37,000 or face three years in prison. "We have problems when some use the technology to engage in mischief," says the island's Legal Affairs Minister. "We have to put structures in place to ensure that persons and, in some cases, companies and characters are not tarnished." The measure was approved as part of a broader electronic crimes bill, which also makes it a crime to distribute child pornography, imposing fines of up to $111,000 and a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. (Read more Facebook stories.)THE Scottish Football Association is facing mounting pressure to take action over the upcoming Scotland-Qatar game in Edinburgh due to human rights abuses in the Gulf state. Masses of Scotland fans are now planning to boycott Friday's game at Easter Road over revelations that some 1200 workers have died in Qatar building stadiums and infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup. Anger over the Scotland-Qatar game comes as Fifa, the sports governing body, is embroiled in a series of scandals over alleged corruption and bribery, as well as upsetting Europe and America over the re-election of Fifa's president Sepp Blatter. Some of Scotland's most prominent human rights activists and leading supporters' organisations have now spoken out against the human rights violations in Qatar, with some comparing the country's record to that of apartheid South Africa. Amnesty International's Gulf Migrant Rights Researcher Mustafa Qadri said: "While Qatar's national team takes to the football pitch, over 1.5 million migrant workers continue to risk forced labour and other abuses in the Gulf nation. Many thousands of those facing abuse are working on World Cup-related projects. "The FA, the football bodies in Northern Ireland [Qatar is playing Northern Ireland today] and Scotland, the sponsors, the players and fans, as well as governments around the world, must send a clear message that they will not tolerate a tournament built on the back of migrant labour abuse." Mass opposition to the staging of the World Cup in Qatar has been building. Amnesty International has highlighted the human rights abuses taking place in the country and, earlier this month, a team of BBC journalists was arrested for attempting to film the conditions in which migrant workers are living, provoking widespread condemnation of Qatar. A spokesperson for Amnesty International said that although they do not support a boycott of the Scotland-Qatar game, the human rights organisation believes it is a chance for the SFA to make a clear statement, speaking out against what is happening in Qatar. In February of this year, SFA president Campbell Ogilvie travelled to Qatar to meet officials from the country's Football Association where he said he hoped the two organisations could work together in the future. Saud Abdulaziz Al Mohannadi of the Qatari FA said during the meeting that two countries would have an "enhanced relationship... in order to improve the football system in both Qatar and Scotland". Over the weekend however, the SFA chief executive Stewart Regan floated the idea of UEFA, the European governing body which voted against Sepp Blatter in FIFA's presidential elections on Friday, boycotting future World Cups if the Swiss were to be re-elected. Nevertheless, there is no suggestion that the SFA will move to call off Friday's match at Easter Road. Of Fifa, Regan said: "There has to be change. There has to be change now. There could, of course, be a rival body. There could be threats of not participating in competitions. There are a number of options." First Minister Nicola Sturgeon supported Regan's calls for real change in the way Fifa is run, saying that the latest developments have been "deeply disturbing". She added: "This week's arrests of senior Fifa officials on charges of corruption are deeply concerning for anyone who cares about football. The World Cup is too important to be tarnished with scandal and suggestions of criminal behaviour. I support the calls of Stewart Regan, chief executive of the Scottish FA, for fundamental and urgent changes to the way Fifa is governed and share his disappointment at the Fifa election result. A change of Fifa leadership appears to me to be crucial to rebuilding its reputation." Although, the Scottish Government said last night that they expect all states to comply with human rights law, they did not condemn the decision to hold the Qatar friendly in Edinburgh. The Sunday Herald asked for interviews with Shona Robison and John Nicolson, who hold the SNP portfolio for sport in Holyrood and Westminster respectively, as well as Humza Yousaf, the party's international development spokesman, but none were available for comment. Yousaf has already travelled to Qatar to raise concerns around the abuse of human rights in their World Cup preparations and offered to help the country protect human rights throughout the whole process. Scotland's most prominent human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar is, however, supporting calls for a boycott of the game, and condemned the lack of action from football associations across the world to address the situation in Qatar. "When you consider how many workers have died trying to build a World Cup stadium for Fifa it is an absolute disgrace," Anwar said. "The problem is that our own football associations have had very little to say about this situation and it is about time they put their heads above the parapet and make a stand." The SFA said yesterday that the fixture against Qatar was arranged due to the convenience of them already being in the UK to face Northern Ireland - as well as the need to play a game before facing the Republic of Ireland in a crucial Euro 2016 qualifying match just days later. However, the outcome of the Qatar match could actually end up jeopardising Scotland's world ranking, and ultimately their 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign due to the complex nature of Fifa's seeding system. Former SFA chief executive Gordon Smith went further than most in football however, when in an interview with the Sunday Herald last night he compared the Scotland-Qatar game to playing South Africa in the 1980's. However, he then went on to say that he understood why the game is going ahead. Smith said: "I can understand why there are calls for a boycott. It's a bit like if they had arranged a friendly with South Africa during apartheid... there would have been a lot of political ill feeling. "It is a similar situation now because of what is happening in Qatar and how people are being treated - but Scotland needs a match before they play the Republic of Ireland. So in a footballing sense I can see why it's going ahead, but I understand the political opposition as well." Andrew Jenkin, head of fans organisation Supporters Direct, said that action should be taken over the game, as football can be a great tool to bring light to such situations. "We have seen boycotts of countries which have poor human rights records in the past, such as South Africa during apartheid," Jenkin said. "I don't know if boycotting is the right thing to do but there are many examples of when people have stood up and made sure that sport is the vehicle to express their disdain as to what is going on. "It's a difficult situation but what's going on in Qatar is not acceptable and football could be the perfect avenue for us to express that in Scotland, we will not stand for it." West of Scotland Tartan Army spokesperson Hamish Husband said that he is aware of many fans who have taken the decision to boycott of the game. "I am aware of many longstanding Scotland fans who decided to boycott the game the minute it was announced," Husband said. "The boycott is happening because of human rights and the slave labour-type treatment of many of the workers building these stadiums. It's not about how Qatar was chosen, that's irrelevant."Judge Neil Gorsuch was on the list of judges that President Donald Trump promised he would choose from during the campaign. \| AP Photo Trump picks Gorsuch for Supreme Court The 49-year-old federal appeals court judge would be the court's first conservative addition in a decade. President Donald Trump on Tuesday tapped Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, elevating a 49-year-old judge who has served on a federal appeals court for more than a decade to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. “When Justice Scalia passed away suddenly last February, I made a promise to the American people: If I were elected president, I would find the very best judge in the country for the Supreme Court,” Trump said. “I promised to select someone who respects our laws and is representative of our Constitution and who loves our Constitution and someone who will interpret them as written.” Story Continued Below Trump used his characteristic superlatives to introduce Gorsuch, calling him the “best” judge for the job and praising his credentials without expounding on the specifics of his legal philosophy. Trump even touted Gorsuch’s Ivy League pedigree — the kind of affiliations Trump has sometimes denigrated as breeding grounds for the out-of-touch elite. "Mr. President, I am honored and I am humbled," Gorsuch said after being introduced. Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric sat in the front row during the announcement. Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, were also in attendance, as were a number of congressional leaders. Scalia’s widow, Maureen, was also in the audience. Gorsuch pledged that, if confirmed, he would serve as “a faithful servant of the constitution and laws of this great country.” “The Supreme Court’s work is vital not just to a region of the country, but to the whole, vital to the protections of the people’s liberties under law and to the continuity of our constitution — the greatest charter of human liberty the world has ever known,” Gorsuch said. In his remarks, Gorsuch praised Scalia. “Justice Scalia was a lion of the law. Agree or disagree with him, all of his colleagues on the bench cherished his wisdom and his humor. And like them, I miss him,” he said. Gorsuch was on the list of judges that Trump promised he would choose from during the campaign, and his selection to the high court is expected to rally conservative activists who successfully pushed Republicans to block hearings for Judge Merrick Garland, former President Barack Obama’s pick, after Scalia’s death in February 2016. Gorsuch was appointed to the circuit court in 2006 by George W. Bush. He was confirmed by a Senate voice vote, meaning there were no objections to his confirmation but individual senators' votes were not recorded. Trump touted Gorsuch as having been confirmed "unanimously." Gorsuch said he cherishes the traits he considers essential to a judge — “impartiality and independence, collegiality and courage” — and said he looks forward to his hearing before the Senate, which he called the “greatest deliberative body in the world.” Gorsuch’s statement provided some hints that he’s what legal scholars call an "originalist" or "textualist," favoring a literal meaning of statutes and the Constitution. “I respect, too, the fact that in our legal order it is for Congress, and not the courts, to write new laws,” Gorsuch said. “It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people’s representatives. A judge who likes every outcome you reach is very likely a bad judge — stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands.” View Who is Judge Neil Gorsuch? President Donald Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch from the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to fill the vacant seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. And he made a nod to his religion: “I am so thankful tonight for my family, my friends and my faith,” he said. “These are the things that keep me grounded at life’s peaks and that sustain me in its valleys.” If confirmed, Gorsuch is unlikely to swing the ideological balance on the court. Legal experts see him as largely falling in line with the conservative bloc, as did Scalia. But, at 49, he would be the youngest justice on the court and represent an infusion of new blood into conservative ranks that have not seen an addition for a decade. Democrats have threatened to filibuster Trump's nominee, and the Senate's top Democrat criticized Gorsuch's record on Tuesday night. “The burden is on Judge Neil Gorsuch to prove himself to be within the legal mainstream and, in this new era, willing to vigorously defend the Constitution from abuses of the executive branch and protect the constitutionally enshrined rights of all Americans,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. “Given his record, I have very serious doubts about Judge Gorsuch’s ability to meet this standard.” Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ed Markey of Massachusetts have all indicated they'll vote against the nominee. Senate Republicans praised Trump's pick and noted that Democrats had not blocked him from joining the appeals court. "Eleven years ago, the Senate was so confident in Judge Gorsuch’s abilities that it confirmed him by voice vote," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). "In the time since, he has shown himself worthy of that distinction, and I would hope that my Senate colleagues give him the respect he deserves this time around, as well, and support his confirmation.” Gorsuch has the typical pedigree of a high court justice. He graduated from Columbia, Harvard and Oxford, clerked for two Supreme Court justices and did a stint at the Department of Justice. He attended Harvard Law with Obama. On Tuesday afternoon, Obama's former ethics czar, Norm Eisen, another classmate, tweeted: "Hearing rumors Trump's likely Supreme Court pick is Neil Gorsuch, my (and President Obama's!) 1991 Harvard Law classmate.If so, a great guy!" Since 2006, he has served on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and he is praised by conservative scholars for the clarity and force of his writing. “Neil Gorsuch is one of the most respected conservative originalist legal intellectuals of his generation,” said Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitution Center. “He’s unusual for his memorable writing style, the depth of his reading and his willingness to rethink constitutional principles from the ground up. Like Justice Scalia, he sometimes reaches results that favor liberals when he thinks the history or text of the Constitution or the law require it, especially in areas like criminal law or the rights of religious minorities, but unlike Scalia he’s less willing to defer to regulations and might be more willing to second-guess Trump’s regulatory decisions.” Gorsuch is a favorite of legal conservatives because he has sharply questioned a three-decade-old legal precedent that many on the right believe has given too much power to the regulatory state. The landmark 1984 Supreme Court ruling involving the Chevron oil company held that courts should defer to federal agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous federal laws. In a ruling last August in an immigration case, Gorsuch questioned the wisdom of that doctrine, arguing that the meaning of the law is for judges to decide, not federal bureaucrats. “Where in all this does a court interpret the law and say what it is?” Gorsuch asked in an extended digression on the subject. “When does a court independently decide what the statute means and whether it has or has not vested a legal right in a person? Where Chevron applies that job seems to have gone extinct.” Other rulings give conservatives confidence that Gorsuch is a strong supporter of religious freedom rights. Last September, he joined a dissent arguing that requirements for contraception coverage in Obamacare ran roughshod over the rights of religious nonprofits. View Trump picks Gorsuch for Supreme Court President Donald Trump picks Neil Gorsuch for Supreme Court on Tuesday. Gorsuch also wrote a 2000 law journal article and a 2006 book arguing strongly against assisted-suicide laws. The practice of allowing the terminally ill to end their lives is now legal in six states and is on the verge of being legalized in Washington, D.C. Gorsuch was confirmed to the Denver-based appeals court by a voice vote. His confirmation to the Supreme Court is expected to be contentious. Republicans hold a 52-48 advantage in the Senate, but Democrats, led by Schumer, are expected to force Republicans to muster 60 votes through a filibuster. Trump has suggested Republicans should eliminate the filibuster if Democrats use it, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been more circumspect about that idea, saying it remains up to the Senate, not the White House. Gorsuch has seen the grinder of Washington, D.C., up close. His mother, Anne Burford Gorsuch, ran the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan but resigned under pressure amid a criminal investigation and a House contempt of Congress citation over records related to alleged political favoritism in toxic-waste cleanups. She maintained her innocence and was never charged in the matter. Gorsuch is from Colorado. His supporters note that he is an outdoorsman who fishes, hunts and skies. On the court, conservatives hope he could become the intellectual heir to Scalia, long the outspoken leader of the conservative bloc. “The real appeal of Gorsuch's nomination is he’s likely to be the most effective conservative nominee in terms of winning over Anthony Kennedy and forging conservative decisions on the court,” Rosen said. “He clerked for Justice Kennedy, and they like and trust each other. If any nominee could sway Kennedy to conservative decisions, it would be Gorsuch.”BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The head of Iraq's main humanitarian group said an 18-year-old approached him with a baby suffering from leukemia. The desperate mother said she'd do "anything" for treatment for her child -- and then offered herself up for sex. Baha, 12, waits for treatment in an Iraqi Red Crescent center after shrapnel pierced his left eye. Said Ismail Hakki breaks down in tears as he recalls that story. Leukemia can be treatable to a degree in much of the world, but not in Iraq. The baby died two months later. "It shook me like hell," said Hakki, the president of the Iraqi Red Crescent. "All my life I've been a surgeon. I've seen blood; I've seen death. That never shook me -- none whatsoever. But when I see the suffering of those people, that really shook me." The plight of Iraq's children is nearing epidemic proportions, he said, with mothers and fathers abandoning their children "because they're becoming a liability." The parents don't do it out of convenience, they do it out of desperation. Watch the plight of Iraq's children » "When you become so desperate, you tend to just throw everything up and go," Hakki said. "Every time I look at those children, I ask myself first, 'What crime have those children committed?'" Hakki says Red Crescent has the monumental task of treating and feeding more than 1.6 million children under the age of 12 who have become homeless in their own country. That's roughly 70 percent of the estimated 2.3 million Iraqis who are homeless inside Iraq. How to help the Iraqi Red Crescent With 95,000 volunteers and 5,000 employees, the Iraqi Red Crescent is the last line of defense for the country's poor, sick and displaced. They try to blend in as best they can, with Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds working in the neighborhoods distinct to their ethnicities. Six employees of the Iraqi Red Crescent have been killed over the last four years. Eight have been wounded, including six left disabled by the severity of their wounds. Impact Your World See how you can make a difference Hakki says the spike in numbers of abandoned children is especially alarming, the result of sectarian violence and drastic socio-economic problems. The majority of parents in Iraq, he says, leave their children with a single relative who often has about 20 to 30 children to look after. Some parents just leave their kids altogether. Many of the families are living in areas without basic needs, like water and electricity, and there are no jobs available. "It's a desperate situation," he said. "Children are becoming a liability for both the father and the mother." The greatest concern is the ripple effect it will have in the long term -- an entire generation lacking basic life skills, surviving with no education, no income and no families. See wounded Iraqi children get help in neighboring Jordan » "The trauma of what's happening to those children is enormous," he said. "If somebody is injured by a bullet or shrapnel, it takes a week or two and he's fine.... The psycho-social injury is pretty deep and can take months, if not years, to heal. "That's the task -- the mammoth task -- the Iraq Red Crescent is facing." The group gets some financial support from the central government. It's also negotiating with the U.S. Embassy, he said, to see if it can offer financial aid. But funds are low. Just recently, the group closed 18 camps for the winter and is trying to house those thousands of people in abandoned government buildings. At a waiting room at an Iraqi Red Crescent treatment center in Baghdad's Mansour district, CNN came across several young children in desperate need of care. But they were among the lucky ones -- if that term can even be applied -- because their parents remain with them. Baha, a 12-year-old boy, was waiting to see a doctor, recalling the exact date -- January 16, 2004 -- he lost his left eye. "I want my eye to get well," he said. Baha was with his father in a market when someone opened fire on U.S. soldiers. When the soldiers fired back, shrapnel hit his eye. Despite what happened, this brave boy still goes to that same market. "I'm not afraid," he said. Across the room, 3-year-old Saja lightened the mood in the room. "Iraqis, we are still brothers!" she sang. She giggled, laughed and darted around, bringing smiles to all who saw her. Yet, she couldn't see most of what was around her. She's blind in one eye and losing sight in the other -- the result of shoddy medical care. Her father, Dia'a, said he heard about the Iraqi Red Crescent from television and others who had been treated here. He said he can't afford to travel outside the country for medical treatment for his girl. This clinic, he said, has given him "a ray of hope that I had lost." He, too, expressed despair over the plight of Iraq's youngest generation. "Our children are suffering. All they talk about is weapons and bombs," he said. "They are children. We are older; our hair turns gray. What happens to them hearing all the explosions and bombs? "We can't make them feel better because we are down." That's a sentiment that haunts the head of the Iraqi Red Crescent. "There are times I get up in the middle of the night and I say, 'Oh my God, how are we going to solve it? God help me to help those kids!'" E-mail to a friend CNN.com's Wayne Drash contributed to this report in Atlanta. All About Iraq War • Refugees International • United Nations High Commissioner for RefugeesThe fixture between Liverpool and Manchester United is one that demands global attention. As a spectacle, it is England’s riposte to El Clasico, Derby della Madonnina, De Klassieker, and so forth. In short, it is a very big deal. The animosity between the cities may have its roots in issues beyond the football pitch but it is on it that it finds a platform to express itself. Thus, a game between the two sides is always plagued with intensity and a smorgasbord of emotions. The traditional giants may not be fighting for the ultimate prize of the title but they are 2 of the teams in the running for a spot in next season’s Champions League. The result at Anfield may not prove be the defining moment in the race but its importance didn’t have to be underlined ahead of the game. Liverpool 1-2 Manchester United Line ups Liverpool: 22. Mignolet // 23. Can – 37. Skrtel – 17. Lovren // 31. Sterling – 14. Henderson – 24. Allen – 18. Moreno // 20. Lallana – 15. Sturridge – 10. Coutinho Manchester United: 1. De Gea // 25. Valencia – 4. Jones – 12. Smalling – 17. Blind // 16. Carrick // 8. Mata – 21. Herrera – 31. Fellaini – 18. Young // 10. Rooney United’s
it have anything to do with the assumption that in the Southern Hemisphere the Jewish mind goes against reason. Personally, I believe this is something even more Jewish than auto-anti-Semitism. As a Jew to a Jew, let’s be honest, it’s the same unique Jewish sense of humor. Only a particularly developed Jewish sense of humor can explain why you have chosen to turn your back on the democratic, Western side, which develops medicine (at least until Teva goes bankrupt), feeds millions around the world through agricultural developments, sends doctors to every place hit by an earthquake across the globe and develops cyber defenses against the forces of evil. That same developed sense of humor alone can explain why you favor your Palestinian friend’s side, the side which hijacks planes, the side which hangs gay people on electric poles, the side which rips out girls’ throats in honor killings, the side which has failed to establish any state or society which isn’t totalitarian, chauvinist, primitive and/or murderous. I’m willing to send you one, by the way. If you give me your address, I’ll gladly send over a copy of my latest book on the issue, titled “The History of the Palestinian People.” It may take a while before it reaches the end of the world you live in, but I can assure you that you’ll be able to read the entire book in less than one minute.• Burkina Faso forward signs five-year contract with Ligue 1 side • The 21-year-old impressed during season on loan at Ajax Bertrand Traoré has joined Lyon from Chelsea, the two clubs have announced. The Burkina Faso international, 21, has spent recent seasons on loan at the Dutch clubs Vitesse Arnhem and Ajax and will now move to France on a contract until 2022. Manchester United set to sign Nemanja Matic from Chelsea for around £40m Read more Lyon wrote on Twitter: “It is official: Bertrand Traoré is Lyonnais! A transfer for 10m euros (£8.8m) and a five-year contract.” Reports have suggested the fee includes a sell-on clause and other potential add-ons. A press conference staged by Lyon to unveil Traoré began in bizarre fashion, with a seat left empty at the table while the club president, Jean-Michel Aulas, and coach, Bruno Genesio, discussed a range of other matters. Aulas, quoted by L’Equipe, made mention of “technical difficulties” in concluding the transfer and added that Traoré “will not be present for the return to training on Tuesday”. But the player was eventually introduced during the press conference and posed for photographs with the club’s shirt. He told OLTV: “I am very happy to be here, to be Lyonnais. Lyon has always been an impressive club, with big players and a great history. It is an honour for me to play here. Transfer window 2017 – every deal in Europe's top five leagues Read more “When I came here with Ajax a few months ago, I was attracted by the philosophy of the club, with several young players from the academy, and the magnificent Parc OL. With Ajax, we had a bit of a similar style of play and that enticed me to come here. “I am coming to bring something extra to OL and I hope to continue progressing and to learn with the coach and my new team-mates.” Traoré officially joined Chelsea in 2013, having previously appeared for them as a triallist after emerging from Auxerre’s academy. He never established himself in the first team and, after his recent loan moves, is looking to carve out a long-term role for himself. He said: “I have been looking to have stability and, in signing a contract with OL, I could not ask for more. I have the time to show everyone what I can do.”It is clearly an impossible task to try and chose your favorite FIVE Mohamed Hamaki songs…actually its hard to chose 10 or 20 lol But as it was his birthday a few days ago and following that we heard the news that he was DESERVEDLY won the MTV’s European Music Award for BEST ARABIA ACT, we decided to look for five of his songs that are on our mind today…. It is time for “On My Mind” or (على بالي)…SUPER DOSE :) Hope you enjoy them with us… 1. Sultan Gamalik (Album: Hammam Fi Amesterdam SOUNDTRACK - Year: 1999) 2. Yalli Ghayeb (Album: Betedhak - Year: 2003) 3. Tammenuni Anaik (Album: Kheles El Kalam - Year: 2006) 4. Naweeha (Album: Naweeha - Year: 2008) 5. Haga Mosh Tabaeya (Album: Haga Mosh Tabaeya - Year: 2010) What Hamaki songs are on your mind today?John Bennett (pictured), an anti-Muslim Oklahoma State Representative, has hinted at executing Hillary Clinton in a bizarre Facebook post An anti-Muslim Oklahoma State Representative has hinted at executing Hillary Clinton in a bizarre Facebook post. John Bennett, a Republican seeking re-election in the state's second District, made the comment in response to a right-wing blog post about the Benghazi attack in 2012. 'Two words... firing squad,' Bennett wrote in a post that has since been deleted. After deleting the comments, Bennett claimed he was being'sarcastic' in a text message he sent to the Oklahoman. However, he went on to accuse Clinton of treason, which is punishable by death. 'She has committed nothing less than treason by leaving fellow Americans to die in Benghazi,' he said. 'If anyone else had done that they would be charged with treason and thrown under the jail at a minimum, and a firing squad likely.' Many were critical of the post before it was deleted, according to KFOR. 'Isn’t it treason to threaten the life of a presidential candidate? You, in effect, you wished for her death and laid out the means of her execution,' one person wrote on Facebook. However, the network found other disgusting comments that have since been deleted supporting Bennett's suggestion. 'No firing squad. That would be too good. A public hanging would be well suited for her,' one person said. Bennett made his comment (pictured) in response to a right-wing blog post about the Benghazi attack in 2012 'She has committed nothing less than treason by leaving fellow Americans to die in Benghazi,' Bennett said when asked about Hillary Clinton (pictured) Bennett's Facebook page is littered with anti-Muslim comments and articles he shared from right-wing blog sites. He was also anti-abortion rights for women, and posted a number of bible verses. In another post, he proudly displayed his letter of endorsement from the NRA. The Republican created controversy in 2014 when he said any Muslim who follows the practices of Islam should not be trusted, while also comparing followers of the religion to Nazis. The State Representative (pictured) created controversy in 2014 when he compared people who follow Islams to Nazis 'You think every German was a Nazi? No, they weren’t. But what happened with the Nazis was that once they got in power, all those Germans that sat quiet or were scared to say anything had no choice but to follow and support what they were doing,' he said. 'So is every Muslim bad? No. but if they subscribe to Islam and what it teaches, and if they’re not standing up and condemning what Islam teaches, then they’re just going right along with them, just like the Germans did when the Nazis were around,'Michael Hayden, the former director of the NSA and the CIA, said in a statement Sunday that Fox’s Sean Hannity, one of Trump’s most ardent and vocal media supporters, behaved like a “true propagandist.” In a statement to Brookings Institute senior fellow Benjamin Wittes, Hayden, a retired Air Force general, wrote that “Hannity has entered the pantheon of a true propagandist.” He added that the Fox host’s “behavior reminds me of a conversation I had with a political office in the mid-1980s when I was the air attaché to Bulgaria. I asked this officer what truth was to him. He responded without hesitation, ‘Truth is what serves the party.'” Former CIA and NSA Director Mike Hayden responds to @seanhannity‘s endorsement of foreign espionage against the US. pic.twitter.com/HwbNJjKmDB — Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) October 23, 2016 Hayden’s remarks were in direct response to Hannity’s praising WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. It was a drastic shift for the Fox host, who was hostile to Assange and WikiLeaks for years. His sudden about-face comes after the organization began making disclosures intended to damage Clinton’s campaign, specifically steadily releasing emails stolen from the private email account of Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. Hayden noted that, save for a few personalities — such as Chris Wallace, who moderated the final debate, Bret Baier, and Megyn Kelly — “FOXNews has almost completely jumped the shark.” “They have given up any semblance of conservatism and focused on an almost visceral hatred of all things Clinton and Obama.” Hayden served as director of the NSA from 1999 to 2005 and director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009. He was one of 50 top Republican national security officials to sign an open letter in August denouncing Trump. — Sam Reisman (@thericeman) is a staff editor at Mediaite. Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comIt’s amazing where inspiration can come from. When axisVFX was called upon to help create a race of two-dimensional-like creatures called the Boneless in the Doctor Who 'Flatline' episode, they drew inspiration from, surprisingly, glitchy and failed 3D printed objects as well as sea slugs. fxguide talks to axisVFX visual effects supervisor Grant Hewlett, creative director Stuart Aitken and lead effects artist Joe Thornley-Heard about their work for the BBC show. The Boneless are actually seen initially as only two-dimensional creations, distorting the world they move over until they become three-dimensional beings. Each required a different visual effects approach. Here’s a look at how each Boneless effect was created. The 3D Boneless Dubbed ’distortion zombies’, the Boneless in their human-like forms went through several design incarnations while axisVFX collaborated with director Douglas Mackinnon and VFX art director Ste Dalton on the look. “One of the early bits of reference we looked at was 3D printing that had gone a bit wrong,” relates axisVFX visual effects supervisor Grant Hewlett. “It was tied in to the idea that they would be permanently connected to the place they were born - so it suited the story that they couldn’t just suddenly chase after people and get to them very quickly. So they had to constantly re-draw themselves, but they weren’t very good at that so that’s where the distortion and pieces missing came from.” An early proof of concept was also devised to check that the visual effects team could deliver the zombies on the necessary TV schedule. “We had some mocap left over from a previous game project at Axis,” says Hewlett, ”and we put that on a scanned character and ran it through the Houdini pipe. We shot that through a few different cameras and proposed that as generally how it was going to look.” axisVFX effects lead Joe Thornley-Heard devised the throughput in Houdini for how the creatures would be realized, beginning with an understanding of how the 3D printers produced those glitchy pieces. “I think having such good reference of those broken 3D printing models and also having a good idea of how those 3D models are created really helped,” says Thornley-Heard. “It’s got a nozzle that lays out liquid plastic in a spiral, so I was able to take a mesh in a rest pose for the character, and scatter points on it and add a curve up to the height of the model. Then I used the OpenVDB toolset in Houdini to go from that rest pose mesh to the next step. It’s really easy to stick points to the surface, move points around using that VDB representation of the mesh, and then it’s also really good for compositing.” Here, the idea was to turn the curves into surfaces and combine them into the original mesh. “Because it’s all just volume data I could apply a sort of ‘iDistort’ in 3D to the level set using a sort of cellular noise as a look-up to do the actual glitching distortion,” explains Thornley-Heard. “We put some animation through that and you’ll get all of the head jumping a few units to the left or the right on a particular frame. So the combination of adding that spiraling curve as a texture meant I could take that rest pose mesh, stick it all to the animated character and output a hi-res level set mesh with UV attributes for shading for rendering and lighting.” To capture the likeness of the actors themselves, axisVFX had initially considered a traditional 3D character approach of cyberscans and modeling, but ultimately considered it would be too time consuming and expensive. “We thought,” says axisVFX creative director Stuart Aitken, "given we were using this kind of aesthetic anyway, and we knew they were going to be distorted, we didn’t want them to look like CG characters.” Instead, the actors were scanned at Ten24 with a handheld Artec scanner and simultaneously photographed by a camera array to capture textures that could be applied with photogrammetry techniques. “What we got out of that,” says Aitken, “was a pretty nice 3D scan that we needed to clean up a little, and photo ref. The guys did an awesome job of sticking these two things together. You don’t get the textures aligned to the scan - you literally have to take the photographs and re-project them onto the mesh.” A motion capture shoot also took place, with Mackinnon able to direct the performances for the zombies himself. axisVFX then followed a traditional lighting pipeline led by CG Supervisor Sergio Caires, with final compositing for the shots carried out in NUKE and overseen by VFX Supervisor Howard Jones. Boneless in 2D A similar distorted aesthetic was behind the 2D look for the Boneless beings as they first emerge and literally drag the textures of the world around them. This time, sea slugs became the unlikely source of inspiration. “We spent a long time working out how these creatures would drag textures before they became 3D,” outlines Hewlett. “It was really hard to do that, and not have traditional cues from specular highlights and shadows to be able to get that kind of movement.” The Boneless are seen first as wall murals, shots accomplished by filming actors turning around in various ways, and layering their movements in Photoshop. For one shot zooming close into a line on a wall, axisVFX had to re-create the scene with a virtual camera due to physical constraints on set. “The reference for that,” explains Aitken, “was Holbein's skull, a famous optical illusion where something’s really stretched at one point and once you get to the right angle it all forms. Because we had to take this line and turn it into a head, we had to get the camera millimeters away from the wall to make it work. We added an extension to the camera in Maya and the guys did that in NUKE.” - See the mural versions of the Boneless in this preview. “It was probably one of the most difficult things,” adds Hewlett, “partly because it was the very first shot. We were in this tiny flat in Cardiff and the camera crew are scratching their heads looking at our previs saying, ‘What the hell is this?’ We just had to shoot about six different takes and hope that we could put it back together again." An aspect that helped axisVFX in smearing the textures was working with the art department early on to ensure walls and props were ‘texture-decorated’ to begin with. “If it was all clean,” notes Aitken, “we wouldn’t be able to drag the textures around and you wouldn’t be able to see the things. So that was one of the reasons for having the stripey carpet and 60s wallpaper and that stuff and lots of patterns everywhere." The Boneless are further revealed when PC Forrest suddenly becomes absorbed into the carpet, providing a glimpse of the distorted textures. An idea for the final distortion look came from director Mackinnon who referenced a sea slug and asked axisVFX to devise their effects based on that. “It was more like a leech which has this stretch and compression movement,” says Thornley-Heard. “We had to follow the locomotion of a worm or a leech that has sections that stretch and squash, and it uses the squash section as a foot and extends its body forwards from that. It’s got a very creepy feeling and that was the kind of textural quality we gave to the individual creatures. They also had a flocking behavior, like starlings. So the combination of those made a mass of these writhing things that gave it the creepiness.” Thornley-Heard built a 3D representation of the sea slug in Houdini that would then be applied to the plates inside NUKE. “That’s where a lot of the experimentation came,” he says, “because a lot of the movement of each individual creature was based on its texture and surface quality. The problem was you couldn’t represent that because that gave it too much shading. Some of the creepiness of the leeches is their sheen or stickiness and the specular.” “What it ended up being was I had a leech rig for a single leech that was derived from a single point,” adds Thornley-Heard. “That just handled the squash and stretch and generated the mesh. So I could feed in a bunch of points with the flocking behavior, which meant a particle sim with some fluid motion could be turned into a crowd of leeches. That was able to generate some orthographic elements that could then be re-projected in NUKE. That got a little bit complicated because we were using the STmap UV lookup in NUKE but through the re-projection we had to then use the camera transform to transform those UV values in order for it to pick up the right part of the projected texture.” axisVFX relied on C44Matrix from Nukepedia for the transform of the color data. “With extra secondaries like UV maps, ramp ups and other sorts of things,” says Thornley-Heard, “we were able to drag textures, smear it and use time echoes in NUKE to get a really kind of painterly water color smear as well. It had to look like they were tasting the world, sampling it and digesting it in a way that looked like they were understanding it. That was the story point.” The Boneless shots were the primary effects created by axisVFX on the show, but others included flattening objects such as a couch and even people. The studio also crafted energy fields and blasts and a shape shifting Tardis, working for around six weeks on the show between their Bristol and Glasgow offices and delivering a total of 66 shots.Taylor Twellman is still skeptical about the direction of U.S. Soccer following Bruce Arena's resignation. The U.S. men's national team will play a friendly in Portugal on Nov. 14, both countries' federations announced on Monday. The Portugal game could be the first the U.S. team will play since a 2-1 defeat to Trinidad and Tobago on Oct. 10 that resulted in the Americans failing to qualify for the World Cup for the first time since the 1986 cycle. Meanwhile, Portugal sealed qualification last week with a 2-0 win over Switzerland that allowed it to claim top spot in UEFA's Group B. It is unclear at present who will manage the U.S. for the match. On a conference call with reporters last week, U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati said he would name a manager to oversee the two matches "in the next seven to 10 days." U.S. youth technical director and U-20 manager Tab Ramos is widely expected to be put in charge for November, though a second match has yet to be confirmed. A potential matchup with Wales will not go forward, sources confirmed to ESPN FC, and though U.S. Soccer is looking for a replacement, one source said there are "limited options." The two countries have faced each other six times previously, with each side claiming two wins. The last encounter was during the group stage at the 2014 World Cup, with the teams playing to a 2-2 draw. Portugal will begin the international break with a friendly against fellow World Cup qualifiers Saudi Arabia in Leiria on Nov. 10, before facing the U.S. in Algarve. Jeff Carlisle covers MLS and the U.S. national team for ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreyCarlisle.None of that matters in this economy. Mr. Blattman has been out of work ever since, 18 months. He moved to New York because he thought prospects would be better than in Florida. (“I couldn’t go back to Maryland, tail between my legs.”) But after applying for 600 jobs, he’s had just three interviews — two of them over the phone. At the only in-person interview, for a position supervising international admissions at a Westchester County college, he was asked about salary. “I said: ‘Whatever you’re paying, I’ll take it. I understand it’s a different world now, I can adapt.’ ” The job went to someone half his age, he says. Being single, he wants to be in New York City, but lives in a studio apartment in this middle-class suburb, because rents are cheaper. He let his online dating membership lapse because, he says, once women figured out he was unemployed, it killed things. He can walk to shopping, but often drives his secondhand S.U.V. to a grocery store two towns away just to have someplace to go. “If I walk to the store, I’m back in 10 minutes, and then what?” Last Monday, asked what he had planned for the week, he said, “As of now, I have zero planned, not a thing.” He has enough to live on for two to three years and knows he’s luckier than many. Still, he wakes in the night, scared. “If I don’t find work by then,” he says, “I don’t know what I’ll do.” Unemployment for middle-aged workers like Mr. Blattman is the highest it’s been since data was first collected 60 years ago. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, joblessness is worse for men over 45 (7.7 percent in July) than women the same age (6.9 percent). And while the middle-aged are still more likely to have jobs than younger workers, once people Mr. Blattman’s age are laid off, finding a new job is harder. In 2008, laid-off people over 45 were out of work 22.2 weeks, versus 16.2 weeks for younger workers. Like steelworkers in the 1980s recession, Mr. Blattman was part of an industry, financial services, where entire companies and divisions collapsed and disappeared. “It wasn’t anything about me personally,” he says. “The world around me just changed overnight. Like East Germany, one day it was there, next day gone.” Several factors were at play: credit markets contracted; a scandal over questionable ties between lenders and college aid offices put private lenders on the defensive; and Congress cut the subsidies paid to private lenders for issuing federally guaranteed loans, reducing profitability. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Blattman has many people to commiserate with, but few to network with. “Ninety percent of the people I worked with lost jobs,” he says. After his layoff, he bought two suits, “to be prepared for the glut of interviews.” He’s never worn them. 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. Companies insist applications be sent via e-mail. “I’d say 95 percent never even acknowledge receiving my application, let alone telling me I was rejected. No letters, no courtesy, everything is so chaotic and rude.” Even headhunters stopped responding. “One tried to help for a few weeks, but disappeared and didn’t return phone calls or e-mails.” “I’d see ads for business jobs, teaching jobs, that were my exact résumé and not even get a call. So many are out of work, if they want a guy with polka dots on his head, they can find polka dots.” Just getting people to understand what he did for a living — setting up loan programs for colleges — is often not possible. “I just say I’m a sales guy, I can sell ice to Eskimos. My problem is, I have no credential. I’m not a lawyer or doctor, not in pharmaceuticals, not an expert in women’s fashion. I have no broker’s license or insurance certificate.” “Here’s the reality,” he continues. “I used to be somebody, I had a job. Not anymore. Everything ground to a halt. No sense of purpose. No self-esteem.” Filling the days is a chore. He goes for the $2.99 breakfast special at a nearby diner every morning, just to get out and be around people. A few times a week, he rides the train into Manhattan, to a museum or street fair, just to be out. “I’ll walk from Union Square to the Upper East Side, walk through Central Park and just get lost and see where I come out.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story His father, a truck driver who survived the Depression, instilled the importance of hard work in his children by planting the fear of homelessness, and Mr. Blattman cannot walk by a street person now without wondering if this could be him. When he’s out, he feels guilty he’s not home, hunting the Internet for job prospects. His health insurance expired July 31, so he bought a new policy that starts Sept. 1, and is keeping his fingers crossed he makes it through August. He fears he’s too old to find work and too young to retire. He got a call from a headhunter last week; one of his former employees had listed him as a reference. She asked what he was doing and said she might have a job for him. “We’ll see,” he says. “I’ve got to the point — no one’s going to do that for me. It’s all about me making it happen. I can’t rely on the old world to take me back.” With so much time on his hands, he decided to take a stab at writing novels. He’s finished a thriller about a consumer loan officer and is working on making contacts in the writing world. “I have befriended publishers, published authors, agents, taking certain people to lunch,” he says. A few hours after saying he had nothing going last week, he received an invitation to a book party in SoHo and planned to build a day in the city around it. During his walks, he makes notes on his BlackBerry for his second novel, which, he says, is half finished. It’s about a 58-year-old unemployed man who lives in a studio apartment the size of a hotel room, and every morning goes to a diner, where he falls for a waitress who’s the daughter of Holocaust survivors. It’s a love story, he says, and while he’s not yet sure exactly how it will turn out, his intent has always been to give it a happy ending.Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer (R-S.C.) breeds contempt Of late, my affection for South Carolina has grown, but I just don't get the Palmetto State's politicians. We tittered at Gov. Mark "Gone Hiking" Sanford (R). We gasped at Rep. Joe "You Lie!" Wilson (R). And now we have say-what whiplash thanks to Lt. Gov. Andre "Starve the Poor" Bauer (R). The Greenville News reports that at a town hall meeting over the weekend, Bauer argued that the government end assistance to those who fail drug tests. “My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed,” he said. “They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.” Wow. This incident is but one of many that explain why there was no way Sanford would be impeached over his affair with an Argentinian woman who was not his wife. Check out NPR's Ken Rudin to find out more about Bauer's tense relationship with South Carolina Republicans.Islamic hygienical jurisprudence includes a number of regulations involving cleanliness during salat (obligatory prayer) through Wudu and Ghusl, as well as dietary laws and toilet etiquette for Muslims. The fiqh is based on admonitions in the Qur'an for Muslims to be ritually clean whenever possible, as well as in hadith (words, actions, or habits of the Islamic prophet Muhammad). Cleanliness is an important part of Islam, including Qur'anic verses that teach how to achieve ritual cleanliness. Keeping oral hygiene through cleaning the teeth with the use of a form of toothbrush called miswak is considered sunnah, the way of Prophet Muhammad. Ritual ablution is also very important, as observed by the practices of wudu (partial ablution), ghusl (full ablution), and tayammum (water-free alternative using any natural surface such as rock, sand, or dust). In Muslim countries, bathrooms are often equipped with a Muslim shower situated next to the toilet, so that individuals may wash themselves properly. This ablution is required in order to maintain ritual cleanliness. The common Muslims practice of taking off shoes when entering mosques and homes is also based on ritual cleanliness. Islamic cleanliness and hygiene [ edit ] Sunni Islam has its own hygienical jurisprudence. It is preferable for a Sunni Muslim to remove the hair directly below the navel and under the arms also as trimming the nails once a week. Leaving hair and nails is permissible after 15 days and disliked after 40 days.[1] The best day for removing needless hair and cutting nails is Friday. It is permissible to use shaving cream to remove needless hair. Needless hair and nails should be buried to prevent illnesses from spreading. Cutting eyebrows is permissible if they are too long. Sunni women should put their nails and hair removed from the head, below the navel, and under the arms in a place where no non-permissible man can see it.[2] Personal grooming is also a matter of focus in Islam.[3] Allowing a beard to grow while trimming the moustache is emphasized with it being seen as mandatory by all respected Sunni scholars from the four major Sunni Madh'hab. Islamic dietary laws [ edit ] Islamic dietary laws provide a set of rules as to what Muslims eat in their diet. These rules specify the food that is halāl, meaning lawful. They are found in Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, usually detailing what is unlawful, or harām.[4] Islamic genitalia hygiene [ edit ] Urine is forbidden to be on a Muslim during prayer times, as it is considered dirty. The foreskin is a possible spot where urine can accumulate. Circumcision is used to prevent this.[5][6] Islamic toilet etiquette [ edit ] The Islamic faith has particular rules regarding personal hygiene when going to the toilet. This code is known as Qadaahul Haajah.[7][8] Issues of laterality, such as whether one uses the left or right hand and the foot used to step into or out of toilet areas, are derived from hadith sources.[9] The only issue which the Qur'an mentions is the one of washing one's hands especially after using the toilet which is mentioned in verse 5:6. Examples of these rules include, but are not limited to: It is strongly forbidden to make the toilet close to the flowing waters, or to be by flowing water whilst relieving yourself. It is more preferable to step into the bathroom area with the left leg and step outside the bathroom area with the right leg. One should remain silent whilst on the toilet. Talking, answering greetings or greeting others is heavily disliked. [7] One should not face nor turn one's back on Qibla (the direction Muslims face to pray) whilst relieving oneself. [7] When leaving the toilet one should also say a prayer, "O Allah! Bestow your forgiveness upon me." [7] Use of toilet paper is acceptable, but washing with water is still needed for purity and to minimize germs present in feces from touching the skin.[10] Islamic sexual hygiene [ edit ] Sexual hygiene in Islam is a prominent topic in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) due to its everyday nature. Ibn Abidin, a 13th century Hanafi Islamic scholar explains:[11] When there is discharge of thick, cloudy white fluid (wady) (that exits before or after urinating) or unlustful discharge of thin, sticky, white fluid (madhy) caused by play or kissing, it requires ghusl. And wudu. Regarding things that necessitates ghusl: sperm or female ejaculate that leaves its place of origin with desire [f: whether actual or effective], even if it exits the body without desire, even if without sexual intercourse; the head of the penis entering either private part of a living human being who is fit for sexual intercourse, even without any release of sexual fluids…” [al-Hadiyya al-`Ala’iyya (Gifts of Guidance, unpublished translation)][12] After partaking in sexual activity where penetration or ejaculation occurs, both men and women are required to complete a full-body ritual ablution known as ghusl in order to re-establish ritual purity before prayer.[13] Ghusl requires clean, odorless water that has not been used for a previous ritual and begins with the declaration of the intention of purity and worship.[14] A Muslim performing complete ablution then washes every part of his or her body.[14] See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Further reading [ edit ]A Denver police officer accused of having an improper relationship with a domestic-violence victim was suspended, and a second officer is on desk duty while the internal-affairs office investigates an unrelated allegation that he had sex in a patrol car while on duty. Officer Scott Kida, a 14-year-veteran, is awaiting further discipline stemming from the allegation that he “had an inappropriate relationship with a crime victim,” police spokesman Lt. Matt Murray said. Murray refused to elaborate on the allegation but said the internal investigation is complete. Kida was suspended March 13. “He has to be at home during his work hours,” Murray said. Kida had worked most recently out of the District 2 station in northeast Denver. Before that, he was a corporal in the District 3 station in southwest Denver but was demoted when Chief Robert White reorganized the department last year. A second officer, Jairon Katz, on the force for eight years, is on desk duty while police probe a separate, unrelated allegation of misconduct. Murray described it only as “inappropriate behavior” that was against departmental policy. But sources said the allegation involves on-duty sexual activity in a patrol car. Katz patrolled most recently out of the District 5 station in northeast Denver. Neither officer could be reached for comment. Attorney Sean Olson, who is representing both, said he was not familiar enough with the cases to comment. Manager of Safety Alex Martinez also declined to comment through his spokeswoman, saying his office had not yet reviewed the cases. Sadie Gurman: 303-954-1661, sgurman@denverpost.com or twitter.com/sgurmanWith Montee Ball out a month, the Denver Broncos have added to their running back depth - at least on the practice squad. The Broncos on Wednesday signed running back Jeremy Stewart to their practice squad, the team announced. Stewart (5-11, 215 pounds) is a third-year player who appeared in 17 games (0 starts) during his first two NFL seasons with the Oakland Raiders. He's tallied 27 rushes for 103 yards (3.8 avg.) with one touchdown and 10 receptions for 68 yards (6.8 avg.) in his career. He also has kick return experience, hauling in eight kickoffs for 138 yards (17.3 avg.) in addition to five career special teams tackles, according to the Broncos. In college, Stewart rushed for 920 yards and 14 touchdowns on 209 carries (4.4 avg.) for the Stanford Cardinals (thank you John Elway). He was an undrafted free agent pickup for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2012. A la Knowshon Moreno, Stewart will wear jersey No. 27. The Broncos confirmed that offensive tackle Colorado local Ryan Miller, of Columbine High School and Colorado Buffaloes fame, was released from the practice squad to make room for Stewart.Adam Wainwright #50 of the St. Louis Cardinals pitches in the eighth inning during game one of the doubleheader against the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park on September 30, 2015 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (AFP Photo/Justin K. Aller) St. Louis (AFP) - Adam Wainwright, a three-time Major League Baseball All-Star pitcher who was injured in April, was reactivated Wednesday by the St. Louis Cardinals and pitched his first relief inning since 2006. The Cardinals pulled the 34-year-old right-hander off the 60-day disabled list ahead of a double-header against Pittsburgh and he threw the eighth inning in the Pirates' 8-2 victory over St. Louis in game one. A victory by St. Louis in game two between the two teams with the best records in the major leagues would clinch the National League Central division title for the Cardinals. Both clubs have secured playoff berths already. Wainwright suffered a torn left Achilles tendon on April 25 and has missed 141 games since hurting himself while batting in a game at Milwaukee. He had been expected to miss the remainder of the season. Before the injury, Wainwright was 2
stop. Often, you stop when you get that final scene. You’re constantly seeking out that final scene…once I got that I knew that I had a full arc to the story. Are you screening the film in Mexico? We are, and it’s something that we’re really excited about. I’m excited to see how American audiences react, but I fell in love with Mexico, I fell in love with the country, I fell in love with the people. The film means an enormous amount to me, and to see how people there react, I am very much looking forward to [that]. The few people we have been able to screen the film for have really responded to it. I think this is a film [the U.S.] really needs to see, and hopefully it will shake things up and show a world that you hear about and read about but don’t necessarily see. That was my goal: to get access to this world that you see in the headlines but you don’t necessarily viscerally feel or experience. Going back, I understand how you went from Arizona to Mexico, but what originally made you interested in the border in Arizona? I had just finished…”Escape Fire,” and I was riding on the subway in New York and read this Rolling Stone article called “Border of Madness” by Damon Tabor, and the minute I read it I was like [snaps fingers]! It was this crazy world I knew nothing about. I knew very little about the border, I knew very little about the war on drugs, I knew very little about vigilantism. These were all things that interested me and excited me. [The article] was a very vivid depiction of this world. The minute I read it, I wanted to make this film. I reached out to [Tabor] and we started getting together and talking about it, and then he eventually introduced me to Tim “Nailer” Foley, who is the protagonist in Arizona, and it took several months to gain access to him, and then I was down there filming. What sense did you get from the civilians who live in the towns where these conflicts broke out? The crazy thing about Arizona is that you feel like you’re not in the United States, that you’re sort of in this other-worldly place where it is cartel land. You look up on the hilltops and there are cartel scouts, ushering drugs through the valley. The cartels now control both the human and drug trafficking into the United States. It used to be two different industries, drug trafficking and human trafficking; cartels now control everything. So you do feel like you’re in this sort of wild west area. But you drive a hundred miles away and you’re in Phoenix or Tucson and you feel away from it all. Also, in Arizona, there’s not gunfights in the streets, there’s not a “war” going on. [Conflict at the border] is something we don’t necessarily know is happening, but it’s happening every day. In Mexico, it’s in their face, the violence. It’s so real, it’s something they live with on a daily basis. There wasn’t one person I met who wasn’t affected by cartel violence. Since the “war on drugs” began in 2007, 80,000-plus people have been killed, 20,000-plus people have disappeared…These are crazy numbers. You think about [the numbers of the people killed by] 9/11, ISIS…this is a war we are a part of that we are turning a blind eye to. It’s crazy because it’s sort of amorphous warfare. You could have a shoot-out in the middle of the street one day, and that night people are out having tacos and drinking beers. They’ve lived and grown to be resilient and accepting of this violence, and that’s what’s so scary and so sad. At any moment, the tranquility can stop. They often find people hanging from bridges, mass graves…it is a very frightening place to be, especially in Michoacán. For decades, people sort of walked around shrouded in fear, and the idea of stepping up and fighting back against the cartel was unheard of. So it’s important to recognize that when the Autodefensas first rose up, it was this very novel idea — and this crazy idea — of everyday citizens — farmers, ranchers, doctors — rising up to fight back against this evil entity that for many years had enacted horrific violence against their families… Obviously, the film spirals into a complex and dark place, but I think it’s very important to acknowledge that the origin of the Autodefensas movement was a very beautiful, very pure idea of citizens who had no government to turn to, who lived in a lawless society, who had no choice but to rise up and take the law into their own hands. I think the citizens, the people in the pueblos and the cities of Michoacán, unless they’re part of the cartel, were incredibly grateful for what was happening, at least in the beginning. READ MORE: Tribeca Exclusive: ‘Jackrabbit’ Filmmakers release ’80s-Inspired Video Game So, you were inspired by these two pieces of journalism, the one about Arizona and the one about this region in Mexico. What changed for you from the original inspiration to tell the story? Is it the film you thought you were going to make? I by no means made the story I thought I was going to make. That’s why it was such a difficult film to make, because it was constantly changing. Every week the story changed. Every month, the story changed. So we were constantly re-evaluating what is the story. Where is the arc? Where is this going? Where are my main characters going? But it was a really exciting way to make a film. You end up with a story you didn’t expect and you didn’t start out making. It’s sort of cliche advice, but a mentor of mine in the film world once said, “if you end up with the story you started with, then you weren’t listening along the way,” and that maxim was totally true for “Cartel Land.” Would you make a film like this again? I want to keep making immersive films, verité films, about interesting characters. At this point I’m not sure if I want to be in a war zone again. A “war zone.” We’ll see. To answer an earlier question, one of the scariest parts about making this film was that I really didn’t know who I was with, if I was with the good guys or the bad guys. That made it particularly frightening. You just really didn’t know who you were with. Was it frightening on the physical level of, “are they going to turn on me?,” or an intellect level of, “oh no, am I telling the bad guys’ story?” Both. Trying to understand the story and who is “good” and who is “bad” was difficult as a filmmaker and journalist. But physically, being in the back of a car with a group of people who have unknown motivations or unknown origins was scary. I would be terrified. I think one of the scariest moments for me was, despite all the gun battles and the torture and all that stuff, a moment in the film where I’m interviewing a women who describes being kidnapped by the Templars, the cartel in Michoacán. [She] describes how her husband was also kidnapped, how her husband was almost burned to death and dismembered right in front of her, and the joy which the cartel members exhibited while doing this, laughing and joking. The hollowness in her eyes, and the way in which there’s a person sitting right in front of me, but her soul had been sucked out of her, that was very disturbing. To think that we’re the same species of human beings that would do that to other people was very disturbing, psychologically. Very difficult for me to grasp and stayed with me that day, that night, that week, that month…up to today. It’s something I think about. READ MORE: ruth or Fiction? Tribeca Directors Grapple With Reality Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.(AP Photo) People stand outside Detroit City Hall, protesting thousands of residential water-service shutoffs by Detroit's water department, during a rally in Detroit, Thursday, July 24, 2014. Posted by guest-blogger Sam Ross-Brown. Late last month, the City of Baltimore began notifying thousands of residents that their water may soon be shut off due to lack of payment. As Sarah Lazare reports for Common Dreams, residents owing more than $250 in payments going back at least six months were notified that they had 10 days to pay their bills in full or have their taps shut off. The number of residents who received a notice last month nears 25,000, though Food & Water Watch estimates that a full 75,000 Baltimore residents are in danger of losing running water in their homes. What’s worse, the shut-offs serve to deepen the racial and economic divisions in a deeply unequal city. Baltimore’s poverty rate is nearly twice the rate nationwide while the cost for utilities like water has jumped more than 40 percent over the past three years. The shut-offs are set to disproportionately impact Baltimore’s large non-white majority, despite the fact that a few hundred businesses collectively owe more than $15 million in unpaid water bills to the city. Baltimore’s threat to shut off its residents’ water supply echoes a similar move by the City of Detroit in the summer of 2014. As Kristen Doerer reported for the Prospect last August, city officials in Detroit shut off running water to some 17,000 residents who were behind on their payments, most of them poor and non-white. After an international outcry, and an unprecedented warning from the United Nations that the shut-off violated basic human rights, the city backed off. As in Baltimore, households represented the vast majority of water shut-offs, despite private businesses owing more than ten times as much on average. Although the water crises in Baltimore and Detroit are not climate-based, the experiences of these cities have a lot to say about how the politics of scarcity may play out on a rapidly warming planet. A case in point is California, which is now in Year Four of the worst drought it’s ever recorded. In response, state officials have mandated a 25 percent across-the-board cut in water use. But oddly, the new mandate exempted industries like agriculture and even fossil-fuel extractors, which together account for more than 80 percent of the state’s water consumption. As in Baltimore and Detroit, residents in California make up a small share of the state’s water footprint—around 20 percent—and yet they’re the ones making the largest sacrifices. And while mainstream coverage has spilled a lot of ink over how the cuts will impact the pristine lawns of Pasadena and Orange County, those most impacted will likely be the farm workers of the Central Valley, many of whom are undocumented immigrants. As Julia Wong writes for In These Times, the drought has already led to job losses in the tens of thousands, and threatens thousands more. It’s also led a steep spike in water prices for small towns like Cantua Creek near Fresno, leading many residents to fall behind on payments, risking dry taps. (Sound familiar?) “Farmworkers are not getting any support from the growers,” UFW organizer Antonio Cortes told Wong. “The growers have support from the governor and the federal government, but the farmworkers get nothing.” What this strategy also means, reports Mark Hertsgaard for The Daily Beast, is that California’s water scarcity will likely just get worse. With reservoirs and mountain snow-packs shrinking faster every year, farmers in the Central Valley are now drilling deeper and deeper to access a limited supply of groundwater. This agricultural version of an arms race not only privileges some of the nation’s largest agribusinesses—the ones that can afford to drill deeper and faster than everybody else—it also threatens the state water system’s last lifeline. “This is the real potential doomsday scenario in California,” Hertsgaard told Democracy Now! A barren aquifer doesn’t mean more cutting back—it means collapse. In a sense, the real danger of California’s drought, and climate change as a whole, is not that it’ll force us to cut back or make sacrifices. (Imagine an FDR-era response to exceptional drought; this stuff is doable.) It’s that the structural barriers and inequities of our 21st century economy and political system don’t allow for the kind of mass, emergency action that a warming planet demands. As Naomi Klein writes in her latest book, This Changes Everything, climate change is approaching at the worst possible historical moment: At a time when the planet is demanding radical change, “the only kind of contraction our current system can manage is a brutal crash, in which the most vulnerable will suffer most of all.” Another way to look at it is that we’ve reached a point where two of the most immediate water crises the country now faces—Baltimore and Detroit—have nothing to do with climate. They exist entirely within a broken economic and social system, and yet they’re every bit as dangerous to public health and human rights as California’s record-breaking drought. Responding to climate change in a serious way not only means taking a hard look at our energy systems and lifestyles. It also means addressing how the politics of water and carbon impact the realities of inequality and injustice.SUBSCRIBE: Get the analysis of Mark Shields and David Brooks delivered to your inbox every week. Republican Donald Trump has called for a ban on Muslims coming into the U.S., saying, "Our country cannot be the victim of tremendous attacks by people who believe only in jihad." Senator Ted Cruz has warned, "Our enemies are not tired of killing us. And they're getting stronger," while Senator Marco Rubio cautioned, "What happened in Paris could happen here. These are radical terrorists who want to kill us." Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has warned of retaliation from Trump's comments — quote — "He is becoming ISIS' best recruiter. They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam." For our discussion on this, we're joined now by Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard University, and Beverly Gage. She's a professor of 20th century American history at Yale University. And we welcome you both. Beverly Gage, to you first. How long have candidates used fear in one form or another in American politics? And how successful has it been?Photo Marijuana smoking often starts during adolescence — and the timing could not be worse, a new study suggests. Young adults who started using the drug regularly in their early teens performed significantly worse on cognitive tests assessing brain function than did subjects who were at least 16 when they started smoking, scientists reported on Monday. The findings, presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego, led researchers at McLean Hospital to surmise that the developing teenage brain may be particularly vulnerable to the ill effects of marijuana. “We have to understand that the developing brain is not the same as the adult brain,” said Dr. Staci A. Gruber, the paper’s senior author and director of the cognitive and clinical neuroimaging section of the neuroimaging center at McLean, a Harvard-affiliated hospital in Belmont, Mass. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The study, done in conjunction with brain scans, was small, consisting of 35 chronic marijuana smokers who were 22 years old on average. Twenty had started smoking marijuana regularly before age 16, while 15 started smoking regularly at age 16 or later. All had similar levels of education and income. 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 subjects were asked to complete an assessment of executive function — the brain processes responsible for planning and abstract thinking, as well as understanding rules and inhibiting inappropriate actions. The test — in which participants were asked to sort cards with different shapes, numbers and colors — is a measure of cognitive flexibility, the ability to stay focused, stick to rules and control impulsive responses. The participants who started smoking marijuana at younger ages scored significantly lower on the test than those who started smoking later in their teen years, Dr. Gruber said. They got fewer of the card-sorting categories correct and made more mistakes. They were also much more likely to repeat their mistakes, continuing to give incorrect answers even after being told that they were wrong.The 2017 college football season has arrived with many storylines. History suggests, the more storylines, the more surprises in a season. The No. 5 ranked Clemson Tigers will attempt to defend their national title without Deshaun Watson, their former star quarterback. The Alabama Crimson Tide are an overwhelming favorite at No. 1 (52 out of 61 votes in the Associated Press poll), and will play the No. 3 Florida State Seminoles — a serious title contender — this Saturday. No. 17 Florida have suspended seven players for its season opener against No. 11 Michigan -- including its top playmaker, wide receiver Antonio Callaway. Week one isn’t expected to have many exciting games, but there are a few worth watching — even if it’s only to watch this year’s star players. Let the hunt for bowl season, begin. Appetizers (10) Oklahoma State vs. Tulsa Thursday, August 31st, 7:30 p.m. Quarterback Mason Rudolph leads the Cowboys against the Golden Hurricane at Boone Pickens Stadium, Stillwater, OK. The Cowboys haven’t been picked by many to win the Big 12 conference, but they have the talent on paper to compete with Oklahoma. Tulsa has lost a lot of talent on offense, but the system has proven to give many teams fits. Expect lots of points and yards at a fast pace. This game has the potential to be a defensive coordinator’s nightmare. Tulsa will play well enough to hang around but the Cowboys will break it open once they get settled in at home. (2) Ohio State vs. Indiana Thursday, August 31st, 8 p.m. Quarterback J.T. Barrett enters a crucial year for his draft stock — which is very low — but still is a dual-threat that many teams fear. The Buckeyes are still licking their wounds after being bullied and shut out (31-0) by Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl. The unfamiliar territory for coach Urban Meyer and the Buckeyes have them hungry for redemption. Their path begins with a test against the Hoosiers at Memorial Stadium, Bloomington, IN. Despite some subtractions from Ohio State’s roster, they still have the same world class talent as they do every year. Indiana is unranked, but their roster is full of speed and talent, with nine starters returning on defense. With Ohio State’s determination, this game should be a blowout. But, Indiana could keep it close until late in the game. This has “trap” written all over it for Ohio State, but once maturity sets in, the Buckeyes will pull away. (23) Texas vs. Maryland Saturday, Sept. 2nd, 12 p.m. Coach Tom Herman makes his debut as the new Longhorns coach, and Maryland is far from an easy beginning. While Texas has a lot more talent than Maryland, the Terps have outstanding running backs that can give the Longhorn defense some trouble at Royal Texas Memorial Stadium, Austin, TX. There is a ton of pressure for Texas to play well in Herman’s first game, and no pressure for the Terps who come in as a road underdog. Texas’ offense is loaded with veterans, and should be successful in the passing game. Expect a slow start on offense from both teams, but Texas will win in a closer game than most fans would like to see. (13) LSU vs. BYU Saturday, Sept. 2nd, 9:30 p.m. BYU had an underwhelming performance in their first game versus Portland State. The offense looked atrocious and sloppy all game, and BYU only managed to score 20 points in their victory. LSU’s star running back Derrius Guice will start the season with a bang, but the Tiger’s defense will have a field day at Mercedes-Benz Superdome, New Orleans, LA. Many think this game will be close, but LSU should have the game in control from start to finish. (25) Tennessee vs. Georgia Tech Monday, Sept. 4th, 8 p.m. This is a trap game for the Volunteers at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta, GA. They’re the more talented team who are nearly superior at every position. But, Georgia Tech has been known to show up in primetime games and shock superior teams. We all remember this in 2015: The Vols will start the season without former QB Josh Dobbs who is now in the NFL, but new QB Quinten Dormady has plenty of promise. If the GT defensive front seven can hold its own against Tennessee RB John Kelly, the Yellow Jacket secondary could take over. It’s always tough to stop the triple-option offense, but Tennessee will find its groove in the second half. Kelly will have a great game, Dormady will be efficient enough to keep the offense moving, and Tennessee will win a hard-fought game. Main Course (11) Michigan vs. (17) Florida Saturday, Sept. 2, 3:30 p.m. As mentioned, Florida enters the game with seven players suspended, including Callaway. Prior to the suspensions, this game had the potential to be a treat for the fans. The suspensions won’t prevent it from being so, but Michigan is more favored than before and the gap between them and UF may have grew a bit wider. Michigan is the superior team, and will flex its muscles at AT&T Stadium, Arlington, TX. UF always puts an elite defense on the field; but even with Callaway, the offense struggled. The passing game is a huge question, the running game isn’t efficient enough and the line isn't polished yet. Quarterback Malik Zaire will begin his second chance at UF with some upside, but don’t expect the offense to dazzle. Michigan also will struggle on offense, but will do enough to put the game away in the second half. The Gators should have a solid year, but the Wolverines are a potential top 10 team with a ton of talent. Michigan should win by more than one score. (21) Virginia Tech vs. (22) West Virginia Sunday, Sept. 3rd, 7:30 p.m. This game at FedEd Field, Landover, MD should be a wild one. The hype is growing off the charts for the former Florida passer Will Grier – who left after being punished for using PEDs – and will attempt to reboot his college career at WVU. The Mountaineers’ defense isn’t elite, but it’s good enough to frustrate Virginia Tech’s redshirt freshman quarterback Josh Jackson. Though despite WVU having an improved defense, Virginia Tech has a star-studded secondary. Grier will have to have the game of his life to pass all over VT, which seems like a daunting task in the opening game of the season. This game won’t be a shootout, but it’ll be close until the very end. Virginia Tech should prevail as the more complete team if their QB can handle the pressure. UCLA vs. Texas A&M Sunday, Sept. 3rd, 7:30 p.m. UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen enters the year with an astronomical amount of hype and pressure. UCLA isn't expected to have a huge season, but Rosen is. That road starts with Texas A&M at the Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA. The widely regarded top five pick is facing a mediocre Aggies secondary that was thrown on all last year. Expect Rosen to have a huge day. The 1-2 rushing punch of running backs Trayveon Williams and Keith Ford could give UCLA some problems, but the passing game for the Aggies is a huge question without a clear answer. If the game is played later in the year, it could be a shootout the fans would all want to see. Since it’s week one, the Aggies could play well and score a lot of points, but the execution may not be as crisp as the fans would like. The Bruins should win this game and Rosen should be special. Dessert (1) Alabama vs. (3) Florida State Saturday, Sept. 2, 8 p.m. Lights, camera, action! Alabama comes into the season as the heavy favorite to win the championship (shocker), and Florida State has championship aspirations of their own. Head coach Nick Saban does not take losing lightly, and Alabama will come out hungry and disciplined. Florida State should not be taken lightly either, as their roster consists of talent that can arguably match Alabama at every position. Alabama quarterback Jalen Hurts will enter the year with more experience, and the defense will look fantastic all season. But, QB Deondre Francois enters the year as a dark-horse Heisman candidate, and is a more talented passer than Hurts. Deshaun Watson was special, but we saw what happens to Alabama when they face a team who has the clearly superior QB. Don’t expect the Crimson Tide defense to get worn out, but expect FSU to apply pressure for at least three quarters. FSU’s defense will be the x-factor to the game: limit Alabama on offense, and the game is up for grabs. But, if the Seminoles turn the ball over, Alabama will make them pay — give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile. It’s going to be close, but expect Alabama to open the game up in the fourth and win by two scores. Whoever loses this game, risks a chance at the college playoffs.“The victims are ‘too Christian’ to excite the Left, and ‘too foreign’ to excite the Right.” - Regis Debray In the multiple wars and conflicts raging in Syria, Iraq and Egypt, a particularly vicious war is intensifying against the descendants of the first Christian communities that made the Fertile Crescent and Egypt their homes. The world is watching helplessly and silently the disappearance of the oldest living churches - as if their long history of enduring wars, conquests, schisms, peaceful co-existence and conflicts with Muslims is about to expire. The ancient communities of believers, some of whom still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus, are withering away along with their once glorious civilizations in a genocidal cultural war of eradication. If only the stones of the churches and monasteries could speak. Christian communities in Iraq and Egypt were subjected to violence, intimidation and legal discrimination long before the onset of the devastating season of Arab uprisings. Egyptian authorities invariably were accomplices in the crimes of extremist Islamists against Copts and other Christian churches. The American occupation of Iraq unleashed a vicious Islamist war on the Christians who were accused of supporting the occupation. In America’s decade in Iraq Christians almost became extinct. By blessing a sectarian based polity, and acquiescing in the long sectarian era of Nouri al-Maliki (by Presidents Bush and Obama) the United States, ensured that Jeffersonian democracy will not grow on the banks of the Tigris. President Obama’s ambivalence about Syria’s war, his dithering and contradictory policies and his inability or unwillingness to deliver on his promises and threats contributed to turning Syria into the most savaged and tormented country in the twenty first century, including dealing the Christians of that country their worst calamity since the massacre of the Christian community in Damascus in 1860. Apathy and helplessness Those of us who have been sounding the alarm about the death of cosmopolitanism, pluralism, inclusiveness and the imperative of maintaining what is left of the once rich human mosaic that was at the heart of what made some of the great cities of the region beacons of culture, are stunned at the general silence, and yes the betrayal of Western societies - particularly the United States - of these communities. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq contributed significantly to the unraveling of that country, just as the continuing support of Egyptian autocracy over recent decades has made a bad situation worse. It is almost too late to stem the tide against the Christians of the region, particularly in the Fertile Crescent Hisham Melhem The horrors of the sound and the fury of the war on the Christians of the Middle East have been fully documented and yet the reaction of western political classes, public opinions and even Christian churches has been mostly and scandalously muted. A recent report by the Center for American Progress (CAP) titled “The Plight of Christians in the Middle East” describes the grim agony and challenges facing these “disappearing” communities “in the very lands where their faith was born and first took root” then notes correctly that “the reactions from the United States, Europe, and other key powers to this new wave of destruction have been marginal.” The reasons are complex and varied. Brian Katulis, the principal author of the report, told me that there is an “entrenched apathy” and “helplessness, regarding what can be done effectively and without any cost” to mitigate the predicament of Middle Eastern Christians. The apathy extends to society and academia, and the attitude of the secular media towards organized religions has been one of ambivalence, sometimes bordering on distrust. Also, many Christians in the West know very little about the descendants of the first Christians in the East. It is true that statistically, more Christians in the world in recent years (before the wars in the Arab world) have been persecuted and suppressed than members of other faiths, yet very few “comfortable” Christians in the West fully understand that, that kind of persecution is still practiced in the twenty first century. To many of them the “moral” fights of Christians in the West are mainly over abortion, birth control and same sex marriage, where your beliefs rarely - if ever - subject you to political and physical persecution. Is there a way out? CAP’s thoughtful report is welcome, because it does not limit itself to detailing the various levels of persecution and challenges the different Christian communities face in their respective societies, thus avoiding simplistic generalizations, but because it includes a number of recommendations to address the Plight of the Christians in the Middle East. Mainstream American think tanks rarely publish such reports. The recommendations are not too ambitious and measured, reflecting the realization of the authors of the report of the limits of American influence and the reluctance of the Obama administration to get deeply involved in such sensitive issues. The report urges the U.S. government “to elevate freedom of religion and conscience as a priority in U.S. engagement in the region.” It does envision a role for “partnerships with the private sector and nongovernmental institutions,” and “advancing diplomatic approaches to conflict resolution in the region.” The report calls on the government to prioritize assistance to Christian refugees, and to “weigh carefully the benefits and costs of special visa programs for Christians that may be seen as encouraging emigration, aiding in the exodus, or providing special treatment.” Other recommendations includes promoting religious freedom, and pluralism, economic development and reform efforts, investment in education, and working with international organizations and leading churches to preserve Christian heritage in the region. The report cautions the government to “use U.S. military force and security assistance cautiously and beware of potential pitfalls.” Moral relativism and selective outrage The U.S can and should do more. President Obama should start by shedding his ambiguity regarding issues of religious extremism. The embarrassing initial reluctance of the White House to admit that the 21 Egyptians beheaded recently by ISIS affiliated group in Libya because they were Copts is a case in point. Addressing Arab states solely through the administration’s “Muslim world” framework is flawed. Arab states, particularly Egypt and the states of the Fertile Crescent are homes to Arabs and non-Arabs, Muslims and non-Muslim, where Christians, and before them the Jews have planted their deep roots before the advent of Islam. A better approach would be to address the violence against Christians as taking place in the context of deteriorating economic conditions, the collapse of brittle political regimes bereft of legitimacy, and in the context of unprecedented Sunni-Shiite sectarian bloodletting. When ethnic or religious groups are subjected to systematic violence and persecution because of who they are, their plight should be addressed urgently, because this is how genocide starts. In this context, addressing the plight of the Christians of the Middle East should not be seen as a special treatment just because they are Christians with long cultural and religious links with the West. Moving quickly And it is commendable that the Obama administration move quickly last summer to save the Yezidis of Iraq from the mass killers of ISIS. Ideally, the Christians in the Arab states, even though they live in societies that are not democratic, with the partial exception of Lebanon, should struggle for their political and civil rights as full citizens, in modern civil states governed by constitutions and legal systems that guarantee their rights as equal citizens. If the Christians are unique in the Arab world specifically, it is because of their outstanding over all contributions to the development of their societies in the last two millennia, culturally, artistically scientifically, economically and politically, before and during the Muslim era. The evolution of Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Alexandria and Beirut cannot be fully appreciated without realizing the pivotal roles of the various Christian communities in these cities. The U.S. can promote this vision in a variety of ways. The president and other senior officials should speak publicly and forcefully against persecution of Christians and other minorities and use their influence particularly in countries where they have clout. The U.S. was muted when Copts were subjected to government discrimination and the violence of radical Islamists in the last few decades during which the U.S. provided Egypt with generous financial and military support. The U.S. did not fight this good fight in Iraq, during its decade long special privileged position in Mesopotamia, when undemocratic rules where incorporated in the Iraqi constitution. The argument that U.S. official cannot publicly criticize discriminatory practices without harming bilateral relations is bogus. No one can deny that Russia is an important country, but that did not prevent the Obama administration last year during the run up to the Sochi Winter Olympics from criticizing Russia’s laws against the gay community. Onward Christian soldiers The war being waged against the Christians by ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra and other extremist Islamists and the fracturing of Syria and Iraq, have forced local communities of Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriac Christians in both countries to form armed militias to defend their villages. According to recent press reports U.S. authorities are aware of these activities and some of the Christian militias in Iraq may benefit from U.S. funds to train and equip local forces to protect civilians exposed to ISIS in the plains of Nineveh. And while international attention has been focused correctly on ISIS’ foreign legionnaires, given their relatively large number and viciousness, there is a small trickle of Christian volunteers coming to Syria and Iraq to do battle with ISIS and to defend the Christians. These modern would be Crusaders are not significant militarily or numerically, but the prospects of even a low number of Christian volunteers posing as the great grandchildren of Richard the Lion heart doing battle with the descendants of the famed Salah al-Din al-Ayubbi is enough to give one the shivers. It is difficult morally and politically to deny these local communities of Christians under siege the rights to defend themselves, but these desperate acts demonstrate the extent of the unraveling of Syria and Iraq into hundreds of warring factions engaged in a war of all against all. While these small armed Christian militias will never exert a dominant military influence, it is important to remember the tragic outcome when other much more powerful “ruling” Christian militias in recent history from Lebanon to Serbia abused their powers and committed atrocities against unarmed civilians. The Serb militias committed the worst mass killings on European soil since the Holocaust, when they killed thousands of Muslim civilians and when Lebanese Christian militias went beyond self-defense and either killed Muslim civilians or turned their guns on fellow Christians. The lingering memories of the Lebanese civil war and the actions of some of Lebanon’s Christian militias remain one of the reasons there is not much sympathy inside the U.S. government with the political leaders of the Lebanese Christian communities. Christian responsibility One is reluctant to criticize the Christians in the Middle East when they are down. But precisely because they are down one should remind them that they still have human agency and that their blunders and occasional parochialism can be their own worst enemies. Even in the face of historic challenges, Christians in the region are still notoriously fragmented and short sighted. In Lebanon, the political leaders of the Maronite Christians in particular are infamous for their bickering, vindictiveness and their outrageous readiness to enter into alliances with the devil just to spite their co-religionist rivals. Former General Michel Aoun, a reckless and shallow Christian leader of something called the Free Patriotic Movement, has been driven by a blind ambition to be the President of Lebanon, a position that is shrinking with each passing day, to the point that he allied himself with his old enemies Hezbollah and Syria believing that through them he can realize his dream. In the process, he allowed Hezbollah to hijack the brittle Lebanese state, divided the Maronites more than ever, and allowed the Syrian regime - even when exhausted - to share control of Lebanon with Hezbollah. In the past, some Christian leaders, in the political and religious domains, allowed Arab tyrants to use them. Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Assads, both father and son in Syria, did that. That closeness to the hated regimes was used as an excuse by the killers of Al Qaeda, al-Nusra and ISIS to justify their brutalities against innocent Christians. The terror visited on the Coptic Church in Egypt in the last few years was historically painful, and can in a tiny part explain the public support of Pope Tawadros II the leader of the largest Church in the Middle East for the “savior” of Egypt Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi before his election as President. Some Copts, cognizant of their sensitive dilemma were extremely uncomfortable, watching their Pope sharing the stage with the Field Marshal following the bloody ouster of former Islamist President Mohammad Mursi. Last September, a large delegation of various Eastern Churches visited Washington to highlight the plight of their churches with members of congress and government. Their notorious divisions and their inability to frame their challenges or to propose practical options were on display during a meeting with President Obama. The President was strongly advised by some to work with President Assad of Syria, while others urged him forcefully never to collaborate with Assad. The lack of agreement about fundamentals among the leading Eastern churches is usually used as an excuse by those in Washington who are, to begin with inclined not to get America involved deeply in the problems of the region. It is almost too late to stem the tide against the Christians of the region, particularly in the Fertile Crescent. But Middle Eastern Christians
lot of the world seemed curious enough to sing along, too.” The singer said her childhood “bubble started to burst” when she was introduced to LGBT people in her professional life. “These people were nothing like I had been taught to fear,” she said. “They were the most free, strong, kind and inclusive people I have ever met. They stimulated my mind and they filled my heart with joy, and they freaking danced all the while doing it. These people are actually magic, and they are magic because they are living their truth. Oh, my goodness, what a revelation… and not the last chapter of the Bible.” Perry wasn’t the only celebrity to be honored for her work on behalf of the LGBT community at the event; actress America Ferrera earned the night’s Ally for Equality Award. In presenting Ferrera’s award, fellow actress Lena Dunham said she has never met another artist “more eager to lift up the voices of her sisterhood.” The pair previously shared a stage at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last year. “Anything I ever did for the rights of this community I did because I believe — with every fiber of my being — that my liberation is bound up in the liberation of my LGBTQ brothers and sisters, and in the liberation of my black brothers and sisters, and in the liberation of immigrants, and refugees, and Muslims, and Sikhs, and women all over the world, and the incarcerated, and the criminalized, and the uneducated, and the poor, and the hungry, and, and, and, and, and,” Ferrera said. Watch the full livestream of HRC’s gala dinner here. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaumAn Elections Canada investigator alleges in court documents that he suspected Conservative campaign worker Michael Sona was not the only person involved in misleading robocalls to voters in Guelph, Ont. Sona, who worked as director of communications to Marty Burke, the Conservative candidate in Guelph, is the only person charged over automated calls that directed hundreds of voters to the wrong polling station on election day in May 2011. His defence counsel is expected in court Thursday morning in Guelph for a pretrial hearing. In a sworn statement made public this week, Elections Canada investigator Allan Mathews described his conversations with Sona and his lawyer last year. “In my March 2, 2012 telephone conversation with Sona, and in my conversations with his counsel, I have noted that I suspected that others were involved as well as Sona, but in each case I have been clear that I was asking Sona to provide a statement to me under warning,” Mathews alleges in an Information to Obtain a court order (ITO) he swore in May. Witnesses who give statements under warning are told that anything they say could be used in court. Mathews does not indicate in the ITO whether he still believes someone else was involved in the calls made by a suspect using the pseudonym “Pierre Poutine.” But in the conclusion of the document, Mathews alleges that Sona “admitted to personal involvement while leaving some suggestion that he did not act alone.” The ITO is subject to a publication ban that restricts the reporting of certain sections. Madam Justice Celynne Dorval ordered the ban on Monday. The Citizen is considering challenging the publication ban in court. Mathews also refers in the ITO to comments Sona made in television interviews with CBC and Radio-Canada last fall, before he was charged for violating the Elections Act. “Sona denied being Pierre Poutine and suggested that as a young staffer it would not have been possible for him to carry out such a vast scheme (possibly speaking of all robocall complaints, arising in over 200 [electoral districts], rather than just Guelph),” Mathews wrote. During the interviews, Sona said he couldn’t have arranged the robocalls because he didn’t have access to the list of identified non-Conservatives contained in the Conservative Party’s voter-tracking database. In the ITO, Mathews contradicts Sona about whether Elections Canada had ever cleared him in the robocalls case. “Sona also said in his media interviews that Elections Canada had told him in June that they had cleared him of involvement and that our investigation was completed. These last statements are wrong,” he alleges. In an email Wednesday, Sona’s lawyer, Norm Boxall, said, “My view is that this case should be tried in court, not in the media, and accordingly I am not commenting.” The ITO also corrects information in an earlier court document concerning Andrew Prescott, the campaign worker who set up voice broadcasts for Burke’s campaign through RackNine, the Edmonton-based robocall company used to send the election day broadcast.A 61-year-old Ohio tourist with Alzheimer's disease who disappeared after leaving a midtown Manhattan hotel has been found safe, police say. Gus Rosendale reports. (Published Tuesday, June 24, 2014) A 61-year-old Ohio tourist with Alzheimer's disease who disappeared after leaving a midtown Manhattan hotel has been found safe, police say. Vivian Minnielli, of Hamilton, Ohio, was found on a park bench on the Upper West Side Monday evening, according to police. A passerby recognized her from media reports and contacted authorities. She was in good condition. Minnielli had been last seen at the New York Hilton Midtown hotel on Sixth Avenue at about 3 p.m. Sunday, police said. Her relatives said she was seen on surveillance video walking out the front door of the hotel and heading north, perhaps toward Central Park. She was not carrying identification, they said. The couple traveled to New York City with their granddaughter, Samantha. Relatives said she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's about three years ago. --Roseanne Colletti contributed to this storyChoose your words carefully… (Mark Wilson/Getty) It's not feminist to say we can't call her what she is just because she's a woman. A group that’s referring to itself as Hillary Clinton’s “Super Volunteers” has promised to track when the media uses “coded” sexist words — such as “ambitious” and “insincere” — to describe her, according to New York Times political reporter Amy Chozick. The other forbidden words and phrases are “polarizing,” “calculating,” “disingenuous,” “insincere,” “ambitious,” “inevitable,” “entitled,” “over-confident,” “secretive,” “will do anything to win,” “represents the past” and “out of touch.” Advertisement Advertisement The idea is either that when these words are used to describe her more often than male candidates or that when they are used to describe her at all there is some kind of negative connotation attached to them that’s rooted in sexism. Good thing they warned me. Otherwise I at some point might have called her “insincere” or “disingenuous” — because she, you know, is. Just earlier this week she vowed she was beginning a new, open relationship with the media during a speech and then refused to take questions after it. Oh, and while we’re at it: Using your private e-mail for official government business and pretending it was a matter of “convenience” seems pretty damn deceitful. But I guess we can’t call her what she is, and the reason we can’t is that she’s a woman. You see how ridiculous it is to consider this a feminist point of view, right? Advertisement #related#I don’t doubt that it’s tougher for female politicians in a lot of ways. Sexism is still a big problem. If you disagree, go ahead and spend 14 seconds reading an Internet comments section and then tell me I’m wrong. It’s true, a lot of people think that women can’t handle the same things that men can. Advertisement But here’s the thing: Doesn’t creating a whole set of special “rules” for Hillary just because she’s a female reinforce that idea? I don’t know how to solve the problem of women not being treated like other candidates — but not treating them differently from other candidates because they’re women sure does seem like a good start to me.It was revealed this week that the Tories have seen a dramatic fall in their popularity among ethnic-minority voters. A private Downing Street poll showed support plummeting to its lowest level since Iain Duncan Smith was party leader. For more than 20 years we at Operation Black Vote (OBV) have campaigned for the parties to take minority voters more seriously, warning that the size of Britain’s black electorate shows it has the power to swing a general election. After these figures, and their likely impact on the general election result, it seems we’ve finally been proven right. Just take a glance at some of the parliamentary seats that changed hands this year, and we can begin to see that movement within a relatively small number of seats can mean a huge difference: Bedford, Bristol North-West, Derby North, Reading East, and Peterborough; in London, Battersea, Enfield Southgate, Croydon Central, and Kensington. All have significant black or Asian populations. It’s no surprise to me, then that No 10 has analysed the data, scrutinised the feedback and concluded that, if the Tories had won over the “black vote” in key marginal seats, they would now be enjoying a parliamentary majority. Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘In one visit to a Sikh temple, David Cameron wore a traditional orange patka.’ Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images So what went so badly wrong for the Conservatives? For some years political leaders have recognised that with a diverse society you need to have an appeal to the whole population on the one hand, but also to specific groups, such as pensioners, young people, women, and black and minority communities. During the 2015 general election campaign, the Tory leader David Cameron went to the annual Festival of Life – and spoke to more than 40,000 black churchgoers, bringing an inclusive message: “I believe in aspiration... I look out to this crowd and I see someone who will take my role and become prime minister for this great country.” He took the same message to other faith groups too – in one visit to a Sikh temple he wore a traditional orange patka – extolling their business and family virtues. Even without much substance, that pulpit narrative helped get him over the line to a majority government. Fast forward two years, and in a snap election Theresa May struggled to attract minority voters. On her first day as prime minister she had acknowledged: “If you’re black, you’re treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you’re white.” But her genuine desire to confront persistent race inequality was completely lost in the relentless mantra of “strong and stable”, “strengthen my hand” or “coalition of chaos” that marked her election campaign. By contrast, Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn had a strong message of social justice, which plays strongly among communities that face discrimination on a daily basis and bear the brunt of austerity. As a perennial outsider, Corbyn’s belief in this cause has never wavered, but this time round his masterstroke was something that mainstream politicians rarely do: that is, look beyond the 60% of people who traditionally vote. We at OBV have always argued that this untapped constituency, which is dominated by ethnic minority, working class and young voters, could render any seat winnable. Any seat. Corbyn sought to make friends and listen to a sector of society that was never on the radar of major political parties; this included black grime artists, who had hundreds of thousands of social media followers. In addition, Corbyn has a number of prominent black and Asian faces on his front bench. Thousands of young black first-time voters felt empowered, registered to vote, and voted in record numbers. So what now for May and Corbyn? May knows that the Labour leader stole a march on her, but she is responding. Last month she appointed the black activist Nero Ughwujabo as a special adviser who will work closely with her on race issues. In fact, though it was barely mentioned at this election, May has a good track record on race. She confronted the police over black deaths in custody and high levels of stop and search; and I know she’s aware that, if unchecked, race inequality will widen. That’s why she launched the historic race disparity audit; and depending how she follows it up she could have a strong platform to demonstrate a commitment to tackling burning racial injustices. But so far she’s been held back: first and foremost by her own hardline Brexiteers, who grab the headlines with a narrative that is widely perceived as anti-foreigner. Many minorities have a genuine fear that a hard Brexit will mean their equal rights protections are torn up in a “bonfire of the regulations”. This budget will make things even worse for women and the disadvantaged \| Dawn Butler Read more For Corbyn, complacency will be the biggest challenge. For decades Labour has taken the black vote for granted, offering lip service to equality, but then continuing with business as usual. Cameron saw this and seized his opportunity in 2010 and 2015. And some early signs from Labour are troubling, such as the case of Bilal Mahmood. He twice fought as a candidate for Labour against Iain Duncan Smith in the safe seat of Chingford and Woodford Green, and made a big dent in the Tory majority. But the central party machinery then ousted him and introduced an all-women shortlist: these have historically done little for black and Asian candidates, and of course exclude Black and Asian men, who are also under-represented. In politics, as the past 18 months have shown, there are few certainties; but one of them is the growing influence of the ethnic-minority electorate that will continue to demand greater social and racial justice. Politicians ignore this at their peril. If there’s one thing we’ve learned this year, it’s that black votes matter. • Simon Woolley is the director of Operation Black VoteAmerican technology and graphic chip major Nvidia has unveiled its latest AI system codenamed ‘Pegasus’ that will enable level 5 driverless vehicles. The American major has been working with various auto manufacturers for developing new-tech solutions for the automotive future, including driverless tech and connected vehicles technology. It’s new system, codenamed Pegasus, extends the Nvidia Drive PX AI computing platform to handle Level 5 driverless vehicles, that delivers over 320 trillion operations per second -- more than 10x the performance of its predecessor, Nvidia Drive PX 2. As per Nvidia, this new system will help make possible a new class of vehicles that can operate without a driver -- fully autonomous vehicles without steering wheels, pedals or mirrors, and interiors that feel like a living room or office. They will arrive on demand to safely whisk passengers to their destinations, bringing mobility to everyone, including the elderly and disabled. It claims that with millions of hours of lost time will be recaptured by drivers as they work, play, eat or sleep on their daily commutes. And countless lives will be saved by vehicles that are never fatigued, impaired or distracted -- increasing road safety, reducing congestion and freeing up valuable land currently used for parking lots. Nvidia says of the 225 partners developing on its Drive PX platform, and more than 25 are developing fully autonomous robo-taxis using Nvidia Cuda GPUs (Graphic Processing Units). Today, their trunks resemble small data centres, loaded with racks of computers with server-class Nvidia GPUs running deep learning, computer vision and parallel computing algorithms. Their size, power demands and cost make them impractical for production vehicles. The computational requirements of robo-taxis are enormous -- perceiving the world through high-resolution, 360-degree surround cameras and lidars, localising the vehicle within centimetre accuracy, tracking vehicles and people around the car, and planning a safe and comfortable path to the destination. All this processing must be done with multiple levels of redundancy to ensure the highest level of safety. The computing demands of driverless vehicles are easily 50 to 100 times more intensive than the most advanced cars today. Commenting on the future of autonomous vehicles, Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, Nvidia says, "Creating a fully self-driving car is one of society's most important endeavours -- and one of the most challenging to deliver. The breakthrough AI computing performance and efficiency of Pegasus is crucial for the industry to realize this vision. Driverless cars will enable new ride- and car-sharing services. New types of cars will be invented, resembling offices, living rooms or hotel rooms on wheels. Travellers will simply order up the type of vehicle they want based on their destination and activities planned along the way. The future of society will be reshaped.” "Today dozens of companies are racing to develop robo-taxis, but they are still gated by the massive computation needs of a truly driverless car," says, Luca De Ambroggi, senior principal automotive analyst at IHS Markit. Specifications Nvidia Drive PX Pegasus is powered by four high-performance AI processors, it couples two of Nvidia’s newest Xavier system-on-a-chip processors -- featuring an embedded GPU based on the its Volta architecture -- with two next-generation discrete GPUs with hardware created for accelerating deep learning and computer vision algorithms. The system will provide the enormous computational capability for fully autonomous vehicles in a computer the size of a license plate, drastically reducing energy consumption and cost. It also is designed for ASIL D certification -- the industry's highest safety level -- with automotive inputs/outputs, including CAN (controller area network), Flexray, 16 dedicated high-speed sensor inputs for camera, radar, lidar and ultrasonics, plus multiple 10Gbit Ethernet connectors. Its combined memory bandwidth exceeds 1 terabyte per second. Nvidia Drive PX Platform The Nvida Drive PX platform scales from a single mobile processor configuration delivering Level 2+/Level 3 capabilities to a combination of multiple mobile processors along with discrete GPUs for full Level 5 capability. These configurations run on a single, open software architecture. This enables automakers and tier 1 suppliers to move from development into production for a wide range of self-driving solutions -- from Auto-Cruise on the highway, to Auto-Chauffeur for point-to-point travel, to Pegasus for a fully autonomous vehicle. As per the company, this cloud-to-car approach will enable cars to receive over-the-air updates to add new features and capabilities throughout the life of a vehicle. Pegasus will be available to automotive partners in the second half of 2018. Nvidia DriveWorks software and Nvidia Drive PX 2 configurations are available today for developers working on autonomous vehicles and algorithms.Libertarian politics in Colorado have always been among the most fun to watch. After all, the nation's 42 years ago and has attracted all kinds of colorful characters, from Lakewood City Councilman Doug Anderson, who became the first Libertarian elected to office in a major city in 1987, to Christine Smith, Continue Reading . But Glendale mayor Mike Dunafon may top them all if he runs for governor. And the longtime libertarian promised Fox31 in February he would do just that if he got 60,000 "likes" on his Facebook page before his sixtieth birthday, on April 12. Dunafon easily surpassed that number and told Fox last weekend that he is now working on getting the signatures he'll need to make the ballot. A run could certainly be a boon for Libertarians, but also for the strip-club industry, since Dunafon is married to Debbie Mathews, the owner of Shotgun Willie's -- and the two have made politics in Glendale pretty interesting over the past decade. In fact, Gentleman's Review -- a Nevada-based website that promotes strip clubs -- recently used this connection as an indication that "the mainstream consumer's stereotypical negative attitude towards strip clubs may have softened over the years. "Whether it is Howard Stern talking about his former adventures at Scores in New York City or the constant celebrity sightings at strip clubs throughout the country, strip clubs are becoming more acceptable by mainstream audiences. Even more telling is the market research report, conducted by IBIS World [a market research firm], stating that national strip club revenues are expected to rise 4.5 percent from 2012 to 2017," the website said. "Around twelve strip clubs can be found in the greater Denver area, and many help cultivate these improved consumer attitudes by upgrading their businesses to offer other services other than just simple stage dancing. Out of these twelve clubs researched in the area, ten of them serve alcohol and six of them serve food. Diamond Cabaret in downtown Denver offers fine dining at CY Steak, a modernized American Steakhouse created by restaurateur Cliff Young, a man who has fifty years of experience in the Colorado restaurant scene," Gentleman's Review continued. "Clubs are also seeing more of a female customer base beginning to frequent their businesses. This can be attributed to modern club appearances, like La Boheme's 1940's pin up burlesque rock motif or The Penthouse Club's two floors of lavish luxury style seating." Gentleman's Review also points out that VCG Holdings, the owner of La Bohème, Diamond Cabaret and three others, is run by Troy Lowrie, who got a volunteer job last summer as a reserve police officer for the Town of Morrison, issuing traffic tickets and upholding laws. Making new laws, of course, could be up to Dunafon if he replaces John Hickenlooper under the gold dome. And Dunafon has already said what he will start with in his first gubernatorial proclamation on Facebook: "In Glendale, we have our Year of Freedom, where we remove useless, oppressive laws from our books regularly," he wrote on Tuesday. "As your Governor, I will do the same for the entire state." More from our Politics archive: "Denver's a 'liberal shthole'? Republicans debate a Mile High convention."Scientists are baffled! It seems like every other media report on science opens like that. Like news stories about the recent discovery that art may predate our species, which focused very much on how this research was something “we never expected to find” and “challenges” what we knew. Whilst this might make a nice media narrative, it isn’t really representative of science as a whole. Yes, science doesn’t know everything. If it did we could all go home and that money could go on a few extra javelin missiles or something. But it isn’t as though researchers are blindly stumbling around in the dark either. There are hypotheses, theories and predictions that guide us. Palaeanthropologists don’t find fossils by just going to Africa, throwing a Frisbee and then digging a trench where it lands. This misrepresentation of science is having some more nefarious consequences than just helping newspapers sell a few more copies. It fosters public misunderstanding of science and scientists; and undermines the credibility of the process. Creationists are already leaping on the “surprising” nature of the early art to try and invalidate human evolution. Creation Evolution Headlines notes Everything in evolutionary paleoanthropology is a surprise, because they are so wrong, they are not even wrong. “Surprised” is the new normal. Hearing that a new finding will “challenge all we thought we knew” is normal. Reading that a new find raises big, hairy questions is normal. Hearing that it has “profound implications for human evolution” is normal. What would really be surprising would be to find an evolutionary anthropologist declare that a finding was just what they expected. (hat tip to Ashley for pointing that article out) So, to try and show that science works (bitches) I decided to do a bit of research into research. I examined all of the studies published in the journal Human Evolution in volumes 72 – 76; looking to see how often scientists really were baffled. The results are presented in a handy colour-coded chart below. Green represents research that vindicates an existing finding Red is when a study disproves an existing finding Yellow is where the results are ambiguous Studies that didn’t examine any previous researchwere excluded from this examination1. As you can see in the vast majority of cases the research does vindicate existing findings. The results are what the scientists expected. Very little baffling anywhere. It’s also worth noting that this is simply looking at how frequently existing research was challenged. Often, researchers think that an idea is flawed and will be disproven eventually; so it’s ultimate refutation hardly counts as baffling. Or it’s typically the case that two competing hypotheses are being compared. Whilst the researchers’ preferred idea might be disproven, there’s obviously another team out there who are quite happy (and completely unbaffled) by the results. And of course there’s always the fact that a positive (or maybe ambiguous) result could be surprising in its own right. In other words, my little study is imperfect; but would likely significant overestimate how often researchers are befuddled. Yet it still shows that surprising, total refutations of ideas occur very rarely. Even then; the unspoken assumption here is that such cases are somehow bad for science. Hardly. Science isn’t a dogma that is harmed by such challenges. Science flourishes in the unknown, in the surprising. What I’m trying to show here is that science works. Contrary to what the news media and creationists would have you believe, we aren’t just stumbling in the dark without a clue. Palaeoanthropology contains many strong theories and hypotheses that help us predict what we’ll find (and continue to be vindicated by such predictions). These ideas are far from perfect and will likely be ammended in the future. There are also many surprises out there waiting for us. But there’s a big difference between “baffled by everything we find” and “perfect knowledge of everything”. Science – as this little examination hopefully demonstrates – inhabits the gap between those two extremes. Oh, and clearly I now have many examples of palaeoanthropological discoveries that were “just what they expected.” So I look forward to the author of Creation Evolution Headlines to publish a follow-up talking about how surprised and baffled they are. Notes Many studies examine multiple hypotheses (often because there are multiple hypotheses about a particular issue). When this happened, a study was counted as vindicated if the preferred hypothesis of the researchers was vindicated (e.g. “there’s hypothesis A and B. We test hypothesis A and vindicate it, proving hypothesis B wrong by proxy” would count as vindication). If there were a lot of issues being tested to the point where such an identification was impossible, the study was omitted from the examination. Also; if the primary goal of the study was vindicate that was also counted as a vindication, even if some minor aspects were refuted. AdvertisementsTHOUSANDS of Dick Smith customers could be left out of pocket as receivers say they will not honour gift cards or refund deposits for the failing electronics chain. The retailer announced this morning the 393-store chain had tumbled into administration, putting more than 3300 jobs at risk. Receivers Ferrier Hodgson said stores would remain open while options were considered for the business, and employees would continue to be paid. But consumers, many of whom may have received gift cards for Christmas, face being left empty-handed. “Due to the financial circumstances of the group, unfortunately, outstanding gift vouchers cannot be honoured and deposits cannot be refunded,” Ferrier Hodgson partner James Stewart said. He said affected customers will become unsecured creditors of the group, casting a question mark over whether they will get their money back. Mr Stewart said the search was on to find a party willing to buy the company. “Dick Smith is one of the best known brands associated with consumer electronics in Australia and New Zealand.” Mr Stewart said, “We are immediately calling for expressions of interest for a sale of the business as a going concern.” Mr Stewart said that the New Zealand business was profitable and expected it would be attractive to potential buyers. Dick Smith announced it had gone into voluntary receivership this morning, just a day after its shares were put in a trading halt. The company said its sales and cash generation in December was below expectations, and it had been unable to secure alternative funding. “While confident on the long-term viability of the company, the directors have been unsuccessful in obtaining the necessary support of its banking syndicate to see it through this period,” it said in a statement. “Without this support, there is no option other than to appoint a voluntary administrator.” The collapse into administration comes barely two years after the chain was floated on the stock market by its former private equity owners. Dick Smith directors have appointed McGrathNicol as administrator, and will “explore all options” to allow the company to continue as a going concern. It says the weak sales last month continued a trend from the past quarter. Receiver Mr Stewart said it was too early to clearly identify the main causes of the company’s financial problems, but said the business had become cash constrained in recent times. Shares in the group had plunged more than 80 per cent since August on the back of two profit warnings and weak sales in October and November. Its shares have now been suspended from trading. The chain was criticised by rivals in early December for launching a clearance sale, labelled “suicidal” by one competitor, with deep discounts of up to 80 per cent. Dick Smith chief Nick Abboud announced in October that full-year net profit for the year to next June was expected to be as much as $8 million below a previous forecast of $45 million to $48 million. One month later, the group shocked the market by saying it could not reaffirm the profit forecast issued just weeks earlier. Mr Abboud also said then that the retailer would write $60 million off the value of inventory. A mammoth clearance fire sale launched early last month sparked fears of a price war, with Harvey Norman executive chairman Gerry Harvey labelling it a “suicidal” move. The sale was launched on the same day it was announced Dick Smith would be dropped from the ASX 200 index in the quarterly reshuffle. IG market analyst Evan Lucas said the clearance sale made it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about Dick Smith’s sales for the crucial festive season. “Dick Smith had million of dollars’ worth of inventory on fire sale, so the Christmas sales were already interrupted by that,” he said. “What could have been a reasonable Christmas period has been impacted, and the question is how much that sale has also impacted JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman.” Dick Smith shares last traded hands at 35.5c — well below their issue price of $2.20 when it was floated in December 2013. The retailer is the latest company to disappoint after private equity owners turned it over to the public. Private equity house Anchorage Capital Partners bought Dick Smith, then a 325-store chain, from retail heavyweight Woolworths for $94 million in November 2012. The retailer was floated on the Australian share market just over a year later with a value of $520 million, raising questions about Woolworths’ decision to sell it so cheaply. But Dick Smith has floundered in the highly competitive sector, with the plunging share price leaving investors deeply rattled. Yesterday, investors in rival consumer electronic stocks shrugged off the potential bad news coming out of Dick Smith, with JB Hi-Fi shares closing up 3 per cent at $20.10. Harvey Norman shares were also up, closing 3.8 per cent higher at $4.34. jane.harper@news.com.auPlayground Games has revealed the changelog for the first patch for Forza Horizon 3. This patch will be made available later today, and according to its changelog, it fixes the stuttering issue that PC gamers have reported when the framerate was unlocked. In addition, this patch will improved overall stability on Windows 10, will add additional options to the Windows 10 Advanced Controller Menu, and packs various wheel Improvements. Here is the changelog for this first patch for Forza Horizon 3: Windows 10 – Fixed a performance issue on Windows 10 that caused stuttering with high or unlocked framerates on certain hardware configurations – Improved stability on Windows 10 – Disable mouse move detection while driving – The Windows 10 video options screen will no longer ask users to save when no changes have been made -Additional options have been added to the Windows 10 Advanced Controller Menu. These include: Steering wheel sensitivity * Invert Force Feedback * Centre spring scale * Damping scale – Fixed a problem where pre-order cars and the Halo Warthog were not appearing in the Windows 10 version of the game for some players Wheel Improvements – Logitech G27 is now registered correctly on Windows 10, so the correct default mapping will be applied – All wheels with enough buttons have had the horn added to their default mappings on Windows 10 – Fix to dead zones for acceleration and braking axes on wheels – Default mappings for all TX Racing Wheel variants – Fixed a bug where custom input mappings would not save successfully General Improvements – The Social and Rivals tabs will now unlock for players with Xbox Live Silver accounts – Fixed a bug where the racing line would sometimes disappear – Controller hot swapping is now available. Players can switch between controllers/their keyboard whenever they choose (including the wheel) – Various content fixes for cars UPDATE: The patch is now available!Mervyn Gregory Hughes (born 23 November 1961) is a former Australian cricketer living in Melbourne. A right-arm fast bowler, he represented Australia in 53 Test matches between 1985 and 1994, taking 212 wickets. He played 33 One Day Internationals, taking 38 wickets. He took a hat trick in a Test against the West Indies at the WACA in 1988–89 and went on to take 8–87 for the match. In 1993, he took 31 wickets in the Ashes series against England. He was a useful lower-order batsman, scoring two half-centuries in Tests and over 1,000 runs in all. He also represented the Victorian Bushrangers, Essex in English county cricket, the Australian Capital Territory and Australia 'A' in the World Series Cup. Childhood [ edit ] Hughes was born in Euroa, Victoria. He started kindergarten while at Apollo Bay and his first year at school came when the family went back to Euroa. Organized sport began in 3rd grade at Werribee. In 5th grade, he pestered his father to be allowed to join football at Werribee where he held his own, despite the fact that he was one of the smallest players when out of his age group. Hughes' enthusiasm for sport was described as "unquenchable."[2] Domestic career [ edit ] Hughes started his career playing district cricket with Footscray in 1978–79. Footscray (now called Footscray-Edgewater) has subsequently had their main home ground named after him; it is now known as the Mervyn G. Hughes Oval. He was selected for Victoria in 1981–82 and made his debut against South Australia. International career [ edit ] Hughes first appeared for Australia against England in 1985–86. He took 7 Wickets in that match. Though He was not re-selected until the Ashes series against England the following year. At the WACA Ground in 1988–89, Hughes completed a hat trick spread across three separate overs, two innings and two different days. He had Curtly Ambrose caught behind with the last ball of his 36th over; ended the West Indies' first innings in his 37th, by removing Patrick Patterson; and more than a day later, completed his hat trick by trapping Gordon Greenidge lbw with the first ball of the West Indies' second innings.[3] The Australian selectors always viewed Hughes as a Test match player rather than a one-day player. He was generally only selected for the shorter game when another player was injured or otherwise unavailable.[citation needed] Hughes' physical presence (a burly 6'4"), horseshoe moustache, a penchant for exuberant displays of affection for his fellow players, along with a tendency to talk to the opposition in inventively colourful language (his nickname was "Fruitfly" – a somewhat incongruous nickname until Allan Border explained it was a reference to "Australia's greatest national pest") and a (some would say)[who?] "mincing" run-up (that at times stretched to 45 paces), made him a firm favorite amongst supporters, who would often imitate his warm-up stretches behind him en masse. In England, on his second Ashes tour in 1993, the crowd often chanted "Sumo" when he ran in to bowl.[4] Hughes played his last Test in Cape Town against South Africa in 1994. After cricket [ edit ] Late in his career, Hughes undertook a stint with the ACT Comets, which turned out to be unsuccessful. He claimed only five wickets at an average of 46.80 over six matches (Rodney Davison, Jimmy Maher, Jamie Cox, Shaun Young and Ryan Campbell). Merv Hughes' Test career batting performance. Hughes replaced Allan Border in June 2005 as a selector for the Australian cricket team, although his performance as a selector came under much scrutiny after many controversial decisions and the loss of the number-one ranking for Tests after the 2009 Ashes series. However, Australia would go on to have a successful 2009–10 summer, finishing undefeated in all three forms of the game. Hughes though, was later dropped as a selector for the Australian cricket team and subsequently replaced by Greg Chappell on 29 October 2010. He is a prominent supporter of the Western Bulldogs in the Australian Football League [5] and has also done some acting, portraying Ivan Milat in the comedy movie Fat Pizza. Additionally, Hughes has appeared on TV commercials as well, featuring losing weight with "The 14-day All-Bran Challenge" and appearing as himself in the English comedy show Hale and Pace. Personal life [ edit ] Hughes was a notorious consumer of alcohol and food. Towards the end of his career, this was felt[citation needed] to have increased damage to his knees and may have ultimately led to a shortening of his Australian and Victorian playing careers. Having always been rather overweight, he participated in both seasons of Channel Nine's Celebrity Overhaul to lose weight and improve his fitness. He was the top performer (weight-wise) in the first season of the show. Hughes is noted for his large moustache. Described by Cricinfo as being "of incredible proportions",[6] the moustache became sufficiently synonymous with Hughes for him to be rumoured to insure it for £200,000.[7] In a 2013 Sky Sports interview during the 2013 Ashes series, he quashed this rumour as being false. Other sports [ edit ] Hughes also played Australian rules football during the winter in the late 1970s and early 1980s; at his peak, he was a key position player for the Werribee Football Club in the Victorian Football Association first division.[8] In the media [ edit ] In 201
center, with round conduits, almost writhing – not like a snake, more in a technical manner. The machine felt as if it were rewiring me, reprogramming me… This is real. It’s totally unexpected, quite constant and objective… an independent, constant reality… I’m lucid and sober. This brings us finally to the crux of the matter. If there is a common source for these experiences of shaman ‘spirits’, faeries, aliens and the creatures in DMT-world, that can be accessed via an altered state of consciousness, are the experiences real? The crux is; what is consciousness? A reductionist materialist would tell us that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain, and so whilst they might accept that all these experiences happened subjectively, due to an altered state of consciousness, they can all simply be reduced to the brain making it up. Brain chemistry changes, experience is imagined in the brain, stories are told about that imagined experience. Simples. But to dismiss the subjective experience is to dismiss consciousness itself. There is a reason reductionist materialists call consciousness the hard problem – it’s because consciousness is all we have and nobody has ever captured it. It exists purely as a subjective experience in a closed system. As the old metaphor goes; looking for consciousness inside the brain is like looking for the radio announcer inside the radio. S/he isn’t there, s/he is an electro-magnetic projection being tuned into by the receiver. Aldous Huxley called the brain a ‘reducing valve for Mind at large’. We are transceiving consciousness not producing it. This corresponds with the philosophy of Idealism, beautifully articulated in recent times by Bernardo Kastrup, and just about every Oriental spiritual movement for the last several thousand years. Put shamanism and Gnosticism into the mix and we find a cohesive hypothesis for consciousness creating reality, not the other way round. But what trumps everything is direct, personal experience. This is the only true route to understanding existence – what Zen masters call direct pointing at reality. And that’s exactly what is happening in shaman journeys to the spiritworld, faerie-tales, alien abductions and DMT trips. They are experiences, accessed through altered states of consciousness, that are direct participations in Huxley’s Mind at large, a reality that exists to the consciousness of the observer but which is at the same time greater than the observer. But only by experiencing these realities through direct encounter can they be understood to be real. Nobody can tell you about them, you have to know them. Perhaps, for our benefit as a species, we need to take more notice of the stories that are brought back. Graham Hancock summarises many of the ideas expressed here at: Graham Hancock – ancients and altered states of consciousness. Well worth a watch. Ongoing consciousness research by Rick Strassman can be found at Cottonwood Research Foundation. The cover image is Pablo Amaringo, ‘Ayahuasca Vision’ Share this: Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Google Pinterest More Reddit Tumblr Pocket Telegram WhatsApp Like this: Like Loading...CLEVELAND, Ohio - In a recent interview with Blurred Culture, Bizzy Bone of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony drops a piece of information that music fans may not know or have probably forgotten about. In the interview, Bizzy Bone recalls, among other things, being kidnapped as a child and being rescued thanks to "America's Most Wanted." Bizzy Bone, real name Bryon McCane III, was born in Columbus and had a rough upbringing. His mother's ex husband abducted Bizzy and his sisters at the age of 5. Bizzy Bone says he was abused and molested for two years. "America's Most Wanted" first aired a photo of Bizzy as a missing child in 1983 at the end of "Adam," a TV movie about the abduction and murder of host John Walsh's son. Bizzy Bone has said in interviews that it was Walsh's persistence that helped rescue him shortly after the TV movie aired. Bizzy Bone appeared on "America's Most Wanted" in 2002 to give an update on his life and thank Walsh: After he was rescued, Bizzy Bone went to live with his mother for a short period before jumping in and out of foster homes. He later moved to Cleveland where he sold drugs. Bizzy Bone met Layzie Bone, another founding member of Bone Thugs, in a dope house. The duo, along with the other founding members of Bone Thugs, would eventually form a music group called "The Band-Aid Boys." Soon after, the group was discovered by rap mogul Eazy-E and changed its name to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. The rest is a piece of hip-hop history.Fresh off a recent skirmish over "Buy American," some Canadian cabinet ministers are expressing confidence that a new protectionist push from some U.S. politicians won't succeed. A group of 28 members of the House of Representatives last week unveiled a bill calling for U.S. President Barack Obama to give Canada and Mexico six months notice that it will pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The push is being led by Representative Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, and has the backing of both Republicans and other Democrats. The politicians blame NAFTA for contributing to job losses in the U.S. On Tuesday, some Canadian cabinet ministers expressed doubts the bill will get far. "Our evaluation is that this is certainly inconsistent with the direction that the Barack Obama administration has chosen," International Trade Minister Peter Van Loan told reporters on Parliament Hill. "In the state of the union address, the president made clear his commitment to try and grow the American economy through trade," he said. Van Loan said NAFTA was important for job growth and development both in Canada and in the United States, "and as such we’re optimistic that [the bill] will not come to pass." "We're always worried about protectionist tendencies," said Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Canada recently avoided a trade issue with the U.S. government when it worked out a deal on the so-called "Buy American" provisions contained in the U.S. stimulus package. "Certainly our success in getting the Buy American deal penned... is a demonstration of the Obama administration’s commitment to freer trade, so we anticipate we’ll continue to work hand-in-hand with them to deal with any threats of rising protectionism."A visual explainer on North Korea and the recent increase in tensions regarding its nuclear and missile programmes. The reclusive state's nuclear and ballistic programmes have invited more than one round of sanctions, the latest by the United Nations Security Council that will ban exports worth $1 billion. After withdrawing from the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty in 2003, North Korea has gone on to conduct several nuclear tests, most recently in September 2016. Pyongyang has also ground-tested a new rocket engine and test-launched ballistic missiles. North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Un has steadily increased the number of ballistic missile tests since he came to power after his father Kim Jong-Il passed away in 2011. The country's nuclear programme was launched in the Soviet era with the construction of its first nuclear reactor in Yongbyon in 1965, but it carried out its first successful nuclear test in 2006. Since the 1960s, North Korea has been trying to develop nuclear capabilities, much to the dismay of South Korea, a close ally of the United States. Tensions have risen dramatically in the Korean Peninsula after North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile last month. What is the history of the two Koreas In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, starting the three-year Korean War. Since the signing of the armistice agreement in 1953, North and South Korea have been divided by a 4km wide demilitarised zone stretching 250km. Seoul, South Korea's capital and largest city, is within close range of this demilitarised zone and could be hit by North Korean artillery in case of hostilities. Both Koreas have steadily increased their military spending over the decades. The US has thousands of its troops stationed in the region, making the Korean Peninsula, located between the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea, one of the most militarised zones of the world. Today, North Korea spends more than any other country on military spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). Nearly a quarter of its GDP goes towards the military. With almost 1.2 million people currently serving in the military, North Korea also has the world's fourth largest army. As world leaders have come and gone, North Korea's Kim dynasty has remained in power. What is the reach of North Korea's ballistic missiles? Over the last few years, North Korea has tested several ballistic missiles with varying degrees of success. The leader of the country, Kim Jong-un, has promised to continue the tests, drawing condemnation from the US and its regional allies, South Korea and Japan. North Korea is barred under UN resolutions from any use of ballistic missile technology, but six sets of UN sanctions since Pyongyang's first nuclear test in 2006 have failed to halt its drive for what it insists are defensive weapons. The United States fears North Korea may one day use its missiles to deliver a nuclear payload to its west coast. This fear has increased after Pyongyang's ballistic tests in July. It is unclear yet if the country is capable of putting nuclear bombs on these newest missiles, but the increasing technological capabilities prompted US President Donald Trump to say that any threat to the US would be met with "fire and fury". What are North Korea's nuclear capabilities? However, since 1984 the isolated North Asian nation has significantly upped its activities towards this goal. Under the then leadership of Kim Il-sung - the first leader of the communist country - North Korea launched its first missile tests of significance. After Kim's death in 1994, his son Kim Jong-il became supreme leader of North Korea. He carried on his father's legacy and ramped up the scale of both its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. This led to the first nuclear test and first launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in 2006. Although the ICBM test failed, it was clear to the world that North Korea's military capabilities were increasingly rapidly. In 2011, Kim Jong-il died and his son Kim Jong-un came to power. Since then he has pushed the nuclear programme to new heights with more tests and improved capabilities. Over the last few years, North Korea's nuclear capabilities have improved significantly. The country's most recent nuclear test had a yield of about 100 kiloton, about five to six times more powerful than the nuclear bombs that were dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The United States, North Korea's main enemy, is fearful a nuclear-armed ICBM could be used to target American cities. Who are North Korea's trading partners? Sanctions imposed by the UN have made it hard for North Korea to trade with other countries. Its main trade partner is its neighbouring country China. Over 80 percent of North Korean import and export trade is done with China. The latest sanctions focus mainly on North Korean exports, prohibiting the country from trading coal, its main source of income. China, one of few countries friendly to North Korea, voted in favour of the new trade restrictions. Correction: The second infographic originally stated South Korea's military spending was 23% of its GDP. It is actually 3%. Source: Al Jazeera NewsIraqi Kurdistan has been getting a lot of attention lately — but not for the usual reasons. The autonomous region in northern Iraq is still on the frontline in the battle against the Islamic State, but its capital city, Erbil, is now known for another reason: as home to a group of fashionable young hipsters. Taking social media by storm, these hipsters have formed a contemporary “gentlemen’s club” to share their love of male couture and promote a more modern, cosmopolitan, and peaceful image of their homeland. Known collectively as Mr. Erbil, they aim to invigorate the local economy and encourage civic engagement, all the while looking dashing for their 100,000 social media followers. Fans include residents of Israel, a country Mr. Erbil members told this journalist they admire and hope to one day visit. Because of the striking incongruity between pictures on the Mr. Erbil Instagram account and those of war-torn Kurdistan we are used to seeing, the group has attracted extensive international media coverage. However, Erbil, which is only about an hour’s drive away from front lines, has more of a modern veneer than might be assumed. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up Foreign investment flowed into the oil-rich region following the establishment of Iraqi Kurdistan as a federal entity governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government in the aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. American and multinational oil companies arrived, and with them shopping malls, cineplexes and other trappings of globalization. But the boom went bust with the decline of oil prices in the summer of 2014. As the Islamic State rampaged through Iraq, over a million Iraqi and Syrian refugees began pouring into Iraqi Kurdistan. The difficult situation continued and many young men were unemployed or underemployed. And then Ahmed Nauzad and his fellow dandy friends Goran Pshtiwan and Omer Nihad decided to launch a men’s club in Erbil in February 2016. “We had an idea for a gathering that was inspired by Pitti Uomo,” Nauzad told The Times of Israel, referring to the prestigious semi-annual men’s fashion industry event in Florence, Italy. ‘We’ve got all kinds of gentlemen. We’ve got a car mechanic, a doctor, engineers, shop owners, government people, everything’ “We used social media and talked to friends to try to find people for the gathering. We also went out into the streets looking for guys who dressed like us,” said Nauzad in a video interview in excellent English. “Like us” could be indicated by Nauzad’s long, expertly groomed beard and a super-stylish haircut. They ended up attracting 22 young men with an affinity for bespoke tailoring and personal grooming to the event, which they held at the ancient citadel in the heart of Erbil. One year later, the club has doubled in size and increasing numbers of gentlemen are applying. According to Nauzad, the members range in age between 18 and 32. Some are married and some are single, but none have children. The men come from all walks of life and different religions. (Iraqi Kurdistan is religiously diverse, with Muslims of various sects, Yazidis, Assyrian and Armenian Christians, and others). “We’ve got all kinds of gentlemen. We’ve got a car mechanic, a doctor, engineers, shop owners, government people, everything,” said Nauzad, who is a marketing research manager. Mr. Erbil holds quarterly seasonal gatherings for all club members at historic sites in the city — which serve as a scenic backdrop for the many photographs and videos the men take of themselves and their latest looks. For a gathering for Newroz, the Kurdish New Year, they wore their traditional Kurdish costumes for a photo shoot in the mountains. In between these larger gatherings, smaller groups of members meet on a weekly basis at local cafés. Nauzad, 26, emphasized that Mr. Erbil is about a lot more than merely looking splendid. The men are proud of a Mr. Erbil men’s fashion line they are designing and having made by local tailors. ‘We are not only using local tailors, but also local fabrics. This, for instance, is made from local goats hair that is sheared in the summer’ “We are not only using local tailors, but also local fabrics. This, for instance, is made from local goats hair that is sheared in the summer,” Nauzad said as he pulled his yellow tie out from his dark blue vest to show this reporter. “The fabrics are very authentic. They may have a slightly rougher feel than you’re used to, but they are very good quality,” he said. The men are inspired by the latest European fashions, but their style also harks back to the historical affendis, or lords — respected and well educated Kurdish men who would dress in their finery to attend salons and tea shops. Mr. Erbil is about bringing fashion to Kurdistan, and also gentlemanly etiquette and protocol. This includes keeping religion and politics out of the club. “Religion is a private matter,” said Nauzad, who fled Kurdistan temporarily with his Muslim family to Germany in the early 1990s. Following the First Gulf War, the Kurds suffered great economic hardship due to embargoes imposed on Iraq by the United Nations, as well as embargoes Saddam Hussein put on the Kurds. A civil war within Kurdistan ensued between 1994 and 1996. “My earliest memories are of my Dad hiding us in the house because there was fighting,” Mr. Erbil co-founder Pshtiwan told Vocativ. ‘It’s really important to us to fight the close-minded image people have of us’ In addition to supporting the local tailoring economy, Mr. Erbil seeks to promote social causes. Every Thursday the gentlemen give a shoutout on their social media accounts to exemplary women making an impact in Kurdish society. They recently highlighted Taban Shoresh. Now living in the UK, Shoresh is a child survivor of genocide under Saddam Hussein. She founded Lotus Flower, a charity helping women and girls in refugee camps in Kurdistan through sustainable employment and psychological recovery. The club is also preparing a video with an anti-violence against women message in 14 languages, and viral content promoting environmental awareness and encouraging people not to litter. ‘You know, there’s a deep connection between the Kurds and Israel’ “It’s really important to us to fight the close-minded image people have of us. Kurdistan is always represented by war, but it’s a positive place too,” Nauzad said. Nauzad said he and others in the club would be interested in visiting another part of the world that also has an erroneous reputation for being a constant war zone — namely Israel. “You know, there’s a deep connection between the Kurds and Israel,” Nauzad said. Nearly 200,000 Jews from historic Kurdistan, divided today between Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, live in Israel. The Kurdish-Israeli community maintains positive ties with Kurds within the Kurdish heartland and in the Kurdish diaspora. The Times of Israel reported on Bakhteyar Ibrahim, an Iraqi Kurd who was in Israel in 2013 to celebrate Saharan, the annual Kurdish Jewish holiday (celebrated during Sukkot). Ibrahim, who lives in Germany, founded the Kurdistan Israel Friendship Association in 2010. The organization has chapters in a number of countries, including Australia, German, England, and Benelux. According to Ibrahim there are even chapters in Syria, Iraq, and Iran. ‘Ties between Israel and the Kurds run deep’ “Ties between Israel and the Kurds run deep. A Mossad officer named Sagi Chori was sent to help his close friend, the late iconic Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani, manage the Kurds’ battles against the Iraqi army in the 1960s. There have also been persistent reports of Israel training Kurdish commandos. “Nationalist Kurds tend to see Israel as a role model for an independent Kurdistan: a small nation surrounded by enemies and bolstered by a strategic partnership with the United States,” wrote Lazar Berman in a Times of Israel article about a battle between the Kurdish Peshmerga and Islamic State fighters at Mt. Sinjar in late 2014. Nauzad said he’d love to get an invitation to visit Tel Aviv. He is particularly interested because of the beard care line Mr. Erbil has launched called Rishn. All the combs are handcrafted in Kurdistan, but the oils are imported. “I understand there is good production of grooming oils in Israel,” Nauzad said.A few days ago, I was reviewing screen mockups with a bunch of developers, and one of them said something along the lines of «screen five looks a bit empty. Do you think we could add some more stuff in there?» This is something I hear a lot. People tend to dislike empty space. It’s wasted! Can we put some kind of widget in there? Let’s talk about something completely different. I heard you bought a new shelf half a year ago, and it looked really cool and modern and nice? Everybody loved your new shelf! But a few months later, it suddenly didn’t look so cool and modern and nice anymore, for some reason, and people kind of just stopped complimenting you on your new shelf. Weirdly, now that you think about it, the exact same thing happened to your flat. When you moved in, you thought it was sleek and nice and modern, but now it looks pretty cramped and stuffy. Fear of Emptiness There’s a concept in visual art called horror vacui, or «fear of empty spaces.» It’s the natural tendency of humans to fill empty spaces with stuff. Your new shelf has some empty panels? Put something in there! Your flat has an empty corner? Buy a chair! Or a plant! Something! Anything! Humans have the same tendency when it comes to visual design. No empty space! Your screen has a few white pixels? What feature can we put there! Quick! Find something we can put there! There’s a problem with that, though. Empty space is not useless. Value Perception Empty space creates value perception. Universal Principles of Design cites shop windows as an example: In a survey of more than 100 clothing stores that display merchandise in shop windows, the degree to which the shop windows were filled with mannequins, clothes, price tags, and signage was inversely related to the average price of the clothing and brand prestige of the store. Emptiness equates to prestige. A single corner of an average PC laptop typically has more visual details — air vents, buttons, stickers, textures, colored ports, bezels — than a whole MacBook. This is part of a Windows laptop: This is a whole MacBook Pro: Which one do you think costs more? This doesn’t just apply to shop windows, shelves, and laptops. It extends to software. You can immediately identify which of these two websites sells cheap stuff, and which sells expensive stuff. Putting more stuff on your screens decreases your users’ perceived value of your software. Usability There are other issues with overcrowded user interfaces, of course. An important one is usability. Every needless widget you put on the screen distracts the user from the thing she should be doing. Don’t be a victim of horror vacui. If you want your software to be perceived as valuable, don’t fill every empty corner with some kind of feature or widget. Keep your designs clean, and don’t add stuff just to fill empty space. Remove features if you have to.Australia Post job cuts: Acting Prime Minister Warren Truss backs Ahmed Fahour's $4.8m salary Updated Acting Prime Minister Warren Truss has backed the multi-million dollar salary paid to the head of Australia Post, as the Opposition says unions are right to question the pay of executives who slash jobs. The communications workers union says the company's managing director Ahmed Fahour's $4.8 million salary is "excessive" in the light of a decision to cut 900 Australia Post admin staff. The union is highlighting the $550,000 salary paid in 2013 to the head of the US Postal Service, a company that has 19 times more staff and 11 times the revenue. The highest paid public servant in Australia is the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Ian Watt, who earns more than $800,000 per year. But Mr Truss says Australia Post operates like a commercial company even though it is government-owned. "It's a commercial company and they have to pay commercial wages to get the best people to get the job [done] for them," Mr Truss said in Gladstone. Public sector pay comparisons $844,800 Ian Watt, Prime Minister and Cabinet $824,320 Martin Parkinson, Treasury $798,720 Dennis Richardson, Defence $798,720 Peter Varghese, Foreign Affairs and Trade $757,760 David Tune, Finance $716,800 Jane Halton, Health $691,200 Gordon de Brouwer, Environment $665,600 Simon Lewis, Veterans Affairs $507,000 Tony Abbott, Prime Minister Source: Remuneration Tribunal "It's a decision for their board. Australia Post is facing real challenges and they will need quality management and an innovative board to solve the problems." Mr Fahour has announced a major restructure of Australia Post, which involves splitting the company into a retail and standard mail division, and an arm devoted entirely to the booming parcel delivery service. Joan Doyle from the Communications Workers Union says Mr Fahour is struggling in the top job. "Given that he's still not really kicking goals we think that that salary's excessive," she said. Mr Fahour says he does not determine his own pay. "The matter of compensation is a matter for the board," he told Radio National. Ms Doyle says the same board has restricted pay rises for ordinary postal workers but backed big bonuses for the bosses. "The staff were very upset when he got a 66 per cent pay rise last year and they got a 1.5 per cent pay rise," she said. "While the board might set Mr Fahour's salary, there's a bit of [a] symbiotic relationship between the board and Mr Fahour, where he looks after them and they look after him." Salary an issue when jobs are being cut: Shorten Labor Leader Bill Shorten has backed the unions' decision to attack the Australia Post chief's salary. "I think when you've got 900 people losing their jobs executive salaries do become an issue," Mr Shorten told reporters in Sydney. "There's no doubt that the internet's changing the way Australians communicate with each other but it's how you manage change [that] is terribly important to whether or not its viewed as the right thing or the wrong thing. "Executives who are receiving multi-million dollar wages when hundreds of people are losing their jobs... people probably do look at that and say 'what's going on here?'" Earlier, Labor's communications spokesman Jason Clare declined to criticise Mr Fahour's salary, saying it was not the cause of Australia Post's difficulties. "Mr Fahour is a very experienced business person no doubt being paid a very handsome salary in this role," Mr Clare said. "He was paid even more in the private sector but the point I want to stress here is that the real issue confronting Australia Post is not this salary, it's the drop in letters," he said. Topics: business-economics-and-finance, government-and-politics, federal-government, truss-warren, australia First postedTuesday’s strike marks an intensification of U.S. military action against the Assad regime, whose human rights violations have sparked mounting concern from the Trump administration. On April 26, the U.S. launched more than 50 tomahawk missiles into Syria, targeting the site of a recent chemical-weapons attack. The strike was the nation’s first military operation against an Arab government since 2011, when President Obama sanctioned a military intervention in Libya. At the time of the missile strike, Trump said the move was vital to national security. Since then, U.S. involvement in the Syrian war has continued to escalate. On May 18, U.S.-led coalition jets carried out a strike that closely paralleled Tuesday’s attack. Following the incident, CBS News reported that pro-regime forces twice violated the deconfliction zone in al-Tanf—once when more than a dozen regime vehicles infringed on the radius of the U.S. army convoy, and again when an unarmed fighter-bomber entered the zone. In recent months, Russia, which is allied with Assad, has been less than pleased with increased U.S. military aggression in the region. Dmitry Peskov, the spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, referred to April’s missile strikes as a “violation of international law,” adding that the strikes “will inflict major damage on U.S.-Russia ties.” According to RT, a member of the Russian parliament shared a similar response in the wake of Tuesday’s attack, calling the strike “an act of aggression” and “a step by the U.S. towards engaging in an open conflict in Syria.” A day earlier, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched an operation to capture Raqqa, an ISIS stronghold in Syria. The Trump administration announced in May that it would arm and train Syrian Kurdish forces—a critical move in the Raqqa offensive, but one that could have damaging consequences for U.S.-Turkey relations. While defeating ISIS has long been a priority for the Trump administration, targeting the Assad regime is a more recent development. Trump previously told The New York Times that “fighting Assad and ISIS simultaneously was madness, and idiocy.” Meanwhile, the U.S. Defense Department claims their actions in al-Tanf are consistent with previous policy. “Now that [Syrian and allied forces have] backed off, we’re not going after them,” Eric Pahon, a spokesperson for the department, told Bloomberg in May. Still, he said, given the nature of the war, “anything can happen.” We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.File this one under expected and obvious: Korea Times is reporting that LG isn't announcing the next version of its flagship line — the LG G4, if the naming convention remains consistent — until at least April. That would give it distance from the Samsung Galaxy S6, which we're expecting to see at Mobile World Congress on March 1. On the other hand, LG hasn't ever announced its flagship phone at Mobile World Congress. Instead, it used that stage in 2013 and 2014 to announce the LG G Pro and LG G Pro 2, respectively. We're not expecting a new G Pro model, with the LG G Flex 2 supplanting that line. The LG G3 was announced in late May 2014 at events in New York and London.Brother Spaghettus had a bad day on Wednesday. A court in the eastern city of Frankfurt an der Oder announced that his religion, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, had no right to hang official signs at the entrances to the town of Templin, Brandenburg, giving information about their weekly services, next to those of the local Catholic and Protestant churches. "The suit has been denied," Judge Sabine Selbig said in court. "It does not depend on whether the organization is a world-view community or not." The judge ruled that the government of the state of Brandenburg had legitimately overruled a verbal agreement to allow the four signs, which Brother Spaghettus, aka Rüdiger Weida, chairman of the religious society, had made with Templin mayor Detlef Tabbert in December 2014. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster existed in secret for hundreds of years, it claims Weida was defiant after the ruling was announced on Wednesday. "We completely expected this verdict," he told DW. "The next step is we're going to take it to a higher state court." Equal rights Weida, who answers all questions with scrupulous earnestness, was disappointed with the way the court treated the case. "Our impression was that the judge was not in the slightest interested in engaging with the substance of the case, and dismissed it merely as a formality," he said. "And she was completely wrong, and that's why we see good chances for our appeal." Weida also said his church intended to sue the local road authority for "attempted collusion" in the trial for making false claims about the church. For the Brandenburg Infrastructure Ministry, on the other hand, the case is straightforward. "The question was whether the group is a religious group or not," spokesman Steffen Streu told DW. "As far as the road signs are concerned, there are clear rules - a recognized religious community is allowed to do that." Weida was offended by the implicit discrimination in this point of view. "For us these signs are simply to be taken for granted," he said. "We are just as serious as every other religion, and we want to be able to articulate ourselves just as seriously. We consider it completely unreasonable that other views of the world in Germany get special privileges. If someone has privileges, it always means that someone else is discriminated against." A new creationism The Flying Spaghetti Monster was born in Kansas, in the US, in 2005, when "concerned citizen" Bobby Henderson wrote an open letter to the state's school board after it decided that "intelligent design" should be taught as an alternative theory to evolution on the school curriculum. Henderson argued that it wasn't fair to only allow schools to teach just one creationist theory, and claimed that he, and "many others around the world," believed that a Flying Spaghetti Monster had created the universe. Churches are allowed to hang up official notices in Germany The letter went on to briefly explain the theory, and claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster manipulated any scientific evidence that appeared to contradict it with "His Noodly Appendage." By 2006, the Flying Spaghetti Monster was not in Kansas anymore. Churches were formed all over the world, including the only German one in Templin, where the chief Pastafarian Minister, Rüdiger Weida, leads a "noodle mass" for his congregation of five people every Friday ("Our god was faster than other gods, and he finished with the creation of the Earth earlier, and that's why we have to rest on Friday already. We consider it a kind of discrimination that we have to work on Friday and that our children have to go to school," he said). The services are similar to those of the Catholic church. They begin with a joint profession of faith, sing hymns, and take communion. "But our communion does not consist of flesh and blood, but from noodles from His noodly appendages and beer from His beer volcano," said Weida. The church also has relics, including a pirate flag, but that is not the most important. "Our most holy relic is a multiple miracle - it's a closed bottle of white rum that someone brought to our pirate meeting," explained Weida. "There we simply forgot to drink it - that was the first miracle, that a bottle of rum stayed closed among pirates, the second miracle was that a pirate brought it to the next meeting, and the third miracle was that it wasn't drunk then either. After that we saw that it was a sign that this bottle must never again be opened."The Schneiders host their fourth-annual dinner and auction Thursday to raise money for their foundation, Ben’s Fund, which is named in honor of their son, Ben, who has autism. Traci Schneider never went anywhere without an escape plan. A team employee jokingly calls Traci, the wife of Seahawks general manager John Schneider, “the family general manager,” and with good reason. She has handled much of the responsibility of raising the couple’s two children: Ben, 13, and Jack, 11. Ben, in particular, could be a handful. He was diagnosed with autism at age 3 and would erupt into tantrums that could last hours. So when Traci walked into stores, she ran through her checklist: How far are we from the door? Where is the car? Where are the bathrooms? She has left full grocery carts idling in stores as she and the boys ran out. “I can’t imagine what that feels like,” Traci says of autism. “So many times I’m like, ‘God, I just wish I could know, feel it in my own body, what that feels like for (him).’ Just so I knew what they were experiencing and going through.” The Schneiders are hosting their fourth annual dinner-and-auction fundraiser, called Prime Time, on Thursday to raise money for their foundation, Ben’s Fund. Guests will buy and barter with Ben Bucks, featuring Ben’s face instead of George Washington’s, and the money will go to families affected by autism. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a group of developmental disabilities that can cause significant social, communication and behavioral challenges in children that last throughout their lives. The disabilities can range from mild to severe, according to the CDC. Ben’s Fund was established in 2012 by the Seattle Women’s Seahawks Association and Traci and John Schneider. “The reasons why we’re doing this are one, because of awareness,” Traci Schneider said. “We want people to understand what this is like. Two, so we can raise funds for families that are faced with autism. But three, when you have a kiddo on the spectrum, you can feel very alone. You can feel like you’re not living life and interacting. We don’t want them to feel like they’re alone in this.” The diagnosis was so life-altering that John Schneider, then a rising star in NFL front offices, nearly quit football. By age 30, in 2002, he already had a high-ranking job with Washington and was rehired by the Green Bay Packers. John Schneider, Seattle Seahawks general manager, discusses the biggest challenges he’s faced and lessons he’s learned from raising his two children, including an autistic son. (Dean Rutz / The Seattle Times) That same year, John and Traci had their first child and named him Ben. When Ben was about 14 months old, the Schneiders noticed small peculiarities with his behavior. Ben wasn’t responding to them. He never pointed. He typically hung out away from other kids. Traci took Ben to his 18-month wellness visit and was told Ben was fine. Part of Traci clung to that. Part of her knew it wasn’t true. Ben was having meltdowns, and Traci had no idea how to calm him or even what caused the outbursts. She and Ben used to take walks together, the same path every trip, but one day Traci cut the walk short. Ben lost it. Traci had no idea why. She called the doctor’s office frequently until one day a doctor told her, “Maybe you should take parenting classes.” A fundraiser to benefit Ben’s Fund is Thursday at El Gaucho in Seattle, and is sold out. For more information or to donate, go to Seahawks.com/BensFund. She felt like an awful mom. Amid the ambiguity, Traci and John had their second child, Jack, and noticed right away how different he was from Ben. But they still were searching for answers. Shortly after Ben turned 3, the Schneiders had him tested. Doctors told them their son had autism. “Heartbroken,” Traci says. “It rocks your world,” John says. The Schneiders grieved. “You have all those goals and dreams and hopes for your children that you’re
003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eMemory Onboard Type: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3L SDRAM \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eGraphics Card: Hybrid Graphics \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eSystem Installed: AMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2 GB GDDR5 SDRAM Dedicated \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eResolution: Up to 2560 x 1600 \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eHard Drive: 512 GB PCIe-Based Flash Ports: 2x Thunderbolt 2, 2x USB 3.0 (A) \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eDisplay Connectors: 2x Mini DisplayPort via Thunderbolt port, 1x HDMI \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eAudio: Integrated Stereo Speakers \u0026amp; Dual Array Microphones \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eAudio Connector: 1x 1\/8\" (3.5 mm) Headphone\/Microphone Combo Jack \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eFlash Media Slot: 1x SDXC \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eNetwork: 10\/100\/1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45) via optional cable \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWi-Fi: 802.11a\/b\/g\/n\/ac \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eBluetooth: Bluetooth 4.0 \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWebcam: Yes \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eOperating System: Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite Dimensions (WxHxD): 14.1 x 0.7 x 9.7\" \/ 35.8 x 1.8 x 24.6 cm\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWeight: 4.46 lb \/ 2.02 kg\u003c\/li\u003e \u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch3\u003eCondition: \u003c\/h3\u003eRefurbished\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch3\u003eWarranty: \u003c\/h3\u003e30 Day Warranty\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch3\u003eFeatures: \u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cul\u003e \u003cli\u003e2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 with Turbo Boost up to 3.7GHz\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e16GB 1600MHz memory and 512GB PCIe-based flash storage\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eIntel Iris Pro Graphics\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eAMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2GB GDDR5 memory\u003c\/li\u003e \u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch3\u003ePackaging: \u003c\/h3\u003eBulk\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch3\u003eWhat you get: \u003c\/h3\u003eOne [1] Laptop \u003cbr\u003e One [1] Charger","published_at":"2019-02-27T16:31:49-05:00","created_at":"2019-02-26T19:27:08-05:00","vendor":"Apple","type":"Laptops","tags":["10PCTOK","222","278","328","All Deals","Apple","Bulk","Cal State Electronics","Laptops","Refurbished"],"price":129999,"price_min":129999,"price_max":129999,"available":true,"price_varies":false,"compare_at_price":249999,"compare_at_price_min":249999,"compare_at_price_max":249999,"compare_at_price_varies":false,"variants":[{"id":19725669433431,"title":"Default Title","option1":"Default Title","option2":null,"option3":null,"sku":"MJLT2LLA-C-16GB-500GB","requires_shipping":true,"taxable":true,"featured_image":{"id":6776334942295,"product_id":1993464643671,"position":1,"created_at":"2019-02-27T16:31:52-05:00","updated_at":"2019-02-27T16:31:52-05:00","alt":null,"width":1500,"height":945,"src":"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0758\/5143\/products\/81SWwMDgEwL._SL1500_c04ad7d5-01dd-4b16-92be-d0c442ffca56.jpg?v=1551303112","variant_ids":[19725669433431]},"available":true,"name":"MacBook Pro 15.4\" Notebook Computer with Retina Display \u0026 Force Touch Trackpad","public_title":null,"options":["Default Title"],"price":129999,"weight":0,"compare_at_price":249999,"inventory_quantity":25,"inventory_management":"shopify","inventory_policy":"deny","barcode":"641022234839"}],"images":["\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0758\/5143\/products\/81SWwMDgEwL._SL1500_c04ad7d5-01dd-4b16-92be-d0c442ffca56.jpg?v=1551303112","\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0758\/5143\/products\/6190O7-wlVL._SL1200_be9b3016-808c-4fbe-8bd9-8fa653d48195.jpg?v=1551303112","\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0758\/5143\/products\/41kAWNxIAuL._SL1280_b2a779fe-df0e-42ce-aca3-fb88097dd559.jpg?v=1551303112","\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0758\/5143\/products\/81uEPNTD1yL._SL1500_54142efb-305c-43cd-a1a3-e78ba783cc4f.jpg?v=1551303112","\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0758\/5143\/products\/31Gn1kSyiDL_91c4b48a-0e45-4163-a8dc-c16b5a0ce916.jpg?v=1551303112"],"featured_image":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0758\/5143\/products\/81SWwMDgEwL._SL1500_c04ad7d5-01dd-4b16-92be-d0c442ffca56.jpg?v=1551303112","options":["Title"],"content":"NOTE: This product is Refurbished and comes in Bulk packaging. Warranty: 30 Day Warranty\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 15.4\" MacBook Pro Notebook Computer with Retina Display \u0026amp; Force Touch Trackpad is a powerful notebook computer with an innovative, ultrathin, ultraportable aluminum unibody design.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe system is powered by a quad-core 4th generation Crystalwell 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7 processor. The 4th-gen Crystalwell processor uses low voltage for improved battery life without sacrificing performance.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe MacBook Pro with Retina Display also has 16GB of onboard 1600 MHz DDR3L RAM, 512GB of PCIe-based flash storage and an SDXC media card slot.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eYou'll be able to connect to the Internet with high-speed 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The MacBook Pro also supports a\/b\/g\/n Wi-Fi networks as well.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe MacBook Pro also features built-in Bluetooth 4.0, which allows you to connect wireless headphones, keyboard, mice and other compatible peripherals without a hassle.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe widescreen, LED-backlit IPS screen has a glossy finish and a native resolution of 2880 x 1800.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFeatures:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cul\u003e \u003cli\u003eProcessor 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7 Quad-Core 4th-Gen Crystalwell with Cache \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eL3: 6 MB \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eMemory Onboard Type: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3L SDRAM \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eGraphics Card: Hybrid Graphics \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eSystem Installed: AMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2 GB GDDR5 SDRAM Dedicated \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eResolution: Up to 2560 x 1600 \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eHard Drive: 512 GB PCIe-Based Flash Ports: 2x Thunderbolt 2, 2x USB 3.0 (A) \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eDisplay Connectors: 2x Mini DisplayPort via Thunderbolt port, 1x HDMI \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eAudio: Integrated Stereo Speakers \u0026amp; Dual Array Microphones \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eAudio Connector: 1x 1\/8\" (3.5 mm) Headphone\/Microphone Combo Jack \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eFlash Media Slot: 1x SDXC \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eNetwork: 10\/100\/1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45) via optional cable \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWi-Fi: 802.11a\/b\/g\/n\/ac \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eBluetooth: Bluetooth 4.0 \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWebcam: Yes \u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eOperating System: Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite Dimensions (WxHxD): 14.1 x 0.7 x 9.7\" \/ 35.8 x 1.8 x 24.6 cm\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWeight: 4.46 lb \/ 2.02 kg\u003c\/li\u003e \u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch3\u003eCondition: \u003c\/h3\u003eRefurbished\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch3\u003eWarranty: \u003c\/h3\u003e30 Day Warranty\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch3\u003eFeatures: \u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cul\u003e \u003cli\u003e2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 with Turbo Boost up to 3.7GHz\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e16GB 1600MHz memory and 512GB PCIe-based flash storage\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eIntel Iris Pro Graphics\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eAMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2GB GDDR5 memory\u003c\/li\u003e \u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch3\u003ePackaging: \u003c\/h3\u003eBulk\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch3\u003eWhat you get: \u003c\/h3\u003eOne [1] Laptop \u003cbr\u003e One [1] Charger"}A fight broke out in the first quarter of Sunday's Raiders vs. Broncos game that led to three players being ejected, including Denver's Aqib Talib and Oakland's Michael Crabtree. On a second and six run by Marshawn Lynch a little more than three minutes into the game, Crabtree engaged Talib in a block, and proceeded to push him out of bounds before knocking him to the ground on the sideline. From there, Talib pulled off Crabtree's helmet as he was surrounded by a group of Broncos. Raiders players began pushing the Denver players circled around Crabtree, leading to a brawl between the teams. Crabtree walked away at first, but then he exchanged punches with Talib, who still had his helmet on. Always wear a helmet if you’re gonna start swinging pic.twitter.com/1yk4EL6wlG — Pete Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) November 26, 2017 In the end, Crabtree, Talib, and Oakland guard Gabe Jackson were ejected from the game. Jackson was ejected for pushing an official. After the ejections, Lynch escorted Talib past the Raiders' sideline as Crabtree stayed around his teammates. Marshawn Lynch escorted Aqib Talib out of the game. 🤣 pic.twitter.com/D2Cci6Ks3c — Will Brinson (@WillBrinson) November 26, 2017 Last year the two players got into a heated confrontation, causing Talib to snatch Crabtree's chain off his neck during a game. That time when Talib snatched Crabtree's gold chain! pic.twitter.com/rFExeeNc9D — History of Sports (@BeforeFamePics) November 26, 2017 This time around, Talib snatched Crabtree's chain again right before he was knocked out of bounds. After being ejected from the game, Crabtree went up to a luxury box in Oakland to watch the remainder of the game. Lynch did something similar when he was ejected from a Week Seven game against the Chiefs and watched the rest from the stands. After being ejected for fighting with Aqib Talib, Michael Crabtree is watching the rest of the game from a luxury box https://t.co/25h6TmgTnC pic.twitter.com/GpBMlACEeE — Sports Illustrated (@SInow) November 26, 2017 The 4-6 Raiders lead the 3-7 Broncos 21-0.Eight years, no trophies, but Gazidis reveals he wants Wenger to agree new Arsenal deal Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis has confirmed that he wants Arsene Wenger to extend his contract beyond the end of next season and lead the club to the top of European football. Wenger’s deal expires next year and he has been in demand, not least in his native France where Paris Saint-Germain and his former club Monaco are rich from overseas investment. Sign him up! Gazidis (below, left) wants the French boss to extend his deal with Arsenal beyond next summer Rumblings of dissent at the Emirates sparked suggestions that the 63-year-old might seek a fresh challenge but Gazidis expects him to stay and build a powerful team from the club’s new position of commercial strength. Arsenal forecast their annual income is set to rise by £70million, launching them into the £300m-plus bracket along with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United and European champions Bayern Munich. This will allow them to compete for those players who command fees beyond £25m and wages over £200,000 a week such as Wayne Rooney, one of this summer’s top targets. ‘Of course we could do that, we could do more than that,’ said Gazidis. ‘We are beginning to see something we’ve been planning for, which is the escalation in our financial firepower. It’s a progression over the next two seasons. It’s quite significant for the club. It means we can look at some options that weren’t really in our financial capability. ‘It really is time now for us to turn that into sporting success. I know Arsene is focused on that and we are together. This is not some veiled message. ‘The key to this summer is going to be making the right decisions without damaging the great team unity which we have — and I think we have the right person to do that in Arsene. ‘The most important thing is that we have the right chemistry. It could be big-name players but it also might not be. It’s going to be the players Arsene believes in. He is pretty blind to price tags. He looks at what he sees and makes judgments based on that. ‘I think he will make the right decisions. We are not going to go through what we have in the last couple of summers with a major departure to wrestle with. If any players are to leave, those will be Arsenal’s decisions.’ The Premier League’s top three — Manchester United, City and Chelsea — have all changed their manager, but Arsenal retain faith in Wenger. ‘We think we have a fantastic manager,’ said Gazidis. ‘We hope he wants to do what he is doing for the long term. I believe he does. I think he is still ambitious, still driven and sees the potential of the club. I think he is very excited by that. Champions League regulars: Arsenal finished fourth at Spurs' expense to qualify for Europe's top competition Non-mover: Wenger has been at the helm at the north London club since 1996 ‘We have a great relationship and he has a great relationship with the board. ‘We have got a lot of confidence in Arsene that he is the right person to take the club forward and I think he will want to do that.’ Wenger joined the Gunners in October 1996, winning the title in his first full season and qualifying for the Champions League every year since. But he has not won a trophy since the FA Cup in 2005. The Gunners finished last season in fourth, 17 points behind champions Manchester United. They were embarrassed by Bradford and Blackburn in the domestic cup competitions and beaten on away goals in the Champions League by eventual winners Bayern Munich. There has been dissent from some fans, who believe it is time for change at the club. ‘We want to be competing at the top of the game and in order to do that you have to be in the Champions League,’ said Gazidis. ‘So we are pleased to have qualified but it is not ultimately where we want to be with moving the club forward. ‘We want to be a club that is competing at the very top end of the game and that means competing to win the Premier League and competing to win the Champions League. ‘It is not idle ambition when we talk about wanting to get there. I think we have a very solid plan that will give us the ability to compete at that level provided we do things well.’ New financial strength comes from sponsorship, including the lucrative deals with Emirates to sponsor shirts and the stadium and a new deal for Puma to take over from Nike as kit suppliers next year. ‘The club is on a good path,’ said Gazidis. ‘We have been through a difficult and in some ways disappointing season which ended satisfactorily. But we are not crowing about that. We are looking ahead and to how we can push forward. ‘We’ve seen two clubs this year in the Champions League final, both of whom run responsible financial models and they are pretty fantastic teams and very exciting to watch. There’s no reason why we can’t do that.’Ballon d'Or? We all know Messi is best, says Valverde The Argentine star is the world's best player even if he does not win the Ballon d'Or, his club coach has insisted coach Ernesto Valverde believes Lionel Messi is the world's best player, regardless of who wins the Ballon d'Or. Messi is a record five-time winner of the individual honour, but he is expected to be joined on that tally by star Cristiano Ronaldo this year. The duo have shared the past nine Ballons d'Or and are widely considered the world's two best players. Valverde, whose team host Olympiacos in the on Wednesday, said he had no doubt who was best. Messi 21/10 for hat-trick v Olympiacos "We all know who is the best player in the world [Messi]," he told a news conference on Tuesday. Article continues below "Giving a Ballon d'Or or other award to remark that, it is something I don't care about. It doesn't change our opinion. "We all know." Messi has made an impressive start to this season, scoring 14 goals in 12 games in all competitions for Barca.The Baylor Bears and the Ole Miss Rebels have verbally agreed to a 2020 football game in Houston, Ole Miss confirmed to the Daily Journal today. Brett McMurphy of ESPN also confirmed the verbal agreement for the 2020 Baylor-Ole Miss Game. Baylor, Ole Miss have verbally agreed to open 2020 season at Houston’s NRG Stadium, sources told @ESPN — Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) February 17, 2016 The AdvoCare Texas Kickoff game would be played on the opening weekend of the 2020 season on Saturday, Sept. 5 at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. News of a possible Baylor-Ole Miss matchup first surfaced last month when Ole Miss athletics director Ross Bjork spoke to SEC Country. Prior to that, Baylor had been rumored to be talking with Arkansas about a game in Houston in 2019. Baylor is scheduled to open the 2020 season at home vs. Incarnate Word on Sept. 5. That game was previously announced for Aug. 31, 2019 before Baylor listed it as a 2020 contest in their 2015 media guide. It’s possible that Incarnate Word could simply be moved back to the 2019 opener to clear the way for the Ole Miss game. The Bears are also slated to host Louisiana Tech on Sept. 12, 2020 in the first game of a three-game series. Ole Miss has no non-conference games scheduled for the 2020 season. If the Baylor game comes to fruition, it would be their first announced game and it would satisfy the SEC’s mandate of scheduling at least one Power Five team per season. The Big 12 also announced a similar strength of schedule requirement recently, and Ole Miss would fill that need for Baylor. Football SchedulesHe's told his forces to shoot Russian officers operating in his fiefdom without his permission, accused the U.S. government of complicity in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and blessed the reportedly bigamous marriage of a local police chief to a minor. Such have been the recent exploits of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Russia's Chechnya region whose pronouncements and behavior have appeared increasingly mercurial, even for a man already renowned for his flamboyant -- and often menacing -- public persona. They come amid heightened tensions between Kadyrov and federal Russian officials since the slaying of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov near the Kremlin on February 27. Kadyrov has publicly defended a main suspect in the crime, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has called "shameful." And even as the Kremlin has awarded Kadyrov with various state honors, he and his top officials have in recent months displayed defiance toward dictates from Moscow on issues ranging from polygamy to security. Last week, Kadyrov went on the offensive against users of the Facebook-owned application WhatsApp, upbraiding local women he accused of using the online messaging service to rumormonger about the nuptials between Chechen police chief Nazhud Guchigov, reportedly already married and in his 40s or 50s, and a 17-year-old girl. Addressing the women's husbands at a May 18 meeting broadcast on local television, Kadyrov told the men that their wives "won't write these things" if they "keep them at home" and "don't let them out." "They're on WhatsApp all night long. Make them work. Let them work in the garden. Let them work in the greenhouse," he told the alleged offenders of local mores as they stood around him in a circle looking gloomy and deflated. 'Shoot To Kill' Putin has essentially handed the keys to Kadyrov to run Chechnya as he sees fit in exchange for ensuring stability in the mainly Muslim republic, the site of Moscow's two brutal wars with separatists and Islamic militants over the past two decades. A former rebel fighter turned Kremlin loyalist, Kadyrov assumed the region's presidency in 2007 at the age of 30 and has largely stamped out an Islamic insurgency in Chechnya that has migrated to neighboring Russian regions in the North Caucasus. Critics, meanwhile, accuse him of deploying his battle-hardened local security forces to commit human rights abuses against civilians and extrajudicial killings of opponents in Chechnya, other Russian regions, and abroad. At the same time, Kadyrov has portrayed himself as a beacon of Islamic piety and Chechen cultural traditions, even those at odds with federal Russian laws. His backing of the marriage between Guchigov and the 17-year-old schoolgirl, who according to a Novaya Gazeta report was initially opposed to the union, has sparked a national debate in Russia about polygamy, which is banned in the country but which Islamic law permits. The bride's age has also raised eyebrows, with critics noting that Russia's legal marriage age is 18, and others noting that the country's Family Code allows regions -- including Chechnya -- to set a lower legal age. Guchigov was already married when the story of his planned wedding to the teenager emerged, according to some media reports. Other reports said his marriage to his first wife had not been formally registered. Following the May 16 wedding, which the bride later said she consented to, Kadyrov's chief of staff said Russia should legalize polygamy. Kadyrov has also issued threats against federal Russian law enforcers. At an April 21 meeting in Chechnya's capital, Grozny, Kadyrov told Chechen law-enforcement officials that "if any [security officer], whether from Moscow or Stavropol, appears on your territory without your knowledge, shoot to kill. They have to take us into account." The outburst was triggered by an incident two days earlier in which a Chechen man was killed in a joint operation by police from the neighboring Stavropol region and a Russian Interior Ministry Unit. The Interior Ministry called the remark "unacceptable," and Kadyrov later walked his comments back, saying he had made them "based on emotions." Instagram Strongman Kadyrov's most visible public platform is Instagram, another Facebook-owned social-media platform for which he appears to harbor less venom than for WhatsApp. Having recently crossed the 1-million-followers mark on his Instagram page, Kadyrov regularly posts a mishmash of political musings, photo ops, and short videos highlighting his passion for sports. Some of his most politically charged public statements in recent months have been disseminated via Instagram. After a Boston jury last week handed a death sentence to convicted bomber 21-year-old Dhokhar Tsarnaev, whose father is Chechen, Kadyrov said he does not believe the attack could have been carried out "without the knowledge of U.S. security services." He also used Instagram to defend the marriage of the Chechen teen to the police chief by quoting Russia's national poet Aleksandr Pushkin and denouncing a prize-winning journalist for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta for reporting that the girl was being forced into the union against her will. The journalist, Yelena Milashina, came to Chechnya to spread "liberast lies paid for from abroad," he wrote, using a derogatory term likening liberals to "pederasts." Kadyrov, of course, was known for colorful antics long before his recent turn on the center stage of Russian political life, including snuggling with a tiger and posing with a wolf. But political commentators say his actions since Nemtsov's assassination represent a fundamental shift in his public conduct toward Moscow. "He's pushing things further because he believes he can push things further," erstwhile Kremlin insider Stanislav Belkovsky, head of a Moscow-based think tank, told Ekho Moskvy radio in a May 20 interview. Aleksei Venediktov, Ekho Moskvy's well-connected editor in chief, said in an interview with Znak.com this week that tensions between Kadyrov and powerful security officials in Moscow had long been bubbling beneath the surface. "The conflict spilled into the public after Nemtsov's murder, but objectively it was always there," Venediktov said. Venediktov noted that he has taken additional security measures after what he believes was a threat Kadyrov made against him in a January 9 Instagram post in which he accused the journalist of promoting "anti-Islamic" sentiment. "That was before Nemtsov's murder, and I hired additional security personnel at that time," Venediktov said. With reporting by Reuters, echo.msk.ru, and znak.comIf you noticed that there was a lot of news this week in the Senate, but hardly any mention of Democrats, you weren't alone. By mid-afternoon Thursday, after a 12-hour filibuster by Sen. Rand Paul, John Brennan was confirmed to be the next CIA director by a vote of 63-34. The "nay" votes were clearly short of a successful challenge to Brennan’s confirmation (whose nomination to the same office was undermined four years ago). Much of Paul’s protest centered on the White House’s refusal to answer where it stood on targeted killings. Although it broke no records, Paul’s filibuster met with telling widespread negative reactions on the parts of liberals and progressives. Democrats were virtually invisible, with one or two notable (and weak) exceptions, during Paul’s time on the floor. Advertisement: Prior to Wednesday, Paul and others in the Senate asked over and over for confirmation that American citizens were not in danger of being killed on American soil. The question was itself hospitably narrow: There was no challenge to the legality of killing foreigners on American soil, to the kill list, to drone strikes on international soil, to the arbitrary (secretive, procedure-less) executions of foreigners deemed a threat. Yet, the White House’s response was silence, evasion from the president himself, or circumspection. On Wednesday afternoon, Attorney General Eric Holder explicitly affirmed that “in extraordinary circumstances,” the president could indeed authorize drone strikes. One day later, Holder issued another answer, which was falsely framed as confirming the limits of the president’s ability to drone Americans on U.S. soil. In fact, Holder reiterated more precisely that the Obama administration reserved the right to kill Americans engaged in combat on American soil. White House press spokesman Jay Carney appeared to make Holder’s statement more definitive (watch at 00:20), stating that “The president has not and would not use drone strikes against American citizens on American soil.” In reality, Holder responded negatively to a strictly limited question, namely, “Does the president have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?” Given the untrustworthiness of the Obama administration in anything having to do with the Global War on Terror, Holder’s answer should not be reassuring to Americans. What does it mean to be “engaged in combat” on American soil? Does it mean protest? Dissent? Being Muslim and loud? Standing within 50 feet of the White House with a critical sign? In a world where the mainstream media refuses to be critical watchdogs and whistle-blowers are treasonous and betrayers of national security, Holder’s answer may have made Rand Paul happy. But the rest of us, especially if we are remotely critical, should be terrified. Whether rejecting the constitutional rights of American citizens, kidnapping alleged terrorists from foreign soil, or treating captured “enemies” inhumanely, Holder’s supposed confirmation of the limits of the president’s authority to kill without accountability is a deeply unsettling unilateral and illegal expansion of political power. As Glenn Greenwald pointed out well before Holder’s (consistent) responses, [t]he idea that assassinations will be used only where capture is "infeasible" is a political choice, not a legal principle. If the president has the power to kill anyone he claims is an "enemy combatant" in this "war", including a US citizen, then there is no way to limit this power to situations where capture is infeasible. Yet instead of expressing outrage, Democrats continued to acquiesce to the White House’s radical expansion of executive power. And they turned on Rand Paul, even though his objections should have been shared not just by liberals, but by everyone with even a passing respect for the rule of law. Advertisement: So where’s the problem for progressives? Apparently, Paul’s question about killing Americans on American soil is deemed such a singular Tea Party-ish position that only two Democrats (Patrick Leahy and Jeff Merkley) and Independent Bernie Sanders joined Republican forces in challenging Brennan’s nomination. Rather than challenge a Democratic administration in defense of constitutional principles that all citizens should insist be guaranteed, Democrats embraced party tribalism. As Kevin Gosztola pointed out, so-called progressives from Lawrence O’Donnell to Chris Matthews vilified the only politician who was asserting a -- limited, mild, patriotic -- challenge to the White House’s imperious expansion of unilateral authority. It was a challenge that every single Democrat, conservative, liberal or progressive should have been pushing for the last four years. Even those few, such as Sen. Ron Wyden, who exhibited some backbone, did so tepidly. After all, Wyden clearly stated that he would vote to confirm Brennan. Apparently, it is bizarre to insist that the U.S. government’s power to kill should be limited. So much so that (Feet to the Fire!) liberals point to Paul’s endorsement of a 1905 right to contract case as a distraction reason to demonize him instead of supporting his stance on this issue. The most important take-away of Paul’s 12-hour filibuster for ThinkProgress.org’s Ian Millhiser was that Paul endorsed Lochner v. New York in his very same remarks about drones. Tea Party Libertarian Paul went so far as to — gasp — suggest that big government was a problem, or that the right to contract could have helped avoid Jim Crow and racism against African-Americans. Paul’s speech also includes a somewhat rambling attempt to claim that Lochner helped “end Jim Crow,” a claim that would cause anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of civil rights history to scratch their head. Lochner was decided in 1905, and, while Paul is correct that the Lochner Era justices very occasionally struck down discriminatory laws, Jim Crow was still very much alive when Lochner was overruled in the 1930s. The Supreme Court decision that did the most to eradicate Jim Crow — Brown v. Board of Education — rested on the Constitution’s guarantee that no person shall be denied the “the equal protection of the laws,” not on some fabricated right to contract. So … Rand Paul is a racist, according to Millhiser, who writes as if the “fabricated right to contract” was a bizarre, unusual, far-right idea that existed in a vacuum. But the unfettered "right to contract" is consistent with a classic free-market framework later articulated by Milton Friedman. Friedman argued that racism could be eroded by adhering to unregulated markets. Indeed, the right to contract is a staple of the Chicago School of Economics, which includes notables such as Richard Posner and Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s economic policy adviser and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. I’m not endorsing free markets, but it’s hardly an unusual reading for many, many mainstream economists. In fact, your average Ivy League college-going child is probably going to take a class with one of them soon, if they haven’t already. Advertisement: Similar free-market principles are the basis of challenging the hyper-regulated and hyper-punitive War on Drugs, which is disproportionately directed toward minority populations. I venture to guess that this is the basis of Rand’s father, Rep. Ron Paul’s long-standing objections to the Drug War as well. It’s hardly outlandish to believe that in some instances, pushing back against the authority of the state would work in favor of vulnerable populations. Again, I don’t endorse free markets; I’m only suggesting that we need a more complicated view of Paul’s position than Democrats are willing to acknowledge. Is Paul a racist? Here’s a better question: Is Paul any more racist in his economic and drug policy endorsements than the White House in its policies of kill lists, targeted killings, drone strikes, TSA no-fly and watch lists, Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Communities program or “See Something, Say Something” policy? Is Rand Paul more of a threat to black and brown populations (American or foreign) than the current administration, which deported more than 1.5 million migrants during its first term and separated tens of thousands of migrant parents from their children? Is Rand Paul more of a threat to our safety
one of the primary complaints against Homura’s development in Rebellion. Intimately connected with characterization is also the reader/viewer’s ability to bring together the relevant background information needed in order to interpret the relationship between various features of a story. We have the relevant background information in order to detail why Madoka would come save Homura in Rebellion — it is because she is that kind of person, based on everything we know of her from the series. But do we have the relevant information in order to find meaning and fittingness in Homura’s final decision at the end of the film? Fans dispute this, but I intend to show in this paper that we do. Finally, with regard to the question of contextual background necessary for judgments of narrative fittingness, we should add that the relevant contextual background can refer not simply to the writing of individual characters but also to themes within narratives. Two major themes preoccupied Puella: the problem of unjust suffering and the various economies of sacrifice set in place to offset this suffering. The relationship between these two poles of sacrifice and the problem of suffering provides the broader background in which the details of the narrative happen, both in the series and in its sequel. I suggest that what most fundamentally drives dissatisfaction among the fanbase is Rebellion’s frustration of the catharsis Puella accomplishes in its series finale concerning the problems of suffering and sacrifice. I speak explicitly of catharsis because, as I hope to show below, the tv series[9] provides so much of its artistic satisfaction through its building up of a world of heartless suffering that is ultimately overcome through the sacrificial actions of Madoka Kaname. With Rebellion, however, Urobuchi and his team completely overturn the moral and narrative closure of the series preceding it, thereby effecting a shift between the relation of the two poles and thus “betray[ing] the message of the original.”[10] This explains much of the disappointment with Rebellion; the extent to which the consolations of the show’s finale appeal to the viewer will determine in large part how she receives Rebellion’s (literal) unraveling of Puella’s universe. But precisely in this, I argue, lies the genius of the film, and to demonstrate that genius is to lay bare the narrative fittingness of Homura’s rebellion at the end of the third film. This is my goal in this essay: to underscore that narrative fittingness by analyzing the unraveling of Puella’s universe that Rebellion accomplished. To do so I must perform two tasks. First, to analyze how the original series creates the interpretive background for its narrative, its moral and metaphysical universe in which suffering is endemic to human life and must be negotiated and kept at bay through a system of sacrifice, namely the sacrifice of the magical girls themselves. It is to this universe that Madoka’s decision to become a magical girl (and specifically, the magical girl par excellence) speaks, and it is through her sacrifice that the series offers viewers some form of catharsis. Rebellion is a rejection of this sacrifice, and so my second aim with this paper is to demonstrate that Rebellion presents the moral project of magical girl Homura Akemi as the condemnation of the series that came before it. In Rebellion, Homura grows as a character; if Madoka’s character is the moral center of the original series, then Rebellion is Homura’s chance to ‘talk back’ to the series, to question the moral validity of its conclusion. It is to this conversation that we as viewers are invited, to decide between the different answers Madoka and Homura offer to the problem of suffering and sacrifice. To this analysis of the show and its sequel I wish to bring an additional conversation partner: Fyodor Dostoevsky. It may not seem it at first, but the Russian novelist, and specifically his master work, The Brothers Karamazov, can be juxtaposed nicely with the Puella story because both deal extensively with the question of the suffering of children and its justifications and solutions. It is the central contention of this paper that what we are witnessing in the dynamic between the original series and its film’s postscript is a rendition of the polyphony of perspectives found in the Brothers Karamazov.[11] Much of the polyphony of this novel concerns the philosophical and theological question of theodicy — how to justify God in the face of evil and suffering — and especially theodicy as it relates to the suffering of children. The chapter in the book that deals explicitly with this question is entitled, fittingly enough, “Rebellion,” and it was just this coincidence of titles that provoked the thoughts you are now reading. I cannot definitively demonstrate that Urobuchi drew on Dostoevsky as he conceptualized the story for the series and films (though this is by no means out of the question considering the significant role literature plays in his other works, especially Psycho-Pass). But even if Puella is not intentionally drawing on Karamazov, the book nonetheless serves as an ideal lens through which to address the questions of coherence between Puella and Rebellion. My argument, then, will proceed as follows. I will first give a sketch of Dostoevsky’s two ‘responses’ to the question of suffering as these appear in his chapter “Rebellion.” These are, respectively, the conclusions that 1) the suffering of the most innocent one, God, will justify the allowance of evil in the world, and contrastively, 2) that even the suffering of the innocent God is insufficient to justify the suffering in the world, especially that of innocent children. In second and third sections, I will connect these two responses to Puella the series and to Rebellion respectively. Part I: Dostoevsky Dostoevsky’s “Rebellion” The chapter “Rebellion”[12] consists of a conversation between two of the Karamazov brothers, the monk-novice Alyosha and his older, skeptically-inclined brother, Ivan. Ivan is tormented by the reality of suffering, and he intends in this chapter to trouble his brother with some of his own anguish. Ivan speaks the most throughout the chapter, though Alyosha is allowed one final, questioning attack of his own in response. It is an injustice to the cruel beauty of Ivan’s argument to reduce it to a few summary points, but for the sake of space we must move briskly towards our analysis of Puella, and so I offer here the barest bones of his argument. Ivan attacks in this chapter not the (Christian) concept of God simpliciter, but rather the arrangement of the world by this God so that the suffering of children is not only an actuality, but even a possibility. Children are crucial in Ivan’s discourse, for they are “of a different nature,” completely unlike the adult selves they will become. They, unlike adults, are pure, untainted with the knowledge of good and evil. And so it is scandalous that they must suffer for the sins committed against them by the adults of this world. Ivan’s prime example of a child suffering is a story (Ivan, as it happens, has made it a hobby to collect stories of the suffering of children) he heard about a five-year old girl who was beaten to a pulp by her parents and then shoved in an outhouse with her mouth full of excrement. If that image were not haunting enough, Ivan follows it up with the harrowing cry of the child beating her breast and pleading with “dear God” to save her. No god answers. Ivan’s outrage finds here its best expression: “[C]an you understand why this nonsense is needed and created? Without it, they say, man could not have even lived on earth, for he would not have known god and evil. Who wants to know this damned good and evil at such a price? The whole world of knowledge is not worth the tears of that little child to ‘dear God!’”[13] If the cost of human freedom is the possibility of such innocent suffering, then it is a price too high. “I need retribution, otherwise I will destroy myself,” Ivan cries.[14] There can be no justice, he claims, in a world where children pay the price to achieve the “eternal harmony” that God will bring about in the afterlife when all wrongdoers and their victims are reconciled. Ultimate reconciliation assuages nothing. It is in response to this state of affairs that Ivan utters his famous lines, “I’d rather remain with my unrequited suffering and my unquenched indignation, even if I am wrong. Besides, they have put too high a price on harmony; we can’t afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return my ticket…It’s not that I don’t accept God, Alyosha, I just most respectfully return him the ticket.”[15] Such egregious acts of violence against children can tolerate no forgiveness, and thus the entire idea of an ultimate harmony and reconciliation — on which the whole enterprise of creation was justified in the first place — is thrown into question. Alyosha, the monk-novice, balks at Ivan’s refusal for ultimate comfort of eschatological harmony. “That is rebellion,” Alyosha responds, even as he reluctantly agrees with Ivan’s assessment of God’s world. And yet something stops him from accepting this rebellion wholesale: the figure of Christ. “Brother…you asked just now if there is in the whole world a being who could and would have the right to forgive. But there is such a being, and he can forgive everything, forgive all and for all, because he himself gave his innocent blood for all and for everything.”[16] If God can enter the world of human violence as the pure one whose innocence surpasses even that of children, then there can be a way of at least bearing the world’s violence, Alyosha claims. Though Alyosha is not allowed any sustained development of this counterargument to Ivan’s despair (and Alyosha is not the type to give compelling rational arguments in the first place), this idea of the innocent willingly suffering on behalf of the guilty will feature prominently throughout the rest of the novel as an intra-narrative response to Ivan’s rebellion. From this brief summary of Dostoevsky’s chapter, a few points relevant to our topic should already be clear. The reader will note that there is in Ivan’s obsessive focus on children’s suffering a clear parallel to the suffering of the magical girls: why should these girls be the bearers of such immense suffering? Madoka herself will grapple with this question throughout the series. But it is in the figure of Homura Akemi that we find an Urobuchian double to Ivan Karamazov. The protest of Ivan is given narrative voice in Homura Akemi’s series-long attempt to prevent Madoka from sacrificing herself in order to save Homura and the world, as well as in Homura’s plot to nullify Madoka’s “Law of Cycles” which justifies the world of Homura’s own suffering. Madoka, on the other hand, speaks for Alyosha’s plea that the willing suffering of a god can make the suffering of the innocent of this world livable in some way. This survey of “Rebellion” will suffice for now; as we turn to our next section, we will examine how Puella Magi presents the contrasting moral visions of Homura and Madoka so as to vindicate both Madoka’s (and Alyosha’s) moral perspective. Part II: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Homura’s Tragic Wish Episode 10 (“I Won’t Rely on Anyone Anymore”) of Puella will serve as a good entry into our discussion, for it is in this episode that the audience is finally treated to a fuller vision of Puella’s universe through the narration of Homura Akemi’s backstory. Homura is, first of all, a character of highest tragedy, a fitting companion to Oedipus and others in literature who have rattled the cage of fate only to find its bars unmoving. The tragedy of Homura’s situation becomes clear in Episode 10 as we witness her transformation from anemic and shy schoolgirl to hardened and emotionally cool magical girl. The catalyst of this emotional metamorphosis is, of course, the death of Madoka, Homura’s best friend who sacrifices herself at the first Walpurgisnacht (the cataclysmic advent of a super-witch who besieges their hometown) in order to save Homura’s life. Homura rejects this sacrifice. Luckily for her, she also possesses, due to her magical girl transformation, the means to perform that rejection on time and space itself. By resetting time, Homura relives again and again the tragic month that leads up to Madoka’s death, with Homura each and every time unable to avert the disaster she lives to undo. One curious feature worth our attention emerges in this episode’s depiction of Homura’s tragic struggle. Madoka appears to us at the beginning of the episode as a strong, forthright, and full-blooded magical girl — utterly unlike the quiet, insecure, and unsure Madoka viewers have known so far in the show.[17] Homura, on the other hand, appears at the beginning of her story much more like the Madoka we know. It appears that an inversion has happened throughout the course of Homura’s interference with time: the more Homura attempts to avert Madoka’s cruel end, the more Madoka’s personality diminishes. This is a troubling fact, one which should tip off attentive viewers that Homura’s efforts to undo Madoka’s sacrifice — the consummate act of her fully-formed personality — are in fact undoing the very person Homura loves so dearly. Here is our first clear narrative tie between Homura’s actions in the series and her actions at the end of Rebellion. We will have occasion to return to this point in the second half of our paper. There is thus a tragic irony in Homura’s heroic, time-traveling endeavors. This irony does not remain merely on the level of viewer awareness, however; it becomes apparent even to the of Puella. Episode 11 (“The Only Thing I Have Left to Guide Me”) exposes it to viewers and to Madoka when Kyubey, the representative of the higher life forms (“Incubators”) manipulating the magical girls as victims for his economy of sacrifice, at last explains just why Madoka is supremely fit to become a magical girl more powerful than all others. Homura’s regular undoing of time has compressed the fabric of the universe so much that Madoka has now become its karmic center. It is this karmic compression which in turn will allow Madoka to make her ultimate sacrifice in Episode 12 (“My Very Best Friend”), a sacrifice far greater than the ones she had made before Homura began writing her revisionist history. In attempting to prevent Madoka from sacrificing herself, Homura has instead enabled this death supremely.[18] Let us recall the details of this final sacrifice. Madoka, because she is more powerful than any potential magical girl ever, is able to wish for whatever she desires with an absolute assurance of its fulfillment. Her wish: to rewrite the karmic law that magical girls must inevitably become witches and thereby to save all magical girls, and especially her friends, Homura, Sayaka Miki (who had already become a witch and then subsequently was destroyed), Kyoko Sakura (also dead), and Mami Tomoe (the first magical girl we meet to have died). This is a massive wish, only possible, as we have noted, because of Homura’s actions, but this is not the only reason the wish appears grandiose. Consider Madoka’s hesitance throughout the series concerning what to wish for should she become a magical girl. She simply cannot make up her mind — another sign of her diminished personality compared to the Madoka (who must have made a wish already since she is a magical girl) we meet in Homura’s story in Episode 10. But we can also view this indeterminacy concerning her wish from another angle: Madoka does not know what wish to make because the only wish that can satisfy her self — which, as we have noted, has thinned more and more with each turning back of Homura’s clock — is now a wish that transcends all wishes. And the price of this wish, as viewers discover, is Madoka’s complete dissolution as a self. One for Many: The Quest to Save the Individual It is fitting that Madoka’s wish leads to her dissolution; in some way, Homura’s actions have been working, ironically, precisely towards this end. Yet such a sacrifice is also perfectly consonant with the person Homura loved in Madoka in the first place, a person willing to sacrifice herself for the good of others. Here we return to our discussion of Dostoevsky and his chapter “Rebellion,” particularly with respect to Alyosha’s retort to Ivan that the sacrificial love of God manifest in Christ can render the suffering of the world morally tolerable in some way. In this series, Madoka Kaname is the Christ figure. I will say more in a moment about the particular ways in which Madoka is a Christ figure in a particularly Dostoevskian mode, but should the reader meet this claim with some skepticism, let us recall the first scene we see in Episode 12 immediately following Madoka’s sacrifice. After Madoka and Homura share an intimate farewell — somewhere and sometime outside of space and time — the scene cuts to Kyosuke Kamijo (the boy whose musical career-ending physical handicap was healed as the wish accompanying Sayaka Miki’s transformation into a magical girl) about to begin his violin recital. He announces to his audience, and to us viewers, that he will be playing “Ave Maria.” This piece immediately contextualizes Madoka’s sacrifice in the interpretive framework of the sacrifice of Christ, the son of the Mary whom Kyosuke’s violin hails.[19] And this is not the first connection we have seen of Madoka and Christ: already in Episode 11, when Kyubey explains to Homura that she is the inadvertent cause of Homura’s immense karmic destiny, we see Madoka stretched out by the ‘threads of fate,’ her small frame making a cruciform shape.[20] But how is Madoka a Dostoevskian Christ? She is this insofar as she fulfills Alyosha’s requirements: she is completely innocent and she suffers. But, perhaps more appropriately than even Christ, Madoka is also a child who offers herself in the place of all others, and especially in the place of her suffering child-warriors. In this vein we may note that though it is a commonplace that Puella serves as a subversion of the magical girl genre of manga/anime, this does not exhaust our interpretations of the fact that Urobuchi’s magical girls are, well, little girls. It is, after all, because of the suffering of the innocent magical girls — who courageously risk their lives in the fight against witches and whose fate is assured devolution into the state of witches — that Madoka decides to sacrifice her life. She will offer her life in defiance of the laws of the universe that condemn magical girls to unjust suffering. The greatest exposition of these laws comes in Episode 11 when Kyubey gives Madoka a tour through the history of magical girls. Kyubey here explains that it was the sacrifice of the magical girls that has allowed human society to flourish without the constant interference of witches: “Don’t get me wrong — I don’t think [the magical girls who gave into despair and died as witches] are foolish. It was thanks to their sacrifices that human society developed as far as it has. It was the suffering of all the magical girls throughout history that laid the foundations of the life you have now. If your civilization benefits from their sacrifice, why should the lives of a few people matter in the grand scheme of things?” Cosmic harmony and growth, therefore, depends on the sacrifice of one for the many. Recall that this is exactly the substance of Ivan’s protest against God and His world in the Brothers Karamazov: the price of freedom and eternal harmony is the suffering of innocent children. Ivan’s lament appears here in a different metaphysical and religious framework, the framework of karmic balance and harmony,[21] but the complaint is the same in both systems. Children ought not to suffer for any greater good.[22] You Are Now a Concept: Madoka’s Karmic Kenosis Madoka’s sacrifice will rewrite the world such that magical girls no longer become witches. In this way, she overcomes the cosmic, karmic system and the Incubators with it; she bypasses the Incubator’s trick of offering a girl a ‘regular’ wish and thereby sacrificing the girl’s life in order to keep propped up the entire system of sacrifice (what I will henceforth call “The System”). “I want them [the magical girls] to be at peace. If that goes against the laws of the universe, then I’ll just rewrite those laws.” Madoka’s sacrifice, then, is the end of sacrifice. But this means as well that her sacrifice will have consequences as unique for her as they are for the universe. In the first place, Madoka’s sacrifice frees magical girls through Madoka’s newfound divine powers. Kyubey identifies Madoka’s wish as an attempt to “violat[e] the laws of cosmic destiny” and to “become a god.” Through her wish, Madoka does indeed become the god Alyosha spoke of, the innocent one who sacrifices himself for the sake of all. Her sacrifice’s redemptive and substitionary character finds best expression in the sequence in which we witness Madoka visiting magical girls throughout history and relieving them of their fate of becoming witches. She speaks kindly to them words of good cheer; “I will take your burden,” “I will take your pain.” In this new universe, magical girls, instead of turning into witches when their Soul Gems accumulate too much despair, simply pass into the afterlife. Such is the fate of Sayaka, whose new death we witness in Episode 12, the significance of which death only Homura truly understands. It brings Homura great pain to witness Sayaka’s death, for only she knows (due to her ability to travel through time) that Sayaka was spared a witch’s fate through Madoka’s sacrifice. Homura remains the only magical girl with knowledge of the previous timeline of Episodes 1–11, which means that she is the only person alive who remembers Madoka. This is because Madoka’s sacrifice entailed not simply physical death, but the complete eradication of personal existence alongside the death of her body. The magical girl Mami notes the severity of this sacrifice when she notes that “dying would be a kinder fate.” Stricken from memory, Madoka’s apotheosis means the end of her narrative identity. To her family and her friends she will be but a name, a vague memory forever far away and yet always on the tip of their tongues. Kyubey judges her to not exist personally any longer: “Your physical body is no more. You are now a concept.” Mami agrees, “You have become hope itself.” By rewriting the universe through her death, Madoka has become the new System — the “Law of Cycles,” as she is frequently called in Rebellion. One of the most satisfying aspects of this conclusion to Puella is the dawning realization of defeat in the character of Kyubey. The chief mouthpiece of the former System (as we have noted above) and the clearest identifiable ‘villain’ of the show, Kyubey is at first shocked by Madoka’s outwitting wish, but his shock does not last long. In a conversation between Kyubey and Homura in the wake of Madoka’s sacrifice, Kyubey shows Homura a massive comet zooming through the realms of space, which comet he calls the “existence that is Madoka Kaname.” This is Madoka’s new Soul Gem, and as such it is destined — so Kyubey believes — to eventually destroy another universe with all the curses from this world it has stored up in itself through Madoka’s act of saving all magical girls. Kyubey’s smug conclusion, however, is shattered with Madoka’s appearance in her full regalia as the ultimate Magical Girl[23] and her riposte that her wish to save all magical girls means that she has also saved herself. This is Kyubey’s ultimate defeat, and we witness its full effects at the end of the episode when we find Homura explaining to Kyubey that, in another timeline, Incubators were able to steal energy from magical girls who inevitably became witches. Kyubey is extremely intrigued by this idea, and he affirms his desire that such a system be available to Incubators, but he cannot decide whether Homura is telling the truth or whether she has simply cooked up this idea in her head. The final moments of the show make Madoka’s non-existence most clear even while it raises the possibility that her sacrifice has left traces of her identity in the new world she has created. Near the end of Episode 12, Homura stumbles upon Madoka’s young brother, Tatsuya Kaname, drawing a stick figure of Madoka in the sand and repeatedly calling her name. Homura recognizes the drawing warmly, and this recognition invites Madoka’s mother, Junko Kaname, to ask Homura: “Wait, do you know who Madoka is? Is she some kind of anime character?…I don’t know why, but when I heard that name I started getting all nostalgic. Madoka…”[24] Here Madoka’s transformation into a concept transcends even the boundaries of the show through Junko’s ironic quasi-breaking of the fourth wall. We as viewers are to remember Madoka not as an individual, but as a concept, as the show itself that produces a certain kind of nostalgia: the same nostalgia Madoka’s sacrifice has left in the hearts of her friends. And yet, as we have seen through the interaction between Homura and Madoka’s baby brother, there remains some ambiguity at the end of the series finale as to whether Madoka is truly ‘gone.’ Homura finds herself still able to communicate, nebulously, with some entity recognizable as Madoka. We see this communication first in the moments after the final sacrifice: a naked and frightened Homura appears on the screen only to be embraced by an equally naked Madoka. Homura comes to understand the effect of Madoka’s sacrifice, and in response to her protests that she will never see Madoka again, that she will never sense Madoka again, Madoka assuages her fears: “It’s too soon to give up.” Even if all others forget Madoka, Homura will remember her and know her presence. As a token of such hope, Madoka undoes her two hair ties and gives the red ribbons as a gift to Homura — an exact reversal of Homura’s own hair untying in Episode 10, during which Homura pronounces “No one will believe me about the future. No one will accept the truth about the future.” This is when Homura “turns cold” and becomes the Homura we know throughout the series. For Homura, then, the undoing of her braids represents the abandonment of hope about the future; she must take the future into her own hands. For Madoka, her free hair (which will become flowing and regal at the moment she finally defeats Kyubey) symbolizes the confidence that the past will continue into the future as Homura’s memory.[25] We can therefore read this gift as Madoka’s final request that Homura become the person she used to be, before she lost herself in despair. That the final, post-credits scene of the series finale shows Homura fighting the new curses of the world, wraiths, with Madoka’s ribbon snugly in her hair, suggests that she will indeed fulfill Madoka’s wish, at last accepting Madoka’s sacrifice and the world Madoka has created. We have every reason to hope, for the last thing we hear in the show is Madoka’s voice urging Homura on, “Do your best.” Part III: Rebellion Divided Consciousness: Homura’s Labyrinthine Soul[26] The reading of the series offered above can, as I have argued, be identified with the perspective of Alyosha Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s chapter “Rebellion.” Just as with Christ’s sacrifice in Alyosha’s world, Madoka’s sacrifice makes the world of sacrifice morally livable (and she does this by remaking that world). And yet the thought may have already dawned on the reader: the world of sacrifice in some sense remains precisely through Madoka’s sacrifice, and so, even though no new magical girls will be sacrificed by becoming witches, Madoka’s world remains a world in which the individual must be sacrificed for the many. Is Madoka’s sacrifice therefore not simply a restatement of Kyubey’s perspective, but condensed into the sacrifice of only one magical girl instead of all of them? It is this interpretation of Madoka’s death that propels Homura Akemi’s rebellion in the film sequel to the series. I will argue in this half of the paper that Homura’s rebellion can be read as a version of Ivan Karamazov’s own “Rebellion” against Alyosha’s moral vision of sacrifice. Before moving on to our analysis, however, it will be helpful to summarize the film briefly. Viewers begin the film immersed in a similar but altered Puella universe, one in which the magical girls we know from the series are all alive and well, fighting together as the “Puella Magi Holy Quintet” (in scenes highly reminiscent of Sailor Moon, no less). Madoka, Sayaka, Homura, Kyoko, and Mami battle ‘Nightmares’ (new monsters which have replaced both the witches and wraiths we know from the series), drink tea in the afternoon, and go to school together. Life is perfect. Too perfect, in fact, and this leads Homura to begin questioning whether the girls are trapped in some fantasy world. Eventually she comes to the realization that they are indeed locked in a witch’s labyrinth, and the final revelation — for Homura and for us viewers — is that Homura herself is the architect of this labyrinth: she has become a witch. (The mechanics of how this is possible in light of the conclusion to the series we leave for the viewer to learn by watching the film). Madoka, seeing the suffering of Homura as she descends into witchhood, descends momentarily into the world — as an individual — in order to rescue Homura. Precisely at this moment, however, Homura shockingly snatches Madoka’s wrists, pulling Madoka from the divine realm and beginning the process of re-writing the universe’s laws once again.[27] This is her rebellion against Madoka’s universe — this is Homura, like Ivan, ‘returning her ticket’ to Madoka’s world — and the film ends with Madoka, Sayaka, Kyoko, and Mami trapped in the world Homura, the new demonic god, has created. This is the twist ending that has occasioned ‘a fan rebellion’ with cries of incoherence. The most serious fault line for claims of coherence is, as we noted above, the characterization of Homura. If Puella was Madoka’s story, Rebellion is Homura’s; indeed, majority of the film takes place within Homura’s Soul Gem.[28] To argue against this rebellion and instead for coherence, we point out first that the Homura we meet in her own labyrinth (whom we may call ‘Labyrinthine Homura’) is completely of a piece with the Homura we knew from the series. Labyrinthine Homura’s frustration with her growing realization that she and the girls are inside a witch’s labyrinth; her insistence on uncovering the truth in spite of repeated warnings that she may not like the truth she uncovers; her anguish at discovering that she is the witch in whose labyrinth she is trapped; her desperate requests to Madoka to let her die within her own labyrinth — all these converge to heighten the sense of tragedy laced through Homura’s entire story, from Puella through to Rebellion.[29] Most movingly, in her protests against the Incubators who made her into a witch, Labyrinthine Homura recalls that she first became a magical girl in order to save Madoka, and thus she will not allow the Incubators to use Madoka after they have lured her into Homura’s Soul Gem. In response to Kyubey’s question of whether she is willing to die as a witch and give up her own salvation (granted to her by Madoka’s sacrifice) in order to save Madoka, Labyrinthine Homura answers with a resounding yes. All these observations suggest that Homura despises the intentions of the Incubators who are using Homura to break the ‘Law of Cycles’ in order to create witches (creatures, ironically, whom the Incubators could not even imagine until Homura explained them to Kyubey in the final episode of Puella). Do all of Homura’s protestations and actions finally prove false and manipulative when Homura becomes not Madoka’s savior but her prison-master? The terrifying, small smile that plays on Homura’s lips the moment she grips Madoka’s wrists threatens to undo the entire film that has come before it. It is Homura, and not the Incubators, who exploits Madoka’s goodness and pity in order to lure her from the depths of her new divine existence back towards the vulnerability of individuality. Homura, in the final moments of the film, outwits the Incubators, making them pawns in her game, though in the process she has rendered herself the very object of Labyrinthine Homura’s hateful reproaches. This is the radical break in character that critics have found in Homura’s actions at the end of Rebellion. In making this judgment, they miss the broader clues in Homura’s characterization in the series, as well as the sustained discussion of the validity of sacrifice in order to keep suffering at bay. We have already detailed some of this broader background necessary for interpretation; let us now sharpen our analysis in order to show the narrative coherence between the ending of Rebellion and all that has come before. We can begin with the question of sacrifice. The End of Sacrifice We have mentioned Madoka’s return to individual existence in the course of Rebellion. This return happens first in the fantasy world inside Homura’s Soul Gem, when Madoka, attracted by the sufferings of Homura, is drawn into her labyrinth in an attempt to rescue her before she becomes a witch. This is, after all, Madoka’s new, divine role as the new structure of the universe, the ‘Law of Cycles,’ as Kyubey calls Madoka. This (re)-incarnation of Madoka into individuation continues the Christ-figure associations from the series, and these associations pepper the film throughout. They begin early, when Madoka’s teacher, Kazuko Saotome, predicts the end of the world, complete with solar and lunar eclipses and the second coming of Christ. We learn by the end of the film, as we watch the blood moons of the collapsing labyrinth, that the Christ figure has already come in the person of Madoka.[30] What is more, Madoka’s hidden, saving presence is acknowledged the moment Homura’s labyrinthine manifestation recognizes that whoever created this fantasy realm is dishonoring Madoka’s sacrifice. As we watch Homura gripping the feet of a stone relief depicting Madoka as a saving god coming with angel wings and the breaking rays of the world beyond, we hear the labyrinth’s Clara Dolls chanting “Gott is tot, Gott is tot,” a dense refrain in the light of Rebellion’s unfolding. Firstly, Madoka was dead insofar as she ceased to exist individually after her sacrifice in Puella; secondly, Madoka is ‘dead’ when we consider her loss of memory within Homura’s labyrinth; thirdly, Madoka’s ‘divine death’ will be most complete paradoxically when Homura wrests from her divine existence and subjects her to the new world Homura creates. With the end of Madoka’s apotheosis we now witness Homura’s. Madoka’s sacrifice made her a god, Homura’s seizing of divinity made her a demon. The effects of this transformation extend further than Madoka’s. Whereas the cycle of hope and despair in the life of magical girls remained in Madoka’s new world, albeit with saving emphasis found in hope, in Homura’s new world, hope and despair are transcended to reach the heights — or depths — of love. So Homura explains it, anyway, though we will ask in the conclusion of our analysis of Rebellion whether Homura’s self-assessment is ultimately convincing. In any case, Homura’s new world breaks the grammar, the rationality that is the only principle Kyubey and his fellow Incubators can understand; for this reason we see that it is only in Homura’s universe that the Incubators are finally conquered, having become instruments at the service of Homura.[31] And so, whereas Madoka’s sacrifice, though it undid the suffering of magical girls, nonetheless in the final analysis kept the System in place, Homura’s grasping at divinity completely undoes the System. Indeed, Homura does not lose her individuated existence like Madoka did — she remains in the world to enjoy the presence of the one she loves, Madoka Kaname. Divine Doubles When Homura rips Madoka from the divine realm, her Soul Gem overflows with chaotic chromatics, prompting Sayaka to ask, “What is that? Obsession, desire?” Homura would answer, “Love,” but we viewers may be excused for questioning this identification and siding with Sayaka’s description. In her re-writing of the laws of Madoka’s universe, Homura has achieved her goal: she has regained Madoka (“I’ve got you,” she says, gripping Madoka’s wrists) and so has accomplished her rebellion against Madoka: “I’m never going to let you go again, Madoka.” The suffering child, Madoka, whose sacrifice Homura could never finally accept, is now back and safe in the arms of Homura; Homura rebelled against the world of sacrifice — both Kyubey’s first world and Madoka’s second world — and won. What is the cost of this rebellion? If Madoka’s own rebellion against Kyubey’s world entailed her ceasing to exist as an individual and set her for a perpetual fight against despair arising in magical girls, the cost of Homura’s sacrifice is more complicated. Initially Sayaka protests Homura’s world, and so does Madoka in the climactic scene of the film’s denouement. This scene is worth analyzing in detail. It takes place in the hallway of Mitakihara Middle School, and viewers will remember that this is the hallway where Homura, in Episode 1 (“I First Met Her in a Dream”), first cryptically pleaded with Madoka never to change anything about herself. Homura’s admonition to
to kidney cancer, testicular cancer, low birth weights and other health problems — flowed through a Colorado Springs Utilities wastewater treatment plant before crews could try to block it. Then it trickled into Fountain Creek. “Even if we would have been able to head it off at the plant, we’re not equipped. I don’t know of any wastewater plants in the country equipped to remove PFCs,” utilities spokesman Steve Berry said. “We would not have been able to remove that chemical before it was discharged back into the environment from our effluent.” Fountain Creek flows south toward Pueblo and into the Arkansas River. Pueblo Board of Water Works spokesman Paul Fanning said Pueblo didn’t hear about the spill until reporters made inquiries Tuesday. “We don’t use any groundwater or surface water from Fountain Creek. We use water from the Arkansas River taken upstream from where Fountain Creek flows in,” Fanning said. “But it is not a good thing to have those contaminants anywhere in our water. There are some reported health effects. It is in our interest to protect our public.” Air Force officials couldn’t be reached to discuss the spill. “We take all environmental concerns seriously and have opened an investigation to determine the cause of the discharge and prevent it from happening again,” Col. Doug Schiess, commander of the 21st Space Wing at Peterson AFB, said in a prepared statement. The PFC-laced waste was held in a tank at a firefighter training area on the base, located at the southeastern edge of Colorado Springs. PFCs are a component in the aqueous film-forming foam used to extinguish fuel fires. Air Force officials said in the statement that they discovered the spill Oct. 12 during an inspection. They notified Colorado Springs Utilities the next day. The tank was part of a system used to recirculate water to a firefighter training area. PFCs at levels exceeding a federal health advisory limit already had contaminated groundwater and public drinking water systems south of Colorado Springs, an area that is home to an estimated 80,000 people. Peterson AFB is suspected as one source. Federal Army Corps of Engineer officials conducted an initial investigation. Air Force officials have said the military’s past use of PFCs for firefighting was legal, but that crews are discontinuing their use except in emergencies. PFCs are not regulated under federal law. Air Force civil engineers are in the process of assessing PFC contamination around the country. They say they’ll put out a report in the spring. The PFC-tainted area south of Colorado Springs ranks among the hardest-hit of at least 63 areas nationwide where PFCs have been measured in public water systems at levels the Environmental Protection Agency deems dangerous. In Colorado, government well test data show PFCs have contaminated groundwater throughout the Fountain Creek watershed, nearly as far south as Pueblo, at levels up to 20 times higher than that EPA health advisory limit of 70 parts per trillion. Public-water authorities in Fountain, Security and Widefield have scrambled to provide enough alternative water. Security has been purchasing millions of gallons of diverted Arkansas River water from Colorado Springs, installing new pipelines and minimizing pumping from contaminated municipal wells. Since Sept. 9, Security has not pumped any water from wells, water and sanitation district manager Roy Heald said. “This spill does not affect us immediately,” Heald said. “Our only concern would be the long-term effect on Fountain Creek and the Widefield Aquifer.” Some parents south of Colorado Springs began paying for bottled water — to be safe. A contractor delivers emergency bottled water to at least 77 households. The Air Force has contributed $4.3 million to help communities deal with the contamination. Colorado Springs utilities crews will work with the military “to keep PFCs out of our system. That is the goal,” Berry said. “How do we protect our customers and our system from this chemical? That is the focus. It goes beyond the Air Force. It is any industrial process that may use that chemical.” El Paso County Public Health “takes this discharge seriously and will coordinate with the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment to collect water samples along Fountain Creek, if warranted,” spokeswoman Danielle Oller said. CDPHE has been informed, agency spokesman Mark Salley said, adding: “It is under investigation by the Air Force, and the department is waiting for information. … The Air Force has demonstrated its commitment to identifying and addressing PFC contamination at Peterson Air Force Base and facilities nationwide.”The City of Detroit has just filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, the largest municipal insolvency in U.S. history, according to news reports. Though the move wasn't expected to happen until Friday, news sources in the Motor City confirm it happened moments ago this afternoon. Today, Kevyn Orr, the city's state-appointed emergency manager asked a federal judge for permission to place the city into Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the AP reports. The filing would allow the city to seek protection from creditors and unions who are renegotiating $18.5 billion in debt and other liabilities. In June, Orr released a plan that would leave many of these creditors with "far less" than they are owed, reports the Detroit Free Press. Advertisement The Freep puts it as well as anyone here: the bankruptcy would lay "the groundwork for a historic effort to bail out a city that is sinking under billions of dollars in debt and decades of mismanagement, population flight and loss of tax revenue." The filing begins a 30-to-90 day period where a court will determine if Detroit is eligible for Chapter 9 protection and what claimants might be entitled to in a settlement. Advertisement More on this as we get it. Update 4:22 p.m.: Here's a copy of the Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing care of TV station WXYZ. Advertisement Detroit Chapter 9 Bankruptcy Filing - WXYZ by webteam2410 Update 4:34 p.m.: Until today, the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history by population was in Stockton, California, which earlier this year sought protection from more than $500 million in debts. In terms of debt size, Jefferson County, Alabama was larger than Stockton with $4.23 billion in debt. Detroit today trumps both. Advertisement Update 4:42 p.m.: Here is part of a statement from Gov. Rick Snyder, who today authorized the bankruptcy request: "The fiscal realities confronting Detroit have been ignored for too long. I'm making this tough decision so the people of Detroit will have the basic services they deserve and so we can start to put Detroit on a solid financial footing that will allow it to grow and prosper in the future," the governor said. "This is a difficult step, but the only viable option to address a problem that has been six decades in the making." [...] Detroit has more than $18 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities and doesn't have the revenues to meet those obligations and provide an adequate level of services to its people, who pay the highest taxes per capita in Michigan. The city's debt level is unsustainable. Currently, 38 cents of every city dollar goes toward debt repayment, legacy costs and other obligations. By 2017 that figure is expected to reach 65 cents per dollar. "The simple fact is Detroit is in a financial crisis. The city is insolvent and has been borrowing money to pay its bills for nearly a decade. Bankruptcy is the only feasible option to fix the city's finances and do what is right for the 700,000 people of Detroit," Snyder said. Advertisement Update 4:47 p.m. No official word has been sent to the media yet from Detroit's Big Three automakers about the city's bankruptcy. But the Detroit News' David Shepardson got this out of General Motors: Advertisement Update 5:05 p.m.: What exactly happens when a city goes bankrupt? That's tough to say. The Detroit News calls it "a largely uncharted world:" Unsecured creditors could take the biggest hit in bankruptcy court. Orr wants them to share a $2 billion payout on approximately $11.5 billion worth of debt, which includes an estimated $9.2 billion in health and pension benefits and $530 million in general-obligation bonds. Instead of paying creditors in full, Orr would use $1.25 billion over the next decade to buy police cars and fire trucks, replace broken street lights, tear down burned-out homes, fight blight and improve city services. Orr wants to stabilize the city, woo new residents, provide essential city services for Detroiters, lower property taxes and transfer costly departments, including the water department to an outside group. Advertisement Let's wish him luck with that. Update 5:35 p.m. From Freep autos writer Alisa Priddle: Advertisement She's right. Here it is. I wonder why that happened? Update 5:40 p.m. Advertisement Update 6:11 pm Photo credit APWe’re less than two weeks away from Kurt Angle’s official return to WWE, when he’s enshrined as a Hall of Famer at the WrestleMania weekend induction ceremony on Friday, March 31. But, as wrestling fans are wont to do, we’re already wondering what he’s going to do after that. Specifically, what he’ll do in-story on Raw or SmackDown. His new interview with Brian Fritz at Sporting News doesn’t shed a whole lot of new light on the subject. It doubles down on some old quotes (he hasn’t talked to company officials about wrestling again, but is pretty sure WWE will have him in the ring for them) and, as part of the story of his first meeting with Vince McMahon after agreeing to return, indicates there’s some exciting stuff in the works: To be able to come back and Vince say just let it go, let everything in the past go. We're here now, there's nothing you need to worry about that occurred in the past. Just worry about right now and the future. We have some wonderful plans for you in the future. What might those plans entail? I know, for sure, they want me to work in the company, most likely in a non-wrestling capacity. They know I've been active and they know that I can still go just as well as I've ever gone. We haven't talked about it but, I'm sure, in the back of their minds they're thinking we're going to release Kurt Angle on some of these talents in the future. It's not guaranteed and I have not talked to them about it at all. Seeing people like Sting and Goldberg come back to do some programs, it's promising that Kurt Angle will get a shot. With Raw General Manager Mick Foley on the chopping block, that’s a role a lot of folks are fantasy booking for Angle. And as we’ve seen with SmackDown commissioner Shane McMahon, an authority figure can certainly find opportunities to wrestle as a part-timer. Now we just have to be patient and find out what these “wonderful plans” include... Check out the whole interview at Sporting News for more of his thoughts on coming back to WWE, and speculate away about the future below!Joffrey Lupul promises the Maple Leafs will turn things around. “We’re going to switch things around by playing more of a team game and doing it as a team,” said Lupul. “That being said, you do need individuals to step up at points. Leaf goalie Jonathan Bernier will start against the Phoenix Coyotes on Thursday night. ( Rick Madonik / Toronto Star ) Joffrey Lupul (right) says the tide will turn for his Toronto Maple Leafs. ( Mark Blinch / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO ) “You want to step up your individual game but within the team structure. It’s easy to try to do too much and get off on your own page. You see that when teams are struggling, guys want to make an impact and do things that aren’t what usually makes them successful.” The Maple Leafs have lost five of their last six. Reading the tea leaves, it could well be James Reimer in net for a repeat perfomance or Jonathan Bernier. The Leafs don’t announce their starting goalies. Bernier started practice in the home-team net — an indication he was starting — but Reimer finished the skate in the home-team net and left the ice first — an indication he was starting. Article Continued Below Bernier is 10-11-2 with a 2.53 goals-against average and a.925 save percentage. He lost his last start, Monday, against Pittsburgh. He has won one of his last five appearances that includes coming in for relief for James Reimer on Dec. 12 in St. Louis. The Coyotes are expected to go with Team Canada hopeful Mike Smith. The Leafs haven’t held their opponents to fewer than three goals for the last seven games. Leafs coach Randy Carlyle said the coaching staff spent Wednesday — a day off for players — re-evaluating the direction of team. Things like “where we think the hockey club is heading, and if there were positives we could accentuate and try to eliminate some of the negatives that are happening around our group,” said Carlyle. “We formulated a plan and presented it to the players. “We think there are some things we can hang our hat on, that if we continue to get this group to commit to playing a more aggressive forecheck, a more aggressive zone, the tide will turn in our favour. We will find ways to have success.” Carlyle says the team has been better at forechecking, has cut down the number of penalties it was taking and has cut down shots against, but has been hurt by individual mistakes. Article Continued Below “What we’ve tried to do is re-set our group,” said Carlyle. GARDINER CHIT-CHAT Carlyle said he talked to Jake Gardiner about the kinds of mistakes he was making that led to his benching for the second period Tuesday against Florida. “It’s not that he’s been playing poorly. He had five or six good strong games. But then two games he makes mistakes and the puck ends up in the back of our net. It’s hard to ignore as a coach. He feels that the mistakes he makes are very easily improved. “He’s a talented young player. He can move the puck and he can skate. He’ll get that opportunity to do it again.” KEEPING MORGAN RIELLY Said Carlyle: “We felt we have a young player, you have to provide him with quality minutes and a quality opportunity. My biggest worry is playing him too much. He’s earned an opportunity to play in our lineup. We feel he’d be best suited playing with us, because he’s going to play. Said Rielly: “My goal is to play here in Toronto. Any time you have a chance to play for Team Canada, it’s huge honour. I’ve been privileged enough to play for that team, the U-20s, the U-18s, which are all great experiences. I think playing in Toronto is a goal that I had for quite some time. I’m happy I’m here. All I’m worried about now is playing well and helping the team win some games.” Read more about:For the second time in school history, Gonzaga has ascended to the top spot of the subjective and meaningless list of college basketball teams known as the AP poll. This ascension coincided with nearly every other highly ranked team losing at some point in the last two weeks, prompting many to wonder if the undefeated Zags deserve their no. 1 ranking. I’ve already gone through the reasons why it’s dumb to assume that Gonzaga will choke in the NCAA tournament, which is to say, I pointed out that the Zags don’t have a history of choking as much as people think they do. But the no. 1–ranking argument is different than the choking argument, which is why I wanted to take a second to make my stance clear: I don’t give a shit. Let’s be honest: You don’t either. So why are we pretending this matters? The AP poll has no bearing on tournament seeding, voting for player/coach of the year award, or whether Mark Few’s eyebrows will ever grow back. The only thing it might affect is recruiting, and even that doesn’t matter in Gonzaga’s case, since the Bulldogs just load up on transfers looking for a change of scenery and foreign players who were conned into believing that Spokane is a suburb of Seattle. Why, then, is this becoming a thing? And why is Gonzaga the only program that has to deal with these nonsensical discussions? If every other team lost this week and West Virginia rose to become the new no. 1, people would just shrug and say, “Meh, I guess the Mountaineers deserve it, but rankings don’t matter anyway.” Any time Gonzaga sits down at the adult table, though, people lose their mind as though it somehow affects their livelihood to see the Zags succeed. We, as a college basketball community, need to stop caring about stuff that doesn’t matter. Instead, let’s channel our energy toward things that are truly important: Tom Crean’s buyout drops from $4 million to $1 million on July 1. It’s financially sensible for Indiana to wait to fire him until then, but July is far too late in the basketball calendar for a program to make a coaching change. This is a problem with no obvious solution, and I’m losing sleep trying to figure out what I’m going to tell athletic director Fred Glass when he calls and asks for my advice. Is Baylor’s Scott Drew a good coach? 12. North Carolina (20–4) 11. Cincinnati (20–2) 10. UCLA (20–3) I can’t tell if I’m a contrarian or if everyone else is way too reactionary, but my feelings toward UCLA this season always seem to be the exact opposite of the general consensus. When the Bruins beat Kentucky 97–92 in Rupp Arena in December, the college basketball world foamed at the mouth over how UCLA’s offense could cure cancer, while I scratched my head and wondered if anyone else noticed its awful defense. And now that the Bruins recently dropped two straight (96–85 to Arizona on January 21, and 84–76 at USC four days later), the hype train seems to have gone completely off the rails, as though everyone forgot how unstoppable this offense is. UCLA is like the Ken Bone of college basketball: Everyone was intrigued at first, and as we discovered more we couldn’t resist letting our praise get out of control. Then we found out too much and decided to pick the Bruins apart, like it’s their fault that we exalted them so quickly. So no, I’m not panicking about UCLA “being exposed” against Arizona and USC, mostly because those games didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Well, I guess that’s not true: They confirmed my suspicion that the Bruins are a team made up of human beings who can, in fact, lose games that don’t involve miraculous buzzer-beaters. Otherwise, UCLA remains the same team today that it was at the start of the season: a supremely talented offense that’s among the most efficient and entertaining the sport has ever seen, and a defense that could best be described as “absolute dog shit.” I’m a devout believer in great defense being more important than great offense in the NCAA tournament, so I should probably touch on UCLA’s abysmal defense before I get to the fun stuff. And let me be clear: The Bruins really are that bad defensively. Never mind their intelligence, ability, or cohesiveness on that end of the floor. The real concern is there doesn’t seem to be a player on the roster who gives a damn. Instead of treating defense as an opportunity to impact a game, UCLA’s players appear to view it as a nuisance, like they’re children who have been sent to timeout and are just rolling their eyes and staring at the clock until they can go back outside and play. Sure, every so often someone on the Bruins will block a shot or jump in a passing lane to a trigger a fast break. But these sorts of moments are fool’s gold — the only reason UCLA cares in these instances is because the Bruins never pass up an opportunity to make a highlight play. The other side of that coin, of course, is that UCLA’s offense is basically nothing but highlights. That’s hardly hyperbole, by the way. Freshman guard Lonzo Ball, who seems to be a lock as a top-five pick in the 2017 NBA draft, has turned college basketball on its head with his ridiculous court vision, his ugly jump shot that finds a way to go in no matter where he pulls up from, and his general showmanship that makes you wonder how he could have possibly gone anywhere other than UCLA. Freshman forward TJ Leaf’s numbers (17.0 points and 8.9 rebounds per game) aren’t that far off from what Kevin Love posted in his lone season in Westwood, when Love was the Pac-10 player of the year and a consensus first-team All-American. Senior guard Isaac Hamilton is averaging 14.9 points per game and would be the best player on all but maybe 25 or 30 teams in America. And up until Leaf went nuts and scored 32 points in a 95–79 win at Washington State on Wednesday, none of the aforementioned guys were even the team’s leading scorer, as senior guard Bryce Alford is averaging 16.2 points per game. A hundred years from now, when college basketball is played by robots on Mars and people are complaining about how the game isn’t what it used to be, some idiot will try to convince everyone that 2016–17 was the golden era of the sport because he came across a tape of this UCLA offense. Will that be enough for the Bruins to overcome their defensive deficiencies and win a national championship? Probably not. But who cares? Only one team wins the national title every year anyway, and while I’d like to see UCLA start actually giving some effort on defense, I don’t think it needs to bother trying to change its identity. At this point in the season, the Bruins should double-down on their approach, cross their fingers, and hope the March Madness gods look down upon them favorably. Maybe UCLA will lose some games it shouldn’t along the way, but I like to think of that as an occupational hazard that comes with its style of play. For all their flaws, the Bruins are capable of beating any team in the country by 25 on any given night, which is something that can’t be said of anyone else. 9. Wisconsin (19–3) 8. West Virginia (18–4) 7. Villanova (21–2) Halftime It’s halftime, which can mean only one thing: It’s time for Dick’s Degrees of Separation, the most mildly amusing internet game involving college basketball! You know the drill: I give you the end point of a Dick Vitale tangent and you pick the path he took to get there. Let’s get to it. During Saturday’s Oklahoma–Florida game in Norman, how did Dick Vitale end up talking about Scotty Thurman? A. Brent Musburger, who is calling the game with Vitale, comments that Florida–Oklahoma would be a good game in football, too. Vitale cautions Musburger against selling these basketball programs short before launching into a bit of trivia. Vitale explains that Oklahoma is the only school with two Naismith Award winners in the last decade, and that Florida is the only SEC school besides Kentucky to win a national title in the last 20 years. Then, mistaking it for a fact that is interesting or relevant, Dickie V. points out that the last non-Kentucky, non-Florida SEC team to win a championship was Arkansas in 1994, led by Corliss Williamson and Scotty Thurman. B. Early in the game, Musburger points out that Sooners coach Lon Kruger once served as the head coach at Florida, taking the Gators to their first Final Four in school history. Vitale reminds viewers that run took place in 1994, and then, as if trying to confirm his own memory, says that Florida lost to Duke in the national semifinal game. This was the same year, Dickie V. continues, that the Blue Devils lost to Arkansas in the title game when Scotty Thurman hit a game-winning shot for the Razorbacks. C. The camera cuts to 39-year-old Florida coach Mike White, who Vitale says looks young enough to be a player instead of a coach. This triggers a spiel about how old Vitale and Musburger are, during which Dickie V. informs viewers that this will be the last game the duo ever calls together. After a beat, Musburger points out that the SEC has a handful of coaches who could still probably play a little, including Alabama’s Avery Johnson and Vanderbilt’s Bryce Drew. Vitale then offers Arkansas assistant Scotty Thurman as his contribution to the list. 6. Virginia (17–4) Jay Wright may have won last Sunday’s battle of heartthrob coaches when Donte “The Big Ragu” DiVincenzo tipped in a buzzer-beater to lift Villanova to a 61–59 win over Virginia. But it’s possible that Cavaliers coach Tony Bennett will win the war. That’s because Virginia is finally starting to look the part of a Final Four team, something I never thought I’d say about this group in November. I’ve thought all season that the difference between this Virginia team and the ones of the recent past is that this squad lacks an elite individual talent. Specifically, I worried about whether Virginia could find a wing to replace what Justin Anderson and Malcolm Brogdon brought to the table the last few years. Part of what makes that role so critical is providing off-the-ball scoring so London Perrantes (who I think is the country’s most fascinating player) can fluctuate between scoring and distributing instead of having to force the issue all the time. But, as is always the case with Virginia, the real impact of a great wing is felt on the defensive end. What has made the Cavaliers’ pack-line defense famous over the last few years is discipline, as the Hoos are more concerned with staying in position than making a spectacular play. Knowing this, you might think Virginia’s defense traditionally hasn’t been disruptive, and that the Hoos instead try to force opposing offenses to beat themselves. But with Anderson and Brogdon, that wasn’t always true. Those guys made life hell for whoever they were guarding, and they did so in a way that kept the cohesiveness and discipline of the collective unit intact. There’s a subtle difference between Virginia defenses that are reactive and proactive, but it’s significant enough to separate a team that wins games from one that wins titles. I expected this Virginia squad to fall into the former category, and for most of the season it has. But the recent play of Devon Hall and Marial Shayok, two talented junior guards who have struggled with consistency, has caused me to rethink Virginia’s ceiling. That’s not to say that either one is anywhere close to Anderson or Brogdon’s level. But both are 6-foot-5, provide a ton of energy, and have given the Hoos exactly what they need on both ends of the court for the last month. That’s why the Villanova game might prove to be a win in the long run for Virginia. The Hoos went on the road against the no. 1 team in the country, Perrantes played his worst game of the season, and this group still had the defending national champions on the ropes. Shayok was great all afternoon; Hall handled being asked to do a million different things wonderfully; and junior forward Isaiah Wilkins, who has looked like the reincarnation of Anthony Gill of late, continued playing out of his mind. And that’s to say nothing of Ty Jerome, the freshman guard who went from putting up a two trillion in a 88–76 loss at Pitt on January 4 to waving off his entire team to sink a game-tying shot at Villanova. Related The Underappreciated Greatness of London Perrantes What was once Perrantes and a bunch of other dudes has transformed into a team full of capable playmakers that just might win its third ACC title in four seasons and advance to the Final Four. Virginia still has concerns: This is clearly the least talented team Perrantes has been on since his arrival in Charlottesville (which says more about how great the other three teams were), and the pack-line defense remains susceptible to teams that can shoot 3s (specifically ones with big men who can shoot 3s). Junior guard Darius Thompson continues to look lost on the court, while freshman guard Kyle Guy’s ACC slump has been a bummer for anyone who is a fan of man buns and/or “Guy” puns. (Can you imagine how insufferable Virginia fans would have been if Guy had played for the Hoos when the “Who has two thumbs…” joke was popular?) But that’s the beauty of college basketball: Every team has obvious flaws. All they can do is try to limit how damaging those flaws can be. This is something Virginia has more or less mastered the last few years, which explains why the Hoos haven’t lost a game by more than a possession in regulation since December 3 and sit a half game back from the top of the loaded ACC standings. Not bad for a team that supposedly lacks elite talent. 5. Louisville (18–4) 4. Arizona (20–2) 3. Baylor (20–2) 2. Kansas (20–2) 1. Gonzaga (22–0) The “Retiring” Broadcaster of the Week When I think of Brent Musburger, a handful of things come to mind: (1) his love of gambling; (2) his love of Katherine Webb; (3) “SECOND DOWN AND NINE”; (4) trying to remember whether his first name is Brett or Brent; and (5) his voice being synonymous with a big game. You could point a camera on a group of turtles taking a nap, and I’ll be 100 percent into it if the first thing I hear is Musburger saying, “You are looking live …” So yeah, I guess you could say I was bummed when he decided to call it a career. And sure, it seems fishy that Musburger suddenly arrived at this decision, that he didn’t wait until the end of the college basketball season, that his final game came on the last day of a month (January 31). But ESPN was running tributes to him throughout the entire day, which it totally wouldn’t have done if it was forcing him out the door, you guys. Brett — it’s Brett, right? — definitely made this decision completely on his own, so stop asking questions and just let the man go in peace. With that, I’ll let Musburger’s final sign-off double as the sign-off for this column. The Dick’s Degrees of Separation answer is B. See you next week.Ever since the Senior Bowl the Denver Broncos were connected to quarterbacks Garrett Grayson and Bryce Petty. There were multiple reports saying that the Broncos "loved" Grayson and that they narrowed down their quarterback search to four quarterbacks. Well now that the second day of the 2015 NFL draft is in the books, the Denver Broncos still haven't selected a quarterback and are showing that they believe in backup quarterback Brock Osweiler as their heir apparent. Exhale, Brock Osweiler. The Broncos just sent the message you remain Peyton Manning's heir apparent. — Mike Klis (@MikeKlis) May 2, 2015 Any quarterback selected from here on out will not be drafted to be the quarterback of the futurue, but simply as a developmental guy who will compete with Zac Dysert to be the team's third-string quarterback. Osweiler is ready to show that he indeed is the guy of the future for the Denver Broncos and that he is "burning" to show everyone what he can do. "It's nothing easy, and nothing directly prepares you for it. My coordinator in college once told me, 'Only worry about the things you can control.' I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to be the starter for this team, but at the same time it wasn't up to me. Right now Peyton is our starter. That is great," Osweiler said Tuesday. "I can only control how much I know the playbook, how I practice. I want to try to give Coach (Gary) Kubiak and (general manager) John Elway the best product that they've seen from me in four years. I am very confident that this August, they will see the product that John drafted, they will see what he was hoping I would turn into. I want to walk away from the preseason with no regrets." Osweiler is entering the final year of his rookie contract and his future remains in question. According to Osweiler, the Broncos have yet to approach the young quarterback about an extension, but he's not concerned about that. "No one has approached me, but it's nothing to worry about," I assumed that the Broncos interest in some of the second-tier quarterbacks meant that they were not completely sold on Osweiler, but I was wrong there. The Broncos passed on Baylor quarterback Bryce Petty in the first, second and third rounds, and also passed on Garrett Grayson in the 1st and 2nd round. Grayson was drafted by the New Orleans Saints in the third round. Oregon State Sean Mannion was also drafted, and the Broncos passed on him multiple times as well. Elway on Brock Osweiler after 2nd round: "Everybody wants to kick Brock to the curb, we drafted him for a reason.'' — Jeff Legwold (@Jeff_Legwold) May 2, 2015 According to a report from Mike Klis, earlier this week, the Denver Broncos are expected to draft a quarterback at some point in this draft. I think they will come away with CSU-Pueblo's Chris Bonner at some point tomorrow afternoon, but he(or whoever they draft) will not be an immediate threat to quarterback Brock Osweiler. Go Broncos!Laser walls and smart sensors will be installed at the Indo-Bangla International Border in West Bengal to plug the porous riverine and unmanned terrain and keep a tight vigil to check infiltration and terrorism. “Very soon laser walls and smart sensors will be installed at the Indo-Bangla border especially in the porous riverine area and in the areas that do not have proper fencing. It will be done on an urgent basis so that it becomes operational by the next year,” a top BSF official told PTI on the condition of anonymity. Watch What Else Is Making News? Advertising According to BSF officials, a pilot project will take off within a few months in the Indo-Bangla riverine border area in West Bengal. “The pilot project will start in a few months once we get the equipment and other things that are needed. The areas, where lasers and sensors will be placed, have already been identified,” another official said. A team of technical experts will handle a pilot project for deploying technological solutions in riverine areas and the areas that lack fences. Advertising “The smart sensors will be monitored through a satellite-based signal command system. They will have night and fog operability tools. The mechanism is — sensor blips and alerts border guards,” said the official. The paramilitary force is using the Farheen laser wall technology at the Indo-Pakistan border and has reaped benefits through better management of the borders. BSF DG K K Sharma and other top officials of the force recently toured the Indo-Bangla border area in West Bengal and Tripura. According to BSF sources, installing laser walls and remote sensors is part of the Centre’s plan of keeping a tight vigil at the Indo-Bangla border following inputs from intelligence agencies that terrorists and anti-national elements are exploiting the unfenced areas and riverine borders. “The matter of laser walls and smart sensors in West Bengal was on the back burner. But it came up after the terror attack in Dhaka a few months ago as there were intelligence inputs that terrorists and anti-national elements were exploiting the unfenced areas and riverine borders,” said another official. Of the 4,096 kilometer-long Indo-Bangladesh border, 2,216.7 is in West Bengal. The decision to install laser walls in areas where barbed wire fences could not be erected due to the treacherous terrain or marshy riverine topography was taken by the BSF two years ago. The Union Home Ministry and BSF expedited the installation and activation of laser walls on the western front after the Pathankot terror attack. It was suspected that terrorists had breached the border in Bamiyal area in Punjab. Meanwhile, the proposal submitted by BSF’s South Bengal frontier to the West Bengal government for land needed for erecting fences in a highly sensitive 81.7 km area has been approved. Advertising The state government has approved it and asked the district magistrates to procure land and hand it over to us, the BSF said.What should be done about guns? In the wake of the mass murder of elementary schoolers and their teachers in Newtown, Conn., last month, that question is getting more attention than it has in many years. Vice President Joe Biden, who is chairing a working group on gun violence, has already met with lawmakers on new gun policy proposals, which President Barack Obama promised to unveil publically this week. But scientific evidence for exactly which kind of legislation would be most effective at stemming gun violence is lacking — a situation that is in many ways of the government's own creation. Several congressional efforts in the 1990s and up to 2011 have limited federal research on gun violence, vastly reducing the scientific data available for policymakers today. What's left is piecemeal and often small-scale research that fails to answer big questions about effective restrictions, the link between gun violence and mental health and cultural factors such as media, said Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple University and former president of the American Psychological Association. Farley has been calling for what he dubs a "national violence project" that would approach the question of gun violence with the same gusto as the Manhattan project developing the atomic bomb, or the Apollo missions to the moon. "I don't think we're going to get there by piecemeal efforts," Farley told LiveScience. "It's got to be big." How we got here In the 1980s and 1990s, research on gun violence in the United States was going strong. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) funded studies on gun violence, and research was bearing fruit, said Fred Rivara, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital. In particular, Rivara said, agency-funded research had revealed that residents of homes with guns had a higher likelihood of violent death in the home. [The History of Human Aggression] However, once those findings came to the attention of the National Rifle Association (NRA), a political firestorm ensued. Congress members who supported the NRA first attempted to remove all funding from the NCIPC. That failed, but Congress did manage to remove $2.6 million from the CDC's overall budget, the exact amount spent on firearm injury research in the
) 10. Biology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology “Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that happen in the cells of living organisms to sustain life.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolism There are two primary sources of energy, Phototrophs where “Light is absorbed in photo receptors and transformed into chemical energy” and Chemotrophs where “bond energy is released from a chemical compound.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_nutritional_groups “Phototrophs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoautotroph are the organisms (usually plants) that carry out photosynthesis; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis to acquire energy. They use the energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into organic materials to be utilized in cellular functions such as biosynthesis and respiration.” “In plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, photosynthesis uses carbon dioxide and water, releasing oxygen as a waste product.” “In biology, carbon fixation; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fixation is the reduction of carbon dioxide to organic compounds by living organisms. The obvious example is photosynthesis. Carbon fixation requires both a source of energy such as sunlight, and an electron donor such as water. All life depends on fixed carbon organisms that grow by fixing carbon are called autotrophs—plants for example. Heterotrophs, like animals, are organisms which grow by using the fixed carbon produced by autotrophs. Some organisms can go either way. Fixed carbon, reduced carbon, and organic carbon all mean organic compounds. Carbon dioxide, in all its guises, is inorganic carbon.” Chemoautotrophs; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotroph are “organisms that obtain carbon through Chemosynthesis”; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemosynthesis “are phylogenetically diverse, but groups that include conspicuous or biogeochemically-important taxa include the sulfur-oxidizing gamma and epsilon proteobacteria, the Aquificaeles, the Methanogenic archaea and the neutrophilic iron-oxidizing bacteria.” There are three ways that an “organism obtains carbon for synthesising cell mass; Autotrophic – where “carbon is obtained from carbon dioxide (CO2)”, Heterotrophic – where “carbon is obtained from organic compounds” and Mixotrophic – carbon is obtained from both organic compounds and by fixing carbon dioxide. Bacteria – TBD “Methanotrophs (sometimes called methanophiles) are bacteria that are able to metabolize methane as their only source of carbon and energy.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanotroph “Some ferric iron-reducing bacteria (e.g. G. metallireducens) can use toxic hydrocarbons such as toluene as a carbon source, there is significant interest in using these organisms as bioremediation agents in ferric iron-rich contaminated aquifers.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_metabolism Fungi – TBD Protozoa – TBD Chromista – TBD Animal – Anthropogenic: Carbon Dioxide; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide contributes to the Greenhouse Effect; http://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_3_1.htm “The lime industry is a significant carbon dioxide emitter. The manufacture of one tonne of calcium oxide involves decomposing calcium carbonate, with the formation of 785 kg of CO2 in some applications, such as when used as mortar; this CO2 is later re-adsorbed as the mortar goes off. Additionally, if the heat supplied to form the lime (3.75 MJ/kg in an efficient kiln) is obtained by burning fossil fuel it will release CO2: in the case of coal fuel 295 kg/t; in the case of natural gas fuel 206 kg/t. The electric power consumption of an efficient plant is around 20 kWh per tonne of lime. This additional input is the equivalent of around 20 kg CO2 per ton if the electricity is coal-generated. Thus, total emission may be around 1 tonne of CO2 for every tonne of lime even in efficient industrial plants, but is typically 1.3 t/t” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_kiln and influences the rate of plant growth ; http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/CO2plants.htm Methane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane Nitrous Oxide Ozone Soot/ Black_carbon Aerosols/ Icebreakers/Arctic Shipping/Fishing/Cruise-Line Transits Contrails Land Use; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_use “is the human use of land. Land use involves the management and modification of natural environment or wilderness into built environment such as fields, pastures, and settlements.” “Land use practices vary considerably across the world. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization Water Development Division explains that “Land use concerns the products and/or benefits obtained from use of the land as well as the land management actions (activities) carried out by humans to produce those products and benefits.” s of the early 1990s, about 13% of the Earth was considered arable land, with 26% in pasture, 32% forests and woodland, and 1.5% urban areas.” “Land Cover/Land Use Change [LCLUC]”; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_use,_land-use_change_and_forestry http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/18/more-on-land-use-change-affecting-temperatures/ “has a profound impact on the regional‐scale surface energy and water balance and where it has been intensive.” There is “growing detectable evidence about weather and climatic feedbacks and possible teleconnections associated with LULCC.” “The LULCC impact is likely on a par with other major global forcings but unlike warming seen from GHG emissions, LULCC forcing is multi directional and can warm/ cool, cause positive/negative feedbacks depending on the region and timing.” “The fact that the impact of LULCC is small with respect to the global average radiative forcing, with the exception of emissions of CO2, is, however, not a relevant metric as the essential resources of food, water, energy, human health and ecosystem function respond to regional and local climate not to a global average.” http://www.iclimate.org/dev/publications/Niyogi-LCLUC-MARCH2011-SHORT.pdf A study by researchers from Purdue University and the universities of Colorado and Maryland concluded that greener land cover contributes to cooler temperatures, and almost any other change leads to warmer temperatures. The study, published on line and set to appear in the Royal Meteorological Society’s International Journal of Climatology later this year, is further evidence that land use should be better incorporated into computer models projecting future climate conditions, said Purdue doctoral student Souleymane Fall, the article’s lead author. Among the study’s findings: * In general, the greener the land cover, the cooler is surface temperature. * Conversion to agriculture results in cooling, while conversion from agriculture generally results in warming. * Deforestation generally results in warming, with the exception of a shift from forest to agriculture. No clear picture emerged from the impact of planting or seeding new forests. * Urbanization and conversion to bare soils have the largest warming impacts. In general, land use conversion often results in more warming than cooling.” http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2009b/091102NiyogiClimate.html “Although variations in the natural flooding regimes were likely the dominant mechanism driving changes in surface water, it is possible that human manipulations through dams and other agriculture infrastructure contributed. This study demonstrates the substantial role that land-cover and surface water change can play in continental-scale albedo trends and suggests ways to better incorporate these processes into global climate models.” http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010EI342.1 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/18/more-on-land-use-change-affecting-temperatures/ – Deforestation – Reforestation – Deforestation – Greening – Desertification – Cultivation/Farming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_cultivation Reclamation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation Urban Heat Islands Run Off From Asphalt Snow plowing/clearance Farming Sewage/Wastewater Treatment Discharge Fossil Fuel Energy Generation and Waste Heat Nuclear Power Generation – Including Ships Renewables – Wind Farms, Solar Arrays, Dams and Ethanol “In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J=132,000 TWh). This is equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504×1013 W).” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption etc. “Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that happen in the cells of living organisms to sustain life.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolism “The basal metabolic rate of a human is about 1,300-1,500 kcal/day for an adult female and 1,600-1,800 kcal/day for an adult male.” http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2009/VickieWu.shtml Animal – Non-Anthropogenic including Plankton Beaver (Genus Castor) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver etc. 11. Chemical Fossil Fuels: Coal Oil shale Petrochemicals – Petroleum – Mineral Oil Asphalt Tar Pits/Sands Methane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane etc. Iron Fertilization “occurs naturally when upwellings bring nutrient-rich water to the surface, as occurs when ocean currents meet an ocean bank or a sea mount. This form of fertilization produces the world’s largest marine habitats. Fertilization can also occur when weather carries wind blown <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust“>dust long distances over the ocean, or iron-rich minerals are carried into the ocean by glaciers,[3] rivers and icebergs. Iron Fertilization can result from Geo-engineering; http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=34167 Reactions: Combustion – Forest Fires – Fossil Fuels – Methane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane etc. “Photosynthesis; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis is a chemical process that converts carbon dioxide into organic compounds, especially sugars, using the energy from sunlight.” “Chemosynthesis; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemosynthesis is the biological conversion of one or more carbon molecules (usually carbon dioxide or methane) and nutrients into organic matter using the oxidation of inorganic molecules (e.g. hydrogen gas, hydrogen sulfide) or methane as a source of energy, rather than sunlight, as in photosynthesis.” Conversion of Methane, CO2, etc. 12. Physics Temperature http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/01/a-big-picture-look-at-earths-temperature/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature Variations in atmospheric and oceanic temperature can have significant impacts on Earth’s climate, including cloud cover, rainfall, Flora, Fauna, Ocean Circulation and Marine Biology. These variables can in turn affect Albedo and Transpiration. A Biogeochemical Cycle; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogeochemical_cycling “or substance turnover or cycling of substances is a pathway by which a chemical element or molecule moves through both biotic (biosphere) and abiotic (lithosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere) compartments of Earth. A cycle is a series of change which comes back to the starting point and which can be repeated.” “The term “biogeochemical” tells us that biological; geological and chemical factors are all involved.” “Ecological systems (ecosystems) have many biogeochemical cycles operating as a part of the system, for example the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, etc. All chemical elements occurring in organisms are part of biogeochemical cycles. In addition to being a part of living organisms, these chemical elements also cycle through abiotic factors of ecosystems such as water (hydrosphere), land (lithosphere), and/or the air (atmosphere).” Lars G. Franzén and Roger A. Cropp argue in Geografiska Annaler 2007, that “Carbon sequestering in peatlands is believed to be a major climate regulating mechanisms throughout the late Phanerozoic (Franzén, 1994; Franzén et al, 1996). Since plant life first evolved on land, peatlands have been significant carbon sinks, which could explain significant parts of the large variations in the atmospheric carbon dioxide observed in various records.” They also “suggest that the ice age cycles during the Pleistocene are generated by the interglacial growth of peatlands, the sequestering of carbon into this terrestrial pool and the subsequent cooling by decreased greenhouse effect. The final initiation of ice age pulses towards the end of interglacials on the other hand is likely attributed to the cyclic influx of cosmic dust to the Earth surface, which in turn regulates cloud formation and the incoming shortwave radiation (Franzén & Cropp, 2007). These shorter cycles have a frequency of c. 1000-1250 years and might be connected to sunspot or other low frequency solar variations. http://www.mendeley.com/research/peatlandice-age-hypothesis-revised-adding-possible-glacial-pulse-trigger/ http://www.peatnet.siu.edu/Assets/F.pdf Electricity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity Lightning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning is an atmospheric electrostatic discharge (spark) accompanied by thunder, which typically occurs during thunderstorms, and sometimes during volcanic eruptions or dust storms. From this discharge of atmospheric electricity, a leader of a bolt of lightning can travel at speeds of 220,000 km/h (140,000 mph), and can reach temperatures approaching 30,000 °C (54,000 °F), hot enough to fuse silica sand into glass channels known as fulgurites, which are normally hollow and can extend some distance into the ground. There are some 16 million lightning storms in the world every year. Lightning causes ionisation in the air through which it travels, leading to the formation of nitric oxide and ultimately, nitric acid, of benefit to plant life below. Lightning can also occur within the ash clouds from volcanic eruptions, or can be caused by violent forest fires which generate sufficient dust to create a static charge. How lightning initially forms is still a matter of debate. Scientists have studied root causes ranging from atmospheric perturbations (wind, humidity, friction, and atmospheric pressure) to the impact of solar wind and accumCan you imagine anyone in this day and age actually lying about their console preference? The so-called "console wars," which once led to actual public dissembling, are now regarded, beyond the fringes of fan-site forums and enthusiast subreddits, as a thing of the past. Why? In 1992, at the height of the 16-bit console generation, a marketing team at Sony conducted a series of focus groups on gamers. They revealed something surprising: Teenage boys who owned a Super Nintendo would not admit it in public. The reason? The other dominant console of the era, the Sega Genesis, with its extreme mascot Sonic and uncensored version of Mortal Kombat, had tapped so keenly into teenage male culture that it had made Nintendo, with its G-rated games and chubby plumbers, uncool. It was hard for even the fanboys to pick sides in the most recent edition of the "console war." First of all, Nintendo easily won it by the numbers, selling 20 million more copies of the Wii than Microsoft or Sony sold of the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. But, of course, the casual-gaming Wii had few fanboys. Also, a dwindling number of exclusives meant that aside from a few big franchises the systems basically played the same games. Early in this generation Sony and some supporters pointed to the PlayStation 3's technological superiority as a reason it would host games with much better visual fidelity. As it turned out, many other factors proved more important: which system a game was originally developed for, which engine it used, how familiar a developer was with the hardware. In other words, in most cases, it came down to the individual game; everyone was wrong. So graphics, the traditional redoubt of the console warrior, were hardly a bragging point. You might have a 360 because you like its interface better, or a PlayStation because you like its Blu-ray player, but neither feature is really the stuff of vitriolic discourse. The Sony press conference at E3 last night was the strongest public expression of console partisanship I have seen in years. When Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, announced that the PS4 would support the free sale and trade of used games on the PlayStation 4, the assembled crowd literally started chanting "Sony." They chanted "Sony"! Sony is the 13th-largest company in Japan. To grasp just how absolutely strange a cultural phenomenon this was, imagine a crowd of fanatics and writers in Osaka (the second-largest city in Japan) chanting "CVS Caremark" (the 13th-largest corporation in America). If there was an Xbox One fan in the crowd, he sure as hell would have lied about it. Look: It's obviously sort of a strange thing to do, to root for a console, to hope one $500 consumer device succeeds instead of another one. It's always struck me as a kind of extreme confirmation bias, the desire to validate and keep validating a difficult choice. Consoles are inert. They aren't athletes, or politicians, or television characters. They are squat weird computers that will play the same games, for the most part. Doesn't each company have the same ultimate goal, to maximize profit for its shareholders? Doesn't each company constantly make microscopically- calculated adjustments to its public image so it can sufficiently pander to some desired demographic with enough "credibility" to obscure that goal? I mean, come on. Let's stop pretending Sony is valiant. If they were so committed to the idea of used games, why didn't they announce this policy in February? Microsoft made a move and Sony reacted; fine, it was the smart thing to do in context. But did you notice how every time Sony referred to "used games," they made sure to include the modifier "disc-based"? Did you also notice how Sony, much more than Microsoft, has emphasized the game-streaming capabilities of its new console? If you think that Sony is going to let you freely trade digitally downloaded and streaming games, which are going to be all games in the near future, I have a piece of swampland in You're a Fucking Moron to sell you. Sony is not some noble underdog. They are the company that won the last console generation by selling SIX TIMES as many PlayStation 2s as Microsoft sold Xboxs, and the one before that by selling three times as many PlayStations as Nintendo sold N64s. (And, less than 24 hours after receiving an internet handjob for his company's supposedly benevolent used game policy, Tretton is already walking it back.) Also, please don't give me this "gamers are nostalgic" line, like that's a winning argument, or an argument at all. Do you think nostalgia is in and of itself a good thing, a value-positive thing? You know what people are nostalgic about? Books. People have been reading books for just a little bit lot longer than they've been sticking breakable cartidges and scratchable discs into game consoles. Books have a smell and a feel. You hold them in your hands for hours. You curl up with them in bed with a flashlight when you're a kid. A library of books is a lot more impressive than a library of games. It just is. And people still buy Kindles like crack baggies, because they make sense. That's right, people disregard more than six centuries of cultural and tactile history to read their books on a little ugly machine. And they happily comply with Amazon's single-book-lend policy. So don't give me your 20 years of trading games with your buddies as a relevant cultural factor. Your nostalgia is a temporary business proposition for Sony. Microsoft has obviously pursued some terrible policies with the Xbox One, the arbitrary-seeming once-a-day check-in most of all. But to bring back the teenage attitudinizing of the 16-bit console wars, all because Sony has made a very short-term wager on the gullibility and historical amnesia of gamers, is pathetic. Neither of these companies like you. They see games as media, not as a special case. And the successful big media companies sell digital media with digital rights management. Gamers talk a lot about how games should be taken as seriously as every other medium. OK, well, go on the Apple store and see how all other mainstream media gets sold. I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing. But Sony versus Microsoft is not good versus evil. It's money versus money. Go ahead, pick a side.Monkeytail Custom Wood & Bakelite Finishing AKaholic #: 164989 Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: Missouri Posts: 1,688 AKaholic #: 164989 My Bakelite Restoration This will be several posts long going over different bakelite pieces and what I do for different situations. Step by step run down of how I take some of the most run down dreary pieces of bakelite and turn them into this... To start off: Lets get out some bakelite. Looks like I found some bakelite. Fun fun. Lets grab a few from the top. For learning purposes we tried to grab one with lots of wear and in need of considerable love. Two are in moderately good condition with only a few wear spots and some color loss. The fourth is a chunky grip I had been wanting to restore as it is very lackluster and void of much life and we aim to change it. Notice the rough areas, spots where fiber stands out or color instantly dulls off, this is what this process is all about: making this stuff gorgeous. Here are a few close ups with just a rag dusting them off so we can get a look at the damage and see what lurks below the surface. We WILL BE CLEANING THEM THOROUGHLY PRIOR TO OILING, we are leaving them this way in the pics for the purposes of the tutorial. Now I have picked out which I will work on. I suggest doing a few at a time to save on material but don't overload yourself as you want to pay very much attention to detail to reach your goal. 4 for this project will work perfectly. Time for the work to start. If there is any cosmoline this is first priority, using a shop rag ( NOT THE ONE WE WILL BE USING TO OIL THE PIECES) clean off any material from the pieces. I use my soft picks to remove any material from the checkering first. I also scan the surface of the piece for any spots that can hold any gunk and get that out of there. Careful not to use anything that is going to scratch the surface if you get a bit antsy and slip. I have two tiny tip nylon picks that I love for this job. A small soft brush (I use a few tooth brushes of different sizes also.) During this process of the BIG INITIAL CLEAN I like to keep another rag in my lap just to clean my tools as I go. If I notice my gloves getting dirty I will also use this rag to wipe my hands. Clean the brushes off frequently and it is best to clean off the picks VERY frequently to ensure you are getting everything or breaking it up enough so your brushes will finish the job. Then we clean them all up one final time and make sure all we have are nice clean bakelite pieces. Set them on your tray and clean up. Remove any towels you used for the cleaning as you won't be using them again for THESE grips. Clean up the work surface and with clean hands/gloves and a clean work station you are ready to proceed. Now before any polishing is done we will give them a LIGHT bath oil massage. I use Neutrogena bath oil, any natural oil that has NO SALTS added will work wonderfully. DO NOT use fragranced ones with little mineral beads and such, also no motor oil or other thick machining oil. We are using stuff we would use on our own skin literally. I use cheap plastic paint trays to save the oil and reapply, it also gives them an area to dry. MAKE SURE you DO NOT dry them on a surface that will suck up the oil which essentially will be reversing the process and yield subpar results (ex: cardboard.) I will oil these grips up in the paint trays to avoid a mess and to save the oil so I can apply it several times and keep getting more as needed. Don't just dunk them in or slop it on but put a few minutes into each massaging the rough areas trying to really get it down into the fibers that stand. Now we will let them dry for several hours on the paint trays. They are soaking that oil in and restoring the brittle bakelite back to life. After they have dried you will see it on the outer surface. The gritty areas are the ones we will pay extra attention to when we polish them with the 0000 steel wool shortly. Notice the almost "sandy" areas in the pics below. The more we oil, polish them that will disappear. Yes we must rinse and repeat this process. Learn to love it. Here you will notice a bit of rough along this grip but the upper part is already getting its gloss and shine back, this is common since most of the wear is going to be in the grip portion. This is where the "rough mold mark" will be if present and will take special attention and significant oiling to even it out. Now we are going to gently polish them dry with a clean shop towel that you will ONLY use for these purposes. NOT the shop towel you clean off your rough grips with nor the one you use after using steel wool. This is ONLY for rubbing them extra dry after an oiling. I leave this towel with my paint trays so that it stays nice and clean. Make sure there aren't any hard small particles on the pieces as they may scratch the surface of the bakelite during our next step of polishing. To the next post: I've had lots of interest into the specifics of what goes into the pieces I sell and along with requests for before and after pictures so with one big thread we will knock it out.This will be several posts long going over different bakelite pieces and what I do for different situations.Step by step run down of how I take some of the most run down dreary pieces of bakelite and turn them into this...To start off:Lets get out some bakelite.Looks like I found some bakelite. Fun fun. Lets grab a few from the top.For learning purposes we tried to grab one with lots of wear and in need of considerable love. Two are in moderately good condition with only a few wear spots and some color loss. The fourth is a chunky grip I had been wanting to restore as it is very lackluster and void of much life and we aim to change it.Notice the rough areas, spots where fiber stands out or color instantly dulls off, this is what this process is all about: making this stuff gorgeous.Here are a few close ups with just a rag dusting them off so we can get a look at the damage and see what lurks below the surface. We WILL BE CLEANING THEM THOROUGHLY PRIOR TO OILING, we are leaving them this way in the pics for the purposes of the tutorial.Now I have picked out which I will work on. I suggest doing a few at a time to save on material but don't overload yourself as you want to pay very much attention to detail to reach your goal. 4 for this project will work perfectly.Time for the work to start.If there is any cosmoline this is first priority, using a shop rag ( NOT THE ONE WE WILL BE USING TO OIL THE PIECES) clean off any material from the pieces.I use my soft picks to remove any material from the checkering first. I also scan the surface of the piece for any spots that can hold any gunk and get that out of there. Careful not to use anything that is going to scratch the surface if you get a bit antsy and slip. I have two tiny tip nylon picks that I love for this job. A small soft brush (I use a few tooth brushes of different sizes also.)During this process of the BIG INITIAL CLEAN I like to keep another rag in my lap just to clean my tools as I go. If I notice my gloves getting dirty I will also use this rag to wipe my hands. Clean the brushes off frequently and it is best to clean off the picks VERY frequently to ensure you are getting everything or breaking it up enough so your brushes will finish the job.Then we clean them all up one final time and make sure all we have are nice clean bakelite pieces.Set them on your tray and clean up. Remove any towels you used for the cleaning as you won't be using them again for THESE grips. Clean up the work surface and with clean hands/gloves and a clean work station you are ready to proceed.Now before any polishing is done we will give them a LIGHT bath oil massage. I use Neutrogena bath oil, any natural oil that has NO SALTS added will work wonderfully. DO NOT use fragranced ones with little mineral beads and such, also no motor oil or other thick machining oil. We are using stuff we would use on our own skin literally.I use cheap plastic paint trays to save the oil and reapply, it also gives them an area to dry. MAKE SURE you DO NOT dry them on a surface that will suck up the oil which essentially will be reversing the process and yield subpar results (ex: cardboard.)I will oil these grips up in the paint trays to avoid a mess and to save the oil so I can apply it several times and keep getting more as needed.Don't just dunk them in or slop it on but put a few minutes into each massaging the rough areas trying to really get it down into the fibers that stand.Now we will let them dry for several hours on the paint trays. They are soaking that oil in and restoring the brittle bakelite back to life.After they have dried you will see it on the outer surface. The gritty areas are the ones we will pay extra attention to when we polish them with the 0000 steel wool shortly.Notice the almost "sandy" areas in the pics below. The more we oil, polish them that will disappear. Yes we must rinse and repeat this process. Learn to love it.Here you will notice a bit of rough along this grip but the upper part is already getting its gloss and shine back, this is common since most of the wear is going to be in the grip portion. This is where the "rough mold mark" will be if present and will take special attention and significant oiling to even it out.Now we are going to gently polish them dry with a clean shop towel that you will ONLY use for these purposes. NOT the shop towel you clean off your rough grips with nor the one you use after using steel wool. This is ONLY for rubbing them extra dry after an oiling. I leave this towel with my paint trays so that it stays nice and clean. Make sure there aren't any hard small particles on the pieces as they may scratch the surface of the bakelite during our next step of polishing.To the next post: Always taking on work, lets talk about your next project. Custom Woodworking/Finishing and Bakelite Restoration __________________Always taking on work, lets talk about your next project.Custom Woodworking/Finishing and Bakelite Restoration Last edited by Monkeytail; 03-08-2014 at 01:16 PM.ISTANBUL — Google was spared on Tuesday from a recent wave of Internet bans in Turkey after it reportedly complied with a court order to remove links to images of Mehmet Selim Kiraz, a prosecutor who died after leftist militants took him hostage at an Istanbul courthouse last week. Twitter and YouTube were temporarily blocked in Turkey on Monday after they failed to respond to an order to remove photographs and other content showing one of the hostage takers pointing a gun at Mr. Kiraz’s head during the assault. Senior government officials have criticized the publication of the photographs, branding the images terrorist propaganda and citing the lack of consideration for the victim’s family and friends. News outlets that showed the images were not granted access to cover the prosecutor’s funeral. People on social media in Turkey, accustomed to similar bans in recent years, easily circumvented the restriction on Twitter by using services to mask their Internet protocol access points, and in a few hours the hashtag #twitterisblockedinturkey became a trending topic.A Kelowna Mountie is being hailed for his bravery and his actions last week when he helped rescue a woman from Okangan Lake. On Nov. 27 at about 10:30 p.m. the Kelowna RCMP received a report of a distraught woman on the William R. Bennett Bridge. Police say it appears she intended to jump off the bridge. When two officers arrived they found the 21-year-old at the peak of the northbound side, clinging to the outside of the passenger walkway. The first officer tried to talk the woman down, but eventually she pushed herself off and fell feet-first into the lake. She surfaced and began to tread water. The two officers then removed the rear seats from the police car and dropped them down to the woman to use as flotation devices, however she swam away from them. Meanwhile, Cpl. Matt Hare, with the help of a Protrans WRB Bridge employee, had made his way down to the water’s edge on the West bank and saw the woman seemed to be in some kind of distress. Hare then waded into the water and swam to the woman. He was able to gather up one of the floating foam seats and then pulled the woman to shore. Both were treated for hypothermia. “After seeing the woman swim away from safety and begin struggling due to the cold, I knew that we couldn’t wait for a boat so there was only one thing to do,” says Hare, “without someone’s help, she wasn’t going to come ashore and it would’ve turned into a recovery mission.” Having jumped in the water to help pull an intoxicated swimmer from the lake this past September, Hare was no stranger to impromptu water rescues. Fortunately both had positive results although they certainly could have had more dire consequences. “Our members continue to impress me with the work they do every day,” says Supt. Nick Romanchuk, officer in charge of the Kelowna RCMP. “Cpl Hare displayed exceptional bravery by saving this woman’s life, at great risk to his own.” The woman was taken to hospital.President Trump has dealt with almost a full-year’s worth of hogwash from his opposition on the other side of the aisle. Democrats have tried hard to keep Obama’s legacy alive, but have failed to slow down President Trump’s momentum, while on his crusade to “Make America Great Again.” Senator Cory Booker has finally reached his breaking point with President Trump. Booker feels defeated after Trump’s tax plan was passed and didn’t hold back when describing how he felt as a result of Trump’s non-stop winning. Here’s what Mr. Booker had to say about the recent Tax Reform passage: Senator Booker obviously is out-of-touch with the current status of America’s everday worker and middle class. He thinks Trump’s tax plan is an “economic sledge hammer” and will “hurt” America, when in reality it will send taxes down significantly across the spectrum. This will, in turn, put more money back into millions of Americans’ pockets and into the economy, as we have already seen with Wells Fargo who recently increase wages. Booker stressed the trillions of dollars America is in debt. It’s interesting how he never cared when Obama racked up the trillions of debt that President Trump was left to handle as a result of 8 years of ridiculous spending and deals with our enemies (ie. Iran). The economy has flourished ever since President Trump has taken over the reigns and this little factoid is what must be hurting Booker’s feelings. It’s hard to take him serious since his rebuttal makes very little sense (unless you’re a socialist). What do you think of Cory Booker’s rebuttal? Do you think Trump’s tax reform bill will hurt or help Americans? Comment your response below and please SHARE the news! Main article image: Youtube Screen GrabEvery year the topic of banning the TT comes up but did you know that the average deaths per year on Mount Everest are higher than the TT? Social commentators and ill-informed journalists who think that the world should be a place where no-one is allowed to die of anything except old age put their tuppence in every time there's a death at the TT but it's not just the Daily Mail-reading stereotype that dabbles in a bit of anti-TT either; I hear more and more bikers talking about it too. It struck me the other day that the TT is one of those great feats of human endurance and when I think of the feat of human endurance; it's those who try and reach the peak of Mount Everest. Despite huge advances in technology, climbing Mount Everest remains one of the signatures of what makes us human. A massive feat that pushes the people who try it to the limit of their own mental and physical endurance and often beyond. A lot has changed since George Mallory and Andrew Irvine died while trying to reach the peak in 1924. Today, the technology used in clothing, for navigation and the knowledge of the ascent built-up over the years means that climbing Everest is now safer than ever. It is however, far from being safe. In 1953 Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand beekeeper, and Tenzing Norgay, an acclaimed Sherpa became the first to reach the roof of the world, 15 people before them had died trying. Since Hillary and Norgay climbed to the summit, over 2700 people have made it to the top, however 224 people have died trying, too. That's one person dying for every 12 who have climbed to the top of Mount Everest. By comparison, the first Isle of Man TT race took place in 1907. The race was won by Charlie Collier at an average speed of 38.21 mph
will force the current generation to do what's good for it. SPIEGEL: Again we're touching on the issue of the compass that Helmut Kohl says is missing. Fischer: A compass isn't going to get you anywhere in the 21st century. Instead, you need a functioning radar screen or, better yet, a GPS device. SPIEGEL: Mr. Fischer, thank you for speaking with us.CANCUN, Mexico -- Critical negotiations are under way here in Cancun, under the auspices of the United Nations, to reverse human-induced global warming. This is the first major meeting since the failed Copenhagen summit last year, and it is happening at the end of the hottest decade on record. While the stakes are high, expectations are low, and, as we have just learned with the release of classified diplomatic cables from Wikileaks, the United States, the largest polluter in the history of the planet, is engaged in what one journalist here called "a very, very dirty business." Dirty business, indeed. In Copenhagen last year, President Barack Obama swept into town and sequestered a select, invite-only group of nations to hammer out what became known as "The Copenhagen Accord." It outlined a plan for nations to make a public "pledge" to reduce carbon emissions, and to submit to some kind of verification process. In addition, wealthy, developed nations would, under the accord, pay billions of dollars to help poor, developing nations adapt to climate change and to pursue green-energy economies as they develop. That might sound nice, but the accord was designed, in effect, to supplant the Kyoto Protocol, a legally binding global treaty that more than 190 countries have signed. The United States, notably, has never signed Kyoto. The Wikileaks cables help explain what happened. One of the most outspoken critics of developed countries in the lead-up to Copenhagen, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Republic of Maldives, a nation of small islands in the Indian Ocean, ultimately signed on to the Copenhagen Accord. A secret U.S. State Department memo leaked via Wikileaks, dated February 10, 2010, summarized the consultations of the newly appointed Maldives ambassador to the U.S., Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed. The memo reports that the ambassador said, when meeting with U.S. deputy special envoy for climate change Jonathan Pershing, "Maldives would like to see that small countries, like Maldives, that are at the forefront of the climate debate, receive tangible assistance from the larger economies. Other nations would then come to realize that there are advantages to be gained by compliance." He asked for $50 million, for projects to protect the Maldives from rising sea levels. Pershing appears in a related memo, dated a week after the Maldives memo, regarding a meeting he had with Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate action, who played a key role in Copenhagen, as she does in Cancun. According to the memo, "Hedegaard suggested the AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) countries 'could be our best allies' given their need for financing." Another memo from February 17, 2010, reported, "Hedegaard responded that we will need to work around unhelpful countries such as Venezuela or Bolivia." That was from a meeting with deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs Michael Froman. The memo went on, "Froman agreed that we will need to neutralize, co-opt or marginalize these and others such as Nicaragua, Cuba, Ecuador." The message is clear: Play along with the U.S., and the aid will flow. Oppose, and be punished. Here in Cancun, I asked Pershing and the lead U.S. negotiator, special envoy for climate change Todd Stern, about the memos, and whether the U.S. role amounted to bribery or democracy. Stern wouldn't comment on the Wikileaks cables, and said nations "can't... ask for... climate assistance and then... turn around and accuse us of bribery." I followed up by asking about countries that had U.S. aid money for climate stripped, like Ecuador and Bolivia, for opposing the Copenhagen Accord. He and Pershing ignored the question. Pablo Solon, Bolivia's ambassador to the United Nations, did have an answer. He said the facts speak for themselves: "One thing that I can say for sure is they cut aid to Bolivia and to Ecuador. That is a fact. And they said it very clearly: 'We're going to cut it, because you don't support the Copenhagen Accord.' And that is blackmail." Solon is not optimistic about what can come from the Cancun negotiations. He told me: "The current pledges on the table will raise up the temperature by four degrees Celsius [7.2 degrees Fahrenheit]. That is catastrophic for human life and for Mother Earth." Amy Goodman is the co-founder, executive producer and host of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on more than 450 public broadcast stations in North America.Faint grunts of desperation echo into the night as rain pounds down on a dimmed city parking lot. Bathed in streetlight, Randy Couture eats a pair of right hands from a 6-foot-5 blonde behemoth, then slams him on the pavement and seizes mount. The Swede gives up his back and a bloodied Couture slithers in a rear-naked choke, before catching a countershot and rolling into an omoplata. It may not seem like retiree work, but it's all just par for the course for Couture, who's bombastic struggle with Dolph Lundgren highlights Ambushed, the former champion's upcoming Hollywood action venture. To call Couture a busy man these days would be a bit of an understatement. In reality the film is just the latest in an endless cascade of side projects, a media mixture which has the 50-year-old dipping his toes into everything from the silver screen to advertising to coaching, with a string of reality television gigs on Spike TV thrown in for good measure. "I'm busier than I've ever been in my life," Couture laughs. "I kind of miss the simplicity of a 10 or 12-week training camp where all I did was eat, sleep or train." It's been a little over two years since Couture danced his final dance in the Octagon. The shadow of his vast figure still looms over the sport in various facets, although traces of Couture are notably absent throughout the festivities taking place in Las Vegas on this 20th anniversary of the UFC. It's not altogether surprising. That bridge burned down in late-January when Couture jumped ship from Zuffa to Viacom; a wound still recent enough to be tender. Yet as the organization he helped build creeps one year closer to America's legal drinking age, Couture's footprint still reverberates through MMA's legendary halls. "It's interesting to see how far the sport has come, and how it's changed," he remarks. "Obviously over the course of my fighting career, I was one of the guys who transitioned from those old days and how things were with the tournament format. Seemed like a new rule every time we had a show; there was a new rule to fit into you training program. "Back then when I was jumping in, UFC 13 and on through UFC Japan the first time, we were concerned this sport was going to die. There were political figures out there like Senator McCain that were trying to crush the sport and keep it down, get it banned and all those things that were going on. And they were fairly close to being successful." Through perseverance, adaptation and a little luck, MMA managed to survive those dark years and flourish into the titan it is today. Along the way Couture was one of it's foremost figures, a three-time heavyweight champion, a two-time light heavyweight champion, and even an old-school tournament winner to boot. He coached opposite Chuck Liddell on The Ultimate Fighter's landmark first season, defended MMA's honor against brash over-the-hill boxer James Toney, and became the fourth member of the UFC Hall of Fame a year before winning his final title. But even now, there's one moment for Couture that stands above the rest. "I have several I'm proud of, but I don't think there's a more favorite fight of mine than the Tim Sylvia fight," Couture says after a pause. "Coming out of retirement after a year off, the stark contrast in mine and Tim's physicality, just the whole way that fight went down at that time, the North American record for attendance. There were just a lot of things that lined up for that particular night." Indeed, that particular night, March 3, 2007 in Columbus, Ohio, will forever be remembered by those who lived through it. While he may be a punchline now, back then Sylvia was a daunting force. The 6-foot-8 thorn in the heavyweight division's side, whose command over the throne coupled with a six-fight win streak and seemingly insurmountable 80-inch reach to signal an unwinnable end for the 43-year-old Couture. "There were a lot of questions," Couture says looking back. "Certainly at my age, coming out of retirement and facing a guy that was that big, there were a lot of people that thought I was crazy and should've just rested on my laurels and stayed retired. For me, I always kept it simple. Focused on the problems at hand, the tactics and the technique that I was going to use to defeat whatever opponent that was standing across from me, and Tim was no different in that regard. "I felt pretty confident I had the answer for Tim. You never know, it's still a fight and a lot of things can happen. There's certainly been occasions where I thought I had the answer, and it turned out I had the wrong one. That was a night where everything just fell into place, and went exactly how it should've gone." Couture was hardly given a chance against Sylvia, but it took just eight seconds for the universe of probability to come crashing down on its axis. Couture waded into the center of the cage, lunged forward with his left leg, then rocketed off a straight right. The punch collided with a satisfying thwack into Sylvia's jaw. From there, history was made. "He was like a redwood at 6-foot-8. I was as surprised as, I think, everybody in the arena when he fell over," Couture laughs. "It took me a couple seconds to kind of catch up and realize what I was looking at. I don't think the crowds sat back down for the rest of the fight." Even today, more than six years later, not a week goes by without Couture drowning in conversations and congratulations from overjoyed fight fans who can't believe the old man did it. In many ways, it's strange to think back to that time now. Six years doesn't seem like much, but for a sport still in its infancy, it's a lifetime. In today's era of hyper-athletic, cardio-monster heavyweights, it's easy to wonder how a figure like Sylvia could become so menacing, so unbeatable, for even a short window. "The heavyweight division has always kind of, certainly from the boxing days, been the marquee division. In mixed martial arts, I think that was a little different. It was the 205-pound division that tended to be more of the marquee division. I think that's starting to shift a little bit now," Couture says. "The heavyweight division (now) is probably deeper than it's ever been. A guy that's average size, like myself, in the heavyweight division probably won't have the kind of success that I had, with the depth and the type of athletes that are in the division right now. These guys aren't just big guys. They're very well rounded, very conditioned fighters. Guys like Junior dos Santos and Cain (Velasquez) are kind of this new hybrid. I think Brock (Lesnar) was kind of the start of that trend in the division. So I hope that continues." Even despite his split with Zuffa, Couture is one of the few originals to have parlayed his five minutes in the spotlight into a sustainable income. From one venture to the next, there's always something new on the horizon. It's a life Couture enjoys, and believe him when he says he'd rather be fending off the likes of Lundgren than the monsters of today's era. But every once in a while, when the stars hit the Vegas strip and thrill of fight week bubbles to a rolling boil, he can't help but catch himself thinking about those old, unhinged days, when the outlaws of combat sports ruled from their grisly perch. "I think in my prime I would've been able to compete with any of these guys (now) in either of the divisions, 205 or heavyweight," Couture finishes with a smile. "It's going to be a dogfight. They're very skilled fighters and they pose a lot of problems. But I think in my day, I could've hung with any of them and been successful."KUALA LUMPUR: Police today arrested Sungai Besar Umno chief Jamal Md Yunos following reports of theft which allegedly took place when he and dozens of youths barged into a gaming centre last month. Selangor CID chief Fadzil Ahmat said Jamal was arrested this afternoon, while 9 others were taken into custody last night. The Red Shirts movement’s leader has shared photos of plainclothes policemen waiting outside his house. “We are investigating them for gang robbery,” Fadzil told FMT. Jamal has led a series of raids on gaming centres in the state, in a bid to highlight what he claimed was the Selangor government’s lack of enforcement over illegal gambling outlets. Today’s arrest is the third time the politician was arrested. He was arrested in October last year over a Facebook posting, and once again in the hours leading to the Bersih 5 rally in Kuala Lumpur the following month.This was the proposal she was looking for. Redditor and young Padawan Stephen Dempsey used the Force to propose to his girlfriend Amanda by recreating the Imperial-II class Star Destroyer from Star Wars out of Legos, making it pretty much the most badass ring box any Jedi has ever seen. Naturally, Amanda, who is also a lover of the film franchise, said yes. Dempsey posted photos of his build on Imgur and shared it on Reddit for all other Star Wars super fans to behold. Dempsey told The Daily Dot that Darth Vader's warship has a particular significance to his relationship: "Our love is like this ship," he told Amanda. "Its shields defend from any outside force wanting to get in and destroy us." According to Dempsey's post on Reddit, he is currently working on gluing together his proposal ship. Engagement rings are nice, but superglue means real commitment. As far as wedding plans go, Dempsey wrote, "we actually plan to play the Star Wars opening heme at the beginning of our reception to announce the new bride and groom." May their life together be like a Lego: fun, sturdy and non-biodegradable. Star Wars proposal BONUS: 30 Star Wars Facts You Didn't KnowThe United States has the second highest degree of Internet freedom in the world, according to a new study from Freedom House. What country's ahead of America? Estonia, a country of 1.29 million in northeast Europe. Estonia Why does Estonia top the list? According to Freedom House, it "ranks among the most wired and technologically advanced countries in the world." "With a high internet penetration rate and widespread e-commerce and e-government services embedded into the daily lives of individuals and organizations, Estonia has become a model for free internet access as a development engine for society," reads the report. Estonia's commitment to technological innovation in government is especially remarkable considering the former Soviet state's weak economy following the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Freedom House credits the country's first independent leaders with putting the country on a track towards economic development through technology and innovation. "The country’s new leadership...perceived the expansion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as a key to economic growth and invested heavily in their development," reads the report. Update: As a Mashable reader pointed out, NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence was built in Estonia in 2008, resulting in the funneling of funds to improve the country's IT infrastructure. Freedom House ranks countries' "Internet Freedom Status" in three main ways: obstacles to access, limits on content and violations of users' rights. It also factors in tertiary factors, including internet penetration and blogger arrests. Estonia got high marks in almost every category. The United States The United States got nearly as excellent marks, with 78% internet penetration and no notable arrests of bloggers. However, the debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), two bills considered a threat by many Internet free speech advocates, raised some eyebrows. "Internet access in the United States remains open and fairly free compared with the rest of the world," reads the report. "Courts have consistently held that prohibitions against government regulation of speech apply to material published on the internet, but the government’s surveillance powers are cause for some concern. In early 2012, campaigns by civil society and technology companies helped to halt passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which were criticized for their potentially negative effects on free speech." Freedom House also warned of greater U.S. government interference in the open Internet. "Several developments in recent years, however, have placed the government and internet freedom advocates at odds over aspects of internet regulation as well as issues surrounding online surveillance and privacy. The United States lags behind many major industrialized countries in terms of broadband penetration, and network operators have challenged recent rules concerning network neutrality. The current administration appears committed to maintaining broad surveillance powers with the aim of combating terrorism, child pornography, and other criminal activity. Moreover, reports have emerged that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is seeking expanded authority to control the design of internet services to ensure that communications can be intercepted when necessary." At the bottom of the list were Iran, Cuba and China, while Belarus, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Thailand and seven other countries received a rating of "Not Free." To read the full report, visit Freedom House. Are you surprised Estonia topped the list? Should the United States be where it is, higher or lower? Share your thoughts in the comments. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Olena_TThis weekend, 20,000 or so screaming fans will pack into the Anaheim Convention Center to watch the best gamers around the world compete for thousands of dollars at Major League Gaming's Spring Championship. But that's only a fraction of the number of people who will watch the tournament unfold online. This is like the Super Bowl for gamers, except it happens four times a year. The Spring Championship will pit the best teams in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, League of Legends and StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm against their rivals for a three-day long showdown that culminates in a $100,000 prize and months of bragging rights. There will undoubtedly be Cinderella stories and underdogs to root for, and nail-biting final matches. If it seems like these are more sports cliches than you'd expect for a gaming match, it's because Major League Gaming has modeled itself after both the best sports television networks and sports leagues. It organizes a league of teams with the best players, sets rules for their competition and then broadcasts the matches to an engrossed online audience. SEE ALSO: The 15 Best Free iPad Games Between the four larger tournaments, Major League Gaming focuses on keeping its audience entertained by providing daily live content for them to watch, as well as hooking them in to its own competitive gaming platform where they can rank themselves against the pros. It's a complete package that supports a lifestyle for its hardcore gamer audience, and one they are happy to plug in to. The ESPN of E-Sports Chris Puckett started out as a professional gamer who lived that kind of lifestyle. Now he creates shows five days a week as as MLG's executive producer, focusing on competitive Call of Duty play. Puckett spends each day helping to fill between six and seven hours of live programming streamed to fans on MajorLeagueGaming.com. Puckett has cribbed much of what he does from sports. MLG had a relationship with ESPN from 2006 to 2011, and MLG's cofounder and president Mike Sepso said that they were given the benefit of ESPN and its producers' collective knowledge. "The team has experience with the best sports television producers in the world, who come from multiple companies and cover multiple sports. That's what we've been able to draw out of the sports world and translate to our world," Sepso says. "Chris didn't go to school to become a broadcast guy. He got to work with some broadcasters and producers in the sports world for the past seven or eight years, and that's why we are so good at doing that." Of course, there is a benefit to having your entire sports league in-house. Puckett coordinates with top Call of Duty teams that compete in MLG to help him produce daily content. That usually means he'll set up matches between popular teams, bring in casters — commentators whose job it is to explain the match — and then add the kinds of graphics and polish that you'd expect from SportsCenter. Viewers will be treated to tricks of the trade pioneered by sports broadcasters, including two-minute breakdowns of strategy during heated matches, or even live instant replay during games. Puckett said much of these capabilities have only come around as streaming and capturing technology for gaming have recently improved. Broadcasting a game is a different technical beast than a live sporting match, and much of the challenges lie in how to present the first-person view of eight different players during a match so fans can follow the action. There are several elements on screen to help, including a mini-map that tracks player movement and a list of the active players, what team they're on and the number of kills they've achieved. "We've also trained the audience to be familiar with the locations inside the maps, so they recognize where players are. With that, it allows us to switch to more cameras, and always catch the most exciting action," Puckett explains. Live matches are the most popular type of programming. MLG uses them to get viewers invested in the storylines of teams in the lead-up to the championship, and much of what Puckett decides to feature is based around telling a good story for fans. But fans are equally fascinated by strategy shows, where players explain how they play. "With Call of Duty, a lot of the younger viewers will want to get information on strategy from the pros and see what techniques they are using," Puckett says. "I'll get two of the top teams to face off in the best of seven or 11 games. I'll ask them after what their team did right and wrong. The players give very candid feedback and talk openly and honestly about their strategy, and it's a way for younger players to learn and improve." Live matches for other popular games like StarCraft 2 have their own takes on the strategy formula, each aimed at being relatable to fans, and also giving them heroes in the sport to admire. Getting Advertisers Involved MLG also produces softer shows for their network and YouTube, including content that cribs from reality shows on TLC. In the Dr Pepper Ultimate Gaming House show, now in its fifth season, fans who apply are rewarded with a makeover of their gaming space, complete with serious Dr Pepper product placement. Dr Pepper is a huge supporter of Major League Gaming, sponsoring everything from this show to pre-game coverage streamed from the championship tournaments. It's found a solid home, along with other sponsors, at MLG, particularly because the platform boasts very high engagement from its fans. "People that will tune in to watch the championship at Anaheim will watch for about three hours, more than double than what people watch during the Super Bowl," Sepso says. "MLG's live broadcasts are more than two times more engaging than the next most engaging property, and because we have such dedicated fans and such tremendous growth year over year — about 300%." Sepso says the fans aren't turned off by the casual brand endorsements because they see them as something that helps supports the championship, which they are very passionate about. "It drives our fans to really support the advertisers that support something they love," Sepso says. "What some of our advertisers have learned is that they get their return on investment through that high level of engagement and passion." Improving Competitive Gaming Advertisers aren't the only ones to notice the spending power of passionate games. Sepso says that in the past two or three years, game publishers like Warner Bros. Interactive and Sony Entertainment Online have approached the company in order to get feedback on how to improve the multiplayer experience. Sepso jokes that before, companies wouldn't give them the time of day, and much of this disruption has to do with free-to-play games becoming a dominant force on the PC. The most obvious example of this is League of Legends, which has become the most popular competitive game in the world in the last two years because of wide adoption from the free-to-play model, and because creator Riot Games constructed a title directly around the multiplayer experience. The popular title has almost 40 million active players, and has posted numbers as high as 5 million active at one time. "That game is a juggernaut. The live audience and broadcast audience will be significantly bigger than StarCraft, and StarCraft has 12 to 14 years of esports history behind it," Sepso says. "Anecdotally, we see a major shift where the publishers are responding to the consumer's want for online competitive play and new business models. At the end of the day, the consumer wins. People will naturally go to the platform that has the best multiplayer experience, the most balanced game and the place where they can have fun." To provide an additional service to both players and game publishers, Major League Gaming has developed MLG Play, an integrated API that gives gamers of any skill level a consistent profile associated with their games, while also providing data to developers and publishers about what players are doing. The MLG Play profile allows amateur and professional players to see their ranks in international ladders, and offers incentive to improve. "This data tracks all of the tournaments that lead up to our qualifying events. These players have the same profiles, so it's a really easy way to seek out where you stand against the world of professional and amateur gamers," Sepso says. "The road to professional circuit starts at MLGPlay, and you build your way up from there." For those with professional aspirations or just looking to tune in, Major League Gaming's Spring Championship begins Friday night at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET. There are three days of competition (here's the full schedule) as teams battle each other in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm and League of Legends tournaments. Fans can watch for free on MLG's website, or pay to subscribe for 1080p, ad-free experience on its Twitch channel. Photos courtesy Major League GamingSea snakes feared extinct found at Ningaloo Reef Updated Two species of sea snakes, both listed as critically endangered and previously feared to be extinct, have been discovered living off the West Australian coast. Researchers said the discovery of the short-nosed sea snake on Ningaloo Reef and the rare leaf-scaled sea snake at Shark Bay were the first time they had been spotted alive and healthy in 15 years. Those two sea snakes were obviously in courting mode and hopefully getting ready to make babies and create future generations of short nosed sea snakes. JCU PhD student Blanche D'Anastasi Their only previous known habitat was nearly 2,000 kilometres away on Ashmore Reef in the Timor Sea, but they disappeared from there, a phenomenon scientists were at a loss to explain. Scientists at Queensland's James Cook University (JCU) made the discovery, working in collaboration with WA's Department of Fisheries and Department of Parks and Wildlife. JCU PhD student Blanche D'Anastasi said she was stunned by the discoveries. "We were absolutely blown away," she said. "When the snakes went extinct at Ashmore Reef there was global alarm... the last thing we expected to find was the two missing sea snakes and there they were, in plain sight." Ms D'Anastasi said it was particularly encouraging that the discovery of the short-nosed sea snake showed the two snakes in the midst of their courting process. "Those two sea snakes were obviously in courting mode and hopefully getting ready to make babies and create future generations of short-nosed sea snakes," she said. Ms D'Anastasi said the discoveries meant there was a significant need for further research and examination of the areas in which they were found. "We discovered these snakes well out of their range and in entirely new habitats," she said. Topics: animals, animal-science, ningaloo-6701 First postedThe beef between Game and Tyga and Lil Durk and 40 Glocc is starting to pick up steam with the release of " ChiRaq To LA " and newly-named XXL Freshman, Lil Durk, has one less supporter from his home city in his beef with Tyga. Yesterday, Chicago MC Chief Keef showed his support of Game on Twitter and Instagram by sending out the cover art of the song with the caption, "Be Bool! go fuck wit Blood nem[sic]." The support comes as bit of a surprise since Keef is from Chicago and has been affiliated with Durk, but on "ChiRaq To LA", Game does mention Keef by name saying, "Ridin' through the Chi, ain't never seen Oprah, hit a 300 with my little nigga Sosa." Game also mentions several other up and coming Chicago rappers that he is friendly with, including Lil Herb and LEP Bogus Boys before concluding the song with "You heard of Durk? Nigga, hell nah." [ @ChiefKeef ]Long time critic of Bitfinex and Tether @bitfinexed has been threatened by a lawsuit brought by the law firm Steptoe & Johnson on behalf of Bitfinex. In the long running battle between @bitfinexed and the Bitfinex exchange, @bitfinexed has long claimed market manipulation through the use of Tethers which he claims are not backed by real currency and were used in order to artificially boost the price of Bitcoin. He also asserts that wash is trading taking place on both Bitfinex and now on Kraken as well. Wash trading is when a person or group working together places sell orders and then buys those order themselves. The purpose is to either create fake volume or to create a fake sense of demand for a coin. Wash trading is illegal on most regulated exchanges around the world. Kraken has recently made the move to remove fees on trading Tethers when above a certain volume. @bitfinexed claims this is proof that they promote wash trading. However, as of now, neither Bitfinex or its legal team has officially stated exactly what legal measures or what laws they may use against @bitfinexed. However, in a statement and possibly the most ironic part of this whole thing is that they claim @bitfinexed was the one who was involved in market manipulation through his false reporting. @bitfinexed has stated that Bitfinex has a long history of filing lawsuits they have no chance of winning or even planning on following through with. He used the example of when Bitfinex sued Wells Fargo only to withdraw the lawsuit later on. If a lawsuit were to go through, one would think that Bitfinex would have to prove the claims against them to be false, which would mean opening up their books to an audit, which is what @bitfinexed and other critics of Tethers have wanted all along. So far, it seems Bitfinex is spending more time hiring legal teams and PR firms than working on an audit of their Tethers which they have promised for months. For more background on the Tether situation, you can read an explanation here.1 Tottenham starlet Kyle Walker-Peters Kyle Walker-Peters has signed a new contract with Tottenham which will keep him at the club until 2020, the Premier League side have announced. The 20-year-old has been rewarded with a third new contract in 18 months after his bright first-team breakthrough. Walker-Peters made his senior Spurs debut against Newcastle on the opening day of the season and was named man of the match in the 2-0 win at St James’ Park. “I’m buzzing to sign a new contract with Spurs, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds,” said the youngster. “To make my debut and get three points, get man of the match. I am delighted of course and it just shows that I need to kick on now and it makes me want more of that. “I joined the club as an under-11, so it does make it a lot sweeter being here for so long, growing up in the Tottenham area and supporting the club.” The full-back has been capped by England at Under-18, Under-19 and Under-20 levels and was part of the team which lifted the Under-20 World Cup in June. Walker-Peters joined Tottenham’s academy in 2013 and was a regular in the club’s Premier League 2 and Youth League sides last season.Video (00:49) : Police say Suhayb Hassan of Eagan was accidentally shot by his brother as the two played with a gun. A game of “cops and robbers” between two brothers, who police said were playing with a loaded gun, ended in tragedy Sunday in Eagan. Suhayb Jamal Hassan, 13, died after his 15-year-old brother shot him in the chest with their father’s 9-millimeter pistol. The two boys found the gun and were playing with it in their home in the 1700 block of Silver Bell Circle on Sunday morning, according to Eagan police. “At some point, the firearm was loaded, then thought to be unloaded by one of the boys,” according to a police department news release. As the brothers played, the 15-year-old pressed the trigger and unintentionally fired the weapon at Hassan, Detective Desiree Schroepfer said. The brothers were at home with their 11-year-old sister when the incident occurred. She was not injured. The 15-year-old brother called police, initially saying that his brother was running with a knife and fell and stabbed himself. When police arrived on the scene, the older brother told officers about the shooting. “I believe at the time he was very scared because he knew he wasn’t supposed to be playing with the firearm. And he was concerned that he was going to get in trouble for that,” Schroepfer said. First responders found Hassan, bleeding and unresponsive, around 11 a.m. and they were not able to save him. “Anytime there is a loss of life of a young child, it’s tragic,” Schroepfer said. “And our hearts go out to the friends, family and community of this young individual.” No one was arrested and police said they do not expect future arrests. “Although this appears to be a horrible accident, upon completion of this investigation, the facts we gather will be presented to the Dakota County attorney’s office for review,” police said in the news release. Schroepfer declined to discuss specifics about the storage of the handgun the teens were playing with, but she said, “It’s always important to make sure that you store firearms properly.” In a 2012 Minneapolis case, a 4-year-old found his father’s loaded gun and shot and killed his 2-year-old brother. A judge sentenced the father, who had stashed the gun between a pillow and a mattress, to 10 years of probation and extensive community service, primarily educating the Hmong community on gun safety. Hassan was an eighth-grader at Black Hawk Middle School in Eagan. Officials said counselors are available to talk to students. On Monday, no one answered the door at the family’s white house on a quiet cul-de-sac. Staff writer Erin Adler contributed to this report.Image caption A surge in orders for the book has sent it to the top of the bestseller lists The Pentagon says it may sue a former US special forces member who has written a first-hand account of the May 2011 raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. The Department of Defense's top lawyer has informed the former Navy Seal that he has violated agreements he signed in 2007 not to divulge military secrets. The book, No Easy Day, was written under the pseudonym Mark Owen. Its publisher, Dutton Penguin, said it saw "no reason" to change its plans to release the book on Tuesday. It was not reviewed ahead of publication by the Pentagon, CIA or the White House - and officials had warned that criminal charges could result from the improper disclosure of secret information. In an interview with CBS, "Mr Owen" - who has been identified by US media as Matt Bissonnette - rejected charges that the book is timed to influence the November election in the US, saying it "has nothing to do with politics". 'Material breach' The Pentagon's general counsel, Jeh Johnson, wrote to the author on Thursday to inform him that non-disclosure form he signed in 2007 obliged him to "never divulge" classified information. The letter said: "In the judgment of the Department of Defense, you are in material breach and violation of the non-disclosure agreements you signed." The Pentagon is considering "all remedies legally available to us", the letter added. It was reported this week that No Easy Day contradicts the official story of the raid. The book says Bin Laden was shot dead as soon as he looked out of his bedroom as Seals rushed up the stairs, according to the Associated Press news agency, which has seen an advance copy. But US officials have stated he was shot only after he had ducked back into the bedroom, prompting fears he might be grabbing a weapon. The book also reveals that the commandos were not big fans of US President Barack Obama, even though they applauded his decision to launch the operation. An interview with Mr Bissonnette by CBS News' 60 Minutes was originally scheduled for broadcast ahead of the book's original release date of 11 September. The author said he chose that date to signify that the publication was a non-political decision. "You know, if these - crazies on either side of the aisle want to make it political, shame on them," he says an excerpt of the interview released by CBS. "This is a book about September 11th, and it needs to rest on September 11th. Not be brought into the political arena, because this has nothing to do with politics." However, publication has now been brought forward to
kolasis) can heal the wounded soul. The elenchos too is a painful treatment, and Socrates’ interlocutors squirm like little children when they are forced to take their medicine. Socrates warns Callicles that if he does not accept the treatment of the elenchos, he will go through life out of harmony with himself, without the proper balance and order that constitutes health, not just for the individual but for the cosmos. If he does not take the medicine his elenctic examination has prescribed, the errors of his life will fester and scar. The final myth in the Gorgias, therefore, is not, as it has often been understood, an appeal to retribution in the next life that supplies the deficiencies of justice in this life, but an illustration of the effects of living an unexamined life. When the souls of his interlocutors are exposed to the judgement of the Socratic elenchos, the festering wounds caused by their ways of life are laid bare. 14In the Gorgias, Plato crafts Socrates’ description of the process of afterlife judgement to reflect the process of elenctic examination that is so thematized in this dialogue, where Socrates explicitly discusses his elenctic methods in contrast with those of his rhetorical interlocutors. The myth provides an illustration of this contrast, and the vivid picture of the soul stripped naked and revealing all its deformities and scars to the expert eye of the judge is an image of the Socratic elenchos. Three elements in particular correspond to the description of the Socratic elenchos. The lack of witnesses corresponds to the elenctic examination of a single person’s ideas, without the recourse to the opinions of others or to long oratorical speeches. The examination of the naked soul by the judge corresponds to the analysis of the person’s ideas and the pointing out of the inconsistencies. The suffering in the afterlife corresponds to the shame of the elenchos, the effect of the defeat in this philosophic contest which provokes the one who has undergone the elenchos to change his life. Although Plato illustrates the process of elenchos in many of his dialogues by depicting the interlocutors engaged in elenchos, the myth in the Gorgias separates out these different aspects of the elenchos from one another, giving the reader a better understanding of the different effects of the Socratic elenchos. 13Kephalos describes the process that every person might go through of self-judgement as death approaches, but Plato elsewhere makes use of judges who decide the fate of the deceased to illustrate the process of self-examination that is crucial to living the philosophic life. The idea of judges, be it the gods in a vague and unspecific sense or particular entities who carried out a detailed process of examination, seems to derive from the common mythic tradition, although Plato’s bricolage with the bits of tradition produce far more complex and detailed scenarios than anything else extant. Plato himself refers in the Laws to the idea that the soul must give an account of its life to the gods as an ancestral belief, and the Platonic Seventh Letter urges belief in the ancient and holy accounts that tell of judges that provide punishment for wrongdoing committed in life. Perhaps the earliest extant reference to the process of judgement comes in Pindar’s Second Olympian, where an unspecified judge assigns recompense for the deeds of life, a blissful existence without toil for the good, unbearable toil for the bad. While sources such as Aeschylus specify the judges as underworld divinities – Hades or a Zeus below the earth – Plato is the first attestation for particular semi-divine figures as judges, Minos, Rhadamanthys, Aiakos, and even Triptolemos. Plato’s assignment of Minos as the judge of newly dead souls at Gorgias 524a is a clever bit of creative misprision of Od.11.568-71, while the choice of Rhadamanthys may likewise adapt the reference in Od. 4.564. 12While this basic idea of a differentiated afterlife seems both traditional and widespread, the precise way in which the differentiations were made varies in the evidence, from the idea of a judgement of the dead, to differentiated places to which they go, and the kinds of rewards and punishments they receive. The idea of judgement and punishment in the afterlife is common enough for Plato to depict the old man Kephalos as starting to think that perhaps he might have something to worry about after death. Kephalos refers to myths he has heard - not special ‘Orphic’ doctrines but familiar traditional tales - that assign punishment in the afterlife for injustices committed in life. While he had not taken them seriously while younger, he says that the approach of death causes people to examine their lives to see if they will have any penalties to pay. Those who discover crimes they have not paid for get anxious, while those who can’t think of any wrongs they have done are buoyed up by hope. Indeed, those who have won the favor of the gods during their lives can expect that the gods will care specially for them after death as well. 11Outside the few passages that emphasize the helplessness of the shades, the Homeric references to life after death provide a much more lively picture of the afterlife, a picture that corresponds with the evidence found outside the Homeric epics. The dead have feelings and emotions, memories of their lives in the sun, and the ability to know of and even interfere in the world of the living. They appreciate the attentions paid to them by the living, not simply the burial and funeral rituals, but the offerings made subsequently at the tomb. Moreover, the world of the dead itself is not so dreary, nor are all the shades merely flitting about, gibbering mindlessly. The pursuits of the dead mirror the world of the living, and the social hierarchies of the living world persist in some form after death. Orion continues his hunting, while Minos continues giving judgement and resolving conflicts, suggesting that, in the world of the dead, the shades carry on with the characteristically Greek pursuit of lawsuits. Minos’ position among the dead, not to mention Achilles’, suggests that the social hierarchies from the world of the living are reproduced in the land of the dead - the gods’ favorites remain favored. Likewise, those who won favor from the gods by their deeds in life continue to reap the benefits, while those who incurred the wrath of the gods continue to suffer their displeasure. This afterlife is not uniform for all ; those who have angered the gods continue their punishments in the afterlife, while those who have won their favor continue to enjoy its benefits. This differentiated afterlife is in direct conflict with the uniformly dreary one that underscores the importance of the heroic glory. 10As powerful as this grim vision of the afterlife is in the Homeric epics, commentators since antiquity have noticed that this uniformly dreary life for the senseless, strengthless dead is not the only vision of afterlife presented in the Homeric poems. For example, Achilles worries in the Iliad lest the soul of Patroklos get angry at learning that he has given Hektor’s corpse back to his father, and the soul of Ajax can recall the past quarrel and remain angry at Odysseus while sulking at a distance, never drinking the blood that is supposed to be necessary to restore awareness to the shades. Odysseus, while he is performing libations and sacrifices to the dead at the entrance to the Underworld, even makes an elaborate promise to perform further rituals upon his return to Ithaca for the satisfaction of the dead. The scenes with Achilles and Patroklos or Odysseus and his mother are notable for their pathos, but, while these few passages clearly articulate the idea that the shades of the dead live mindless and meaningless existences, the other references to the life after death are much less marked, suggesting that audience needs less grounding to accept the ideas of lively afterlife introduced in them. It is the ideas of mindless shades and lifeless afterlife that need careful handling - put in the mouths of authoritative speakers like Achilles, Circe and Odysseus as explanations of strange visions, these ideas are marked as special, in contrast to the expected and accepted ideas of a lively afterlife. 9The Homeric epics present a mixed picture of what happens to an individual after death, but scholars have focused on one element in that picture as the standard view of the afterlife, not just in Homer but in Greek religion more broadly. This supposedly standard view is that the souls of the dead lack all mind or force ; once a hero leaves the light of the sun, only a grim, joyless and tedious existence awaits, with no particular suffering but no pleasure either. Such a view is supported by a few key passages in the epics : the meeting of Achilles with the shade of Patroklos in the Iliad, the meeting of Odysseus with his mother in the Underworld in the Odyssey. This bleak vision of death and afterlife is fundamental to the Homeric idea of the hero’s choice - only in life is there any meaningful existence, so the hero is the one who, like Achilles, chooses to do glorious deeds. Since death is inevitable, Sarpedon points out, the hero should not try to avoid it but go out into the front of battle and win honor and glory. Such glory (κλέος) is the only thing that really is imperishable (ἄφθιτον), the only meaningful form of immortality, since the persistence of the soul after death is so unappealing. 8Even though the historical premises of Rohde’s argument have long since been rejected, the relation of the Homeric ideas of afterlife to the Orphic is still relentlessly depicted in terms of a chronological development. Other views are presented as later developments, starting with the Archaic period - or rather with the elements in Homer (and Hesiod) that seem to clash with the ideas that are presumed to be “earliest”. Despite the notorious problems of dating the Homeric epics or even various elements within them, scholars have put forth a circular argument : the earliest material can be identified as the truly Homeric idea of afterlife, while the later material can be identified as such because it conflicts with the truly Homeric version, which is the earlier. The problem, I suggest, lies in the confusion of the world in the Homeric poems with the world of the Homeric poems, that is, the world of their audience. The ideology of death and afterlife expressed in the Homeric poems does not necessarily correspond to the ideas that were generally accepted by the audiences of the Homeric poems over the years in which the poems were being composed and performed. Rather, the poems articulate their own ideology of death and afterlife that resonates with the ideas of heroic glory and the poetic celebration thereof within the poems. Scholars have mistaken the special ideology within the poems for the ideas of death and afterlife of the audience outside the poems, thus misunderstanding both the way the ideas and images of afterlife are used both in Homer and in later authors such as Plato. 7The supposed centrality of these doctrines concerning the soul to Orphism accounts in large part for the interest that Orphism has aroused over the last century and a half, since scholars regarded Orphism as the channel through which the idea of the immortality of the soul, as well as the idea of sin and salvation, entered Western philosophic and religious tradition – primarily through the works of Plato. The contrast between the idea of mere persistence of souls beyond physical death and a true and authentic idea of immortality of the soul, has been seen as the contrast between the dreary Homeric afterlife, where everyone shares the same bleak fate, and the other visions of a more lively afterlife, with different fates for different folks. In his fundamental study of the issue, Rohde argues for the evolution of a real idea of the immortality of the soul coming from new ideas of the soul and of afterlife that arise out of the Dionysiac invasion and the Orphic reform. Hence, by this argument, the Orphics are responsible for the entry into Greek religion of a real concept of the immortality of the soul, and the appearance of such ideas in other texts can be attributed to the influence of the Orphics. 6By contrast, scholars over the past century and a half have put forth various lists of Orphic doctrines in their attempts to define Orphism by its doctrines. Bernabé has recently listed the central points of Orphic doctrine that have met with (more or less) general agreement : a belief in a soul-body dualism, an idea of an original sin (or peché antécédent) from which purification can be sought to attain salvation, and the idea of a cycle of reincarnations over which this process occurs. I argue, to the contrary, that the dualism of the soul and body is an idea found throughout the tradition, whereas reincarnation is only found occasionally in texts labeled Orphic (even in its broadest sense) and cannot be read back into other texts. While a number of Orphic texts do emphasize the idea of purification, the idea of an Orphic doctrine of an inherited original sin is a modern fabrication, and the idea of obtaining a favorable afterlife (salvation) is not in itself an idea restricted to Orphism. The attempt to define Orphism by these doctrines includes in the category evidence that was never regarded as Orphic by the ancients themselves, as well as attributing all of these doctrines to evidence that displays only some or none of these ideas. 5Whereas modern scholars have tended to make such attributions on the basis of supposed Orphic doctrines, the ancients made no such doctrinal classifications. Rather, the ancient label “Orphic” was more like the contemporary term “new age”, which is associated, not specifically with particular religious ideas or organizations, but more vaguely with a set of ideas loosely defined by their distance from mainstream religious activity. Like “new age”, the association with Orpheus can be positive, indicating special inspiration that goes beyond the ordinary, but often is negative, implying a holier-than-thou attitude that is either ludicrous or hypocritical. Whether something is labeled as Orphic depends, in the ancient evidence, not on the presence of particular mythic motifs or religious doctrines, but upon the act of classification by a particular classifier in a specific context ; it is, therefore, always a polemical definition, not a disinterested one. 4In my current work, I am seeking to redefine ancient Orphism, that is, to come up with a way of defining the category of things the ancient Greeks would have labeled Orphic. In my process of re-definition, I start with Linforth’s single criterion of the name of Orpheus to delineate evidence labeled as Orphic by the ancient witnesses, but I derive from this class of explicitly labeled evidence a set of criteria that characterize the material in different ways as extra-ordinary religious phenomena. I suggest that Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘family resemblances’ permits us to construct a polythetic definition in which evidence characterized by any of several criteria may be labeled Orphic. In this polythetic definition, there is no single feature, be it the name of Orpheus or some particular doctrine of the soul, that makes something Orphic. Rather, if something - person, text, or ritual - boasted of extra-ordinary purity or sanctity, made a claim to special divine connection or extreme antiquity, or was marked by extra-ordinary strangeness, perversity, or alien nature, then that thing might be labeled Orphic, classified with other Orphic things, and perhaps even sealed with the name of Orpheus. This polythetic definition permits us to include even material that is not sealed with the name of Orpheus but is classified as extra-ordinary in the same ways that other evidence that does bear Orpheus’ name. 3To assess the idea that Plato borrows from Orpheus, we must understand what was Orphic in antiquity. The category of Orphism is often defined in modern scholarship precisely by the presence of certain kinds of ideas about the afterlife, the nature and fate of the soul. Orphic ideas of the soul and afterlife are most often defined by explicit contrast with the Homeric view of the afterlife, which is taken as the standard view for ancient Greek culture. As Parker puts it, “Orphic poetry can almost be defined as eschatological poetry, and it was in such poems perhaps that ‘persuasive’ accounts of the afterlife – accounts designed, unlike that in Odyssey xi, to influence the hearer’s behaviour in the here and now – were powerfully presented for the first time.” I argue that such an approach provides a misleading picture not only of Orphic ideas of afterlife, but even of the normative ideas in ancient Greek culture about the nature and fate of the soul, in life and afterwards. We cannot understand what Plato is doing with the mythological tradition unless we properly understand the place of those ideas within it. The ideas in Homeric poetry that are usually taken to be standard in fact represent a special perspective that stresses the power of poetry to provide immortality, while the range of ideas that are actually marked in the ancient evidence as extraordinary or linked with Orpheus and his ilk is much smaller. The persistence of the soul and the lively afterlife are not the exclusive province of Orphism but rather the normal and most widely accepted ideas in the tradition. Only a limited range of ideas about the relation of the soul to the body seem consistently to be labeled, in some way or other, as Orphic in the evidence. 2Here I want to argue that many of the ideas which Plato is supposed to have drawn from Orphism come not from the Orphica, but from the broader mythological tradition. Even those elements which Plato did draw from the Orphica or similar sources, however, he transformed in significant ways to suit his philosophical purposes in the particular dialogue. I shall first examine the idea of a lively afterlife, arguing that, while this vision differs from that of Homer, a differentiated afterlife with judgement, complex geography, and rewards and punishments was nevertheless a widespread and generally accepted idea, which Plato manipulates in various ways in different dialogues. By contrast, other ideas of the relation of the soul to the body, such as the soul entombed in the body or the process of reincarnation, appear marked, in the evidence of Plato and others, as extra-ordinary and unfamiliar ideas, which Plato again transposes to fit his arguments in the dialogue. 1So claims the sixth century NeoPlatonist, Olympiodorus, attributing Plato’s ideas of the soul and its nature in the Phaedo to the mysterious ancient singer Orpheus. Later scholars have been inclined to follow Olympiodorus in attributing many of Plato’s ideas about the soul to Orpheus, or rather to ‘the Orphics’ or ‘Orphism’, a variously defined religious current linked to the poems of the mythic poet Orpheus. Too often, Plato’s philosophic innovations are explained away by tracing the ideas back to ‘Orphism’, but this search for sources, which served Olympiodorus and the other NeoPlatonists to bolster the authority of Plato and the ancient pagan tradition against the advancing tide of Christianity, obscures the subtle work of Plato in manipulating the mythological and philosophic tradition of which he was a part. Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (1981). To Die and Enter the House of Hades: Homer, Before and After. Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death. J. Whaley. New York, St. Martin’s Press: 15-39. Burkert, W. (1982). Craft Versus Sect : The Problem of Orphics and Pythagoreans. Jewish and Christian Self-Definition : Volume Three - Self-Definition in the Greco-Roman World. B. Meyer & E. P. Sanders. Philadelphia, Fortress Press: 1-22. Bernabé, A. (2002). La toile de Pénélope : a-t-il existé un mythe orphique sur Dionysoset les Titans? Revue de l’histoire des religions 219(4): 401–433. Bernabé, A. (1997). Orfeotelestas, charlatanes, intérpretes : transmisores de la palabra órfica. Homenatge a Miquel Dolç. M. del C. Bosch and M. A. Fornes. Palma De Mallorca: 37–41. Notes Parker 1995, p. 500. Not only does such a claim ignore the mass of Orphic material on other subjects (which indeed Parker mentions elsewhere in his discussion), but it suggests that the Homeric nekyia had no effect on the behavior of its audiences. Any traditional tale, particularly so influential a myth as the Odyssey nekyia, provides for its audience a model of the world and for behavior within it. See Edmonds 2004, pp. 4-13. See especially Edmonds 2008a, 2008b, and 2013 (from which some of the foregoing is drawn). “El creyente órfico busca la salvación individual, dentro de un marco de referencia en que son puntos centrales : el dualismo alma-cuerpo, la existencia de un pecado antecedente, y el ciclo de trasmigraciones, hasta que el alma consigue unirse con la divinidad.” Bernabé 1998a, p. 172 ; cp. Bernabé 1997, p. 39 ; Bernabé 2002b, pp. 208-9 ; Bernabé 2011, pp. 11-14, 254-256. In his important edition of the fragments (Bernabé 2004 Poetae Epici Graecae II.2 : 224), he claims, “Orphici agebant vitam religiosam, quem initiati in ritu privato adipiscebantur ; habebant libros tradentes et servantes doctrinam Orpheo adscriptos ; credebant animam immortalem esse, sed culpam vetustam quae hereditas a Titanibus devenit, sibi expiandam esse ritus certos celebrando, praecepta instituta quaedam observando ; credebant quoque animas suas in nova corpora transituras esse antequam corpore liberatae aeternam vitam beatam ad inferos consequi possent.” Guthrie 1952, p. 73, puts the same ideas in less guarded terms : “The Orphic doctrines included a belief in original sin, based on a legend about the origin of mankind, in the emphatic separation of soul from body, and in a life hereafter.” “It was the Orphic Mysteries,” proclaims Smyth, “that gave birth to the most profound ideas of Greek religion - the divine origin of the soul, its eternal nature, and personal immortality.” Smyth 1912, p. 274. Cp., Moore 1912, pp. 113-114, “Whatever extravagances Orphism fell to, it must be kept in mind that it had introduced into the European world certain doctrines pregnant with spiritual fruit. … It remained for Plato to bring the Orphic seed to fruit by giving an intellectual basis to the doctrine of the divine nature of the soul, which he thus raised out of the plane of mere emotional belief.” Dieterich’s influential Nekyia seeks to trace the Christian imagery of Hell back to Orphic sources, while Macchioro’s Orpheus to Paul derives the theology of St. Paul from Orphic beliefs. Dieterich 1893 ; Macchioro 1930. Rohde 1925, p. 9, complains, “To speak of an ‘immortal life’ of these souls, as scholars both ancient and modern have done, is incorrect They can hardly be said to live even, any more than the image does that is reflected in the mirror ; and that they prolong to eternity their shadowy image-existence - where in Homer do we ever find this said?” For Rohde, drawing upon the ideas of his friend Nietzsche, Dionysiac ecstasy provided the worshipper with a mystic identification with the deity, a feeling of immortal life, but it was only the rationalizing (Apolline) ideas of the Orphics that shaped this primitive feeling into a real doctrine.“Reflexion upon the nature of the world and of God, the changing and deceptive flow of appearance with the indestructible One Reality behind it ; the conception of a divinity that is One, a single light that, divided into a thousand rays and reflected from everything that is, achieves its unity again in the soul of man : such thoughts as these, allied to the dim half-conscious impulse of an enthusiastic dance-worship, might allow the pure waters of the stream of mysticism to run clear at last, freed from the turbid and unsatisfying enthusiasm of popular religious practices.” (Rohde 1925, p. 266) Cp. Lucas 1946, p. 67. “The modern reader, baffled and dismayed by the apparent crudity of much of conventional Greek religion, is inclined to look everywhere for signs of Orphism, because it gives more of what he has come to expect from religion, and he is loath to believe that the Greeks did not demand it too.” Thus, for example, despite her caveats, Johnston’s recent survey of Greek beliefs of death and afterlife takes the lifeless afterlife in Homer as primary in both time and importance. “In earliest times, the Greeks apparently believed that everyone got the same deal after death… The souls existed in a state that was not unpleasant but not particularly enjoyable.” (Johnston 2004, p. 486.) Cp. Albinus 2000, p. 16. “The Archaic attitude towards death was confined to remembrance and adoration of the dead through hero-cult and epic song. Under the sway of Homeric discourse, the fate of mortals was regarded, with only a few exceptions, as a departure for the House of Hades, inhabited by the ghost-like images of former lives. However, a specific interest in the hereafter, representing a continuation of individual existence in its own right, developed from the Archaic to Classical times, much under the influence of Orphic discourse, and accompanied by extensive changes in social life.” Likewise, Bernabé 2011, p. 157. Sourvinou-Inwood 1995 links the shift in attitudes to death and afterlife to the rise of the city-state and sees the role of Orphic sectaries merely as developing the most extreme form of the ideas. pace Rohde 1925, p. 26. “If the Homeric creed had not been so constructed in essentials that it corresponded to the beliefs of the time, or, at least, could be made to correspond, then it is impossible to account (even allowing for the poetic tradition of a school) for the uniformity that marks the work of the many poets that had a hand in the composition of the two poems. In this narrow sense it can be truly said that Homer’s poems represent the popular belief of the time.” Sourvinou-Inwood 1995 has a far more nuanced model, but she still assumes that the Homeric poems represent the earliest stage of a development of ideas. The shade of Patroklos refers to the other ghosts as ψυχαὶ εἴδωλα καμόντων - souls, phantoms of the worn out (Iliad 23.72), and Achilles encapsulates this view after his dream vision of Patroklos (Iliad 23.103-4) : “Ah me! So even in the house of Hades there is something, a soul and a phantom, but the wits are not there at all.” ὢ πόποι ἦ ῥά τίς ἐστι καὶ εἰν Ἀΐδαο δόμοισι ψυχὴ καὶ εἴδωλον, ἀτὰρ φρένες οὐκ ἔνι πάμπαν. Whatever it is (τις) that survives lacks φρένες, the force of mind or emotion that is an essential element of the living individual. Achilles’ lament at the condition of the soul of the deceased comes after he has attempted to embrace the shade of his dearly departed companion, and the same pathetic scene produces the same idea when Odysseus tries to embrace the shade of his mother in the underworld. She tells him that she is not a trick or false image, but this is the appointed way with mortals when one dies. For the sinews no longer hold the flesh and the bones together, but the strong might of blazing fire destroys these, as soon as the life leaves the white bones, and the spirit, like a dream, flits away, and hovers to and fro.” Odyssey 11.218-222. ἀλλ’ αὕτη δίκη ἐστὶ βροτῶν, ὅτε τίς κε θάνῃσιν. \| οὐ γὰρ ἔτι σάρκας τε καὶ ὀστέα ἶνες ἔχουσιν, \| ἀλλὰ τὰ μέν τε πυρὸς κρατερὸν μένος αἰθομένοιο \| δαμνᾷ, ἐπεί κε πρῶτα λίπῃ λεύκ’ ὀστέα θυμός, \| ψυχὴ δ’ ἠΰτ’ ὄνειρος ἀποπταμένη πεπότηται. Rohde and others have taken this statement to imply that it is the process of cremation that removes the φρένες and θύμος from the soul that goes to Hades, but see below. (For differing approaches to the components of the Homeric self, see for example Claus 1981 or Clarke 1999, p. 42-47. ) This idea is reinforced in the Odyssey when Circe describes Tiresias as the only shade in the underworld who has retained his mind (νόον) ; all the rest are mere gibbering ghosts. τοῦ τε φρένες ἔμπεδοί εἰσι· τῷ καὶ τεθνηῶτι νόον πόρε Περσεφόνεια, οἴῳ πεπνῦσθαι, τοὶ δὲ σκιαὶ ἀίσσουσιν. (Odyssey 10. 493-5) Homer Iliad 12.322-8. ὦ πέπον εἰ μὲν γὰρ πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε\| αἰεὶ δὴ μέλλοιμεν ἀγήρω τ᾽ ἀθανάτω τε\| ἔσσεσθ᾽, οὔτέ κεν αὐτὸς ἐνὶ πρώτοισι μαχοίμην\| οὔτέ κε σὲ στέλλοιμι μάχην ἐς κυδιάνειραν·\| νῦν δ᾽ ἔμπης γὰρ κῆρες ἐφεστᾶσιν θανάτοιο\| μυρίαι, ἃς οὐκ ἔστι φυγεῖν βροτὸν οὐδ᾽ ὑπαλύξαι,\| ἴομεν ἠέ τῳ εὖχος ὀρέξομεν ἠέ τις ἡμῖν. O my friend, if only we two having escaped from this war here might forever continue to be unaging and immortal, neither would I myself fight in the forefront nor would I urge you into the battle where men win glory. But now, since ten thousand dooms of death hang over us, which it is not possible for any mortal to elude, let us then go forth, so that either we seize glory from someone or someone from us. Thus, even Achilles, who chose to die young and glorious would rather be alive again, although he does not repudiate his earlier choice and is delighted to hear that his son, Neoptolemos, is also securing himself immortality through his glorious deeds. “The vividness of the Homeric image of the senseless ghosts is so strong and striking in its starkness that it has coloured modern scholars’ visions of this Hades ; without doubt it is partly responsible for the monolithic interpretations put on it.” (Sourvinou-Inwood 1995, p. 84, n. 210) Homer Odyssey 11.541-546 ; Homer Iliad 24.591-595. Patroklos is now safely cremated and celebrated in funeral games and thus fully integrated into Hades ; if the “rule” of the standard version is that the deceased loses all consciousness once cremated, Patroklos should have no way of knowing what Achilles has done nor any emotions to feel if he did learn. Rohde championed the view, based on Odyssey 11.221-2, that cremation is the point at which the soul loses the φρένες and θύμος, and that a shift from cremation to inhumation in the post-Homeric period brought new ideas of the survival of consciousness for the soul (or brought them back from previous periods of inhumation. Sourvinou-Inwood, however, relying on more recent archaeology that tracks the variation between practices at different times and in different regions, points out : “The choice between cremation and inhumation can be shown to be a matter of fashion, with no significance.” (Sourvinou-Inwood, 1981, p. 33 ; cp. Snodgrass, pp. 143-7) Homer Odyssey 11. 29-33. I swore many times to the strengthless heads of the dead that, when I returned to Ithaka, I would slaughter in my halls a barren cow, whichever one was the best, and heap up the pyre with treasures, and to Teiresias alone, apart from the rest, I would dedicate an all-black ram, the one which stood out from all in our flocks. πολλὰ δὲ γουνούμην νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα, \| ἐλθὼν εἰς Ἰθάκην στεῖραν βοῦν, ἥ τις ἀρίστη, \| ῥέξειν ἐν μεγάροισι πυρήν τ’ ἐμπλησέμεν ἐσθλῶν, \| Τειρεσίῃ δ’ ἀπάνευθεν ὄϊν ἱερευσέμεν οἴῳ \| παμμέλαν’, ὃς μήλοισι μεταπρέπει ἡμετέροισι. Cp. Odyssey 10.521-6. As Claus 1981 notes of Iliad 23.103-4, “What is impressive about these lines is not that they explain the particular nature of the shade but that they show a need to explain and define.” (p. 98) Sourvinou-Inwood 1995, p. 79, referring to Odyssey 11, Odyssey 10.493-5, Iliad 23.103-7. “But if, as I suggest, the filters of both poet and audience were shaped by a belief in a Hades which (whether or not it was explicitly hierarchically articulated) involved inhabitants with faculties, values, and behaviour-patterns at least minimally comparable to those they had in life, Achilles’ superior status in Hades would have appeared ‘only common sense’, and so accepted unexamined.” (p. 80) Homer Odyssey 11.568-575. As Sourvinou-Inwood notes, “Outside this context he [Homer] does not stick to the constraints of the belief in witless shades ; for to him (and to his audience), by whom the belief in the lively shades was taken for granted, the articulation of behaviour or belief involving the shades as lively did not register as other than ‘natural’.” Vase paintings depict the dead engaged in a variety of pleasant pursuits - games like pessoi or dice - and Pindar fr. 130 has the dead engaging in horsemanship, gymnastics, and lyre-playing as well. Cp. Garland 1985, pp. 68-72. Much ingenuity has been needlessly exercised in the attempt to explain away the punishments of Tantalos, Tityos, and Sisyphos in the Homeric nekyia so that their suffering does not contradict the mindlessness of the dead, but those three simply represent notable figures who are suffering in the afterlife, just as Odysseus also meets other notables with different fates. There is no reason to imagine they didn’t really die or that they are “cosmic” sinners (as Sourvinou-Inwood 1986 suggests) or otherwise representative of special kinds of crimes. The Erinyes appear in oaths (Iliad 3.276-80 ; 19.259-60) as figures who punish beneath the earth those who have transgressed oaths, but the Homeric poems do not elaborate, as other sources do, on the range of crimes and punishments, as well as punishers. Plato Republic 330d-331a. The 5th century BCE painting of Odysseus in the underworld by Polygnotus, which Pausanias saw at Delphi, provides a wider selection of punishers and punished. In addition to the ones mentioned in the Odyssey, Polygnotus depicts a man who maltreated his father being abused in turn by the father, while someone who committed sacrilege is left to the attentions of a pharmakeutria. (10.27-31) Further torments are provided by a horrible monster named Eurynomos - a demon unknown, Pausanias notes, to the nekyiai of the Odyssey, the Minyas, and the Nostoi. A Demosthenic speech attests to other such paintings depicting the afterlife torments of the impious. [Dem.] 25.53. The speaker condemns his opponent : “But he is implacable, unsettled, unsociable ; he has no kindness, no friendliness, none of the feelings which an ordinary person knows ; all those things with which the painters depict the impious in Hades - Curses, Blasphemy, Envy, Faction, Strife, with
Growth Hormone-tainted milk it would allow into Canada the further exploitation of temporary foreign workers it would enable the extended patent protection it would give to transnational corporations for expensive life-saving pharmaceuticals the threat posed to public water services and water protection the lack of transparency in its negotiation and now in its ratification process. It is important to email your comments on the TPP to the committee via email at ciit-tpp-ptp@parl.gc.ca The committee is accepting written submissions (of no more than 1,500 words in length) until June 30. Media reports suggest that the House of Commons will vote on the ratification of the TPP in the fall of 2017, just before the November 2017 deadline set by the 12-signatory countries. For our critique of the TPP, please see our campaign web-page here. Further reading Windsor and Montreal chapters protest the TPP (May 12, 2016) Winnipeg activists protest the Trans-Pacific Partnership (April 21, 2016) Council of Canadians & Climate Justice Saskatoon protest outside TPP hearing (April 21, 2016) A most unpublic 'public hearing' on the TPP in Vancouver (April 18, 2016)The National Registry of Exonerations, a project of the University of Michigan School of Law, issued findings this month about the country’s criminal-justice system’s failures. The group reported 1,733 exonerations of prisoners in the past 26 years, including 149 cases last year, a record number topping the previous year, which, underscoring the trend, was also a record. According to investigators, prosecutorial misconduct helped secure nearly 44 percent of those bogus convictions. “Since 2011, the annual number of exonerations has more than doubled,” the authors noted. “We now average nearly three exonerations a week.” There is no way to measure the true extent of prosecutorial mischief, of course, because—as we’ve learned during Orange County’s ongoing, jailhouse-informant scandal—the public-payroll cheaters routinely escape detection. These offenders taint the process by posing Forrest Gump-oblivious to their transgressions, habitually lying, taking advantage of government secrecy and exploiting the aid of collaborators, fellow prosecutors and judges who remain mum when they see corruption. In 2010, for example, Superior Court Judge John D. Conley, a former prosecutor, refused to even lackadaisically wag his finger at two sheriff’s deputies caught lying on the witness stand to help his former employer, the Orange County district attorney’s office (OCDA), tilt a Laguna Niguel residential-burglary case. There are consequences to a criminal-justice system that espouses its own righteousness but tacitly lets dirty government agents know they won’t likely get caught and, if they are, will face no punishment. That’s not speculation. In 2015, during another disturbing sequence of events, Superior Court Judge Thomas M. Goethals ruled two senior jail deputies repeatedly lied in a death-penalty case, but neither their boss, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, nor the person who could have prosecuted the crimes, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, held them accountable. Such indifference to unethical conduct serves to green-light additional duplicitous moves by individuals with enormous state power to end a citizen’s freedom. Prosecutorial cheating apparently extends to relatively minor trials, too. Late last year, our two daily newspapers, the Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register, failed to tell their readers about a troubling case originating in Irvine. OCDA officials filed a 2013 DUI charge against Sandra Goelman, who was involved in a 7:45 a.m. traffic accident with an Orange County Transportation Authority bus. The then-63-year-old Goelman hadn’t consumed alcohol or illegal substances, but about nine hours before the incident, she’d taken the sleep aid Ambien. This otherwise-meaningless case evolved “from a normal, if there was such a thing, Ambien DUI case to a radioactive one,” according to Superior Court Judge Gregory W. Jones. The mess had nothing to do with Goelman or her lawyers. The controversy centered on two questions: Did Deputy DA James Hong lie in hopes of unfairly strengthening the government’s case? And, if so, what were the consequences? In late 2014, the OCDA quietly removed Matthew Andrade, an Irvine Police Department officer who responded to the collision, as a trial witness and refused to explain why, raising suspicion for Peter F. Iocona, Goelman’s Laguna Beach-based defense attorney. Iocona got a court order for the officer to appear, but he failed to show up at a hearing. During an April 22, 2015, pretrial session in Judge Douglas Hatchimonji’s chambers inside the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach, the defense attorney reported that the cop refused to share his contact information with anyone but the OCDA. Hatchimonji asked Hong if he knew how to reach the officer. According to court records filed by the defense and reviewed by the Weekly, the deputy DA declared “he had no information regarding Mr. Andrade’s whereabouts or why he did not appear pursuant to the court order.” However, three months later, on July 15, Andrade called Goelman’s defense, who’d gained an arrest warrant against him for failing to appear in court, and dropped a bombshell, one he supplemented with a sworn affidavit. He claimed Hong telephoned his private cellphone on April 14 and told him not to show up for testimony. The cop wasn’t guessing as to who called him; he possessed cellphone records. Given the extraordinary trust Orange County juries typically give law-enforcement witnesses because they wear badges, why would a deputy DA want this particular cop to mysteriously disappear? An easy answer is available. After the Goelman accident, Irvine PD fired Andrade for an act of dishonesty, according to court records. Other than Assistant DA Jennifer Contini testifying the officer “lied to a sergeant,” the circumstances are not known. California law, the so-called Police Officers’ Bill of Rights, blocks public access to such details. During a Sept. 15 hearing, Hong—who joined the OCDA in August 2011 after graduating from Trinity Law School—downplayed events, but he admitted a review of his own cellphone records matched the ex-cop’s time line. Under questioning by Alan Castillo, Iocona’s colleague, the deputy DA acknowledged telling Hatchimonji he had no clue how to contact the cop, even though he’d phoned the man seven days earlier for a six-minute, on-duty conversation. Believing events raised the issue of criminal witness tampering by dissuading an individual from testifying, Castillo demanded Hong explain the discrepancy. “Because I had no recollection of that conservation with Mr. Andrade,” the prosecutor asserted. Toward the end of the contentious hearing, Castillo also asked Hong if he had been confused when he told Hatchimonji he didn’t know how to contact Andrade. “Yes,” the deputy DA replied after Judge Jones rejected multiple objections by senior prosecutors in attendance, Sonia Balleste and Mark Sacks. “I initially felt confused about what’s going on.... The problem is it’s not my case. So it’s difficult for me to be familiar with everything that’s going on and feel comfortable.” The judge didn’t buy Hong’s claim of being unaware of Andrade’s status as a “radioactive witness” for the government’s case. “I cannot conceive of an innocent explanation for [the deputy DA] being mute [when Hatchimonji asked why the cop failed to attend court],” Jones ruled. “I think [Hong] realized he had made a big mistake releasing a witness from appearing on a judge’s order and he said nothing. So, I do believe that there was prosecutorial misconduct. I’m convinced of that fact.” To underscore his view, the judge cited what he called a Plato quote to the prosecutors. “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark,” he read aloud. “The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” But would the OCDA be punished? No. Jones determined Goelman’s constitutional rights had not been prejudiced to warrant a pretrial dismissal of the case. Did Hong endure as much as a wrist slap? No. Rackauckas transferred him from misdemeanor duties to a more powerful division of the agency, the felony panel unit, a move that usually leads to a pay raise. The Ambien DUI case went to trial in mid-October. Prosecutors demanded the Andrade/Hong affair be hidden because its exposure would air “a meritless” accusation that the OCDA “engaged in criminal misconduct.” After four days of testimony, jurors deadlocked. Karma?A self-described libertarian radio host on Monday defended Fox News host Megyn Kelly’s assertion that Santa Claus was white, saying he was going to “scream and complain because Martin Luther King is always portrayed as black.” In a clip obtained by BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, Herman Cain radio show guest host Neal Boortz speaks to a caller who called to complain that Kelly had been criticized after she recently said that both Santa and Jesus Christ were white men. “Yeah, I’m sorry, Santa Claus is white!” Boortz exclaims. “Okay? Deal with it!” “Everything has got to be black now, it doesn’t matter what it is,” the caller laments. “You know, I’m going to scream and complain because Martin Luther King is always portrayed as black,” Boortz quips. “It just ain’t right.” Boortz goes on to predict that he was going to “chase away” about 100,000 of Herman Cain’s listeners before the show was over. Listen to the audio below from the Herman Cain Show, broadcast Dec. 16, 2013.A new study has shown that a single injection of antibodies that target HIV can protect monkeys from contracting the virus for nearly six months. The study, published today in Nature, is an important step in the development of a new treatment that could prevent HIV infections in people. Because no HIV vaccine exists, finding other forms of preventive treatments against HIV is key. In the study, American and German researchers used four powerful antibodies that are known for neutralizing several strains of HIV circulating around the world. The antibodies were produced by certain HIV-infected people and purified in a lab before being used in the study. The researchers injected four groups of macaques with a different antibody. A week after the monkeys were given the antibodies, they were exposed to weekly low doses of a monkey version of the HIV virus. (The human version only infects people.) The antibodies were found to protect the macaques from becoming infected for 12 to 14 weeks on average. Some animals were even protected for as long as 23 weeks. For monkeys without the antibody, it took an average of three weeks to become infected with HIV. "I am astonished by how long protection lasted." "The result is surprising," says Ruth Ruprecht, who directs the AIDS Research Program at Texas Biomedical Research Institute and did not take part in the study. "I am astonished by how long protection lasted." Preventive HIV medications already exist, but they leave much to be desired. Pills like PrEP, for example, reduce the risk of getting infected from sex by more than 90 percent. The problem is that PrEP needs to be taken daily, and people often forget or they run out of pills or they take the medication only when they have sex. And that reduces the drug’s effectiveness. "PrEP is good if people take it, but we all know that human nature is such that we’re not perfect," says Ruprecht. "We forget things." This is why scientists are looking for other medications that can prevent HIV infections. Creating a vaccine would be ideal, but that’s proven difficult. Antibodies could be an alternative to an HIV vaccine. A vaccine works by exposing a person to a weakened pathogen and basically teaching the person’s immune system to fight off the infection for several years. With the treatment tried in this study, people would be injected with the antibodies instead of producing them themselves. The question is how long people would be protected. The longer the protection, the better the treatment, because it’d require people to get injections less frequently. That’s key in parts of the world like Africa, where HIV is widespread but access to health care facilities much less so. Nearly 37 million people in the world live with HIV today; in 2014 alone, nearly 2 million people became newly infected. Antibodies could be an alternative to an HIV vaccine The study found that certain monkeys were protected for nearly six months with a single injection of antibodies. That’s promising, says David Montefiori, the director of the Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine Research and Development at Duke University, especially because the antibodies used in the macaques will be even more effective in people. In fact, monkeys create their own antibodies to fight off the human antibodies, causing the antibodies to stick around for a shorter period of time than they would in people. "What the data in this study is suggesting is that six months [of protection] may be achievable and with improved technologies we might even do better than that," says Montefiori, who did not take part in the study. "This study is the first one to show that a single administration of these monoclonal antibodies can prevent infection, prevent disease, and might be a viable alternative for a vaccine against HIV," says Malcolm Martin, the director of the Viral Pathogenesis and Vaccine Section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who co-authored the study. "That’s a new finding." The study is not completely groundbreaking: antibodies have already been used to delay HIV infection in macaques. But in most of those studies, the monkeys were infected with HIV with a single high-dose shot of the virus. In this study, the monkeys were instead exposed to the virus in low doses week by week, not all at once. That mimics the way that people get exposed to HIV in real life. In fact, people usually don’t get infected with HIV the first time they’re exposed to the virus, Ruprecht says. The infection happens gradually. First, we have to see if the antibodies work in people "People actually get exposed to a surprisingly low level of virus during individual unprotected acts of intercourse," says Ruprecht. "It’s surprisingly low the amount of infectious virus that gets passed from an HIV-positive person to a negative partner." For this reason, she says, the study "is a very good step in the right direction to reflect the biology of HIV virus among people." The study has its limitations, at least for some. Ruprecht points out that the researchers could have achieved better results by using a cocktail of antibodies in the monkeys, instead of injecting each group of macaques with a single antibody. That’s because when an HIV virus is confronted by one antibody, the virus becomes resistant to it. "When you combine antibodies that have different specificities, you decrease the chance of creating immunization-resistant viruses," says Ruprecht. When mixed together, the antibodies "reinforce each other, synergize, and what that will mean is that the protection will be much more potent." The study acknowledges that a cocktail of antibodies would be more efficient. But, Martin says, the researchers wanted to first figure out how effective each individual antibody was against the HIV virus. "Right now, we have to take things one step at a time," says Martin. "You can’t jump start in and automatically give a mixture of four antibodies." First, Martin says, we have to see if the antibodies work in people. Only then we can think of an effective cocktail treatment. "Hopefully, we’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel within the next 10 years." That’s what happening right now with one of the antibodies Martin used in his study. A clinical trial of the antibody VRC01 — the first one of its kind — has just begun in Brazil, Peru, and the United States. The study will enroll 2,700 people who are at high-risk of infection and it will test how effectively the antibody protects them from getting infected. Later this spring, the study will launch in several African nations, including South Africa, Kenya, Botswana, and Tanzania. If the results, which are expected by 2022, are good, antibodies could be developed into an effective preventive treatment, which would be profoundly important in the fight against HIV. Montefiori, who has devoted 30 years of his career to finding an HIV vaccine, says there are reasons to be positive. "With the extraordinary progress that’s been made just in the past six years, I’m more optimistic than ever that the field will eventually succeed in having an effective prevention measure," he says, whether it’s the antibodies or an actual vaccine. "Hopefully, we’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel within the next 10 years."A captured Syrian soldier admits in a recent video that Hezbollah and the Iranian regime is helping Assad. Ali Imad Takla, who was captured by the rebel Free Syrian Army, told the opposition Iran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, are fighting with forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. In this video a Syrian opposition member says Iran and Syria is helping Assad. Al-Arabiya reported: Iran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, are fighting with forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, a soldier allegedly belonging to the Syrian Republican Guard said in a video posted online Monday. Ali Imad Takla, who – according to the amateur video – was captured by the rebel Free Syrian Army told the opposition his brigade has been fighting in Daraya under the orders of General Yousef al-Masry using missiles, planes as well as canons. He added there are regime soldiers based at Souq al-Hadeed. However, Al Arabiya cannot independently verify the content of the video.From the Texas General Land Office: The fringed leather pouch David Crockett carried his musket balls in the day he fell at the Alamo probably started out its life in a Creek Indian village in Tennessee. Its trip to Texas with Crockett in 1836 was just the start of a journey that would eventually land it in Switzerland, in the hands of British pop legend Phil Collins. At 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 28, Crockett’s pouch will return to the Alamo, along with Collins and the rest of what is widely considered to be the biggest and best collection of Alamo artifacts ever assembled. The Collins Collection will be unloaded from a truck in crates and be placed in the Gallagher House, 723 E Houston Street, under the direction of Collins himself and Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, the state’s steward of the Alamo. The arrival of Collins’ generous donation to the people of Texas will be a historic press opportunity. Collins’ Alamo collection includes invaluable artifacts like Jim Bowie’s legendary knife, and one of only four remaining rifles owned by Crockett. There are letters from William B. Travis and many other historical documents that shed insight on early Texas history. Like many Alamo artifacts, the story of Crockett’s pouch is not entirely clear. Some say Crockett gave the prized possession to a Mexican officer. Some suspect it was looted from Crockett’s corpse. But its return will bring its own story full-circle. The pouch, when found, held Crockett’s last remaining musket balls and two tortillas, long gone. After the battle, somehow, the bag found itself in the possession of Mexican Col. Jose Enrique de la Peña. When Peña died, it was documented along with the rest of his belongings. “Texans are deeply indebted to Phil Collins,” Patterson said. “He is giving us back our heritage. Now these Texas treasures need a home where all can see them and study from them and learn about how Texans won our liberty.” Patterson, as chairman of the Alamo Endowment, is leading the effort to build that permanent home for the Collins Collection. The private collection was popularized in Collins’ 384-page book, “The Alamo and Beyond” in 2012. Patterson said Collins’ decision was swayed by the Texas General Land Office being granted authority over the 300-year-old former mission in 2011. Patterson personally closed the deal that Land Office staff and Collins had been discussing for several months. For more information on the Texas General Land Office please visit www.glo.texas.gov. For more information on the Alamo, please visit the official Alamo website at http://www.thealamo.org. WHO: British pop legend Phil Collins, Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson WHAT: Delivery of the Phil Collins Alamo Collection WHEN: 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28 WHERE: Gallagher House, 723 E Houston Street, San Antonio (across the street from the Alamo) WHY: Delivery of the biggest and best Alamo collection in the world.The Phoenix Suns added some point guard depth Saturday, signing Phil Pressey to a 10-day contract. The 25-year-old undrafted point guard out of Missouri has spent three seasons in the NBA. In his first two seasons with the Boston Celtics, Pressey started in 11 games. He averaged 3.5 points and 2.3 assists per game in his second and final season with the Celtics in the 2014-15 season. After spending time with the Portland Trail Blazers and Utah Jazz before the start of the 2015-16 season, Pressey played in 14 games for the Philadelphia 76ers before being waived on Dec. 4. Since being waived, Pressey has been playing for the Idaho Stampede in the NBA D-League. Orlando Johnson went back to the D-League after his 10-day contract with the Suns and Jordan McRae’s second 10-day contract expired after Friday’s loss to the Houston Rockets. Ronnie Price returned in that loss and Brandon Knight has not played since Jan. 19. Follow @AZSportsThough modern refrigerators are getting fancy and connected, they're still just a jumble of pipes, pumps and hazardous fluids. Scientists from Canada and Bulgaria have made a discovery in the field of so-called magnetic cooling that may change their core functionality, however. Such systems work when ferromagnetic materials are removed from a magnetic field, causing them to cool down. That cooling energy can be recaptured using water as a heat transfer fluid instead of environmentally harmful hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants. Previous experiments have yielded inefficient systems, but researchers found a compound that could create a so-called giant magnetocaloric effect merely by rotating in a magnetic field. That drastically reduces the required input energy, and could one day result in simpler, more efficient fridges -- or anything else that needs to chill.Toby Alderweireld will rightly win Tottenham Hotspur’s Player of the Season come May. And yet in a season in which I, as well as most other Spurs fans, have run out of superlatives for the Belgian, he is not being spoken of in relation to the PFA Player of the Year award. Alderweireld has helped to fix Spurs’ defence. Last year we conceded 53 league goals and were defensively chaotic. Our press was often ineffective, our central midfield was often porous, and our centre-back pairing was often – well, it often contained Federico Fazio or Vlad Chiricheș. Naturally you would think that if you were to fix one of these problems you might see improvement. If you were to fix two of these problems, you might expect even greater improvement. As we have fixed all three, it would seem only right that the defensive improvement would be significant. But that seems to underplay the influence of Alderweireld, our best centre-back since club legend, Ledley King. So far this season Spurs have conceded just 24 goals in 30 matches and have kept 10 clean sheets. In those 30 matches, Alderweireld has played every minute – 2700 in total, more than any other Spurs player. Like King was for all those years, he has been a calming presence in the middle of defence, leading by example rather than by throwing his body on the line. He is not John Terry; he is not Belgium’s Brave Toby Alderweireld. In fact, he only averages 1.6 attempted tackles per 90 minutes and has only picked up three yellow cards all season. Scroll to continue with content Ad Don't think there have been many games this season where Alderweireld wasn't a contender for MOTM. Virtually flawless again today. — Bankrupt (@bankruptspurs) March 13, 2016 Story continues Alderweireld’s key defensive attributes are two-fold. Firstly, he has a natural knack of being in the right place at the right time. He is one of those players who seems to almost attract the ball at times, and that is a difficult skill to hone. He knows when to mark a man, and when to simply position himself in key areas where the ball is likely to end up. He also leads the defensive line with a calm authority which belies the fact that he is not one to rant or rave. He pushes us up to halfway, he controls the offside trap, he organises us. It is no surprise that his presence has led to significant improvements in those around him. Jan Vertonghen to his left was playing his best football for the club prior to picking up an injury, Kyle Walker to his right has returned to his best form, and Eric Dier ahead of him has been wonderfully dependable in his new central midfield role. It is not just his defensive attributes that have stood out. As you might expect from a player that was with the Ajax Academy between the ages of 15 and 19, his ability on the ball is impressive. His diagonal cross-field passes were attracting attention at the beginning of the season, when he would switch play neatly from one side of the pitch to the other, and we would gleefully comment from the stands on the likeness to Michael Dawson’s long-range passing (which was underrated, as it happens). But then he started playing the long-balls a little straighter, and twice in the space of a month he set up Dele Alli to score – first against West Bromwich Albion, and then against Everton. In both cases he effortlessly dropped the ball between defenders and goalkeeper, and in the case of the West Brom goal, Alli didn’t even have to take a touch, such was the immaculate weight of pass. Swoon. Alderweireld is a proper footballer. He regularly played in central midfield for Southampton last season, and has played right-back relatively often in his career too, including for the Belgian national team. He gives the impression of being unflappable wherever he ends up on the pitch -- be it pushing up into midfield in possession, being the last man on a counter, or marshalling the defence from a set piece. Apart from in the second Premier League game of our season in which Alderweireld conceded a penalty against Stoke City, he has been as close to perfect as one could expect – a Man of the Match contender more often than not, and the most consistent performer for the club across a supremely impressive Premier League season. That he is not in the running to win the PFA Player of the Year award is unsurprising in the context of the season. Romelu Lukaku, Jamie Vardy, and Harry Kane have played over and above what will have been expected of them to varying degrees. Riyad Mahrez and Dimitri Payet have been creative geniuses. Ross Barkley and Dele Alli have given England a new ‘Gerrard/Lampard’-style conundrum. N'Golo Kanté has been a Duracell Bunny crossed with Claude Makélélé. And a couple of Gooners have done alright in fits and starts too. Plus, it’s worth remembering that defenders don’t seem to win this award – John Terry was the last to do so in 2004/5. In an age where defending is oft-criticised, though, Alderweireld should be spoken of as a potential winner and his form and ability recognised. Though if his form continues, he might well be lifting another trophy come the end of the season regardless. Follow Chris on twitter at @WindyCOYS and read his Spurs musings at Windycoys.comBritish National party activists have warned a primary school's headteacher and chair of governors that they will face demonstrations outside their homes if they do not drop plans to extend sex education lessons to children aged four. A delegation from the far-right party picketed Grenoside Community primary school in Sheffield over proposals that would see children aged between four and six being taught about reproduction in mammals. Older children would be taught about the human body, including naming the sex organs, as well as receiving guidance on "good and bad touching". BNP activists, who arrived as the school was preparing to close on Tuesday, demonstrated outside and handed in a letter warning the head: "We believe that your evil plans to introduce these children to sex at such a young age borders on paedophilia and that it is not acceptable." The letter was copied to the school's chair of governors and Sheffield city council's executive director for children, young people and families. It warns: "We hope that you will see sense and we hope that no further action is needed, although we are ready to involve ourselves further on behalf of the silent majority if you insist on going further down your present road." The BNP's leader, Nick Griffin, tweeted: "Small BNP team went to Grenoside Primary School, Sheffield today. Leaflets v plans for sex … lessons from age 4. Mental paedophiles behind sick plan must drop it or face demos at home too." The school is consulting parents over changes that were originally scheduled for introduction in the spring or summer next year. The proposals will extend sex education to younger children. The school's headteacher, Colin Fleetwood, said: "This is an attempt to teach a more systematic approach throughout the school. It's also more systematic about the science part of it." He said that while a small number of parents did not want any sex education lessons in primary school, and others thought it was too early, the "vast majority" had been supportive of the changes. For the youngest children, the lessons would involve being taught about baby animals, Fleetwood said. "It's mummy rabbits and daddy rabbits." In response to the BNP demo, the school has sent a letter to parents saying the consultation will continue, and that the school's parents and governors will take a decision on the proposals. Fleetwood said: "Obviously it's extremely unpleasant to have the BNP threatening to demonstrate, and receiving an ultimatum is not a pleasant thing. We're actually carrying out a very successful consultation with our parents, with a high level of engagement." The Department for Education (DfE) recommends that all primary schools should have a sex and relationship education programme, but this guidance is not binding and it is up to schools to decide what to teach about reproduction and puberty beyond the science curriculum. All children need to know about puberty before the onset of physical changes, the DfE says. A DfE spokesman said: "Teachers have a right to do their jobs free from harassment, intimidation and abuse. The teaching of sex and relationships education in primary schools is a matter for schools and parents – it is not an issue for outside organisations to get involved in."A gunman opened fire on Thursday at an Oregon community college, killing 13 people in an act of violence strongly condemned by President Barack Obama. Thirteen people were killed in the incident at Umpqua Community College and about 20 others were wounded, according to Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum. The shooter — a 20-year-old man — died after exchanging gunfire with law enforcement, officials said. It was not immediately clear if he was included in the number of deceased Rosenblum provided. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said in a statement that it is "still too early to know all of the facts," but stressed the state's top priority is treating injured victims and securing the campus. Authorities did not immediately give any details on a motive but said they were investigating. In a somber press conference, Obama expressed both support for the victims and incredulity that Americans continue to die in mass shootings. He renewed his call for stronger gun controls to help stem the violence. "Somehow, this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine," he said in a prepared statement. "We've become numb to this." Opponents, many of which are members of the Republican-controlled Congress, however, strongly oppose new measures. They argue gun control legislation does little to prevent incidents of violence.How to Build Self Confidence: 6 Essential and Timeless Tips Image by *Zara (license). “Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.” Helen Keller “Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.” Brian Tracy “Confidence is courage at ease.” Daniel Maher I believe that one of the most common wishes is simply to feel more confident in various situations in life. But how? Confident friends may say: “Well, just be confident, man!”. However, to a person that doesn't feel that confident this piece of advice may not be very helpful. At all. There are however some time-tested and timeless advice. And in this article I'll explore some of those tips. You can learn much more about becoming more sure of yourself and building your inner strength and assertiveness in my 12-week Self-Esteem Course. Now, I hope you will find something useful in this article to help you improve and maintain your own levels of confidence. 1. Take action. Get it done. “Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.” Thomas A. Bennett “Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.” Thomas Carlyle “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” Dale Carnegie The most important step in building self confidence is simply to take action. Working on something and getting it done. Sitting at home and thinking about it will just make you feel worse (and lazy). Simple. But not always easy to do. To make it a bit easier, here are a three of my favorite ways to make it easier to take action: Be present. This will help you to stop overthinking and just go and do whatever you want to get done. One of the simplest ways to connect with the present moment is just to keep your focus on your breathing for a minute or two. Lighten up. One way to dissuade yourself from taking action is to take whatever you are about to do too seriously. That makes it feel too big, too difficult and too scary. If you on the other hand relax a bit and lighten up you often realize that those problems and negative feelings are just something you are creating in your own mind. With a lighter state of mind your tasks seems lighter and become easier to get started with. Have a look at Lighten Up! for more on this. That makes it feel too big, too difficult and too scary. If you on the other hand relax a bit and lighten up you often realize that those problems and negative feelings are just something you are creating in your own mind. Have a look at Lighten Up! for more on this. Really, really want it. Then taking action isn't something you have to force. Taking action becomes a very natural thing. It's something you can't wait to do. 2. Face your fear. “The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear.” William Jennings Bryan “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” Eleanor Roosevelt Look, I could tell you to do affirmations or other exercises for months in front of your mirror. It may have a positive effect. Just like preparing yourself it may help you to take action with more confidence. But to be frank, if you don't listen to the quotes above and face your fears you won't experience any better self confidence on a deeper and more fundamental level. Having experiences where you face your fear is what really builds self confidence. There is no way around it. However, there are ways to face your fears that do not include that much shaking of the knees. There are ways to make it easier for yourself. Be curious. When you are stuck in fear you are closed up. You tend to create division in your world and mind. You create barriers between you and other things/people. When you shift to being curious your perceptions go SWOOSH! and the world just opens up. Curiosity is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and positive then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear. How do you become more curious? One way is to remember how life has become more fun in the past thanks to your curiosity and to remember all the cool things it helped you to discover and experience. When you are stuck in fear you are closed up. You tend to create division in your world and mind. You create barriers between you and other things/people. It opens you up. And when you are open and positive then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear. How do you become more curious? Realize that fear is often based on unhelpful interpretation. As humans we like to look for patterns. The problem is just that we often find negative and not so helpful patterns in our lives based on just one or two experiences. Or by misjudging situations. Or through some silly miscommunication. When you get too identified with your thoughts you'll believe anything they tell you. A more helpful practice may be to not take your thoughts too seriously. A lot of the time they and your memory are pretty inaccurate. 3. Understand in what order things happen. One of my favorite snippets of movie-dialogue is this one from the 1999 film “Three Kings”. In this scene Major Archie Gates (George Clooney) wants the small team to save a fellow soldier and steal Saddam's gold just after the first Gulf War has ended. The young soldier Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze) has his doubts about the plan: Archie Gates: You're scared, right? Conrad Vig: Maybe. Archie Gates: The way it works is, you do the thing you're scared shitless of, and you get the courage AFTER you do it, not before you do it. Conrad Vig: That's a dumbass way to work. It should be the other way around. Archie Gates: I know. That's the way it works. Great movie. Great little piece of dialogue. Even though it may not be what people want to hear. The thing is
for the poor. But hey, one time in 2013 he said we should be nice to the poor, so there you go. Moderate! Supporting a path to legalization (not citizenship) and not rushing to blast all poor people into outer space should not be enough to make him liberals’ favorite Republican candidate, though there’s a low bar there. A policy apostasy or two aside, Kasich, also a former Fox News host and Lehman Brothers banker, is a fairly uniform conservative. What makes him stand out is what makes so many other so-called moderate heretics, such as ex–House Speaker John Boehner or Sen. Lindsey Graham or Sen. John McCain, stand out in the Republican Party of 2016: He’s a tactical realist who understands the limits of governance—and thus, how to govern. “You can’t get any really big thing done if you just have one party,” Kasich said while answering a question about his Social Security reform plan on Monday. “We have to have some form of bipartisanship. You’ve got to have some people in the other party say, ‘OK.’ And in the course of it, you’re going to have to talk to them about some of the things they want. You can’t give away the store. There’s a few places [I’ll] have to give. That’s life! I mean, where is it that we don’t give? I don’t know why we think politics is the only place where the answer is no, no, no, no, no.” You will not find many candidates who will admit this, which is to say “admit” that they would govern in the way the United States government is designed to operate. Kasich doesn’t paint the apocalyptic portrait of American politics or the state of the world that, say, Sen. Ted Cruz or every other candidate does. He’s saying that he knows how to do what needs to be done, but in order to achieve it you’re going to have to cut some deals with Democrats. It’s this combination of mild demeanor and procedural realpolitik that makes Kasich the nefarious “moderate” who understands what it means to govern and thus is actively despised by the conservative base. Unless the filibuster is torn down completely, any Republican who becomes president will have to operate this way. Kasich is a filthy rotten moderate RINO for admitting it. See more of Slate’s GOP primary coverage.South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Steve Spurrier (Photo11: Jeff Blake-USA TODAY Sports) It was not so much a press conference as it was a manifesto; a full accounting of his accomplishments, his health and his perceived enemies squeezed into 10 minutes of fury that made one of the game's great coaches and biggest characters look smaller than he ever should be. Steve Spurrier has spent a lifetime winning with such style and flair that he probably should be granted another. But the college football landscape is no country for old men. He is not the first to go down this road, and he won't be the last. At 70, Spurrier is in throes of humanity's most natural reflex, playing out for all the world to see: Getting old stinks. "This is new for South Carolina," Spurrier said. "Somebody doesn't like your coach. We're not too proud of what happened last year, but we're coming back. Don't listen to our enemies." Spurrier went on and on like this Wednesday during a hastily called media gathering in Columbia, which followed several days both last week in Birmingham and earlier this week on ESPN of answering questions about how long he planned to coach. He was petulant. He was paranoid. He suggested an Atlanta Journal-Constitution conspiracy to help the Georgia Bulldogs in recruiting. He took shots at Clemson and quoted Attila the Hun. He promised to continue coaching South Carolina for "a long time." It's hard to blame Spurrier for fighting back — and frankly, it makes things a whole lot more entertaining in the humdrum SEC East. But the harsh truth is, his age has indeed become a factor in recruiting. When Spurrier himself suggested last year that he only planned on coaching for two or three more years, rivals pounced, a few players reneged on their commitments to the Gamecocks and South Carolina responded quickly by giving him a new five-year contract. The new narrative, though, doesn't change reality. The Marcus Lattimores, Alshon Jefferys and Jadeveon Clowneys aren't in South Carolina's pipeline anymore. Tennessee is coming back strong. Clemson has become a more attractive destination in recruiting. Georgia isn't interested in letting top-ranked players outside the state. And South Carolina has a 70-year old coach who all but admitted at SEC Media Days that he thought about walking away at the end of last season until the bowl win against Miami rejuvenated him. "Now that we're 7-6, some of our enemies want to make you think Spurrier's gettin' old, can't do it anymore," he said. "Some people are gonna try to convince you that our 7-6 isn't as good as some other schools' 7-6." This is the dance that happens at the end, and it's rarely pretty. In this case, though, it also seems unnecessary. Spurrier's answers to the age question have been perfectly reasonable up until now. It was unlikely to be a major topic unless South Carolina got off to a poor start this season. It would be romantic to think this was part of some grand strategy to galvanize the program and head into fall camp with a clear mission. But Spurrier is much more seat-of-his-pants than that, and if this were the tone he wanted to take, why not do it last week? Spurrier also has had a habit recently of showing his pettiness, whether it was banishing local columnist Ron Morris or taking an unnecessary and ill-timed shot at Clemson coach Dabo Swinney during a celebration for Lattimore after his gruesome injury. Now the latest target seems to be Journal-Constitution columnist Mark Bradley, who suggested last week that South Carolina was a program in decline. "Last year at this time I was 69, we were 11-2 and there was no question about my age," Spurrier said. "Now that we're 7-6 we've got some enemies out there. I've got some guys that don't like me out there talking and writing." Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Compared to his colleagues, Spurrier has been treated royally for more than two decades. As coaching has become more corporate and buttoned-down, he's remained cocky, compelling and entertaining. It has earned him a lot of goodwill among the media, and everyone recognizes college football will be worse when he is gone. But no matter how many workouts he does or medical reports he gives, Spurrier can't bend time or erase the obvious. One of these days, the oldest coach in SEC history is going to retire. Spurrier is a young 70, but Wednesday, he found a way to make himself look a whole lot older.Page Content Marked reduction in key crime areas in Northbridge Dedicated WA Police Bicycle Patrol Group formed for Northbridge and CBD The State Government today announced Western Australian police officers will reintroduce dedicated pushbike patrols to the CBD and Northbridge to help continue drive down crime. Premier Colin Barnett said there had been a significant reduction in key crime areas in Northbridge since 2008 and declared the hospitability and entertainment precinct was once again a desired destination for West Australians. "People and families are coming to Northbridge in droves thanks to the State Government's investment in policing, activating public space and encouraging a fantastic range of restaurants and bars to open up in the area," Mr Barnett said. "Events like the Fringe World Festival had brought Northbridge to life." Deputy Premier and Police Minister Liza Harvey said this change in culture would now be built on with a dedicated Bicycle Patrol Group. Mrs Harvey said the Bicycle Patrol Group could bypass traffic issues to respond quicker, easily access areas where vehicles could not go, would be highly visible helping deter crime and would help promote greater community engagement. "Not only are local police keen to conduct bike patrols, this has been something which has consistently been raised at our community forums and by local businesses as something they'd like to see," she said. Mrs Harvey said the bike patrols would help continue to reduce crime in Northbridge. Between 2008 and 2015, Northbridge crime dropped for: assaults - down 36 per cent threatening behaviour - down 73 per cent home burglary - down 44 per cent theft - down 25 per cent property damage - down 48 per cent. "These figures are particularly encouraging considering the substantial population growth we have had since 2008," Mrs Harvey said. "We won't ever stop trying to further reduce crime in the area, we built the $93 million Perth Police Centre based in Northbridge and now these bike patrols will enhance police engagement with the local community." Fact File Bike patrols will start by the end of April 2016 The state-of-the-art $93m Perth Police Centre was opened in Northbridge in July 2013 Premier's office - 6552 5000 Deputy Premier and Police Minister's office - 6552 5900Birds & Birding There is a common belief that a “snipe hunt” is some sort of wild goose chase, a hazing ritual for naïve outdoors folk. Consider the Wikipedia entry on the topic: “A snipe hunt, a made up hunt that is also known as a fool’s errand, is a type of practical joke that involves experienced people making fun of credulous newcomers by giving them an impossible or imaginary task. The origin of the term is a practical joke where inexperienced campers are told about a bird or animal called the snipe as well as a usually preposterous method of catching it, such as running around the woods carrying a bag or making strange noises such as banging rocks together.” The truth of the mythical snipe hunt is that the “fake” tools and techniques a rube is supposed to use are actual tools and techniques for catching real snipe. The Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary pages cite moonless nights, spotlights, noisemakers, and gunny sacks. Yes! These are the tools of the trade for a bird-catching tradition that goes back a very long way. I first learned about snipe hunt techniques from famed Indian bird trapper Ali Hussein. He comes from a long line of bird trappers who once caught birds for profit. As times changed, Ali developed a conservation ethic and began using his deep knowledge and experience to catch birds for science instead. I met Ali at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park while he was on a world tour of biological stations, traveling with a translator and a passel of trapping gear (made mostly from bamboo and other natural materials) to share his skills and knowledge with biologists. One of the simpler techniques Ali demonstrated was the “torch and gong.” The bird trapper takes advantage of a moonless night to find water birds (such as snipe) carrying a flaming torch while beating a disorienting gong to obscure the sounds of the approaching trapper. When the bewildered bird is spotted, a net is thrown over it to catch it. A snipe hunt, plain and simple. The snipe hunting tradition has continued in wildlife research, with updated tools and techniques. For example a 1959 report from the Illinois Natural History survey outlines the snipe-hunting method (they call it “night-lighting”) using a truck driven through a field with a generator-powered bank of spotlights, with a trapper riding on the hood carrying a long-handled net. And even now, right here in Cape May, a multi-year study of migrating and wintering woodcock (a very similar bird to snipe) employs the snipe-hunt technique (or if you prefer, the torch and gong, night-lighting, or in Ali’s language, luki-phanna) as their primary capture technique. At some woodcock trapping sites, the snipe are numerous as well. Once in a while the woodcock trappers scoop up a snipe, just to prove that snipe hunting is by no means a fool’s errand.1.7k SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Reddit Tumblr Digg Linkedin Stumbleupon Mail Print On April 29th, 2015 El Paso Police were responding to a burglary on the block that Erik Salas Sanchez lived on. Police encountered Sanchez at a home which was not the one burglarized, but the one where he lived with his mother. She claims that police arrived at their home and asked her to come out. At this point, for reasons unknown, Erik began to yell at the police. Police claim that during his tirade, Erik threatened them with a ‘metal object’, and they had no choice but to attempt to subdue him with a taser. They said that when the taser failed and Sanchez began charging at them, they had no choice but to fire on him. Their bullets struck him three times and he later died from the injuries. ABC7 has obtained a copy of the eight page report of Sanchez’s autopsy. The three bullets struck him on both sides of his back and once in the buttocks. All from behind. It seemed rather impossible to me that a person could be shot three times in the back while running towards the people firing the weapon. But since I have taken a lot of heat from critics for not using factual information or doing enough research, I decided to contact an expert. Willy the Wizard was the greatest Dungeon Master in my home town precisely because of his ability to decipher the correct outcome of missile weapon engagements. I once saw him roll down a storm of 10,000 fireballs in roughly the same time that it took the games elvish thief to sneak off and acquire a prostitute at the Inn next to the castle we were fighting at. Willy was painting figurines when I arrived and agreed to help me with my research when he saw that I had brought the requisite 12 pack of Mtn. Dew he requires for his services I began, “Wizard Willy, I come to inquire if it would have been possible for a target to be struck three times in the back by projectiles?” He rubbed his beard and made a face of deep consternation, “What was the targets race and class?” “Race, Hispanic, class unknown.” “Level?” “Sorry, unknown.” “Ah, I see you have brought your wonderful wizard a fine riddle today, Joshua. Was the target in his homeland and was he carrying much in the way of gold or treasures?” “He was in a distant land, Willy, and it is unlikely that he was adventuring with much in the way of game assets, if I were to guess.” “Alas, I see it now. So he was poor, Hispanic and in a hostile land. The likelihood of such a character getting struck by missile weapons in the back is certainly high.” “Yeah, for sure. But here is the main thing, Wizard Willy. The adventurers who shot him claim that they fired at him while he was charging at them.” “Oh, I see. Did these adventurers carry magical weapons? Were the projectiles enchanted?” “I do not believe so. I think they were just first level pistols with no charms or other wizardly embellishments.” “Then it is my expert opinion that there was no way the man was shot in the manner in which the shooters described.” “That is what I thought, too. So what would you say the chances were that they actually shot him in the back while he charged at them, D20, 1 or less?” “Oh no, without magic the odds of that happening could not be calculated with a million twenty sided dice. Even in the most fantastical realm. It is simply against the laws which govern the game. Physics. Now if you do not mind, I have campaign maps to draw, may I be of further service or will you be on your way?” “No, we good. Thanks, Wizard Willy.” And so having done my research I am ready to report on the facts. El Paso Police Department is lying its ass off. It thought it could get away with murdering a man who failed their attitude test because he was not ‘from around here’. And they will likely to continue to lie even when more facts and wizardly pronouncements come to light, further damaging their fantastic bardly tales. Because that is what cops do. Lie, kill…whatever it takes to survive. 1.7k SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Reddit Tumblr Digg Linkedin Stumbleupon Mail Print EPN Ichthyosaur Fossil 75x31 Marine Reptile Pirate Gold Coins Jurassic Sticker $264k $245000.0 V1710 Allison Engine V12 Wwii P40 P38 P63 P39 P51- Aircraft- Marine $25000.0 Sub-mariner Comics #17 Cgc 9.4 Off White Single Highest Graded Cgc #0079299012 $20000.0 Sub-mariner Comics #1 Cgc 5.5 Timely Marvel 1941 Key Golden Age D5 H10 Cm $19995.0 Original Running Wwii Us Army 1944 Willys Mb Military Jeep Ford Gpw Marine Truck $18995.0It’s been a busy year for Steven Spielberg. Witness The Adventures of Tintin, opening in the United States on December 21, and War Horse, opening four days later. Few directors manage to get two films out at once, but in addition to his directing chores, Spielberg received an executive producer credit on 11 film and television projects this past year, including Super 8, Real Steel and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. (He also found time to criticize the last 20 years of filmmaking, saying there are “not a lot of movies” that he would watch, while still putting a plug in for The X Factor.) Spielberg’s sudden increase in output—he directed only seven other features since 2000—prompted me to think about whether quantity helps or hurts a filmmaker. Mumblecore pro Joe Swanberg has released six feature films over the past year: Art History, Autoerotic, Caitlin Plays Herself, Silver Bullets, Uncle Kent, and The Zone, displaying an admiral work ethic despite increasingly scathing reviews. Swanberg generally produces, writes, directs, and edits his films, which makes his output even more impressive. Some directors spend years on a single project, and several have spoken of their regret over not accomplishing more. But Swanberg doesn’t come close to the medium’s more prolific directors. Take Takashi Miike, born in Osaka in 1960. After graduating from the Yokohama Vocational School of Broadcast and Film, he released his first feature in 1991. Since then he has completed over seventy productions in theater, film, and television. In 2001 and 2002, he received credit on fifteen features. Some of his films were direct-to-video releases, and not many have opened in the United States. Miike has worked in all genres, from family films to period adventures, but built his reputation on films like Audition (1999), a horror film based on the novel by Ryi Murakami. Its torture scenes unsettled even seasoned directors like John Landis and Eli Roth. Although his recent 3D action film Hari Kiri: Death of a Samurai showed at Cannes, Miike seems to thrive on the controversy his movies elicit for their sex and violence. Rainer Werner Fassbinder provoked controversy of a different sort. Before he died at the age of 37 from a drug overdose, the German director made 40 feature films and two television series, as well as acting in dozens of films and plays and directing dozens of stage pieces. At various times he was also a cinematographer, editor, composer, and theater manager. Influenced by Bertolt Brecht and by the French New Wave, Fassbinder cranked out film after film, relying on a troupe of actors that included the wonderful Hanna Schygulla. Films like The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971) and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) won Fassbinder world-wide acclaim and the ability to make films like Despair (1978), adapted from the Vladimir Nabokov novel by Tom Stoppard, and The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978), perhaps his most popular work. Two years later made the television Berlin Alexanderplatz, based on the novel by Alfred Döblin and released as a 15-hour movie in the US. Fassbinder’s personal life was a stew of largely failed relationships compromised by his self-destructive tendencies. In public he was the subject of frequently bitter personal attacks from gays and conservatives, as well as mere critics. How he managed to complete 40 films in fifteen years is a mystery. Then there are the real workhorses of the industry, the B-movie directors who flourished in the 1930s and 1940s. Joseph Santley directed over ninety features, including films with The Marx Brothers and Gene Autry. (Autry had his own punishing schedule: as well as making six to eight features a year, he hosted a weekly radio show, had frequent recording sessions, and sponsored a rodeo that toured the country annually.) William Witney, cited by Quentin Tarantino for his expertise, started directing low-budget serials when he was twenty-one. He is credited with more than 60 feature films, as well as hundreds of episodes of TV series. It would be hard to top the output by William Beaudine, who started out in the industry as an actor for Biograph in 1909. After assisting D.W. Griffith on The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, he directed shorts and then features for everybody from Samuel Goldwyn in the 1920s to Embassy Pictures in the 1960s. Beaudine worked with Mary Pickford, W.C. Fields, Will Hay, and Bela Lugosi. He also directed one of the most successful exploitation films of all time, Mom and Dad (1945). Accounts vary widely as to how many movies he actually directed, but sticking to only theatrically released features, he made more than 175. Some records will never be broken, in part because the rules have changed. Buck Freeman, who played first base and right field for teams in Washington and Boston, was credited with two strikeouts in over 4000 at bats. A modern-day player could only strike out once in his career to top that record. Unfortunately, strike-outs weren’t an official statistic for most of Freeman’s career, so his record can hardly be considered valid. (On the other hand, it’s unlikely that anyone will top Cy Young’s 511 wins—or his 316 losses, for that matter.) Similarly, it’s hardly fair to count the films D.W. Griffith made at the start of his career, since they were only one- or two-reels long up until the four-reel Judith of Bethulia in 1913. But they were still marketed as individual titles to be sold and later rented to theaters. Griffith made 141 in 1909 alone, including such groundbreaking titles as A Fool’s Revenge (a condensed version of Rigoletto), Those Awful Hats (about screening conditions in movie theaters), The Cricket on the Hearth (from the Dickens story), Resurrection (from the Tolstoy novel), A Fair Exchange (from Silas Marner), Pippa Passes (the first film reviewed in The New York Times), and The Lonely Villa (a thriller starring Mary Pickford). Griffith and his crew were essentially making a film every three days, a burst of white-hot creativity that in my opinion will never be equaled. What’s even more remarkable was that he was simultaneously inventing narrative cinema as we know it today. Griffith may not be the world’s most prolific filmmaker, but he is certainly one of its most important.— Martin Brodeur will start for the Devils against the Red Wings on Tuesday night And then, amazingly, that could be it for the future Hall of Famer in New Jersey. Earlier on Tuesday, the New York Daily News reported that the Devils and the Wild had agreed to a deal that would send the legendary goalie to Minnesota. The lifelong Devil, who has a no-trade clause, would have had to approve the trade before it could be completed. The newspaper’s report also said the 41-year-old wanted to mind the net one last time at a Devils home game before potentially moving on to the next chapter of his career. And that could still happen, just don’t expect Minnesota to be his destination. That’s because the wild acquired goalie Ilya Bryzgalov from the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday afternoon. Asked if he’s shopping Broduer, Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello said he doesn’t respond to rumors. “Whatever is said between Marty and I is between Marty and I. And don’t read into that there is anything. All I’m doing today and tomorrow is trying to make this team better,” Lamoriello told The Record of Bergen County. “I believe in this team and I’m doing whatever I can to make it better.” Tuesday night’s game at Prudential Center, assuming he plays, will mark Brodeur’s 1,250th regular-season game in net for New Jersey. The NHL trade deadline is set for Wednesday at 3 p.m. ET. Brodeur’s contract will expire after the season. Another possible landing spot for the Montreal native, according to the Daily News, is his hometown. In addition to Brodeur being from the city, the Canadiens placed goalie Carey Price on IR retroactive to Feb. 26. The 20th overall pick in 1990, Brodeur debuted with New Jersey in 1991. An all-time great, he has the most career wins among goaltenders, the most playoff shutouts, the most minutes played, the most games played and the most regular season shutouts. Brodeur is a four-time Vezina Trophy winner, a five-time Jennings Trophy winner and has been selected to the NHL All-Star game 10 times. He’s also the only goalie in NHL history to record eight 40-win campaigns. Brodeur hasn’t been the No. 1 goalie for New Jersey in 2013-14, starting only 29 games to Cory Schneider’s 33. The three-time Stanley Cup champion has been up and down this season, going 14-11-4 with a 2.47 goal-against average and a.900 save percentage. You May Also Be Interested In These StoriesForbes magazine released its list of the World's Highest-Paid DJs this week, and while most of the top 10 entries are big names on the electronic dance music scene--Skrillex, Swedish House Mafia, David Guetta, Steve Aoki, Deadmau5--one of these names is most definitely not like the others. Sitting pretty, and lucratively, in the number seven spot is none other than "Jersey Shore" star Pauly D, who makes a fist-pumping (or some might actually say depressing) $11 million a year for his DJing appearances. That sort of money can buy a lot of hair gel and tanning-booth visits. DJ Pauly D, as he is known in the club circuit, has made some real in-roads in the EDM world, signing a three-album deal with 50 Cent's G-Unit record label; launching his own line of headphones; opening for Britney Spears on her North American Femme Fatale tour; serving as an exclusive resident DJ at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas; and starring in a spin-off MTV reality series, "The Pauly D Project," about his burgeoning DJ career. But still, to see the shellacked-haired reality personality on a list alongside superstar DJs that regularly headline mainstream music festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo--or, in the case of Deadmau5, even perform at the Grammys--is a bit of a shock. Not to mention, somewhat of a bummer. Let this sink in: Pauly D makes ELEVEN MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. Sigh... Here is Forbes' full World's Highest-Paid DJs list: 1. Tiësto — $22 million 2. Skrillex — $15 million 3. Swedish House Mafia — $14 million 4. David Guetta — $13.5 million 5. Steve Aoki — $12 million 6. Deadmau5 — $11.5 million 7. DJ Pauly D — $11 million 8. Kaskade — $10 million 9. Afrojack — $9 million 10. Avicii — $7 million Related links: Follow me on Twitter, AmazonIt’s a fairly common tendency among adults to remember our adolescent years as the time when we thought we had life all figured out, and chuckle at our youthful arrogance. But former evangelical teens like me possessed another level of audacity in our youth — not only were we armed with our own answers for all of life’s big questions, we also had answers for everyone else. In all of the world. Many of us who grew up attending short term mission trips with our high school youth group look back on those memories with a particular mixture of horror and endearment. We would bake the heck out of all the cookies and wash all the cars to raise funds so we could go and ensure that all over the world, people knew our answers to their life’s problems. And the stories we’d marinate while on our trip —embellished with details like how gross the bathroom conditions were in this or that third world country and the volume of exotic foods we consumed — were designed to best the previous year’s short term missions trip’s “sharing.” It was at once a ridiculous display of privilege and a treasure trove of dear memories with our peers. We'd raise funds to go and ensure that all over the world, people knew our answers to their life’s problems. —@cindy_w_brandt In recent years, short term missions (STMs) has come under some scrutiny. Popular blogger Jamie the Very Worst Missionary opened what she called a can of worms on some problematic aspects of STMs — like centering on the stories of the rich kids who go on these trips, instead of the locals. And the bestselling book When Helping Hurts, by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett, critiques the financial stewardship of the Western church’s resources, highlighting astounding statistics like this one: In 2006, Americans spent $1,600,000,000 on STMs. Other problems inherent in STMs include a lack of quality cross-cultural training and an abuse of power dynamics, things Westerners are often unaware of when stepping across foreign boundaries. Thoughtful engagement of STMs consider what it means to do good development and how that intersects with evangelism's goals. We're long overdue some criticism of short term missions and a long, hard look at the colonial roots of long term missions. There is much that the church, particularly the Western church, has to repent of when it comes to harm and damage done in the name of glorifying the Lord in all nations. As a new generation of youth rise up in the church, we must lead them to do better. And yet, I fear that as we strip away the baggage of STMs, we may also rob our youth of the life-giving spirit of service, compassion, and community. Once we get past the embarrassment of the errors of our past, a powerful narrative of strength in teamwork, and participation of something greater than ourselves, remains. I believe this is a crucial element of adolescent development, as teenagers embark on the road to outgrowing their childhood egotism. “Missions” has a much broader definition outside the evangelical context. The concept of banding with a team of people and embarking on an adventure to achieve a worthy cause is the driving story behind all of the world’s epic tales. A deep sense of mission is an essential driving force that carry us from moving through each stage of living a meaningful life. How can the Christian youth of today band together with non-Christian youth in a way that fuels their dreams and taps into the vibrant energy coming of age? I want to suggest the idea of protest as mission. I propose this idea not from my own jaded adult mind, but from following the lead and tremendous example of young voices in this generation. In a historic lawsuit, 21 young plaintiffs — nicknamed the “climate kids” — are suing President Obama and the United States government for not doing enough to stop the rapidly changing climate. Children as young as eight-and-a-half are speaking up for their own generation, while the actions of adults are causing consequences for the earth they have to inherit. And in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline,which would snake through the sacred lands of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and threaten their water supply, young Native Americans are standing up for their own community. In these brave protests, I see echoes of the sentiment that fueled my own young evangelical dream — to be in community with my people, and together make a change in the world. “It’s a time of unification. It’s to be with my brothers and sisters and my youth to stand as one and fight or this land,” Naelyn Pike, from the Chiricahua Apache Tribe, said. In these brave protests, I see echoes of the same sentiment that fueled my own young evangelical dream — to be in community with my people, and together make a change in the world. Historically, children have been involved in protests, says Kenneth Braswell, author of the illustrated children’s book, Daddy, There’s a Noise Outside. Our youth have a right to learn and understand the issues facing our community, both local and global, and they deserve to insert their voice into the spaces they occupy. This is as sacred and spiritual a mission as short term missions. We need to continue the pressure on churches to re-imagine better ways of mission — one that does not imbue spiritual arrogance on our youth to spread harm in local communities of foreign lands. Our children are ready to embark on their journey. We had better be sure the story we are dreaming for them is a worthy one.Get the biggest Chelsea 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 Atletico Madrid have had a stunning late approach to take Diego Costa back to Spain rejected by Chelsea. The £32million striker, 27, has scored six goals in his last six games and has returned to form since Jose Mourinho was replaced by Guus Hiddink in December. Madrid boss Diego Simeone signed Jackson Martinez from Porto last summer but the Colombia forward has scored just three goals in 22 appearances. Atletico are understood to have tried to take advantage of Chelsea’s interest in 29-year-old Martinez by offering a swap deal. In pictures - MK Dons 1-5 Chelsea: Chelsea dismissed it and were then offered a cash-plus-player deal but rejected it out of hand with the Blues insistent that they do not want to sell their Brazil-born Spain striker. Read more:The taxi magnate who said he was subjected to a profanity-laced rant by Mayor Bloomberg has filed a federal lawsuit charging the mayor with threatening him and siccing TLC inspectors on his fleet in retaliation for his opposition to the “Taxi of Tomorrow” plan. The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court late yesterday, accuses Bloomberg and TLC chief David Yassky of ordering inspectors to dump a blizzard of bogus tickets – totaling about $3.5 million – on cabs operated by Taxi Club Management CEO Gene Freidman. “It’s deeply disappointing and terribly disturbing that the mayor will use his powers to try to beat people who disagree with him into oblivion,” said Steve Mintz, the lawyer representing Freidman. The suit is an amended version of an earlier suit Freidman had filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, but contains the new allegations against Bloomberg and Yassky. The TLC has imposed $85,000 in fines on one of Freidman’s medallions and similar penalties are in the works against dozens of other medallions, adding up to roughly $3.5 million in penalties, Mintz said. Yassky, according to the suit, offered to revoke the fines in exchange for Freidman dropping his challenge to the mayor’s plan. “In other words, Yassky was offering to exercise his discretion in a manner favorable to Freidman in exchange for a benefit in the form of political support for Taxi of Tomorrow,” the suit charges. Freidman had originally sued the city to stop Bloomberg’s pet “Taxi of Tomorrow” plan, which would replace the existing fleet of hacks with new, gas-burning Nissan minivans. A Manhattan Supreme Court judge ruled against the mayor’s plan last week. A day later, as The Post first reported Wednesday, Bloomberg heaped abuse on Freidman in a private club at Madison Square Garden during a Knicks game, threatening to “destroy your f–king industry” once he leaves office in January. “These are the acts of a big, bad bully. It’s Putin-esque,” a source close to Freidman told The Post this morning, comparing Bloomberg to Russian president Vladimir Putin. The amended federal suit seeks a jury trial and unspecified monetary damages. Bloomberg spokeswoman Julie Wood scoffed at the suit. “It’s not uncommon for disturbed and angry people to file lawsuits against the Mayor and the City of New York. This is another effort by Mr. Friedman to avoid hundreds of thousands in fines for constantly cheating taxi drivers,” she said.A Sustainable Choice The Greening of a Roof With the exception of the maintenance crew and an occasional researcher, Target Center's green roof is off limits to the public. Between the fragility of the plants that grow there, the need to protect the arena's roof, and the wisdom of keeping tour groups off of the top of very tall buildings, the green roof is considered to be best left undisturbed. So photographer Bill Kelley and I felt pretty lucky to get to see the 2.5-acre prairie in the sky on a warm, clear-blue-sky day a couple weeks back.Installed in September of 2009, the green roof is nearing the end of its second full summer. So far so good, says Tom Reller, senior director of operations for the Target Center. "The city wanted to make a sustainable choice with this roof and except for one little bad spot that had to be fixed, everything has been going really well up here."Looking out across this skyscraper prairie, plants in hues of mostly purple and yellow are in bloom, butterflies are fluttering around and grasshoppers are everywhere. It feels weird, but as we move across the roof we follow Reller's instructions to step gingerly on the plants rather than walking directly on the roof, which could cause damage and future leaks. You can't tell it when you're up there, but from the air the rooftop garden looks like a huge leaf as thousands of pavers, which resemble leaf veins, divide the different planting areas from each other.When Target
, where $5 buys 1 school lunch. On top of that I will give out 4 $500 academic/sporting scholarships to give 4 families a little boost. My hope is that my NZ adventure will increase sales of Flo products and encourage people to donate to Eat My Lunch to have a long-term impact on this problem. You can join us Just $5 buys 1 school lunch. So buy 1 or 100. Every little bit helps and you can visit the Eat My Lunch website to see the great work they do. You can even volunteer at one of their locations if you want to be hands on involved! And here’s some amaziing perks for supporting us that you can’t live without You can also support this cause by buying Flo Clothing products regularly. They are amazing quality and the perfect gift for yourself or your loved ones, as well as giving back to the community.SPECIFICATIONS 1.33:1 Standard English Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono English PCM Mono English subtitles 3 Discs FEATURES Audio commentary featuring director and Harold Lloyd archivist Richard Correll, film historian Richard Bann, and film critic and historian Leonard Maltin Lloyd's prologue to the film, created for the 1966 rerelease Three newly restored Lloyd shorts: The Marathon (1919), with a new score by Gabriel Thibaudeau, and An Eastern Westerner and High and Dizzy (both 1920), with new scores composed and conducted by Davis Big Man on Campus, a new visual essay on the film's locations by silent-film historian John Bengtson Conversation between Correll and film historian Kevin Brownlow Footage from a 1963 Delta Kappa Alpha tribute to Lloyd, featuring comedian Steve Allen, director Delmer Daves, and actor Jack Lemmon Lloyd's 1953 appearance on the television show What's My Line?Share UnKoch My Campus: the latest attack on campus free speech UnKoch My Campus: the latest attack on campus free speech This behavior is symptomatic of an intolerant impulse among the Left This behavior is symptomatic of an intolerant impulse among the Left This is counter-intuitive to what institutions of higher learning have always stood for: freedom of thought and the diversity of ideas Colleges and universities have historically been beacons of innovation and scholarship, shaped by intellectual diversity and a passion for knowledge and debate. Freedom of speech has always been a vibrant part of campus culture. But that enduring image of universities is now under attack. A new dogma is pervading campuses across America, with students and academics seeking to silence all opinions that dissent from the progressive orthodoxy. Nothing highlights this dogma better than UnKoch My Campus. Earlier this month the student-focused organization hosted a national “day of action,” encouraging students to protest what they perceive as the Koch Brothers’ untenable influence over American colleges and universities. According to their website, the group is concerned by the donations that the Kochs have made to hundreds of colleges and universities, since 2005. They believe there is “mounting evidence” that the money is given with strings attached. UnKoch My Campus claims that their efforts are about increasing “accountability, transparency, and academic freedom.” But as the group’s name alludes, they only target specific libertarian and conservative donors. Their true purpose is clear. From UnKoch My Campus’ website: “With the 2016 elections just a year away, we have a chance to clog Koch’s political pipeline,” So let’s call this what it is: a progressive organization vilifying and attacking a voice on campus because it advocates ideas contrary to the progressive orthodoxy. And they’re doing so in the name of academic freedom. The irony is palpable, if not chilling. Especially when you look at the kinds of campus specific donations that UnKoch My Campus claims to be concerned about—the majority of the money is coming from the left. Stanford University received $40 million from billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer in 2009 to build the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy. Steyer’s organization NextGen Climate also spent $74 million in 2014 and plans to spend more in 2016 when they roll out a campus mobilization program with paid field staff on campuses in key battleground states. The donation Stanford received is modest compared to the whopping $100 million Cornell University received from former Democratic Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s charity for construction on it’s new Cornell Tech campus. And the donation Cornell received pales in comparison to some of Bloomberg’s more generous endowments to John Hopkins, which has received more than $1 billion from Bloomberg in his lifetime. George Soros’ foundation Open Society Institute gave $26.4 million worth of grants and project funding to universities in 2013 alone, $675,000 of which went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Civic Media. All of this dwarfs the $68 million that the Koch brothers have given, from 2005 to 2013, for libertarian and free-market university programs. And here’s the thing, the Kochs are for open immigration, marijuana legalization, and criminal justice reform, Their largest political expenditure was given to the ACLU to fight the Patriot Act. On many fronts the Koch’s agree with the left’s agenda. So why are they so frequently under fire from progressives? It seems that while progressives preach diversity as a fundamental value, they can’t accept any dissent from their rigid ideology. Their new agenda is to shame all dissenting thoughts and opinions out of the dialogue. UnKoch My Campus is a small organization, but it illustrates this dangerous dogma, which is now permeating campus culture—the idea that it is ok to censor ideas and shut down speech, simply because you don’t like it. It’s this same viewpoint that leads students and university faculty to protest for the removal of speakers and public programs on campuses around the country, simply for dissenting from the majority opinion. Brandeis University made the decision to rescind an honorary degree to women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali after students and Islamic advocacy groups protested the decision. After student protests, Williams College in Massachusetts uninvited conservative feminist author Suzanne Venker to speak on why modern feminism has failed. Even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was uninvited to be the commencement speaker at Rutgers University after the faculty came together to protest her appearance. There are over 40 stories like this listed on the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s Disinvitation List from 2013-2014 alone. This behavior is symptomatic of an intolerant impulse among the Left to suppress all opinions they deem disruptive to the social norm. In an academic world where the majority of professors and administrators are more than a little left-of-center, this trend is disconcerting for the 35 percent of millennials that identify with the GOP. And it fundamentally harms intellectual debate. There’s nothing wrong with students or campus faculty protesting against a speaker, campus event, or donor that is not in line with their personal beliefs – that’s part of the beauty of free speech. But the objective has become to silence dissenting speech entirely in an effort to control the conversation on campus – to quash any thought that deviates from the progressive ideology that dominates most universities. This is counter-intuitive to what institutions of higher learning have always stood for: freedom of thought and the diversity of ideas. If dissenting opinions continue to be silenced in the name of academic freedom,American universities will cease to be trailblazers in intellectual thought. Instead, they will stifle it. I just hope we aren’t there yet. Crissy Brown is a Young Voices Advocate who works for the Leadership Institute, a nonprofit that assists student organizations fight against campus free speech violations. Share“The so-called ‘faint young Sun paradox’ has long been a topic of debate because its resolution bears important ramifications for the basic factors structuring climate regulation and the long-term habitability of Earth and Earth-like exoplanets.” So begins Chris Reinhard’s new paper in Nature. Reinhard is a Principal Investigator at the Alternative Earths Team of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, which has a goal of “unraveling the evolving redox state of Earth’s early atmosphere as a guide for exoplanet exploration” and eventual habitability. The paradox at issue is that, three billion-ish years ago, our Sun was about 25-percent dimmer than it is today. Yet geological records suggest that the Earth was even warmer then than it is now. Most solutions to the paradox figure that there must have been high levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Two big questions are related to that, though: which gasses, and what sort of processes put them there? Geological, chemical, and biological factors have all been suggested, with a different mix of gasses depending on the cause. To tackle the paradox, Reinhardt and colleagues investigated how the lifeforms on the early Earth could have impacted the atmosphere. Their working hypothesis was that oxygen-producing photosynthesis had not yet evolved, although that is definitely not a given. The team used a computer model that assessed primitive forms of photosynthesis, any of which might have evolved prior to the photosynthetic processes we see today. The model combined the different ecosystems that resulted from different putative atmospheric conditions. The results indicate that a mixture of two groups of organisms would generate enough methane to keep the early Earth toasty warm, even with a dimmer Sun. One group would metabolize hydrogen while the other scavenged electrons from iron. In fact, only that combination would work—neither type of organism alone would generate enough heat. Oxygen was not prevalent in the Earth’s atmosphere until around two billion years ago. Currently, photosynthesis is the primary process putting oxygen into our atmosphere, but when this oxygen-producing photosynthesis evolved is not at all clear. The Great Oxygenation Event of two billion years ago could have possibly been due to the origin of photosynthesis; alternatively, it could be that photosynthesis evolved long beforehand but didn’t contribute much oxygen to the atmosphere. In that case, the Great Oxygenation Event would have been driven by tectonic activity. Reinhardt and NASA care because, if the latter scenario is true, it can teach us about the early Earth’s oxygen cycle (things like the fact that iron is essential). Knowing how our atmosphere became so oxygenated might help us recognize potential biosignatures on other planets. Nature Geoscience, 2017. DOI: 10.1038/s41561-017-0031-2 (About DOIs).Having a panic attack involves the whole body so it is not surprising that the symptoms associated with it can originate from any part of the body. Whilst it is true that there are many more anxiety sufferers thinking they have a physical illness than ill people who think they may have anxiety, it is prudent and we strongly advise you to see your doctor to discuss your symptoms and get checked over. So if you have not seen a doctor as yet, please make an appointment soon. If you see your doctor and are diagnosed with anxiety/panic then we can help you overcome these symptoms, this disorder and regain your quality of life. The symptoms of a panic attack are very physical and real – they are not imagined in your mind. BUT these symptoms are not life-threatening however much you may think they are; and you will not die or even be maimed from them – despite how awful you may feel at the time. They do pass. Keep reminding yourself of these facts as they will aid in your recovery. I’ll take the symptoms one at a time and you will learn and understand what happens throughout your body that causes you to feel the way you do during anxiety/panic attacks. The Sympathetic Nervous system kicks in. This is an involuntary system so once your body has decided to put this into action there is nothing you can do except go with it and calm yourself as fast as possible thus telling your body all is now well and it can stop the response thus limiting the length and severity of the response. It all starts in the Adrenal glands. The adrenal glands not surprisingly secrete adrenaline – which stimulates the heart rate and the breathing rate. It also secretes noradrenaline, which helps maintain constant blood pressure, which may contribute to why we feel a bit dizzy whilst it finds a balance. The adrenals also release Cortisol, this affects the release of glucose from the liver to give us the energy to flee and why you feel so exhausted at the end of an attack and it is so vital to replace nutrients. This in turn affects parts of us … Hyperventilation Hyperventilation means over-breathing which is caused by the sufferer breathing faster then needed. This may be apparent by feeling very short of breath or you may not be aware of it at all. In this way the body’s balance of carbon dioxide and oxygen is disturbed. Hyperventilation can lead to Panic because you start to breathe quicker and shallowly and this results in you breathing out more carbon dioxide than the body produces, thus keeping the carbon dioxide level in the blood stream too low. Without enough carbon dioxide to maintain the acid/base balance of the body, the blood becomes too alkaline, a condition known as “blood alkalosis.” Alkalosis causes the arteries to constrict, with the result that blood flow is restricted, especially to the brain. Although the blood contains plenty of oxygen, alkalosis also prevents the essential transfer of oxygen from the blood to the brain, muscles, and organs, as has been frequently verified in panic attack victims who have gone to the emergency room. This is known as the “Bohr Effect” and has long been recognized by those who study hyperventilation. Under these circumstances, the oxygen available to the brain is reduced drastically. At first your vision begins to blur. The typical sufferer reports feeling dizzy, tense, anxious, jittery, and nervous. The sufferer often feels like crying, and feels weak and confused. Starved for oxygen, the sufferer feels as if they are suffocating. As the condition worsens, the brain gets more confused and sends the wrong messages. One wrong message sent is the need to breathe even more deeply, which worsens the problem. The heart is pounding by now, increasing (or lowering) blood pressure. Pupils dilate, parts of the face, hands, and feet become cold or numb, the hands tremble, and the sufferer sweats. Chest pain may be present. This is usually related to chest breathing and muscle spasms in the chest wall, but in some cases may be actual heart pain. Another symptom directly resulting from this is tingling in fingers and toes. A sure sign of hyperventilation. The numbness is a symptom that its hard to get used to, why 3 fingers and not the whole hand or just the right side and not the left etc. This often leads people to self diagnosing strokes and fits whereas this is just hyperventilation and extremely easy to correct. Hyperventilation is not a serious medical condition as the body will automatically readjust when you let it. However, the sensations are extremely unpleasant and frightening. In many cases the sufferer has lost the ability to control their breathing correctly and this can be remedied by re-learning a correct method of breathing, from the abdomen and longer the out breath (count of 11) than the in one (on count of 7) and as slow as you can make it. 8 breaths a minute is adequate for healthy adults at rest. If you find that you cannot control your breathing then breathe into a paper bag or cup your hands over your mouth and breathe through them, as if it’s really cold out, it does work and only takes a couple of minutes to take effect! Friends and family can help you by counting in and out for you. Many articles on panic will tell you that although you may feel dizzy you will not faint. That’s mostly true but in reality a very few people who cannot control the hyperventilation may faint which is the body’s way of taking back control so it can redress the o2- co2 balance. The good news is that if you’ve not fainted by the time you read this it’s most very likely that you will not do so. If this is going to happen, it happens on the first panic attack. If you have not fainted to date you will not start to do so – especially now you know what to do. Dizziness or light-headedness What you feel: You feel suddenly light-headed, woozy or dizzy. This is sometimes accompanied by a feeling that you might faint or pass out. It also may feel as though you are walking on a boat, or that the floor seems to move up and down and it’s hard to balance. You may also have difficulty placing your feet because your perception of the ground or floor may be wrong. In some cases it may seem that even though you are standing on a firm floor, the floor may be vibrating or moving. This is a very common feeling that most sufferers get. It’s usually as a result of hyperventilation but also of intense fear and the adrenalin hit. Feeling faint is very worrying and very frightening. You feel as though you are going to pass out or the whole world seems to be spinning and you cannot focus on anything. Your vision is blurred and this causes more Panic as you are now ‘sure’ that you will pass out or collapse. Even when you convince yourself that you will not faint, the feeling of un-steadiness or dizziness remains. This feeling can go on for minutes or hours and there seems to be no end to it. What causes this: This symptom has a few variations. Some people may experience a sudden head rush feeling, which goes almost as quickly as it comes. As long as the individual doesn’t react with more fear, the symptom will come and go and will vary in frequency from a number of times per day, to a few times a month. Another variation includes a constant state of unbalance, spinning, wooziness, fogginess and so on. Often it is accompanied by a feeling that you may pass out (some people do, however, that’s not common). This symptom has a few causes. It could be from a blood sugar imbalance, hyperventilation (not getting enough oxygen) or an inner ear or ear pressure condition. This is a common symptom and sometimes an individual can experience both forms, and at different times. There are tests available that can accurately identify a blood sugar imbalance, however, most often this isn’t the main cause. Typically, those with anxiety disorder have their blood sugar levels within the safe range when tested. However, long periods without eating may aggravate the condition because blood sugar levels may drop too low because of not eating. It’s important to eat regular wholesome and natural food so that the fluctuations in blood sugar remain in the normal range. If you are experiencing this symptom, having medical tests may be beneficial – certainly, to rule out any other cause. If your symptom is a result of hyperventilation, deliberately deep slow breathing will reduce and even eliminate this symptom. While deep relaxation will help to diminish and eliminate most symptoms, I found that this symptom is one that hangs on the longest, and is the least responsive to immediate counter action. However, regular exercise provided me with results though not immediate. Try to steady your breathing and sit quietly somewhere so that you can concentrate on it. The more you panic and worry, the worse you will feel. Try to occupy and distract your mind with something so you don’t focus on the dizziness and if necessary sit down for a while to help get your balance back. As with all symptoms, when the nervous system gets sufficient rest, this symptom will diminish and eventually subside. Heart palpitations, chest pain, irregular beats, flutters, skipped beats What you feel: One of the most worrying symptoms is chest pains or a tight feeling in your chest. The immediate thought is “heart attack” or “stroke” and this only worries you more. You may also notice that your heartbeat is incredibly fast or irregular at times having palpitations and again this leads to the worry that you will have a heart attack. Often the chest muscles may feel very tight, and sometimes they can become painful if they are tight enough to spasm. Because the individual may become concerned that they may be having a heart attack, their fear will add to the stress biology which can not only worsen the pain, but can produce other symptoms similar to a heart attack such as profuse sweating, light-headedness and numbness in the arms, feet or face. These increased symptoms can also cause more fear which then can turn into a panic attack Your heart feels like it skips a beat or flops in your chest. It sometimes may feel like a tickle in your chest that makes you cough. If you take your pulse, you’ll notice that sometimes the beats are unevenly spaced. You may experience a tightness or pressure in the chest. Sometimes you may feel shooting pains, or muscle twitches, or just an uneasiness or fullness in the chest area which causes you concern There is no evidence that panic and anxiety has any adverse effect on the heart and the pains are easily explained. What causes this: Stress biology causes the heart rate to increase. It does this so that the body is ready to take action. It’s like in drag racing, drivers get their RPM’s up prior to the green light so that they can hit the light with maximum torque. Since the stimulant hormone adrenaline, the body’s super fuel, is produced when danger is perceived, the heart rate is naturally increased. Once the stimulant is used and eliminated from the body, the heart rate will return to its normal range. Moderate regular exercise helps to regulate this symptom. When you start panicking the whole of your body becomes tense and this includes your muscles. The chest pains you experience are due to the constricting of the chest wall muscles and the muscles between your ribs and not due to any actual muscles in your heart and the best cure is to start stretching these muscles gently to relieve the pain. Although you may not feel like doing any exercise whilst getting these pains, try stretching your arms above and behind your head, out to the sides and bending over gently to relieve the pain. Naturally most people are dreadfully worried about their hearts but if your G.P. has given you the all clear cardiac wise – then do not be alarmed if the chest pains and palpitations come back and last for more than a day. If it is related to panic, although it is painful and worrying, the pains will subside if you try gentle exercise and ignore them. Regular exercise and deep relaxation help to minimize this symptom. Also, staying away from artificial stimulants such as caffeine, chocolate, high doses of raw sugar (such as pastries, sweets, cookies, etc.) and smoking help to keep this symptom in check. Throat tightening/Choking/Swallowing problems What you feel: Often one of the first symptoms of anxiety. People complain of feeling as though they will choke or being strangled. In reality its not nearly so dramatic – the muscles in the throat contract and salivary glands produce thick mucus leading to a feeling of restriction around the throat, it can produce a feeling that you are having difficulty swallowing or breathing. In fact you are not having difficulty, it just feels as though you are. You also get a dry mouth and it can feel like you cannot drink but you can. You feel as though there is something stuck in your throat or sometimes feel there is a lump in your throat. Other times you may feel that you can barely swallow or that there is a tightness in the throat, or that you have to really force yourself to swallow. Sometimes this feeling can lead you to think that you may suffocate or get something stuck in your throat. What causes this: When in danger, stress biology produces a tightening in the throat muscles which produces the choking or ‘something stuck in the throat’ feeling. When in a nervous or stressful situation, many people will experience this feeling. It is often referred to as ‘a lump on your throat’. There is minimal danger of choking or suffocating under normal conditions, however, some people are very sensitive to things in their throat and therefore caution should always be observed when eating. Chewing food thoroughly and slowly will prevent inadvertently swallowing something that may provoke someone to gag. This symptom can come and go, and may seem to intensify if one becomes focused on it. Eyes, Blurred vision, Eyes sensitive to light, Dry, watery or itchy eyes What you feel: You may see stars or movements out of the corner of your eyes that don’t exist. You may also see flashing lights in your eyes or your vision may seem almost kaleidoscope-like. Sometimes you may feel that there is a dark object or something just on the outside edge of your vision, or that your vision is narrowing. It seems your vision is blurry or out of focus, and it’s more apparent now than before. There are times when your eyes seem more sensitive to light than at others, even to a point of regular light being too bright so that you have to wear sunglasses or squint. You feel as though your eyes are either always dry, constantly watering or itchy. And often, your eyes are red or ‘glossy’ looking. Even a good night’s rest doesn’t help. Ciliary muscles relax – pupils dilate focusing on distant items sometimes disturbing your vision or allowing odd colours or floaters to be noticed. What causes this: Eyes are nerves. The nerves in the eyes send their information to the brain through the nervous system. When the nervous system is over active, the nerves in the eyes can play tricks on you which means we sometimes receive false information. These symptoms are some of the ways we receive this false information. None of these symptoms are serious when they are attributed to anxiety disorder. However, it is important that you get a professional medical evaluation completed to ensure your condition is related to anxiety disorder. In your Ears, Ringing What you feel: You hear a ringing or low rumbling in one or both ears. And when things are quiet, these sounds are a lot louder. You may also experience something like a plugged ear or fullness in one or both ears. The condition seems to come and go, however, when it comes it may last a long time. Sometimes, it only affects only one ear, and the same one over and over again. Muscles become taut straining, can temporarily affect the balance architecture within the ear leading to further dizziness. What causes this: The ear is a very complex organ and is made up of a very complex system of nerves, muscles and bones. These are all intricately related to provide sound and balance information to the brain. While the exact cause of this symptom is unknown, it is quite common. Some people have been diagnosed with Meniere’s Disease or Vertigo, but the medication provided produced no change. It was interesting to notice that when a few were given a tranquilliser, their ear problems cleared up. Breathing/Shortness of breath The hyperventilation as above plus your bronchial tubes dilate thus requiring more air than usual to fill the lungs so feels that it’s taking more effort to breathe – it is, you’re taking in more air at each breath. What you feel: You feel that your breathing is forced and laboured. You become conscious of how you are breathing and you have a hard time catching your breath. It seems like you have to force yourself to breathe, in fear that if you don’t, you’ll stop breathing and die. Or, for no apparent reason, you feel out of breath and find yourself doing an unusual amount of yawning in an attempt to catch your breath. What causes this: When stress biology changes the body, it quickens the breathing and respiration so that the individual is ready for immediate action. Unfortunately, this also means that the breathing becomes shallow in nature (unless we are physically exerting the body such as running, fighting, swimming, etc.) which results in the body not getting enough oxygen. That’s why we feel out of breath. This is a natural occurring biological outcome resulting from stress biology. Sometimes this symptom will be persistent from day to day, and other times it may appear for awhile, then disappear. Both are common. Once the nervous system calms down, you breathing will return to normal. Also, because breathing is an automatic bodily function, you’ll never have to worry about not breathing. Your body does it automatically. It may be shallow, but you’ll always get enough oxygen. Regular exercise helps to maintain regular breathing patterns. As with all symptoms, when the nervous system gets sufficient rest, this symptom will diminish and eventually subside. Digestive system/Nausea What you feel: All parts of the GI muscles contract, decreasing the flow of digestive juices and slow down your metabolism – but it wants to get rid of what is ready to be excreted, now!!. You may need the loo urgently several times, have tummy pains. This can be from gentle butterflies to a severe pain in the pit of the stomach. Often you swallow air leading to feeling very nauseous or having a churny tummy produces gas that needs to be burped up. You may feel bloated or gaseous, or that there is a lump in your stomach. Sometimes you may feel like you have butterflies in your stomach or that your stomach is tight. Some people refer to it as a ‘heavy’ stomach. Others experience over acidity or persistent nausea. Sometimes even the thought of eating something will make you nauseous. What causes this: High stress biology produces extra stomach acid, digestive juices and stomach muscle action or tension in order to quickly digest and eliminate food in the digestive system. This helps to prepare the body for immediate action. When high stress biology is maintained throughout the day, the build up of stomach acid and muscle tension produces an excess of stomach acid which then irritates the stomach and causes indigestion, bloating, diarrhoea, and so on. Eating smaller more frequent meals will help to reduce this symptom, as well as eating blander non-spicy foods. Using ant-acids, stomach remedies and drinking plenty of water will also help. However, the best remedy is rest, although symptom relief is not immediate. Lack of appetite or taste, a tinny, metallic or ammonia smell or taste What you feel: Sometimes you just don’t feel like eating, or the thought of food is unappealing. Or, that even though you are eating, the food has no taste or is unsatisfying. You have a persistent ‘tinny’, ‘metallic’ or ‘ammonia’ smell in your nose, or you taste it often and it’s not from your food or environment. Often it’s just there, but you can’t figure out why What causes this: Similar to the other stomach related symptoms, loss of appetite is a result of an upset stomach due to the sustained increase in digestive action. Loss of taste occurs because taste buds are nerves, and an over stimulated nervous system can send false signals to the brain which means that sometimes we can experience odd, dulled or incorrect sensory perceptions (since our receptive senses are controlled and interpreted by the nervous system). The loss of taste because of this miscommunication or misinterpretation by the over stimulated nervous does occur. This is another example of how we can receive incorrect or inaccurate sensory perceptions because of an over stimulated nervous system. The only remedy for this symptom is rest so that the nervous system can regain its health. Kidneys, urgency to urinate, frequent urination, sudden urge to go to the toilet What you feel: You have an urgent need to go to the toilet, even though you may have just gone. Starts decreasing urine output but initially wants to get rid of everything already waiting to be excreted. May need to visit the loo urgently. What causes this: High stress biology produces the need to eliminate. It does so because when the body prepares for action, it wants to eliminate all waste matter in order to make the body as well prepared for action as possible. Having all excess baggage removed, the individual will be at their peak readiness in order to ‘fight or run’ – the ‘fight or flight’ response, produced by the Emergency alarm. This symptom is very common and often experienced by stage performers just before they are to perform. Unfortunately, for those who experience anxiety disorder, a high level of stress biology will produce this symptom, and as long as the stress biology is high, the symptom will be produced. That’s just how the body was engineered. Some remedies include ant-acids, diarrhoea medication, relaxation and deep breathing. Muscles, muscle tension, stiffness, muscle twitching, tight scalp or neck What you feel: You feel like your muscles are always tight or strained, sometimes to the point of frequent pain, or even persistent and ongoing pain. Some may also find the pain so restricting and debilitating that it prevents physical activity, and sometimes to the point of becoming bed ridden. It’s also common to experience pain or cramps in any of the body’s muscles. A particular joint in your body feels unusually stiff and sore, or hard to move. It may even feel arthritic. Sometimes you feel you may be ‘seizing up’. For no apparent reason, a particular muscle will begin to twitch. This twitching will continue for an unusual amount of time before it stops of its own accord. Sometimes it twitches so long it becomes sore, and may continue on and off for days. You may feel that your scalp is sore, has shooting pains, or that the back of your neck and head are very tense. Even though there is no apparent reason for this, they continue to. What causes this: Stress biology causes muscles to contract (tighten) so that the body is more resilient to an attack. The higher the stress biology, the more tense the muscles will be. Some people experience mild tenseness while others may experience great pain, sometimes to the point of immobility. Others experience uncontrollable muscle twitching. It can be one particular muscle over and over again, or it can be a wide variety of muscles. Sometimes the twitching can last for days. Regular exercise helps to keep tight muscles relaxed. Some find relief through massage therapy or warm baths. As with all symptoms, when the nervous system gets sufficient rest, this symptom will diminish and eventually subside. Shakiness or trembling What you feel: You may feel as though you have an all over invisible shake/tremble going on within you and this may sometimes convert to be large visible shakes often at night. It is ok and not to be mistaken for a fit – it’s just the body getting rid of lots of excess energy. Your arms, hands, legs and even your whole body may feel shaky or like they are trembling. Sometimes you feel like you can’t stop yourself from shaking or trembling, and your whole body is vibrating. What causes this: This is another very common symptom brought about by high stress biology. Some people say that they have a ‘case of the nerves’ because they are shaking so much. This trembling is a result of an over stimulated nervous system, and is often intensified by a lack of sleep. Regular deep relaxation, sleep and exercise will help to eliminate this symptom. Temperature waves, sweating, feeling cold or chilled What you feel: For no apparent reason you break into hot or cold sweats. You may also experience hot flashes or excessive sweating for no reason.Some people really feel a panic or anxiety coming on by a whole wave washing through them of extreme heat or icy coldness. When your symptoms feel particularly irritable, suddenly, you feel very cold or chilled. Often this chill is difficult to shake, and only after the symptoms subside does the chill lift. What causes this: When high levels of stress biology are present, any nerve or system controlled by the involuntary nervous system can experience erratic and inappropriate biological responses. The respiration system is no exception. This is a common symptom and isn’t one to be concerned with. It’s just annoying and sometimes awkward in social settings. Numbness or tingling in hands and feet What you feel: You feel pins and needles in your hands and feet, or other parts of your body. Sometimes you get a feeling like a particular area of your body is numb or frozen. Other times you may feel a burning sensation in your arms, legs or face. What causes this: Since the nervous system conveys touch sensations to the brain, when the nervous system is over stimulated, it can sometimes send impaired information which will often be felt as a numbness, tingling or pins and needles. For example, when an individual pinches a nerve they usually feel the results of this as numbness or tingling in a certain part of the body. Because the entire skin area of the body is touch sensitive (nerves cells connected to the brain through the nervous system network), any part of the skin or body can feel numb, tingly or as pins and needles. Typically this sensation comes and goes, and will affect a wide range of body areas off and on. It’s nothing to be concerned with and will subside once the nervous system gets sufficient rest. Headaches Often described as a headband pain, it can be a debilitating headache. If you get migraines then it can lead into one. They can result from stiff and painful muscles, especially in your scalp,jaw, neck. shoulders and upper back They may be related to stress or may accompany a hangover They sometimes follow a sporting injury or head injury Dehydration can cause headaches so drink more water Some people are prone to headaches at weekends, possibly as a result of a change in routine. They may also be caused by eye problems, dental problems, sinusitis, spinal problems or high blood pressure They are rarely a sign of a brain tumour. In addition, the symptoms of a brain tumour usually develop gradually and become progressively worse, unlike the episodic nature of migraine, which is associated with complete freedom from symptoms between attacks. Depersonalization, Derealization, Feeling of unreality What you feel: Now for the Brain, the limbic system in the brain instigates this whole response and is responsible too for our emotions and behaviour. One of the body symptoms that people hate most is the one when you feel all foggy, surreal, woozy or spacey. You may either feel that you are not real or that the earth is not real and you’re a time warp away. These are often the hardest symptoms to understand and its very common to deduce that you must be going mad which makes you panic even more. This is completely untrue and you are very safe. You feel like you are not a part of what is going on, or that you feel like you are in a dream state or ‘out of touch with things’. Also, things around you may seem like they are shimmering, foggy, hazy or too bright. What causes this: As we learned in Understanding, the body and mind are tightly integrated. What affects one affects the other. This symptom is another example of how an over stimulated nervous system can cause us to experience odd and impaired feelings, emotions and perceptions. Much like how a psychoactive or recreational drug can alter one’s mental state, an over active nervous system can affect certain body chemistries thereby producing mind altering effects. The feeling of unreality or disassociation is one type of altered mental state that high levels of stress biology can produce. It is not completely understood what goes here but it is generally thought that the limbic system in the brain decides
тящего момента. Момент передается на все четыре колеса через шестиступенчатую секвентальную коробку передач. Посетители автосалона могут увидеть этот автомобиль одними из первых. ### (translated) Opel at the Moscow International Motor Show: three Russian prime ministers and two new versions of Mokka - Russian premieres: Opel ADAM, ADAM ROCKS and Insignia OPC - Tribute to the Russian capital: a concept car Opel Mokka Moscow Edition - At full throttle through the desert: Opel Mokka Dakar for the most complex in the world of rally Rüsselsheim / Moscow. Opel model line expands in Russia. At the Moscow International Motor Show 2014 presented three cars, no doubt deserving of the title of the most striking and emotional throughout the model range. As they go on sale in early 2015. Opel ADAM created a furor in Europe and is ready for new challenges in Russia. This stylish urban hatchback - a real record of individualization. The number of combinations clearance city car tends to infinity, so we can safely say that each ADAM unique. Opel ADAM - debut in the rapidly growing segment of "lifestyle" car A-Class. The three-door mod length of only 3.7 m fits perfectly into the urban environment. Configure the chassis and steering are focused on how to give the driver maximum driving pleasure. ADAM family is growing: machine for fans of adventure and fresh air, the stylish new genre legislator and, of course, the champion of individualization Opel ADAM ROCKS copes with multiple roles at once. Trehdverka length of 3.75 m, a "pocket crossover", opens a new market niche. Designers have given Opel ADAM ROCKS few special touches, which, combined with the soft-top gives it its own unique charm. Under the hood lurks ADAM ROCKS completely new 1.0-liter ECOTEC engine with direct injection and turbocharging. This high-tech, powerful and compact engine complies with Euro 6. vibration and noise, often characteristic of a three-cylinder motors, are minimized. The new 1.0 ECOTEC will be offered in two degrees of forcing 90 and 115 hp With the latest ADAM ROCKS accelerates to 100 km / h in 9.9 seconds and its top speed is 196 km / h. To enable ADAM ROCKS off-road properties, Opel engineers largely redesigned suspension and steering. Ground clearance mini crossover increased by 15 mm compared to ADAM, and was 140 mm. The flagship of the entire range of Opel, Insignia OPC provides uncompromising 325 hp and 435 Nm of torque. With the six-speed manual transmission and all-wheel drive Insignia OPC from zero to 100 km / h in 6 seconds (6.3 seconds for the wagon Sports Tourer). Maximum speed electronically limited model for 250 km / h, and a version without strain reaches 270 km / h (265 for the wagon). High-performance Brembo brake system provides efficient deceleration, absolute stability and durability even under high loads. Electronically controlled AWD system is built on the principle of Haldex. It can transmit up to 100% of torque to the front or rear axle, constantly adapting to the driving conditions. In combination with the FlexRide suspension with shock absorbers adjustable stiffness becomes the standard all-wheel drive chassis handling and control. The new program is aimed at the ESP control as accurately as possible the impact, especially in the case of understeer. Exterior and interior Insignia OPC every detail underline the sporty model. Aggressive bumpers, Recaro seats with memory, gear knob with emblem OPC and completely new front panel and gauges. Now, the driver can see the parameters such as oil pressure and temperature, the degree of throttle opening and the acceleration on the optional 8-inch display. A new sports steering wheel is fitted with gearshift paddles for versions with automatic transmission. Even in automatic mode, the driver can instantly switch gears that allows you to combine pluses manual and automatic gearboxes. Stunning design concept Opel Mokka Moscow Edition Where else but at the Moscow International Motor Show to present kotsept car Opel Mokka Moscow edition? A special version of the best-selling book is devoted to the capital metropolis. Inspired by the map of Moscow, the designers applied on the hood, roof and rear of the crossover label Mokka, in which the letter "O" stylized road network within the Garden Ring. The same graphic elements are present and in the interior they are laser engraved on the seatbacks to be supported on the front panel. Soft leather with perforations on the seats stitched with contrasting blue and orange thread. Even mats continue to blue-orange theme, in addition to them plotted coordinates: latitude and longitude of Moscow. Opel Mokka Dakar ready to race in South America Opel aims to develop new types of motorsport. Balázs Szalay (Balázs Szalay) and Laszlo Bunkotsi (László Bunkoczi) from the Hungarian team Opel-Team prepared a special crossover Mokka, to take part in the Dakar Rally. This legendary race in the desert, which will be held from 3 to 17 January in South America: Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. "War" crossover completely ready for such adventures. Suspension with 25-centimeter progress cope with deep holes in the sand, and high jumps. Huge tank capacity of 520 liters allows to pass great distances at maximum speed. Some components of a body made racing Mokka and light and heavy-duty carbon fiber. Under the hood of the car is placed V8 engine capacity of 6.2 liters, which produces 340 hp and 660 Nmft of torque. Is transmitted to all four wheels via a six-speed sequential gearbox. Auto show visitors can see this car is one of the first.It was the late spring of 1963, and my friend Martin was exhausted. The campaign to integrate the public facilities in Birmingham had been successful but also tremendously taxing. In its aftermath, he wanted nothing more than to take Coretta and the children away for a vacation and forget - forget the looming book deadline, the office politics of his ever-growing Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the constant need to raise funds. But a date for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom had been nailed down - Aug. 28 - and Martin realized he couldn't plan such a massive undertaking with the usual endless interruptions. No, if this march were going to come together in time, he would have to escape all the distractions. (This was a man, after all, whose best writing was done inside a jail cell.) He needed to get away to a place where very few people could reach him. That would be my house in Riverdale, N.Y. For the previous three years, I had been an adviser to Martin Luther King Jr., his personal lawyer and one of his speechwriters. Stanley Levison, another adviser who had done even more work with Martin on his speeches than I had, was also a New Yorker. Because of some dark ops on the part of the FBI, Martin could not deal directly with Stanley, yet he very much valued his advice, so it made sense for Martin to stay at my home and have me act as a go-between as we planned the March on Washington - and the speech Martin would deliver. The logistical preparations for the march were so burdensome that the speech was not a priority for us. Early in the summer, Martin asked some trusted colleagues at the SCLC for their thoughts on his address, and during his weeks in New York, we had discussions about it. But it wasn't until mid-August that Martin had Stanley and I work up a draft. And though I had that material with me when I arrived at the Willard Hotel in Washington for a meeting on the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 27, Martin still didn't know what he was going to say. We met in the lobby rather than in a suite, under the assumption that the lobby would be harder to wiretap. Tables, chairs and plants acted as a cordon of privacy. It was with this odd start, hiding in plain sight, that 12 hours before the March on Washington began, Martin gathered with a small group of advisers to hammer out the themes of his speech. He had reacted well to the material Stanley and I had prepared, but he also knew that many of the march's supporters and organizers - labor unions, religious groups, community organizations and academic leaders - needed to be heard as well. So that evening he had a cross-section of advisers present to fill any blind spots. Cleveland Robinson, Walter Fauntroy, Bernard Lee, Ralph Abernathy, Lawrence Reddick and I joined him, along with Wyatt Walker and Bayard Rustin, who were in and out of our deliberations. As we ate sandwiches, our suggestions tumbled out. Everyone, it seemed, had a different take. Cleve, Lawrence and I saw the speech as an opportunity to stake an ideological and political marker in the debate over civil rights and segregation. Others were more inclined for Martin to deliver a sort of church sermon, steeped in parables and Bible quotes. Some, however, worried that biblical language would obfuscate the real message - reform of the legal system. And still others wanted Martin to direct his remarks to the students, black and white, who would be marching that day. Martin got frustrated trying to keep everything straight, so he asked me to take notes. I quickly realized that putting together these various concepts into a single address would be difficult. Martin would have to take one approach - his own - with the other ideas somehow supporting his larger vision. I kept on taking notes, wondering how someone would turn all this into a cohesive speech. As it turned out, that would be my task. Eventually, Martin looked to me and said, "Clarence, why don't you excuse yourself and go upstairs. You can summarize the points made here and return with an outline." I sat in my room, flipping through the scrawled pages of the yellow legal pad, struggling to boil down everyone's perspectives. The idea of urging the crowd to take specific actions, as opposed to a general kind of complaining, seemed one area of agreement. (The march's organizing manual even had a headline that spelled it out: "What We Demand.") A conversation that I'd had during the Birmingham campaign with then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller inspired an opening analogy: African Americans marching to Washington to redeem a promissory note or a check for justice. From there, a proposed draft took shape.Fiscally conservative Tea Partiers just can't seem to nail down a message. They hate government spending, but want Obama to shell out more money so astronauts can play with big, expensive toys in outer space. Maybe they're just bored retirees? At a demonstration outside NASA's Kennedy Center in God's waiting room Florida yesterday, Space Coast Patriots carried birther signs and yelled nonsensical slogans about Obama's supposed scrapping of America's space program during his visit there. From NPR's Greg Allen: Although he's scaled back, all but canceled the Constellation manned mission program, President Obama has actually increased the NASA budget. And after the outcry about the Constellation, Mr. Obama has proposed pumping more money into the Kennedy Space Center, with programs that the White House says will add some 4,500 jobs. Like much the president says, [protester] Don Forward says he doesn't believe it." According to Don Forward: "[...] It's not going to help the day to day person who works out at the cape, actually making the cape run, I don't think it is." Another Space cadet, Bonnie Smith, told NPR she thinks this is all part of Barack Hussein's diabolical plan to destroy the Patriotic resistance: "This area is a Republican area. You know, I can be conspiratorial and say, is he trying to crush this area? You know, you can look at it like that." Yes, Bonnie, we can be conspiratorial and suggest you increase your daily Geritol intake. And retired Kennedy Space Center worker John Schneider thinks the government needs to spend more money, and lots of it, to keep the program running: "When John Kennedy said we'll be on the Moon in 10 years, we were. I mean, we did it. But it took a bunch of money. They, you know, they did not spare the horses when it came to money." Can't someone just ship a bunch of backgammon sets and lawn chairs down to these confused old-timers? [Image via]Man loses teeth, jaw wired together after e-cig explodes ENGLEWOOD, Fla.- A man lost eight teeth and had to have his jaw wired after he said his e-cigarette exploded in his face. Chris Thompson was on his way to breakfast with his dad, Mike, on Sunday when he said suddenly his e-cigarette exploded in his right hand. “I was about to take a puff off of it, like I normally did hundreds of times before and just had it in my mouth and pressed the button and it exploded,” Chris said. “I said ‘what happened?’ And my dad was pulling over at the time and he said ‘your e-cigarette blew up.’ I looked down and I was on fire right here [chest] and parts of the battery or whatever was burning went down into my lap.” They drove immediately to Englewood emergency room, and from there Chris was flown to Blake Trauma Center in Bradenton. Chris said eight of his teeth are now wired to stay in place, his jaw is wired, he has cuts on his right eye and burns marks on his chest and leg. “I never anticipated in a million years that it would be like a mini grenade going off in my hand, right next to my face,” he said. “There was no warning, there’s was no advance notice, there was no shaking, no vibration. Nothing. I was just puffing on it, the same way that I had done for the last two years.” Chris’ dad Mike is a Vietnam veteran and described the explosion as a bomb going off. “I didn’t know with all the things happening around the country today, if it was an ambush, an IED, a hand grenade,” Mike said. “I saw the white muzzle flash out of the corner of my eye…The boom at the exact same time, the vehicle filled with toxic fumes, the floor in front of me was on fire. So I’m dropping the windows, stomping out the fire, slamming on the brakes and my son’s asking me, ‘Dad, what happened?'” Chris is not sure how long it will take him to recover, but he hopes by sharing his story it will stop someone else from using an e-cigarette until they are safe. “I’d give it a second thought because this is going to take a long time to heal and it’s very painful.” In October 2014, FEMA and the U.S. Fire Administration released a study on e-cigarettes. They found there were 25 different incidents of explosions or fires that involved e-cigarettes reported in the media in the U.S. between 2009 and August 2014. At this point, there are no regulations on e-cigarettes, but if you have an incident with one you can report it to the FDA by calling 1-800-FDA-1088 or by filling out an online form. Reporter: Lindsey SablanFamily members of Earl Andrews and Monquiarious Caldwell attend a prayer vigil in honor of the two friends, who were shot and killed on the Grambing State University campus. (Hannah Baldwin/The News-Star via AP) First came the calls to Grambling State University’s police chief, Gene Caviness, around midnight Tuesday, with distraught students reporting shots fired on the campus in northern Louisiana. Then police found Earl Andrews, a 23-year-old Grambling senior, and his friend Monquiarious Caldwell, also 23. They were on the ground in a residential courtyard, both dead from gunshot wounds. Jaylin M. Wayne. (Lincoln Paris Sheriff’s Department) On Thursday, police arrested Jaylin M. Wayne, of St. Louis, after he turned himself in to law enforcement. He has been charged with first-degree murder. Wayne is a freshman at the historically black university, school officials said. The Lincoln Parish Sheriff’s Department said the incident began with a disagreement between Wayne and Andrews. At some point during the fight, Wayne produced a firearm, shooting Andrews and Caldwell. Caldwell had been trying to help Andrews when he was shot, according to a sheriff’s department news release. “I feel confident that our investigators have put together a strong case,” Sheriff Mike Stone said in the release. Stone thanked the Grambling State University Police Department, the Grambling Police Department, the Monroe Police Department, the Ruston Police Department and the Louisiana State Police for their roles in the investigation. Richard J. Gallot Jr., the university’s president, thanked the authorities for “their around the clock effort in solving this case within the first 48 hours. Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the Andrews and the Caldwell families during this difficult time.” The shooting had shaken the campus, a small community of 5,188 students, where the death of Andrews was “truly a loss of a member of a family,” Gallot said in an interview. The shooting occurred during homecoming week, when the school, in the city of Grambling, sees a spike in visitors. “It’s a horrible thing to happen on any day of the week, any week,” said Will Sutton, the university’s director of communications. “It’s particularly unfortunate that it’s homecoming week, an annual, joyful series of days, where we have people returning home to campus.... Nobody wants to return to something like this.” Students had received emergency text messages from the university after the shooting, urging them to stay in their rooms overnight, school officials said. About a third of the university’s students live on campus. Caviness was alerted to the shooting after receiving several calls on his cellphone from students. University officials said he often gives his cellphone number to students at the beginning of the semester and encourages them to call him with any concerns, rather than go through the police department. It’s just one example of the closeness of the Grambling State community, said Gallot, the university president. He told The Washington Post that he wasn’t surprised by the outpouring of support for the victims’ families so soon after the shooting, as dozens of students posted condolences on social media as early as 2 a.m. Wednesday. He said that Andrews especially loved being part of the university’s family and that even the cafeteria workers were fond of him, adopting the senior as “one of their own.” “I honestly can’t remember the last time there was a loss of life in this manner... the last time we had something of this magnitude,” Gallot said. “We’re not in the middle of a major metropolitan area. We’re a small community. Something like this is not something that happens every day.” In a statement to the campus community, he asked that the “GramFam” student body do what it has always done: Look out for one another. The university will move forward with academic and event schedules as planned this week, including all homecoming events. Students and staff should expect an increased police and security presence on campus, Gallot said. Andrews lived with his older brother, Ladarius Heard, in Ruston, La., a short distance from campus. Heard, a contractor for an industrial building company, had been staying in Shreveport for an extended job assignment last week — but drove back to Ruston on a whim Friday night. “I don’t know what it was,” Heard told The Post. “Something that told me to drive back.” Earl Andrews, right, with his brother, Ladarius Heard. (Courtesy of Ladarius Heard) He said he was sleeping when a friend called him around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday to alert him to the shooting on campus. Heard said he can’t fathom why anyone would have wanted to harm his younger brother. “He was always smiling, dancing,” Heard said. “He didn’t bother nobody.” Andrews was studying criminal justice at Grambling, Heard said, and had planned on moving to Texas after graduation. His mother, Juanita Augman, said he wanted to be a parole officer. “I just can’t explain it,” Augman said of her son’s death. “It’s just been the longest, longest day. He was a wonderful child.” He played football at Patterson High School, about four hours south of Grambling, and wanted to play in college but couldn’t because of an injury, she said. He enjoyed basketball as well, and often played at the campus gym with members of Grambling’s basketball team. Andrews was also a runner and had earned more than 15 trophies during his time on the Patterson High School track team. He eventually moved, transferring to Farmerville High School, not far from Grambling. He graduated from that school in 2013. “He was a very active person. Everybody loved him,” his mother told The Post. “And he was very respectable.” She added: “I love all my kids, but he was just a special one — everybody loved him.” Grambling State was founded in 1901 by a group of black farmers and has become well known for its marching band and its football dominance; about 200 players went on to the NFL during the tenure of a legendary coach. Susan Svrluga contributed to this report, which has been updated.“President Obama told the American people that under Obamacare the average family’s premium would drop $2,500. In fact, the average family’s premiums have risen $3,000. Now, Chris [Wallace], if you’re a single mom, if you’re struggling to feed your kids, $5,500, that is real money that you can’t provide for your family.” — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), interview on Fox News Sunday, Jan. 31, 2016 Oh my, this tired old talking point again. A version of this claim was first made in the 2012 campaign. And yet it keeps popping up, presumably because it sounds like such a delicious talking point. But four years later, it still isn’t right. So, once again, here’s why this is nonsense math. The Facts This story starts with a misleading claim made by then-Sen. Barack Obama, campaigning for the presidency in 2008 — which should be a lesson to today’s would-be presidents about making false statements during a campaign. At least 19 times during the 2008 campaign, according to a video circulated by GOP lawmakers, Obama claimed that his health-care plan would reduce “premiums by as much as $2,500 per family.” The specifics were laid out in an Obama campaign memo, which called the $2,500 figure a “best-guess” assumption. But Obama’s pledge came with a very large asterisk: He was not saying premiums would fall by $2,500, but that health-care costs per family would be that much lower than anticipated. In other words, if overall costs — not just premiums — were expected to rise by $5,000 by 2012, they would only rise by $2,500. We should note that Obama was not especially clear about that aspect of the estimate — and as shown in the video, he frequently misstated it. When Obama made this claim in 2008, he was quickly called out by fact checkers. The Fact Checker awarded Obama Two Pinocchios for the pledge, saying that it was based on shaky assumptions (such as a Rand Corp. study that was criticized by the Congressional Budget Office). Moreover, there was no guarantee that any cost savings would be passed on to consumers; it could just be pocketed by insurance companies. But apparently no one ever forgets these pledges. The health-care plan that emerged from Congress was significantly different from Obama’s campaign proposal. Yet the White House in 2011 offered a reestimate that the plan would yield $2,000 in savings by 2019. In 2014, Obama even began to claim that “the average premium for family coverage today would be $1,800 higher” if not for his health-care plan — a statement that also yielded Pinocchios. (It is very difficult, even at this date, to determine how much a slowdown in health-care costs is attributable to the Affordable Care Act. The Great Recession resulted in a general slowdown in health-care costs around the globe.) Okay, we have stipulated that Obama started this with his bogus, asterisk-laden pledge. But then Cruz, as many other Republicans before him, compares that pledge to the growth in employer-based premiums, derived from a Kaiser Family Foundation survey. The 2015 survey shows that the average annual premium for family coverage was $17,545 in 2015. Premiums thus have gone up $3,775 since 2010 — when the law was passed — or $1,800 since 2012, when the Affordable Care Act was fully implemented. Cruz says $3,000, which may have been an old talking point. (In 2013, the GOP claim was that premiums had gone up $3,000 since Obama took office.) But a key point of the Kaiser report is that average premiums have risen at a remarkably low rate — 4 percent in 2015 — in recent years. “Even with these new requirements [from the Affordable Care Act], most market fundamentals have stayed consistent with prior trends, suggesting that the implementation [of the law] has not caused significant disruption for most market participants,” the report said. Still, the report makes the case that while premium growth has slowed, the cost of deductibles has soared. Finally, Cruz then combines both the Obama “promise” and the increase in premiums to suggest that a “single mom” is struggling under a burden of $5,500 that the law has taken away from her — which is quite a non sequitur. The Cruz campaign did not respond to queries. The Pinocchio Test We realize the temptation is great for Republicans to keep citing this ridiculous Obama promise — even though the pledge was imprecisely stated and called out by fact checkers at the time. Moreover, the law that emerged from Congress was different from the Obama campaign plan. Note that Cruz says “President Obama told the American people.” But in reality, it was not a pledge made during his presidency. But it’s doubly absurd to combine the old campaign pledge with increases in health-care premiums —which overall have grown at historically low rates during Obama’s presidency. Whether that is because of the law is certainly subject to debate, but creating an imaginary burden is not. Three Pinocchios (About our rating scale) Send us facts to check by filling out this form Check out our 2016 candidates fact-check page Sign up for The Fact Checker weekly newsletterVladimir Putin on France and Europe "NATO Members Have Renounced Their Sovereignty" By Sayed Hasan "As you know, the modern world, especially the Western world, is highly monopolised and many Western countries – whether they want to hear this or not – have voluntarily given up a considerable part of their sovereignty. To some extent, this is a result of the politics of blocs. Sometimes we find it very difficult to come to terms with them on geopolitical issues. It is hard to reach an agreement with people who whisper even at home for fear of being overheard by the Americans. This is not a joke or a figure of speech." June 28, 2015 " Information Clearing House " - Vladimir Putin denounces, more and more explicitly, the servility of France and Europe towards the United States, whether in the case of wire-tapping French leaders or that of Mistral ships. The publication by WikiLeaks of documents establishing the wire-tapping by the United States of three French Presidents was an open secret known since the revelations of Edward Snowden. Far from protesting against the flagrant violation of French sovereignty that the espionage of its top leaders constitutes, our government bravely hastened to hush up this scandal, as was expected by Lavrov and Putin. Let us remind that France prided herself in 2013 upon rejecting asylum for Edward Snowden, and that it is illusory to believe that these revelations could change anything : official France cannot but turn down flat Julian Assange’s calls. By refusing the delivery of two helicopter carriers ordered and paid for by Russia, France is both disgraced and discredited internationally as a reliable economic partner and military supplier. The inept pretext of the Ukrainian crisis and alleged Russian interference, invoked by a country that involved itself in the Syrian crisis by arming Al-Nosra terrorists (of which it is apologetic) and calling for the overthrow (even murder) of the legitimate Syrian leader, reveals the extent of the hypocrisy and indecency of the French government and its subjection to American diktats. Especially since this same government then concluded huge arms sales contracts with the barbaric regimes of Qatar and even Saudi Arabia, engaged in an illegal and criminal war in Yemen. While trade between the US and Russia is increasing, their European "allies" are forced to impose sanctions on Moscow and suffer alone its formidable repercussions: thus Vladimir Putin has renewed for one year the Russian embargo on food products from Europe. Vladimir Putin recently said to Charlie Rose, an American TV star presenter who asked incredulously if Russia really aspired to gain respect (indeed, what a preposterous idea): " You know, I hear this all the time: Russia wants to be respected. Don’t you? Who does not? Who wants to be humiliated? It is a strange question. As if this is some exclusive right – Russia demands respect. Does anyone like to be neglected?" To this rhetorical question, our French leaders respond 'yes' without hesitation and continue to whisper in their own homes for fear of prying ears (and microphones). Instead of a rapprochement with Russia, a historic partner concerned about the respect of States and their sovereignty, in addition a rising great power and champion of the defence of international law, France and Europe prefer subjugation to the US, the superpower in irremediable decline with which they chain their destinies. It is easy to conceive the repulsion that Russian elites, despite their professionalism, must feel for our inglorious leaders. Probably to the extent of the felt more and more by their own peoples, whom Putin chooses to address directly. Former arrogant colonial power and conqueror, then sovereignist Gaullist Republic, France is now relegated to the status of American sub-colony whose independence and national interests are routinely violated and trampled, as much by the stateless and spineless leaders in Paris, repeatedly guilty of the crime of high treason (abolished, thankfully for them), as by the imperial hawks in Washington. Even a country like Algeria, a former French colony run by a corrupt and retrograde military regime, has at least leaders concerned of their national interests to the point of refusing any participation in the Saudi-American coalition against Yemen, while Hollands' France was ready to pounce gleefully on a new crusade in Syria, which could have triggered World War III. One may ask, to use an expression of Norman Finkelstein why prostitutes have such a bad reputation... Welcome to Western mediocracy! Sayed 7asan Translated from French by Jenny Bright Vladimir Putin on the tapping of French Presidents: This scandal will be stifled (English subtitles) Briefing session with permanent members of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, 25 June 2015 Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/49766 Transcript: President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues, Mr Lavrov will tell us about the consultations in Paris. Let’s start with this. Please, Mr Lavrov. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: On the whole, it was not useless because even despite certain wrangling during the discussion, the main outcome was the acknowledgement of the fact that there is no alternative to complete fulfilment of the Minsk Agreements. First and foremost, the acknowledgement by our German and our French partners of the fact that the overwhelming part of the Minsk provisions should be implemented through direct dialogue between authorities in Kiev and Donetsk and Lugansk. I can’t say that we have resolved all the problems because this should be done directly by the Contact group and the working subgroups created. I will report on that in more detail later, but on the day of our meeting, a report on the taps [by the United States of the French leadership] was published, and this gave rise to unrest in France so this was another thing that distracted our attention. Vladimir Putin: How will this scandal end? Sergei Lavrov: Frankly speaking, I think that Germany’s example [the US special services wiretapping the German leadership] gives the answer: I think that both sides will try to blanket the scandal and forget about it. Vladimir Putin: That is what would happen.On Monday, “firefighter prophet” and right-wing conspiracy theorist Mark Taylor appeared on Greg Hunter’s “USAWatchdog” program, where he warned that people who support reproductive rights do so only because they want to provide a human sacrifice to the demon god Baal. After repeating his prophecy that God is going to supernaturally remove five Supreme Court justices so that President Trump can replace them and overturn Roe v. Wade, Taylor warned viewers not to be fooled by those who claim they support a woman’s right to choose. “People have to realize the strongman over America is Baal,” he said. “Baal is a very violent entity, he is the second in Satan’s triune, he is the second in command, he is the counterfeit Christ. It feeds off the blood of the innocent, which is the aborted babies. This is why Baal is the strongman, because the aborted babies are the food source that is empowering Baal.” Taylor said that “if you’re listening to these politicians and they’re telling you, ‘Oh, we’re pro-choice, it’s all about a woman’s right to choose, it’s all about women’s health,’ you’re being duped, you’re being lied to.” “They don’t care anything about you,” he said. “All they want from you, as a woman, is to be a breeder for that food source, for you to abort that baby to feed their god called Baal. They don’t care anything about your right to choose, they don’t care anything about your health, all they want is that baby aborted as a sacrifice because every time you abort a baby, it’s a sacrifice to their god called Baal.”The original three OSS stamp issues printed for the operation. A later variety of the 'Futsches Reich' stamp printed for the operation. Operation Cornflakes (1944–1945) was a World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Morale Operation (MO). Operation Cornflakes involved tricking the German postal service, Deutsche Reichspost, into inadvertently delivering anti-Nazi propaganda to German citizens through mail.[1] The operation involved special planes that were instructed to airdrop bags of false, but properly addressed, mail in the vicinity of bombed mail trains. When recovering the mail during clean-up of the wreck, the postal service would hopefully confuse the false mail for the real thing and deliver it to the various addresses.[1] Background [ edit ] The OSS was formed from the division of the Foreign Information Service (FIS) and the Coordinator of Information (COI), a division that President Roosevelt enacted by Executive order 9128.[2] The remainder of the COI was renamed the Office of Strategic Service. The newly formed OSS was under jurisdiction of the Joint Chief of Staff, giving the OSS the capability and status of a military branch.[2] The overarching goal of the operation was to disrupt the morale of the German people by using a method of large scale psychological operation (PSYOP) that the British MI6 had been pushing into service with the help of the Royal Air Force (RAF).[3] Also by using the same pattern of mission that a previous OSS operation in Hungary undertook the OSS would craft their more intricate Operation Cornflakes.[4] The distribution of propaganda in letters and distributed by the German postal system was thought to be an ideal method of reaching the German population and undermine the support of Adolf Hitler. Operation CORNFLAKES began with OSS officials collecting any and all German POWs that had experience with the German postal service or Reichspost.[3] These POW’s were given better meals in exchange for information in collection, sorting, canceling and delivery of the mail. The OSS did not infiltrate Germany directly because they felt it necessary to focus their efforts in the liberation of France in 1944, but by the waning years of the war Secret Intelligence agents of the OSS could be found trickling in. The information gathered however came from nearby outposts in neutral countries that would supply the OSS with information.[5] With this information the OSS and German exiles scoured the telephone directories and pulled over two million, randomly selected names registered within the Reich to send forged letters to.[4][6] A unit of the OSS out of Rome claimed to have forged over 15000 envelopes a week.[6] Within the letters contained writings about family happenings and gossip about non-existent people, the idea being that the domestic mail was not censored unlike the business mail.[3] The letters coming out of Rome to be mailed were completed in different cities around Rome. The envelopes were to be addressed and sealed in Siena, then down to Rome where they would be placed into the counterfeit bags where the mail would be finally sent to Bari to be routed and canceled.[4] In hopes of shaking the morale further in the German people, the OSS called upon master forgers similar in nature as MI6 once had, but rather than having an image of Himmler replacing Hitler, the OSS used a stamp of Hitler, but with some minor modifications. The modifications included a skull overlay that resembles a portion of Hitler’s jaw having been "eaten away". The German subscript at the bottom of the stamp was also altered from 'Deutsches Reich' (German Empire) to 'Futsches Reich' (ruined empire). These stamps were known as the "Death Head" and were usually placed in the letter with other subversive materials.[3] The letters were arranged in Reichspost bags that the OSS had forged to resemble the original bags. These precisely made bags were indistinguishable from the real German mail bags and were mimicked down to the material used.[4] The bags would then be loaded aboard bombs specially designed to deploy the bags near a destroyed train, preferably one carrying mail, and drop the forgeries in amongst the originals in hopes that they would be put into circulation with the rest of the mail. However, all the prior planning was almost for naught because in August 1944 the Reichspost altered their franking machines on the domestic mail making the thousands of letters previously written void.[3] The OSS obtained a copy of the frank design and went
medical qualifications and recommends eating raw vegetables to cure leukemia?” The girl began chemotherapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia in late August but pulled out after 10 days, she and her parents saying the hospital was putting “poison” in her body. As well as receiving unspecified aboriginal remedies, the girl travelled to the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida for other alternative treatment. According to a CBC report, the institute provided cold laser therapy, vitamin C injections and a strict raw food diet as part of a service that cost $18,000. Chief Hill said it was the family’s right to seek out any alternative care they chose. As for actual traditional medicines, she said she did not know exactly what the girl had received. The hospital turned to Brant Child and Family Services after the girl quit chemo, but the agency refused to intervene, noting she has loving parents and arguing it was a matter of health-care consent, not child protection. McMaster Children’s Hospital then took the agency to court, leading to several days of hearings this fall. Judge Edward ruled that it was, in fact, a matter of child protection, but called the situation “untenable.” If he was to order in favour of the hospital, it might mean a social worker having to apprehend the girl. “That will have its challenges given the support the Six Nations community has shown this family.” Regardless, he cited case law to conclude that the mother’s actions were protected by the Constitution. By odd coincidence, another 11-year-old girl from the neighbouring New Credit reserve also dropped out of chemotherapy for leukemia earlier this year, opting instead for similar alternative therapy. National Post • Email: tblackwell@nationalpost.com \| Twitter: tomblackwellNPEditors' Note: Pebble has shut down and is no longer manufacturing or selling smartwatches. Existing devices should continue to work as they have, but functionality or service may be reduced in the future. As such, we can no longer recommend this product. Our original review is below. After a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign that raised over $10 million, and nearly a year spent working out the kinks of a grass-roots effort to bring a consumer product to market, the Pebble Smartwatch ($150 direct) finally arrived earlier this year. We had some reservations at first, but nearly half a year later, with a number of updates under its belt, we've decided to revisit the Pebble and see how far it's come. The physical design remains identical, while the primary features are largely unchanged. But what's new and most exciting is the burgeoning developer community surrounding the Pebble platform. It's still not the most consumer friendly device out there. But for those who are willing to tinker, the Pebble is now the most well-rounded smartwatch available, and it's good enough to be our first-ever Editors' Choice for this kind of product. loading... Physical Design There's a certain elegance to the Pebble's simple and understated design. I think it's far better looking than, say, the squat and thick Martian Passport smartwatch. The plastic casing feels hollow, though, and the buttons along both sides of the watch face feel a bit mushy, preventing the watch from having a rock-solid feel. The included polyurethane band is decidedly understated, but you can swap in any standard 22mm watchband. The Pebble is available in black, white, red, orange, or gray. On the left side is a single button that brings you to the Menu page, while the right side houses Up, Down, and Select buttons for navigation. Tapping any of the buttons activates the Pebble's backlight, and quick flicks of your wrist also light up the display, which is a nice touch. The watch face is customizable, and at the time of testing there were nine choices that ranged from a standard analog look to a futuristic dot matrix. The 1.26-inch 144-by-168-pixel e-paper display isn't the clearest or sharpest, but it gets the job done. The e-paper should not be confused with E Ink displays you'll find on ebook readers like the Kindle Paperwhite. It doesn't have the same printed look as E Ink displays; instead it's more of a monochrome LCD. As such, viewing angle isn't a full 180 degrees and it becomes hard to read the watch when you look from an angle. The screen is also pretty reflective, and even with the backlight on it can be hard to read in bright outdoor light, unlike E Ink. On the left side are three contact points that connect to the included charging cable magnetically. It's reminiscent of Apple's MagSafe connector, but the magnetic hold is a bit weaker—I could detach it simply by picking the watch up. The Pebble has a waterproof rating of 5 ATM, which means it can be submerged up to 165 feet and has been tested in both fresh and salt water, so you can shower or swim with the watch. The battery is rated for more than seven days of use, and in my several days of testing, the battery never ran out, despite only charging once for about an hour. You can plug the included USB cable into a computer or a wall charger from a smartphone. The only things included in the box are the watch itself and the charging cable. Android and iOS Experience The primary purpose of the Pebble is to make push notifications accessible on your wrist, and the watch is compatible with both Android and iOS devices. You get the same basic functions on both platforms, but setup, notification settings, and features like music playback work differently on Android and iOS. For my tests, I used an Apple iPhone 5 and an Android-based HTC One X+. When we first tested the Pebble, notifications were hit or miss on both platforms, especially if you rely on third-party apps. Now, thanks to enthusiastic third-party development, there are apps that work with your Pebble to push virtually any notification you can think of to your wrist. On top of that, third-party apps enable features like weather updates or sending canned text message replies right from your Pebble. For both platforms, you must first download the Pebble app and pair your phone to the Pebble using Bluetooth. From there, however, the experiences diverge. On initial setup with Android, you need to enable Accessibility Services on your phone to get notifications pushed to the Pebble. During this process, you'll see a somewhat disconcerting message that reads: "Pebble can collect all of the text you type, except passwords. This includes personal data such as credit card numbers. It can also collect data about your interactions with the phone." On Android the Pebble app now supports a wider array of third-party apps, but not all of them work right out of the box. For example, GoSMS Pro disables the default text messaging app's notifications to eliminate redundant notifications, and its own notifications are not supported in the Pebble app. Luckily, thanks to third-party developers, an app like Pebble Notifier can forward pretty much any notification to the smartwatch. Then there are third-party apps like Glance for Pebble, which can push weather updates to your wrist and allow you to send pre-set text replies to your most recent contacts. And for Tasker fans out there, there's even a PebbleTasker app that lets the Pebble trigger automated tasks on your smartphone. Pebble recently launched a new software update for its iOS app, as well as a firmware update for the watch itself. With iOS 7, the Pebble can do even more when it comes to notifications on iDevices. You now have to set notifications to 'banner' style for each alert you want sent to your Pebble, but the watch and iOS now support basically any notification over iOS, including third-party apps like WhatsApp and even Google Maps navigation. I tested the new Pebble software with Facebook and Twitter and received a multitude of new and timely notifications on my wrist. In my tests, notifications were nearly instantaneous on both platforms and trigger a visual alert and a vibration on the watch itself. Pressing the middle button clears the notification, while the top and bottom buttons scroll through the notification. Call notifications show contact information, text messages show contact information and a preview of the message, and emails show sender, subject, and the first few lines of the body. The Martian Passport, to compare, only shows basic caller ID notifications on its tiny OLED screen. On the Pebble, though, there's no way to look back at a notification once you clear it from the watch face, and you can't control the length of time the message remains displayed. Many of the bugs we encountered in our original review have been ironed out. Music control works far more smoothly now, and notifications are speedy and reliable. It's still not entirely perfect, though, and you'll have to be willing to deal with lost connections, crashing apps, and trial and error to really eke the most out of the Pebble. Pebble also released a new SDK with its latest update, meaning developers can now access features that lay dormant within the smartwatch all along. For iOS users, the Pebble now supports Bluetooth LE, so having the multitude of new notification types pushing to your wrist shouldn't have a huge adverse effect on battery life. Pebble apps can now take advantage of the accelerometer in the Pebble itself, opening up new doors for things like fitness apps. Unfortunately, because of Android's shoddy support for Bluetooth 4.0 LE, which is only available in Android 4.3, the Pebble team is focusing its efforts on iOS development for now. Conclusion As a category, the smartwatch is still in its infancy and despite its many improvements, the Pebble is still more for the avid geek than for the everyday consumer. The growing collection of third-party apps separates the Pebble from its smartwatch competitors and proves that the developer backing is there. New updates for iOS users signal even more features coming down the road, but it still requires some experimentation to get the most out of the device. Smartwatches can be useful for some, but they aren't for everyone—at least not yet. The Sony SmartWatch 2 is another intriguing option and a nice companion device, but it's also a bit too buggy to go mainstream and while Sony boasts over 250 apps, many of them are half baked. The Samsung Galaxy Gear got the most press of any smartwatch this year, but it's simply too expensive, too limited, and too difficult to use. For now, if you're set on hopping on the smartwatch bandwagon, the Pebble is your best bet for its simplicity and growing feature set.Associated Press - SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Originally cast in a starring role, Netflix's original DVD-by-mail service has been reduced to a bit player — one that may eventually get killed off as the company focuses on its booming video streaming service. Netflix's fourth-quarter earnings report released Wednesday provided the latest glimpse at the DVD service's descent into oblivion as the streaming service hogs the spotlight. The DVD service shed 159,000 subscribers during the final three months of last year to end December with 4.1 million customers. That's an 11-year low for a format that gave Netflix its initial shot at stardom, allowing it out-innovate and outmaneuver Blockbuster Video, then the king of home-video rentals. Now, though, the DVD service operates mostly as an afterthought that caters to a shrinking audience of die-hards who prefer to watch movies and TV shows on discs instead of streaming or downloading them onto a mobile gadget. STREAMING GETS TOP BILLING Meanwhile, Netflix's streaming service has been reshaping the world of entertainment, attracting converts to the convenience of streaming video at any time on any device with a high-speed internet connection. The streaming service now boasts nearly 94 million subscribers in 190 countries, after adding another 1.9 million in the U.S. and 5.1 million in its overseas markets during the final three months of last year. RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney predicts Netflix will have 160 million streaming subscribers by 2020. The company is coming off its biggest quarter of customer growth yet. DVD subscribers may be fleeing, but the service boasts a library of more than 90,000 titles, including recent films that usually aren't available to stream for nine to 18 months after they leave theaters — or sometimes at all, at least on Netflix. The streaming service had about 4,600 titles as of late last year, down from roughly 6,500 in July 2015, according to the research firm Ampere Analysis. Netflix has trimmed its selection of outside streaming titles as it has ramped up its own production of television series and films, which can only be viewed on its streaming service. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, though, insists he wants to expand the streaming catalog to include more of the videos that are only available on DVD now. "We have a long way to go when you think about all the movies and TV shows that we don't have," he told analysts Wednesday. CASH-COW DISCS Even though the DVD service has lost nearly 10 million subscribers over the past five-and-half years, Netflix keeps it around because it remains tremendously profitable. The company makes an operating profit of roughly 50 percent on DVD subscriptions, after covering the expense of buying discs and postage to and from its distribution centers. The DVD service doesn't even have a marketing budget; by comparison, Netflix spent almost $1 billion last year promoting its streaming service. The DVD profits have helped subsidize Netflix's streaming expansion outside the U.S., a push that has accumulated losses of nearly $1.5 billion during the past five years. The DVD service has made $1.9 billion during the same period, enabling Netflix to remain profitable and helping its stock price rise by 13-fold since the end of 2011. The shares gained 8 percent to $144 in extended trading as investors cheered the rapid growth of the streaming service. "We've never discussed shutting down DVDs since there are still lots of folks who subscribe, often to both streaming and DVD by mail," Netflix spokeswoman Anne Marie Squeo said. END OF THE SHOW Eventually, though, most analysts believe it will no longer make sense to keep mailing out DVDs in Netflix's familiar red envelopes as more people conclude the service is no longer worth the money. Some cancellations no doubt stem from the inconvenience of having to wait for a DVD to come through the mail. Other DVD subscribers have periodically expressed frustration with weekslong waits to receive a popular film after it becomes available on disc. Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter believes Netflix's DVD service might linger for another five to eight years, based on its current pace of decline, before the company shuts it down. He believes the moment of reckoning could come when there are only about 1 million DVD subscribers remaining. At that point, Pachter says, Netflix is likely to start closing most of the warehouses that store and distribute DVDs to different parts of the U.S. "As they consolidate those warehouses, the turnaround time is going to be slower," he says. "Then, it's not going to take two days for the next DVD to arrive, it's going to be more like six days. Then people will be upset and quit."IWU administrator confirms she contracted Zika virus in Haiti Copyright by WISH - All rights reserved (James Gathany/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via AP, File) [ + - ] Video Staff Reports - INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - The Indiana State Department of Health announced that the first human case of the Zika virus was confirmed in Indiana on Tuesday. The CDC confirmed that the non-pregnant resident, who had recently traveled to Haiti, did not need to be hospitalized for treatment. Gov. Mike Pence said at an unrelated event Tuesday morning that the confirmed case was in Grant County. 24-Hour News 8 confirmed that the Vice President of Academic Affairs for the School of Nursing, Barbara Ihrke, at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion Indiana was the patient that tested positive with the Zika virus. Ihrke said she was in Haiti on the Island of La Gonave from Jan. 16 to Jan. 23 on an academic trip with nursing students from the university at a new hospital on the island. On Jan. 29, she went to the IWU Health Center after having symptoms including a headache, joint pain and a rash on her face and body. The CDC verified it was Zika through a blood test. Ihrke said the results of the test came back on Tuesday morning. She told WISH-TV that she currently has no additional symptoms and was back to work this week. Ihrke said that since there are currently no mosquitoes currently in Indiana it is not possible to spread the virus. During a press conference state officials say there's very little expectation that it could spread here. State Health Commissioner Jerome Adams said the health department is providing guidance to local health officials and providers in anticipation of additional travel-related cases in Indiana. "The risk of contracting Zika virus here in Indiana remains low, but we know that many residents are concerned," Dr. Adams said. "We urge anyone visiting affected areas to take steps to avoid mosquito bites." "Our prioritization for public health precautions is pregnant women," said Jen Brown of the health department, who also said they're concerned for women who may become pregnant. "Everyone else who might be considering travel has to weigh the risks versus the benefits of travel and make a decision that feels right to them." Ihrke said that IWU currently has no travel restrictions in place for students traveling abroad. But she said "they are working to make certain that everyone is safe." Currently the university has group of students who are serving at the hospital for a semester. Ihrke said there is an American physician on staff at the hospital in La Gonave for any student who needs medical attention. Other Indiana residents shared with WISH-TV that weren't concerned about the virus spreading. "I'm going to Mexico on Monday for my wedding that we've been planning for about a year and a half," said Lauren Laferriere, while walking in downtown. I'm not worried for myself, I'm just worried for my guests. But they're all aware, we've been keeping on top of it, so we're all still going to go." State health officials say the virus is most prevalent in the system for a week after infection, and because of the risk they're also warning men who travel to the region and have pregnant spouses "I do like to travel and I think that everybody's safety is important, especially our babies," said Yvonne Horton, while on her way to lunch. The state says it's being aggressive with its approach. "We're going to be working as we have for many days to educate the public about the risks particularly for traveling into the affected areas," said Gov Mike Pence. Despite the added attention officials say its unlikely the disease will spread here. They say it behaves differently than the West Nile Virus. "The West Nile virus is maintained in nature in wild birds, a virus like Zika virus is maintained in nature in non-human primates, and we don't have non-human primates living in the wild here in the United States," said Brown To protect yourself the CDC suggests to wear long sleeved shirts and long pants. Stay in places with air conditioning, use insect repellents and treat clothing with permethrin. The other reason why officials say it's so unlikely for the disease to spread here is because Indiana doesn't have the type of mosquito that spreads it. There is currently an epidemic of the Zika virus infection occurring in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. Additional information about the virus and ways to protect yourself can be found by clicking here.“We get too soon old and too late smart.” ~Pennsylvania Dutch proverb I read many online blogs and a large portion of them are about minimalism and simple living. That’s wonderful because I believe there is richness to simple living that goes far beyond having less stuff. I also think that since I’ve been embracing it more and more, my life has become happier, less stressful and far more meaningful. But something I’ve noticed is that the vast majority of blogs about minimalism are written primarily by those in their twenties to thirties. And while I’m psyched to know that young adults are embracing the lifestyle, I also believe that maturity offers a perspective that should not be overlooked. In fact, it is often those who have lived through multiple choices and experiences that have the most to offer others. That’s why I thought a few perspectives from midlife should be included in any discussion about minimalism or simple living. So what are a few perspectives that you gain in midlife? Being content, happy and at peace with aging (no matter what your age) is a critical minimalist practice. While it is great being young, the truth is every single one of us will spend much more of our lives not being young, if we are able to experience the gift of a long and healthy life. If too much of your happiness and self-image is attached to your youth (physically and mentally) you are setting yourself up for a significant disappointment in the long run. Learning to appreciate yourself, your life and your experiences at any age is a huge key to simple living and minimalism. is a critical minimalist practice. While it is great being young, the truth is every single one of us will spend much more of our lives being young, if we are able to experience the gift of a long and healthy life. If too much of your happiness and self-image is attached to your youth (physically and mentally) you are setting yourself up for a significant disappointment in the long run. Learning to appreciate yourself, your life and your experiences at any age is a huge key to simple living and minimalism. The inner journey is the most thrilling and satisfying travel you’ll ever take. I love traveling and do it any time I get the chance. But I’ve learned that the inner journey to your own soul where you discover who your really are and learn your life purpose is the ultimate “trip.” By midlife we usually discover the truth to that wise adage: Wherever you go, there you are. And there is a very good chance that if we weren’t happy and fulfilled when we left that place—we’ll be exactly the same when we return. I traveling and do it any time I get the chance. But I’ve learned that the inner journey to your own soul where you discover who your really are and learn your life purpose is the ultimate “trip.” By midlife we usually discover the truth to that wise adage: Wherever you go, there you are. And there is a very good chance that if we weren’t happy and fulfilled when we left that place—we’ll be exactly the same when we return. Everything in the material world is impermanent. While you might understand this intellectually when you are young, it frequently requires decades of getting things and then losing them, achieving things and then failing, creating things only to watch them wash away—all before you understand that everything is temporary. While not everyone “gets” this concept at any age, if and when you do grasp it, you start realizing what is really important and stop chasing after things that won’t last anyway. While you might understand this intellectually when you are young, it frequently requires decades of getting things and then losing them, achieving things and then failing, creating things only to watch them wash away—all before you understand that everything is temporary. While not everyone “gets” this concept at any age, if and when you do grasp it, you start realizing what is really important and stop chasing after things that won’t last anyway. Everything is a leasehold, so sometimes it’s better to rent than own. Eventually every thing you own will be passed on to someone else. That’s right, you can’t take anything with you when you pass on. That’s why it’s wise to avoid getting attached to a bunch of stuff that you don’t really need over the long haul. In fact, everything you own, owns you to the extent that you have to pay for it, take care of it and then figure out what to do with it. Choose carefully what you do decide to own. Eventually every thing you own will be passed on to someone else. That’s right, you can’t take anything with you when you pass on. That’s why it’s wise to avoid getting attached to a bunch of stuff that you don’t really need over the long haul. In fact, everything you own, owns you to the extent that you have to pay for it, take care of it and then figure out what to do with it. Choose carefully what you do decide to own. Relationships are something worth keeping no matter what. I’ve written about the high value of relationships quite often on the blog so I won’t repeat all the numerous benefits. Just consider, living only for yourself might sound good when you’re young, but to those who’ve lived a long and happy life, it is our close relationships that are the most precious possessions possible. In fact, you’ll likely discover your true friends only after you think you’ve lost everything else. I’ve written about the high value of relationships quite often on the blog so I won’t repeat all the numerous benefits. Just consider, living only for yourself might sound good when you’re young, but to those who’ve lived a long and happy life, it is our close relationships that are the most precious possessions possible. In fact, you’ll likely discover your true friends only after you think you’ve lost everything else. The health of your body will eventually affect every simple living goal you ever have. And by health I’m including not only you, but the health of those in your immediate family as well. If you, your spouse, your children or your dependent parents, are suffering from an illness or in pain, a list of 100 things to keep or throw away won’t matter too much. Pain in the body or mind changes all the rules, even in minimalism. This includes having, or not having the means to buy health insurance. If you’re lucky, this issue won’t touch you until you hit middle age, but when it arrives, it can and does rock your perspective on every choice and decision you make. And by health I’m including not only you, but the health of those in your immediate family as well. If you, your spouse, your children or your dependent parents, are suffering from an illness or in pain, a list of 100 things to keep or throw away won’t matter too much. Pain in the body or mind changes all the rules, even in minimalism. This includes having, or not having the means to buy health insurance. If you’re lucky, this issue won’t touch you until you hit middle age, but when it arrives, it can and does rock your perspective on every choice and decision you make. Living frugally and retiring early looks different from midlife. It’s easy to see the excitement and delight of many young minimalists at the idea of retiring early and using all their resources to create a life filled with travel and self-expression. But things look very different when you become a family and reach middle age or older. Even when you think “you’ll never retire” you may be deluding yourself because nearly 50% of those who are retired today did it because they had no choice. Those retirees either lost their jobs and were unable to find new ones—or health-wise they were forced to quit. That approach to living as frugally and simply as possible, has much less to do with freedom and self-expression—and a lot to do with necessity. While both can be rewarding, the approach is vastly different. Never assume that how and when you “retire” won’t affect your plans. It’s easy to see the excitement and delight of many young minimalists at the idea of retiring early and using all their resources to create a life filled with travel and self-expression. But things look very different when you become a family and reach middle age or older. Even when you think “you’ll never retire” you may be deluding yourself because nearly 50% of those who are retired today did it because they had no choice. Those retirees either lost their jobs and were unable to find new ones—or health-wise they were forced to quit. That approach to living as frugally and simply as possible, has much less to do with freedom and self-expression—and a lot to do with necessity. While both can be rewarding, the approach is vastly different. Never assume that how and when you “retire” won’t affect your plans. The best minimalists walk the talk. Lately minimalism has become very popular. That attracts a number of entrepreneurs who see it as a great way to be self-employed and create a business. And while many of them (especially if they are young) have nothing to lose by going “minimal” as a strategy for success, if that doesn’t work they will likely be on to the next new thing before long. Hopefully, by the time you reach middle age a person starts recognizing that unless a person can demonstrate what they are teaching and promoting in their personal life, they probably don’t “own” what it is they are selling. For that reason, it’s usually good advice not to go to a financial advisor who can’t pay their bills. Likewise, don’t go to a doctor that isn’t healthy, or take relationship advice from someone who has been married six times. It’s always best to follow minimalists that are walking their talk. Lately minimalism has become very popular. That attracts a number of entrepreneurs who see it as a great way to be self-employed and create a business. And while many of them (especially if they are young) have nothing to lose by going “minimal” as a strategy for success, if that doesn’t work they will likely be on to the next new thing before long. Hopefully, by the time you reach middle age a person starts recognizing that unless a person can demonstrate what they are teaching and promoting in their personal life, they probably don’t “own” what it is they are selling. For that reason, it’s usually good advice not to go to a financial advisor who can’t pay their bills. Likewise, don’t go to a doctor that isn’t healthy, or take relationship advice from someone who has been married six times. It’s always best to follow minimalists that are walking their talk. Minimalism that doesn’t include the environment and other people is likely just a vain attempt at a new fad. Quantum theory proves that a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the planet can affect storm clouds over my city—so how can anything you or I do not affect everything else? Our decisions matter, and how we treat our planet is similar to how we treat everyone and everything else. Simple living does not occur in a vacuum and should touch everything that occurs in your life. Quantum theory proves that a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the planet can affect storm clouds over my city—so how can anything you or I do not affect everything else? Our decisions matter, and how we treat our planet is similar to how we treat everyone and everything else. Simple living does not occur in a vacuum and should touch everything that occurs in your life. When you’re young, you don’t know what you don’t know. Okay, I was young once too and thought I knew just about everything that was important. The problem was I never even guessed at what I didn’t know. Once you make it past 50 you start realizing that there is a HUGE benefit to having lived long enough to make and learn from 100s of mistakes, experiences and choices. While not everyone who ages continues to learn and grow—if you do, you have an advantage that is priceless. Okay, I was young once too and thought I knew just about everything that was important. The problem was I never even guessed at what I didn’t know. Once you make it past 50 you start realizing that there is a HUGE benefit to having lived long enough to make and learn from 100s of mistakes, experiences and choices. While not everyone who ages continues to learn and grow—if you do, you have an advantage that is priceless. The “best” minimalist practice is to be debt and mortgage free. While most simple living and minimalist websites recommend money management and being as debt free as possible at any age—the freedom and peace of mind that comes in middle age when you are debt and mortgage free is phenomenal. You might be content to live out of a backpack when you’re 25—but just about the only people who do that at 60 are considered homeless. While you might not be able to own your own home mortgage free and clear, if you don’t you will always have payments along with all the other costs (taxes, insurance, etc.). Going first debt free, then mortgage free in our early 50s, and then making sure all our other investments are also free and clear, has been the single most liberating step Thom and I have done to simplify our life. Don’t listen to anyone who says you need a mortgage for a tax write-off—that’s just another financial myth. While most simple living and minimalist websites recommend money management and being as debt free as possible at any age—the freedom and peace of mind that comes in middle age when you are debt and mortgage free is phenomenal. You might be content to live out of a backpack when you’re 25—but just about the only people who do that at 60 are considered homeless. While you might not be able to own your own home mortgage free and clear, if you don’t you will always have payments along with all the other costs (taxes, insurance, etc.). Going first debt free, then mortgage free in our early 50s, and then making sure all our other investments are also free and clear, has been the single most liberating step Thom and I have done to simplify our life. Don’t listen to anyone who says you need a mortgage for a tax write-off—that’s just another financial myth. Time is a commodity that gets more valuable as you age. Even if you believe that your time has value when you’re young, that will only increase as you age. In midlife you grow less tolerant of people who waste your time, work that is meaningless, and experiences that suck the life out of you. Even if you believe that your time has value when you’re young, that will only increase as you age. In midlife you grow less tolerant of people who waste your time, work that is meaningless, and experiences that suck the life out of you. The very best minimalist practices are those that transform your awareness, rather than those that affect your stuff. One of the biggest problems I see in the world today is a focus on the external and material. That focus is found in an over-consumptive world that is both destroying our environment and leaving people with empty and unfulfilled lives. While approaching minimalism with lists of dos and don’ts might be one way to start recognizing the need for a more meaningful life, I don’t believe that approach is sustainable because it too focuses on the external. Until a person’s perspective changes on the inside, they will likely grow bored or leave the practice as soon as it becomes economically feasible. That’s why information about the “why” of minimalism is at least as important as the how. There are likely plenty more advantages to seeing simple living from a more mature age. What do you think? From my perspective, my life today is so much better, happier, overflowing with more potential and freedom, and more fulfilling than it was ever in my 20s or 30s—and I can’t wait to see what comes next. Just like Frank Lloyd Wright said, “The longer I live the more beautiful my life becomes.” I also believe at this stage in my life that many of us with a more mature and older perspective should be a little more vocal with things we have learned along the way and the advantages aging offers. After having lived through some of the most materialistic and self-absorbed eras on the planet, we owe it to those who follow after us to light the way to a better future. Hopefully, where we went wrong and what we learned from those experiences will stop those who follow from making the same mistakes. And to all those who come next—it’s SMART to remember that it is only going to get better as you age! Posted in a Blog Hop Here:Small Footprint FridaysA portrait of Mongolian chieftain Genghis Khan belonging to Taiwan's National Palace Museum. (National Palace Museum handout via AP) Large numbers of Asian men -- potentially hundreds of millions of them -- possess the genetic markers that link them to 11 powerful, dynastic leaders, including the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. Genetic markers are passed down from father to son on the Y chromosome. But after a generation or two, they become very rare or even disappear altogether. In a recent study, though, researchers were able to identify genetic markers on the Y chromosome that weren't rare at all -- and they date back thousands of years. The findings indicate that the number of Asian men who can date their lineage to the same 11 dynastic leaders is potentially quite large. "It must be in the hundreds of millions that belong to these lineages," said Mark Jobling, the lead researcher on the project and a professor in the University of Leicester’s Department of Genetics. Researchers believe that the dynastic leaders who gave rise to millions of men in the present-day Asian population possessed an enormous amount of power, and that social status was passed down from generation to generation. The study, published in the European Journal of Human Genetics, analyzed the Y chromosomes of 5,321 men from 127 different Asian populations covering a geographic spread from the Middle East to Korea. As expected, the majority of genetic markers carried by these men were unique. But researchers were able to identify 11 more common markers -- some that were present as many as 71 times. Those 11 lineages accounted for an astounding 37.8 percent of all the Y chromosomes the researchers analyzed. [DNA evidence proves that King Richard III’s remains really did end up in a parking lot] Two of the Y chromosome markers were associated with warlord Genghis Khan and the lesser-known Giocangga dynasties -- which supports previously published research on these lineages. Nine others, dating from between 2100 BC and 700 AD, were identified in the process. Genghis Khan, Mongol conqueror. (Popperfoto/Getty Images) Previous research and this new study have used a combination of information about the age of the lineages, their geographic locations, and existing oral histories to come up with educated guesses about which dynastic leaders they might be associated with. But without conclusive genetic testing of remains from these men -- including Khan and Giocangga -- it will be impossible to prove the connection conclusively. [Mom, dad, donor: Britain moves step closer to allowing babies with 3 people’s genes] Still, the results show that in Asia, a relatively unique set of factors might have brought on this remarkable phenomenon. These dynastic leaders would have been powerful enough to have access to many women -- in some cases across wide geographical swaths -- which would have increased their chances of having children who survived. And subsequently, those sons also would have had access to many women, who would have given birth to more sons. That phenomenon -- and extreme reproductive success -- would need to have continued for generations in order for their genetic material to still be present today. It was, Jobling said, a "trans-generation amplification effect" of sorts. "These dynasties, the individuals who founded them must have had a great
has observed that horizontal wave slamming was disregarded, even though a negative air gap was identified in analyses performed by both DNV and Grenland Group. The work carried out during the design period was largely in line with experience and industry practice for mobile offshore units at the time the project was pursued. Documentation Various owner constellations and different engineering companies were involved during development of the design from 2005 to 2008. Disagreements and inadequate information existed between the players, particularly when weight increases occurred during the construction process. Not all documentation was transferred at once when the engineering company changed. It is therefore unclear who had access to what documents at given times. System For Registering Personnel When Mustering Activities in the acute phase were largely conducted in accordance with procedures, but it took about 40 minutes to establish a full overview of personnel on board (POB). On the basis of the findings made during the investigation, the PSA has given notification of the following order: Pursuant to section 69 of the framework regulations on administrative decisions, see also section 11 of the management regulations on the basis for making decisions and decision criteria and section 19 of the framework regulations on verifications, we hereby order COSL Drilling Europe AS to verify through appropriate calculations or model trials that the COSLInnovator, COSLPromoter and COSLPioneer units, following the modifications implemented after the incident, are in conformity with section 3 of the framework regulations, see section 10, sub-section 1.1.3 of the Norwegian Maritime Authority’s regulations on construction of mobile offshore units (FOR 87/856), see chapter 9 of the report. Furthermore, COSL Drilling Europe AS is ordered to have these calculations or model trials verified by an independent third party. This order must be complied with by 1 October 2016. The PSA must be notified when the order has been complied with. A plan for the work must be submitted to the PSA by 13 May 2016.© AP University of Washington students walk on the campus between classes. Washington has cut tuition at its colleges and universities over the next two years. (AP) In July, Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington signed a bill that cut in-state tuition. You read that right: the state didn’t demand that tuition rise more slowly, or set a tuition freeze. It reduced the tuition four-year universities and two-year colleges will charge undergraduates over the next two academic years. “I’m crying right now because I’m so happy,” University of Washington student Jessie Gamble told the school paper soon after the bill passed the legislature. She’s the first in her family to go to college, The Daily noted, and she’s working three jobs and taking out loans to pay for her degree. Right now, in-state tuition and fees come to $11,839 a year (that doesn’t include living expenses). A growing number of states are trying to rein in the price students and their families pay to attend public colleges and universities. Tuition rose sharply during the Great Recession after states cut higher education funding. Now student loan debt is approaching $1 trillion nationally, and even upper-income families are worried about rising college costs. And legislatures are under pressure to bring prices down. This year, Minnesota passed legislation that freezes tuition at two-year colleges this fall and will cut tuition next year. Ohio froze in-state tuition for two- and four-year institutions. Wisconsin froze in-state tuition across the 26 campuses in its university system. The University of Maine System, without the Maine Legislature’s prodding, kept tuition flat for the fourth year in a row. But there’s no easy solution to the problem of rising sticker prices. Washington is promising to replace every lost dollar of tuition revenue with state money. Wisconsin, meanwhile, is forcing schools to become more efficient by simultaneously cutting funding and imposing a tuition freeze. It’s not likely that states will return to subsidizing colleges the way they did a generation ago. Most states are spending less per student today than they were before the recession. A long-term solution to rising tuition wouldn’t just involve public investment, or innovation. It would involve a change in the way families behave, says David Strauss, a principal at Art & Science Group, a Baltimore-based consulting firm. His company advises colleges on questions like how to set tuition. Although families are concerned about the cost of college, they’re not migrating toward lower-cost institutions that offer fewer amenities. “The marketplace hasn’t yet caught up with the rhetoric,” Strauss said. Shifting Costs Back to the State Washington state Sen. John Braun holds three degrees: a bachelor’s from UW and two master’s from the University of Michigan. “When I was at the University of Washington in the 1980s, you could work during the summer and part-time and you could put yourself through school. You can’t do that today,” he said. Nationwide, state funding has been receding from state university budgets for decades. But the recession forced a dramatic shift. In Washington, the state made huge spending cuts—UW’s state funding dropped by nearly 50 percent from 2009 to 2012—and allowed universities to raise tuition to make up the difference. “It’s like an equation,” said Norm Arkans, a spokesman for UW. Falling state funding puts pressure on tuition to rise, and vice versa. According to Arkans, two decades ago the state covered about 80 percent of the costs of UW’s educational program and tuition covered 20 percent. By about 2012 the balance had shifted, with the state covering 30 percent and families covering 70 percent. In 2004, Washington residents paid $6,181 per year, on average, to go to a public four-year institution (in current dollars); in 2014, they paid $10,846, according to the nonprofit College Board. Braun, a Republican, started working with his colleagues on a plan to restrain tuition growth two years ago. The state has a generous financial aid program that targets low-income students, he said, but college had become unaffordable for the middle- and upper-middle class. Braun is concerned that students’ reliance on loans to pay for college will hinder their economic mobility and hurt the state economy. Student debt can affect where graduates can afford to live, the jobs they take, and how soon they’re able to make investments like buying a home, he said. In 2013, graduates of UW, Seattle, who had debt owed on average $21,263, according to The Institute for College Access and Success. The state law Braun sponsored phases in the decrease in tuition. Tuition at universities and community colleges will fall 5 percent this year. Next year, research universities (like UW) will cut tuition by 15 percent, and regional universities will cut tuition by 20 percent. After that, tuition will grow relative to the median state wage. “It can grow in the future, but it grows relative to what a student can go out and earn,” Braun said. Crucially, lawmakers agreed to make up lost tuition revenue with state funding. Nobody expects a return to the balance of revenue that supported colleges in the 1980s, with the state footing almost all the bill. But Braun believes lawmakers must take funding higher education seriously. “You don’t want to provide access but then reduce the quality of the education you get,” he said. Pushing Schools to Cut Costs Wisconsin lawmakers are taking a different tack. Six days after Inslee signed the Washington tuition cuts into law, Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed a budget that cut the University of Wisconsin System’s funding by $250 million and froze in-state tuition. Some argue that the relationship between state funding and public university tuition isn’t as clear cut as Arkans’ assertion that it works like an equation. “If tuition only increased to offset reductions in state support, we would expect to see decreases in tuition when state funding cuts (in constant dollars per full-time student) are restored,” said a study by the State Higher Education Executive Officers, an association that monitors higher education finance. The study looked at data through fiscal 2014. Public colleges and universities are actually pulling in 7.5 percent more money per student from state funding and tuition, in constant dollars, than in 1989, the study found. Which brings us back to Wisconsin’s budget: By constraining university funding, the state wants to force institutions to control their costs. One theory for the rising cost of college holds that the more revenue universities get, the more money they’ll spend—increasing their costs over the long term, as investments in new faculty and science labs need to be maintained. Universities have been spending money on things that may not improve the quality of the education they provide, says Robert Martin, a retired economics professor who studied higher education extensively at Centre College in Kentucky. Think extra administrative staff and amenities like rock-climbing walls. Programs can be hard for universities to cut because they’re governed by a sometimes fractious mix of faculty, administrators and boards of trustees. “It’s likely that the only way to get control of college and university costs is for outside agencies to force them to start to control costs,” Martin said. Earlier this summer, a study found that tuition is more likely to rise when individual institutions have power to raise it (as opposed to, say, when state legislatures wield that authority). Technology could also help address the problem, Martin thinks, by creating a lower-cost alternative to a traditional university. Walker thinks so, too: that’s why he worked with the University of Wisconsin System to create the UW Flexible Option, which allows students to work toward an online degree at their own pace. The University of Wisconsin at Madison will save money by cutting funding to its educational programs this year, plus redirecting funding from other activities into education, Chancellor Rebecca Blank wrote on her blog in April without detailing the cuts. But the state flagship will also be raising tuition for out-of-state and graduate students. Demand Remains High for Pricy Schools “When you look at public attitudes about the cost of college, they use words like ‘outrageous,’ ” said Strauss, the tuition consultant. But frustration isn’t changing behavior, he said. Students and families gravitate toward institutions that promise one-on-one attention. They gravitate toward roomy dorms and pleasant dining halls, and demand resources such as mental health services. “These families want things that cost money. And my view is you’re not going to see a major shift in this until … a significant, critical mass of families starts to say, ‘I’m willing to take less for paying less.’ And we’re not seeing that yet,” Strauss said. Of students who participate in a poll Strauss’ firm conducts with the ACT, a nonprofit that administers college admissions tests, three-quarters say cost will have at least some influence on college choice. But they’re still enrolling in the same institutions that similar students enrolled in years ago—they’re not turning down Harvard University for a lower-cost public institution. Higher limits for federal student loans over the past decade help middle- and upper-middle-class families keep financing increasingly expensive degrees. And easy credit has, in turn, made it easier for colleges to raise tuition, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently calculated. But families who’ll do whatever it takes to pay for a brand-name institution aren’t the only market for higher education. There’s a second group that tends to weigh price more heavily in college choices: low-income students, students who are the first in their families to go to college, and adults who want to quickly earn a credential that will lead to a better job. These students are set to make up a greater share of the college-going population as demographics change. There are already low-cost, utilitarian institutions that serve this market. President Barack Obama and many education reformers say that community colleges can provide a cheaper, more accessible substitute for the first two years toward a bachelor’s degree—and quality, career-focused two-year degrees. But “it’s not entirely clear that that experience is a successful answer to the question,” Strauss said. Graduation rates at community colleges are notoriously low. Just 20 percent of first-time college students who enrolled full time in a public two-year college in 2010 graduated from that institution within three years, according to the Department of Education. And college dreams are hard to shake. Just think of the UW student, Jessie Gamble, who’s willing to work three jobs and take out loans to go to a nationally ranked university.For decades, the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) has languished in the US C0ngress. But Iowa Senator Tom Harkin on Tuesday (12 February) promised at least a vote for that ENDA, which would establish protections nationally to prevent employers from discriminating against an employee because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Harkin made the pledge at an event held at the Center for American Progress in Washington DC saying that ENDA ‘will move this year.’ Harkin has the clout to push for at least a committee vote on ENDA because he is chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Last June, President Barack Obama called on Congress to pass a fully inclusive ENDA, which it failed to do. As part of his first presidential campaign, Obama had pledged to extend workplace protections to all LGBT individuals employed by federal contractors. The bill’s failure to pass in Congress has some advocates believing the only route is for Obama to sign an executive order. But the White House has said it prefers a legislative approach similar to the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ repeal. On Monday (11 February), the civil rights organization GetEQUAL staged a demonstration on the south side of the White House complaining that Obama ‘has yet to deliver any policy to protect these vulnerable employees, who can be fired in over half the states in the country based simply on their sexual identity, and 39 states based on their gender identity or expression.’ There is hope among the activists that Obama will mention ENDA when he delivers that State of the Union address tonight (12 February).Whoever coined the phrase, ‘War, what is it good for?’ obviously never spent much time around Tony Abbott. In the past few weeks, the PM’s bottom-dwelling popularity had started to lift, courtesy of weeks of strutting the world stage, threatening Russia, offending Scotland, floating the idea of more troops for Iraq, and declaring his own personal Jihad on Muslims in Australia (and those returning from overseas). But an overnight trip to Melbourne is a long time in politics. The revelations from Fairfax media this morning that the Prime Minister told his entire party room he booked an official function in Melbourne on Tuesday so that he could claim travel entitlements for a private function the night before are reverberating around Canberra. In addition to Fairfax, the ABC are pursuing the story. So is the otherwise gutless Opposition (Google how many times the Labor Party have asked questions about the secret scholarship provided to the Prime Minister’s daughter… and prepare to be amazed). The television networks will be all over it tonight – they got all the vision they needed when Opposition leader Bill Shorten used Question Time to turn up the heat. All they need now is a shot of Tony Abbott running from a camera with his hand over his face. Or maybe just standing there mute, ignoring questions. Either will do. But one major news outlet is missing from the growing frenzy. News Limited. The story is now more than five hours old. The news.com.au site includes a single story, and it’s one which backs the PM. It reports that Malcolm Turnbull “can’t recall” the Prime Minister’s comments. Quelle surprise. The Australian has also provided fleeting coverage of the issue, and again from a perspective aimed at bolstering a Prime Minister under siege. This from a newspaper that spent the better part of a week recently trying to assassinate the character of a young university student (Freya Newman) accused of leaking the details around the awarding of a secret $60,000 scholarship to the Prime Minister’s daughter (and the same newspaper that, when the story broke, went after Wendy Bacon, one of the New Matilda writers who was reporting on the yarn). Like Abbott, News Limited is in a serious bind here. It’s one thing to barrack for ‘the home team’. But it’s another thing altogether to die in a ditch with him. News Limited’s credibility around political reporting already has a ‘Fox News air’ about it. But this is the sort of scandal that can damage more than just a Prime Minister. If News doesn’t join the fray soon – without puff pieces that seek to hose it all down – it risks being accused of breathtaking bias (insert sarcastic laugh here). Why could this damage News? Because this is a story that will piss off even some of the most ardent conservatives. In an era when the ‘age of entitlement has ended’, it has all the makings of a career-ending scandal. There’s yet more diddling of travel entitlements (to the tune of $432 – honestly, who gets $432 for staying somewhere overnight). And it has a cancer ward which was used as cover. That’s the key here. A lot of Australians have had cancer. And a lot more know someone who has. And died from it. It’s not too big a leap to imagine that many of them will take this story very personally. And of course, front in the minds of many conservatives will be the reality that this stuff just keeps happening. It’s only the latest in a long string of gaffes from a Prime Minister who can’t seem to go more than a week or two without making a complete arse of himself… and occasionally the nation. At some point, even the Great Rusted On will grow tired. For Abbott personally, the implications within his own party are also significant. He may survive it – Abbott isn’t coated with teflon, but Labor’s ‘catch and kill their own’ past will make Coalition members far more wary about replacing an odious leader. If enough members hold over the next few days, Abbott might scrape through. But the people who are being asked to hold their nerve and back the most unpopular Prime Minister in living memory are the same people who are undoubtedly tiring of Abbott’s consistent, spectacular failures. The first rule of politics is ‘always back self interest’. More than a few backbenchers will be starting to wonder about the level of anti-Coalition swing at the next election, and whether or not their seats are safe. This latest Abbottism will only help to focus their minds. Abbott’s traction of the last few weeks – by reverting back to two word slogans like ‘Team Australia’ and demonizing Muslims – is now gone. He’s back where he started. While there hasn’t been a flood, individuals within his party have begun leaking against him. In Abbott’s defence, many of the gaffes he’s made have come about, perversely, because of his occasional habit of being surprisingly honest, and saying precisely what’s on his mind. A case in point in his comments about the ‘housewives of Australia doing the ironing’. Why would an old-school misogynist think anyone would be upset by that? So too his remarks to Kerry O’Brien, when he suggested people shouldn’t believe what he says, rather the ‘scripted, prepared remarks’ cooked up by his spin doctors. This latest gaffe is in the same class. After a life of unfettered privilege, Abbott genuinely sees nothing wrong with openly admitting he’s diddled his travel entitlements. After all, most everyone else in the party room is doing the same thing, right? Wink, wink. And he’s right – they probably are. But for a Prime Minister to so blatantly admit it? To quote his conservative predecessor, we’re entering ‘man-child overboard’ territory now. Abbott’s in trouble because no matter how hard he tries, he can’t change what he is – an uber-privileged extremist from the school of ‘what happens on the field stays on the field’. But the field has changed. So has the game. Short of some natural disaster that kills at least a dozen Australians in the next few weeks – and as crude as that sounds, it’s precisely what some in his party will be hoping for – Abbott’s days are starting to look increasingly numbered. His only real hope is to start a war. Actually, maybe there’s a role for the Murdoch media after all."Sandy Kress, Bush's unpaid education advisor, was puzzled. Bush was always on time. But on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, he seemed to want to linger, talking about politics and mutual friends in Texas." [1] So wrote Ronald Kessler in his account of the Bush presidency, A Matter of Character. The time in question was around 8:30 a.m., a quarter of an hour after American Airlines Flight 11 had broken communication with air traffic controllers. The 9/11 attacks were now underway. While many odd things took place that morning, Kress's observation highlights another curious detail: On September 11, 2001, President Bush was running late. This would be of little significance were it not for the fact that this behavior was completely out of character for the president. Bush is not known for dawdling. For example, earlier in 2001, CNN's congressional correspondent Jonathan Karl talked of "Bush's reputation for being punctual." [2] According to David Frum, a former speechwriter for the president: "Bush is famous for his punctuality." [3] Sandy Kress has called him "a very punctual person." [4] According to the Washington Post: "Bush's staff, his friends, his family, his wife" all describe him as "an intensely disciplined and focused individual," who "puts a premium on punctuality." [5] The London Times stated it more bluntly: "There has probably never been a president, there may not have been a human being, who observes punctuality with the sort of fanaticism that President George W. Bush brings to every aspect of his life." [6] That was not, however, the case the morning of September 11. Early morning As he began that day, there was little that appears unusual in the president's behavior. He'd arrived at the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort on Longboat Key, Florida, at 6:30 p.m. the previous evening, being in Florida as part of an effort to place a national spotlight on education. Bush went to bed early, as was his custom. [7] He'd gotten up just before 6 a.m. the morning of September 11. At 6:30, he went for his daily jog, going four-and-a-half miles around the Longboat Key Golf Club, accompanied by several Secret Service agents, and joined part of the way along by Bloomberg News White House correspondent Richard Keil. After returning to his hotel, the president ate breakfast, showered, and got dressed. Then, for the next hour, he met in his penthouse suite with a series of advisors, including -- at just after 8 a.m. -- receiving his daily CIA briefing. Reportedly, "The heightened threat of terrorism was mentioned this morning," during the briefing, "as it had been nearly every morning since George W. Bush took office." With his CIA briefer the president discussed the latest developments in the Middle East, particularly the Palestinian situation. [8] So far, so good. Bush only appears to have begun acting out of character after 8:15, which happens to coincide with the time the attacks were beginning, when Flight 11 broke contact with air traffic control. [9] At that time, Bush met with Sandy Kress to go over the details of his planned 9 o'clock visit to the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in nearby Sarasota, where he was set to take part in a reading program demonstration and then address parents and teachers. Also in the meeting were Bush's senior advisor Karl Rove, White House chief of staff Andrew Card, and Secretary of Education Rod Paige. Bush was scheduled to leave the resort at 8:30 a.m. for the drive to the school. But, Kress has recalled, he "was just sitting back and wanting to talk for a bit." According to Kress: "I've never known him to be late. But I remember we finished the briefing on that fateful day, and we continued to talk for another ten minutes about people and politics in Texas. The time to leave came and passed." Kress added: "That struck me as unusual." [10] It appears that Bush was dawdling. After finally leaving his penthouse suite, the president took the elevator down. Despite the fact that he was now running late, he stopped to have his photo taken with a hotel maintenance worker as he stepped out of the elevator. According to journalist and author Bill Sammon, Bush only then got into his limousine to head for Sarasota after "much shaking of hands and posing for pictures and saying pleasant things to local VIPs who had been invited to the Colony to see him off." For the second time, it appears that George W. Bush was dawdling. Sammon, who was traveling with the president that morning, reported that Bush set off for the school at 8:39 a.m. [11] The president "famous for his punctuality" was running nine minutes late. Driving to school As the president's motorcade headed toward Sarasota, Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Yet, supposedly, no one informed Bush of this until he arrived at the school, nearly 10 minutes later. Robert Plunket, a journalist with Sarasota Magazine who was waiting at the school that morning, later commented: "It mystifies me why they didn't call the president -- he's totally surrounded by state of the art communications equipment and nobody tells him." [12] Journalist and author James Bamford has said: "Despite having a secure STU-III phone next to him in the presidential limousine and an entire national security staff at the White House, it appears that the president of the United States knew less than tens of millions of other people in every part of the country who were watching the attack as it unfolded." [13] In spite of the delay in setting out, the president's limousine arrived at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School at 8:55 a.m., in time for the 9 o'clock appointment. As Bush later remarked: "We're on time -- I like to stay on time; I like to be crisp." [14] As soon as the motorcade stopped, Captain Deborah Loewer, the director of the White House Situation Room, briefed the president. Loewer had been in a vehicle behind the president's and, unlike Bush, learned of the WTC crash during the journey, in a phone call from the Situation Room. "As soon as the motorcade stopped," Loewer has said, "I ran up to the president's limousine and I briefed the president and [chief of staff Andrew] Card of just that information. [Bush] asked me to keep him informed and I said, 'Yes, sir, Mr. President.'" [15] Waiting at the school was a small greeting committee, which, among others, included two Republican congressmen, Adam Putnam and Dan Miller. A White House staffer had informed them that the president had an important call to take from Condoleezza Rice. According to Putnam, they had been told: "When he arrives, and he'll be here in a minute, he's going to walk past you. He's not being rude; he's just got to take this phone call." Yet in spite of apparently having already been informed of the crash at the WTC (by Loewer), Bush seemed far from eager to take the call. According to Putnam: "Well, he comes up and does not go past us. He stops and talks with us, having a good chat with the teacher of the year." (This was Edwina Oliver, who was also part of the greeting committee.) Andrew Card said: "Mr. President. You have a phone call from National Security Advisor Rice you need to take." According to Putnam, Bush "says OK. [But he] goes on talking with the teacher of the year. 'I'll be right there.' Card comes back to him, grabs him by the arm and says, 'Mr. President, you need to take this call right now.'" [16] For the third time that morning, George W. Bush was dawdling. Florida Lieutenant Governor Frank Brogan, another member of the greeting committee, described: "The president stepped away from our group and spoke quietly into the phone for a minute or two. When he returned, he said he had just learned that a plane had collided with one of the towers of the World Trade Center. While this was terrible news, there was no hint of the magnitude of what was happening, so nobody was unduly alarmed." [17] Recalling the incident, Dan Miller said: "I don't think he was aware at the time, maybe, of the seriousness." [18] Based on what he was initially told about the crash, the president has claimed he'd thought it was due to "pilot error." He'd said to Andrew Card that the pilot "must have had a heart attack." [19] Bush later recalled: "I was concerned about it, but there were no alarm bells." [20] The photo op begins At around 9:02 a.m., just before the second aircraft hit the World Trade Center, President Bush entered the second-grade classroom of teacher Sandra Kay Daniels, where 16 young children were waiting to read to him. After being introduced to them, the president sat down and the children commenced their reading demonstration. [21] Then, at around 9:05-9:07, Andrew Card entered the room and walked across to where Bush was sitting. He leaned down and whispered in the president's ear, reportedly telling him: "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack." [22] After delivering this extraordinary news, Card stood up and immediately backed away, taking up a position next to Frank Brogan at the side of the room. According to Bill Sammon, based on his exclusive interviews with the president: Bush wondered whether he should excuse himself and retreat to the holding room, where he might be able to find out what the hell was going on. But what kind of message would that send -- the president abruptly getting up and walking out on a bunch of inner-city second-graders at their moment in the national limelight? Bush might look rattled, or worse, panicked. The last thing the nation needed at this moment was a panicked president. Such an image might even play into the hands of the attackers. No, better to remain calm and sit tight for now. Bush sensed that his demeanor would be almost as important as his actions in these first crucial moments. [23] So, rather than excusing himself from the classroom and assuming his critical responsibilities in helping to protect his country, "The president briefly turned somber before he resumed reading." [24] As James Bamford described: Having just been told that the country was under attack, the commander in chief appeared uninterested in further details. He never asked if there had been any additional threats, where the attacks were coming from, how to best protect the country from further attacks, or what was the current status of NORAD [the North American Aerospace Defense Command] or the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Nor did he call for an immediate return to Washington. Instead, in the middle of a modern-day Pearl Harbor, he simply turned back to the matter at hand: the day's photo op. Precious minutes were ticking by, and many more lives were still at risk. [25] Now that it was clear that America was under attack and needed its president immediately, it is far more difficult to dismiss George W. Bush's continued dawdling as some kind of accident. As the Arlington Heights Daily Herald pointed out: "on that day, Bush's presence made even the planned reading event a perceived target." In fact, according to the Daily Herald: "Because the well-publicized event at the school assured Bush's location that day was no secret, the dense White House security urged school officials to send students home." [26] Apparently, they did not do this right away, as the president remained at the school for over half an hour after the second attack occurred. If Bush himself was unwilling to excuse himself from the classroom, surely his Secret Service agents should have removed him from there. They were there, after all, for the purpose of protecting him. As the St. Petersburg Times reported: "Police and Secret Service agents were on the roof, on horseback and in every hallway" of the school for the president's visit. [27] In fact, according to the Tampa Tribune, the reason the classroom of Sandra Kay Daniels had been selected for the visit was "not because [she and her students] fulfilled some complicated formula; her classroom merely was situated next to the school's north door, making it easier to organize elaborate security." [28] Yet, now there was an urgent need for elaborate security arrangements to be implemented, the Secret Service was as complacent as the president. "For some reason, Secret Service agents did not bustle [the president] away," wrote Canada's Globe and Mail. [29] According to author Philip Melanson, who was an expert on the Secret Service, as soon as the second plane hit the World Trade Center, the Secret Service should have whisked Bush out of the school. Melanson said: "With an unfolding terrorist attack, the procedure should have been to get the president to the closest secure location as quickly as possible, which clearly is not a school. You're safer in that presidential limo, which is bombproof and blastproof and bulletproof." [30] Commander in chief According to the U.S. Department of Defense: "Orders for military operations emanate from the National Command Authority -- i.e., the president and the secretary of defense. The president, as commander in chief of the armed forces, is the ultimate authority." [31] Which leads us to another reason why Bush should immediately have been evacuated. As Melanson continued: "In the presidential limo, the communications system is almost duplicative of the White House." Therefore, Bush could have done "almost anything from there, but he can't do much sitting in a school." [32] So, with America under attack, the commander in chief of the armed forces remained motionless in a classroom. According to Bill Sammon, as he sat there, "The president's mind raced with more questions. How could this have happened? Who could have perpetrated such a diabolical crime? No, this was more than a crime. This was war, plain and simple. Someone had suddenly declared war against the United States of America, the mightiest nation on earth." Bush later told Sammon: "Victory clicked into my mind. The one thing that became certain is that we wouldn't let this stand. I mean, there was no question in my mind that we'd respond. I wasn't sure who the attacker was. But if somebody is going to attack America, I knew that my most immediate job was to protect America by finding him and getting them." [33] Yet if George W. Bush indeed realized it was his "immediate job" to "protect America," then his actions in the subsequent minutes are devastating. Having just been informed that "America is under attack," the president remained in his seat while the children began to read a story called "The Pet Goat." Four minutes later, the children were finishing their reading demonstration: "The -- girl -- and -- the -- goat -- were -- playing -- in -- the -- back -- yard," they read aloud. "They -- did -- not -- see -- the -- car -- robber." And finally, their last line: "More -- to -- come." [34] As Sammon pointed out: "Now that the lesson was over, Bush would finally be able to return to the holding room and get to work." Now he could get on with protecting his country. Or could he? "But there was no sense in rushing his exit. The press might interpret haste as distress." So, instead, "He decided to remain seated, as if he were in no hurry whatsoever to leave the second-grade classroom of Sandra Kay Daniels." For the fourth time that morning, George W. Bush dawdled. "Hoo! These are great readers," he said. "Very impressive. Thank you all so very much for showing me your reading skills. I'll bet they practice, too. Don't you?" Bush continued: "Reading more than they watch TV... anybody do that? Read more than you watch TV?" As children raised their hands, he said: "Oh, that's great. Very good. Very important to practice." As Sammon described, Bush was "smiling as if he didn't have a care in the world." The "notoriously punctual president who just minutes earlier had been prodding Daniels to get down to brass tacks was now lollygagging as if he didn't want the session to end." He turned to Daniels and told her: "Thanks for having me." Then, to the children: "I'm very impressed with how you read this book." He "continued to linger in his seat." White House assistant press secretary Gordon Johndroe then requested that members of the press leave the classroom. One reporter called out: "Mr. President, are you aware of reports of the plane crash in New York?" Bush replied: "I'll talk about it later." The president "stepped forward and shook hands with Daniels, slipping his left hand behind her in another photo-op pose. He was taking his good old time.... Bush lingered until the press was gone." He then turned to the school's principal, Gwendolyn Tos�-Rigell, taking her aside for a private conversation. He told her: "I'm so sorry, but a tragedy has occurred. I'm going to have to address some things. I really wish it would have been a different set of circumstances." [35] And all this time, America was under attack. The holding room Even though the reading demonstration was over, the president still did not leave the school. Instead, at around 9:15 a.m., he relocated to a holding room next to the classroom. There he remained for about 15 minutes. During that time, he spoke on the phone with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and New York Governor George Pataki. He also worked on a speech to the nation that he would deliver from the school's library. [36] The Secret Service later told the 9/11 Commission that, around this time, it had been "anxious to move the president to a safer location, but did not think it imperative for him to run out the door." [37] Bush himself recalled that, while he was in the holding room, "the Secret Service and the Mil Aide [military aide] was in the process of getting information about where the president ought to go. One thing for certain, I needed to get out of where I was." [38] Yet, according to Frank Brogan, who was with the president at that time, Bush in fact wanted to stay exactly where he was. Brogan has claimed: "The Secret Service tried to get the president to
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wants Election Commission to settle EVM debate. Highlights Mayawati, Arvind Kejriwal have alleged tampering of voting machines Questions been raised on voting machines, says Mamata Banerjee Says Election Commission should meet all parties to allay fears After BSP chief Mayawati and AAP's Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's allegations of tampering of electronic voting machines (EVM), West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has said that the Election Commission should call for an all-party meeting on the issue.Drawing attention to a video clip in which BJP leader Subramanian Swamy is seen talking about EVM tampering, the Chief Minister said "I have not said anything. Subramanian Swamy is strong legally and what he has said should be considered and investigated.""Whether to accept or not accept these views is their choice but for this matter. the Election Commission should call a meeting with all political parties," Ms. Banerjee added.The chief minister clarified that she had heard the Election Commission's statement saying there is no such thing. "But I have also seen the version of Subramanian Swamy, a video clip. He was saying it can be tampered," she said, confirming that she believed that EVMs can be tampered with.Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati had alleged large scale tampering in EVMs soon after Assembly election results were announced on March 11, a charge that was echoed by Mr Kejriwal who added that this explained why the Aam Aadmi Party had received fewer votes in some seats than the strength of the party's volunteers. The Congress' Ghulam Nabi Azad also appeared to support Ms Mayawati, pointing that since a large number of people had raised concerns, this "issue must be looked into". The CPI (M) is backing allegations of EVM tampering. "It is a long-held opinion that tampering of EVMs is not impossible but rather possible. The countries who started using EVMs have moved away. Scientists from abroad have confirmed that EVM tampering is possible," said CPI (M) lawmaker Sujan Chakraborty.Burger giant's first franchisee sues Whataburger From a sweaty stand on the Texas gulf coast to a chain with drive-thrus from Arizona to Florida, these vintage photographs chart the 65-year history of Whataburger. From a sweaty stand on the Texas gulf coast to a chain with drive-thrus from Arizona to Florida, these vintage photographs chart the 65-year history of Whataburger. Photo: San Antonio Express-News Photo: San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 78 Caption Close Burger giant's first franchisee sues Whataburger 1 / 78 Back to Gallery San Antonio restaurant chain Whataburger Inc. has been sued by a franchisee that alleges it was stopped from opening a store in Laredo. Whataburger of Alice Inc., the chain’s first-ever franchisee, further contends the parent company wants to eliminate franchisees as part of a plan to go public. In an emailed statement, Whataburger said the franchisee’s lawsuit contains “serious misstatements and baseless speculation.” Go to ExpressNews.com to read more about the lawsuit.Corporate Japan will join the country's battle against bulging waistlines next month with the introduction of compulsory "flab checks" for the over-40s and penalties for firms that fail to bring their employees' weight under control. Health authorities hope the measures will arrest the rise in obesity among middle-aged men and slow soaring medical costs. All employees over 40 - about 56 million people - will be required to take the test to determine whether they are at risk of metabolic syndrome - symptoms associated with being overweight that, if left unchecked, increase the risk of strokes, heart disease and diabetes. Men with girths of more than 85cm (33.5in) will be given exercise and diet plans and, in urgent cases, told to see a doctor. The health ministry estimates that 13 million Japanese suffer from metabolic syndrome, while another 14 million are at risk. Men are about 10% fatter than they were a decade ago, while women are more than 6% heavier. The ministry hopes to see a 25% reduction in the number of people at risk over three years. According to reports, firms will be required to cut the number of overweight workers and their dependants by 10% by 2012. Those that fail to reach the targets face surcharges of up to 10% on contributions to a welfare fund for the elderly. "If it can prevent even a small number of people from developing cardiovascular diseases it will be good news for them and their families," Yuji Matsuzawa, director of the Japan Society for the Study of Obesity, wrote in the Asahi newspaper.In the run-up to the first face-to-face meeting between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama, scheduled for Wednesday in London, there was hope that agreements could be reached on the issues of a nuclear Iran and the plans for the U.S to deploy a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe. The assumption was, that the two sides would work toward a trade-off where the U.S. would back down from it’s missile-defense system in exchange for Russia ratcheting up the pressure on Iran. But speaking to the BBC, Mr. Medvedev said “I don’t think any trade-offs are possible in this respect.” Last month, Russia signaled its willingness to work in the direction of strengthening their relations with the United States. “Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is ready for thorough and joint work on the entire agenda of bilateral cooperation, including on disarmament issues. “What we’ve heard lately from representatives of the new U.S. administration with regard to the future of Russian-American relations has received a positive reaction in the Kremlin,” a Kremlin spokeswoman said in early February. But now Russia seems to be digging its feet in on the issue of its support for Iran’s nuclear program. “Our position is based on well-known UN resolutions and approaches set forth by the IAEA, namely that Iran’s nuclear program should be peaceful,” Medvedev said. He said that Russia is “interested in securing our country and our citizens from threats posed by certain problematic states. “But the point is that this should be done through common efforts rather than by deploying any missiles or radars along our borders when a real doubt arises as to what lies behind all this. Is it done to make us nervous, or in order to really prevent some threats?” he said. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates went public on Sunday saying he believes that heavier sanctions are needed in order to deter Iran from producing nuclear weapons. “I think frankly from my perspective the opportunity for success is probably more in economic sanctions in both places (Iran and North Korea) than it is in diplomacy,” said Gates. “Diplomacy perhaps if there is enough economic pressure placed on Iran, diplomacy can provide them an open door through which they can walk if they choose to change their policies.” “And so I think the two go hand in hand, but I think what gets them to the table is economic sanctions,” the Pentagon chief told Fox News Sunday. Meanwhile, a group of international leaders are joining hands in their call for the U.S. and Russia to lead the way in eradicating all nuclear weapons from the globe. “We are urging the two presidents to seize this historic opportunity to confront the most urgent security threat to our world: the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the related risk of nuclear terrorism,” said former U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel. “The two leaders can move beyond traditional arms control and, in a bold move, set the world on a course toward the total elimination of all nuclear weapons — global zero.” Global Zero is a new worldwide, nonpartisan initiative spearheaded by more than 100 international leaders working for a binding, verifiable agreement to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said, “A far-reaching joint initiative by Presidents Medvedev and Obama in favor of nuclear weapons non-proliferation and nuclear arms limitations brings the problem to the top of the contemporary international policy agenda. It would set the stage for multiplying efforts in the nuclear disarmament and arms limitations area at the bilateral, regional and global levels.”Monckton Myth #17: Debate vs. Denniss, Part 2 Posted on 29 July 2011 by dana1981 This is the second part of our examination of Monckton's scientific and economic claims in his debate with Richard Denniss. Part 1, which also contains a video of the debate, can be viewed here. Carbon Pricing Economics Once Monckton has finished warping climate science in his opening remarks, he moves on to warping climate economics. "in the London insurance market we have a saying, and that is that 'if the cost of the premium exceeds the cost of the risk, don't insure'. And that brings me to the carbon tax and the mineral resources rent tax. Now both of these taxes are going to cost more than the cost of letting global warming happen in the first place...andF how much will it cost? Around AU$127 billion over the next 10 years". Here Monckton employs the common "skeptic" trick of focusing on the costs of carbon pricing while completely ignoring the benefits. Real world examples of carbon pricing have shown that the benefits exceed the costs several times over. In order to argue that carbon pricing will be costly, tricksters like Monckton, the Heritage Foundation, and the Republican National Committee have to pretend that the funds from the carbon pricing system will disappear into a black hole. That is not reality, and economic studies consistently predict that the benefits will outweigh the costs several times over. However, Monckton claims otherwise: "it is clearly cheaper to do nothing about global warming and to adapt in a focused way to any consequences that are adverse that may occur from any warming that may occur than to spend any money whatsoever now on it. And that...is the overwhelming consensus in the peer-reviewed economic literature...a majority, in fact a near unanimity among economists show that it is greatly more expensive to try and intervene...than simply to sit back, enjoy the sunshine, and adapt in a focused way, as and if and only when necessary." This claim is completely backwards. There is a consensus among economists with expertise in the climate that we should reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because doing so would benefit the economy. 2009 NYU IPI survey results of economists with climate expertise when asked under what circumstances the USA should reduce its emissions Abrupt Warming Monckton proceeds to claim that abrupt climate change simply does not happen: "Ask the question how in science there could be any chance that the rate of just roughly 1 Celsius per century of warming that has been occurring could suddenly become roughly 5 Celsius per century as it were overnight. There is no physical basis in science for any such sudden lurch in what has proven to be an immensely stable climate." First of all, the central estimates for warming over the next century - depending on the CO2 emissions scenario of course - are in the ballpark of 2 to 4°C. 5°C is possible, but only in the highest emission scenarios. But more important is Monckton's claim that the climate is inherently stable. The paleoclimate record begs to differ. A stable climate is the exception, not the norm, at least over long timeframes. Moreover, there has never before been a large human influence on the climate, so why should we expect it to behave exactly as it has in the past when only natural effects were at work? Earth Has Warmed as Expected Monckton also repeats one of Richard Lindzen's favorite myths, that Earth hasn't warmed as much as expected based on the IPCC climate sensitivity: "if we go back to 1750...using the Central England Temperature record as a proxy for global temperatures...we've had 0.9°C of warming in response to an addition of greenhouse gases to atmosphere by us which is almost equivalent to a doubling of CO2 concentration. That's going to give you around 1°C of warming per doubling of CO2 concentration. Over the last 60 years we again see 1°C of warming per century. All of the evidence points to 1°C of warming for a doubling of CO2" It should go without saying that the temperature record for a single geographic location cannot be an accurate proxy for average global temperature. We know that over the past century, the average global temperature has warmed approximately 0.8°C, and over this period, the atmospheric CO2 equivalent concentration (including the added greenhouse effect from other greenhouse gases like methane) has almost doubled, as Monckton suggests. However, human aerosol emissions, which have a cooling effect, have also increased over this period. And while 3°C is the IPCC best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity, the climate system is not yet in equilibrium. Neglecting these two factors (aerosols and thermal inertia of the global climate), as Monckton and Lindzen have done, will certainly give you an underestimate of equilibrium sensitivity, by a large margin. This is how Monckton supports his lowball climate sensitivity claim - by neglecting two important climate factors. As we have previously shown, the warming over the past 60 years is consistent with the IPCC climate sensitivity range, and inconsistent with Lindzen and Monckton's lowball climate sensitivity claims. Monckton claims the observational data supports his low sensitivity claims - reality is that observational data contradicts them. International Action Monckton proceeds to make false claims about why a few countries pulled out of a follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol: "there is no need to take any action about carbon dioxide at all. That is why Canada has announced that she is not going to participate in a Kyoto 2, Japan has announced the same, even America has announced the same" Suggesting that these countries pulled out of Kyoto because they believe no action on carbon emissions must be taken is completely false. Japan, for example, is fighting for a broader deal to reduce emissions. The vice minister for global environmental affairs at Japan's environment ministry argued that extending Kyoto, which excludes two largest emitters (China and the USA), would be "meaningless and inappropriate". Japan is trying increase global emissions cuts by including the largest emitters - Monckton's claim could not be further from the truth. And although the USA and Canada have not taken serious action to reduce emissions, both governments do agree that action must be taken. If Monckton were correct and these countries did not believe emissions reductions were necessary, they would not participate in international climate conferences at all. Runaway Warming Monckton argued that the IPCC climate sensitivity range is: "a near impossibility physically speaking, because in any object on which feedbacks operate, if the feedback loop gain is great than somewhere in a range of 0.01 to 0.1, the object becomes terminally unstable, and under conditions which might quite easily occur, the loop gain would reach 1, and the system would blow itself apart." However, as we have previously discussed, Monckton's argument doesn't apply to the greenhouse gas situation, because the equation behind its feedback is different. As usual, Monckton oversimplifies the situation, and as a result, arrives at the wrong conclusion. Carbon Pollution Speaking of oversimplifying, Monckton finishes out the debate by intertwining two more myths, arguing that CO2 isn't a pollutant because it's plant food. "let us distinguish between pollution - which usually means particulate pollution such as soot - or the emission of carbon dioxide, which on any view, is not a pollutant. It is plant and tree food." However, as Denniss pointed out, CO2 is by definition a pollutant because its emissions are an unintended byproduct of burning fossil fuels, which endanger public health and welfare through their impacts on climate change. And the 'CO2 is plant food' argument is, once again, a gross oversimplification of the issue. Lesson Learned - Verbal Debates are a Mistake For the most part, Monckton came out of this debate looking pretty good for one simple reason - you win a verbal debate not by being right, but by sounding right. Monckton spent almost the entire debate misrepresenting the scientific (and economic) literature at best, lying at worst. But in a debate, you don't lose anything by being dishonest or wrong. The most your opponent can do is say you're lying, and then it's a case of he-said, she-said. And Monckton is certainly an eloquent and charming speaker who plays to a crowd very well. Reality, facts, and science aren't on his side, but in a public debate, that hardly matters. Thus debating a "skeptic" like Monckton is doing him a favor. If Monckton wants to debate climate science, he should do so in the peer-reviewed literature like a real scientist (and no Monckton, the APS newsletter is not peer-reviewed). Or alternatively, if Monckton challenges you to a debate, follow Barry Bickmore's advice and offer a written debate where facts can be checked. Not surprisingly, Monckton declined Dr. Bickmore's offer.Starting at $40 per month, Hulu's live offering delivers more than 50 channels, 50 hours of "cloud DVR" recording and an ad-free viewing experience for its existing content (which normally costs $12 per month). That's a big step up from Sling TV's entry-level plan, which costs $20 per month with 30 channels. Hulu's pricing makes sense when you consider the amount of channels it offers, along with the wealth of its current library. Clearly, the company isn't aiming to be the cheapest offering on the market. Instead, it's delivering a compelling value for discerning types -- or at least, that seems to be the pitch. I wouldn't be surprised if Hulu moves toward a cheaper subscription plan eventually, especially when you consider the cost of add-ons like 200 hours of cloud DVR ($15 per month) or unlimited screen viewing (also $15 per month). You can also bundle those add-ons together for $20 per month. Once you start adding new features (Showtime is another $9 per month), it's not long before Hulu's TV service starts to look like your cable bill: complex and expensive. The first thing you'll notice when you start exploring Hulu's live TV service is that there are no channel guide. For me, someone who's spent years growing used to guides on cable and satellite TV, this omission was incredibly disorienting. Instead, Hulu asks you about your favorite channels and TV shows when you first sign on, and they then show up in the main menu's My Channels and Lineup sections. Clearly, the company's goal was to integrate the live TV programming into the same interface as its on-demand library. That's certainly noble, but the result is initially confusing. To be fair, all of Hulu's TV competitors have their own interface issues. They each try to recreate the classic channel guide, but they're all a bit hard to navigate and feel slower than I'd like. If you've used Hulu in the past, you've probably noticed that its interface has gotten a refresh as well. Partially, that's to make room for the new TV sections, but there's no doubt that the service needed a top-to-bottom spit shine as well. The new UI might also look a bit familiar to anyone who's used Microsoft's Zune players. There's the same emphasis on bold typography and images, and the entire interface is broken up into a series of columns. You can likely thank Hulu's new head of experience, Ben Smith, for this blast from the past. He joined the company from Microsoft, where he spearheaded the TV and video design for the Xbox One, which takes plenty of design cues from the old Zune UI. While Hulu's new look makes a striking first impression, there's an extreme learning curve if you're using it on the Apple TV. That's especially true if you're used to Hulu's old design. (The new interface and live TV service are currently only available on the Apple TV, Xbox One, Chromecast and the company's iOS and Android apps.) The first column in the interface, called Lineup, is dedicated to content you're following, while Keep Watching lets you pick up where you've left off on previous shows and films. The My Channels section is where you'll be able to see what's playing on your favorite networks. If you want to see what's coming up on those channels or peruse what they have available for on-demand content, you have to hold down the selection button on the Apple TV's remote. That gesture feels alien on the Apple TV and takes a while to get used to. Another design flaw? If you want to watch something that isn't in the My Channels column, you have to head up to Hulu's top menu and choose to browse TV networks. Then you're stuck scrolling down a long list of networks until you find what you're looking for. You could just add another network to your My Channels selection, but it's still a painful process. As much as I'd like to see more personalization and bolder UI design, this is an instance where a simple programming guide would be easier for everyone to understand. Hulu's new interface is much easier to deal with on phones and tablets, where swiping and scrolling through columns is more intuitive. I suppose that makes sense, since the core design philosophy of the Zune's interface was focused on mobile devices as well. When it comes to actually watching live TV, Hulu's service works as well as the competition. Tuning into a broadcast usually takes around two to three seconds, and the picture quality is typically solid. There isn't much pixelation, and images are generally sharp. Discerning viewers wouldn't mistake it for a solid HD feed from a satellite or cable source, but it's in-line with what we've seen from Sling TV and other services. You're basically giving up a bit of quality for the convenience of streaming TV on a wide variety of devices. Hulu's cloud DVR service is useful for recording newer TV episodes and films, but it's limited to 50 hours with the base plan. If you want 200 hours, you'll have to shell out $15 or $20 for one of the add-ons. Hulu's initial array of channels includes TV-addict favorites like HGTV and SyFy, and surprisingly, it also features all four major broadcast networks, including CBS. But there are still some huge programming gaps that will keep early subscribers at bay. For example, there aren't any Viacom channels, so that leaves out MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. Perhaps most damningly, there's no AMC. That means you won't be able to see The Walking Dead -- the most popular show in America -- on Hulu's TV service. Those omissions are particularly surprising since they're all supported by Sling TV, PlayStation Vue and DirecTV Now. There's a chance that Hulu could eventually add these channels, but who knows how long that'll take. There's a lot to like about Hulu's TV service, but it's hard to recommend to avid TV watchers. You'll likely get a better deal from Sling or one of the other competitors, and you'll have access to even more channels. Hulu's big selling point is its integration of live TV with all the streaming content it's known for, but aside from The Handmaid's Tale, there's not much that would justify a whole new subscription for many viewers. Once it fills its programming holes, though, Hulu has a chance to create the most compelling live TV service on the market. But please, bring back the channel guide.“Bruce has been very helpful in trying to envision what cannabis sales can look like in Alberta and put people’s’ minds at ease” “And I said well … they’re going to lose a lot of their top line business to marijuana.” “She was a little bit cautious on this ‘marijuana thing’ with this ‘marijuana guy,’” explained Linton, whose company is valued at over $2 billion and is poised to lead Canada’s future recreational weed market when it opens by next summer. So when Bruce Linton, CEO of Canadian medical licensed cannabis producer Canopy Growth, first met Ivonne Martinez, president of the Alberta Liquor Store Association, the reception was “tepid,” the businessman recalled in an interview. Two years ago, Alberta’s association of liquor stores wasn’t keen on weed. Many board members had negative perceptions of the drug and never thought it would become one of Canada’s fastest growing industries. Read more Two years ago, Alberta’s association of liquor stores wasn’t keen on weed. Many board members had negative perceptions of the drug and never thought it would become one of Canada’s fastest growing industries. So when Bruce Linton, CEO of Canadian medical licensed cannabis producer Canopy Growth, first met Ivonne Martinez, president of the Alberta Liquor Store Association, the reception was “tepid,” the businessman recalled in an interview. “She was a little bit cautious on this ‘marijuana thing’ with this ‘marijuana guy,’” explained Linton, whose company is valued at over $2 billion and is poised to lead Canada’s future recreational weed market when it opens by next summer. “And I said well … they’re going to lose a lot of their top line business to marijuana.” “Bruce has been very helpful in trying to envision what cannabis sales can look like in Alberta and put people’s’ minds at ease” That’s when Linton believes the relationship between legal weed and Alberta’s booze business began to shift. Martinez invited him to fly from Ontario to speak to her Association’s board a couple weeks later. He’s made four trips to Alberta since then related to the liquor file, which he believes holds the key to future recreational cannabis sales in the province. Linton’s most recent trip was this week to give the keynote speech at the Alberta Liquor Industry Conference hosted by Martinez’s group in collaboration with the province’s Gaming and Liquor Commission. His talk was entitled: “Economic opportunities of cannabis and leveraging the Alberta liquor model.” It’s moments like these that could help shape which cannabis players will come out on top, or get pushed out of, the future legal market in Canada projected to be worth billions. Intense lobbying efforts involving alcohol regulators, provincial officials and marijuana companies are underway in several provinces which have yet to announce their weed distribution plans. “Bruce has been very helpful in trying to envision what cannabis sales can look like in Alberta and put people’s minds at ease,” Martinez told VICE News. She says she works on behalf of the province’s 1,400 or so private liquor stores, of which 600 are official members of her group. While the exact details of Alberta’s plan to distribute non-medical cannabis by next year have yet to be decided, the province’s justice minister Kathleen Ganley unveiled a draft proposal earlier this month. It would set the minimum age to buy and consume cannabis at 18, the same as it is for alcohol there, and give the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission rights to oversee wholesaling and distribution. It’s still unclear whether storefronts will be government-run or private companies, or a combination of the two. Albertans still have until the end of October to provide input on the plan. If Linton could predict the future, he envisions existing liquor stores in Alberta being retrofitted to sell pot. Even though the province’s proposed plan would prohibit cannabis and alcohol from being sold in the same place, there’s a way around that. “Would I like to vertically integrate and control the point of sale? Yes” “In one door, it will be a cannabis store. And in the other door, it will be a liquor store. And it will all be inside the same footprint, which has fairly advanced security control systems, so that the liquor currently doesn’t go missing at night,” said Linton. Liquor stores could make “minor amendments” to their infrastructure in order to retail cannabis by next summer, he said. “That’s why I’ve been supportive of them.” On the other hand, Linton has eschewed the cohort of 12 licensed weed producers formed this month to push for their own retail operations in Alberta. The Canadian Cannabis Co-op says it would create a “turn-key retail solution” for “socially-responsible cannabis retailing.” “Would I like to vertically integrate and control the point of sale? Yes,” said Linton. “But if you’re entering a province that already has a distribution system that has caused people to invest a lot of money… I don’t think that rubs everybody quite the right way.” Martinez says the province’s private liquor store model provides the ideal setup for cannabis sales, something Linton saw early on. “What an opportunity to grow the business,” she said. “There’s a lot of money to be made for those who do business the right way … but at the end of the day, for us, it’s all about selling responsibly.”The first night of the Democratic National Convention featured rousing tributes to Hillary Clinton, blistering critiques of Donald Trump — and a chorus of boos from Bernie Sanders delegates at invocations to vote for Clinton, even when they came from Sanders himself. Many commentators wondered why the Sanders delegates persisted in their protest, weeks after their nominee had conceded the election to presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton. The answer may rest in a step that Sanders himself took. In the lead-up to the convention, the Sanders campaign worked with both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to help write the party’s platform. Those meetings featured debates between the Sanders and Clinton teams, and while there was progress on many issues, there were many more where Team Sanders suffered defeats — including opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, banning fracking, and enacting a carbon tax. Throughout this process, Sanders openly considered bringing key issues where he was stymied to the convention floor itself, by submitting what is called a “minority plank.” That would have allowed his campaign to submit platform proposals to the floor for a vote among all delegates. This is a process that has been used before, with some success. In 1948, Hubert Humphrey forced the Democratic Party leadership to add support for civil rights to the platform by using the minority plank procedure, which ended up boosting black turnout for the Democrats in the following election. In 1984 and 1988, the insurgent Jesse Jackson campaign mobilized its delegates to stage floor fights on a whole host of issues. Fighting over the platform on the floor would have offered Bernie delegates the chance to continue doing what they do best — organize and make change. They would have had an opportunity to argue over issues the movement cared deeply about and possibly even move the Democratic Party in ways that Bernie’s inside negotiations with the DNC failed to. But on July 10, Sanders’s campaign released a triumphant statement calling the platform the “most progressive” in the Democratic Party’s history. On July 12, the Sanders campaign then abruptly ended its talk of a convention fight over the issues. “As a result of our success and the realization that further platform fights would be portrayed in the corporate media as obstructionist and divisive, the senator made the very difficult decision not to file minority reports,” Sanders policy chief Warren Gunnels wrote to key supporters. But fighting those fights might well have been less “obstructionist and divisive” than the booing — and the unresolved frustrations the booing represented. Sanders delegates, when deprived of the opportunity to work to improve the Democratic Party at the convention, booed because it was the only outlet they had.About I need your help, i have come up with a unique idea that i believe solves a few problems when using a backpack. How many times have you taken your backpack off, and stuck your hand deep inside to search for that item that always eludes you. Well we have all been there. So why not just cut the bag in half so access is made much easier, well that solved that one. The other idea for this backpack is having a one man bivy tent already to fold out at any time. No more separates and expense, with this system when the bag is in half this would make a very stable base, the bivy tent would fold out of the base compartment, the idea is so simple, its perfect for those long hikes..there is nothing like this out there. Even with out the bivy tent the concept of the bag being able to fold in half has so many other uses. A few ideas are a picnic bag or being able to place the bag on a bicycle as a pannier bags..can you imagine trying to transport a big rucksack on a bicycle, well this is the solution. I hope you will help and get this idea made into a reality.. thank you for your time.I get up early in the morning these days, and try to get my cup of coffee down as I skim through the sound bites of news on Facebook, the less than forth coming mainstream media, and the fringe news sites that have sprung up all over the internet. It is pretty dismal as I scan for information. Thank God for my "One Day at a Time" books that align me peacefully, the prayer for the day and the moment of silence for meditation. Today it told me I need find laughter and joy. The other day I was listening to my fave podcast, Caravan to Midnight, John B's voice alone comforts me. He was talking about an interview he had done, that he was not sure he would air. He talked about the intensity of the interview. He asked the question I wonder myself about people, "Do we really want to know?" When it comes to dark or shocking information, do we really want to know? Do we really want to know about our politicians? During the 2012 election interviewers found people on both sides, that could not even answer the most basic questions about candidates, yet they were very opinionated, passionate even. This was true even on college campuses. The same is true about issuses. What is happening around Fukishima? What happened in Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS scandal, the trade of our American for 5, there are more, but you get my inference. They are world wide, and President to President. Yet as people we are willing to accept the mainstream media's versions, turn off the T.V. and go about our business, grateful they figured it out. Those who don't are accused of being a 'right wing or left wing wacko". They are told they are 'conspiracy theorists'. We don't want to entertain they may have some truths in their accounts, because it would mean we would have to face some real truths about ourselves and our lives. As some one in recovery, I have been forced to face many personal issues and flaws. It has only made me a better person. That is after I am shocked to my core that I really possess that horrible flaw, and have behaved in a way that would embarrass Charlie Sheen. It has made me better in the long run. I too have been shocked by learning information around my leaders, or my world that makes me frightened or uncomfortable. Is Fukishima pumping out radio active water into the sea? IRS targeted conservative groups? I am sure this and much more is true. I try to gain as much information as my heart and brain can handle at any onetime. I do want John B. to air this interview, in fact I can't wait. Sometimes though I don't want to know, "I can't handle the truth", as Jack Nicholson would say. Sometimes I want to just watch Mad Men, all seasons, while I flip mindlessly through The Star,or In Style magazine and sit. Then I get a good nights sleep, and I am ready to "know" again for a while. What about You?11636 Härtere Strafen für Ehrenmörder : "Einen kulturellen Rabatt gibt es nicht" von Constantin Baron van Lijnden 09.04.2014 © Artem Furman - Fotolia.com "Kultureller Rabatt für 'Ehrenmord'", titelte die FAZ Ende März empört. Bald darauf machte die Juristin und Kriminologin Julia Kasselt die Ergebnisse ihrer Dissertation publik, wonach genau das Gegenteil zutrifft: Ehrenmorde werden nicht milder, sondern in der Regel härter bestraft als sonstige Partnertötungen. Lebenslange Haft wird in 38 Prozent der Fälle verhängt, Tendenz steigend. Anzeige LTO: Frau Dr. Kasselt, die Debatte um vermeintlich mildere Strafen für Ehrenmörder entzündete sich Ende März an einem Urteil des Landgerichts (LG) Wiesbaden. Das Gericht hatte bei einem Deutsch-Afghanen, der seine schwangere Freundin niedergestochen hatte, die besondere Schwere der Schuld verneint. Das bedeutet, dass nach 15 Jahren eine Freilassung auf Bewährung geprüft werden kann. Erstaunt Sie das Urteil? Kasselt: Erstaunlich finde ich eher, dass gerade diese Entscheidung für so viel Aufregung sorgt, immerhin ist der Mann ja wegen Mordes zu lebenslanger Haft verurteilt worden – die höchste Strafe, die unser Rechtssystem kennt. Mit dieser Strafe muss in ständiger höchstrichterlicher Rechtsprechung restriktiv umgegangen werden, und mit der "besonderen Schwere der Schuld" doppelt restriktiv. Sie wird auch in schockierenden Mordfällen nur selten angenommen, insofern ist nichts Skandalöses daran, dass das LG sie hier verneint hat. LTO: Anlass der Aufregung war wohl weniger das Urteil an sich, als seine Begründung, in der auch auf die kulturelle und familiäre Zwangslage des Täters eingegangen wurde. Manche wittern darin einen Trend, in den Medien war von kulturellem Rabatt die Rede. Kasselt: Tatsächlich ist das Gegenteil der Fall. Ich habe in meiner Dissertation für den Zeitraum von 1996 bis 2005 insgesamt 63 Verurteilungen in Ehrenmordfällen mit 91 Urteilen in Fällen von Partnertötungen ohne Ehrhintergrund verglichen, und erstere fielen in der Regel strenger aus. Konkret wurden 38 Prozent der Ehrenmörder zu einer lebenslangen Freiheitsstrafe verurteilt, aber nur 23 Prozent der Täter aus der Vergleichsstichprobe. "Ehrenmorde kommen oft unter familiärem Druck zu Stande" LTO: Ehrlich gesagt finde ich das in beiden Gruppen ziemlich wenig. Kasselt: Das hat verschiedene Ursachen. Bei den Ehrenmordfällen sind einige im Vers
im and Back to the Bricks are perfect examples of grassroots festivals that took hold and flourished after being embraced wholeheartedly by the community -- a formula to be replicated. Flint has also seen success with smaller events, too, such as the Flint Fire & Ice Festival, New Year's Eve and the Taste of Downtown -- and we expect they will also grow in the years to come under the initiative of the city's champions. We hope that more people – more dreamers and doers like Al Hatch and Bobby Crim – will build on their momentum and realize the enormous potential in Flint and Genesee County.Not to be confused with Aflaq or Affleck Aflac Inc. (American Family Life Assurance Company) is an American insurance company and is the largest provider of supplemental insurance in the United States.[3] The company was founded in 1955 and is based in Columbus, Georgia. In the U.S., Aflac underwrites a wide range of insurance policies, but is perhaps more known for its payroll deduction insurance coverage, which pays cash benefits when a policyholder has a covered accident or illness. The company states it "provides financial protection to more than 50 million people worldwide".[4] In 2009, Aflac acquired Continental American Insurance Company for $100 million;[5] this enabled Aflac to sell supplemental insurance on both the individual and group platform.[6] As of June 30, 2012, Aflac was represented by approximately 19,300 sales agencies in Japan, and 76,900 licensed sales associates in the U.S.[7] History [ edit ] The company was founded by brothers John, Paul (died 2014), and William Amos in Columbus, Georgia, in 1955, as American Family Life Insurance Company of Columbus. In 1964, the company name was changed to American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus. The company, in 1990, adopted the Aflac acronym, although the official name of the underwriting subsidiary remains American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus. Aflac announced the appointment of Frederick J. Crawford as Chief Financial Officer, as well as Executive Vice President in June 2015.[8] The company signed 6,426 policyholders in its first year.[9] Aflac pioneered cancer insurance in 1958. Beginning in 1964, the company decided to focus sales on worksite settings, eventually through policies sponsored by employers and funded through payroll deductions. By 2003, more than 98% of Aflac policies in the United States were issued on a payroll deduction basis, making the company a leader in that approach to policy distribution. Business [ edit ] Aflac operates in the United States and Japan, and has its worldwide headquarters and corporate offices in an eighteen-story tower just east of Downtown Columbus, Georgia, in an area known as MidTown. The Aflac tower is the tallest building in the city. As of June 30, 2015, the corporation's total assets were more than $103 billion, and the company insured more than 50 million people worldwide.[10] Aflac is the largest provider of guaranteed-renewable insurance in the United States and the largest insurance company overall in Japan, when measured by individual insurance policies in force.[11] The company now offers several types of insurance policies in the United States, including the following: Accident Cancer/Specified Disease Dental Hospital Confinement Indemnity Hospital Confinement Sickness Indemnity Hospital Intensive Care Life Lump Sum Cancer Lump Sum Cancer Critical Illness Specified Health Event Short Term Disability Vision Aflac also offers un-reimbursed medical, dependent day-care, and transportation flexible spending accounts. The company also offers human resources services for HIPAA and COBRA. From 1979 to 1997, the company owned several television stations, most of them in small and medium markets. It sold the broadcasting division (including flagship station WTVM) to what became Raycom Media in 1997.[12] Aflac is ranked 137th in the Fortune 500 list of largest United States corporations by revenue.[13] Critics of cancer policies [ edit ] Consumer groups and some government officials say that cancer insurance returns fewer premium dollars to policyholders than standard insurance. A United States General Accounting Office study found that the policies paid back as little as 35% of premiums (Aflac said its cancer insurance paid back 62.4%). In comparison, New York State requires most major-medical policies to pay back 82% and group policies to pay back 75%. New York State does not allow stand-alone cancer policies. In 1997, AFLAC spent $175,000 on lobbyists and campaign contributions to change the law.[14] New York State lifted its ban in 1998, for purchasers who already have basic coverage. Consumer Reports recommended that policyholders use the money instead to buy lower-deductible insurance.[15] Insurance claims by line appear on the Annual Statement filed with each state. Loss claims are a percent of total premium before commissions. The Aflac Duck [ edit ] Since December 1999, the company's identity and brand has become more widely recognized in the United States as the result of TV commercials featuring the Aflac Duck, who frustratedly quacks the company's name to unsuspecting prospective policy holders. The duck concept and all of the commercials to date have been created by Kaplan Thaler Group, an advertising agency based in New York City. Metzer Farms, a Gonzales, California goose, duck, and gamebird hatchery, supplied them with the initial ducklings that each grew into the famous duck. Struggling to come up with a concept to make the big but relatively obscure insurance company's name memorable, one of the agency's art directors stumbled upon the duck idea while walking around Central Park at lunchtime uttering, "Aflac, Aflac." He soon realized how much the company's name sounded like a duck's quack. The Aflac Duck character has now starred in more than 30 commercials. In many of these commercials, character actor Earl Billings also appears. The Aflac Duck is enshrined on Madison Avenue's Walk of Fame as one of America's Favorite Advertising Icons.[16] In April 2009, Aflac introduced a new marketing campaign called "Get the Aflacts", designed to educate consumers about the specific benefits of the insurance products the company sells. The Aflacts campaign gave the Aflac Duck "a more prominent role", designed to "help potential customers learn the Aflacts, er, facts about policies and other products", according to The New York Times.[17] Celebrities have starred in the Aflac ads, including Chevy Chase (2003); Yogi Berra; Yao Ming; Donald Trump's wife and current First Lady, Melania Trump (2005); NASCAR Cup Series driver Carl Edwards (2008–2014); the United States Olympic synchronized swimming team (2004); and Wayne Newton playing at Stardust Hotel and Casino for the 2003 commercial. The duck also appeared with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.[18] In 2005, the company logo was changed to incorporate the duck. The first commercial using the new logo featured Gilbert Gottfried at a pet store because the duck kept saying, "Aflac!" and he had to trade in the duck for a parrot, saying, "If you're hurt and can't work".[19] The duck was originally voiced by comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who also voiced Digit on the PBS Kids series Cyberchase and Iago in the Disney film Aladdin.[20] After 11 years as the voice of the Aflac duck, Gottfried was dismissed on March 14, 2011, due to jokes on Gottfried's Twitter account referencing the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. The company's chief marketing officer stated that "Gilbert's recent comments about the crisis in Japan were lacking in humor, and certainly do not represent the thoughts and feelings of anyone at Aflac."[21] On March 23, 2011, Aflac announced that the company was taking applications for the new voice of the Aflac Duck through QuackAflac.com until April 1. Commercials requesting the submissions, first aired in 2006 but updated, resemble a silent movie.[22][23] On April 26, 2011, it was announced that Daniel McKeague, a television advertising sales manager from Hugo, Minnesota, would be the new voice of the Aflac duck.[24] The first Aflac commercial featuring the duck's new voice aired May 1, 2011. In 2018, an Aflac ad inserted an animated Aflac duck into the opening credits of the DuckTales reboot.[citation needed] Corporate philanthropy and social responsibility [ edit ] The company states that through a partnership with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Aflac has contributed more than $100 million to childhood cancer research and treatment.[25] Aflac employees are formally involved in an array of charitable organizations such as Habitat for Humanity International, the Easter Seals, and the United Way.[26] Aflac's stated objectives include the decrease of its environmental impact, for which the company is into a partnership with the Clean Air Campaign to encourage employees to engage with greater frequency in alternate commuting methods.[27] Aflac and Macy's Partnership [ edit ] Aflac and Macy’s have partnered since 2001 to sell the annual Aflac holiday plush duck in select Macy’s stores nationwide.[28] Net proceeds from each duck sold are donated to the participating children’s cancer facility nearest to where it is purchased. Since 2001, more than $3 million has been raised from the sale of the ducks.[29] Aflac has participated in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for the past six years. A new balloonicle was unveiled in 2014, featuring the Aflac Duck wearing ice skates.[30] Award programs [ edit ] Aflac National High School Baseball Player of the Year (first presented in 2004).[31] The Jackie Robinson Award is given to the high-school player who is entering his senior year and who best displays character, leadership, and the values of being a student athlete in academics and community affairs.[31] The award is presented at an annual All-American Awards banquet, which was first held in 2003.[32] The banquet follows the annual All-American Baseball Classic, an East-West all-star game featuring the 38 best players from around the nation who are entering their senior year of high school.[31][32] First held in 2003, the game is played at Petco Park, San Diego, California.[31][33] Proceeds from the game and banquet are donated to Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego and its fight against childhood cancer.[33] In 2011, the name of the all-star game was changed to the Perfect Game All-American Classic.[33] Awards and honors [ edit ] Aflac has been the recipient of several awards: Aflac has appeared on Fortune' s 100 Best Companies to Work For list for 20 consecutive years. s 100 Best Companies to Work For list for 20 consecutive years. Aflac has appeared on Fortune' s America's Most Admired Companies list for 17 years. s America's Most Admired Companies list for 17 years. Aflac has been recognized by Ethisphere magazine as a World's Most Ethical Companies for 12 consecutive years, and is the only insurance company to do so. [34] Aflac has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index North America for six consecutive years. In August 2016, Latina Style magazine placed Aflac on the list of the 50 Best Companies for Latinas to work for in the United States. Aflac has been on this annual list for 17 years. Aflac has appeared on Black Enterprise magazine's list of the Top 40 Best Companies for Diversity for 10 years. See also [ edit ]Hunter Heaivilin Meagan Suzuki For all its lushness, the state imports the vast majority of its food. Advocates like Hunter Heaivilin think they have the solution. On a balmy January afternoon, as he drives northwest along Oahu's sun-washed coast, Hunter Heaivilin happily explains his plans for creating an urban food forest in downtown Honolulu. A full 2,400 miles from California, Hawaii boasts gasoline and housing prices among the country's highest, but one of the state's biggest imports—and a major factor in the high cost of living for its 1.4 million residents—is food. Estimates suggest that more than 85 percent of Hawaii's food is shipped in from across the Pacific, while a 2012 study by the state found that "replacing just 10 percent of the food Hawaii currently imports would amount to approximately $313 million dollars which would remain in the State." Estimates suggest that more than 85 percent of Hawaii's food is shipped in from across the Pacific. With a 3 percent population increase since 2010, the state's capital and urban center of Honolulu, on Oahu, now contains nearly 400,000 residents, making it slightly more populated (and ergo, slightly hungrier) than Cincinnati. Heaivilin, the director of three agriculture-focused nonprofits in Honolulu, was raised on Oahu (where he briefly attended high school with the author) and believes that its urban growth can be managed by making better use of Hawaii's own natural resources. "There's an interest in having a tethering to the land," he says, "but there's a wealth of development in Honolulu, too. So how do we rectify destroying the landscape [with] all the benefits of urban spaces?" Article Continues Below The answer, Heaivilin and his colleagues believe, is urban agriculture. For the past several years, they've worked to cultivate a bridge between "two competing ideas of who we are," and address what Heaivilin calls a "reluctant urbanism" in the middle of the ocean. In addition to the major crops of coffee, pineapple, and macadamia nuts, Hawaii's farmers grow a number of native cultivars such as breadfruit, sweet potatoes, bananas, papaya, and taro (or kalo), the underground stem of which is ground to make sweet, paste-like poi. These "canoe plants," brought to the islands by waves of Polynesian settlers between 300 and 800 AD, have featured heavily in traditional Hawaiian cuisine, and now help to fill out urban garden plots alongside chili peppers, mixed greens, and various European and Asian vegetables. There are also examples of what Heaivilin and his peers call the "de-colonial palate," including vegetables like edible hibiscus or "Samoan spinach" that are uncommon on Western tables. While the islands' isolation prevents much regional produce sharing, the state's micro-climes allow for many kinds of crops to be grown year-round. Oahu itself has highland, lowland, arid, and lush zones, and a single tract of land from the mountains down to the shore might span different ones. However, agricultural land is under pressure today. "Land value is high, so it becomes a lot more complex to keep land in agriculture—and people in agriculture—because of the cost of living," Heaivilin says. While many people on Oahu have home gardens, the island is "still getting its feet wet" in terms of supporting an agricultural community. Heaivilin and other core hui (or partnership) members of Hawaii nonprofits steer the urban ag movement. While Urban Farm Hawai'i and O'ahu Farm to School Network are working to expand resources for local growers and promote gardening and food education in schools, the Asia-Pacific Center for Regenerative Design (APCRD) and Permablitz HI offer courses and policy leadership informed by permaculture, an ethical design system for sustainable living and land use. The groups have focused many of their latest efforts in the Kaka'ako neighborhood of Honolulu, a previously industrial zone on Oahu's south shore located between the tourist-heavy areas of Waikiki and Ala Moana and mixed-use Honolulu Harbor. Kaka'ako has undergone dramatic change as the site of large-scale and luxury development projects, but also, recently, a large homeless encampment. Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter. The best way to follow issues you care about. Subscribe Loading... On its new Kaka'ako plot, Urban Farm Hawai'i will kick off the first growing season with banana plants, a range of vegetables, and maturing taro stock that was removed from a previous site. The group hopes that the banana plants will provide fast shade for the growers in their new location, and that carefully managed irrigation and the harnessing of runoff water will help its green potential emerge quickly. As Kaka'ako becomes more polarized by wealth, the garden projects aim to include all neighborhood residents—including the homeless, through a partnership with the Institute for Human Services. "It's a leveling experience," Heaivilin says. "Whether you're from the penthouse or the pavement, you're working shoulder to shoulder in the garden." "Whether you're from the penthouse or the pavement, you're working shoulder to shoulder in the garden." By planting on urban infill sites, advocates hope to provide green conduits where both flora and fauna can reemerge. The projects also serve to "combat the extinction of [urban green-space] experiences," Heaivilin says, and help urban residents re-learn to value them. The ultimate goal is supersistence, livelihood above and beyond subsistence. Matthew Lynch, co-founder of the APCRD and Permablitz HI, is a "reformed capitalist" working alongside Heaivilin. He points out that high-rise developments in neighborhoods like Kaka'ako may raise larger environmental concerns; the building of high-density housing in a near-shore area will likely weigh on an already outdated and overburdened sewage system and other aging infrastructure in Honolulu. However, like Heaivilin, Lynch sees Kaka'ako's growth as an opportunity to introduce more sustainable methods of development. "Everything is a resource," he says, "and inherent in everything is an opportunity."Facebook has been found to have positive and negative effects on a teen’s stress; liking posts on Facebook is good for stress but being liked may be harmful. The findings come from the University of Montreal and the Institut Universitaire de Santé Mentale de Montréal. The findings revealed that having over 300 friends increased a teen’s cortisol – stress hormone – levels. Yet, if teens were supportive of their friends – liking their posts for example – their cortisol levels dropped. The research team recruited 88 participants between the ages of 12 and 17 and asked them about their Facebook use, number of friends, self-promoting behavior and their supportive behavior towards their friends – liking, commenting, etc. Cortisol levels were also collected from the teens four times a day for three days. Lead researcher, Professor Sonia Lupien, Ph.D., said, “While other important external factors are also responsible, we estimated that the isolated effect of Facebook on cortisol was around eight percent,” Lupien said. “We were able to show that beyond 300 Facebook friends, adolescents showed higher cortisol levels; we can therefore imagine that those who have 1,000 or 2,000 friends on Facebook may be subjected to even greater stress.” Other research has shown that high morning cortisol levels in 13-year-olds increases the risk of suffering from depression when they are 16 by 37 percent. None of the participants suffered depression at the time of the study, but Lupien could not rule out that they may have an increased risk of depression later on. She explained, “We did not observe depression in our participants. However, adolescents who present high stress hormone levels do not become depressed immediately; it can occur later on. Some studies have shown that it may take 11 years before the onset of severe depression in children who consistently had high cortisol levels.” “The preliminary nature of our findings will require refined measurement of Facebook behaviors in relation to physiological functioning, and we will need to undertake future studies to determine whether these effects exist in younger children and adults. Developmental analysis could also reveal whether virtual stress is indeed ‘getting over the screen and under the skin’ to modulate neurobiological processes related to adaptation,” Lupien concluded. The findings were published in Psychoneuroendocrinology. Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/uom-lof111715.phpWayne LaPierre needs to rethink this one. Wayne LaPierre needs to rethink this one. One of the stories we heard from anti-gun-control advocates at the Senate hearing this week was of Sarah Dawn McKinley, who fought off two intruders with her shotgun in Oklahoma in 2011. This was then embellished by witnesses into the broader assertion that good moms everywhere need to be able to have assault rifles and enough ammo to fight off entire zombie hordes So is McKinley on the same page as the others? Well, she is and she isn't. I just got off the phone with Ms. McKinley, and what she told me will give a boost to people on both sides of the argument. She told me she does not favor an assault weapons ban, even though she didn’t use an assault weapon in warding off her intruders. But Ms. McKinley said she supports the idea of expanding the background check system, telling me: “Anybody should be willing to get a background check that wants to take a gun.” “I completely agree with background checks,” she said. “If I want a gun I have no problem getting one. I don’t see why anybody would have a problem getting a background check if they have nothing to hide.” The NRA is so far afield on this one that even their own poster children aren't buying it. You would think the group would stomach popular things like tightening background checks in order to look more reasonable while they're battling against all the other proposals, but nope. To help deal a blow to the NRA's continued power in Congress, Daily Kos is enthusiastically supporting Robin Kelly in the upcoming Illinois 2nd Congressional District primary. Please help by contributing $3 (or more!) to her campaign.Tokyo (CNN) -- Up a narrow flight of stairs in a modest, non-descript office building, three retirees sit in a cramped room, hunched over their computers and mobile phones. They look like the planning committee for a neighborhood senior breakfast, not the leaders of a 250-member team attempting to defuse one of the worst nuclear meltdowns in history. But that's exactly what 72-year-old Yasuteru Yamada hopes his seniors group, the Skilled Veterans Corps, will do: help end the crisis at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The group, consisting only of retirees age 60 and up, says it is uniquely poised to work at the radiation-contaminated plant, as the cells of an older person's body divide more slowly than a younger individual. Holes feared in two reactors "We have to work instead of them," says Yamada, referring to the estimated 1,000 workers currently at the nuclear plant. "Elders have less sensitivity to radiation. Therefore, we have to work." Yamada is a former engineer for Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd. and offers decades of experience, he says. A cancer survivor, Yamada says he values his life but wants to make a difference in the years he has left. Yamada pauses as his mobile phone rings. He pops out his hearing aids to answer. Another call from the news media, he says, as he excuses himself briefly. Reporters from around the globe have called daily since Yamada announced the existence of his group. They, including this reporter, are calling because of what the prime minister's special adviser to the nuclear crisis publicly dubbed them, the "suicide corps." Goshi Hosono, at a news conference last week, told reporters that while the government was grateful for the offer, there is no immediate need for the elderly volunteers. Masaaki Takahashi, 65, bristles at the name Hosono gave his team. "I want them to stop calling us the'suicide corps' or kamikazes," he says. "We're doing nothing special. I simply think I have to do something and I can't allow just young people to do this." Takahashi is currently tasked with logging the names of donors and volunteers. He says there are more than 900 donors and 250 able-bodied seniors who want to don the white radiation suits and enter the grounds of the plant. The reasons driving their desire to volunteer vary, according to the group, but none include a wish to die. Kazuko Sasaki, 69, the co-founder of the group, says she has a number of personal reasons why she wants to work at the plant. "My generation, the old generation, promoted the nuclear plants. If we don't take responsibility, who will?" But Sasaki is also pragmatic about the risks an older person is willing to take versus someone younger. "When we were younger, we never thought of death. But death becomes familiar as we get older. "We have a feeling that death is waiting for us. This doesn't mean I want to die. But we become less afraid of death, as we get older." Sasaki also says a 30-year old exposed to radiation at the crippled plant might get cancer at 35 or 40. At her age, she'd be 75 or 80, and might have gotten cancer anyway, she says. The owner of the nuclear plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), tells CNN it is thankful for the offer from the seniors group. But it says they currently have enough workers to control the crisis. But if Hikaru Tagawa is any indication, the plant is having trouble luring employees to the facility. Tagawa is a former temporary worker at Fukushima who lived just a few miles away, an area that is now a mandatory evacuation zone. When CNN met Tagawa, he was living at an evacuation center near Tokyo. "Nothing can make me go back to work there," he says, as his young daughter played nearby. He points out he has two young children and calls the levels of radiation "too dangerous." Whether the concerns of a worker shortage or the public arguments from the seniors, the same government point man, who called the group a "suicide corps" now appears to be less resistant to the idea. "I met the leader of the group and we've started a discussion, looking for any possible, practical next step," Hosono said in a news conference Monday. Yamada also says he has met with Hosono. But he believes his group will be working at the plant soon. The reason is simple, he says. "They need us."Well, it's happened again. The marine veteran, activist, and talk show host who has been gaining a lot of attention lately for his call for revolution in America has been arrested at another "Smoke Down Prohibition" event, this time in Washington, D.C.Kokesh was arrested at the last "Smoke Down" event in Philadelphia. There was plenty of suspicion surrounding his arrest considering the fact that he had not even been smoking marijuana nor had he done anything to cause an arrest. This instance is very similar as one can clearly see in the video that he was not participating in any "illegal" act. It has been reported, however, that his arrest was due to the fact that there was a marijuana cigarette "on the ground near him."The Daily Sheeple reports that Kokesh has already been released, unlike the last time when he was held for a week.348 people have been arrested over the distribution of online child exploitation material. Credit:AFP AFP national child protection operation co-ordinator Todd Hunter said all six were abused in the production of exploitation material. ‘‘They were all being filmed or had photos taken of them in horrible circumstances,’’ he said. He said the first arrests were made in August 2013 and have been ongoing. “In these investigations, the identification and removal of child victims from harm [is a top priority]. We will always focus on that as a first priority, over and above any prosecution action and that is a concern that there will be further children identified.” The AFP have arrested 65 people in Australia. Credit:AFP Those charged in NSW include two teachers, a priest and a former priest, who were arrested in July and August this year. AFP commander Glen McEwen said the investigation, named Project Spade, followed a sting into a child exploitation website operating from Canada and was one of the largest of its kind ever carried out through law enforcement co-operation. Hundreds across the world were arrested over a child porn ring. ‘‘The AFP and state and territory police worked relentlessly alongside international partner agencies to bring these offenders to justice," Commander McEwen told journalists in Canberra. "This global investigation has disrupted a wide-spread international network of suspects, in a powerful demonstration of law enforcement working together to protect children around the world. He said investigations in Australia had been under way since early 2012 and more arrests were expected in coming months. “As you would appreciate, there’s a lot of forensic analysis that needs to be conducted in these types of investigations and we are expecting more charges to be laid,” he said. Police said 108 people had been arrested in Canada, 76 in the United States and 164 in other countries from Spain to Mexico and South Africa. As a result of the operation, 386 children have been removed from harm, police said. "Of concern to the investigators was the number of people [arrested] who have close contact with children," Inspector Joanna Beaven-Desjardins, head of Toronto's Sex Crimes Unit, said. "The arrests included 40 school teachers, nine doctors and nurses, 32 people who volunteered with children, six law enforcement personnel, nine pastors or priests, and three foster parents." The investigation by about 30 police forces - from Australia, Spain, Ireland, Greece, South Africa, Hong Kong, Mexico, Norway and the United States, among others - led to the rescue of 386 children, most of whom were prepubescent, she said. Police began looking into the operations of a Toronto company called Azovfilms.com and its owner, Brian Way, 42, in October 2010, and the US Postal Investigation Service helped comb through the company's database to track down both the producers and the consumers of the porn, Ms Beaven-Desjardins said. Mr Way's lawyer, Nyron Dwyer, declined to comment. The Azovfilms.com website has been shut down. People making the images included a youth baseball coach in Washington state who made more than 500 films and a school employee in Georgia who put a camera in a student washroom to videotape images of students' genitals, US Postal Inspection Service inspector Gerald O'Farrell said. More than 350,000 images and over 9000 videos of child sexual abuse were found during the probe, and arrests are continuing, Ms Beaven-Desjardins said. "It is still ongoing, there will be further arrests and I imagine there will be more children that will be saved because of it," she said. Australian arrests Nine of the Australians arrested are from NSW; 33 from Queensland; 12 from South Australia; five each from Western Australia and Victoria; and one from the ACT. The Australian arm of the global investigation was known as Operation Thunderer. Police said a 42-year-old school teacher was arrested in Cowra on July 24 and charged with possessing child abuse material and using a carriage service to access child pornography. A 57-year-old Catholic priest was arrested at The Rocks on July 29 and charged with using a carriage service to access child pornography. A 42-year-old school teacher was arrested at Emu Plains on August 7 and charged with possessing child abuse material and using a carriage service to access child pornography. A 72-year-old retired Catholic priest was arrested at Lake Haven on August 20 and charged with possessing child abuse material and using a carriage service to access child pornography. The four men are all before the courts. Police spokeswoman Cath Allen said Victoria police arrested one of the five Victorians involved. "We arrested a 50-year-old man from St Kilda, and charged him with possessing, accessing and using a carriage service for child exploitation material as part of the operation," she said. An AFP spokesman said the federal police handed the other four Victorian arrests. A 61-year-old Belmont man is facing three charges, including a one-time use of a carriage service to access child pornography, and one time charge of soliciting of child pornography. He appeared at the Geelong Magistrates Court. A 52-year-old Sunshine North man has been remanded until a committal mention, and has been charged with a one-time use of a carriage service to access child pornography and a one-time use of a carriage service to transmit child pornography. A 53-year-old Belmont man, who will appear at the Geelong Magistrates Court, was charged two offences, including a one-time use of a carriage service to access child pornography. Loading A 42-year-old Keysborough man, also facing two charges, will appear in the Melbourne Magistrates Court. - with Reuters and Caroline Zielinski, Tom McIlroyPatrick Smith / Getty Images file The Navy-Marines Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Md, is pictured in 2012. Three U.S. Naval Academy football players are under investigation for alleged sexual assault last year against a female midshipman, sources have confirmed to NBC News. It's alleged that the victim and the three students had been drinking when she reportedly had sex with one of them, her boyfriend, in the back seat of a car, sources said. The other two then allegedly had sex with the woman. One was a senior set to graduate last week; his graduation was put on hold pending the investigation. The other two are juniors at the Annapolis, Md., school. The sources said the victim initially reported the incident in February 2012 and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service immediately launched an investigation. Four months later, the woman essentially withdrew her complaint when she stopped cooperating with investigators, and the investigation was halted. This past February, the woman renewed her complaint and the investigation was restarted. No charges have been filed. The investigation is ongoing. In 2007, the Academy expelled Navy quarterback Lamar Owens, Jr. in a sexual assault case. Although he was acquitted of any sexual assault, he was found guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer. The problem of sexual assault in the military has been getting increasing attention, and data released recently shows that reported assaults are on the rise. In fiscal year 2012, the number of reported assaults increased 6 percent to 3,374 — up from 3,192 from fiscal year 2011 – and the number of people who made an anonymous claim that they were sexually assaulted rose from 19,000 to 26,000, according to an annual Pentagon report released earlier this month. The military's sexual assault-prevention unit has been in the news this month because of several high-profile cases involving abuse prevention officers. On May 6, the Air Force officer in charge of that service's sexual assault program, Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski, was arrested in an Arlington, Va., parking lot for allegedly groping a woman. He was charged with sexual battery and removed from his position pending an investigation. On May 14, the Pentagon said an Army sergeant first class, assigned to III Corps at Fort Hood, Texas, was under investigation for allegedly forcing at least one subordinate into prostitution, abusive sexual contact, assault and maltreatment of subordinates. He has been suspended from his duties pending an investigation. And on May 16, the head of the Army's equal opportunity and sexual assault-prevention office at Fort Campbell, Ky., was relieved of his duties over a dispute with his estranged wife. He was arrested by civilian authorities for violating a protective order sought by his wife, according to the Pentagon, and released on a $15,000 bond. Last Friday, in a speech to the class of 2013 at the U.S. Naval Academy, Obama urged the 1,047 graduates to "live with integrity" and help restore trust in the military. “Those who commit sexual assault are not only committing a crime, they threaten the trust and discipline that make our military strong,” he said. NBC News' Courtney Kube, Tom Curry, and Elizabeth Chuck contributed to this report.Hospital spokesman Heru Nugroho said 54 bodies were brought in after the inferno. More than 66 others were injured, many of them critically with burns. The latest deaths bring the total toll to more than 90 since the country's most active volcano started erupting on October 26. Many of the dead were children from Argomulyo village, 11 miles from the crater of the volcano, according to witnesses and emergency response officials. "Argomulyo village has been burned down to the ground by the heat clouds. Many children have died there. When I was in the village the ground was still hot," Yogyakarta police force medic Teguh Dwi Santosa said. A river running through the village overflowed with a thick mixture of mud and ash, and several bodies lay unclaimed in the debris, witnesses said. Ash, deadly heat clouds and molten debris gushed from the mouth of the 9,616-foot mountain and shot high into the sky for most of the night and into the morning. There was panic and chaos on the roads as people tried to flee in the darkness, rescue workers said. The ranks of evacuees swelled past 100,000 people, with 30,000 moved into a sports stadium about 15 miles away from the peak. "The emergency shelters are now overcrowded," emergency response field coordinator Widi Sutikno said. The international airport at Yogyakarta was closed as ash clouds billowed to the altitude of cruising jetliners and the runway was covered in gray soot. Surono, a government volcanologist, said the blasts were the largest yet. "This is the biggest eruption so far. The heat clouds went down the slopes as far as 13 kilometres and the explosion was heard as far as 20 kilometres away," he said. The exclusion zone was widened to12 miles around the mountain and everyone living in the area was ordered to evacuate their homes and shelters immediately, he said. Indonesia's transport ministry has told pilots to stay at least nine miles away from the rumbling volcano and several flights linking central Java to Singapore and Malaysia have been cancelled this week. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited people displaced by the volcano as the disaster-prone country struggled to cope with dual natural disasters following a tsunami off Sumatra on October 25.Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new
from 0 to roughly 150 kts in about 2.5 seconds is even more exhilarating than it sounds. During the stroke, there’s a buildup of sound, and you have this amazing visual rush as the deck and personnel around you whiz by at ever-increasing speeds. (Your acceleration actually increases, too, not just the speed.) Then, in the space of a microsecond, the sound decreases dramatically, almost like silence in comparison, the deck goes away, and you’re left with this feeling of hanging over the sea 80 feet below you. At night, those lights zooming past you go away, and you’re hanging in nothing. Inky blackness envelopes you. You scan your engine instruments because it got so quiet so quickly. You make sure you’re still pointing up, because there is no outside reference. And you restart your heart, because your brain’s going to need more oxygen soon. It’s a rush. More questions on Aviation:A friend of mine asked for a custom website, so here I am, writing a custom cms. I know, there are plenty of systems out there that would handle his needs, but it’s also a good excuse to play around with CakePHP 3, so here we are. For the lazy, the codebase we’ll be working on will be available on GitHub. I will be pushing each set of changes on the date when each blog post in this series is published. No cheating! Email Previewing One thing that has always annoyed me about developing emails within an application is that the preview step is pretty manual. I do agree that all emails should be seen in the actual email clients - all clients render at least slightly differently - but I personally hate the following workflow: Update email Send test email to client Wait until client has received the email Check email Repeat until done It’s sort of annoying to go through, and not very nice for rapid application development. Fortunately, there is a solution! We’ll use my MailPreview plugin to shorten the development cycle significantly. Start off my installing it: composer require josegonzalez/cakephp-mail-preview Next, we’ll want to load the plugin (and it’s routes): bin/cake plugin load Josegonzalez/MailPreview --routes The MailPreview plugin integrates with the CakePHP Mailer class, but currently requires a single addition to get previews going. We’ll need to add the following use statement to UserMailer class declaration: use Josegonzalez\MailPreview\Mailer\PreviewTrait; And we’ll need to add the trait usage inside of the class: use PreviewTrait; Now we can create a MailPreview class for our UserMailer. Think of the MailPreview class as a type of fixture, except it provides testing data for emails instead of databases. I’ll create a UserMailPreview in src/Mailer/Preview/UserMailPreview.php with the following contents: <?php namespace App\Mailer\Preview; use Josegonzalez\MailPreview\Mailer\Preview\MailPreview; class UserMailPreview extends MailPreview { public function forgotPassword() { return $this->getMailer('User') ->preview('forgotPassword', [ 'example@example.com','some-test-token' ]); } } The usage is pretty straightforward. The PreviewTrait adds a preview() method to the Mailer, which takes in the name of the email and the arguments to send that email. The return is then used to show what the email looks like on screen. In order to display the previews, we’ll need to allow the actions if the controller is the MailPreviewController. I added the following to my AppController::initialize() method: if ($this->request->params['controller'] == 'MailPreview') { $this->Auth->allow(); } If you browse to /mail-preview, you will see a list of your mailers and the emails they contain. If you click on one, you’ll get a weird routing error. Why? Because we are in a plugin, all urls are scoped to this plugin, and since the urls in question are not mapped, boom goes the email. Fix that by adding 'plugin' => null to the urls in your forgot_password.ctp templates, and you should see the following in your browser: Always be explicit about your urls! Pretty good, right? Now we can work on our email to our hearts content! We’ll save our progress here. git add composer.json composer.lock config/bootstrap.php src/Controller/AppController.php src/Mailer/UserMailer.php src/Template/Email/html/forgot_password.ctp src/Template/Email/text/forgot_password.ctp src/Mailer/Preview/ git commit -m "Setup email previews" Displaying a Responsive Email I more or less am going to grab the layout template from leemunroe/responsive-html-email-template with a few minor tweaks: Replaced the <title> element contents with <?= $this->fetch('title')?> element contents with Replaced the body with <?= $this->fetch('content')?> You can modify the email otherwise however you see fit. I placed mine in src/Template/Layout/Email/html/default.ctp. In order to load this layout, I removed ->layout(false) from my UserMailer::forgotPassword() method. With a few minor changes, my email now looks like this: I’ll save my work for now, but here are a few ideas to try: Setup some sort of email unsubscribe flow. Add images or backgrounds to your emails. Create an EmailHelper to make adding buttons etc. easier. git add src/Mailer/UserMailer.php src/Template/Email/html/forgot_password.ctp src/Template/Layout/Email/html/default.ctp git commit -m "Nicer html email layout" For those that may just want to ensure their codebase matches what has been done so far, the codebase is available on GitHub and tagged as 0.0.20. Looks like I lied about what we were going to work on today, but I wanted to go back and show off a neat development feature I’d been working on. I think the results speak for themselves, and hope it was a worthwhile trip. Tomorrow we’ll actually work on selling photos. Be sure to follow along via twitter on @savant. If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, you may follow the rss feed here. Also, all posts in the series will be conveniently linked on the sidebar of every post in the 2016 CakeAdvent Calendar. Come back tomorrow for more delicious content.0 of 11 Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports The Jacksonville Jaguars can get the second year of their rebuild off to a great start by adding a capable quarterback and a stud pass-rusher at the top of the 2014 NFL draft. Targeting those two positions is a common theme as the Jaguars approach their second draft under head coach Gus Bradley and general manager David Caldwell. Fortunately, this year's draft class is loaded with talented prospects who would provide immediate help at both areas. In fact, the only pressing question is in what order the Jaguars will select their potential franchise passer and premier pass-rusher. But Caldwell and Bradley will also be aware of the need to restock the weapons available to any new man under center. That means adding a running back who can shoulder a hefty workload and a wide receiver who can win on the outside. Here are the best 2014 draft picks that fit the primary team needs for the rebuilding Jaguars.The five-member larger bench is headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa. A five-member bench of the Supreme Court on Friday disqualified prime minister Nawaz Sharif from being a member of parliament over concealment of assets and being dishonest, in one of the most historic SC cases in recent history that could chart the political future of the country. On April 20, the same bench had issued a split 3-2 judgement, with two dissenting notes in the verdict by Justice Khosa and Justice Gulzar Ahmed. Here we take a look at profiles of the honourable judges who formed the bench. Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa Elevated to the Supreme Court in 2010, Justice Khosa headed the bench tasked with adjudicating the Panama Leaks case. Hailing from DG Khan, he has decided about 50,000 cases over a period of more than 18 years. Justice Khosa was one of the two judges who ruled against PM Nawaz Sharif. Justice Gulzar Ahmed Justice Ahmed began as an advocate of the High Court and SC, before being elected as honorary secretary of the Sindh High Court Bar Association. In 2002, Justice Ahmed was elevated to judge of High Court of Sindh and was subsequently promoted to senior puisne judge of the High Court of Sindh in Feb 2011. He became a SC judge in November 2011. Justice Ahmed was the other dissenting judge. Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan Graduating from the Khyber Law College in 1977, Justice Khan enrolled as an advocate of the SC in 1991. Having served as a judge of the Peshawar High Court for nine years, he was appointed as chief justice in 2009 and elevated to judge of the SC in 2011. Justice Ejaz Afzal authored the 540-page Panama Papers verdict. Justice Ijaz ul Ahsan After completing his LLB from Punjab University Law College, Justice Ahsan completed his postgraduate studies from Cornell University, New York. He was elevated to the bench in 2009 and was confirmed as a judge of the Lahore High Court in 2011. Justice Ahsan has served as inspection judge for Kasur, Gujranwala and Lahore Districts. In 2015, he was appointed as the chief justice of Lahore High Court and elevated to the SC in June 2016. Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed Justice Saeed was first enrolled as an advocate of the High Court of Lahore in 1980 and was promoted to advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan in the subsequent year. Justice Saeed has also served as special prosecutor by the Ehtesab Bureau in 1997 and has been a member of the legal team prosecuting many high profile cases at the Lahore High Court. He has previously served as special prosecutor NAB in 2001. Justice Saeed was appointed as an Additional Judge of the High Court of Lahore in 2004. In 2012, he was elevated as Judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.Michael Jordan Speaks Up For Black Lives And Police Officers Enlarge this image toggle caption Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Michael Jordan is condemning violence against both African-Americans and police. His forceful and emotional statement, released by ESPN's The Undefeated, is a marked change for the NBA legend. Jordan has been famously apolitical during his career — first as a Hall of Fame basketball player for the Chicago Bulls and more recently as an owner of the Charlotte Hornets — avoiding public statements on politics and civil rights, when other athletes have spoken out. "I can no longer stay silent," Jordan writes. "We need to find solutions that ensure people of color receive fair and equal treatment AND that police officers — who put their lives on the line every day to protect us all — are respected and supported." The statement comes after the recent police shootings of two African-American men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and two deadly attacks against police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. "I know this country is better than that," Jordan writes. Jordan says he's making $1 million donations to two organizations, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Institute for Community-Police Relations, which was recently established by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The aim, Jordan writes, is to help "build trust and respect between communities and law enforcement." The donations come during a period of renewed advocacy and statements about social issues by professional athletes and sports leagues. Current NBA stars LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade and Chris Paul opened the 2016 ESPYs, earlier this month, by asking professional athletes to speak up on issues of social justice and to help unite communities in the U.S. WNBA players have spoken out, too, wearing solid black shirts during warm-ups, or shirts with the printed words "#BlackLivesMatter" and "#Dallas5," in reference to the five police officers who were killed in Dallas earlier this month. Most recently, the NBA announced that it was stripping Charlotte, N.C., of the 2017 NBA All-Star Game because of North Carolina's House Bill 2 — the so-called bathroom bill — which has been called discriminatory against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. In making that announcement, the league stated: "While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2."This article is about the former roller coaster on Coney Island. For the former roller coaster in Atlantic City, sometimes known as the Flip Flap Railway, see Loop the Loop (Young's Million Dollar Pier) Flip Flap Railway was the name of a looping wooden roller coaster which operated for a number of years at Paul Boyton's Sea Lion Park on Coney Island, New York. The coaster, which opened in 1895, was notable for being the first looping roller coaster to operate in North America. It was also notable for its engineering as well as the extreme G-forces that this engineering inflicted on riders. History and design [ edit ] The first looping roller coasters were built in Europe in the mid-1800s. These rides, known as "centrifugal railways", were initially designed to be temporary installations and they achieved little success.[1] The Flip Flap Railway was tested in Toledo, Ohio in 1888 by designer Lina Beecher before the coaster was moved to Coney Island.[2] The coaster was tested with sand bags and monkeys before human riders were allowed on the coaster.[3] The coaster had a single rail and riders rode two-to-a-car and sat in tandem.[4] Sea Lion Park developer Boyton liked Beecher's coaster and decided to move it to Sea Lion Park.[2] Flip Flap Railway was shut down along with Sea Lion Park in 1902. While Sea Lion Park was replaced with Luna Park in 1903, Flip Flap Railway was not retained, owing to its unpopularity.[2] The 2-person cars also meant that it was difficult to turn a profit on the coaster.[5] Ride experience [ edit ] Like the earlier centrifugal railways in Europe, Flip Flap Railway was notorious for the extreme g-forces that it produced in its riders. The circular nature of the coaster's loop, as well as its relatively small diameter of 25 feet,[3] meant that it could produce forces of approximately 12 g.[6][7] This caused riders to often experience discomfort and neck injuries from whiplash.[3][7] Modern looping roller coasters use teardrop-shaped loops to greatly reduce these g-forces.[6] See also [ edit ]Researchers have cleared a major hurdle to the practical use of nanoscale lasers, opening the way to fundamentally new capabilities in biosensing, computing, and optical communications. A team at the University of California, Berkeley, has demonstrated the first semiconductor plasmon nanolaser, or “spaser,” that can operate at room temperature. Hot spot: Blue light (top) emitted from the first semiconductor “spaser” (bottom) that runs at room temperature, instead of in a cryogenic vacuum. This special type of nanolaser amplifies particles called surface plasmons, which can be confined in smaller spaces than conventional light. While traditional lasers work by amplifying light, spasers amplify particles called surface plasmons, which can do things that the photons in ordinary light waves can’t. For instance, photons can’t be confined to areas with dimensions much smaller than half their wavelength, or about 250 nanometers, limiting the extent to which optical devices can be miniaturized. Plasmons, however, can be confined in much smaller spaces and then converted into conventional light waves—making them useful for ultra-high-resolution imaging or miniaturized optical circuits that might, for example, operate 100 times faster than today’s fastest electronic circuits. Working with Berkeley mechanical-engineering professor Xiang Zhang, postdocs Ren-Min Ma and Rupert Oulton designed and demonstrated the new semiconductor spaser. It uses metals and semiconductors, long recognized to be attractive materials because of their ubiquity and resilience. But previous spasers made of them lost too much energy to sustain lasing unless cooled to extremely low temperatures, below -250 °C. “For a time there was a lot of criticism that plasmon lasers would only work at low temps,” says Martin Hill, a professor of electrical engineering at the Technical University of Eindhoven, in the Netherlands, who researches nanolasers. “This [is] an interesting demonstration and a step towards making useful devices and encouraging more people to look at plasmon-mode nanolasers.” The team’s device contains a 45-nanometer-thick, 1-micrometer square of cadmium sulfide, a semiconductor used in some solar cells and photoresistors for microchip manufacturing. The square rests on a a 5-nanometer slice of magnesium fluoride, atop a sheet of silver. When light from a commercial laser hits the metal, plasmons are generated on its surface. But the cadmium sulfide square confines the plasmons to the gap, reflecting them back each time they hit an edge. Less than 5 percent of the radiation escapes the structure, allowing sustained surface-plasmon lasing, or “spasing,” at room temperature. The research was published online in Nature Materials on December 19. This isn’t the first spaser to work at room temperature. In fact, the very first spaser used dye-based materials that work at room temperature. But these materials can only be activated with pulses of light—called optical pumping—which limits applications. The Berkeley team used optical pumping to demonstrate its laser because “it’s easier,” says Oulton, but the major advantage of semiconductor lasers is that they can be pumped electrically—the team’s ultimate goal. “We need to be able to plug real-world devices into a wall socket. This is without question,” Oulton says. While Hill is excited by the Zhang group’s demonstration, he notes that “electrically pumped devices are a much more technically difficult thing. For example, for photonic crystal lasers, it took many years from the first optically pumped laser until an electrically pumped device was made.” The Nature Materials paper describes only sustained lasing within the cadmium sulfide cavity, which Ma says is useful for applications like single-molecule detection, important in high-sensitivity biological and medical testing. The researchers are working on demonstrating a biosensor based on the laser, and Ma says a practical device might be possible within a few years. They have also developed ways to couple the light output of the spaser so that it can be used in plasmonic circuits for optical computing or communications. Building simple plasmonic circuits is another project Zhang’s group is pursuing. Other possible applications for the spaser include using it to focus light beams in photolithography, making possible the manufacture of microchips with features smaller than 20 nanometers, about the limits of optical lasers. It could also be useful for packing more data onto storage media such as DVDs and hard disks. Ma notes that both applications would require the addition of a plasmonic lens to further focus the light; this is something else that Zhang’s lab has worked on. The group is enthusiastic about the potential to eventually commercialize this design, since it uses inorganic semiconductors already common in computing and communications. Ma says it should be “very easy” to integrate devices based on the design into current fabrication processes. Oulton and Hill both also mention that the materials are extremely robust and have long lifetimes inside devices. Optimistically, say Ma and Oulton, proof of principle—electrically injected plasmonic lasers that run at room temperature—should be possible within a couple of years, and commercial devices could follow quickly.French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Versailles, France, on May 29. (Reuters) As Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived at the Versailles Palace on Monday to meet Emmanuel Macron, the recently elected leader of France, all eyes were on the handshake. Macron had surprised the world last week with his white-knuckle grasp of President Trump's hand when the pair met for the first time. Trump had already gained notoriety for his handshake, a vigorous tug that has caught some world leaders off guard. The French president, however, came prepared. Though Trump leaned in first, he tried to release his hand from the lengthy shake, twice, while Macron kept squeezing. Speaking to Le Journal du Dimanche this weekend, Macron explained that “my handshake with him, it wasn’t innocent,” later adding: “One must show that you won’t make small concessions, even symbolic ones, but also not overpublicize things, either.” Outside the Versailles Palace, reporters waited eagerly for a potentially tense Franco-Russian handshake. As Putin stepped out of his car, many people pulled out their cameras to capture the greeting between the two leaders. But anyone expecting fireworks would probably have been disappointed: Macron and Putin shook hands amiably for seven seconds before heading inside. Other videos show that inside the palace, the pair shook hands again — for about six seconds. Macron's relatively simple greeting of Putin belies a complicated relationship between the two leaders. Under Putin, a former KGB officer with a strongman image, Russia had supported far-right leader Marine Le Pen in France's presidential election this year. In the final days before the vote, Macron aides had claimed that Russian groups had hacked his campaign and released internal information in a bid to discredit it. Moscow denies such allegations. Macron had name-checked Putin in an interview this weekend, suggesting that he knew how to deal with such leaders. “Donald Trump, the Turkish president or the Russian president are in a balance-of-power logic, which doesn't bother me,” Macron said. “I don't believe in the diplomacy of public invective, but in my bilateral conversations, I will let nothing pass. That's how you make yourself respected.” Monday's meeting — during which Macron and Putin were also scheduled to tour an exhibition marking the 300th anniversary of Russian Czar Peter the Great’s trip to Paris — was scheduled to discuss weighty topics, including the crises in Syria and Ukraine. And the French leader didn't pull any punches. During a joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Versailles, France, May 29, French President Emmanuel Macron said RT and Sputnik, two Russian news outlets, "acted as organs of influence, of propaganda" during the French presidential campaign. (Reuters) As the pair emerged from a three-hour talk to speak to reporters, Macron launched into a remarkably frank discussion of two Russian state news outlets — Sputnik and Russia Today — that he accused of behaving as “organs of influence, of propaganda, of lying propaganda.” “I will not give an inch on this,” the French leader said. Putin, who was standing by Macron as he said this, did not demur. More on WorldViews Trump and Obama are having very different trips to EuropeForum Forums Share Share The Magic Kingdom will officially open the Jungle Cruise Skipper Canteen on December 16 2015 in Adventureland. Soft opening began today, with entry both now, and from the December 16 official opening date, on a walk-up basis only. No reservations are yet being accepted, although is expected to change in the new year. The restaurant is open for both lunch and dinner, and perhaps surprisingly and unlike the most recently opened restaurant, Be Our Guest, the Skipper Canteen does not serve alcohol. We'll be back with a full review later in the week, but until then, here is a look at the full menu. Appetizers S.E.A. Shu Mai - A legendary blend of Pork, Shrimp, Mung Beans, and Spices wrapped in Gyoza Skin then steamed $10 Baladi Salad - Classic Egyptian Salad consisting of a mix of Hearts of Romaine, Green Peppers, Cherry Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Parsley, and Ambasha Bread tossed with Garlic $9 Falls Family Falafel - A secret recipe of Chick Peas, Garlic, Onions, Lemon Juice, and Herbs served with White Bean Dip and Tomato-Cucumber Salad $8 Amazon Annie’s House-made Arepas - A trip down the Amazon with Slow-cooked Beef, Black Beans, Tostones, and Queso Fresco $9.50 Ginger Grog of Hot and Sour Soup - Flavored with ginger “not the crocodile” garlic, soy sauce, and rice wine vinegar finished with fresh egg, tofu, and wood ear mushrooms $7.50 Sustainable Fish Collar - Broiled Collar served with a green papaya salad and yurt-soy sauce $11 Entrees Rice Noodle Bowl - Pho Broth served with choice of Chicken, Duck Breast, or Tofu served with Jalapeños and mix of fresh Herbs. Duck $23, Chicken 422, Tofu $20. Grilled Lamb Chops - Seasoned with a North African Berber Style Spice Blend served with green lentils stew $25 A Lot of Steak Salad - We’re betting it all on this Thai-marinated Flank Steak tossed with Hearts of Romaine, Carrots, Red Peppers, Cucumbers, Red Onions, and Cherry Tomatoes with Asian Dressing $18 Char Shiu Pork - Marinated Grilled Pork Tenderloin Medallions served with Chinese Broccoli and choice of Five-gran or White Rice $23 Curried Vegetable Crew Stew - Served with Roasted Acorn Squash, Lentils, and Sautéed Collard Greens $17 Skip’s Mac and Cheese - A typical Egyptian dish consisting of Spiced Ground Beef, Pasta, Béchamel Sauce, served with Broccoli $19 Trader Sam’s Head-On Shrimp - Sustainable Local Farm Raised Shrimp tossed in a Chili-Garlic Sauce and served with Chinese Broccoli and choice of Five-grain or White rice $25 Sustainable Fish - “Not Piranha” served over Chinese Broccoli, Carrots, Shiitake Mushrooms, and Red Bell Peppers in a fragrant Lemon Grass Broth (Market price) “Tastes Like Chicken Because It Is!” - Marinated Grilled Chicken Breast served with Stir-fried vegetables, Shiitake Fried Rice, and Hoisin Sauce $23 Dr. Falls’ Signature Grilled Steak - Strip Loin Asado marinated in Sofrito and served with Yuca Planks, Avocado, and House-made Chimichurri $23 Desserts Sugar-crusted Congee Pudding - Caramelized Custard with Millet, Almonds, Apricot, Dates, and Honey-Almond Tuile $8 Coconut Bar with Pineapple-Basil Compote and Vanilla Cream - Vanilla Chiffon Cake with Coconut and Lime–White Chocolate Ganache $8 Bertha’s Banh Bong Lan Cake with Mango Lime Sorbet - Vanilla Chiffon Cake soaked with Lemon Grass-Ginger syrup $8 Kungaloosh! - An African-inspired chocolate cake with caramelized banana served with cashew-caramel ice cream topped with coffee dust $8 Discuss on the Forums Article Posted:There are 27 brothels in Nevada, the only state where they're legal. (AP Photo/Laura Rauch) Here's some trivia you can use. With news that a Nevada brothel owner is joining the Libertarian Party and considering a run for the Senate, we wondered where the Libertarian Party officially stands on the world's oldest profession. Turns out the party does support legalized prostitution. That is likely one of several reasons the Nevada Libertarian Party is welcoming brothel owner Dennis Hof of Bunny Ranch fame with open arms -- even though his sideshow candidacy has zero chance of winning (but a small chance of affecting the race) and Hof previously set up a Hookers4Hillary Web site. [Flesh-peddler lays bare Senate plans in Nevada. Here's why his naked ploy might matter.] Of course, the Libertarian Party's embrace of legal prostitution makes sense. Its platform boils down to this: "Individuals should be free to make choices for themselves and to accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make." That's from the party's official Web site, which goes onto say that individuals own their bodies and have the right to do with them what they want. In addition, the Libertarian Party eschews prosecution of what it calls "victimless" crimes "that do not directly harm the person or property of another." That includes: "gambling, drug use, prostitution, sodomy, etc." In the United States, prostitution is legal only in Nevada, where it's been grandfathered in since the state's 19th-century gold mining days. Prominent libertarian-leaning politicians have offered mixed messages on legalizing prostitution, though. Former congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.), who ran for president as a Republican in 2008 and 2012 and as the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988, has supported legalizing prostitution, along with drugs. His son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), distanced himself from those positions in 2012, saying that wouldn't be part of his campaign. Sen. Paul, who is running for president as a Republican in 2016, said in 2008 that he does not support "any changes to the law" with regard to prostitution. And the Libertarian Party's 2012 presidential nominee, former Republican New Mexico governor Gary Johnson never explicitly supported legalized prostitution but said he does think it's safer when it's regulated. Even public and political opinion in Nevada on prostitution is sharply divided. Las Vegas' former mayor, Oscar Goodman, wanted to legalize it in the city, where it's banned but frequently practiced. His wife and now the current mayor, Carolyn Goodman, disagrees. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is the most prominent Nevada politician to call for an end to legalized prostitution, saying it's harmed Nevada's public image. So there you have it. Avid brothel supporter? Consider joining the Libertarian Party, like the Bunny Ranch guy. Or just keep this in mind for The Fix's next trivia night.My previous article here at Mysterious Universe, A Mind-Altering Mysterious Woman, was focused on the deeply strange 1971 saga of a woman in the employ of the Nixon-era White House who was hypnotized and controlled under very weird circumstances. With that in mind, I thought it would be useful to demonstrate to you the sheer extent to which the human mind can be harnessed and manipulated, and has been since the 1940s. “I can hypnotize a man, without his knowledge or consent, into committing treason against the United States,” stated Dr George Estabrooks – the chairman of the Department of Psychology at Colgate University – in 1942, and before a group from the U.S. military. “Two hundred trained foreign operators, working in the United States, could develop a uniquely dangerous army of hypnotically controlled Sixth Columnists,” he added. But, Estabrooks had more to say than just that. In fact, he had much more to say, as you will now see. Consider his following words: “During World War One, a leading psychologist made a startling proposal to the navy. He offered to take a submarine steered by a captured U-boat captain, placed under his hypnotic control, through enemy mine fields to attack the German fleet. Washington nixed the stratagem as too risky. First, because there was no disguised method by which the captain’s mind could be outflanked. Second, because today’s technique of day-by-day breaking down of ethical conflicts brainwashing was still unknown. “The indirect approach to hypnotism would, I believe, change the navy’s answer today. Personally, I am convinced that hypnosis is a bristling, dangerous armament which makes it doubly imperative to avoid the war of tomorrow.” Three decades later, Estabrooks was still championing the world of hypnosis and the potential it offered military and intelligence agencies. His April 1971 article, Hypnosis Comes of Age (which was published just six months before the strange President Nixon-linked saga I refer to in the opening paragraph…), offers these words: “Communication in war is always a headache. Codes can be broken. A professional spy may or may not stay bought. Your own man may have unquestionable loyalty, but his judgment is always open to question. The ‘hypnotic courier,’ on the other hand, provides a unique solution. I was involved in preparing many subjects for this work during World War II. One successful case involved an Army Service Corps Captain whom we’ll call George Smith. “Captain Smith had undergone months of training. He was an excellent subject but did not realize it. I had removed from him, by post-hypnotic suggestion, all recollection of ever having been hypnotized. First I had the Service Corps call the captain to Washington and tell him they needed a report of the mechanical equipment of Division X headquartered in Tokyo. Smith was ordered to leave by jet next morning, pick up the report and return at once. Consciously, that was all he knew, and it was the story he gave to his wife and friends. “Then I put him under deep hypnosis, and gave him – orally – a vital message to be delivered directly on his arrival in Japan to a certain colonel – let’s say his name was Brown – of military intelligence. Outside of myself, Colonel Brown was the only person who could hypnotize Captain Smith. This is ‘locking.’ “I performed it by saying to the hypnotized Captain: ‘Until further orders from me, only Colonel Brown and I can hypnotize you. We will use a signal phrase the moon is clear. Whenever you hear this phrase from Brown or myself you will pass instantly into deep hypnosis.’ “When Captain Smith re-awakened, he had no conscious memory or what happened in trance. All that he was aware of was that he must head for Tokyo to pick up a division report. On arrival there, Smith reported to Brown, who hypnotized him with the signal phrase. Under hypnosis, Smith delivered my message and received one to bring back. Awakened, he was given the division report and returned home by jet. There I hypnotized him once more with the signal phrase, and he spieled off Brown’s answer that had been dutifully tucked away in his unconscious mind.” What all of this tells us is that not only is hypnosis an excellent tool when placed into the right hands, its proven record dates back a very long time, too. Indeed, plenty of time to perfect whatever strange technology may have been utilized on the unfortunate victim in my A Mind-Altering Mysterious Woman article…RALEIGH, N.C. – Governor McCrory signed an executive order Tuesday that clarifies existing state law and provides new protection for North Carolina residents. According to the Governor’s Office, Executive Order 93 does the following: Maintains the common sense gender-specific restroom and locker room facilities in government buildings and schools. Affirms the private sector’s right to establish its own restroom and locker room policies. Affirms the private sector and local governments’ right to establish its own non-discrimination employment policies for its own employees Expands the state’s employment policy for state employees to cover sexual orientation and gender identity Seeks legislation to reinstate the right to sue in state court for discrimination. Pleased to see movement from @GovOfficeNC. Historic to include LGBT protections for state employees. Look forward to more dialogue. — Mayor of Charlotte (@CLTMayor) April 12, 2016 On a mobile device? Click here to watch. Gov. Pat McCrory said Tuesday he is banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identify in state government personnel decisions and is seeking to reverse a provision of HB2 that made it harder for people to sue over discrimination on other grounds in court. An executive order McCrory signed Tuesday leaves intact the primary provisions of HB2. They keep local governments from adopting ordinances prohibiting discrimination against LGBT people and require that bathrooms and locker rooms in state and local government buildings be used according to the "biological sex" of the user. However, the executive order reaffirms that the private sector can set its own restroom and locker room policies and that private businesses and local governments can establish their own policies for their employees. That would be the case with or without McCrory's action, but the executive order makes it clear that that is the position of the state. In a video, McCrory said he has "listened to the people of North Carolina, and the people of North Carolina are entitled to both privacy and equality. We can and we must achieve both of these goals." Before HB2 was passed in a one-day special session of the General Assembly March 23, people who alleged that they were discriminated against on the basis of "race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex or handicap" could sue in either state or federal court. HB2 ended the ability to bring those suits in state court, although those discriminated against on the basis of a handicap could rely on a different state law to sue. Lawyers who handle employment discrimination lawsuits said the change was a blow to those discriminated against in the workplace because it is cheaper and easier to sue in state court and the period during which lawsuits can be filed in state court is longer than in federal court. A state lawsuit can be filed at a county courthouse while federal cases are heard in a much smaller number of federal courthouses around the state, a potential barrier for people who live in more remote areas. Changing the part of the law that prevents the cases from being filed in state court would take action by the General Assembly, which returns to Raleigh for its regular session April 25. McCrory's office said North Carolina is now one of 24 states that have protections for sexual orientation and gender identity for its employees. One provision of the executive order says that private entities leasing property from the state can set their own policies regarding signage and use of bathrooms and locker rooms. If, as it may do, that provision applies to local governments, it could lessen the chances of the NBA moving its all-star game to another city instead of holding it in Charlotte as planned. The Charlotte Hornets lease Time-Warner Cable Arena, where the game is to be held, from owner Charlotte city government. Without the clarification in McCrory's order, policies in HB2 might apply in the arena. The order apparently allows the Hornets to decide bathroom and locker room signage and use questions. Senate leader Phil Berger endorsed McCrory's actions in a statement. “Gov. McCrory just put to rest the left's lies about HB 2 and proved it allows private and public employers, non-profits and churches the ability to adopt nondiscrimination policies that are stronger than state and federal law," Berger said. "But that
but never to us. It took a campus bias incident, a campus hate crime, and all of my Ethnic Studies courses to articulate my rage into a language that could not be dismissed so easily. Speaking and writing English are considered necessary requirements for playing the political game of the American education system. Crying and complaining get you disqualified, but if you appropriate their words of statistics, of fancy book learning, of speaking when it’s your turn, you can play the game of English thrones, and possibly win it. Checkmate by the Angry Minority. E1 to FU. But there’s no prize for winning. The game is played with or without your consent. You are never quite sure who is this year’s gamemaster: is it our schools? is it the media? is it the government? is it you? The rules shift for each player, but one rule remains the same for the minority: you may wear the jersey, but you’re not on our team. I am reminded of this division when my favorite English teacher compliments me for speaking English so well. I am reminded of this in AP Spanish Language, where I’m the one whose accent needs to be Standardized. I am reminded of this when my career counselor tells me I need to italicize the foreign, to separate Spanish from English for the sake of my white interviewers. I am reminded of this when my mother’s misspelled pleas to a lawyer are never answered, but my politely worded complaint earns me a reply. I have been the only person of color in my creative writing courses. I have been the only person writing about persons of color in my creative writing courses. I was never just a writer, but I never wanted to be just anything. The only grammar lesson I enjoyed promised me that in good writing, you never qualify someone as just-. Some minority writers don’t want to be hyphenated, and that is their right, but I welcome its conjunction. I don’t want you to forget that when I address ‘you’ in my stories, it is not always to you. The first attempts in a creative writing course are often thinly veiled versions of ourselves, but when I got the peer critique, Your white character needs to be more sympathetic, I was still stung by its implication. Why does any character need to be sympathetic at all? I wrote myself into the white stepmother as much as I did the cheating Latino father, the disillusioned Latina mother, the Latina child caught in the middle of it all. But out of all the characters in that story, it was the white woman that my reader was most concerned with saving. The U.S. education system trains you to read the universal voice as a white heterosexual male’s voice, and too many deviations from that path get you sent to the Ethnic Fiction section. I reject the notion that writing realistically means accepting a sympathetically sterilized vision of the world. “Historically,” “realistically,” “in my experience,” are the qualifiers that let literary genres off the hook because it’s easier to qualify your ignorance as a product of the system than to admit that you share responsibility. For the dominant majority, I can pass for white: I speak their kind of English, my skin is their shade of white, I wear their kinds of clothes, and I go to their kind of school. I don’t want to tell you which school, not to let my administration off the hook, but to demonstrate that this exclusion is not a problem limited to one institution. The older I get, the more aware I become of the contours of exclusion, and its shape does not fit the easy metaphor of a barrier. There are not only two sides, and participating in any side doesn’t mean you’re a member of it. Hegemony requires your consent, and when it opened its door to me, I held the door open for those that followed. I told my younger sister she needed to do better in English, not Spanish, if she wanted the good kind of college to notice her. When my close white friend told me those kind of girls were all so ghetto, I did not correct her. My family and I have all fallen prey to the intoxicating allure of the American Dream, the vague, unsatisfying answer of America as a “better life.” To help me claim this “better life,” my mother gave me a name that could be accepted in both English and Spanish, accented and unaccented. How many ways can you say a name? This was the acting exercise I failed. I thought that if I stretched the syllable hard enough, the word would break even, and it would be enough to pay the toll –Miss Mahnn-i-cuh for my teachers, Monica for my classmates, Mónica for my relatives, and Móni for my family. How is the name meant to sound? It depends on who’s in the room. I carry my father in my last name and my mother in my middle name; the first name is mine to accent, at my privilege. For their daughters, my parents stretched their wallets and then their marriage, and one did not break even. My sister and I are the remainder of this fraction, and I am indebted to my parents, who gave up their dreams so I could major in my own. In a few months, I will have a fancy degree in English, but my parents are more fluent in language than I am. To master a language, you have to understand differences that no grammar book can teach you. So much comes down to tone. No one wants their speaker to be unclear. After my father and I got into a fight about his money and my future, he sent me a long email explaining himself through Google translator. I’m the daughter who never calls him enough, and argues in heavy English consonants when I want to confuse him. He is the father who bolded would do anything for you, and said he loved, loves, and is always loving me. His English was not grammatically correct, but it was more emotionally honest than my feelings shielded in sarcasm. I pull it up when I need a reminder of my complicated, contradictory love for a hybridized language that is ours alone. “I am extremely happy for Google Translator and spell check. I typed very slowly so don’t expect me to email you every time. I wish I could speak English better because I know your english is good but unfortunately I don’t write spanish well either. Love you, Papi” ______________________________________________ Monica Torres is a senior English and American Studies major who concentrates in Latina/o Studies and is writing her way into a career. She has previously written for Creative Loafing Tampa.So you're in the stands at an NFL stadium, you left your handheld device in the car and you have no idea how your fantasy football team is doing. If only they'd show out-of-town fantasy football statistics on the scoreboard. Fantasy? Not anymore. Starting with Thursday's New Orleans Saints-Green Bay Packers season opener at Lambeau Field, all NFL teams have been directed to show real-time fantasy football statistics on their scoreboards, league spokesman Brian McCarthy said, USA Today reported. Previously, it was at the discretion of the league's 32 teams whether to display out-of-town individual statistics on stadium video boards. While many fans do follow their fantasy teams on their phone or handheld device, the league -- aware that fans can choose their living room, high-definition television and the Internet over paying for tickets, parking, food and drinks at the stadium -- wants fans to feel connected to the fantasy football experience in the stands. "We know we have to continue to do more to keep fans coming to our games," McCarthy said, according to the report. "We're looking at ways to further replicate the at-home experience in the stadium."The Poverty Line uses the universal lens of food to examine the daily choices you would face if you lived at the poverty line. Over the last 8 years, the artists travelled 150,000 km to photograph this project across 31 countries. The project takes a typological approach over time. Each country's figure is based on their poverty line definition and official national statistics to derive a per capita per day rate. Food is then procured from local markets using that monetary amount. Each piece of work is photographed with the food items placed on local newspapers purchased on the day of the shoot, with the dimensions, lighting carefully measured to express a uniform aesthetic across time and geographical spread. The project was referenced by the World Bank and exhibited as large scale installations at the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin, Paris (2015), PMQ, Hong Kong (2015), Studio 94, Taipei (2015), Museum of Modern Art, Tblisi (2013), Three Shadows Art Centre, Beijing (2012) and the United Nations, Bangkok (2018). The project has been extensively featured in international media including BBC, Le Monde, CNN, Foreign Policy and is currently in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago and Central Academy of Fine Art Museum, Beijing. Chow and Lin are currently based in Beijing, China."Tarantine" redirects here. For the dialect spoken in Taranto, see Tarantino dialect. For other uses, see Tarentum Comune in Apulia, Italy Taranto (, also US: ; Italian pronunciation: [ˈtaːranto] (); Tarantino: Tarde)[1][a] is a coastal city in Apulia, Southern Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Taranto and is an important commercial port as well as the main Italian naval base.[3] It is the third-largest continental city of Southern Italy. According to 2011 population census, it then had a population of 200,154. Taranto is an important commercial and military port with well-developed steel and iron foundries, oil refineries, chemical works, naval shipyards, and food-processing factories. In ancient times around 500 BC the city was one of the largest in the world with population estimates up to 300,000 people.[4][5] Overview [ edit ] Taranto naval base for the Italian Regia Marina's First Squadron. (Photo from 1930s) Taranto's pre-history dates back to 706 BC[6] when it was founded as a Greek colony, established by the Spartans. The ancient city was situated on a peninsula; the modern city has been built over the ancient Greek city of which only a few ruins remain, including part of the city wall, two temple columns dating to the 6th century BC, and tombs.[7] The islets of S. Pietro and S. Paolo (St. Peter and St. Paul), collectively known as Cheradi Islands, protect the bay, called Mar Grande (Big Sea), where the commercial port is located. Another bay, called Mar Piccolo (Little Sea), is formed by the peninsula of the old city, and has flourishing fishing. Mar Piccolo is a military port with strategic importance. At the end of the 19th century, a channel was excavated to allow military ships to enter the Mar Piccolo harbour, and the ancient Greek city become an island connected to the mainland by bridges. In addition, the islets and the coast are strongly fortified. Because of the presence of these two bays, Taranto is also called "the city of the two seas". The Greek colonists from Sparta called the city Taras (Τάρας; GEN Τάραντος Tarantos), after the mythical hero Taras, while the Romans, who connected the city to Rome with an extension of the Appian way, called it Tarentum. comune of Taranto (red) within its province. Theof Taranto (red) within its province. The natural harbor at Taranto made it a logical home port for the Italian naval fleet before and during the First World War. During World War II, Taranto became famous as a consequence of the November 1940 British air attack on the Regia Marina naval base stationed here, which today is called the Battle of Taranto. Taranto is also the origin of the common name of the Tarantula spider family, Theraphosidae, even though strictly speaking there are no members of Theraphosidae in the area. In ancient times, residents of the town of Taranto, upon being bitten by the large local Wolf Spider, Lycosa tarentula, would promptly do a long vigorous dance like a Jig. This was done in order to sweat the venom out of their pores, even though the spider's venom was not fatal to humans. The frenetic dance became known as the Tarantella. In geology, Taranto gives its name to the Tarantian Age of the Pleistocene Epoch. Physical geography [ edit ] Aerial view of Taranto Taranto faces the Ionian Sea. It is 14.5 metres (48 ft) above sea level. It was built on a plain running north/north-west–southeast, and surrounded by the Murgia plateau from the north-west to the east. Its territory extends for 209.64 square kilometres (80.94 sq mi) and is mostly underwater. It is characterised by three natural peninsulas and a man-made island, formed by digging a ditch during the construction of Aragon Castle. The city is known as the "city of two seas" because it is washed by the Big Sea in the bay between Punta Rondinella to the northwest and Capo San Dante to the south, and by the vast reservoir of the Little Sea. Big Sea and Little Sea [ edit ] The view of the Little Sea from the Appian Way The Big Sea is frequently known as the Big Sea bay as that is where ships harbour. It is separated from the Little Sea by a cape which closes the gulf, leading to the artificial island. This island formed the heart of the original city and it is connected to the mainland by the Ponte di Porta Napoli and the Ponte Girevole. The Big Sea is separated from the Ionian Sea by the Capo San Vito, the Isole Cheradi of St Peter and St Paul, and the three islands of San Nicolicchio, which are completely incorporated by the steel plant. The latter form a little archipelago which closes off the arc creating the natural Big Sea bay. The Little Sea is considered to be a lagoon so it presents problems of water exchange. It is virtually divided into two by the Ponte Punta Penna Pizzone, which joins the Punta Penna to the Punta Pizzone. The first of these forms a rough triangle, whose corners are the opening to the east and the Porta Napoli channel linking it to the Big Sea in the west. The second half forms an ellipse whose major axis measures almost 5 kilometres (3 miles) from the south-west to the north-east. The Galeso river flows into the first half. The two water bodies have slightly different winds and tides and their underwater springs have different salinities. These affect the currents on the surface and in the depths of the Big Sea and the two halves of the Little Sea. In the Big Sea and in the northern part of the Little Sea, there are some underwater springs called citri,[8] which carry undrinkable freshwater together with salt water. This creates the ideal biological conditions for cultivating Mediterranean mussels, known locally as cozze. Climate [ edit ] The climate of the city, recorded by the weather station situated near the Grottaglie Military Airport, is typical of the Mediterranean with frequent Continental features. The spring is usually mild and rainy, but it is not uncommon to have sudden cold spells come in from the east, which often cause snowfall. Average annual precipitation is fairly low (even for southern Italy), measuring just 16.7 inches per year. The summer is very hot and humid, with temperatures reaching up to 40 °C (104 °F). On 28 November 2012 a large F3 tornado hit the port of Taranto and damaged the Taranto Steel Mill where workers were protesting against the plant's pollution emissions; about 20 people were injured, and another man was reported missing. The tornado is one of nine to hit Italy since 1 October.[citation needed] Climate data for Taranto Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year Record high °C (°F) 20.0 (68.0) 21.0 (69.8) 28.0 (82.4) 29.0 (84.2) 34.0 (93.2) 40.8 (105.4) 43.0 (109.4) 42.0 (107.6) 39.0 (102.2) 32.2 (90.0) 26.4 (79.5) 23.0 (73.4) 43.0 (109.4) Average high °C (°F) 12.3 (54.1) 12.8 (55.0) 15.0 (59.0) 17.8 (64.0) 22.4 (72.3) 26.7 (80.1) 29.8 (85.6) 29.6 (85.3) 26.5 (79.7) 21.8 (71.2) 17.3 (63.1) 13.6 (56.5) 20.5 (68.9) Daily mean °C (°F) 9.1 (48.4) 9.5 (49.1) 11.4 (52.5) 14.0 (57.2) 18.2 (64.8) 22.3 (72.1) 25.1 (77.2) 25.1 (77.2) 22.2 (72.0) 18.1 (64.6) 13.8 (56.8) 10.4 (50.7) 16.6 (61.9) Average low °C (°F) 6.0 (42.8) 6.2 (43.2) 7.8 (46.0) 10.2 (50.4) 14.0 (57.2) 18.0 (64.4) 20.5 (68.9) 20.7 (69.3) 18.0 (64.4) 14.4 (57.9) 10.4 (50.7) 7.2 (45.0) 12.8 (55.0) Record low °C (°F) −10.0 (14.0) −5.0 (23.0) −6.4 (20.5) −2.4 (27.7) 2.0 (35.6) 7.4 (45.3) 8.8 (47.8) 10.2 (50.4) 6.4 (43.5) 1.0 (33.8) −3.0 (26.6) −4.8 (23.4) −10.0 (14.0) Average precipitation mm (inches) 45 (1.8) 45 (1.8) 42 (1.7) 29 (1.1) 22 (0.9) 12 (0.5) 11 (0.4) 20 (0.8) 23 (0.9) 63 (2.5) 52 (2.0) 61 (2.4) 425 (16.7) Average precipitation days (≥ 1.0 mm) 6 6 5 5 4 2 2 3 3 6 6 7 55 Average relative humidity (%) 78 75 73 71 68 63 61 63 66 73 77 80 71 Mean monthly sunshine hours 126 131 156 221 284 316 341 327 246 197 140 110 2,595 Source #1: Archivio climatico Enea-Casaccia (temperature and precipitation),[9] Danish Meteorological Institute (sun, 1931–1960)[10] Source #2: Servizio Meteorologico (humidity, 1961–1990 and extremes 1943–present recorded at Taranto-Grottaglie Airport)[11][12] It is classified as Geographical zone C and having a degree-day of 30. History [ edit ] Doric columns from the Temple of Poseidon in Taranto, legacy of its Greek origins. Taranto was founded in 706 BC by Dorian Greek immigrants as the only Spartan colony,[6] and its origin is peculiar: the founders were Partheniae ("sons of virgins"), sons of unmarried Spartan women and Perioeci (free men, but not citizens of Sparta); these out-of-wedlock unions were permitted extraordinarily by the Spartans to increase the prospective number of soldiers (only the citizens of Sparta could become soldiers) during the bloody Messenian Wars, but later they were retroactively nullified, and the sons were then obliged to leave Greece forever. Phalanthus, the Parthenian leader, went to Delphi to consult the oracle: the puzzling answer designated the harbour of Taranto as the new home of the exiles. The Partheniae arrived in Apulia, and founded the city, naming it Taras after the son of the Greek sea god, Poseidon, and of a local nymph,[13] Satyrion.[citation needed] According to other sources, Heracles founded the city. Another tradition indicates Taras as the founder of the city; the symbol of the Greek city (as well as of the modern city) depicts the legend of Taras being saved from a shipwreck by riding a dolphin that was sent to him by Poseidon. Taranto increased its power, becoming a commercial power and a sovereign city of Magna Graecia,[14] ruling over the Greek colonies in southern Italy. Its independence and power came to an end as the Romans expanded throughout Italy. Taranto won the first of two wars against Rome for the control of Southern Italy: it was helped by Pyrrhus, king of Greek Epirus,[14] who surprised Rome with the use of war elephants in battle, a thing never seen before by the Romans. Rome won the second war in 272 BC. This subsequently cut off Taranto from the centre of Mediterranean trade, by connecting the Via Appia directly to the port of Brundisium (Brindisi). Ancient art [ edit ] Like many Greek city states, Taras issued its own coins in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. The denomination was a Nomos, a die-cast silver coin whose weight, size and purity were controlled by the state. The highly artistic coins presented the symbol of the city, Taras being saved by a dolphin, with the reverse side showing the likeness of a hippocamp, a horse-fish amalgam which is depicted in mythology as the beast that drew Poseidon's chariot. Taras was also the centre of a thriving decorated Greek pottery industry during the 4th century BC. Most of the South Italian Greek vessels known as Basilican ware were made in different workshops in the city. Unfortunately, none of the names of the artists have survived, so modern scholars have been obliged to give the recognizable artistic hands and workshops nicknames based on the subject matter of their works, museums which possess the works, or individuals who have distinguished the works from others. Some of the most famous of the Apulian vase painters at Taras are now called: the Iliupersis Painter, the Lycurgus Painter, the Gioia del Colle Painter, the Darius Painter, the Underworld Painter, and the White Sakkos Painter, among others. The wares produced by these workshops were usually large elaborate vessels intended for mortuary use. The forms produced included volute kraters, loutrophoroi, paterai, oinochoai, lekythoi, fish plates, etc. The decoration of these vessels was red figure (with figures reserved in red clay fabric, while the background was covered in a black gloss), with overpainting (sovradipinto) in white, pink, yellow, and maroon slips. Often the style of the drawings is florid and frilly, as was already the fashion in 4th-century Athens. Distinctive South Italian features also begin to appear. Many figures are shown seated on rocks. Floral motifs become very ornate, including spiraling vines and leaves, roses, lilies, poppies, sprays of laurel, acanthus leaves. Often the subject matter consists of naiskos scenes (scenes showing the statue of a deceased person in a naos, a miniature temple or shrine). Most often the naiskos scene occupies one side of the vase, while a mythological scene occupies the other. Images depicting many of the Greek myths are only known from South Italian vases, since Athenian ones seem to have had more limited repertoires of depiction. Ancient coin from Taranto, with the eponym Taras hero riding a dolphin. Collection of ceramics produced in Taranto ca. 580 BC. Taranto Archaeological National Museum Bronze and gold nutcracker, late 4th-early 3rd century BC. Taranto Archaeological National Museum Horace, Ode to Septimius - Celebrating plate Translation: "This corner of the world smiles at me more than the others" 2006 Municipal bankruptcy [ edit ] The Municipality of Taranto was declared bankrupt effective 31 December 2005, having accrued liabilities of €637 million.[citation needed] This was one of the biggest financial crises which has ever hit a municipality.[citation needed] The bankruptcy declaration was made on 18 October 2006 by the receiver Tommaso Blonda. He was appointed following the resignation of the mayor, Rossana Di Bello, on account of her sixteen month prison sentence for abuse of office and forgery of documents relating to investigations into the contract for the management of the city incinerator, awarded to Termomeccanica.[citation needed] Transport [ edit ] The two leaves of the 1887-built Ponte Girevole turning to open the waterway for a large ship Taranto railway station connects the city with Rome, Naples, Milan, Bologna, Bari, Reggio di Calabria and Brindisi. The Ponte Girevole (swing bridge), built in 1887, runs across the navigable ship canal that joins Mar Piccolo (Little Sea) with Mar Grande (Big Sea) and stretches along 89.9 metres (295 ft). When the bridge is open, the two ends of the city are disconnected.[citation needed] Environment [ edit ] In 1991 Taranto was declared a high environmental risk area by the Ministry of Environment. As a consequence of the pollutants discharged into the air by the factories in the area, most notably the ILVA steel plant, part of Gruppo Riva, Taranto is the most polluted city in Italy and western Europe. 7% of Taranto's pollution is produced by the public; 93% is produced by factories. In 2005, the European Pollutant Emission Register estimated dioxin emissions from the Taranto ILVA plant were responsible for 83% of Italy's total reported emissions.[15] Every year the city is exposed to 2.7 tonnes (2.7 long tons; 3.0 short tons) of carbon monoxide and 57.7 tonnes (56.8 long tons; 63.6 short tons) of carbon dioxide.[citation needed] In 2014, the Italian National Institute of Emissions and their Sources,[16] state that Taranto stands third in the world behind China's Linfen, and Copşa Mică in Romania, the most polluted cities in the world due to factories' emissions.[citation needed] In particular, the city produces ninety-two percent of Italy's dioxin.[citation needed] This is 8.8 percent of the dioxin in Europe.[citation needed] Between 1995 and 2004, leukaemias, myelomas and lymphomas increased by 30 to 40 percent. Dioxin accumulates over the years. Over 9 kilos[clarification needed] of dioxin have been discharged into the city's air by its factories.[citation needed] Grazing is banned within 20 kilometres (12 mi) of the ILVA plant.[17] In 2013, the ILVA plant was placed under special administration when its owner, the Riva family, was accused of failing to prevent toxic emissions,[18] which caused at least 400 premature deaths.[19] Emissions of both carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and dioxin have decreased. Animal species have returned that had left, including swallows, cranes, dolphins, seahorses and the coral reef.[citation needed][clarification needed] Main sights [ edit ] Lungomare, which was inaugurated in 1934 by Benito Mussolini Palazzo del Governo facing the, which was inaugurated in 1934 by Benito Mussolini Taranto has a number of sites of historic value. Situated at the angle of the canal, Big Sea and Piazza Castello, the Aragon Castle was built between 1486 and 1492 by orders of King Ferdinand II of Aragon for the purpose of protecting the city from the Turks' frequent raids.[20] The castle which was designed by Italian painter and architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini replaced a pre-existing 9th century Byzantine fortress which was deemed unfit for 15th century warfare.[20][21] In 1707 it ceased to be used as a military fortress and was converted to a prison until under Napoleon Bonaparte it reverted to its original military function. To date it is the property of the Italian Navy and is open to the public. Twenty-first century excavations revealed the castle's earlier Byzantine foundations which can be viewed.[20] There are several Greek temple ruins - some from the 6th century BC - such as the remains of a temple dedicated to Poseidon with its two surviving Doric columns still visible on Piazza Castello in the Citta Vecchia.[7] The Promenade (lungomare), named after former Italian king Victor Emmanuel III, overlooks the Mar Grande, the natural harbour and commercial port.[citation needed] The Concattedrale Gran Madre di Dio, designed by Gio Ponti, was built in 1967-1971 in reinforced concrete and is one of the most significant late works of the architect. In 2018 it is in poor repair and defaced by graffiti.[22] In the modern districts, but above all the central Borgo Umbertino, there are also the Fountain of the Rosa dei Venti, Monumento al Marinaio, the War Memorial and the Navy Yard, another symbol of the city, some archeological places like the Cripta del Redentore, churches like Maria Santissima del Monte Carmelo, San Pasquale and San Francesco di Paola and 18th and 19th-century palaces like Palazzo Magnini, Palazzo delle Poste, Palazzo del Governo, Palazzo degli Uffici and Palazzo Savino D'Amelio. In the outskirt and in the countryside there are several traditional ancient country houses called masseria, like Masseria Capitignano. Old Town [ edit ] Via Cava in Old Town. The painted red arched door of the old, multi-storied palazzo is an example of the street art that since 2013 became a feature of Old Town The Old Town or Città Vecchia is where the Greeks built their acropolis. Today it retains the same street layout of 967, when the Byzantines under Nicephorus Phocas rebuilt what the Saracen troops led by the Slavic Sabir had razed to the ground in 927 AD.[23] There are four main arteries (Corso Vittorio II, Via Duomo, Via di Mezzo and Via Garibaldi) which run in a straight direction however the side streets were purposely built narrow and winding to impede the passage of an invading army.[24] Now it includes also the City Hall and the old Clock Tower. Incorporating the Aragon Castle, Doric Columns and Piazza Fontana, it is situated and entirely enclosed on the artificial island between the Big and Little Seas and is reached from the New Town by crossing the Ponte Girevole (swing bridge) from the south and the Ponte di Porta Napoli from the north. Almost rectangular in shape, it is divided into four ''pittaggi'' ( quarters) that are delineated by the cross formed between Via di Mezzo and postiliera Via Nuova. These are "Baglio" and "San Pietro" in the upper section which face the Big Sea; and "Turipenne" and "Ponte" in the lower part fronting the Little Sea.[23] The nobility, clergy and military personnel made their homes in Baglio and San Pietro, whilst the artisans and fishermen dwelled in Ponte and Turipenne. An Armenian community was present in the 10th and 11th centuries having arrived in Taranto as troops in the Byzantine Army. The San't Andrea degli Armeni church in Piazza Monteoliveto, located in the Baglio quarter, stands as testimony to the neighbourhood where the Armenians made their homes.[25] In 1746 the entire population of Taranto resided in Old Town. This resulted in the necessity of building additional stories on the narrow houses.[26] It is still inhabited with a number of people living in juxtaposition to the old palazzi. By 2013 the population of the Old Town was just 1000[23] at a time when the wider city had more than 200,000 inhabitants. Old derelict buildings in Via di Mezzo which forms the cross that divides the four pittagi There are a number of 17th and 18th-century palazzi in Old Town. For years, they served as the main residence of local aristocratic families and the clergy. These include Palazzo Calò, Palazzo Carducci-Artenisio (1650), Palazzo Galeota (1728), Palazzo Gallo (17th century), Palazzo Latagliata, Palazzo Lo Jucco (1793), Palazzo D'Aquino, Palazzo Delli Ponti, Palazzo Gennarini, Palazzo d'Ayala, Palazzo Visconti, Palazzo Galizia, Palazzo Ciura and Palazzo Pantaleo. The 17th century de Beaumont-Bonelli-Bellacicco palace houses the Spartan Museum of Taranto - Hypogeum Bellacicco which extends below street and sea level to the hypogeum that is a crossroads with other hypogeum of Old Town which together form the system of subterranean Taranto.[21] Churches include the San Cataldo Cathedral (10th century) in Piazza Duomo, San Domenico Maggiore (1302), Sant'Andrea degli Armeni (16th century), Sant'Agostino (1402), San Michele (1763), Sant'Anna, the Madonna della Salute sanctuary (1752), and San Giuseppe (16th century).[21] Close to the San Agostino church, located near Pendio La Riccia, the buried remains of an ancient Greek temple were discovered. Beginning in 1934 Benito Mussolini embarked on a project of rejuvenation that involved the demolition of the working class Turipenne pittaggio along the Via Garibaldi and ''Discesa Vasto'' which contained the homes of local fishermen as well as the old Jewish quarter. The demolitions, which also razed the old medieval wall and three churches out of the four within the area, continued until the outbreak of World War II. Modern edifices and apartment blocks were erected to replace the demolished structures.[27] In addition to the many palazzi, Old Town has myriad arched alleyways, saliti, vicoli and small streets, some of which are closed to traffic. Between 2013 and 2014 two Neapolitan urban artists Cyop and Kaf embarked on a project to decorate derelict buildings, walls and doors in the piazzi and vicoli with 120 representations of street art. It has since become a striking feature of Old Town which is described as the abandoned district of Taranto.[28] Education [ edit ] Among the various school are: Liceo Scientifico Battaglini, Liceo Archita (the most ancient),[citation needed] Liceo Quinto Ennio (in Literature), Liceo Aristosseno (Languages), Galileo Ferraris, ITCS Pitagora da Taranto, Vittorino da Feltre, Cabrini, ITIS Righi and ITIS Pacinotti (in IT) and ITC V. Bachelet (in Commercial and Accounting – famous for the activities at BIT MILANO).[citation needed] Demographics [ edit ] Census populations Dialect [ edit ] The city is the centre of the Tarantino dialect (dialètte tarandíne) of the Neapolitan language. As a result of the city's history, it is influenced by Greek, Vulgar Latin, French and many others. Sports [ edit ] Cuisine [ edit ] Taranto's cuisine is characterised by using local products, especially vegetables and fish like artichokes, eggplants, tomatoes, olives, onions, shrimps, octopus, sardines, squid and, above all, mussels. A very important role is also played by the olive oil and bread produced in the city and in all the villages of its province. Some PDO, PGI and PAT are made in the countryside of Taranto and in the villages around the city: among them we can find some extra-virgin olive oil like Terre Tarentine PDO and Terra d'Otranto PDO, fruits like Uva di Puglia PGI and Clementine del Golfo di Taranto PGI, vegetables like the Barattiere PAT, Pomodorino di Manduria PAT, types of cheese like Burrata di Andria PGI and Ricotta Forte PAT, a type of bread called Pane di Laterza PAT and the Capocollo di Martina Franca PAT, a type of capocollo. Mussels of Taranto [ edit ] Tarantinian mussels cooked in a pan A very important ingredient of the cuisine of Taranto is mussels.
case. Really, what we wanted to use was all those various worlds, to add to our storytelling, have places to go to in different types of adventures — to visit rather than just to basically set up where every book has its own world and own direction. I don't think that would make the strongest line, diversifying that fast, because it feels like all those things are competing with each other to get attention. What we want to do is create the sensibilities we had leading into the Crisis on Infinite Earths — the multiple worlds and opportunities that could be weaved into one big story, or tapped into to help support and move ideas forward. Check back tomorrow as we find out more about how the eight new mini-series fit into this new DC continuity, how Grant Morrison's new graphic novel series fits in, and how DC chose its current approach to its next Batman Eternal weekly.President Donald Trump drew his poorest marks yet for his handling of the economy. \| Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images Trump approval rating dips to new low in Fox News poll President Donald Trump's approval rating reached the lowest mark it has been in any Fox News poll, 38 percent. In Fox News' latest poll released Wednesday, the percentage of voters who approve of the president dropped 4 percentage points from September and a full 10 points since the poll's first post-inaugural results in February, while the number of those who disapprove — 57 percent — rose to a new high under his administration. The findings highlight a continued erosion of national support for the president, who received low mark across several major policy areas. Story Continued Below Approval for President Trump remained high, however, among Republican voters, who overwhelmingly favored his performance at 83 percent. His support among independents dropped to 30 percent while 9 in 10 Democrats registered their discontent with the president's performance. Trump also drew his poorest marks yet for his handling of the economy, with 44 percent approving, and on key foreign policy matters, including his direction on Iran and North Korea, with just over 1 in 3 approving of each. The economy, which had been Trump's relative strong suit in prior polls, saw a 5 percent drop in approval from September. POLITICO Pulse newsletter Get the latest on the health care fight, every weekday morning — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. Trump garnered disapproval from a majority of voters on his handling of taxes for the first time, a finding that comes as the White House and congressional lawmakers continue to make a major legislative push to get the tax code overhauled by the end of the calendar year. The commander in chief continued to draw low marks for honesty, trustworthiness and knowledge. A majority of voters in a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday similarly found the president earning poor ratings on his personal attributes, with most finding him to be dishonest and not compassionate. The president, who participated in a briefing on the federal response to recent natural disasters, received more mixed marks for his handling on the numerous hurricanes that have rocked the southern U.S. and the Caribbean. While voters were largely split on his handling of the hurricanes in Texas and Florida, 64 percent felt the Trump administration's handling of the hurricanes that have ravaged Puerto Rico was "only fair" or "poor." The Fox News poll was conducted by telephone and live interview from Oct. 22 to 24. It sampled 1,005 registered voters and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.Since the release of Seattle’s Housing Affordability and Livability (HALA) plan in July 2015, city policymakers have been plugging away at defining its most ambitious policy, a type of inclusionary zoning called “Mandatory Housing Affordability” (MHA). MHA couples zoning changes that allow larger buildings—“upzones”—with mandates on developers to provide affordable homes or pay into the city’s affordable housing fund. With MHA, Seattle has an opportunity to become a model for Cascadia and beyond for embracing growth and supporting affordability in concert. But as I have written previously (here and here), the success of MHA hinges on striking the right balance between upzones and mandates. If they balance, MHA will propel progress toward a more economically integrated and inclusive Seattle—the kind of city where people from all income levels find housing options where there are great schools and close job opportunities. If they do not, Seattle will get the opposite: less housing overall and less lower-cost housing, too. The housing shortage will worsen, competition will stiffen for what’s available, and prices will escalate, displacing more low-income residents. As more cities consider inclusionary zoning, they too will face the risk of its potential backfire. The theory of MHA is exactly right, but its implementation was always going to be the hard part. The theory of MHA is exactly right, but its implementation was always going to be the hard part. It’s a technically difficult policy to operationalize, because not only is real-estate development a complicated process in itself, but the MHA program parameters must also be custom tailored for a vast range of building types and zones throughout the city. Defining MHA affordability requirements that work well under such a huge variety of conditions is a monumental urban planning challenge. Last month Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development released the last in a series of reports that lay out its proposals for MHA. This article first provides a brief overview of the program followed by a theoretical discussion of value exchange—that is, what builders trade for investing in subsidized, below-market-rate housing. It then evaluates the city’s proposed MHA upzones and mandates, identifies problems, and recommends fixes. Fixing some first draft errors can ensure the city delivers on its housing affordability promises. The main findings are that (1) the MHA program as proposed would create serious inconsistencies in the balance between the value created by the upzones and the cost of the affordability mandates, and (2) in many cases that balance is tilted toward mandates that are too onerous relative to the value of the upzones. The resultant added costs imposed on homebuilding will suppress development, jeopardizing the program’s goal of 6,000 new affordable homes. To avoid that failed outcome and get the MHA program back in balance, additional real estate development feasibility analysis is the critical missing ingredient. An overview: What the planners have been cooking up and where it’s headed Although Seattle’s MHA program applies to both residential and commercial development, this article addresses only the residential side, wherein lies the greatest risk of unintended, counterproductive consequences for affordability in Seattle neighborhoods. The city projects that residential MHA will produce 4,080 affordable homes over 10 years. To hit that number, planners have proposed a stretching set of MHA upzones and associated affordability mandates throughout the city. The scale of the upzones varies, but most are relatively modest (for example, maximum height raised from six to seven stories). Each upzone is assigned a performance requirement and payment requirement, and developers can choose one or the other. Under the performance option, building developers must rent or sell a specified percentage of a building’s housing units at prices affordable to households earning 60 percent of area median income (AMI), currently $54,180 for a family of four. Under the payment option, builders pay a per-square-foot fee based on the total floor area of residential use in the building, and the city uses that money to fund separate affordable housing projects. The city sets the payment amounts roughly equal to the monetary loss builders would incur if they had chosen the performance option. (Details on the calculation are here, and projections on performance versus payment are here.) The draft MHA applies to all property within the city’s urban villages and centers and to all property zoned for multi-family elsewhere in the city (excluding designated historic districts), as illustrated in the map below. Nearly all single-family and industrial zones are excluded from the program. The areas subject to MHA get assigned upzones and corresponding performance and payment amounts. The specifics of each upzone depend on the existing zoning and other city planning priorities. Maps detailing the proposed MHA upzones in each of 21 different neighborhoods are here and here. The first neighborhood likely to see MHA implemented will be the University District, where a rezone process began way back in 2011. Approval by Seattle City Council could come as early as mid-February 2017. Getting the MHA numbers right in the University District rezone would set a precedent for other parts of the city. The city plans to implement MHA next in downtown and South Lake Union (SLU) in April – May 2017. For the remainder of the city, the Office of Planning and Community Development is currently preparing an Environmental Impact Statement and expects to complete it in May 2017. The city is also conducting an extensive outreach process to educate residents and get feedback on the 21 proposed neighborhood upzones noted above. The mayor hopes to have MHA implementation completed as early as late summer 2017. The core principle of MHA is equal value exchange As proposed in Seattle’s HALA recommendation R.1, MHA is grounded in the concept of an equal exchange of value: upzones would allow developers to make more money, but they would dedicate most of that money to housing low-income families: Amount of affordable housing required (and in-lieu fees) is based on value of upzones, and varies by market and construction type. Implementing this principle consistently across Seattle’s dozens of different zones and dozens of different building types is essential. First, an inconsistent value exchange will have capricious effects on housing development. Without consistency, in one zone MHA might cause, say, a five to ten percent net increase in the total cost of building—enough to kill feasibility. Meanwhile, the owner of a property around the corner in a different zone with balanced MHA requirements might see no net increase in development costs at all. An imbalance in the opposite direction could leave affordable units “on the table,” that is, construction would have remained feasible under higher requirements. More importantly, the biggest risk to the success of MHA is if inconsistency leads to affordability mandates so onerous that homebuilding diminishes. In this lose-lose outcome, the city not only gets fewer new rent-restricted homes, but also ends up with a lot less market-rate housing. And when market-rate homes don’t materialize in a high-demand city such as Seattle, competition for what housing remains intensifies through a cruel game of musical chairs in which the poorest families always lose. The loss of market-rate housing eliminates affordable housing through the process of economic displacement—by far the most common cause of displacement in Seattle, when rising rents force tenants to move. To put things in perspective, the production goal for the residential portion of MHA averages about 400 rent-restricted units per year. Just two 200-unit apartment buildings rendered infeasible by MHA per year would effectively negate most of the subsidized units produced by the program. And suppressing construction of two 200-unit buildings per year could easily result from poorly balanced MHA rates in a city where thousands of apartments are built per year. When that housing doesn’t get built, the would-be tenants will instead bid up the prices of existing city apartments, setting in motion the musical chairs dynamic all the way down the market, where the people with the least are most likely to get pushed out. In the end, close to 400 low-income families and individuals could have no options but cheaper homes outside of the city or to double up with friends. The very solution intended to help these families winds up driving them away from their community, schools, and jobs. Just two 200-unit apartment buildings rendered infeasible by MHA per year would effectively negate the benefits of all of the subsidized units produced by the program. On the other hand, if the mandate/upzone tradeoff errs on the side of incentives rather than disincentives for homebuilding, the only downside is that the number of rent-restricted units per building would be slightly lower. But because under these conditions MHA would improve feasibility, the city would expect to see an uptick in homebuilding projects, each of which would deliver rent-restricted homes. So in fact, a lower mandate could actually lead to more subsidized, lower-cost housing, not to mention the indirect affordability benefits of supplying more market-rate housing—and that means getting closer to the important city goal of plenty of homes of all kinds for more people of all walks of life. Given the complexities of zoning and real estate development, it is unrealistic to expect MHA to provide a perfectly equal value exchange in all cases. But given the lose-lose unintended consequences of excessive affordability requirements, the architects of MHA would do well to err on the low side when setting the mandates: aim high with the upzones, aim low with the requirements! Lastly, if the costs imposed by MHA are greater than the upzone’s value, and especially if the value exchange varies widely, the program may be more vulnerable to a legal challenge. Washington state law bans affordability mandates outright unless they are balanced through value exchanges. Equal value exchange starts with a proportional relationship between affordability requirements and the increase in building size The value of an upzone is determined by the extra rent or sales income derived from the additional market-rate homes permitted by the upzone. At the most basic level, equal value exchange necessitates a proportional relationship between the number of subsidized housing units mandated (or the in-lieu fee) and the number of market-rate units gained. For example, a simple formula for maintaining that balance is a stipulation that for every three additional apartments allowed by an upzone, one unit must be reserved as affordable for families at 60 percent of AMI. An upzone that allows just three extra units yields one rent-restricted apartment. An upzone that yields 300 extra units produces 100 rent-restricted apartments. In contrast, Seattle defines the MHA performance and payment amounts in relation to the entire building, not to the size of the upzone. This approach makes Seattle’s MHA math more complicated than it needs to be, though it’s still just math. The value exchange can still be balanced and consistent as long as the whole-building requirements are derived from the extra capacity granted by the upzone. For example, consider a 6-story apartment building with 12 units per floor, subjected to an MHA upzone that allows one additional floor and mandates that one-third of the extra units be subsidized. The resulting enlarged building would provide four rent-restricted units out of 84 total, or about 5 percent. Boost the upzone to two floors, and the building would have to provide eight rent-restricted units out of 96 total, or about 8 percent. The value exchange can be kept consistent by adjusting the whole-building requirement as the size of the upzone varies. The increase in building size is governed by multiple factors The simplest metric for gauging development capacity is “floor-area-ratio” (FAR), which expresses the total floor space of a building relative to the area of the property it’s built on. For example, a one-story building that completely covers its property has an FAR of one: for every square foot of property, there is one square foot of floor. A four-story building that covers half its property has an FAR of two. An upzone from four to five full stories corresponds to a 25 percent increase in allowed FAR. In Seattle, most multi-family zones are regulated through FAR, though some are not (many zones in downtown, for example). Cities can also control building capacity with regulations such as height limits, density maximums, setbacks from property lines, and open space and parking requirements. In some cases, variation in the cost of different construction types may also act as a restraint on development capacity. For example, if building codes mandate expensive concrete or steel construction for buildings exceeding a given height, it may be cost-prohibitive for developers to use all of the height allowed by zoning (more on this later). In other cases, market demand for certain unit sizes or inherent dimensional constraints on unit layouts may limit the usability of capacity granted on paper. Depending on the specifics of a zone, in addition to FAR, any or all of the above factors may play a role in determining the value developers can derive from an MHA upzone. Value exchange is also determined by rents, but rents don’t sit still The value of an upzone also depends on the market rent (or price) of housing. All else being equal, the higher the rent, the more valuable every extra increment of building capacity that zoning allows, and the higher the affordability mandate can be without jeopardizing feasibility. But here’s the challenge: market rents vary continuously over both location and time. Like a stopped clock that tells the correct time twice a day, MHA mandates are static and cannot track changing rents. That’s an inherent drawback—there is simply no way that an MHA system can be defined to accurately and consistently account for the endlessly churning variability of real estate economics. To help compensate for the effect of varying rents on value exchange, Seattle planners have proposed three location-based tiers of “market strength” that reflect typical rents in different parts of the city, as shown in the map below. The proposed performance amounts increase along with market strength: 5, 6, and 7 percent for the low, medium, and high tiers, respectively. Places with higher rents get higher requirements. For example, new housing in Capitol Hill must provide 7 percent affordable units; in Ballard, 6 percent; in Rainier Beach, 5 percent. The proposed market-strength areas are well aligned with the general variation in typical rents across Seattle. But the geographical delineation of the market areas has such a low level of granularity, the inevitable result will be requirements that hit or miss equal value exchange depending on the exact location and unique features of individual development projects. This moving target highlights the importance of erring on the low side with affordability requirements to avoid the lose-lose result of suppressed housing production when the determining factors are so fluid. Getting MHA right depends on the right kind of feasibility analysis Quantitative assessment of the MHA value exchange requires real estate development feasibility analysis. Feasibility analysis seeks to answer this fundamental question: does homebuilding pay for itself plus enough return on investment to induce builders to risk their money? In particular, evaluating the impact of Seattle’s proposed MHA program on feasibility necessitates a before-and-after comparison. “Before” means the status quo existing zoning conditions, and “after” means subject to the new rules of MHA, including the upzone and the affordability mandate. This two-part, “all else being equal” feasibility analysis can answer the question that matters most: compared to doing nothing, would the implementation of MHA compromise feasibility and result in fewer new homes produced? Seattle’s planners hired a consultant to conduct a feasibility study on MHA and published the final report last month. For the purposes of assessing value exchange, though, the city’s study has a critical shortcoming: the analysts did not assess feasibility under the “before” conditions, and therefore the study provides no information on how MHA would change development feasibility. Instead, in brief, the study did a static analysis. It imagines a scenario in which MHA upzones and mandates are already in place. It assumes an array of things about rents, construction costs, interest rates, and the like. And it calculates, based on these assumptions, that housing development under MHA would mostly be feasible in high-market areas, mostly infeasible in low-market areas, and a mixed bag in medium-market areas. So even ignoring the lack of before-and-after comparison, the report still signals big problems with the current draft of MHA because it imposes a larger encumbrance on housing construction feasibility in lower-rent areas of the city. But a static analysis is largely irrelevant. It doesn’t test the principle of value exchange, which is the foundation of a successful MHA program. And without an understanding of how implementing MHA would or wouldn’t impact development feasibility, any projections of home production are just guesswork. How does the MHA proposal measure up on value exchange? The city has proposed two separate systems of MHA affordability requirements: one for downtown and the South Lake Union (SLU) neighborhood and one for everywhere else in the city. This article addresses only the “everywhere else” system. (An initial look indicates that the proposed MHA requirements for downtown/SLU are partially based on a proportional relationship to the added capacity granted by the upzone but that there are also inconsistencies.) Outside downtown and SLU, MHA is projected to produce 3,080 rent-restricted homes over ten years. The proposed performance and payment amounts for outside of downtown/SLU are shown in the matrix below, and they apply uniformly to all proposed upzones. On the horizontal axis of the matrix, the requirements vary according to three geographically based market-strength areas, as described and mapped above. On the vertical axis of the matrix, the requirements vary in very rough proportion to the scale of the upzone, as designated by an “M” suffix (definitions here). For example, a zone that currently allows four-story buildings upzoned to five stories is classified as “M”; if upzoned to seven stories, it’s “M1”; and if upzoned to high-rise, it’s “M2” (more on this later). Within each “M suffix” tier, the affordability requirements apply uniformly to a wide variety of upzones. It follows that planners must be assuming that the value created by each upzone is fairly consistent. But is it? As a first measure, the table below shows FAR and height increases for proposed MHA upzones with the “standard M suffix.” The FAR boosts for these upzones range greatly, from just 4 percent to as much as 41 percent. In other words, based on raw FAR alone, the value exchange is severely inconsistent. And how close to equal are these value exchanges? As noted above, the city has not conducted the kind of before/after feasibility study necessary to answer that question with any precision. The original HALA report describes the typical MHA upzone as adding one floor to apartments with four to six stories. Assuming a full added floor, that translates to FAR boosts ranging from about 17 to 25 percent. Based on analysis conducted by HALA committee members, upzones in this range are likely to create a value exchange that is reasonably balanced with the proposed affordability mandates shown in the table above. Likewise, in a previous article, I presented a simple before-and-after feasibility analysis for a hypothetical MHA upzone that granted an increase in FAR of 20 percent, and it indicated that the value exchange would be roughly equal. As a preliminary rule of thumb for equal value exchange under the proposed MHA affordability requirements, in general, a FAR increase of 20 percent is a reasonable target. As shown in the table below, many of the proposed MHA upzones provide lower FAR boosts, and therefore risk rendering some homebuilding projects less feasible. The two most powerful levers for restoring balance are the FAR boost and the affordability requirements: either raise the former or lower the latter, or both. But in addition, as discussed above, factors other than FAR may also influence the value of an upzone. In the following sections, I’ll take a closer look at some of these unique conditions and their implications on value exchange. The “NC” upzones generally reflect the original intent of HALA, but lean toward compromising feasibility With the exception of NC-95, the “NC” upzones shown in the FAR table above have FAR boosts from 15 to 20 percent. Based on the 20 percent rule of thumb discussed above, these upzones are likely to be close to a balanced value exchange—though if anything they are likely erring on the high side of requirements. However, new requirements for upper-level setbacks take a bite out of the value of both the NC-55 and NC-75 upzones. Such rules insist that upper stories of a building have a smaller floor plate than lower stories, to make them less visible from the street. The problem is that the irregularities in building form introduced by setbacks increase construction costs, negating some of the added value. The NC-75 upzone suffers from an additional hit on upzone value because the extra floor is built in the base of the building out of concrete, which is more expensive than the wood used in the upper floors. The FAR boosts for the NC-55 and NC-75 upzones are already on the low end of the rule-of-thumb target, and these additional value-reducing factors heighten the risk that the value exchange will tilt too far against feasibility. In both cases the risk could be mitigated by removing the setback requirement and raising the FAR to allow the addition of a full floor. Upzones from 85 to 95 feet will suppress development The NC-85 to NC-95 upzone stands out with a paltry 4 percent FAR increase. What’s more, a jump from 85 to 95 feet is probably worthless anyway, from a builder’s perspective. Raising a building’s height from 85 to 95 feet requires a change of construction type from wood (relatively cheap) to concrete or steel (expensive) and also crosses the high-rise height threshold, triggering costly building code requirements. These structural and building code barriers explain why vanishingly few new apartments are nine to eleven stories tall. Either you frame in wood and stop at eight, or you switch to concrete and steel and build much taller—typically at least twelve—to recoup the cost. Given that developers will rarely, if ever, use the additional 10 feet of height, what matters is how much value the upzone grants without that height bump. The worst-case before-and-after MHA scenario is mixed-use apartment buildings of similar construction type that both maximize FAR, yielding only that miniscule capacity increase of 4 percent, and a corresponding diminutive increase in value (this is the case analyzed in the city’s feasibility study). Here again, though, the raw FAR boost doesn’t tell the whole story because this particular zone reserves 1.5 FAR for non-residential use only, and typical mixed-use apartment buildings don’t include enough retail or office space to take advantage of that FAR. The likely best-case scenario for value creation is a 70-foot-tall “5-over-2” building at FAR 5 before MHA, compared to an 85-foot tall “5-over-3” building at FAR of 5.5 after MHA. That’s an FAR boost of only 10 percent. But the third floor of concrete and the required more expensive fire-retardant wood negates some of the 5-over-3 building’s added value. (See notes at the end of the article for details on these building types.) In sum, MHA upzones that raise heights from 85 to 95 feet will likely function as downzones. No one will build to nine stories because of the extra construction cost. Eight-story buildings will bear the brunt of the MHA costs because the upzone provides relatively little value. Consequently, fewer eight-story buildings will be erected than if MHA had never been introduced. The city could fix this flaw by reverting to the upzone proposed in the original HALA report: 85-foot zones would increase to 125 feet, thereby creating value sufficient to cover the affordability requirements. Removing the unusually high FAR requirement for non-residential use would also help. Low-rise upzones have relatively low capacity increases and are further compromised by unique constraints The FAR boosts for LR1, LR2, and LR3 upzones are 8, 15, and 10 percent, respectively. So right off the bat, two of the zones are well below the 20 percent rule-of-thumb FAR boost, while the third is at best getting close. On top of that, the value of upzones is compromised by unique aspects of townhouse or rowhouse projects. First, developers can’t derive much extra value from an upzone unless it allows the addition of a full extra unit. At the same time, homebuyer preferences limit the range of marketable unit sizes. Extra capacity applied only to enlarging units typically reduces the per-square-foot value of the building, eroding the value of the upzone. Also, larger units will have a higher price tag when sold. The city’s townhouse prototypes for the LR2 zone described here (page 30) illustrate the diminishing returns of enlarged unit size. The MHA upzone yields the same number of units, but the prototypes’ average size rises from 1,500 to 1,750 square feet. Even worse, the units get a fourth floor, which undermines marketability because it’s not desirable to walk up and down four stories in a home. It also bumps the project out of the residential code and into the more expensive building code intended for commercial structures. Required setbacks on the fourth floor would also tend to increase construction costs. Second, density is typically limited by restrictions other than FAR, such as setback, open space, and parking requirements. Without relaxation of the various development standards that limit density, the additional FAR is unlikely to result in more homes getting built. Accordingly, the proposed LR1 upzone, for example, includes the removal of the current limit on housing unit density (one unit per 1,600 or 2,000 square feet of lot, depending on type). Similarly, the LR3 upzone removes currently required design standards for enclosed parking and alley access improvements in exchange for added FAR. Finding this article interesting? Donate now to support our independent research! Other potential design standard fixes that the city could consider include reduced setbacks, longer maximum facade lengths, and FAR exemptions for partially underground portions of the structure. In any case, even with relaxed design standards that add value by enabling better use of the additional FAR, the value of the LR1 and LR3 upzones is still ultimately limited by their relatively small 8 and 10 percent FAR boosts. All told, the net effect of the draft MHA values would likely be to suppress housing construction in low-rise zones, yielding little in-lieu fee revenue for subsidized housing projects and further tightening the supply of “missing middle” housing in Seattle—that is, cheaper options like duplexes, triplexes, rowhouses, and small apartment buildings, and in particular family-friendly homes affordable to first-time buyers. Again, the solution is to either lower the mandates or raise the value of the upzones. And to compensate for the quirks of low-rise, planners should consider erring even more on the side of lower mandates. Complicated intermeshing with existing regulations creates outliers The MR and SM-U-85 upzones are outliers on either end of the FAR spectrum shown in the table above. The 41 percent FAR boost for the MR upzone is so high because the MHA upzone is incorporating the FAR bonus currently available through the city’s Incentive Zoning Program. Several other proposed upzones absorb capacity from Incentive Zoning in the same way, including High-rise (HR) zones in the North Rainier and Dravus Urban Villages, and many zones in downtown and SLU. Meanwhile, the proposed upzone in the University District from NC-65 to SM-U-85 is complicated by the additional FAR granted through the city’s Station Area Overlay. The overlay already raises the allowed FAR to 5.75 in the existing NC-65 zone, even though typical buildings in that zone can’t use that much FAR anyway. So in practice, the proposed upzone’s FAR of 6.0 represents a boost bigger than the 4 percent shown in the table above, since the two added floors can actually consume the extra FAR. But on the downside, building to 85 feet requires a more expensive construction type that knocks down the value of the upzone. These two cases, along with the NC-95 and low-rise upzones described in the previous sections, illustrate how the city’s proposal to set uniform affordability requirements on the whole building for a variety of different upzones is an ill-suited method for consistently creating equal value exchange. As suggested above, planners could minimize the inconsistency by instead setting requirements specific to each upzone, based on the specific upzone’s estimated value. The value exchange for larger upzones is inconsistent As noted above, the draft MHA loosely reflects the scale of upzones by assigning higher mandates for cases in which an upzone increases the allowed building size by more than one standard zoning change increment, as designated by M, M1, and M2 suffixes. This refinement helps balance the affordability mandate with the extra value of these larger upzones, but it still falls far short of delivering a consistent value exchange because here again, the FAR increases vary enormously. The table below illustrates the inconsistency among larger-scale upzones classified as “M1.” The increase in FAR is all over the map for different upzones, but the performance and payment amounts are the same for all of them, regardless. For example, the upzone from 65 to 320 feet is far more valuable than the upzone from 65 to 95 feet, yet both bring the same affordability requirements. To avoid the inevitable inconsistency caused by three categories (M, M1, and M2), here again, the solution is individual calculation of performance and payment amounts for each upzone. For example, applying the rule-of-thumb baseline standard I proposed above (5 percent inclusion for a 20 percent FAR boost) the mandate would be 18 percent inclusion for the upzone from 65 to 320 feet and 7 percent for the upzone from 65 to 95 feet. That is not to say those should be the final numbers, though, because, as discussed above, FAR is not the only determinant of value. But such customization would also allow adjusting the mandates down to reflect unique conditions that reduce the value of the upzone. The leap in construction costs above the high-rise threshold of 85 feet is one such condition. Another threshold above 240 feet triggers requirements for time-consuming and costly structural peer review, reducing the net value of upzones that cross that height, such as the one from 65 to 320 feet—and this particular upzone crosses both thresholds, such that a hefty reduction in mandate would likely be appropriate. Upzones to high-rise may warrant reduced mandates to support other city goals As shown in the table above, upzones to high-rise (SM-U-240 and SM-U-320) grant relatively large FAR boosts, and, based solely on the principle of equal value exchange, would justify relatively high affordability mandates. However, in the case of high-rise, other city planning goals may warrant departing from an equal exchange by scaling back the mandates. Built of concrete or steel, high-rises are typically about 20 percent more expensive to construct than mid-rise buildings (less than 85 feet tall) that can be framed in wood. For that reason, high-rise construction is typically only feasible in areas that command high rents, such as downtown and SLU, but usually not in medium market-strength areas such as the University District or Northgate. However, in both of those medium-market centers, the city hopes to focus high-density housing growth to meet Comprehensive Plan targets and to leverage the region’s investment in light rail. High-rise housing development is key to achieving those goals. In a medium market-strength area, a straight upzone without MHA might be enough to make high-rise feasible. Compared to that baseline, the larger the financial encumbrance imposed by MHA, the less likely a high-rise building will pencil out. This increases the risk not only of stymied projects outright, but also of under-building: in areas where rents aren’t high enough to support high-rise, developers may opt to construct lower-cost, non-high-rise buildings even though zoning would have allowed them to go taller. The result is permanently underutilized land that could have provided more housing—both market-rate and affordable—if not overly encumbered by MHA requirements. A second reason that may warrant scaled-back requirements on high-rise derives from an inherent quirk in the whole MHA scheme: properties that got upzoned before MHA will invariably have lower affordability requirements than properties subject to the exact same upzones implemented under MHA. That’s because the city cannot impose new affordability requirements against the value of upzones that happened in the past. This built-in inequity of MHA will tend to precipitate lower fees in zones that already allow the largest buildings in the city—downtown and SLU in Seattle, for example. And that imbalance would shift production away from the areas upzoned to high-rise under MHA to areas that already allowed high-rise. As they work toward finalizing the MHA requirements, planners could conduct further analysis to determine if competing city priorities could be better met with pared-back affordability requirements on upzones that allow high-rise construction where it is desired but has not occurred historically. Fortunately, as discussed above, erring on the side of lower affordability mandates is the lower-risk path for MHA. Raising affordability requirements will increase, not decrease, displacement In a recent update to the original MHA proposal, policymakers raised the performance and payment amounts in certain parts of Seattle in response to community concerns about displacement. These changes were focused on areas the city previously identified as having high risk of displacement, including the Central Area, North Beacon Hill, North Rainier, Columbia City, Northgate, Crown Hill, and Chinatown/International District (the areas are highlighted with crosshatching on the map above). Community concerns are genuine and important. Displacement is a serious problem in Seattle, and city leaders should explore all possible avenues for minimizing it and for mitigating it. Unfortunately, setting higher MHA requirements will not help achieve these objectives and in fact is likely to have the opposite effect. Raising the mandates shifts the value exchange against development feasibility, and the result will be fewer new homes—both subsidized and market-rate—built in the targeted areas. But contrary to popular belief, the best available evidence shows that the construction of market-rate housing reduces displacement. In fact, the city’s own study of the University District showed that the proposed upzones would accelerate housing development yet would result in less displacement than if the zoning was left unchanged. The goal of reducing displacement would be best accomplished by rescinding these elevated MHA requirements and implementing a suite of separate, targeted anti-displacement measures in areas with high displacement risk. Seattle’s Equitable Development Implementation Plan is a great example, with successful anti-displacement projects underway. Targeted preservation of existing, privately owned, low-cost housing is another complementary strategy. Delivering on Seattle’s affordability housing promises means getting the math right Seattle policymakers have so far made good progress on developing a complicated program that must establish upzones and corresponding affordability requirements for a vast range of conditions throughout the city. However, the success of MHA under the current proposal is jeopardized by major inconsistencies in the balance between the upzones and affordability mandates, and in many cases, by what is likely an imbalance that will suppress development and undermine the program’s goals. Correcting these flaws will rely on more rigorous feasibility analysis that will vet the current MHA proposal against existing zoning to ensure that on balance the program does not create a net encumbrance on homebuilding that would worsen Seattle’s housing shortage, exacerbate displacement trends rather than curb them, and potentially negate the program’s expected housing affordability benefits. To review, here’s a rundown of the key findings and conclusions: To avoid the lose-lose outcome of suppressed homebuilding, policymakers should err on the side of lower affordability mandates and larger upzones. Overall, the proposed MHA value exchange
forces, not constitutional obedience. So, for example, when the Reagan Administration unilaterally armed the Contras, Congress stopped the program not by going to court to enforce the Constitution, but by holding public hearings, attaching riders to appropriation bills, etc. In any event, it is very unlikely that our current divisions of power would be changed dramatically and quickly if there were no constitutional obligation. We have long traditions in this country and are used to certain ways of doing things, and people have vested interests in the status quo. These forces would constrain sudden change in much the way that they do in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Israel, where the structure of government is not enforced by a constitutional document, but nonetheless is relatively stable. How would we determine which laws or government actions are appropriate or inappropriate? Would we still have judicial review? I certainly understand the argument that we don’t want a pure democracy, and there is something to be said for an elite body that is separated from day-to-day politics, pronouncing on questions of political morality. But if we look at the most important Supreme Court decisions over the last century or so—things like Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas, which established the right to gay intimacy—those are not, in any meaningful sense, tethered to the constitution. They are judgments by the justices about our traditions, about prior precedent, about their own sense of political justice. That might be a good thing, it might be a bad thing—I think that is something for the American people to decide. There is one thing that would change, and that is people would not be able to stop an argument by saying, “But that is unconstitutional.” What would judicial review be based on, without the Constitution? It would be based on our values. I take no position on judicial review in this book. What I do think is that if we are going to have judicial review, judges have an obligation to be honest with us about what they are doing. As things stand now, they are not being honest. Important decisions rendered by the Supreme Court on issues like abortion, the rights of gay men and lesbians, and affirmative action, have virtually nothing to do with the Constitution. Instead, they reflect contestable value judgments made by the justices. It’s important to emphasize that this is not something I’m proposing—this is how things are now. Maybe it’s a good idea to have an elite body, somewhat insulated from political majorities, making judgments of political morality that bind the political branches. But people need to decide on that question without being confused by the pretense that the justices are only enforcing the Constitution. One of the virtues of my proposal is that it would force the Supreme Court to be more honest about what it’s actually doing. How would our rights to, say, free speech, be protected without the Bill of Rights? Freedom of speech and the press are important rights that we ought to protect. In the long run, though, if we’re going to have freedom of speech, we’re not going to have it because people are told, “Your betters said this was something you’ve got to have.” The people who favor it have got to do the hard work of telling their fellow citizens why this is something we should cherish and why it’s important to all of us. One of the problems with constitutional obligation is if people start depending on it, they get lazy, and they stop making arguments that make sense to people today. If we don’t have to obey the Constitution, does it still have value? What should its place be? The Constitution, in the great words of its preamble, speaks of “we the people,” of forming “a more perfect union” and providing “for the common defense” and “general welfare.” Those are things that anybody could favor. To the extent that we treat the Constitution as kind of a poem that inspires us, or even as a framework that allows us to debate how we should achieve these things, I don’t have a problem with that. Poems inspire us, but they don’t command obedience, and I don’t think the Constitution should either.In an Oval Office meeting featuring leaders of conservative groups that already lining up against House Republicans’ plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, President Donald Trump revealed his plan in the event the GOP effort doesn’t succeed: Allow Obamacare to fail and let Democrats take the blame, sources at the gathering told CNN. During the hour-long meeting, sources said Trump chastised the groups — including Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks and the Tea Party Patriots — for calling the House GOP proposal “Obamacare lite,” warning the tea party activists, “you are helping the other side.” In true Trump fashion, the President jumped into salesman mode, sources at the meeting said. “This is going to be great. You’re going to make it even greater,” the President told the group. “I’m going to work hard to get it done.” The meeting between Trump and the conservative leaders also included White House senior advisers Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, Kellyanne Conway and Marc Short, as well as other top West Wing staff. Sources at the meeting said White House aides showed some openness to one aspect of the House GOP plan that has become an irritant to tea party aligned groups: the provision that pushes back an overhaul of the expansion Obamacare Medicaid funding until 2020. The conservative groups at the meeting asked that the date be moved up to January 1, 2018. White House aides said they were “open to discussing” it, sources said. Concerns were also raised about the tax credits in the House GOP plan which allow lower-income Americans to buy health insurance, financial assistance that tea party groups see as subsidies. “They counter-punched hard on that,” a source at the meeting said of the White House response. Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney, a former member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, gave an impassioned defense of the tax credits, a display that surprised attendees from the conservative groups. “He was very defensive about it,” one attendee said about Mulvaney. Confident that the health care plan will pass the House, Trump laid out his strategy for winning passage in the Senate, telling the meeting he will campaign heavily in red states featuring vulnerable Democrats up for re-election. “Trump said he will have football stadium events in states where he won by 10-12 points and he is going to dare people to vote against him,” a source at the meeting said. As for prominent Republican opponents of the health care plan, Trump sounded optimistic. On Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the President was effusive about his one-time primary rival. “I love him. He’s a friend. He’s going to end up voting for it,” the President told the group. A source at the meeting was astonished as to how White House staff could have been so blindsided by the initial conservative opposition to the GOP plan. “We telegraphed it for weeks,” one tea party official at the meeting said. A WH official at the meeting said: “It was a legit policy meeting — real discussion about specifics.” “The president expressed that he was open to things that could improve the bill, but was also clear that this is the vehicle — this is the chance to repeal and replace.”The U.N. committee in charge of monitoring arms sanctions on North Korea concludes in a report that China provided six off-road vehicles that were converted into long-range missile launchers by Pyongyang’s military. The Chinese-made transporter-erector launchers were first displayed at a military parade in Pyongyang last year as part of North Korea’s newest long-range strategic nuclear missile, the road-mobile KN-08 missile. “On the basis of the information currently available, the panel considers it most likely that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea deliberately breached the end-user guarantee that it officially provided to [China‘s] Wuhan and converted the WS51200 trucks into transporter-erector launchers,” says the annual report of a U.N. panel of analysts, dated June 11. According to the report, Chinese officials told the United Nations that the six transporter-erector launchers were sold as “lumber transporters” and were manufactured by China’s Hubei Sanjiang Space Wanshan Special Vehicle Co., and that they could not be used for transporting missiles. Other analysts say the disguised launcher transfers are typical of Chinese covert arms proliferation efforts. A U.N. analysis of the launchers reveals that the launchers’ “fronts and sides, the fenders, the exhaust systems, fuel tanks and tires of the vehicles seen on parade exactly matched those of the WS51200 series advertised by Wanshan.” An end-user document in the U.N. report purports to show that North Korea’s Forestry Ministry bought the six trucks through the Wuhan Sanjiang Import and Export Corp. in November 2010. Other documents in the report from China show that the vehicles are described as WS51200 nonhighway trucks “with the longest body and largest payload mass of all such vehicles in China.” “It was independently developed by the Ninth Academy of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp. and its recent successful delivery to the client has filled a gap in this sector in China,” the report states. The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp. is the Chinese military’s main mobile-missile producer. The document, without naming North Korea, says the vehicle was “developed by the Wanshan Company of the Ninth Academy in accordance with the client’s needs, using the WS series heavy-duty chassis technology.” Discovery of the North Korean KN-08 prompted the Pentagon to conduct a recent study that concluded the long-range missile threat to the United States has increase sharply. The Pentagon announced earlier this year that it is adding 14 new anti-missile interceptors to its missile defense system. Richard Fisher, a specialist on the Chinese military who was one of the first analysts to confirm that the North Korean missile launchers are Chinese-made, said the U.N. report is “a defeat for the United Nations and a failure of American diplomacy because China escapes an appropriate accusation of violating U.N. sanctions against selling missile technology to North Korea.” Mr. Fisher said China has been promoting the “falsehood” that the trucks were sold for use in hauling lumber. “The Sanjiang Group of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp. designed the 16-wheel truck that was sold to North Korea for the specific purpose of transporting, erecting and launching large missiles,” Mr. Fisher said. “That a North Korean nuclear missile that can reach Anchorage, Alaska, is being carried by a Chinese made TEL is not the result of some ‘violation’ of a contract, but of a deliberate Chinese policy to help North Korea become a nuclear missile state.” A State Department spokesman had no immediate comment. RUSSIAN SUPERWEAPON? Moscow’s response to President Obama’s call for a new one-third reduction in deployed strategic nuclear warheads was met with a chilly response, according to recent statements by Russian officials. Additionally, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin, the key arms control official, announced Sunday that Russia is developing a new strategic “superweapon” to deal with its U.S. adversary. “Today, we are experiencing a revolution in military science,” Mr. Rogozin told Russian television. “This revolution is connected with the rapid development of highly accurate means of destruction. These are cruise missiles and high-speed rocket weapons. In the future, there will be hypersonic weapons.” According to the Russian official, military reaction times are much shorter than in the past, and the United States “adversary” has shown its capabilities against foreign militaries with precision strike weapons. “Russia is analyzing the situation,” he said. “We are creating a weapon that could be called a superweapon. This is a weapon that will allow us to see the enemy sooner than he will see us and to inflict a blow on him, in retaliatory measures, that will be irreversible for him.” He did not elaborate. Moscow’s new high-technology arms program includes “fundamentally, new type” weapons, Mr. Rogozin said. “We are moving to robotics we are moving to principles of fighting when one serviceman can fight for five people by using robotics and automated hardware.” Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 20 also disclosed that Russia, following the Chinese military, is building state-of-the-art space weapons that would “guarantee [for] Russia the fulfillment of space defense tasks for the period until 2020.” “It includes systems of missile and air attack warning, means of target detection and destruction,” Mr. Putin said. “Creating such a system needs detailed designing, effective construction and a careful analysis of threats and development plans for means of attack. And, of course, efficient coordination with other arms and services of the armed forces.” By contrast, the Pentagon’s new guidance on nuclear weapons issued last week appears to ignore the growing Russian strategic nuclear threat. The guidance states that although Russia is modernizing its nuclear forces, “Russia and the United States are no longer adversaries.” NSA CHIEF ON CHINA Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, recently stepped up his public appearances in response to the defection of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. And one new aspect of Gen. Alexander’s public remarks is that for the first time he has named China as one of the most aggressive threats to U.S. secrets and other information through cyber attacks. “I think our nation has been significantly impacted with intellectual property, the theft of intellectual property by China and others,” Gen. Alexander said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “That is the most significant transfer of wealth in history. And it goes right back to your initial question: Who is taking our information? It’s one of the things I believe the American people would expect me to know. That’s where my mission is. Who’s doing this to us and why?” Testifying June 18 before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the four-star general was asked how he would describe Chinese cyberespionage and cybermilitary capabilities aimed at conducting disruptive attacks against the United States. “Very carefully,” he said, noting extensive public reports of Chinese cyberattacks. Recent discussions between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Chinese cyberattacks is a good beginning, he said. “I think we’ve got to solve this issue with China and then look at ways to move forward,” Gen. Alexander said. Among the issues to be resolved are what are the right standards for cyber activities, he said. Gen. Alexander provided one-word answers about Chinese cyberattacks under questioning by Rep. Mike Rogers, Michigan Republican and committee chairman: “Would you say that China engages in cybereconomic espionage against intellectual property, to steal intellectual property in the United States?” “Yes,” Gen. Alexander said. “Would you argue that they engage in cyberactivities to steal both military and intelligence secrets of the United States?” “Yes.” It was the first time the director, who is also commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, directly accused China of engaging in cyber espionage and cyber attacks. Earlier, Gen. Alexander had been reluctant to identify China as the major cyber threat. Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.By 10 a.m., the Richmond commercial kitchen that serves as a base for Mattersons Jamaican Cuisine is inundated with the aromas of chiles, thyme, allspice and grill smoke. Obrian Matterson, a slim 38-year-old whose vowels broaden and constrict depending on whether he’s talking to fellow Jamaicans or reporters, has already grilled off 180 legs of jerk chicken. As he packs food into aluminum containers, his staff hustle around him, slicing plantains to deep-fry and pouring jerk sauce into containers. Half of the food will be carted onto Matterson’s food truck, Scotch Bonnet, destined for San Francisco’s Financial District. The other half is being driven to tech companies in the South Bay. In San Francisco, the common wisdom has been that tech companies are bad for nearby restaurants because so many build luxe cafeterias to keep employees near their desks. And yet the culture of free food has allowed hundreds of small food operations like Matterson’s to thrive by providing lunches to the tech industry. It is not an underground economy, but a quiet one, invisible to the public and sometimes the workers they feed Also growing is the number of brokers who connect cooks to offices — and take a cut of the profits. Most are based in the Bay Area and have attracted significant sums from venture capitalists: more than $20 million for Zesty, $16.5 million for Eat Club and close to $6 million for ZeroCater. Two Bay Area companies, ZeroCater and Cater2Me, were the first to connect tech offices with local cooks and restaurants in 2010. Zach Yungst, who founded Cater2Me with Alex Lorton, came up with the idea of a n office-lunch concierge service after becoming dissatisfied with the watery soups and wilted salads provided by his former employer, a private-equity firm. Cater2Me sold companies on its ability to curate lunch, rotating cuisines so employees wouldn’t get bored. In the early days, he canvassed farmers’ markets and food trucks, looking for food businesses willing to prepare meals in a commercial kitchen and deliver them to corporate offices. Obrian Matterson met Yungst through those scouting trips. Matterson had moved from Jamaica to the Bay Area a year earlier after marrying his American-born wife, Loris. The couple were cooking out of their home, but Cater2Me’s offer of legitimate catering work spurred them to take what they called “a crash course” in food business, getting the right paperwork and renting a commercial kitchen. The effort paid off. “We started out doing one job a day, and four weeks later, we were doing 30 to 35 jobs a week,” Obrian said. The timing couldn’t have been more ideal for both sides. With billions of dollars gushing into Silicon Valley and San Francisco, Cater2Me and ZeroCater provided an easy-to-scale, flexible employee perk, and the two catering brokers amassed large stables of food businesses. By 2013, many of their food vendors worked for both competitors. There was enough work to go around. “It’s like having a sales person, so we don’t have to worry about finding the business, pounding the pavement, dealing with the logistics,” said Brian Yee of City Smoke House. “We can just focus on the food.” The money has been good enough for Yee and his brother, Brandon, to take over a two-story commercial kitchen on Sixth Street in San Francisco, where their staff of seven smokes briskets and bakes poster-size pans of corn bread — without a storefront or a food truck. The steady stream of income coming from corporate catering has allowed cooks to expand farther and faster than they could have on their own. Vive La Tarte’s owners, Arnaud Goethals and Julie Vandermeersch, emigrated from Brussels to San Francisco five years ago and began baking Belgian-inspired tartes and quiches. In the early days, 75 percent of their business was through brokers like Cater2Me and ZeroCater, Goethals said. Eighteen months ago, Vive La Tarte was able to open an expansive, airy cafe in SoMa. Constructed with multiple income streams in mind, it has an espresso station, a long pastry case and a large production kitchen, because catering lunches and parties still brings in a third of Vive La Tarte’s revenue. Cooking lunch for office workers comes with its challenges. “You don’t have a lot of leeway,” Goethals said. “If they tell you 12:30, you have to be there at 12:30.” Drivers who know how to set up the food properly are rare. Staying competitive with gluten-free crusts, vegan dishes and Paleo dishes has taken ingenuity. Established restaurants have also seen the benefit of adding corporate catering. “Our food gets delivered by Zesty to downtown offices where we have no physical presence,” said Anjan Mitra of Dosa. Dosa prepares orders for Eat Club and Farm Hill, too, largely in its South San Francisco commissary or at its Valencia Street location, which isn’t open for lunch. “We just felt like it was a revenue opportunity for us in the daytime.” In January 2015, a five-alarm fire shut down Los Shucos, Sofia Keck’s Guatemalan hot dog stand in the Mission. That’s when she discovered Cater2Me. Keck began prepping out of a commercial kitchen and assembling her elaborately garnished sausage sandwiches at companies around the region. When the repairs at Los Shucos were completed, she reopened with limited hours — mostly on the weekend — so she wouldn’t lose all her new catering clients. Catering has always been a lucrative side business for restaurants. But the brokers who arrange for office lunches take a large cut — generally 15 to 30 percent. Food vendors rely on volume to make a profit. That large cut is why Caleb Zigas, executive director of the San Francisco business incubator program La Cocina, is wary of the brokers. “They’ve certainly played a big role in the growth of the companies at La Cocina,” Zigas said. “What I keep pushing on our businesses is that (catering through brokers) has to be a temporary cash-flow situation until they can get themselves on their feet.” “It’s a very dependent relationship,” he added. Cater2Me and ZeroCater require vendors to deliver and set up the food, establishing at least some personal interaction with the companies they serve. Newer companies like Zesty and Chewse handle all the delivery, eliminating the hassle but also the vendors’ exposure. Binita Pradhan, owner of Bini’s Kitchen, laughed when asked about Zigas’ concerns. “The clients are super good. I feel blessed,” she said. Catering represents 40 to 50 percent of her business, but she also sells her momos (Nepalese dumplings) and curries to Whole Foods stores, operates a stand at Off the Grid’s Fort Mason event and, as of last year, runs a takeout restaurant in the Financial District. She has 16 employees. Yet Zigas’ fear of overdependence may not just be professional paranoia. A number of food vendors have seen their catering income drop of late. After the Mattersons launched their food truck in 2014, funded by their catering earnings, Cater2Me and ZeroCater brought on additional Caribbean vendors and their orders shrank. Vive La Tarte and City Smoke House are also seeing decreasing orders, and both said their clients are spending less per person for lunch. “We indirectly have our finger on the pulse of the economy,” Brian Yee says. Both Cater2Me and Zesty insist that their companies are growing, though they refused to provide specific metrics. Yungst claimed that in 2015, Cater2Me worked with 1,000 vendors in 11 cities. The average vendor sold $10,000 in food each month through the broker, and the higher-volume vendors could make up to $100,000 a month. Back at the Richmond kitchen, Loris and Obrian Matterson are relishing the prospect of a winter slowdown after a busy summer juggling public festivals, food truck gatherings and office catering. It will give them some time to figure out what direction they will take next: A second food truck? A full-service restaurant? Loris said that, despite the success of Scotch Bonnet, ZeroCater and Cater2Me still provide 35 to 40 percent of their gross sales. “It definitely helps pay the bills,” she said. When aspiring chefs ask her whether they should buy a food truck or open a restaurant, she tells them to test the waters first. “A good way to see if your product is good is corporate catering,” she said. “It’s like an incremental step.” Jonathan Kauffman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jkauffman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jonkauffmanIf you’re a regular reader of this site you know that education is a frequent topic. Though the nation’s economy is slowly improving, its current state — fueled in large part by the unwillingness of some of our elected officials to boost job prospects — has, in part, resulted in greater competition for jobs available to debt-saddled graduates. The good news is, according to an ABC News report issued before the summer recess, prospects for college graduates are at their best level since the beginning of the recession. And, since that report was issued, ABC News has also reported that fewer graduates are returning home to live with their parents. But there are still obstacles. So now it’s early in a new academic year and this is the time of year when many students begin to examine their prospects; what is the outlook for soon-to-be graduates? Take a look at the graphic below; while its purpose is to encourage online education programs, the information displays both the challenges and options students face: While I’m not suggesting that graduates “stay home” there is a point to be made about the opportunities furthering one’s education may provide. Let’s dissect this and take a look at the current environment: Though the cost of a college education can be prohibitive, on average those who further their education beyond an undergraduate degree have a better chance of earning a greater average salary than those who do not. Factors such as outsourcing led to a decline in the presence of the manufacturing industry, and that has contributed to stagnant real income in the United States. With the decline of unions and their better-paying, middle-income jobs over the past several decades has come a shrinking middle class. A decline in the study of mathematical and technical sciences, which are among the highest paying professions, has resulted in too few people to fill available jobs in these fields. The Obama administration has formed partnerships with community colleges and businesses so that graduating students will be better prepared for available jobs. Growth in the service industry has added downward pressure to wages over the past few decades. This furthers the argument in support of pursuing higher education. On a positive note, more avenues to pay for higher learning are available to graduates who wish to further their education. According to a NewsOne.com articles, the President’s college tax credit is helping millions of students and families pay for college – last year it helped more than 9 million students and families save on tuition. Given Mitt Romney’s propensity towards all things vague (and his ability to change positions), it is not certain exactly what he believes so his numbers, in the form of a budget, would have to speak for themselves. The Romney/Ryan ‘to do list’ proposes cutting the tax credit; if that’s not enough, the budget plans include slashing Pell Grants and student loans. Regardless of what Romney says, in noting the advice that Romney once gave to a college student, that is, borrow money from his parents, President Obama knows that “Not everybody has parents who have the money to lend.” Mitt Romney’s website states: “Post-secondary education cannot become a luxury for the few; instead, all students should have the opportunity to attend a college that best suits their needs. Whether it is public or private, traditional or online, college must be available and affordable.” That sounds good until it’s matched with the plans laid out in Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” budget. So what is a student to do? Take time to learn the implications that can be gleaned from the very telling chart above — and then make sure that each candidate’s stance on job growth, affordable education and the prospects for educated young people in this country are understood before election day. Vote smart; the future of this nation is at stake — and only an educated, competitive labour force can move this nation into the future. ___________ Graphic created by: CollegeAtHome.comA UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate has developed the first automated techniques to identify adult ads tied to human trafficking rings by linking the ads to public information from Bitcoin — the primary payment method for online sex ads. Websites for online classified ads selling sex are widely used by human traffickers, but law enforcement efforts to trace and disband human trafficking rings are hindered by the pseudonymous nature of adult ads, the tendency of ring leaders to employ multiple phone numbers and email addresses to avoid detection and the difficulty in determining which online ads reflect willing participants in the sex trade and which reflect victims forced into prostitution. The study is a first step toward developing a suite of freely available tools to help police and non-profit institutions overcome these challenges and identify victims of sexual exploitation on websites such as Backpage and Craigslist, where ads for human trafficking are often found. “The technology we’ve built finds connections between ads,” said Rebecca Portnoff, a UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate in computer science, who developed the tools as part of her dissertation. “Is the pimp behind that post for Backpage also behind this post in Craigslist? Is he the same man who keeps receiving Bitcoin for trafficked girls? Questions like these are answerable only through more sophisticated technological tools – exactly what we’ve built in this work – that link ads together using payment mechanisms and the language in the ads themselves.” Portnoff will present the findings this month at the Association for Computing Machinery’s SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, one of the world’s leading data-mining conferences, which will publish the paper in its proceedings. The work was funded by Amazon Web Services Cloud Credits for Research program, Giant Oak, Google, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. Computer scientists from UC San Diego and the New York University Tandon School of Engineering were also involved in the study. The research team’s approach relies on two novel algorithms. The first is a machine-learning algorithm rooted in stylometry, which is the analysis of an individual’s writing style to identify authorship. Stylometry can provide confirmation of authorship with high confidence, and, in the case of online trafficking ads, allows researchers and police to identify cases in which separate advertisements for different sex workers share a single author: a telltale sign of a trafficking ring, but hard to identify without sophisticated computer analysis. “Imagine looking through page after page of explicit advertisements, some for underage victims. You’re looking through all this material to find the set that are advertising trafficked and underage victims. Even given a team of humans dedicated to the task, there’s simply too much data – often quite traumatizing – to go through,” Portnoff said. By automating stylometric analysis, the researchers discovered they could quickly identify groups of ads with a common author on Backpage, one of the most popular sites for online sex ads. (Since this research was conducted, the adult advertising section of Backpage was discontinued; however, the researchers noted that adult ads remain prevalent, now appearing in multiple sections of the site.) After identifying groups of ads with a single author, the researchers then tested a second algorithm that utilizes publicly available information from the Bitcoin mempool and blockchain — the ledgers that record pending and completed transactions. Because Backpage posts ads as soon as payment is received, the researchers compared the timestamp indicating submission of payment to the timestamp of the ads’ appearance on Backpage. All Bitcoin users maintain accounts, called wallets, and tracing payment of ads that have the same author to a unique wallet is a potential method for identifying ownership of the ads, and thus the individuals or groups involved in human trafficking. “There are hundreds of thousands of these ads placed every year, and any technique that can surface commonalities between ads and potentially shed light on the owners is a big boost for those working to curb exploitation,” said Damon McCoy, an NYU Tandon assistant professor of computer science and engineering and one of the paper’s co-authors. Combining automated stylometric and timestamp analysis to identify sex ads by both author and Bitcoin owner represents a considerable advancement in assisting law enforcement and nonprofit organizations that try to identify victims of human trafficking, McCoy said. The researchers deployed their automated author identification techniques on a sampling of 10,000 real adult ads on Backpage, a four-week scrape of all adult ads that appeared on Backpage during that time, as well as on several dozen ads they themselves placed as a point of comparison. They reported an 89 percent true-positive rate for grouping ads by author — significantly more accurate than current stylometric machine learning algorithms. The team also reported a high rate of success in linking the ads they placed themselves to the corresponding transactions in the Bitcoin blockchain. They acknowledge, however, that they were unable to verify whether matches they made using real-life ads and Bitcoin transaction information truly correspond to individuals tied to human trafficking – that must ultimately be pursued by police. “Sex trafficking of children hides in plain sight within the vast online escort environment. It’s difficult for investigators to sift through the mounds of data and figure out what is important and what is not when looking for a child,” said Julie Cordua, CEO of Thorn. “This type of research is critical to advancing this work and helping investigators find children faster and reduce the time in trauma. We’re grateful to academics and researchers who are willing to lend their time and talent to this issue to help find new solutions that move this work forward.” The researchers intend to refine their analysis in collaboration with law enforcement and nonprofit organizations.Sharing this could save a life. Cobb County Heroin Epidemic What You’re Searching For? Are you or a loved one struggling with addiction and are you concerned with the Cobb County Heroin Epidemic? In America, opioids like heroin have taken hold of countless lives. Once you have become addicted to opioids, getting off of them on your own is all but impossible. Our doctors, nurses, and staff are here to help you make that possible. About our facility. Cobb County Heroin Epidemic. Get Clean in less than 2 weeks. We offer a 10-day outpatient protocol that focuses on restoration of dopamine levels in the brain. When dopamine levels are restored to normal states the craving for drugs or more specifically opioids lessens dramatically and this is where true recovery begins. Remove cravings and you have a fighting chance to get well and completely recover. When you are considering Cobb County Heroin Epidemic, we may be just the right fit for your situation. Isn’t it time to put Heroin problems behind you or your loved one? With the right help, you can beat the addiction to Heroin drugs and move forward with the beginning of a better life for you and your family free of Heroin. Cobb County Heroin Epidemic Offering Outpatient Treatment. We are an outpatient treatment facility and that means “no lockdown.” You come and go each day throughout your treatment. The NAD IV infusion our patients receive dramatically lessen the craving for drugs. In fact, read below two first-hand accounts from previous participants in our addiction treatment protocol. Cobb County Heroin Epidemic. Actual Testimonials: “I’m an executive mom for a successful company. I would start drinking around four or 5 PM every day 1 to 2 bottles of wine per day when I started the 10-day protocol. After the third day, I noticed the cravings going away. By the tenth day, I had no desire, compulsion or feeling the need to drink wine. This program has been great it’s changed my life and I would recommend it to anyone who is ready to stop drinking.” -Julie “I’m in the entertainment business. I make music and videos That are seen worldwide. I smoked marijuana every day four or five joints a day a couple of blunts too. A relative of mine found out about this program. I flew into Atlanta they took great care of me and I was skeptical about his program but I was willing to give it a try. I’m telling you after the third day I noticed I didn’t have the desire to smoke weed. My desire was to be better in my music business. I couldn’t believe it, by the end of the 10th day I had no desire to smoke weed and I began to sleep great. I started having clarity of mind and my creative and artistic skills have sharpened and I have more energy for performance. I am very grateful for this program I’m so glad I did it and I recommend it to anyone who wants to stop smoking weed and better their life.” -SB Cobb County Heroin Epidemic. Call now 678-695-8146 Isn’t it time to get this in hand? Aren’t you ready to put your Heroin addiction in the rearview mirror? We can help you get through this. All you have to do is take the first step and make the call. Please get help today. Your initial consultation with our doctor is confidential and free. Cobb County Heroin Epidemic. Call now – 678-695-8146 Heroin addiction in America has been described at crisis or epidemic level. Getting off of opioids is very difficult. Make sure that when you seek help for addiction that you treat the craving for opioids like hydrocodone or Vicodin. When you can get the craving for Heroin drugs under control you can then truly begin to treat the underlying issues of why addiction started in the first place. Heroin addiction treatment can be effective but you must take the first steps toward recovery and reach out for help. The good news is there is help and there is hope for beating addiction. What is heroin? Heroin is an opioid drug that is made from morphine, a natural substance taken from the seedpod of the Asian opium poppy plant. Heroin presents as a white or brown powder, or a black sticky substance known as black tar heroin. Other common names for heroin include dope, horse, junk, and smack. The danger of overdose with heroin. A person can overdose on heroin. This overdose takes place when the person uses too much of the drug and has a toxic reaction that manifests in serious, harmful symptoms or death. When overdose on heroin occurs, the user finds that their breathing often slows or stops. This can decrease the amount of oxygen that reaches the brain, a condition called hypoxia. Hypoxia can have short- and long-term mental effects and effects on the nervous system, including coma and permanent brain damage. Please get help today. Heroin addiction is a real life or death situation that needs your immediate attention. The Cobb County Heroin Epidemic is real and we can help you. Heroin Crisis Marietta GA – America’s Heroin Addiction Problem – Treatment Centers For Heroin Addiction – Marietta GA Addiction Treatment – Heroin Overdose Treatment Centers – Oxycodone Overdose Marietta Georgia – Heroin Overdose Marietta – Heroin Crisis in America -Georgia Heroin Triangle – Cobb County Heroin Epidemic If you can devote less than 2 weeks to getting better, we can help. Our outpatient program treats your craving for heroin and puts you in a position to think rationally without the compulsion to use. This is when true healing can begin. Call 678-695-8146 for a discreet, free, and no-obligation consultation. Cobb County Heroin Epidemic.The crowd-funded choose-your-own-adventure survival game Dyscourse by Owlchemy Labs launched on Steam yesterday. Backers can get a DRM free version by contacting the developers, but there are currently no DRM free options available to the general public.The story starts off when a passenger of Dysast Air, Rita Locket, wakes up on a deserted island after a crash landing. She soon comes across the other remaining survivors, and together the group of six must find a way to survive; and hopefully make it off the island.Dyscourse is marketed as an interactive choose-your-own-adventure, and after
remain. But he is gratified to have reached this point and even more motivated to continue, so as not to disappoint the millions of people who suffer from type 1 diabetes, which is usually diagnosed in children and young adults. “We’re tired of curing mice,” Melton said in an interview. “Most patients are sick of hearing that something’s just around the corner; I’m sick of thinking things are just around the corner. But I do believe in the big picture.” Melton hopes the cells could be ready to be tested in people in a few years. Already, cells are being transplanted into primates through a collaboration with a researcher in Chicago. Melton’s work is expected to energize the diabetes research community. Advertisement Dieter Egli, assistant professor in the pediatrics department at Columbia University Medical Center, said his laboratory will try to repeat Melton’s experiment immediately. DOUGLAS MELTON FOR THE GLOBE Pancreatic cells that secrete insulin. “It’s a wonderful result, something we’ve been waiting for quite awhile,” Egli said. Earlier this year, Egli’s laboratory was able to create embryonic stem cells from a person with type 1 diabetes, through a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer. He now plans to use Melton’s procedure to create the beta cells that are affected by the disease. Egli said that while he hopes the work will allow him to transplant cells into patients one day, the ability to generate large numbers of beta cells in the laboratory will also aid in the near-term search for diabetes drugs that work on beta cells in diseased patients. Melton is also collaborating with a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to surmount the other major challenge in treating type 1 diabetes: stopping the immune system from attacking and killing the beta cells within the pancreas that secrete insulin. Together with MIT bioengineer Daniel Anderson, he hopes to create an encapsulation technology that could protect the cells from the immune system. Advertisement Other attempts to use stem cells for diabetes therapy have been making steady progress. A clinical trial was announced this summer in which researchers will transplant into patients immature cells capable of developing into beta cells. Melton’s advance succeeded not because of a single eureka moment but through the hard work of a rotating cast of 50 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in his Cambridge laboratory, who toiled on the project over the last 15 years. The biologists decided the key to making the cells that secrete insulin in the body would be to copy the way they normally develop in the embryo. First, they carefully tracked the formation of beta cells during development, looking at which genes turned on and off. Then, they tried to emulate the process, triggering those same genes to go on and off using chemicals and growth factors. The resulting procedure, which Melton compares to the steps of making an involved chocolate raspberry cake, takes about 40 days and involves six steps. The researchers were able to make the insulin-secreting cells from embryonic stem cells and from another type of stem cell, which avoids many of the ethical quandaries of stem-cell research because they are created by reprogramming people’s skin cells into a stem-cell-like state, rather than requiring the destruction of embryos. The key, Melton said, is that they were able to make the cells in the quantities that would be needed to treat patients — a coffee cup’s worth of beta cells. Now that other researchers have seen that it is possible, he hopes they will take the procedure and improve upon it, making it faster, easier, and more efficient. Although Melton’s personal motivation is treating type 1 diabetes, the approach also has potential for treating type 2 diabetes, which occurs later in life but can also require patients to use insulin injections. “I think a lot of people will change how they are harvesting and producing cells in their labs to see if they can reproduce this,” said Dr. Elizabeth Seaquist, president for medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association. Melton noted that the research would not have been possible without private philanthropy, especially in the years when federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research was restricted under the Bush administration. “When the Harvard Stem Cell Institute was created in 2004, the university ventured into uncharted and, some thought, untenable terrain,” Harvard president Drew Faust said in a statement. “This accomplishment is something none of us could have predicted 10 years ago, and I am excited to see where it will lead.” Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @carolynyjohnsonTwo Uniqlo shoppers in Beijing were propelled into the international spotlight this week when a self-shot sex tape of the couple in the store's dressing room went viral online. The video has also landed them in the custody of the Beijing police, along with three other people suspected of involvement in the illicit video. According to the BBC, the five people were arrested shortly after the video went online on Wednesday, though news of the arrests only appeared on Sunday morning. Chinese authorities were exceedingly displeased with the release — and subsequent popularity — of the sex tape. Cyberspace Administration of China, the country's internet regulator, said that "the vulgar video had spread like a virus online and clashed with socialist core values." State censors quickly worked to remove the video from popular social media sites like Weibo. The production and distribution of "obscene" videos is banned in China. Dozens of chinese make selfie in front of Uniqlo after the viral smartphone video #sextape in #UNIQLO, in #beijing pic.twitter.com/aNGsSlHcuO — dufour (@freddufour_afp) July 15, 2015 As part of the investigation into the video, authorities said they were looking into rumors that Uniqlo itself had some hand in the production of the tape as a media stunt. In a statement, the low-cost Japanese clothing company denied such claims, saying, "We would like to remind the public to uphold social morality and use our fitting rooms in a correct and proper way." In the meantime, the flagship Beijing Uniqlo location became a bit of a hit online, with passersby posing and taking selfies in front of the store.CLONMEL, Ireland — Michael Lumley, a 63-year-old unemployed father of three, is one of the hundreds of thousands of people around Ireland in recent months protesting new water charges introduced by the government. After six years of austerity measures brought in amid the Great Recession, he said, the water fees have brought him to a breaking point. “I suffer from severe arthritis, and I can no longer work,” said Lumley, via email from his home in County Tipperary. “I receive a disability allowance to survive on each week, and like everyone else, I have bills to pay. I am dreading Christmas, as I will struggle to pay for it. I already pay for my water and can’t afford to pay any more.” The government’s decision to set up a semi-state company to charge for water usage — replacing the current water system, which is paid for through general taxation — has proved the most controversial of the austerity measures introduced in Ireland since 2008 and has given birth to a mass social movement. The countrywide protests aim to prevent what is seen as double taxation on water for an already cash-strapped populace. A massive national protest is set to take place in Dublin, with others across the country, on Dec. 10 to coincide with Human Rights Day. It has attracted international attention. Members of the Detroit Water Brigade — where more than 27,000 homes had their water cut off for not paying their bills — will arrive in Dublin to join the protests. While the rest of Europe levies a direct charge for water, Ireland has until now funded its supply through taxes. The government tried to quell the discontent by publishing the water charges last month after the protest movement reached a fever pitch. According to the new rates published in a memo of the government’s water services bill, the water bill for a single-adult home will be capped at 160 euros (about $200) per year, and the maximum charge for a multi-adult home will be capped at 260 euros (about $325) per year, regardless of the means of the occupants. These caps will remain in place until 2019, after which the rates may be increased. In the meantime, the government has made no explicit reduction in residents’ general taxes, which have financed the water supply to date. Lumley feels the government’s move to create an independent charge for water is unnecessary. “Over the past six years we have had to pay an extra 5 percent on motor road tax, 5 percent on vehicle registration tax and 2 percent on VAT [the national sales tax]. This money raises 1.7 billion euros a year towards water services. The government spends 1.2 billion euros on the current water system each year. Where does the rest go?” Meanwhile, he said, his disability payment has been reduced. "I, along with countless others, cannot afford to pay again for something we already pay for," said Lumley. "That is why I am against this unfair tax — that and the fact that the money raised from it will go to pay off banking debts, not my debt, so why should we have to pay it?” In 2008, after the collapse of the banking system, the Irish government nationalized the private banking debt of six banks, taking loans of almost 85 billion euros from the European Financial Stabilisation Facility and the International Monetary Fund. The Irish people were forced to foot the bill through a range of austerity measures that have caused social repercussions such as home repossessions, homelessness, cutbacks to social services, unemployment and emigration. For the government to repay the loans, an independent assessor made a number of recommendations, including the implementation of an independent water service provider. The Irish government set up that company, Irish Water, in July 2013. It is responsible for the operation of public water services, including management of national water assets, maintenance of the water system, investment and planning, managing capital projects, customer care and — most controversially — billing for water usage. The coalition government of Fine Gael and the Labour Party argue that billing for water usage is needed to provide the funds to modernize an antiquated water infrastructure that has been neglected for decades. Irish Water has paid out over 85 million euros in fees to consultants, contractors and lawyers as part of a startup budget of 180 million euros. The CEO of Irish Water’s annual salary of 200,000 euros has proved another sore point for voters who are angered by the government’s failure to fully reform the practices of previous governments in paying excessive salaries to CEOs of semi-state companies. According to most recent data from the Central Statistics Office in Ireland, more than 750,000 Irish were living in poverty in 2012, including 220,000 children and 68,740 pensioners. From 2007 to 2012, the percentage living in consistent poverty nearly doubled, from 4.2 to 7.7 percent. In the same period, the gap between the richest and poorest 20 percent of the population increased by more than 11 percent. Ireland, whose private banks gambled (and lost) more per capita than any other European country, was disproportionately affected by the economic crisis. The tiny country is paying almost 42 percent of the total European banking debt, despite making up only 1 percent of its population, according to Eurostat. The crisis has cost Ireland 25 percent of its GDP, compared with 1.5 percent in Germany. While the average cost is 192 euros per person in the EU, the figure stands at 9,000 euros per person for Irish citizens, not taking into account the 18 billion euros put in from the Irish National Pension Reserve Fund. “I appreciate that any new charge is difficult, especially in light of the last number of years,” said Transport Minister Pascal Donohue. “However, very few people, I think, would disagree with the fact that we need to put a system in place that will allow for adequate investment in our water services.Next Chapter > The Perfect Starter Car What is the best first car for a young, aspiring automobile enthusiast? Whether you are a newly-licensed driver or a car enthusiast parent looking for vehicle for your son or daughter, it’s a tough question to answer. Non-enthusiasts will likely suggest something that’s slow and durable, as those types of cars will provide less temptation for shenanigans while standing up to the abuse that an inexperienced driver will bring. You’ll also want a car that’s cheap and easy to repair, because in the likely event the car gets into a fender bender, the easier it is to get back on the road the better. Reliability should also be considered as well, as no one likes getting stranded in a strange place. But if you see cars as being more than just transportation, or want to encourage a young enthusiast to embrace the car hobby, the decision becomes even more difficult. Many of the recommended vehicles for young drivers aren’t particularly fun or interesting. On the other hand, regardless of budget I think we can all agree that handing a new driver the keys to an expensive, powerful sportscar is not a good idea. Not only will it be difficult and dangerous for them to handle the power, it also skips many steps on the automotive pathway that most of us climbed and learned with. So what’s a good enthusiast car for a new driver? The Honda CR-X is a very worthy candidate. They’re relatively inexpensive, fuel efficient, reliable, easy to drive and also easy to work on. On top of all that, the CR-X is quite fun to drive – even in stock form. It’s also a great car for learning and growing with. If so inclined, a CR-X owner can fit a wealth of upgrades to take the Honda far beyond its economy car roots – everything from aftermarket suspension and body parts to complete engine swaps. An entire generation of auto enthusiasts grew up cutting their teeth on cars like the CR-X, and Southern California’s Jesse Temores is one of them. Spoon Mania In high school, the CR-X was one of the first cars Jesse got his hands on, and he fell in love. But rather than moving on to more exotic machinery like many former Honda owners have, he’s stuck with the little Civic derivative. The car you see here is one that represents a lifetime of love for the CR-X – a love that’s now being passed down to younger generations of the Temores family. This yellow machine is known as KILLR-B thanks to its distinct body color and the engine that powers it. It’s also one the nicest and most well-rounded CR-X builds on the streets of SoCal. Over the years, Jesse has transformed the CR-X from a stock commuter into a tasteful and functional street build that’s every bit as home on the track as it is on LA freeways, and his kids have been watching and learning the whole time. For starters, the car has been restored in many areas – a trend we’ve been seeing a lot more on ’80s and ’90s Hondas as they age. The side mouldings, weather-strips and headlights were among the parts replaced with brand new OEM components. Under the hood sits a naturally aspirated B18C5 Type R engine, which is a swap route CR-X owners have been taking for years. Only Jesse’s setup is a bit more exotic than your typical CR-X re-power… Not only was the drivetrain sourced directly from Spoon Sports in Japan, but the swap was also done to pass inspection at California’s strict smog stations. Along with that, the engine bay has also seen a complete wire tuck and detailing to follow a look that’s become so common on Southern California’s top Honda builds. Something To Grow With As you’ve probably gathered by now, Jesse went for a heavy Spoon theme for the car. Not only was the engine handled by Spoon, but the radiator, oil cooler, brakes and tower bars are also among the parts sourced from the legendary Japanese Honda specialist. The flat black-colored 16-inch SW388 wheels are also immediately recognizable as Spoon parts, and they’re mounted on a full Type R 5-lug hub conversion. The tires are grippy Yokohama Advan A048s. As for the exterior of the CR-X, Jesse has gone with a simple JDM-inspired look. There’s a European market rear bumper, Xenon lips front and rear for a period look, and the lower section of the body has been coated in flat black for some additional contrast. Further adding to the JDM touch is a full glass moon roof with bronzed JDM glass all around to truly excite the legit Honda geeks out there. As you can tell by now, there is no area of the car Jesse hasn’t addressed, and the interior is no exception. The floor pan has been customized, there’s a Cusco roll bar and the seats are Spoon buckets mounted on custom rails. Oh yeah, and the whole thing has been converted to right-hand drive with certification from the California Highway Patrol. Other Spoon touches include the steering wheel and shift knob, while many of the interior panels themselves have been replaced by European market parts. It all adds up to one of the most complete CR-X builds on American shores. The Spoon theme is so well executed that Spoon Sports itself certified the car at the recent Eibach Honda meet. Aside from the welding and the actual paint job, Jesse did all the work on the Honda himself, and he’s learned a ton over the course of the build. Perhaps best of all, Jesse didn’t do all this for himself. He actually plans to give the KILLR-B CR-X to his middle son, who is 19. He’s already built a Mugen-themed CR-X for his oldest son, and plans to build a J’s Racing CR-X for his youngest son who is 13 right now. Only after that has happened is when Jesse says he’ll finally build a CR-X for himself. At the moment he’s imaging a full sleeper build in silver with a K20A swap under the hood. We have no doubt it will be incredibly well done. For the Temores boys it’s truly, as they say, a family affair. Mike Garrett Instagram: japanifornia_media mike@speedhunters.com Photos by Louis Yio Jesse Temores’ Honda CR-X Engine Honda B18C5 Integra Type R engine swap, engine built by Spoon, Spoon header, Spoon radiator, Spoon plugs and wires, Spoon oil cooler, AEM fuel rail, Rywire custom harness, DC alternator, shaved engine bay, full wire tuck, custom Spoon exhaust Driveline Rebuilt 5-speed transmission, Spoon LSD Suspension/Brakes Innovative front cross-member, Innovative T-bar, Vision Spoon coilovers, Function 7 LCAs, Cusco camber kit, Spoon tower bars, Spoon brakes Wheels/Tires 16-inch Spoon SW388 wheels, 225/45R16 Yokohama Advan A048 tires Exterior Restored mouldings, headlights, weather-strips, EDM rear bumper, Xenon lip spoilers, custom rear diffuser, custom glass roof, JDM bronze glass, front license plate flipper, yellow/black repaint Interior Full RHD conversion, custom floor pan, Cusco roll bar, custom seat rails, Spoon bucket seats, Takata harnesses, EDM door panels, custom instrument bezel, Spoon steering wheel, Spoon shift knob, Spoon mirror Cutting Room FloorIn west Turkana, Kenya, where an ancient lagoon once provided life to those around it, a gruesome massacre of 27 prehistoric hunter-gatherers has been unearthed—extending the timeline of human warfare back to 10,000 years ago. The find was made by researchers from Cambridge University’s Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Human Evolution (LCHES), in a place in Kenya called Nataruk. It seems this group of 27 may have been members of an extended family; eight were women and six were children, all interestingly under the age of six. Only 12 skeletons were relatively complete—allowing more knowledge to be drawn from those remains—and of these, 10 demonstrated clear signs of having been killed violently. Their cheeks and heads showed signs of blunt-force trauma, possibly from wooden clubs; hands, knees, and ribs were broken; several had wounds left by arrows in their necks; and the tips of stone projectiles were discovered lodged in the skull and chest of two men. These tips were made from obsidian—a black volcanic rock easily sharpened to make cutting tools and weapons—which is unusual for the region. “Obsidian is rare in other late Stone Age sites of this area in West Turkana, which may suggest that the two groups confronted at Nataruk had different home ranges,” said Mirazon Lahr. Four skeletons were found is positions indicating that their hands had been bound, including a woman who was six to nine months pregnant—as evidenced by the fetal bones recovered. The bodies were found in what seems to have been a marshland surrounded by forests, at the edge of a lagoon, which was likely a coveted location for groups—it would have been an ideal location for access to drinking water and fish. Pottery has been found nearby, too, hinting that foraged food items were held in storage. “The Nataruk massacre may have resulted from an attempt to seize resources – territory, women, children, food stored in pots – whose value was similar to those of later food-producing agricultural societies, among whom violent attacks on settlements became part of life,” said Dr. Marta Mirazon Lahr, from Cambridge’s LCHES, who directs the IN-AFRICA Project and led the Nataruk study, in a statement. However, this idea is uncertain, as it appears no one was spared—including the women and children. It is equally likely, then, that such a massacre was a standard sort of response between two distinct human groups at the time. The latter theory seems even more possible as the entire group was left unburied in this idyllic location—suggesting a high level of violence and perhaps a disregard for the other group. Which has led the researchers to believe that this is the earliest scientifically-dated evidence of human conflict—and a precursor to human warfare. In fact, using radiocarbon dating on the skeletons, soil layer samples, and shells found surrounding the skeletons, the team managed to push the date of human warfare to between 9,500 and 10,500 years ago—in the epoch following the last Ice Age, the Holocene. This makes the finding especially important, as the origins of war are hotly debated. As the authors mention in the paper, which is published today in Nature, violence between different groups is prevalent in chimpanzees—but whether or not it was humankind’s evolutionary destiny (and thus has haunted us since our species emerged), or whether it later came about when the notion of ownership developed from humans settling on land as farmers is unclear. The group at Nataruk was nomadic, however—they were not agrarians by any means—so a massacre of this scale suggests that warfare is not a learned behavior, but something more inherent. “The deaths at Nataruk are testimony to the antiquity of inter-group violence and war,” said Mirazon Lahr. “These human remains record the intentional killing of a small band of foragers with no deliberate burial, and provide unique evidence that warfare was part of the repertoire of inter-group relations among some prehistoric hunter-gatherers.” —– Feature Image: This skeleton was that of a man, found lying prone in the lagoons sediments. The skull has multiple lesions on the front and on the left side, consistent with wounds from a blunt implement, such as a club. (Credit: Marta Mirazon Lahr, enhanced by Fabio Lahr) Comments commentsMuch has been made of the celebrity presence at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, but there's one tabloid target who hasn't made much of an impact. Perhaps that's all about to change, however, because Lindsay Lohan has decided to jump into the fray, and talk taxes. Barack Obama's Twitter account sent out a quote from one of the president's speeches: “I’ve cut taxes for those who need it: middle-class families, small businesses.”—President Obama — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 7, 2012 Lohan, who often re-tweets the president, was quick to respond: It's a bit unclear what Lohan is trying to suggest. Perhaps she means that some listed on Forbes magazine's lists should receive tax cuts if it turns out that they are not, in fact, millionaires. We'll leave it to you in the comments, but that might just be the most specific tax cut of all time. A parting note: Lohan's been on a bit of a Twitter binge lately. Here, she tries to drum up the most meme-ready song of all time: More Lohan belowIdeologues to social scientists: get off our lawn!! As I’ve written before, I’m a big fan of Chris Hayes’ Twilight of the Elites, and the argument contained therein that public distrust of elites and expertise more generally is at an all-time high. Two data points from my morning reads can highlight — but not prove — this trend. Exhibit A is a fascinaing column by Gillian Terzis in The New Inquiry on the persistence of superstar economists since the 2008 financial crisis. What caught my attention: E]conomists have not only retained their prominence in the years since the global financial crisis; they have expanded it. Media-savvy economists have only grown in number, disseminating nuggets of user-friendly economic theory and technocratic liberalism in newspaper columns, blogs, and econo-centric podcasts. Krugman, along with Joseph Stiglitz, Nouriel Roubini, Nassim Taleb, and Jeffrey Sachs have become household names as swaggering political pundits…. With economists becoming mainstream personalities, their econospeak is worming its way deeper into everyday language. Our money is as easily invested as our time: remember to “calculate” your “opportunity cost.” Emotions are “inefficient”: try not to have any. Choosing a restaurant necessarily invokes a “cost-benefit analysis.” Steering the course of one’s life is necessarily about making the right decisions at the right time. And the time for this linguistic evolution is right. In an age of laissez-faire capitalism and precarious labor, what are individuals and corporations doing, if not constantly “re-establishing themselves” as “market players?”…. Underlying all these examples is the idea that a perfunctory understanding of economics, it seems, is society’s best attempt at a code of justice amid endemic institutional dysfunction in political and legislative frameworks. As such, the quotidian economist presents himself (most often, it is a “he”) to audiences as above and beyond the realm of trifling matters like ideology or politics. The everyday economist goes out of his way to portray economics as a social science untouched by politics and ignorant of historical context. But such an approach is at a deliberate remove from the complexity and the uncertainties of modern life. It suggests that because humans are rational thinkers, then our actions can always be predicted, or at least reduced into theoretical epigrams. And so mainstream economics affirms itself as the discipline with an answer to everything, even when financial crises repeatedly underscore the gap between theory and praxis…. Metaphors may make for a great pull-quote, but too often they perpetuate causal simplification. Everyone is assumed to act in a certain fashion under a specified set of conditions, holding all other variables constant. Oversimplifying economic phenomena ignores possible failures and contingencies: how does one account for empathy, altruism, irrationality? Surely, politics must play a part; surely there are objects — sentimental talismans, or the right to decent shelter — to which no market value can be ascribed. It’s beyond the remit of economics to care…. In the online marketplace of ideas, the influence of a few celebrity economists creates an illusion of scarcity of new, heterodox voices. Yet now more than ever, to prevent costly and irreparable policy errors, economics needs its crowded-out Cassandras. This is such an extreme mixture of fascinating analysis and total bulls**t that your humble blogger really needs to step back and gaze in awe at it. A big problem with Terzis’s analysis is that the very "celebrity ecconomists" she cites — Roubini, Taleb, Stiglitz — were precisely the economists who were the Cassandras prior to 2008. One would assume that a public intellectual ecosystem that rewards critics who provided trenchant criticism is a good thing. Lamenting their rise seems… odd. Except that it isn’t for Terzis, because she objects to the very idea of a social science that tries to drain the complexity out of modern life in order to model it. Which is a fancy way of saying she objects to social science in principle — because without simplifying reality a lot, it’s simply impossible to model or explain it. In essence, Terzis’ argument is that modern society is sooooo complex that radical uncertainty can’t be eliminated — so don’t bother. Terzis is coming at this from a Karl Polanyi-esque place on the left. Meanwhile, on the right, John Podhoretz looks at yesterday’s polling in the 2012 presidential race, throws up his hands, and basically says, "Bah!! Numbers!!" Mark it down on your calendars: Yesterday — Monday, Oct. 8, 2012 — may go down in the annals of history as the day political polling died. It was the most ridiculous polling day among many preposterous polling days in the course of this long campaign… The disparity in these numbers and their trends are so broad that even the cautionary method of adding them all together and averaging them out — best done by the Real Clear Politics “poll of polls” — makes little sense…. Pollsters themselves, when challenged on their stats, say they’re just presenting a snapshot of public opinion. Fine, but these snapshots are wildly distorted. The key hidden fact is that fewer than one in 10 respond to those who try to poll them. People who screen their calls, hang up on people they don’t know or end the survey because they don’t have time to take it make up more than 90 percent of those phoned by pollsters. Then there are issues with cellphone users and those who communicate pretty much solely by texts and e-mail, and the like. All we can be sure of, in the words of the peerless Internet humorist Iowahawk, “political poll results accurately reflect the opinions of the weirdo 9 percent who agree to participate in political polls.” What yesterday proved is that all bets are off. We’re judging the state of this contest with junk data, and we need to stop. Until pollsters can figure out how to avoid all these crazy mood swings and white noise, they should be put on political and pundit probation. Yeah!! Until pollsters learn to avoid… um… statistical variance… um… they shouldn’t do statistics. And get off my lawn!! Podhoretz raises some useful points here — omitting cell phones does introduce a possible bias into polls, and the possible sample bias of low response rates. Podhoretz’s core complaint, however, is both deeper and pretty friggin’ absurd — there’s too much variance!! Stop the madness!! The whole basis of statistics is that one is attempting to determine what a population thinks by looking at a small sample of that population. Such an exercise inherently introduces variance in interpreting the results. One day of particularly wide variance does not spell doom for the polling enterprise. Indeed, as a poll-watcher, what’s been striking this election season is not the variance in the poll numbers but the relative lack of it compared to past elections. Both candidates’ post-convention "bounces" were modest compared to past elections, and the numbers were pretty constant for a pretty long period of time during the summer. Look, I get that social scientists are easy to mock and ridicule, and Lord knows, we make mistakes. Acknowledging fundamental levels of uncertainty and unknowability is a healthy thing to do. Going from that acknowledgement to rejecting the enterprise of social science entirely — as both Terzi and Podhoretz do in their essays — is really, really stupid. Now get off my lawn.The Twin Cities mayors said Thursday that they’re part of an effort by mayors around the state urging the Legislature to raise the minimum wage. During an event at the Capitol this morning, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges called for legislators to raise the state’s minimum wage to $9.50 an hour. Current law requires a $6.15 hourly minimum wage for some workers, although most are covered under the federal standard of $7.25 an hour. Many business groups oppose the increase. Coleman and Hodges said both the St. Paul and Minneapolis city councils will consider resolutions urging legislative action. The mayors said they represent other mayors around the state who also want to see wages increase for low-end earners. Citing an analysis from Minnesota 2020, they said an estimated 30,000 workers in Minneapolis would see a raise with a $9.50 minimum wage, bringing nearly $40 million in additional purchasing power. In St. Paul, 20,000 workers would get a raise, representing an additional $27 million in purchasing power. Said Hodges: “Minneapolis enjoyed a strong recovery from The Great Recession, but we know that many people were left behind. We have some of the largest gaps in the country between the haves and the have nots, and that includes a gap in wages. Our city, our state and our country need to do something to address the soaring inequity. Raising the minimum wage is crucial to ensuring that people who work for a living, can make a living.” Coleman said: “We have an opportunity to act in the next few weeks here in Minnesota to provide relief for our low wage workers. We must ensure wages keep pace with the basic cost of food, housing and other necessities.”Claiming Nevada as a victory, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed an energized crowd of supporters Saturday night after eking out a narrow win in the day's caucus. Playing up her image as the pragmatist alternative to Bernie Sanders and his ambitious (unrealistically so, many critics would say) plans, Clinton acknowledged that American voters are angry, and rightfully so. However, Clinton spent her victory speech encouraging "real solutions," and she continued the refrain that the United States is not a "single issue" country. After citing the devastated communities of Flint and Ferguson, along with those living in "coal country and Indian country," Clinton said: "The truth is, we aren't a single issue country. We need more than a plan for the big banks. The middle class needs a raise. And we need more jobs. We need jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced – jobs that provide dignity and a future." She followed up with a push for increasing sustainable energy production, proclaiming to the crowd of desert dwellers that under a Clinton presidency, the "clean energy superpower of the 21st century" would be the United States, not Germany or China. Nevada is likely to be a major beneficiary of Clinton's sustainable energy generation platform; she intends to increase installed solar capacity nationwide to 500 million panels. CNN on YouTube Clinton continued on, calling on the men and women of corporate America to make sure that they play by the rules and claiming that a Clinton presidency would support companies who are doing the right things: "If you invest in your workers, contribute to your communities, help build a better America, we're going to stand with you. We're going to go into the future together." Clinton added: "We need more jobs. We need more opportunity." Standing together was a clear theme throughout the speech. Clinton used the word "together" a total of eight times during her eleven and a half minute speech; "community" or "communities" was used seven times. She also used this opportunity to announce that her campaign would be introducing new ways for Americans to get involved in community service during the upcoming week. She specifically vowed: "We will propose new ways for more Americans to get involved in national service and give back to our communities because every one of us has a role to play in building the future we want." JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images She also used the speech to announce a plan that would ensure indebted college students and graduates would have a way to refinance their debt obligations, saying she has "a plan to cut your interest rates and cap payments so you never have to pay more than you can afford." While Clinton did deliver a victory speech and not a concession speech in Nevada, the results out of the Silver State are likely to be perceived as way too close for comfort for those in her camp preparing strategy for Super Tuesday and beyond. You probably didn't think that Hillary Clinton's campaign emails and power ballads had anything in common. Our lifestyle editor, Emma Lord, is here to prove you wrong...At a conference in November I had what somehow became “post-Christian day.” It consisted of a series of conversations with friends who once were committed Christians but no longer found that faith to be compelling. None of my friends is hostile to Christianity. For the most part they find that life works just as well if not better for them without it. But in one conversation an old friend gently probed me: what is the faith that I hold and why am I still living my life playing this particular game? Changes I found the questions to be tricky to navigate. So many of the reasons I might have given at different times in my life I either no longer believe or else no longer find compelling. I recognize much more humanity in the pages of scripture than I did when I instinctively gravitated to the Bible as the word of God in high school and college, and went through an era in and after seminary in which I was willing to use the language of “inerrancy.” I don’t think that the Bible is a magic book or an instruction manual for life or even a completely coherent story from start to finish. I don’t find the notion of escape from coming judgment to be compelling. I do think that some notion of final judgment is important especially on the positive side of the ledger, to reward those who died in their faithfulness, but I wouldn’t join Christianity or keep to it out of fear of damnation. I’m just not interested in that as a major plot in the cosmic narrative (or in a god who would make that the primary theme of his story). I don’t have frequent experiences of existential connection with God. I honestly don’t know when the last time was that I felt like God answered a prayer. I have had some of these experiences, and they have been meaningful. But I also think that I could have these experiences as a vanilla theist or otherwise spiritual person without clinging to this particular Christian narrative. I find myself more likely to believe scientific explanations of events than miraculous ones. I don’t see God’s hand in every piece of good news or surprising happening. I’m not going to put my faith on the line against any scientific theory.
federal government, President Obama should make it clear that discrimination against LGBT workers will not be tolerated if you want to do business with the government. At its core, ENDA’s premise is simple: Nobody should be denied employment or forced out of a job due to their sexual orientation and gender identity. Americans from all demographic and political backgrounds support this bill. It’s time for Congress to take action and finally turn it into law. Winnie Stachelberg is the Executive Vice President for External Affairs and Crosby Burns is a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress.Not sure what to get the special man in your life for Valentine’s Day? How about a chocolate version of your butthole! Thanks to a company called Edible Anus, you can now send chocolate shaped buttholes to your boyfriend (or enemies) and scare the shit out of them. For just $38.95, you can give your man the perfect reminder that he should make a point to eat your ass at some point tonight! Just remember to order before January 31, 2016 to guarantee delivery before Valentine’s day. The company also offers poo cards, rectal T-shirts, or anal sculptures made out of glass or bronze. Now, of course Edible Anus chocolates aren’t modeled after your specific anus, but if you really wanted one, you would have to make an appointment with Magnus Irvin, the butt magician behind bronze anus molds: Irvin initially began by creating anus sculptures in chocolate, but then moved on to metal sculptures. “ The molds are available to anyone who wants their own anus cast, or a copy of someone else’s anus,” says Irvin, who has been making the chocolates for 15 years. “It just seemed to make some sort of poetic sense.” Order before January 31 to get it in time for Valentine’s Day: Order here. The entire casting process takes around a half hour and is done using alginate gel, which is the same substance dentists use to take mouth molds. Irvin charges over $1,900 for a custom bronze mold of your anus. Here’s a video of the process which is NSFW: RELATED \| 10 Unconventional Gifts To Show Your Man You Love Him This Valentine’s DayIreland has ranked fourth in a survey of European 'Nanny States' when it comes to laws on cigarettes, alcohol and food. Ireland has ranked fourth in a survey of European 'Nanny States' when it comes to laws on cigarettes, alcohol and food. The country has the second most stringent rules on tobacco and is in third place when it comes to drink according to the survey of 28 European Union countries. Only Britain was deemed to have more strict laws on tobacco, while Finland and Sweden topped the league table on tough alcohol rules. The Nanny State index was compiled by six European think-tanks and was spearheaded by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a UK-based organisation which is reported to have previously accepted funding from a tobacco company. The survey resulted in "a league table of the worst places in the European Union to eat, drink, smoke and vape". Its editor Christopher Snowdon said: "Ireland in the last 10 years has really come up as being a sort of leader in nanny state regulations, as has the UK, so I guess the countries are more of less where I would expect them." He said Ireland was "quite well known" for being increasingly keen to bring in these kinds of public health policies. "Obviously we're looking at minimum pricing of alcohol, plain packaging tobacco... it was already the first country to bring in a smoking ban. It doesn't surprise me to see it near the top," he added. The criteria being considered in ranking the countries included taxation polities, advertising rules, laws on vending machines and smoking bans among other items. Ireland was fourth on the overall list behind Finland, Sweden and the UK with the Czech Republic considered the country that was the least like a nanny state. Irish IndependentIt was an all too familiar scene for Orlando City fans on Saturday. Space opened up for Carlos Rivas, the team’s enigmatic, frustrating, exciting young Designated Player in Orlando, and the Colombian striker turned and lined up a rocket with his left foot. For two years now, Orlando City fans are used to seeing that same shot fly 15 yards over the goal and into the upper deck of the stands. “That’s so Rivas,” they’d say. There’d be shaking heads and creating online memes. Not this year. Not this Orlando City team. This laser went into the upper corner and was the eventual game-winner for Orlando City in a 2-0 result over Colorado on Saturday, the Lions’ sixth win in seven games. The 23-year-old has finally come into his own in his third season in Major League Soccer, and so has Orlando City. Embedded video for Full-grown Lions: How Orlando City ditched dysfunction for success The Lions sit atop the Supporters’ Shield standings with 18 points. They are a perfect 5-0 in the confines of their new stadium, which provides one of the best atmospheres in MLS. It’s been a remarkable start for Orlando City, which is thriving under head coach Jason Kreis. Ascending to the top of the standings hasn’t come easily in Central Florida. Like its expansion partner, New York City FC, Orlando has already hit the reboot button once. But, like NYCFC, there are no regrets about the decision that was made. Nobody in the organization is under any illusions we’ve reached our potential here. - Niki Budalic “I’d say from when Jason first arrived we started thinking about the next season and where we needed to improve and I think going back to my offseason presentation to the board and what we needed to focus on, No. 1 was leadership and character,” Orlando City general manager Niki Budalic told FourFourTwo on Sunday night. “It wasn’t by chance we pegged Will Johnson and Jonathan Spector as two central, key pieces. The biggest thing for us was developing a winning mentality and a culture being a young expansion franchise and having turnover in the first two years. It was really important to establish a winning mentality and a culture. That’s why our focus was on guys like that.” Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports Orlando City navigated its way around some of the usual roster missteps that happen in the expansion process. It also hopscotched its way through a sticky salary cap situation, using a record trade of Kevin Molino for $650,000 in allocation money to make the pieces of the puzzle fit. Johnson and Spector have immediately stepped into prominent roles. It has all reversed the outlook for a team which many people, myself included, thought would struggle this year. Orlando City went from being one of the youngest teams in MLS in 2015 – players age 21 or younger played 8,483 minutes that season, more than double the next closest team in MLS – to a solid mix of younger players with veterans. The average age of the roster is now 25.74, which is close to the MLS median. Of even more importance has been the maturation of young players, none more so this season than Rivas. The Colombian had a tumultuous start, struggling with his fitness and dealing with family issues that occurred as he transitioned to a new country. But despite his struggles, his talent was always obvious. That was the maddening part. There were flashes of why Orlando City paid around $1.5 million to beat out Benfica for Rivas’ signature from Deportivo Cali, but he always seemed to fall just shy of those expectations. Credit the Lions for not giving up on him. They turned down two overtures from Benfica at the end of the 2015 season and mid-2016. They also batted away trade offers in MLS. When Kreis arrived, he worked to figure out the talented speedster, who had one goal and six assists through his first 38 appearances in MLS under former coach Adrian Heath. Kreis moved Rivas from the left wing to the forward position next to Larin. There, Rivas has looked more dangerous and consistently threatening. It finally paid off with his first goal of the season on Saturday. Budalic said Kreis is also due credit for his ability to create a more “communicative and more inclusive” culture at the club, which made Rivas feel more a part of the project. “It hasn’t been smooth, 100 percent, and just a turnaround; there were some bumps in the road,” Budalic said. “But since Jason took over, his approach to man management, to giving a second chance and also due to Carlos growing up [helped]. He went through a lot in the offseason and he still has a ways to go, but we see now when he feels included and wanted, how he responds.” NEXT: Rivas emerges as Larin transfer talk heats upThis coming season of the CW DC shows, Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and DC's Legends of Tomorrow, will feature a huge crossover. DC VP of Creative Affairs Dan Evans chats with DC All Access offering some teases, which includes possibly seeing more of the Legion Of Superheroes in Supergirl, as last on Supergirl saw the Legion ring teased and this coming season features Mon-El (played by Vampire Diaries' Chris Wood). "The direction for The CW shows can be summed up this way," Evans said." It's just going to be epic. We are going to really delve into the entire DC Universe. It's going to be more characters, bigger stories, and we kind of push the boundaries of what we can do on television. This season the big changes are going to be insanely big changes. We are actually changing the fabricate of the universe with Flashpoint. We'll be seeing a whole new set of team members for Arrow. And of course Supergirl coming to The CW will make everything crazy. We kind of hinted, you saw some interlock in the first season, and you saw the Legion ring, now one of the most powerful Legionnaires ever, Mon-El, will be showing up on Supergirl. We don't know what's going to happen from there. It can't be good for everybody. But it also opens a door. Are we going to see more Legionnaires? I hope so." Evans continued with talk about the big crossover, mentioning comic book fans will love it. "With CW, they really love and understand what we are doing, and they are so embracing, so loving, that we can go and do the craziest comic book stories," Evans offered. "With this crossover, it's going to take the most understanding of TV executives to make this happen. Comic book fans are going to lose their mind when they find out what the basis for the crossover is. I will say, it's based on a big thing from DC's history. It will justify the crossover, you will not feel cheated." Watch more from DC All Access below. The Flash premiers Tuesday, October 4th at 8pm ET; Arrow on Wednesday, October 5th at 8pm ET; Supergirl on Monday, October 10th at 8pm ET, and DC's Legends of Tomorrow premiers Thursday, Octobe 13th at 8pm ET.A man holds the MacBook Air on display at the Apple Store in New York February 1, 2008. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. federal agents have been given new powers to seize travelers’ laptops and other electronic devices at the border and hold them for unspecified periods the Washington Post reported on Friday. Under recently disclosed Department of Homeland Security policies, such seizures may be carried out without suspicion of wrongdoing, the newspaper said, quoting policies issued on July 16 by two DHS agencies. Agents are empowered to share the contents of seized computers with other agencies and private entities for data decryption and other reasons, the newspaper said. DHS officials said the policies applied to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens, and were needed to prevent terrorism. The measures have long been in place but were only disclosed in July, under pressure from civil liberties and business travel groups acting on reports that increasing numbers of international travelers had had their laptops, cellphones and other digital devices removed and examined. The policies cover hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes — as well as books, pamphlets and other written materials, the report said. The policies require federal agents to take measures to protect business information and attorney-client privileged material. They stipulate that any copies of the data must be destroyed when a review is completed and no probable cause exists to keep the information.The latest version of House Republicans’ health care bill will lower the cost of insurance for many Americans compared with what they would pay under Obamacare, but would leave 23 million fewer people with health insurance a decade from now, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. Healthy people could see “significantly lower premiums” in some states that waive Obamacare requirements, letting insurers sell plans that cover fewer services, some of which people don’t want or need. But the sick or elderly could struggle to find affordable plans in those states, the CBO said. Republican leaders touted the savings, saying it bolsters their “rescue mission” to save the country from the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which is quickly losing insurers. The latest blow came Wednesday when Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City said it would pull out of the marketplace in 32 counties spanning 67,000 customers in Missouri and Kansas next year. “This CBO report again confirms that the American Health Care Act achieves our mission: lowering premiums and lowering the deficit. It is another positive step toward keeping our promise to repeal and replace Obamacare,” said House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican. The analysis should also clear the path for the Senate to take up the bill, after analysts said it showed enough savings to meet budget rules that allow the legislation to be fast-tracked, avoiding a Democratic filibuster. But Democrats and some rank-and-file Republicans said the numbers were a grim indictment of the GOP plan, leaving far too many people without the coverage that was the chief goal of Obamacare. “I have never seen a health care bill which throws 23 million Americans off of health insurance. That’s not a health care bill,” said Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent. The 23 million figure includes people who, without Obamacare’s “individual mandate,” would choose not to get health insurance, though the largest chunk consists of people affected by cuts in federal subsidies to state Medicaid programs. Scorekeepers said that thanks to changes in Medicaid and other programs, the Republican bill will reduce federal deficits by $119 billion over the next decade. That’s less than the $150 billion in savings from a previous version of the bill. Yet the number of people who would lack insurance by 2026 is just a slight improvement over the 24 million the CBO projected in March, based on the earlier version of the bill, meaning the figure will remain a public relations headache for the GOP. The White House hit back at the report’s figures, saying the CBO is unreliable in evaluating health care legislation. “History has proven the CBO to be totally incapable of accurately predicting how health care legislation will impact health insurance coverage,” a White House official said. House Republicans pushed the bill through their chamber on a 217-213 vote earlier this month, after making changes to win over holdouts who had sunk the first effort in March. Among the more significant changes, leaders agreed to allow states to waive the Affordable Care Act’s main strictures requiring insurers to cover an expansive list of services. The new bill also pours billions of federal dollars into risk programs that subsidize sicker customers who would end up paying more. Budget analysts said starting in 2020, the bill’s effect on premiums will depend on where someone lives. About half of Americans — those living in states that won’t request waivers — will see a small drop in premiums, averaging 4 percent by 2026, the CBO said. Another third of the country resides in states that will waive Obamacare’s “essential benefits” like maternity and mental health, resulting in rates that average 20 percent lower than current law — though actual savings will vary by region and age of customers. One-sixth of the country lives in places that would also waive essential benefits and rules requiring insurers to charge healthy and sicker people the same amount. The CBO said it is too difficult for it to estimate how much lower premiums will be for healthier people, but said, over time, it will “become more difficult” for sicker ones in those states to purchase insurance “because their premiums would continue to increase rapidly.” The CBO said the markets should remain stable under Obamacare in most areas, but that pockets of the country will have limited choice due to the exodus of insurers such as Blue Cross of Kansas City. Those insurers say they can’t turn a profit or worry the Trump administration won’t implement key parts of the 2010 law, namely the “individual mandate” requiring people to hold insurance or pay a tax, and cost-sharing subsidies that help insurers who lose money by picking up low-income customers’ costs. Democrats are unanimously opposed to the GOP bill, and said Republicans won’t be able to spin the latest cost estimate as good news. “Republicans will crow about the premiums going down in the outer years, but the decrease in premiums only occurs because the quality of insurance will plummet. Cheaper insurance isn’t going to help anyone if it doesn’t actually lead to the health care people need,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat. As written, the House bill repeals most of Obamacare’s taxes and its individual mandate, replaces its generous subsidies with refundable, age-based tax credits and reins in and caps spending on the Medicaid program for the poor. It also strips Planned Parenthood of federal funding as punishment for its abortion practices. Senate Republicans have said they’ll write their own bill, hoping to soften the transition for states that expanded Medicaid or provide more generous tax credits to poorer and older Americans who could struggle to afford coverage under the House plan. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, signaled Wednesday he sees a tough road ahead. “I don’t know how we get to 50 [votes] at the moment,” he told Reuters. “But that’s the goal.” The CBO’s findings should guide senators who are trying to address regulations and consumer protections baked into Obamacare, with conservatives preferring a more direct strike at the law. In the House, the waiver plan negotiated by Rep. Thomas MacArthur, New Jersey Republican, and the House Freedom Caucus would let states opt out of a series of “essential” health benefits, such as maternity and mental health care, and allow insurers to charge healthier people less than sicker ones, so long as the states set up high-risk pools to pick up their higher costs. States can tap $115 billion in federal “stability” funding over 10 years for the high-risk pools and an additional $15 billion for a risk-sharing mechanism to pay for sicker consumers who could be priced out of the market. A late amendment by Rep. Fred Upton, Michigan Republican, added $8 billion to risk-pool funding to get more centrists on board with the plan. “The report places a great deal of emphasis on the effects the MacArthur amendment would have on destabilizing state insurance markets in waiver states and see the additional $8 billion in funding provided by the Upton amendment as having very little effect,” said Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia who closely tracks the debate. The CBO said scrapping essential health benefits would also come with tradeoffs. Premiums would decline, on average, though people who need the optional services would have to pay more. “In particular,” it said, “out-of-pocket spending on maternity care and mental health and substance abuse services could increase by thousands of dollars in a given year for the nongroup enrollees who would use those services.” • Dave Boyer contributed to this report. Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.A broadband price war has emerged as Internet service providers (ISPs) take aim at some 360,000 cable modem users whose services may be discontinued by end-2017. Sources said StarHub's existing network leasing agreement with Singtel - which is crucial for the former's cable broadband and TV services - is coming to an end next year. Should StarHub choose to end the lease, its cable services will cease, making its 360,000 customers a prime target for ISPs eager to expand their customer base. When contacted, StarHub chief marketing officer Howie Lau said: "We will ensure a smooth transition for our customers, from cable to our fibre broadband services." The Straits Times understands that a decision has yet to be made on the Singtel lease. In April, StarHub slashed the monthly price for its 300Mbps package from $49.90 to $29 - the cheapest offer yet - as part of early efforts to retain its cable broadband customers. New tech takes over Conventional broadband is based on older technologies such as StarHub's cable and Singtel's asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) systems. These technologies, which have been around for more than a decade, have a surfing speed limit of around 100Mbps, unlike fibre broadband services which are 10 to 100 times faster. Fibre broadband - launched here in September 2010 - now commands about 70 per cent market share among households, according to the latest statistics on the Infocomm Development Authority's website. In contrast, there are now only 360,000 cable modem users and "thousands" of ADSL subscribers. It is not known when Singtel will retire its ADSL systems, but StarHub's cable service may be discontinued next year. StarHub's existing network leasing agreement with Singtel - which is crucial for the former's cable broadband and TV services - is coming to an end next year. The long-term lease dates back to the early 1990s, when StarHub's predecessor, Singapore Cable Vision, was set up. It had to lease Singtel's networks as the latter had a monopoly on telecommunications facilities. Irene Tham But other ISPs also sniffed out the opportunity. Last month, M1 matched the StarHub deal with its own $29-a-month 300Mbps plan. ViewQwest - which has so far been focusing on ultra-fast plans with surfing speeds of 1Gbps or higher - said it is set to offer a 350 Mbps fibre broadband plan for $29 a month tomorrow. "This group of users may not need high-speed plans, but they will be looking to switch to a good fibre broadband provider," said Mr Vignesa Moorthy, chief executive of ViewQwest. Mr Mike Ang, president of the Association of Telecommunications Industry of Singapore, said the switch from older technologies such as cable to fibre is inevitable. "Cable technologies which are capable of surfing speeds of up to around 100Mbps are old and will eventually be retired," he said. Fibre broadband services debuted here in 2010, offering 10 to 100 times faster surfing than older broadband technologies such as cable and asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL). Now, more than 968,000 - or seven in 10 - households are on fibre broadband plans, according to Infocomm Development Authority statistics. Mr Clement Teo, a senior analyst at market research firm Forrester, attributed the huge demand for fibre broadband to aggressive promotions. "Today, a 1Gbps plan can be bought for only $39 a month." Comparatively, a 6Mbps ADSL plan from Singtel - which is more than 100 times slower - cost $29.90 a month in 2013.Fiorina put the children — whose faces Yahoo Health has chosen to obscure — front and center without their parents’ permission. (Photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo) Imagine you are a 4-year old child on a preschool field trip to the botanical gardens. One minute you are looking at flowers, the next minute, you are sitting at former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina’s feet as the presidential hopeful gives a “right to life” forum speech. No, this isn’t the Onion; yes, this is what happened to a group of Iowa preschoolers yesterday at the Greater Des Moines botanical gardens who found themselves unwittingly used as props for a graphic speech given by the candidate in front of a wall-size poster of a fetus, reports the Guardian. Parents of the children claim they never gave the Fiorina campaign permission to include their children in her stump speech; as parent Chris Beck told the Guardian, “This kids went there to see the plants. [Fiorina] ambushed my son’s field trip.” Beck added: “Taking them into a pro-life/abortion discussion [was] very poor taste and judgment. I would not want my 4-year old going to that forum — he can’t fully comprehend that stuff. He likes dinosaurs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Transformers.” The Mayo Clinic says that for toddlers, sex education isn’t a single tell-all discussion. They recommend taking advantage of everyday opportunities to discuss sex. If there’s a pregnancy in the family, for example, tell your child that babies grow in a special place inside the mother. An episode of PBS Newshour that aired in May discussed the way that Dutch schools begin their sexual education programs in kindergarten in a way “to get kids thinking and talking about the kind of intimacy that feels good and the kind that doesn’t.” For example, children read storybooks with their teacher showing different animals hugging and are asked to explain why someone might choose to give someone else a hug. Yes, this is considered sex ed. And, yes, that is what appropriate sex ed looks like for a 4-year old, who probably has no idea what the birds and the bees are. Read This Next: Support for Legal Abortion at Highest Level in 2 Years Let’s keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Health on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.Ebola virus. (Photo: NIAID/Flickr) Folks speak blithely about their guilty pleasures. But if you get a little thrill when you contemplate the worldwide obliteration of society in a horrific Armageddon, have you crossed a line from "person with a guilty pleasure" to "person who is a dangerous psychopath"? This was a question that wrecked most of one afternoon following a discussion of Ebola with some co-workers. We were brainstorming ideas for stories about the awful pandemic, and the topic of American preparedness came up. Although Ebola seems decently isolated on our shores, public health officials are girding our infrastructure for worst-case scenarios. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website I made the following confession: Although obviously the West African Ebola crisis sickens and saddens me, and although I ofcourse don't want Ebola to run rampant... whenever I hear about the idea of our nation crumbling in an apocalyptic plague, I get an amoral twinge of excitement. It's a tiny but unavoidable rush, not unlike the burst one feels when a rollercoaster begins to crest a hill, or when Darth Vader flicks on his lightsaber for the climactic battle of The Empire Strikes Back. I feel a similar frisson when it seems like a geopolitical crisis is bringing us to the brink of World War III (all summer, every time I read about ISIS’s march, I felt a jolt). I'm not proud of the way I feel, but it never goes away. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website "If it's not in the hypothetical and you're seeing the devastation and you're more excited than distraught, then you're in the psychopathic range." Surely, I thought, at least some of my journalist coworkers could relate. They could not. "Dude," one muttered to me. "That's kinda fucked up." Red-faced, I took to Gchat and iMessage to see if any non-work friends felt a similar electricity when they considered a real-world apocalypse. "Not really," said one. "I don't get scared, but I don't get excited, either," said another. "I don't even want to be homeless in America, much less experience The Road," said one of my dearest pals. My pondering had turned to mild panic. Was I crazy? Or at least, in the immortal words of Matchbox 20, just a little unwell? I sought journalists' favorite kind of professional help: I called up some researchers, specifically, in this case, those who had studied humanity's fixation on end-of-the-world scenarios. I began each interview by asking if I was crazy for having my shameful thrills about apocalyptic news. "I have that, too!" exclaimed University of Minnesota neuroscientist Shmuel Lissek (to my great relief). The idea of Armageddon "wakens your autonomic nervous system," he says. "Your heart starts beating faster, you start breathing faster, your sweat glands engage. There's a certain exhilaration from that idea, and one can enjoy that kind of arousal, especially if there's a part of you that knows it won't happen." Lissek's research on the human fear-response suggests that apocalyptic exhilaration is actually the product of useful evolutionary traits. "We'd rather have a false alarm than miss a potential threat," he says. "Organisms endowed with brain circuitry leading them to take even minor threats"—such as the unlikely prospect of a worldwide Ebola outbreak—"seriously are more likely to pass on their genes." Plus, he says, "Life gets boring with the in and out routine of our daily lives, so having something like [the apocalypse] be a possibility is exciting." Of course, cautions Lissek, some balance is in order here. "When the apocalypse is in the hypothetical, it's normal for the excitement to be stronger than the fear," he says. "If it's not in the hypothetical and you're seeing the devastation and you're more excited than distraught, then you're in the psychopathic range." But University of California-San Diego psychologist Nicholas Christenfeld has a slightly different take. He agrees that my feelings were in the normal range for humans, but said that those feelings were the result of an irrational aspect of human cognition. "If you hear about a horrible tragedy that kills 1,200 people, there's some part of us that thinks, Just 1,200? But 120,000 would be so much cooler!" Christenfeld says it's part of a quirky divide in human thought when we experience or hear about any kind of massive event, be it a natural disaster or a well-executed air-show performance from the Blue Angels. On the one hand, we recognize the valence of our emotions—a judgment about whether the thing we're experiencing is good or bad. But we also recognize the magnitude of the emotion—the degree to which it's big or rare. "In humans, to some extent, the valence is secondary," Christenfeld says. "One could run up the magnitude and make things more exciting and engrossing, regardless of whether the thing you're thinking about is good or bad." He compares it to the experience of enjoying a tragic movie in which the protagonists die. "You'll say, 'It was so gripping! I wept!' It's not that you liked that they died, but you liked the intensity of the emotion,” he says. “These apocalypses are tapping into that same two-factor experience. The vast scale of the destruction would be awesome, in the literal definition of that word." Other experts suspected my excitement might have to do with contemplating the world that would come after a society-destroying plague. "We're so stressed and overloaded, that you can start to think, Wouldn't life be simpler if things just broke down?" says Jeff Greenberg, a social psychologist at the University of Arizona. "As long as we're among the survivors, life gets simpler. In a world like ours right now, the idea of being heroic and doing the right thing is so complex that we don't know what it might even be. But in a post-apocalyptic world, we'd have simpler ways to know what the right thing is." Along similar lines, University of California-Davis sociologist John R. Hall drew a parallel between my thinking and people's endless fascination with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. "When you have a phenomenon like 9/11, it's literally a disclosure, which is the Greek meaning of the word," he says. "It unveils an understanding of the world that is beyond what any of us possessed before or could've imagined having. Apocalyptic events seriously draw into question people's taken-for-granted understanding of their worlds." In other words, the end of the world as we know it can show the world as it always really was, beneath the veneer of stability. These conversations put me somewhat at ease about my own mental health (at least in this particular matter). And all of the experts I spoke with emphasized that, as long as I don't have a desire to bring about the end times (I don't), I pose no threat to society. But a new question popped up: If humans are predisposed to find apocalyptic scenarios exciting, couldn't that numb our feelings of urgency about preventing the apocalypse? Even if we don't want to speed it along, would my (and others') desire for thrills subconsciously keep me from wanting to avert disaster? None of the experts I spoke with had a conclusive answer, though none of them seemed too worried about it. However, guilty creature that I am, I raced to the website of Doctors Without Borders and made a donation. I, like all sane people, continue to hope the crippling crisis in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea will come to an end soon. Speaking of guilt, there's one last tidbit I should mention. Greenberg, the social psychologist, pointed out that my choice of profession might also predispose me to my extremely guilty pleasure. "You're in a business where bad news is exciting, right?" he asks. "The apocalypse would give you more stuff to write about." Touché.CLOSE Fort Collins police confirmed that at least one person has died in an early Thursday shooting west of CSU. Fort Collins Police Services Fort Collins police respond to the scene of a fatal shooting investigation at 720 City Park Ave. on Thursday, October 19, 2017. (Photo: Austin Humphreys/Staff Photographer) Update 10/21: Florida man killed in Fort Collins shooting was Air Force veteran Update 10/20: Slain CSU student had'spirit for adventure' Update 10/20: Gunman ambushed shooting victims after birthday celebrations ORIGINAL STORY: Just before 2 a.m. Thursday, callers began dialing 911 to report a shooting west of Colorado State University’s campus. Within minutes, police vehicles were swarming the area. Three people are dead and another is injured after the incident at 720 City Park Ave. — marking the deadliest shooting in Larimer County in more than a decade. A Colorado State University student is among the dead, and police confirmed the suspect is also deceased. Details on what exactly transpired were limited Thursday evening, but police confirmed the suspect likely knew at least one of the victims. The Larimer County coroner identified 22-year-old Savannah McNealy as one of the shooting victims. The coroner ruled her death a homicide by multiple gunshot wounds, according to a news release by the office. The coroner intends to release the identification of the other two people who died, as well as the cause and manner of their deaths, on Friday. McNealy was a student at CSU, the university confirmed. CSU’s online directory indicated that McNealy was studying liberal arts, art and art history. She was also listed online as a designer for CSU Life, a monthly campus publication. The small neighborhood near Campus West is heavily populated by CSU students — filled with apartment complexes and fraternity and sorority houses. As the sun rose Thursday, the police investigation continued. Red and yellow police tape encircled the complex. Police officers stood watch around the blocked area, and neighbors watched from their balconies. Police cruisers lined the block, and an interagency command post was stationed on-scene. The RV-like vehicle functions as a mobile police station so officers have access to computers and can coordinate with other agencies during large-scale investigations. Sign up: Get breaking news alerts in Facebook Messenger Brooke Ehlers lives in a nearby apartment and said she was up late studying when she heard multiple gunshots and the sound of a woman screaming just before 2 a.m. She called 911 and said that within minutes, police vehicles were swarming the area. CSU police first alerted the campus to the shooting about 2:35 a.m. The alert provided a description of a suspect and warned people nearby to stay inside. They posted two subsequent alerts in the early morning hours, and an “all clear” about 4:50 a.m. — shortly after Fort Collins police confirmed that they were no longer searching for suspects. Crime tracker: Homicides in Larimer County Jessica Sanow-Smith, a CSU graduate student, lives across the street from the scene. She said she was asleep at the time of the shooting but her husband, Luke Smith, heard multiple gunshots in the early morning hours and checked to make sure their doors were locked. "I just woke up and had text messages from friends like, 'You live there. Are you OK?' And then I saw a bunch of emails on my phone (from CSU)." Sanow-Smith said her husband thought the shots were fireworks at first because there are often fireworks in the area. Lief Youngs, a resident of the apartment complex where the shooting took place, said he slept through the incident, but his roommate woke him up around 4 a.m. to tell him about it. He said residents who had cars parked inside the crime scene tape were not able to move their vehicles. People who live inside the taped-off area had to leave their homes through back doors to avoid the crime scene or have a police officer escort them to and from their front doors, he said. More: Recent Northern Colorado homicides raise question: Are we less safe? The Fort Collins police investigation is ongoing. Emergency communications indicated the injured victim was rushed to Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, but police did not share details about the severity of the victim’s wounds. CSU issued a campus email Thursday afternoon with information about the shooting and resources for the campus community. "We are deeply saddened by this terrible loss to our campus community and will share more information as we have it," the statement said in part. A team of counselors was made available for walk-in support at the Lory Student Center. CSU administrators encouraged students to contact the CSU Health Network Counseling Services at 970-491-6053, and they encouraged faculty and staff to contact the Employee Assistance Program at 970-491-1527 or the ComPsych Guidance Resources at 1-800-497-9133. They encouraged people concerned about a student or employee to Tell Someone at 970-491-1350 or supportandsafety.colostate.edu/tellsomeone. SummitStone Health Partners provides 24-hour crisis services for Larimer County residents. Contact 970-494-420
hamel and Racener Sunday, the World Series of Poker held a press conference to introduce the final two players of the 2010 WSOP Main Event. Of course, we were there to bring you coverage from the media frenzy. Check it out below. Following us on Twitter is a really good idea. Another good idea? Facebook.(updated below) A prominent US politician late last week was asked several questions by the Huffington Post about Obama's due-process-free assassinations of US citizens. Who was it who gave the following answers? Cheating via Google will be harshly punished. First, when asked whether the US public should be told when the Obama administration has targeted a US citizen for due-process-free execution - re-read again what was asked - this prominent politician replied: Maybe. It just depends." Yes, that was actually the answer. As the Huffington Post put it, this politician "appeared conflicted over whether it was acceptable for the administration to simply disappear American citizens, a term that had previously been used as a verb only outside the United States." This politician elaborated this way: "It depends on the situation. Maybe it depends on the timing, because that's right - it's all about timing, imminence. What is it that could be in jeopardy if people know that happened at this time? I just don't know." Regarding the Obama drone wars generally, this politician explained the rationale for these extrajudicial killings by making claims about the unique, death-loving attributes of the Muslim targets and the need to Keep Us Safe: "I don't know the American people want [the administration] to say, when in doubt, we decided that it wasn't that imminent, and boom, we get hit again. It's hard. It's not an easy thing, especially when you see that the values on the other side are not there. This is their life's work to go to heaven - not to put down their beliefs, but the fact is, we don't have a shared respect for life." Don't let any "doubt" get in the way. Err on the side of killing. Otherwise, "we get hit again" - by "the other side" who, unlike us, doesn't "have a shared respect for life" because they want to get to heaven and get their virgins. In the spirit of generosity, I'll give a few hints. The conservative site Hot Air, which has good analysis of all this, noted about these comments: "you might guess that they came from Dick Cheney or Condi Rice. Actually, scratch that — Condi sounds a bit more dovish about drones than" this person does. So it's not Cheney or Rice. Nor was it Gen. William Westmoreland, who justified the mass death caused by the US during the Vietnam War by explaining: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient." Nor is it George Bush, who told the nation in his 2002 State of the Union address that Our Enemies in the War on Terror "embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice, made long ago, on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life." Just to be extra helpful, I'll add that the quotes about how "their life's work is to go to heaven" and they "don't have a shared respect for life" are also neither from Robert Spencer, Pam Geller nor Melanie "Londonistan" Phillips, who routinely depict Them - "the other side" - as being a death cult eager to die and get to heaven in contrast to the superior western love for the sanctity of life. The answer, which is here as well as in the photograph at the end of this column, reveals so much about the US political class and American political culture. Public opinion and right-wing support While claiming ambivalence, this politician implicitly justified Obama's assassination program and drone war by referencing public opinion ("It's interesting how popular it is in the public. People just want to be protected"). Here one finds the standard public opinion fallacy used to justify US militarism, which I described here two weeks ago: namely, the public will virtually always overwhelmingly support policies that both political parties agree are the right one. In such cases, this "public opinion" excuse reverses causation: politicians do not embrace a policy because public opinion supports it; the opposite is true: public opinion supports it because politicians from both parties embrace it (aside from the fact that polls on these issues are far more conflicted than is suggested by this excuse). Along those lines, the media's leading neoconservative, Charles Krauthammer, last week defended what the Washington Post called Obama's "drone wars" and did so, from start to finish, with reasoning precisely identical to that which I routinely hear from most Obama supporters justifying these policies. In particular, the central premise one must embrace in order to justify all of this is George Bush's once-controversial 2002 formulation about the War on Terror: "These enemies view the entire world as a battlefield, and we must pursue them wherever they are." As Krauthammer correctly notes, once you accept that Bush-defining "this-is-war-and-the-battlefield-is-the-whole-world" premise, as he and all other neocons do, then support for Obama's policies is virtually compelled, but if you reject that premise, then opposition will naturally follow. Said Krauthammer: "Now, for those who believe that the war on terror is not war but law enforcement, (a) I concede that they will find the foregoing analysis to be useless and (b) I assert that they are living on a different and distant planet. For us earthlings, on the other hand, the case for Obama's drone war is strong." That the Global War paradigm was the proper one was, prior to 2009, a highly controversial proposition. Nancy Pelosi at a press conference in Washington DC. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images UPDATE These kinds of statements from US officials - we must keep killing and killing because They don't respect the sanctity of human life, unlike us - are commonplace. One invariably insightful and amusing Twitter commentator summarized it this way this morning: And: And: And: That all nicely summarizes the logic of the War on Terror.All overnight flashing yellow light intersections will be phased out by October 1. (Photo: CBS Austin) Drivers at night will no longer see flashing yellow lights at Austin intersections. More than a hundred intersections in Austin become flashing yellow for the main lanes and flashing red in the secondary roadways overnight. This is to help traffic moving during times when not a lot of cars are on the road. However, by the end of September there will no longer be flashing yellow lights overnight. “It’s primarily for safety reasons,” assistant director of Austin transportation department Jim Dale said. In June, the city said it was planning on phasing out the program if there was evidence the flashing yellow light intersections had a higher crash rate. Dale said Wednesday after looking at the data they found 10 percent of the crashes at flashing yellow light intersections between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. involved a pedestrian or bicyclist. That compares to six percent for regular lights in that time period. “And those differences were enough to tell us alright let’s take a step back and look at what we’re doing and can we do something to make it safer for everyone,” Dale said. The problem is when intersections go flashing yellow, the pedestrian signals do not work. That was a major concern for parents after 14 year Alexei Baureis was killed in June while crossing the street when the lights were flashing yellow at Spicewood Springs and Rustic Rock Drive. “There’s always got to be an option for pedestrians to cross,” Alexei’s father Eric Baureis said Wednesday. Months later, Eric and his wife Anna are still grieving the loss of their son. Anna goes out of her way every day to not go to the intersection. “I can’t, I can’t go down there,” Anna Baureis said. That’s why they’re happy to see the program being lifted. “I think that may be helpful,” Eric Baureis said. Still, it doesn’t fix what happened. “It seems like a mistake is being righted and it seems like the timing is bad,” Eric Baureis said. Both also said they’d like to see other pedestrian signal equipment improvements throughout the city as well. “I’m just a person who wants to walk the street and I want our kids to be safe,” Anna Baureis said. Of the 112 flashing yellow light intersections, Dale says they’ve already stopped half of them. That includes the intersection at Spicewood and Rustic Rock. “But our goal by the end of September is to have them all removed,” Dale said. Dale says this is still a temporary halt that will last about a year, and then they’ll decide whether or not to bring it back. “But we want to come back and look at our data in a year from now. And see how the signals are performing in terms of crashes and then see if we stick with this or if we change,” Dale said. Dale also said this isn’t in response to what happened to Baureis, they had already been transitioning the lights out before the crash. He says in some cases they took out flashing yellow lights because of nearby development.The Abe administration says it will double agricultural exports to ¥1 trillion by 2020, strengthening the farm industry despite the threat of fierce competition once Japan opens its markets more to foreign products under free trade accords. The target is part of a policy package approved by a government panel that includes measures aimed at facilitating large-scale farming by intensifying the use of farmland, supporting farmers engaging in processing and distributing their produce, and doubling incomes in the agricultural sector as a whole over the next decade. “I will achieve drastic reforms in agricultural policy by steadily implanting the policies under this plan,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a meeting of the panel in his office Tuesday. The move signals that the administration is serious about making Japanese farmers more globally competitive as the country negotiates with 11 other nations, including the United States and Australia, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP raises the principle of eliminating all tariffs among its members. This is pressuring Japan, which wants to maintain tariffs on imports of some key farm product categories, such as rice, to protect domestic farmers amid fears the free trade agreement could open the way to an influx of cheap imports. On Tuesday, the TPP members wrapped up a meeting in Singapore by giving up on their goal of achieving a broad agreement before the end of the year. They will continue negotiations next year to iron out their differences over tariffs and other issues. The agricultural reform plan agreed on by the government panel will also enforce a sweeping overhaul of the heavily protected sector. While promoting cost reduction, particularly among rice farmers, and encouraging the production of high-value added goods, the government will end its decades-old policy of protecting rice growers. The government currently limits rice production under the quota system introduced in 1970 to prevent sharp price falls and provides across-the-board cash handouts to farmers joining the production adjustment. The administration plans to introduce a new system in fiscal 2018 under which rice farmers will decide production volumes while taking into account government forecasts of supply and demand. The major policy shift will entail reduction in subsidies for the farmers.Resident Evil 7 may have been made in Japan, but that doesn't mean its native country is getting its native version. Either that or the Japanese version is the developer's intended vision and Capcom simply added more gore to appease a western audience's bloodlust. Either way, the Japanese edition of Resi 7 is less gory in a myriad of ways. As reported by YouTube channel Censored Gaming, Resi 7's Japanese release strongly tones down the game's horror imagery. To wit: in the English release players can find a mutated head in the fridge, full of blood, slime, and fangs jutting out at unsettling angles. In the Japanese version there's simply a photograph of an ordinary man's face with a red X drawn over it. Japan received both a normal and 'Grotesque Version' of Resident Evil 7, though even the Grotesque Version was censored. That's where this footage comes from. Likewise, the western version has a bit where player character Ethan must stick his hand (and entire forearm) down a corpse's throat to retrieve a key. In the Japanese version, he simply picks it up next to a rotting, mutated cadaver. The bit where the cop get their head sliced open by Jack Baker is a lot less gory in the Japanese version, too, as the top half of their skull doesn't slide off. Finally, a severed hand is covered with blood in the western release, whereas in Japan it's shrouded in a black moldy substance. On the plus side, Lucas' Japanese voice actor sounds a lot more unhinged. Sometimes it's what you don't see that's most frightening of all. Censoring horror games in Japan is pretty common as Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami's recent grindhouse opus The Evil Within was given a similarly neutered treatment in its homeland.Makes sense. It’s the only show more hostile to Trump than North Korea’s own propaganda is. The funniest thing about this report is that “Morning Joe” is, relatively speaking, a hard show for most Americans to understand, let alone North Koreans. It’s the ultimate Beltway insider program, tailored to the tastes of political junkies. Imagine being an average guy or gal channel-surfing for some general interest news in the morning and stumbling upon an MJ colloquy between Steve Schmidt, Nicolle Wallace, and Donny Deutsch on the “dog whistles” in Trump’s latest speech on tax reform. Imagine trying to make sense of that. Now imagine a North Korean military officer, separated by geography, language, and a lot of culture, trying to make sense of it. I take it back. The funniest thing about this is that the entire crew seems to take the report at face value instead of recognizing that the North Korea officer was just blowing smoke up the NBC correspondent’s ass about what his favorite American news shows are. NBC News correspondent Kier Simmons landed a rare interview with a North Korean military official on Thursday and learned that officials in the communist country watch “Morning Joe” specifically for reports and discussions about their country… “He quite plainly said he believes President Trump is mentally ill,” Simmons told “Morning Joe” co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. “And he was unequivocal in saying he believes North Korea could win a war with America.” “Be it no doubt that the senior officials here pay attention to what is being said in the U.S.,” Simmons added. “One telling me that he watches ‘Morning Joe’ every day specifically for the segments about North Korea.” Everyone knows that the place to be for in-depth coverage of the crisis on the peninsula isn’t BBC World News, it’s “Morning Joe.” What? Actually, though, I can kinda sorta see why North Koreans might be monitoring the program. It’s not for the North Korea coverage, of course, it’s because their intelligence people probably know that Scarborough and Brzezinski know Trump personally and therefore might have special insights into his thinking. The NorKs are, reportedly, confused about Trump’s intentions and eager for experts in Washington to clue them into whether Trump’s a blowhard or he really is planning a nuclear first strike. Watching “Morning Joe” would be of a piece with that. And hey, everyone enjoys political television that confirms their own intellectual biases. The NorKs think Trump is crazy and evil; Scarborough and Brzezinski call him crazy and evil pretty much every day. Someday, when the definitive historical account of the U.S./North Korean nuclear exchange of 2019 is written, we may learn that it was an especially febrile, white-knuckled attack on Trump’s mental stability on MSNBC one morning that convinced Kim Jong Un to order full release. A frightening thought: If the NorKs are monitoring “Morning Joe” because the hosts know Trump, they’re probably monitoring “Hannity” too. They must be on the edge of their seats wondering if the Seth Rich case will ever be cracked.I had a good idea definitely who I wanted Hook to be and then speaking to Eddie and Adam about it, I knew what they were looking for with the character. He's fun to play, but it's a difficult one there. You kind of have the pressure of knowing that people grew up with Hook. The idea is that he's a slightly older gentleman and a bit of a buffoon, but completely evil. When I came on that was something that I was aware of because he is a lot different than the traditional Hook. How I wanted him to be was slightly more of a bad boy, and I wanted people to feel slightly guilty for rooting for him. Hopefully I've achieved that. People seem to have taken him to heart, which was great because there was a bit of pressure coming on that I felt myself.President Obama has just nominated Lael Brainard as a Fed Governor, Jerome Powell to his second term and most notably, Stanley Fischer (ex Head of the Bank of Israel) as Vice-Chairman of the Fed. "These three distinguished individuals have the proven experience, judgment and deep knowledge of the financial system to serve at the Federal Reserve during this important time for our economy,” Obama said in statement. Bear in mind that Fischer is skeptical of forward-guidance (as we note below) which is soon to become the Fed's main weapon to jawbone markets. Stanley Fischer's term as governor runs through 2020 (vice chair through 2018), Brainard's term through 2026 and Powell's through 2028! Tenure anyone? We are sure they will still do a great job... As we noted previously, Fischer brings some interesting views: Q. How does Fischer broadly think about the economy? Fischer is a highly respected academic macroeconomist. He is credited with helping to lay the foundations of New Keynesian macroeconomics, which sought to place traditional Keynesian theory on a stronger microeconomic foundation. Subscribing to this school of thought, we believe that Fischer's general view of the world is similar to that of Bernanke and Yellen, with a significant role for active fiscal and (more importantly) monetary policy. In fact, Fischer was Bernanke's dissertation adviser in graduate school, and Bernanke recently referred to him as a "role model and frequent adviser." As a result, we see little daylight between Fischer and the current core FOMC leadership with respect to their basic paradigm for thinking about the economy. Q. How would his appointment affect the dynamics on the Committee? Fisher is widely seen as a policy heavyweight, having not only run the Bank of Israel, but also served as the chief economist at the World Bank and First Deputy Managing Director (the number two position) at the IMF. Both his academic standing and policy experience suggest that Fischer's views will be very influential on the Committee. Q. What are the key points from his tenure as head of the Bank of Israel? Under his tenure, the Bank of Israel aggressively cut its policy rate from 4.25% to 0.5% in the wake of the financial crisis. Starting in February of 2009, the Bank of Israel joined the Fed in undertaking purchases of longer-dated securities, indicating a willingness to adopt unorthodox monetary policy measures. The stated intention was to "extend the effectiveness of monetary policy onto longer interest rate maturities." However, later in 2009 the Bank of Israel began hiking its policy rate, in advance of all major global central banks. We do not see this as necessarily indicating a "hawkish" policy bias on the part of Fischer, but rather a reaction to the fact that economic developments in Israel were substantially different from those prevailing in the G4 economies. The Bank of Israel did not adopt explicit calendar- or outcome-based forward guidance under his leadership. Q. What are his views on balance sheet policy? Fischer generally holds a favorable view on the effectiveness of balance sheet policy. As noted, the Bank of Israel began a program of longer-dated securities purchases under his watch. He also stated in a November speech at the IMF that one of the key lessons from the financial crisis, in his view, was that monetary policy is not impotent once the zero lower bound on short-term interest rates has been hit. He specifically highlighted the efficacy of the Fed's QE?which he said was supported by a substantial amount of academic work?and did not explicitly mention forward guidance on the path of short-term interest rates. Q. What does he think about forward guidance? In contrast to his statements on QE, he has recently expressed a more skeptical view of forward guidance. Specifically, he noted in September that "if you give too much forward guidance you do take away flexibility," that "we don’t know what we’ll be doing a year from now. It’s a mistake to try and get too precise," and that "you can’t expect the Fed to spell out what it’s going to do…because it doesn’t know." These statements contrast with Yellen's strong endorsement of forward guidance. In that sense, Fischer's statements do pose at least some risk to our expectation that the FOMC will ultimately enhance its forward guidance by reducing the unemployment threshold to 6.0%. That said, such a limited number of statements are unlikely to capture all of the nuances of Fischer's thinking on the topic. One can also argue that his criticisms apply mostly to calendar-based guidance and less to outcome-based guidance, which only requires the Fed to "spell out what it's going to do" in a more conditional sense. In any case, we have little doubt that Yellen and Fischer would see eye to eye on the need to prevent a large tightening of financial conditions anytime soon, so the slightly greater uncertainty that might result from his nomination is mainly about tactics, not strategy. Q. What is the likelihood of confirmation? If nominated, we think Fischer would very likely be confirmed. In the unlikely event that his confirmation faced substantial opposition from Republicans, the recent change to Senate rules requiring only a simple majority to break a filibuster on confirmation votes ensures that he could be confirmed with only Democratic votes.FILE - This April 26, 2011 file photo shows actor Fred Willard arriving at the fifth annual BritWeek in Los Angeles. Willard, who starred in such films as ``Best in Show'' and ``Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,'' was arrested in a Hollywood theater July 18, 2012, on suspicion of engaging in a lewd act, police said Wednesday.(AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File) LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actor Fred Willard, perhaps best-known as a dog-show announcer in the movie "Best in Show," was arrested on suspicion of committing a lewd act at a Hollywood adult theater and later fired from his work on a PBS series. Uniformed vice officers were conducting a routine investigation of the theater Wednesday night and saw Willard engaging in a lewd act, Los Angeles police Sgt. Mark Ro said. The actor appeared to be alone, he said. Willard, 72, was booked at the Hollywood police station on suspicion of committing a lewd act in public. Ro said Willard was released after midnight without posting bail. By Thursday afternoon, Willard had lost his job narrating "Market Warriors," which is produced by Boston public television station WGBH. "Given the unfortunate news reported today, effective immediately Fred Willard no longer will be involved with the 'Market Warriors' series," said WGBH spokeswoman Jeanne Hopkins. Mark Walberg, the host of "Antiques Roadshow," will re-narrate the four episodes that have already been produced. Hopkins said. Willard's attorney Paul Takakjian wrote in an email that he was gathering more information and declined further comment. The actor said in a video posted by celebrity website TMZ that it was a misunderstanding and denied wrongdoing. ABC plans to continue broadcasting its series "Trust Us With Your Life," which is hosted by Willard and has four shows that have not yet aired. Willard was nominated four times for Emmys for guest roles on TV's "Modern Family" and "Everybody Loves Raymond." In Pixar's 2008 hit "WALL-E," he played Shelby Forthright, the CEO of a ubiquitous big-box chain called Buy'n'Large. In addition to "Best in Show," Willard has also appeared in other Christopher Guest mockumentary films, including "This is Spinal Tap" and "Waiting for Guffman."Methodology: This was a hand-stitched process. The 10-episode third season added up to 8 hours and 43 minutes in total, excluding opening and closing credits. I re-watched it twice, and timed each scene from beginning to end and noted the characters within. If a character entered mid-scene, I counted them as being in the whole thing (the actor was on set that day, and was key to it, after all). There are scenes in which a character or characters are in the background (Tyrion and Sansa's wedding springs to mind) and the actors don't have any lines (or have one or two), but I counted those for the same reason — better to round up. I rounded way up with the dragons; there are scenes when they aren't pivotal, but are in the distance, flying behind Dany. But who am I to say that the Mother of Dragons was not using her children effectively in those scenes to intimidate her foes? So, I counted them. When I had all of the times for each character clocked and added up, I sent the numbers to BuzzFeed's art director, John Gara, who conceived of and created the graphic. Two thoughts: I embarked on this project with the same obsessive spirit as Ahab pursuing Moby Dick — there's no real explanation. Many things delighted me along the way, and I hope Game of Thrones fans can find their own surprises within. I will share two of mine. While I went in guessing that Peter Dinklage would be on screen more than anyone else, I was interested to see that the gap between him and the rest of the main characters/actors was so large. On the other end of things, considering what an important character Mance is in the books, seeing how little Ciarán Hinds was in Season 3 underlined how Game of Thrones hasn't (yet?) established him — which is a loss to me. Please share your own observations in the comments!After Kristian Nairn revealed that his character, Hodor, wasn’t going to be appearing in the fifth season of Game Of Thrones, speculation ran rampant that Hodor’s consistent companion on the show, Bran Stark, would not be appearing either. However, in a new video interview from On Demand Entertainment, pointed out to us by commenter “O’Toole,” Isaac Hempstead-Wright directly says that he’s filming the next season of Game Of Thrones as his next project. Video below, as well as some mild speculation…. The video starts as promotion for Hempstead-Wright’s new film, The Boxtrolls. Discussion of his Game Of Thrones role starts about three minutes in, and the “What’s next for you?” question appears at the very end. No mention is made of Hodor’s lack of presence, which is unsurprising, especially if it was the interview was filmed before yesterday. If Bran is appearing in Season 5, but Hodor is not, then it’s likely that we’ll be seeing Bran’s magical training more than his physical presence in over the course of the season. (This isn’t a spoiler; the show is well off from Bran’s story on the page at this point.)Advertisement President-elect Donald Trump undeniably shares something in common with deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein - his love of opulent interior design. Trump's love of all things gold and gaudy is well known, with his properties across the country decorated in the most lavish of ways. But now, a series of new pictures show just how the President-elect's mansions and casinos in New York, Connecticut, Florida, and New Jersey compare to some of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's compounds and palaces. Hussein, who was hanged on December 30, 2006, after being found guilty of crimes against humanity during his time as dictator of the gulf country, seemed to share Trump's penchant for covering the walls of his palaces in gold, photographs first published by Vanity Fair show. The reception area inside one of his Tikrit palaces was strikingly similar to the hall at the Donald's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, while both presidents' appeared equally fond of grand entrance ways - with the magazine comparing Trump Tower's lobby to the central rotunda at Saddam's 'Water Palace' in Baghdad. Trump's long-defunct Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City bears a resemblance to Hussein's Al-Shaheed Monument in Baghdad - which was built to honor Iraqi soldier who died fighting in the Iraq-Iran War that raged from 1980 to 1988. Jewel-encrusted staircases were also a favorite of both, with Trump's Mar-a-Lago mansion and Manhattan skyscraper well known for their ostentatious entryways. And to cap it all off, it appeared Trump and Hussein preferred the same style for their respective bedrooms, with large wooden frames, beige curtains and walls spotted in the Taj Mahal penthouse and the Al-Faw Palace in Baghdad. The real estate comparison comes after the Republican president-elect created headlines earlier this year for praising Hussein's 'efficient killing of terrorists'. 'You know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn't read them the rights — they didn't talk, they were a terrorist, it was over,' Trump told a campaign rally in North Carolina in July. The president-elect also said the world would be better if Hussein - and Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi - were still in power, during an interview in October 2015. 'People are getting their heads chopped off, they're being drowned. Right now, they are far worse than they were, ever, under Saddam Hussein or Gadhafi,' Trump told CNN. Donald Trump (pictured in the lobby of Trump Tower in 1989) appears to have a similar taste in interior design as Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had ‹ Slide me › The golden touch: Both Donald Trump and Saddam Hussein appeared to love decorating their mansions with gold. Pictured top is the Mar-a-Lago resort, and pictured bottom is a room in one of Hussein's Baghdad palaces ‹ Slide me › Massive compounds: Trump is known around the world for his sprawling estates, but it appears as though some of Saddam's homes may have matched up size-wise. Pictured left is the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, and pictured right is Hussein's summer residence near Anechki in Iraq ‹ Slide me › Something to stair at: Lavish staircases were features of many properties owned by both Donald Trump and Saddam Hussein. Pictured left is a staircase in Mar-a-Lago, and pictured right is one inside one of Hussein's palaces in Tikrit Like-minded: Donald Trump (left) and Saddam Hussein (right, in November 1987) seemingly thought the same way when it came to interior design - based off pictures of their respective mansions and palaces ‹ Slide me › Similar styles: Donald Trump and Saddam Hussein appeared to prefer their bedrooms to be set out in almost identical ways. Pictured left is a penthouse at the Trump Taj Mahal in New Jersey. Pictured right is Hussein's former bedroom at Al-Faw palace in Baghdad ‹ Slide me › Entertaining areas: Both the Donald and Saddam seemed set on having massive spaces inside their properties to welcome and host guests. Pictured top is the Mar-a-Lago mansion - set up for Donald Jr's wedding in 2005. Pictured bottom is one of the main rooms in one of Hussein's palaces in Tikrit ‹ Slide me › Monuments on the mind: Trump's long-defunct Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City (pictured top) bears a resemblance to Hussein's Al-Shaheed Monument (pictured bottom) in Baghdad - which was built to honor Iraqi soldiers who died fighting in the Iraq-Iran War that raged from 1980 to 19880 While on stage in Comic-Con’s Hall H, Black Panther director Ryan Coogler didn’t say much about his Marvel film, mainly because he’s still working on the script and there’s still a ways before production commences. That said, newly cast Lupita Nyong’o did reveal the first plot details to Marvel during the red carpet press rounds following the panel. From the Marvel Studios presentations, we know that Danai Gurira (The Walking Dead) and Nyong’o (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) play Okoye and Nakia, members of Wakanda’s elite special forces unite called the Dora Milaje. Nyong’o further revealed during an interview with a Marvel.com correspondent: The story of this Black Panther is- what am I allowed to say? – The story is that the Black Panther’s leadership is really threatened by two foes who come together, and so Black Panther gets the help of the C.I.A. and the Dora Milaje to try and defeat the enemy. Michael B. Jordan was revealed to be one of these foes. The Human Torch curse strikes again as the former Fantastic Four star will now play Erik Killmonger. Might the other one by Ulysses Klaw? We already saw Andy Serkis bring this vibranium-hunting comic villain to life in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and he walked away with at least one of his arms in tact. Given the character’s ties to Black Panther, the film seems like a logical place for him to appear next, if at all. Black Panther doesn’t hit theaters until July 6, 2018, so we have some time to kill, and thankfully Doctor Strange, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok, and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 to keep us preoccupied. See the full Marvel live-stream below and skip to around the 19:80 mark to hear Nyong’o talk about the film’s story. Check out more of our recent Black Panther and Marvel coverage below:23.04.2016 Abgas-Affäre weitet sich aus - Verschleppt und vertuscht? Wirtschaft Der anstehende Rückruf Hunderttausender Dieselautos wegen zu hoher Abgaswerte setzt neben den Herstellern auch den Bundesverkehrsminister stärker unter Druck. "Da kommt noch Einiges nach", sagte der Chef des Verkehrsausschusses im Bundestag, Martin Burkert (SPD), zu dem am Freitag von Ressortchef Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) vorgelegten Bericht über Nachmessungen an mehr als 50 Modellen verschiedener Autobauer. Er nehme an, dass der von der Opposition aus Grünen und Linken geforderte Untersuchungsausschuss zum Abgas-Skandal bald beschlossen werde. "Zugleich kommt der Verkehrsminister nächsten Mittwoch in den Verkehrsausschuss, um über die aktuelle Situation zu berichten." Monatelange Prüfungen des Kraftfahrt-Bundesamts (KBA) hatten ergeben: Bei 22 von 53 getesteten Dieselwagen bestehen Zweifel, ob das Herunterregeln der Abgasreinigung bei niedrigeren Temperaturen wirklich mit dem Schutz von Motorbauteilen zu tun hat. Bei rund 630 000 Autos sollen die Hersteller daher nun die Technik nachbessern. Betroffen sind unter anderem Mercedes, Opel, Audi, Porsche und die leichten VW-Nutzfahrzeuge, aber auch ausländische Marken wie Fiat. Zwar steht bisher nur beim VW-Konzern, der am Freitag einen Rekordverlust infolge des Diesel-Debakels meldete, der Einsatz einer Betrugs-Software zur Manipulation von Emissionstests fest. Die gesamte Autobranche rutscht jedoch wegen der teils drastischen Abweichungen zwischen realen Testwerten und offiziellen Firmenangaben zum Schadstoffausstoß zusehends in eine Vertrauenskrise. "Die neuen Erkenntnisse aus dem Untersuchungsbericht beunruhigen mich sehr", sagte Burkert. "Es hat den Anschein, als sei die Tinte noch nicht trocken in den USA bei dem Vertrag mit VW über Entschädigungen - schon kommt eine Horde schwarzer Schafe daher." Am Donnerstag hatte ein US-Richter Eckpunkte einer Einigung mit Volkswagen verkündet. Umweltverbände werfen dem Verkehrsministerium und dem ihm unterstellten KBA schon seit längerem eine Mauschelei mit der Autoindustrie vor. Es gibt daher Forderungen, die Zuständigkeit für die Kfz-Zulassung vom KBA auf das Umweltbundesamt (UBA) zu übertragen. Die EU-Kommission will die nationalen Aufseher ebenfalls stärker an die Kandare nehmen. "Um die Gesundheit der Menschen und die Umwelt zu schützen, muss in Zukunft klar gelten: Alle Autos halten die Grenzwerte ein, egal ob im Sommer oder im Winter, im Prüflabor oder auf der Straße", sagte UBA-Chefin Maria Krautzberger. Aus Sicht der Bundestags-Opposition soll der geplante Abgas-Ausschuss prüfen, ob Untersuchungen zugunsten der Autokonzerne verschleppt wurden. "Wenn sich der Verdacht erhärtet, dass Dobrindt das letzte halbe Jahr genutzt hat, um sich mit den Konzernen abzustimmen, dann haben wir ein richtiges Problem", sagte der Linke-Abgeordnete Herbert Behrens, der den Ausschuss voraussichtlich leiten wird, der dpa. Es gibt auch Kritik daran, dass der Minister den Rückruf als freiwillig statt als verpflichtend ausgab. "Ich sehe eine große Gefahr für Arbeitsplätze, wenn jetzt mit der Vertuschung weitergemacht wird." Der Autoverband VDA hatte den Dobrindt-Bericht begrüßt, weil es nun "Klarheit und Transparenz" über die tatsächlichen Schadstoffwerte gebe. Der Geschäftsführer des Naturschutzbundes Nabu, Leif Miller, meinte hingegen: "Die Bundesregierung hat Anteil an der heutigen Misere. Weder wurden in Verkehr gebrachte Fahrzeuge ordnungsgem
filmed here since 2004’s Terminal City, but also the most prestigious. As if it weren’t enough that Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall was writing the American remake’s première episode, with James Strong, the prolific British director (Downton Abbey, Law & Order: U.K., Doctor Who) and Broadchurch alumnus helming it, Gracepoint is being shepherded by Hollywood royalty. It’s part of a slate of high-profile projects undertaken by producer John Goldwyn, grandson of the legendary MGM co-founder Samuel Goldwyn. Goldwyn, 55, most recently produced The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, starring Ben Stiller, a remake of James Thurber’s 1939 short story his grandfather brought to the screen in 1947 with Danny Kaye. Goldwyn, whose other projects include Showtime’s serial-killer drama series Dexter and Baby Mama, is reportedly eyeing a remake of Guys and Dolls. For Shine America, best known for its fleet of unscripted shows such as The Biggest Loser, MasterChef and Slide Show, Gracepoint is part of an expanded plan to do more scripted shows, CEO Rich Ross, 52, recently told The Hollywood Reporter. The series distributed by Shine International follows the company’s maiden voyage — FX’s The Bridge — into that realm. Chibnall is executive producing the remake of his labour-of-love originally set on England’s Dorset coast with showrunners Dan Futterman (Capote) and Anya Epstein (In Treatment), Shine’s Carolyn Bernstein (The Bridge) and Kudos’ Jane Featherstone (The Hour). RUSHES: Congratulations to Victoria-raised Jennifer Baichwal and co-director Edward Burtynsky, whose documentary Watermark won the Rogers Best Canadian Film award from Toronto Film Critics Association this week. … Carl Bessai is coming back to town, but not to make a movie this time. The prolific B.C. filmmaker will offer tips and share stories about working with actors such as the late Cory Monteith and Sir Ian McKellen during his Directing Actors workshop at CineVic on Jan. 25 and 26.By Ulson Gunnar Any US general providing candid views on fighting and winning a war admit the impossibility of victory as long as the source of an enemy’s fighting capacity remains intact. In fact, as an excuse for why the US is still struggling in Afghanistan over a decade and a half after initially invading the Central Asian state in 2001, US General John Nicholson blamed outsiders including Pakistan, Iran and Russia for aiding, abetting and harboring anti-US forces. No amount of military might brought to bear on forces fighting the US within Afghanistan’s borders can disrupt finances, recruitment, training, weapon supplies, logistics and refitting taking place beyond Afghanistan’s borders and thus beyond the US military’s reach. The United States suffered a similar problem during its prolonged occupation of Vietnam. North Vietnam, China and neighboring states provided support and safe havens for fighters in the south facing off against US troops and their South Vietnamese counterparts. Despite killing up to 4 million people and dropping more ordnance on the region than had been dropped during the entirety of World War 2, the US ultimately failed to defeat North Vietnam or prevent the reunification and independence of the Vietnamese people. Despite both a historical and contemporary example of futile warfare fought out of reach of the source of an enemy’s fighting capacity, the US is presenting to the American public a “plan” to fight and defeat the so-called “Islamic State” in Syria completely ignoring the terrorist front’s state sponsors. The “Plan” To Defeat the Islamic State The plan includes a possible expansion of US troops already operating illegally and uninvited in Syria. In the Guardian‘s article, “US military will retain core strategy against Isis as Trump mulls escalation,” it states: [US General Joseph] Votel, speaking from Jordan on Wednesday, said that one option to speed up a long-signaled attack on Raqqa was to “take on a larger burden ourselves”. Shouldering more of the task would mean US forces, conventional as well as special operations, bringing more artillery and logistics options to the fight. Absent from US President Donald Trump’s “plan,” and from comments made by US commanders, is any mention of the source of the Islamic State’s fighting capacity. No mention is made as to where they are drawing their fighters from, who is paying for and overseeing their training, arming, outfitting and continuous supplying of when finally they reach the battlefield, or how they have managed to fight the summation of Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian, Lebanese and Russian forces for years now. Download Your First Issue Free! Do You Want to Learn How to Become Financially Independent, Make a Living Without a Traditional Job & Finally Live Free? Download Your Free Copy of Counter Markets Unlike in Vietnam and Afghanistan, two theaters the US desperately sought or seeks victory over indigenous resistance and had openly and repeatedly accused neighboring states of aiding and abetting that resistance, the US has been strangely quiet during both President Barack Obama’s and now President Trump’s administrations regarding neighboring states aiding and abetting the Islamic State. However, without addressing the very source of the Islamic State’s fighting capacity, defeating the terrorist front will be difficult if not impossible. A Pretext for US Occupation A plan to place large numbers of US troops in Syria, without the Syrian state’s consent and amid an intentionally unwinnable, open-ended war against the Islamic State will create a pretext for the long sought after de facto US occupation of Syria. It will also give the US the ability to carve out yet another “safe haven” within Syrian territory, complimenting NATO-member Turkey’s in the north. From these two locations, terrorist forces can and will be harbored, trained, armed, supplied and sent off deep within Syrian territory to further divide and destroy the Syrian state. Far from mere conspiracy theory, such plans have been repeatedly articulated by US policymakers since at least as early as 2012, including a Brookings Institution paper literally titled, “Assessing Options for Regime Change” (.pdf). “safe-havens and humanitarian corridors” that would be used not for any sort of actual humanitarian purpose but to further exert what the paper calls “coercive action.” In it, the document clearly advocates a possible full-scale US invasion and occupation of Syria, as well as the creation of what it callsthat would be used not for any sort of actual humanitarian purpose but to further exert what the paper calls The paper also specifically mentions Turkey’s role both in creating “safe-havens” and as serving as a base from which Syria is to be invaded and occupied. The paper, written in 2012 under the administration of President Obama, depicts a strategy being reintroduced and expanded under US President Trump. It represents not only a dangerous continuity of agenda, but a complete commitment by the special interests occupying Wall Street, Washington, London and Brussels to divide and destroy the Syrian state, a commitment that persists despite many setbacks. A real “war” on the Islamic State would involve first and foremost the exposure, condemnation, isolation and destruction of its state sponsors who US intelligence and political circles have repeatedly admitted include interests within their own nation, as well as among their allies including Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Anything less indicates a rouse serving as nothing more than a pretext for an expanded US presence in Syria, not to fight and defeat the Islamic State, but to preserve it while attempting to further divide and destroy the Syrian state. Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”, where this article first appeared.Average annual direct medical costs for hospital-admitted firearm injuries exceeded $622 million for the years of 2003 through 2013. This is an underestimate of the overall direct hospitalization costs because readmissions for further treatment may not have been identified with an Ecode noting the original cause of the injury. While this represents less than 1% of the overall costs of $377 billion for all hospital stays in the US, firearm injuries represent relatively high costs per patient (Moore et al., 2014). In 2012, the average cost per hospital stay was $10,400 (Moore et al., 2014), which is less than half of the average costs for a firearm injury. The lowest average cost for a firearm-related admission was $16,975 for an unintentional firearm injury, and the highest were $32,237 for an injury from an assault weapon and $33,462 from legal intervention. In 2012, uninsured patients comprised 5% of all hospitalizations, while we found that from 2003 to 2013, an average of 30.1% of firearm injury hospitalizations were among the uninsured (Moore et al., 2014). In contrast, 29% of all hospitalizations were paid by private insurance compared with 21% of firearm hospitalizations. Based on their per-hospital cost, the overall hospitalization cost, and the low proportion of private insurance coverage, firearm injuries pose a high burden on our healthcare system. Our cost estimates provide only a small component of the overall burden of firearm injuries. Studies reporting lifetime medical and productivity costs range from $48 to $175 billion (Corso et al., 2007; Lee et al., 2014; Miller, 2012; Fowler et al., 2015; Allareddy et al., 2012), with differences based on the source of firearm incidence data, types of firearm injuries included, sources of cost estimates, and types of costs included in the estimate. Lost productivity from premature death as well as work time loss was the largest component of these costs, with a smaller proportion from direct medical care. Studies that focus on medical care also exhibit substantial variation in methods and estimated cost burden. Four studies report the lifetime medical care costs from firearm injuries that occur in 1 year, and these range from an average cost of $684 million for hospital admissions in 2000 (Fowler et al., 2015) to an average cost of $1.5 billion for hospital admissions in 2010 (Miller, 2012). These studies vary in their definition of medical care costs, but most cover all costs, including transport, readmission, and nursing care, and some estimate lifetime rather than annual costs (Corso et al., 2007; Lee et al., 2014; Miller, 2012; Fowler et al., 2015; Allareddy et al., 2012). The two main sources for estimating non-fatal firearm injuries are the National Inpatient Sample, used here, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System – All Injury Program, which estimates national firearm injury hospitalization rates based on 66 hospital Emergency Departments (Schroeder & Ault, 2001; U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 2000). Although these hospitals are chosen to represent a range of hospitals by size, the sample over-represents urban emergency departments. Estimates of firearm injuries from the National Inpatient Sample tend to be lower than those from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System. For example, Lee et al., used the National Inpatient Sample to estimate an annual average of 28,249 hospital admissions from 2006 through 2010, and in comparison Fowler et al., estimated an average of 36,224 per year from 2010 through 2012. Our annual average of 30,617 was closer to other estimates from the National Inpatient Sample. We found that firearm injuries disproportionately affect youth, males, and a non-White population. These trends have been widely reported in previous research (Fowler et al., 2015; Allareddy et al., 2012; Leventhal et al., 2014). In addition, we found that assaults caused more than 60% of admissions, followed by unintentional injuries. These trends are also similar to those reported in other studies of non-fatal firearm injuries (Fowler et al., 2015; Leventhal et al., 2014). However, because firearms are such a lethal means of suicide, suicide comprises a higher proportion of firearm mortality by intent (Fowler et al., 2015). Rates of firearm hospital admissions did not change significantly from 2003 through 2013. Previous studies have found that hospitalizations decreased between 1998 and 2011 among children injured by a firearm (Kalesan et al., 2016), and for all firearm hospitalizations from 2000 to 2010 (Kalesan et al., 2013). Handguns and assaults posed the largest overall hospitalization cost burden. Although the highest per-hospital cost was for assault weapons, handguns comprised over 70% of firearm injuries among those for which the weapon type was known and the total annual hospitalization costs were nearly $183 million. Assaults had the third-highest cost per hospitalization and were the most frequent intent, costing an annual total of nearly $373 million. Two other studies reported costs by injury intent. Fowler et al. reported lifetime medical and lost work time costs among those admitted to a hospital to be approximately $475 million for unintentional firearm injuries, $600 million for self-harm/suicide, and over $2 billion for assault/homicide (Fowler et al., 2015). Corso et al. reported the lifetime costs medical costs for assaults as $800 million and for self-harm as $124 million (this study included only violent firearm injuries) (Corso et al., 2007). While these study’s estimates are higher due to factors described above, the trends by intent are similar. No prior studies have reported costs associated with the type of firearm, although information about the type of firearm would be helpful to prioritize intervention approaches. One major challenge to estimating costs by firearm type is the high prevalence of hospitalizations for which the firearm type is unknown. In the National Inpatient Sample, nearly 60% of the firearm types were unknown. Handguns accounted for nearly 70% of all hospitalizations for which weapon type was known, and among these handguns accounted for four times the total annual hospitalization costs than for any other type of firearm. In addition to a high prevalence of missing information about firearm type, this study has other limitations. Approximately 25% of injuries in the National Inpatient Sample are missing Ecodes, and it is possible that these could contain some firearm injuries. Our examination of injury diagnoses among admissions without Ecodes suggested that firearm injuries likely comprise less than 1% of those missing Ecodes. Our sample also does not include readmissions that did not have an Ecode identifying a firearm as the cause of injury, and thus our findings are likely an underestimate. The extent of missing data for the type of firearm limits our ability to fully examine injury and cost characteristics. The NIS is the largest and most representative sample of US hospitalizations, but may be subject to sampling bias and not designed specifically as a firearm injury surveillance system. Our analysis includes only hospitalized firearm injuries, which are about one third of all reported firearm injuries.Today someone shared with me a link to a promotion for an episode of ABC’s “What Would You Do?” For those unfamiliar, the program uses actors in public spaces to test how the general public will react to particular situations that often involve moral responses. I’ve seen one where a man slips drugs into his date’s drink in front of other bar patrons while his date is in the bathroom. Many people came forward to warn the woman about what had happened, and a few challenged the man with the drugs directly. In another segment, they had a pretty blonde woman struggling with her bike lock at a local park. Passersby stopped to assist her. When the person struggling with the lock was changed to a young black man, however, the responses were quite different–hostile and accusatory. It’s actually an interesting concept that challenges social prejudices and perceptions. It sometimes makes us look deep inside America’s, and perhaps our own, prejudices. However, a recent segment highlighted a negative (and highly inaccurate) atheist stereotype, showing an atheist obnoxiously confronting a family in a restaurant, as the family tried to have a prayer before their meal. The atheist actually gets up, goes over to the family, and tries to tell them to stop praying because it makes her uncomfortable. How many times has this happened in your presence? If you’re like me, the answer to that is “never.” Outside of our well-publicized stint with Patrick Green on our “Foolish Atheists” episode (please don’t e-mail Patrick!), I’ve never seen an atheist actively try to repress anyone’s right to free exercise in a space where such expression is legal. On the contrary, I’ve heard from atheists who have had to endure religious promotion in their workplace, atheists who have been threatened or abandoned by their religious families, atheists who have relatives trying to indoctrinate their children in secret. But I have yet to see an atheist act like the one in this segment. I posted a comment at the Facebook page for this promo short–as have (at this time) about 1,600 atheists, some of whom you might recognize. I encourage you all to add your voices there. I see this as nothing short of perpetuating harmful defamation against this community and hope (perhaps in futility) that we might get something in the way of an apology from the station or the program itself. While we have atheists suffering real persecution (see Jessica Ahlquist and Steven Hewitt as real world examples of what happens when an atheist stands up on behalf of religious freedom–even if you’re a child or a veteran!) The Religious Right is most often the group doling out the bigotry and bullying, not on the receiving end–although to hear them tell it, they’re one of the most oppressed powerful, well funded, well organized, politically connected majorities in modern times. Their god should do a better job of protecting them against the disempowered, disorganized, politically disenfranchised, socially mistrusted atheist minority. Someone in comments offered a suggestion for how this show could have been more realistic and also more relevant to the current public reality: They suggested the family have one older child who refuses to participate in the prayer for reasons of conscience, and have the parents respond with derision, insult, punishment threats, bullying and other forms of coercion. I’d love to see if my guess about what would happen in this Texas town would be correct. I would guess that patrons in the restaurant would side, in large part, with the parents and even help to shame the child to conform. That’s actually a scenario we DO often hear about in our letters to the show–with disturbing frequency.By Annabella Nielsen COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A Danish-Moroccan bookseller has been jailed for four years for supporting and inciting terrorism in posts on Facebook. A lawyer for bookseller Sam Mansour argued that his Facebook messages such as "We are terrorists, and we are proud" were a matter of freedom of speech, just as Danish cartoonists who drew the Prophet Mohammad in 2005, outraging many Muslims, were deemed to have been exercising their right to free speech. "I just used the civil rights that Danish society has given me," Mansour said in his defence statement, adding that he had hurt no one. But a court in the capital, Copenhagen, rejected that argument and ruled late on Thursday that Mansour had directly incited violence and terrorism. Mansour's other posts included "Jihad is a duty". He also posted photo-shopped pictures of the severed head of one of the cartoonists who drew Mohammad. The cartoonist's head was pictured in a toilet and surrounded by flames and blood. Mansour was jailed for three and a half years in 2007 on the same charge. Both then and in this latest case, the prosecutor suggested he be deported back to Morocco. Mansour, 54, sat calmly during the hearing, occasionally smiling at his supporters, who were behind a glass partition. Many supporters were teenaged boys with bushy beards, checking their smartphones and joking with court guards. Among the supporters were six women in black niqabas. During one of many breaks in the hearing, Mansour spoke with his supporters, one of whom shook his hand through a gap in the partition and told him: "Good things will come to you, Sam". The 2005 cartoons of Mohammad, published in various Danish newspapers, sparked heated debate about freedom of speech at home and protests in various parts of the Muslim world in which at least 50 people were killed. For many Muslims, any depiction of Mohammad is blasphemous. (Editing by Robert Birsel)Published: Wednesday, April 15, 2015 @ 6:24 AM Updated: Wednesday, April 15, 2015 @ 6:24 AM Beech-Nut has recalled 1,920 pounds of baby food that may be contaminated with small pieces of glass, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). The recall affects four-ounce glass jars labeled “Stage 2 Beech-Nut CLASSICS sweet potato & chicken” that were produced on Dec. 12, 2014 and which were shipped to retail locations “nationwide,” according to a USDA news release. The recalled jars show the establishment number “P-68A” inside the USDA mark of inspection. The affected product expires in “DEC 2016” and includes product numbers “12395750815” through “12395750821.” Most grocery chains and stores post recalls on their web sites a day or so after those recalls are announced. The USDA sent out an email notice of the Beech-Nut recall just before midnight Tuesday night. As of 6 a.m. this morning, grocery chains with a significant presence in the Dayton, Springfield, Hamilton and Middletown areas, such as Kroger, Walmart and Meijer, had not yet posted a recall alert on their web sites. The problem was discovered after Amsterdam, N.Y.-based Beech-Nut Nutrition received a complaint from a consumer who found a small piece of glass in the product. The company has received a report of a mouth injury associated with consumption of the affected baby food. The USDA said consumers with questions about the recall should contact the Beech-Nut Consumer Hotline at (866) 674-4446.Revealed: Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate is top executive at firm that that built disastrous Obamacare website after being awarded no-bid $93m contract Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is an executive at the company that built Obamacare website Toni Townes-Whitley is senior vice president at CGI Federal which earned contract to build the site. She joined in May 2010 The women are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni The Department of Health and Human Services reviewed only CGI’s bid for the Obamacare account even though four companies submitted bids CGI became an approved government vendor in 2007 The Obama administration has been accused of cronyism after it was revealed Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate is an executive at the company contracted to build the beleaguered Obamacare website. Toni Townes-Whitley is senior vice president at CGI Federal, the U.S. arm of a Canadian company which won the no-bid contract for the problem-plagued website. Townes-Whitley, from the Princeton class of ’85, and Michelle Obama are members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni, according to The Daily Caller. Friends: First Lady Michelle Obama (left) and Toni-Townes Whitley, CGI Federal senior vice president, were classmates at Princeton Earlier this month, Washington Examiner reported the Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid handed CGI Obamacare account without putting the contract out to competitive tender. It has since been revealed four companies submitted bids, but only CGI was considered for the $93 million Healthcare.gov contract. Washington Examiner reported this is because CGI became an approved government vendor in 2007. This meant the company could be assigned government contracts worth up to $4 billion until 2017 without having to bid publicly for them. The company was approved before Barack Obama was first inaugurated in 2009. Townes-Whitley reportedly joined CGI in May 2010. CGI was one of 16 companies qualified under the Bush administration to provide certain tech services to the federal government. Tech bugs with Healthcare.gov aren't limited to the sign-up process: Data files getting to insurance companies are often flawed as well However the discovery of Michelle Obama's relationship with a top executive at CGI Federal has sparked a social media storm, with Twitter punters accusing the Obama administration of cronyism. Dan Carpenter ‏wrote: 'Isn't this cozy?????"Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI.' Citizenwells ‏wrote: 'CGI Obamacare website contract Obamas (Barack & Michelle) crony capitalism or poor judgement.' Radio personality Mark Simone wrote: 'How did bumbling CGI get a $678 mill no-bid contract to build the website? They were friends with Michelle.' Meanwhile, Washington Examiner reported CGI has a troubled track record for the delivery of government contracts, highlighting a time when it failed to meet the deadline for a new online medical registry for diabetes patients and treatment providers. Ontario, Canada, government officials cancelled the $46.2 million contract after 14 months of delay in September 2012. Ontario officials currently refuse to pay any fees to CGI for the failed IT project.New ‘Black Death’ FOUND: Deadly virus WORSE than Plague and with No CURE Breaks out – WHO by USJ Staff 1.22k The disease, known as Marburg virus disease (MVD), is similar to Ebola and can be lethal in up to 90 per cent of cases. Emergency screening has begun at the Kenya-Uganda border in Turkana after three members of the same family died of the disease in Uganda. The outbreak is thought to have started in September when a man in his 30s, who worked as a game hunter and lived near a cave with a heavy presence of bats, was admitted to a local health centre with a high fever, vomiting and diarrhoea. He did not respond to antimalarial treatment and his condition rapidly deteriorated. He was quickly taken to another hospital in the neighbouring district, but died shortly after arriving. His sister, in her 50s, died shortly afterwards and a third victim passed away in the treatment unit of a local health centre. The WHO website reads: “Marburg virus disease is a rare disease with a high mortality rate for which there is no specific treatment. “The virus is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, body fluids and tissues of infected persons or wild animals (e.g. monkeys and fruit bats).” Several hundred people are believed to have been exposed to the virus, which is among the most virulent pathogens known to infect humans. Early symptoms include fever, chills, headache, and myalgia. The news comes as Madagascar faces a deadly outbreak of plague, which has already claimed the lives of 127 people. Cases of the plague have soared in recent days and extra funding has been released by the World Bank to provide additional resources in the face of the “worst outbreak for 50 years”. The outbreak has been compared with the Black Death, when plague swept across Europe and Asia in the 13th century, killing more than 50 million people in what is now considered one of the worst pandemics in human history. Two thirds of the recorded cases in Madagascar are caused by the pneumonic plague, which can be spread through coughs and sneezes and without treatment, can kill within 24 hours. The outbreak has prompted warnings that it could spread to nine nearby countries, including UK holiday hotspots Mauritius and the Seychelles. This Article Was Originally Published In ExpressFormer Calif. State Senator Rod Wright, convicted of perjury and voter fraud, served half an hour of a 90-day sentence behind bars Friday, Oct. 31, 2014. A former Southern California state senator convicted of perjury and voter fraud served half an hour of a 90-day sentence behind bars. Democrat Rod Wright appeared Friday at a Los Angeles County jail to begin serving his sentence. But the 62-year-old former lawmaker was released almost immediately after the paperwork was completed -- just 34 minutes after he was booked. Wright was convicted earlier this year on eight felony counts, including perjury and voting fraud, for lying about where he lived when he ran for office. He had said he moved into an Inglewood property he owned so he could run in 2008 to represent the 25th Senate District, but jurors found that Wright actually lived outside the district. The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that Wright was released because of jail crowding. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department officials could not confirm the reason for his release. Wright resigned his seat rather than face possible expulsion. In separate cases, two other Democratic state senators have been indicted on federal bribery and corruption charges. Wright was also ordered in September to complete 1,500 hours of community service and will be on probation for three years. The Associated Press contributed to this report.The greatest scam being perpetrated against taxpayers and consumers is renewable energy, according to a new analysis published by the Australian, greater even than Ponzi, Madoff and Enron. While sinking enormous financial resources into propping up renewable energy prospectors, national governments are providing no perceptible benefits to their citizens, writes Judith Sloan, a renowned Australian economist who has served on the Australian government’s Productivity Commission. “With very few exceptions, governments all over the world have fallen into the trap of paying renewable energy scammers on the basis that it is necessary, at least politically, to be seen to be doing something about climate change,” Sloan writes, before providing readers with an avalanche of economic data to back up her assertion. In Australia, more than 2 billion taxpayer dollars a year are funneled to renewable energy handlers by virtue of the operation of the renewable energy target and the associated renewable energy certificates, Sloan observes. At the same time, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency “shovels out hundreds of millions of dollars annually to subsidise renewable energy companies, many of which are overseas-owned,” she states, and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation was given $10 billion in equity by the Gillard Labor government “to lend or grant money to renewable energy companies.” Despite this enormous taxpayer “investment,” so-called renewable energy has yet to pay any dividends or to suggest it will be economically viable for the foreseeable future. Sloan’s grim analysis of the state of renewable energy as a financial sinkhole in Australia is mirrored by other countries such as the United States. According to Forbes, on a total dollar basis, wind and solar together get more from the federal government than all other energy sources combined, despite the fact that neither is anywhere close to self-supporting. Wind has received the greatest amount of federal subsidies. Solar is second. Based on production (subsidies per kWh of electricity produced), however, solar energy “has gotten over ten times the subsidies of all other forms of energy sources combined, including wind,” writes energy expert and planetary geologist Dr. James Conca. During the Obama years from 2010 through 2013, federal renewable energy subsidies increased by 54 percent—from $8.6 billion to $13.2 billion—despite the fact that total federal energy subsidies declined by 23 percent during the same period, from $38 billion to $29 billion. In absolute terms, between 2010 and 2013 solar energy alone saw a 500 percent increase in federal subsidies from $1.1 billion to $5.3 billion. In this same period, subsidies for fossil fuels decreased by 15 percent. from $4.0 billion to $3.4 billion, and subsidies for nuclear energy fell by 12 percent, from $1.9 billion to $1.7 billion. One of the more pernicious side-effects of the enormous government subsidies for renewable energy, Conca found, is that they actually increase the cost of energy. This cost, however, is transferred from the energy consumer to the taxpayer, “and so goes unnoticed by most Americans,” he stated. While during the period between 2010 and 2014 nuclear energy cost about 4¢ and 5¢ per kWh to produce, solar energy cost between 80¢ and 100¢ per kWh, or 20 times as much to produce. This despite the fact that nuclear energy is “as renewable as wind” but doesn’t enjoy the same star status among environmental activists. Returning to the case of Australia, Sloan argues that if one were to sum up all the taxpayer-funded subsidies, grants, concessional loans, guarantees and the like the aggregate amount “dwarfs any other government industry assistance aid.” Something similar has happened in Germany, Sloan states, where Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to shut down all the country’s nuclear power plants, to be replaced with “renewable energy.” The target for 2030 is for 50 percent of the nation’s power to come from renewables. The ill-fated Energiewende, the country’s program for energy transition, has hit serious hurdles, Sloan notes, not least the extraordinary cost that now totals some €650 billion. In an odd twist of fate, late last year the wind simply didn’t blow for several days and a thick fog surrounded many parts of Germany, and thus the output from renewables fell to just 4 percent of total demand. It was Poland, “with its black coal-fired electricity plants,” that came to rescue Germany from its self-induced energy crisis. The best approach for the future, Sloan concludes, entails “acknowledging that enough is enough when it comes to subsidising renewable energy.” The sector has been showered with favors with little to show for it, she observes, and it is high time “it stood on its own two feet without any preferential treatment or financial assistance.” Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome• Depay’s move from Manchester United to be completed in next 48 hours • ‘He is exactly the player we were looking for – he has a certain panache’ The Lyon president, Jean-Michel Aulas, believes Memphis Depay is champing at the bit to show his “immense talent” as the Holland forward puts the final touches on his move from Manchester United. Aulas expects a deal to be concluded for the 22-year-old in the next 48 hours, with the transfer fee rising to £21.7m with bonuses. Aulas doubts the move will be finalised in time for Depay to make his debut against Marseille on Sunday, but he is hoping the he will soon be fulfilling the rich promise he showed at PSV Eindhoven after a frustrating spell in England. Alex Morgan: ‘If Fifa start respecting the women’s game more, others will follow’ \| Donald McRae Read more Aulas told RMC Sport: “We’ve bet on a player who wants to show his immense talent. There was a lot of interest in him from his time with Holland and in Eindhoven, where he had two fantastic seasons. When you see him developing, you get the impression that he really wants to show his immense talent. So we hope, as we hoped with the women’s team by bringing in Alex Morgan, and we are not disappointed.” Depay joined United for £25m in the summer of 2015 with a burgeoning reputation, but he failed to live up to expectations at Old Trafford and made just one start under José Mourinho this season. He had been linked to various clubs but it was Lyon who won the race for his signature, with Depay having travelled to France to discuss personal terms this week. Aulas said: “It was a dream, because he corresponds exactly with the player we were looking for. In addition, he has a certain panache. “It’s true that José Mourinho didn’t play him that much, so there was an opportunity for us to negotiate with Manchester United. For the moment, we’ve got an agreement in principle but we still need to write up a contract, which is a bit complicated because there are quite a few bonuses. “This is a big operation, because I think it will be around €16.5m, with up to eight million in bonuses. It’s a major investment. It’s ongoing but it will take, I think, another 48 hours for him to be registered.” Lyon are currently fourth in Ligue 1 with 34 points, 11 adrift of the joint-leaders Monaco and Nice, but with a game in hand on both. This weekend they host sixth-placed Marseille with four points separating the teams. Asked if Depay might be an option for that match, Aulas said: “I think that will be a little early, because at the moment we have not finalised all the documents. If it takes 24 hours, then he could play. If it’s a little more, he will not be available on Sunday.”Wildlife Disturb a jumping worm and it’s like a nightcrawler on steroids: It violently writhes on the forest floor, recalling a snake in a bad horror movie. Try to catch it, a piece of its tail will detach in your hand — still wriggling as you hold it. But put aside the creepy factor: jumping worms may be the next big threat to northern forests. Jumping worms, consisting of various non-native species from multiple genera, have become established in a number of eastern and southeastern states. In 2013, species from the genus Amynthas were confirmed for the first time in the Upper Midwest, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. In the forests and prairies of the Upper Midwest, the jumping worm could significantly alter habitats and decrease biodiversity. Why are they so damaging? And is there anything we can do to stop them? Why Much of What You Know About Earthworms is Wrong You probably learned about the wonders of earthworms at an early age. They aerate the soil. They help your garden grow. And they catch fish. The humble earthworm is a creature to celebrate. Overlooked in all this earthworm love is an important fact: in a significant portion of the North American continent, no native earthworms have existed since before the Ice Age. As such, forests and other habitats have evolved without them. But people love earthworms. They indeed use them by the millions for fishing, and for composting, and to help gardens grow. And so the worms have been spread far and wide. Even areas with native earthworms have largely been taken over by non-native varieties. The common nightcrawler — familiar to anyone who has ever cast a bobber and hook — is a European species. Earthworms have also spread into the northern habitats where worms have been absent for thousands of years. The hype is true: earthworms cycle through a lot of refuse, and fundamentally change the soil. This may be good in your backyard garden plot, but it’s not in the northern forest. “Earthworms change the environment to suit their needs,” says Brad Herrick, ecologist and research program program manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. “When they are introduced, they make a host of physical, chemical and biological changes to the soil environment.” Essentially, worms turn the forest floor — a complex community of plants, invertebrates and microbes – into a completely
its autonomous testing. It has periodically provided updates about the 3.5 million miles accrued since it launched its self-driving efforts, much of which were logged at Castle. The press has had limited access to its ubiquitous Google car prototypes, the modified Pacificas and Lexus SUVs, and the engineers and designers charged with building its program. Monday’s event marked a shift in Waymo's strategy, as it offered unprecedented access to it test vehicles, facilities, and engineers to a group of media. (The Atlantic got an exclusive look earlier this year, but no fully autonomous rides.) Waymo is intent on showing that its test cars are able to handle the complicated, complex, and increasingly dangerous task of navigating a two-ton machine on public roads. Not only that, but they can do it more efficiently than humans. Waymo appears to be moving toward making the flesh-and-blood driver obsolete. “you can imagine a complete empty car coming to where you are.” “In level four mode, you can imagine a completely empty car coming to where you are, you open the door, hop in the back seat, and it can take you — relaxed and happy, perhaps it has Wi-Fi — wherever it is you want to go,” says John Krafcik, CEO of Waymo. “That’s what we’re striving to achieve every day.” But Waymo is still a long way from being able to bring its fully driverless cars from the protected, highly scripted scenarios of its test facility to the wild, unpredictable open roads. Regulators and local governments are still grappling with how to regulate cars without steering wheels and pedals, and surveys indicate that most Americans don’t know enough about the technology to fully understand it, much less trust it. Plus, Waymo is finding itself in a space that is becoming increasingly crowded with other big, well-heeled players. The Alphabet subsidiary boasts that it has the most experience, the best technology, and the smartest minds working on its self-driving cars. But what it has not set forth is a clear strategy for making money off its advanced systems. It’s not a car company, an automotive supplier, or a ride-hail company like Uber or Lyft. It’s part of Alphabet, one of the world’s biggest and best-capitalized tech giants, so profit isn’t an immediate concern — but it will be soon. Ironically, its lawsuit against Uber may provide it with its first revenue, if a judge agrees that the embattled ride-hail company conspired to steal its self-driving trade secrets. That case is set to go to trial at the end of the year. During the tour, Krafcik wouldn’t comment on reports that the company is getting ready to launch its first commercial product. But he did describe the types of ventures Waymo was considering: ride-hailing and ride-sharing; trucking and logistics; working with cities to help better connect residents to public transportation; and selling and licensing its technology to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). “Whether they are Waymo-branded or not, it’s probably too early to say,” Krafcik says. Waymo has also set up shop in suburban Detroit, in close proximity to several of the predominant automotive industry suppliers. the driver is increasingly “fading into the background” The company has partnerships with Fiat-Chrysler, Lyft, and Avis, and it’s been manufacturing its own sensors and hardware since late last year to reduce dependence on suppliers. And since last April, the company has been operating a limited-run ride-hail service in a suburb outside Phoenix, Arizona, so it can monitor how real people would use and react to its vehicles. Those rides always feature a safety driver behind the wheel, but Krafcik said that the driver is increasingly “fading into the background.” Also during the tour, Waymo provided a closer look at the interiors of its self-driving minivans, as well as the backseat user experience. In addition to the blue “start ride” button, there is another button that reads “pull over,” in case a rider need to unexpectedly suspend the trip. There is also a “help” button, a la GM’s OnStar, that someone could push in case the car breaks down. (During my ride, I was able to chat briefly with a Waymo technician based in Austin, Texas.) Two screens on the back of each of the driver and passenger seat headrests show a top-down visual map of what the van’s sensors allow it to “see.” But rather than the raw “X view” version used by Waymo engineers, the version passengers see looks like a design studio product: it's simple, congruent, and the script is uniform. Other vehicles and cyclists are represented by blue rectangles. Emergency vehicles are distinguished by a red light that circulates around the rectangle. The symbol for pedestrians appears in a ghostly white hue. And orange traffic cones look like orange traffic cones, only tiny. “It’s all about curation,” said Ryan Powell, head of Waymo’s UX design team. “Knowing what to show, how to show it.” Other features, such as navigational directions and time-to-arrival, are meant to give passengers basic information they need about their journey. They also help assure riders that the car can see construction zones and all the other variables that make daily driving unpredictable. (Waymo says it has an app that test subjects in Arizona use to hail its minivans, but the company wouldn’t let us see it.) “It’s all about curation.” But the interior of a self-driving car is worthless if no one agrees to get in one or trust their belongings in the car’s hands. Many Americans say they have serious reservations about self-driving. This is where Waymo’s real work at Castle comes into play: testing and retesting all the different scenarios one encounters on the road: aggression, unpredictable behavior, bad infrastructure, debris in the road, or, unrestricted intersections. Waymo first began conducting its structured tests in a partially secluded parking lot near the Shoreline Amphitheatre near Mountain View, but has since moved all this testing to its Castle facility. That’s where Stephanie Villegas, Waymo’s lead on structured testing, ran a couple demonstrations for us. Villegas (wearing aviator sunglasses, a witch’s hat, and a black cape embroidered with gold stars, in the spirit of a press event held on the day before Halloween) explained how Waymo installed and constructed a variety of driveways, lane-changes, and hairpin turns to let the cars run dozens of tests. Waymo’s engineers then collect the data from those tests to re-create them in simulation, allowing to rack up even more miles and experiences for its vehicles. “We really put our cars through the wringer of real-world conditions,” Villegas says. “Things like deep, severe potholes, over harsh speed bumps, steep incline scenarios, and shooting concentrated jets of water at the car to see if water gets in any of the crevices. And that will model conditions we see in the real world and want to be ready for.” “We really put our cars through the wringer of real-world conditions.” We watched Waymo’s self-driving minivan dodge an aggressive Honda convertible, an obliviously reversing black Fiat, and a trio of Waymo employees pretending to fumble a bunch of moving boxes in the middle of the road. (Waymo calls these actors “fauxes,” pronounced “foxes,” as an homage to the wild foxes that sometimes infiltrate their site.) But unlike our test ride, Waymo always puts a safety driver behind the wheel during structured tests, just in case. These scenarios are then run through a simulation, where engineers will “fuzz the variables” to account for a variety of different outcomes, Villegas says. Waymo has even orchestrated a number of collisions to see how its vehicles operate in a crash scenario, but Villegas said there has never been an unintended accident. But what happens if the movers with the boxes don’t get out of the way? And Waymo’s car refuses to cross the double line to go around them? Villegas says the car would never intentionally break the law, even minor infractions that a human driver would have no qualms violating in order to get cars moving. That could create bottlenecks, with self-driving cars holding up traffic because its law-abiding brain won’t allow it to proceed, even if a stoplight is malfunctioning. It’s these types of complications and unanswered questions that Waymo is furiously working to address as it speeds toward making full autonomy available. “I think for a lot of the world right now, this can feel really theoretical,” Krafcik says. “This new world of fully self-driving — what is it? I think one of the reasons for that is because all of the folks playing in the [Level 4] space right now have drivers in the driver seat. It doesn’t feel like fully self driving. When you drive on public roads, you have someone in the driver's seat. Sometimes it’s part of the law, or they’re doing it because it’s just the safe thing to do.” The leap to fully driverless cars will be a hard one to make. But Krafcik — and Waymo’s parent company Alphabet — intend to be the ones leading the charge. “Our goal, our intention, is to bring this technology to the public,” he says. “To the world.” The question is: are the rest of us prepared to go along for the ride?An Amber Alert has been declared in Calgary for a missing five-year-old boy and his grandparents. Five-year-old Nathan O'Brien has blond curly hair and brown eyes and was wearing peach-coloured shorts and a striped blue hoodie. Alvin Liknes, 66, has grey-blond hair and was last seen wearing black sports shorts. He walks with a slight limp. Kathy Liknes, 53, has red-brown hair and green eyes and was last seen wearing pyjamas. Both are considered missing. Nathan was last seen wearing peach-coloured shorts and a striped blue hoodie, say police. (Calgary Police Service) The child's mother went to the grandparents' home in the southwest Calgary community of Parkhill at 10 a.m. MT, but no one was there. “Evidence found at the residence suggests the disappearance of all three family members may be suspicious," said Calgary Police Service spokesman Kevin Brookwell. Nathan's mother dropped him off at his grandparent's house for a sleepover Sunday night at 10 p.m. MT. "When we went to the address and after speaking with family the home wasn't in the condition it would typically be left in, and there's some indication the occupants did not leave under their own volition," said Brookwell. "All the vehicles are accounted for, no information to go on at this time, that's why we're reaching out to the public if they saw anything suspicious." Anyone with information can call the Calgary Police Service at 403-266-1234 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477. The homicide unit is looking into the case, but Brookwell says that's not unusual. "[It's] because of the circumstances and nobody has heard from them, no information despite everyone's best efforts," he said. "We'll remain optimistic we'll find them, could be others involved, I don't want to speculate." Police searched the area and said all family members they have spoken to are co-operating.Internet service providers have called for more meaningful discussions with Federal Government agencies on the data to be captured and hold under a proposed data retention regime. The regime, included in a discussion paper released by the Attorney-General's Department last month, has been the subject of closed-door negotiations between government and service providers for the past two years. If implemented, it would oblige telcos to hold a certain amount of telecommunications data for customers for up to two years for the purposes of criminal investigation. However, the extent of the data captured and stored under the proposal has been a continued point of confusion, despite a parliamentary inquiry into the proposed reforms. The discussion paper only refers to data as "a communication that is not the content or substance of a communication". But representative bodies for ISPs and mobile carriers say they have not held any discussions around the proposed data to be captured and stored for the past two years. A confidential discussion paper prepared in 2010, parts of which were subsequently leaked to the media, was the last major point of contact from the Attorney-General's Department on the issue. John Stanton, chief executive of telco representative body the Communications Alliance, told a parliamentary committee hearing that the industry remained uncertain whether the information contained in that paper — which provided a "very clear description of a metadata-based dataset" — was relevant to the current proposals. "We don't know whether that discussion paper is current, we don't know what the current view is so we are relying on experiential material without understanding with any degree of specificity what's being sought today," he said. The type and extent of data sought is likely to depend on whether Australia follows a similar route to the European-style data retention regime, which focused on the source, type and destination of communication, time and duration, and device used. Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association chief executive Chris Althaus told the committee hearing that the industry would support such a targeted scheme, but called for more discussion on how the costs would be involved. The industry supported a UK-style scheme, which saw the government there promise to shell out £1.8 billion ($A2.75 billion) to cover the setup and operational costs of systems required to retain the data. Althaus said an Australian equivalent, estimated to cost between $500 million and $700 million, would have to be footed by the communications industry. "That's somewhat of an assumption because we haven't seen that detail," he said. "At enormous cost, there seems to be little discussion about where the efficacy might lie and we think that's an opportunity that should be pursued more deeply in partnership with industry."Johnny Hoogerland will ride for Gianni Savio's Androni Giocattoli team in 2014 after reaching a late agreement to join the Italian team. Related Articles Hoogerland claims Dutch road race championship The Cyclingnews guide to rider transfers Savio building Androni Giocattoli for 2014 Hoogerland said to be negotiating to join Cannondale Androni Giocattoli secures 2014 Giro d'Italia wild card Hoogerland and Van Dijk win the Amstel Curacao Race The Dutchman rode for Vacansoleil-DCM this year but the WorldTour team has folded after being unable to find new sponsorship. Despite being known for his aggressive style of racing and being the current Dutch national road race champion, Hoogerland struggled to find a satisfactory offer from other WorldTour squads and so opted to join for the Italian-based Professional Continental team. Hoogerland hit the headlines during the 2011 Tour de France when he was involved in a dramatic crash caused by a car passing the breakaway. He had scored enough KOM points during the stage to earn the polka-dot mountains classification jersey but crashed into a barbed wire fence and needed 33 stitches for his injuries. Nonetheless, Hoogerland finished the stage and ultimately completed the entire Tour. This year he was hit by a car whilst training in Spain in February, suffering rib and spinal fractures, as well as liver damage. He returned to racing in late April and won the Dutch road title before riding the Tour de France. He was in talks with the Cannondale team but that option apparently ended when the team failed to reach a agreement with Tinkoff. "Johnny is an important signing for us," Androni Giocattoli team manager Gianni Savio told Cyclingnews. "He's the current Dutch national champion and has real character. I'm sure he'll do well. His character suits our team because we like to be aggressive in races and so does Johnny. We always go on the attack, as our record of 1680km on the attack at the Giro d'Italia proves, and Hoogerland is a natural born attacker." Hoogerland is expected to be part of the team's Giro d'Italia squad alongside other new signings Manuel Belletti, who join from A2r-La Mondiale. Androni Giocattoli won the Coppa Italia series and so secured a wild card invitation to the Giro d'Italia. Androni Giocattoli will have an 18-rider roster in 2014, with two further places remaining to be filled. Riders confirmed for 2014 include sprinter Mattia Gavazzi, Marco Frapporti, Emanuele Sella, Patrick Facchini, Matteo Di Serafino, Antonino Parrinello, Carlos Ochoa, Jackson Rodriguez and Diego Rosa. Neo-pros include Yonder Godoy the Venezuelan Under 23 champion, Italy's Nicola Testi, Andrea Zordan and Gianfranco Zilioli.poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201701/1121/1155968404_5269134114001_5269127917001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true House GOP reverses course on gutting ethics panel Trump tweets his disapproval of Republicans' decision to prioritize gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics. Following a public outcry and tweeted criticism from President-elect Donald Trump, House Republicans reversed course Tuesday on a proposal to gut their own ethics watchdog. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called an emergency House GOP conference Tuesday to scrap a proposed House rule that would have effectively declawed the Office of Congressional Ethics. The proposal, which House Republicans approved behind closed doors Monday night, would have defied Trump’s “drain the swamp” mantra, aimed at making Washington more transparent and less cozy. Story Continued Below McCarthy’s motion to restore the current OCE setup was adopted by unanimous consent after Trump himself got involved — an intervention that irritated a number of House Republicans who supported the move to neuter the ethics office. “We shot ourselves in the foot,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who said the ethics snafu was an unnecessary self-inflicted wound. “Sometimes people have to learn the hard way.” “They need to know the gravity of this situation,” said one senior GOP source ahead of the vote to maintain the OCE’s full powers, while adding that the office is not without flaws. “The best thing may be to unwind it.” The abrupt reversal marked a rocky first day for the new, 115th Congress. It was supposed to have been a jubilant opening for conservatives, with Republicans taking control of both chambers and prepping for the takeover of the White House by their party leader, Trump. Then came this public relations debacle — and the whole situation unraveled from there. House Republicans’ surprise adoption of the OCE rules change Monday night appeared to catch even House GOP leadership off guard. The pitch would have put the office under the thumb of lawmakers on the House Ethics Committee. Monday’s effort was led, in part, by lawmakers who have come under investigation in recent years. Trump on Tuesday morning called out his fellow Republicans on Twitter. “With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it … may be, their number one act and priority. Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance! #DTS,” Trump tweeted. The proposed changes would have essentially declawed the office, until now an independent body. They would bar OCE from considering anonymous tips against lawmakers and sharing investigative findings with other branches of government or the public, as the office currently does in the name of transparency. They would also apparently keep OCE from investigating criminal activity, the bulk of its work — instructing the office to “immediately” refer any hint of such actions to the lawmaker-controlled ethics panel rather than pursue it itself. Adoption of the changes would have been an awkward way for Republicans to start the new Congress — and not merely because it would have given the appearance that they don’t value oversight of their own actions. The proposal also stepped on their message of the week, which is one of unity and “hitting the ground running” in a new GOP-controlled Washington. This week was supposed to center around Congress taking the first major steps toward repealing Obamacare and denouncing the recent landmark United Nations resolution chiding Israel. But the proposed rules change sucked up much of the oxygen on Capitol Hill. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and McCarthy urged their colleagues during the closed-door meeting Monday to vote against the idea. GOP leadership said any reforms of OCE should be done on a bipartisan basis. Despite their disapproval, Ryan and McCarthy spent much of early Tuesday morning arguing that OCE will “continue to operate independently” and will continue to investigate members of Congress “thoroughly and independently,” as Ryan said in a statement. “I want to make clear that this House will hold its members to the highest ethical standards and the Office will continue to operate independently to provide public accountability to Congress,” Ryan wrote. “All members of Congress are required to earn the public’s trust every single day, and this House will hold members accountable to the people.” Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.), incoming chairwoman of the House Ethics Committee, echoed Ryan’s statement Tuesday morning. In her new role running the committee that would oversee the OCE, she pledged not to interfere with the office’s board “or prevent it from doing its work.” “The Office has an important role to play in restoring confidence in Congress, and it will continue to perform its work in the new Congress as the Office of Congressional Complaint Review,” she wrote in a statement. “I will work in a bipartisan manner with the Office to ensure its independence and to maintain the highest ethical standards of the House.” Still, the actual language of the amendment suggests otherwise. Asked, for example, about OCE not being allowed to probe criminal activity, McCarthy said during a meeting with reporters Tuesday that it would still be allowed to do so. But when pressed about the specific language of the rule, he changed his tune slightly, arguing that immediate referral was more efficient. “If at any time the board of the office discovers information indicating that a matter which is the subject of a review by the board may involve a violation of a criminal law, the board will immediately refer the matter to the Committee on Ethics,” the rule states. On MSNBC on Tuesday morning, McCarthy said, “It is true that I opposed moving forward on this at this time because I thought it was something both parties should take up at the same time.” But McCarthy, speaking before the measure was scrapped early Tuesday afternoon, said he would vote for the rules package that included the provision and argued that “most of these reforms are bipartisan supported reforms.” Congress reacts to the GOP’s ethics fiasco Politicians on both sides comment on the Office of Congressional Ethics on Monday. poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201701/1257/1155968404_5269260580001_5269239392001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" “I don’t want to put politics with it,” McCarthy said. “That’s why I thought this wasn’t the best time to go forward with it.” But the conference did not heed leaders’ earlier warning, approving the rules change 119-to-74 Monday evening. Asked about the matter Tuesday morning on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Trump’s former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, defended the House’s move, adding that “of course [Trump is] going to drain the swamp; ethics is a big piece of that.” “I don’t want your viewers to be left with the impression … that ethics is gone now,” she said. “There will be a new group in its place that is overseen by the House Ethics Committee, and that new group in large part wants to curtail what some have seen as 100 investigations since 2008, only a third of which have been referred to the House.” Members, she added, “feel their due process rights have been violated and compromised.” Her comments, however, came before Trump’s tweets chiding lawmakers. Trump’s apparent annoyance over the rules change was expected to have a possible effect on whether the OCE change passed the House later Tuesday. All Democrats were expected to vote against the House rule. If the 74 Republicans who voted against the rule during the rules package markup also voted against it on the floor, the rule would not pass. It was unclear, however, how many would be willing to put themselves on their line publicly, going against the conference to defend an office that many feel needs to be reined in somehow. Democrats and outside ethics groups, meanwhile, have blasted the pitch as irresponsible. “Republicans claim they want to ‘drain the swamp,’ but the night before the new Congress gets sworn in, the House GOP has eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrote snarkingly in a statement Monday after news of the secret-ballot vote. “Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress.” Even conservative groups like Judicial Watch called the proposal “shameful.” Madeline Conway and Louis Nelson contributed to this report.Explosive new reporting by The Intercept published Thursday, based on documents obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveals how the U.S. spy agency and their British counterpart, the GCHQ, worked together in order to hack into the computer systems of the world's largest manufacturer of cell phone SIM cards – giving government spies access to highly-guarded encryption codes and unparalleled abilities to monitor the global communications of those with phones using the cards. Following its publication, journalist Glenn Greenwald called it "one of the biggest Snowden stories yet." According to fellow journalists Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley, who did the reporting on the top-secret documents and detail the implications of the program, the target of the government hacking operation was a company called Gemalto, based in the Netherlands, which makes SIM cards for some of the best known makers of cell phones and other portable electronic products, including AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and hundreds of other global brands. The acronym SIM stands for "subscriber identity module" and is a small intergrated circuit within a phone that is used to authenticate users and relay key information to the network on which the phone is operating. As Scahill and Begley report: With these stolen encryption keys, intelligence agencies can monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments. Possessing the keys also sidesteps the need to get a warrant or a wiretap, while leaving no trace on the wireless provider’s network that the communications were intercepted. Bulk key theft additionally enables the intelligence agencies to unlock any previously encrypted communications they had already intercepted, but did not yet have the ability to decrypt. As part of the covert operations against Gemalto, spies from GCHQ — with support from the NSA — mined the private communications of unwitting engineers and other company employees in multiple countries. In a series of tweets, both Scahill and Greenwald offered context for the latest reporting: NEW: One of the biggest Snowden stories yet: NSA/GCHQ hacked into company producing SIM cards for cellphones https://t.co/a4tajJ3WVn — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 19, 2015 The NSA & GCHQ covertly stole millions of encryption keys used to protect your mobile phone communications: http://t.co/dVjLuxl4k3 — jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) February 19, 2015 This is basically what the NSA & GCHQ are doing to cell phone "privacy" http://t.co/dVjLuxl4k3 pic.twitter.com/9ovQvJdzNs — jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) February 19, 2015 SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our progressive news model only survives if those informed and inspired by this work support our efforts Remember how Obama says NSA only monitors private comms of bad guys? Yeah, that's BS. They cyberstalk engineers http://t.co/dVjLuxl4k3 — jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) February 19, 2015 "People were specifically hunted & targeted by intel agencies, not b/c they did anything wrong, but b/c they could be used" -- @csoghoian — jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) February 19, 2015 This top secret document is so damn creepy. Look at how they spied on innocent people working for a SIM card company https://t.co/vtyWP9ed1o — jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) February 19, 2015 For its part, Gemalto told The Intercept it was totally unaware of the security breach or that the encryption keys to any of its cards had been compromised. In fact, after being reached for comment on the operation, Gemalto directed its own security team to investigate the situation, but told the journalists they could find no trace of the hack. However, according to the top-secret document detailing the program leaked by Snowden, an operative with the NSA boasted, "[We] believe we have their entire network." Technology experts who spoke with Scahill and Begley said the theft of the encryption keys was highly troubling. Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the idea that the NSA has stolen these encryption keys "will send a shock wave through the security community.” Told about the program, Gerard Schouw, a member of the Dutch Parliament, said the revelation was "unbelievable." And repeated: "Unbelievable." According to The Intercept:SPRING FLING XXXIII - April 13-14, 2019 Look for special features, displays, events. The Spring Fling Mopar event is entering its 33rd year as the largest Mopar car show and swap west of the Mississippi; with a car show, swap meet, and midway on Saturday and Sunday. Over 700 cars, 300 swappers, 50 manufacturers, and over 9000 spectators. Spring Fling activities start on Thursday, ranging from a Willow Springs track day, driving cruises, coastal caravans, and a cruise-in. The Spring Fling Mopar car show is attended by Mopar fans from all over the world, and has gained international media coverage. Spring Fling Saturday night cruise this year is at Bob's Big Boy in Northridge again. An easy 7.6 mile cruise from Woodley Park, Bob's Big Boy features ample parking and a sit-down restaurant with a full menu. Bob's Big Boy has long been an icon of the cruising culture. This Bob's is full every Friday night, with a range of hot rods and muscle cars. Last year even saw a 48 Fiat altered with small block and zoomie headers, wheelie bars, slicks, dragster steering wheel and a license plate. This Bob's is also only about a 1/4 mile from the old shops of Dick Landy and Don the Snake Prudomme. The area is well-known for hot rods and racing. After the show closes at 4:00 pm on Saturday, Bob's will host the Saturday night event from 5:00 to 9:00pm. There is a Target, Kohl's, Wells Fargo and other restaurants in that shopping center also. You can call or email with any unanswered questions to 818.759.1779 or info@cpwclub.com. Please note: LA County Parks requires that every car entering into the show area MUST fill out and sign a liability release form. We provide these at the gate, which requires filling them out before entering. It will be easier and faster if you print out the form and bring it filled out the day of the show. And who wants to be doing paperwork on show day, right?! Please print, complete, and hand signature: Liability Form.LISTEN: Earl Watson, Suns interim head coach Your browser does not support the audio element. It is said that while two’s company, three’s a crowd. Next season, the Phoenix Suns’ backcourt figures to be very crowded. As of now, the team is set to have a pair of staring-caliber point guards in Eric Bledsoe and Brandon Knight to go along with shooting guard Devin Booker. The team is also hoping to bring Bogdan Bogdanovic over from Europe, and 21-year-old Archie Goodwin is still viewed as part of the team’s future. But really, any angst people might be feeling has to do with the top three guards, because there is a belief that it will be tough sledding if all three are around and asked to share the basketball. See Suns, circa 2014-15 season. However, while some view the glut of guards as an issue waiting to happen, head coach Earl Watson sees the picture differently. “The future of the guard position has to be a collective vision; coaching staff, management, ownership,” he told Doug and Wolf on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Thursday morning. “Far too many times programs allow each sector to throw out a different vision. There’s no balance, no continuity. “The future of the Suns are exactly those three. All three. Because why not?” Watson, who currently holds the title of interim head coach, cited age and ability as reasons for why it can work. Bledsoe, at 26, is the oldest of the group, while Knight is 24 and Booker 19. “Eric Bledsoe, great penetrator, facilitator, can score; Brandon Knight, quick, fast, can shoot; Devin Booker, post, can handle, can spot up, can come off pin down, can isolate,” he said. “All three complement.” Earlier in the interview, when discussing Booker’s ascension, Watson hearkened back to his time with the 2007-08 Seattle Supersonics and Kevin Durant’s rookie season. Along with drafting the future star second overall that summer, the team also jettisoned veteran star Ray Allen while allowing another key player, Rashard Lewis, to leave in free agency. While the moves on the surface seemed counter intuitive, Watson and others soon realized it was simply a matter of creating shots and opportunity for Durant and the team’s other young players. In Phoenix, however, he does not feel like anyone has to go in order to make room for someone else. “Those three players that we have here — the Killer B’s, right — Booker, Bledsoe and Brandon, they’re all so different they can complement each other,” he said. “But the truth is, the biggest question is what bench do we put around them, because everyone has to complement. “I think the bench is more important, moving forward, than actually who starts with them.” While there is reason to believe the trio of guards could co-exist on the court and score points, there are understandable questions regarding the group’s ability to defend. After all, the trade-off when going small in order to put the ball in the basket is that, assuming you are facing a bigger team, you will be at a disadvantage on the other end of the floor. Bledsoe is 6-foot-1 and 190 pounds, Knight is 6-foot-3 and 189 pounds, while Booker is 6-foot-6 and 206 pounds. At his age, it would not be a shock to anyone if Booker adds some bulk to his frame. But still, he’s never going to be mistaken for a forward on the floor. “We know Bledsoe’s a lock-down defender; can you play those three at the same time? That is the true question,” Watson said. If the Suns cannot play all three at the same time, someone would have to come off the bench, and that’s where things could get dicey. Bledsoe and Knight are both playing under lucrative long-term contracts, while Booker has thrived as a starter and is, if not already, looking like the face of the franchise. Which of the three slides into a reserve role? Would one have to? “We talked about this [Wednesday] as a staff,” Watson said. “It’s interesting — I’m not saying it’s going to happen, it could happen — but think outside the box. Golden State is taking claim for small ball, well, we know (Mike) D’Antoni did it with Shawn Marion, they’re like a decade late. “So, why can’t small ball extend to the three, to the small forward position? If Devin Booker becomes stronger in the future, eventually those three could potentially close games. I’m not saying who starts and comes off the bench, but those three could close games.” Follow @theAdamGreenWall Street is no longer cheering bad economic news. The Dow dropped 292 points and the S&P 500 declined almost 1.5% after the latest in a long line of alarming economic reports. The tech-heavy Nasdaq tumbled over 2.3% -- its biggest drop in nearly a year -- as investors worry that biotechs may be overvalued. For weeks the stock market rallied because investors saw every economic speed bump as an indication the Federal Reserve would keep interest rates extremely low for longer and longer. That annoying and somewhat perverse trend ended on Wednesday, at least temporarily. "You're at a point now where you can no longer say bad news is good news. That's not working anymore. You've got to show some growth here," said Joe Saluzzi, co-head of trading at Themis Trading. The growth jitters have knocked the stock market well below the levels it soared to last week after the Fed signaled a slow and steady approach to rate hikes. Related: American cash is flooding into European stocks Show me the growth: So what's causing the latest sell-off? Investors lost their appetite for stocks after the government said orders for big-ticket items like refrigerators unexpectedly fell last month. Even excluding volatile transportation items, so-called durable goods orders dipped in February. This report wasn't a one-off blip either. It comes on the heels of other disappointing indicators, including a surprise decline in retail sales and a steep drop in existing home sales. Yes, some of the economic turbulence may have been caused by the unusually harsh winter. No matter the cause, the U.S. economy no longer looks as hot as it did heading into 2015. That's why Wall Street banks are quickly ramping down their growth forecasts. Goldman Sachs (GS) cut its U.S. gross domestic product forecast from 2% to 1.8% for the first quarter, and Barclays trimmed its estimate to 1.2% on Wednesday. Those are modest trims, but they certainly are not heading in the preferred direction. Related: Divorce settlement sparks fight between casino owners Too pricey? All of this renews concerns about whether U.S. stocks have become too expensive. The S&P 500 is currently trading at over 17 times its forward earnings, which is higher than normal, although not at alarm bell levels. "The market becomes less tolerant of imperfect news" when valuations are this high, said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Capital. "Maybe we're finally at that inflection point where less-than-good-news is not good news."
don't see what it shows, really... a party of 600 people leaves a bit of a mess. "And I do think it's odd that someone who does work in the prime minister's office would refer information on anonymously to a blogger, especially that kind of information." "It does make me wonder what other contributions Mr Ede might have made, as well as whether this is sanctioned by the prime minister in any way." The party finished about 2am, with gallery members staying behind to clean up. The gallery has an arrangement to make a contribution to the cost of cleaning if the mess is considered excessive. As of this afternoon no request had been made. The gallery also provided a small gift to the cleaners to thank them for their work after the party. The party included ministers, leaders and senior MPs from across the political spectrum and other invited guests. Whale Oil was the blog that broke the scandal of Auckland Mayor Len Brown's extra-marital affair just after the October local body elections. Labour's Deputy Leader David Parker said there had long been speculation about the links between Key's office and Whale Oil. "Today's unsavoury events prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the links between Cameron Slater and the ninth floor of the Beehive," he said. "This raises serious questions about the source of many of Cameron Slater's stories. We can now safely assume future leaks regarding confidential government information and political attacks National wants to distance itself from, come from John Key's office." Slater refused to discuss his connections with Ede. "I have no idea who I received images from, I don't disclose who my sources are," he said. "I get many, many things from many different people across the political spectrum and I don't reveal who my sources are." The media would run the same story if it was a party held by a political party, he said. "You guys run around pointing the finger at how Parliament pays the cleaners, you run all of these stunts and you have a great big piss up and knees up filled with corporate whores, professional lobbyists, various other different people, leave an unholy mess and you don't even have to pay to have it cleaned up because the taxpayer picks up the bill, so yeah I do have an issue with it."All of the Destiny 2 3D prints that we’ve featured before have been hand cannons, but now we’re dipping into some bigger guns. Maker Colin Catchpole created this print as the latest in his long line of Destiny 2 creations. When we spoke to Catchpole he told us that the Skyburner’s Oath took him around a week to design in his free time. Once printed and assembled the gaps were filled in with car body filler and primer filler with rounds of sanding in between. The paint was done with a black top coat, a metallic green weather coat, and some silver. The convincing chipping effect is a secret Catchpole isn’t sharing. To try your hand at making your own, start with the files available on both Thingiverse and MyMiniFactory. The version you see in the gallery below is rather large at 70cm long and 37cm tall, so you’re going to be needing a lot of filament. If you want to save on the plastic, consider printing the Drang, Rat King or Better Devils / True Prophecy instead.How close was that! Candidates win by tightest of margins How close was that! Candidates win by tightest of margins Nicola Sturgeon with Stephens Gethins, who scraped through by just two votes It was a nail-biter for candidates up and down the country, as the General Election saw some of the tightest results in history. :: North East Fife in Scotland held its breath as SNP Europe spokesman Stephen Gethins held off a incredibly close challenge from Liberal Democrat Elizabeth Riches by just TWO votes. Mr Gethins won 13,743 votes compared with Ms Riches who polled 13,741. Trivia time now - it was the equal-narrowest victory in UK general election history, tied with National Labour's Abraham Flint in Ilkeston in 1931 and Lib Dem Mark Oaten in Winchester in 1997. Image: Emma Dent Coad won Kensington by 20 votes :: In the upmarket west London constituency of Kensington, Labour won the seat for the first time, defeating the Conservatives by just 20 votes. It took three recounts before Emma Dent Coad was declared the victor over Tory incumbent Victoria Borwick, by 16,333 votes to 16,313. :: The SNP's Pete Wishart, who was the chair of the Scottish Affairs Committee in the last parliament, held on to his Perth and North Perthshire seat by just 21 votes. He got 21,804 votes, while Conservative Ian Duncan was hot on his heels, picking up 21,783. Image: Pete Wishart held on to his Perth and North Perthshire seat by 21 votes :: Labour's Ian Austin held on to his Dudley North seat by just 22 votes over Conservative Les Jones. Mr Austin received 18,090 votes, while Mr Jones was within touching distance, on 18,068. :: Another Labour politician, Paul Farrelly, had a close call when he secured his Newcastle-under-Lyme seat by just 30 votes over Conservative Owen Meredith - 21,124 votes to 21,094. :: In Southampton Itchen, Conservative Royston Smith won by 31 votes over Labour's Simon Letts - 21,773 to 21,742. Image: Zac Goldsmith speaks after closely winning the Richmond Park seat :: Former London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith returned for the Tories in Richmond Park, southwest London, winning by just 45 votes some six months after losing it to the Liberal Democrats. He defeated rival Sarah Olney won 28,588 votes to 28,543. :: There were also some nerves for Home Secretary Amber Rudd. Following two recounts in Hastings and Rye, Ms Rudd was narrowly re-elected by 346 votes. Image: Amber Rudd was narrowly re-elected with a majority of just 346 :: The General Election count in Kensington has been suspended without a result. A third recount will take place "as soon as possible" after counting staff have had a chance to "rest and recuperate", the constituency's returning officer said. Results for the London seat, which was won by the Conservatives in 2015, remained "very close" after the second recount.A study released Tuesday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics is bad news for people in the United States seeking to further restrict citizens’ 2nd Amendment rights. It illustrates a sharp drop in the number of American gun homicides since their highest level of occurrence a decade ago. The BJS study found that homicides committed with firearms dropped 49 percent, from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011. For gun rights advocates, however, the results are unsurprising. They echo similar findings by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. At the same time the number of gun-related homicides fell, the rate of gun ownership increased. Pew reports in a separate gun-related report: “The number of firearms available for sale to or possessed by U.S. civilians (about 310 million in 2009, according to the Congressional Research Service) has grown in recent years, and the 2009 per capita rate of one person per gun had roughly doubled since 1968.” Pew also indicated a drop in gun homicides, citing a more drastic change: from seven gun-related homicides per 100,000 people in 1993 to 3.6 in 2010, a drop of 49 percent. In spite of the drop in the number of gun-related homicides as the rate of firearm ownership is on the rise in recent years, vilification of guns and gun owners by reactionary media and political interests has taken its toll. A Pew survey from March indicated that a majority (56 percent) of Americans believe gun-related crimes happen more frequently than they did in past decades.BHK Labs Measurements: NAD C 275BEE Stereo/Mono Amplifier All amplifier measurements are performed independently by BHK Labs. All measurement data and graphical information displayed below are the property of the SoundStage! Network and Schneider Publishing Inc. Reproduction in any format is not permitted. Notes: Measurements of the NAD C 275BEE power amplifier were taken at 120V AC line voltage, both channels driven. Both channels were measured, using the fixed-level inputs. Unless otherwise indicated, the data reported below are for the right channel. Power output (stereo mode) Power output at 1% THD+N: 192.0W @ 8 ohms, 201.0W @ 4 ohms Power output at 10% THD+N: 203.8W @ 8 ohms, 243.8W @ 4 ohms Power output (mono mode) Power output at 1% THD+N: 354.1W @ 8 ohms Power output at 10% THD+N: 468.7W @ 8 ohms Additional data Input/output polarity: noninverting AC-line current draw at idle: 65.0W, 0.78A, 0.71PF Gain (stereo, Lch/Rch): output voltage divided by input voltage, 8-ohm load Fixed input: 28.6X/28.5X, 29.1dB/29.1dB Variable input, full clockwise: 50.7X/50.0X, 34.1dB/34.0dB Gain (mono), output voltage divided by input voltage, 8-ohm load Fixed input: 57.2X, 35.2dB Variable input, full clockwise: 101.1X, 40.1dB Input sensitivity for 1W output into 8 ohms (stereo, Lch/Rch) Fixed input: 98.9mV/99.2mV Variable input, full clockwise: 55.8mV/56.6mV Input sensitivity for 1W output into 8 ohms (mono) Fixed input: 59.4mV Variable input, full clockwise: 28.0mV Output impedance @ 50Hz Stereo mode: 0.042 ohm Mono mode: 0.084 ohm Input impedance @ 1kHz (stereo) Fixed input: 10.3k ohms Variable input, full clockwise: 205k ohms Input impedance @ 1kHz (mono) Fixed input: 10.3k ohms Variable input, full clockwise: 163k ohms Output noise with fixed input (stereo mode), 8-ohm load, termination 1k ohm, Lch/Rch Wideband: 0.45mV/0.33mV, -76.0dBW/-78.9dBW A weighted: 0.0257mV/0.0264mV, -100.8dBW/-100.6dBW Output noise with variable input set full clockwise (stereo mode), 8-ohm load, termination 1k ohm, Lch/Rch Wideband: 0.38mV/0.37mV, -77.4dBW/-77.7dBW A weighted: 0.0391mV/0.0433mV, -97.2dBW/-96.3dBW Output noise with fixed input (mono mode), 8-ohm load, termination 1k ohm Wideband: 0.70mV, -72.1dBW A weighted: 0.0540mV, -94.4dBW Output noise with variable input set full clockwise (mono mode), 8-ohm load, termination 1k ohm Wideband: 0.64mV, -72.9dBW A weighted: 0.0821mV, -90.7dBW Measurements summary The C 275BEE appears to be a linear design with load-sensing circuitry that causes it to output about the same amount of power into 4 or 8 ohms; usually, a solid-state power amp produces quite a bit more power into 4 ohms. Chart 1 shows the frequency response of the C 275BEE with varying loads. In mono mode (not shown), the high-frequency rolloff was about twice that shown in Chart 1. In both cases, the output impedance was low enough that there was negligible variation with the NHT dummy speaker load. The distortion measured in the C 275BEE’s left channel was quite a bit better than in the right. Chart 2 illustrates how the NAD’s total harmonic distortion plus noise (THD+N) vs. power varied for 1kHz and SMPTE intermodulation test signals, and with amplifier output for 8- and 4-ohm loads. Chart 2A shows the results for 8-ohm loading in mono mode. NAD does not recommend 4-ohm loading for the C 275BEE in mono mode. Chart 3 plots the C 275BEE’s THD+N as a function of frequency at different power levels. The rise in distortion with frequency in the right channel is quite pronounced. Chart 3A shows the same measurement taken for the left channel. The NAD’s plot of damping factor vs. frequency, shown in Chart 4, is typical of most solid-state power amplifiers: high at low frequencies, then declining throughout the audioband. In mono mode, the damping factor (not shown) was about half that indicated in Chart 4 -- a normal situation, as the two output channels are in series with the load. Chart 5 shows a spectrum of the C 275BEE’s harmonic distortion and noise residue in a 10W, 1kHz test signal. AC-line harmonics are low but relatively complex. Signal harmonics are dominated by the third harmonic, with the second and higher harmonics of decreasing magnitude. Chart 1 - Frequency response of output voltage as a function of output loading Stereo mode Red line = open circuit Magenta line = 8-ohm load Blue line = 4-ohm load Chart 2 - Distortion as a function of power output and output loading Chart 2A Stereo mode (Line up at 50W to determine lines) Top line = 4-ohm SMPTE IM distortion Second line = 8-ohm SMPTE IM distortion Third line = 4-ohm THD+N Bottom line = 8-ohm THD+N Chart 2B Mono mode (Line up at 100W to determine lines) Top line = 8-ohm SMPTE IM distortion Second line = 8-ohm THD+N Chart 3 - Distortion as a function of power output and frequency Chart 3A Stereo mode (8-ohm loading, Rch) Red line = 1W Magenta line = 10W Blue line = 30W Cyan line = 70W Green line = 150W Chart 3B Stereo mode (8-ohm loading, Lch) Red line = 1W Magenta line = 10W Blue line = 70W Cyan line = 150W Chart 4 - Damping factor as a function of frequency Stereo mode Damping factor = output impedance divided into 8 Chart 5 - Distortion and noise spectrum Stereo mode 1kHz signal at 10W into an 8-ohm loadAngels and Airwaves have always been a strange band, seemingly just releasing music whenever they feel like, most likely down to the fact frontman Tom DeLonge now juggles music with things like feature films, books and other things he wants to do. This year however, the band released the four song EP titled ‘Chasing Shadows’, something that I was eager to listen to as soon as it was released. I wasn’t disappointed by the EP, with all the tracks on it being stand-outs for some of the best of the year, I was disappointed by how overlooked the EP was in general, with none of the songs getting radio play, none of the songs getting a buzz around it and just in general nothing really coming of what would have been a massively celebrated collection of songs should it have been released by someone more in the mainstream eye. But what made this EP good enough to be seen as underrated and underappreciated? The first thing that springs to mind is the musical genius. Despite only being 16 minutes long, it feels big, it feels bold and feels like something that wouldn’t feel out of place being played to 30,000 people in Hershey Park. The first thing that struck me was just how different every track was, with a song like ‘Overload’ being fast and hard-hitting compared to finale track ‘Chasing Shadows’ which builds slowly before hitting you with an overpowering final chorus. It’s this type of music that is lost in today’s times, with most albums now feeling forced and every song stylistically similar to the last. The EP may not exactly flow like a masterpiece, but it does feel like four potential singles ready to be released at any time. Lyrics wise, the EP delivers again. ‘Voyager’ stands out particularly, with it even managing to make me, the most lackadaisical person in the world, feel empowered, even if it is just for a few minutes. Credit has to again go to DeLonge here, with his talent vastly improving from his early days in Blink, with the lyricism’s now feeling mature and polished. The same can be said about the instrumentals. The guitars are smooth and not overused, the drums provide a nice backing track and the synth elements are welcomed throughout, especially in the last track. Despite the reason this particular project was released was to accompany the new book of DeLonge’s, it really should have garnered more attention, as I believe it is one of the strongest things released by AVA, especially in recent times. Overall, it could be good that this effort is underrated and underappreciated, as those who do fully understand just what this EP stands for will always feel like they’ve got an unearthed gem on their Spotify and potentially Apple Music if you’re a fan of terribly put together layouts. Credit has to go to DeLonge and Ilan Rubin for this (and Aaron Rubin, the sound engineer, whose role is often under appreciated but without him, the material just wouldn’t have been as good) as they have set the bar high for anything else the band do, and changed the classic view of EP’s in general, not as a way to promote your hit single, but as a way to convey thoughts in a shorter, but still large, arena-big way. AdvertisementsI’ve been wanting to get into electronics for a while now (it seems like a sensible thing for someone who works for a laptop manufacturer to do) but haven’t known where to start. Back in January, the fine people at Sparkfun Electronics helped out with that by running a Free Day where they gave away electronics worth USD $100k: $100 free, to 1000 people. I was lucky to be one of the 1000 people, which put some electronics ideas within my reach that I otherwise would have found it hard to justify spending money on. And, here’s the result — Madeleine and I made a t-shirt together that displays how much unread e-mail I have using an Arduino Lilypad and Bluetooth dongle, and an Android phone to send the number of unread mails to the shirt. Here’s an image of the center of the shirt, and a video showing it in action: Lilypad t-shirt (youtube, download in Ogg Theora) I’ve uploaded the source code that runs on the Lilypad and the python script that I’m running on the Android phone to my github account.Before Tom Holland was announced as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spider-Man for Captain America: Civil War and the upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming, fellow Brit Asa Butterfield was frequently mentioned as one of the front-runners for the role, with certain rumour sites even going as far as to claim on several occasions that he’d been cast [see here and here]. Flickering Myth’s Scott Davis caught up with Asa this week to discuss his new film Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, during which he shared his thoughts on portraying a superhero, and revealed that he’s more of a DC fan, and would love to appear in the DC Extended Universe. Here’s an excerpt from the interview. Be sure to check back tomorrow for the full thing. Your name was mentioned many times online as the potential new webslinger. Are comic book films something that still interests you as an actor? I always try to keep my options open – I think playing an iconic role like Peter Parker or any of the others, it’s always going to be difficult because you have a lot to live up to and to really own these characters who many people love and adore. To be given an opportunity to give your take on a character like that and something that you love is great. On the other side of the coin coming up with something totally original is just as fun because you get to start from scratch and create a new character which may well become iconic itself, you never know. I think Tom Holland did an incredible job, I think he nailed it. Are you more a DC or Marvel fan? DC honestly – just from the comics and the cartoon series. I like the grittiness of DC. Would a role in the DC Extended Universe be something that may peak your interest? Looking at you, maybe playing Robin or Nightwing would fit? Don’t jinx it! I’m maybe a bit too tall for Robin and about the same height as Ben Affleck but maybe someone who’s taller and sleek and a little sneaky! They went younger with Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. Maybe you could be the new Riddler, he’s tall and sleek! Stop, you’re getting me excited! Are you a fan of the new DC films, Batman v Superman, etc.? I’m a big fan and I’m really excited to see Justice League! SEE ALSO: Ella Purnell talks Miss Peregrine, her love of all things Tim Burton and working with her friend Asa Butterfield Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is set for release on September 30th, with a cast that includes Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Ella Purnell, Chris O’Dowd, Allison Janney, Terence Stamp, Kim Dickens, Rupert Everett, Judi Dench and Samuel L. Jackson.Scientists have finally managed to extract DNA from Australia's extinct giant kangaroos ─ the mysterious marsupial megafauna that roamed Australia over 40,000 years ago. A team of scientists led by Dr Bastien Llamas and Professor Alan Cooper from the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) have extracted DNA sequences from two species: a giant short-faced kangaroo (Simosthenurus occidentalis) and a giant wallaby (Protemnodon anak). These specimens died around 45,000 years ago and their remains were discovered in a cold and dry cave in Tasmania. Relatively good preservation conditions in the cave allowed enough short pieces of DNA to survive so researchers could reconstruct partial "mitochondrial genomes"─genetic material transmitted from mother to offspring and widely used to infer evolutionary relationships. "The ancient DNA reveals that extinct giant wallabies are very close relatives of large living kangaroos, such as the red and western grey kangaroos," says lead author Dr Bastien Llamas, ACAD senior research associate. "Their skeletons had suggested they were quite primitive macropods─a group that includes kangaroos, wallabies, pademelons and quokkas─but now we can place giant wallaby much higher up the kangaroo family tree." The research has also confirmed that short-faced kangaroos are a highly distinct lineage of macropods, which had been predicted on their unusual anatomy. Generally poor preservation conditions and the age of Australian megafaunal remains has prevented retrieval of its DNA until now, although complete nuclear or mitochondrial genomes have been previously obtained from extinct megafauna from Eurasia, the Americas, and New Zealand. Scientists attempting to decipher the evolutionary relationships of the Australian megafauna were previously restricted to using information from bones. "In addition to poor DNA preservation, most of the extinct Australian megafauna do not have very close relatives roaming around today, which makes it more difficult to retrieve and interpret the genetic data," says Dr Llamas. "Together with my colleagues Alan Cooper and Paul Brotherton, we had to think hard about experimental and bioinformatics approaches to overcome more than 10 million years of divergent evolution between the extinct and living species." Although ancient DNA confirms that the short-faced kangaroos left no descendants, it also shows their closest living cousin could be the banded hare-wallaby (Lagostrophus fasciatus), which is now restricted to small isolated islands off the coast of Western Australia. "Our results suggest the banded hare-wallaby is the last living representative of a previously diverse lineage of kangaroos. It will hopefully further encourage and justify conservation efforts for this endangered species," says co-author Professor Mike Lee of the South Australian Museum and the University's School of Biological Sciences. The research is published online (ahead of print) in Molecular Biology and Evolution.It started innocuously enough. The prime minister-for-life never missed the annual “Liberation Day” parade. With the drums and platoons thundering, nobody noticed as the quadcopter, barely larger than a sparrow, floated down toward the dais, its faint whirr drowned out by the industrial machinery rolling by in formation. It was at once a child’s birthday present and the summation of millennia of military science. A flying machine postulated long ago by Michelangelo, now equipped with a vial of biological toxin, a GPS chip, microprocessors, and facial recognition software. The attackers had uploaded the prime minister’s face to the quadcopter’s onboard processor, given it a rough search grid where they expected the target to be located, and then let it loose. The drone found its target, quickly zoomed within a few inches of the man’s face, deployed its payload, and self-destructed. The prime minister and his coterie were dead within the hour. His remaining lieutenants were at each other’s throats by the end of the day. Their respective clans lobbed accusations at one another on social media, live-streamed protests, and employed smartphone-wielding teenagers as spotters. By week’s end the country was awash in blood, thrown into a full-scale civil war. Community centers equipped by aid organizations with 3D printers quickly turned into weapons-printing armories. An enterprising college student, sent away to the University of London by her urban middle-class parents, translated a copy of the U.S. Army’s Ranger Handbook into the local dialect and uploaded it to a well-known file-sharing website clandestinely built by locals on top of Wikipedia. Cryptocurrency donations flowed in from diaspora communities in Europe, funding ad hoc logistics networks ferrying supplies by the pound across the border. It was a 21st-century Berlin Airlift of apocalyptic know-how. Thumb drives with videos describing how to mix explosives from household goods were passed around like candy. Mobile phone-towers, once symbols of modernity (and, to the discerning observer, the reach of domestic and foreign intelligence services) were quickly destroyed. In their place, ad hoc wireless mesh networks popped up around the country built with old 802.11n routers strung up to the sides of buildings, operating without the need for satellite connectivity. Back in the United States, at the urging of members of the Congress whose districts had similar ethnic constituencies, the American president huddled his advisors. Eight days later, he gave a widely lauded speech announcing critical aid for key ethnic groups simply defending themselves against attempts at cleansing. Help would arrive in just a few short weeks. In the meantime, the Theater Special Operations Command was directed to mobilize a small “advise and assist” team. Its partner on the ground was unknown. By the time this team actually arrived 96 hours later, the war was nearly over. The government-in-exile, operating for years over private chat servers in Europe, had traveled into the country clandestinely via micro-submarine and quickly established a new government in the mineral-rich northern region. What happens when the capabilities that we give to special operators can instead be deployed by amateurs? How will the special operations community respond? We propose the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) initiate a formal, biannual training event that invites competition between cutting-edge special operations forces and creative members of the public. By allowing technologists to compete against and alongside premier special operators in closed training exercises, we can begin to draw tactics, techniques, technologies, and procedures currently in development in the academic and private sectors into premier special operations units in the U.S. military. To complete its missions in an increasingly chaotic world, U.S. special operations forces (SOF) must learn to rapidly adopt technologies that may only be months old. Just as machine intelligence transformed the professional chess circuit — today’s top chess teams are human-machine hybrids — so too must SOF evolve and drive emerging capabilities more deeply into its operational elements. Fortunately for those involved in planning, training, and executing sensitive and special operations, no nuanced actor has yet synthesized all of these new tools into a precise instrument. But there are signs of experimentation by America’s potential adversaries, most notably in the special operations campaign run by the Russian government during its annexation of Ukraine. Why are current SOCOM operational constructs considered “special,” and how can we ensure they remain so in the future? Portions of the SOF mandate are about asymmetrically denying the enemy operational access to technology. The converse is true, too. SOCOM’s dominance relies on its ability to asymmetrically use technology to achieve traditional political and military aims faster and more efficiently. One need look no further than CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology or other special mission units supporting SOCOM. Colonel John Boyd explained that the ability to cycle through the process of observation-orientation-decision-action faster than the other side often leads to military victory. In many cases, the speed of that loop is increased with technology. For years we’ve been seeing an exponential increase in computer and communication capabilities. Exponential growth looks linear until it hits an inflection point. Are we there? Perhaps. The iPad 2, released in 2011, was more powerful than the 1985 Cray-2 Supercomputer, which cost $35 million in today’s dollars. This comparison illustrates the commoditization of so-called “national technical means.” What was once the sole provenance of nation states can now be purchased at the corner store, and the downward price pressure on these capabilities is not limited to the digital spectrum. Unmanned aerial vehicles with cutting-edge optics, built and used by nation states for over half a century, are now available for the cost of a meal at a modest restaurant. Combining sensors, actuators, transducers, and other analog and digital components hereto unknown provide a potential generational leap in asymmetric capability by non-state actors and non-elite units of potential competitor nations. How can we continue to man, train, and equip the best special operations forces in the world when the same capabilities they employ, which cost us billions of dollars to acquire and train up, are available to a weekend hobbyist for a few hundred dollars? For SOF, this logically leads to the relatively unexplored frontier of human-machine capabilities. The way we interact with computers today bears no practical difference from the way a person interacted with a computer in 1985, when the Cray-2 was the gold standard. Is it possible to learn new ways to take advantage of the best humans have to offer and combine it with the best that machines can offer? Gary Kasparov thinks so. In an article titled “The Chess Master and the Computer,” he writes about “freestyle” chess competition where players were allowed to work with computers for a substantial prize: The teams of human plus machine dominated even the strongest computers. The chess machine Hydra, which is a chess-specific supercomputer like Deep Blue, was no match for a strong human player using a relatively weak laptop. Human strategic guidance combined with the tactical acuity of a computer was overwhelming. The lesson here is that human and machine, working in concert, are much more powerful than either, alone: The surprise came at the conclusion of the event. The winner was revealed to be not a grandmaster with a state-of-the-art PC but a pair of amateur American chess players using three computers at the same time. Their skill at manipulating and “coaching” their computers to look very deeply into positions effectively counteracted the superior chess understanding of their grandmaster opponents and the greater computational power of other participants. Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process. Kasparov had elite training in chess, yet lost to Deep Blue in 1997 because computer could calculate millions of potential outcomes in real time. But when Kasparov worked together with a great computer, he regained the advantage. Today’s SOF are Kasparov’s peers — elite warriors. SOCOM must now leapfrog the potential loss to “Deep Blue” by examining how it can drive technology more deeply into the fabric of SOF operating structures. Do current SOF have the best process of interacting with computers? How would they know until it’s too late? What are the ramifications of losing to some poorly funded, poorly trained terrorists who stumble on a much better process? Our proposed biannual “freestyle” SOF competition would award significant prizes to the winners, and would initially be held in the San Francisco Bay area, where many avant-garde engineering and technology minds hang their hats at the major companies and smaller startups pushing the envelope. Our idea is to draw elite and the amateur technologists into a competition of technologies and wits against U.S. Special Operations Forces in a training environment as unconstrained as modern battlefields. Over the course of 72 hours, the teams will compete to complete various tasks and then debrief each other on the tactics, technologies, and procedures employed. At the end of each competition, we will issue write-ups of who won and why — a 21st century corollary to Admiral Sims’ continuous-aim fire exercises that promulgated best practices throughout the Navy. Finally, while the long weekend will prove to be both challenging and rewarding, we also hope it will be fun. Technology has always dictated the way in which nations prepare their soldiers for war. In ancient times, the combat tools (horses, infantry formations, trebuchets) dictated how militaries trained for battlefield efficiency. The industrial age of war changed these dynamics to focus on unit efficiency and dispersed coordination. The digital age ought to drive a similar revolution. Isn’t it time we start? Joshua Steinman is a former member of the Chief of Naval Operations’ Rapid Innovation Cell, and recently left active duty to join ThinAir, a digital security startup in Palo Alto, California. He is a reservist with the Defense Innovation Unit, and a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at National Defense University Joshua Kvavle is a former member of the Chief of Naval Operations’ Rapid Innovation Cell, and a research scientist at SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific, soon to be embedded at the Office of Naval Research Global, where he specializes in next-generation optical technologies, including augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality. He holds a PhD from Brigham Young University in Electrical Engineering. These views are those of the authors alone and do not represent the positions of any part of the U.S. government. Image: Adapted from Daniel Zedda, CCOr… YOUR Story in Nine Critical Sentences The best way to teach a technique is to show it working relative to something you already understand. What better way, then, than to introduce you to an immensely powerful story development tool – I hesitate to call it a trick, though it feels like magic when you use it – than to apply this little ditty to The Hunger Games. Any story – the whole story – can be reduced to 9 sentences. It can be reduced to one, actually, but 9 can tell the whole story with structural resolution, albeit at a 10,000 foot level. Go ahead, try it on your story at any stage, or apply this to your favorite novels… it’ll test your knowledge of story architecture, while pointing you toward it… which is the whole point. This is something you can use when developing a story, or when finishing one. It’s an acid test, of sorts… if you struggle with it, then you’re just possibly in trouble with the story itself. The goal isn’t to finish, the goal is to optimize. To make your story the very best it can be within the context and confines of your driving concept. These 9 sentences aren’t the first step in story development, by the way. Or shouldn’t be. The first step is the identification of an idea. Then the goal becomes to expand the idea into a concept, and then you lay it out over these specific 9 sentences, each of which is assigned a mission. When you do that, you’ve just structured your entire novel. The number 9 isn’t arbitrary here. Solid stories have five major milestones, and they unfold in four parts. Do the math… that’s nine things – specific turns and essences – that need to be identified, and then broken down into individual scene treatments. The real value comes when these nine sentences expand into more sentences, ultimately with each sentence describing a scene in your story. At that point, congratulations, you’ve just written an entire outline. Here’s The Hunger Games in 9 Sentences. Pay attention to the labels that identify the 4 parts, and the 5 milestones. This is important because they need to be in a specific order and target specific content… and they all need to be covered. Here goes: The HOOK is when, after meeting Katniss and her family in the first chapter, we see her sister Prim selected as a Tribute in the District 12 Reaping ceremony, and then Katniss (our hero) steps up to volunteer to take her place in the games. The Set-up continues (PART 1 of the story, or about the first 20% of the total length) with scenes that simultaneously show us the life Katniss had been living, including her skills in the forest, and the process of saying goodbye and then traveling to the Capital city, where their (she and the other District 12 Tribute, Peeta) preparation and training begin under the guidance of assigned mentors and caretakers. The story changes (kicks into a higher gear) at the FIRST PLOT POINT when Katniss, after being unsure about a strategy that pairs her romantically with Peeta
including threats of violence towards him and his family. The anger began when he tweeted such inflammatory remarks as "The DSR fire time was 0.2 seconds. It's now 0.4 seconds. The rechamber time was 1.0 seconds. It's now 1.1 seconds." As the threats rolled in, Vonderhaar attempted to bring things into perspective for those bullying his account. Not sure these fractions of seconds are worth the threats of violence. +— David Vonderhaar (@DavidVonderhaar) July 23, 2013 Activision community manager Dan Amrich stepped in to defend Vonderhaar. "[Vonderhaar] often gets told he should die in a fire or kill himself or is a horrible person," Amrich writes. "If anybody thinks for a second that this is okay, it is not. But if the loudest voices in the Call of Duty 'community' act like an angry mob instead, guess how the entire world views Call of Duty? Now consider that these Internet Tough Guy rants and demands are not unique to COD, but exist everywhere, in many gaming communities. This is why the world often does not take gaming seriously; this is why gamers are assumed to be immature, whiny assholes. Because the immature, whiny assholes are louder." Amrich goes on to thank those who submitted reasonable feedback about the changes, and commends Vonderhaar for his patience. "If you enjoy your games, have a little respect for the people who make them - and stop threatening them with bodily harm every time they do their job." Source: EurogamerMr Justice Jay ruled against the Home Office at London's High Court. Credit: PA A Somali refugee who was convicted of sexually assaulting a child has been awarded £105,000 damages after a judge ruled he was unlawfully detained as an immigrant for just over 20 months. The 41-year-old man, who arrived in the UK in 1997 and is only identified as AXD, is still serving a 21-month sentence for the crime imposed in February 2015, six months before he was granted refugee status. AXD, who is believed to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, previously served a 16-month sentence for unlawful wounding after slashing his victim's face with a broken mirror. The judge said the refugee, identified as AXD, was not obviously 'playing the system' and his deportation to Somalia could best be described as speculative. Credit: PA Mr Justice Jay ruled against the Home Office at London's High Court in May and found in favour of AXD's claim he was unlawfully detained from April 1 2013 to December 5 2014 - prior to the sex assault for which he is imprisoned. The judge noted that AXD was "not a particularly worthy, likeable or sympathetic individual" but said he was clearly "vulnerable" and mentally ill. Another way of looking at this case, however, is to point out that the claimant is vulnerable, that he probably suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, and that only those obligated to an adherence to the rule of law would be likely to vindicate his rights. This alternative viewpoint is based not on any subjective preferences but on the loyal discharge of the judicial function. – Mr Justice Jay While detained, AXD argued that if he was deported he would face persecution on account of his sexual orientation and his conversion from Islam to Christianity. Concerns were also raised about his mental health. The judge said AXD had been detained far too long in circumstances where he was not obviously "playing the system" and his deportation to Somalia could best be described as speculative. The risk to the public, and of absconding, was not so great that continued incarceration was the only real option. In my judgment, the claimant's case cried out to be grabbed by the metaphorical scruff of the neck, and clear and firm decisions made. It is simply not acceptable that the claimant was detained for so long, in such circumstances. – Mr Justice Jay'Click' on images for full size and further information Image Details Title: St. George's Cross Description: The Cross of St. George, the Patron Saint of England, is the national English flag. This flag has been used to form the basis of a number of flags representing Northern Ireland (see below). Title: St. Andrew's Cross Description: The national flag of Scotland was merged with the national flag of England in 1606 by King James I. It has grown very popular in Scotland given the increasing desire for devolution or independence. The flag is also found on Loyalist Murals suggesting the affinity between Ulster Protestants and Scots. Title: St. Patrick's Cross Description: Even on St. Patrick's day, this flag is not widely flown by Irish people who, for the most part, do not recognise it as their own. It is seen as a British symbol, and is used by regiments of the British Army. [Additional note: The flag was first designed by British authorities in Dublin Castle in the 17th century as a counterpart to St. George's Cross. The flag also forms part of the coat of arms of the Duke of Leinster.] Title: British Union Flag Description: This Union Flag is sometimes referred to as the 'Union Jack', although this name for the flag only correctly applies when the flag is flown on a ship. The flag is made up of the above three flags: St. George's Cross, St. Andrew's Cross, and St. Patrick's Cross. The design was meant to reflect the 1801 Act of Union between Britain (England, Wales, and Scotland) and Ireland (the Welsh flag was not incorporated into the Union Flag). The Union Flag is, by custom and practice rather than by any law, the official flag of the United Kingdom (UK), of which Northern Ireland is part. However, since 1973 there has been no official Northern Ireland flag. In the absence of such a flag, the Union Flag has been used and is an integral part of the Protestant, Unionist, and Loyalist tradition. Title: Irish National Flag (Tricolour) Description: Ireland's national flag has its origins in the French Revolution and the French flag. The Tricolour was designed to signify the peace (white) between Nationalists (green) and Unionists (orange). It was hoisted above the General Post Office in Dublin during the 1916 Easter Rising, and has since been used by Ireland's Nationalists and Republicans North and South of the border. Title: Province of Ulster Flag (nine counties) Description: The Ulster Flag represents the nine counties of the ancient province of Ulster, and is one of the four provincial flags of Ireland. The flag is based on the crest of the O'Neill Chieftains of Ulster, who were renowned for their strong resistance to English rule, hence the flag is regarded as being Nationalist. Title: Leinster Flag/ Naval Jack Description: This flag represents one of the four provinces of Ireland, Leinster, whose capital is Dublin. The flag was previously used by the United Irishmen in 1798, Daniel O'Connel's Repeal of the Union campaign in the 1830s and 1840s, and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Contrary to popular belief, this flag was also used in the 1916 Rising, however the colour green was seen as exclusively Catholic, thus Sinn Fein favoured the Tricolour in 1918, as a flag embracing both Catholic and Protestant communities in Ireland. Title: The Four Provinces of Ireland Description: This flag represents the four provinces of Ireland. Ulster is represented by the red and yellow nine counties flag. Munster is represented by three crowns on a blue background. Connaught has an eagle and an arm holding a knife, while Leinster is shown with a harp on a green background. The flag is almost exclusively used by Nationalists and Republicans. Title: Ulster Banner (or 'Government of Northern Ireland Flag', or 'Ulster Flag' - six counties) Description: The Ulster Banner is based upon the St. George's Cross (see above) and has similarities to the Province of Ulster Flag (see above). In 1953 the ‘Ulster Banner’ was adopted as the flag of Northern Ireland by the Stormont administration. The adminstration was prorogued in 1972 and following the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973 this flag ceased to have any official standing. The flag remains in use by some sporting organisations. This particular flag of Northern Ireland is seen as staunchly Loyalist because of the Crown, the Star of David, and the Red Hand of Ulster. A number of other flags were based upon this design (see the alternative 'Ulster' flag below). Title: Alternative 'Ulster Flag' (six counties) Description: This flag is very similar to the original Government of Northern Ireland flag except that it has no crown and has a British Union flag in the top left-hand corner. It is perceived as a Loyalist UDA flag, and the absence of the Crown suggests a more independent stance, due to a disillusionment with Britain and mainstream Unionism. Title: Orange Order Flag Description: The Orange Order is an organisation with branches across Northern Ireland. It is exclusively Protestant and bans Catholics, and those married to Catholics, from joining. The flag is Orange with a purple star which was the symbol of the Williamite forces. Title: Orange Order Flag - Alternative Version Description: This version of the flag is Orange with the English Cross of St. George in the top left hand corner and a purple star in the bottom right hand corner. Title: The Crimson Flag (or The defiant 'bloody flag' of the Apprentice Boys of Derry) Description: The Apprentice Boys of Derry is a loyal order organisation that commemorates the siege of Derry in 1689. During the Williamite Wars, thirteen apprentice boys shut the gates of the city against the armies of the Catholic King James II, who was later defeated by the Protestant King William of Orange. The two dates commemorated by the Apprentice Boys of Derry are 18 December (when they shut the gates), and 12 August (the day the Siege was relieved by King William's forces). The crimson colour of the flag symbolises the bitter and 'bloody' struggle of the defenders. Title: Ulster Independence Flag (or Ulster National Flag) Description: The flag was unveiled on 'Ulster Day', 17 November 1988, when the Ulster Independence Committee (now the Ulster Independence Movement; UIM) was formed. The flag is made up of St. Patrick's Cross and St. Andrew's Cross (see above), the six pointed star and the Red Hand of Ulster. The UIM claims to break from traditional Loyalist thought by promoting independence from both Ireland and Britain. The flag is also flown by members of other groups and is popular with some elements in the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). Title: Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) Flag Text: 'UVF' Description: This flag can be seen on many Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) murals. It has the Cross of St. George in the top left-hand corner. Title: The Starry Plough Flag Description: The Starry plough illustrates the constellation of the same name (also known as the Big Dipper or the Great Bear) on a blue background. It was first used by the Irish Citizen's Army who were a socialist organisation which fought in the 1916 Easter Rising. The flag has also been used by a number of socialist and Republican paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland including the Workers' Party, the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).In an astounding display on the United States Senate floor Tuesday evening, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell effectively silenced Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the middle of her floor speech voicing opposition to attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions. McConnell interrupted Warren on procedural grounds saying that she had impugned Sen. Sessions during her speech and then effectively barred her from continuing. Warren, who was visibly miffed and then increasingly incredulous, was reading a letter from Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr., submitted to the Senate in 1986 urging the body to block Sessions’ nomination as a federal court judge. The letter was addressed to none other than avowed segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond, who was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee at the time. “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters,” Warren read aloud from King’s letter. “For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship.” Moments later Sen. McConnell interrupted on the Senate floor. “The senator has impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama,” McConnell. “I call the senator to order under the provisions of Rule 19.” Rule 19 covers a whole host of procedural rules on debate etiquette on the Senate floor. In this case, the notable portion of the rule, is Section 2: “No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who was presiding in the chair, agreed with McConnell. “I am surprised that the words of Coretta Scott King are not suitable for debate in the United States Senate,” Warren replied asking to be able to continue. Sen. McConnell objected, and Sen. Daines, repeating the words verbatim of a Republican staffer three feet in front of him, instructed Warren to take her seat. Warren appealed to the full Senate, but lost a party-line vote 49–43, which means, the Hill points out, that Warren “won’t be allowed to speak from the floor until after the Senate wraps up its debate on Sessions’ nomination, expected to occur on Wednesday evening.”In slapstick comedy as in law enforcement, timing is everything. Just ask the bystander who intervened in a police chase in the UK this past Saturday – by sticking out his foot to comically trip up a fleeing suspect. According to a press release from the Kingston Police department, police were called to investigate reports of two men seen selling drugs around midnight on Clarence Street. When officers tried to stop one of the men he took off on foot, with police officers in close pursuit. WATCH: The dumbest criminals of 2015 caught on camera CCTV cameras captured what happened a short time later, as the suspect ran past a man walking hand-in-hand with a female companion. With an almost casual demeanor, the man sticks out a foot – and sends the fleeing suspect tumbling to the street, where police pounce on him seconds later. In gratitude, Kingston Police posted the video to their Facebook and Twitter channels to thank the man, who they declined to identify. “A number of Kingston Officers were chasing a suspect through the town centre over the weekend when they received some unexpected assistance from a member of the public,” the post read. “Thank you for helping them.” The video generated considerable praise for the unknown bystander after it was posted online. A spokesperson for Scotland Yard told The Daily Telegraph that police arrested the suspect, a 17-year-old charged with possessing Class A drugs with intent to supply.1 of 7 View Caption FILE - This Oct. 3, 2009, file photo, shows Navajo Code Talker Chester Nez signing a book, "Navajo Weapon," outside of a FILE - This undated file image of a book cover image released by Berkley shows "Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One FILE - In this May 17, 2011 file photo, Navajo Code Talker Chester Nez poses at his home in Albuquerque, N.M. Nez, the last of the Navajo Code Talker Chester Nez bleeses the crowd at an outdoor rally at Civic Plaza in Albuquerque, N.M., Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2004 b This Oct. 3, 2009 photo shows Navajo Code Talker Chester Nez speaking to a woman outside an Albuquerque, N.M., tourist shop during This Nov. 29, 2009 photo shows Chester Nez talking about his time as a Navajo Code Talker in World War II from his home in Albuque FILE - This Oct. 3, 2009 file photo shows Navajo Code Talker Chester Nez speaking at a book signing for "Navajo Weapon,"The "Back to the Future" screenwriter revealed to Niteside that the script for the cult classic was turned down dozens upon dozens of times. "The original script was rejected over 40 times," writer and producer Bob Gale told Niteside Monday night during the 25th anniversary of the trilogy that grossed hundreds of millions and celebration of its Blu-Ray and DVD release. "The idea that [the film] was even going to make its money back when it came out in 1985 -- much less still be around today -- how could we imagine that?" Gale, who joined fellow cast and crew at the reunion held at Guastavino's on Monday in Manhattan, credited the actors with making the story come to life on the silver screen. New York's Royal Families: Meet the City's Top Heiresses "We all knew Michael from 'Family Ties.' He was the original first choice for the movie, but the producer of 'Family Ties' wouldn't let him out of the show to do it. [He] wouldn't even let [Michael] read the script," Gale said. They shot for five weeks with a back-up actor: "It wasn't working," Gale said. "We went back [and said],'We are up the creek here. Could we convince you?'" A flexible schedule eventually won them over.The Constitution of the State of Wisconsin is the governing document of the U.S. State of Wisconsin. It establishes the structure and function of state government, describes the state boundaries, and declares the rights of state citizens. The Wisconsin Constitution was written at a constitutional convention held in Madison, Wisconsin in December 1847 and approved by the citizens of Wisconsin Territory in a referendum held in March 1848. Wisconsin was admitted to the United States on May 29, 1848. Although it has been amended over a hundred times, the original constitution ratified in 1848 is still in use. This makes the Wisconsin Constitution the oldest U.S. state constitution outside of New England. Only Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island use older constitutions. The current Wisconsin Constitution contains a brief preamble and fourteen articles detailing the state government, its powers, and its limitations. Creation of the Wisconsin Constitution [ edit ] Although Wisconsin continues to use the original constitution ratified as Wisconsin achieved statehood, the current constitution is the second document to be proposed as the state constitution. In 1846, the residents of Wisconsin Territory first voted to apply for statehood, and they elected 124 representatives to meet in Madison to author a state constitution. These delegates, most of them elected as Democrats, met in the fall of 1846 to write the constitution. However, the document they produced by December 1846 contained several provisions which were deemed radical at the time. The document gave married women the right to own property and allowed for a public referendum to settle the issue of African American suffrage. In addition, Edward G. Ryan, the delegate from Racine, Wisconsin, introduced a section to the constitution that prohibited all commercial banking in Wisconsin. Not ready to accept some of these provisions, the public rejected the first proposed constitution in a referendum and elected a second delegation to write a constitution which would be more acceptable to the people. The second constitutional convention produced a much more conservative document that lacked the controversial progressive clauses in its predecessor. The second draft constitution was mute on the controversial issues of women's property rights. It gave suffrage only to white male citizens over the age of twenty one and American Indians that had been made citizens of the United States, but gave the legislature the ability to extend suffrage to other groups through laws approved by public referendum. Although drafted in English, the drafters contracted with publishers of newspapers in the territory, not printed in the English language, to translate the constitution into the languages in which such newspapers were printed.[1] The issue of banking was put to a public vote; citizens could decide for themselves whether or not the state legislature could pass laws allowing banking after the constitution was ratified. The second proposed constitution was finished in December 1847, and was approved by the public in March 1848. During the same election, voters also chose to allow the legislature to charter banks. Shortly after the referendum, the state constitution was ratified by the United States Senate and put into effect with the election of the first state officials. Provisions of the current Wisconsin Constitution [ edit ] Declaration of Rights [ edit ] The first article of the Wisconsin constitution outlines the legal rights of state citizens. In addition to reaffirming the rights guaranteed in the United States Bill of Rights, Article I of the Wisconsin Constitution offers additional guarantees to its citizens. Among these are sections which prohibit imprisonment for debt, guarantee resident aliens the same property rights as citizens, affirm that the military is subordinate to civil authorities, allow for the use of state owned school buildings by civil and religious organizations during non-school hours, and guarantee the right of citizens to hunt and fish. Legislature [ edit ] The Wisconsin Legislature is described in Article IV of the Wisconsin Constitution. It is divided into two houses, the Wisconsin State Assembly and Wisconsin State Senate. The constitution sets forth the method of electing legislators and gives their terms as two years for representatives to the assembly and four years for senators. It allows bills to originate in either house, and gives each house the ability to amend bills already passed by the other. In addition, the Wisconsin Constitution outlines certain limitations to the power of the legislative branch of government. The state legislature is prohibited by the constitution from authorizing gambling, although amendments have introduced numerous exceptions to this rule including an allowance for bingo games held by certain non-profit organizations and a state lottery. The legislature is also prohibited from passing legislation affecting certain private business, such as voting to change a person's name. Executive Branch [ edit ] Article V of the Wisconsin Constitution describes executive office in the state, providing for a governor and lieutenant governor who are elected jointly to four-year terms. The constitution also outlines the powers and duties of the executive branch. The governor of Wisconsin is given command of the state's military forces and empowered to pardon convicts. The Wisconsin Constitution also allows the governor to veto bills passed by the state legislature. The governor is also given line-item veto power over bills of appropriation, allowing the executive to cut out certain parts of legislation. The constitution does, however, prohibit the governor to create a new word in a bill by objecting to certain letters. Rejected bills or portions of bills are then returned to the legislative house where the bill originated, where a vote from two thirds of the members can override the veto. Article V also sets forth a line of succession for the governor should he resign, be removed, or die. In the absence of a governor, executive power is transferred to the lieutenant governor, and in cases where both the governor and lieutenant governor are unable to fulfill executive responsibilities, these powers are transferred to the Wisconsin Secretary of State. Article VI of the Wisconsin Constitution describes other administrative positions, providing for a secretary of state, treasurer, and attorney general to be elected to four-year terms. This article also describes rules for various elected officials on the county level. Judicial Branch [ edit ] The Wisconsin Constitution outlines the state's judicial branch in Article VII, granting judicial power in the state to a unified Wisconsin Supreme Court consisting of seven justices elected to ten-year terms. The justice who has been serving longest is given the powers of chief justice. In addition to the supreme court, the constitution provides for the Wisconsin Circuit Courts, which each have districts prescribed by the legislature with borders following county boundaries. An intermediary body between the supreme court and the circuit courts, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, is also established in the state constitution. Finally, the legislature is granted power to form municipal courts with jurisdiction over individual cities, villages, and towns in the state. Article VII of the Wisconsin Constitution also describes the process for impeaching and trying state officials. A majority of members in the state assembly can vote to impeach a civil officer. The state senate is then given the power to conduct a trial of the impeached official. If two thirds of the senators present vote to convict the officer, the convicted party is removed from office and made subject to further prosecution under law. Amending the Constitution [ edit ] The process for making changes to the Wisconsin Constitution is stated in Article XII. Wisconsin does not have petition-based referendums or initiatives; an amendment (including a full replacement of the state's constitution) can be made either via constitutional convention or introduced by either house of the state legislature. In order to call a constitutional convention, a majority of the state legislators must vote in favor of holding a new convention, and then the people of Wisconsin must approve the vote to call a convention at the next general election. If an amendment is introduced via the legislature, its passing requires a lengthy three-vote process: First, a majority of members in both houses of the state legislature must vote in favor of the amendment. Once the proposed amendment passes both houses for the first time, any further progress in the amendment's adaptation must wait until after general elections have been held and the state legislature has reconvened with the members chosen in the new elections; then, both houses must vote a second time to accept the proposed amendment (without changes). time, any further progress in the amendment's adaptation must wait until general elections have been held and the state legislature has reconvened with the members chosen in the new elections; then, both houses must vote a time to accept the proposed amendment (without changes). Should the amendment pass the legislature twice, it must be approved in a third vote by the voters at the next general election. Original document [ edit ] The original copy of the 1848 document is missing.[2] This handwritten copy contained the signatures of all the delegates who drafted it during the second constitutional convention of 1847.[3] As arguably one of the more important artifacts related to the history of the state, the mystery of its whereabouts has become a well known anecdote in the state.[4] Soon after it was drafted, the original document was submitted to a printer named Horace A. Tenney of Madison, who produced three certified copies. Two of these copies and the original are missing. The one remaining copy contains the names of the original signers, but not the actual signatures.[3] This is the copy that is used for a display in the rotunda of the State Capitol Building. The first to discover the original document was missing was historian Lyman Draper, who tried unsuccessfully to locate it in 1882. The topic was first reported by the Milwaukee Sentinel in 1917,[2] and subsequently reported by many other news outlets over the years, including Madison's Capital Times in 1935.[4] There have been different theories about the document's existence and whereabouts. Two common theories include the notion that the original was never returned by the printer, and also a theory that it was taken as a souvenir by one of the delegates from the constitutional convention.[5] The first mass printing occurred when printer Beriah Brown issued it in pamphlet form, of which a color facsimile is available for viewing on the website of the state's Historical Society. Although the Beriah Brown printing was laced with many printers' errors and important textual inaccuracies, it was what state residents of the time read when they voted to endorse a Wisconsin constitution in 1848.[6]Last week I posted this short entry about Jim Aparo’s Batman which lead into a nice discussion on the 1990s Batman: Knightfall Series of which I had to admit I had never read in its entirety. After reading Scott VanHorne’s words; I got into Knightfall literally like 3 issues before it happened. I’d just finally emerged from my Chris Claremont X-Men phase. It was something amazing to see unfold month after month. No more rote and weird Batman stories. Finally….something was HAPPENING to him that was shaking up the status quo. Each issue after combatting the Arkham escapees, he’d get more beat up, more tired, and you could see Batman was heading into the most dangerous confrontation of his entire career. By the time Bane showed up in the Bat-cave and laid down the challenge, and Batman said (In a panel drawn by Jim Aparo) “Not on the best day you ever had…” As he replaced the cowl over his unshaven face…. Dude……that shit was 100x more heavy than the scene in TDKRBrynn Anderson/Associated Press Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper is one of the brightest talents in MLB, but it's still too early to put him in the same discussion as the greatest players ever—a point that Barry Bonds will be all too happy to remind you, per William Ladson of MLB.com: He is a beast. [But] he doesn't compare to me yet. He has a long way to go [to be compared] to me. He is not even close to me. But he is one hell of a ballplayer. I watch him, I admire and I look at him, and I’m in awe. You don’t see that often. Harper later responded to Bonds' comments, via James Wagner of the Washington Post: Looking at how they performed through their first four years, the two are relatively similar: Bryce Harper vs. Barry Bonds—First Four Years Player G AVG HR RBI SB WAR Harper 510.289 97 248 37 19.8 Bonds 566.256 84 223 117 23.5 Source: Baseball-Reference.com In his fifth year, Bonds earned the first of three MVP awards over a four-season stretch. Harper won his first MVP last year, but sustaining that greatness will be his next challenge. Of course, Bonds' best work came well into his 30s. He was in his age-36 season when he broke the single-season home run record. Comparing any player to Bonds—especially one as young as Harper—is unfair. The home run king, who was linked to performance-enhancing drugs during the latter stages of his playing career, may be the greatest offensive player in baseball history. As long as he keeps up his current pace, Harper will have a Hall of Fame-caliber career. Baseball-Reference.com gives him a similarity score comparable to Hank Aaron, Orlando Cepeda, Mickey Mantle, Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Robinson and Miguel Cabrera, among a few others, through age 22. Expecting the reigning National League MVP to reach Bonds' level may be a bit unrealistic, though. Note: Stats for Harper and Bonds are courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.Astronauts on long space voyages would probably get pretty tired of freeze-dried meals, so scientists have long been trying to figure out how to grow space food to supplement their diets. According to researchers at Purdue University, strawberries may be one space-friendly crop. They say a low-maintenance strawberry cultivar called Seascape would do pretty well in space. It produces fewer berries than other cultivars, but they're bigger and just as tasty. Growing plants in space comes with several challenges, not the least of which is providing artificial light. Artificial-sunlight lamps need lots of power, and they generate heat, too, so a spacecraft or space base would need enough power to cool things down. There are no winds or insects to pollinate the plants, which is especially problematic for flowering fruits like tomatoes and strawberries. Roots grow differently in low-gravity environments. And water is a precious commodity, so space crops must do well with small amounts. NASA has been studying the problem for years, but scientists are still weeding out plant varieties to find the best ones. When space shuttle Discovery landed April 20, it brought back specimens of Arabidopsis thaliana plants that had been growing on the International Space Station. It will take about a year to determine how microgravity affected the plants' growth, and how well they handled the stress of spaceflight. The results should illuminate some problems with growing crops in space -- but at least one problem, limited light, shouldn't be an issue with the Seascape strawberry. The plants can produce strawberries with as little as 10 hours of light a day, and they produce fewer but bigger berries, meaning less work for the astronauts who would have to hand-pollinate and harvest them. The plants kept producing fruit for about six months after starting to flower, according to the study, published early online in the journal Advances in Space Research. The first space farm would probably consist of produce like lettuce, radishes and tomatoes. Sweet strawberries would be a welcome addition, the researchers say. They could satisfy an astronaut's sweet tooth better than freeze-dried snacks. The next step is to test Seascape bushes using LED lighting, hydroponics and different temperatures, the researchers say.It’s a beautiful sunny day and you are pedalling your bike down a long dirt road near a village in rural Thailand. Alongside the road you see emerald green rice paddies, women in conical hats bent over in the fields, water buffalo pulling a plough. You ride through these peaceful rice fields for miles, occasionally stopping at a beautiful ornate temple or passion through a village where a bustling market is held. As you ride by, little children wave and chase after you – fascinated by your foreign appearance. Locals give you happy smiles as you pass by their farms or shops. Renting a bike and cycling in Thailand can be a great way to see more of the country and to enjoy it at a different pace. Bicycle rental in Thailand is quite cheap and there are many different options. Whether you want to ride your bike through the remote rural rice fields or the streets of Chiang Mai – there are plenty of adventures to be had. Tips for Cycling in Thailand If you are planning on embarking on a cycling tour of Thailand, you have a lot of fun to look forward to. In order to ensure that your trip goes smoothly, here are some tips that you should keep in mind: It is a good idea to always have travel insurance before you enjoy an active pursuit such as cycling while travelling. Check to make sure that your travel insurance covers you for activities such as cycling. If you are planning on a long cycling trip, invest in some high quality lightweight and compact bicycle luggage. A bike rack bag or a bar bag will help you to carry everything you need for a few weeks of travel. When cycling long distances, wear the right clothes. Padded cycling shorts can really help to keep you comfortable and avoid chafing. Make sure that you wear trainers or cycling shoes. You might be tempted to wear the flip-flops that are the standard for travellers in Southeast Asia, but these can be quite dangerous when riding a bike. When you are cycling in Thailand, it is very important to take the heat into consideration. You must stay well hydrated so that you are not in danger of heatstroke. It is also important to wear sunscreen when you are riding your bicycle in Thailand. The sun is strong and you can burn quite easily, which will be painful and will require you to stay inside – no more cycling fun! If you are feeling really hot, you can soak a light cotton shirt in cold water and place another lightweight top over it. This will help to cool your skin down. If you are going off the beaten track, take a map or a GPS with you and let someone know where you plan to go. Check in with that person when you finish that trip, so that they are aware of your whereabouts. These are just a few tips to keep in mind for cycling in Thailand. Have you ever been on a cycling adventure in Thailand? Let us know your stories in the comments below. photo credit: Arian Zwegers via photopin cc photo credit: David McKelvey via photopin ccImage by Kent Buckley You might say forming a so-called Special Senate Committee on Marijuana—that is staffed by politicians who mostly know little to nil about cannabis, legal or otherwise—is like having a task force on snow full of Hawaiians. In Massachusetts though, the laws that govern how we live and die tend to be crafted not by experts, or by people who are even remotely knowledgeable about the areas they are impacting, but rather by the mediocre minds steering government. From an octogenarian judge who didn’t know the difference between a download and an upload making rulings in the case of Sony BMG v. Tenenbaum, which set major precedents regarding online music, to our veritable surveillance state in which the largest legislative donors win the most lucrative security contracts, it’s clear that our Commonwealth is run by an incompetent confederacy of fences. All things considered, we’re skeptical about the recently announced addition of nine new senators to said cannabis panel, which up until now has been a one man show headed by Sen. Jason Lewis of Winchester. As the State House News Service reported, this was significant because, according to Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, “senators had shied away from the panel [in the past] out of concern that studying the legalization of cannabis could draw the ire of voters opposed to legalization.” What’s most important here is that pols want to keep an edge on the two activist camps rallying for legalization next year on starkly different terms—even though Rosenberg now says legislators won’t tackle the cannabis question head-on. Since they may be a factor down the line, we slid some members of the Special Senate Committee on Marijuana under our microscope … First there are the relative heroes—Sen. Michael Moore stood up against cannabis ignorance all the way back when such stances actually were less popular. The same goes for Sen. Harriette Chandler, who prudently welcomed dispensaries to Worcester, and who told reporters, “Like it or not, the people of Massachusetts voted. This is the law of the land.” Another nod goes to Sen. James Welch, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, who recently told MassLive, “I do believe the voters spoke two years ago.” Then there’s the Neanderthal contingent. Sure to dull the impact of enlightened legislators is Sen. John Keenan of Quincy, who once used a press conference soapbox to declare, “there is no such thing as medical marijuana.” It gets worse, as Keenan once claimed to have “spoken with hundreds of voters regarding the issue of medical marijuana, many of whom voted ‘Yes’ on Question 3, all of whom now believe the law is vague and subject to exploitation.” Sure you did, buddy. Was one of the complainants Sen. Richard Ross, no relation to the Miami coke rapper, who is also serving on the panel, and who in 2009 joined then-state Sen. Scott Brown in sponsoring a bill to recriminalize marijuana in Mass? Having someone like Ross or Keenan on a panel that may forge the future of cannabis in the Commonwealth is like having a Klan member write Civil Rights law. But let’s say this commission really does want to be helpful—what should they do? Easy, they should join the Boston Globe editorial board in recommending the legislature pass something like the Bay State Repeal (BS
ass. He also makes really good pie. Advertisement Crime scene investigation is cool Admittedly, there’s not much to it—you just walk around and look at stuff—but putting all the pieces together is pretty satisfying. I mean that literally, too. As you observe crime scenes, you assemble a collection of pieces. Then you put them together to figure out what the fuck sort of bizarre bullshit is going on, like so: Advertisement It’s surprisingly bold Blues and Bullets takes place in the mid-1900s. While America has been and continues to be a hotbed of racial tensions, some very particular ones dominated the era. Blues and Bullets doesn’t shy away from them. The guy Al Capone sends to look after you, Milton, is a large black man, and people notice. Ness, for his part, is generally not an asshat, but one character calls Milton an “uppity negro,” and you can either go along with it or use that fact to threaten the jerk in question. Advertisement Oh, and (MAJOR SPOILER) there’s a big hint that Milton might be gay (END BIG SPOILER). Milton is more than an amalgam of those characteristics, though. He’s laid back, but in an icy, distant sort of way. His jokes land gently, with a chuckle and a smile, but they burn for hours. While he banters with Ness in a way that resembles your standard buddy cop knee-slappery, there’s a spasming unease beneath the surface. Their relationship is surprisingly tense despite painting both of them as pretty likable dudes, people you’d be down to grab a beer with. I like it a lot. There’s also this one-liner directed at Ness by a random dock worker, which—while lighthearted—reveals simmering resentment. Advertisement Dang. It will be interesting to see where Blues and Bullets goes with its handling of these issues, but for now it’s acknowledging them, staring them in the eyes instead of flinching away. That’s something. BIG CAPITAL LETTERS Advertisement LOOK AT THESE HUGE FUCKING LETTERS. THEY’RE SO BIG YOU CAN TAKE COVER BEHIND THEM (AND YOU DO). TAKE THAT, SPLINTER CELL AND WHOEVER ELSE. Caveats Blues and Bullets’ first episode surprised the hell out of me with its lowish-budget brand of hardboiled charm, but it’s got some issues. Briefly: It’s janky and slow moving, and a fixed camera sometimes makes it uncomfortable to play. Also, its QTE action scenes (of which there are thankfully few) are laughably low impact, and on-rails shooting segments feel awful and don’t gel with the storyline at all. Advertisement Lastly, Blues and Bullets is an episodic series, and promising starts do not always lead to strong middles or satisfying conclusions. Speaking of, episode one doesn’t conclude in fittingly grand fashion so much as it kinda just... stops. That’s a bummer. Still, I think the series is worth checking out—or at least keeping an eye on. It’s probably not the next noir classic, but it’s a tasty caper with plenty of personality. Basically, it’s greasy spoon diner pie, and I want seconds. Advertisement You’re reading Steamed, Kotaku’s page dedicated to all things in and around Valve’s stupidly popular PC gaming service. Games, culture, community creations, criticism, guides, videos—everything. If you’ve found anything cool/awful on Steam, send us an email to let us know. To contact the author of this post, write to nathan.grayson@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @vahn16.A sixth grader, through his father, has sued officials at the President House at the Islamabad High Court, accusing them for plagiarising and using his speech without his consent. Eleven-year-old Mohammad Sabeel Haider, who studies in Islamabad Model College for Boys, told DawnNews on Friday that he was chosen to deliver a speech at the President House in Islamabad on Dec 22. The ceremony was recorded and is supposed to be aired on Pakistan Television on Dec 25, marking the 141st birth anniversary of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. However, when Sabeel arrived at the President's House, he was informed he will no longer be delivering the speech. He said in his petition that a tenth-grader delivered the speech he had written and prepared, alleging that his intellectual property was stolen. According to Sabeel's lawyer, as per Section 3 of Intellectual Property and Copyrights Ordinance 1967, a literary piece that the person has produced themselves cannot be used by a third party without their consent. The court's judgement in this regard has been reserved.Under fire from veterans’ advocates and Republicans about medical delays at veterans hospitals, the Obama administration decided to offer up a political sacrifice … of an official who was already planning to step down. Tensions have been mounting since allegations surfaced that hospitals run by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) have manipulated waiting lists to cover up the long delays experienced by many veterans to see a doctor. Following the testimony last week of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki before Congress, in which both Republicans and Democrats aired complaints over the situation, the administration announced Dr. Robert Petzel, the VA’s under secretary for health, would step down. The announcement implied that Petzel was to blame for the problems at VA hospitals, and that his leaving meant the administration was serious about fixing the mess. But Petzel’s departure was announced last September when the VA issued a press release saying he would retire in 2014. In addition, President Barack Obama nominated Petzel’s replacement, Jeffrey A. Murawsky, more than a week before Petzel’s resignation. At that time, Shinseki was quoted as saying he was “grateful for Dr. Petzel’s distinguished service to Veterans spanning four decades, and for his leadership in transforming VHA’s health care delivery system to better care for Veterans.” Fast forward to last week, when Shinseki said in the statement announcing Petzel’s resignation: “Most veterans are satisfied with the quality of their VA health care, but we must do more to improve timely access to that care.” The bungled move gave GOP lawmakers ample reason to blast the administration. Representative Jeff Miller (R-Florida), chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, described Petzel’s departure as “the pinnacle of disingenuous political doublespeak.” “Characterizing this as a ‘resignation’ just doesn’t pass the smell test,” Miller said in a statement. He added that the VA was “splitting semantic hairs to create the illusion of accountability and progress.” A veterans’ rights organization, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, labeled the decision cynical and token, according to The New York Times. “We don’t need the VA to find a scapegoat,” Tom Tarantino, the group’s chief policy officer, said. “We need an actual plan to restore a culture of accountability throughout the VA.” -Noel Brinkerhoff To Learn More: Veterans Secretary Ousts Health Care Official Amid Criticism (by Richard Oppel Jr., New York Times) VA Convenes Commission to Identify Candidates for the Under Secretary for Health Position (Department of Veterans Affairs) Robert Petzel (AllGov)The Great Wall of China is not actually one wall, but a series of overlapping fortifications held together with sticky rice. A Channel 4 documentary, The Great Wall of China: The Hidden Story, has shed new light on the millennium-old structure through state-of-the-art drones and cutting-edge chemistry. Over a five-year survey of the wall, scientists have discovered that it is made up of overlapping buttresses that extend over 13,000 miles – almost twice as long as previously thought. The team has also decoded its complex signal system and explain how the wall is held together with a sticky rice soup that made it more resistant to water. Scientists first discovered that builders mixed the sticky rice with standard mortar ingredients in 2010. Published in the American Chemical Society Journal Accounts of Chemical Research, researchers found that construction workers in ancient China first developed the sticky rice mortar about 1,500 years ago. Led by Bingjian Zhang from the Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, they found the mortar was stronger and more water resistant than pure lime mortar. This mix was used to construct important buildings including tombs, pagodas and city walls – some of the structures were so strong they could withstand powerful earthquakes. The scientists wrote at the time: "Analytical study shows that the ancient masonry mortar is a kind of special organic-inorganic composite material. The inorganic component is calcium carbonate, and the organic component is amylopectin, which comes from the sticky rice soup added to the mortar. "Moreover, we found that amylopectin in the mortar acted as an inhibitor: The growth of the calcium carbonate crystal was controlled, and a compact microstructure was produced, which should be the cause of the good performance of this kind of organic-organic mortar." Findings also suggest the ancient mortar mix is still the best available material for restoring ancient buildings: "The test results of the modelling mortars shows that sticky rice-lime mortar has more stable physical properties, has greater mechanical strength, and is more compatible, which make it a suitable restoration mortar for ancient masonry." The Great Wall of China: The Hidden Story - Secret History is on Channel 4 on 30 November at 8pm.“What has always struck me is how little anybody in New Hampshire cared about Vermont at all,” said Jeff Sharlet, an author who teaches English at Dartmouth and recently moved from New Hampshire to Vermont. Outsiders initially notice the states’ similarities. Their geographic shapes on the map are inverted mirror opposites (each says the other is upside down). Their demographics — relatively old and almost all white — are nearly identical. They match each other in natural beauty through all four seasons, with especially spectacular fall foliage. But they have differed in crucial ways since the beginning, their geology setting their destiny. Vermont’s rich limestone soil led to its development as an agricultural state; New Hampshire’s granite-packed earth made farming more difficult and turned the state toward industry. “The people reflect the geology,” said Willem Lange, 80, a longtime New England storyteller who lived half of his life in New Hampshire until he decided the property taxes were too high, and then moved to Vermont. “New Hampshire humor is a little grimmer, a little bitter,” he said. “Its default mode is grumpy.” On the other hand, Mr. Lange said, “Vermont is boring.” “There are so damn many liberals,” he added, “I can never win an argument.” Mr. Lange said he missed the bracing honesty in New Hampshire, where, he said, people would read his column and tell him that he was an idiot. “In Vermont they just say, ‘Oh, that was a lovely piece,’ ” he said. Vermont was once the most Republican state in the country and is now among the most liberal, thanks in part to an influx starting in the 1960s that included people like Mr. Sanders, although local politics had already started trending Democratic.If you hang out with cyclists long enough, especially the ones who've been around for a while, especially after consuming enough post ride malty beverages, the nostalgia river starts to flow heavy with much lamenting and crying for the "good old days." You hear how it used to be "real" and how the days used to be epic, trails were new and fresh and exciting, riders weren't hung up on STRAVA or looking good, and they had soul, man. You eventually hear how things are mainstream, sold out, not cool, hollow, etc. And it makes people think "Damn, I missed the golden days of Mountain Biking, when it was this nascent niche outsider rebel thing. People beat their breast and cry to the heavens "OH, where have all the good times gone???" Don't get me wrong, the things that happened back in the day were cool and fun and you should have fond memories of them, you shouln't forget them and you should keep them alive by telling the stories. Just don't make the past some unattainable goal that makes everything today look like that old chamois that got worn for a week straight and never got washed. Here is the truth….right now, whether you realize it or not, it is probably the greatest time to be a mountain biker. here are three reasons: 1 – We have more trails than ever before. Go to any state, you will find some sweet trails. Yes, we here in Fruita are blessed with an amazing variety of kick ass trails in terrain you don't have anywhere else, but that doesn't mean there aren't some amazingly fun badass trails elsewhere. There is 32 miles of awesome singletrack at Lake Wilson in Kansas, there are the trails in Patapsco in Maryland, there is Copper Harbor, Michigan, Salmon, Idaho, Rapid City, South Dakota, just to name a few. And they are all legal, no hiding, no carrying your bike deep into the woods just to ride two miles of supposedly fun trail. And the best part is, there are new trails being built all the time. Wherever you live, you can ride and have a blast. We get people coming into the shop asking where the locals ride, as if we have a secret stash of the really fun trails. We don't. We ride the trails we tell you about, because they are so damn fun and so damn awesome we don't need to build secret trails to have fun, the legal stuff IS the good stuff. 2 – Bikes today are amazing. I ride a full suspension bike that allows me to ride just about any thing I want. My seat goes up and down when my thumb pushes a button. I have a range of gears that let me ride steep hills and still give me what I need on flats and going down a hill. My bike is light and efficient and can take more abuse than a professional MMA fighter. The greatest bike eight years ago is crap compared to a mediocre bike today. Bikes have NEVER been this good, and they keep getting better. 3 – Lots of people = lots of information. I rememeber back in 1992 a freind and I driving around the North Carolina mountains for three hours searching for a trail we heard about from a guy who gave us vague directions. Now that so many people are mountain biking, there is a wealth of information out there and you can find just about any trail faster than it takes to upload the pics of that trail to your facebook to tell everyone you rode it. How many forums, blogs, sites, with trail info, bike reviews, gear reviews, discussions are there? About a bazillion and two. And they are not just from magazines or companies trying to persuade you to spend your money on thier hot new thing (by the way, OTE will be rolling out our newest hot thing, the "micro-29er" later this fall, look for it) but they are done by the guy who lives in your town who is on a budget, or the guy who's been doing this for a while and has tested out and tried the different energy gels and tells you what he thinks is the best. All this information can get confusing, and yes there is a lot of bogus crap info out there, but there is more good solid info than not, and you can get trail info and reviews almost immediately. Sometimes it's almost TOO easy, which might not be great, but that is another blog entry for later. Point is…it's a hell of a lot easier to be informed now than it used to be, and that is a good thing. So…the 19th Fruita Fat Tire Festival just ended. We had some rain, which put a literal and figuarative dampner on things, and it might be easy to say "oh, it used to be so good, where have all the good times gone?" In a way, it turned out to be one of the most fun festivals to date. We had a smaller crowd, which meant it was more intimate, it was easier and more conducive to meet new people and make new friends who share your passion, which is what it's all about. The fun still happened, it almost happened more. A spontaneous game of Footdown broke out between reps from Hayes and Fox and some local groms. Then bike limbo happened, people just started making fun. There was some tallbike jousting. None of this was schedualed, it just happened, organically, because people are aweosme and they were having a good time. We could say "Oh, it used to be soooo cool, where have all the good times gone?" but we'd be wrong. The point of all this is this: The good times are right freakin now. We are in them. Don't try to re-live that cool moment five years ago, if you focus on that, you will miss all the super cool moments happening right now. The bikes are better, the trails are better, access is easier, and right here, right now, is where the good times are. If you missed the Fat Tire Festival, or didn't want to come because you think it got too big, please re-think it and come join us next year. If you feel sad because you missed the good old days of 1" long-travel bikes with wierd geometry and spending half a day driving around to find a four mile trail, you can still have those fun adventures, and the rewards today are waaaay greater. Consider yourself lucky to be riding now, when things are fantastic and will only get better. These are the good times. Don't miss them. Get out there and ride your bike, and if you can, come to Fruita, and come ride with us. We would love to share the good times with you.A Muslim conference to be held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre this weekend featuring two anti-gay speakers has drawn the ire of two local MPPs. “We asked police to monitor the situation, especially two individuals, because one of them in particular has a history of saying very hateful things,” said Toronto Centre MPP Glen Murray, as he walked down Church St. for the Trans Pride March. One of the men Murray refers to is Bilal Philips, a Jamaican-Canadian who has preached for the deaths of gay men living in Islamic countries. The other is Abdur Raheem Green, a British Muslim convert who also shares similar views. “I think if someone were doing something against Muslims or suggesting that Muslims be killed, or diminishing them in any way, we would be equally offended,” said Murray, who spent the earlier part of the day in Brampton celebrating Canada Day with members of the Sikh and Muslim community. “Hate is hate is hate is hate and people who try to be bearers of hate are offensive at any time,” he added.Neither Candidate Wants to Talk About Bad Teachers The CNN moderator Anderson Cooper asked both candidates whether teachers’ unions protect bad teachers. Mr. Sanders did not come near answering the question, instead talking about his plan to provide free college tuition. Mrs. Clinton came only slightly closer. “Teachers do so much good, they are often working under the most difficult circumstances,” she said. “So anything that could be changed, I want them to look at it.” They Are Tired of Each Other The early debates were feats of elaborate politesse by two candidates each pretending that the road to the White House did not run through the other. Now, every response of Mrs. Clinton’s to a Sanders attack betrays a barely concealed weariness. For all the talk from her campaign last spring that Mrs. Clinton expected the march to the nomination to be a long one, her manner is that of a contender who cannot quite believe the other guy is still at it. Mr. Sanders has grown no fonder of Mrs. Clinton. General insinuations that she is too close to the country’s powerful and financial elite to govern well have given way to harsher and more direct attacks — suggesting that Mr. Sanders believes that she truly is corrupt. Clinton Is Eager for a Lazio Moment In her 2000 Senate race in New York, Mrs. Clinton managed to turn a debate challenge from Rick A. Lazio, a House Republican, into a major stumble. After he approached her lectern with a written pledge to abstain from spending so-called soft money in the campaign, her aides cast his move as inappropriate, even bullying. On Sunday, Mrs. Clinton and her team seemed eager to bait Mr. Sanders — whose long arms and bellowing urgency leave him physically dominating their shared television space — into a similar moment. When Mrs. Clinton tried to talk over one of his answers, Mr. Sanders snapped back, “Excuse me, I’m talking.” Her campaign later blasted out an email suggesting Mr. Sanders had a problem with his “tone.” Compared With the G.O.P., They Look Like Lincoln and Douglas To a nation still wondering why the Republican candidates are publicly debating penis size and incontinence, the Democrats offered a largely substantive debate about domestic policy. There were deep dives into gun control, trade policy and the environment. Mrs. Clinton gave voters the most vigorous defense of the Export-Import Bank presented in either party’s race. Whether voters like the ideas or not, they are at least being discussed. The danger for the Republicans is not optical, but political: Mr. Trump’s insult-comic approach to the campaign has made it impossible for the party’s candidates to discuss and debate their best ideas on issues like education and job growth.The company still makes lots and lots of products there, but increasingly is selling them too; Walmart just announced plans for more than 100 new stores and 18,000 job openings in China. In China the Walmart brand is more upscale than it is stateside, signifying the material hopes of the country’s growing middle class. Enter Wang Shishu, a 52-year-old Walmart store employee, who has been agitating since the summer for better pay, benefits, and working conditions, organizing protests in the industrial center of Shenzhen. When he was fired, he began picketing his store with slogans like “Protest Against WalMart for Illegal Dismissal,” “Support for Reasonable and Just Demands of Workers,” and “Solidarity for Justice.” Walmart’s been in the news a lot these past few months, and the news hasn’t been good. A company once synonymous with low prices, ambitious sustainability goals, and retail innovation, is now facing an international bribery scandal and repeated protests from Our Walmart, an organization of workers in the U.S. that claims 4,000 members. The twist in the new Chinese woes for Walmart is that like most Chinese workers, Walmart employees are represented by a union; though normally aligned with companies over workers, it does provide a framework for grievances in the nominally Communist country. Shishu and his fellow workers also have the backing of SACOM, a Hong Kong-based labor advocacy group that has been active on behalf of workers at Apple’s Chinese suppliers. They are collecting crowdsourced donations directly for Shishu and also collecting information on working conditions at Chinese Walmarts for a report to be released soon. [Image: Flickr user Andrew Turner]http://gty.im/856355182 A Film Review Of Miles Killebrew’s Performance Against The Minnesota Vikings In Week Four. Killebrew’s Blanket Coverage When Miles Killebrew came to Detroit, many thought he was destined for the money backer role and that he may not make it as a traditional safety. However, his performance against the Vikings on Sunday was contradictory to that. Killebrew played the majority of his plays in the box but when he was asked to cover over-top, he was fantastic in coverage. He quickly diagnosed opposing plays and jumped routes, even if the ball was not thrown his way. In the third quarter, there is a play where Darius Slay goes up for a jump ball against Laquon Treadwell and earns a pass breakup. On this play, Killebrew has a deep quarter assignment, he recognizes a post route by Stefon Diggs in the opposite side slot and jumps in front of the receiver, putting himself in position to intercept the ball if Keenum throws to Diggs. Being in position like this is why Killebrew was only targeted four times in this game. He allowed zero catches and added two pass deflections (50% of his targets). Whether it was deep zone assignments or playing man in the box, Miles quickly read what the offense was throwing at him, allowing him to be sticky in coverage all day. Miles Stuffed In The Run While Killebrew excelled in coverage, he equivocally struggled against the run. Whenever he lined up in the box as a “money backer” against a run, he was swallowed by offensive lineman, tight ends, and even struggled to shed Vikings receiver Adam Theilen. He did not show any ability to hand fight or shed blocks at all. While he was quick to diagnose route combinations and get in position in coverage, he really struggled to recognize run plays quickly enough to make plays. Dalvin Cook TD On this play Killebrew lined up in the slot towards the top of the clip. As the ball is snapped, he begins to press Stefon Diggs as he stems a corner route. Yet he fails to recognize that the play is actually an inside run with running back Dalvin Cook, subsequently taking himself out of position to make a play on the ball. The result was a touchdown for the Vikings. Dalvin Cook’s Fumble (Broadcast Angle) (View From Behind The Play) In these two clips above, you see an example of Killebrew struggling to shed blocks. Killbrew takes a good pursuit angle but when he makes contact with tight end David Morgan, he is driven back five yards and removed from the play. This allowed Dalvin Cook to gain 10 additional yards on the play. Killebrew Blitz On two plays during this game the Lions attempted to blitz Killebrew – the above clip is one of them. However, due to his inability to break free of the lineman, he did not make an impact on either play. The inability to get to the quarterback on this blitz ended with a 33-yard reception for the Vikings. While Killebrew struggled against the run in this game, it really showed up when Killebrew was playing in the box in the money backer role. Bringing him closer to the line allows lineman and tight ends a short path to the young safety. When they do get to him, he is quickly removed from the play. This ineffectiveness playing against the run in the box, combined with his great ability to cover deep in this game, could help show Killebrew’s ability to succeed in a more traditional safety role. Enjoy this article? Follow Zac on Twitter @DetLionsScout or chat with him on our Lions Subreddit!Bad news, Hulu users. It was revealed today that the streaming service is taking the first steps toward making you prove you are a pay-TV customer before being able to watch anything. Please don’t throw anything at your computer monitor, you still need it to read The Mary Sue. Editor’s note: We have some updated information on this news after the jump. Hulu provides ad-supported content in the way of clips and full television shows and films to users. They also proved a paid subscriction service that still has ads but with more content. They also recently started airing original programming. But according to a NY Post report, Hulu is moving toward an “authentication” model. In other words, you’ll already have to have a cable television subscription in order to use the service. This is not pleasant news to many who have purposely cancelled their cable services to go full streaming or to use other subscription services. Not all networks stream their content online but for those that do, the content is usually just ad supported. The NY Post writes, “In fact, the move by Hulu toward the new model — called authentication because viewers would have to log in with their cable or satellite TV account number — was behind the move last week by Providence Equity Partners to cash out of Hulu after five years, these sources said.” This is similar to how the HBO Go app works now but Hulu is not the only one that will be making this move down the road. “Fox, owned by News Corp., which also owns The Post, is expected to begin talks soon with Comcast on a TV Everywhere deal that will require authentication. Plus, Philadelphia-based Comcast is expected to switch to an authentication model for this summer’s Olympic Games,” they write. “Hulu, owned by News Corp., Disney, Comcast and Providence, could see its March audience [31 million visitors], as measured by ComScore, shrink after authentication. Hulu racked up some $420 million in ad revenue last year and is expected to do well in this year’s ad negotiations,” they write. “But the move toward authentication, which could take years to complete, will make cable companies happy because it could slow cord-cutting by making cable subscribing more attractive.” That doesn’t make this reveal any easier on current Hulu users. Adam Skoglund wrote on Twitter, “Just read the #Hulu news for today. Nice to see the TV giants changing things to keep their feet firmly planted in 1997. Good luck w/ that.” IGN writer Joey Esposito has similarly negative sentiments about the news, “I swear, it’s like TV doesn’t WANT me to watch it. @Hulu #RIP” Some have admitted they knew this would happen eventually while others called it an act of desperation. What I think might happen as a result of an authentication model is viewers getting desperate. Hulu is a free and legal service, forcing people to pay, especially if it’s not going to Hulu itself, could lead to some resorting to illegal means to procure shows. The other thing to consider is the legality of making someone subscribe to a cable provider in order to watch something from, let’s say, NBC, which is free to begin with. So far there’s no comment from Hulu. What’s your opinion on the upcoming change and what are your regular viewing habits? UPDATE: Techcrunch has gotten a bit more information from “a source close to Hulu.” We just talked to a source close to Hulu. According to our source, Hulu and its content providers have talked about this move toward authentication since 2009. Our source noted that Hulu has no interest in being a first mover here and that a requirement for authentication is likely still a few years out. Hulu, however, does want to be a good partner and may have to give in to its partners’ pressure soon or later. Even though an authentication requirement isn’t likely to happen right away, though, our source notes that what could happen relatively soon is that the content providers could require longer delays before their shows become available on the service for non-subscribers. Cable subscribers, under this model, would get access to a show on Hulu the next day, while non-subscribers would have to wait at least 30 days. This model would likely also apply to Hulu Plus subscribers. Does this make you feel any different about the news? (via NY Post)There are few things more relaxing than starting off the day with your favorite beverage from Starbucks. Unfortunately, the experience becomes less relaxing once you begin to see the impact that your daily latte is having on your wallet. And, at roughly three bucks a cup, even the smallest sizes available have a way of turning into a major expense over time. But what alternatives are there? Well, you could always pick up some ingredients and make your own. With a Blendtec blender and a little bit of know-how, you can experience the joy of Starbucks, without ever having to leave your kitchen. Read on to discover ten recipes that you can use to recreate some of the most popular beverage options from the Starbucks Secret Menu, at a fraction of the price.This last week i managed to complete part of the Camino de Santiago in Spain. First off, I 100% recommend it. Wether you make it for religious purposes or not, the trip will probably be one of the most memorable experiences of your life. There are many Caminos depending on where you start from. The busiest trail starts in France, but you don’t have to do the entire thing, and most people don’t. Two other friends of mine and I started it in Oviedo, Asturias. We took the northern path up to Ribadeo, Galicia, and then went southwest, all the way to Santiago. That’s a total distance of approximately 350km. We bought the bus ticket back to Madrid before starting the Camino, so we were tightened by the time the whole way. We made it in a week. Yup, it was pretty tiring. This is the road we took. It’s called the Northern Way or the Way of the Coast. It is very beautiful but it’s said to be one of the toughest. Still, it was worth it. The way by Asturias: Te way through Galicia: There are many reasons people walk for. I walked for religious reasons, as it seems many others I encountered with were doing. For us, religious pilgrims, the struggle, the drudgery, and yes, the chance to pray at the cathedrals along the way are often some of the points for making the walk. I think, though, that the idea of pilgrimage, while it may find its natural home in the religious world, might also have something to offer non religious pilgrims making the trip for other reasons. The idea, as I have it, is to let yourself be — to find small joys in small things, and to walk on. Life is so rarely what we expect it to be, and in the same way a pilgrimage of any kind often contains surprises, even in hidden and small ways. It can sometimes be a tedious physical and mental challenge. There are days you want to quit. I went through rain, fog, and many body pains. for moments you are even miserable, but that is almost the point. The Camino is like life, it has periods when you feel like absolute crap, when you feel like you can’t go on and you want to quit and it has moments that make you overwhelmingly happy to be where you are and to be doing what you are doing. Also, one of the points of the Camino for me was to challenge myself to finish, to face a daunting challenge head on and to finish. My point is that you have to find your own reasons for continuing, you have to find your own motivation, you have to find your own support or support yourself. One of the greatest help I got along the way was from other pilgrims who were suffering, like me, but they were continuing, like me. Having someone to talk to about your day and having someone to listen to were some of the reasons that kept me going. Basic and most important tips? 1) You should go at the pace your body lets you. There are daily stages for a reason! Make a stage by day and enjoy your journey. Don’t tear your feet up making 40km unnecessarily. So don’t buy a bus ticket back home for 8 days later if you plan to walk 350km. (I mean, you can, but if you do so, you haven’t time to visit historical places, for example) 2)Take lots of skin tape with you for your feet (obviously some good used hiking shoes) and blisters. Those little guys are small but painful killers. Best remedy? Just roll your toes and feet in skin tape and over the blisters. No ointments or creams of any sort. Bareback. 3) Your backpack. You can either do it with your entire closet on your back or do it with only one underwear and a stick to help yourself walk. My point is, you will only use 0.01% of what you take with you. In most hostels and shelters you’re able to wash your clothes and do laundry. Also take some sandals with you for the showers. Take a penknife with you too. And take the basics. Only the basics. Here’s a Backpack Weight Calculator that will surely help you when packing. If you’re interested in receiving the official certificate (Compostela) at the end of your journey you have to do at least 100km on foot (200km by bike or horse), and get your passport (Credencial) stamped along the way. Most hostels, churches, town halls and even bars will stamp the book, and it’s a great chance to talk and meet new people. On that note, it is useful to know a little Spanish. A lot of people will know at least some English, but being able to use both languages is very helpful. Compostela, written and given in Latin. Credencial (passport) Caminos of Europe and Spain Santiago de Compostela Cathedral There are a few ways you can do hostels. You can make reservations ahead of time to many of them or do small bed and breakfasts (which are still very cheap, usually 10€-15€ the night). It’s very nice, because it means you can take your time on the trail and not worry about getting to the next town — which my friends and I weren’t able to do due to having to arrive to Santiago in only a week. We stayed in public shelters, hence having the double challenge of having to arrive at the shelter at 6pm or 7pm. Public shelters get full about that time and if there’s no bed, you get to sleep on the floor or on the road. It’s a nice experience sleeping under the stars. Anyhow, private hostels also tend to be nicer in terms of showers, air conditioning, and beds. Obviously, they’re more expensive and takes time to plan. On the other hand, public hostels cost about 5€ a night in most towns and, as aforementioned above, are simply first come first serve. There’s no reason to worry about food. You will be passing through towns on the trail, and the restaurants, cafes and small supermarkets are set up for pilgrims. These last ones are a good way to save money, and something that we chose to do. We went and bought the grocery and picked up some bread, cheese, and fruit for breakfast and lunch each day. This way we could eat on the trail and not worry about finding a place. Also good if you’re in a hurry. I also chose to just drink tap water. Many people choose to drink bottled water the entire time, but I simply filled up my water bladder with tap, and had no issues. Most places offer a 10 Euro meal that comes with 3 courses and wine. You will probably want to eat 3 courses after a day of hiking. As a curious fact, the route to Santiago de Compostela is the third most important Christian pilgrimage (the other two are Rome and Jerusalem). The total number of pilgrims in 2013 that received the compostelas at the Pilgrims Office in Santiago were 215.880 pilgrims. (The last holy year, 2010, the number was 272.412) Women: 98.008 (45,40%) Men:
render the Qurbani invalid, if he has authorized the person who slaughtered the animal on his behalf. It is a Sunnah to lay the animal with its face towards the Qiblah, and to recite the following verse of the Holy Quran: I, being upright, turn my face towards the One who has created the heavens and the earth, and I am not among those who associate partners with Allah. ( Al-An'am, 6:79) But the most essential recitation when slaughtering an animal is: Bismillah, Allahu Akbar. (In the name of Allah, Allah is the greatest). If somebody intentionally avoids to recite it when slaughtering an animal, it does not only make his Qurbani unlawful, but also renders the animal haram, and it is not permissible to eat the meat of that animal. However, if a person did not avoid this recitation intentionally, but he forgot to recite it when slaughtering the animal, this mistake is forgiven and both the Qurbani and the slaughter are lawful. If somebody is unable to recite "Bismillah Allahu Akbar" in the Arabic language, he can recite the name of Allah in his own language by saying, "In the name of Allah". Distribution of the Meat If an animal is sacrificed by more than one person, like cow or camel, its meat should be distributed equally among its owners by weighing the meat strictly and not at random or by mere guess. Even if all the partners agree on its distribution without weighing, it is still not permissible according to shari'ah. However, if the actual weighing is not practicable due to some reason, and all the partners agree to distribute the meat without weighing, distribution by guess can be done with the condition that each share necessarily contains either a leg of the animal or some quantity of its liver. Although the person offering a Qurbani can keep all its meat for his own use, yet, it is preferable to distribute one-third among the poor, another one-third among his relatives and then, keep the rest for his personal consumption. All parts of the sacrificed animal can be used for personal benefit, but none can be sold, nor can be given to the butcher as a part of his wages. If somebody has sold the meat of the Qurbani or its skin, he must give the accrued price as sadaqah to a poor man who can receive Zakah. Hajj The most important way of worship performed in this month is "hajj", one of the five pillars of Islam. The Muslims from every part of the world assemble in Arabia to perform this unique way of worship. Hajj is a worship, which requires at least five days to be performed in its proper way. There are detailed rules for different acts of hajj for which separate books are available, and the present article does not aim at explaining all these details. However, some basic information about its obligation is being given here: 1 Hajj is obligatory on every adult Muslim who can afford to go to Makkah during the hajj season, whether on foot or by any other carriage. 2 If a person can travel to Makkah to perform hajj, but he cannot travel to Madinah, hajj is obligatory on him also. He can perform hajj without visiting Madinah. 3 A Muslim woman cannot travel for hajj unless she is accompanied by a mahram (i.e. husband or relative of a prohibited degree like son, father, brother etc.) If she does not find any mahram to accompany her, hajj is not obligatory on her until she finds one. However, she must make a will that in case she dies before performing hajj, his heirs should arrange for her hajj-e-badal out of her left over property. 4 Hajj is obligated only once in one's life. After performing the obligatory hajj; one is not required to perform it again. However, he can perform the nafl (optional hajj as many times as he or she wishes.) 10 Days of Zhul-Hijjah and their Injunctions By Shaykh Maulana Saleem Dhorat The first ten days of Zul Hijjah are full of virtues and great blessings. According to a large group of mufassireen(commentators of the Qur'aan), the ten nights mentioned in Soorah Al Fajr are the nights of the first ten days of Zul Hijjah. Allah says: By the Dawn; By the ten Nights; (89:1-2) This oath substantiates the greatness and sacredness of these ten nights in the eyes of Allah. This is an extra ordinary oath; it is very reliable and significant and the wise men can understand that by this oath, Allah too attaches great importance and value to the ten nights of Zul Hijjah. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam too, has clearly mentioned the importance and the virtue of these blessed moments. It is reported by Abdullah Ibne Abbaas radhiyallahu anhuma that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said, "No good deeds done on other days are superior to those done on these (first ten days of Zul Hijjah)." Thereupon, some companions of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said, "Not even Jihadd? " He replied, "Not even jihaad, except that of a man who does it by putting himself and his property in danger (for Allah's sake) and does not return with any of these things." Bukhaari V1 pp132 In another Hadeeth reported by Aboo Hurayrah radhiyallahu anhu, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said, "On no days is the worship of Allah desired more than in the (first) ten days of Zul Hijjah. The fast of each of these days is equal to the fast of a whole year, and the worship of each of these nights is equal to the worship of Laylatul Qadr." Tirmizi V1 pp58 Moreover, what other virtue can be greater for these blessed days than the fact that certain specific devotions cannot be performed but in these specified days. Allah Almighty has specifically chosen these days for the fulfilment of two of the most important devotions, viz. Hajj and Qurbaani. One may argue and say that there are other forms of devotions too, which are fixed to specific days and moments; hence what is the speciality of these particular days? The answer to this argument is simple. Although there are other devotions too, which are also fixed to specific time, such as fasting in the month of Ramadhaan; but one may, if he desires, fulfil the devotion of fasting in days other than Ramadhaan i.e. as an optional devotion. On the contrary, the wuqoof of Arafaat (which is the essence of Hajj), the wuqoof of Muzdalifah, etc., cannot be performed but in these specified days. If one was to remain in Arafaat for many months after the 9th Zul Hijjah, he will not receive any reward whatsoever and it will never be considered an act of ibaadah. Similarly, Qurbaani is performed only in three days one of which is 10th Zul Hijjah. There is no possibility whatsoever of a nafl Qurbaani once these days have lapsed, so much so that qazaa Hajj or qazaa Qurbaani is not even possible. It is because of these distinguishing characteristics that the ulamaa have stated, in the light of Qur'aan and Hadeeth that after the days of the month of Ramadhaan, the greatest days in virtue are the first ten days of Zul Hijjah. The reward of ibaadah in these days increases abundantly and the results are honoured with specified blessings and mercies by the Creator. ACTS OF VIRTUE There are certain specific acts of virtue in these blessed days of Zul Hijjah which are enumerated and explained below: 1 Upon sighting the moon of Zul Hijjah, those people intending to perform Qurbaani should neither cut their hair nor clip their nails until the Qurbaani is performed. This is a mustahab (desirable) act derived from Hadeeth of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam wherein he has said: "A person should neither clip his nails nor cut his hair until he performs qurbaani". [Ibne Maajah] Some ulamaa have explained the reason and wisdom behind this order of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam thus that in this month, hundreds of thousands of people are blessed with the opportunity of visiting the sacred house of Allah in Makkah. They enjoy the spiritual atmosphere of the holy places and acquire maximum benefit from the blessed moments. Whilst they are there in the state of ihraam certain acts become impermissible for them. Amongst them is clipping of nails and cutting the hair. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam instructed those of his followers who could not reach the blessed places, to imitate the pilgrims by not cutting the hair and clipping the nails so that the mercy of Allah can enshroud them too together with the pilgrims. 2 These days are so blessed that a day's fast is equivalent to a year's fast and a night's devotion is equivalent to the ibaadah of Laylatul Qadr. The indication is towards the fact that we should endeavor to perform as many virtuous acts as possible in these days. 3 9th Zul Hijjah is the day of Arafah in which the main fardh of Hajj is performed i.e. wuqoof Arafah. This is a great moment for the pilgrims when the Mercy of Allah descends upon them in abundance and their sins are forgiven and du'aa accepted. Allah, through His Compassion and Mercy, has not deprived the non-pilgrims of his mercy, but rather, shown the way to His Pleasure. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam was asked about the fast of the day of Arafah. He said, "It compensates for the (minor) sins of the past and the coming year." [Ibne Maajah] Note: One should take note that the sins forgiven are minor sins. The major sins are not forgiven without tawbah. 4 The reciting of Takbeeraate Tashreeq after every fardh Salaat from the Fajr of 9th Zul Hijjah to the Asr of 13th Zul Hijjah (i.e. total of twenty three fardh Salaat). It is waajib upon men to recite this takbeer once after every fardh Salaat audibly. The women should recite it silently. 5 The Sunnah of Ibraahem alayhi salaam - the Qurbaani. It is to be performed on 10th, 11th or 12th Zul Hijjah. One may sacrifice a thousand animals on days other than these, but it will never be regarded or considered a Qurbaani. Here, a believer is taught a great lesson that an action or a place or a time does not hold any virtue in itself; but rather it is Allah's command and order that changes the status, level and grade of things. Regarding Qurbaani, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said: "There is nothing dearer to Allah during the days of Qurbaani than the sacrificing of animals. The sacrificed animal shall come on the Day of Judgement with its horn, hair, and hooves (to be weighed). The sacrifice is accepted by Allah before the blood reaches the ground. Therefore sacrifice with an open and happy heart." Tirmizi V1 pp275, Ibne Maajah V1 pp226 May Allah ta'aalaa bless us with spiritual gains and His Pleasure in these blessed moments. Aameen.To call Adam Dunn's time with the Chicago White Sox a disappointment, would be an understatement. On Sunday, Dunn was shipped off to the Oakland Athletics on the final day that teams could acquire players and place them on their postseason roster.In the winter heading into the 2011 season, the White Sox tried to sell their "All In" movement to their fans. Dunn, was the face of the team's mindset that they would do whatever it took to win another World Series. Former general manager Kenny Williams, who was never afraid to jeopardize the future of the franchise in order to win right away, handed The Big Donkey a 4 year 56 million dollar deal.Throw away what sabermetrics might say about Dunn's OBP being respectable at times. Don't be caught up in people pointing to the fact that Dunn saw a large number of pitches during his at-bats, his walk total, or his 95 homers over the course of the past three years. Adam Dunn's contract was the worst in franchise history.Dunn's legacy with the White Sox will be highlighted by all those swings that would lead to him taking a slow stroll back to the dugout. His 222 strikeouts two years ago was horrendous and a symbol of the designated hitter's time in Chicago.Yes, Dunn provided some moments of glory. He did have walk-off homers and would deliver occasionally in the clutch with a base hit. Heck he even was at the plate during that famous balk-off win. Despite these positives, Dunn was never that threat in the middle of the lineup that the Sox thought they were getting three and a half years ago.What frustrated most of Dunn's teammates over the years was the criticism their beloved friend received from the media and fans. That's the thing, Dunn was not a bad guy. He was never cocky or full of himself. During his tenure in Chicago, he took the heat and admitted that he needed to do better. He took care of rookies like how he took pitcher Scott Carroll out to dinner after his first start this year.At times, Dunn would even have fun with the negative words he would receive from others. He famously tipped his cap after getting on base amid his historically terrible 2011 season. While he never had a serious blowup while he was struggling, people could tell that the hardships were taking a toll on him at the plate. That could be a huge reason why he plans on possibly retiring after this season.General manager Rick Hahn once again is showing that his sight is on the future and will do whatever it takes to cleanse the franchise of previous mistakes. Getting something, anything, for one of the biggest disappointments in White Sox history, is another step in the right direction.Follow Nick on Twitter: @KapN93Nick Kapetan hosts The Sports ReKap with co-host DJ Vogt on MarquetteWire.org."What are they? Creations of mind?- The mind can make Substance, and people planets of its own With beings brighter than have been, and give A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh" "The Dream", Lord Bryon (1788-1824) In the year 1725 the professor of medicine and personal physician of the bishop of the German town of Würzburg, Dr. Johann Bartholomäus Adam Beringer (1667-1738), was approached by three chaps, who offered him the possibility to purchase some strange stones they had found in the fields. Beringer recognized the unique value of the discovery and paid a rich reward for these and further specimens. After a short time he possessed the greatest collection of stones displaying on the surface various bugs, molluscs, plants, birds, mammals, stars, suns and even Hebraic letters. One year later, in 1726, Beringer published a monographic work with 14 sections and 21 plates depicting 204 specimens of his collection: the "Lithographia Wirceburgensis", assuring the veracity of the stones as a divine miracle. But then the scandal was revealed - the chaps admitted that the stones were artificially carved, incited by two peers of Beringer, the mathematician Jean Ignace Roderique (1697-1756) and the theologian Johann Georg von Eckhardt (1664-1730). The two scholars admitted that the fraud was their revenge for the presumptuous behaviour of Beringer and intended to expose his credulity and incompetence. The public and the media were not amused by the childish behaviour of all the involved persons: The reputation of all the three scholars was ruined, Roderique and Eckhardt were forced to leave the city and Beringer tried to minimize the damage by destroying almost all of the printed copies and the printing plates of his book. He never recovered from the humiliation and died embittered years later. Almost every student of earth sciences knows this or a similar version of the myth, often told in textbooks as warning of blind faith and argument from authority. The beautiful carved stones of limestone are today remembered as "Würzburger Lügensteine" - the infamous "lying stones of Würzburg". However careful study of the still existing stones and the preserved historic documents of the lawsuit that investigated the claims of fraud at Beringer´s time depict a much more complicated "criminal case." Fig.1. and 2. The lying stones as depicted in the Lithographia Wirceburgensis (images in public domain). Today 434 lying stones survive, 494 are depicted in the Lithographia Wirceburgensis and Beringer himself claims that he possessed more than 2.000. However considering the short period in which the "discoveries" took place (less than one year) it seems more reasonable to assume that this number is deliberately exaggerated. Estimated 600 to 1.100 true lying stones seem a more plausible number. Beringer affirms that he received or discovered the first stones in May of the year 1725. Between June and November he hired the two brothers Hehn, the chap Zänger and later a fourth person, which name is not recorded, to collect further stones on the presumed site of the first discovery. Beringer began almost immediately to describe the various stones and ordered the printing plates for his book; he also published a preview of his work in October of 1725. Already then first doubts were cast on the veracity of the stones, but Beringer presented various witnesses that could testify that indeed the stones were found during the excavations on a hill near Würzburg. Johann Georg von Eckhardt, and later Jean Ignace Roderique, were send to investigate the site but couldn't find any stone there. However they also couldn't provide evidence to dismiss Beringer´s claims. It is important to note that Beringer never affirmed that the stones were true petrifactions ( the petrified remains of organisms killed by the biblical flood) and he even states that the stones differ from the true petrifactions found in the hills near Würzburg. He discusses in great detail the various explanations proposed for the origin of petrifactions in the first chapters of "his" Lithographia (as a matter of fact the book is published as doctoral thesis under the name of one of Beringer´s students - Georg Ludwig Hueber - but his contribution is limited to an introduction of 9 pages) and examines the various hypotheses, but dismiss all in favour of a literally "miracle". God himself created these stones and the recognizable carving spurs (!) on the stones are only a trace of the power of god creating these figures. In spring of 1726 Beringer received some rocks from the fourth chap, this time in fact fabricated by Roderique to reveal the artificial nature of the stones. The fraud is revealed, even in the presence of the bishop (the Lithographia is dedicated to him), but Beringer simply modifies some chapters of the Lithographia, still in press, claiming that it is now only proven that the last stones are fakes and the first generation is still evidence for (literally) god's hand carving the rocks. Beringer is apparently so self-confident in his position that he initiates a process against the claims of fraud regarding his persona. In the process, that will last until after the publication of the Lithographia, the incriminated chaps will only admit to have sold the stones to Beringer, but not to have carved the figures. Considering the depictions of exotic animals and even Hebraic letters on the lying stones it is in fact difficult to image that people from a rural area with no naturalistic background would be able to execute such an elaborate hoax. There is no doubt that the scholar Roderique manufactured some of the stones, however he arrived to Würzburg only in the winter 1725-1726, so he can not be responsible for the first generations of stones described by Beringer already in October of 1725. Roderique left Würzburg voluntarily in 1730, the revealed "scandal" had no influence on his career and he died as respected scholar and publisher years later. There is no evidence that Eckhart played a major role in the entire story, apart the first investigation of the supposed excavation site. Both Roderique and Eckhart had no motive for revenge versus Beringer and were relatively unsuccessful in the attempt to discredit the lying stones, as they - or others, could never demonstrate that that the first stones were fakes. But who then faked the first lying stones? Beringer didn't suffer too much from the supposed scandal, not only didn't he even try to prevent the publication of the Lithographia after the first claims of fraud (there was still plenty time left), but he retained his position and reputation. In 1767 even a second edition of the Lithographia was published with the original plates (not even touched by Beringer) of the first edition. His hypothesis of divine intervention on the rocks was never ridiculed in a time when fossils were anyway considered the vestiges of a biblical flood. However it is true that after the newspapers revealed that it was possible to fake the stones (like done by Roderique) the lying stones could no longer be used to support uncritically this hypothesis. Only after Beringer´s death his strange behaviour, he remained unimpressed by all the claims of fraud, was interpreted by many authors as simple ignorance or even criminal stubbornness. But maybe he remained calm because he was sure that nobody could definitely prove that the first generations of stones were fakes, simply because he knew who carved the figures in the stones. Beringer had the naturalistic knowledge and probably also the contacts to professional craftsmen to perpetuate such an elaborate hoax - even if we never will know the entire truth, one fact is clear, the modern myth of the lying stones is itself a lie… Bibliography: BEHRINGER, J.B.A. & HUEBER, G.L. (1726): Litographiae Wirceburgensis, ducentis lapidum figuratorum, a potiori insectiformium, prodigiosis imaginibus exornatae specimen. Würzburg 1726. Scan by www.BioLib.de NIEBUHR, B. & GEYER, G. (2005): Beringers Lügensteine: 493 Corpora Delicti zwischen Dichtung und Wahrheit. Beringeria Sonderheft 5, Teil II: 188In September 2012, Research in Motion (now BlackBerry) CEO Thorsten Heins famously told reporters at the company's BlackBerry Jam developer event that BlackBerry 10 has a "clear shot at being the Number three platform in the market." That kind of low expectation from BlackBerry's leader is not good enough for Nokia CEO Stephen Elop. In a video interview with Bloomberg this week during the Mobile World Congress trade show, reporter Caroline Hyde asked Elop if Windows Phone had a chance at being the second biggest operating system. Elop responded with the rather bold quote, "It can be the biggest operating system in the world." However, Elop did add a little bit of a qualifier with that statement, saying, "We have a lot of work to do, jointly with Microsoft, to make that happen." When Hyde asked for a specific target date on when Windows Phone might become the biggest OS, Elop said they have their own internal targets but declined to give any more forward looking statements. There is evidence that Windows Phone 8 gained market share on iOS and Android, and Microsoft itself said this week that downloads of Windows Phone apps have increased greatly over the past few months. There's no question, however, that Windows Phone has a long way to go before it approaches the share that Android and iOS currently enjoy. Source: BloombergThearon W. Henderson/Getty Images After remaining unsigned through six weeks of the 2017 NFL season, Colin Kaepernick claims the league is participating in collusion. As first reported by Bleacher Report's Mike Freeman, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback has filed a grievance against the owners for collusion under the latest collective bargaining agreement. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reported on what Kaepernick is looking to accomplish with the grievance: "Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Kaepernick wants to trigger termination of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement. "Article 69, Section 2 of the CBA allows for the agreement to be terminated prematurely in the event of proof of collusion. Under Article 17, Section 16(c) of the CBA, termination can arise from only one incident of collusion involving only one player if there is clear and convincing evidence of a violation." Kaepernick's attorney, Mark Geragos, released a statement on why the grievance was filed, via Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network: Kaepernick opted out of his contract at the conclusion of last season with the expectation he would find a new landing spot but has not gotten a new deal and has received surprisingly little interest compared to how well he played last season. He finished the year with 16 touchdowns and only four interceptions in 12 games. The 29-year-old was notably the first NFL player to kneel during the national anthem at the start of last season as a protest against racial injustice. The media attention is a holdup for several organizations. As former Tennessee Titans general manager Floyd Reese recently explained to 102.5 The Game (via Jason Wolf of the Tennessean), "You don’t want this circus." However, Commissioner Roger Goodell has denied there has been any blackballing of the quarterback. "I believe that if a football team feels that Colin Kaepernick, or any other player, is going to improve that team, they're going to do it," he said in June, via Alden Gonzalez of ESPN.com. La Canfora reported last Sunday that Kaepernick is "not quitting" and is willing to prove himself as a quality option.Free for Everyone Here Be Dragons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. You may publicly display this movie for free. You may burn it to DVD or other media and redistribute it for free. You may not create derivative works from it. You may not charge money for its display or distribution, including the cost of media. Here Be Dragons is copyrighted by Brian Dunning. Contribute Contributions toward the production cost of Here Be Dragons are most welcome. Your funds will be used to support further productions like this one. Amount: $5 USD $10 USD $20 USD $35 USD $50 USD $75 USD $100 USD $150 USD $200 USD $250 USD Contact Email me if you want to contact me for any reason. Download a Press Kit here.MUSCOY, Calif. – Eighteen years after opening their doors for the first time, a group of Muslim doctors continue to offer free medical health care in their Alshifa Clinic in Muscoy, California, serving all patients, regardless of their faith or race. “Our religion tells us to take care of humanity,” Dr. Talat Khan told KABC. “This is an underserved community, mostly Hispanic and African-American population here – very poor people.” The clinic first opened 18 years ago. Over the past years, Muslim doctors were not paid a penny for their service to the local community. It costs the clinic $25,000 a year to keep the doors open, and only a small amount comes from the government. Khan said about $100,000 comes from the Muslim community. Donations are the not the only requirement to keep the doors of Alshifa clinic open. The clinic needs optomologists, dermatologists and preferably female gynocologists. The doctors said it’s not about religion at the clinic, but rather helping the community. “I’m Christian and it’s just amazing. They have a lot of love. That’s the main thing. That’s what binds all of us no matter what your nationality is – is the love,” patient Lynn Macy said. Alshifa is not the only place where Muslim doctors provide free medical help for poor Americans. In January 2012, a group of Muslim doctors volunteered to open the Rahma Health Clinic to provide free medical services for poor residents in New York’s Syracuse city. Earlier in 2011, a free clinic was established by the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America to provide dental, ophthalmologic, pediatric and pain-management services on Sundays at the Balal Mosque on St. Louis University’s campus. Another clinic was opened by the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis, in partnership with Volunteers in Medicine in October.NEW YORK -- A man apparently jumped off a building and landed on a hospital's pressurized oxygen tank, causing a leak and cutting off the oxygen supply to the hospital, according to authorities. CBS New York reports the incident happened around 2 a.m. Friday at Mount Sinai West Hospital on the west side of Manhattan. Police said the 31-year-old man was pronounced dead. There were no other injuries, CBS radio station 1010 WINS reported. The oxygen leak has been turned off and the leak contained. The hospital is operating on a portable system until repairs are made. The NYPD said the emergency room was evacuated as a precaution and patients there are being relocated to other rooms of the hospital. Incoming patients are being diverted to other hospitals in the area. Police have 59th Street between 9th and 10th avenues blocked off as repairs are being made, CBS New York reported. The name of the victim wasn't immediately released. Police were trying to determine the exact location from where he had jumped."The more you give, the more you get. For the great majority, [the new service] will be free of charge, for a minority it will actually make them money, and for a small portion it will cost them. We know that unless we're able to create revenues for the filesharers they'll just move on to the next free site. Filesharers are our best friends." When the Pirate Bay was suddenly and unexpectedly commandeered by Global Gaming Factory late last month, only a few clues were dropped as to how the new site would proceed as a legally acceptable entity. Now, however, the owners are speaking up, and their business plan sure sounds unorthodox, if not fatuous in nature. In a new report, we're told that the new face of TPB should appear in around a month, and with the refresh will come a handful of "give-and-take" pay models that will somehow please both customers and the top brass within the music industry. Here's how Hans Pandeya, the chief executive of GGF, explains things:Mr. Pandeya also affirmed that his outfit was currently in negotiations with some of the music industry's biggest players, and while he wouldn't list 'em by name, he did note that things have been "positive" so far. Another interesting aspect of all this is how it expects to generate revenue outside of actual music consumers. Reportedly, the new site will raise cash "through advertising and by making network data traffic cheaper and more efficient for internet service providers, which would be done by making the filesharing more local, allowing users in the same city to be interconnected as opposed to swapping data across multiple borders." Is P2P 2.0 upon us? Is the conventional subscription model about to be turned upside down by a most unlikely source? If Hans' dreams come true, it sure seems possible.Nov 8, 2013, Buzzfeed ANTAKYA, Turkey — The activist threw himself into Syria’s revolution from its early days. He organized protests, documented the deadly crackdowns and disseminated the news, risking his life. When the opposition took up arms, he worked closely with rebel groups, helping to spread their message of resistance and taking toll of the war’s carnage in places journalists couldn’t reach. He has won widespread recognition for his work, and he remains deeply involved in the struggle today — though he no longer calls it a revolution. In fact, he thinks it needs to end. The activist works under his real name, but he requested anonymity to give the candid assessment of the conflict laid out in these remarks, which are compiled from a recent in-depth interview. Asked to speak on the record, he deliberated with friends and colleagues and ultimately declined. He says he fears a backlash: His words could be used to undermine his work, or he could be misunderstood. He also cites safety concerns. But he believes that his message, unpopular among his revolutionary colleagues, is one they need to hear — that their revolution has ended; that a dangerous wave of Islamic extremism has welled up in its place; that they should work to stop the fighting now; and that if they can’t, they should hope it’s Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who wins. “To simply say I want Assad to win would be a disaster if anyone heard it,” the activist says. “But we’ve created a monster. For too long on the ground, there was too much focus on the crimes the regime was committing and not enough on our own problems. And addressing these problems was always being delayed. “So we knew there was some sort of Islamism in the fighting even when it was starting back in 2012 and we would ignore this, because we would say it would all end soon — Assad is going to fall in two weeks; Assad is going to fall in a month; Assad’s going to fall in Aleppo. At each moment, we thought it was going to end very soon, and that meant we were neglecting the mistakes that were being made [among the revolution]. We were thinking, OK, the regime’s going to fall, and we can solve this later. We just need to get rid of Assad. This was a big mistake. “To that extent, we’ve created ISIS [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a powerful al-Qaeda affiliate that is gaining ground in the rebellion]. And we’ve created Jabhat al-Nusra [another Qaeda-linked group].” The activist has little hope for a political solution — a peace conference expected in Geneva this month was delayed again this week. Even if talks moved ahead, he adds, the moderate opposition wouldn’t have much say. “We’ve reached this point where we have two powers that are recognized by the international community — the Syrian regime and the extremist groups on the ground,” he says. “The third group [the moderate opposition] is very weak, even though it’s the majority in Syria. We don’t have anyone to defend the group. We don’t have weapons. We don’t have finances. We don’t have media. “So yes, if I’m going to choose which side I wish would win at this stage, I would choose the side that’s already in power rather than seeing the extremist side jump into power and destroy everyone else. The extremist groups do not seek a revolution in Syria — or at least, not a democratic one. They seek an Islamic one. And it’s something that’s not accepted by the majority of the country, whether you support Assad or you don’t. I would prefer that Assad wins at a stage like this for one reason: all of the other alternatives are totally unacceptable. “I would not cheer the idea of Assad winning. I would not help in any way,” the activist says, adding that he’d keep up his fight against the government. “But I will accept it. “I have no guarantees to offer in government-controlled areas that if those areas are ‘liberated,’ we can keep you safe. That it will not be ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra in charge, and that you won’t live under their laws. If I could make that guarantee, then I would support the idea of bringing down the regime without a political solution.” The Islamic extremists threatening to overtake the rebellion, the activist says, pose more of a threat than Assad. “There is no language between civil society and Islamic authority in Syria right now,” he says. “There’s no dialogue. It’s unacceptable. “In the same way that if you say anything about Assad you’re doomed, if you say anything about God, you’re also doomed. It’s the same way of reacting, but the Islamic system is a much more lethal system, because it depends on an ideology that says, ‘God, who is the creator of the universe, says that we’re in charge. And if you stand against that, then you stand against the creator of the universe. And we will chop your heads off, chop your hands off. We will whip you. We will prevent you from speaking out.’ I think the ability of this Islamic authority and these extremist groups to abuse the citizens of Syria is much higher than that of the Syrian regime. “A lot of people would argue that, if the regime wins, there would be no space whatsoever for another revolution, because the regime would come back 10 times stronger. The majority of people say that. I think that’s total nonsense.” The activist says that the moderate opposition is much more capable of resisting Assad than it was before the revolution, when political life was stifled and activists worked in the shadows, often unknown even to each other. “What we have in Syria now is local councils,” the activist says, referring to the civilian administrative groups that have sprouted up in rebel-held territory across the country, “and political and activist groups, whereas before March 2011 we had nothing. It was just a few people that were anonymous online. “We have groups now. We have experience. We know how to perform demonstrations now. We know how to have contact with the media. We know how to provide aid and how to set up field hospitals. It’s a totally different situation now. And we learned from our mistakes. “I think it’s definitely possible to see a revolution in the future. But if we don’t accept that we have lost now—that our revolution has stopped, or been put on pause, and that is a big dispute among activists—then that means that everything that’s happening now, and all the crimes that are being committed by Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS, will be written in history as part of the Syrian revolution. Do you see what I mean? If we can differentiate between this period that was the Syrian revolution, and this period now that is a messy situation that came as a result of a dictator standing against a revolution, then I think we can keep our revolution clean and our aspirations clean and our ideals in place. But
Sex presumably facilitates pair bonding, but how do partners remain pair-bonded between sexual acts? Evolutionary perspectives suggest that sexual afterglow serves this purpose. We explored how long sexual satisfaction would remain elevated following sex and predicted that stronger sexual afterglow would characterize more satisfying partnerships. We pooled the data from two independent, longitudinal studies of newlywed couples to examine these issues. Spouses reported their daily sexual activity and sexual satisfaction for 14 days and their marital satisfaction at baseline and 4 or 6 months later. Results demonstrated that sexual satisfaction remained elevated approximately 48 hr after sex, and spouses experiencing a stronger afterglow reported higher levels of marital satisfaction both at baseline and over time. We interpret these findings as evidence that sexual afterglow is a proximal cognitive mechanism through which sex promotes pair bonding. Alexander, R. D., Noonan, K. M. ( 1979 ). Concealment of ovulation, parental care, and human social evolution. In Chagnon, N. A., Irons, W. (Eds.), Evolutionary biology and human social behavior: An anthropological perspective (pp. 402 – 435 ). North Scituate, MA : Duxbury Press. Google Scholar Bartels, A., Zeki, S. ( 2000 ). The neural basis of romantic love. NeuroReport, 11, 3829 – 3834. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E. ( 1999 ). Passion, intimacy, and time: Passionate love as a function of change in intimacy. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 49 – 67. Google Scholar SAGE Journals Birnbaum, G. E., Finkel, E. J. ( 2015 ). The magnetism that holds us together: Sexuality and relationship maintenance across relationship development. Current Opinion in Psychology, 1, 29 – 33. Google Scholar Crossref \| ISI Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., Shaver, P. R. ( 1998 ). Self-report measurement of adult attachment: An integrative overview. In Simpson, J. A., Rholes, W. S. (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 394 – 428 ). New York, NY : Guilford Press. Google Scholar Brody, S., Costa, R. M. ( 2009 ). Satisfaction (sexual, life, relationship, and mental health) is associated directly with penile-vaginal intercourse, but inversely with other sexual behavior frequencies. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 6, 1947 – 1954. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Buss, D. M., Schmitt, D. P. ( 1993 ). Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating. Psychological Review, 100, 204 – 232. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Call, V., Sprecher, S., Schwartz, P. ( 1995 ). The incidence and frequency of marital sex in a national sample. Journal of Marriage and Family, 57, 639 – 652. Google Scholar Crossref \| ISI Carlsen, E., Petersen, J. H., Andersson, A. M., Skakkebaek, N. E. ( 2004 ). Effects of ejaculatory frequency and season on variations in semen quality. Fertility and Sterility, 82, 358 – 366. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Carmichael, M. S., Humbert, R., Dixen, J., Palmisano, G., Greenleaf, W., Davidson, J. M. ( 1987 ). Plasma oxytocin increases in the human sexual response. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 64, 27 – 31. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Daly, M. ( 1978 ). The cost of mating. The American Naturalist, 112, 771 – 774. Google Scholar Crossref \| ISI Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., Reis, H. T. ( 2015 ). Best research practices in psychology: Illustrating epistemological and pragmatic considerations with the case of relationship science. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108, 275 – 297. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Flora, J., Segrin, C. ( 2000 ). Affect and behavioral involvement in spousal complaints and compliments. Journal of Family Psychology, 14, 641 – 657. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Gallup, G. G., Burch, R. L., Zappieri, M. L., Parvez, R. A., Stockwell, M. L., Davis, J. A. ( 2003 ). The human penis as a semen displacement device. Evolution & Human Behavior, 24, 277 – 289. Google Scholar Crossref \| ISI Goldberg, L. R. ( 1999 ). A broad-bandwidth, public-domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. In Mervielde, I., Deary, I. J., De Fruyt, F., Ostendorf, F. (Eds.), Personality psychology in Europe (Vol. 7, pp. 7 – 28 ). Tilburg, The Netherlands : Tilburg University Press. Google Scholar Hicks, L. L., McNulty, J. K., Meltzer, A. L., Olson, M. A. ( 2016 ). Capturing the interpersonal implications of evolved preferences? Frequency of sex shapes automatic, but not explicit, partner evaluations. Psychological Science, 27, 836 – 847. Google Scholar SAGE Journals \| ISI Jacobson, N. S., Moore, D. ( 1981 ). Spouses as observers of the events in their relationship. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 49, 269 – 277. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Lehtonen, J., Jennions, M. D., Kokko, H. ( 2012 ). The many costs of sex. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 27, 172 – 178. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Levin, R. J. ( 2009 ). Revisiting post-ejaculation refractory time—what we know and what we do not know in males and in females. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 6, 2376 – 2389. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Loewenstein, G., Krishnamurti, T., Kopsic, J., McDonald, D. ( 2015 ). Does increased sexual frequency enhance happiness? Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 116, 206 – 218. Google Scholar Crossref \| ISI Luchies, L. B., Finkel, E. J., McNulty, J. K., Kumashiro, M. ( 2010 ). The doormat effect: When forgiving erodes self-respect and self-concept clarity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 734 – 749. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Maner, J. K., DeWall, C. N., Baumeister, R. F., Schaller, M. ( 2007 ). Does social exclusion motivate interpersonal reconnection? Resolving the “porcupine problem.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 42 – 55. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI McNulty, J. K. ( 2008 ). Forgiveness in marriage: Putting the benefits into context. Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 171 – 175. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI McNulty, J. K., Olson, M. A. ( 2015 ). Integrating automatic processes into theories of relationships. Current Opinion in Psychology, 1, 107 – 112. Google Scholar Crossref \| ISI McNulty, J. K., Olson, M. A., Meltzer, A. L., Shaffer, M. J. ( 2013 ). Though they may be unaware, newlyweds implicitly know whether their marriage will be satisfying. Science, 342, 1119 – 1120. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI McNulty, J. K., Wenner, C. A., Fisher, T. D. ( 2016 ). Longitudinal associations among relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and frequency of sex in early marriage. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 45, 85 – 97. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Meltzer, A. L., McNulty, J. K. ( 2016 ). Who is having more and better sex? The Big Five as predictors of sex in marriage. Journal of Research in Personality, 63, 62 – 66. Google Scholar Crossref \| ISI Meston, C. M., Buss, D. M. ( 2007 ). Why humans have sex. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36, 477 – 507. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Muise, A., Schimmack, U., Impett, E. A. ( 2016 ). Sexual frequency predicts greater well-being, but more is not always better. Social Psychological & Personality Science, 7, 295 – 302. Google Scholar SAGE Journals \| ISI Norton, R. ( 1983 ). Measuring marital quality: A critical look at the dependent variable. Journal of Marriage and Family, 45, 141 – 151. Google Scholar Crossref \| ISI Osgood, C. E., Suci, G. J., Tannenbaum, P. H. ( 1957 ). The measurement of meaning. Urbana : University of Illinois Press. Google Scholar Radloff, L. S. ( 1977 ). The CES-D scale: A self-report depression scale for research in the general population. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1, 385 – 401. Google Scholar SAGE Journals Raudenbush, S. W., Bryk, A. S., Cheong, Y. F., Congdon, R. T., du Toit, M. ( 2011 ). HLM 7. Lincolnwood, IL : Scientific Software International. Google Scholar Rosenberg, M. ( 1965 ). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. Google Scholar Crossref Sauer, M. V., Zeffer, K. B., Buster, J. E., Sokol, R. Z. ( 1988 ). Effect of abstinence on sperm motility in normal men. American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, 158, 604 – 607. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Schumm, W. R., Paff-Bergen, L. A., Hatch, R. C., Obiorah, F. C., Copeland, J. M., Meens, L. D., Bugaighis, M. A. ( 1986 ). Concurrent and discriminant validity of the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale. Journal of Marriage and Family, 48, 381 – 387. Google Scholar Crossref \| ISI Simpson, J. A., Gangestad, S. W. ( 1992 ). Sociosexuality and romantic partner choice. Journal of Personality, 60, 31 – 51. Google Scholar Crossref \| ISI Tofighi, D., MacKinnon, D. P. ( 2011 ). RMediation: An R package for mediation analysis confidence intervals. Behavior Research Methods, 43, 692 – 700. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Wilcox, A. J., Weinberg, C. R., Baird, D. D. ( 1995 ). Timing of sexual intercourse in relation to ovulation—effects on the probability of conception, survival of the pregnancy, and sex of the baby. New England Journal of Medicine, 333, 1517 – 1521. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISI Yeh, H. C., Lorenz, F. O., Wickrama, K. A. S., Conger, R. D., Elder, G. H. ( 2006 ). Relationships among sexual satisfaction, marital quality, and marital instability at midlife. Journal of Family Psychology, 20, 339 – 343. Google Scholar Crossref \| Medline \| ISIWhen Kenneth Schustereit was 18 years old, he tried to swipe a pile of what he thought was scrap metal from a machine shop's parking lot and ended up spending part of his summer vacation in jail for misdemeanor theft. That was in 1974. Thirty years later, Schustereit is still paying for his crime. That's because a background check of his criminal record sold to employers by ChoicePoint data brokers erroneously reported that his misdemeanor was a felony. It also stated that he spent seven years in prison when he spent 51 days in county jail. Schustereit discovered the mistake only after Home Depot turned him down for a job last year and mentioned the report. He thinks the report cost him half a dozen other jobs as well, although he doesn't know for sure, since most employers don't tell job applicants why they've been rejected. "I have a stellar work record," said Schustereit, who was laid off nine months ago as a quality-assurance inspector at a Texas plant. "But the problem is that I write down a 30-year-old misdemeanor on the application, and when they look it up, it comes up as a felony. It makes me look like a lying convict." Recent security breaches at ChoicePoint and Seisint have raised awareness about data brokering and the role that these companies play in identity theft. But the breaches have brought little attention to another problem with data brokering that can cause just as much harm as identity theft – inaccurate data. In addition to selling personal information about millions of people to marketers and government agencies, data brokers collect information from public records and sell it to employers conducting background checks on prospective workers. Employers facing problems with violent workers, falsified credentials and workplace theft have legitimate reasons for seeking background checks. And obtaining such reports has become increasingly easy and cheap when masses of information can be collected electronically and sold online. But there are no standards for assuring the accuracy of data. And incorrect or misleading information can lead to lost jobs and public embarrassment. Legislation is currently going through Congress that would establish oversight of data brokers to help prevent identity theft, but it doesn't address problems with data accuracy. The onus for finding errors and correcting them will still be on members of the public. A 2004 report by the National Association of State Public Interest Research Groups found that 79 percent of credit reports may contain some type of error. There's no reason to believe that criminal records are any more accurate. The Fair Credit Reporting Act, which covers background checks for issues related to employment, requires that employers get written permission from subjects to perform a check on them. But workers seldom have a choice in the matter if they want a job. If applicants or employees lose a job or promotion because of information in a background check, workers are entitled to receive a copy of the report from the data broker that provided it. "But what's to prevent a company from doing a check and saying they're not going to hire you for another reason?" said Ronald Peterson, who believes he lost jobs because of his reports. "You and I don't have a right to look at who has asked for our records." Getting misinformation in a file corrected or removed is another battle. Misinformation can occur for a number of reasons – clerks mis-key information, criminal charges get dropped but not updated in files, or arrested suspects provide authorities with the name and Social Security number of someone else. If data does get corrected in one database, there is no way to ensure that it's corrected in other databases. Easy access to masses of digital data that never goes away also means that people are less able to make a clean start in life even after they've served their time or been cleared of charges. After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly ran criminal background checks on more than 7,000 employees working for its outside vendors and barred hundreds of workers from the company, including a man who lost his position because of a 6-1/2-year-old dismissed misdemeanor battery charge that should have been expunged from his record. "We're becoming a nation where there is no social forgiveness," said Beth Givens, founder and director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "We've got to have wiggle room in our society to accept mistakes we've made in the past. But you can't do that anymore because of records being permanently in these databases." Schustereit is a case in point. After being laid off from his job, he applied for work in Home Depot's electrical department. He'd passed a drug test and psychological review and had even discussed salary and working hours with the company. But then Home Depot told him his background didn't check out. It took several calls to ChoicePoint and Home Depot's headquarters before Schustereit discovered that ChoicePoint had listed him as a felon. The company's report also listed his middle name as Dale instead of Don, which suggested that the company might have confused him with someone else. Ron Peterson's problem was even more pronounced than Schustereit's. A report from backgroundchecks.com attributed him with an array of serious criminal offenses he never committed. "In Florida I'm a female prostitute (named Ronnie); in Texas I'm currently incarcerated for manslaughter," Peterson, a California resident, said. "In New Mexico I'm a dealer of stolen goods. Oregon has me as a witness tamperer. And in Nevada – this is my favorite – I'm a registered sex offender." Back in 1974, Schustereit was originally charged with third-degree felony theft. But in a deal with authorities, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor instead and was sentenced to 60 days in jail. He was released early for good behavior. But the ChoicePoint report failed to note either of these significant details. ChoicePoint blamed the Texas Department of Public Safety, where it said the incorrect felony information originated. The Texas DPS did admit to misidentifying Schustereit's offense, but not for turning his 60-day sentence into seven years. The department said ChoicePoint was responsible for that error. Schustereit thinks the mistake is indicative of the sloppy work that data brokers do. "It was incumbent on both the Texas DPS and ChoicePoint to find out if Kenneth Dale was different from Kenneth Don before ruining someone's life," he said. Texas DPS spokeswoman Tena Mange said her department has quality-control procedures for information that it creates but has little control over the accuracy of electronic data that comes from courts and arresting authorities. And after information leaves the DPS office, the department has no control over how data brokers manipulate it. Mange said her department always recommends that people counting on criminal background checks for hiring decisions conduct fingerprint matches instead of name matches, even though they're more expensive and take more time. ChoicePoint declined to comment for this story and Home Depot did not return calls for comment. After numerous phone calls and e-mails, ChoicePoint and the Texas DPS did fix Schustereit's record, although the damage was already done. And Schustereit has no idea how many other data brokers still list him as a felon. Peterson had to work hard to get his record cleaned up. He bought reports from ChoicePoint and backgroundchecks.com after State Farm denied him insurance last year. ChoicePoint got his middle name wrong and reported that there was a bench warrant for his arrest in Arizona. Backgroundchecks.com – which claims to have 4,000 customers worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies – included information about all Ronald or Ronnie Petersons in its database, apparently making no attempt to distinguish relevant records from irrelevant ones, even when Peterson inserted different birth dates to see if the information would change. It didn't. Backgroundchecks.com President Craig Kessler said there was little data brokers could do to distinguish the records of individuals sharing the same name. "We're not in the business of authenticating the identity of individuals. All we do is report the data that's supplied to us from the courts," said Kessler. He said the problem stems from the fact that courts are doing away with using Social Security numbers that could help distinguish people with similar names. "Sex-offender registries do not have anything other than a name in many cases," Kessler said. "We encourage companies to ask additional questions to help them confirm that this is the same person." But Peterson, who believes that background reports contributed to his inability to get a good job offer for the last two years, said it's easier for employers to pass on candidates who have bad information associated with their name than to do the work to determine if the information is correct. It took Peterson 40 hours and numerous phone calls to clear his identity in Arizona – the bench warrant was for a different Ron Peterson – and he was able to do so only after submitting his fingerprints. "The victim is victimized by the system," Peterson said. California Woman Sues ChoicePoint The Fight Over Cyber Oversight Big Business Becoming Big Brother Hide Out Under a Security BlanketThis story is part of ongoing MassLive coverage into the state's October 2016 launch of all-electronic tolling on the Mass. Pike and the elimination of toll plazas. _________________________ BOSTON - Massachusetts transportation officials on Monday unveiled proposed rates under the all electronic tolling system set to go live in October 2016. Depending on your drive and whether you have a Massachusetts E-ZPass transponder or not, you could pay less, you could pay more or you could pay the same as you do under the current toll plaza system. Once the state flips the switch, drivers with an E-ZPass transponder can cruise under toll-taking metal gantries at highway speeds, instead of having to slow down to go through toll plazas. For drivers without transponders, the gantry will take a snapshot of their license plate and mail a bill to the vehicle's owner. The current "go live" date is Oct. 28. State officials have pledged that the new rates will be "revenue neutral." "Revenue neutral does not mean every single person who gets on or off anywhere pays less money or pays the same amount of money," Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack told reporters during a Monday morning briefing on the rates. "This is not a toll increase," Pollack continued. "This is a rate setting process designed to address the fact that we are collecting the same amount of tolls in a different set of locations." A passenger vehicle with an E-ZPass, traveling from the New York border to Boston will end up paying 45 cents less than what a driver would pay under the current system. ($6.60 under the current system versus $6.15 under all electronic tolling.) The Western Turnpike current toll, from the New York border to Weston with an E-ZPass, is $4.70, while under the proposed new system, it would cost $4.45. From Weston to downtown Boston, it currently costs $2.00, while under electronic tolling it would be $1.70. The location of the gantries means a number of trips can go up or down under the proposed system. Free rides will also be available, as detailed by MassLive.com. Free ride: New system will allow you to bypass tolls in Springfield, Worcester Transportation officials plan to hold seven meetings across the state to solicit input on the new rates. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation's board of directors will vote on rates and fees at its Oct. 6 board meeting. The western Turnpike generated $128.1 million in revenue from current tolls in a calendar year, and is slated to generate $127.7 million under all electronic tolling. As for the Metropolitan Highway System, which includes Boston, tolls generated $225 million in calendar year revenue. Under all-electronic tolling, the revenue falls to $216.3 million, according to MassDOT. "While that has been complicated and while it will be important to hear from our customers to make sure that the proposed rates -- whether we got them right or they disagree and we reconsider some of them - this proposed set of rates, its purpose is to basically generate that $128 million and roughly $220 million that we need to operate our tolled facilities but not to generate additional revenues in the form of a toll," Pollack said. The following are the set gantry rates for each gantry on the Mass. Pike if you have a transponder: Lee --.25 cents Blandford -- $1 Westfield --.30 cents Ludlow --.45 cents Warren --.55 cents Charlton --.50 cents Hopkinton --.45 cents Southborough --.25 cents Framingham --.25 cents Weston --.45 cents Newtonville --.20 cents Brighton -- $1 Allston --.50 cents Ted Williams Tunnel -- $1.50 Tobin Bridge -- $1.25 Sumner/Callahan Tunnels -- $1.50 The following rates will apply if you have a non-Massachusetts issued E-ZPass transponder from another state: Lee --.30 cents Blandford -- $1.15 Westfield --.35 cents Ludlow --.50 cents Warren --.65 cents Charlton --.60 cents Hopkinton --.50 cents Southborough --.30 cents Framingham --.30 cents Weston --.50 cents Newtonville --.40 cents Brighton -- $1.25 Allston -- $1 Ted Williams Tunnel -- $1.75 Tobin Bridge -- $1.25 Sumner/Callahan Tunnels -- $1.75 The following rates will apply if you do not have any transponder and are charged by the pay-by-plate system, which captures your license plate number and sends you a paper bill: Lee --.60 cents Blandford -- $1.45 Westfield --.65 cents Ludlow --.80 cents Warren --.95 cents Charlton --.90 cents Hopkinton --.80 cents Southborough --.60 cents Framingham --.60 cents Weston --.80 cents Newtonville --.70 cents Brighton -- $1.55 Allston -- $1.30 Ted Williams Tunnel -- $2.05 Tobin Bridge -- $1.55 Sumner/Callahan Tunnels -- $2.05 Noah Bombard contributed to this post. This post was been updated to reflect the correct proposed toll rate schedule. MassDOT earlier on Monday provided an incorrect schedule to reporters.Toronto may be a relatively flat city, but that doesn't mean that there isn't quite the collection of tough hills for cyclists to climb. As an avid rider I often masochistically ascend these roads to test my fitness and prove myself a man (full spandex and all!). But, truth be told, going down them is almost always more fun. And, as a commuter on a single speed, I avoid them like the plague. So in a gesture to the arrival of the Tour de France to the Alps, I've compiled a list of some of the ones I alternately love and fear. I'd be happy to add more to the map at the bottom if readers can think of some that I've missed! Bayview Extension (north end) Coming in at around a kilometer, this is long by Toronto standards. Although not overly steep, I like the view of Don Valley from near the top. Seeing the parkland below always makes me feel that I've accomplished something. Brimley Road Featuring bailout ramps for trucks that might lose control on its steeps, this is the toughest climb in the city. Longer than the rest, and plenty steep for Toronto, even hardcore cyclists will break a sweat on this one. Thankfully for commuters, Brimley isn't on the way to anything but Lake Ontario. But for those like me who like to ride down to the beach at Bluffer's Park, it's sure to be a suffer-fest on the way out/up! Glendon Campus Lower Parking Lot To climb this hill you need to break the rules and go up it the wrong way (it's a one-way heading east). But some might find the tree-lined road worth it for the switchback at the top. The sign there claims it's an 18% gradient. Hogg's Hollow Commuters in the north end know all too well that at Yonge and Wilson/York Mills all roads point up. For my money, I think the east side is the toughest to go up, and the most fun to go down. Humber Valley near Old Mill There's a number of ways to climb and descend in and around Humbercrest Blvd., all of which are exciting on the way down and challenging on the way up. Lawrence Avenue East When heading on Lawrence to the city's east end, I've often avoided the Bridal Path by riding down through Glendon's campus to where Lawrence resumes. It's definitely a short cut distance-wise, but damn this thing is steep. Straight and steep. Poplar Plains A great alternative to taking Bathurst north from Dupont, the bike lane makes this considerably safer, if a little steeper. The curves near the top of this hill have often allowed me to dream I was on a real mountain. Avid cyclists will enjoy going up Poplar Plains and down Russell Hill Rd. for interval training (and cornering work on the descent!). Pottery Road Currently undergoing some construction work, traffic on this hill can be a bit scary, especially when you're crossed-eyed from climbing. But, it's probably the fastest way to head out of this area of the Don Valley and into the city. Redway Road The steepest hill in the city, the service road down to the Sewage Treatment Plant has a gradient that tops 20%. This hill is as fun to descend as it is hard to climb! In a misguided display of bravery, I once hit 78kph on the way down. Happy to be alive, I won't do that again! Watch for mountain bikers using the road to pass between trails along the ravine wall and the corner at the bottom. Sunnybrook Park/Hospital This isn't a particularly steep climb, and the canopy of the trees keeps it nice and cool. When I cycle around Sunnybrook, I often take this route out of the park and onto the city streets. It's quite pretty and a great place for novice cyclists to get their climbing legs. Rattlesnake Point Although not in Toronto, whenever I'm looking to test my mettle (or kill myself!), I'll head out to Milton to climb this monster. Used for the Provincial Road Championships a few years back, this is as close as it gets to an alpine climb in the GTA. Sure, it's not as long, but with multiple switchbacks and a crazy gradient, this is an absolute leg-breaker! View Hills for Cyclists in Toronto in a larger map Lead photo is of Pottery Road, subsequent photos depict the hill described immediately below.So The Final Four is Set… How Do You Feel About That Bruins? by Mike Regalado The LA Times has just reported that UCLA wide receiver Devin Lucien is no longer with the Bruin football program and looks to go as a graduate transfer. That move allow Lucien to play next season without needing to sit out a year, but as LA Times writer Chris Foster states, Lucien is yet to graduate from UCLA. Lucien has one more year of eligibility left and was to be one of the Bruins top weapons through the air in 2015. Last season he was third in receiving with 225 yards and 2 touchdowns. Although he did not start every game, he did see time in all thirteen contests. It is a bit peculiar about his exit, seeing as he would be one of the top receivers. UCLA does utilize a spread offense that uses a lot of different receivers which the Bruins have a lot of depth at. Hopefully it is not an issue of playing time as he could have really taken a huge step with the Bruins in the fall. With Lucien gone, that makes Jordan Payton and Devin Fuller the two most experienced receivers on the team. Both were projected to once again be part of the top three receivers with Lucien, but now leaves the door open for younger players. Mossi Johnson, Jordan Lasley and Eldridge Massington would most likely be next receivers in line for a starting role. Still, good luck Mr. Lucien. Go Bruins!65,000 drug users and drug pushers have surrendered to the Philippine Government This is the total number recorded since President Rodrigo Duterte launched an intensified anti-drug campaign PNP Chief Ronald Dela Rosa said they are surprised by the influx of surrenderees Over 65,000 drug users and drug pushers have surrendered to the Philippine government since the intensified campaign against illegal drugs was launched by President Rodrigo Duterte. In an article written by Virgil Lopez and NB of GMA News, it was disclosed by PNP chief Director General Ronald Dela Rosa to Rappler on Friday, July 15, that it was the latest figure; saying that they are surprised with the number. “We were surprised by the sudden influx of surrenderees. We didn’t expect…Ganun na pala kalala ang problema natin sa droga [That’s how worse our problem on illegal drugs is],” he said. Malacañang, on the other hand, has welcomed the development; noting that the voluntary surrender of “self-confessed users and pushers reaffirms our people’s renewed faith and trust in authorities.” No to extra-judicial killings Meanwhile, Presidential Communications Office Secretary Martin Andanar said the government has to seize the moment without resorting to extra-judicial methods of anti-criminality operations. “Government is against any form of extra-judicial killings. We do not condone these acts. Government is here to save our people from the drug menace and punish the offenders, including the big-time ones. The PNP continues to investigate situations involving vigilante killings and operational aspects where deaths are reported,” Andanar noted. ‘A generation was saved’ At present, the campaign against drugs remain “far from perfect” but Andanar noted a generation of Filipinos has been saved from it. “Many communities are now relatively drug-free with record-high number of people giving up to authorities, choosing quieter and healthier lives,” he said. In a 2012 study, the Dangerous Drugs Board counted 1.3 million drug users nationwide. Some lawmakers, on the other hand, believe the true figure may be nearer 10 million, or one-tenth of the Philippine population. Moreover, the U.N. statistics suggest methamphetamine use is more common in the Philippines than in neighboring countries. Watch Dela Rosa’s interview with Rappler reporter Bea Cupin:Red Hat Product Security has been made aware of a vulnerability in the SSL 3.0 protocol, which has been assigned CVE-2014-3566. All implementations of SSL 3.0 are affected. This vulnerability allows a man-in-the-middle attacker to decrypt ciphertext using a padding oracle side-channel attack. To mitigate this vulnerability, it is recommended that you explicitly disable SSL 3.0 in favor of TLS 1.1 or later in all affected packages. A brief history Transport Layer Security (TLS) and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols designed to provide communication security over networks. The SSL protocol was originally developed by Netscape. Version 1.0 and was never publicly released; version 2.0 was released in February 1995 but contained a number of security flaws which ultimately led to the design of SSL 3.0. Over the years, several flaws were found in the design of SSL 3.0 as well. This ultimately lead to the development and widespread use of the TLS protocol. Most TLS implementations remain backward compatible with SSL 3.0 to incorporate legacy systems and provide a smoother user experience. Many SSL clients implement a protocol downgrade "dance" to work around the server side interoperability issues. Once the connection is downgraded to SSL 3.0, RC4 or a block cipher with CBC mode is used; this is where the problem starts! What is POODLE? The POODLE vulnerability has two aspects. The first aspect is a weakness in the SSL 3.0 protocol, a padding oracle. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability to recover small amounts of plaintext from an encrypted SSL 3.0 connection, by issuing crafted HTTPS requests created by client-side Javascript code, for example. Multiple HTTPS requests are required for each recovered plaintext byte, and the vulnerability allows attackers to confirm if a particular byte was guessed correctly. This vulnerability is inherent to SSL 3.0 and unavoidable in this protocol version. The fix is to upgrade to newer versions, up to TLS 1.2 if possible. Normally, a client and a server automatically negotiate the most recent supported protocol version of SSL/TLS. The second aspect of the POODLE vulnerability concerns this negotiation mechanism. For the protocol negotiation mechanism to work, servers must gracefully deal with a more recent protocol version offered by clients. (The connection would just use the older, server-supported version in such a scenario, not benefiting from future protocol enhancements.) However, when newer TLS versions were deployed, it was discovered that some servers just terminated the connection at the TCP layer or responded with a fatal handshake error, preventing a secure connection from being established. Clearly, this server behavior is a violation of the TLS protocol, but there were concerns that this behavior would make it impossible to deploy upgraded clients and widespread interoperability failures were feared. Consequently, browsers first try a recent TLS version, and if that fails, they attempt again with older protocol versions, until they end up at SSL 3.0, which suffers from the padding-related vulnerability described above. This behavior is sometimes called the compatibility dance. It is not part of TLS implementations such as OpenSSL, NSS, or GNUTLS; it is implemented by application code in client applications such as Firefox and Thunderbird. Both aspects of POODLE require a man in the middle attack at the network layer. The first aspect of this flaw, the SSL 3.0 vulnerability, requires that an attacker can observe the network traffic between a client and a server and somehow trigger crafted network traffic from the client. This does not strictly require active manipulation of the network transmission, passive eavesdropping is sufficient.
Scout and the Executive Director of Scouts for Equality, issued the following statement: “Today’s announcement hopefully marks the beginning of the end of the Boy Scouts of America’s decades-old ban on gay leaders and parents like my two moms. In two weeks, the BSA’s national executive board will vote to ratify a resolution that has already been unanimously adopted by their executive committee. “For decades, the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gay adults has stood as a towering example of explicit, institutional homophobia in one of America’s most important and recognizable civic organizations. While this policy change is not perfect—BSA’s religious chartering partners will be allowed to continue to discriminate against gay adults—it is difficult to overstate the importance of today’s announcement. “The BSA has explicitly cited the work of Scouts for Equality members Pascal Tessier, an openly gay Eagle Scout working at a Boy Scouts summer camp in New York state, Yasmin Cassini, a lesbian woman from Colorado who was denied employment on the basis of her sexual orientation, and Brian Peffly, an openly gay Eagle Scout who until recently served as an assistant Scoutmaster in central Ohio. I could not be more proud of, or grateful for, the courage, strength, and dedication to the values of Scouting as demonstrated by Pascal, Yasmin, and Brian.” The relevant portions of proposed resolution reads as follows (emphasis added). The full resolution can be downloaded here: Regarding Employees and Non-unit Volunteers […] Adult leaders in the programs of the Boy Scouts of America must (a) subscribe to and abide by the values expressed in the Scout Oath and Scout Law, (b) subscribe to and abide by the precepts of the Declaration of Religious Principle, and (c) demonstrate at all times behavior that exemplifies the highest level of good conduct and respect for others and that is consistent with Scouting’s values and codes of conduct. No adult applicant for registration as an employee or non-unit-serving volunteer, who otherwise meets the requirements of the Boy Scouts of America, may be denied registration on the basis of sexual orientation. Regarding Religiously Affiliated Troops and Units […] The Boy Scouts of America affirms the right of each chartering organization to reach its own religious and moral conclusions about the specific meaning and application of these values. The Boy Scouts of America further affirms the right of each chartering organization to select adult leaders who support those conclusions in word and deed and who will best inculcate the organization’s values through the Scouting program. […] From the BSA’s frequently asked questions: Can a gay adult be a Scoutmaster or unit leader? Yes. If selected by the chartered organization, an otherwise qualified and eligible gay adult is eligible to serve as a unit leader.Ivanka Trump stilettos will soon be harder to find at Nordstrom. The department store chain said on Thursday that it had decided to put the brakes on its relationship with Ms. Trump and removed her brand from a list on its site. “We’ve said all along we make buying decisions based on performance,” Nordstrom said in a statement. “In this case, based on the brand’s performance, we’ve decided not to buy it for this season,” referring to the spring. A spokesman for the brand disputed Nordstrom’s assertion that it had not bought clothes for the coming season. The move comes amid an effort by what is called the #GrabYourWallet campaign to encourage shoppers to boycott products with ties to President Trump, his family and his donors. In November, Nordstrom defended its decision to sell Ms. Trump’s products. “We hope that offering a vendor’s products isn’t misunderstood as us taking a political position,” the company wrote on Twitter on Nov. 2. “We’re not.”Burton-On-Trent will host snooker’s Q School for the first time in May, and entry for fans will be FREE. Players from 22 different countries around the world will be at the Meadowside Leisure Centre from May 14 to 25 for the qualifying school for World Snooker’s professional tour. There will be eight two-year tour cards up for grabs, with the semi-finalists in each of two tournaments earning the chance to play on the global circuit in 2015/16 and 2016/17. They will be competing for over £8million in prize money, in major tournaments including the UK Championship and World Championship. Top ladies player Reanne Evans, who competed in the World Championship qualifiers this year, is among the Q School hopefuls. She plays her opening match on Friday May 15. Experienced former top-32 star Marcus Campbell is also in the field and opens his campaign on Thursday May 14. Also competing for tour cards will be former World Championship semi-finalist Andy Hicks, American pool ace Corey Deuel and Germany’s rising star Lucas Kleckers. In total there are 166 players competing, from countries as far afield as Canada, USA, Singapore, China, Russia, Pakistan, Israel, Turkey and Qatar. For the full draw and format click here There is no need for fans to book, they can come along on the day and watch high quality snooker for free.EMERYVILLE, Calif., Aug. 01, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Amyris, Inc. (Nasdaq:AMRS) will report financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2017 after market close on Thursday, August 10, 2017. The company will hold its quarterly conference call to discuss these results, as well as provide an update on the company's business and outlook, at 4:30 p.m. ET (1:30 p.m. PT) on Thursday, August 10, 2017. Conference Call: Thursday, August 10, 2017, 4:30 p.m. ET/1:30 p.m. PT Dial-in Number: (866) 516-3867 (U.S. & International) Access Code: 58275243 Audio Webcast: A live webcast of the call will be available online on the Amyris website. To listen via live webcast, please visit: http://investors.amyris.com. A replay of the webcast will be available on the Investor Relations section of the Company's website approximately two hours after the conclusion of the call. About Amyris Amyris is the integrated renewable products company that is enabling the world's leading brands to achieve sustainable growth. Amyris applies its innovative bioscience solutions to convert plant sugars into hydrocarbon molecules and produce specialty ingredients and consumer products. The company is delivering its No Compromise® products across a number of markets, including specialty and performance chemicals, flavors and fragrances, cosmetics ingredients, pharmaceuticals, and nutraceuticals. More information about the company is available at www.amyris.com. Amyris, the Amyris logo and No Compromise are registered trademarks of Amyris, Inc. Contact: Peter DeNardo Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications Amyris, Inc. +1 (510) 740-7481 investor@amyris.com pr@amyris.comWoman charged with hate crime against Muslims A Burien woman has been charged with two counts of malicious harassment, the state's hate crime statute, after she allegedly yelled racial slurs and assaulted two Muslim women. Jennifer Leigh Jennings, also known as Jennifer Leigh Adams, was charged Thursday in King County Superior Court on what happened to be her 37th birthday. Her arraignment, in which she is expected to enter a plea, is scheduled for Nov. 2. The incident happened about 6 p.m. Saturday at an AM/PM gas station at 15252 Tukwila International Blvd. The two women -- both U.S. citizens -- were trying to pump gas into their car. "Jennings was watching and said, 'Suicide Bomber,' and 'Hey you don't know how to pump go back to your country,'" Detective David Heckelsmiller wrote in a probable cause document. Jennings slammed the car door on one of the woman's legs and pushed the other woman, according to police. She also allegedly kicked the first woman when she got out of the vehicle. A Tukwila police detective viewed a recording made by a AM/PM surveillance camera and investigators are waiting for a copy to be made for the case, police spokesman Mike Murphy said Thursday. On her way to the Tukwila police holding facility, Jennings told an officer, "Ya, I shouldn't have called them sand (expletives) or other stuff like that," according to the probable cause document. At the holding facility, Jennings continued to be upset, telling an officer with a dark complexion, "You're only doing this because he's the same race and religion as those two ladies." Jennings, whose criminal history includes a fourth-degree assault conviction and four convictions in the 1990s for exposing herself or illegal touching, has been released on bail. Arsalan Bukhari, executive director of the Washington chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he believes the incident is a symptom of the anti-Muslim hysteria being stirred up in mainstream media. "I hope we can stand up against that kind of fear promotion that can lead to this stuff," he said. "We fear that this may just be one of the many incidents that may be happening, and people are suffering in silence."Houston Texans offensive coordinator George Godsey, left, talks to running back Arian Foster during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer... more Houston Texans offensive coordinator George Godsey, left, talks to running back Arian Foster during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) less Houston Texans players stretch during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) Houston Texans players stretch during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) Houston Texans wide receiver Jaelen Strong stretches during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) Houston Texans wide receiver Jaelen Strong stretches during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) Houston Texans running back Arian Foster stretches during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) Houston Texans running back Arian Foster stretches during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) Houston Texans linebacker Brian Cushing jogs with a football during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) Houston Texans linebacker Brian Cushing jogs with a football during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) Houtston Texans cornerback Johnathan Joseph (24) ties his shoe while talking to safety Rahim Moore (26) during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. (... more Houtston Texans cornerback Johnathan Joseph (24) ties his shoe while talking to safety Rahim Moore (26) during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) less Houston Texans head coach Bill O'Brien walks across the field as he team stretches during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston... more Houston Texans head coach Bill O'Brien walks across the field as he team stretches during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) less Houston Texans safety Eddie Pleasant (35) stretches during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) Houston Texans safety Eddie Pleasant (35) stretches during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) Houston Texans quarterbacks Brian Hoyer (7) and Ryan Mallett (15) play catch during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston... more Houston Texans quarterbacks Brian Hoyer (7) and Ryan Mallett (15) play catch during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) less Image 13 of 27 Houston Texans quarterback runs across the field during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) Houston Texans quarterback runs across the field during Texans mini camp at Houston Methodist Training Center on Tuesday, June 16, 2015, in Houston. ( Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle ) Photo: Houston ChronicleA teenager in Australia who thought he was doing a good deed by reporting a security vulnerability in a government website was reported to the police. Joshua Rogers, a 16-year-old in the state of Victoria, found a basic security hole that allowed him to access a database containing sensitive information for about 600,000 public transport users who made purchases through the Metlink web site run by the Transport Department. It was the primary site for information about train, tram and bus timetables. The database contained the full names, addresses, home and mobile phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and a nine-digit extract of credit card numbers used at the site, according to The Age newspaper in Melbourne. Rogers says he contacted the site after Christmas to report the vulnerability but never got a response. After waiting two weeks, he contacted the newspaper to report the problem. When The Age called the Transportation Department for comment, it reported Rogers to the police. "It's truly disappointing that a government agency has developed a website which has these sorts of flaws," Phil Kernick, of cyber security consultancy CQR, told the paper. "So if this kid found it, he was probably not the first one. Someone else was probably able to find it too, which means that this information may already be out there." The paper doesn't say how Rogers accessed the database, but says he used a common vulnerability that exists in many web sites. It's likely he used a SQL injection vulnerability, one of the most common ways to breach web sites and gain access to backend databases. The practice of punishing security researchers instead of thanking them for uncovering vulnerabilities is a tradition that has persisted for decades, despite extensive education about the important role such researchers play in securing systems. The Age doesn't say whether the police took any action against Rogers. But in 2011, Patrick Webster suffered a similar consequence after reporting a website vulnerability to First State Super, an Australian investment firm that managed his pension fund. The flaw allowed any account holder to access the online statements of other customers, thus exposing some 770,000 pension accounts — including those of police officers and politicians. Webster didn't stop at simply uncovering the vulnerability, however. He wrote a script to download about 500 account statements to prove to First State that its account holders were at risk. First State responded by reporting him to police and demanding access to his computer to make sure he’d deleted all of the statements he had downloaded. In the U.S., hacker Andrew Auernheimer, aka "weev", is serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence for identity theft and hacking after he and a friend discovered a hole in AT&T’s website that allowed anyone to obtain the email addresses and ICC-IDs of iPad users. The ICC-ID is a unique identifier that’s used to authenticate the SIM card in a customer’s iPad to AT&T’s network. Auernheimer and his friend discovered that the site would leak email addresses to anyone who provided it with a ICC-ID. So the two wrote a script to mimic the behavior of numerous iPads contacting the web site in order to harvest the email addresses of about 120,000 iPad users. They were charged with hacking and identity theft after reporting the information to a journalist at Gawker. Auernheimer is currently appealing his conviction. Update 1.9.14: Rogers confirmed to WIRED that the vulnerability he found was a SQL-injection vulnerability. He says the police have not contacted him and that he only learned he'd been reported to the police from the journalist who wrote the story for The Age.“A lot of people may think that you come into our program and you get a free pass," says Terrell Dorsey, a co-director of the 180 Program. “But you’re getting more than a free pass." Four months before her 18th birthday, Sarah left her parent’s house over a family dispute. She began couch-surfing at friends’ homes, and sometimes sleeping in cars to stay off the streets. It wasn’t long before Sarah was busted for shoplifting, her means to repay friends and buy food and drugs. Three months later, Sarah, now 18, says she’s “changed her views.” She’s employed, back in her parent’s house and enrolled in a job-training program for information technology. She has no criminal record. After her shoplifting arrest, Sarah was given the chance to participate in the 180 Program, a criminal-justice diversion program funded by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. The program gives minors accused of misdemeanor offenses a chance to have charges waived before they’re even filed. The trade-off: Four hours in a weekend workshop, where participants hear from people who have changed their lives after brushes with the law, and brainstorm a new path for themselves. “Our job is to really understand that wall they see in front of them, get them to understand it’s a hurdle and help them find a way to jump above it,” says Terrell Dorsey, one of the co-directors of the 180 Program. “A lot of people may think that you come into our program and you get a free pass. But you’re getting more than a free pass; you’re getting to develop healthier life skills.” The 180 Program stemmed from conversations between King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg and Pastor Doug Wheeler, a leader in the African-American community. The first workshop was hosted in July 2011, and they’ve been held every month since. To date, the program funded by the prosecutor’s office has helped almost 1,500 young people avoid misdemeanor charges. “The community really grabbed a hold of this idea and put together a fantastic curriculum,” Satterberg said. “I’m absolutely confident that this program has a much better outcome than teaching (youth) where the courthouse is.” O’Shae, who was 17 when she participated in the December workshop, says it’s the atmosphere at the workshops that makes a difference. “As soon as I walked in, I could just feel all of the positive vibes,” O’Shae said. “When people tell their stories, I feel like it’s an empowerment for everybody. It brings out a lot of emotion, too. People are tearing up because it’s real life. The stuff that they did doesn’t really determine who they are in their life.” The Seattle Times is not using the last names of the participants because charges against them have been dismissed. Dominique Wheeler-Davis, the program’s other co-director, says the key to encouraging buy-in is allowing young adults to hear from one another, having them brainstorm their own paths to change instead of telling them what to do. But the work that truly makes a difference, he thinks, comes after the program: connecting kids with tutoring, counseling, jobs and rehab, and offering them an adult mentor. Last year, a grant to increase minority-youth participation allowed the 180 Program to build a team of “community ambassadors” who helped facilitate that extra step. Terence Charles was one of those ambassadors. At 41, Charles walks with a cane because of a bullet that damaged his spine at age 15 during a rough time he attributes partly to a lack of positive male influence. He tears up when he talks about helping other youth avoid the same fate. “I did a lot of crazy stuff when I was their age and I paid dearly for the mistakes that I made,” Charles said. “Everybody makes mistakes. It’s good for people to get second chances, you know. That’s what we try to offer these kids.” This year, that grant money has run dry, and Wheeler-Davis does most of the outreach on his own. But he’s hopeful the program will find more money to rebuild the outreach program, and to grow the 180 Program. He sees a future where they can improve their attendance rates and offer two workshops each month. “It’s all about building the relationship with these young people and that’s what makes the change,” Wheeler-Davis said. “We want to walk with a kid all the way through high school, walk with a kid through college and be able to stay connected. We still participate, but it’s hard to do that when the numbers are growing every month and we don’t have the staff.” Currently, evidence for the success of the program is mostly anecdotal. A 2014 evaluation by the King County Office of Performance, Strategy & Budget indicated the program was “promising” in terms of serving minority youth and having a low recidivism rate, but said more time is needed to accurately measure its effectiveness. But facilitators of the 180 Program find success in every young person they turn away from crime — like Sarah, and O’Shae, who have both come back to speak on the youth panel at 180 workshops. The August workshop was Sarah’s first time on the other side of the workshop. “I’m not going to stand up here and tell everyone that I’ve made my 180 and I’m a completely changed person and I’ve accomplished the end result,” Sarah remembers saying when it was her turn to speak. “For me, it’s about taking time … I want to look back and be proud of my progress. “I’m on track to accomplishing my 180.”Will Scotland become first country to end 'period poverty'? Will Scotland become first country to end 'period poverty'? At least 1,000 people should receive free sanitary products during the trial Scotland could become the first country in the world to introduce free sanitary products for women. Labour MSP Monica Lennon wants to introduce a universal system of free provision of sanitary products across Scotland, leading the way in eradicating so-called "period poverty". Ms Lennon is launching a consultation on a members' bill and if it is successful, it could see Scottish schools, colleges and universities offer free sanitary care in their toilets. The move comes after a series of reports revealed young women are using socks and toilet paper, and sometimes staying away from school during their period because they do not have the money to buy tampons or towels. Labour's inequalities spokeswoman at Holyrood says she wants to "end the stigma of menstruation". In July, the Scottish government announced a six-month pilot project in Aberdeen aimed at women and girls from low-income households. Image: Ms Lennon says she wants to 'end the stigma of menstruation' At least 1,000 people should receive free sanitary products during the trial, which ministers have supported with £42,500 of funding. If a new law is passed in Scotland, it would likely put pressure on ministers to introduce a similar scheme in the rest of the UK. Ms Lennon said: "Scotland has the opportunity to be a world leader in ending period poverty. "Access to sanitary products should be a basic right but sadly in Scotland we know not everyone can afford or obtain what they need. "That's why I intend to introduce a legal duty on the Scottish Government to develop a universal system in Scotland which will provide free sanitary products for anyone who needs them. "My proposal also includes a statutory duty on schools, colleges and universities to provide free sanitary products in their toilets. Having your period shouldn't result in anyone missing class. "This is a big step towards creating a fairer and more equal society and I hope to hear from people right across Scotland during the consultation." Education Secretary Justine Greening has previously said she would "look carefully" at the possibility of offering free sanitary products to girls who receive free school meals. Last year, public schools in New York introduced free tampons and pads in all secondary school buildings following a successful pilot scheme.GPS, Facial Recognition and Blockchain Ensure Chickens Are Raised Hygienically and Ethically in China December 18, 2017 A new program called GoGoChicken promises to deliver Chinese consumers a means to track chickens on the farm to ensure that their future dinner has been harvested in an ethical, clean and sustainable way. Currently, ZhongAn Online, a major Chinese insurer, has outfitted 100,000 chickens with smart anklets that transmit information about the bird’s location and exercise to a cloud network. Each chicken is assigned a profile and facial recognition technology prevents confusion between animals. Farmers also upload information such as diet and other biometrics to the chicken’s profile. Blockchain technology ensures that the data is credible and unaltered. Consumers shopping for chicken meat can verify that the meat was harvested hygienically by cross-referencing the information provided on the packaging with the information available online. Users get a glimpse into the life of the chicken before purchase. Alternatively, customers can even purchase a baby chick and monitor the bird as it grows, before arranging for its slaughter. ZhongAn aims to eventually enroll 23 million chickens in the GoGoChicken program and expand the program beyond Anhui province. The goal is total transparency throughout the food chain. Additionally, quality of life is improved for the livestock. Farmers are better able to analyze health information about chicken flocks and individuals. Since all GoGoChickens are raised in a free-range environment, the chickens live three times longer or more than traditionally farmed chickens. “We see a big market potential [for the chicken] in China, as food safety is a highly concerning topic, and the expanding middle class is willing to pay more for healthy and safe meat,” said CEO Chen Wei of ZhongAn Tech, in an interview with South China Morning Post. The motivation for this technology comes as China works to change its culture of food sanitation. There was wide backlash following a 2014 video that depicted a supplier selling rotten meat to fast food outlets McDonald’s and KFC in China. There is also considerable concern about the food sanitation of street vendors and lower-market restaurants, as gutter oil has been a traditionally prevalent source of cheap cooking grease for these vendors. Gutter oil is any type of cooking oil that has been disposed of, but has been illegally recovered and reused, typically with little or no refinement. ZhongAn Tech is looking at other opportunities for this concept, such as fish farms.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption There is a strong anti-coal movement in Germany Germany is an enlightened leader in the global battle to reduce CO2 emissions, a pioneer in renewable energy and community power projects and a champion of energy efficiency. Or so the common narrative goes. But try telling that to Monika Schulz-Hopfner. She and her husband, along with 250 other residents of Atterwasch, a quiet village near the Polish border, face eviction from their home of 30 years to make way for the Janschwalde-Nord coal mine. And not just any old coal, but lignite, the dirtiest form of this ancient fossil fuel that is mined in vast opencast pits. If the plans go ahead, the village, parts of which date back more than 700 years, will be demolished. "Since the plans for the mine were unveiled in 2007, we have lived with this constant threat, which has taken over the lives of every individual and the community as a whole," says Mrs Schulz-Hopfner. "Every single decision we make is affected by it." And the residents of Atterwasch are not alone. In the eastern German region of Lausitz, nine villages are under threat, where up to 3,000 people could lose their homes to make way for five new lignite mines that are fuelling the country's renewed thirst for coal. Two further mines are under consideration. Immediate impact The mines are needed to power a new generation of coal power plants. Two new lignite plants were opened in 2012, with a further two in the pipeline. Another two hard coal plants also opened last year, with a further five opening this year or next, with two more awaiting licences. The effects are already being felt. Lignite production in 2012 hit its highest level for almost 20 years, while initial estimates suggest this brown coal was used to generate 162bn kWh of electricity last year, more than in any year since 1990. The use of hard coal also increased, meaning the two energy sources accounted for 46% of Germany's overall energy production. The impact on CO2 emissions has been immediate. "There has been an increase of between 5%-7% in CO2 in the past two years," says Prof Claudia Kemfert, head of energy at the German Institute for Economic Research. And this in a country that aims to reduce emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2020. As Prof Christian Hey, secretary general of the German Advisory Council for the Environment, says: "Germany has a coal problem." 'Failure' There are many reasons why. One is the low cost of carbon. "Due to the failure of the emissions trading system, the price of CO2 permits is very low," says Prof Hey. "The EU has failed to address this issue." Image copyright Christof Koepsel Image caption The opencast lignite mines in Germany cover tens of square kilometres Oversupply and a fall in demand for energy - and therefore permits - during the economic downturn means the price now stands at around three euros per tonne of CO2. If everything had gone to plan, the price would be more than 10 times that by now. Overcapacity has also pushed the price of coal lower, while the lignite industry has benefited to the tune of 60 million euros from being exempt from supporting the renewables industry, says Prof Hey. This means the fossil fuel has moved down what is called the merit order curve. This was introduced in Germany in the 1990s, and determines the order in which energy sources are used to satisfy demand. The cheapest source is used first, the second cheapest second, and so on. What is lignite? Over time, peat is converted into lignite, which is then, due to heat, pressure and chemical changes over millions of years, converted into hard coal The energy intensity of lignite is the lowest of all forms of coal, making it the least efficient Because it is less dense, lignite burns much faster than hard coal Lignite is extracted from opencast mines, which cover a far greater area than the deep mines used to extract hard coal Lignite contains less carbon but more sulphur than hard coal Source: World Coal Association, Store Norske Renewables are currently the cheapest, followed by nuclear. Lignite comes next, followed by hard coal. And as the government has resolved to phase out nuclear power by 2022, lignite will move further down the curve. Until the carbon price rises, then, lignite is set to remain at the heart of German energy production. "This is one of the biggest inconsistencies of the energy transition, and if the government wanted to address it, it could," says Prof Hey. "To address this paradox, the government needs to adopt a regulatory approach on coal. It is relying on the market, rather than regulation, and this is key to the problem." Or as Prof Kemfert puts it: "The government isn't doing anything." In fact, the new coalition has said that all fossil fuel power sources are equally important for the security of supply for the foreseeable future. 'No appetite' But despite government inaction, there are some reasons to believe the growing use of lignite may not last. All the new coal plants built in recent years, together with those that are due to open this year and next, were given the go-ahead about 10 years ago, when energy prices were much higher than now. Some argue that such massive investments are simply not viable in today's economic climate. Image copyright Carsten Koall Image caption Campaigners want to stop new coal mines and the expansion of older mines As Mariana Heinrich at Poyry Managing Consulting says, these plants "represent the end of a business cycle and not a longer term trend". More importantly perhaps, "there is no public or political appetite for building [new coal plants] for the next 30-40 years," argues Lars Waldmann, senior associate at the Agora Energiewende think tank. And he says that lignite is not needed to fill the gap that will be left by phasing out nuclear power, a decision taken as far back as 2000. "We hope and think that gas will fill the gap, as there is enough installed capacity," says Mr Waldmann. This capacity is largely dormant right now due to the cheap price of coal, and the rising price of gas. Image copyright ideengrün \| Markus Pichlmaier Image caption Mrs Schulz-Hopfner wants to see more renewables, not lignite "From the economic side, renewables and gas can be the cheapest way to cover all demand." Mrs Schulz-Hopfner will take little comfort in that. "It is idiotic. We don't need more and more lignite because we are using more renewable energy," she says. "If we Germans truly want the Energiewende (energy transition), then no more villages should be demolished." But the new generation of coal plants means the fossil fuel will remain a key component of Germany's energy mix. The fact that lignite will always be cheap to produce, allied with a powerful pro-coal lobby in German politics, means the temptation to rely on this dirty fuel will remain strong as long as the carbon price remains low. For a country that, in so many respects, is a leader in clean energy, not to mention committed to stringent carbon dioxide emissions reductions, this contradiction seems odd to say the least. This article is part of a series of features on the future of energy. The next, published on Monday 14 April, will look at attempts to mine coal more cleanly.Media reports have recently focused on the role of Iraqi Shia militias in the battle for Aleppo, essentially foreign legions fighting on behalf of the Syrian state. Despite their differences, both the Spanish and Syrian civil wars witnessed the intervention of foreign legions, entire units of regular armies, militias, and air forces from other states, opposed to foreign fighters, independent individuals who chose to fight for an ideological cause. In commemoration of the 80-year anniversary of the Spanish Civil War which began in July 1936, this article compares the role of foreign legions in that conflict to the Syrian civil war. The significance of foreign legions in both conflicts is that they pushed the military momentum in favour of both Francisco Franco and Bashar al-Assad. Assad's dependence on foreign legions Franco depended on foreign legions from fascist Italy, the Corpo Truppe Volontarie, Nazi Germany, the Condor Legion, and an entire contingent of Moroccans, the Regulares. Assad's foreign legions come from Russia, Iran, the Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias, and brigades of Afghan Shia, Liwa Fatimiyyun and Pakistani Shia, Liwa Zaynibiyyun. OPINION: What the Spanish Civil War can reveal about Syria The question is why did Franco and Assad need these foreign legions, and what do they mean for why the Syrian civil war continues to endure? My previous article compared the overall dynamics of both civil wars. While the Nationalists were the rebels in the Spanish Civil War, for analytical purposes I equate General Franco's army and his faction, the Nationalists, with Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian state. I only equate the Republican government of Spain with the Syrian rebels because of one glaring similarity. Their fighting capabilities were crippled by infighting, ultimately weakening their forces. On the other hand, Franco and Assad's forces did not suffer from continued military infighting, even though there were sharp political differences and rivalries in each of their coalitions. Franco and Assad also inherited the advanced weaponry of the regular military. Yet this advantage was still insufficient to achieve an outright victory. Both needed foreign states to provide more weapons and the expertise on how to use them. Manpower problems Franco and Assad also inherited the advanced weaponry of the regular military. Yet this advantage was still insufficient to achieve an outright victory. Finally, both depended on foreign legions from other states owing to their manpower problems. While the officers stayed loyal to Franco, the lower ranks defected to the Republican side, similar to the patterns of defections of the lower rank-in-file of the Syrian military to the rebels. Franco and Assad had to replenish the rank of their militaries from their respective populations, and then later from abroad. The population demographics of each conflict is entirely different. Spain's population was relatively homogenous religiously, albeit with differences among religiosity among its Catholics and cultural differences among Catalans, Basques, and Castilians. Franco could draw upon a military base in Spain that represented conservative trends, particularly strong in the north of Spain, but he would also need foreign military units to augment his ranks. While the Syrian civil war cannot solely be attributed to just a sectarian conflict, the core military and security units the regime depends upon, such as the Republican Guard, the 4th Division, the paramilitary Shabiha (later rebranded as the National Defence Forces), do draw disproportionately upon an Alawite base. OPINION: Searching for Garcia Lorca There was a limit as to how long the Syria regime could defend itself in objective terms when the numbers of loyal fighters it can draw upon, a minority within Syria, dwindled due to attrition on the battlefield. Assad on the offensive There was also a limit as to how long both Franco and Assad could maintain the morale of a core of a fighters witnessing continuous combat. Ideally, this factor works towards a resolution of civil war. Reduced manpower forces a regime to recognise that the conflict has reached a stalemate and compels them to negotiate. With the fall of Idlib to rebel factions and Palmyra to ISIL (also known as ISIS) in May 2015, the debate on the tenuous future of Syria's regime emerged, with commentators such as Marwan Bashara asking: "Is it truly the beginning of the end for Assad and his decades' old regime?" The headline of a Guardian article asked, "Amid the Ruins of Syria, Is Bashar Al-Assad Now Finally Facing the End?"
Anchorage; Vice President/Business Development, Avis Alaska; President, Avis Alaska 2002-2006; Vice President/Advertising & Marketing, Avis Alaska, 1990-2002; Owner, Prestige Limousine Service 1992-1996; Vice President Sales, Windjammer Cruises 1990-1992; Fleet Manager, Avis Alaska, 1985-1990; Administrative Assistant, Avis Alaska, 1984-1985; Airport Rental Agent, Avis Alaska, 1982-1984; Car Wash Manager, Avis Alaska, 1980-1982; Car Washer, Avis Alaska 1979-1980 Elected office held, with dates: Alaska State House of Representatives, 1998-2002 Previous unsuccessful runs for office, with dates: Anchorage Assembly 1995-96, Governor 2006 Timothy Huit Date & place of birth: Sacramento, Calif. Marital Status: Single Children (ages only and whether they attend public or private school): 32, 29 Residence neighborhood: Sherwood Acres Website, blog, Twitter handle, Facebook page: huitforanchoragemayor2015.com Party Registration: Republican Education (degrees, years awarded, institutions): UAA B. A. Anthropology-Justice- Philosophy Occupation(s): Small Business Owner; Social Worker/Street Outreach Worker Current employer: Public sector work experience, including military: Private sector work experience: Elected office held, with dates:Earlier this week, we told you about the Norm Stewart biopic debuting on the SEC Network on Sunday. We were fortunate enough to get to spend some time to speak with Coach Stewart, and we are pleased to bring you the following interview (special guest appearance by Norm's dog if you listen to the audio). The text has been edited for readability. A quick background on Coach Stewart: Norm Stewart played for Missouri from 1953-56, making the all-Big 7 team his senior year after averaging 24.1 ppg. After graduation, he gave professional sports a try before getting into coaching the late 1950s. Stewart became the head coach at the State College of Iowa (now Northern Iowa) from 1961-67, winning two conference titles and finishing second the rest of the time with an overall record of 97-42. In 1967 he returned to MU as its head basketball coach. Stewart coached at MU until his retirement in 1999, going 634-333 overall, including 33-41 against Kansas. He won eight Big 8 regular season titles, including four in a row from 1980-83, and had 16 NCAA Tournament appearances. Stewart was named AP Coach of the Year in 1993-94, a season that saw his team go 28-4 overall, including 14-0 in Big 8 Conference play. In 1989, Stewart was diagnosed with colon cancer, missing the final half of the 1988-89 season. He beat the cancer and returned to coaching the following year. At the time of his retirement, over half of MUs wins were credited to Norm. In 2007, Coach Stewart was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. AUDIO: RCT with Norm Stewart ANDY: Hello Rock Chalk Talk! This is Andy, otherwise known as misterbrain on this site. I'm joined here by Mike (mikeville) and we have a unique opportunity for you today. Earlier this week, we told you a little bit about the new film coming out from the SEC Storied series from ESPN Films called "SEC Storied: Norm" and today we have the pleasure of speaking with the subject of that film, Norm Stewart, legendary coach at Missouri. ANDY: Norm, I just wanted to start by asking, what does it mean to you to be able to sit down and tell your full story all at once? Normally we hear bits and pieces about your early life or your coaching career or your work with Coaches vs Cancer, but this is a nice opportunity, I think, to bring all that together and tell the whole story at once. What has that process meant to you? NORM: Well the first thing, we had the opportunity to put our basketball thoughts into a book when we were coaching and during that coaching period we had the opportunity to put our thoughts about some of the things that were happening in basketball in another book, and this was an attempt to - I say an attempt, this is an endeavor to put it into film over a long period of time. And I was so appreciative that the people that did it, that Fitz Mitchell, who is one of the most outstanding people in the business, was selected to do this. And so I thought he captured everything very well. And so we were pleased that they did it, that he was selected, and we are proud that came out very well and captured a lot of the things about the past that I've been able to travel over a long period of time. ANDY: I think he definitely did a very good job of capturing everything there. I know I learned a whole lot that I hadn't before, and it was nice to see the entire arc of your career. Moving to a little bit about what the film covers, it talks about when you were coming out of high school, and how you were recruited by quite a few colleges in the area, including by Phog Allen at Kansas. Since we cover Kansas, we're curious, what was it like being recruited by Coach Allen, how persuasive was he, and did you ever really entertain the idea of going to Kansas or did you always want to go to Mizzou? NORM: Oh, no, I entertained it. It was very high on the list. But you have to understand recruiting was done so differently in the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. I was involved in the ‘50s, the early ‘50s, and Doc Allen had just come off of winning the national championship at Kansas in 1952 with Clyde Lovellette, the Kelley brothers, Bill Hougland, Bob Kenney, Lienhard, I can still name all the players. And I know some of them, and know them very well. But that was the situation, and Dick Harp was his assistant. In fact, in regard to the family, I still see his grandson. His grandson is a medical doctor there in Kansas City, a wonderful individual, and an outstanding doctor. But it was something to consider, but again, at that time, it was just different, and the other people who were helping me make the decision pushed me a little bit, I think, toward Missouri. MIKE: Hi coach, this is Mike. Your '93-94 team you had at Mizzou is probably one of your more well-known teams, you went undefeated in Big 8 play, but I wanted to talk a little bit about your first NCAA Tournament team which was your 1975-76 squad; it was also your first Big 8 Champion. Just talk about what place they hold in your heart and in your memory. NORM: Well my first team was '67-68 and those guys are still my favorites. They're the only ones - we used to have medals or something if you won a championship, and they were the only team that didn't. But some of my favorite guys are from that team. But the '75-76 team was composed of Kim Anderson who is the current coach, a guy named Willie Smith who was a great player, Jimmy Kennedy out of St. Louis - they're favorites also, and other members of that team. But if you mention one, you should mention them all and there isn't time. The '93-94 team was a team that if you say, "What team got the most out of their talent?" Probably it would be that team out of all of them. And maybe there were teams in that group that they couldn't have beaten, but they were the ones who got the most out of their talent and got within an eyelash of going to the Final Four. There was no center on that team as far as a "center." I had a 4-man playing center. We had no 3-man, and no point guard. And yet they won all but two of their regular season games. So, very special teams, and all of them become special, and the players become special. ANDY: Coach, a natural topic to discuss - and I know that the film touches on this as well - the Kansas-Missouri rivalry. Do you have any moment that you could say is your favorite memory that comes out of that? Or maybe even a least favorite memory? Just anything that really sticks out in all that time that you were involved with the rivalry. NORM: There's many of them. I remember the first time I visited there, and of course talked with Dr. Allen and Dick Harp, and competed against Ted Owens who I just saw two weeks ago. We had a great visit, he and I and Billy Tubbs and Lon Kruger. The games themselves, there were so many great games. We lost some, we won some. Special moments? Roy Williams. I did NOT want to make a tour of the league and get what we call the "ham and turkey" or whatever, and so I selected one school. And the one school that I selected was because I got a great invitation from Roy to come to the University of Kansas, and I let that represent my being at all the institutions in what started out as the Big 6, Big 7, Big 8, and then Big 12 Conference. And Roy and the University of Kansas were very gracious in having me there and giving me some time. And so that was a memorable event also. MIKE: Coach, how would you describe your overall relationship with Roy Williams? I mean, he gave you a rocking chair, do you ever sit in that and relax a little bit? NORM: (Laughter) I know I still have it. My association with Roy, and I've said this many times - since Roy represented Kansas, I represented Missouri, two schools that have this long-standing - well, what do we want to call it? It's more than just competition. But under those circumstances, Roy and I had a great association. Ted and I had a good association. But Roy and I had an outstanding association and talked about things that applied to coaching, applied to staff, applied to a lot of things. And to me - and I've said this - I know people in Kansas didn't like the fact that he left. But he went home, and he's done a fantastic job at the University of North Carolina. He's an outstanding person and he's an outstanding coach, and he and I have a great association, and still do. MIKE: In the past, you've been, let's say, unwilling, to publicly comment on Missouri's move away from historical rivalries and over to the SEC. I don't suppose there's any chance we could get you to talk about that this afternoon, is there? NORM: Well, I just didn't want to speak about it because I wasn't in the position. I think I did say the fact that I thought they would play in the future. And I think they still will, in some of the sports, anyway. I mean, they're just so close. But I understand. And I understand it from the other side. I understand why KU - you know - KU didn't leave the league. Missouri left the league. And I know that makes Missouri people unhappy. But I can understand from the other side why they don't see it as necessary to play and compete. But I think they will. I say "I think ‘they' will" - I think both sides will find some way to make some sort of an agreement to compete against one another. Unfortunately, that competition and fierceness of it comes about not so much from athletics as it does from history. And I think that's the saddest point of it all, really. MIKE: Coach, aside from maybe Allen Fieldhouse, can you pick out a specific arena or school that you just did not look forward to that road trip? NORM: Well, again, I'll have to tell you, I always looked forward to going to Allen Fieldhouse. My thought was this, because I had people tell me they did not want to come to the Hearnes building. After thinking that through, I thought, that's a circumstance of competition, of competing. And to me, I would always tell my players, if you can't compete in Allen Fieldhouse, then maybe you ought to change sports. Because it's a great place to play, a wonderful environment. And we tried to do the same thing at the Hearnes building in Columbia, to make it a place where it was completely advantageous for us, but still was an environment for a great basketball game. ANDY: Just a couple more questions for you, Coach. Something that was talked about in the film that I wanted to ask you about - it talks about when you were trying to make Missouri basketball a nationally known name, competing with the likes of UCLA and the other big programs - that you were willing to schedule any kind of game that you needed to, to get Mizzou on national television and get their name out there. What was the craziest road swing or trip that you put together to try to further that goal? NORM: Well, again, you have to think back to a time completely different than it is now. The craziest? We played in Stillwater, Oklahoma on Saturday afternoon, then played a noon game in the Meadowlands in New York on Sunday. At noon! I said a noon game. And I had to make the arrangements. And I had to, as they say, "pull some tickets" from some good friends who happened to have jet airplanes. And I did not get any assistance from anyone. It was based on whether I could pull that off or not. So I not only was the coach, I was the travel secretary, the procurer of funds, and did the whole deal. That was probably the craziest. We played Ralph Sampson's Virginia Cavaliers, Terry Holland the coach. We had them beat - it was a Sunday noon game, we had no time for preparation, obviously - we had them beat and we got Ralph Sampson in foul trouble. I still see Ralph once in a while. We got Ralph in foul trouble and they had to take him out, and that's when they regained the lead and beat us! (Laughter) ANDY: That definitely sounds like a completely different time with you having to do so much to get all that coordinated! I just want to finish up with one more question; I know that towards the end of the film, it talks about your charitable efforts and how you were instrumental in creating the Coaches vs Cancer charity. We'd just like for you to take a little bit of time to talk about the history of that foundation, what it means to you, and what can fans of any school do to get involved. NORM: Well it means a lot from the standpoint of raising money to try to defeat cancer. But if you think about this a little bit, the reason that it is the only recognized charity of the NABC - The National Association of Basketball Coaches - and the way that I sold that program to the coaches was based upon the fact that they needed the image of being what they are, and that is good people that think about other people. And the image that they had during that time, during about the '92-93 time, there was really a lot of changes being made, but they had the image of some guy making quite a bit more money than the average guy walking around on the street. And they were seen on television yelling at kids. And that's not who the coaches are. They are a wonderful group of people. They care about other people. And they happen to make an inordinate amount of money now, which is great, and I'm proud of them. But I'm proud of the fact that that group is completely volunteer, there are no paid employees as far as the coaches are concerned. And they've raised over 100 million dollars. And so that, to me, is the biggest factor. MIKE: Coach, how can just a regular fan like myself or Andy, of any school, how can we get involved with Coaches vs Cancer? NORM: There are many high school coaches, but the main thing would be to go to Bill Self. Bill is involved. He has his own charity also. Some coaches, like Bill, have their own charity. But he does an event for us in Kansas City every year. This year Bob Costas came in and was our emcee. Bill and of course Coach Weber up at K-State, Gregg Marshall at Wichita State, and then the UMKC coach, and the coach and Missouri all come in and we have a big program. And last year, I think they raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $350-400,000. We're gonna get it to a million dollars in a couple of years. But for a person to get involved, just remember, do what you can do. If you call one of those coaches, or call his office, they may have something you can get involved with. If not, make sure that your friend, or make sure that your parents, or make sure that yourself, that you go and do the tests that you're supposed to. Because if we'll get tested, we'll eliminate cancer. ANDY: Well, coach, it was great to talk to you today. NORM: Alright. Nice talking to you guys! Have a good day! ANDY: You too, thanks. MIKE: Thanks, Coach! NORM: You bet. Bye.Remember the other day when Westcity Bible Baptist Church Pastor Logan Robertson sent an email to a gay Christian author who was promoting his book? It said these loving words o’ Jesus: We are not interested in your filthy lifestyle or book. Romans 1 clearly says God has rejected homos and they are worthy of death. You can not be saved. … The bible says you are vile, strange (queer), reprobate, filth, sodomite, natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed… I pray that you will commit suicide, you filthy child molesting fag. Pastor Logan Robertson Most of the reports about this incident have been pretty one-sided. And maybe it should be. But New Zealand’s ONE News decided that they should really get a comment from Robertson. So they had reporter Matt McLean call him up for an interview. Turns out McLean is also gay. So guess how that interview went? he would not give an interview to a “filthy faggot” and he hoped that he too would commit suicide. I’m sensing a pattern… Robertson spoke to one reporter, presumably a straight one, and explained that he really wasn’t the bad guy here. “I think every single one of them [homosexuals] should be put to death,” says Pastor Robertson. “Christians shouldn’t be doing it, I’m not going to do it, it’s the Government’s job to be doing it.” Yep, it’s the government’s job to execute people who are gay. Just like Sniper Jesus did from the mount. Looks like Pastor Steven Anderson has himself a boyfriend. (Thanks to Andrew for the link)All but one of the girls Velma Jackson knew from her days in an Indian residential school are dead. Some of the Blue Quills students died on the streets, some died working in the sex trade, some died from alcohol-fuelled accidents. This is what Ms. Jackson told the federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which on Tuesday released a landmark report that documents the horrific treatment of native children at the church-run institutions, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse was rampant. The 388-page report of the commission, headed by Justice Murray Sinclair, drew a connection between the social ills borne out of the residential-school system and the murders and disappearances of indigenous women that plague the community today. Story continues below advertisement "More research is needed, but the available information suggests a devastating link between the large numbers of murdered and missing Aboriginal women and the many harmful background factors in their lives," the report says, pointing to poverty, domestic violence and the overrepresentation of natives in the child-welfare system. "The complex interplay of factors – many of which are part of the legacy of residential schools – needs to be examined, as does the lack of success of police forces in solving these crimes against Aboriginal women." Among the report's 94 recommendations is for Ottawa to launch a national inquiry to investigate the violence and its relationship to the "inter-generational legacy of residential schools." The call comes a year after the RCMP revealed that at least 1,181 native women and girls were killed or went missing between 1980 and 2012. After the August killing of Tina Fontaine, a native foster child who had been placed at a Winnipeg hotel, Prime Minister Stephen Harper dismissed the need for an inquiry into the deaths and disappearances, saying they are not part of a sociological phenomenon but crimes best handled by police. Native leaders cried foul, with some pointing to Tina's case as a prime example of how historic injustices can lead to modern tragedies. Tina's family said the struggles that left her vulnerable and on the streets of Winnipeg were inextricably linked to her father's 2011 killing – a beating death committed by two men whose families were rocked by abuse in the residential-school system. "There is unquestionably a connection between the residential-school experience and the current experiences of indigenous women in Canada," said Dawn Harvard, the interim president of the Native Women's Association of Canada. "Until [victim's relatives] get that inquiry, and until they see their government taking this issue seriously … there won't be resolution and reconciliation for those families." Vivian Ketchum, who lived at an Ontario residential school in the early 1970s, said she was physically and sexually abused, including by an older native boy. She said some of the men who perpetrate violence against indigenous women today are "only doing what they were taught as children." In a section on the overrepresentation of aboriginals in prisons, the report bluntly details the connection, as the commission sees it, between residential schools and violence within the community. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement "It should not be surprising that those who were sexually abused in the schools as children sometimes perpetuated sexual violence later in their lives," the report says. "It should not be surprising that those who were taken from their parents and exposed to … disparagement of their culture and families often became poor and sometimes violent parents later in their lives. The consequences for many students and their families were tragic."Imprime Comparte Facebook Twitter Menéame Fresqui MySpace Google Yahoo MSN Reporter Viggo Mortensen aseguró este jueves que siente "odio" por José Mourinho. Mortensen, que vivió durante varios años de su niñez en Argentina, dijo que no le gusta el planteamiento de juego del equipo madridista, como tampoco el de Ricardo Caruso Lombardi, técnico del San Lorenzo de Almagro, del que es "hincha fanático". Viggo Mortensen "En España soy hincha de Real Madrid, pero odio a Mourinho, tiene un equipo para jugar y no lo hace" "En España soy hincha de Real Madrid, pero odio a Mourinho. En Austin Power está el mini-yo. Bueno, para mí, Caruso es el mini-Mourinho, tienen el mismo planteamiento cobarde. Tienes un equipo para jugar y no lo haces", comentó. "Sin riesgo, no hay gloria. Hay que ir para adelante. Y, como hincha, eso es lo que opino y lo digo", agregó el actor destacado en la trilogía cinematográfica de 'El Señor de los Anillos', de Peter Jackson, en declaraciones a Radio Vorterix, de Buenos Aires. El actor está en Buenos Aires para el estreno de la película 'Todos tenemos un plan' Mortensen, de 54 años, viaja varias veces al año a Buenos Aires para ver partidos del San Lorenzo en la Liga argentina, y se encuentra en esta capital para el estreno de la película 'Todos tenemos un plan', ópera prima de la directora local Ana Piterbag. Los productores del filme han anunciado que la película se estrenará en Buenos Aires el próximo día 30 de este mes, en España el 7 de septiembre y será presentada en los festivales de Toronto y Londres y en el Unasur, en la provincia argentina de San Juan.Bike Advisory Committee: Stop Wasting Time and Money Stalling on Bike Projects In March of 2011, then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signed into law the city’s Bicycle Plan, a list of some 1,600 miles of bicycle lanes, routes, friendly streets and paths scheduled for the next 30 years. In some ways, implementation is going exceedingly well. The pace at which new bicycle lanes are being added exceeds even that of New York City. In other ways, the plan seems stalled as many of the projects that make up the “Backbone Bicycling Network” connecting neighborhoods, are being delayed or canceled as nervous City Councilmembers put up roadblocks to bicycle progress. And bicyclists aren’t going to stand for it much longer. On Tuesday night, the city’s official Bicycle Advisory Committee, a body of advocates appointed by individual City Councilmembers and the Mayor’s Office, passed two resolutions (text not available) basically telling the city it’s wasting time and resources by studying and stopping bicycle projects that are already studied and funded. “In some cases, the City has identified key corridors for bicycle infrastructure and pursued funding for improvements on those corridors, such as the $20 million Proposition 1C grant for the My Figueroa project or Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) funds,” writes Jeff Jacobberger, a lawyer who chairs the Bicycle Advisory Committee. “Often, those funds must be spent on that specific street, and cannot be transferred to other projects. When funded projects do not go forward, the money spent on planning and design has been wasted. Moreover, the City’s poor track record of seeing projects through to completion means that it has a harder time competing for future funds.” The two motions single out proposed bicycle lanes on North Figueroa Street and on Westwood Boulevard, but they could easily apply to projects on Lankershim Boulevard or South Figueroa. Thus, when Councilmember Paul Koretz killed a study of the Westwood Boulevard bike lanes that would provide an important connection to UCLA and a future Expo Line station, it wasn’t just bad policy; it was a waste of money. In its motions, the BAC points out that these proposed bike lanes had already been funded. In Northeast Los Angeles, Councilmember Gil Cedillo hasn’t come out against bike lanes on North Figueroa, but he is requesting another round of public outreach. This outreach would duplicate efforts completed by LADOT while his predecessor, Ed Reyes, was in office. The popular proposed bike lanes (they even have their own #fig4all hashtag) are opposed by a very vocal minority in the community and a small tabloid newspaper. Cedillo promised support for these bicycle lanes in a candidates forum broadcast on Streetsblog TV last year. In this case, the city isn’t just wasting money; it’s wasting important manpower. “The people that work for the city are actually the scarce resource,” argues Herbie Huff, who was appointed to the BAC by Councilmember Eric Garcetti and re-appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti. “We can win funds for asphalt. We can win funds for paint. We can win funds for signs. But what the federal government isn’t going to fund is people, and that’s what we’re wasting when we don’t build the projects that are planned and funded.” In the case of North Figueroa, precious city staff and overtime hours will be spent on the next round of community outreach — to say nothing of the time spent by advocates for and against the lane repeating past efforts. The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition’s Ride Figueroa campaign and even Northeast L.A. Critical Mass (which starts in front of Cedillo’s field office) will spend hundreds of hours working to bring out crowds to these public meetings. But while City Councilmembers push for more meetings, or outright kill projects, based on immediate political concerns; they are also damaging the backbone of the city’s future bicycle network. North Figueroa, South Figueroa, Westwood, Lankershim Blvd. These are all streets that are an important part of the city’s bicycle plans, and delay or cancellation of projects approved in the bike plan, studied by LADOT and funded through state or local sources undermines that plan and public safety. “It is important to create a complete network of bikeways that provides safe, convenient access to important destinations or across major barriers. Most BAC members were appointed by individual councilmembers, and we acknowledge the important role that councilmembers have in overseeing proposed projects in their districts,” finishes Jacobberger. “However, deference to councilmembers should not be absolute. All Angelenos should be able to bike safely to places like UCLA, the Hollywood Bowl, Exposition Park and LA Live; all councilmembers have an interest in ensuring that their constituents can safely bike to the places that their tax dollars support.” – Fun fact. Huff replaced Joe Linton on the BAC when he moved to Jersey City last year.When you buy an Android phone or tablet, it’s the expectation that Google will be deeply integrated. However, what if you don’t want to use Google’s services or apps because of privacy or ethical concerns? Android is open source, so there’s nothing stopping you from doing just that. Leaving the relative safety of the Google ecosystem means you’re cut off from all the usual apps and tools, but it’s quite possible to leave Mountain View behind as you take your Android experience to the expert level. So what’s it like to use Android without Google? It’s a jungle out there. A tale of two Androids The Google bits of Android — like Gmail, Google Play, Google Now, and Maps — aren’t technically part of Android. The platform itself is open source, and is maintained by the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), to which Google is the largest contributor. Unlike AOSP, Google’s apps and services are proprietary and closed source. Some people aren’t comfortable with that, which could be one reason someone might want to use Google-free Android. An AOSP version of Android is different from “stock” Android. Any discussion of a stock build you hear is probably referring to the version of the platform the way Google prefers it — what’s installed on Nexus and Google Play Edition devices. That is basically AOSP with a few small tweaks and the full Google apps package included. If you install a plain AOSP ROM, you’ll get things like the dialer, browser, calendar, keyboard, and messaging app. Many of these are a bit older than what you’d get direct from Google, but make no mistake — AOSP contains a full-featured mobile operating system. Anyone can download and build the basic open source version of Android, but OEMs have to pass the Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) in order to get access to the Google apps. A custom ROM developer can’t do that because they don’t make a device, which is why many of them require you to install Google’s software package on top of the ROM — that process is a bit of a legal gray area. We’re not doing that, though. This is a zero-Google experiment. Going Google-free Getting out from under Google’s thumb is easier for some devices than others. You need to be able to unlock the bootloader and install a custom recovery, which is sometimes frowned upon by US carriers. A Nexus device, like the Nexus 5, can be prepped in a few minutes but a Samsung Galaxy S5 on Verizon or AT&T, for example, is a bit of a pain. Those GS5 models also come with the unpleasant potential that you could brick your phone. The end goal is to replace the Googley software on your device with something free of Mountain View’s influence. Sometimes there are clean AOSP ROMs built for a device, but installing something like CyanogenMod and skipping the Google app installation step is probably a better option due to wider support. I used a Nexus 5 for my Google-free experiment, so I used a version of Android 4.4 straight from AOSP with no modifications whatsoever. It’s a bit jarring to boot into a pure AOSP ROM after using Android for a long time. The things you’ve become accustomed to are missing, but some old friends are there to greet you. Google has slowly migrated to delivering apps via the Play Store, so the open source versions haven’t been keeping up with the design language. For example, the AOSP browser looks pretty much like it did in Android 4.0 (Google has since moved to Chrome, and Chromium for Android isn’t really a user-facing solution). And the music player? Forget about it — you don’t want to even bother. You need apps, and lots of them. My first stop was F-Droid, which is an open source repository of free apps. It installs like an app, then lets you grab your choice of free stuff. You’ll find software like K9 Mail, a powerful (but somewhat ugly) email client, the Apollo music player, and the super-useful Dashclock widget. You can even grab the pro-privacy Duck Duck Go search client as a solid Google alternative. There isn’t a ton of content here, but it’s a start. One thing to watch out for is the increasing reliance on Google Play Services. This is one of the core components of Google’s Android package that includes features like malware scanning, device location, and more. Some apps assume you’ll have that, and they just won’t work without it. You can scrounge around the internet for APKs, but you need to be cautious where you’re downloading things from. You know better than to install strange EXEs on a Windows machine, right? The same wisdom holds true for Android. Remember, Google’s anti-malware scanner is part of Play Services, which you don’t have. Malware is less common than the scaremongering would have you believe, but it is a concern. Just because a page says an APK is the Netflix client pulled from Google Play, that doesn’t mean it really is. Make sure you’re only direct downloading APKs from trusted sources like Mozilla. On a related note, Firefox makes a great browser for Google-free Android. There are a few other third-party app stores like SlideMe and Getjar, but the selection is fairly bad. If you really want to have good apps, you’ll need to install the Amazon Appstore. Yes, you’re moving from one big company’s sandbox to another, but Amazon’s Appstore client is really just an app store, and you’re free to toil in the wilds of the internet if you want to fend for yourself. When it comes down to it, Amazon’s store is light years ahead of the other alternative app stores. Through Amazon you’ll be able to plug into services like Dropbox, Netflix, and Amazon’s own cloud player. Google Play still has an order of magnitude more worthwhile apps, but frankly, the Appstore makes AOSP usable as a modern smartphone platform without all the risky app sideloading. Should you do it? Oh, goodness no. Google has crafted an excellent set of apps and services for Android, and there’s more than you know going on in the constantly evolving Google Play Services client. This is the stuff that makes Android a mobile operating system you actually want to use. It’s possible to get by with just Amazon’s ecosystem, but it’s definitely a step down. Scrounging for apps on your own works too, but it’s nearly impossible to find everything you’d want. This is an interesting experiment for anyone who digs Android, but I can only imagine the most vehemently anti-Google Android fans (is that a thing?) going to the trouble of using Android without Google. Android works fine without Google, it’s just not nearly as good.It’s time for some wild, reckless bonsai styling!! (Sorry, short digression…..consider the word reckless. Now the word wreck-less….weird, huh?) This is that second buttonwood from the last post. I got it from Mary Madison two years ago (she likes to challenge me, she’ll say “Hey Adam, look at this one, it’s really strange” and she knows I’ll be hooked). And this one is strange. From the right angle it looks like a deer or a horse head. And it has a tiny base and a giant body. When I potted it in this training pot last year it was with the purpose of encouraging some root growth (I had to put a rock under the right side to prop it) and to wire some movement into the branches. I surely didn’t have any idea of any true shape then. I’m not sure I have one now. Maybe if I dramatically change the potting angle? It has terrible obverse taper. (There’s that word again. Obverse. I will change the lexicon of bonsai yet.) In order for me to see the trunk (and to reduce excess transpiration through the leaves) I’ll defoliate. And also remove the wire (just so I can put more on later. I feel like Sisyphus sometimes). Now some more angles. Hmmmnn Ummmmm Ooga booga I think I have an idea. I have to take it out of the pot first though. Lookit those roots! Compared with the tree in post # 1 these are purty. That’s what we want to see, fine white hairlike roots. The bonsai soil makes a difference. That’s why, with my friend Dave’s help, we repotted all my stock buttonwood into training pots using good bonsai soil. A big thanks Dave. What’s my plan? Well, looking at the tree out of the pot gives you a better perspective. After looking at the live portions and the branches that I need, I’ve chosen to carve the underside of the trunk and the first uh, branch-like mass that makes that angle. I feel confident that I won’t compromise the health of the tree if I carve out this And I don’t need my fancy carving tools either; just my fancy bonsai tools My big spherical knob cutters will do the trick. I might go back next year to refine the deadwood (with those fancy tools) but I don’t need to at the moment. It’s pretty smooth and you can’t really see the tool marks Especially with how blurry that photo is.
bany: SUNY Press, 2012), 53. [10] Pluth, 103. [11] Lorenzo Chiesa, Subjectivity and Otherness: A Philosophical Reading of Lacan (Boston: MIT Press, 2007), 20. [12] Todd McGowan, Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2013). [13] Charles Wells, The Subject of Liberation: Žižek, Politics, Psychoanalysis (Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2014). [14] Soler, 18. [15] Soler, 38. [16] Soler, 105. [17] Chiesa, 9. ————— Editors’ note: A recent CTheory interview with Gad Horowitz is available here. ————— Gad Horowitz is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Toronto, Canada. Horowitz writes political theory from a series of shifting perspectives: Canadian political culture, psychoanalysis, Buddhism, Judaic scholarship, and General Semantics. His books include: Canadian Labour in Politics (University of Toronto Press, 1968), Repression: Basic and Surplus Repression in Psychoanalytic Theory: Freud, Reich and Marcuse (University of Toronto Press, 1977), “Everywhere They Are in Chains”: Political Theory from Rousseau to Marx (Nelson Canada, 1988) Difficult Justice: Commentaries on Levinas and Politics (University of Toronto Press, 2006). Horowitz taught General Semantics at the University of Toronto beginning in 1985. His course is available in video format here. In November 2013 he served as resource person for the VII National General Semantics Workshop at Saurashtra University, Rajkot. Workshop videos are available here.The recent news that there's no single-player DLC in the works for Mass Effect: Andromeda has all but sealed the fate of the franchise for now. In the drip-drip of bad news for the venerable sci-fi series, we were first told that the saga had been “shelved,” and no resources were being put towards developing a sequel at this time. Now, even the game that’s already been released, which could badly use some of the embellishment that DLCs provide, won’t even be expanded upon in the slightest. It’s an ignominious end to something that began with so much promise. The non-BioWare developers I know who currently work for large studios have confided in me that they look at the ragestorm around Andromeda and think “there but for the grace of God go I.” One described the atmosphere following ME:A’s launch, “Our team has been passing [a scathing review of ME:A] around, nervously, like we're waiting our turn to get eviscerated.” They added, “If Bioware can be skewered by critics, we aren't necessarily safer.” The speed with which the narrative around Andromeda spiraled out of control was stunning. It began with a pre-release preview for EA Access users that allowed countless ordinary players to get their hands on the game ahead of launch, and within hours gifs of the game’s wonky, sometimes unsettling animations were practically making themselves. I myself got in on the fun -- there were plenty of creative jokes and memes being made about the animation, much of it in the spirit of good humor. Then the hilarity came to an abrupt end: that segment of the game community which revenges itself upon anyone who is even perceived to have slighted them, developed a conspiracy about Andromeda’s animations and, of course, found a woman to blame. Harassment, threats, abuse, and all the usual scapegoating followed. In the midst of all of this, what should’ve been a joyous launch day, the culmination of years of work, occurred under a cloud. The game was tarnished and tainted in a way it wouldn’t recover from. It didn’t help that, in addition to strangely inhuman animations, the game was frontloaded with poorly written, poorly delivered dialogue. The ten-hour preview given to the public was where the bulk of the game’s weakest material was and it hardly made for a good first impression. My own assessment was that, independent of the controversy, the game suffered from a great deal of unevenness. Video games of this size are, of course, authored by many hands. But it is the skill of producers and creative directors to fuse the joins such that everything, from the art to the story to the controls, evince the consistency of a single vision. ME:A lacked that. In some places its writing and characterization shone, in others it was amateurish. In some places the animation had a stunning verisimilitude, in others it could only be seen as a bad joke. A patch fixed most of the animation problems, saving countless NPCs from the doldrums of uncanny valley, but the damage was done. "Clearly, in the light of hindsight, pre-releasing a game in such an unfinished state to a large segment of your audience was a terrible idea." Three months after the game’s launch, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier confirmed what many of us had suspected: the game had a deeply troubled development cycle. According to Schreier’s sources, most of ME:A was developed over the space of a mere 18 panicked, crunchy months. And contrary to the conspiracies of the angriest, most reactionary players, politics had nothing to do with it (among the more extraordinary theories was the notion that BioWare deliberately made Andromeda’s women “ugly” in deference to the sensibilities of “SJWs.” As a lesbian feminist myself, I never quite understood how that was supposed to work). The larger issue seemed to be the fact that teething problems with the game’s animation engine, which had already been changed unusually late in the development process, never went away and even got worse as production went on. With everything condensed into this frenetic 18-month window, everything was in flux, and that’s damaging in a development process where some things need to be locked down at certain points well before launch. Clearly, in the light of hindsight, pre-releasing a game in such an unfinished state to a large segment of your audience was a terrible idea. Andromeda would have benefited from at least another year in production to smooth out the kinks and develop a consistent tone. But we got what we got, and what we got wasn’t actually as wretched as all that. For all the glitches and the cringey early dialogue, the game that unfolded was one that was actually fun, funny, and not a little addictive. It was a game that, I felt, had stumbled across the finish line and just barely made it to a point where it could stand on its own and tee up a sequel. Instead, the entirety of Mass Effect’s future has been thrown into doubt and Andromeda has been abandoned. *** There was always something to be said for the idea that the original Mass Effect trilogy told a complete story that needn’t be improved upon or extended. The fact that Andromeda took place in its titular distant galaxy is a testament to how far BioWare had to reach to find a hook for a new ME game. ME:A was also ribbed for attempting to, sometimes hamfistedly, recapture the formula of the original games, right down to the identities and trope-y roles of your crew. Did we really need another Mass Effect 1? To be sure, even the wildly alien setting of a whole new galaxy offered precious little novelty. "The fact that Andromeda took place in its titular distant galaxy is a testament to how far BioWare had to reach to find a hook for a new ME game." And yet there’s the magic that always saves a BioWare game: the characters. I loved them, sometimes in spite of them, and this was a game that, for its faults, was alive with fascinating stories great and small. Like all of Mass Effect, it was a rollicking pulp adventure, silly in the best ways, with characters you wanted to see get out of just one more overly contrived jam on their way to becoming Big Galactic Heroes. It’s a comic book, and a pretty decent one at that. The ending of Andromeda teases us with the fate of the other arks, and with the hint of some threat deeper in the galaxy; you want to find out what happens next. Now, we may never know. As the BioWare Montreal team move away from the divisive title, it’s worth asking, too, what kind of community game developers have fostered around their games where they look at an incident like ME:A’s launch and wonder “am I next on the chopping block?” Morose metaphors abound; there’s real fear of the video game community’s unchecked, omnidirectional rage -- a rage so great that they seek to be capable of killing the very things they claim to love, hurting the very people who create them along the way. Waypoint’s Patrick Klepek argues that this comes from the very love that players have for the franchise, a love so deep that it becomes distorted into malevolence when reality inevitably fails to live up to the image of perfection one so adores. That’s certainly part of it -- we in the press have played our role in fostering that -- and studios have a responsibility to ask themselves whether the price of cultivating a fervent fandom is to train the next hate mob who threatens your devs’ families. Perhaps companies could stand to be more proactive and do something beyond posting a weak-kneed reminder to their fans that “attacking individuals, regardless of their involvement in the project, is never acceptable” after the latest abusive episode. But it’s hard to say, especially from this far on the outside, where to go from here. The people who worked on ME:A were hard done by both their company and their fans. Thus a perfectly good series that should’ve had a long life ahead of it now lies fallow. Is the point of creating a passionate community the fostering of a fan-base who will buy your games and help you make them better? Or to create a group that can stop those games from being made altogether? Katherine Cross is a Ph.D student in sociology who researches anti-social behavior online, and a video game critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications.Though she had to keep these letters secret from her pa, she openly shares not each one but some letters to her ma. She sits beside her and they both read it together. Her face lit up by her smile of the assurance of a mother-daughter oath to keep it between them. Her love letters did not come delivered by a mailman. She receives them hand-delivered in secret missions and sends her written messages back just the same way. Over those years, she has compiled her love letters in a rectangular-shaped album with ivory-white pages and its cover protectively covered with clear plastic, the same kind she uses for her school books. Inside her Love Letters album are pale stationeries and envelopes delicately arranged from the very first puppy-love to the treasures of hand-carried letters from several other young suitors. Dried stemmed roses and a little-sweet-nothing note on a silver foil candy wrap are noticeably marked as part of her crisp album. Miraculously in awe that her favourite Reynolds blue ball pen used in letter writing still sits inside the book. She remembers her ma telling her, “Don’t throw, return or burn the letters away. One day when you have children of your own, you can show them your asset.” “You can tell your kids, “Look how many suitors mommy had.” Two beautiful daughters shared her secrets of the love letters she had kept for years to be shared with them when they turned to teens. She tells her girls, “He loves me, he loves me yes.” The girls’ reactions were priceless and are worth the years of waiting to finally share it with them.…or if it is, it’s also dark and troubling. Much like the present, really, only different. Only worse. Such is the primary lesson of today’s exploding subgenre of dystopian young adult fiction. I hesitate to make too many assertions about which books started this undeniable trend, or which books are included, because there’s a certain squishiness to how the term itself is used these days. It’s sometimes used to describe books I’d class as post-apocalyptic (Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now, Janni Simner’s Bones of Faerie and—just out—Faerie Winter). Others have observed that it’s become more or less the YA field’s code word for “science fiction,” not so different from how “paranormal” is regularly used to mean any contemporary fantasy with a romance. This is a valid point; YA does seem to avoid the term science fiction. (Though I wonder how that will morph as YA SF books with less of a focus on dystopian elements become more common. And I believe they will. Beth Revis’ Across the Universe being a prime example; for all that there are hallmarks of dystopia there—the controlled society, the loss of individualism—it is primarily a generation ship story.) At any rate, argument over the term’s use or not, there are a steadily growing number of YA books that are indisputably dystopian in nature, with the wild success of The Hunger Games having kicked the trend into high gear. This makes perfect sense to me. Thinking back to my own high school years, I adored Farenheit 451, 1984, and Brave New World when we read them for class, and (not for class) Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. So I’d hold that teenagers and dystopian works have always gone together. Over the past decade and the explosion of YA itself as a field, I believe the renaissance (or birth, however you want to look at it) of this subgenre being written for teens began with Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy. If anyone’s unfamiliar with these books, they follow the journey of Tally Youngblood in a future version of our world where at 16 everyone is made “pretty” and goes to live in New Pretty Town. Of course, they aren’t just making you pretty, and there’s an organized resistance movement, and the beautiful ruins of our own dead society. The books hit the nerve center of our culture’s obsession with looks over substance, while exploring the danger of conformity and a host of related issues. In fact, many titles speak directly to historical strains of dystopian literature in SF. I relied on The Encylopedia of Science Fiction’s entry (written by Brian Stableford) as a primer. The entry talks about how “revolution against a dystopian regime” often turned into a plot with “an oppressive totalitarian state which maintains its dominance and stability by means of futuristic technology, but which is in the end toppled by newer technologies exploited by revolutionaries.” This seems to me to nearly describe Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games or Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother—although, in both those instances, it’s not so much new technology as the heroes effectively using the existing technology against the totalitarian regime. (Or, for Doctorow’s part, inventive new uses of that technology.) And, if Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker doesn’t allow for any major overthrow of the society’s leaders, it is undoubtedly exploring a distorted landscape, environmentally and socially, a direct callback to another primary strain of dystopia. The Encyclopedia talks about post-WWII dystopian writing that has “lost its faith in the probability of a better future, and the dystopian image was established as an actual pattern of expectation rather than as a literary warning device.” The grim world of Ship Breaker seems to be clearly speculative from our current reality, though Paolo has said elsewhere that part of the reason the novel is more hopeful than his work for adults is because teens still have a chance to improve things. All of these dark futures come standard with philosophical and political themes; all of them believe in the possibility for change. At the end of Laura Miller’s New Yorker essay about YA dystopians, she wondered if the anxieties showcased in most of the books aimed at teens are truer reflections of the ones their authors feel. While this may be a factor, I think most—the best—YA writers are tapped into what it feels like to be a teenager (something that really doesn’t change that much from decade to decade). So I suspect the core reason these books connect so well with teens—many of them even with the potential to be that holy grail of YA, appealing to girls and to boys—is that most of them are, at heart, about pulling apart the oppressive assumption and the unexplained authority, and then rebelling against it. Tearing it apart. In a world where choosing what to rebel against seems impossible for every generation (“What do you got?”), stories set in worlds where the decision is easy and justified will never lose their appeal. There’s this popular view of teenagers as intellectually lazy (because they text or something? I don’t know) and politically uninvolved. I’d argue that the popularity of dystopians exposes the lie beneath both these, well, lies. These novels may spring from the anxieties of older people, but they are cultural anxieties—and teens are also members of our culture. The beauty of well-aimed dystopia for teens is that it can potentially have a direct effect on what it’s arguing against, by speaking directly to the people best suited to alter the future. Maybe things don’t look so bleak after all. Gwenda Bond writes YA fantasy, among other things, and can be found at her blog and on Twitter.Joe Rogan, an American podcaster, UFC commentator, and host of the Joe Rogan Experience said on Twitter that UFC Featherweight champion Conor Mcgregor could force the UFC to accept bitcoin for his fights. If @TheNotoriousMMA keeps winning he could force the @UFC to start accepting Bitcoin. https://t.co/PpZ7x3ac6W — Joe Rogan (@joerogan) January 23, 2016 Conor Mcgregor, arguably the biggest superstar in the history of UFC has been driving the highest pay-per-views and gate sales for his past few fights. McGregor’s income for his last fight against the former Brazilian champion Jose Aldo totaled US$8 million, overtaking Ronda Rousey’s earnings-per-second record with a 13-second knockout win. The highly anticipated matchup against Rafael dos Anjos on March 5 is also expected to be the biggest fight in the lightweight division of the UFC and the promotion. Because of McGregor’s dominant fight record and popularity in the UFC, the promotion’s president Dana White and multi-billionaire Chairman/CEO Lorenzo Fertitta have been dealing with McGregor directly, offering premium pay-per-view cuts. Benefits of UFC Apart from cable television, UFC offers pay-per-view in the Google Play store, Apple App Store, UFC TV and UFC Fight Pass. UFC could possibly integrate bitcoin in the UFC TV platform, enabling international users to transact and purchase pay-per-views using bitcoin. Because of the limitations of traditional financial networks, many users often struggle to purchase or subscribe to UFC TV. Users in Korea example, have trouble purchasing pay-per-views due to the requirement of Shinhan Banking Group, Korea’s largest financial institution and credit card issuer, to download and transfer to another application before settling the transaction in the UFC.TV platform. The redirection of servers and financial applications often result a technological glitch, disallowing users to settle their transactions in the platform. The UFC promotion could also benefit from accepting bitcoin for its gate sales. According to UFCVIPExperience, the Official Ticket Package website of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, VIP tickets cost up to US$10,000, while basic tickets can be purchased at around US$60. Bitcoin, which requires a substantially lower transaction fee compared to traditional means of payments such as credit card and bank wiring, could save users and the UFC promotion around 4% in total costs. Some fighters like former top welterweight contender for Ultimate Fighting Championship Jon Fitch are already receiving a portion of their income in various cryptocurrencies, including bitcon. Fitch was introduced to bitcoin after the financial collapse in 2008, when he lost the majority of his savings. “After the 2008 financial collapse, I was left under $180,000 on my condo in San Jose. I didn’t want to keep supporting people who kind of make those things happen. So I started playing around with cryptocurrency. Now I see all the possible things it can be used for. Especially the blockchain and the technology behind that,” said Fitch. Since 2014, Joe Rogan expressed his optimism towards bitcoin, while conducting interviews with bitcoin experts including Andreas Antonopoulos. Over the past few years, Rogan emphasized the significance of the Bitcoin network’s ability to store various information in a transaction as an unalterable and irrefutable data set.In Taiwan, temples and stray cats are common sight, but one rarely sees both in the same place, except at Yi Tien Temple in New Taipei, where nine stray cats have made a home. The temple, built in 1965 in honor of the sea goddess Matsu, has become known not just a place of worship for residents of Sanchong, but also a shelter for cats in the neighborhood. Unlike most temples where it is unacceptable for animals to be wandering around, Yi Tien Temple provides a cozy refuge for cats. "It's not like we're picking up cats around the clock, it's just that it's impossible to sit and watch them die," Wang Hsiu-ying (王秀英), leader of the temple's Buddhist chanting group, told CNA. Wang, who has been serving as a volunteer at the temple since its opening, talks to the cats mostly in whispers. "You are hungry, aren't you," she said, picking up a 10-day old kitten to give it a bottle feed. Wang said she first started rescuing stray cats about 10 years ago when she found a female and five newborn kittens near the temple. Over time, she learned how to take care of cats and began buying large quantities of food for them from her own pocket. After a while, other volunteers and staff at the temple joined the effort. Now, there are usually eight or nine cats at the temple, lying on the altars, curled up inside the statues, or drinking water from the cups offered as tributes to the deities. (A woman prays while Tai Tai slumbers on a prayer stool) "Cats, like humans, are living beings," Wang said. "The deities won't be bothered by them." The temple's officer of general affairs, surnamed Tu (杜), said it is interesting to note that the number of cats at the temple always seems to remain roughly the same. "As you can see, cats come and go, they die, and it's like their lives are being extended this way," said Tu, who has taken on the task of dealing with the litter boxes. Whatever the reason for their constant numbers at the temple, the cats have become an attraction for visitors from home and abroad. Inside the temple there are pictures of "Yuan Yuan" the tabby, "Bao Bao" the tuxedo, "Tai Tai" the gray cat, and many others, taken by visitors, the temple staff and volunteers. Among them is the famous "New New," a black and white cat that died around 2009 and was renamed "Holy Cat" on a section of the temple's website that is dedicated to the cats. No one at the temple can recall what exactly was so special about New New, except that she was clever and one of the older strays at the temple. If worshippers did not put their dollar notes into the donation boxes properly, New New would push in the money with her paw, according to Chao Ching-fu (趙慶福), former chairman of the temple's management committee. On the temple's website, there is also a story about how New New survived a serious car accident while she was wearing a Matsu amulet. (New New and Yuan Yuan playing. Photo courtesy of Yi Tien Temple) Whether or not most people believe the stories, there is no doubt that the temple is a safe refuge for cats, which in turn attract people. "I came here because I saw the stories on TV," said Amy Liu, who works in the area and was visiting the temple to see the cats for the first time. "Cats are lovely creatures. I definitely would come back again to see them."December 13, 2016 Tournament to Follow Modified Swiss System Format; Teams Qualify for ELEAGUE Major with Three Victories ELEAGUE, the transformative esports organization created by Turner and WME \| IMG, will kick off the ELEAGUE Major Qualifier on Thursday, Dec. 15, at 10 a.m. ET, with live coverage from ELEAGUE Arena in Atlanta available via Twitch. Comprehensive multi-angle coverage of select matches will also be available via ELEAGUE’s Game Command player at live.eleague.com. The first match will feature Team Dignitas and teenage prodigy Emil ‘Magisk’ Reif facing off against CIS Minor runner-up Team Spirit of Russia. Here is a link to the match schedule for the first day of the Qualifier. Sixteen teams will participate in the ELEAGUE Major Qualifier including ELEAGUE Season 02 Champion OpTic Gaming and North American fan favorites Cloud9; European titans Ninjas in Pyjamas; ELEAGUE Season 01 Semifinalist mousesports and French squad G2 Esports; as well as Immortals, TyLoo and ELEAGUE Season 02 Semifinalist FaZe Clan. Tournament Format The ELEAGUE Major Qualifier will follow a modified Swiss system format with 16 teams split into four, four-team pools. The first two pools will consist of the bottom eight finishers from the previous Major. The third and fourth pools will be made up of the champions and runners-up, respectively, of the Europe, Asia and CIS Minors and the Americas Qualifier. Teams in each pool will be randomly matched up with teams from other pools, and will qualify for the ELEAGUE Major (Jan. 22-29, 2017) by earning three victories before being defeated three times. Likewise, teams will be eliminated upon reaching three losses before earning three victories. Round Best-of-One Matches Qualified Teams 1 Eight (0-0 vs. 0-0) 0 2 Four (1-0 vs. 1-0), Four (0-1 vs. 0-1) 0 3 Two (2-0 vs. 2-0), Four (1-1 vs. 1-1) & Two (0-2 vs. 0-2) 2 4 Three (2-1 vs. 2-1) & Three (1-2 vs. 1-2) 5 5 Three (2-2 vs. 2-2) 8 Talent Lineup Richard Lewis will return to anchor the ELEAGUE desk, joined by analysts Jason ‘Moses’ O’Toole and Duncan ‘Thorin’ Shields for pregame, halftime and postgame coverage. Three pairs of casters – Anders Blume & Auguste ‘Semmler’ Massonat; James Bardolph & Daniel ‘DDK’ Kapadia; and Henry Greer & Matthew ‘Sadokist’ Trivett – will take viewers through each Counter-Strike: Global Offensive play in real-time. Host Sue ‘Smix’ Lee will provide player interviews and reports on site. Here is a link to an image of the talent lineup for the Major Qualifier. ELEAGUE’s Game Command to Provide Multi-Angle Coverage of Select Qualifier Matches ELEAGUE’s Game Command, an innovative mosaic video player accessible via live.eleague.com, will allow fans to watch select live matches from the ELEAGUE Major Qualifier through a customizable interface with thousands of different viewing options. Fans will be able to choose between individual player views (up to four at a time); a complete team vantage point for either squad’s complete lineup of five players displayed; the observer feed; and a large version of the game map. More About ELEAGUE For the latest ELEAGUE updates, including schedules and live match stats, visit http://www.eleague.com/, its Facebook page (facebook.com/eleaguegaming) and Twitter account (@EL). -30-Center Tyler Seguin missed his second straight practice Thursday with what is being described as a muscle issue. Stars coach Lindy Ruff said he thought Seguin should be able to play Friday against Chicago, but couldn’t guarantee it. “We just decided to give him another day. He’s not quite where we need him,” Ruff said. “He should be OK for tomorrow, but not definitely.” Goaltender Kari Lehtonen, who missed Wednesday’s practice due to having some dental work done, was back on the ice Thursday and went through a full practice. Defenseman Aaron Rome, who suffered an undisclosed injury in a recent practice, was not on the ice again. Stars practice lineup Here’s how the Stars lined up in Thursday’s practice. With Tyler Seguin not practicing, Dustin Jeffrey again centered Jamie Benn and Valeri Nichushkin. Ray Whitney was back on the second line with Cody Eakin and Alex Chiasson after skating with Shawn Horcoff and Rich Peverley on Wednesday. Jamie Benn – Dustin Jeffrey – Valeri Nichushkin Ray Whitney – Cody Eakin – Alex Chiasson Erik Cole – Shawn Horcoff – Rich Peverley Antoine Roussel – Vernon Fiddler – Ryan Garbutt Brenden Dillon – Stephane Robidas Alex Goligoski – Trevor Daley Jordie Benn – Sergei Gonchar Kevin Connauton Kari Lehtonen Dan Ellis Not skating: Tyler Seguin (muscle), Aaron Rome (undisclosed) This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club. Mark Stepneski is an independent writer whose posts on DallasStars.com reflect his own opinions and do not represent official statements from the Dallas Stars. You can follow Mark on Twitter @StarsInsideEdge.The second major expansion for Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Fallen Ghosts, has been detailed. Ubisoft has announced the second expansion for Ghosts Recon: Wildlands. Called Fallen Ghosts, the add-on is set after the events of the main game. With the Santa Blanca Cartel now dismantled, civil war has erupted. The only military force in the country, the Unidad, enlists the help of volunteers to help restore order. The new special unit, called Los Extranjeros, is made up of former cartel members, mercenaries, veterans, and criminals from other countries. Los Extranjeros’ first item on the docket is tracking down and eliminating all American agents. The Ghosts must evacuate remaining CIA members and American civilians in the country. After getting shot down on their way to carry out this mission, the Ghosts find themselves stranded in the middle of the jungle facing elite soldiers. The soldiers hunting them come in four classes: Armoured: Equipped with heavy bulletproof plates, they are especially threatening in close combat. Equipped with heavy bulletproof plates, they are especially threatening in close combat. Elite Sniper: Geared up with an advanced movement detector, these Elite Snipers are able to spot far away targets, and never miss their shot. Geared up with an advanced movement detector, these Elite Snipers are able to spot far away targets, and never miss their shot. Jammer: With a jamming antenna directly in their backpack, they are able to neutralise drones and interfere with all electronic equipment. With a jamming antenna directly in their backpack, they are able to neutralise drones and interfere with all electronic equipment. Covert Ops: Equipped with a new prototype cloaking device, that makes them almost invisible, and a powerful crossbow, they give a new meaning to the word “Ghost.” Fallen Ghosts adds a new campaign with 15 new missions. The ultimate goal is to take down four new bosses. The expansion will start you with a new level 30 character already equipped with all the main skills. Fall Ghosts raises the level cap to 35 to allow you to unlock nine new skills. The expansion also adds six new weapons, including a crossbow that can fire explosive bolts. The game’s advanced, and expert difficulties have received some tweaks, too, to make things more challenging. Fallen Ghosts will be available to season pass holders on May 30, and standalone on June 6 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.Toddler incubates nest of deadly snakes Updated A toddler in Townsville in north Queensland has incubated a nest of one of the world's most deadly species of snake - in his bedroom closet. Kyle Cumming, 3, found the snake eggs several weeks ago while playing in his backyard and put them in his wardrobe, media reports say. On Monday, the boy's mother discovered seven squirming baby snakes inside a takeaway container she had given him after he found the eggs. Eastern brown snakes are second only to the inland taipan as the most venomous snakes on Earth, and are responsible for most lethal snake bites in Australia. Queensland Museum information officer and snake expert Steve Wilson said despite the age of the snakes, if Kyle had been bitten the result could have been deadly. "Any venomous snake, as soon as it hatches, has all the apparatus to deliver venom because the first thing they have to do is catch and kill prey - it's a perfect replica of an adult snake," he said. "Brown snakes are highly venomous and a baby brown could potentially kill or at least seriously harm a human being - adult or child. "If he had played around with them, which a little boy would, there's a chance they would have bitten him and there's a real chance that he may have been very seriously harmed or killed by them." 'Very lucky' Mr Wilson urged the need to instil in children that snakes of any sort are never to be touched. "You've got to impress on children to steer clear of any handling of any snakes or snake-like animals, not necessarily to be feared but always treated with a great deal of caution," he said. "For a little kid scooping them out, he's either very lucky that when he picked them up he kept them the right way up or he got them very early in their development when it wasn't too critical." Kyle's mother Donna Sim told News Limited she did not think any more of the eggs until she found the container full of hatchlings. "I was pretty shocked, particularly because I don't like snakes," Ms Sim said. But Ms Sim's discovery could have saved the animals' lives, as if they had remained forgotten in the wardrobe they would have died. "If they hadn't been found they would have been doomed - doomed and entombed," Mr Wilson said. It was reported Ms Sim and her son took the container to nearby Billabong sanctuary, where wildlife rangers were to release the reptiles into the wild. Topics: reptiles, animals, animal-science, science-and-technology, townsville-4810, qld, australia First postedAn image purportedly showing a tweet sent out by Donald Trump on 10 August 2016 in which the Republican presidential nominee made disparaging comments about the people of Utah has been circulated on Twitter: However, the above-displayed tweet was not posted by Donald Trump. For starters, it does not appear on his Twitter timeline. Although some viewers claimed that Trump deleted this message shortly after posting it, this is highly unlikely: the original was supposedly retweeted close to 1,000 times, yet there are no links to that initial tweet. Furthermore, genuine tweets from the @RealDonaldTrump Twitter account are accompanied by a blue verified symbol. Although this symbol can be digitally added into fake tweets, as was the case with a recent fake Tim Kaine tweet, there’s no reason for someone to digitally remove this symbol from a genuine tweet. It’s likely that this image was created with a web site such as LetMeTweetThatForYou.com, which allows users to easily fabricate fake tweets:This is a guest post written by Nikki Moungo. Nikki is a self-employed, work-at-home mother to three inspiring children. … As a bereaved mother, my heart goes out to Ann Marie Devaney and what she is experiencing since the death of her son. A word exists to describe the loss of a spouse: Widow. There is no word to describe the loss of a child, because no words can begin to convey the sheer gravity of what we parents experience. It’s an all-consuming loss, and that’s an understatement. Every fiber of your being is stretched beyond imagination. You think of all the ways you could build a time machine. Denial takes center stage. “It’s not over until I say it’s over! I simply refuse!” repeats like a mantra in your head. One month after my son turned twenty-one, I received “The Call.” I don’t remember the flight. I don’t remember packing my suitcase. All I remember is trying to make it to the city he was in as quickly as possible. When it came time to remove his life support, in spite of my grief, I knew that having the chance to be with him in his final moments was not a “luxury” all parents in my position were afforded. I was able to lay down on his hospital bed with him. I took my grown, young, adult son in my arms, just as I did when he was a baby. I laid my head on his chest and listened to his healthy heart continue to beat for nearly fifteen minutes after life support was removed. Each beat brought with it a ray of hope… but then his heartbeats slowed, until the monitor flat-lined with it’s macabre long beep. Still, I lay there, holding him, crying, angry. I didn’t want to let go. I remembered the day he was born, how I held him and felt this flood of pure unadulterated love flow though my body, but there was something else, too. Something I wasn’t expecting. This maniacal fear resonated through my entire being. He was my reason for living. He had instantly become “everything that was good and pure and that mattered.” I fully understood it was my job to keep him safe. I realized I now stood to lose something that I didn’t have to lose before. I stood to lose the most important thing in the entire world, and it haunted me, as it does many parents when holding their newborn. So fresh, so innocent, you instantly feel an intense desire to protect them at all costs. You hope that harm will never befall them, because you know it will be an insurmountable loss. Unfortunately, this is not the way the world works. Tragedy doesn’t know or care who you are or what you believe in. Death isn’t picky. I say all this because I understand and empathize with
oko Selden. After carefully parsing the two-part sentence, she concluded that the original does not seem to say what it has always been taken to mean. The “traditional” interpretation may have been deliberately encouraged, she suggested, or the existing idea led to that reading. I can readily support the latter possibility from Japan ’s long military tradition. Col. Yamazaki Yasuyo Commander of the Attu Garrison Col. Yamazaki Yasuyo, in any event, knew exactly what the article meant when he cited it in his wire, on May 29, 1943: Under ferocious attack by enemy land, sea, and air, the two battalions to the fore were both almost smashed. We have barely been able to sustain this day. I arranged so the wounded and the ill in the field hospital were disposed of, the light ones by themselves, the serious ones by the medics. I made the civilian employees who were noncombatants each take up a weapon, form a unit, both army and navy combined, and follow the attack unit. We had them make a resolve [to die], lest we together suffer the shame of being taken prisoner while alive. It is not that there is no other way; I simply did not wish to sully the soldiers’ last moments. We will carry out a charge with the heroic spirits [of those killed in battle]. [13] Other than Japan ’s military tradition, there were a few factors that may have made the notion of gyokusai more or less acceptable, rather than condemnable as an outright military failure. Going to war was long equated with meeting death. Many military songs at the time attest to this. Most important among them is Umi Yukaba (When Seagoing). The Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) in 1937 commissioned Nobutoki Kiyoshi to compose it. The lyrics were an ancient military vow that Otomo no Yakamochi (716?-785) incorporated in his poem in the Man’yoshu (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves), the oldest extant anthology of Japanese poetry, and went: Umi yukaba mizuku kabane, etc.: When seagoing, we might become watery corpses, mountain-going, corpses for grasses to grow from. Our wish is to die by our Sovereign’s side with no looking back.[14] This song, which was often sung in gatherings to send soldiers off to the front, went on to be known as a “semi-national anthem.”[15] Another song, which is said to have become the most popular, was also composed in 1937. It said, in its first stanza, For victory, I pledged, and gallantly left the country. Without exploits, I can’t die.... and in the third, My father, appearing in a dream, urged me, “Come home in death.” “Come home in death” (Shinde kaere), to paraphrase, means, “Fight with resolve to die on the battlefield and come home only as a soul.” These words are from “The Song of Bivouac” (Roei no Uta [16]). The lyrics were selected from those submitted by ordinary people in a 1937 newspaper contest. It was the year in which the Nanjing Massacre occurred. There was another factor. Despite the Geneva Convention, “take no prisoners” was the prevailing practice at the time – not just in the Japanese but in the Chinese military as well. The US military, too, largely followed it in practice, if not as a matter of policy. “We of course do not expect to return alive” (Seira motoyori seikan o gosezu) – so vowed Ebashi Shinshiro, representing all 25,000 university students, on October 21, 1943, at the ceremony in the Meiji Jingu Gaien stadium, in Tokyo, to send them off to the military.[17] Earlier that year, the Tojo cabinet had raised the eligible draft age to 45 and then abolished draft exemptions for university students. Ebashi was a student at the Faculty of Literature of the Imperial University of Tokyo. Prime Minister Tojo himself gave the farewell speech. Tojo Hideki was forced out as prime minister following the defeat at Saipan, which included 5,000 suicides, many among civilians. There evidently was military coercion, though coercion in that milieu doesn’t carry much meaning. It was, in the first place, a total war; civilians were regarded as part of the war effort. Then there was the frenzy and hysteria created by the furies of war: bombing, bombardment, strafing, machine-gunning. “The mass suicides by deliberate drowning or by rushing futilely against an overwhelming force, were, from the evidence, due to hysteria and despair [rather than “fanatic militarism”],” Helen Mears, in her 1948 book Mirror for Americans: Japan, concluded after cataloguing the myths being created and perpetuated by the New York Times editorialists and others even as their own reporters were saying different things. “There is strong reason to believe that the chief motive in many of the mass suicides was fear of what we would do to them should they surrender,” she went on to note. “Japanese propaganda against us (like ours against them) emphasized our savagery and ruthlessness as a foe. It is significant that we responded to such propaganda by killing more Japanese.”[18] This brings us to the Battle of Okinawa, the biggest gyokusai as far as the military clashes to which the term is applied are concerned. To quash the Japanese forces defending the fragile archipelago, the U.S. amassed 550,000 soldiers with a vast armada of air and sea power. New York Times reporter W. H. Lawrence filed a report on the battle in June 1945, using blunt language that his successors at the newspaper 60 years later would not imagine deploying in reporting from Iraq, even though a vastly superior power does exactly the same thing: “Stated in its simplest terms we were able to announce the victory of Okinawa because the enemy had run out of caves and boulders from which to fight and we were nearly out of Japanese to kill.”[19] A later official U.S. account put the number of Japanese soldiers killed in action at 110,070, with 7,401 captured. In addition, an estimated 100,000 civilians, between one quarter and one third of the Okinawa population, were killed. Island people called the American assault “an iron storm” – a series of “shock and awe,” if you will, that lasted for three months. The government structure quickly disintegrated [20], the military command system rapidly splintered. With the idea of death over retreat or surrender prevailing, it would have been a miracle had no Japanese soldiers forced civilians to kill themselves or killed them outright in that chaos and madness. This substantially expanded version of his column, “Fatal deliverance from an ‘iron storm,’” which appeared in The Japan Times on October 29, 2007, was written for Japan Focus. Posted at Japan Focus on February 9, 2008. Hiroaki Sato is a translator and essayist in New York. His most recent book is Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology. For other articles on the Battle of Okinawa, gyokusai and Japanese historical memory see1. Compulsory Mass Suicide, the Battle of Okinawa, and Japan's Textbook Controversy Aniya Masaaki, The Okinawa Times, and Asahi Shinbun. Translated by Kyoko Selden2. Shattering Jewels: 110,000 Okinawans Protest Japanese State Censorship of Compulsory Group Suicides, Kamata Satoshi, Shukan Kinyobi translated by Steve Rabson. Tojo Hideki rescued after suicide attempt Notes: [1] Hiroaki Sato, “Foreseeing the future – and ignoring it,” Japan Times, January 26, 2004. [2] Most such words Japan adopted came from ancient Chinese texts. Gyokusai comes from a passage from the History of North Qi: “A great man might as well die as a jewel shatters; he cannot be like a tile left untouched.” North Qi was a Chinese Dynasty that lasted briefly, from 550 to 577. [3] The Daihon’ei (Imperial Headquarters) announcement cited in the Japanese Wikipedia article on gyokusai, as well as this site on the Attu gyokusai. [4] Dates of battles and numbers of casualties here are mostly taken from Wikipedia (Japanese and English) and other readily available sources. They can differ from site to site, from one account to another. [5] Robert Sharrod, reporting from Iwo Jima for Life, wrote: “The island had been bombed for 74 straight days before D-Day. In January it had been thoroughly shelled by cruisers and battleships. For three days prior to D-Day many cruisers, battleships and destroyers poured more than 8,000 tons of high explosives on the eight square miles of Iwo Jima” (Reporting World War II: Part Two: American Journalism 1944-1946, Library of America, 1995, pp. 634-638). This shows that counting the duration of a battle from the day of landing makes little sense. [6] Ooka Shohei’s Leyte Senki (Chuo Koron Sha, 1974), Vol. 3, p. 288. Ooka, a survivor of the Battle of the Philippines who went on to write such novels as Fire on the Plain and Taken Captive, wrote the detailed account of the Battle of Leyte Gulf “for the soldiers who died.” [7] The proper term was “special attack force” (tokubetsu kogekitai, abbr. tokkotai). The Navy’s initial unit was named Shimpu, the sinified reading of a set of two Chinese characters (Chinese: Shenfeng), but the news accounts soon started giving it in its Japanese reading, Kamikaze, which stuck. [8] Referring to Vice Adm. Kurita Takeo’s decision to abandon the battle in the Leyte Gulf midway, Ooka observed: “... when you really think about it, [Kurita’s failure to follow through the operation plans] corresponds to the inability of Japan as a whole to carry out, in August 1945, the [government’s call for] 100-million gyokusai.” Leyte Senki, Vol. 1, p. 259. [9] The words of Vice Adm. Kusaka Ryunosuke, chief-of-staff of the Combined Fleet. See, for example, Yoshida Mitsuru’s life of Ito Seiichi, Teitoku Ito Seiichi no Shogai (Bungei Shunju, 1977), p. 161. Chapter 11 of his book is an attempt to puzzle out the “irrationality” of the action. Yoshida, a survivor of the sinking of the Yamato, wrote Requiem for Battleship Yamato. [10] Hayashi Shigeru, Taiheiyo Senso (Chuo Koron Sha, 1967; Vol. 25 of Nihon no Rekishi), pp. 340-342. His Majesty’s Aide-de-Camp Jo Eiichiro’s diary records the Showa Emperor’s concern about the fate of Attu. See Hando Kazutoshi’s compilation Showa-shi Tansaku, Vol. 6 (Chikuma Shobo, 2007), pp. 232-241. [11] In Bowers’ talk at JETRO New York in the fall of 1995 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Japan ’s surrender. Sato’s translation of the talk in the November 1995 issue of OCS News. [12] Senjinkun and Shirane Takayuki’s account cited in full in Hando Kazutoshi’s Showa-shi Tansaku, Vol. 5, pp.143-157. [13] The Internet site on the Attu gyokusai cited in note 3 carries Yamazaki’s wireless message in its entirety (with a couple of orthographic errors). If the message cited here reproduces the original, Hayashi, quoting it, p. 341, toned it down considerably. His Majesty’s Aide-de-Camp Jo (see note 10), noting the gyokusai in his entry on May 30, 1943, added a parenthetical remark: “In recent times, ‘moving stories’ from the frontline, in many cases, appear [intended] to make up for operational deficiencies.” Jo was killed in battle as captain of the aircraft carrier Chiyoda on October 25, 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. In his oral recollections of the war, Ooka Shohei said that the Imperial Guard Infantry Regiment, to which he was assigned after being drafted at age 35, despised the Senjinkun in general and Article 8, Part II, in particular. Ooka, Senso (Iwanami Shoten, 2007; originally 1970), p. 60. [14] Hiroaki Sato, Legends of the Samurai (Overlook Press, 1995), pp. 17-18. Umi Yukaba can readily be heard on the Internet. Click here for a youtube video. [15] Technically, Japan had no national anthem until the Japanese government recently made Kimigayo the official anthem. [16] Shigure Otowa’s Nihon Kayoshu (Shakai Shiso Sha, 1963). p. 295. Roei no Uta can also be heard on the Internet. Click here for a youtube video. [17] Hando’s Showa-shi Tansaku, Vol. 6, pp. 257-259. [18] Helen Mears, Mirror for Americans: Japan (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1948), p. 81. [19] Mears, p. 88.Security Analyst Tony Shaffer: Obama White House Behind Mike Flynn Phone Call Leaks (Video) Former CIA analyst and retired U.S. Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer told FOX Business Network to be careful what they ask for. Democrats want an investigation into the Mike Flynn phone calls with Russia. Shaffer says the leaks will lead back to the Barack Obama White House. Tony Shaffer: I would put this right at the feet of John Brennan and Jim Clapper and I would go so far as to say the Obama White House was directly involved before they left. Ben Rhodes and those folks… The Democrats are behind this and some of the Republicans are involved with the leaks. So I say ‘Bring it on!’ Via FOX Business Network:breakdown of White House salaries was released late Friday afternoon, detailing the number of taxpayer dollars that pay the salaries of the known white nationalists Donald Trump chooses to employ, including Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Sebastian Gorka. Bannon, architect of the “alt right” movement promoting white male supremacy that propelled Trump to the White House, was tapped by Trump as his Chief Strategist, occupying the highest levels of access and influence within the White House. Bannon receives $179,700 from the American public to hold this position. But that’s not the only source of influence for Bannon, who received special dispensation to continue running his white nationalist website from within the White House. Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller is another holdover from Trump’s racist campaign who has known ties to avowed white nationalists and is viewed by them as an ally in the movement. Miller is also paid $179,700 from taxpayers for his work delivering Trump’s message, including the famously despotic declaration that Trump’s power “ will not be questioned.” Bannon and Miller are regularly cited as leaders on the most xenophobic and authoritarian pieces of Trump’s agenda, including the unconstitutional Muslim ban Rounding up the total is Sebastian Gorka, an actual Nazi sympathizer and member of the Hungarian far-right group known as Vitézi Rend, which was established by the anti-Semitic leader of Hungary who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. Sebastian Gorka is paid $155,000 to serve as Trump’s Deputy Assistant and Strategist, a title he almost lost when his Nazi ties became public — before intervention from Bannon saved his job and his taxpayer salary. That brings our total to $359,555 in taxpayer dollars being funneled to men we know are advocating a white supremacist agenda within the White House walls.The Mantra-Rock Dance poster by Harvey W. Cohen (created December 1966) The Mantra-Rock Dance was a counterculture music event held on January 29, 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco.[1] It was organized by followers of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) as an opportunity for its founder, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, to address a wider public.[2] It was also a promotional and fundraising effort for their first center on the West Coast of the United States.[3][4] The Mantra-Rock Dance featured some of the most prominent Californian rock groups of the time, such as the Grateful Dead[5][6] and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin,[7] as well as the then relatively unknown Moby Grape.[8][9] The bands agreed to appear with Prabhupada and to perform for free; the proceeds were donated to the local Hare Krishna temple.[3] The participation of countercultural leaders considerably boosted the event's popularity; among them were the poet Allen Ginsberg, who led the singing of the Hare Krishna mantra onstage along with Prabhupada, and LSD promoters Timothy Leary and Augustus Owsley Stanley III.[3][10] The Mantra-Rock Dance concert was later called "the ultimate high"[4][11] and "the major spiritual event of the San Francisco hippie era."[3] It led to favorable media exposures for Prabhupada and his followers,[12] and brought the Hare Krishna movement to the wider attention of the American public.[10] The 40th anniversary of the Mantra-Rock Dance was commemorated in 2007 in Berkeley, California.[13] Background [ edit ] A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (also referred to as "Bhaktivedanta Swami" or "Prabhupada"), a Gaudiya Vaishnava sannyasi and teacher, arrived in New York City from his native India in 1965 and "caught the powerful rising tide" of a counterculture that was fascinated with his homeland and open to new forms of "consciousness-expanding spirituality."[14] After establishing his first American temple in New York City at 26 Second Avenue, Prabhupada requested his early follower Mukunda Das[15][nb 1] and his wife Janaki Dasi to open a similar ISKCON center on the West Coast of the United States.[16][17][18] Mukunda and Janaki met up with friends from college, who would later come to be known as Shyamasundar Das, Gurudas, Malati Dasi, and Yamuna Dasi. Teaming up with them, Mukunda rented a storefront in the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury neighborhood,[19][20] which at that time was turning into the hub of the hippie counterculture, and stayed to take care of the developing new center.[16][21] Preparation and promotion [ edit ] To raise funds, gain supporters for the new temple, and to popularize Prabhupada's teachings among the hippie and countercultural audience of the Haight-Ashbury scene, the team decided to hold a charitable rock concert and invited Prabhupada to attend.[4] Despite his position as a Vaishnava sannyasi and some of his New York followers objecting to what they saw as an inappropriate invitation of their guru to a place full of "amplified guitars, pounding drums, wild light shows, and hundreds of drugged hippies,"[22] Prabhupada agreed to travel from New York to San Francisco and take part in the event.[10][nb 2] Using their acquaintance with Rock Scully, manager of the Grateful Dead, and Sam Andrew, founding member and guitarist of the Big Brother and the Holding Company – who were among the most prominent rock bands in California at the time [5][6][7]– Shyamasundar and Gurudas secured their consent to perform for charity at the concert, charging only the "musicians' union minimum" of $250.[9][23][24] Malati Dasi happened to hear Moby Grape, a relatively unknown group at the time, and she convinced the other team members to invite the band to play at the concert as well.[25][nb 3] Another leading countercultural figure, the beatnik poet Allen Ginsberg, was a supporter of Prabhupada. He had met the swami earlier in New York[16] and assisted him in extending his United States visa.[26][nb 4] Despite disagreeing with many of Prabhupada's required prohibitions, especially the ones pertaining to drugs and promiscuity, Ginsberg often publicly sang the Hare Krishna mantra, which he had learned in India. He made the mantra part of his philosophy[27] and declared that it "brings a state of ecstasy."[28][nb 5] He was glad that Prabhupada, an authentic swami from India, was now trying to spread the chanting in America. Along with other countercultural ideologues like Timothy Leary, Gary Snyder, and Alan Watts, Ginsberg hoped to incorporate Prabhupada and the chanting of Hare Krishna into the hippie movement.[nb 6] Ginsberg agreed to take part in the Mantra-Rock Dance concert and to introduce the swami to the Haight-Ashbury hippie community.[27][29] As for the choice of venue, the team considered both the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom, finally settling on the latter as its impresario, Chet Helms, appeared to be "more sympathetic to the spirit of the concert"[30] and agreed to let it be used for a charity event. Artist Harvey Cohen, one of the first ISKCON followers, designed a Stanley Mouse-inspired promotional poster with a picture of Prabhupada, details of the event, and a request to "bring cushions, drums, bells, cymbals."[31] To generate interest among members of the countercultural community of Haight-Ashbury, Mukunda published an article entitled "The New Science" in the San Francisco Oracle, a local underground newspaper specializing in alternative spiritual and psychedelic topics.[32] He wrote: The Haight-Ashbury district is soon to be honored by the presence of His Holiness, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, who will conduct daily classes in the Bhagavad Gita, discussions, chanting, playing instruments, and devotional dancing in a small temple in the neighborhood.... Swamiji's use of the Hare Krishna Mantra is already known throughout the United States. Swamiji's chanting and dancing is more effective than Hatha or Raja Yoga or listening to Ali Akbar Khan on acid or going to a mixed media rock dance.[33] Ginsberg helped plan and organize a reception for Prabhupada, who was scheduled to arrive from New York on January 17, 1967. When the swami arrived at the San Francisco Airport, 50 to 100 hippies chanting "Hare Krishna" greeted him in the airport lounge with flowers.[16] A few days later the San Francisco Chronicle published an article entitled "Swami in the Hippie Land" in which Prabhupada answered the question, "Do you accept hippies in your temple?" by saying, "Hippies or anyone – I make no distinctions. Everyone is welcome."[34] Event [ edit ] San Francisco Oracle, January 1967 The Mantra-Rock Dance listing in the, January 1967 The Mantra-Rock Dance was scheduled on Sunday evening, January 29, 1967 – a day of the week that Chet Helms deemed odd and unlikely to generate substantial attendance.[35] Admission was fixed at $2.50[3] and limited to door sales.[36] Despite the apprehensions of the organizers, by the beginning of the concert at 8 PM an audience of nearly 3,000 had gathered at the Avalon Ballroom,[37] filling the hall to its capacity.[38] Latecomers had to wait outside for vacancies in order to enter.[39] Participants were treated on prasad (sanctified food) consisting of orange slices[9] and, regardless of the prohibition on drugs, many in the crowd were smoking marijuana and taking other intoxicants.[37][40] However, the atmosphere in the hall was peaceful.[38] Strobe lights and a psychedelic liquid light show, along with pictures of Krishna and the words of the Hare Krishna mantra, were projected onto the walls.[41] A few Hells Angels were positioned in the back of the stage as the event's security guards.[9] Prabhupada's biographer Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami thus describes the Mantra-Rock Dance audience: Almost everyone who came wore bright or unusual costumes: tribal robes, Mexican ponchos, Indian kurtas, "God's-eyes," feathers, and beads. Some hippies brought their own flutes, lutes, gourds, drums, rattles, horns, and guitars. The Hell's Angels, dirty-haired, wearing jeans, boots, and denim jackets and accompanied by their women, made their entrance, carrying chains, smoking cigarettes, and displaying their regalia of German helmets, emblazoned emblems, and so on – everything but their motorcycles, which they had parked outside.[38] pictured) served as the Mantra-Rock Dance venue. Photo: March 2011 The Avalon Ballroom ) served as the Mantra-Rock Dance venue. The evening opened with Prabhupada's followers – men in "Merlin gowns"[41] and women in saris – chanting Hare Krishna to an Indian tune, followed by Moby Grape.[41] When the swami himself arrived at 10 PM, the crowd of hippies rose to their feet to greet him respectfully with applause and cheers.[4] Gurudas, one of the event's organizers, describes the effect that Prabhupada's arrival had on the audience, "Then Swami Bhaktivedanta entered. He looked like a Vedic sage, exalted and otherworldly. As he advanced towards the stage, the crowd parted and made way for him, like the surfer riding a wave. He glided onto the stage, sat down and began playing the kartals."[9] Ginsberg welcomed Prabhupada onto the stage and spoke of his own experiences chanting the Hare Krishna mantra. He translated the meaning of the Sanskrit term mantra as "mind deliverance" and recommended the early-morning kirtans at the local Radha-Krishna temple "for those coming down from LSD who want to stabilize their consciousness upon reentry," calling the temple's activity an "important community service." He introduced Prabhupada and thanked him for leaving his peaceful life in India to bring the mantra to New York's Lower East Side, "where it was probably most needed."[3][4][42] After a short address by Prabhupada, Ginsberg sang "Hare Krishna" to the accompaniment of sitar, tambura, and drums, requesting the audience to "[j]ust sink into the sound vibration, and think of peace."[9] Then Prabhupada stood up and led the audience in dancing and singing, as the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Moby Grape joined the chanting and accompanied the mantra with their musical instruments.[43][44][45] The audience eagerly responded, playing their own instruments and dancing in circles. The group chanting continued for almost two hours, and concluded with the swami's prayers in Sanskrit while the audience bowed down on the floor. After Prabhupada left, Janis Joplin took the stage, backed by Big Brother and the Holding Company, and continued the event with the songs "The House of the Rising Sun" and "Ball 'n' Chain" late into the night.[9][46] Reaction and effect [ edit ] The LSD pioneer Timothy Leary, who made an appearance at the Mantra-Rock Dance along with Augustus Owsley Stanley III and even paid the entrance fee,[3] pronounced the event a "beautiful night".[40] Later Ginsberg called the Mantra-Rock Dance "the height of Haight-Ashbury spiritual enthusiasm, the first time that there had been a music scene in San Francisco where everybody could be part of it and participate,"[4] while historians referred to it as "the ultimate high"[4][11] and "the major spiritual event of the San Francisco hippy era."[3] Moby Grape's performance at the Mantra-Rock Dance catapulted the band onto the professional stage. They subsequently had gigs with The Doors at the Avalon Ballroom and at the "First Love Circus" at the Winterland Arena, and were soon signed to a contract with Columbia Records.[8] August 2007 The Mantra-Rock Dance's 40th anniversary commemoration poster. The Mantra-Rock Dance helped raise around $2,000 for the temple and resulted in a massive influx of visitors at the temple's early morning services. Prabhupada's appearance at the Mantra-Rock Dance made such a deep impact on the Haight-Ashbury community that he became a cult hero to most of its groups and members, regardless of their attitudes towards his philosophy or the life restrictions that he taught.[47] The Hare Krishna mantra and dancing became adopted in some ways by all levels of the counterculture, including the Hells Angels,[48] and provided it with a "loose commonality" and reconciliation,[47] as well as with a viable alternative to drugs.[49] As the Hare Krishna movement's popularity with the Haight-Ashbury community continued to increase, Prabhupada and followers chanting and distributing prasad became a customary sight at important events in the locale.[10][37] At the same time, as the core group of his followers continued to expand and become more serious about the spiritual discipline, Prabhupada conducted new Vaishnava initiations and named the San Francisco temple "New Jagannatha Puri" after introducing the worship of Jagannath deities of Krishna there.[19] Small replicas of these deities immediately became a "psychedelic hit" worn by many hippies on strings around their necks.[50] Since the Mantra-Rock Dance brought the Hare Krishna movement to the wider attention of the American public,[10] Prabhupada's increased popularity attracted the interest of the mainstream media. Most notably, he was interviewed on ABC's The Les Crane Show and lectured on the philosophy of Krishna consciousness on a KPFK radio station program hosted by Peter Bergman.[51] Prabhupada's followers also spoke about their activities on the San Francisco radio station KFRC.[52] On August 18, 2007, a free commemorative event dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Mantra-Rock Dance was held at the People's Park in Berkeley, California.[13] Notes [ edit ] See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Coordinates:Oh dear In a salty exchange with our friends over at Eurogamer, Destiny's creative director, Luke Smith, has defended the price of the upcoming expansion, The Taken King. To access all the exclusive content available in The Taken King, you'll need to buy the new Collector's Editon, which will set you back £80/$80. It essentially means you'll end up buying the base game AND the two other DLC packs again. For no reason. When asked if he could understand why fans are "confused" that Bungie wants fans to buy stuff they already own - even acknowledging that the developer had "set some stuff aside for that edition specifically to really make it appeal to fans who have engaged with the game already" - Smith said: "Yeah, I can totally empathise with those people. But the Collector's Edition is a pretty cool package for people who want to pursue that stuff." "Purchasers get a big, rich campaign. Fully voiced cinematics and the story of what happens when an angry alien god wages war on a solar system, all with a satisfying conclusion. You also have a new subclass to pursue and unlock. We also have a bunch of new strikes - we're not yet talking about how many - and a new raid. We're showing two new PVP modes and four PVP maps this week, and it's a fairly safe bet we're not done yet showing things off. So I'm fairly excited about the value proposition. We're calling this a major expansion because it is. We're giving people a whole new place to go, that new destination..." But it's the same price as the base game, pressed Eurogamer. "All I can do is answer that with the same thing I just gave you... We're really comfortable with the value we're giving to players this autumn. I believe that once we begin to share more, players will be even more excited. And for existing players it also comes with the Founder's pack with a new Sparrow, shader and emblem." When asked how Bungie justify the price point outside of the US (in the UK, it'll be £40, which roughly converts to $63), Smith couldn't talk about anything other than American Dollars as British Pounds are "just foreign" to him. The Collector's Edition will feature three emotes unavailable to players who do not pick up the £80 bundle. Though EG did an admirable job pressing for a reason as to why Bungie steadfastly refuses to offer the content to those who had already invested their money -- and time -- in Destiny's world, Smith said it was about "the players assessment of the value for the content" and insisted that if he "fired up a video right now and showed you the emotes" we would "throw money at the screen". He closed on saying that while Bungie was "reading the forums and the reactions to this week's announcements" and will "continue to discuss player feedback with respect to the game and Collector's Edition content", he had "nothing to announce today". For more, check out the interview in full, although steel yourself - it's a painful read. If you want to buy it, The Taken King launches on September 15. I'm genuinely not sure I want it anymore, though. You? You are logged out. Login \| Sign upRed and black mangrove are shown in this May 21, 2015 handout photo provided by Miami-Dade County June 29, 2105, among debris from shoreline cleared for land to be used for the 2016 Miami International Boat Show in Miami, Florida. REUTERS/Miami-Dade County/Handout via Reuters By Zachary Fagenson MIAMI, Fla. (Reuters) - New revelations that a long strip of protected mangrove trees were illegally razed amid preparations for the 2016 Miami International Boat Show has outraged Florida environmentalists. The lost trees, critical to the marine ecosystem, were hacked away in mid-May by a Miami city contractor in advance of the five-day show expected to draw about 100,000 attendees and 1,500 boats. Environmental activists said in a letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that staging the show in an environmentally sensitive region could violate a number of federal laws including the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. The federal agency is currently weighing permits for the boat show, slated to be held next February at the Miami Marine Stadium. "You've got sea grasses, corals, manatees, all sorts of protected birds," said Mayra Peña Lindsay, mayor of nearby Key Biscayne, one of the show's staunchest opponents. The affluent city, on an island just outside Miami city limits, has hired a public relations firm to demand the National Marine Manufacturers Association move its event elsewhere. But the city of Miami, which has agreed to replant the trees that could take more than five years to grow to full size, continues to support the boat show. "It was an isolated incident," said Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado. The more than 300 feet (90 meters) of mangroves were razed from a beach abutting the Miami Marine Stadium, a historic yet long dormant seaside venue that once hosted ocean races and concert performances on floating stages. Nonprofit organizations and the city of Miami have been working for years to revive the stadium, which was shuttered after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Miami earlier this year agreed to spend $16 million on an extensive overhaul. The boat show, celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2016, also committed several million to improving the structure. "Boaters are some of the original conservationists," said Ellen Hopkins, spokeswoman for the National Marine Manufacturers Association. (Editing by Letitia Stein and Sandra Maler)Model-View-Intent is the newest design pattern on Android. It was inspired by Cycle.js by André Staltz and adopted to Android world by Hannes Dorfmann. This article introduces MVI pattern and shows you how to build a basic Hello World app using MVI. You may ask, why apply an architectural pattern to such a simple app with no real-world application? There are a couple of other more complex MVI examples out there (see the Recommended Reading section below) an we all learn differently. For me personally seeing a basic example like this is more likely to give me that aha moment when exploring something new. I hope that this article will help you grasp the basics of MVI and inspire you to dive deeper and apply the pattern in more complex real-world apps. Kotlin source code for this article is on Github. MVI with Mosby We’ll use MVI library from Mosby. This lets us concentrate on a big picture such as MVI concepts and business logic rather than dealing with non-trivial RxJava API and memory management. With Mosby you don’t have to worry about wiring your View and Presenter to handle rotation and prevent memory leaks. Model-View-Intent You’ve seen Model and View before in other patterns such as MVC, MVP and MVVP. But the reactive nature of MVI makes things quite different: Model represents a state (data to be displayed, visibility of your View widgets, RecyclerView scroll position, etc.). Model is more formalized in MVI than in other patterns. A screen of your app may be composed of 1 or more Model objects. Model is defined
cultural works, including writing, dance, sculpture, theatre and music, are religious—mostly Hindu, with significant Jain contributions, too. The area had been largely ruled by a succession of Hindu kingdoms. (Muslim rulers in the region, including Tipu, a prominent 18th-century sultan of Mysore, promoted Urdu and Persian cultural works instead.) The land is covered with old Hindu and Jain architecture. Sanskrit borrowings, so common in formal Kannada, are often suffused with religious connotations. But it is certainly not the case that only Hindus and Jains in Karnataka speak Kannada. And Muslims, Christians, atheists and others have contributed much to past and present culture in Karnataka. Still, it is hard to separate Kannada and religious identity, especially when the ways to celebrate the language’s cultural heritage are through the music, dance, and theatre mostly created by Hindus, under Hindu kingdoms, for Hindus, and in reference to Hinduism. The knots created by this diversity raise uncomfortable questions. Is it possible to be a Muslim (or Christian, or atheist) Kannadiga, not just a fellow Karnatakan, when the language’s culture is so suffused with other religious identities? The very existence of Muslim native Kannada-speakers, of course, supports one conclusion. But the state’s many native Urdu-speakers, and the unavoidable saturation of Hindu religious culture into the Kannada language, lean toward another. More fundamentally, is it exclusionary to celebrate Kannada culture as a way to celebrate Karnataka? Many people would say yes, of course it is: a third of the state speaks other languages and have other cultures, so Karnataka must represent more than just Kannada. But perhaps that is too unkind to the majority group in a state created for them. If they can’t celebrate their heritage in their own homeland, where else? How, then, to draw these distinctions fairly? I recently came across this music video, “Kannada Jeevaswara”, which was released last year to celebrate Karnataka Rajyotsava and the “cultural heritage of Karnataka”. It was sponsored by the Information and Publicity Department of Karnataka’s state government. Like its predecessor “Ek Sur” did for all India, this video uses catchy tunes and pretty scenery to propagandise a message of Karnataka unity. The main message, nominally like “Ek Sur”, is unity in diversity: we have many stories, but let us find common ground with Kannada. Unlike many of these sorts of cheesy cultural features, “Kannada Jeevaswara” has high production value and well-written lyrics. Without my critical goggles on, I might have even enjoyed it. But a few things stood out to me. The song is meant to represent all of Karnataka: the images cover the state north to south, coast to hills. It’s written about Kannada, though. (Even non-Kannada speakers can hear how many times the language’s name is repeated in the song.) There’s not even a wink to the state’s other native languages, like Tulu, Kodava or Konkani, though they’ve taken video of the regions where they’re spoken. And Hindu imagery appears again and again. Fine; the state is home to incredible religious heritage, old and new. Still, apart from a few flashes here and there, Islam and other major religions are given short shrift even while the camera lingers on the state’s tiny Tibetan Buddhist community. It would take some skilled mental gymnastics to claim that this video, expansive as it is, represents Karnataka. Perhaps it’s unfair to pick on a video that was probably made with the best of intentions. I don’t think that it was meant to be exclusionary. But I think it’s even more telling that the government of Karnataka could so unconsciously equate Karnataka with (only) Kannada and (mainly) Hindu identities. The current slogan of the state’s tourism board is “One State. Many Worlds.”, a rather accurate summary of Karnataka’s diversity. If only it were simple enough to leave it at that. As long as the state's minorities are stifled in favour of a facade of unity, the sentiment is empty: "many worlds", yes, but a splintered state. Karnataka's advocates must either avoid celebrating the state's cultural heritage at all (an impossibly sad result), or it must take its own tourism motto to heart.All aboard the Choo-Choo train! In a special edition of the JUSTIFIED podcast here on Post Show Recaps, hosts Josh Wigler (@roundhoward) and Antonio Mazzaro (@acmazzaro) sit down with Duke Davis Roberts (@DukeUnchained), the actor who plays — er, played — Tiger Hawk Security muscle man Choo-Choo on season six of the FX series. Duke reveals everything you could possibly want to know about Choo-Choo, including what the character was like in his original incarnation and the changes that were made on-set to make him the curiosity we know and love today, stories about interacting with Timothy Olyphant, Garrett Dillahunt and Sam Elliott, his theories for how the show is going to end (he doesn’t know spoilers), and his musings on several other television shows like BREAKING BAD and GAME OF THRONES. Plus, find out what Duke is up to now, from his web series Dungeons and Shit to his ambitious, superheroic 10-year plan. Leave your thoughts on the Choo-Choo interview in the comments section below, through our feedback form, or by hitting us up on Twitter. Subscribe to Post Show RecapsThe story behind the chemical explosion that rocked China’s Tianjin port last Wednesday continues to evolve amid fears that the public could be at risk from the hundreds of tonnes of sodium cyanide stored at the facility. More specifically, Monday’s heightened concerns were related to the possibility that rain could interact with the water soluble chemical, releasing deadly hydrogen cyanide gas into the air. "First rain expected today or tonight. Avoid ALL contact with skin," a text message purported to have originated at the US Embassy in Beijing read. The Embassy would later deny the message’s authenticity, perhaps at the behest of the Politburo which has kicked off the censorship campaign by shutting down hundreds of social media accounts for "spreading blast rumors." Despite efforts to preserve order and clamp down on discussion, the anger in China is palpable as citizens demand answers as to how a catastrophe of this magnitude could have happened and as it turns out, not only was Tianjin International Ruihai Logistics storing sodium cyanide in amounts that were orders of magnitude larger than what they were supposed to be storing, but they were apparently doing so without a license. "The company has handled hazardous chemicals during a period without a licence," an unnamed company official said on Tuesday. Apparently, Ruihai received the licenses it needed to handle the chemicals just two months ago, BBC reports, citing Xinhua. Meanwhile, it looks as though determining who actually owns Ruihai will be complicated by the fact that in China, it’s not uncommon for front men to hold shares on behalf of a company’s real owners. This is of course an effort to obscure Communist party involvement in some enterprises and as FT reports, "that seems to be the case for Shu Jing and Li Liang, who appear in State Administration of Industry and Commerce records as holding 45 and 55 per cent of Ruihai International Logistics." "Both Mr Shu and Mr Li told Chinese media they were holding their shares on behalf of someone else," FT adds, "but would not say who." Here’s more from FT: Licensing to operate a hazardous goods warehouse is not easy to come by, and Ruihai Logistics’ operation seems to have been approved after neighbouring lots had already been auctioned to residential developers. Adding to the speculation, Tianjin’s online corporate registry database was inaccessible for four days after the blasts. When access resumed on Monday, a search for Ruihai Logistics yielded a curious gap. The company was registered in 2012 but its current legal owners only bought their shares in 2013. The historic list of changes that should have reflected the previous owners did not appear. The records reveal that many Ruihai executives are former employees of Sinochem, the giant state-owned chemicals, fertiliser and iron ore trader that owns the largest hazardous warehouse operation in Tianjin. You get the idea. And although we’ll likely never know the true extent of the Party’s involvement with the company, local residents are furious, as evidenced by protests near the blast zone on Tuesday morning, which means Beijing must at least pretend to be serious about investigating the incident. In an effort to pacify the country’s censored masses, party mouthpiece The People’s Daily said 10 people, including the head and deputy head of Ruihai had been detained since Thursday. As Reuters reports, Yang Dongliang, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, is also under investigation: China said on Tuesday it is investigating the head of its work safety regulator who for years allowed companies to operate without a license for dangerous chemicals, days after blasts in a port warehouse storing such material killed 114 people. Yang Dongliang, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, is "currently undergoing investigation" for suspected violations of party discipline and the law, China's anti-graft watchdog said in a statement on its website. The agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, did not say that Yang's behavior was connected to the explosions in the port of Tianjin but the company that operated the chemical warehouse that blew up did not have a license to work with such dangerous materials for more than a year. While Beijing is busy engineering a smoke screen to appease the locals, thunderstorms are rolling into the area, which, as noted above, is bad news as the hundreds of tons of water soluble sodium cyanide are now exposed to the elements. Here's Xinhua: Rains are expected to complicate rescue efforts and may spread pollution at the Tianjin port, which was rocked by warehouse blasts last week. China's central meteorological authority has predicted a thunder storm over the blast site, where hundreds of tonnes of toxic cyanide still reside. A chemical weapon specialist at the site told Xinhua that rain water may merge with the scattered chemicals, adding to probability for new explosions and spreading toxins. On Tuesday, the Tianjin Environment Protection Bureau said it had collected 76 samples from around the blast site. "With regards to the safety levels, in total there are 29 cyanide inspection sites [and] of them, eight exceeded safety levels [with] the largest reading was 28 times over the safety standard," said Bao Jingling, the agency's chief engineer. Indeed, some have observed what's been described as a "white foam" on the ground. And as for the forecast, well, things don't look promising: Finally, the first estimates of the damage are beginning to trickle in and while we won't know the full extent of the human toll for quite sometime (if ever), Fitch puts the financial impact of the blasts for Chinese insurance companies at between $1-$1.5 billion. For anyone out there who's long (or looking to get short) the Chinese P&C space, here's Deutsche Bank's take: Based on reported data, PICC was the largest P&C player in Tianjin with 28% market share in 2014, followed by Ping An at 23%, CPIC at 12% and Taiping at 5%. Tianjin is a relatively small market for listed insurers, accounted for 1.2% of 2014 premiums for PICC, 1.8% for Ping An, 1.4% for CPIC and 4.1% for Taiping. We note that it may be too early to assess ultimate losses from this event as it generally takes time for all claims to be filed. However, assuming losses are shared based on their respective market share in Tianjin, we estimate that every Rmb1bn ultimate loss, PICC’s 2015E combined ratio could increase by 12bps, Ping An by 18bps, CPIC by 14bps, and Taiping by 32bps and PICC’s 2015E net profit would decline by 1.6%, Ping An by 0.5%, CPIC by 0.8% and Taiping by 1.2%. We maintain our relatively cautious stance on Chinese P&C insurers as we expect underwriting profitability to be under pressure in the next 6-12 months amidst auto premium deregulation, potential increase in competition from online players and a tougher comp in 2H15E. It also looks as though the government could be on the hook for tens of millions of yuan in insurance claims for injuries and deaths. The full Fitch statement is below. And meanwhile: Tianjin city sells 376m yuan of 3-yr bonds at 3.38%. China’s Tianjin Sells 1.46b Yuan Special Bonds in Placement. * * * Full statement from Fitch The insured losses from a series of explosions at a chemical warehouse in Tianjin on 12 August are likely to be material for Chinese insurance companies, potentially exceeding USD1bn-1.5bn, says Fitch Ratings. The high insurance penetration rate in this area could make the blasts one of the most costly catastrophe claims for the Chinese insurance sector in the last few years. While the incident is still developing, Fitch expects the number of reported insurance claims cases to surge further in the coming few weeks. Fitch believes that claims from the blasts are likely to undermine the financial performance of some regional players and those property and casualty insurers with high risk accumulation in the affected areas. That said, it is too early to determine the exact impact that this incident will have on the credit strength of the Chinese insurance sector as a whole. According to the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, non-life insurance premiums from Tianjin city amounted to CNY11bn (USD1.7bn) in 2014. As such, should insured losses come in at the high end of the initial USD1-1.5bn estimate, they would represent about 88% of total direct premiums written in Tianjin or roughly 5.4% of aggregated shareholder capital for the six most active issuers at end-2014. PICC Property and Casualty Company, Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance Company of China, China Pacific Property Insurance, China Continent Property & Casualty Insurance, Sunshine Property & Casualty Insurance and Taiping General Insurance are the most active insurers in the region, accounting for more than 77% of the non-life segment as measured by direct premiums written. Claims from the blasts could be shared with both local and international reinsurers, which could mitigate the direct impact on the Chinese insurance sector. While insurers could recover a portion of their property claims from their reinsurers, their exposure, the amount of retention and the number of reinstatements under the catastrophe reinsurance program are likely to determine the degree of severity to which they are affected. Fitch estimates that the overall risk cession ratios of major non-life players active in the Tianjin region range from 10% to 15%. Chinese media have reported that more than 8,000 vehicles were destroyed by the explosions. Claims from motor insurance could impair insurers' margins and capital if their reinsurance protection is marginal and the degree of risk accumulation within the affected region is significant. Aside from motor excess of loss treaties, in which the reinsurers indemnify the ceding companies for losses that exceed a specified limit, it is common for Chinese insurers to use quota share reinsurance treaties to mitigate their solvency strain due to the strong growth in recent years from the motor insurance book of business. The majority of claims will come from motor, cargo, liability and property insurance. However, medical and life insurance claims are also likely to be substantial. Victims of death and injuries are covered by a government-supported accident insurance plan for the Tianjin region, in addition to their own medical and life insurance policies. Each injured person who is insured by the government plan can claim compensation of between CNY20,000 and CNY35,000, depending on the extent of injuries while compensation of CNY50,000 will be paid in the event of death.President Obama on Thursday commuted the prison sentences of 58 inmates serving in federal prisons across the country who have been convicted of drug crimes, just over a month after commuting the sentences of 61 other inmates. The inmates were convicted of drug-related crimes such as possessing and intending to distribute cocaine or methamphetamine. Eighteen of the people receiving commutations were sentenced to life in prison. Their sentences are set to expire on Thursday or on September 2. This comes only about a month after the president commuted the sentences of 61 people who were convicted of similar crimes. Most of that group will be released from prison at the end of July. Mr. Obama has commuted more prison sentences than the past six presidents combined. He has commuted the sentences of 306 people while George W. Bush commuted 11 and Clinton commuted 61. At the same time, Obama has only pardoned 70 people, the fewest of any president since President James A. Garfield in the early 1880s.PowerCLI is the PowerShell API toolkit for vSphere. It’s quite a simple and easy to use solution for day-to-day scripting of vSphere tasks like trying to find a list of Virtual Machines, Snapshots older than a some time frame, Datastores running out of space and much much more.It’s a must have for administrators anything larger than a small vSphere environment. Invoke-VMScript is a “cmdlet” that allows you to run commands on the remote host via PowerShell. This has been used extensively by us to automate the build of new Virtual Machines and migration of existing machines to a newer OS/platform. We chose to use it because the only other alternatives are Java (too complex, no internal knowledge) and Perl. SOAP APIs with Perl are tedious at best and this is no exception. Perl just doesn’t handle the complex SOAP data-structures in a manageable way. What takes 25 lines of PowerCLI can take 200 lines of Perl. I’ve known for a long time PowerCLI’s Invoke-VMScript support for bash was buggy but today I’ve established it is FUBAR. Up until today I’ve discovered two common bash commands that behave unexpectedly when run from Invoke-VMScript. ( exit 1 ); echo $? This will return 0 from Invoke-VMScript, when it should return the value given to exit in the sub-script (1 in this case). When I pasted this to VMWare community forum (the supported method for logging bugs since we don’t have the appropriate contract to log a ticket against PowerCLI), and bugged their PowerCLI twitter account for a response, I was told to use the “ExitCode” Object returned by Invoke-VMScript and I went on my merry way. [[ $(/bin/true) ]] \|\| echo TRUE This should return TRUE always, but when run from Invoke-VMScript we get: bash: -c: line 0: syntax error near `]]’ bash: -c: line 0: `[[ ]] \|\| echo TRUE’ Simply assigning a command output to a variable and echoing it also doesn’t work. A=$(grep alias ~/.bashrc \|tail -1); echo $A This returns nothing. Running ‘ps -ef’ while it’s executing reveals what I believe to be the core of all these issues: /bin/bash -c bash > /tmp/vmware-root/powerclivmware255 2>&1 -c “A=alias mv='mv -i’; echo ; sleep 30” The way it’s been implemented, it appears to be executing parts of the code one at a time, rather than the whole script in its entirety. Even when we use backticks (`) instead of $() we get the same results. This makes anything but the most basic bash commands useless. Last example, $! doesn’t work: /bin/true & echo $! This should return the PID of the command we spawned (/bin/true in this case) but again we get nada. I can make my scripts into files, ship them to the VM and run them, but this takes more commands, requires dos2unix to be installed on the remote host and is frankly a hack. I don’t enjoy PowerShell, it behaves very differently to what I’m used to in a scripting language so I think once I’ve completed the current project I will look at rbvmomi to see if we can use Ruby instead. UPDATE: VMware have advised this is a known issue but due to “legal” reasons they cannot advise when this will be fixed. Either something really weird like a breach of Open Source licensing is going on or they’re lying!Jean Gross, the outgoing 'communication champion' for children, said parents should be advised by text to switch the television off, if they had it on all day, and reminded to speak to their babies. She raised the idea in her last report on how to improve the speaking, reading and writing skills of children. Gross said such radical ideas were needed to combat a problem that seemed to be growing, with the numbers of school-age children identified with such difficulties having grown by 58 per cent in the last five years. Dismissing accusations that the idea amounted to the 'nanny state' reaching into people's living rooms, she said many parents simply did not know what was best for the child's development. She said: "Every parent that I've met wants the best for their child, but not every parent knows what to do. "Parents are not doing a bad job, but often they need the information to do better." Many did not know, for instance, that having the television on all day hampered a young child's talking ability, she said. "If you are a child under two and the television is on all day long in the background, research does show that will have a negative effect on their language development," she said. "They can't pay attention to their mum or dad talking as well." While that might seem obvious to many, Gross said speech and language therapists had told her that "parents don't know this". Another idea is to send parents texts linked to their child's age, telling them what to expect from their offspring in terms of communication skills. She said: "Imagine that parents could sign up when they are pregnant to a service called 'Your amazing baby', and get regular tests sent to their smartphones. "For example, one text might say 'Did you know that even in the first few months after birth, your baby can imitate you?' " In this example, they would then be prompted to open a link to a page on YouTube, or some other website, showing a very young baby imitating a father sticking his tongue out. Research showed few parents realised the importance of talking to their babies in the first three months, she added. She said the messages must be informative and fun, for anything that lectured parents "would just put them off". However, she thought direct interventions were sometimes necessary, even if they extended the state's reach into the private sphere. "Governments of all persuasions are afraid of being seen to interfere in family life and being seen as the nanny state," she noted. Such a text service must be voluntary, she emphasised, and could also include advice on other aspects of parenthood such as health, sleep, food and toilet training. Gross, made a Commander of the British Empire in the New Year's Honours List for her services to education, said children had communication problems for two reasons: either there was an underlying biological cause, or there were "social factors" at play. She said some of the 58 per cent rise could be accounted for by better identification of children with problems by nurseries, schools and doctors. However, she thought increasing numbers of children had poor language development for social reasons. Some argue new technologies like the internet and smartphones undermine the time mothers and fathers spend talking to their babies, while others blame the rise of "cash rich, time poor" parents. "Whatever it is, we know what works: spending time face-to-face on the floor with them," she said. Once a child was identified as having communication problems, she said too many parents "fall down the cracks" in a system where it was unclear whether the NHS or the local authority was responsible for speech therapy. "There is an absolute lack of clarity about which agency is responsible for it," she said. In December Gross left two years in post as communication champion, a role funded jointly by the Department for Education and the Department of Health.Contents Plant Breeding as a Hobby In order to breed plants successfully it is important to understand the principles of plant reproduction. The purpose of this circular is to explain these principles and to describe some of the simple techniques that you can use to produce new varieties or strains of plants. Plant Selection Natural selection is the process that occurs in nature whereby strong and well- adapted plants survive while weak and poorly adapted plants eventually die out. This process has taken place since the beginning of life on earth and it is still occurring in nature. Artificial selection is the process that humans use to obtain more desirable types of plants. Thousands of years ago people learned that saving seed from the kind of plant they wanted to continue growing would increase the chances of getting a plant similar to the original. But our ancestors didn't know what their chances of success were nor did they understand the processes by which traits were changed or maintained. It wasn't until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that humans began to understand the laws of heredity and the processes of plant reproduction. Even today these fundamentals aren't completely understood. But enough is known so that we can select plants for breeding with considerably more assurance of success than our primitive ancestors did. Fundamentals of Plant Reproduction Kinds of reproduction Asexual, or vegetative, reproduction occurs without the fusion of germ (reproductive) cells. In garden plants, asexual reproduction occurs when a part of the plant is separated from the parent plant and develops into a complete plant, as when strawberries produce runners which take root and form new strawberry plants. Asexual reproduction can be brought about artificially by means of leaf cuttings, stem cuttings, root cuttings, etc. Plants that originate from asexual reproduction are usually identical to the parent plant. Sexual reproduction involves the union of a male and a female germ cell. From this union a seed -- and ultimately a new plant -- is produced. Sexual reproduction is the most common type of reproduction for garden plants. The plants originating from sexual reproduction are often quite different from their parents and from each other. Because of this possibility for variation, sexual reproduction of plants is the method used by plant breeders in developing new strains and varieties. Parts of the flower Parts of a flower. The flower shown here is a perfect flower; that is, it has male and female reproductive organs. The stamen is the male organ and the pistal is the female organ. ÝÝ (Fig.1) The petals, which add greatly to the beauty of flowers, serve such useful functions as aiding in pollination and protecting the sex organs from physical damage. The sepals, which often are green, cuplike structures, support the petals and protect the floral parts. The flower parts vary greatly in size, shape, color, and number, but generally it is easy to distinguish the pistil from the stamens. You can identify the stamens by the yellow powder (pollen) on their tips and the pistil by a bulge (the ovary) at its base. On an unusual flower, however, it might require careful study to tell them apart. Types of flowers A perfect flower contains both stamens and a pistil (Fig. 1) It is the most common type of flower. Some common perfect flowers are those of tomatoes, morning-glories, snapdragons, petunias, lilies, and irises. The flowers of squash are imperfect, each flower having only one type of sex organ. ÝÝ (Fig. 2) Cross section of a chrysanthemum. Composite flowers, such as chrysanthemums, are made up of clusters of florets. Some composite flowers have both ray and disc florets while some have only ray florets. ÝÝ (Fig. 3) Pollination and Fertilization There are two kinds of pollen transfer -- cross-pollination and self- pollination. In cross-pollination the pollen is transferred from the anther of a flower of one plant to the stigma of a flower of another plant. In self-pollination the pollen is transferred from the anther to the stigma of the same flower or to another flower of the same plant. Fertilization takes place when the male and female cells unite in the ovule. ÝÝ (Fig. 4) The parent flower that furnishes the pollen is called the pollen parent; the one that bears the seed is called the seed parent. Heredity Genes. All cells contain genes, which are the units that determine the traits of a plant or animal. Except for the germ cells, each cell in a plant contains two genes for each trait -- for example, for the trait of color a plant could have one gene for yellow and one for red. The germ cells have only one gene for each trait. Of the thousands of germ cells that a plant produces, about half have one of the genes for each trait and about half have the other gene. When the male and female germ cells unite in the ovule each contributes one gene for each trait so that the new seed then has two genes for each trait. The various combinations of the many genes inherited from the pollen parent and from the seed parent determine the traits of the offspring and of future generations. You can't tell by looking at a plant exactly what genes it contains. For example, a plant may have one gene for red and one for yellow, but only a red color may show in its flower; by looking at the plant you have no way of knowing about the gene for yellow. Nevertheless, the gene for yellow is present in the plant's cells and some of the plant's offspring will inherit this gene, which they in turn will pass on to their offspring. If the plant and its offspring are self-pollinated, in the first or second generations following, depending on how the genes interact, some of the offspring will produce yellow flowers. By observing the occurrence in the offspring of different colors (or other traits that you are interested in) you can find out what genes the parent plants have and how they interact. With this knowledge, your plant-breeding job will be greatly simplified. If a plant that is self-pollinated produces offspring identical to itself, then it is said to breed true. If the first-generation offspring are not all identical to the parent plant, then it is said that segregation has occurred. Each square represents one seed of the F 1 generation. Each seed inherits a gene for red (R) from one parent and a gene for yellow (r) from the other. ÝÝ (Fig. 5) 1 1 When the F 1 plants are self-pollinated, or "selfed," their genes can combine in four different ways. Figure 6 illustrates the four possible combinations. The offspring resulting from the self-pollination of the F 1 generation are called the second filial or F 2 generation. When the F 1 plant is selfed segregation occurs, and the F 2 generation inherits traits in a 1:2:1 ratio (1 RR, 2Rr, 1rr). ÝÝ (Fig. 6) If a seed contains two genes for the same color, it is said to be pure for that trait and the resulting flower will show that color. For example, in Fig. 6 the seeds containing two genes for the color red (RR) will result in red flowers and the seeds containing two genes for yellow (rr) will result in yellow flowers. The seeds containing genes for both colors (Rr) may result either in flowers that are red or in flowers that are mauve (a shade halfway between red and yellow), depending on whether the gene for red has complete or incomplete dominance. Complete dominance. Some genes are dominant and some are recessive. Whenever a dominant and a recessive gene for a particular trait occur in the same plant, the dominant gene will cause its character to show up in the plant to the exclusion of the recessive trait. In Figs. 5 and 6, let us assume that red (R) is dominant and yellow (r) is recessive. Whenever an R occurs, even if an r also occurs, we can expect the flower to be red. In Fig. 5 (F 1 generation) all the seeds have an R gene; thus all the flowers will be red. In Fig. 6 (F 2 generation) R occurs in three of the squares; these three seeds will result in red flowers. The dominant gene R does not appear in the lower right square; therefore the recessive trait yellow will show in the flowers of this plant. Thus, for a large number of plants in the F 2 generation, where red has complete dominance over yellow the color ratio will be 3:1, that is, three red to one yellow (Fig. 7). If red has complete dominance over yellow, then the seeds represented in Fig. 6 will develop flowers having a color ratio of 3:1 - out of every four floweres, three will be red and one will be yellow. ÝÝ (Fig. 7) 1 2 If red has incomplete dominance over yellow, then the seeds represented in Fig. 6 will develop flowers having a color ratio of 1:2:1 - out of every four flowers, one will be red, two will be mauve, and one will be yellow. ÝÝ (Fig. 8) Continuing to use Fig. 6 as an example, let us now assume that you wish to fix a trait by self-pollinating the plants of the F 2 generation. We will assume three different situations: (1) you wish to breed only yellow flowers; (2) you wish to breed only red flowers; and (3) you wish to breed only mauve flowers. (1) Breeding for yellow. As explained above and illustrated in Figs. 7 and 8, regardless of whether there is complete or incomplete dominance, you may expect one out of every four flowers to be yellow (rr). These yellow flowers are pure, that is, they have no R genes. Therefore if you self them, they and their offspring will breed true for yellow (Fig. 9). Ý When a purebred plant is self-pollinated, it breeds true; that is, the offspring are all identical to the parent and to each other. ÝÝ (Fig. 9)Ý 2 3 If red has incomplete dominance, only one out of four flowers will be red (see Fig. 8), and since it is pure (containing RR) you'll have no trouble in fixing the trait. (3) Breeding for mauve. As explained earlier, mauve flowers will be obtained if red has incomplete dominance over yellow. In the F 2 generation, if there is incomplete dominance, two out of every four flowers will be mauve (see Fig. 8). When you self these flowers, segregation will again occur and you will obtain the same ratio as occurred in the F 2 generation -- 1:2:1. In other words, the color mauve cannot be fixed. The most you can expect in the long run, if you self mauve flowers, is two mauve flowers out of every four. Breeding for other traits. The above discussion is given only as an example to explain the process of heredity. By crossing and selfing plants and observing the ratios of the traits that you are interested in, you can soon find out whether you are dealing with complete or incomplete dominance. (A 3:1 ratio in the F 2 generation usually indicates complete dominance; a 1:2:1 ratio, incomplete dominance.) You will then be able to tell whether or not it is possible to fix a trait. You may wish to breed for more than one trait. Some traits that are often relatively easy to change are: yield, flower color, plant size, leaf size, fruit shape, and fruit size. With two genes for each trait in each parent, you will have to grow many offspring before one will appear with all the desired traits. Even if you are interested in replacing only one trait with a more desirable one, you may have to grow many plants in order to obtain one that shows the desired trait without showing any changes in other traits. Some characteristics, such as yield and fruit size, are governed by many genes, and vast numbers of plants may be needed to obtain the desired result. Hybrids. F 1 hybrids of vegetables and flowers are often mentioned in seed catalogues and breeding programs. These varieties are the result of crosses between two pure lines. The purpose of the cross is to bring together in a plant desirable traits possessed separately by the parent plants. Some characteristics obtained in this way are increased vigor, uniformity, and earliness. Seed from the hybrid will produce many plants unlike the hybrid. Therefore, in order to maintain all the desirable characteristics of the hybrid, the original parents are crossed each year. It is seldom worthwhile to save seed from the hybrid for commercial production, although it can be used in a breeding program. General Breeding Techniques Equipment Magnifying glass (10 or 15 power) Tweezers Small sharp-pointed scissors Camel-hair brush Small containers or vials Alcohol Rubber bands or soft wire Paper or cellophane bags Paper clips Tags Notebook When to breed Extremely high temperatures or moist conditions are harmful to pollen. For best results you should pollinate plants on dry days during the cool hours of the morning or as soon as the anthers have split open. Selecting the parents The plants you select for breeding should be sturdy and healthy. It is usually easier to tell which ones are healthy after a few flowers on the plant have bloomed. In choosing a pollen parent, select one that has a heavy yellow powder on the anther. This powder is the pollen. If you brush your fingernail against the anther, a trace of pollen should adhere to your nail. A fresh flower is more likely to have healthier pollen than one that has started to wilt or dry out. In choosing a seed parent, examine the stigma. It should have either a glistening substance on it that is sticky to the touch or a "hairy" surface. It is this substance or surface that retains the pollen, thus making fertilization possible. Once you have selected the pollen and seed parents, you are ready to begin pollination. Prepollination steps Emasculation is necessary to prevent self-pollination. Remove all anthers or stamens. ÝÝ (Fig. 10) Both the seed and pollen parents should be protected from contamination by foreign pollen. This can be done by one of the following methods: Closing the flower. In many flowers, such as morning-glories, petunias, and lilies, the petals can be closed around the floral organs with a piece of soft wire, string, or rubber band (Fig. 11) Care should be
:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. on August 10. ERCOT has been able to handle this extremely high demand without any system emergencies. In its summer 2015 reliability assessment, the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation (NERC) had forecasted a higher reserve margin for Texas's electric grid this summer (16.24%) compared with previous years (14.98% in 2014). Reserve margins reflect the amount of available generating capacity in the absence of unplanned outages at projected peak system demand. Reliability planning helps to ensure that there are enough electricity supply and transmission resources to meet demand even if there are unexpected outages of generation plants or transmission lines. Although sustained high summer temperatures and strong population and economic growth pushed peak demand higher than forecast, the grid has performed as expected. In August 2011, ERCOT declared several emergencies in an effort to reduce electric demand. Rolling power outages were avoided because load curtailment was carried out through demand response and interruptible load contractual agreements, calls for voluntary conservation, and execution of short-term contracts that brought four generators back from nonoperating status. Since then, grid operators have worked to better ensure reliability in ERCOT. Unlike all other U.S. regional transmission organization wholesale electricity markets, ERCOT has neither a capacity market nor a requirement that energy suppliers build or purchase reserve capacity to meet unexpected supply shortages. Instead, ERCOT allows wholesale prices to rise relatively higher than in other markets during system emergencies. This encourages consumers to conserve energy while relying on high wholesale electricity prices to spur investment in generation resources. Price caps are instituted in wholesale markets so that generators cannot charge unreasonable prices when power is scarce. ERCOT price caps have risen from $1,000 per megawatthour ($/MWh) at the 2001 start of retail competition to $9,000/MWh since June 1 of this year. ERCOT has made efforts to encourage market transparency and disclosure to discourage companies with market power from overcharging during system emergencies. ERCOT day-ahead zonal prices were near $2,250/MWh during the hour of greatest demand on August 10. ERCOT has taken additional price-related actions to encourage investment in generation. These actions include adding a premium to real-time prices when resources are scarce based on the outage risk and the lost value to consumers of an outage, establishing price floors for emergency response services to keep prices from falling during emergencies, and allowing generators to earn a capacity price for reserving a limited amount of capacity to provide ancillary services. ERCOT has also added more generating capacity and demand response. Since last year's NERC summer assessment, more than 6 GW of new generating capacity, mostly natural gas and wind, has been installed in ERCOT. Year-to-date through August 11, Texas used a record-high 4.5 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas to help fuel the state's expanded power generation needs. ERCOT also has several types of demand-response programs that allow participants to bid in a price for either voluntarily using less electricity or by running distributed generation resources. Together these demand-response programs represent 3.4% of the ERCOT total internal demand forecast. Source: EIA, data from Note: Data for 2015 are through May. EIA, data from Survey Form EIA-860, Summer CapacityData for 2015 are through May. Principal contributors: Lori AnitiSpread the love 1 Share Many of us have problems with bad credit for several causes. For some people, credit issues are getting too much to handle that it’s beginning to get in the way of personal relationships. Are you experiencing the same issue? If so, what can you do to get rid of your financial difficulties as well as to save your valuable relationship? Give consideration to the following advice: Understand the root of the problem. Bad credit may be brought about by different circumstances. In any case, you should find out the real cause of your personal bad credit problem. Is it because of poor financial management? Is it because of uncontrolled spending? Understanding the real issue is the first step towards finding a solution that works. Do not try to hide the problem. Hiding the problem from your partner or family will not resolve it. Sooner or later, your family will find out, and by then the problem may have become much worse and more difficult to deal with. So let’s say that you are struggling with debt repayment. Instead of telling your family that everything is okay, why not ask for help? If you are dealing with your mortgage loan, you should not delay taking action because what’s at stake is your property. If your lender moves towards repossession or foreclosure, you may not have enough time to save your home. Do not ignore the problem. Some people may deny that there actually is a problem. When they receive calls from a creditor, they may simply ignore these calls, thinking that they will be able to pay their debt in full in a little while. But, an attitude like this only puts you at a greater risk for real problems. You do not want your creditor to pass your account to a debt collection agency. Past experience has proved that borrowers will have an easier time negotiating if they are dealing with the original creditor. Since debt collection agencies make money out of collection, negotiating your debts can prove to be a challenge. Hence, when a creditor is trying to contact you about your past due debts, the best thing to do is to speak with your creditor and explain your situation. Most creditors would be willing to adjust their terms to help out a borrower in need, but you have to face the problem early to keep it from getting worse. Talk about the matter. Open communication is important when resolving bad credit and personal relationships. For example, if you have a spouse, the two of you should sit down and talk about the matter with open minds. Speak politely and respect each other’s opinions. Listen well when the other person is talking. Your goal should be to reach an agreement and avoid heated discussions if possible. Seek professional counseling. Don’t hesitate to seek professional advice from a trusted credit counseling agency. This is especially true if credit-related problems are hurting your personal relationships. A credit counselor will able to help you understand the root of the problem and figure out an effective solution as well. Having an expert to mediate between you and your family also helps to make sure that everyone comes to an agreement.At the end of this week’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., we were teased with something that felt almost like a dream: the original recruits of Coulson’s team (yes, even Grant Ward), suiting up for one more mission. As conflicts build and their search for Skye intensifies, the teammates will have to face their demons—and deal with their past issues—to come together. To tease “The Dirty Half Dozen,” this week’s piece comes courtesy of Jake Wyatt, who has most notably contributed his beautiful art to Marvel’s groundbreaking series Ms. Marvel (which was recently honored with the distinction of a 2015 Eisner Award nomination.) In addition to illustrating comics at Marvel, DC and Boom Studios, Wyatt also is working on developing his first solo series, Necropolis, which will debut in the fall of 2015. Check out the poster in full above, as well as some teases for next week’s episode with executive producer Jeff Bell below. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: My first thought when I saw this poster was that it reminded me of the last year’s Level 7 art: the original team back together again, everyone in their defensive positions. JEFF BELL: It’s very old school. But having everybody together…I love the way Simmons is glaring at Ward, just right behind him. I will say there’s an Easter Egg in the poster—that’s all I’ll say. But the fact that we’re all together is awesome. And getting all those people on a quinjet is tight quarters for a lot of people who no longer share the love. This is also the first one where we’ve had the title of the episode on the poster; that’s a little different. The team needs to save Lincoln and Deathlok, which means everyone’s going to have to come together despite their differences. But not everyone likes Lincoln. Not everyone likes Ward. And not everyone likes Deathlok… Right. And why is Ward agreeing to this? And does he have an agenda? Because clearly…look, he wants to be forgiven and loved. That’s all he wants. He’s like, “I’m sorry, I miss it, I miss you guys…come on, I’m a good guy!” We’re trying to bring everything together for the finale, and this is a big part of that. Will we see a bit of internal conflict with Skye, based on the fact that she’s now struggling with a lot of things—namely, seeing Ward again, and her family issues? There’s a scene between the six of them—our six original people—and it’s maybe…I don’t know if it’s my favorite scene of this season, but it’s certainly a top three or four scene of the season, of all six of them together. And part of the reason is that it does everything. You’re reminded of how good they used to be, how good they were together, and what went wrong. The guys did a lovely job on it. Behind Skye, there’s a pattern that looks a little like DNA strands. My first thought, given where we left off after the last episode, was that it could be the DNA of powered people. I cannot confirm or deny, but I find that very interesting. [laughs] Looking around, there’s a couple of things that are very specific to the plot that you wouldn’t necessarily know. But after you see the episode, you’ll be able to pick it out. And we haven’t seen the last of “best dad ever” Cal, right? Oh lord, no. You can’t put him on every poster! [laughs] We’ve got some story left for him. “The Dirty Half Dozen” airs Tuesday, April 28 at 9 p.m. ET on ABC. Be sure to check in at EW to see the exclusive reveal of next week’s art for episode 20, “Scars.” The art for “The Dirty Half Dozen” will go on sale on Friday, April 24 at www.marvelshop.com/agentsofshield as a $49.99 print (limited to 100 copies) at 12:30 a.m. PT. More coverage from EW on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: The Art of Evolution:US golfer Robert Garrigus, who finished in a tie for third at this month’s US Open, admitted he used to smoke marijuana mid-round on the Nationwide Tour in the early 2000s – and he was not the only one, Golf Digest reported Wednesday. Article continues below... The 33-year-old, who is enjoying a breakthrough season, struggled with substance abuse early in his career but went through drug rehab and made his way onto the PGA Tour. Garrigus said that in 2002, six years before the tour instituted drug testing and a year before he got clean, he would sneak off for a smoke while in competition on the Nationwide Tour – the US PGA’s development tour. "Oh yeah, there were plenty of guys on the Nationwide Tour who smoked in the middle of the round," Garrigus said. "We always talked about it. You could go in the Porta John and take your drags." Garrigus said his substance abuse problems started when he was playing golf at Scottsdale Community College and it simply became part of his lifestyle. "It was all golf and partying," he said. "I never did hard drugs. I never did coke or LSD. It was just smoking and drinking and hanging out with friends. "The smoking got to be habitual: five, 10, maybe 20 times a day. I didn’t keep track of how much. I constantly needed to be high. And I took it to the max. Every single day. Mostly just smoking, smoking, smoking." He said now that he has come out the other side, he could realize how "stupid" his behavior was, but he added, "I don’t regret any of it because it put me on the path I’m on now." PGA Tour vice president of communications Ty Votaw said the tour had no comment. Read more here.Spain continued to foil its biggest potential refugee influx in four years on Tuesday. Spanish vessels picked up the occupants of 76 small boats. Spain's governing People Party attributed the migrant's increased use of boats to tougher fences at Melilla and its other offshore enclave Ceuta. The Spanish coast guard said those picked up while trying to cross the Mediterranean's key waterway included 20 children and 95 women. They were taken to a temporary shelter in a municipal sports center in Tarifa, Spain's southernmost post. During a similar bid on Monday, nearly 300 migrants were intercepted in 29 boats. Southern Spain, Italy's Lampedusa The Gibraltar strait, a key shipping lane, separates Morocco and Spain by 15 kilometers (nine miles). It is a key route for migrants and smugglers - alongside Italian entry points, such as Lampedusa island. Italy's navy rescued 2,000 migrants last weekend. Authorities attribute the rise in numbers to traffickers taking advantage of calm, warm summer weather and the end of the Ramadan fasting season. "The exact same thing happened last year," said Spain's government representative in Cadiz, Javier de Torre, adding that "organized crime groups" took advantage of the good weather. Ladders versus razor wire At dawn on Tuesday, about 700 sub-Saharan migrants using makeshift wooden ladders tried to scale Mellila's six-meter-high barrier topped with razor wire. Some 30 migrants managed to enter the enclave, said Spain's interior ministry. Spain began toughening its border security at the two enclaves in February when 15 migrants drowned while trying to swim to Ceuta. The UNHCR refugee agency says so far this year more than 75,000 migrants, often fleeing violence in Africa and the Middle East, tried to cross the Mediterranean. About 800 people have died during these attempts. About 10,500 children - two-thirds of them unaccompanied or separated from their families, were included in the UNHCR count. Last month, Amnesty International said EU policy put refugees and migrants at risk by preventing them from seeking asylum. The organization said this pushed refugees to take perilous risks to reach Europe. ipj/hc (dpa, AFP, Reuters, AP)Speaking in a radio interview recorded on Saturday, former sheriff Joe Arpaio declared “I’m not going away” and hinted at a public career move one day after being pardoned by President Donald Trump. Arpaio also used the interview to hit back at Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for criticizing Trump’s decision to pardon the former sheriff for criminal contempt of court. Arpaio said he was “a little surprised” by McCain’s comments and alleged that McCain was just trying to “make the president look bad.” Arpaio slammed McCain for casting a decisive vote on a bill to repeal some parts of Obamacare: “Think of that. Think of that and how many people are going to suffer. He should be supporting our president.” Arpaio was convicted last month for defying a judge’s order to not detain suspected illegal immigrants. He had faced up to six months in prison and possible fines. Fresh from being pardoned by Trump on Friday, Arpaio was speaking in a recorded interview set to air Sunday night on this reporter’s talk radio program, Aaron Klein Investigative Radio, broadcast on New York’s AM 970 The Answer and NewsTalk 990 AM in Philadelphia. Asked directly whether he is planning to seek a political position now that he has been pardoned, the 85-year-old Arpaio replied: You know what, I told my wife I’m not finished. I’ve got a lot of things in mind. Since I left office I’ve been very busy. I’ve got my own office setup. I’m not going away. Why would I go away? I told my wife when I left office after 24 years with the sheriff’s office, 55 years in law enforcement around the world – I dedicated my whole life to fighting crime and defending our country – I said I’m never going to get involved with politics. That’s what I told her. And then I changed my mind when I saw what was going on. Not just with me, but with the president and with the system. During the interview, this reporter read to Arpaio a tweet from McCain that was critical of Trump’s pardon. .@POTUS's pardon of Joe Arpaio, who illegally profiled Latinos, undermines his claim for the respect of rule of law https://t.co/2FckGtwQ2m — John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) August 26, 2017 Arpaio hit back at McCain: I’m a little surprised at the senator. He did call me after my (election) loss… I’m really shocked that he took that shot at me. I stayed out of his race as a matter of courtesy and he called me after I lost. ‘Anything I can do for you?’ Well, thank Senator. Thanks a lot. Maybe it’s not just me. He doesn’t like the president so going after me he figures will make the president look bad. But that’s sad. That’s how politicians are. Remember who the deciding vote was on Obamacare. Think of that. Think of that and how many people are going to suffer. He should be supporting our president. Apraio further responded to frequent Trump critic Jeff Flake, McCain’s fellow Arizona senator, who tweeted of the pardon: “I would have preferred that the President honor the judicial process and let it take its course.” Arpaio asserted that Flake “is trying to make points with the mayor. And all those other Democrat politicians and all of those activists saying the same thing.” Arpaio said that he is in debt for millions because of the “sham” case, and is seeking help with the costs through his legal defense fund. He went on to praise Trump, saying “I would still support him regardless of the pardon.” “I’m glad he had the guts to do what he did,” he added. “I’m just sad that he has to take some heat from certain media outlets if you know what I mean. But they go after him all of the time. When he does anything they tear him apart. I have never seen anything like this.” Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.Supreme Court conservatives indicate they’ll rule against unions The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority signaled Monday that it is likely to substantially weaken government employee unions by overruling a 1977 decision that has allowed the unions to charge nonmembers for the costs of representing them. At a one-hour hearing, the justices appeared to agree with a lawyer for 10 teachers who argued that the fees they must pay to the California Teachers Association violate their First Amendment rights by requiring them to subsidize political positions that they oppose. A ruling against the teachers union would overturn laws in California and 22 other states that allow public-sector unions to charge fees to nonmembers for the costs of negotiating their wages and hours and representing them in grievance proceedings. Union members pay dues, a higher amount that also covers expenses for lobbying and other expressly political activities, generally in support of pro-union Democrats. The 325,000-member teachers union, backed by the Obama administration and the state of California, contends nonunion members should not be allowed to become “free riders” who pay nothing for the unions’ costs of representing them. Conservative Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy appeared to endorse that view in a 1991 opinion that referred to “free riders” and noted that state law required the unions to represent all employees. Justices’ points But Kennedy rejected the “free rider” label on Monday and told California’s lawyer that the union “is making these teachers compelled riders for issues on which they strongly disagree.” And Scalia seemed to endorse the central argument of the nonunion teachers: that all economic negotiations with a school board, or any government agency, are inherently political because they affect the spending of public funds. “Everything that is collectively bargained with the government is within the political sphere, almost by definition,” Scalia told California’s solicitor general, Edward DuMont. “Should the government pay higher wages or lesser wages? Should it promote teachers on the basis of seniority?... All of those questions are necessarily political questions.” DuMont countered that negotiations about subjects like car-mileage reimbursement rates had little to do with politics and did not prevent dissidents from speaking out against the union. “There is no restriction on any individual employee’s speech... either in the workplace or out of the workplace,” he said. The court ruled unanimously in 1977 that a public-sector union does not engage in political activity when it represents state or local government employees on issues like wages, so it can charge those costs to all employees. Full union dues, charged only to members, also cover the costs of lobbying and other overtly political activities. Percentages vary between unions, but the teachers union says a nonmember’s fee is about 70 percent of a member’s dues. If that ruling is overturned, the unions would lose fees from hundreds of thousands of nonmembers nationwide and some current union members who decided to drop out to save money. The result would damage labor organizations in the remaining U.S. stronghold, as representatives of more than a third of government employees, compared with less than 7 percent in the private sector. It would also reduce their political clout. Potential impact Justice Stephen Breyer, a member of the court’s more liberal minority, said such a ruling would also call into question past decisions upholding mandatory fees for state bar associations and possibly some state university fees, which also support some activities the fee-payers oppose. He said the 1977 ruling was “a compromise that... has lasted reasonably well.” The union’s lawyer, David Frederick, pointed to the court’s 2006 ruling — by a 5-4 conservative majority — that said government employees who express opinions on workplace issues were not protected by the First Amendment and could be fired. But Kennedy, the author of that ruling, said the two cases were different. “That was in the workplace,” he told Frederick. “It didn’t apply to merit pay. It didn’t apply to the protection of underperforming teachers.” The nonunion teachers’ lawyer, Michael Carvin of the Center for Individual Rights, said the only purpose of the fees charged to nonmembers was to “inflate the union’s war chest by (payments from) people who really have not made a voluntary decision to do so.” A ruling in Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association, 14-915, is due by the end of June. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelkoHosam Maher Husein Smadi (born 1990) is a citizen of Jordan who was arrested on suspicion of planning a terrorist bombing of Fountain Place, a building in Dallas, Texas, on September 24, 2009.[1][2][3] Smadi was in the United States illegally, and unaware he was under continuous surveillance, and that the other members of his "sleeper cell" were all Federal agents.[2] The agents in his "sleeper cell" had supplied him with inert chemical, so his bomb had not posed a real threat.[4] Immigration officials were trying to determine how Smadi was able to work at a gas station, since he only had a 2007 tourist visa.[1][3] Smadi was provided with a fake bomb by FBI agents posing as members of al-Qaeda. He placed the device in the parking garage under the building and activated it with a cell phone. Instead of setting off a bomb, the cell phone rang a phone number at the FBI offices. Smadi pleaded guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.[1] Under the terms of a plea bargain, an additional charge of bombing a public place was dropped, and a sentence of not more than 30 years was recommended.[1][5] On October 20, 2010, he was sentenced to 24 years imprisonment. He will be deported from the United States after serving his sentence.Written by Stephy Chung, CNN Hong Kong Contributors Momo Moussa, CNN Wing Shya is one of Asia's best-known artists, with work spanning photography, graphic design and film. He has shot images of some of the region's top talent and collaborated with fashion houses, brands and magazines. But while Wing is now a household name in his own right, his three-decade career was launched under famed Hong Kong film director Wong Kar Wai, who hired him as an on-set stills photographer after seeing his student work. Wing, then a young arts graduate, was experimenting with collages after studying abroad in Canada and returning to his native Hong Kong in 1991. He found the medium's textures apt for capturing his home city's intoxicating environment. 1 / 17 As director Wong Kar Wai's exclusive set photographer, Hong Kong artist Wing Shya is known for his vivid, tender images from the golden era of Hong Kong cinema, including this moment between Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung during the filming of Wong Kar Wai's masterpiece, "In the Mood For Love." Credit: Wing Shya Drawn to those collages -- and photos that, according to Wing, "other people hated" -- Wong invited the young creative to Argentina, to shoot stills for the 1997 Palme d'Or-nominated film "Happy Together." The inexperienced young photographer showed up to set without a soundproof box for his camera -- and could only film in between takes because of the sound of shutter clicks. But the images offered a "different chemistry" between the lead actors, he said. "It (feels) like something is going to happen, but you don't know what's happening." The chaotic, shifting density of Hong Kong's cityscapes is a strong inspiration for Wing's work. Credit: Wing Shya "The thing I learned most from Wong Kar Wai was his attitude," Wing said, from his studio in Hong Kong. "He would never give up. He would keep shooting and really believed in each movie. It wasn't about technique (or) art direction -- it was about attitude and how he, and the whole team, loved filming." Wing would continue to work with Wong on several other films including "In the Mood for Love" and "Eros." 'Acting Out' These cinematic images will feature alongside dozens of other works in a new photography exhibition examining Wing's prolific career. The retrospective "Wing Shya: Acting Out," opens this week at Shanghai Center of Photography in the city's West Bund arts district. "Wing Shya: Acting Out" showcases some of Wing's lesser-known works. Credit: Wing Shya The show's curator Karen Smith said the show presents an opportunity for young artists to see Wing's process -- by featuring a variety of early works, collages, portraits and fashion photography. "We didn't want to just produce something that (visitors) could Google. Of course, we have his iconic images, but we wanted to give the audience an idea of how he thinks through his images," Smith said in a phone interview. Wing often became so entranced by scenes that he shot entire rolls of film that were unfocused or riddled with technical errors. But it became part of his approach as an artist -- "Things are only mistakes if you think they are." Credit: Wing Shya "In China, we see a lot of artists who are technically proficient... they are trained to get things 'right' all the time. This is further encouraged by the production-line pace at which artists have become used to working to meet the demands of a strong market for arts," said Smith. "But creativity comes from going down the wrong path occasionally. That's the great quality of Wing's work. He's not afraid of mistakes."Charles Albright “Eyeball Killer, Dallas Ripper and Dallas Slasher” Serial killer researched and summarized by Victoria Bedford, Maryann Bishop, Jillian Lee Allen, Lauren Blanks, Annemarie Bartholomew, & Ann Spangler Department of Psychology Radford University Radford, VA 24142-6946 Date Age Life Event Aug 10, 1933 0 Born in Amarillo Texas, adopted as the only child of Fred and Delle Albright No specific dates As a child he was doted upon and would be dressed in girl’s clothes and given a doll at times when his aunt was present. He was an impulsive child and would always manage to get out of the yard behind where his mother worked. She searched the fence and found no openings, but later learned he would wait for people passing by and simply would ask them to lift him over. Della ended up tying him to the porch to keep him away from the fence. No specific dates As soon as he received his first gun, he began shooting small animals like squirrels and rabbits, etc, and wanted to become a taxidermist and with Delle’s help, learned to skin and stuff them but grew bored of small animals. As a teen he helped his mother in her real estate business 1946 13 Convicted of aggravated assault, mother goes to bat for him, as she always will. 1947 14 Owned property that his adoptive parents bought for him 1948 15 Had sex with local prostitute and received “crabs.” 1949 16 Stole $380.00 from a cash register, and after a police investigation, they found 2 handguns, and a rifle worth over $111.00. April 21, 1951 17 Sentenced to prison for theft and receiving stolen goods, served 6 months of a 2 year term, and this began his fate of the 10’s… he has trouble with the law approximately every 10 years, but was apparently a successful thief and conman in between! 1951? 17 Went to Arkansas State Teacher’s College. Broke into a girl’s dorm and stole nude pictures, and also broke into a professor’s office. 1952? 18 Cut out the eyes of a friend’s ex-girlfriend and pasted them on the walls and onto another girl’s face (her picture). 1952-53? 19 Dated Bettye Nestor, an excellent prim and proper young lady, who worked in the president’s office and then he tricked her into stealing keys for all over the college and used them unethically to aid his schemes. Dec 27, 1954 20 Married 2 days after Christmas, to Bettye Nestor, a teacher at Kimball HS. Rarely keeps a job more than 3 months and became a bullfighter to show friends he could, styled hair, manufactured baseball bats, became and illustrator, and was a designer for a company that made airplanes. 1954 20 Stole a bunch of equipment from the college and was ready to take it away at end of semester, but caught, which leads to expulsion from school, but did not lead to criminal prosecution. 1961 27 Arrested for receiving and concealing stolen goods. Charges didn’t stick so he was released and suffered no consequences. 1968 34 Forged papers from Arkansas State Teacher’s college, changing grades to A’s and B’s, and giving himself a Bachelor’s Degree, and then a Masters. 1970 36 Sentenced to 3 years probation in Hunt County for forgery and altering official records (to change his grades and get undeserved academic recognition for jobs). 1971 37 Arrested for forging cashiers checks. Only received probation. 1975 41 Separated from wife, Bettye. April 1979 46 Was sentenced to a year’s probation after stealing 2 perfume atomizers from a Dallas store (he always loved giving gifts, even when unemployed, so assumed most were stolen). 1980 47 Sent back to prison after pleading guilty to stealing a miter saw and other items openly from a Dallas store ( Cut back door chain, shopped and took cart outside, was ready to load and leave when managers stopped him). 1981 48 Mother, Delle, dies. He travels and meets his birth mother. 1981 48 Is accused of molesting a 9 year old girl, and claims innocence and not understand why his friends and the girl would say such things, but accepted a guilty plea not to cause further problems. 1984 -87 51-54 Dated Mary White, who came back long after he was convicted and insisted she was afraid of him and knew he killed Pratt because of astrological tables he followed and knew he would kill again. 1885 52 Went to trial for sexual molestation case and received probation. 1986 53 Father, Fred, dies. Albright moves in with Dixie Austin. He inherits almost $100,000 from the savings and efforts of his parents. Even with his inheritance, Dixie worked at a gift shop and fully supported Albright and paid all the household expenses. 1987 54 Divorced Bettye Nestor, they had one daughter. 1988 55 Rhonda Bowie, 30, another Dallas prostitute, found dead from stab wounds, eyes not removed. 1990 57 He tries to start a romantic relationship with Glenda Durham until she learns about Dixie. Note: 1990 57 Starts drawing pictures of mutilated women, -- the prostitutes he murdered? But not sure if it was before or after the first murder. Also, is beginning to display odd behaviors, such as mowing lawn in underwear and collecting serial killer books. 1990-91? 57-8 Albright has an early morning shift delivering newspapers around which questions as well as alibis arose. Dec 13 1990 57 Date of first slaying and eyeball removal, Mary Lou Pratt (age 35), prostitute, shot in the back of the head, eyes cut out and her body dumped in southern Dallas County. In about 3 mos, there was an encyclopedia think file on Albright, but by then, 2 others were killed in the same manner. Feb.10, 1991 58 Second slaying- Susan Beth Peterson, 27, shot in the back of the head, eyes cut out and her bodies dumped in southern Dallas County. Mar 19, 1991 58 Third slaying- Shirley Elizabeth Williams, 41-year-old black prostitute was found shot in the back of head, eyeballs removed, her body dumped in southern Dallas County, found in the 2800 block of Bently Ave. [Albright lived nearby at 1000 block of El Dorado Ave, Oak Cliff, TX.] March 22, 1991 58 Albright’s home in the 1000 block of El Dorado Avenue is raided by police and searched where they found a pick-up truck that had been stolen from Chevrolet in 1988, and he is taken in for questioning, he is questioned for 7 hours. March 23, 1991 58 He was not charged then, as the evidence from his home didn’t link him to the case, however it pushed the investigations further. April18, 1991 58 Albright, indicted in the third of the three slayings on April 18, is in solitary confinement at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center. Before his March arrest in connection with the gruesome killings, murky undertows of vice, deceit and sexual depravity tugged quietly against the public persona of the amiable 57-year-old whom neighbors adored. June 25, 1991 58 Albright’s lawyer, Brad Lollar, “challenged the state's right to hold Mr. Albright pending an indictment in the October 1988 death of Rhonda Bowie.” Aug. 21, 1991 58 Albright is “charged with murdering four Dallas-area prostitutes, also has become the chief suspect in two Arkansas killings” and many other unsolved murders try to find their way to Albright as killer. Nov.2, 1991 58 Prosecutors are consider dropping one of four murder cases against Albright (Rhonda Bowie) because witnesses say he was at a softball tournament in New Mexico when the 1988 killing occurred in Dallas, which had the same fiber or hair evidence as in the three other cases currently under way. Police said that hairs or fibers found on the body of 30-year-old prostitute Rhonda Bowie implicated Albright. Dec.7, 1991 In more than 20 years of studying serial killers, FBI Agent Judson M. Ray testified Friday, he has never seen anything like the "precision cutting' used to mutilate three Dallas prostitutes. "What was interesting to us was the method in which these victims, these body parts, were taken,' the FBI agent said. "In my professional opinion, it's doubtful that you would have more than one person that deranged living in this city.' Dec.11, 1991 58 Neighbor testified that Albright was a very pleasant neighbor who often gave gifts and did free electrical work. Dec 12 1991 58 Defense Forensic expert, Samuel J. Palenik, a small particles expert, testified that hair samples representing much of the evidence against Albright may not belong to him, Charles Albright’s girlfriend Dixie also testified saying that Albright was not capable of committing such violent crimes and also insists he was with her for at least one murder time. Palenik also questioned if the evidence from Albright’s vacuum cleaner even came from the victims, while the prosecution expert, Charles Linch of Dallas, listened Dec.17, 1001 58 Case goes to jury. Dec?1991 58 Jury convicts Albright on one murder, Shirley Williams, due to strongest evidence (also her yellow raincoat) and he is sentenced to life in prison. Dec, 10, 1995 62 More multiple prostitute slayings in Dallas Nov.17, 2004 71 After reading the book, and reading all the news articles, we feel Mr. Albright may have been wrongly convicted of Shirley William’s murder, and that whoever killed her likely killed the other two as well. We cannot guess if he has ever killed others, but lean towards his innocence in these three that qualify him as a serial killer. He does not seem to be a nice man, but maybe not a serial killer either. General Information Sex Male Race White Number of victims 3 (only convicted of one) Country where killing occurred United States States where killing occurred Texas Childhood Information Date of birth August 10, 1933 Location Amarillo, Texas Birth order An adopted only child Number of siblings None in adoptee family, 1 sister? birth mother XYY? Unknown but not specifically mentioned Raised by Both parents, Fred and Delle, Delle was doting and over-protective and controlling Birth category Only child Parent’s marital status Married
if they suddenly saw the whole earth as a temple. “No wonder,” Fadiman writes, “enlightenment is always a crime.” At 9:30 in the morning, an architect and three senior scientists—two from Stanford, the other from Hewlett-Packard—donned eyeshades and earphones, sank into comfy couches, and waited for their government-approved dose of LSD to kick in. From across the suite and with no small amount of anticipation, Dr. James Fadiman spun the knobs of an impeccable sound system and unleashed Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68.” Then he stood by, ready to ease any concerns or discomfort.For this particular experiment, the couched volunteers had each brought along three highly technical problems from their respective fields that they’d been unable to solve for at least several months. In approximately two hours, when the LSD became fully active, they were going to remove the eyeshades and earphones, and attempt to find some solutions. Fadiman and his team would monitor their efforts, insights, and output to determine if a relatively low dose of acid—100 micrograms to be exact—enhanced their creativity.It was the summer of ’66. And the morning was beginning like many others at the International Foundation for Advanced Study, an inconspicuously named, privately funded facility dedicated to psychedelic drug research, which was located, even less conspicuously, on the second floor of a shopping plaza in Menlo Park, Calif. However, this particular morning wasn’t going to go like so many others had during the preceding five years, when researchers at IFAS (pronounced “if-as”) had legally dispensed LSD. Though Fadiman can’t recall the exact date, this was the day, for him at least, that the music died. Or, perhaps more accurately for all parties involved in his creativity study, it was the day before.At approximately 10 a.m., a courier delivered an express letter to the receptionist, who in turn quickly relayed it to Fadiman and the other researchers. They were to stop administering LSD, by order of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Effective immediately. Dozens of other private and university-affiliated institutions had received similar letters that day.That research centers once were permitted to explore the further frontiers of consciousness seems surprising to those of us who came of age when a strongly enforced psychedelic prohibition was the norm. They seem not unlike the last generation of children’s playgrounds, mostly eradicated during the ’90s, that were higher and riskier than today’s soft-plastic labyrinths. (Interestingly, a growing number of child psychologists now defend these playgrounds, saying they provided kids with both thrills and profound life lessons that simply can’t be had close to the ground.)When the FDA’s edict arrived, Fadiman was 27 years old, IFAS’s youngest researcher. He’d been a true believer in the gospel of psychedelics since 1961, when his old Harvard professor Richard Alpert (now Ram Dass) dosed him with psilocybin, the magic in the mushroom, at a Paris café. That day, his narrow, self-absorbed thinking had fallen away like old skin. People would live more harmoniously, he’d thought, if they could access this cosmic consciousness. Then and there he’d decided his calling would be to provide such access to others. He migrated to California (naturally) and teamed up with psychiatrists and seekers to explore how and if psychedelics in general—and LSD in particular—could safely augment psychotherapy, addiction treatment, creative endeavors, and spiritual growth. At Stanford University, he investigated this subject at length through a dissertation—which, of course, the government ban had just dead-ended.Couldn’t they comprehend what was at stake? Fadiman was devastated and more than a little indignant. However, even if he’d wanted to resist the FDA’s moratorium on ideological grounds, practical matters made compliance impossible: Four people who’d never been on acid before were about to peak.“I think we opened this tomorrow,” he said to his colleagues.And so one orchestra after the next wove increasingly visual melodies around the men on the couch. Then shortly before noon, as arranged, they emerged from their cocoons and got to work.Over the course of the preceding year, IFAS researchers had dosed a total of 22 other men for the creativity study, including a theoretical mathematician, an electronics engineer, a furniture designer, and a commercial artist. By including only those whose jobs involved the hard sciences (the lack of a single female participant says much about mid-century career options for women), they sought to examine the effects of LSD on both visionary and analytical thinking. Such a group offered an additional bonus: Anything they produced during the study would be subsequently scrutinized by departmental chairs, zoning boards, review panels, corporate clients, and the like, thus providing a real-world, unbiased yardstick for their results.In surveys administered shortly after their LSD-enhanced creativity sessions, the study volunteers, some of the best and brightest in their fields, sounded like tripped-out neopagans at a backwoods gathering. Their minds, they said, had blossomed and contracted with the universe. They’d beheld irregular but clean geometrical patterns glistening into infinity, felt a rightness before solutions manifested, and even shapeshifted into relevant formulas, concepts, and raw materials.[The volunteers] remained firm: LSD absolutely had helped them solve their complex, seemingly intractable problems.But here’s the clincher. After their 5HT2A neural receptors simmered down, they remained firm: LSD absolutely had helped them solve their complex, seemingly intractable problems. And the establishment agreed. The 26 men unleashed a slew of widely embraced innovations shortly after their LSD experiences, including a mathematical theorem for NOR gate circuits, a conceptual model of a photon, a linear electron accelerator beam-steering device, a new design for the vibratory microtome, a technical improvement of the magnetic tape recorder, blueprints for a private residency and an arts-and-crafts shopping plaza, and a space probe experiment designed to measure solar properties. Fadiman and his colleagues published these jaw-dropping results and closed shop.At a congressional subcommittee hearing that year, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy grilled FDA regulators about their ban on LSD studies: “Why, if they were worthwhile six months ago, why aren’t they worthwhile now?” For him, the ban was personal, too: His wife, Ethel, had received LSD-augmented therapy in Vancouver. “Perhaps to some extent we have lost sight of the fact that it”—Sen. Kennedy was referring specifically to LSD here—“can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly.”His objection did nothing to slow the panic that surged through halls of government. The state of California outlawed LSD in the fall of 1966, and was followed in quick succession by numerous other states and then the federal government. In 1970, agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration released a comprehensive database in which they’d sorted commonly known drugs into categories, or schedules. “Schedule 1” drugs, which included LSD and psilocybin, have a “significant potential for abuse,” they said, and “no recognized medicinal value.” Because Schedule 1 drugs were seen as the most dangerous of the bunch, those who used, manufactured, bought, possessed, or distributed them were thought to be deserving of the harshest penalties.By waging war on psychedelics and their aficionados, the U.S. government not only halted promising studies but also effectively shoved open discourse of these substances to the countercultural margins. And so conventional wisdom continues to argue that psychedelics offer one of a few possibilities: a psychotic break, a glimpse of God, or a visually stunning but fairly mindless journey. But no way would they help with practical, results-based thinking. (That’s what Ritalin is for, just ask any Ivy League undergrad.)Still, intriguing hints suggest that, despite stigma and risk of incarceration, some of our better innovators continued to feed their heads—and society as a whole reaped the benefits. Francis Crick confessed that he was tripping the first time he envisioned the double helix. Steve Jobs called LSD “one of the two or three most important things” he’d experienced. And Bill Wilson claimed it helped to facilitate breakthroughs of a more soulful variety: Decades after co-founding Alcoholics Anonymous, he tried LSD, said it tuned him in to the same spiritual awareness that made sobriety possible, and pitched its therapeutic use—unsuccessfully—to the AA board. So perhaps the music never really died. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say instead that the music got much softer. And the ones who were still listening had to pretend they couldn’t hear anything at all.On a Saturday last October, 45 years after dispensing those last legal doses, James Fadiman stood on stage inside the cavernous hall of Judson Memorial Church, a long-time downtown New York incubator of artistic, progressive, and even revolutionary movements. High above him on a window of stained glass, a golden band wrapped Escher-like enigmas around the Four Evangelists. Fadiman appeared far more earthly: wire frames, trim beard, dropped hairline, khakis, running shoes—like a policy wonk at a convention, right down to lanyard and nametag.A couple hundred people sat before him in folding chairs and along the side aisles of the hall. He adjusted his head microphone, then scrolled his lecture notes and side-stepped the podium. He felt fortunate to be there for many reasons, he said, including a health scare he’d had a few months back—a rather advanced case of pericarditis. “Some of you, I know, have experimented with enough substances so that you’ve ‘died.’ But it’s different when you’re in the ER.” He chuckled. “And you’re not on anything.”Most everybody laughed at his icebreaker, understood he was comparing, quite unfavorably, his recent experience to the way that, under the influence of high-dose psychedelics, one’s personality has a tendency to scatter like stardust. Which is to say that Fadiman was not addressing an ordinary audience.He was the first presenter of the day at the fifth-annual Horizons, a weekend-long forum organized to “open a fresh dialogue” regarding the role of psychedelics in “medicine, culture, history, spirituality, and creativity.” The crowd consisted of young and old, dreadlocks and suits, crushed velvet and institutional bonafides. A self-declared prophet sat near Bellevue Hospital’s leading addictions specialist. Both are pro-psychedelics, though they differ on what qualifies as appropriate usage. Said addictions specialist is currently administering psilocybin to people with recurrent and advanced-stage cancer in—surprise!—a government-sanctioned study. Most people enrolled in his study have reported that a single psychedelic session substantially reduced their anxieties related to death, while also qualifying as one of their most spiritual experiences.“I kind of did the squarest bio I could,” Fadiman said, pointing at a Horizons brochure, “just in case other people were reading it.” Who did he mean? Squares? Feds? He’d chosen to highlight his post-ban work, which sounded mildly interesting though fairly innocuous. Co-founder of the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. Course instructor at San Francisco State, Brandeis, and Stanford. Writer. Member of various corporate boards. Don’t be fooled though. His bio obscures a well-documented notoriety.In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe writes about encountering “a young psychologist,” “Clifton Fadiman’s nephew, it turned out,” in the waiting room of the San Mateo County jail. Fadiman and his wife were “happily stuffing three I-Ching coins into some interminable dense volume of Oriental mysticism” that they planned to give Ken Kesey, the Prankster-in-Chief whom the FBI had just nabbed after eight months on the lam. Wolfe had been granted an interview with Kesey, and they wanted him to tell their friend about the hidden coins. During this difficult time, they explained, Kesey needed oracular advice.Fadiman’s influence transcends counterculture, though. It might even stretch through the very medium through which you’re reading these words. In What the Dormouse Said, John Markoff reports that Fadiman had dosed and counseled numerous “heads” as they were attempting to amplify consciousness through silicon chips and virtual reality. The personal computer revolution, Markoff argues, flourished on the Left Coast precisely because of a peculiar confluence of scientists, dreamers, and drop-outs. And indeed, if you were to illustrate with a Venn diagram the relationships between those involved with Acid Test parties, the Homebrew Computer Club, the Augmented Human Intellect Research Center at Stanford University, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, various backwoods communes, and, of course, the IFAS research center, you’d see an overlap of communities on the San Francisco Midpeninsula that just wasn’t available to the average IBM computer scientist in Westchester.Though scientists are more typically seen as killers of myth, not its creators, Einstein and many of his more visionary contemporaries sound as trippy as any of yesterday’s mystics.It’s true that Fadiman cooled it for several decades, did those square things in his bio, settled into the suburbs, and kept on the down-low any lingering passion for chemically boosted consciousness. But then, in 2010, with the publication of his book, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys, it became official: At 70 years old, Fadiman had gone rogue. In a mild-mannered sort of way, yes, with charts, hypotheses, and a winning bedside manner. But government be damned, he was now an outspoken advocate for the careful but criminal use of psychedelics, especially LSD, his favorite.What’s astounding isn’t so much that he came out of the psychedelic closet for a second time—most everyone retains a certain allegiance to their formative experiences—but that he is far from alone. And we’re not just talking about the tens of thousands of utopians who co-create an ephemeral Mecca in the swirling sands of Black Rock each summer.Though draconian laws still keep psychedelics from the general public, next-generation administrators at the FDA and DEA have been approving research studies again. The taboo broke with a 1992 investigation of how dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, a fast-acting psychedelic, impacts consciousness; DMT wasn’t burdened by the cultural baggage of its three-lettered cousin. And what began quite haltingly had become, by the middle of the last decade, if not routine then certainly notable: Terminated research from the ’60s was being replicated and even furthered in dozens of studies by big-name players, including Johns Hopkins, NYU, and UCLA. These studies, which almost exclusively explore the psychotherapeutic potential of psychedelics (as opposed to, say, how they might influence creativity), are getting results that would make a Big Pharma rep salivate. Of the hundreds of volunteers who’ve participated, a high majority have said that psychedelics, given in a safe, supportive setting, helped them to, depending on the study, accept imminent mortality, overcome drug and alcohol addiction, mitigate obsessive-compulsive urges, or heal post-traumatic stress disorder.Yet another study recently passed the approval process despite strong objections from the Pentagon: In the summer of 2011, 16 vets who returned from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD began receiving a combination of talk therapy and MDMA (pure Ecstasy). This, though the DEA still officially states that psychedelics’ “use in psychotherapy largely has been debunked.” The current relationship between regulators and these Schedule 1 substances is a tangle of impossible possibilities—not unlike the stained glass window overlooking Judson’s stage.“What happens in serious psychedelic work,” Fadiman said to the people before him, “is there’s a sudden reframing of massive amounts of worldview. We don’t know much about what that learning means, but we sure can see the results.” Though he applauds the aforementioned studies, he has come to Horizons specifically to speak on their limitations. In fact, his entire lecture is intended to be an attack on what he calls “the medical model,” an approach to psychedelic drug use that curtails access to only a fraction of society, and for only narrowly defined goals centered around personal therapy.Fadiman studied the people before him, then widened his eyes with faux innocence. “How many of you are going to be in a legal research study next year?”No hands.“Including not me. You not only have to be ill [to participate], but you have to be ill with something fairly awful. Now, how many of you are planning to have a psychedelic within the next year?”An overwhelming majority of the audience raised a hand, some enthusiastic, others sheepish. Heads swiveled like periscopes, the better to see all those mea culpas.“So, I’ll talk to you.”Widespread laughter: score!“For a long time after research stopped in the ’60s, I thought, ‘Oh, I can’t do the research that interests me the most, that’s the most life-changing, that has the most potential.’ I also realized that … what the government said is, ‘We are restricting some basic freedoms.’”Throughout the lecture, his left hand poked like a conductor’s stick as he challenged his listeners with a series of questions.“Can you go to most any group, from tea parties on one end, to us, I think we’re probably on the other, and say, Is religious freedom something that we support in this country?”“Is it all right to establish or re-establish or discover a connection to the Divine?”“Is it OK to do something that leads to your own self-healing and improves your connection to the natural world?”“Is it OK to discover how the universe works? At the moment, we’ve got two Nobel Prize winners who’ve copped to the fact of where they got their ideas.”Francis Crick is one and the other: Kary Mullis, who was intermittently under the influence of LSD as he developed the polymerase chain reaction, a genetic sequencing technique through which scientists can detect certain infectious diseases, map the human genome, and trace ancestral heritage back thousands of years.Fadiman was warming up now, standing tall for the 23 million Americans who, according to government stats, have already taken LSD, and the 400,000-plus who will try it for the first time this year. Curiosity continues to trump criminalization.“We’re not necessarily going to be content if certain psychedelics are available on prescription [for people who are really ill],” Fadiman said. “That’s not what psychedelic freedom is about.”Just as he began to speculate on how and when “psychedelic freedom” might be achieved, the microphone slipped off his ear, shoulder-bounced, and tumbled to the floor. It sounded like gunshots or a door being bashed in. Fadiman threw up his hands, fingers splayed, head lowered, as if a SWAT team was raiding the auditorium. He had the audience laughing again as a sound tech scrambled to make things right. Nonetheless, his slapstick evoked a sobering truth concerning the tenuous turf between personal and legal conviction. How many people here have ever been in an actual raid? Hands please?The discovery of lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, is a fairly known tale, at least in certain circles. As war ravaged Europe, Dr. Albert Hofmann hunkered down in his lab in Basel, Switzerland, and synthesized dozens of compounds from ergot, a grain-attacking fungus, in an effort to create a medicinal blood stimulator. In 1943, he accidentally (or, as he has claimed, synchronistically) absorbed a few potent drops from the 25th variety, soon thereafter experiencing a “not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition.”What’s less commonly known, even in certain circles, is what should or shouldn’t be done with this potent discovery, which Hofmann has referred to as “my problem child.” During a second, entirely intentional exposure, his problem child unleashed upon him a slew of hellish and terrifying visions, severely compromising both his short-term sanity and his ability to navigate the physical world.Through his re-stabilized head microphone, Fadiman was focusing on exactly these sorts of dangers: He’d transitioned from advocacy to shop talk. “Have you ever had a bad trip?” he asked the audience. “Hands please. That’s quite a few. Do you know why it was a bad trip? Unfortunately, less hands.”Of his own hands: The right clutched lecture notes, while the left danced. “OK, you aren’t going to be involved in research studies. But in your personal lives you are going to be looking at”—left ascending three invisible steps—“yourself, science, and the Divine. And so it’s important to know, what is necessary for the safest, most successful, and potentially sacred experience?” Palm upward. “The answer is, very simply, six items.” And then down to the podium.These six items are, perhaps simply enough, factors that Fadiman believes determine the quality of a psychedelic experience, as well as its specific nature. He has culled them from his work with hundreds of people in therapy sessions, creativity experiments, and Death Valley vision quests. They are:Set: the mental attitude of a would-be psychedelic voyagerSetting: the surroundings in which a psychedelic substance is ingestedGuide: a person experienced with non-ordinary states of consciousness who helps to mitigate challenges and channel insightsSubstance: the type and quantity of psychedelic agentSession: the entirety of a psychedelic trip, including all activities or ritualsSituation: the environment, people, and culture from which a person comes to a session and returns afterwardRegardless of whether they use Fadiman’s preferred terminology, medical researchers conducting government-approved therapeutic studies look for these same essential parameters, as do shamans and tribal elders across the globe. These diverse facilitators of psychedelic experiences carefully screen applicants to ensure they are of sound(-enough) mind and prime them on the benefits that a session can offer, thereby helping to focus intentions, establish positive expectations, and dramatically increase the odds of a favorable outcome.During the 1960s, researchers determined that non-lyrical music, including solo flute, tribal drums, ragas, and classical recordings greatly augmented a psychedelic experience. Fadiman favors Hovhaness’s Mysterious Mountain and Fauré’s Requiem.Sessions typically occur in a comfortable, often enchanting, environment—say, a star-shaped temple in the Brazilian Amazon or a cushy, made-over hospital room at NYU’s dental school. And in these settings, therapists, shamans, and researchers follow a certain protocol, comprised of time-tested, peer-reviewed rituals that have been shown to most effectively channel revelatory and even, as Fadiman would have it, sacred, experiences. A psychedelic voyager may be guided with singing and drumming, or with prerecorded non-lyrical music, eyeshades, and photographs of loved ones, or with suggestions, observations, and questions, and, sometimes, later in the session, as the potency of a substance wanes, with forays into particularly choice habitat. Afterwards, the voyager is welcomed back and assisted with integrating into her situation any learning, insights, and mystical flashes that may have occurred.Those least likely to account for these six factors are typically people with less stable personalities, which is to say, youth. Which is to say, most of us who found ourselves with LSD on our tongues for the first time in a friend’s basement, at a jumping party, or on the untamed outskirts of sprawl. The mind might be entirely unprepared, the dosage too much, the setting and lack of effective support quite dangerous.“I think guides are wonderful,” Fadiman said, “which often gets me dismissed as a radical conservative—a kind of fun thing to be in this crowd. But look, you don’t go to the airport and say, ‘I want to fly a plane.’ And a pilot says, ‘Here’s the keys, pick one of those, and give it a shot.’”He has a point. After all, even the most positive LSD experiences often involve disturbing visions and moments of paranoia. Most of us still managed to do OK during our first time, maybe even were steered toward an epiphany. But some of us didn’t. Some of us crash-landed and injured ourselves or others, or were overpowered by unresolved subconscious conflicts, or, in extremely rare cases, unleashed a latent psychosis. Over the last 50 years, more than a few were locked up in a correctional facility of one kind or another and injected with Thorazine, which, unfortunately, has a way of transforming a drug-induced freakout into life-long affliction. (Xanax is a far better option.) Acid casualties from the 1960s still haunt Telegraph Avenue like ghosts with unsettled scores.When Fadiman sat down to write his book, he had at first been attempting to write a memoir; after an early draft, he decided he was doing too much navel-gazing and shifted his style and content to create The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, which reads a good deal like a how-to-manual. Still, he didn’t entirely suppress his initial urge to tell portions of his own tale, and why should he? Even as he conducted government-sanctioned research, he was cavorting with mystics, poets, outlaws, and a pistol-packing man who transnationally distributed LSD, regularly communicated with U.S. intelligence agencies, and pioneered procedures for psychedelic sessions that highly regarded medical facilities still use today.In one anecdote that made the cut, he recounts a night spent with Ken Kesey on a feral embankment between the shoreline and the town dump of sleepy Pescadaro, Calif. Peaking on a relatively high dose of LSD shortly before dawn, Dorothy, one of Ken’s girlfriends, lay down in the dirt to better observe one particular wild violet. Stardust waltzed off its purple petals into the embankment, the ocean, even the dump. Stranger still, the violet budded, blossomed, withered, and died, both forward in time and in reverse.When Dorothy tried to explain it all to James, he didn’t scoff. Instead he got down beside her and, utilizing insights he’d developed as an IFAS guide, urged her deeper into the experience. Dorothy became aware that stardust was also coursing through her neural network. The universe wasn’t random chance, she thought that morning, but ebullient choice. She didn’t need to go anywhere because she was everywhere.If you ask her today, she’ll tell you the effects from her trip lasted long after she came down. For starters, she’d say, this was the pivotal moment that led her to become a filmmaker. (Her short documentaries have earned numerous accolades, including an Emmy, an Oscar nomination, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Gold Medal.) But, she’d add, that’s not all. That morning, she ditched Hunky Ken for Interstellar James, and for 47 years and counting, they’ve lived together in an open marriage.What happened to Dorothy Fadiman that morning? How about Francis Crick and the people with cancer in the anxiety studies? Staunch materialists might argue that exogenous, psychotropic molecules had simply transformed their three pounds of gelatinous gray head muscle into funhouses for a few hours. But Ms. Fadiman, Crick, and most study volunteers say something quite different—that the psychedelics they ingested acted as a sort of antenna, allowing them to receive rather profound transmissions that they couldn’t typically access during their ordinary states of consciousness. Such a claim is not without precedent.Ever since people first altered their surroundings with celestially aligned rocks, they’ve also been altering their inner landscapes. Though Albert Hofmann’s recipe is entirely modern, tribes and other pre-industrial societies from Australia to Mesopotamia have long been mixing the medicine into brews, snuffs, and powders. In rituals, often of a collective nature, they’ve ingested these substances and then sung, drummed, and channeled to access insights, archetypal beings, and alternate realities. While these societies are as eclectic as orchids, they share at least one characteristic: Their rituals have served as an axis mundi, a psychic compass that simultaneously situates and provides direction to both individual and community. As a result, matter and consciousness are experienced as entwined, purposeful, and sacred.On stage and page, Fadiman has argued that, in marked contrast, most members of post-industrial societies perceive themselves as happenstance cogs in a clockwork universe, and consequently, exhibit a profound and increasingly dangerous alienation. The dissociation of self is so fundamental that bioregions are sub-divided into tract housing, resources into quarterly earnings, and people into one-percenters and the rest. For Fadiman at least, even traditional Western therapy, which seeks to re-align a sick individual to this worldview, must necessarily end in a cul-de-sac.Marlene Dobkin de Rios, a medical anthropologist, has argued that there is a strong correlation between centralized power and psychedelic prohibition as authoritarian leaders have perennially associated these substances with insurrectionary tendencies. Indeed, whether in 17th-century Europe or 19th-century America, even as proponents of church and state enclosed communal lands and subjugated the inhabitants therein, they especially targeted those deemed most resistant to ideological control—the shamans, witches, magi, occultists, and others who concocted, imbibed, and distributed psychedelic substances, and believed themselves to be in an ongoing discourse with land, non-human species, and spirits.The!Kung (tongue-click then “kung”) is one of the psychedelically-augmented, anarchistic societies that had survived these purges well into contemporary times. A nomadic people, they’d harmonized with the austere rhythms of the Kalahari Desert for thousands of years. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, who lived with them during the 1950s, writes that the!Kung recognized an illness called “Star Sickness,” which could overcome members of the community with a force not unlike gravity and cause profound disorientation. Unable to situate themselves in the cosmos in a meaningful way, the afflicted displayed jealousy, hostility, and a marked incapacity for gift-giving—the very symptoms that plague many Westerners, according to Fadiman (and, certainly, quite a few others).To cure and prevent Star Sickness, the!Kung conducted all-night trance dances around a bonfire four times per month on average, often augmenting them with psychoactive plants including dagga (marijuana) and gaise noru noru (more than marijuana). As dancers sang, stomped, shook rattles, and spun, a boiling force called n/um collected in their abdomens and sometimes flowed out through their heads, causing them to soar over fantastical terrain. These grand vistas were said to provide the necessary perspective to re-align community members both to the stars and one other.Surely, the!Kung’s chosen mode of governance reflected these regularly-scheduled astral tune-ups. Until the 1970s, when apartheid-era colonizers irrevocably altered the flora, fauna, and flow of the Kalahari, the!Kung had organized through leaderless, consensus-based decision-making, coupled with a bawdy humor that infused even the most sacred moments to dispel tension and check the power-hungry. This sort of power-sharing sounds not dissimilar to what Occupy Wall Street protesters attempted last year with their General Assemblies and Spokes Councils. Perhaps both Occupiers and the!Kung have tapped something primordial: When researchers isolate heart cells on a Petri dish, the cells bounce to their own idiosyncratic rhythms. But placed beside one another, they self-organize into a collective beat.The urge to connect with the numinous remains strong throughout the world, including the West—even as medical experts pathologize it, monotheistic bureaucrats neuter it, and Madison Avenue spellcasters exploit it. Of course psychoactive plants, fungi, and synthetics aren’t the only way to sate this urge: Sufis spin, musicians riff, and physicists formulate. And sometimes psychedelics just get in the way, according to religious scholar Huston Smith.Cops don’t just hide on side streets—they sneak into heads, too. And so Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential hopeful, can declare with patrician matter-of-factness, “Corporations are people, my friend.”After surveying late-’60s counterculture, he warned that without the grounding of long-term spiritual practice, psychedelic drug use amounts to, at best, a “religion of religious experience,” a series of mystical wows decontextualized from personal and community health.Notably, though, the plant teachers—as some shamans refer to vision-inducing flora—have been perceived by what probably amounts to a majority of human societies as a legitimate and particularly effective portal into the fabric and meaning of reality. Michael Pollan popularized what ethnobotanists have been saying for some time with his 2001 book, The Botany of Desire: Plants and people have been involved in a symbiotic relationship for millennia. They entice our noses, bellies, and brains; we nurture their terrain. It’s a fairly open secret that not only does the Amazon contain the necessary ingredients for ayahuasca, one of the strongest and oldest psychedelic brews, but that the forest itself isn’t so much a wilderness as a 10,000-year-old garden under indigenous management.By comparison, Americans commonly perceive the wild violet as a noxious weed—though it’s a rich source of Vitamins A and C, as well as antimicrobial and anti-HIV agents. The wild violet is quite hardy, too, which is why Dorothy Fadiman’s prized flower was able to flourish near the Pescadaro dump, the ass-end of civilization. But for homeowners intent on turning their parcel of property into a monochromatic green sheet, that simply means repeated applications of a particularly strong herbicide along with, as one website advises, “persistence.” Such an approach to land use, which views private property as so inviolable and autonomous that it’s above even the laws of nature, surely reflects how many Americans perceive not only their surroundings but also themselves. You’ve heard the one about the rugged, entirely self-made individual?Albert Einstein, who navigated the twilight turf between consciousness and matter for much of his life, argued that “Man” suffers from an “optical delusion of consciousness” as he “experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest.” His cure? Get some n/um. “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious,” he said. “It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: His eyes are closed.”Though scientists are more typically seen as killers of myth, not its creators, Einstein and many of his more visionary contemporaries sound as trippy as any of yesterday’s mystics. They say that the time-space continuum warps like the surface of a trampoline. They say that we are stardust. That there is no “in the beginning.” That things are not things at all, but relations. That the observer tweaks the observed, at least on a sub-atomic level, just by observing.Who knows, their latest findings may one day affirm some ancient hypotheses. If reality isn’t shaped with the psychically aware, self-organizing units that Giordano Bruno called monads in the sixteenth century, then perhaps it’s woven with Indra’s net, the jeweled nodes of which stretch into infinity, each one a reflection of all others. To entertain such ontologies is to re-contextualize one’s self as a marvelous conduit in a timeless whole, through which molecules and meaning flow, from nebulae to neurons and back again. If certain of these molecules connect with our serotonin receptors like a key in a pin tumbler, and open a door to extraordinary vistas, why shouldn’t we peek?Fadiman had another question for the audience: “How many of you have heard about micro-dosing?” He adjusted his bifocals to a groovy sight: two-dozen uplifted hands. “Whoa!”Despite the 45-year government ban, Fadiman had never stopped longing to tinker with LSD, to catalogue what we might be capable of with this byproduct of mold. Of all the possible forays into this psychic terra incognito, he was most eager to explore micro-dosing—specifically its long-term effects. And he didn’t have another 45 years for the feds to get hip to the plan.Fadiman claims the “normal range” of an LSD dose varies, based on whether one is seeking a recreational experience (50 mcg), creative boost (100 mcg), therapeutic session (100-250 mcg) or face-to-face with “the Divine” (400 mcg). But, he cautions, a higher dose is a riskier dose.First things first: Fadiman defines a micro-dose as 10 micrograms of LSD (or one-fifth the usual dose of mushrooms). Because he cannot set up perfect lab conditions due to the likelihood of criminal prosecution, he has instead crafted a study in which volunteers self-administer and self-report. Which means that they must acquire their own supply of the Schedule 1 drug and separate a standard hit of 50 to 100 micrograms into micro-doses. (Hint: LSD is entirely water-soluble.)Beginning in 2010, an unspecified but growing number of volunteers have taken a micro-dose every third day, while conducting their typical daily routines and maintaining logbooks of their observations. Study enrollment may last for several weeks or longer: There doesn’t appear to be a brightly drawn finish line. After several weeks (or, um…), participants send their logbooks to an email address on Fadiman’s personal website, preferably accompanied by a summary of their overall impressions.“Micro-dosing turns out to be a totally different world,” Fadiman extolled. “As someone said, the rocks don’t glow, even a little bit. But what many people are reporting is, at the end of the day, they say, ‘That was a really good day.’ You know, that kind of day when things kind of work. You’re doing a task you normally couldn’t stand for two hours, but you do it for three or four. You eat properly. Maybe you do one more set of reps. Just a good day. That seems to be what we’re discovering.”Elsewhere Fadiman has been more specific about the logbooks he’s received. One physician reported that micro-dosing got him “in touch with a deep place of ease and beauty.” A vocalist said she could
−\mathrm{NPlusKPatterns}. \end{align*} \] Extensions do not form a group. The easiest way to see that is to observe that extensions are idempotent, i.e. $X+X=X$ for any extension $X$. However, in a group there is only one idempotent element, zero. Extensions do form an inverse semigroup, though. Thus we again arrive at inverse semigroup torsors. Acknowledgements A recent discussion with Niklas Broberg about Haskell extensions motivated me to explore these concepts. His HIW’12 lightning talk on Haskell Modular Mindset is also relevant. Oleksandr Manzyuk kindly pointed me to the concept of a torsor.ATTILIO MAGGIULLI Parigi, tolti i fondi alla Comédie italienne Il direttore si schianta in auto contro Eliseo Tenta di sfondare le inferriate della residenza del presidente della Repubblica Hollande PARIGI – Con l’auto, a tutta velocità, contro la cancellata dell’Eliseo, a Parigi, residenza ufficiale del presidente della Repubblica, François Hollande. Si è temuto un attentato, questa mattina attorno alle 10 e 30, all’ingresso du Coq, del Gallo, dalla parte dei giardini presidenziali. Era invece la protesta estrema di un italiano, Attilio Maggiulli, direttore di un teatro parigino, la Comédie italienne, disperato per il taglio dei fondi alla cultura e alla struttura che dirige. Attilio Maggiulli, da Strehler a Montparnasse, una vita per il teatro GIA’ FERMATO - L’italiano è stato fermato dopo aver tentato di sfondare il cancello principale dell’Eliseo a bordo di un’auto. Secondo il sito di Le Monde, che cita fonti di polizia, Maggiulli era stato già fermato mercoledì pomeriggio nei dintorni dell’hotel Marigny, non lontano dal palazzo presidenziale francese: aveva dato fuoco a un pupazzo di Arlecchino e poi lanciato volantini per la strada per denunciare i tagli delle sovvenzioni al suo teatro. L’uomo sarebbe stato fermato, ascoltato e poi «rilasciato senza nessuna accusa da parte della procura», si legge sul sito. Italiano schianta la macchina contro i cancelli dell'Eliseo Rcd LA PROTESTA - Una negoziante ha raccontato di aver sentito il fracasso e, quando si è affacciata, di aver visto un’auto grigia schiantata contro le inferriate. L’uomo al volante è estratto privo di conoscenza e ora è piantonato in ospedale.Luc Forsyth and Gareth Bright have set out on a journey to follow the Mekong river from sea to source. The Diplomat will be sharing some of the stories they’ve found along the way. For more about the project, check out the whole series here. Outside the northern city of Luang Prabang, we explore the relationships between humans and domesticated elephants. Over four days we learn about the bond formed between the animals and their handlers and the realities of the ecotourism and logging industries’ use of elephants. “When I came here, I didn’t know anything about elephants. I was a little afraid of them,” Son Phet admitted. A 24-year-old mahout, or elephant rider, Son Phet did not look afraid of the giant animal anymore as he stood fully upright on its head. Khoun, the 47-year-old female he was partnered with, hardly seemed to notice his weight. After the last week of investigating the impacts of Laos’ hydropower dams on the local populations, we had come to an elephant camp outside Luang Prabang to try and learn more about the relationships between people and animals along the Mekong. We had seen shockingly little wildlife during the the last months of travel. Apart from a brief visit to a national park and bird conservancy in Vietnam, most of the animal populations and habitats we’d encountered had been in bad shape. We needed to be reminded that the Mekong was a river that was not solely the domain of humanity. Admittedly, visiting a man-made camp where elephants were closely tied to their human partners was not the purest means of learning about the lives of the animals. But as Laos has an estimated population of just 400-600 wild elephants remaining, with our limited resources we stood little chance of interacting with them in their natural environment. Even with this compromise in mind, we felt it was important to try and gain some understanding of the enormous mammals’ situation in 21st century Laos. After all, the country’s historic nickname was Lane Xang — the Land of a Million Elephants. Courting an Elephant “I heard that one of the older mahouts had a motorbike accident,” Son Phet explained when we asked what prompted him to become a professional elephant handler. “I knew about this place because my village is quite nearby and I had played with elephants a little before, and so I decided to apply.” The process of learning to control an elephant, Son Phet told us, was an involved one. Captive elephants form a special bond to their handlers and will stubbornly refuse to listen to anyone they do not know. They are highly intelligent animals and can remember and understand a surprising variety of command words, but if they don’t trust a person they project an air of quiet indifference and simply will not move. And weighing roughly 3 tonnes, there is little a person can do to compel them against their will, save extreme physical violence. For mahouts like Son Phet, whose job security depended on being able to control his elephant while keeping it in good health, abusing the extremely valuable animal (buying an adult female can cost far more than a luxury SUV) would be a sure way to get fired. On top of this, beating an elephant into submission could create short term acquiescence, but in the long run made sure the mahout would live in perpetual danger. “Elephants hide their emotions,” Son Phet told us when we asked him about the risks involved with his job. “It can be very difficult to tell if they are happy, sad, or angry. If you treat them badly they will hide their feelings, but they will never forget. They will wait and let you think everything is ok, but they might wait until you are alone with them in the jungle and then kill you. They don’t forget.” The thought of such a powerful creature biding its time behind a mask of calm until it could exact the ultimate revenge on an abusive human was both fascinating and terrifying in equal measure. Of course, Son Phet was taught this when he accepted the job, and so knew that the only way to gain real control required time and patience. The basic formula was simple: stay in nearly constant contact with them for roughly a month until sufficient trust was earned. That contact involved everything from feeding the elephants, playing with them, and bathing them in the Mekong to keep them cool and clean. Except for when the elephants were taken into the jungle where they slept for the night, the mahouts were seldom out of sight of their animals, even long after a trusting relationship was established. Yet like any relationship, complete control was always out of reach. “You can never really have 100 percent control,” Son Phet explained. “The best you can do is maybe 95 percent. They can always choose not to listen.” When we asked Son Phet to describe how he felt about Khoun after spending more than a year together, his response was unashamedly tender: “She is everything. My friend, my family, my wife.” Beasts of Burden As much as we were moved by the close relationships between man and elephant we had witnessed over the last few days, we knew that Khoun and the other animals at the Luang Prabang camp were not free in the true sense of the word. They were treated with absolute compassion and kindness, but still they remained indentured to their owners and spent nearly every day carrying tourists on their backs. Yet from our research and pre-trip conversations with elephant experts, we knew that employment in the ecotourism industry was far preferable to the other jobs elephants were often forced into. According to the Elephant Conservation Center, there are currently more elephants employed by the logging industry in Laos than there are in the wild. Laos is rich in valuable hardwoods such as teak, and its mountainous terrain and the low budgets of many logging operations mean hiring industrial machinery is not always the most effective option for harvesting lumber. Elephants, with their enormous strength and ability to navigate both on land and in water, are often recruited into the labor force. The owner of the camp where we’d been staying agreed to show us where we could see the use of elephants in the logging industry for ourselves, and so early on our final morning in Luang Prabang we were dropped off at a small crossing on a minor tributary of the Mekong. As we sat in a leaky fishing boat that served as the only means of crossing we could hear the distant sound of something crashing through the water well before we saw it. When the elephant, a 35-year-old female named Seub, round the bend in the river, it was a truly awesome sight. Outfitted with a thick harness, it dragged a massive section of a freshly felled tree at the end of lengths of heavy-looking chains. It was the first time we had actually experienced the full extent of the animal’s power; with each determined heave forward it was apparent just how strong it was as it heaved the log over a sandbar and into the flowing river beyond. Its mahout sat cross-legged on Seub’s head just above the river’s current as the elephant swam steadily across to the opposite bank, the weight clearly much easier for her to manage with the aid of the water’s buoyancy. Once ashore, the mahout barked commands to Seub, provoking the final burst of power needed to beach the log. Seub was then unhooked from her chains and let to a thicket of dense grass to graze for a while before heading back across the river to haul another section of teak. In all, Seub would be able to make roughly 10 of these trips in a day, earning around $150 for the loggers for every cubic meter of lumber she delivered. If she wasn’t sick or tired and worked at maximum speed, her mahout told us, Seub could pull more than $10 000 worth of wood across the river in an 8 hour work day. It was difficult and dangerous work for both the elephant and her mahout, and since many small scale logging operations were illegal the risks were substantial. Back at the Luang Prabang camp, we talked with Son Phet about what we had seen. “I’m a bit worried,” he said about the future of elephants in Laos. “We used to be ‘the land of a million elephants,’ but now we’re just a few thousand. They can be valuable, and people sometimes hurt them [while trying to earn money with them]. When I see this I want to tell people to stop so that we can keep elephants in Laos for future generations.” This piece originally appeared at A River’s Tail.Photograph by: Nick Procaylo, PNG Editor’s note: It’s a rare day indeed when CanucksArmy is able to publish a piece with actual access. Today is that rare day. These observations from the opening of Canucks Main Camp were written by friend of the blog Justin Morissette, who is a broadcast journalism student at BCIT in Vancouver. He occasionally blogs about movies, moonlights as a stand-up comedian and once sang the national anthems at a Canucks game. Follow him on Twitter: @JustinMoris. Through an equal dose of luck and opportunity, I recently found myself covering the opening day of Canucks’ main camp for a local television station. As the older, more seasoned beat reporters waited around the narrow hallway impatiently as players were led out to face the press one by one, my enthusiasm could not be deterred. “Just wait,” said one veteran. “You’ll come to hate this in time.” As someone who would have otherwise been sitting bored in a classroom had I not been there, standing bored in a hallway waiting to interview hockey players seemed like a pretty great place to be. The Canucks’ have gone with a different set-up so far in this training camp, in terms of media availability, leading players out by request instead of opening up the room to reporters. While it gives the team more control over what “the message” is, it sadly cuts down on the chance to get an exclusive. I would have liked to have broken off from the pack and struck up a conversation with one of the lesser names in the dressing room to see if I could get something worthwhile, but alas, the opportunities just weren’t there this year. Not yet anyway… Here then, are my impressions from inside the belly of the beast: Christian Ehrhoff was expendable. No one was willing to come right out and say this, but the implication was made several times throughout the day, most clearly by Henrik Sedin. Asked of the team’s chances to make it all the way back to the Stanley Cup Final, Henrik quipped “We didn’t lose anything.” When pressed on how the loss of a 50+ point defenseman could be seen as insignificant, Henrik alluded to the situations in which Ehrhoff was able to play that got him those points. Those minutes will go to someone else now, be it Ballard or Tanev or whomever, and there is a real belief amongst the team that whoever gets those minutes will fare just as well. Cody Hodgson is glib. One of the most eagerly awaited interviews of the day was the former CHL player of the year, with the weight of the world riding on his shoulders. The wait was all for naught, as Hodgson went into "Tiger Woods mode." He gave impersonal, cookie-cutter answers that filled time but didn’t require him to ever really say anything of substance. This is his demeanour with the media, and while in the past it has earned him the label of an entitled child with a potential attitude, I can’t say I blame him for the approach. Once burned by a Vancouver media eager to foment controversy between Cody and team management, Hodgson has taken to saying nothing as a way of avoiding trouble. While it doesn’t make for colourful soundbytes, the media has largely made their own bed on this one. Cody Hodgson is built like a truck. While his short, choppy skating stride was still a contentious issue once the team took the ice on Saturday, there should be no worries about Hodgson’s size. Intense summer workouts with Gary Roberts and company have Hodgson looking nearly twice as muscular as he did during the playoffs last season. He no longer looks like a kid, and while foot-speed will always be a concern for Cody, strength on the puck has a way of compensating for it (see: The Sedins). Keith Ballard is the team’s best interview. Say what you will about Ballard’s struggles as a player this past season, there is no questioning his integrity as a person. Ballard was in the first handful of players to be led out to be interviewed on Friday, and he knew exactly why he was being brought out early – to face the music. He is open and honest in a way that so few pro athletes are, willingly talking about last season’s difficulties while still addressing how rewarding it was to play on such a successful team. He never says anything that will get him into trouble, but the pain in his eyes when he talks about last year is clear as day. It is refreshing to hear this man speak, and I wish nothing but the best for him in the coming season. Mikael Samuelsson is poised for a huge year. The one question Samuelsson refused to answer was "when exactly did you start to feel worse for wear last season?" His eyes tightened. He took his time before answering simply: “No comment.” While he didn’t want to use health as an excuse, it’s likely that Samuelsson was bothered by injuries for most, if not all of last season. To take him at his word he feels better than ever coming into this years training camp, which, is good news. The Canucks will need him to be a cornerstone on a makeshift second line to start the regular season, so the opportunity is there for him to deliver. While last season was viewed as an "off-year" for the shoot-from-anywhere winger, he did finish only three points back of his totals from the year previous. This was thanks in large part to his 19 power-play points, 14 of which were assists. If Ehrhoff is as replaceable as the team would have us believe, Samuelsson will have the opportunity to improve those totals, playing the point on the first-unit – a role he was relatively successful in last season. Finally: Ryan Kesler should never be captain. Let it be known that I am a huge fan of Kesler as a player. He is my favourite Canuck, and has been for quite some time. But whenever questions of leadership begin to arise around the team, a common sentiment continually rears its head: that Ryan Kesler should be the captain of the Vancouver Canucks. Now, I understand this sentiment to a point, but it’s the exact qualities that make him so likeable as a personality that make him an awful choice to wear the C. Interacting with the media, Kesler carries himself like he’s the smartest guy in the room – and maybe he is. When TSN’s Farhan Lalji opened questioning by asking Ryan how his summer was, Kesler became aww-shucks-y, as if the media really cared. While Hodgson keeps his answers terse to avoid trouble, Kesler seems to actively seek it out. He’s not out to enlighten, he’s there to entertain himself. Credit where it’s due, he is entertaining. But let him continue to be goofy, let him photobomb interviews and dodge honesty with irony. Just leave the leadership to those willing to answer the tough questions in tough moments.The appeals court acknowledged that the general rule is that buyers of patented products can do with them what they wish. But it said the conditions Lexmark placed on the sale of its cartridges could be enforced as a matter of patent law. The Obama administration urged the Supreme Court to hear the case, saying that ruling was mistake. “For more than 150 years, this court has held that, once a particular patented article has been sold in the United States by the patentee or with his authorization, the patent laws do not constrain the subsequent use or resale of that article,” the administration’s brief said. The appeals court also ruled on foreign sales, saying that patent holders could control what was done with their products after they were sold abroad and re-imported by buyers like Impression Products. That ruling may be in tension with a 2013 Supreme Court decision in a copyright case, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that it was lawful to import and resell textbooks that were first sold abroad. Advocacy groups including Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a brief supporting Impression Products, saying Lexmark’s approach was part of a disquieting trend. “Product manufacturers have routinely attempted to expand their rights under intellectual property law to restrict the spread of information about their products and to prevent customers from using their devices in new and useful ways,” the brief said. “The court should ensure that patent law does not provide a road map to legitimize such practices.”Apr 17, 2013 Dione exhibits some unusual features that may indicate electrical forces at work. Recently, the Cassini-Solstice spacecraft made a close flyby of the moon Enceladus. As the Picture of the Day from May 3, 2012 discussed, the bright plumes emanating from the 500 kilometer moon are most likely the result of an electrical connection between it and the gas giant planet Saturn. On the same day, Cassini also flew fairly close to Dione, another of Saturn’s enigmatic moons. The formerly named Cassini-Huygens mission was launched from Cape Canaveral on October 15, 1997. Few now remember the public outcry against the mission. There were several attempts by citizens groups to stop the launch because of the 33 kilograms of plutonium-238 that provides electrical power to the orbiter. Since there had been failures of other launch vehicles, the concern was that an explosion of the Titan IV-B rocket would scatter radiation over many hundreds of square kilometers in southern Florida. However, the launch was uneventful, and after several years flight time Cassini entered orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004. A few months later, Cassini deployed the Huygens lander, which descended by parachute to the surface of the Solar System’s largest moon, Titan. In the last eight years, Cassini has made close approaches to a number of Saturn’s moons, Dione among them. This time, the spacecraft looked at Dione from a distance of about 8000 kilometers, but it has come as close as 67 kilometers on previous passes. Dione’s mean diameter is 1123 kilometers. In comparison, the diameter of Earth’s Moon is 3475 kilometers, so Dione is among the medium-large moons in the Solar System. Iapetus, Rhea, and Tethys are similar in size, as are Uranus’ moons Ariel, Titania, and Oberon. The first images of Dione revealed a moon whose surface appeared to be dominated by bright “wisps” that wound around its face. Later, when higher resolution pictures were decoded, the wisps were discovered to be deep chasms and trenches that split large craters, running for hundreds of kilometers. Mission specialists remain baffled by the extent to which the moon has been “fractured”, although some form of faulting due to tectonic activity continues as their best guess. According to a March 2, 2012 press release, ionized oxygen molecules have been detected on Dione. This means that Dione joins Saturn’s moon Rhea in possessing a highly rarified atmosphere. Planetary scientists speculate that the oxygen comes from solar wind ions impacting the water ice on both moons, causing it to crack into hydrogen and ionized oxygen. Dione also joins its sisters Tethys and Enceladus in spewing charged particles into the ring structure around Saturn. Like Enceladus, the “plumes” are ejected from numerous hot spots. Evidence exists that Dione also contributes to the plasma trapped within Saturn’s magnetosphere. Jim Burch of the Southwest Research Institute used data from Cassini’s Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) to determine that the plasma electrons were emitted from Tethys and Dione. In the Electric Universe hypothesis, the charged particles from Dione (and Tethys) are due to plasma discharges that are ejecting material into space, in the same way that Jupiter’s moon Io contributes sulfur plasma to the magnetospheric torus around Jupiter. It seems likely that conditions in the past were far more energetic, forming Dione’s present day etched terrain. The grooves and canyons run parallel to each other. They have sharp rims and begin abruptly with no gradually eroded look to them. They have side canyons running off at ninety-degree angles and craters along their length, often in chains. The craters are shallow with no debris around them and have central peaks. The moons of Saturn orbit within its plasmasphere and exchange electrical energy with one another, so electricity must be considered whenever we observe unusual morphology. Projecting earthly geologic forces and the slow progress of erosion onto other planets and moons misses the point. Wind and rain erode our planet and presumably create canyons and valleys. When no wind or rain exists, such as on Dione, how does the fresh looking and unique topography occur? Should we then question whether wind and rain alone have sculpted the Earth? Stephen SmithComing into the preseason, I was pretty indifferent on Jacksonville Jaguars rookie quarterback Blake Bortles. I knew he was obviously better than Chad Henne, but I didn't really get caught up in the mass pandemonium surrounding him. To me, he was who he was: a quarterback who was kind of good and kind of bad. After Bortles set the preseason on fire (and after suffering through Chad Henne for 10 quarters of uninspiring play) I was fully behind him. I tweeted #FreeBlake countless times. I was at the Colts game when they finally gave him the nod, and the crowd's reaction to him stepping onto the field for the first time is a moment I will never forget. But after the excitement of a brand new quarterback wore off and the trek that is a 17-week NFL season sunk in, I realized what Bortles really was: a quarterback who was kind of good and kind of bad. Preseason Takes: The Best Case Scenario for Blake Bortles' Rookie Season "The best case for Bortles' rookie season is for him to firmly establish himself as the starter over Henne in the preseason." In hindsight, this was a pretty mediocre take. We're not going to know if Blake not sitting was the correct call or not for quite awhile. "Personally, I think he should play early because that is the best way to fix his issues." WHEW. I whiffed on this one. I figured Bortles getting increased live action reps would lead to him cleaning up his mechanics, but the opposite happened. During the preseason he looked like a new and improved quarterback, but his mechanics steadily worsened as the year went on. The Worst Case Scenario for Blake Bortles' Rookie Season "The worst case for Bortles' rookie season is that he does not show sufficient improvement in his mechanics, rendering his development and putting the Jaguars offense back some in terms of development." This proved to be the most accurate description of Bortles' rookie year, for better or worse. To say his development was rendered is a bit too strong, but it is hard to make an argument that he is where you want him to be right now. He didn't personally hold back the development of the entire offense, but fact of the matter is the team will all learn a new offense next year (though I think this a good thing.) most importantly, as I touched on, he showed regression, not progression, with the finer points of the position, leading to inaccuracy, interceptions, and leaving yards and points on the field. Overall, the biggest miss I had when trying to predict Bortles' rookie season was misinterpreting the fit with Jedd Fisch and not taking the youth of the rest of the offense account. I thought Fisch would be very good for Bortles because of his tendencies to move quarterbacks outside the pocket and test defenses vertically, both major strengths of Bortles. Alas, the now ousted Fisch was under scrutiny throughout the year, most of it fair, for his lack of ability to structure the offense around the teams strengths. When discussing Bortles' rookie year, it is impossible to not bring up his supporting cast as well. He had two rookies starting on the offensive line, a second-year player (playing his first full season) at left tackle, a second-year player at RB, and three rookies heavily contributing at WR. There was really only four veterans (Cecil Shorts III, Marcedes Lewis, Zane Beadles, and Toby Gerhart) and nobody would call any of them more than above average. Bortles had to command an offense with talent that was either simply average, or learning the up and downs of the NFL in the same way he was. I'm confident in saying there is a limited amount of quarterbacks, and likely zero rookies, that would find success with the 2014 Jaguars offense. Best Game Bortles' best game of his rookie year could come down to a few choices. In first start against the San Diego Chargers, he went toe-to-toe with Philip Rivers for the better part of the first half. Against the Tennessee Titans, he threw for 336 yards. Against the New York Giants, he administered his first comeback drive, and then against the Baltimore Ravens he had his biggest number of throws that made you go, "Oh." Ultimately, I think Bortles' best game was against the San Diego Chargers in Week 4. This was before his mechanics took a nosedive, and for the first half of the game the Offense looked like the offense we expected all offseason. He didn't look like a rookie, taking deep shots and matching Phillip Rivers as much as he could, but eventually the Chargers won by simply being the more talented team. Considering this was Bortles first start, it was an impressive outing as he went 29-for-37 for 254 yards and one touchdown. Looking Ahead Looking ahead, I think Bortles' playing this year was ultimately extremely important. Not right or wrong, but important. The team now has a full years of tape on him and knows where he needs to improve, what he does best, and how he can lead the offense. Bortles' rookie season raised quite a few questions, but it answered many as well. Bortles' rookie year came under a lot of scrutiny, and for good reason. In the middle stretch of the year, he had some games that worried a lot of people, including myself. Thankfully, he settled down in the last four or five games of the season. The team even noted the game was coming easier to him, and he finished the year on a stronger note than most anticipated during the season. He flashed a lot of the talent that made him the No. 3 overall pick, and his development has just started. Bortles' development between Year 1 and Year 2 is vital, and heres to hoping he builds off the improvements he made at the end of 2014.Share This story has been updated. DeKalb Strong, a group formed in response to the process of creating new cities in DeKalb County, will become the public face of the opposition to the proposed cities of Tucker and LaVista Hills. Meanwhile, LaVista Hills and Tucker supporters are planning to rally support ahead of the November cityhood referendum. While that might look like a clear line dividing the two camps, there is agreement between LaVista Hills Chairman Allen Venet and DeKalb Strong President Marjorie Snook. Both say the state Legislature needs to reexamine its current cityhood and annexation processes. “I think the General Assembly is starting to realize they need to try and restore some sanity to this process before it gets worse,” Snook said. “I think it’s made them realize this is not an issue of DeKalb. We have a broken cityhood process in the state of Georgia.” Venet said that even though his cityhood movement was the beneficiary of the current process, it’s still a flawed process. “The legislature handles annexations along one path, and handles city proposals along a different path and it was not easy for anyone to get those paths coordinated because those paths don’t currently meet the way the Legislature is organized,” Venet said. State Sen. Elena Parent said in an email to constituents that there is currently a plan to reexamine the “broken and unfair process” of annexation and cityhood. “I was able to pass a Resolution to create a Senate Study Committee that will recommend formalizing this process,” she wrote. “This committee, I hope, will bring all the key players to the table for an honest discussion on how creating cities, and annexing unincorporated areas can be transparent and fair to those that want it and those that don’t.” State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver said the House passed a similar proposal. Several key conflicts emerged during the recent debate over the incorporation process. Which comes first: Annexation or cityhood? A plan to annex Druid Hills, including Emory University, into the City of Atlanta illustrated one major procedural flaw. Parts of the map promoted by a group called Together in Atlanta overlapped with a plan put forward by LaVista Hills. Cityhood bills are introduced as general legislation, which does not require approval of the majority of the county’s legislative delegation. If a cityhood bill was local legislation, it would require the consent of nine of DeKalb’s 16 House delegation members and four of seven DeKalb County Senators to move forward. Annexation bills are considered local legislation. New cities have been vehemently opposed by Democrats that control the delegations of some Atlanta counties. To get around this, when the Republicans took control of the Legislature they changed the rules so that city legislation could be general legislation. This is why Sandy Springs finally formed in 2005 after decades of trying to become a city. But annexation has remained local legislation. That conflict came to a head this year as multiple existing cities pursued annexation plans as Tucker and LaVista Hills pursued their cityhood bills. Also, cityhood bills work on a shorter time table, having to pass one chamber of the General Assembly by Crossover Day. Annexation bills are not bound by Crossover Day rules which means the process of passing those bills could take longer. Annexation bills for Decatur, Avondale Estates and Atlanta all failed this year. Too many methods? While there is only one method for forming a new city, via referendum, there are four different ways to annex property into a new city. One method is by a petition. LaVista Hills learned this firsthand when Brookhaven used the petition method to annex Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Executive Park into its city limits before the start of the 2015 Legislative session. Both had been in the LaVista Hills map. Annexing property by referendum is also has been targeted for reform. During the session, state Rep. Beth Beskin, R-Atlanta, introduced a bill that would change the process for annexation referendums. Currently only people in the area to-be annexed have a right to vote under the state law. Beskin’s legislation would change the rules so people in both the existing cities and the proposed areas to be annexed would get a chance to vote. The Legislation died this year. Flexible rules The Legislative process for moving forward with cityhood bill is largely dependent on rules established by the General Assembly. But the Legislature bent those rules to allow Tucker and LaVista Hills to move forward. Specifically, the two cityhood movements were not required to have a completed feasibility study for their proposals to move forward. A feasibility study would show whether the city could generate enough tax revenue to provide services to residents. While both had completed these studies during the 2014 Legislative session, the maps changed. LaVista Hills was a combination of two previous cityhood movements: Briarcliff and Lakeside. The LaVista Hills map and Tucker maps both split commercial property each wanted. When both cities were approved, neither had an updated study reflecting the new maps. Meanwhile, two other proposed cities – Greenhaven and Stonecrest – were not successful at making it through the Legislature this year. Both completed feasibility studies. Both Greenhaven and Stonecrest have a population that is over 90 percent black. While there are no updated studies for Tucker and LaVista Hills yet, data from prior studies and Census data suggest that both will be majority white cities. An Atlanta Journal Constitution article says that LaVista Hills’ population would be 57 percent white, 18 percent black, 16 percent Hispanic and 9 percent Asian. Tucker’s population would be 49 percent white, 34 percent black, 9 percent Hispanic and 6 percent Asian, the AJC story says. To read the full story, click here. The 2015 General Assembly was more flexible with the rules for proposed majority white cities than it was with majority black cities. Kathryn Rice, chairperson of the group behind Greenhaven cityhood, avoided mentioning race while commenting on the apparent double standard during an email summarizing the 2015 session. “We found the legislative process for cityhood to be a challenge,” she wrote. “The rules were not consistent and we found that exceptions were made for some but not others. We at (Concerned Citizens for Cityhood of South DeKalb) believe that we complied with all the requirements; however, there were legislators that interpreted the rules differently from us. Sometimes it was frustrating when there seemed to be blatant exceptions to the rules for some proposed cities while narrowly adhering to their rules for others (like Greenhaven).” More input needed Toward the end of the 2015 session the LaVista Hills map was altered so that it now takes in parts of the Mason Mill and Medlock Park neighborhoods. Those changes caught residents of those neighborhoods by surprise. The arbitrary, indifferent nature of the current process can be harmful, Snook said. “We are not opposed to the idea of any new cities in DeKalb but we are opposed to these new cities,” Snook said. “We clearly know that the boundaries are haphazard and ill-thought out …They do a lot of damage to existing communities. We feel that in general, the cityhood process needs to be a lot more careful, a lot more thought out and invite more public input.” Venet said there’s a compelling argument for approving LaVista Hills cityhood this year. He also sees the benefit of reexamining the process. “The short answer is yes,” Venet said. “The long answer is the existing laws have worked and we are proceeding under the law as it is. Would it be good if the Legislature and the laws had a better way of coordinating, for example annexation plans and city plans? Well certainly, yes.”KOIN 6 News Staff - TIMBER, Ore. (KOIN) -- A paramilitary group training at a rental facility caused an explosion that critically injured the lead instructor. Scott Turner suffered life-threatening injuries and was airlifted to OHSU for treatment, said Vance Stimler of the Washington County Sheriff's Office. The 42-year-old Albany resident was treated by a medic at the scene before being airlifted. On Sunday, Turner's condition was listed as "fair." Copyright by KOIN - All rights reserved Scott Turner in an undated photo from his Facebook page, seen Aug. 15, 2015 Copyright by KOIN - All rights reserved Scott Turner in an undated photo from his Facebook page, seen Aug. 15, 2015 Stimler said the "pro-law enforcement" group was taking target practice filled with the explosive material Tannerite. When the target - a car door - was hit, the explosion scattered shrapnel and hit Turner. The training exercise was being held at the Joint Regional Operations Center Foundation (JROC), which is described as "a fully permitted public
a multitude of factors already well-covered, the 12m that played WoW back in vanilla/TBC just don’t have a real interest in MMOs as a whole. They never did, and while they were briefly attracted to a bright light every now and again, the tourists always came back, or just left and went home altogether (though ‘9m’ still remain, right?). Yet for years studio after studio tried to chase them, dressing their offering up as a robot, or a superhero, or countless variations of Gandalf. And all failed. All of them. What has always worked in this genre is accurate targeting and delivery. To most Darkfall 1 was not a success, because it never got above 100k subs and Aventurine’s track record was and is, well, let’s call it special. And yet DF1 was a sub-based MMO for three years, had three expansions and launched a second server six months after release, and now has a sequel of impeccable quality (snicker) in beta. From a players perspective, it’s exactly what you could hope for. More importantly, for those at AV, from the original crew to the new hires, they get to continue doing what they love and getting paid for it. And DF is just one example among many, with by far the most prominent being EVE; a title still growing after ten years that is more true to its vision than just about anything else. A title that started in a niche of niches and carved itself into the second-biggest MMO out. Not bad for Excel Online. More importantly, Camelot Unchained and others show that the future of the genre is, finally, not in chasing the mythical WoW unicorn, but in reproducing what actually worked; delivering a measured product aimed at the crowd that actually wants it. And if that crowd is only 30k strong, as Mark Jacob’s estimates will be the case for CU, so be it. 30k people paying you each month is more than doable from a business standpoint; you just can’t spend 300m to get there. And that’s where the fear comes in from the WoW-clone crowd. Titles like CU offer nothing for them. Nothing. They are too focused, too targeted, and demand too much from them. Worst of all, these titles don’t NEED the WoW-cloners, and that scares them to death. After all these years of being catered to, of having one massively over-produced monthly snack after another, the next wave will ignore them and move right past them. It’s what niche products do. And MMOs are most certainly niche, one unique and unreproducible outlier aside.BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union plans to seal the world’s largest free trade deal with the United States are threatened by intractable differences over food names, none more so than the right of cheese makers to use the term “feta”. A cheesemonger puts pieces of Greece's trademark feta cheese in a bag for a customer in central Athens November 21, 2007. REUTERS/John Kolesidis Negotiators talk of accelerated progress and hope to thrash out a skeleton agreement on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) within a year, aiming for a major boost to growth in the advanced Western economies. But geographical indications (GIs), a 1,200-long list ranging from champagne to Parma ham, present a major headache. At the same time as euro zone leaders are ordering Greece to balance its budget and liberalise its product markets, EU trade negotiators are fighting to defend its signature cheese. GIs are a cornerstone of EU agricultural and trade policy, designed to ensure that only products from a given region can carry a name. To the United States, it smacks of protectionism. “It’s politically extremely important in Europe. As (the EU) phases out direct agricultural support, there has to be a trade-off by promising to do more in trade policy,” said Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy. “For 20 years they have been fighting about it at the World Trade Organisation even if the economic value is disputed.” EU member states will have to approve any deal and will need food name protection as compensation for EU farmers facing a flood of U.S. beef and pork imports. Agriculture is not a sizeable part of either the EU or the U.S. economy, but farmers retain political muscle, as French livestock and dairy producers showed this week by forcing the government to offer aid after protests including road blockades. Washington does not object to protection of niche items such as British Melton Mowbray pork pies. But negotiators face a very difficult task to find a balance for widely produced feta, Parma ham or parmesan, the biggest maker of which is America’s Kraft Foods (KHC.O). The EU introduced GIs and designations of origin in 1992, securing protection for Greek feta, which means “slice”, 10 years later when it declared that non-Greek producers’ use of the term was “fraudulent”. 6,000 YEAR HERITAGE It is a view echoed by Christina Onassis, marketing manager at the Lytras & Sons dairy in central Greece. She describes the unique plants and microflora of Greece’s mountainous regions and says feta “imitations” mostly use cow’s milk. “For 6,000 years, Greece has produced continuously using milk from ewes and goats,” she said. “We also ripen the cheese for days, which does not happen in any other feta production.” The issue is about more than just national pride for near-bankrupt Greece. Its feta exports rose 85 percent between 2007 and 2014 to 260 million euros, and sales to countries outside the EU more than doubled. U.S. agricultural and trade experts generally recognise the region-specific terms such as “Gouda Holland” or “Camembert de Normandie”, meaning that U.S. producers can still make and name their own gouda and camembert cheeses. However, they argue that the European Union has gone too far by including the likes of gorgonzola and feta - terms they say are not region-specific but generic like cheddar or mozzarella, which do not have GI status. “Show me on the map where feta is?” asked one U.S. trade negotiator. In fact, under EU law, the feta-producing region covers almost the whole of the Greek mainland plus the island of Lesbos. Only milk from here can be called feta. The European Commission says names can be protected even if they are not linked to a particular place. Feta, it says, is so closely connected to Greece as to be identified inherently as a Greek product. In 2012 several non-European food producers and associations, many from across the Americas, formed the Consortium for Common Food Names (CCFN) to fight what they see as Europe’s appropriation of generic food terms. “There’s nothing wrong with GIs, but is something a true GI or just a method of production?” said CCFN executive director Jaime Castaneda. “Most consumers do connect feta with Greece, but most also connect cheddar with England but it does not have to be made there.” U.S. producers, he says, could lose billions of dollars in income if they are forced to rename their products. BATTLE ALREADY UNDERWAY Even before an EU-U.S. free trade deal, Castaneda says U.S. businesses are already affected in countries like South Korea, whose trade accord with Europe includes GI protection. “It’s affecting us substantially in international markets, such as Korea, by preventing exports,” he said. “You see it too at international food shows in Europe. This is a never-ending issue.” Ron Buholzer, president of the family-owned Klondike Cheese Co. in Wisconsin, which makes award-winning feta and muenster cheeses, shares that view, deeming it outrageous that anyone would claim sole ownership of these names. “This is an economic issue for us, certainly, but it’s also personal – it’s about what’s right and fair,” Buholzer said. The United States says the EU system is unfair because many American producers of traditional products are immigrants from Europe or their descendants, such as the Buholzer family. It also notes that EU members have had doubts. Both Denmark and Germany took the Commission to court over its moves to grant Greece the exclusive right to use the name feta, with initial success in 1999 before losing in 2005. A compromise was found in the EU-Canada trade accord (CETA), allowing Canadian producers already making “feta” or “gorgonzola” to continue doing so, while new entrants would have to adopt other terms such as “feta-style”. Greece and U.S. dairy exporters have already called this unacceptable, highlighting the difficulties that lie ahead.The conservative drive to threaten a government shutdown to defund Obamacare is collapsing, thanks in part to the news that Mitch McConnell won’t vote with Ted Cruz, effectively meaning the strategy is dead. So now, multiple reports are telling us that House Republicans are preparing to use the debt limit to force an Obamacare delay. This comes as new polling confirms yet again the basic dynamic here: The American people, even if they disapprove of Obamacare, do not support using this fall’s fiscal confrontations to sabotage the law, whether we’re talking about a government shutdown or the debt limit. In moving away from a shutdown fight, House Republicans are pleading with conservatives to recognize two realities — Dems won’t agree to seriously undermine Obamacare, and destructive brinksmanship will damage the GOP far more than Obama or Dems. But in forging the new House GOP strategy, Republican leaders are refusing to bow to the very same realities they are asking conservatives to accept. David Drucker reports on the new plan being hatched by House Republicans: The package that House GOP leaders plan to unveil when their members return to Washington late Wednesday will be anchored by proposals to simultaneously raise the federal borrowing limit and delay for a year further implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Additionally, the legislation would likely include a collection of previously introduced bills popular among House Republicans and difficult for Obama to dominate, including construction of the job-rich Keystone XL pipeline. The debt-ceiling package, set for a House vote by week’s end, could include a variety of GOP-friendly economic proposals, including tax reform, Medicare means testing, medical liability reform, an overhaul of the federal employee retirement system, elimination of the Dodd-Frank bailout, the easing of Environmental Protection Agency rules, restrictions on federal regulators and an expansion of offshore energy production. Gee, that’s it? Maybe Republicans should also ask Obama to impeach himself while they’re at it. The meaning of this is plain. House Republicans will likely cave in the shutdown fight — probably by passing a “clean CR” funding the government at current levels. Hoping to soften the blow among conservatives who will scream “surrender,” GOP leaders are already signaling they will demand a whole grab bag of conservative goodies — including undermining Obamacare — in exchange for a debt limit hike. The apparent thinking here is that the debt limit gives Republicans more “leverage.” But, ironically enough, the very act of asking for a string of concessions that is comically transparent in its effort to mollify conservatives further undermines the strategy itself. There’s just no way Obama can agree to engage in negotiations around anything approaching this set of demands, because it would help cement a dynamic that would be untenable over the long term, one in which Republicans continue to insist on an insane level of concessions in exchange for agreeing to avert economic chaos. And by continually inflating unrealistic expectations among conservatives, GOP leaders make it harder to accept a “face saving” way out of the debt limit jam, too. The shutdown strategy always suffered from a refusal to accept that for Obama and Dems, anything that fundamentally undermines the Affordable Care Act is a non-starter, no matter what. The shutdown gamble also suffered from the delusion that dissaproval of Obamacare would automatically translate into widespread public support for any tactic designed to undermine it, no matter the level of collateral damage. In abandoning one hostage strategy and substituting another, House Republicans are asking conservatives to accept both of those realities, even as their own preferred strategy is based on a continuing refusal to reckon with them. * POLL SHOWS BROAD OPPOSITION TO OBAMACARE SABOTAGE: A new National Journal poll finds that 63 percent of Americans support funding the government and keeping the health care issue separate, versus only 27 percent who support only funding the government if Obama agrees to unwind the health law. Sixty one percent of independents, and 51 percent of Republicans, support keeping them separate. The same is true of the debt limit: Opposition to linking Obamacare with debt-ceiling talks is less severe, but nonetheless potent. A majority, 52 percent, say “increase the U.S. debt limit and deal with the health care issue separately,” while 31 percent say “only increase the debt limit if Obama agrees to delay or withdraw his health care plan.” Fifty-one percent of independents want the debt limit and health care considered separately. As noted here yesterday, John Boehner does not have to allow a radical minority to paralyze the government. * WALL STREET JOURNAL SLAMS TED CRUZ: The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board absolutely blisters Ted Cruz and his doomed crusade to defund Obamacare. The most important line in the editorial: The only real way to repeal the law is to win elections. It’s the latest sign of alarm among GOP elites about where this is all headed, now that the madness unleashed by years of lies and distortions about Obamacare can no longer be contained. * TED CRUZ SANK HIS OWN CRUSADE: Relatedly, see a smart point from Steve Benen: Senate procedural complexities have actually given Senate Republicans a clever way to throw Cruz overboard, while appearing as anti-Obamacare as ever. Cruz doomed himself. * THE GOP REBRANDING IS OFFICIALLY DEAD: Brian Beutler takes stock of the ways in which the government shutdown fight signals the official death of the GOP rebranding effort. (link fixed) From immigration to the continuing battle over Obamacare, the GOP’s extreme wing has killed it dead. * NO MORE COMPROMISING FROM MITCH McCONNELL: The New York Times takes a look at how pressure from the right in the Kentucky GOP Senate primary has put Mitch McConnell in an even less compromising mood than he’s been during the past five years. This is the key McConnell quote: “I don’t intend to participate in any discussion, publicly or privately, that raises taxes or spends more than current law.” McConnell — who stepped in to help negotiate a fiscal cliff deal — won’t participate in any talks to replace the sequester if that replacement includes a penny more in new revenues from the rich. The only way to a replacement, then, is to get a half dozen GOP Senators to break with leadership. * GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN BECOMES ISSUE IN SENATE RACES: Dems are circulating this piece from the Charlotte Observer detailing that the Republicans vying in a primary to run for Dem Senator Kay Hagan’s seat are falling over each other to support a government shutdown to defund Obamacare. This, plus McConnell’s gyrations on the issue while under pressure from a challenge, suggests the shutdown push may be becoming a litmus test issue in which contenders must prove their “conservative” bona fides, which could have ramifications in general elections. * GET READY FOR DEBT CEILING ARMAGEDDON: The threat of a government shutdown is bad enough, but the threat of default is far worse: As Annie Lowery details this morning in a must read, it could cost hundreds of billions of dollars and inflict deep damage on the global economy. Remember, Republicans such as John Boehner have already admitted not raising the debt limit could imperil the full faith and credit of the United States, but are using it as a bargaining chip, anyway. * FORMER HOUSE SPEAKERS MARVEL AT GOP CHAOS: Former House Speakers such as Newt Gingrich and Dennis Hastert tell Jill Lawrence that things are probably worse now in the House than they’ve ever been, thanks to today’s radicalized Tea Party minority, which imagines it will undo Obama’s signature domestic achievement outside normal electoral channels. Of course, the Tea Partyers will only seize on this as proof they are rattling the “old guard,” confirming the righteousness of their cause. * AND DEMS VAULT INTO LEAD IN VIRGINIA: A new Washington Post poll finds Dem Terry McAuliffe now leads GOPer Ken Cuccinelli by nine points among likely voters, 47-39. Also of note: McAuliffe now leads Cuccinelli among women by 24 points, which suggests that perhaps the Republican’s positions on women’s health issues have become a bit of a problem for him. Dem operatives are hoping this portends similar gender gaps in other statewide races, such as next year’s Senate contests. Worth watching. RELATED: 25 prominent voices on the rightThe Spin on Spit-Roasting UP IN SMOKE THE SPIN ON SPIT-ROASTING It’s one of the oldest and most universal cooking methods on Planet Barbecue. And few sights make us hungrier than a duck, chicken, rib roast, pork shoulder, or even a whole suckling pig or lamb—fat glistening, exterior crusty—spinning slowly on a turnspit next to the fire. Spit-roasting no doubt emerged as the third great grilling technology (after direct grilling and shish kebab) in prehistoric times. By the Middle Ages, massive joints of meat spit-roasted in baronial fireplaces sustained large households—turned by hand by young male servants called “spit jacks.” Later, power to spits was ingeniously supplied by dogs running on treadmills, steam, mechanical clockworks, and finally, by electricity. Manually-turned spits remain quite common in the world’s grilling cultures. One practitioner is my friend Dietmar Brunk, who repeats the house rule: “In order for your drink to earn/you must the rotisserie spit earn.” (OK, it sounded more poetic in German.) Incidentally, Deitmar is the grillmeister who introduced me to one of the world’s greatest spit-roasted dishes: traditional German Spiessbraten—onion-stuffed, spit-roasted pork shoulder—at his home in Idar-Oberstein. (See recipe below.) Spit-roasting rocks for many reasons: The slow rotation of the meat (or vertical, in the case of gyros, Döner kebab or tacos al pastor) on the spit guarantees even browning and caramelization of the meat proteins. Meat and poultry are self-basting as the melting fat and juices re-circulate through and over them as they cook. Spit-roasted foods cook evenly. Slow and gentle cooking yields tender, succulent meat. You can spit-roast over charcoal, wood, gas, in a fireplace, or over a campfire. Spit-roasting is a form of indirect grilling, usually done at medium-low to medium heat. (Though sometimes smaller items are spit-roasted over higher heat.) Spit-roasting is ideal for fatty or cylindrically shaped foods, like whole birds, boneless and bone-in rib roasts, pork loins and shoulders, lamb legs, and of course whole lambs, goats, and hogs. What you may not realize is that you can also spit roast whole vegetables such as onions and cabbages and fruit, such as pineapples, like they do in Brazil. One of our favorite techniques is spit-roasting over charcoal, because it’s easy to toss soaked wood chips or chunks on the coals to generate wood smoke. Rotisserie collar-motor kits for a Weber kettle, for example, are available through Amazon. Many gas grills come with rotisserie mounts; some even come with dedicated rear-mounted rotisserie burners. To speed up the cooking process, you can also light the outside burners, as you would for indirect grilling. For wood fire and fireplace spit-roasting equipment, check out Spitjack.com, run by our friend Bruce Frankel. (Bruce designed “The Beast”—the industrial strength rotisserie we used to roast Greek-Style Whole Hog With Greek-Style Herbs in Episode 209 of Primal Grill.) My advice is to buy a kit with the sturdiest motor you can afford. Among spit-roasting accessories, we like rotisserie grilling baskets, which can hold chicken wings, vegetables, and other foods too small to skewer. There are even flat baskets that hold whole fish or other thin foods in place as the rotisserie spins. Several models are sold on Amazon.com. Before you are ready to spit-roast, make the food as compact and cylindrical as possible. Tie roasts, truss poultry, bind legs, etc. Flopping parts will not only throw off the rotisserie’s balance, but may jam against the grate or come too close to the fire. When loading the spit, first put one fork on with the prongs facing the center of the spit. (We’ve all forgotten to do this at some point.) Thread the food on the spit through the center, then put the remaining fork on the spit and secure the food. Be sure the load is centered and well-balanced on the spit, making any necessary adjustments, then tighten the screws on both prongs. (The tines of a dinner fork work well for this.) Sometimes, you’ll need to use wire to secure whole animals or larger pieces of meat to the spit. If grilling on a charcoal grill, set it up for indirect grilling with a drip pan directly underneath the spit. Put the end of the spit into the motor socket. Adjust the load or counterweight to ensure the food spins evenly, then switch on the motor. Add coals every hour as needed. When spit-roasting over a campfire—and only do this where it’s allowed, please—rake the embers into a lateral pile behind the axis where the spit will rotate. (You can also rake them into a pile in front if you want more heat.) Place drip pans directly underneath where the food will cook. Put the supports and spit in place. Replenish the coals as needed. Here are two of our favorite rotisserie recipes to get you started—“cooked to a turn”—yes, that’s the origin of the popular phrase. ONION-STUFFED, SPIT-ROASTED PORK SHOULDER SPIESSBRATEN Method: Spit-roasting Serves: 8 1 boneless pork loin (about 2-1/2 pounds) Coarse salt (kosher or sea) and freshly ground black pepper 1 medium onion, thinly sliced crosswise 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced (optional) You’ll also need: butcher’s string; a rotisserie; beech wood logs, chunks or chips (about 2 cups of the latter) Butterfly the pork—that is, make a lengthwise cut through one side almost to but not through the other side, holding the knife blade parallel to the cutting board. Open up the pork loin as you would a book. Using the side of a heavy cleaver, a scaloppini pounder, or a rolling pin, lightly flatten the butterflied pork. Generously season the inside of the pork with salt and pepper. Arrange the onion slices on top of one side. Arrange the garlic, if using, on top. Fold the other side over the pork to return it to its original cylindrical shape. Using butcher’s string looped over crosswise, tie the roast into a tight cylinder. Set up your grill for indirect grilling and preheat to medium (350 degrees F). Toss the soaked wood chips on the coals or place in the smoker box or a smoker pouch if using a gas grill. Cook the pork until crusty and browned on the outside and the internal temperature reaches 180 degrees F, about 1-1/2 hours. Transfer the Spiessbraten to a cutting board and let rest for 5 minutes. Remove the butcher’s string and carve the roast crosswise into 1/4-inch thick slices. ROTISSERIE CHICKEN MEDITERRANEAN STYLE (WITH OLIVE CAPER SALSA) This simple dish is a staple at the Raichlen household. Note what may be a new technique for you: spitting the chicken through the side, not from front to back (a technique, incidentally used around Planet Barbecue). The bird browns better and stays juicier this way. Serves 2 1 whole chicken, (3-1/2 to 4 pounds) 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil 2 to 3 tablespoons Best of Barbecue Mediterranean Herb Rub (available from Grilling4All.com), herbes de Provence, or your favorite Mediterranean-style herb rub Olive Caper Salsa (see recipe below) You’ll also need: Butcher’s string; a rotisserie Wash and dry the chicken (removing the giblets from the cavity). Season the front and main cavities of the bird with 1 tablespoon rub. Truss the bird with butcher’s string (for step by step instructions, see page 000 in How to Grill) so the wings and legs don’t flop during cooking. Brush or rub the outside of the bird with olive oil and thickly season with the remaining rub. Set up the grill for spit-roasting and preheat the grill to medium. When ready to cook, thread the chicken onto the rotisserie spit through the side. Make sure it’s balanced. Spit-roast the chicken until the skin is well browned and the meat is cooked through, 1 to 1-1/4 hours. Use an instant-read meat thermometer to test for doneness, inserting it into the thickest part of a thigh, but not so that it touches a bone. The internal temperature should be about 170 degrees F. Transfer the chicken to a cutting board and remove and discard the trussing string and skewer. Let rest for about 5 minutes before carving. Serve with the Caper Olive Salsa below. OLIVE CAPER SALSA 1 ripe beefsteak tomato or 2 to 3 Roma tomatoes, seeded and cut into 1/4-inch dice1 scallion, trimmed and thinly sliced1/4 cup pitted diced kalamata or black olives1 tablespoon drained capers2 fresh basil leaves, slivered2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, plus lemon wedges for serving (optional)Coarse salt (kosher or sea) and freshly ground black pepper Combine the tomato, scallion, olives, capers, basil, oil, and lemon juice in a nonreactive mixing bowl. Right before serving, toss to mix, adding salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste. Yours in righteous grilling, Steven Raichlen, Grill Master and Editor-in-Chief Nancy Loseke, Features EditorNorth Bay's Widdifield Secondary School has taken steps to accommodate transgender students by offering an "all gender restroom." The decision was made after student council approached Charlie Peterson, a transgender student, who immediately supported the idea. "I was so happy that that was something people wanted to consider," Peterson said. "It's incredibly important for anyone to feel safe to do something that's so simple...using a bathroom that you don't have to be afraid to use or be afraid to be judged." Peterson had already approached the school's principal about the stress surrounding entering the men's washroom. 'That's the tranny' he heard people say "It was just this year I started to get comfortable using the men's washroom in our school," Peterson said, "a lot of these guys have known me since preschool so I would often find myself interacting with people who knew me before [I transitioned.] They were uncomfortable." Peterson said he would often hear the male students make comments, especially after he left the bathroom, saying things like, 'that guy used to be a girl' or 'that's the 'tranny'''. "Before coming out, that's one of the hardest parts. No one knows, you're so confused, and you're stressed out [about using the bathroom]." Charlie Peterson has advocated for an all-gender washroom at Widdifield Secondary School in North Bay. (Facebook CBC) 'The right thing to do,' says principal Widdifield's principal, Lisa O'Kane, said that Peterson was the "catalyst" to make the addition, and that providing the washroom falls in line with the school board's policy of inclusion. The bathroom itself is nondescript, O'Kane said, wide enough for wheelchair access with the only difference being the sign that identifies the room as "all gender." "When kids come to us with an idea, we talk, sit down, then see what we can do to act," O'Kane said, "...and they asked for space where they felt safe, secure and comfortable." O'Kane said the idea has been met with only positive feedback from students and outside community. Although some Canadian universities have designated all-gender washrooms, she expects other secondary schools, if they haven't already, will start to consider following suit. "This is about the right thing to do for kids," O'Kane said, I want all my kids to feel respected in the place where they learn, the place of their business. I want them to feel safe. It's an easy thing to do."Dr. Stephen Nichols combines a passion for church history with a love for the Reformed tradition, and he brings his expertise to our podcast 5 Minutes in Church History. A specialist in American Christianity and historical theology, Dr. Nichols is President of Reformation Bible College in Sanford, Fla., Chief Academic Officer of Ligonier Ministries, and a Ligonier teaching fellow. He formerly served as research professor of Christianity and culture at Lancaster Bible College in Lancaster, Pa. He has served as a lecturer and adjunct professor at Reformed Theological Seminary and Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Dr. Nichols has master’s degrees in theology and philosophy, and he received his Ph.D. from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. A prolific writer, Dr. Nichols has written, contributed to, or edited more than twenty books on church history, biblical doctrine, and practical theology, including volumes in the Guided Tour series on Jonathan Edwards, Martin Luther, and J. Gresham Machen. His recent books include A Time for Confidence, Reformation ABCs, and The Legacy of Luther, coedited with R. C. Sproul. He has also contributed many articles to publications such as Tabletalk magazine. He is coeditor for the Theologians on the Christian Life series from Crossway. Dr. Nichols has traveled extensively for teaching and speaking engagements, including the prestigious Gheens Lectures for the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition to 5 Minutes in Church History, he also hosts the Open Book podcast. Dr. Nichols lives with his wife, Heidi, and three children in Sanford, Florida.Missoula County is anticipating a busy election year and with campaigning season in full swing and elections on the horizon, the county is looking for extra help. Elections Administrator Rebecca Connors said the county is recruiting up to 800 election judges, servicing 28 different polling locations "We need—for polling locations—right around 500 or so election judges. Then at our election center on the fairgrounds, we utilize several different buildings on Election Day," Connors said. "We have a tabulation center, same-day voter registration center, and we need help with directing traffic, help assisting voters at our technicality center where we do all of our tabulations. That requires another 200 election judges for that location." Connors said the biggest job for election judges is to make sure the entire process runs smoothly. "We do a training this February where they would train them on all of the election laws so all of the election laws are followed on Election Day," Connors said. "Election judges are part of the process so it's a great educational opportunity for them to see the lifecycle of a ballot, to work with voters; It may be a voters first time voting and they may be able to share an experience with that person. It's a lot of fun." Connors said training is held in Feb. at the Missoula County Fairgrounds. Those interested in applying can visit www.MissoulaElectionJudge.com and view the online class schedule as well as register. Applicants can also call 406-258-4751.Liverpool have made a formal complaint to Uefa after their 18-year-old winger Bobby Adekanye was allegedly racially abused during a youth match against Spartak Moscow. Liverpool left to rue missed chances as Spartak Moscow hold on for draw Read more Adekanye, a Nigerian-born Dutch youth international, is alleged to have been subjected to racial chants and gestures when he appeared as a second-half substitute in a Uefa Youth League game in Moscow on Tuesday. Liverpool’s academy director, Alex Inglethorpe, and members of his staff are believed to have witnessed the incidents at the Spartak Academy and their observations have been reported to European football’s governing body. The teenager was introduced in the 59th minute of Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat in Russia by the coach Steven Gerrard and the club are awaiting a response from Uefa. Liverpool’s complaint comes amid increased scrutiny on the Russian football authorities to address racism problems in the buildup to next summer’s World Cup. No incidents were reported by Liverpool from their Champions League draw against Spartak later on Tuesday, a game that the manager Jürgen Klopp said was played amid “a really good atmosphere”. Spartak, however, are facing three new charges from Uefa following the 1-1 draw at the Otkrytiye Arena. Home supporters unveiled a banner that read ‘Uefa Mafia’ and also let off smoke bombs after Fernando scored for their team. Uefa has also opened disciplinary proceedings against Spartak for “illicit chants” – understood to be against the governing body – and for blocking stairways. The new charges, as well as the banner and chants, come after Spartak were fined £60,000 and their fans banned from their next Champions League away game, at Sevilla, for firing a flare in the direction of the referee in the draw with Maribor in Slovenia.UPDATE (12/30): Namecheap has finished their campaign after raising over $64,000 for EFF. However, you can still transfer domains and automatically donate to EFF by using Gandi, Centuric, or Suspicious Networks - see below for details. When the well-known domain name registrar Go Daddy threw its support behind the Stop Online Piracy Act, it led to a PR disaster: Internet users rebelled against the registrar, and called for Go Daddy customers to transfer their domains. In response to the boycott Go Daddy has switched their position, but some companies are deciding to take a stance against the Internet blacklist legislation. In a day of action scheduled for December 29th, these companies are publicly protesting the scary legislation that endangers our Internet infrastructure and threatens online free expression in the name of combating so-called rogue websites. We’re incredibly grateful that these companies have chosen to donate funds to EFF to support our work fighting for free expression online. Please check them out and, if possible, jump on board: UPDATE (12/29): more companies join the campaign. Suspicious Networks NS1.net is running an anti-SOPA campaign that includes a discount and $2 donation to EFF per domain transferred in! They describe themselves as "a no frills domain registration & small business IT solutions provider striving to support an open, fully decentralized Internet." The campaign runs until Valentine's Day 2012 or the blacklist legislation is defeated, whichever happens first. Check out their transfer page, which includes their opposition to SOPA and PIPA. You can also follow Suspicious Networks on Twitter. Centuric (offer updated) is offering up to 1,000 reduced $3.99 transfer fees on domain registrations beginning December 29, 2011, of which $1 will be donated to EFF. Use the promotional code: SAYNOTOSOPA. Read their press statement. UPDATE (12/30): more companies join the campaign. Uservoice provides hosted feedback forums, which allow customers to create, discuss, and vote for ideas. Uservoice is taking a stand against Internet censorship by offering new customers 40% off the first 6 months of ANY UserVoice Full Service plan and donating 10% of all such proceeds to EFF! Just use the discount code "no2sopa" between now and January 12, 2012. You can also follow Uservoice on Twitter. ReferralCandy, from Anafore, helps companies reward customers who bring in referral business. They hate SOPA so much that from now until January 24th, if you sign up for a ReferralCandy account using this link, they’ll donate 60% of your first month’s bill to EFF. You’ll also get store credit for the remaining 40% for showing your support. Follow ReferralCandy on Twitter. DreamHost is donating $1 to EFF for every customer who uses the promo code SOPAROPA. DreamHost launched their promotion on December 22nd after publishing this popular post: "Don't Drop the Soap, Drop SOPA!" You can save $50.00 when you pre pay for one year of shared web hosting and get 4 free domain registrations (.com,.net,.org or.info ) for the life of your hosting plan. DreamHost has long had a philanthropic streak--they offer all non-profit organizations free web hosting. Is your company running a similar campaign? Email kellie@eff.org If you’ve been hungry for new ways to promote online freedoms and protest the blacklist bills, then help these companies with their campaigns. And if you don’t have a need for any of these services, you can still become a member of EFF, sign our petition against the blacklist bills, and check out our activism toolkit for other ways you can help fight SOPA and Protect IP. The Internet blacklist bills are a looming threat to our online rights in the new year. EFF couldn’t fight these nasty proposals all on our own. So we’re thankful to be in a diverse coalition with organizations such as American Censorship/Fight for the Future, Avaaz, the Cato Institute, Center for Democracy and Technology, Demand Progress, Free Press, Free Software Foundation, Public Knowledge, and the Wikimedia Foundation. See a comprehensive list of all the organizations at the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Chorus of Opposition page.Negotiations end in agreement on who should bear the brunt of losses caused by banking failure The European Union has struck a deal on rules establishing who will pay for future bank bailouts without taxpayers having to foot the bill. The agreement reached by the EU's 27 finance ministers after seven hours of negotiations early on Thursday is an important step toward establishing Europe's so-called banking union with the goal of restoring financial and economic stability to the recession-hit bloc. The set of rules determines the order in which investors and
of Emma Donoghue's novel 'Room' is competing in the Best Drama category and the lead actress in that movie Brie Larson is competing with Saoirse in the Best Actress category. Emma Donoghue was also nominated for her screenplay. Caitriona Balfe is up for her first nomination as Best Actress in a TV drama for 'Outlander', as is Eva Green who stars in 'Penny Dreadful' which is filmed at Ardmore Studios. The Golden Globes has been described as "the party of the year" ever since it began 73 years ago. The huge cadre of A-list actors are always more relaxed and have more fun than they do at the Oscars. After the show, the entire campus of the Beverly Hilton is party central with lavish after parties where the stars really do come out to play. Meanwhile, Saoirse has also been nominated for a Bafta award. 'Brooklyn' grabbed six nominations, including Outstanding Film, and Saoirse is up against Alicia Vikander, Brie Larson, Cate Blanchett and Maggie Smith for Best Actress. Irish IndependentLizard Kings PBS Airdate: October 20, 2009 NARRATOR: On this island, there lives a hunter that smells its prey with its tongue, that will ambush pigs, deer, even people, tearing them apart. It looks primitive, like a dinosaur, though it's not. Komodo dragons are lizards, specifically, monitor lizards, which means they're far from primitive. Of the almost 5,000 types of lizard, monitors are the smartest; some can even count. And while they vary in size as much as an elephant and a mouse, they share a distinctive temperament. ERIC PIANKA (Ecologist The University of Texas at Austin) : Monitor lizards are lizards with an attitude. They know that they're top predators, and they act like they're top predators. They aren't afraid of anything. They are smart. NARRATOR: But could there be a side to monitors we've missed? That they're not only cunning, clever and fearless, but in some cases downright cuddly? Hungry, sometimes, not for a meal, but a pat or a bath? ERIC PIANKA: I dare anybody to go to a major zoo and look a monitor lizard in the eye. It's looking back at you. Other lizards don't do that. NARRATOR: Lizards as you've never seen them, up next on NOVA: Lizard Kings. Major funding for NOVA is provided by the following: Retirement: it may be a long way off or another adventure waiting just ahead. Pacific Life can help provide a dependable income you can enjoy for the rest of your life, because retirement can be a very long ride. Your financial professional can tell you more about Pacific Life. Pacific Life: the power to help you succeed. Natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel, yet a lot of natural gas has impurities like CO 2 in it. Controlled Freeze Zone is a new technology being developed by ExxonMobil to remove the CO 2 from the natural gas, so we can safely store it where it won't get into the atmosphere. ExxonMobil is spending more than $100 million to build a plant that will demonstrate this process. I'm very optimistic about it because this technology could be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly. And David H. Koch. And... Discover new knowledge: HHMI. And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. NARRATOR: Beneath Central Australia's great deserts, eggs, still and silent for nearly nine months, are showing signs of life. But no doting mother attends the new arrivals. They either make it out of their shells or not, either gain mastery of their bodies, or die trying. And die they well might. They have no future in this burrow. Their only chance at survival is to claw their way straight up, through more than three feet of baking sand, to the open air. Here, they must seek cover fast, before adults of their own kind take notice and eat them. No question, it's a hard beginning. But such hardship has molded some extraordinary creatures: a family of about 60 lizard species known as monitor lizards or "Lizard Kings." Sixty-five million years ago, a cataclysm wiped out the ruling reptiles, the dinosaurs, but monitor lizards survived. Of the nearly 5,000 types of lizard found today, the monitors are the undisputed kings. Almost half of the monitor species live in Australia. In this desert, one has become top predator, a position usually occupied by mammals. And it's no accident. True, like all lizards, this species, called the perentie, cannot regulate its body temperature internally, but that doesn't mean they're sluggish. Give them some rays and they have the stamina, speed and smarts of a mammal. And they're big, sometimes six feet long, commanding home ranges of up to 2,000 acres. Australia's outback harbors all kinds of creatures, not just lizards. It may look barren; actually, it's a patchwork of different habitats, each sheltering its own species. But the lizards stand out, giving the region its nickname, "Land of Lizards," and making it the perfect place for lizard hunters. ERIC PIANKA: I saw my first lizard when I was a little boy, and I thought it was the neatest thing I'd ever seen. I can't believe that I've been lucky enough to spend my whole life studying lizards. NARRATOR: Known as the "Lizard Man," American biologist Dr. Eric Pianka is a world authority on lizard ecology. He's combed through the globe's deserts for over 40 years, but he's found no better place for his field studies than Red Sands, his research site in the Great Victoria Desert of Western Australia. ERIC PIANKA: Red Sands is my favorite place on this earth. It's a beautiful, pristine, clean place. It's a desert rat's paradise. On Red Sands there's 55 species of lizards living together, including six species of monitor lizards. There's no place else in the world you can find that kind of diversity. NARRATOR: Red Sands is teeming with skinks, geckoes and monitor lizards of all sizes. And on this trip, Eric will try new ways to get inside the monitors' mind. But finding them is no easy task, even for the Lizard Man. Low fences lead the animals into pit traps sunk into the ground. ERIC PIANKA: I hope we get something bigger. NARRATOR: With these pit traps, Dr. Pianka and his field assistant, Stephen Goodyear, catch many of the smaller ground-dwellers. Twice a day, Eric and Stephen check all of their 175 traps. By logging every lizard species, they try to work out how so many lizards can co-exist. ERIC PIANKA: So the real appeal to me is trying to understand the high numbers of species of lizards you find together. I have to know all the players; we have to know their names and what eats what. I still occasionally stumble on something new out here, so it's just really exciting. I don't think I could bear to study a low-diversity system. NARRATOR: In the past 20 years, Eric's pits have trapped more than 18,000 lizards. It's the most comprehensive survey of a lizard community anywhere in the world. Not all monitors are as big as perenties, there are little ones too. ERIC PIANKA: Now this is a lizard, lizard and a half: Varanus eremius. For me this is a real trophy. It's my favorite lizard of all. It's a lizard hunter just like me, and they roam over long, long distances, hunting other lizards. I'll take him back to camp. Thanks. I think it's fascinating that almost all the lizards that are out here are connected directly with other lizards, eating lizards. There is a lot of lizard-eating lizards. And one of the things I've been working on over the last 40 years is making a food web. And the monitor lizards are right at the top. NARRATOR: Being top predators, monitor lizards hunt down anything smaller than they are, even their own kin. And in a place too hot and dry for most mammals, these lizards rule. They rival many mammals as cunning hunters. When prowling for food they don't just follow their victim's scent, they do something else; monitors think ahead. These calculating hunters learn and memorize all the major landmarks around. They read the landscape like a map, taking short cuts to hideouts and ambushing prey to avoid energy-draining chases. When this monitor comes across a hot scent, he follows the trail relentlessly, using special senses that guide him with lethal accuracy. His target today is an eastern brown snake, one of the world's deadliest. It leaves an unmistakable odor trail, but it's one of many. Other animals have passed this way too. But the monitor can follow the snake's trail and ignore all the others by using his tongue. Like snakes, monitors have forked tongues. By flicking them in the air or touching the ground, they pick up scents. Every time they pull in their tongues, they read these scents with an organ in the roof of their mouth. It's like tasting and smelling at the same time. Even more astonishing, the monitor can tell how long ago his prey has passed and in which way it's heading. He never follows a trail backwards. As long as there's a trace of a scent, he follows it, leaving the Lizard King's quarry few options. Hiding underground could be the snake's escape, but the monitor is as skilled at tracking below ground as above. The snake has one last defense: its venom can kill a human with a single bite, but not the monitor; he seems to be immune. If he can't tear his prey apart, he'll swallow it whole and head first. Being partly solar-powered, reptiles only need 10 percent of the food we mammals need. And if food is scarce, a good meal can last the King for weeks. Back at camp, Eric and Stephen sort through their catch of the day. STEPHEN GOODYEAR: We've even got some monitor lizards. ERIC PIANKA: Oh, wow! What? STEPHEN GOODYEAR: We've got a Varanus eremius, two Varanus brevicauda. NARRATOR: The Red Sands camp is about 250 miles from civilization, and they've been out here for more than two months of searing desert winds and the ever-present bush flies. Eric has been coming here for almost half a century, making his study of the Red Sands lizards unique. It's only long-term data like his that enables us to recognize changes in an ecosystem and understand the local effects of climate change. On this expedition, Eric hopes to find good lizard numbers, especially monitors. As top predators, their presence or absence will indicate whether the desert community here is still healthy. ERIC PIANKA: There, I got it. Pretty good: 27 and a half. NARRATOR: And soon, Eric will get visitors. He'll be helping them launch a cutting-edge project, one that could give him new insights into the monitors' notoriously secretive lives. ERIC PIANKA: This year we're doing a different project from anything I've ever done before. I'm collaborating with two ethologists, and we're going to try to see if we can put little cameras on monitor lizards out here. Monitor lizards don't let you watch them, but if you can put a video camera on one, you might be able to see things that you could never see, and learn things that, otherwise, we'd never know. NARRATOR: Eric's collaborators, Christian Rutz and Lucas Bluff, decide to try the new invention before reaching his camp in Red Sands. Code-named "Lizardcam," this pilot study is designed to explore the world from the monitors' point of view. And local monitor expert Rex Neindorf has lined up the first grumpy subject. LUCAS BLUFF (Oxford University) : Hey Rex, what have you got for us? REX NEINDORF: Oh, we've got a big one. LUCAS BLUFF: Alright, I'll get out of your way. REX NEINDORF: He's a, he's a big boy. He's pretty cranky too, so just keep away from that head. NARRATOR: This large specimen is used to having people around, making him an ideal test candidate. He's big enough to carry Lizardcam and should quickly recover from all the high-tech fuss. The next time he sheds his skin, the Velcro fixings will come off. LUCAS BLUFF: Now we're on air. NARRATOR: The camera sends live pictures back to a mobile receiver and has a radio tag, so it can be found later. LUCAS BLUFF: No worries. CHRISTIAN RUTZ (Oxford University) : I think he's ready to go. REX NEINDORF: Are you guys happy with that? LUCAS BLUFF: Yeah. CHRISTIAN RUTZ: Go for it. REX NEINDORF: Okay, I grab him right there. Okay, and if you guys just want to stand back a fraction, and we'll see how we go. NARRATOR: And they're all set. It's Lizardcam's world premiere. REX NEINDORF: Okay, big fellow. Off you go. He wasn't happy with that. CHRISTIAN RUTZ: I'm actually very happy that he doesn't try to remove the unit. It doesn't seem to bother him at all. REX NEINDORF: It's really good. I'm very happy with that because the way the unit is sitting, there's really not much weight there at all. And it's almost just as...like there's an insect landed on him, and he's just going to completely ignore it. CHRISTIAN RUTZ: Yeah. So it looks pretty good. NARRATOR: With Lizardcam up and running, they can see things from a monitor's perspective. LUCAS BLUFF: We're on air; good pictures. CHRISTIAN RUTZ: You've got footage coming in? LUCAS BLUFF: Yeah, it's coming in. NARRATOR: For the first time they see what it sees. To get the best results, Christian and Lucas must now let their subject move out of sight, yet stay close enough to receive the video signal. They can bridge a distance of about a third of a mile, room enough for the Lizard King to roam and give Lizardcam its first hard knocks. CHRISTIAN RUTZ: What is always important for us is to get the attachment technique right. So we want to mount our video cameras in a way that it does not impair the animal's movement and natural behavior. These cameras should have no effect on the animal whatsoever. NARRATOR: And this means the camera should drop off rather than trap its host. LUCAS BLUFF: The packaging is the hardest thing, because we need a package that is both very rugged—it has to survive in quite a harsh environment—but at the same time it should be light. And, ideally, it can be reused time and time again. NARRATOR: Trial and error is the only way to improve Lizardcam's design. For nearly half an hour, the lizard has kept a low profile, but now he's on the move, exploring the surrounding scrub, apparently unaware of the video spy on his back. And then the King does something rarely seen. LUCAS BLUFF: Still moving. Actually, he's going up the tree. See there? NARRATOR: Monitors like this one prefer roaming on the ground, or so it was thought. To see this species climbing is a revelation. Lizardcam is already delivering, and, bolstered by their first success, Christian and Lucas try out a more daring design: a head-mounted camera with a power backpack. This time, the star of the show heads off towards a dirt track among sand dunes. He's picked up an appetizing smell, appetizing, that is, to monitor lizards. It's the stench of rotting flesh from a roadkill, and a monitor doesn't turn up his nose at that. They're seasoned scavengers as well as accomplished predators. Cooked in the sun, the mangled rabbit is irresistible, but how best to carve the roast? Monitors have sharp teeth, but they can't chew. So if the meal is too big to be gulped down whole, it has to be torn apart. Lizardcam is like catching a glimpse into the monitor's life and mind. CHRISTIAN RUTZ: You have this little video screen in front of you, and what you see is not some piece of recorded footage, but it is an animal behaving, and you are live on the back of a lizard. And that is very exciting. You get this very special point of view, and you also immediately realize the quality of certain discoveries. NARRATOR: The next discoveries will be at Eric's camp in Red Sands. Basking in the early morning sun is a rarely seen Lizard King. With a relatively long body and short tail, he's the dachshund of the monitors. This short-tailed monitor or brevicauda is the smallest monitor in the world. ERIC PIANKA: Oh, man, look at that. This is an amazing lizard, and it's a real pygmy. Look at this savage thing; ahh, ooh, ahh. It's just a joke to see a little tiny thing like this acting like it's a big lizard, but they don't know they're not big. NARRATOR: In fact, they're just as fierce as their bigger cousins. ERIC PIANKA: Monitor lizards range in size over orders of magnitude, like four or five orders of magnitude, and that's pretty awesome. I don't think there is any other closer related group of animals on the earth. It's just like the difference between a brevicauda and a Komodo dragon is about the same as a mouse and an elephant. NARRATOR: In contrast to this tiny hunter, in Indonesia, real-life dragons rule entire islands. And they truly are giants. Up to ten feet long and weighing as much as 200 pounds, the largest Komodo dragons are not only the biggest monitors, but also the biggest lizards now walking the planet. They will bring down prey as large as deer and water buffalo and occasionally dine on a human. Komodo dragons can devour up to 80 percent of their own weight in a single meal. That's like a human gorging on a 130-pound steak. Their appetite is legendary, but their minds are even more intriguing. ERIC PIANKA: Monitor lizards are fascinating for all kinds of reasons. Not only are they bigger than other lizards, but they're also smarter than other lizards. I dare anybody to go to a major zoo and look a monitor lizard in the eye. It's looking back at you. Other lizards don't do that. NARRATOR: London Zoo was one of the first in the world to exhibit Komodo dragons, in 1927. And it was this species above all others that revealed monitors are more than just powerful hunters. These dragons captivated an awestruck public and their keepers. As Dr. Ian Stephen knows firsthand, they displayed a surprising intelligence. IAN STEPHEN (London Zoo) : Ever since Komodo Dragons were kept in captivity, people realized that there was something extra. They're incredibly inquisitive. Any sort of new thing that you put into their environment, they'll come across, they'll investigate it. They always want to know. They always, sort of...they've always got one eye on you. NARRATOR: Raja demands caution. He's ten years old but still a youngster, and each day Ian needs to stimulate his natural curiosity. IAN STEPHEN: What's this? What's that? What's happening? What's this? Stick. NARRATOR: Incredibly, this fearsome beast can be as docile as a puppy. IAN STEPHEN: I've kept reptiles all my life, and you never really get a lot back from them. Whereas with Komodo dragons, they definitively give you something back. They definitively seek out your presence. And when you're stroking it or interacting with it, you can see he loves it. And I love it. And you know, all the keepers love it. And this is like working around a mammal. NARRATOR: But when it comes to food, he has a dragon's appetite, albeit a semi-tamed dragon. IAN STEPHEN: Raja! Hoi! NARRATOR: Atypically for a reptile, Raja is responding to training routines you'd expect to see with intelligent mammals. IAN STEPHEN: What's this? Good boy! What's this? Come on! Up, up! Good boy, come on. Up, up. Hoi! Good boy. Raja relates the target to food. So we use the target as a tool to move him from A to B. But the key thing is, when the target is out of his field of vision, his feeding response is turned off, okay? So now, because Raja can't see the target, he's now quite a calm animal. When he sees the target, he then expects to be fed. So it's actually a really useful tool for...in, sort of, day-to-day management. And although you can target-train, probably, most reptiles, monitors are a lot more switched on, and they take to the target training so much quicker. Good boy, Raja! NARRATOR: There are even reports of dragons playing, behavior previously unheard of in reptiles. IAN STEPHEN: He's clearly a very intelligent animal. He knows everybody's voices, everybody's smells, different cues, different noises. You spend five minutes talking to Raja and you can definitively see that intelligence in his eyes. It is hard to quantify, but I would definitively say, he's without question the most intelligent reptile I've ever worked with. You're a spoilt boy. NARRATOR: Observing how smart monitors are in the wild is a bigger challenge. Take the Australian sand monitor or gouldii. This sneaky hunter is as fast as he's elusive, always on the run. Eric knows him all too well. Sand monitors frequently steal lizards from his pit traps, leaving only their telltale footprints behind. ERIC PIANKA: Hey, wait a minute. That looks like it might be a track. Let's see. Let's get out and check this out. That track went right over our tire track so it was made today. NARRATOR: But today, the sand monitor might have just run out of luck. ERIC PIANKA: Looks like something. STEPHEN GOODYEAR: Where? ERIC PIANKA: Right here. STEPHEN GOODYEAR: Oh, I think I see it. ERIC PIANKA: Yeah, that's a gouldii track. One of my favorite pastimes is tracking lizards across Australia's red sands. It went right through here. And when I find a crisp, crisp, brand new track, it just makes my heart beat faster. It's like, "Wow! There is a line, all I have to do is follow it, and I'll find a fantastic lizard." When I'm on a track, I'm just single-minded. It went through here. Let's come up here and see if we can...there. It was there. When you learn how to track, not only do you, do you read the sand, but you, you become the lizard yourself, if you're a good tracker. And you see the direction it's going, and then that makes it easier, because you can circle around in a big arc and find the track quicker. NARRATOR: But given the sand monitor's stamina, even a fresh trail can stretch for miles. ERIC PIANKA: Ah, right here you can see the classic gouldii track. They lash their tails, they lift it off the ground. It's not continuous like the perentie track. NARRATOR: While the hide and seek continues at Red Sands, up in Australia's tropical north, Lizard Kings leave hardly any tracks behind. This rocky landscape is home to a number of very different creatures like the Kimberley rock monitor. It's a master climber, quick as a wink and constantly on the lookout for anything small enough to grab. The key to the monitors' remarkable survival story is the one-plan-fits-all body design, which has changed little from the time of the dinosaurs. All monitors can run, climb, dig and swim. The Mertens monitor even has valves in its nose that shut tight when swimming underwater. But apart from size, monitor species don't differ very much, and they're all armed with the same senses. During the dry season, Mertens forage for crabs, crayfish and frogs in widely scattered permanent pools, but they inevitably cross paths with their neighbors, and they're not about to share the spoils freely. Rivals are not tolerated, and much head bobbing accompanies a standoff. It's part of monitor etiquette, a warning to back off or get bitten. Mertens are skilled hunters, on land and in the water. Just like other monitors, to find food, they flick their forked tongue, except that Mertens pick up scents under water as well. They're surprisingly good fishermen. It's a skill spotted by other predators. Why try to catch fish when you can steal one? A Lizard King is not so easily outwitted. Survival out here means staying at least one step ahead. ERIC PIANKA: Ah, there! Stephen, bring the ax and a shovel up here. I've got a gouldii in a burrow. It's a big one. STEPHEN GOODYEAR: Got it! NARRATOR: Back at Red Sands, Eric's found the hideout of his lizard thief. Now he has to get him out. ERIC PIANKA: Right in that direction. So what I'm going to do first is look for the pop hole, the pop hole where he'll jump out. And that most likely will be over about here. NARRATOR: Monitors are a class vanishing act. They disappear from view in an instant, and they build their homes to confuse other predators and, of course, lizard hunters. The main burrow stretches for many yards underground, and it has emergency exits or pop holes, dead-end corners and decoy tunnels, and so Eric and Stephen have to feel their way through the labyrinth of shafts. ERIC PIANKA: Hunh, this isn't going to work. I've got to get my head down this hole. NARRATOR: Eric has to be careful. There could be all kinds of venomous creatures down there. ERIC PIANKA: Oh, man, this is a bad one. NARRATOR: Two hours of digging, and they can almost smell their quarry. STEPHEN GOODYEAR: Does this kind of look like an opening? ERIC PIANKA: Yeah, it does. Maybe that's the pop hole. STEPHEN GOODYEAR: Here, let me just have a look. You can see his tail. ERIC PIANKA: Yep, okay. I told you he was in there. I told you he was going to try to come out a pop hole! Oh, this one is, this one is powerful, man. You want to hold him? He's very strong. Watch out, he's really...don't let him go, whatever you do, hang onto that lizard for dear life. NARRATOR: The sand monitor is a prize catch, but Eric wasn't the first to get to him. ERIC PIANKA: Something must have bit him on the tail, something big. I think it was grabbed by a perentie like that and just barely escaped. Well, let's go back to the truck. NARRATOR: This Lizard King is about to make history. Soon he'll be carrying Red Sands' first Lizardcam. ERIC PIANKA: He's big enough to carry a transmitter. I think Christian and Lucas are going to like this. NARRATOR: While Lizardcam reveals the monitors' tactics in the wild, at the University of Tennessee, biopsychologist Dr. Gordon Burghardt is investigating their intelligence, in the lab. GORDON BURGHARDT (Biopsychologist) : Now, the term "intelligence," of course, is a complex term because, what is intelligence? We can't define that for people. It's best for us to think about this in terms of various tasks, or problems an animal has to solve, and how good they're able to do it. NARRATOR: Checkmate to the Lizard King might be premature, so Dr. Burghardt's team has begun with something simpler: a test to see whether monitors can discriminate between different objects. His animals are African species, and in previous tests, these monitors have already shown they can count up to six. They were trained to leave a feeding area only after they had found six hidden snails, a remarkable performance for a lizard. GORDON BURGHARDT: Our animals are really quite laid back. They are used to people, they are used to being handled, they get a lot of tender loving care. When they get into the environment, they get involved in it right away, rather than being like going to a doctor's office with a young kid, you know, "I don't want to go there again." That doesn't happen with our animals. NARRATOR: Like the Komodo at London Zoo, Milo is trained to respond to a target to get a reward. NATALIE (Student) : Milo: target! Good girl! GORDON BURGHARDT: Hey, you did it. Hey, hop that-a-way. NARRATOR: All of Dr. Burghardt's monitors take to the training easily. GORDON BURGHARDT: Okay, let's see if she can get another target here. After we found that the animals really learned the targeting adequately, we decided: okay, without our presence, without our moving of the object—which is what we were always doing—would they be able to recognize and discriminate it from a similar object that differed in some characteristic. And so we began with the easiest discrimination, black and white. NARRATOR: Now the monitors face two new challenges. First, they can't see their trainers and nothing in the arena moves, so there are no obvious cues as to what to do. Will they remember? NATHAN (Student) : Tongue flicking on the left wall, going straight down. NARRATOR: Second, they can see two balls: the black one they know and a new white one. Will they tell the colors apart? They master the task surprisingly quickly. GORDON BURGHARDT: What we do find is that the animals learn quite rapidly. Within 20 trials, our animals were reliably choosing the right target. And what we find that's amazing, and is not true of most reptiles, that they don't seem to care that much about the environment being simplified and artificial. NATHAN: Tongue flicking black, tongue flicking black. NARRATOR: Rather than being thrown by the sterile lab environment, these monitors are focused and show an ability to think ahead, which is exceptional for a reptile. To test whether the animals are hitting the black ball by chance, the targets are swapped. GORDON BURGHARDT: We think this is a very promising beginning. Obviously we have a long way to go, but no one has really done this kind of work before. But the fact that they are learning some of these trials so quickly, much more quickly than many other animals, even mammals, shows that monitor lizards, I think are, sort of, the primates of the lizard world. NARRATOR: Intelligence is about learning, and the ability to adapt quickly to new experiences, in the lab and in the wild. In Thailand, monitor lizards have learned to take advantage of new opportunities. This is the water monitor, which can grow to more than six feet long, and is known locally as the "little crocodile." It's been quick to find a perfect place to prowl: our food-filled cities. In the center of buzzing Bangkok, the water monitor has invaded water channels and surrounding parks, embracing the urban lifestyle with ease. Fresh food and garbage are both fair game. And the best spots for a hungry lizard, close to busy market stalls, are usually won in a fight. Monitors are renowned wrestlers, but they fight for more than just food. These trials of strength increase just before the big rains. The rains mark the start of the mating season. Now the males are pumped up and ready to brawl over females. This is the one time Lizard Kings break the monotony of their normally solitary lives. The next two months are highly charged, with males marking areas, driving off rivals and making passes at the opposite sex. Males also release scents, which scientists believe may serve to cow the competition and signal their potency. But it takes a great deal of pushing and shoving to convince a lizard queen that he is the King for her. Once the couple has found each other, they mate repeatedly. But the female will mate with several other partners, too, so her clutch of eggs will carry the D.N.A. from different males. Such is the drive to multiply, a female can find herself overwhelmed by suitors. When it's all over, she'll dig an underground chamber and lay a dozen or so eggs. And about eight months later, the young heirs will emerge to found their own urban dynasties. Back at Eric's camp, expectations are rising. ERIC PIANKA: We've got to keep the tail from lashing. CHRISTIAN RUTZ: You've got him? NARRATOR: The Lizardcam team have arrived and they're fitting Eric's freshly caught sand monitor with a made-to-order video camera and radio tag. CHRISTIAN RUTZ: Yeah, it's got the radio tag here, so if it comes off we... ERIC PIANKA: We can find it. CHRISTIAN RUTZ:...we can find the unit. LUCAS BLUFF: And we're going to put another tag on, so we can find the lizard if the unit drops off. ERIC PIANKA: He's behaving very well. NARRATOR: Cooled down for easier handling, the sand monitor takes the fitting in stride. LUCAS BLUFF:...seen on a single lizard before. ERIC PIANKA: Three different signals it's sending out, that's great. NARRATOR: Now comes the moment of truth. How is this Monitor going to react to its new backpack? ERIC PIANKA: Oh, boy. He's going to take off running, I think. There we go. Once he realizes he can go, we'll try to...oh, there he goes. Oh ho, neat! Wow, you can see him walking along; fantastic. CHRISTIAN RUTZ: Okay, let's go down here and try to cut across. NARRATOR: Swiftly out of sight, the monitor is up to his old tricks, but Lizardcam is about to reveal just how he pulls off this familiar vanishing act. Only a few monitor species stand or run on their back legs to get a better view, and the sand monitor is one of them. ERIC PIANKA: He's probably in between a couple of these tight spinifex. CHRISTIAN RUTZ: I think he is. He's over there. ERIC PIANKA: Over that way. Okay. CHRISTIAN RUTZ: But I think we can stay here now, because Lucas gets good reception. ERIC PIANKA: Oh, he's getting... CHRISTIAN RUTZ: So there is no need to get closer. ERIC PIANKA: Yeah, let's not spook him. NARRATOR: After 40 years of watching lizards, Eric is seeing, for the first time, what they see, and he's in for a surprise. ERIC PIANKA: Putting his head down. Oops. There, he's digging. See? He's digging. NARRATOR: Sensing the team is hot on his heels, the monitor changes tactics. ERIC PIANKA: He heard that. He's listening to us, flicking his tongue, yeah. NARRATOR: Sunset is only an hour away and the temperature is dropping. ERIC PIANKA: They're very powerful diggers. He's digging like a maniac. NARRATOR: For a solar-powered reptile, there's only one safe way to go: down, into a warm hideaway. ERIC PIANKA: I think he's going to dig an overnight burrow right here. Amazing he got that far that fast. I didn't know they could do that. This is great. STEPHEN GOODYEAR: You can actually see the hole. ERIC PIANKA: Yeah, he's making his hole, you can see it. NARRATOR: In just 15 minutes, the monitor has excavated itself a snug refuge. ERIC PIANKA: I didn't know they could do it this fast. I thought they, I thought they went into a burrow they'd already...knew was there. CHRISTIAN RUTZ: Well, that's our first discovery then. ERIC PIANKA: Yeah. NARRATOR: Already the monitor has made up for stealing Eric's lizards. His camera will be recovered in a few days. Lizardcam has added a new dimension to Eric's research. Bush fires are part of Australian life everywhere, from the deserts to the tropics. To survive such devastation, each species has its own tactic, but while most animals flee, the Mertens monitor stays cool. Water gives a degree of protection, and the flames will bring an unexpected bonus. Some predators, like birds of prey, are attracted towards the blaze and become a meal themselves. Insects taking flight from the flames and smoke also drop out of the sky, out of the fire and into the frying pan. But there's more to bush fires than destruction and free meals. They're one of the reasons why Australia has such rich lizard communities. Fires carve up the landscape, creating new habitats next to old unburned ones, each supporting different species. ERIC PIANKA: It took me a while to realize how important fires
On Tuesday October 8th, Filip Forsberg recorded his first career NHL goal on Minnesota Wild goalie Niklas Backstrom. Then on Thursday October 10th, Carolina Hurricanes forward Elias Lindholm scored the first goal of his NHL career on a shot that pinballed off Washington Capitals defenseman John Carlson and by goalie Braden Holtby. The following day on the 11th, Chicago Blackhawks forward Joakim Nordstrom scored his first career NHL goal on New York Islanders goalie Kevin Poulin. A memo must have gone around on Saturday the 12th as three more firsts were netted. Minnesota Wild defender Mathew Dumba scored his first NHL goal on Dallas Stars goalie Dan Ellis after the Wild put on a passing clinic. Nashville Predators defenseman Seth Jones recorded his first career NHL goal on New York Islanders goalie Evgeni Nabokov. Last but not least, Colorado Avalanche forward and 1st overall pick of the 2013 draft, Nathan MacKinnon recorded his first career NHL goal on Washington Capitals goalie Braden Holtby. Fun fact here seeing as Holtby gave up 2 first career NHL goals to players this week and he himself is still looking for his first win of the season. Own Goals: Leave it to the Vancouver Canucks to dazzle their hometown fans with a self goal during a 1-1 tie late in the second period. The worst part is that self goal would hold to be the game winner for the Montreal Canadiens. Check it out for yourself below: Undefeated Teams: As mentioned above the Colorado Avalanche are 5-0-0 to start the season. Alongside them also with a 5-0-0 record are the San Jose Sharks. The St. Louis Blues are 4-0-0 to start off the season which is a franchise first for them. However the Sharks will take on the Blues this Tuesday October 15th meaning only one team will remain “perfect”. Finally, the one last team to yet record a regulation loss are the Calgary Flames who hold a 3-0-2 record and have been another shocking team with a good early start. Still Searching for a W: Perhaps it comes as no surprise but the Buffalo Sabres are still winless in their first 6 games with a 0-5-1 record. The team has struggled scoring goals for the most part as they have only six, that’s right just as many goals as games played. To put it in a better perspective, Tomas Hertl has more goals (7) as an individual in fewer games played than the entire Sabres team, ouch. The New Jersey Devils are also looking for that first win as they currently hold a 0-3-3 record with their latest loss being a blanking by the Winnipeg Jets Sunday night. Bottom Dwellers: Once again the Buffalo Sabres find themselves looking up but they are not alone in starting off on the wrong foot this season. The New York Rangers (1-4-0), Philadelphia Flyers (1-5-0), and Washington Capitals (1-4-0) are all sitting at the bottom of the Metropolitan Division looking up. For the Flyers it has been an issue of putting the puck in the back of the net while for the Rangers it has been the quite opposite after suffering blowout losses back to back nights with scores of 9-2 and 6-0. The Capitals however are just not executing as they have lead in 3 of their 4 games that resulted in loses. Finally the only other notable bottom dwelling team is the Edmonton Oilers. The Oilers have also had trouble from keeping the puck going into the back of their own net. Devan Dubnyk’s GAA of 5.43 and Save % of.829 will have to drastically improve if he wishes to be the #1 for the Oilers and if the team wants to start getting some wins. Team Dentist: New York Islanders’ captain John Tavares was struck by a puck to the face during Friday night’s game against the Blackhawks. Tavares however didn’t miss a beat as he skated to the bench, yanked out his own tooth, and skated right back out on his next shift. That’s just more proof that Tavares does it all for the Islanders and can now add “Dentist” to his resume. Hat Tricks: As mentioned before above, on Tuesday the 8th, Tomas Hertl recorded his first career hat trick against the New York Rangers and finished the game with 4 goals on the night. Two days later on Thursday the 10th, Steven Stamkos lit up the Florida Panthers for his 6th career hat trick and finished with 4 pts on the night. Then another two days later on Saturday the 12th, Sidney Crosby recorded his 8th career hat trick against the Tampa Bay Lightning to help his Penguins squad pull out the 5-4 victory in the end. Suspensions: Sharks defenseman Brad Stuart was suspended for three games by the NHL on Wednesday for an illegal check to the head of Rick Nash in Tuesday’s game against the New York Rangers. Stuart has been suspended once before in his career, but it was in 2001 in his second season in the NHL. Stuart will not be back for the Sharks until the Oct. 17 game at Dallas. Vancouver Canucks defenseman Alex Edler had already been in trouble with international hockey officials over a wayward hit last spring. Now, the NHL took action on his hit on the San Jose Sharks’ Tomas Hertl on Thursday night giving Edler a three game suspension. Edler leads the Canucks in average ice time at nearly 25 minutes a game. He won’t be eligible to return until Oct. 19 against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Laviolette Flyerd: The Philadelphia Flyers fired Peter Laviolette on Monday Octber 7th after an 0-3-0 start and a 1-8-1 record overall if you include the preseason, replacing him with assistant coach Craig Berube. The Flyers missed the playoffs last season for the first time in his five-season tenure as head coach. Are They Related? Bradley Cooper (Left) – Star Actor in various movies. Henrik Lundqvist (Right) – Star and starting goaltender for the New York RangersStuffy nose relief A stuffy nose can be annoying. Your nose drips. You sound funny when you talk. And just when you want to blow your nose to finally breathe again, nothing comes out. Many people think a stuffy nose is the result of too much mucus in the nasal passages. However, a clogged nose is actually caused by inflamed blood vessels in the sinuses. These irritated vessels are usually triggered by a cold, the flu, allergies, or a sinus infection. Regardless of the reason for your stuffed-up nose, there are easy ways to relieve it. Here are eight things you can do now to feel and breathe better. We pick these items based on the quality of the products, and list the pros and cons of each to help you determine which will work best for you. We partner with some of the companies that sell these products, which means Healthline may receive a portion of the revenues when you buy something using the links below. 1. Use a humidifier A humidifier provides a quick, easy way to reduce sinus pain and relieve a stuffy nose. The machine converts water to moisture that slowly fills the air, increasing the humidity in a room. Breathing in this moist air can soothe irritated tissues and swollen blood vessels in your nose and sinuses. Humidifiers also thin the mucus in your sinuses. This can help empty the fluids in your nose and return your breathing to normal. Put a humidifier in your room to ease the inflammation causing your congestion. Purchase the Amir cool mist humidifier today. 2. Take a shower Have you ever had a stuffy nose and found that you could breathe so much better after a hot shower? There’s a good reason for that. The steam from a shower helps to thin out the mucus in your nose and reduce inflammation. Taking a hot shower can help your breathing return to normal, at least for a little while. You can get the same effect by breathing in steam from hot water in a sink. Here’s how: Turn on the hot water in your bathroom sink. Once the temperature is right, place a towel over your head and put your head over the sink. Allow the steam to build, and take in deep breaths. Be careful not to burn your face on the hot water or steam. 3. Stay hydrated Keep the fluids flowing when your nose is stuffed up. Almost all liquids can help keep you hydrated when you’re sick, including water, sports drinks, and even juice. They help thin the mucus in your nasal passages, pushing the fluids out of your nose and decreasing the pressure in your sinuses. Less pressure means less inflammation and irritation. If your stuffy nose is accompanied by a sore throat, warm tea and soup will help ease the discomfort in your throat, too. 4. Use a saline spray Take hydration one step further with saline, a saltwater solution. Using a nasal saline spray can increase the moisture in your nostrils. The spray helps thin the mucus in your nasal passages. This decreases the inflammation of your blood vessels and helps empty fluids from your nose. Numerous saline sprays are available over the counter. Some saline sprays also include decongestant medication. Talk to your doctor before you begin using saline sprays with decongestants. They may actually make your congestion worse if used for more than three days. They can also cause side effects when used along with other medications. Purchase Simply Saline adult nasal mist today. 5. Drain your sinuses It’s not the most glamorous task, but you can flush your clogged nostrils with a neti pot. A neti pot is a container designed to flush mucus and fluids out of your nasal passages. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends using distilled or sterile water instead of tap water. Here’s how to use a neti pot: Stand with your head over a sink. Place the spout of the neti pot in one nostril. Tilt the neti pot until water enters your nasal passage. Once the water flows into your nostril, it will come out through your other nostril and empty into the sink. Do this for about one minute, and then switch sides. Purchase the Himalayan Chandra porcelain neti pot today. 6. Use a warm compress A warm compress may help unclog a stuffy nose by opening the nasal passages from the outside. To make a warm compress, first soak a towel in warm water. Squeeze the water out of the towel, then fold it and place it over your nose and forehead. The warmth can provide comfort from any pain and help relieve the inflammation in the nostrils. Repeat this as often as necessary. Purchase the Ace knitted cold/hot compress today. 7. Try decongestants A decongestant medication can help reduce swelling and ease pain associated with irritated nasal passages. Many decongestants are available without a doctor’s prescription. They come in two forms: nasal spray and pill. Common decongestant nasal sprays include oxymetazoline (Afrin) and phenylephrine (Sinex). Common decongestant pills include pseudoephedrine (Sudafed, Sudogest). Many of these medicines are kept behind the pharmacy counter, so you’ll need to get them from the pharmacist. Read more: What you need to know about Sudafed » Use all decongestants correctly and safely. You shouldn’t take a decongestant for more than three days without a doctor’s supervision. After three days, a nasal decongestant may actually make your congestion and stuffiness worse. Purchase GoodSense nasal decongestant today. 8. Take antihistamines or allergy medicine You may want to take an antihistamine or allergy medicine if your stuffy nose is the result of an allergic reaction. Both types of medications can reduce the swelling in your nasal passages, helping to unclog your stuffy nose. Combination medicines that contain both an antihistamine and a decongestant can relieve the sinus pressure and swelling caused by allergic reactions. Follow the instructions for these medications carefully. If you don’t, you may make your condition worse. It should also be noted that antihistamines might make you drowsy. If you aren’t sure how an antihistamine will affect you, don’t take the medicine when you need to be active or productive. Purchase Benadryl Allergy Ultratab tablets today.WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Monday that he was looking into staging a display of American military might in a Fourth of July parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. In remarks during a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France at the United Nations, Mr. Trump said he got the idea after watching the Bastille Day parade in Paris with Mr. Macron in July. During the parade, he could be seen gesticulating and whispering to Mr. Macron at the elaborate display of tanks, soldiers on horseback and military jets flying overhead. “I came back and one of my early calls were, I think we are going to have to start looking at that ourselves,” the president told Mr. Macron. “We are actually thinking about Fourth of July, Pennsylvania Avenue, having a really great parade to show our military strength.”The various branches of the establishment are frequently criticized for not understanding, or even caring about, the critically important fields of privacy and security. In just one image, the New York Post shows just how bad the situation is with this ignorance. When I was in the European Parliament, I was frequently shocked at how badly decision-makers and policymakers understood the crucial issues of the 21st century: information, security, privacy (which in turn lead to innovation and growth). Rather, Members of the European Parliament would have e-mails printed for them by their secretaries and put in a pile on their desks, and they would therefore believe that they understood what the Internet was about. Some decade ago, there was something akin to a riot on the Internet as the copyright industry tried to suppress the key “09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0” from being discussed: this was a cryptographic key for access and playback control of Hollywood DVDs. Everybody who is familiar with the Internet understands the concept of publishing a key. It cannot be undone, and once you publish its secret, you’ve opened Pandora’s box. A cryptographic key is usually published like above, in a sequence of hexadecimal digits, since that’s the secret of the key. This makes it different from a physical key, where the physical shape of the key is the crucial secret. Now consider this story by the New York Post, which cries out in terror that a master key to the New York City utilities has leaked. Consider that this story has passed by many people on its way to publishing, all part of the narrative-creating establishment, and consider what their understanding of the most fundamental security must look like. Yes, that’s the key being discussed right there, the “1620” key. The New York Post is crying out in terror that this master key is on the loose, and goes on to publish the full secret of the key, in gigantic format. From this point, anybody can trivially reproduce this key. It’s reasonable to ask at what point an ignorance of security to this unbelievable level becomes criminal negligence. The ignorance is not unlike the fiasco with Diebold voting machines, also about a decade ago. The voting machines were supposedly secure; they needed a key to access the memory card slots. Spare keys were for sale on the Diebold website, and were only sold to certified voting officials. But like any webshop, there were high-resolution photos of the keys to the voting machines right on that webshop, and those images could be (and were) used to create keys that could access the voting records. Security, too, is starting to become your own responsibility. (hat tip: @gsuberland)Costly impacts include buildings collapsing with melting permafrost, rivers running low and wildfires By Chris Arsenault YELLOWKNIFE, Northwest Territories, Canada, Oct 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Climate change is taking a heavy economic toll on Canada's far north, with buildings collapsing as melting permafrost destroys foundations, rivers running low and wildfires all a drain on the region's limited finances, senior government officials said. A sprawling area spanning the Arctic Circle with a population of less than 50,000, Canada's Northwest Territories has spent more than $140 million in the last two years responding to problems linked to global warming, the territory's finance minister said. "Our budgets are getting squeezed dramatically from climate change," Finance and Environment Minister J. Michael Miltenberger told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "The roads are constantly moving as the permafrost is melting... massive shore erosion is putting buildings at risk. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past few years and the tie to climate change is more and more evident." In this windswept territory, which already relies on central government subsidies, responding to global warming is crucial for its financial survival. A major U.N. conference in Paris in December will aim to create a new global deal to curb climate change to take effect from 2020. Scientists want to keep international temperature rises below 2 degrees compared with pre-industrial levels, while providing poor countries with money for adaptation. But in parts of the Northwest Territories, average temperatures have already risen more than three degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, government officials said. "In Paris, we are hoping for whatever it takes to turn this (climate change) around," politician Bob Bromley told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the territorial capital, Yellowknife. "It's going to require all hands on deck, and willing hands." DIESEL DEPENDENCE The delicate ecosystem of the wide-skied territory, home to the indigenous Dene people, and where wolves, caribou and bison roam, has been plunged into a environmental vicious cycle. Climate change has been linked to decreased water levels in the territory's major rivers, partly due to greater evaporation, causing a sharp contraction in hydro electric power generation. As a result, the government has had to import more diesel, borrowing about $30 million this year alone to make up for the electricity shortfall, hurting its budget and increasing climate-warming emissions in a catastrophic feedback loop. "It's not sustainable," said Miltenberger, the finance and environment minister. He called on Canada's national government to provide more financial help for climate change mitigation, particularly in renewable power, to reduce the costs of importing diesel. With a small population, and high operating costs due to its size and climate, the territory's main employers are diamond mining and the public sector. The region's indigenous people rely on the hunting of caribou as a key food source, but herds are declining, with climate change likely a significant driver. Northwest Territories receives financial transfer payments of about $1.3 billion, or about $29,000 per resident, from Canada's national government to run public services. Craig Scott, executive director of Ecology North, a Yellowknife-based environmental group, believes the government should have invested earlier in renewable energy. Fuel trucks hauling diesel along gravel roads to small rural communities are a common site across the territory. Generators have been working around the clock following the decline in hydro power, Scott said, and new holding tanks had to be imported to store the diesel. "Renewable energies (including) micro hydro, solar and biomass have high capital costs in the short-term," Scott told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "But they are sustainable versus the long-term pain of diesel." This report was produced with support from the Internews Earth Journalism Network. (Reporting By Chris Arsenault by Ros Russell; please add:; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit www.trust.org) Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.Talking to casters: An interview with Noxious and Rich For about a year now, the amount of Hearthstone casters has been on a rise. Whereas in previous years the caster pool was fairly small, in 2016 it grew rapidly. Blizzard announced the "So You Think You Can Cast: Hearthstone Edition" at the end of 2015, through which participants could make a name for themselves in Hearthstone casting. It paved the way for casters such as Alexander "Raven" Baguley and Simon "Sottle" Welch, who are now present at nearly every HCT event. However, not only Blizzard is looking for new talent. More and more organizations are looking to hire upcoming talent to be the face of their tournament. WESG is a prime example of such a tournament. Having numerous local qualifiers, the organizers had to look for talent all across the world to narrate players' journeys to the $300,000 final event. For the final stage of the tournament, WESG chose Noxious and Rich to be part of the casting crew. Kacem "Noxious" Khilaji has been around since the early days of Hearthstone, making name for himself producing a lot of content. Streaming and casting Hearthstone, the Canadian has become inseperable from the game. Richard "Rich" Campbell, on the other hand, is one of those newer talents. Starting in esports about a year ago, he was suddenly asked to cast WESG qualifiers, together with Marcin "Gnimsh" Filipowicz. His charismatic and playful peronality met WESG's expectations, which got him a ticket to China. Noxious and Rich, who have a chemistry as if they're twin brothers, joined Matthieist for an interview at WESG's finals in Changzhou, China.Asylum seekers protest on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, in this picture taken from social media November 6, 2017. Source: Social Media via Reuters PAPUA NEW GUINEA’s Supreme Court has rejected an application to restore electricity, food, water and healthcare to an Australian-run detention centre on Manus Island. Some 600 men have barricaded themselves into the camp since it was officially closed last week, refusing to move because they claim to be fearful of resettlement on the PNG mainland in Lorengau after numerous assaults on asylum seekers by locals. Men in the camp have been shown digging holes in search of water and several are in need of medical help. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has called upon Australia to act swiftly to end what it has called a “looming humanitarian crisis”. SEE ALSO: Refugees barricade in Manus camp as Papua New Guinea army prepare to enter On Sunday, however, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull again turned down an offer from his New Zealand counterpart Jacinta Ardern to accept 150 asylum seekers from Manus and Australia’s other detention centre in the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru. Turnbull said Canberra preferred to work through an existing refugee swap deal he negotiated with former US President Barack Obama last year. Under that deal, up to 1,250 asylum seekers could be sent to the United States and Australia will, in turn, accept refugees from Central America. “We want to pursue those, conclude those arrangements, and then in the wake of that obviously we can consider other ones,” Turnbull told Ardern during a media conference in Sydney. SEE ALSO: Nightmare in Nauru: Australian govt blamed for alleged torture in refugee camp Detention centres on Manus and Nauru have been key parts of Australia’s disputed “Sovereign Borders” immigration policy, under which it refuses to allow asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores. Australia’s offshore detention policies have been heavily criticised by the UN and human rights groups but are backed the centre-right government and the Labor opposition. UN rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a news conference in Geneva on Friday about the “unfolding humanitarian emergency” in the Manus Island centre. Additional reporting by ReutersSunday on MSNBC, former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said The New York Times report that in June 2016 Donald Trump Jr., then-campaign chair Paul Manafort and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met with a Russian lawyer linked with the Kremlin meant we have “a criminal enterprise running this country now.” Dean said, “I think at this point, Trump is Trump. He’s going to lie. He’s going to do all these things he does. And the real savior for democracy is going to be Robert Mueller. He’s going to find out the truth. We’re never going to get the truth out of Donald Trump. He doesn’t tell the truth. Even his supporters know he doesn’t tell the truth, but they like him anyway.” He added, “Putin is still in the Ukraine murdering people. He’s murdering journalists left and right. We’re going to find out from Bob Mueller whether he did, in fact, influence the United States elections. It’s beginning to look more and more like he did. Now we see overnight that there was a meeting between Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and a very — somebody close, very close to the FSB and Putin. So drip, drip, drip, drip. This is a criminal enterprise running this country now.” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNENArcher Street is a stylish home located in London, England. The apartment has one bedroom, and plenty of natural light to brighten its warm interior. It is currently for sale for $3.3 million. Buy it now! Archer Street: “This incredible property has undergone a unique and extremely impressive refurbishment by the current owner in conjunction with Michaelis Boyd Associates. Involving a complete re-build and design with an emphasis on creating a fully sustainable and environmentally friendly home, this sumptuous one-bedroom apartment has been created using natural, UK sourced and made products only, making for a healthier home environment. The result is quite simply an awe-inspiring property and a wonderfully peaceful home in the heart of Soho. You are immediately struck by the wonderful light that floods the entire apartment due to the elevated position on the fourth floor, and the westerly aspect. There is an enormous amount of entertaining space in the form of a huge open-plan reception room and dining area which links perfectly with a well-built and fully sustainable kitchen. Beautiful wood floors and exposed brickwork throughout create a welcoming and warm ambience, especially when the original fireplaces are in use. The good-sized and airy bedroom houses vast wardrobe space and includes an en-suite bathroom.” Photos courtesy of Domus NovaBrendan McDermid \| Reuters. U.S. stock index futures screamed lower, with Dow futures tumbling as much as 350 points, as fears surrounding the health of China's economy multiplied. U.S. stock index futures screamed lower on Monday, with Dow futures (Chicago Board of Trade: @DJ.1) tumbling more than 700 points, as fears surrounding the health of China's economy multiplied. The New York Stock Exchange is invoking Rule 48 for the Monday stock market open, Dow Jones reported. The rule allows NYSE to open stocks without indications. "It was set up for situations like this," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderich Securities. Before this week, Rule 48 was most recently invoked in January 2015. In all, Rule 48 has been invoked 67 times since it was approved in 2007, according to an NYSE spokeswoman. The goal of the rule is to ease market volatility. The Dow futures held about 700 points lower, with the S&P futures off about 80 points, and the Nasdaq 100 futures off about 5 percent, which marks the lower end of the price limit. The major averages are on track for one of their worst opens since the financial crisis of 2008. These concerns saw the benchmark Shanghai Composite (Shanghai Stock Exchange:.SSEC) index notch up its biggest one-day percentage loss since 2007 on Monday, closing down 8.5 percent. Read More Five charts that prove this selloff is serious Panic spread to European markets, with the STOXX Europe 600 off more than 4.5 percent. All major bourses were off a similar amount. The FTSEurofirst 300 index traded down over 4.6 percent and was on course for its worst month since 2008, having shed more than $1 trillion in market value in August so far. Japan's Nikkei 225 index also finished at its lowest closing level since February 23, as a double whammy of China-related fears and a rejuvenated yen brought the bourse down by its biggest one-day drop in more than 2 years. Read More Week ahead: Markets seek clarity from China, Fed The major falls come after U.S. stocks closed deep in the red on Friday, pushing the Dow (Dow Jones Global Indexes:.DJI) and Nasdaq (^NDX) into correction territory.The major averages had their biggest trade volume day of the year and posted their worst week in four years. Oil prices crashed to fresh six and half year lows on Monday, after Chinese stock markets suffered, intensifying worries over the outlook for global oil demand. Brent oil was trading down 4.6 percent, at $43.36 a barrel. U.S. October crude was down 4.1 percent at $38.80 a barrel "Markets are afraid of further economic weakness in China, further pain in global commodity markets and uncertain about Fed and People's Bank of China policy-what they will do and what the impact will be," said global strategist at Societe Generale, Kit Juckes. "The divergence between global commodity prices and equities is not a new theme but the danger now is that they begin to re-correlate-as they did when the dotcom bubble burst in 2000 and what had previously been an emerging market crisis became a U.S. recession." No major earnings or economic data are expected from the U.S. on Monday. While traders will be pre-occupied with the extreme moves in global markets, elsewhere the coming week's annual Economic Policy Symposium at Jackson Hole, which brings together academics, financial market participants and many of the world's leading central bankers, could provide important signals as to near-term monetary policy action in the U.S. In addition, Federal Reserve Vice-Chairman Stanley Fischer will speak later this week. Thursday will brings this week's data highlight, with the second reading of second quarter gross domestic product (GDP). Some important housing data is also due for release throughout the week, including the release on Tuesday of the FHFA and Case-Shiller home price indices and new home sales figures, followed on Thursday by pending home sales data. Meanwhile, safe haven assets have rallied around the world, with gold (Exchange:XAU=) and U.S. Treasurys (U.S.:US10Y) both seeing strong gains in the last two weeks. Read More Early movers: GAS, CMG, ANF, BAC, ANF, BMY & more In currency markets, the yen (Exchange:JPY=) and Swiss Franc (Exchange:CHF=) have rallied against the U.S. dollar while the euro (Exchange:EUR=) has proved the surprise outperformer, appreciating 4.5 percent against the greenback in the last two weeks. Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Rule 48 was last invoked in January 2015, not during the financial crisis, according to NYSE. More From CNBCTV Reviews All of our TV reviews in one convenient place. Even though the second season of The 100 is only poised to be three episodes longer than its first (16 total episodes as opposed to 13), it already feels like those three extra hours of television are making a huge difference. The first season took some time to get moving, but once it did, it steadily built toward an inevitable climax: a clash between the Sky People and the Grounders. It presented a streamlined narrative, the tension it built coming from the efficiency of the storytelling. In its second season, The 100 still boasts that same efficiency and pace, but has also delved into deeper and more complex thematic territory. It would seem that the extra episodes have allowed the show to expand its thematic scope; rather than rushing towards a climax, there’s more time for the buildup, which in most cases is the most fruitful and compelling part of the story. Advertisement “Survival Of The Fittest”is representative of the best qualities of The 100: patience when it comes to storytelling, depth in terms of thematic exploration, and an acute focus on character motivation and psychology. The 100 isn’t ignoring its plot, obviously, but it is making sure that the narrative movement in a single episode feels true to the characters and to the story that’s been previously established. It’s not often that plot twists or a character’s actions feel out of place, and that’s a credit to the patience the writers have shown in developing this world, trusting that the audience will follow the show even in its most meditative moments; there always seems to be a worthwhile payoff. “Survival Of The Fittest” builds around the theme of trust and uneasy alliances. Every major storyline in this episode involves tenuous relationships. There’s Clarke and Lexa’s attempts to work together and craft a plan to get into Mount Weather. There’s Jaha’s newfound friendship with Murphy, the two bonding over the fact that nothing is left for them back at camp. And of course there’s the alliance between the Grounders and the Sky People, one built upon the very combustible notion that they share a common enemy. All of these stories find dramatic tension by exploring issues of trust, especially during times of war and strife. Each story dives into the specifics of why each character or group of people is unable to fully trust the other. There’s history and precedent here that influences how the Grounders and the Sky People interact, and its that attention to detail, to engaging with the show’s past, that makes the conflicts, both internal and external, feel genuine. The tension from the alliances also lets the show’s writing shine, and allows for the actors to find new depths to their characters. It’s immensely rewarding watching Lexa shoot down the aggressive tendencies of Quint. He’s a huge, burly man, but he cowers when Lexa admonishes him for speaking harshly to Clarke. Perhaps it’s simplistic, but it’s undeniably compelling to see the female characters on this show represent strength and good character. All of the Grounder men are eager to get into battle; open the doors and let the Mountain Men burn, they say. But Clarke and Lexa know better, and are focused on discussing a strategy that minimizes the threat of lives lost while also benefitting their cause. Advertisement Octavia moves through similar motions, unrelentingly fighting a Grounder as part of a training exercise in order to earn their respect. Indra, the coldest of all the Grounders, agrees to take her on as an apprentice, offering to turn her into a warrior. Kane, seeing that Octavia is getting close to the Grounders and understands much about them, is eager to use her as a spy, to be his eyes and ears in the Grounder camp. Again, allegiances are being tested, and it’s great seeing Octavia being given something of substance to do. The best/most devastating payoff of the theme of uneasy alliances though comes in the form of Lincoln and Bellamy. When boiled down to its essentials, there’s not a lot that happens in their storyline. They spend the entire episode walking through the forest looking for the underground entrance into Mount Weather, and eventually find it at the episode’s end. That’s not much in terms of plot, but the underlying themes are staggeringly complex. Essentially, “Survival Of The Fittest” is paying off a story that’s been building since the fifth episode, where we saw Lincoln brutally fight for another injection from the Mountain Men. Shortly thereafter, we saw Lincoln struggling to recover from the damage the drug had done, going through withdrawals before coming out clear headed. Since then, Lincoln has been troubled, but not dangerous, which makes his relapse at the end of this episode all the more heartbreaking. When Lincoln tells Bellamy that he can’t go into the underground, and that he remembers everything he did while drugged, it’s not out of fear of the Mountain Men or fear of dying. It’s an addict understanding that he can’t resist the drug that was given to him. Lincoln is fighting against his own vulnerability, his own weakness, and as much as Bellamy’s insistence on getting to Mount Weather makes sense–it’s the only option the Sky People have–it’s devastating to watch Lincoln get dragged towards a fate that he knows is coming. Clarke mercy-killing Finn may have been a shocking moment, but Lincoln’s acceptance of the injection at the episode’s end, a look of regret and futility on his face, was a heavy punch to the gut. The 100 has mined some dark territory this year, and while it can be tough to stomach at times, it gives slow-burning episodes like “Survival Of The Fittest” a necessary, and engaging, emotional and thematic depth. Advertisement Stray observations: Jaha and Murphy’s first interaction was the most awkward/sinister retelling of Good Will Hunting that I’ve ever seen. Murphy gets the laugh line of the night when directing Jaha: “Camp You is that way.” So, what did we all think of the giant gorilla attacking Clarke and Lexa? Necessarily low-budget CGI aside, I thought it was mostly well-executed and served the purpose of putting Lexa and Clarke together in order to strengthen their bond. The sudden introduction of dangerous natural/wild elements into the show was a little jarring though. Another instance of The 100 boasting progressive writing: Bellamy thanks Lincoln for making Octavia strong, to which he replies, “she was already strong.” No damsels in distress here! Not sure how to unpack it yet, but it’s interesting the way the show is introducing the idea of faith as a guiding principle. We learn that Lexa and the Grounders believe in reincarnation and the idea of souls, and Jaha is heading out to find the City of Light, which sounds a lot like a religious pilgrimage to me.Affordable is a relative term that differs depending on your zip code and financial situation. You may have looked into “Affordable Housing” or “Reserved Housing” and been slightly confused as to why these condos are still over $400,000. In Honolulu, that’s a great price for a brand new apartment. In Bristol, VA, a condo that costs $400,000 is absurdity. Affordable isn’t so much about price as it is about finding the best deal that you can comfortably afford. Finding good deals in a market like this takes diligence and patience. Everybody is looking for something that costs substantially less than the median price but isn’t a cardboard box on the side of the road. Finding that intersection of ‘good deal’ and ‘nice place’ is the definition of ‘affordable’ in Hawaii. Luckily, we did the research and have compiled a solid list to get you started. *Numbers updated up to 9/31/2016. For the latest real estate statistics and analysis, visit Locations. Ewa
(10.9 or later). We advise you to test FleetCOMMs performance on your PC desktop or laptop. General specs provided below; CPU : An Intel or AMD dual core processor (running 30-45 frames per second). Quadcore processor highly recommended for 60 frames per second performance. FleetCOMM has tested to run on Intel Core i3, i5, i7 as well as modern AMD processors. RAM : An operating system managing at least 2GB of total system memory. GPU : Requires OpenGL 3.3 support, with 800MB video memory. Preferred on a dedicated graphics card. We highly recommend testing our demo on your machine if you have an "integrated graphics card", before you commit a pre-order. Generally, video cards 2011 and newer will run at 60 frames per second. Intel HD Graphics / AMD APUs and other integrated graphics processors have been tested to run 30-45 frames per second. Display : a monitor capable of 720p or 1080p, 16:9 native resolution required. Full screen toggling + resolution resize will be available in the final version. Sound : stereo speakers / headphones. Audio Engine : FMOD Studio by Firelight Technologies Controls : mouse w/ scroll-wheel + keyboard. Please be advised Bandicam is not compatible with FleetCOMM. FRAPS highly recommended for your video recording needs. FLEETCOMM DEMO Please follow these steps to download the live game engine build (Windows7 only). 1. Load test.fleetcomm.net OR 2a. Download BitTorrent Sync 2b. B5UPH36R3PT3F5KROWOO72R3OBSEMO5HL 2c. Use this key in Bittorrent Sync to download a demo. Be advised, the Bittorrent Sync archive will be updated frequently during this Kickstarter cycle. Once you have downloaded it, you will get updates automatically if you have a web connection. OR Direct downloads available for Linux, Mac & Windows 3a. Download from itchio.fleetcomm.net 3b. Download from indiedb.fleetcomm.net 3b. Download from desura.fleetcomm.net These static download files will have to be downloaded every time there's an update to FleetCOMM. Please check your browser's settings to make sure you can download Windows.exe/.msi files (sometimes it will be marked as "malicious") WHY KICKSTARTER? This project has 3 options for porting to the PlayStation4. We'd like to elaborate why Kickstarter is the optimal choice. Option 1; Sell the full game and wait for sales to trickle in. This requires us to wait for online distributors royalty payments. We would like to get setup with a PS4 environment as soon as possible, so the project can continue development without any breaks. Option 2; Ask established publishers / private investors. We want to keep this project as independent as possible. External parties, who are finance driven, have strings attached, and we'd rather be committed to our gamers instead. Pitching to publishers & investors also involves the same process as crowd-funding; except it's done through closed doors and often requires more time taken away from actually developing a PS4 port. Option 3; Kickstarter The audience on Kickstarter has been extremely supportive of independent game development, not to mention the active social hub. We essentially achieve everything in Option 1, but faster, without all the negative aspects of Option 2. A Kickstarter eliminates our risks for time delay and keeps this project focused on delivering the PS4 port. PRIMARY COSTS The current goal is humble in scope, we want to earn enough funds with our arcade edition, with pre-orders of Operation Vigrior, to cover the following expenses; (US$ 4800) PlayStation4 developer kit. (US$ 4200, estimated) 1-year contract for static IP networking, required for all developers joining the PlayStation developer network. (US$ 8000) Part time work funding for programming, operating at 20 hours per week (estimated total time, 9~12 months). (US$ 1000) Legal / business costs required to register as a game developer with Sony/SCEA. (US$ 2000) Kickstarter fees. (US$ 20000) Total Cost. PS4 DEVELOPMENT FleetCOMM runs on a custom made OpenGL based engine. All of our source runs on C, C++ and Lua. About half of our PS4 development schedule involves stepping through the PS4s graphics libraries, we essentially have to build the graphics rendering pipeline mirrored through the PS4 architecture. The majority of this graphics pipeline work will involve tuning and porting GPU shaders and managing texture atlas sprites. After the graphics pipeline work, FleetCOMMs engine requires all controls and user interface to be overhauled from mouse-keyboard to the PS4 controller. The proposed schedule as follows (these are only estimated dates, we have to work under Sony's response time as well); End of Kickstarter; begin porting all FleetCOMM source to the PlayStation4, register a business entity for PSN, apply for PS4 developer program. Estimated PS4 architecture research + engine overhaul planning + waiting on Sony, 1 ~ 2 months. Estimated PS4 user interface overhaul, 4 ~ 5 months. Estimated PS4 graphics overhaul, 4 ~ 5 months; Total Project Development Time, 9 ~ 12 months. Please be advised, all time estimates are on a part-time work schedule for up to 12 months, with 1 core programmer, and only addresses our US$20,000 goal. We have project extensions listed below that will allow our programmer to develop at full-time levels. PROJECT HISTORY As of this writing, FleetCOMM is now in a public beta state. We've completed our core game engine, our single player battle system, fleet codex, core artwork, sound & music assets. We have also given this game's battle system and graphics modules an extreme amount of polish. FleetCOMM will be receiving continuous updates throughout this Kickstarter campaign. These updates include new features for the arcade edition, and video previews of Operation Vigrior. Our efforts have been on-going since May 5, 2012, when this project received its first seed funding round on Kickstarter. This project has had diverse challenges; our team has been isolated out of funding for continued development. We have been operating on our own time and our own efforts without funding, without external investor support (This project has been primarily supported by our close friends and family). We've decided to keep going on our mission, despite being under-funded and severely limited. Our immediate plans are to finalize FleetCOMM, beyond our arcade edition, as a fully realized tactical space shooter; "Operation Vigrior". What else needs to be done before this game is ready for final release on the PC? Tutorial levels that step through all battle systems and navigation. Clean up and play testing of all viral legion characters. Clean up and play testing of Operation Vigrior campaign. Reloadable game engine settings for video and audio, as well as saved files for fleet codex data (as a protective measure against piracy, these saving functions will be available after the Kickstarter campaign) All of these tasks will be updated to all backers during this Kickstarter and will be visible in update videos or playable through the demo. As part of this Kickstarter, we want to see if there's significant demand to expand the project. The following sections detail all our ambitions for this game. These project extensions will make FleetCOMM reach its full potential. We want you to help break our projects limits. (US$75k) Viral Legion Evolution Our current plan for making new enemies involves re-skinning and re-using sprites, utilizing larger sizes, enabling color swaps & adding new particle events for enemy behaviors. We'd like to enhance this plan with new artwork and new character animations. With this funding goal in place, we will triple our artwork manifest for the Viral Legion. This funding goal will commission artists who are capable of matching (or augmenting) FleetCOMMs visual style. This goal also supports our core programmer in developing enemy A.I. and developing mission lines for all new enemies. This goal also allows our core programmer to further develop FleetCOMM for the PS4 at full-time levels. Budget as follows; (US$ 37,500) PS4 development core budget with a full-time schedule. (US$ 30,000) Artwork commissions for the Viral Legion. (US$ 7,500) Kickstarter / Amazon fees. (US$ 75,000) Total Cost. (US$200k) FleetCOMM v2.0 : Reinforcements & Battle Stations As of now, there are 3 protagonist vessels regimented for FleetCOMM battle drone squadrons. With a bit more funding, we can double that number, and add 3 unique vessels to the fleet. In addition to adding more drone vessels, FleetCOMM will feature new artwork for battle stations and planetary defense systems. . This funding goal allows us to support two core programmers in creating new weapon systems, weapon effects, graphics modules associated with each vessel and all new battle stations. This goal also supplements the artwork commissions, additional staffing needed for team management and expanding the games missions. Budget as follows; (US$ 4800) PlayStation4 developer kit. (US$ 4200, estimated) 1-year contract for static IP networking, required for all developers joining the PlayStation developer network. (US$ 1000) Legal / business costs required to register as a game developer with Sony/SCEA. (US$ 75,000) Game programming, PS4 porting, full-time, with 2 programmers on a 12-month work schedule. (US$ 95,000) Hiring cost for 2 full-time artists on a 12-month development cycle. Included costs for hiring 1 Game Designer to manage the schedule of the art workload. The Game Designer will also enhance the planetary defense mechanics while working with artists. (US$ 20,000) Kickstarter / Amazon fees. (US$ 200,000) Total Cost. (US$300k) FleetCOMM Online We might get this far? Maybe. With this funding goal, FleetCOMM evolves with online PvP and multiplayer coop modes. Details will be discussed when we receive enough backers. MORE REWARDS PACKAGES? We are considering physical item rewards for this campaign, as well as other digital reward tiers. However, we would like to reach our project extension goals first, before we can make the rewards packages. These kinds of rewards require a significant sum of funding. We also want to see if there's significant demand for FleetCOMM, which warrants other kinds of rewards. We'd like to compress our rewards as much as possible, and gather serious community feedback, before we begin committing other kinds of rewards tiers. Once we have earned our game development costs, and we have reached at least 10000 backers, we will be opening new reward tiers. Please note that this is only a tentative list, and these items are up for discussion. The PS4 version of FleetCOMM. Sony/SCEA charges developers for giving out promo copies of a digital download on PSN, this includes things like Kickstarter. Our team would like to address our game development costs first, before we can consider covering the costs of PSN promo codes. A remixed soundtrack, featuring a guest musician. A game battle manual/strategy guide, fully detailed and fully colored, and written for Fleet Codex strategies and design. A bestiary manual, fully detailed, fully colored, containing all data on the Viral Legion. "Revolution" / war-time styled FleetCOMM universe posters. Graphic t-shirts featuring FleetCOMM cover and game art. We will be gathering community feedback for creating these physical rewards. We are sensitive to pricing and costs, and would like to make these potential physical rewards as affordable as possible.This method (should)allow you to1, lock TDP level2, change PP0 current limit setting in Throttlestop3, a lot more stuff to be discoveredSo basically I stumble upon a thread about Dell venue 11 Pro overclocking. And I try to do that to my surface pro 3 using the same way. I extract the IFR file needed from the surface pro 3 bios, and change the following things in NVRAMPackage power limit lock, Variable: 0x27 -> 0x0Platform power limit lock, Variable: 0x63 -> 0x0Config TDP LOCK, Variable: 0x40 -> 0x10Configurable TDP, Variable: 0x3F -> 0x10VR Current value lock, Variable: 0x2C -> 0x0BIOS Lock, Variable: 0x77 -> 0x0BIOS Interface Lock, Variable: 0x79 -> 0x0***So how do you do it? You just need to download and unzip bootx64.zip to (your usb drive):\efi\boot\ on a USB thumb drive. You need to disabled secure boot, and boot from the usb. You should see a grub interface.the command for changing the registers are :setup_var {address} {value}e.g. for disabling Package power limit lock, type: setup_var 0x27 0x0And you change all the values.When you're done, type reboot and boot into windows.You should use throttlestop to change settings.The attached IFR file is the one that extracted from the bios, you should also be able to change the TDP limit?Ms. Ros-Lehtinen was among 20 Republicans who opposed the legislation, most of them in politically divided districts where they hoped their “no” vote might insulate them from any voter fury. But that might not be a successful strategy since it could alienate Republican supporters while failing to win over Democrats. The fate of Democrats who opposed the Affordable Care Act is instructive and shows that bucking the party on a difficult vote doesn’t necessarily protect a lawmaker in the next election. Of 34 House Democrats who opposed the health law in 2010, half still lost their re-elections that November. “Every Republican is going to have to carry the burden of this,” said Representative Rick Larsen, Democrat of Washington. House Democrats have struggled since losing the majority in 2010, failing to capitalize on opportunities to expand their numbers. There is no guarantee that they can take full advantage of these circumstances. But top Democrats point to one promising development: They say they are seeing new enthusiasm among possible candidates rather than having to search for contenders. “We have too many wanting to run,” Mr. Hoyer said. “They are just coming out of the woodwork because they smell victory in the air and they are angry about what the Republicans are doing.”ABC handed out renewal notices late Thursday, formally ordering second seasons of rookie series Secrets and Lies, black-ish, Fresh Off the Boat, How to Get Away With Murder, American Crime, Galavant and Marvel’s Agent Carter, as well as established bubble dramas Nashville (for Season 4) and Castle (for Season 8). Additionally, the network has greenlit a third season of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a fifth season of Once Upon a Time, a 12th season of Grey’s Anatomy, a fifth season of Scandal, a third season of The Goldbergs, a seventh season of Modern Family and a seventh season of The Middle. On the reality front, ABC has picked up a 21st season of Dancing With the Stars, a 20th season of The Bachelor, a 26th season of America’s Funniest Home Videos, a seventh season of Shark Tank, and a second season of Beyond the Tank. Last but not least, 20/20 has also been renewed. ABC, meanwhile, has cancelled Forever, Cristela, Resurrection, Revenge and The Taste. The fate of Last Man Standing remains up in the air.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 Jamie Carragher has expressed concerns about how Christian Benteke will fit Liverpool’s style following his £32.5million move to Anfield. The Kop legend says the second most expensive signing in the club’s history can be “devastating and infuriating in equal measure”. Carragher says Aston Villa’s direct style played to Benteke’s strengths during his three years in the Midlands. “So while we’ve been impressed by how Benteke has torn teams apart — Liverpool, against whom he scored five goals in six games, have really suffered — we also know when his touch has been poor and his lack of interest has been apparent,” Carragher said. “He can be devastating and infuriating in equal measure. “The hope at Liverpool is that surrounding him with better players will see him become even more devastating and consistent. I like him as a striker and actually think he would be great for Chelsea. IN PICS: Benteke signs for Liverpool “Jose Mourinho likes that profile of forward and sets his teams up to get the best out of them. “My worry at Liverpool is, will he be suited to the short, sharp and incisive passing game that Rodgers favours? “Brendan wants his side to play through teams, rather than getting the ball into him from wide areas, a fact Tim Sherwood pointed out as soon as Liverpool’s interest became public. “Parallels have already been drawn with Andy Carroll and people have pointed out that Rodgers wasted no time in getting rid of him but that decision had nothing to do with the fact that Carroll was a big man. It was purely down to him lacking pace and movement. Those are qualities Benteke does not lack.” While the reaction to signing Benteke has been decidedly mixed, the £29million swoop for Roberto Firmino from Hoffenheim was almost universally welcomed. Carragher believes that’s down to the mystique surrounding the Brazil international. Fantasy Football: Is Benteke going to lead your line? Download on iPhone or iPad now Download on Android now “Though 95% of Liverpool supporters have never seen Firmino in action — YouTube doesn’t count — they believe he is already on his way to becoming an icon,” Carragher told the Daily Mail. “He comes from Brazil, his style is similar to Luis Suarez’s and his form for Hoffenheim was brilliant, leaving fans saying: ‘Imagine what he’ll be like for us!’ “That is the mystique of buying players from abroad. Firmino could well be another Suarez; he could also be another Alberto Aquilani. “Contrast that to Benteke, who has become the second-biggest signing in Liverpool’s history after scoring 42 goals in 89 Premier League appearances for Aston Villa, a team that has fought for survival in each of the three years he was there. “It has always fascinated me to see the reaction to those who are brought in from foreign leagues compared to when there is a transfer between Premier League clubs. There are no secrets about players in England. We know all there is to know.”+5 Takes inspiration from the Welsh Rangers,who held no allegiance to any Welsh Kingdom and would only fight invaders of the country(usually Merica or from the late 900s onwards England) It also takes huge inspiration form my favourite book series "The Rangers Apprentice" Based on stealth as-well as mastery of the longbow,and a pair of daggers. Of course in CoE weapon choice will be more free,but this is a guild for those that want to master the Bow. Structure: It will be a meritocratic guild where you will move through the ranks according to your skill and efforts. The leader will have the most say on decisions,however the the guild shall be run by a council of the officers(not seeing enough Democracy in these guilds so thought I'd throw some in) Officer Corps: This will be made up of the leadership of the guild,each division head will fall into this category as-well as their division. This will be Where the decisions will be made,promotions will be decided and tasks will be assigned. Ranks in order-First ranger(Leader) -Second ranger(Second in Command) -Division Heads(The leader of each corps) -Junior Officers(Rangers of great skill but not in charge of a Division) Field Corps This will probably be the biggest corps in the Guild. These are the rangers that will perform the main roles in the wilderness:exploration,bounty hunting,removing bandits from highways,etc. They will be in the most danger on a day to day basis and will most likely develop the best combat skills out of the Corps. Ranks in order-Division Head(Leader of the corps) -Senior ranger(Skilled Field ranger with a long service) -Ranger(Proven fighter,and field agent) -Apprentice(New to the guild,or swapped form another corps) Crafting Corps This will be where the weapons and armour of the guild shall be made. As-well as the source of research for the guild. This will also be the source of the Guilds income so is by no means a lesser Corps than the Field Corps. Ranks in Order-Division Head(Leader of the corps) -Sectional Head(In charge of a specific craft e.g. head of Blacksmiths or Armoursmiths) -Crafters(Will be the main source of production and income) -Apprentice(Taught by crafters,could be a ward or new member) Shadow Corps The group that deals with the darker side of affairs,assassinations,theft etc. They will be taken from the Field Corps for their specific skills. They are by no means evil,they just do what needs to be done. Ranks in order-Division Head(Leader of the corps) -Master Shadow(A proven member of the corps) -Shadow(Skilled member drafted from the Field corps) Elite Corps(Possible) This will be(if created) the corps for those of extraordinary skill,it will also include any members with combat based talents that may join. These will be the rangers that do what none other can,what others do not even see as possible. There are no ranks,these Rangers are answerable only to the First Ranger and will all be of equal rank to each other. Following a similar method as the SAS where the person with the most expertise for each operation will lead. Policy: We are a guild that works for the betterment of the people,be that clearing out a bandit group,killing a monster,supplying medical aid to a plagued town or even removing a Tyrant. We will do all to uphold the purity and freedom of the World,be it working for a Kingdom of Good,or overthrowing a Kingdom of Evil. So if your interested in this ideal,drop a message below.Join the Rangers for the good of Elyria. Our Website can be found here And you can join us on our old forums hereThis article contains Tibetan script. Without proper rendering support, you may see very small fonts, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Tibetan characters. Paro Taktsang (Dzongkha: སྤ་གྲོ་སྟག་ཚང་, also known as the Taktsang Palphug Monastery and the Tiger's Nest),[1] is a prominent Himalayan Buddhist sacred site and the temple complex is located in the cliffside of the upper Paro valley in Bhutan. A temple complex was first built in 1692, around the Taktsang Senge Samdup cave where Guru Padmasambhava is said to have meditated for three years, three months, three weeks, three days and three hours in the 8th century. Padmasambhava is credited with introducing Buddhism to Bhutan and is the tutelary deity of the country. Today, Paro Taktsang is the best known of the thirteen taktsang or "tiger lair" caves in which he meditated. The temple devoted to Padmasambhava (also known as Gu-ru mTshan-brgyad Lhakhang, "the Temple of the Guru with Eight Names") is an elegant structure built around the cave in 1692 by Gyalse Tenzin Rabgye. It has become the cultural icon of Bhutan.[2][3][4] A popular festival, known as the Tsechu, held in honor of Padmasambhava, is celebrated in the Paro valley sometime during March or April. History [ edit ] Background and legends [ edit ] According to the legend related to this Taktsang (which in Tibetan language is spelled stag tshang), which literally means "Tigress lair", it is believed that Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche) flew to this location from Tibet on the back of a tigress from Khenpajong.[5] This place was consecrated to tame the Tiger demon.[citation needed] Guru Padmasambhava, founder of the meditations cave. Wall painting on Paro Bridge. An alternative legend holds that a former wife of an emperor, known as Yeshe Tsogyal, willingly became a disciple of Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambahva) in Tibet. She transformed herself into a tigress and carried the Guru on her back from Tibet to the present location of the Taktsang in Bhutan. In one of the caves here, the Guru then performed meditation and emerged in eight incarnated forms (manifestations) and the place became holy. Subsequently, the place came to be known as the “Tiger's Nest”.[5] Wider view of the cliffside The popular legend of the Taktsang monastery is further embellished with the story of Tenzin Rabgye, who built the temple here in 1692. It has been mentioned by authors that the 8th century guru Padmasmabhava had reincarnated again in the form of Tenzin Rabgye. The corroborative proofs mooted are: that Tenzin Rabgye was seen (by his friends) concurrently inside and outside his cave; even a small quantity of food was adequate to feed all visitors; no one was injured during worship (in spite of the approach track to the monastery being dangerous and slippery); and the people of the Paro valley saw in the sky various animal forms and religious symbols including a shower of flowers that appeared and also vanished in the air without touching the earth.[2] Establishment as a meditation site [ edit ] As noted before, the monastery was built around the Taktsang Senge Samdup (stag tshang seng ge bsam grub) cave, where custom holds that the Indian Guru Padmasambhava meditated in the 8th century. He flew to this place from Tibet on the back of Yeshe Tsogyal, whom he transformed into a flying tigress for the purpose and landed at the cliff, which he "anointed" as the place for building a monastery. He established Buddhism and the Nyingmapa school of Mahayana Buddhism in Bhutan, and has been considered the “protector saint of Bhutan”. Later, Padmasmbahva visited Bumthang district to subdue a powerful deity offended by a local king. Padmasambhava's body imprint is stated to be imprinted on the wall of a cave near Kurje Lhakhang temple. In 853, Langchen Pelkyi Singye came to the cave to meditate and gave his name of Pelphug to the cave, "Pelkyi's cave".[5] After he died later in Nepal, his body was said to have been miraculously returned to the monastery by the grace of the deity Dorje Legpa; it is now said to be sealed in a chorten in a room to the left at the top of the entrance stairway.[5] The chorten was restored in 1982-83 and again in 2004.[5] Milarepa (1040–1123), who meditated at the cave in Taktsang From the 11th century, many Tibetan saints and eminent figures came to Taktsang to meditate, including Milarepa (1040–1123), Pha Dampa Sangye (died 1117), the Tibetan yogini Machig Labdrön (1055–1145) and Thangton Gyelpo (1385–1464).[5] In the latter part of the 12th century, the Lapa School was established in Paro.[6] Between 12th and 17th centuries, many Lamas who came from Tibet established their monasteries in Bhutan. The first sanctuary to be built in the area dates to the 14th century when Sonam Gyeltshen, a Nyingmapa lama of the Kathogpa branch came from Tibet.[5] The paintings he brought can still be faintly discerned on a rock above the principal building although there is no trace of the original one.[5] The Taktsang Ugyen Tsemo complex, which was rebuilt after a fire in 1958 is said to date back to 1408.[5] Taktsang remained under the authority of the Kathogpa lamas for centuries until the mid 17th century.[5] 17th century to present: The modern monastery [ edit ] Tsechu – dance of the Black Hat monks initiated by Pema Ligpa of Bumthang In the 17th century the well-known Tertön Pema Lingpa of Bumthang, who founded many monasteries in various parts of Bhutan, was also instrumental in creating religious and secular dance forms from his conception of the 'Zandog Pelri' (the Copper Colored mountain), which was the abode of the Guru Padmasambahva (which is the same place as the Paro Taktsang or Tiger's nest). This dance is performed in Paro as the Tsche festival. But it was during the time of Ngawang Namgyal of the Drukpa subsect, who fled Tibet to escape persecution by the opposing sect of the Gelugpa order (which dominated Tibet under the Dalai Lamas), that an administrative mechanism was established in Bhutan.[citation needed] In due time, he established himself in Bhutan as a'model of rulership' and was known as the "Shabdrung" with full authority. He wanted to establish an edifice at the Taktsang Pel Phuk site. It was during a Tibetan invasion of Bhutan in 1644-46 that Shabdrung and his Tibetan Nyingmapa teacher gTer-ston Rig-’dzin sNying-po had invoked Padmasambhava and the protective deities at Taktsang to give them success over the invaders. He performed the bka’ brgyad dgongs ’dus rituals associated with the celebrations of Tshechu. Bhutan won the war against Tibet However, Shabdrung was not able to build a temple at Takstsang to celebrate the event, even though he very much wanted to do so.[2][6][7][8] The wish of Shabdrung to build a temple here, however, was fulfilled during the 4th Druk Desi Tenzin Rabgye (1638–96), the first, and only successor of Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyel (Zhabs-drung Ngag-dbang rNam-rgyal), "a distant cousin from a collateral line descending from the 15th century ‘crazy saint’ Drukpa Kunley". During his visit to the sacred cave of Taktsang Pel Phuk during the Tshechu season of 1692 he laid the foundation for building the temple dedicated to Guru Rinpoche called the ‘Temple of the Guru with Eight Names’ (’gu ru mtshan brgyad lha-khang). It was a decision taken by Tenzin Rabgye while standing at the cave overlooking the Paro valley. At this time, he was leading the Tshechu festival of religious dances.[2] At that time the only temples reported to be in existence, at higher elevations, were the Zangdo Pelri (Zongs mdog dPalri) and Ugyen Tsemo (Urgyan rTse-mo).[2] Fire destruction [ edit ] On April 19, 1998, a fire broke out in the main building of the monastery complex, which contained valuable paintings, artifacts and statues. The fire is believed to have been caused by electrical short-circuiting or flickering butter lamps lighting the hanging tapestries. A monk also died during the fire. The restoration works were undertaken at an estimated cost of 135 million ngultrum. The Government of Bhutan and the then King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, oversaw the restoration of the damaged monastery and its contents in 2005.[9][10][11] Geography [ edit ] Cloud cover around the monastery The monastery is located 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) to the north of Paro and hangs on a precarious cliff at 3,120 metres (10,240 ft), about 900 metres (3,000 ft) above the Paro valley, on the right side of the Paro Chu (‘chu’ Bhutanese means ”river or water”. The rock slopes are very steep (almost vertical) and the monastery buildings are built into the rock face. Though it looks formidable, the monastery complex has access from several directions, such as the northwest path through the forest, from the south along the path used by devotees, and from the north (access over the rocky plateau, which is called the “Hundred Thousand Fairies” known as Bumda (hBum-brag). A mule track leading to it passes through pine forest that is colorfully festooned with moss and prayer flags. On many days, clouds shroud the monastery and give an eerie feeling of remoteness.[12][13] Pine forest in the area Near the beginning of the trail is a water-powered prayer wheel, set in motion by a flowing stream. The water that is touched by the wheel is said to become blessed and carries its purifying power into all life forms in the oceans and lakes that it feeds into.[14] On the approach path to the monastery, there is a Lakhang (village level monastery) and a temple of Urgyan Tsemo ("U-rgyan rTse-mo") which, like the main monastery, is located on a rocky plateau with a precipitous projection of several hundred feet over the valley. From this location, the monastery’s buildings are on the opposite ravine, which is known by the name “Copper-Colored Mountain Paradise of Padmasambhava”. This is the view point for visitors and there is a cafeteria to provide refreshments.[15] The trek beyond this point is very scenic with the sound of the water fall breaking the silence.[16] Along the trek route blue pine trees, prayer flags and kiosks selling paraphernalia for worship (such as prayer wheels, temple bells and skulls) are seen. The route is scattered with number of temples. On this path, a large water fall, which drops by 60 metres (200 ft) into a sacred pool, is forded over by a bridge. The track terminates at the main monastery where colorful paintings are displayed. Guru Rinpoche's cave where he meditated is also seen. This cave is opened for public viewing only once a year.[17] Structure [ edit ] Exterior [ edit ] Tiger's Nest temples The monastery buildings consist of four main temples and residential shelters ideally designed by adapting to the rock (granite) ledges, the caves and the rocky terrain. Out of the eight caves, four are comparatively easy to access. The cave where Padmasmabhava first entered, riding the Tiger, is known as 'Tholu Phuk' and the original cave where he resided and did meditation is known as the 'Pel Phuk'. He directed the spiritually enlightened monks to build the monastery here. The monastery is so precariously perched that it is said: "it clings to the side of the mountain like a gecko". The main cave is entered through a narrow passage. The dark cave houses a dozen images of Bodhisattvas and butter lamps flicker in front of these idols. An elegant image of Chenrezig (Avalokitesvara) is also deified here. In an adjoining small cell, the sacred scripture is placed; the importance of this scripture is that it has been scripted with gold dust and the crushed bone powder of a divine Lama. It is also said that the monks who practice Vajrayana Buddhism (the formal State Religion of Bhutan) at this cave monastery live here for three years and seldom go down to the Paro valley.[4][18][19] All the buildings are interconnected through steps and stairways made in rocks. There are a few rickety wooden bridges along the paths and stairways also to cross over. The temple at the highest level has a frieze of Buddha. Each building has a balcony, which provides lovely views of the scenic Paro valley down below. The Monasteries have ancient history of occupation by monks, as hermitages.[4][18] Other structures within the precincts [ edit ] Prayer wheel Taktshang Zangdo Pari is the place where Padmasmbahava’s wife, known as the “Fairy of Wisdom”, Yeshe Tshogyal (Ye-shes mtsho-rgyal), the founder of the Mon, a convent, by the same name as Taktshang and also two other convents. The present caretaker of the place is said to be an old nun supported by a young trainee. Another important place near the shrine is the Urgyan Tsemo, the “Peak of Urgyan” which has a small Mani Lakhang. The prayer wheel, turned by an old monk, resounds with chimes that are heard every day at 4 am. Above the Urgyan is the holy cave temple known as 'Phaphug Lakhang' (dPal-phug IHa-khang), which is the main shrine of the Taktshang. It is also the residence of the Head Lama, Karma Thupden Chokyi Nyenci. Paintings [ edit ] Another view of the monastery The “Copper-Coloured Mountain Paradise of Padmasambahva” (Zangdopari) is vividly displayed in a heart shape on every thangkha and also painted on the walls of the monastery as a constant reminder of the legend. The paintings are set on a pedestal that represents the realm of the King of Nagas amidst Dakinis (mKha-hgro-ma), and the pinnacle in the painting denotes the domain of Brahma. The paintings also depict Klu (Naga) demigods with a human head and the body of a serpent, which are said to reside in lakes (said to denote that they are guarding the hidden treasures). Allegorically, they mean to represent the spiritual holy writings. The paintings also show
однодневки и живущие сотнями лет. А вот могут ли быть растения, которые, например, не сгорали бы в огне? Или животные, которым не нужна вода и воздух? Или люди величиной с горошину? На Земле таких нет. Ну, а вообще «на свете» могут быть такие или нет? Какие вообще могут быть живые существа, а каких совсем никогда, нигде не может быть? На эти вопросы тоже пока нет ответов. И стоит только внимательно посмотреть вокруг, как встают тысячи разных «как?», «отчего?», «почему?». Выходит, что человек, хоть он и делает чудеса, вовсе не всё знает. Вовсе не до конца изучил природу. А потому и не может пока использовать все её богатства. Чтобы по-настоящему узнать Землю, надо прежде всего сравнить её с другими «землями», с другими планетами. Планет много. Все они — «родные сестры». Всех их греет одно и то же Солнце. Но в то же время все планеты и отличаются друг от друга. Хоть они и сестры, но «живут врозь и по-разному». Одни планеты размером поменьше, другие побольше. Одни моложе, другие старше. Одни всю жизнь «жарятся» около Солнца, другие «мёрзнут» вдали от него. Одни «раскисли» от обилия воды, другие «высохли», как мумии. Одни закутались в тёплое одеяло из воздуха с облаками, другие «ходят голышом». И конечно, каждая планета расскажет человеку своё. Побывав на других планетах, человек сделается гораздо умнее, «взрослее». Он будет «видеть Землю насквозь». Всё ему станет понятным: и как устроена Земля в своих глубинах, и что там сейчас происходит, и что будет происходить потом. Человек станет трудиться на Земле с полным знанием дела, как настоящий, хороший хозяин. Поэтому человек сейчас и приступил к космическим путешествиям. И конечно, первой станцией в этом великом походе человека к другим мирам стала планета Луна. 2. ЛУНА ИЗДАЛЕКА Что же такое Луна? Давайте представим себе, что мы унеслись туда, в бездонную черноту ночного неба! В космос! Унеслись и «повисли», где-нибудь на полпути между Землёй и Луной. Осматриваемся. Звёздная бездна окружила нас. Звёзды уже не только над нами. Они и под нами. Они — вокруг нас. Далёкие, остренькие, крохотные огоньки. Сбоку — Солнце. Ослепительное, яркое — смотреть невозможно. И жаром от него так и пышет. Солнце — такая же звезда, как и остальные звёзды. Но Солнце близко от нас — и мы видим его большим. А остальные звёзды все страшно далеко. И потому кажутся точечками. Впереди нас — Луна. Она уже не «плоский блин», каким казалась с Земли, а шарик. Самый настоящий, выпуклый. Толкнёшь — покатится. И она выросла, стала крупнее. Ведь мы приблизились к ней. Позади нас — Земля. Огромный голубоватый «шарище» висит на фоне звёзд. Земля и Луна — планеты. Земля величаво плывёт по своей орбите, по своему пути вокруг Солнца. Целый год тратит она на то, чтобы обойти один полный круг. Вокруг Солнца ходят и Меркурий, и Венера, и Марс, и Юпитер, и другие планеты. Каждая ходит как бы «по своим рельсам» — по своей орбите — и «по своему расписанию». Одни быстрее, другие — медленнее. Каждая «сама по себе». Иногда одна из них подходит к Земле ближе. В эти месяцы мы видим её на небе яркой, немигающей звездой. Потом она уходит на другую сторону Солнца и исчезает от нас совсем. И только одна планета неотлучно сопровождает Землю, никогда не покидает нас, ходит вокруг нас. Это Луна. Планету Луну так и называют — «спутник Земли». Луна гораздо меньше Земли. Поперечник её — всего три с половиной тысячи километров. Для сравнения мы нарисовали рядом с Луной Землю. Луна к нам гораздо ближе, чем другие планеты, но всё же далековато. До неё 384 000 километров. Между Землёй и Луной можно было бы поместить тридцать земных шаров или сотню лунных. Мы называем Луну «небесным светилом» за то, что она светит по ночам. Но она, честно говоря, не больше «светило», чем светлый дом, что стоит против моих окон, на той стороне улицы. Окна мои выходят на север. Солнце ко мне никогда не заглядывает. Зато по вечерам оно ярко освещает дом напротив. И тогда в моей комнате сразу становится светло. Дом, освещенный Солнцем, становится «светилом», освещающим мою комнату. Точно так же светит и Луна. Никакой она не «фонарь». Она просто твёрдый камень. Как дом напротив. Но её щедро освещает Солнце. И она светит, как говорят, отражённым светом. Одним словом, Луна не огненная, как Солнце. До Луны, как до Земли, можно дотронуться и не сгореть. Вернёмся теперь обратно на Землю. Почему Луна видна с Земли то целиком, то половинкой, то узким серпиком? Очень просто. Луна — шар. Солнце освещает его только с одной стороны. С Земли только эту, освещенную, сторону и видно. Теневую мешает разглядеть мутная земная атмосфера. Кажется, точно её вообще нет. Точно от Луны отрезан «ломтик». Почему же этот «ломтик» постоянно меняется? То становится тоненьким серпом, то вырастает до круглого блина? Если бы Луна, сопровождая Землю, шла всё время, скажем, впереди неё или всё время рядом, сбоку, мы видели бы её всегда одинаковой. Но Луна движется вокруг Земли, обходит её один раз за месяц. Поэтому всё время меняется вид Луны на небе. А почему мы никогда не видим обратную сторону Луны? Она же шар. Она должна вращаться волчком, как все планеты. Луна и вращается. А чтобы понять, «как она это делает», попробуйте в солнечный денёк, на улице, покружиться с товарищем, взявшись за руки. Голова успеет закружиться, а вы так и не увидите затылка своего приятеля. Всё время перед вами только его лицо. Так происходит и с Луной. Вращается, а затылок не показывает. Раз в месяц Луна проходит «позади» Земли. При этом она иногда пересекает тень, которую отбрасывает Земля. На некоторое время наша планета загораживает от Луны Солнце. Луна погружается в мрак. Происходит лунное затмение. Вы, наверно, не раз видели его. Полная Луна вдруг начинает медленно вползать в круглую тень. Круглая она потому, что это тень от Земли. А Земля-то — шар. Погрузившись в тень, Луна видна на небе как тёмный, коричнево-красный кружок. Через некоторое время Луна так же медленно выходит из тени снова на солнечный свет. Всего затмение длится часа четыре. Лунные затмения бывают довольно часто. Гораздо реже случаются солнечные затмения. Раз в месяц Луна проходит «впереди» Земли — в той же стороне от нас, что и Солнце. Тогда два-три дня мы её вообще не видим. Она тонет в ослепительных солнечных лучах. Это — новолуние. Луна в такие дни незаметно для нас «крадётся» по небу чуть ниже или чуть выше Солнца. Но иногда Луна проходит прямо перед Солнцем, заслоняя его. Раньше люди при этом пугались. Вы только представьте себе. Стоит жаркий летний день. Солнце безмятежно сияет в вышине. На голубом небе ни облачка. Ветра нет. Ничто не предвещает беды. И вдруг, без всякого предупреждения, без единого звука, на Солнце начинает медленно наползать какая-то чёрная тень. Похоже, точно от Солнца кто-то невидимый начинает отгрызать по кусочку, всё больше и больше. Вот от Солнца осталась уже только половинка, вот — четвертушка. Через час от ослепительного Солнца остался лишь тоненький серпик. Всё кругом постепенно погружается в мрак и... Солнце исчезает совсем. Наступают глубокие сумерки. Птицы и звери безумеют от страха. Тьма среди бела дня! Но проходит минута, другая, и в небе снова вспыхивает тоненький яркий серпик, только повёрнутый в другую сторону. Он начинает расти. Всё повторяется в обратном порядке. Светает. И через час снова сияет яркое Солнце. Как будто ничего и не случилось. Сейчас-то мы хорошо знаем, что происходит. Луна проплыла в космосе между нами и Солнцем. На некоторое время загородила его собой. Тень от Луны упала на Землю. Только и всего. Но ведь раньше-то люди этого не знали. И очень пугались. В древности люди считали, что страшный дракон набросился на Солнце и поедает его, откусывая по кусочку. Ужасная битва чудилась им на небе. Алчный дракон рвёт на куски доброе славное Солнце. Оно, наверное, сопротивляется, но что можно сделать с огромным драконом! Вот если бы можно было как-нибудь помочь Солнцу! Да ведь не достанешь до неба... И люди начинали неистово бить в сковородки, барабаны, трубить в трубы. Одним словом, грохотали и шумели, как только могли. Авось дракон испугается шума и отстанет от Солнца. И действительно, Солнце вновь появлялось на небе. Люди облегчённо вздыхали: «Дракон отдаёт нам Солнце обратно!» И в следующий раз били в сковородки ещё увереннее. Со временем люди так хорошо узнали путь Луны, что научились точно предсказывать солнечные затмения. И перестали бояться их. 3. ЛУНА БЛИЖЕ Давайте теперь возьмём бинокль, «приблизим» Луну и рассмотрим её поподробнее. Смотрите! На том месте, где освещенная часть Луны переходит в теневую, видны неровности. Луна не гладкая, как мячик, а шероховатая. Точно вываляна в песке. Интересно, что «пупырышки» на Луне только на светлых местах. А тёмные пятна Луны совершенно гладкие. Когда смотришь на Луну с Земли просто так, этих «пупырышков» не видно. Люди раньше и не подозревали, что они есть. Но вот около четырёх веков тому назад в Италии, в городе Флоренции, учёный Галилей смастерил первый в мире маленький телескоп. Навёл его на Луну. И увидел Луну такой же увеличенной, как мы видим её сейчас в наш бинокль. Галилей был поражён. Он смотрел на Луну и думал: «Луна — огромная! Каждая шероховатинка на ней — это, наверно, высоченная гора! Значит, Луна — это целая гористая страна, неведомая, далёкая. Наверно, это вторая Земля. Наверно, горы на Луне, как на Земле, покрыты лесами. В лесах живут звери. А тёмные места? Почему они такие гладкие? Наверно, это моря разлились среди гористых материков». Галилей так и назвал тёмные пятна Луны — морями. Астрономы дали всем этим лунным морям названия. Очень красивые, как в сказке. Океан Бурь, Озеро Сновидений, Море Облаков. Попробуем их запомнить. Когда Луна полная, её темные пятна напоминают человеческую рожицу, которая смотрит чуть влево-вверх. Вот мы и сочиним такую «запоминашку». Своей правой щекой Луна чуть отвернулась от нас. А оттуда, из пустого, чёрного космоса, пышет холодом. И эта сторона лунной рожицы вся простуженная, насморочная, мокрая, плаксивая. Без шапки Луна. И без волос, лысая. Замёрзла. И на лбу её морщина — Море Холода. Правый глаз Луны — Море Дождей. А под ним от непросыхающих слёз — Гнилое Болото... Носик у Луны маленький. Как у всех, он в самой серединке. И в этом месте — Срединный залив. От холода изо рта и носа Луны пар идёт. Из носа — поменьше, и там Море Паров. Изо рта — побольше, и там Море Облаков. От этого даже отсырел подбородок Луны. И там — Море Влажности. За мокроту и холод Луна сердится на космос. Ворчит, что из-за него простудилась. Целую бурю негодования устраивает. Поэтому вся «холодная» щека Луны — Океан Бурь. Совсем иное дело — другая половинка лунной рожицы. Её левая щека обращена к нам, к Земле. И вся эта сторона Луны радостная, светлая, счастливая. От нас теплом пышет. Луна чувствует это своим носиком. И здесь — Залив Зноя. На нас смотреть приятно. Ведь у нас так всё хорошо, так красиво. И левый глаз Луны ясный, спокойный. Здесь Море Ясности и Море Спокойствия. В этом глазу Луны отражается наше, земное изобилие. Особенно — изобилие воды. А вода для Луны — недосягаемая мечта, как для нас сказочный напиток — нектар. Поэтому в уголке левого глаза Луны мы видим Море Изобилия и Море Нектара. Улыбнулась Луна, глядя на нас, и, счастливая, задремала. И на лбу её — Озеро Сновидений. А снится Луне — человек, который пришёл к ней. Кончилось одиночество Луны. В её жизни наступает большой перелом. Наступает, как говорят, кризис. И невдалеке от Озера Сновидений расположилось Море Кризисов. Что же такое эти лунные моря? Могут ли они быть на самом деле морями из воды, как на Земле? И могут ли на самом деле на Луне шелестеть леса, журчать ручьи, петь птицы? Конечно, ничего этого на Луне быть не может. Почему? Да потому, что на Луне нет воды и нет воздуха. Это видно даже с Земли. Даже без всякого телескопа. Если бы тёмные пятна на Луне были «мокрыми», они обязательно блестели бы. Хоть иногда. Ведь на Земле в солнечный день блестит и море, и озеро, и любая речка. Даже маленькая лужа блестит на солнце. А лунные моря никогда не блестят. С какой бы стороны ни светило на них Солнце. Они матовые, как сухой асфальт. Значит, тёмные пятна Луны — совершенно сухие равнины. Конечно, следовало бы переименовать их в Пустыню Бурь, Площадь Сновидения, Равнину Облаков. Но беда в том, что уже во многих книгах о Луне написано: моря. Поздно переименовывать. Поэтому решили оставить, как было. Воздух на Луне тоже был бы виден с Земли. Во-первых, воздух имеет цвет. Он — голубой. Во-вторых, воздух всегда немножко мутный. Потому что не лежит на месте, движется. А движущийся воздух — это ветер, который поднимает пыль. Планеты, «обмазанные» воздухом, всегда затуманены, затушёваны дымкой. Лунная же «рожица» не имеет голубого оттенка и видна чётко. Значит, никакого воздуха на Луне нет. Кроме того, если бы на Луне был воздух и хоть чуточку воды, то появились бы облака. Луна вся была бы в белых пятнах. И эти пятна всё время переползали бы по Луне с места на место. Ничего этого мы на Луне не видим. Поэтому можно не сомневаться: нет там ни воды, ни воздуха. Сколько бы мы ни смотрели на неё, она всегда чистенькая, ничем не затуманенная. Точно насухо протёрта чистой тряпкой. Но почему так? Почему Луна такая странная, обездоленная, сухая, голая? Чем она хуже Земли? Луна «хуже» Земли только тем, что меньше её. Из-за этого она слабее притягивает к себе все окружающие предметы. Воздух — тоже «окружающий предмет». Если даже когда-то давно воздух обволакивал Луну со всех сторон, как сейчас обволакивает Землю, то он, как дым, понемногу разошёлся от Луны во все стороны, покинул Луну. Вместе с воздухом ушла с Луны и вода. Ведь вода всегда старается высохнуть, испариться, превратиться в пар, смешаться с воздухом. Особенно если её пригревает Солнце. Так постепенно Луна высохла, растеряла и воздух, и воду. Горы и «моря» превратились в голые пустыни. Странный мир! Горы без единого кустика. Сухое море, по которому можно идти, точно оно замёрзшее. И в то же время нет ни снежинки. И нет голубого неба с облаками. Нет дождя. Нет ветра... Трудно представить себе такой мир! Как-то даже страшно! И в то же время так хочется побывать там! 4. ЛУНА ЕЩЁ БЛИЖЕ А теперь отправимся в астрономическую обсерваторию. Или хотя бы в планетарий. Посмотрим на Луну в хороший, большой телескоп. Волшебная труба — этот телескоп! Смотришь в него — и кажется, что Луна подошла к нам и стала совсем рядом. Её даже не видно всю целиком. Приходится вертеть ручку телескопа, водить его вверх-вниз, вправо-влево, чтобы осмотреть Луну по частям. На Луне теперь видно столько всяких мелочей, пятнышек, ямочек, горочек! Глаза разбегаются! Интересно, многие горы на Луне совсем не похожи на наши, земные. Они — колечками! Точно всю Луну истыкали палкой. Или продырявили изнутри шилом. Самые большие кольцевые горы похожи на цирки без крыш. Внутри ровная круглая «арена», а кругом возвышаются «места для зрителей». Эти горы так и называются — лунные цирки. У всех крупных гор на Луне есть названия. Им дали имена разных учёных, живших в прежние времена. Вот перед нами цирк Птолемей. Это один из самых крупных лунных цирков. Поперечник его «арены» больше ста пятидесяти километров. На этой площадке поместился бы весь южный берег Крыма, от Севастополя до Судака. Кольцевые горы поменьше назвали «кратерами». Они напоминают кратеры земных вулканов, только во много раз больше их. Кроме крупных цирков и кратеров, на Луне тысячи мелких круглых ямочек. Они похожи на «оспинки» или на выбоинки от ударов дробинок. Некоторые ямки так малы, что напоминают булавочные уколы. Наш телескоп «приблизил» Луну очень сильно. Мы видим её сейчас так, как будто до неё «всего» несколько сот километров. Как от Ленинграда до Москвы. Это, конечно, тоже порядочное расстояние. И поэтому каждый «булавочный укол» на самом деле там, на Луне, — яма шириной в километр. А сколько там может быть ямок более мелких, которые отсюда вообще не видны? И равнины вовсе не такие уж гладкие, как кажутся. Наверное, очень трудно передвигаться по Луне. Вы только вглядитесь, как там всё изрыто! Это дикий, неприветливый, непривычный для нас мрачный мир. Нет в нём ни разведанных тропинок, ни знакомых пейзажей, ни уютных уголков. Всё в нём чужое, жуткое, непонятное. Мы осторожно вертим ручку телескопа. Еле заметно поворачиваем его. Медленно плывут перед нами огромные, круглые, полуразрушенные «стадионы», загадочные «воронки» с развороченными краями. На сотни и тысячи километров тянется суровая горная страна. Как всё это могло получиться? Кто так «исковырял» Луну? Кто «вырыл» эти огромные ямы? Кто вздыбил вокруг них хороводы скал? Как заглянуть в прошлое этой странной планеты? Мы вглядываемся в лунные горы и... начинаем читать историю Луны. Смотрите! Можно различить горы старые и горы молодые. Одни появились раньше, другие позже. Ну вот, например, кратер Тихо. Он молодой. Борта его целые, острые, ровные. А цирк Магин — старый. Борта его разрушены, как стены древней крепости. На дне и бортах появились новые, молодые кратеры. А вот Залив Радуги в Море Дождей. Непроходимые, изодранные глубокими ущельями горы вдруг резко обрываются, и начинается ровная, как асфальт, гладь залива. Ведь ясно же, что сперва стояли горы, а потом что-то жидкое затопило низины. Но что могло затопить? Воды на Луне нет. Может быть, это лёд? Если его запорошило сухой пылью, он мог стать одного цвета с береговыми камнями. Нет. Солнце давно растопило бы лёд. Может быть, это разлилась какая-нибудь густая каша? Ступишь на неё, и она медленно засосёт тебя с головой, как вязкое болото? Нет. На лунных равнинах видны трещины, складки, ямы. Равнины твёрдые! Но раньше-то таинственное вещество, из которого состоят равнины, наверняка было жидким. Посмотрите на берега «морей». Хотя бы на кратер Гиппал, на кратер Доппельмайер. Ведь эти огромные «сковородки» явно затопила до половины какая-то жижа. Это могла быть только лава. В недрах планет очень жарко. Иногда в некоторых местах там даже плавятся камни. Превращаются в жидкую огненную кашу — магму. Если ей становится тесно, она через какую-нибудь щель вырывается наружу. Происходит извержение вулкана. А магму, вылившуюся на поверхность планеты, называют лавой. Вытекая из вулканов, лава сперва течёт, как жидкая каша. Раскалённая, дымящаяся, она затопляет низины. А потом остывает, затвердевает. Вдруг она ещё горячая? Как же мы ступим на неё? И почему на Луне вылилось так много лавы? Ведь земные вулканы никогда не затопляют лавой целые страны. А Море Дождей на Луне, например, больше нашего Чёрного моря. Чтобы выпустить наружу столько лавы, надо было вскрыть, разломать планету «вдоль и поперёк». Должны были происходить какие-то страшные катастрофы! И вы знаете, ребята, похоже, что так и было. Видите, сколько на Луне трещин, морщин, складок? Точно Луну со всей силы мяли. Или с размаху били куда попало. А вокруг некоторых кратеров словно разлетелись звездой брызги от каких-то ударов или взрывов. Может, был на свете великанище, который швырял в Луну чудовищной величины камни? Такой великанище — сам космос. Ведь камни в космосе летают вовсю. Вы слышали про метеориты? Это камушки, камни и камнищи, которые летят в космосе в разные стороны. Они встречают иногда и нашу планету, падают на Землю. Такие «небесные камни» лежат во многих геологических музеях. Маленький камень вонзится в Луну, как пуля. Он раздробит грунт, расшвыряет осколки. Получится небольшая круглая ямка — луночка. Крупный камень сделает уже целый кратер:А ведь в космосе встречаются метеориты размером в десятки, даже в сотни километров! Их называют астероидами. Представьте себе эдакую глыбищу-махинищу! Величаво плывёт она в космосе, плавно поворачивается в лучах Солнца. А на пути — Луна! Если бы мы стояли в это время на Луне, вот было бы страшно! Сперва мы увидели бы только маленькую точку в небе, новую звезду. Но точка растёт! Уже видно, что это угловатый камень! Он всё ближе, ближе... Как самолёт, идущий на посадку. Вот глыба стала уже огромной... Вот она уже с тучу величиной! И всё идёт, идёт, не сбавляя хода. Точно океанский пароход, ослепший без капитана, мчится прямо на пристань!.. Вот грозная туча-махинища коснулась Луны! Словно ничего не заметив, она лезет дальше, сквозь лунные горы, как танк сквозь солому. Безжалостно сминая и кроша гордые вековые скалы, погружается она в горный хребет, уходит в каменную твердь планеты, как в податливую мягкую глину... Пыль, брызги, осколки камней полетели в небо и в стороны, как от чудовищного взрыва... Зияющие трещины побежали по горам и долинам до самого горизонта. Из глубин расколотой планеты хлынул пар. Пыль и дым чёрной тучей накрывают нас. Стало темно. В дыму блеснуло красное пламя. Дохнуло жаром. Это из трещин выступила лава. Обгоняя друг друга, поползли по лощинам бурливые потоки дымящейся огненной каши, освещая багровыми отблесками обломки скал. Могучие горы, потеряв опору, клонятся, величественно погружаются в озверевшее огненное варево. Раскалённая, пышущая жаром лава, сокрушая всё на своём пути, идёт и идёт. Но всему бывает конец. Огненные потоки устали, выдохлись. Вот они уже остановились, осели, потускнели. Лава покрывается тёмной пенкой, потом чёрной корой. Перестаёт дымить. А когда дым рассеялся, местность не узнать. Уцелевшие горы стоят печальным хороводом вокруг места, где разразилась катастрофа. Среди кольца гор расстилается огромная, мёртвая, каменная равнина. Как замёрзшее горное озеро. Получился самый настоящий лунный цирк. И получился он, заметьте, «с одного удара». Если глыбища-махинища была бы ещё больше, с одного удара возникло бы и целое лунное море. Лавы в недрах Луны хватит. Могло быть так. Но могло быть и совсем иначе. Могло быть всё наоборот. Сказочный великанище мог расковырять Луну изнутри. Люди в древности по-настоящему верили, что под землёй, например, работает огромный, сильный дядька-кузнец. И все землетрясения и извержения вулканов — дело его рук. Имя его было — бог Вулкан. Конечно, никакого бога Вулкана на самом деле нет. Но землетрясения и извержения не выдумка. Они на Земле бывают, и довольно часто. Могучие силы рвутся из недр земного шара. Почему бы им не рваться и из недр Луны?. Представьте себе, что огненная магма, бурлящая в недрах Луны, нашла себе выход и образовала вулкан. На поверхность Луны вылились потоки лавы. Они остывают, густеют, твердеют. Несколько лет вулкан отдыхает, «собирается с силами». Потом новое извержение. Вытолкнув пробку из застывшей лавы, прочистив жерло, выливается на поверхность новая порция огненной каши. Свежий слой лавы ложится поверх старого, застывшего. Вокруг кратера растёт гора. Так, постепенно, не торопясь, с перерывами, трудится вулкан. Тысячелетиями упорный работяга понемногу «вычерпывает» из-под себя магму и разливает её наверху, вокруг. Но вулкан не инженер-строитель. Он не соображает, что роет под собой яму. Ведь магма под ним, в глубине, расходуется. Под вулканом как бы «пустеют подвалы». А сам он становится всё грузнее. Потому что застывшей лавы на его склонах становится всё больше. Наконец «крыша» над пустым «подвалом» не выдерживает! И тогда... Грунт под ногами содрогнулся, заходил ходуном. Побежали трещины. Пополз вниз склон горы. Поднялись облака пыли. Скривилась, осела одна сторона вулкана... А когда рассеялась пыль, оказывается, — часть горы провалилась в «подвал». Раз за разом оседает, разламывается на части вулкан. Проваливаются в пустоту и его окрестности. Проходит одна, другая тысяча лет — и вулкана уже нет. Он постепенно весь развалился, обрушился вниз. Как старый дом, за которым никто не смотрит. Получилась огромная круглая яма. Такие ямы-провалы называются кальдерами. Но в глубинах
the city of Amiens, where 290 workers are set to lose their jobs next year when production moves to Poland. Even in defeat, Le Pen could present a menacing political force to Macron if the sluggish economy fails to improve. She repeatedly cast Macron as a rich banker with no concern for the working poor, and as the ultimate embodiment of the elite status quo. Key Le Pen aides have told TIME in the past few days that they regard their campaign as a huge success, despite her loss, since they have effectively placed the National Front’s anti-immigrant ideas at the center of French political debate. “We have totally changed the whole paysage [landscape] of French politics,” Ludovic de Danne, Le Pen’s foreign affairs advisor, told TIME in an interview last week. As for her prospects in 2022, says de Danne, “she will be in a good position.” In his final interview as candidate, on Friday for the investigative French website Mediapart, Macron admitted he faced some steep obstacles ahead. “Politics is not a game that you win every time,” he said. For now, at least, Macron has won the biggest contest of all. Correction: The original article misstated the age of Napoleon Bonaparte when he became Emperor. He was 35, not 40. Contact us at editors@time.com.I think saying'men cannot be oppressed' is confusing because it's imprecise I understand how it can be confusing. I just don't think it should be. I think "men cannot be oppressed" should always be understood to mean "men are not oppressed as a demographic" or "men are never oppressed for being men". In the context of this thread, especially, people claiming "men are oppressed too" ARE claiming that men are oppressed for their gender. That's what I was trying to counter. Arguably women only face discrimination when they act (or desire to act) outside their dictated gender role. In that case women are only oppressed (or only notice their oppression) when they try to act in a gender non-conforming way. Oh no, not at all. This is a huge misconception on your part. Women are primarily oppressed for being women. Female infanticide does not happen because the female babies acted too boyish. Women aren't denied educations or the right to wear clothing of their choice because they acted like men. Women aren't denied the right to keep their names after marriage or the right to pass on their names to their children because they're behaving too manly. Women aren't discriminated against in the workforce for being too manly but for being women who are presumed to be likely to fall into unprofitable female traps like motherhood. Women aren't paid less for the same jobs because they're too manly, but because they are evaluated as inherently less capable, intelligent, etc than men. Women's caregiving and reproductive work is considered "not really work" and goes unpaid because women are women, not because women act in manly ways. Acting far outside of gender roles does get women oppressed, too. I don't want to give the oppression that women are never forced to act feminine, or punished for acting transgressively manly. I just want to emphasize that women's oppression doesn't come merely from these transgressions. Women are oppressed for being born on the wrong side of the gender line, not just for crossing it. This means that men and women notice the oppression of the patriarchy in the same situations, when attempting to act outside of societies limited concept of their gender. No. At the root of it, women's oppression happens because femininity is considered inherently bad and "less then" masculinity. So both men and women lose power for acting 'feminine'. Men do face opposition for acting 'feminine', which is bad. But this is completely different from women's oppression, because men never gain power from acting 'feminine' the way women often gain power for acting'masculine' (women wearing suits and having manly careers vs. men wearing dresses or staying home unpaid with babywork), and men have power from merely being men regardless of how they act while women lose power for being women regardless of how they act. Women are not oppressed 'by men' specifically, but by everyone Women are oppressed both by men AND by everyone. Women are oppressed by men because men have way more power than women, and also men have power over women. Women are oppressed by everyone, too, because everyone regardless of gender plays a part in upholding patriarchal ideals that oppress women. Why are you interested in saying women aren't oppressed by men? male gender non-conformity needs to be classified as oppression along the gender-non-conforming axis Already done, GSM as a concept exists in feminism! But the average dude who gets bullied as a "sissy" for crying - that doesn't qualify as oppression. You might as well say that straight men who get teased for "acting gay" when they dress well are oppressed, or a Miley Cyrus getting bullied for twerking by people saying she's "acting like a n*****" is also being oppressed due to her "racial expression"! No, these aren't oppressions. People getting bullied with expressions of hate against other demographics does not count as people being oppressed, it just counts as people being bullied and those other demographics being oppressed. Say for example a cis female engineer is talking about people assuming shes the secretary at work, and a transperson points out that the problem here is that people are oppressed for being gender non-conforming, and that her plight is merely a side effect of trans oppression. I don't understand this at all. The trouble here isn't that the engineer is gender-non-conforming, but that the gender role that says women should be secretaries not engineers is fucked up. By saying a female engineer is an example of gender non-conformity, your hypothetical trans person is in fact entrenching sexist gender roles. Trans people on the other hand are ACTUALLY gender non-conforming, in the sense that they disagree with their assigned gender, not merely transgressing a few oppressive gender roles. This doesn't seem to be a good example. Can you please give me another one for how trans people can derail discussions in women's spaces with reductionism? I think that kind of reductionism is derailing I agree that reductionism is derailing. However, I did not see it happening on this thread. Nor have I seen it happen anywhere else in the way that you claimed ("all issues are women's issues" - is what you said you've seen, right?). Can you please point me to examples? I think that reducing male issues to feminist issues How is something being a feminist issue a reduction? I think its important to recognize that issues faced by men are not simply'side effects' of the oppression of women Can you give me examples, please? In my opinion, there is not in fact a single disadvantage men face that isn't a side effect of patriarchy - i,.e. male PRIVILEGE. I am willing to change my mind if you give me arguments beyond false comparisons to trans issues and a simple dislike of men's issues having to be "subordinate" to women's issues in feminism.Must-see morning clip: Jon Stewart calls out the rampant sexism in politics Women in politics are often dismissed as overly emotional, volatile or crazy On Tuesday night's "Daily Show," Jon Stewart shook his head in disappointment and shame at the American political system for its rampant sexism: When the CIA disagreed with Sen. Dianne Feinstein's intelligence report, they questioned her emotional state. During his Bridgegate fiasco, Gov. Chris Christie painted a former aide as a crazy, emotional woman in an attempt to discredit her. When Chelsea Clinton announced her pregnancy, media pundits wondered how that would affect Hillary's rumored candidacy, even though that would never come up as a debate topic for a male candidate. When Hillary tears up, politicos wonder if she's tough enough for the job. When John Boehner tears up, he's "passionate" about America. The message is clear, says Stewart: "In politics, it's OK to be a pussy, as long as you've got a dick."Free agent lists in January are teases. Fans see the big names and dream of offseason purchases their favorite team should acquire. In reality, most of the names on our top-20 free agent list below won't become available. From now until March, teams will begin to re-sign the players they truly want to keep. If a long-term deal can't get done, the franchise tag will be used. Green Bay's four-year, $42 million deal for Mike Daniels was a great example of this trend. He would have been a top-10 player on our list. With the salary cap expected to soar this offseason, we suspect that deal will wind up looking like an absolute bargain. Without further adieu, the list below is our early rough list of the top-20 unrestricted free agents set to hit the market. We will expand our free agency coverage dramatically in the coming month, with our annual Top 101 list coming out in February. Top 20 2016 Unrestricted free agents 1. Von Miller, Denver Broncos linebacker: Miller has been one of the best overall defensive players in the league since he was drafted. He's as strong stopping the run as he is coming off the edge. There's no way the Broncos will let him hit the market. 2. Josh Norman, Carolina Panthers cornerback: There's nothing like having your breakout season in a contract year. Norman has been the best cornerback in football this year and is a legitimate Defensive Player of the Year candidate. He's not going anywhere. 3. Muhammad Wilkerson, New York Jets defensive end: Sheldon Richardson and Leonard Williams were splashy draft pick additions, but Wilkerson is still the best defensive lineman on the Jets. New York has played hardball in negotiations thus far with Wilkerson, but the franchise tag has to be an option here. 4. Alshon Jeffery, Chicago Bears wide receiver: He might not be the most refined receiver in the league, but few are better at catching deep balls. He's fourth in the league in receiving yards-per-game and topped 1,400 yards in 2013. 5. Cordy Glenn, Buffalo Bills offensive tackle: True franchise left tackles are awfully hard to find. That's why he's a strong candidate for the franchise tag. 6. Jason Pierre-Paul, New York Giants defensive end: He's still disruptive despite playing with a club over his injured hand. There has to be a chance JPP will only get better as he learns how best to play with his disadvantage, and the ceiling here is tremendous. Still, he has struggled to wrap up opposing running backs. Can he finish plays? 7. Eric Berry, Kansas City Chiefs safety: Berry has come back from his cancer scare better than ever. Strong safety play is hard to find and Berry has the versatility teams are looking for. 8. Malik Jackson, Broncos defensive tackle: Like Norman, he's having a career year in a contract season. It's hard to find interior pass rushers like Jackson just entering his prime. 9. Olivier Vernon, Dolphins defensive end: The other Dolphins pass rusher opposite Cameron Wake has dialed up a lot of pressure over the last three years, even if he doesn't always finish the play with a sack. He's clearly an above average pass rush starter, which is going to make him a very rich man. Expectations are he'll leave Miami, who can only afford to pay so much on their defensive line. 10. Doug Martin, Buccaneers running back: He won't make the same money as the guys listed above (and below) him here because of the position he plays, but no one has helped their value more this season. Martin has gone from an afterthought to the No. 2 rusher in the NFL. 11. Bruce Irvin, Seattle Seahawks linebacker: He isn't a defense-changing talent, but he's also better than you think. Irvin is a quality versatile starter. 12. Russell Okung, Seahawks tackle: Even if Okung is only an average starter, he's going to get paid in this market. If he makes it there. 13. Eric Weddle, San Diego Chargers safety: Weddle has a skill set that tons of teams are looking for to shore up the back end of their defenses. His age (30) works against him, but few safeties have been better over the last five years. 14. Sam Bradford, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback: This season has not helped Bradford's value, yet there would be no shortage of teams willing to give Bradford a try if the Eagles don't want to re-sign him. 15. Kirk Cousins, Washington Redskins quarterback: Replacement level starting quarterbacks are worth plenty, and that appears to be Cousins' floor. At worst, he's a poor man's Andy Dalton with room to improve over time. He has more value to the Redskins than anyone else. 16. Matt Forte, Bears running back: One of the league's most complete backs has not shown many signs of age yet. Perhaps he should be paired with another quality option, but there's no doubt he could upgrade many backfields. 17. Andre Smith, Cincinnati Bengals right tackle: How will Smith react to getting paid big bucks (again)? While his career has included some ups and downs, Smith has often been a top-shelf starter. 18. Danny Trevathan, Broncos linebacker: Trevathan is a three-down linebacker entering his prime that can hold up in pass coverage. We're big fans of his skill set and he's just the type of above-average starter that gets paid like a superstar in free agency. 19. Janoris Jenkins, St. Louis Rams cornerback: He's steadily improved each season in the league and now is a playmaking starter. 20. Brock Osweiler, Broncos quarterback: It's hard to imagine John Elway letting his promising young starter hit the market, although this will be a tricky contract to pull off. Just missed: Derrick Johnson, Chris Ivory, Kelvin Beachum, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Haloti Ngata, Lamar Miller, Prince Amukamara, Anquan Boldin.Home price gains continue in early 2015 Updated Home prices have kicked off 2015 with further steep rises, led by Melbourne, Sydney and Hobart. CoreLogic RP Data's home price index shows the average of the capital cities was a rise of 1.3 per cent last month, 1.9 per cent over the three months to the end of January and 8 per cent over the past year. The annual gain was again led by Sydney's 13 per cent rise, which was the only city with an annual gain above the average. However, it was Melbourne which led the January gains, rising 2.7 per cent, versus a 1.4 per cent gain in Sydney and 1.6 per cent increase in Hobart. Other capitals were much weaker, with Canberra up 0.9 per cent and Brisbane 0.6, while Perth, Adelaide and Darwin all recorded home price falls last month, as did non-capital city areas in December. Canberra also posted a price decline over the past quarter and year, while Darwin prices also went 2.6 per cent backwards in the January quarter. CoreLogic RP Data's research director Tim Lawless said the 8 per cent average annual growth rate is still down on peaks seen early last year. "When we look at the annual results, it's still tapering though, so we saw the market peak in annual terms in April last year, and we've seen that growth rate fall from 11.5 per cent in April to 8 per cent now," he said. Mr Lawless is forecasting that trend of gradually slowing prices to continue throughout the year, and said it is impossible to draw any conclusions from January's very strong monthly rise. "We're only just starting to see auctions come back to decent numbers now, over the last week of January," he said. "So I think until we start to see the February and the first quarter numbers we won't get a firm reading for how the 2015 market is shaping up." However, Mr Lawless also noted that a rate cut at the Reserve Bank's next board meeting tomorrow, or the following meeting in March, could boost home prices in the autumn selling season. "Any cut in rates, of course, will be stimulatory to the market, so that will provide some further demand to housing, potentially push growth rates up a bit higher," he added. A boost in home prices from a rate cut could be limited though by a lack of confidence in the economy, very high prices already in key markets and the prospect of stricter lending limits being imposed on banks by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA). "The key obstacles in the marketplace will be affordability - we're already seeing Sydney median house price up around $850,000 - yields are very low, and I think a big part of demand in the marketplace at the moment is demand from investors and we've already seen some direction action from APRA... limiting investor lending to no more than 10 per cent a year," Mr Lawless concluded. Topics: housing-industry, economic-trends, money-and-monetary-policy, australia First postedIt’s the first day back in the office for the PZ team, with plenty of cool stuff on the horizon… but that doesn’t mean that Build 30 isn’t receiving some New Year love. Today we released 30.13 in the IWBUMS branch [instructions on how to join here] to hopefully address some multiplayer issues that were reported over the Xmas break. It’s in IWBUMS rather than the main branch as we want to be sure it’s all fixed before widening the net, so if you’re a seasoned MP player or server host who’s run into stuttering recently then please give it a whirl and let us know how you get on. Other fixes and tweaks include: scavenging balance, fixed spawn points, improved mushroom recipe usage (!), seasonal fishing, translations and improved controller support – in amongst some other good stuff. Elsewhere tools are being picked up on map, stealth, radio transmissions, NPCs and more. Fr’instance as well as working on the new stealth system, Lemmy’s been working on the NPC behaviour system, converting the behaviour tree system to read text script files for the NPC behaviours instead of using code spat out by the editor. This means a) future behaviours will be a lot quicker to add and more crucially b) the entire of the NPC’s behaviours will be 100% moddable when they are finally released. Everything from how they move, how they make decisions, will all be accessible to modders. We know it sounds cool but remember: NO ETA NOT DONE YET ETC. The map team, meanwhile, are back at work on the more urban ‘suburbs’ area – while Will is about to have a first exploratory fiddle with WordZed, the awesome-sauce radio transmission tool created by TurboTuTone and discussed prior to Xmas. Finally, we would really like to direct everyone’s attention to Xeonyx’s absolutely amazing New Denver map. Eleven months in the making, and made in tribute to friends who are sadly no longer with us, it’s an amazing piece of work that deserves the praise and love of the entire PZ community. Ever attentive and fantabulous, meanwhile, is Blindcoder who has already made it a part of his PZ Map Project. Thank you Xeonyx, it’s an amazing feat and a wonderful tribute. The best Christmas present we could have asked for! Join our newsletter for future updates and blogs sent straight to your email inbox!by Ann Garrison KPFA Weekend News broadcast June 25, 2016 Obama’s nominee to head the U.S. Africa Command, Marine Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, reassured the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that he would expand the so-called War on Terror and seek authority to assassinate without presidential supervision in Libya and elsewhere on the African continent. Transcript KPFA Weekend News Anchor David Rosenberg: Earlier this week, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee questioned Marine Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, President Obama’s nominee to become the next four-star general commanding AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command. Most of the discussion focused on the conflict in Libya, where territory is now controlled by seven different forces: the Council of Deputies and Libyan National Army; the Government of National Accord and Libya Shield Force; the Islamic State; the Shura Councils of Benghazi, Derna and Ajdabiya; the Petroleum Facilities Guard; the Tuareg; and local forces. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has more. KPFA/Ann Garrison: U.S. policymakers describe AFRICOM’s goals as, one, stopping genocide and mass atrocities and, two, fighting terrorism. In 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security Advisor Samantha Power all argued that the U.S. was morally obliged to bomb Libya to stop its leader, Muammar Qaddafi, from committing genocide and mass atrocities as, they claimed, the U.S. had failed to do in Rwanda. E-mail on Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server has since revealed that control of oil and currency issues were the actual motives behind the U.S. and NATO’s bombing war and the ouster of Qaddafi. At this week’s hearing, Senate Armed Services Committee members were more concerned with the Islamic State and other radical Islamist groups in Libya and elsewhere on the African continent. South Carolina’s Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham questioned Obama’s nominee, Marine Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser: Senator Lindsay Graham: Libya? Do we fly in Libya? Marine Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser: The answer is yes, if there is a target that is an imminent threat to the United States. LG: OK. Is ISIL an imminent threat to the United States? TW: Yes. LG: Is ISIL in Libya? TW: Yes. LG: How many sorties have we flown in Libya? TW: To my knowledge, none at this time. LG: That makes no sense then, does it? TW: It does not. What I can say, Senator, at this time, is there are targets that are being developed, but there have been no flights flown. LG: How many people do we have on the ground in Libya? TW: I don’t have that answer. It’s not a large number. LG: Do we need people on the ground in Libya? TW: Yes, we do. LG: OK. Do you see any change in policy any time in the near future? TW: I’m not aware of any of those discussions, Senator. LG: Does the buildup of ISIL and other related Al Qaeda type groups present a threat to our European allies? TW: Eventually they could. Yes. LG: OK, thank you. When it comes to Africa, what are the rules of engagement in terms of targeting ISIL in Africa? TW: Senator, I believe the rules of engagement have to do with the presidential policy guidance. That’s what, when these targets pop up, the three that I mentioned that were hit in Libya this year, they fall under that criteria. LG: But you don’t have the authority to, without presidential direction, to go and find ISIL members in Africa and kill them? TW: Well, sir, if the question is “Do we have authority to take out targets?” the AFRICOM commander has some authority for various targets in Somalia, for example, with Al-Shabab, but I’m not familiar with the details and if … LG: Do you have the authority as AFRICOM commander do go after ISIL targets in Africa on your own? TW: I do not. LG: Do you think that would be wise to have that authority? TW: It would be wise. It would certainly contribute to what we’re trying to do inside Libya. LG: Is the war moving to Africa over time, do you think? TW: It could. It’s possible. I mean that’s why ISIL has taken hold inside Sirte, to be kind of a backup if Iraq and Syria fail. LG: So the ungoverned spaces in Africa are likely places for ISIL to flee to if we dislodge them from the traditional Mideast? TW: They’re very likely. That’s why instability inside Africa is to ISIL’s advantage. LG: When you come to, say, ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] shortages, how severe is that for your command? TW: Senator, if confirmed, I’d have to look into that to be specific. I think in the main, it goes without saying, I think it’s common knowledge that AFRICOM’s an economy theatre. I think it’s common knowledge that AFRICOM could use more ISR, but beyond that, I don’t have the specifics. LG: Is it a fair statement when it comes to radical Islamic threats emanating from Africa, we’ve got a long way to go in upping our game? TW: We do. That’s an away game. I know that you’ve mentioned before we are fighting an away game in Africa to contain it on that continent. KPFA: And that was South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham questioning Marine Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, President Obama’s nominee to head AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command. In Berkeley, for Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I’m Ann Garrison. Oakland writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Black Agenda Report, Black Star News, Counterpunch and her own website, Ann Garrison, and produces for AfrobeatRadio on WBAI-NYC, KPFA Evening News, KPFA Flashpoints and for her own YouTube Channel, AnnieGetYourGang. She can be reached at anniegarrison@gmail.com. In March 2014 she was awarded the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for promoting peace in the Great Lakes Region of Africa through her reporting.Khonsa (Arunachal Pradesh): “There are Goblins in the forests”, said Richa. “Goblins? Have you seen them? What do they look like?” “They have long hair that reach their feet. They are tall. They visit the Khonsa market sometimes. They are visible to just one member from a village. Only he can see them. My father once saw them by bribing a villager. They are fearful to look at. They are forest folk who gave each village a recipe to the secret ingredients to jumin (rice beer).” Richa, a state government employee looks into the government’s agriculture initiatives in Khonsa, Arunachal Pradesh, while her father cultivates large plantations of tea and bamboo just before Baromile (12th Milestone). She had gone to the palatial Rajkumar bungalow, which has stood the test of time, with her cousins and friends. A pristine white statue of a lady carrying water was at the entrance, there for three generations of Noctes now. They shared some jumin, which her mother had prepared at Loku, the Noctes’ harvest festival. This was my third visit since November 2012 to the land of the Noctes, an erstwhile headhunting lower hill tribe in the Patkai hills of eastern Arunachal Pradesh and the insurgency-affected Tirap, headquartered at Khonsa. Ethnically related to the Konyak Nagas, the Noctes are originally from the Hukong Valley in Myanmar, from where they migrated during the 1670s-1700s. While the Noctes gave up headhunting in 1960s – the last incident was reported in the 1980s – when the chiefs unanimously decided to give up on the practice and become part of civil society. It was also the period when the armed forces were securing the location to integrate the region with India. Christianity was gaining momentum alongside the insurgency ( and the advent of the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland factions). By the 1990s, the Noctes were Christianised and the Morung – where the hunted heads were displayed, once a symbol of a Nocte village’s prosperity and strength – lost its heads and glory. “Take some gifts for the Raja, when you go to Lapnan. It is tradition,” advised Samman, a resident of the Rajkumar bungalow and the chief of the Pansumthong village, on the outskirts of Borduria, which was an early gate to Myanmar once upon a time. At Lapnan, there was no statue of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary. The raja’s hut was the biggest. It not only had a crisscross V-shaped bamboo flooring, as was the tradition for the chief’s hut, but was elevated from the ground to protect from animal attacks and was made entirely from bamboo, which grew aplenty there. Traditionally, the rajas could take in many wives, who all lived together. The rani (queen) was the first wife of the chief and of royal lineage, while the other wives were part of an alliance or treaty to conquer other lands and maintain peace. Only the rani’s eldest living child could inherit the chieftainship. Lapnan, incidentally, turned out to be the only Nocte village that hadn’t embraced Christianity as the raja and the community were keen to protect the Nocte culture and traditions. The Morung at Lapnan had on display hornbill heads, bison heads, wild boar heads and few snake heads placed in the rack below the over two dozen human skulls of various sizes and shapes. The Morung was a sacred place, where women couldn’t enter and served as a meeting place for the menfolk. Headhunting would involve a group of men organising a hunt for food or to protect their land or conquer new land, and only headhunters would decorate their daos (traditional swords/long blade knives) with the hair of their hunted. The woman’s hair was treated with respect as it showcased that the headhunter had successfully headhunted a woman after killing her protectors in battle, as well as the strategy of occupying new land. The successful headhunting party would then be tattooed on their faces. The oldest of the headhunters is now in their late 80s. Tattooing too is dying out, with the oldest tattoo artist, 84, losing the steadiness in her hands. The Noctes have a strong sense of identity and are still trying to preserve their culture, and look towards community building and belongingness to their land to prevent them from migrating to other urban centres in the country. Most of the Noctes are employed in the government services and Loku is when they celebrate their identity, traditions and culture along with the state, army and tourists. “Baba, see we are in the land of the rising moon”, said Samman pointing out in the night sky that was getting lit up, while I tasted porcupine in the raja’s house, gulping down the bittersweet meat with jhumin, looking at the rising full moon behind the Patkai hills. Indeed we were. Udit Kulshrestha is an independent photographer based out of Gurgaon, and works on the subjects of culture and conflict in the unseen geographies of North East India. He is also the author of Darwaze, a limited edition self published pictorial photobook of his early works.Getty Images The debut of RG3 won’t be televised in Western New York. The Bills have announced that the preseason home opener against the Redskins hasn’t sold out, which means that it will be blacked out locally. To avoid a blackout, all non-premium seats must be sold within 72 hours of kickoff. The more important question is why would the league black out a glorified practice session? Commissioner Roger Goodell has said many times that the quality of preseason play is lacking. It’s one thing to force season-ticket holders to purchase tickets to two meaningless games in order to secure the ability to buy tickets to the eight that count, plus playoffs. Why compel folks to fill the place up before a non-game game will be shown on TV? The good news (for folks who love glorified practice sessions but not enough to pay full price to watch them in person) is that the Redskins-Bills tilt will be shown on a tape-delayed basis in Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse.by Jonatan Gonzalez “It would not be easy to conceive with what a depth of feeling I entered into the struggle carried on by the Spaniards for their deliverance from the usurped power of the French. Many times have I gone from Allan Bank in Grasmere vale, where we were then residing, to the top of the Raise-gap as it is called, so late as two o’clock in the morning, to meet the carrier bringing the newspaper from Keswick. Imperfect traces of the state of mind in which I then was may be found in my Tract on the Convention of Cintra, as well as in these Sonnets.” William Wordsworth The development of the political ideas of William Wordsworth can be seen as a journey from radicalism to conservatism, from a radical stance on the French Revolution and a passionate fervour for Napoleon, to the disappointment caused by what France turned out to be and the ensuing demonization of the First Consul. The Peninsular War (1808-1814), a military conflict for the control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars, offered Wordsworth a further opportunity to shape his views on France and Napoleon, which he did by praising the resilience of the Spanish people in the face of France’s imperialism. It was, as Simon Bainbridge puts it in Napoleon and English Romanticism (2006) “a battle conducted on behalf of liberty and freedom and against tyranny and oppression”. Actually, this sense of excitement induced by the tremendous courage of the Spanish guerrillas, who were fighting against the most powerful army in the world, was common to many Romantic writers, including Lord Byron, Walter Scott, Robert Southey and Felicia Hemans. The first poetic creation by Wordsworth to be inspired by the events in Spain was a little-known poem, probably written in May 1808, and which he did not get to publish in his lifetime. It lacks a title, and its first line reads “A few bold Patriots, Reliques of the Fight”. In it Wordsworth offers a beautiful allegory of Pelagius of Asturias (c. 685 – 737), a Visigothic nobleman credited with beginning the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula after the Islamic conquest in 711. Wordsworth praises Pelagius’ role as the restorer of the Visigothic monarchy in Spain, and criticises Charles IV and Ferdinand VII of Spain for having ruined Pelaigus’ legacy by letting the Spanish throne go to the brother of a “foreign Tyrant”, Joseph Bonaparte. In spite of the importance in Spain of Wordsworth’s poetic creation on the Peninsular War, no Spanish translation of this poem has ever been done. Wordsworth’s ensuing composition on the Spanish issue was his prose-work Concerning the Convention of Cintra (1809), a political commentary on the Convention of Cintra (August 30, 1808), an agreement signed during the Peninsular War by which the defeated French, under the command of Junot, were allowed to evacuate their troops from Portugal without further conflict with the Anglo-Portuguese forces. It was not only focused on the Portuguese issue, though. Wordsworth devotes a great deal of this tract to the events in Spain. However, like “A few bold Patriots, Reliques of the Fight”, no version in Spanish has ever been produced. Complementary to this, in Poems Dedicated to National Independence and Liberty (1808-1811) we can find fourteen sonnets devoted exclusively to the Peninsular War, in which Wordsworth reflects upon the suffering and bravery of the Spanish people, whom the poet sees as an embodiment of liberty and freedom. All these poems reflect thus Wordsworth’s unwavering confidence in the ultimate triumph of Spain over the tyranny of Napoleon: The first translations into Spanish of the poetry of Wordsworth can be traced back to the late nineteenth century. Nonetheless, it was not until 1938, about half a century later, that the first translations of the poet’s work on the Peninsular War reached Spanish readers. That said, between 1938 and 2013 we can find in Spain five different published volumes, containing forty-nine original translations altogether of Wordsworth’s poems on the Spanish issue. In spite of the fact that during that span of years there were produced another thirty-seven titles containing Spanish translations of other Wordsworthian poems, these five publications were released in key historical moments for the reception of Wordsworth in Spain, and have hence influenced different generations of the poet’s Spanish readers. The Spanish Republican magazine Hora de España (The Spanish Hour), published for the first time, in its April 1938 issue, two translations of Wordsworth’s poems on the Peninsular War. The chosen sonnets were “The Oak of Guernica” and “Indignation of a High-Minded Spaniard”, with the translation carried out by the English writer Stanley Richardson and the Spanish poet Luis Cernuda. Published during the last stages of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), this periodical was originally edited in the Spanish city of Valencia, but with the entry of fascist troops into the city, the magazine was forced to move its headquarters first to the city of Barcelona, and eventually to Mexico. These two translations were intended to raise the morale of the Spanish Republicans, who were struggling to resist the invading forces of the dictator-to-be Francisco Franco and his supporters, by reminding them of the glorious past of the Spanish resistance during the Peninsular War. Likewise, these were the only two Spanish translations of Wordsworth’s poems published during the Spanish Civil War. Hence, they were crucial for the shaping of the image of the English poet and his work that was conveyed to his Spanish readers during the Civil War. In 1976, one year after the death of Franco and the ensuing dissolution of Francoist Spain, Poemas (Poems) was published, the third book ever issued devoted exclusively to the Spanish translations of Wordsworth’s poetry. It contained two of his poems on the Spanish issue, “Indignation of a High-Minded Spaniard” and “The French and the Spanish guerrillas”, along with twenty-two of Wordsworth’s most popular poems. Again in 1982, in a volume entitled William Wordsworth, another three translations of Wordsworth’s poems on the Peninsular War were published, “Indignation of a High-Minded Spaniard”, “Feelings of a Noble Biscayan at One of Those Funerals”, and “The Oak of Guernica”. However, it was in 1987 that a book entitled Poemas a España (Poems to Spain) appeared. It was the first publication focused entirely on Wordsworth’s poems on the Peninsular War, and it contained ten of the fourteen sonnets on the Spanish issue that had been included in Poems Dedicated to National Independence and Liberty (1808-1811). These poems were here presented along with several drawings
of the volume buttons. Far more sketchy: The Apple Watch 2 is said to include GPS for accurate workout logging without the need to carry an iPhone, and the Workout app reportedly will gain the ability to track swimming – suggesting a higher level of waterproofing in the next Apple Watch. On the MacBook Pro front, the rumored OLED touchscreen bar is said to be accompanied by a Touch ID sensor for fingerprint login. We already know that macOS Sierra offers Auto Unlock when a Mac is in proximity to your Apple Watch, reducing the need for Touch ID on the Mac, but this would still be a useful feature for Mac owners without an Apple Watch. That source says the Touch ID sensor will be combined with the power button, which would certainly make sense. Finally, we’re hearing again that Apple is working on its own fully wireless EarPods, along the lines of the Bragi Dash. That Apple would offer its own wireless EarPods to coincide with the launch of an iPhone with no headphone socket is again a logical expectation, and the fully-wireless approach pioneered by Bragi would seem an Apple-like approach. The iPhone 7 in Space Black, then, seems to be a likely bet. The other whispers we’re categorizing for now merely as logical-sounding possibilities. You can catch up on all the latest iPhone 7 rumors at our new iPhone 7 guide, scrolling down for the individual stories.The New York Times misinterprets a major story out of Asia today on Sino-Japanese relations. Reporter Jane Perlez writes that Beijing and Tokyo “effectively agreed to disagree over the sovereignty of disputed islands in the East China Sea” and move towards a resumption of diplomatic and security discussions. This, in turn, would move relations out of the deep freeze they have been in for several years and facilitate a meeting next week at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit between Chinese president Xi Jinping and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who have not yet had a substantive dialogue with each other. Yet the official statement by both sides makes no mention of sovereignty or any dispute. This is a crucial point for Japan, which refuses to open itself up to legal or diplomatic claims that might undermine its position. Advertisement Advertisement The islands in dispute are the Senkakus (Diaoyu in Chinese), which lie off the northeastern tip of Taiwan, and have become a flash point for Asian tensions since Japan’s former government nationalized several of the islands in 2012. Captured from Japan at the end of World War II, the Senkakus were returned to Tokyo in 1972 with the reversion of Okinawa. The official U.S. position is that Japan maintains administrative control over the islands, but Washington does not take a position on sovereignty. Since the nationalization two years ago, Japanese and Chinese maritime patrol and coast-guard vessels have repeatedly confronted each other in the waters surrounding the islands, and Chinese fishing boats have also regularly entered the same waters. It was over these islands that China declared its air defense identification zone (ADIZ) last year, causing a spike in tension with the United States, Japan, and Korea. Tensions became so high that, in a presidential first, Barack Obama publicly stated that any attack on the Senkakus would fall under Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan mutual-defense treaty, thereby signaling American intent to help defend the islands. Advertisement In the Times’ telling, Tokyo essentially acknowledged that there is a sovereignty dispute over the islands. The actual statement released by both sides is rather different, noting instead that “both sides recognized that they had different views as to the emergence of tense situations in recent years in the waters of the East China Sea, including those around the Senkaku Islands...” Japanese officials, alarmed that the Times’ reporting could create a storyline that Tokyo is backing down on its previous stance, have been quick to underscore the actual wording of the agreement. It seems clear that Japan is in no way admitting a dispute over sovereignty of the islands, but has worked with Beijing to craft language suitable to both sides that will allow the important second announcement to go forward: “through dialogue and consultation, [Japan and China] would prevent the deterioration of the situation, establish a crisis management mechanism and avert the rise of unforeseen circumstances.” This is indeed a breakthrough from recent years, in which the specter of an accidental clash between Japanese and Chinese paramilitary forces seemed to grow each month. While there is reason to doubt whether the two sides will be able to keep relations on an even keel for the long-run, at least in the short term the political leadership of both has indicated a willingness to look at the larger question of their bilateral relationship. That may reflect a Chinese conclusion that Prime Minister Abe will not back down from his mild military buildup or renewed outreach to nations around the region. Alternatively, Beijing might have concluded that it is better to let the issue sit while it continues to build up its military strength. Advertisement Advertisement The fact that the world’s second- and third-largest economies have been on a tripwire over the islands for years is an indication of continued risk in Asia. Yesterday’s agreement is an important step towards stabilizing the situation, again in the short-run, and giving more constructive diplomacy a chance. Yet it is a significant misinterpretation to see it as an agreement to disagree over who owns the Senkakus. On that score, Tokyo will almost certainly never alter its position that denies even the existence of such a disagreement.About nanomaterials Nanomaterials are tiny structures just billionths of a metre (nanometre) in size. If a nanoparticle was the size of a football, then a doughnut would be as big as the UK. As a result of their tiny size, they can penetrate the human body more easily and offer different properties than larger forms of the same materials. These particles can be used to change the taste, colour, flavour and texture of food. The right to be informed The Parliament has always supported consumers' right to know what is in the food they buy, which MEPs believe should also cover nanomaterials. Current EU rules define engineered nanomaterials as any intentionally produced material whose size is under 100 nanometres. The Commission wants to make this more precise, by adding that a nanomaterial should consist of at least 50% of particles having a size between 1-100 nanometres. MEPs rejected this proposal on 12 March, because it would exempt nano-sized food additives already on the market. The European Food Safety Authority recommends a 10% threshold. Next steps MEPs have called on the Commission to come up with a new proposal that takes the Parliament's position into account.This report was written by David Hendricks of the San Antonio Express-News. One of U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s favorite words on Tuesday while in San Antonio was “regulation.” The powerful Kentucky Republican is against them. Many business owners are, too — sometimes for good reason. Government regulations are never too far from the conversation when the main topic is jobs. When not enough jobs materialize, government regulations often are blamed. Regulations are not far away, either, when it comes to deliberating long-term government spending and the federal deficit. That’s why Tuesday’s luncheon featuring McConnell, staged by three chambers of commerce and the Texas Tribune, provided valuable dialogue that previews the core issues for the upcoming presidential and congressional elections next year — at least the issues business owners and employers should focus on. McConnell set the stage in his opening statements. The American public, by electing in 2008 a Democratic Party president and a Democratic congressional majority, apparently thought that “America suffered from not enough government.” McConnell characterized that way of thinking as “a West European view of what America ought to be.” The 2010 electoral backlash in favor of the Republicans was like “a restraining order” on that way of thinking. McConnell later listed the industries under threat from government regulation: health care, financial services, labor and, so he wouldn’t leave anyone out, industries regulated by “every agency.” The senator said Washington is home to about 150,000 new government employees, financed by deficit spending. “We’re a boomtown,” he said, adding he’d like “fire the bureaucrats” so that the private sector can have a chance to lift the economy out of its slump. Regulations are the main reason companies collectively are sitting on between $2 trillion to $3 trillion in cash. They are “afraid to invest any of it,” McConnell said. Broadway Bank President, Chairman and CEO James Goudge told McConnell from the audience that community bankers are facing too many new regulatory burdens. Some community bankers “will sell or move out of the community,” Goudge said. Yet, no one ever said why the economy fell into recession or why other problems arise. The housing and financial crisis of 2008? The environmentally disastrous oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico last year? Bernie Madoff? Contaminated food outbreaks? Refinery explosions? Coal mine accidents? Appropriate and smart regulation could have prevented those. Maybe McConnell and business owners believe the recent regulatory steps are the wrong ones. The new ones don’t address what caused past problems and therefore make matters worse. If so, that’s not well articulated. Another problem is that Congress passes vague laws that are interpreted too aggressively into hard-and-fast rules by empire-building agencies. That could describe the new air-emissions rules coming out of the Environmental Protection Agency. The Congress-agency process is not discussed enough. It seems the business owners and elected officials sometimes talk past each other too much, at least in public. In private, they probably are more direct with each other. The public is confused. The United States certainly needs jobs. The public doesn’t need a government looking the other way so that job-killing recessions and disasters occur. Is there a way to regulate confusion?Observers of politics have historically applied the term “monarchy” to a variety of superficially similar but sociologically quite distinct regimes: the Roman empire, the Carolingian kingdoms, the Romanov autocracy, the Kuwaiti emirate, the British monarchy. To the extent that there are interesting similarities accross these disparate cases, they have to do with the existence of recognized norms for selecting effective rulers only from a specific lineage (what the Polity coders call an “ascriptive” selection process, or more informally, selection by birthright). Ascriptive selection processes are typically connected both with certain understandings of the basis of authority (e.g., the king should rule because he is the Custodian of Mecca and Medina, not because he represents the people) and an exalted status for the effective ruler; the titles “King” or “Queen” and their various equivalents – Prince, Sultan, Emir, Emperor, Caesar, Shah, etc. – are first and foremost markers of status, elevating the person of the monarch above the common run of people and entitling them to visible honours not available to anyone else in society. The combination of an ascriptive norm of selection to offices with effective political power (rather than purely ceremonial positions) and a particular set of person-centered rituals and symbols defines monarchy, though it does not explain how monarchies survive. Indeed, given the magnitude of the shift towards democratic norms of justification over the last two centuries, the survival of monarchies presents a bit of a puzzle. Though ascriptively-selected rulers were extremely common before the 19th century, nowadays the number of national states with effective monarchies is tiny; the Polity dataset identifies only 11 countries (Bahrain, Bhutan, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, North Korea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Swaziland, and the United Arab Emirates) where there is a norm of selecting members of a particular family for the top executive offices, and you might notice that one of them is not normally thought to be a monarchy but a totalitarian regime. (The data excludes countries with less than 500,000 population; including microstates might add Tonga, Brunei, Monaco, and Lesotho to the list, among others.) In six of these (Bhutan, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Swaziland, and the United Arab Emirates) powerful monarchs nevertheless share some power with other institutions, such as elected parliaments (in the Polity jargon, these regimes have “dual” executives, combining ascriptive and non-ascriptive selection processes). Moreover, once discredited, ascriptive selection processes have proven difficult to resurrect explicitly, even if we broaden our view to consider cases where ostensibly “republican” leaders have tried to ensure that control over the state passes to their sons or other family members after their death or retirement, as Mubarak tried to do in Egypt and Gaddafi tried to do in Libya. There are few “transitions to monarchy” in the 20th century, and the few I can find were quite short-lived. Though many highly personalistic regimes have shown a tendency to turn into family enterprises, they seem to have had mixed success beyond the second generation when recognized selection norms remain “republican” (consider, e.g., the failure of the Duvalier or Trujillo “dynasties” in Haiti and the Dominican republic); North Korea is exceptional in combining ostensibly republican justifications of rule with a successful ascriptive transfer of power to the third generation. We could look at these stylized facts and conclude that the remaining monarchies are mere traditional survivals, doomed to extinction once they run out of oil rents or superpower patronage (a view associated with Huntington, I believe). Or we could conclude instead that the remaining monarchies are precisely the most resilient examples of a once common political form; whatever the Saudi monarchy is doing, for example, it has served it well for over 70 years. Herb argues that monarchies that have survived to the end of the 20th century (the book was published in 1999) are in fact distinctive in ways that make them very resilient. In particular, most of these are what he calls “dynastic” monarchies rather than “personal” monarchies. ( Some people suggest that surviving monarchies in Jordan and Morocco do not fit neatly in either side of this dichotomy, but we’ll ignore these subtleties for the moment since the Saudi monarchy, at least, is the paradigmatic example of a dynastic monarchy). A dynastic monarchy can be compared to a family firm, with the family business being the corporate control of the state (and the enjoyment of its oil rents, in the Saudi case), the king as the family CEO, the senior male relatives as the key executives and company board, and most of the remaining family members as shareholders and lower-level employees. By contrast, in other monarchies the royal family does not play much role in governance or even in sharing the spoils of power; the king rules either in alliance with independent power holders (Barons in medieval Europe, powerful politicians in modern times) or as personal dictators who have managed to keep all potential challengers directly dependent on him through their individual political skills. 1964 1975, despite the fact that he was the most senior of the surviving sons of Ibn Saud, probably due to general agreement within the family that his temper and drinking habits made him a bad candidate, according to Herb. The Saudi monarchy fits the dynastic model quite well. Senior members of the family monopolize all important state positions, such as the defence interior, and foreign ministries, and they play a role in determining the king’s successor. (Since 2007 there is even a formal institution, the “ Allegiance Council,” staffed entirely by senior princes, that is supposed to select and confirm a new king and crown prince). Like a responsible company board, the senior princes have on occasion deposed rulers deemed to be irresponsible, and bypassed unsuitable candidates for the succession. For example, they briefly eased King Saud bin Abdulaziz from governance after he blundered with an ill-conceived plot to kill the immensely popular President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt in 1958, and then more permanently in 1964, when they formally deposed him in favor of King Faysal ; and the family chose not to make Muhammad bin Abdulaziz king in1975, despite the fact that he was the most senior of the surviving sons of Ibn Saud, probably due to general agreement within the family that his temper and drinking habits made him a bad candidate, according to Herb. Moreover, because the family is so large – Yamani quotes an estimate of 22,000 royals in 2009; polygamy plus time produces lots of male-line descendants (Ibn Saud had 43 sons by many wives, who in turn produced many sons of their own) – it can control not only the “ministries of sovereingty,” but place its members throughout the state apparatus, and in particular the armed forces, where they serve to deter coups. In fact, the extended royal family serves as a parallel information-gathering mechanism through the practice of “audiences” with royals, which it uses to both understand what the population is thinking in the absence of a free media and to provide particularized patronage; as Herb puts it, The ruling families, and especially the Al Saud, use the size of the family to extend the majlis [audience] system to as many citizens as possible … Like American members of Congress the princes of the Al Saud act as intermediaries between citizens and the bureaucracy, earning personal credit for solving the problems that arise out of a bureaucracy that is, in the first instance, a creation of the Al Saud (p. 43). The family, like many a successful political party (or mafia), has a very hierarchical culture (deference to older members is strictly enforced), effective private dispute-resolution mechanisms (including special jails for misbehaving princes, apparently), and fora where princes are expected to speak candidly and honestly about what they learn from their contacts with non-royals (princes who develop reputations as liars are not likely to go very far). And in return for lifetime submission and service, all royals receive an allowance and a state job, calibrated to their seniority and political importance, from the enormous oil revenues the Saudi state produces. (Firm figures are hard to find, for obvious reasons, but Herb cites estimates that suggest that at the height of the oil boom, in the 1970s, the al Sauds received at least 12% of all government revenue - an utterly fantastic sum). One of the key things that makes family governance work in this context is, paradoxically, the indefiniteness of the succession rule. The succession norm in Saudi Arabia, for instance, only establishes that the kingship should pass to the most senior “able” male descendant of Ibn Saud, rather than simply to the eldest son or brother of the current king. One might think that this would exacerbate the GoT-style succession conflicts common in many monarchies. (According to Kotkin, almost half of all Romanovs in Russia from Peter the Great to Nicholas II died in family disputes over succession issues, and Herb notes that the Ottoman Sultans even formalized their right to kill their surviving brothers on acceding to power in a “Law of Fratricide” in the 16th century). But Herb argues that the very indefiniteness of the succession norm, combined with the emergence of the modern state with its many positions to fill, actually incentivizes family members to “bandwagon” against ambitious princes who threaten the corporate hold of the family. Though individual princes may prefer to rule unconstrained by the “company board” of their senior brothers and uncles, they will typically prefer that the state remain in family hands over one of their brothers ruling alone or with the support of outsiders. And those who are not contending for the rulership have little incentive to jeopardize their position by supporting candidates who take “extreme” measures in their quest for power, such as threatening intrafamily violence or directly appealing to outsiders by developing alternative patronage networks or offering genuinely liberal reforms. For example, when King Saud bin Abdulaziz did a tour of the realm in 1963 distributing money to tribal chiefs in an attempt to salvage his position and undermine his brother Faysal by securing the support of “outsiders,” uncommitted family members quickly switched to Faysal’s side; as Herb says, the only effect the trip had was “to enrich some bedouin shaykhs and to further alienate his brothers, who sought a decree from the ulema declaring Faysal the ruler and making Saud king in name only” (p. 97). (Shortly after, Saud threatened violence against Faysal, which sealed his fate; he was now deposed for good). Given that different contenders will normally tend to offer similar “bargains” to influential family members and that other family members do not need to pre-commit themselves to one side or another, there is little point for uncommitted princes to strongly support candidates that threaten to overturn the family monopoly on power, while the “losing” contenders can expect to be rewarded with money and influence even if they do not inherit the kingdom. By contrast, a rigid succession rule provides incentives for ambitious royals to use more extreme measures (e.g., poisoning your brothers, appealing to the people) that risk the family monopoly on power. On this account, the Saudi family does not remain in power because of special family bonds, the certainty provided by a clear succession rule, or some Saudi cultural predisposition towards monarchy, much less because of some special symbolic capital of kingship among Arabs. And though oil helps, Herb rightly notes that the price of support is subject to inflationary pressures; more oil revenues mean potential contenders must pay more for support. King Idris of Libya was overthrown when oil revenues were flooding state coffers (take a look at the GDP per capita line in this picture ), partly because he had no family members who had incentives to defend him. The effects of US support on the al Saud family are also quite ambiguous: on the one hand, they mean the family has access to intelligence and resources otherwise unavailable; on the other hand, they provoke a cultural backlash that challengers can and have mobilized. Instead, the family's endurance in power is due to the fact that there are few incentives for family members to mobilize outsider support in their disputes; attempting to do so merely makes family members bandwagon against you. Hence, despite many divisions, on crucial questions the family tends to remain united; and a ruling class that is unified on crucial questions – meaning, a ruling class that does not seek to bring in outsider support to settle its major disputes – is very, very, hard to overthrow. This is not to say that the Al Saud family does not reach out to other sectors of Saudi society, distributing resources to favored groups or mobilizing symbolic capital to secure the support of the ulema, for example; but these actions would be quite ineffective if incentives pushed ambitious princes to mobilize outsider support on their own, “escalating” fights by, for example, courting the army or the clerical establishment as individuals. Moreover, even the mobilizing power of the symbols of kingship is typically quite limited. Herb tells a funny story that apparently circulated in the Saudi court in the 30s about the loyalty of the Bedouin to their emir: As soon as it became clear that the Emir was going to be defeated, his Bedouin followers would be the first to turn and loot his army, justifying this by saying they were his friends and that as he was going to be looted in any case, they had more right than his enemies to the spoils (p. 62).: The new US administration of President Donald Trump vowed on Monday that the United States would prevent China from taking over territory in international waters in the South China Sea, something Chinese state media has warned would require Washington to "wage war."The comments at a briefing from White House spokesman Sean Spicer signalled a sharp departure from years of cautious US handling of China's assertive pursuit of territory claims in Asia, just days after Trump took office on Friday."The US is going to make sure that we protect our interests there," Spicer said when asked if Trump agreed with comments by his Secretary of State nominee, Rex Tillerson, on Jan. 11 that China should not be allowed access to islands it has built in the contested South China Sea."It’s a question of if those islands are in fact in international waters and not part of China proper, then yeah, we’re going to make sure that we defend international territories from being taken over by one country," he said.Tillerson's remarks at his Senate confirmation hearing prompted Chinese state media to say the United States would need to "wage war" to bar China's access to the islands where it has built military-length air strips and installed weapons systems.Tillerson, who was expected to be confirmed as secretary of State on Monday, was asked at the hearing whether he supported a more aggressive posture towards China and said: "We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.”The former Exxon Mobil Corp chairman and chief executive did not elaborate on what might be done to deny China access to the islands.But analysts said his comments, like those of Spicer, suggested the possibility of U.S. military action, or even a naval blockade, that would risk armed confrontation with China, an increasingly formidable nuclear-armed military power. It is also the world's second-largest economy and the target of accusations by Trump that it is stealing American jobs.Spicer declined to elaborate when asked how the United States could enforce such a move against China, except to say: “I think, as we develop further, we’ll have more information on it.”Military experts said that while the U.S. Navy has extensive capabilities in Asia to stage blockading operations with ships, submarines and planes, any such move against China's growing naval fleets would risk dangerous escalation.Aides have said that Trump plans a major naval build-up in East Asia to counter China's rise.China's embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the White House remarks.China's Foreign Ministry said earlier this month it could not guess what Tillerson meant by his remarks, which came after Trump questioned Washington's longstanding and highly sensitive "one-China" policy over Taiwan.Washington-based South China Sea expert Mira Rapp-Hooper at the Center for a New American Security called the threats to bar China's access in the South China Sea "incredible" and said it had no basis in international law."A blockade - which is what would be required to actually bar access - is an act of war," she added."The Trump administration has begun to draw red lines in Asia that they will almost certainly not be able to uphold, but they may nonetheless be very destabilising to the relationship with China, invite crises, and convince the rest of the world that the United States is an unreliable partner."Bonnie Glaser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank called Spicer's remarks "worrisome" and said the new administration was "sending confusing and conflicting messages."Dean Cheng, a China expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Spicer's remarks showed the South China Sea was an important issue for the Trump administration.He said it was significant that neither Spicer nor Tillerson had been specific as to what actions would be taken and this left open the possibility that economic measures - instead of military steps - could be used against China and firms that carry out island building.Meh. In any case, my main objective is to attempt to catch us up to the raws before the series starts up again in mid march. So, hopefully at that time, Mangastream will pick the series back up or possibly another scanlation group because I honestly don't want to get stuck doing this for the rest of my fucking life. Anyway, see ya! Terra Cuckers signing off! PDF Read Online Update - 10th May 2016 I fixed up a few things in the chapter such as typesetting as well as cleaned it. Much better now. Links have been updated. As you probably guessed, I’ll be doing the series in the laziest way possible. But hey, at least it’s something. At any rate, even if I had a cleaner, I wouldn’t redraw because when I did the first half of last chapter it just sank in how much time I would waste doing redraw when I could just fucking translate and typeset like you know, the two main things I’m capable of.We’ve previously documented that the hacking evidence against Russia is extremely weak, and the new report on Russian hacking doesn’t say much. Indeed – if Russia hacked the Democratic party emails (from the DNC and top Clinton aide John Podesta) – the NSA would have all of the records showing exactly who did it. We asked Bill Binney what he thought of the new report. Binney is the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”). Binney is the real McCoy. As we noted in 2013, Binney has been interviewed by virtually all of the mainstream media, including CBS, ABC, CNN, New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, PBS and many others. Binney tells Washington’s Blog: I expected to see the IP’s or other signatures of APT’s 28/29 [the entities which the U.S. claims hacked the Democratic emails] and where they were located and how/when the data got transferred to them from DNC/HRC [i.e. Hillary Rodham Clinton]/etc. They seem to have been following APT 28/29 since at least 2015, so, where are they? Further, once we see the data being transferred to them, when and how did they transfer that data to Wikileaks? This would be evidence of trying to influence our election by getting the truth of our corrupt system out. And, as Edward Snowden said, once they have the IP’s and/or other signatures of 28/29 and DNC/HRC/etc., NSA would use Xkeyscore to help trace data passing across the network and show where it went. [Background.] In addition, since Wikileaks is (and has been) a cast iron target for NSA/GCHQ/etc for a number of years there should be no excuse for them missing data going to any one associated with Wikileaks. *** Too many words means they don’t have clear evidence of how the data got to Wikileaks. Binney designed the NSA’s electronic surveillance system, so he would know.This is a guest post from Mozilla technical writer Judy DeMocker. She recently chatted with Stefan Van Damme about his extension Turn Off the Lights, and his experience porting it from its original Google Chrome version. Take it away, Judy… Stefan Van Damme had a small problem—but it happened all the time. He liked to watch videos online, but video players on sites like YouTube don’t eliminate the other content on the screen—and that makes it hard to focus on the show. So Stefan, who lives in Antwerp, Belgium, built his first browser add-on to dim the lights on distracting content. And since so many people love movies, he built it for seven different browsers for users around the world. Stefan’s extension, Turn Off the Lights, has been downloaded more than 3 million times. With that many users, it’s critical for him to be able to update it quickly and easily, without spending days or weeks on maintenance. So he’s excited about the new WebExtensions API, which makes it easy for him to port his extensions to Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge using a universal code base. Porting to Firefox What browser did you first create your extension for? Google Chrome Why was it important for you to write your extension for Firefox? It is important to me that everyone can have the Turn Off the Lights experience in their favorite web browser. And Firefox is still one of the most popular web browsers out there today. Did you migrate your add-on from the legacy Firefox platform, XUL? How difficult was that? In the first version of Turn Off the Lights, I used the XUL technology. If I had to migrate to the new version, it would be difficult. However, I already had the Chrome extension, so migrating that code to Firefox was very easy. There was only one file I had to change, the manifest file. All the other files, I had to do nothing. How difficult was it to learn and write to the WebExtensions API? (1 = easiest; 10 = hardest) Since Firefox now supports the WebExtensions API, it was very easy to take code that runs on Chrome or Edge and put it on Firefox. I can use the same code base and just change the settings to work with each browser. If I continue with Chrome extensions, then it’s just a “1,” very easy. Did you find all the functionality of your XUL add-on in the WebExtensions API? Or did you have to learn a new way to write the same features? At the time I wrote the XUL add-on from my Chrome extension code, it was difficult, but I got all the functions inside. Today WebExtensions have more APIs, even those that extend outside the website content. For example, the extension can now dim the toolbar of Firefox thanks to the browser.theme API. And that is very unique and also cool. What problems, if any, did you experience developing for Firefox? Mostly I had trouble with the performance of the browser. If I click on my gray lamp button, it goes very slowly to that capacity level. On other browsers, it’s one click and done. I understand Mozilla is working hard to improve this. What do you think of the new Quantum version of Firefox? I see some good improvement in the Firefox Quantum web browser. That is what I like, and it can also be good for my users. Tools & Resources How has the technology changed since 2009? At first, I used Notepad ++ on Windows to write my code. Now I use a Mac and Microsoft Visual Studio. Visual Studio is a better experience for both platforms. I can use it on Mac and Windows (using Boot Camp). I can switch to a Windows PC and use the same developer kit to write code and test it also. How long does it take to publish a Firefox extension? It’s very quick to publish an update to an add-on. Normally I just zip it and click on “Publish” and it’s done. Yesterday, I updated my Date Today add-on, and it took 10 to 15 minutes. How is adoption of your new extension? It’s good. Turn Off the Lights has been downloaded more than 3,000,000 times. I’’ve set up my website to detect a visitor’s browser and send them to the correct hyperlink, so they can download the version that works for them. How long does it take up update your different extensions? So in browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, it takes about two hours to update my add-on. I do one or two major updates for Turn Off the Lights a year, for instance moving from version 3.3 to 3.4. Those take more time. But it’s worth it. I get user feedback from my users that those updates provides better harmony in the current web experience. What resources helped you learn about the WebExtensions API? The MDN website was helpful. I was working with the Chrome documentation, but their site only shows information for the Chrome platform. That’s a minus for the Google team. They didn’t have a browser compatibility table that could show me if a feature is available on another web browser. What help, if any, did you get from Mozilla? I didn’t talk to anybody at Mozilla. But I do report bugs and performance issues. It’s important to get a great experience on all web browsers. What advice would you give other developers who are thinking of creating extensions for Firefox? Just do it. And, listen to your users’ feedback. They are the experts on how you can improve your Firefox extension. Related content Q&A with Grammarly’s Sergey Yavnyi Why I Switched from Chrome to Firefox Quantum Porting a Google Chrome Extension Cross-browser extensions, available now in Firefox Remaking Lightbeam as a Browser ExtensionGet the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email A Merseyside man who enjoys spam so much that he changed his middle name to “I Love Spam” has been unveiled as the new face of the brand. And Mark Benson, 41, also revealed how he is waiting for a new passport listing “I Love Spam” as his legal middle name. The disability support worker, from Halewood, says his wife didn’t believe him when he announced that he planned to change his middle name in honour of his favourite food – and she was shocked when he arrived home one day with the deed poll documents. Mr Benson said: “I eat Spam three or four times a week. I do all the recipes and sometimes I make up my own as well. I changed my middle name two years ago. It used to be William. My wife didn’t think I was serious at first, but I just went and changed it. “Now I’m waiting for a new passport. This will be my first one with my new middle name on it. “There are pictures of me when I was two years old enjoying a Spam sandwich. I love it.” Mr Benson’s two grandfathers, nan and uncle all used to work at the Newforge Foods factory in Gateacre where Spam was produced from 1941 to 1998. This year marks 75 years since the first can of Spam was manufactured at that factory, so Spam is heading off on a UK tour to celebrate. The Spam Can Tour was launched by Mr Benson at Liverpool ONE yesterday. The tour will be on Paradise Place in Liverpool ONE from 11am to 5pm, today and tomorrow.Ernest Vassell CBS/WFOR (CBS/WFOR) MIAMI - North Miami Beach Police are piecing together an officer-involved shooting and killing of a mentally disabled man. The man was originally thought to be carrying a gun but it was later determined to be a toy rifle. Officials told CBS station WFOR that the incident began Wednesday afternoon when officers responded to several calls about a man seen walking around with a rifle. Witnesses told the station that at one point the man aimed the rifle at a neighborhood dog. According to police reports, when officers arrived there was some sort of confrontation which caused one officer to open fire on the man. However, a subsequent investigation revealed that the "rifle" was a toy. The injured man was then taken to a local hospital where he later died. Family members say the man police killed was 56-year-old Ernest Vassell. "They murdered him in cold blood for a toy gun!" cried Vassell's older sister Claire Harding. "That's no reason for you
ew Catcher, worth 10,000 points. Mew has a 1/151 chance of appearing in this game. 151 happens to be the total number of Pokémon at the time when Super Smash Bros. came out. As a Poké Ball Pokémon Mew reappears in Super Smash Bros. Melee, again flying off instead of attacking. The only difference in the "attack" is that Mew appears in its bubble. No character is harmed by Mew's "attack" in Melee either. Mew can only be seen if all characters are unlocked. This makes Mew one of only two unlockable Pokémon in Melee, the other being Celebi. Both have a 1/251 chance of appearing in this game. 251 happens to be the total number of Pokémon at the time when Melee came out. The first time the players see a Mew, they will get a notice saying that it was their first time seeing it. As a trophy Mew is featured as a collectible trophy; this trophy must be specifically earned by playing Hard or Very Hard in All-Star Mode to unlock the trophy. Continuing is allowed to get this trophy. Trophy description in Melee Mew is an extremely rare Pokémon that has been seen by only a few people. Information on every Pokémon in the world is contained in Mew's cell structure, so it has the ability to use any and all TMs and HMs. Some Pokémon scholars believe Mew to be the ancestor of all existing Pokémon, but the idea is debatable. As a Poké Ball Pokémon Mew returns yet again in the third installment. This time though, it drops a CD. It is the most uncommon of all the Pokémon in the game. After the first time brawlers see it, they get a notice saying that it was their first time: "You've encountered Mew for the first time. Strange things do happen." Mew appears at a rate of 1/493. 493 happens to be the total number of Pokémon as of Diamond and Pearl, including Arceus, who hadn't even officially been revealed by Nintendo yet when Brawl came out. If the player has collected all of the CDs, Mew will drop stickers instead, like Jirachi. As a Trophy Mew also returns as a collectible trophy, though unlike in Melee, the Mew trophy is found randomly, either by obtaining it in the Coin Launcher, or finding it in Subspace Emissary. Trophy Description in Brawl A New Species Pokémon. An extremely rare Pokémon that contains the DNA of all other Pokémon, it is thought by many scholars to be a Pokémon ancestor, considering the wide range of moves it can use. On top of being able to make itself invisible, Mew can also transform into any opponent Pokémon and use characteristics and moves in exactly the same way." Pokémon Red/Blue Pokémon Diamond/Pearl Trophy Description Mew is a Pokemon previously thought to be extinct but rediscovered by Dr. Fuji. This Legendary Pokemon doesn't often show itself to humans, so it is considered quite lucky to see one. In Smash Bros., Mew will appear and then use Fly to sail away, leaving behind a gift. Thanks, Mew!Forgive me, but prior to you so rudely dragging me into your dirt pit, I had a pony-pedi, and I am not about to chip a hoof because you dislike my style of digging.Awww the episode that just made meyou forever Rarityand the diamond dogs I did enjoy their appearance as well. I just had to get this done after yesterdays success and its super cold outside a winter wonderland if you will.I was a little more inventive with this one. When I initially sketched out ideas for the card I had dramatic spike scenes playing in my head. But instead I wanted to do a humorous Looney tunes inspired design for the piecesince I laugh and giggle a lot at this episode. I had the classic looney theme playing in my head the whole time I was drawing the guard doglol.MLP title cards because why not the creative team behind the show deserves it. : hug:I want to make one for every episode with its own quirky style that best suits that particular episode; P. wish me luck Bronies.Link to the series gallery [link] I know I repeat myself a lot in descriptions but thats how Jowy:rolls: and always shall.....reminder to self i need to update my DA journal this weekendUntil next deviation LATERSAll drawn on Photoshop CS6 with my Wacom tablet 5Like ithate itits up to you not marmiteWhen the distant planet Meduso was colonized, the settlers didn't expect the natural fuels to dry up as quickly as they did. The elite few on the planet, not wanting to relinquish their luxury, set about the "taming" of the planets fauna for their own use. One such example is the Quadrolume species, a whale-like creature possessing incredible bio-luminescent organs used for its life in the vast depths of the oceans. When captured by "fishing" teams, the Quadrolume is blinded with chemicals, and a metal and glass shield is grafted over its eyes to slow infection from reaching the central nerves. Metal plates are then grafted onto its back, each clamping onto an individual vertebrae, so when tugged on the creature tries to turn away from the pain, creating steering. Finally, the majority of its back is split open, and a yacht is clamped, welded, or grafted onto the remainder of the Quadrolume's spine. These creatures then live out the rest of their usually short lives far from their natural depths, blind and in constant pain. Yet in spite of the well-known ethical problems with this practice they are still hunted in scores, since it is extremely lucrative for those who participate.Image of Audio-Sound Breakout – WTV020SD It has been a long time coming! We now have Eagle 6 schematic and layout import. Multiple sheet schematics—no problem! Multi layer PCBs and silkscreen images—we can import that too! Import any Eagle 6 design. Upverter is now the easiest and most complete way to share your Eagle designs with the world. Give it a try with our free open source account. If you are interested in open sourcing your project or have a bulk import that you would like to do, please contact support and we will give you a hand. We are working on Eagle 5 support, and we anticipate that it will be available in the coming weeks. If you have a project that we can use to test, send support an email and we will see what we can do.David Edwards and Nick Juliano, Raw Story Sen. Joe Biden, the loquacious long-shot Democratic presidential candidate, warned President Bush Thursday that he would move for impeachment if the president unilaterally authorized a military strike against Iran. “The President has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran and … if he does, as foreign relations committee chairman and former chairman of judiciary, I will move to impeach him,” Biden told a crowd of about 100 potential voters at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. Biden said he is meeting with constitutional law experts and plans to send Bush a legal memo formally outlining his warning, according to Seacoast Online, which reported his comments. The senior Delaware senator told the crowd that calls for Bush’s immediate impeachment were valid but may not have enough constitutional support to make them viable. He added that Bush wasn’t the only White House figure who deserves to be booted. “If you’re going to impeach George Bush, you better impeach Cheney first,” Biden said, garnering applause from the crowd. (Original Article)Sunday, July 13th, 2014 PASADENA, Calif. (KABC) -- Three people were killed and two others injured Saturday after a shooting in Pasadena that led to a police standoff, officials said. Pasadena police responded to a call about shots fired at about 4:20 p.m. in the 1700 block of Summit Avenue. Upon arrival, 35-year-old John Izeal Smith opened fire at officers, police said. Investigators said Smith was a renter and was having a dispute with his landlord. Officers found the body of a man in his 70s inside a home. A woman and another man were also gunned down on the street. Smith initially barricaded himself in a home, but ultimately surrendered to police and was taken into custody. Smith is alleged to have killed the three victims and injured two others. No officers were hurt. Smith, a Pasadena resident, was booked at Pasadena city jail on murder charges. nullDeluxe LP Package: LP (Black Vinyl) Non-Sequitur Segues Bonus Picture Disc 12″ 24” x 36” Folded Poster Download cardf Translucent PVC slipcase Blue LP: Limited first edition of 4,000 LPs on blue vinyl Los Angeles’s prodigal songwriting son Ariel Pink shares his eleventh studio album, Dedicated to Bobby Jameson, September 15. The album’s title makes a direct and heartfelt reference to a real-life L.A. musician, long presumed dead, who resurfaced online in 2007 after 35 reclusive years to pen his autobiography and tragic life story in a series of blogs and YouTube tirades. “His book and life resonated with me to such a degree,” Pink states, “that I felt a need to dedicate my latest record to him.” Dedicated to Bobby Jameson begins at the end and ends at the beginning. “We follow the protagonist through a battery of tests and milestones, the first of which sees him reborn into life out of death,” Pink explains, referencing the opening track “Time To Meet Your God.” “From there, he seesaws his way between the innocent love and the rock-solid edifice of childhood-worn trauma that together constitute his lifelong initiation into the realm of artifice and theatrical disposability.” Building upon his singular vision of pop songcraft, established by such seminal records as The Doldrums, Worn Copy, House Arrest, Loverboy, Before Today, Mature Themes, and pom pom, Pink revisits themes that have haunted his sonic cinemascapes since the late 1990s: mismanaged dreams, west coast mythologies, itinerant criminals, haunted boulevards, Hollywood legends, the impermanence of romance, bubblegum artifice, movie stardom, childhood terror, acceptance of self, and narcissism projected through a celluloid filter of controversion. Raised in Beverly Hills, Ariel Pink (born Ariel Marcus Rosenberg) started out as a visual artist before becoming a recording artist in the late ‘90s while attending Cal Arts. Between 1996 and 2004, he honed his craft writing, performing, recording, and producing a body of work that was experimental, impressionistic, and improvisational—often creating melodic accompaniments and percussive elements with his voice, as opposed to traditional drums or drum machines. In 2003, Pink attracted the attention of Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label, earning his home recordings a small and devoted fan base through a series of limited edition reissues. Drawing upon a list of long-forgotten iconoclasts and trailblazers like the Shaggs, the Cure, the Velvet Underground, Destroy All Monsters, the Godz, Cabaret Voltaire, and R. Stevie Moore, Pink set himself to the task of redefining the musical lexicon for himself and others. “This mission,” he says, “remains mine to this day.” Though critically misunderstood at the time, Pink’s lo-fi recordings wielded an enormous influence with insiders and outsiders, earning him the unsolicited distinction as “the godfather of chillwave” and the face of the emergent genre of Hypnagogic Pop. Upon signing to the landmark record label 4AD in 2009, Pink’s fortunes with critics began to reverse, and his resulting first single, “Round and Round,” was named the #1 Record of 2010 by Pitchfork. Since that period, Pink’s influence has grown, even as he and his work have waxed and waned within the popular political conversation. His music, in its earnest genre drag, continues to polarize. His embrace of the dark edges of human folly and despair is juxtaposed with superficial joy, touching on aspects normally avoided in pop music like sarcasm, suspicion, nihilism, self-loathing, and denial. These shadows of the self make their brighter counterparts—love, desire, nostalgia, dreams, acceptance, and epiphany—all the more transcendent, striking deep chords of emotion with fans. In his frenzied portrayals of humanity’s baseness and beauty, Ariel Pink spins pathos into paradise. Standout tracks from Dedicated to Bobby Jameson include “Feels Like Heaven,” a lovelorn insta-classic paying tribute to the promise of romance, “Another Weekend,” which encapsulates the lingering euphoria of a regrettable weekend over the edge, “Dedicated to Bobby Jameson,” a rah-rah psych romp paying homage to L.A.’s punk history, and “Time to Live,” an ironic anti-suicide anthem that promotes survival as a form of resistance before devolving into a grungy, “Video Killed the Radio Star”-style breakdown that supposes life and death as being more or less the same fate and embraces the immortal anarchy of a rock song as an alternative to the prison of reality. Alternately contained and sprawling, Dedicated to Bobby Jameson is a shimmering pop odyssey that represents more astonishing peaks and menacing valleys in the career of a man who, through sheer originality and nerve, has become an American rock and roll institution. The album marks his first full-length release with the Brooklyn-based independent label Mexican Summer.Sort by: Sort by Featured Items Newest Items Bestselling Alphabetical: A to Z Alphabetical: Z to A Avg. Customer Review Price: Low to High Price: High to Low A Game with a Difference! Call of Cthulhu is a roleplaying game of mystery and horror, in which players take on the role of investigators to uncover the secrets of the cosmos. In the course of a game, the investigations may find themselves battling against crazy cults and horrors from beyond space Call of Cthulhu, created by gaming legend Sandy Petersen is the definitive horror roleplaying game and has won over 40 awards including being inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Art and Design Hall of Fame. "No swords. No wizards. Just regular humans, in way over their heads as they work to uncover the mind-shattering horrors of the Lovecraftian mythos. That's the promise of the Call of Cthulhu RPG, and over 30 years later we're still coming back for more." - Gizmodo Now in its seventh edition, its never been a better time to start playing Call of Cthulhu, especially with the newly-introduced Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. Rule Books Looking for our core rules? Go no further. Just click here. You can see the books to run the game if you are a keeper, and to flesh out your investigators if you are a player. "As the men passed the site of Wilbur Whateley’s abode they shuddered visibly, and seemed again to mix hesitancy with their zeal. It was no joke tracking down something as big as a house that one could not see, but that had all the vicious malevolence of a daemon. Opposite the base of Sentinel Hill the tracks left the road, and there was a fresh bending and matting visible along the broad swath marking the monster’s former route to and from the summit.” -From The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft Diving Deep We also have great scenarios, supplements and play aids, and more. Investigate the categories at the top of the page, or scroll down to see our newest releases. “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” -From The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft Free adventures and character sheets? We have them too! Want to Read some Independent Reviews? “Chaosium’s tabletop game is the antithesis of D&D. Heroic, sword-swinging adventures are out; eldritch horrors and insanity are in. It’s not an empowering RPG, where muscles and weapons can win the day. The players are attempting to understand and defeat an evil that can’t be harmed, solving mysteries that will surely drive them mad. Death is the least of their worries.” - PCGAMESN With its 7th edition, Call of Cthulhu further solidifies its position as one of the greatest role-playing games ever made. - GeekNative This is still Call of Cthulhu, and the crown jewel of any version of the system is the Sanity Rules. Seventh Edition does not disappoint. - Microphones of Madness You can't really overstate how influential Call of Cthulhu is in the world of tabletop role-playing games. - Gizmodo I'd have to say it's still my favorite RPG. - 19th Level Check out our Newest ReleasesMysterious Virus Kills Dogs in Ohio Okay, folks **IMPORTANT UPDATE REGARDING THE OHIO VIRUS** I spoke to Dr. Forshey, the state veterinarian for Ohio, this morning (Friday, September 6), at length. He said that it is TOO soon to state definitively that the problem is a circovirus. The tissue tested did test positively for circovirus, and it is likely that it is circovirus, but they do not know if that is what’s making the dogs so sick. They are still awaiting test results on several other dogs. THEY DO KNOW THAT THE MEANS OF CONTAGION IS THROUGH FECES. They do not yet have a handle on the period of incubation. Dogs cannot “catch” this virus from pigs, He said the best thing that dog-owners can do is to behave as people do in a flu epidemic. Dog parks, especially, should be avoided. As for dog shows, he says that it is up to individuals to determine their own comfort level regarding risk. Clearly, do not allow your dogs to be near the poop of other dogs. It will be incumbent on dog day care providers and boarding kennels to keep their premises very clean. Probably this virus is NOT confined to Ohio. We may just be the first state to recognize that this is it’s own problem. He said they expect to have more information, but it may be a couple of weeks, these tests take time. Please remember, if your dog has any of these symptoms–vomiting, bloody diarrhea, foaming at the mouth; get them to a vet immediately. Do not try to ride this out, don’t try to treat it at home. Please note, as of this evening, September 5, the virus has been positively identified (by the veterinary lab at University of California at Davis) as one of the circoviruses. Transmission may have something to do with pigeons. Or not. There is still very little information. But we are including this, in case it is helpful to anyone trying to rule out or confirm a diagnosis. The symptoms mimic many other things: parvo, giardia, salmonella, coronavirus. The State Veterinarian for Ohio, Tony Forshey, has indicated that samples from multiple cases have been tested for these well-known illnesses, but have all come back negative. Tissue samples with the virus have been sent to the veterinary labs at the University of California at Davis, and test results are expected back on Monday, September 9, at which point the Ohio Department of Agriculture is expected to make a formal statement about the virus. A statement issued August 16th by Dr. Forshey’s office indicated only that they were dealing with an unknown virus, and that testing was continuing. Since then there have been only informal updates, including one through Jill Brown, DVM of the Village Animal Clinic in Columbus Ohio, who issued the following statement: VERY IMPORTANT HEALTH ALERT FOR DOG OWNERS. I talked to Dr Forshey, the state veterinarian, and he confirmed that they are working on identifying the cause of death in several dogs. They suspect that it is a virus, possible Circo virus. This virus has not been found in dogs before (it’s found commonly in pigs). They have sent tissue samples to UC Davis, which is the only lab that can identify the virus. Ohio State has already ruled out common causes like salmonella, parvovirus, campylobacter, hemorrhagic gastroenteritis (HGE). He thinks they will have it figured out by Monday and will have a national news release. Ohio is the only state seeing it so far (figures!). The important thing is that dog owners need to get their dog to the vet ASAP at the first sign of vomiting and bloody diarrhea. Dr Forshey indicated that most of the dogs are surviving if treated early. There is, of course, no vaccine available. Please share this information to your own Facebook feed so we can reach as many dog owners as possible. We spoke to Dr. Forshey’s office today, Thursday, September 5 and they confirmed that they are still awaiting test results from California. They have, understandably, been inundated with calls. There are no websites about this virus, no studies, and certainly no vaccine yet. Whether or not the vaccine for one of the porcine circovirus will be employed is only speculative at this point. We are at the tip of the iceberg with this one, and every one is understandably concerned. The biggest question is how is this virus transmitted, and simply put, no one knows the answer yet. Although it is said to have only been found in Ohio so far, the chance of that statement being accurate is probably nil. As we learn more about this, I think we will find that it is far more widespread and that we may have been dealing with it longer than we think. As to how contagious it might be, this is yet to be determined. Three dogs died at a Dog Day Care in Norwood– but other dogs in the same facility did not even get sick. The good news is that dogs who are treated promptly have been making good recoveries, though the treatment is sometimes intense and arduous. Since no one knows quite what they are dealing with, care has come in the form of treating the symptoms and keeping the dog well supported throughout. Please! If you have any concerns about this, contact your veterinarian. Be alert to your own dog’s health. If there is vomiting, bloody diarrhea, foaming at the mouth– in any combination– not all symptoms may be present, get them to a veterinarian as soon as possible. As to whether or not to attend shows, take your dog to dog parks, or to day care or boarding kennels– only you can make this decision. If you will be leaving your dog somewhere, alert the caregivers to this situation. Keep your dog’s immune system hale and hearty. If you have specific questions, the best person to answer those is your vet. Feel free to share this post. We only want to educate folks to be on the lookout for this. As we get updates, we will post them here and on Fort St. Clair’s Facebook Page. If you are a veterinarian and you need further assistance with this, the number for the State Veterinarian’s office is (614) 728-6220.2000 (Postcode) 2006 (Postcode) 2007 (Postcode) 2008 (Postcode) 2009 (Postcode) 2010 (Postcode) 2011 (Postcode) 2015 (Postcode) 2016 (Postcode) 2017 (Postcode) 2018 (Postcode) 2019 (Postcode) 2020 (Postcode) 2021 (Postcode) 2022 (Postcode) 2023 (Postcode) 2024 (Postcode) 2025 (Postcode) 2026 (Postcode) 2027 (Postcode) 2028 (Postcode) 2029 (Postcode) 2030 (Postcode) 2031 (Postcode) 2032 (Postcode) 2033 (Postcode) 2034 (Postcode) 2035 (Postcode) 2036 (Postcode) 2037 (Postcode) 2038 (Postcode) 2039 (Postcode) 2040 (Postcode) 2041 (Postcode) 2042 (Postcode) 2043 (Postcode) 2044 (Postcode) 2045 (Postcode) 2046 (Postcode) 2047 (Postcode) 2048 (Postcode) 2049 (Postcode) 2050 (Postcode) 2052 (Postcode) 2060 (Postcode) 2061 (Postcode) 2062 (Postcode) 2063 (Postcode) 2064 (Postcode) 2065 (Postcode) 2066 (Postcode) 2067 (Postcode) 2068 (Postcode) 2069 (Postcode) 2070 (Postcode) 2071 (Postcode) 2072 (Postcode) 2073 (Postcode) 2074 (Postcode) 2075 (Postcode) 2076 (Postcode) 2077 (Postcode) 2079 (Postcode) 2080 (Postcode) 2081 (Postcode) 2082 (Postcode) 2083 (Postcode) 2084 (Postcode) 2085 (Postcode) 2086 (Postcode) 2087 (Postcode) 2088 (Postcode) 2089 (Postcode) 2090 (Postcode) 2092 (Postcode) 2093 (Postcode) 2094 (Postcode) 2095 (Postcode) 2096 (Postcode) 2097 (Postcode) 2099 (Postcode) 2100 (Postcode) 2101 (Postcode) 2102 (Postcode) 2103 (Postcode) 2104 (Postcode) 2105 (Postcode) 2106 (Postcode) 2107 (Postcode) 2108 (Postcode) 2109 (Postcode) 2110 (Postcode) 2111 (Postcode) 2112 (Postcode) 2113 (Postcode) 2114 (Postcode) 2115 (Postcode) 2116 (Postcode) 2117 (Postcode) 2118 (Postcode) 2119 (Postcode) 2120 (Postcode) 2121 (Postcode) 2122 (Postcode) 2123 (Postcode) 2125 (Postcode) 2126 (Postcode) 2127 (Postcode) 2128 (Postcode) 2129 (Postcode) 2130 (Postcode) 2131 (Postcode) 2132 (Postcode) 2133 (Postcode) 2134 (Postcode) 2135 (Postcode) 2136 (Postcode) 2137 (Postcode) 2138 (Postcode) 2139 (Postcode) 2140 (Postcode) 2141 (Postcode) 2142 (Postcode) 2143 (Postcode) 2144 (Postcode) 2145 (Postcode) 2146 (Postcode) 2147 (Postcode) 2148 (Postcode) 2150 (Postcode) 2151 (Postcode) 2152 (Postcode) 2153 (Postcode) 2154 (Postcode) 2155 (Postcode) 2156 (Postcode) 2157 (Postcode) 2158 (Postcode) 2159 (Postcode) 2160 (Postcode) 2161 (Postcode) 2162 (Postcode) 2163 (Postcode) 2164 (Postcode) 2165 (Postcode) 2166 (Postcode) 2167 (Postcode) 2168 (Postcode) 2170 (Postcode) 2171 (Postcode) 2172 (Postcode) 2173 (Postcode) 2174 (Postcode) 2175 (Postcode) 2176 (Postcode) 2177 (Postcode) 2178 (Postcode) 2179 (Postcode) 2190 (Postcode) 2191 (Postcode) 2192 (Postcode) 2193 (Postcode) 2194 (Postcode) 2195 (Postcode) 2196 (Postcode) 2197 (Postcode) 2198 (Postcode) 2199 (Postcode) 2200 (Postcode) 2203 (Postcode) 2204 (Postcode) 2205 (Postcode) 2206 (Postcode) 2207 (Postcode) 2208 (Postcode) 2209 (Postcode) 2210 (Postcode) 2211 (Postcode) 2212 (Postcode) 2213 (Postcode) 2214 (Postcode) 2216 (Postcode) 2217 (Postcode) 2218 (Postcode) 2219 (Postcode) 2220 (Postcode) 2221 (Postcode) 2222 (Postcode) 2223 (Postcode) 2224 (Postcode) 2225 (Postcode) 2226 (Postcode) 2227 (Postcode) 2228 (Postcode) 2229 (Postcode) 2230 (Postcode) 2231 (Postcode) 2232 (Postcode) 2233 (Postcode) 2234 (Postcode) 2250 (Postcode) 2251 (Postcode) 2256 (Postcode) 2257 (Postcode) 2258 (Postcode) 2259 (Postcode) 2260 (Postcode) 2261 (Postcode) 2262 (Postcode) 2263 (Postcode) 2264 (Postcode) 2265 (Postcode) 2267 (Postcode) 2278 (Postcode) 2280 (Postcode) 2281 (Postcode) 2282 (Postcode) 2283 (Postcode) 2284 (Postcode) 2285 (Postcode) 2286 (Postcode) 2287 (Postcode) 2289 (Postcode) 2290 (Postcode) 2291 (Postcode) 2292 (Postcode) 2293 (Postcode) 2294 (Postcode) 2295 (Postcode) 2296 (Postcode) 2297 (Postcode) 2298 (Postcode) 2299 (Postcode) 2300 (Postcode) 2302 (Postcode) 2303 (Postcode) 2304 (Postcode) 2305 (Postcode) 2306 (Postcode) 2307 (Postcode) 2308 (Postcode) 2311 (Postcode) 2312 (Postcode) 2314 (Postcode) 2315 (Postcode) 2316 (Postcode) 2317 (Postcode) 2318 (Postcode) 2319 (Postcode) 2320 (Postcode) 2321 (Postcode) 2322 (Postcode) 2323 (Postcode) 2324 (Postcode) 2325 (Postcode) 2326 (Postcode) 2327 (Postcode) 2328 (Postcode) 2329 (Postcode) 2330 (Postcode) 2331 (Postcode) 2333 (Postcode) 2334 (Postcode) 2335 (Postcode) 2336 (Postcode) 2337 (Postcode) 2338 (Postcode) 2339 (Postcode) 2340 (Postcode) 2341 (Postcode) 2342 (Postcode) 2343 (Postcode) 2344 (Postcode) 2345 (Postcode) 2346 (Postcode) 2347 (Postcode) 2350 (Postcode) 2351 (Postcode) 2352 (Postcode) 2353 (Postcode) 2354 (Postcode) 2355 (Postcode) 2356 (Postcode) 2357 (Postcode) 2358 (Postcode) 2359 (Postcode) 2360 (Postcode) 2361 (Postcode) 2365 (Postcode) 2369 (Postcode) 2370 (Postcode) 2371 (Postcode) 2372 (Postcode) 2379 (Postcode) 2380 (Postcode) 2381 (Postcode) 2382 (Postcode) 2386 (Postcode) 2387 (Postcode) 2388 (Postcode) 2390 (Postcode) 2395 (Postcode) 2396 (Postcode) 2397 (Postcode) 2398 (Postcode) 2399 (Postcode) 2400 (Postcode) 2401 (Postcode) 2402 (Postcode) 2403 (Postcode) 2404 (Postcode) 2405 (Postcode) 2406 (Postcode) 2408 (Postcode) 2409 (Postcode) 2410 (Postcode) 2411 (Postcode) 2415 (Postcode) 2420 (Postcode) 2421 (Postcode) 2422 (Postcode) 2423 (Postcode) 2424 (Postcode) 2425 (Postcode) 2426 (Postcode) 2427 (Postcode) 2428 (Postcode) 2429 (Postcode) 2430 (Postcode) 2431 (Postcode) 2439 (Postcode) 2440 (Postcode) 2441 (Postcode) 2443 (Postcode) 2444 (Postcode) 2445 (Postcode) 2446 (Postcode) 2447 (Postcode) 2448 (Postcode) 2449 (Postcode) 2450 (Postcode) 2452 (Postcode) 2453 (Postcode) 2454 (Postcode) 2455 (Postcode) 2456 (Postcode) 2460 (Postcode) 2462 (Postcode) 2463 (Postcode) 2464 (Postcode) 2465 (Postcode) 2466 (Postcode) 2469 (Postcode) 2470 (Postcode) 2471 (Postcode) 2472 (Postcode) 2473 (Postcode) 2474 (Postcode) 2475 (Postcode) 2476 (Postcode) 2477 (Postcode) 2478 (Postcode) 2479 (Postcode) 2480 (Postcode) 2481 (Postcode) 2482 (Postcode) 2483 (Postcode) 2484 (Postcode) 2485 (Postcode) 2486 (Postcode) 2487 (Postcode) 2488 (Postcode) 2489 (Postcode) 2490 (Postcode) 2500 (Postcode) 2502 (Postcode) 2505 (Postcode) 2506 (Postcode) 2508 (Postcode) 2515 (Postcode) 2516 (Postcode) 2517 (Postcode) 2518 (Postcode) 2519 (Postcode) 2522 (Postcode) 2525 (Postcode) 2526 (Postcode) 2527 (Postcode) 2528 (Postcode) 2529 (Postcode) 2530 (Postcode) 2533 (Postcode) 2534 (Postcode) 2535 (Postcode) 2536 (Postcode) 2537 (Postcode) 2538 (Postcode) 2539 (Postcode) 2540 (Postcode) 2541 (Postcode) 2545 (Postcode) 2546 (Postcode) 2548 (Postcode) 2549 (Postcode) 2550 (Postcode) 2551 (Postcode) 2555 (Postcode) 2556 (Postcode) 2557 (Postcode) 2558 (Postcode) 2559 (Postcode) 2560 (Postcode) 2563 (Postcode) 2564 (Postcode) 2565 (Postcode) 2566 (Postcode) 2567 (Postcode) 2568 (Postcode) 2569 (Postcode) 2570 (Postcode) 2571 (Postcode) 2572 (Postcode) 2573 (Postcode) 2574 (Postcode) 2575 (Postcode) 2576 (Postcode) 2577 (Postcode) 2578 (Postcode) 2579 (Postcode) 2580 (Postcode) 2581 (Postcode) 2582 (Postcode) 2583 (Postcode) 2584 (Postcode) 2585 (Postcode) 2586 (Postcode) 2587 (Postcode) 2588 (Postcode) 2590 (Postcode) 2594 (Postcode) 2600 (Postcode) 2601 (Postcode) 2602 (Postcode) 2603 (Postcode) 2604 (Postcode) 2605 (Postcode) 2606 (Postcode) 2607 (Postcode) 2609 (Postcode) 2611 (Postcode) 2612 (Postcode) 2614 (Postcode) 2615 (Postcode) 2617 (Postcode) 2618 (Postcode) 2619
asher effects. You behaved yourself, though: you were the monster, not the one who was chasing me but the one who was saving me. Don’t forget we need the ﬁrst draft by Friday. Thanks for saving me. Kiss kiss.” Listening to Cristi is a delectable destruction. I love her proposals on topics I don’t like. For her, I’ve written scripts on genetically modiﬁed corn and Brahman cattle ranching. Even though the work is a pretext to get closer to her, I still haven’t taken the ﬁnal step. And it’s because up until now, unlikely as it may sound, my best quality has been my scripts. She met me when I was horrendously drunk, but even so, or maybe because of it, she considered me capable of writing a documentary exposing the dangers of transgenic grains. Ever since, she’s talked to me as if our previous project had won an Oscar and now we were just gunning for prestige at Cannes. The latest episode of her enthusiasm led me to syncretism. “We Mexicans are pure collage,” she said. It’s hard to believe, but spoken by her, it sounded sublime. I’d disconnected my answering machine because I wasn’t sure I could handle another message from Cristi and her magniﬁcent nightmares. Sometimes I wonder what I’d have to lose by telling her once and for all that I couldn’t care less about syncretism and the only collage I’m interested in is her. But then I remember she likes to take care of people. She thinks of herself as a nurse. Maybe the scripts are the therapy she’s assigned to me and all she wants is for me to take my medicine. But the good monster thing sounds racy, almost pornographic. Although it would be more pornographic if she congratulated me on being the bad monster. The soul of a woman is a complicated thing. Yes, I disconnected the answering machine to erase any record of the voice that obsessed me. When the phone rang twenty times, I couldn’t help wondering what kind of psychopath was trying to get hold of me. That’s how I ended up talking to Katzenberg again. He was still on the line. He had run out of polite phrases and was waiting for my response. I looked in my wallet: two green 200-peso notes, with traces of cocaine (not enough). The sight alone convinced me, but Katzenberg still made an emotional appeal: “This isn’t the ﬁrst time they’ve asked me to come back to Mexico. Believe it or not, the Frida story was a hit. I didn’t want to come back, and a colleague, an anti-Semitic Irishman who was trying to fuck my girlfriend, spread the rumor that I didn’t want to come back because I’d done something dirty. It wouldn’t be the ﬁrst time a gringo reporter got into trouble with the narcotrafﬁckers or the DEA.” “You came back to clear your name?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered, humbly. I told him I was not “one of the locals.” If he wanted to refer to me, he’d have to use my name. It was a question of principles and the proper attribution of sources. Then I asked him for three thousand dollars. There was a silence on the other end of the line. I thought Katzenberg was doing calculations, but he had already moved on to the subject of his story. “How violent is Mexico City, really?” I remembered something Burroughs wrote to Kerouac or Ginsberg or some other big-time addict who wanted to come to Mexico but was scared he’d get jumped. “Don’t worry: Mexicans only kill their friends. 3. Keiko Those days, the only interesting thing in Mexico City was Keiko’s farewell. On Sundays, divorced fathers depend heavily on zoos and aquariums. I got in the habit of taking Tania to Adventure Kingdom, the theme park that we thought of as a whale sanctuary. I decided to spend the morning with Tania, watching the whale swim in powerful circles (my daughter, more accurately, referred to it as an “orca”) and in the afternoon I’d look for attractive, violent settings with Katzenberg. That wouldn’t be easy. All the spots I’ve been mugged are too ordinary. One thing was still unresolved: when would I write that ﬁrst draft for Cristi? While I tried to salvage some cocaine dust from a bill with Sor Juana’s face on it, I came up with an ontological excuse for my block. What was the point of writing scripts in a country where the Cineteca Theaters exploded while they were showing The Promised Land? I remembered the problem we’d had with an extra who got beat up in a scene, and my script had him say “Aggh!” The union decided that since the victim had a speaking part, he should be paid as an actor instead of an extra. After that, my victims died in silence. Anyway, I’ve never seen the slightest resemblance between what I imagine and the handsome stud or bottle blonde who garbles my words onscreen. “Why don’t you write a novel?” Renata asked me once. We were still married then and she was still willing to change me for my own sake, starting with imagining me as a novelist. “In novels, special effects are free and the characters aren’t unionized. All that counts is your inner world.” I’ll never forget that phrase. A time actually existed when Renata believed in my inner world. As she spoke those words, she looked at me, with the honey-colored eyes that Tania unfortunately didn’t inherit, as if I were a landscape: interesting, but a little out of focus. None of the accusations she hurled at me later nor any of the ﬁghts that led to our divorce hurt me as much as that generous expectation. Her trust was more devastating than the critics. Renata saw in me possibilities I never possessed. In scripts, “INT” refers to the interior, and mine is decorated with sofas. That’s as deep as I go. Anything else is the delusion of a woman who made a mistake searching for depths in me, and who hurt me by believing I was capable of plumbing them myself. I called Gonzalo Erdiozóbal to ask him to take care of the script. He doesn’t write, but his life is like a documentary on syncretism. Before Vienna, he was a veteran of university theater productions (he’d recited Hamlet’s monologues waist-deep in a very memorable swamp), he was involved in a freshwater shrimp farming project in Río Pánuco, he left a woman and two children in Saltillo, he ﬁnanced a video about Monarch butterﬂies, and he launched a website to give voice to the 62 indigenous communities of Mexico. Plus, Gonzalo is a marvel of practicality. He ﬁxes motors he’s never seen before and makes delicious dishes with surprising ingredients he ﬁnds in my pantry. His zest for pioneering and love of hobbies are a little annoying, but in times of desperation, there’s nothing better. When Renata and I separated, he ignored my pathetic attempts to isolate myself and visited me habitually. He would show up with magazines, videos, and a very hard to ﬁnd Caribbean rum. I called Gonzalo and he said he’d never thought about writing a script, which meant yes. I felt so relieved that I got carried away talking. I told him about Katzenberg and his return to Mexico, but he wasn’t interested in the journalist’s news. He wanted to talk about other things. An old friend from university theater was producing one of Genet’s plays in a gymnasium. When Gonzalo describes them, scenes run the risk of lasting as long as they do in real life. I hung up the phone. I went to pick up Tania. The city was plastered with pictures of the whale. Mexico City is a wonderful place for breeding pandas—the ﬁrst panda born outside of China was born here—but orcas need more space to start a family. That’s why Keiko was leaving. I explained this to my daughter while we waited for one of the goodbye performances to start in Adventure Kingdom’s gigantic tank. Tania had just learned the word “sinister” and she was ﬁnding many uses for it. We should have been happy; Keiko would have babies off in the depths. Tania gave me a cross-eyed look. I thought she was going to say it was sinister. I pulled out a picture book she had in her backpack and started to read it to her. It was about carnivorous carrots. She didn’t think that was sinister at all. The whale had been trained to say good-bye to the Mexican people. He waved adiós with his ﬂipper while we sang “The Swallows.” A ten-trumpet mariachi band played with enormous sadness, and the singer exclaimed, “I’m not crying! My eyes are just sweating!” I confess, I got choked up in spite of myself. I silently cursed Katzenberg, incapable of appreciating the richness of Mexican kitsch. He only paid to see violence. Keiko leapt from the water one last time. He seemed to smile in a threatening way, with very pointed teeth. On our way out, I bought Tania an inﬂatable whale. There were forest ﬁres outside of Ajusco. The ashes brought night on prematurely. From the hill Adventure Kingdom was built on, the city’s ﬁlthy skin glinted like mica. The perfect backdrop for Cristi’s dreams of a good monster. We got onto the highway without saying a word. I’m sure Tania was thinking about Keiko and the family he would have to travel so far to ﬁnd. I dropped Tania off at Renata’s house and headed to Los Alcatraces. When I got to the table, it was four in the afternoon. Katzenberg had already eaten. I’d chosen the restaurant carefully; it was perfect for torturing Katzenberg. I knew he’d thank me for taking him to a genuine locale. They were blasting ranchera music, the chairs had that toyshop color-scheme we Mexicans encounter only in “traditional” joints, there were six spicy salsas on the table and the menu offered three kinds of insects. All calamities picturesque enough for my companion to suffer them as “experiences.” Baldness had gained ground on Katzenberg’s scalp. He was dressed like a Woolworth’s shopper, sporting a shirt with checks in three different colors and a watch with a see-through band. His little eyes, intensely blue, darted around. Eyes faster than ﬂies, on the lookout for an exclusive. He ordered decaf. They brought him the only coffee they had: café de olla, with cinnamon and panela sugar. He barely sipped it. He wanted to be careful about food. He felt a throbbing in his temples, a little sound going bing-bing. “It’s the altitude,” I assured him. “No one can digest anything at 7500 feet.” He told me about his recent problems. Some colleagues were jealous of him, others hated him for no apparent reason. He had been lucky enough to visit places where conﬂicts broke out on his arrival and it got him incredible scoops. He was the ﬁrst one to document the forced relocations in Rwanda, the Kurdish genocide, the toxic gas leak at the Union Carbide factory in India. Everywhere he went, he’d won prizes and made enemies. He felt his adversaries breathing down his neck. We were the same age, 38, but he’d aged in subtle ways, as if he’d crossed all of Africa with no air conditioning. I thought I sensed a bit of pathological lying in the precise enumeration of his grievances. According to him, nobody had forgiven him for being in Berlin the day the wall came down, or for having run into Vargas Llosa in a shirt shop in Paris a week after he’d lost the elections in Peru. I ﬁgured he was one of those investigative reporters who brag about the facts they’ve dug up but lie about their birthdate. Many of the conﬂicts he’d had with the press must have been sparked by the way he got his stories, taking advantage of people like me. He eyed the neighboring tables. “I didn’t want to come back to Mexico,” he said in a low voice. Was it possible that someone hardened by coups d’état and radioactive clouds was afraid of the Mexican way of life? I’d ordered empipianadas. Katzenberg looked at my plate as he spoke, as if he were drawing conviction from the thick, green sauce. “It’s an elusive thing. Evil is transcendent here. People don’t cause harm just because. Evil means something. It was hell, hell that Lawrence Durrell and Malcolm Lowry found in this country. It’s a miracle they got out alive. They came into contact with overpowering energies.” Just then, they brought me a clay jug of hibiscus water. The handle had broken off and been taped back on. I gestured at the jug: “In Mexico, evil is improvised. Don’t worry, Samuel.” 4. Oxxo Katzenberg’s paranoid side was much more likeable. He wasn’t the overbearing lion of New Journalism he’d been on his last trip. Whether it was real or imagined, all this intrigue was having a positive effect on him. Now he wanted to write his story and get out fast. I spoke like only a screenwriter would: “Is there something I should know?” He answered like one of my characters: “What part of what you know don’t you understand?” “You’re a nervous wreck. Are you in trouble? “I already told you about that.” “Are you in trouble you haven’t told me about?” “If I don’t tell you something, it’s for the good of the mission.” “‘The mission.’ You sound like a DEA agent.” “Come on,” he said, very amused. “I have to protect my source, that’s all. I’ll tell you what you need to know. You’re my Deep Throat. I don’t want to lose you.” “Is there something you haven’t told me?” “Yes. Remember the anti-Semitic Irishman?” “The one who wanted to fuck your girlfriend?” “That’s right. He wanted to fuck my girlfriend because he had already fucked my wife.” “Ah.” “They just named him foreign news editor of Point Blank. He knows I haven’t been very rigorous with my sources. There’s already a price on my head. He’s waiting for the tiniest slipup so he can jump on me.” “I thought everyone hated you because you got to Rwanda ﬁrst.” “There’s some of that, too, but with this guy it’s all about his uncircumcised dick. Us goddamn gringos have personal problems too. Can you understand that, güey?” “You speak Spanish too well. Everyone here ends up thinking you’re CIA.” “I lived here for four years, from 12 to 16, I told you that. I went to school in Mixcoac. Are you going to trust me or not? We need a pact, a marriage of convenience,” he smiled. “They don’t teach you to say ‘marriage of convenience’ at The Mixcoac School.” “There are dictionaries, don’t be a jerk. In Mixcoac, I learned what you learn in any high school: to say güey, man.” He looked at me, his eyes two blue sparks. “Can you understand that I feel like shit, even though I’m paying you three thousand dollars?” We made peace. I wanted to reward him with some quotidian horror of Mexico in this, the year 2000. I borrowed his phone and dialed up Pancho, a dealer I’ve considered trustworthy ever since he said to me, “If you want to see the devil smile, give me a call.” Pancho had me meet him two streets away from Los Alcatraces, in the parking lot of an Oxxo minimart. I wanted Katzenberg to see a coke deal, as simple and cheap as ordering Domino’s. Routine crime. Pancho showed up in a grey Camaro, with his little girls in the back. He walked up to my car window, leaned over, dropped a folded-up piece of paper, and pocketed the 200 pesos I palmed him. “Take care of yourself,” he said, an alarming sentiment coming from someone with trembling ﬁngers, a wasted visage, papery skin. Pancho’s face was the best antidote against his drugs. The devil wasn’t smiling at him. Or maybe that’s his secret and bewitching charm, like some poorly-embalmed Phoenician king. Samuel Katzenberg eyed him greedily, extracting adjectives from that ravaged face. I went into the Oxxo to buy cigarettes. I was at the register when a fast-moving shadow crossed my ﬁeld of vision. I thought the store was being robbed. But the guy behind the counter looked more curious than horriﬁed. He was watching something going on outside. I turned to look at the parking lot. Katzenberg was being dragged out of my car by a guy in a ski-mask, a Glock held to his head. A second guy in a ski-mask got out of the rear seat of my car, as if he had been searching for something back there. He turned to face all of us watching from inside the store: “Motherfuckers!” We didn’t need to see him ﬁre. The minute we heard him we dropped to the ground. I went down surrounded by cans, boxes, and a rain of glass. The shot shattered the front window. A second shot shook the building and kept us ﬂoored for ﬁve minutes. When I got out of the Oxxo, the doors of my car were still open, infusing it with the helplessness of recently vandalized vehicles. As for Katzenberg, all that remained was a button torn off his jacket in the struggle. There was a chemical smell, and a cloud of colored smoke drifted towards the sky. The second shot had shattered the two X’s of the neon Oxxo sign. Strangely, the other letters were still lit: two glowing circles like drunken eyes. 5. Buñuel Lieutenant Natividad Carmona had very speciﬁc ideas: “If you chew, you think better.” He handed me a pack of blue raspberry gum. I took one even though I didn’t want it. I sat in the patrol car, an artiﬁcial taste in my mouth. From the passenger’s seat, Martín Palencia informed his partner: “El Tamale snuffed it.” Carmona made no comment. I didn’t know who El Tamale was, but seeing the news of his death received with such indifference terriﬁed me. It had taken me a while to react to Katzenberg’s kidnapping. That’s what happens when you have a slip full of cocaine in your pocket. What do you do when you hear sirens approaching? Pancho sold top-notch product; it would be a crime to dump it. After searching through my car (in vain, of course), I’d gone back into the Oxxo and headed for the cans of powdered milk. I picked one for infants with acid reﬂux, the brand that saved Tania when she was a newborn. I pulled off the plastic cap and slipped the paper between the cap and the metal seal. With a little luck, I’d be able to get it back the next day. That milk is a luxury item. When I got back to the car, there were two cops on the scene. They made a big show of opening the glove compartment and pulling out a baggie of marijuana. While I’d been hiding the coke, they’d been planting this lesser drug in my car. They didn’t need it to take me down to the station, but they decided to soften me up just in case. I was about to slip them a bill (with traces of something more incriminating than marijuana on it) when a ratgray car with lights on its roof screeched to a stop in front of us, its brakes squealing in that magniﬁcent way police cars never seem to pull off in Mexican movies. That’s how I met ofﬁcers Natividad Carmona and Martín Palencia. They had ferrety hair and manicured ﬁngernails. As I watched them go over the car with deadbeat delight, I noticed a scar on Carmona’s forehead and, much more worrying, a Rolex on Palencia’s wrist. They treated the uniformed cops with utter disdain. They found my Screenwriters Guild I.D. and the bag of marijuana. I was surprised at how easily they broke it down. “Look, Daddy-O,” Carmona said to one of the cops, “you really think a ﬁlmmaker’s going to get high on skunk weed like this?” He gestured at me and his voice took on a respectful tone: “The artist is into much ﬁner things.” He handed the bag to the cop. “Take that shit away.” The grunt cops took their hopes of extortion elsewhere. I was left in the hands of the Law, trained to sniff out my drug habits from my screenwriter ID. We were in the parking lot for hours. The ofﬁcers called Katzenberg’s hotel, Interpol, the DEA, and the consular ofﬁcer at the United States Embassy. Their efﬁ-ciency turned terrifying when they said, “Let’s go to the holding cells.” I got into the patrol car. It smelled new. The dashboard seemed to have more lights and buttons than were really necessary. “How close are you and Mr. Katzenberg?” asked Carmona. I told him what I knew, speaking quickly and stumbling over my words, wanting to ﬁll each sentence with sincerity. We drove through a neighborhood of low houses. It had rained in this part of the city. Every time we pulled up next to a car, the driver would pretend we weren’t there. I’ve been in that situation hundreds of times: not looking at the Law, trying to pretend it is invisible and will continue along its inscrutable parallel course. Where could Katzenberg be? Holed up in some shantytown, gagged in some safehouse? I imagined him being dragged by his kidnappers in a series of confusing shots: a back pushing forward into a roiling fog; a body with its hands tied, already lifeless, being dragged through the dirt; a corpse on its way to becoming anonymous, just a faceless victim, the product of a random misunderstanding; an inert mass, licked eagerly by feral dogs. I imagined an atrocious end for Samuel Katzenberg to avoid thinking about my own. Thirty-eight years in the city is enough to know that a trip to the “holding cells” doesn’t always come with a return ticket. But there are exceptions, I thought. People who make it through a week eating newspaper in a ditch, people who survive ﬁfteen ice pick wounds, people who are electrocuted in bathtubs full of cold water and live to tell the tale, though nobody believes them. I tried to reassure myself by thinking about hideous possibilities in great detail. I imagined myself deformed but alive, ready to terrify Tania with my embrace. Horrendous, but with the right to a future. Then I wondered if Renata would cry at my funeral. No, she wouldn’t even show up at the wake; she wouldn’t be able to handle my mother hugging her and saying sad, tender words meant to console her for being guilty for my death. I wouldn’t have sunk into such melodrama if I’d been in clear danger. The patrol car smelled good, I was chewing blue raspberry gum, we were driving along calmly, obeying stoplights. But in some basement somewhere, El Tamale had snuffed it. “So you’re a ﬁlmmaker, then?” Martín Palencia asked suddenly. “I write screenplays.” “Let me ask you this. That Buñuel did every fucking drug, didn’t he? I have a ton of movies at home, the pirated stuff we’ve conﬁscated from the Tepito black market. All due respect, but I think Buñuel was balls deep. You can tell he was a total druggie, a total visionary. For me, he’s the Boss, the Boss of Bosses, like the Tigres del Norte say, the kingpin of cinema, the only one who really and truly had square balls.” Palencia gestured wildly in support of his theory, and his eyes twinkled, as if he had already spent a lot of time trying to explain this. “Let an old man like that do whatever drugs he wants! I always say, Shakespeare was a fag, what the fuck do I care? Those motherfuckers are creating, creating, creating.” He shook his head hard from side to side; the gesture suggested coke or amphetamines. “Do you remember that one that Buñuel did where two chicks are just one chick? They’re both hot as hell, but they’re different, they don’t look a damn thing alike, but an old guy mixes them up, that’s how fucked up he is. And neither of them give it up. Those damn girls get hotter and hotter. It’s like the old guy was seeing double. It makes you want to be as confused as him. That’s surrealism, right? It’d be frickin’ cool to live all surrealist!” He paused, and after a deep sigh, asked me, “So what was it, what was Maestro Buñuel into?” “He liked martinis.” “I told you, partner!” Palencia clapped Carmona on the back. 6. The Hamster After a ride prolonged by a ﬁlmic discussion in which Palencia tried to convince Carmona that surrealism was hotter than porn, they left me with an ofﬁcial in the D.A.’s ofﬁce. The functionary asked me ﬁfty questions. He asked if I had an alias, and if I had engaged in “sexual commerce” with the kidnapped party. The tough part of the interrogation wasn’t the questions but the way they were repeated, barely modiﬁed, to expose any discrepancies. Asked in a different order or in a different tone, the questions suddenly implied something else. They made it seem like I knew about things before they had happened, like I had intuited or even planned them. I worried about Katzenberg. I had brought him to the Oxxo, so I deserved some of the blame for what had transpired. But something stronger, something distant, dangerous, untraceable, had taken control of him. Would they come after me too? Right now, all I cared about was answering those questions that kept transforming with each repetition. At two in the morning, they let me go. When I got to my apartment, I collapsed onto the bed, thinking about the cocaine I’d left in the Oxxo. I passed out in my clothes and plunged into a deep sleep, in which I felt the occasional brush of a ﬂipper. I woke up at eight a.m. and looked out the window at the streets that surround the Parque de la Bola. Then I checked my answering machine. Two messages. Cristi’s voice exploded with enthusiasm through the speaker: “The script’s a knockout! You’re the best. I know compliments are out of style in this post-modern world, don’t be offended, but you make me want to be old-fashioned. I’m dying to see you. Kiss kiss! Alright, a hundred kisses.” Cristi was exultant. I didn’t know that Gonzalo Erdiozábal had sent her the script, nor did I remember giving him Cristi’s fax number. Although, honestly, I didn’t remember much of anything. The second message said: “Get over here right now. Tania is screaming bloody murder.” (My ex-wife always talked to me like our daughter was a burning building and I was 911.) I had a slice of pound cake and a cigarette for breakfast and left for Renata’s place. On the ride over, I thought about Cristi. Her enthusiastic voice, her desire to be old-fashioned. An incredible thing in such a disastrous moment. I wondered if she would ever use that magnificent voice to demand that I come pick up our daughter. Gonzalo had always been a great friend. Now I knew he was also a better screenwriter. Tania seemed pretty calm when I got there. Renata, on the other hand, glared at me as if she was reading the most abominable crimes all over my face. She shook her hands around like she was trying to swat a cloud of fruit ﬂies. Then she explained the problem: Tania’s hamster Lobito had gotten lost in the Chevrolet, the run-down piece of crap that’s caused us so many problems and is rolling proof that the alimony I send her is bare-bones. She pointed at the car: a chance for me to do my part, problems men should ﬁx. I searched the car for the hamster, imitating some of the expert moves I’d seen the detectives use. The only thing I found was a tortoiseshell brooch shaped like an inﬁnity symbol. Renata had been wearing it when I met her. It was just as hard for me to believe such thin, translucent material could come from a turtle as it was to believe my ﬁngers had once unpinned it from her. Now the clasp was stuck—or my ﬁngers had lost the touch. I decided to bring some specialists in on the search for Lobito. Tania went with me to the Chevrolet dealership. A mechanic in a white lab coat listened blankly to my request, as if customers came by every day with rodents lost in the chassis of their cars. “Wait in Customer Service.” He pointed to a glass-walled rectangle. There we went. The nation’s waiting rooms have ﬁlled up with televisions; we sat and watched a commercial for the government that I found especially repugnant because I was the one who’d written it. For a full minute, it shows an imaginary country where four cinderblock walls count for a classroom and the president smiles, satisﬁed with his achievements. The message couldn’t be any more contradictory: poverty seems to be simultaneously resolved and undefeatable. The shot pulls out to show a barren landscape. It’s as if the government were saying, “We’ve done what little we could.” The last image is a miserable little boy with his mouth open under an eyedropper. Executive authority lets a single, provident drop fall in. I kept my eyes closed until Tania tugged on my pants. The man in the white coat had Lobito in his hands: “We had to take apart the back seat.” He handed Tania her pet. “We found this, too.” He passed me a tennis ball that had lost its bright lime color in the dark recesses of the car. I took it with trembling hands. Its fuzzy texture triggered unsettling memories: Gonzalo Erdiozábal, unrepentant faker, had betrayed me. 7. The Blesséd Baby Mechanic In the Eighties, Renata had wanted to live unhindered, but she also needed a car. Though she hated the idea of a man protecting her, she let her father buy her a Chevrolet. For a few weeks, she felt like a traitor and a dependent. She kept throwing her three little I Ching coins into the air but she couldn’t ﬁnd any metaphors to reassure her. Always happy to help a friend, and to have an excuse to make his generosity a performance, Gonzalo Erdiozábal convinced her to get the car blessed in a traditional rite: “Daddy’s present” could be transformed into a “sacramental ride.” Gonzalo had such an intense way of being incoherent that we accepted his plan. We would go see a priest known for blessing taxis on the day of St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers. The church was very far away, but it would be worth it to take a little trip, try something different for a change. Renata never wanted to baptize Tania. But pulling up to the Anthropology Department in a brand new car made her feel guilty; an automotive baptism seemed like her chance to mix a bourgeois gift with a socially commended act. Gonzalo appointed himself godfather. He showed up at our house with a cooler full of beer and snacks from the Tlalpan market. We went to the outer limits of the city, and even that far out, amazingly, the city kept going. We got lost more than once along the way. Nobody seemed to have heard of the parish, and we kept getting contradictory directions until ﬁnally we saw a taxi decked out for a party, covered with crepe-paper ﬂowers, and decided to follow it. When we got there, dozens of taxis were waiting to be baptized. In the back was the chapel with its little marshmallow-blue towers, like a kindergarten converted into a church. “Do you think they’ll baptize a car if it’s not a taxi?” Renata asked. “That’s the important thing: not being a taxi, and being here,” Gonzalo spoke like a guru of the hybrid world. He hired a trio of mariachis to play for us while we waited. We sat listening to boleros, and after my fourth beer, I started to feel bad for my friend. I’ve left out a crucial detail: Gonzalo was desperately, shamelessly in love with Renata. His ﬂirting was so obvious that it didn’t even bother me. While we listened to a bolero proposing a million ways to suffer from love, I thought about the emptiness that deﬁned Gonzalo’s life and determined his ever-shifting hobbies, how every year for him was constant forward-motion, constant ﬂight. There was the occasional woman. None lasted long enough to knit him a vest in psychedelic colors or for him to master a new yoga pose. Renata had been a perpetually- postponed horizon, a way to justify his empty ﬂings. Waiting in line, I felt intensely sorry for Gonzalo and told him the sorts of things that you say in between romantic songs, until the chords come back in to collect their due. The trio ran out of songs before we reached the chapel. When we were ﬁnally just three taxis away, they told us that the water had run out, too, not only in the church but in the whole neighborhood. We looked at the priest’s dry holy water sprinkler. The wind sent newspapers and plastic bags into the sky. Renata resigned herself to the idea of driving a car in limbo and parking in the Anthropology Department without having gone through a vernacular rite. Gonzalo was drunk by then and entirely committed to being our automotive godfather. He told us to wait for him, and disappeared down a dirt road. We went into the church. On a side altar, we saw the Blesséd Baby Mechanic. His cross was a lug wrench; he was swaddled in a denim jumpsuit. The little pink face, with its fuchsia cheeks, was sloppily painted. The altar was surrounded by painted tin votive offerings giving thanks for highway miracles and tiny cars the taxi drivers left as offerings. We went out into the atrium and stood under the last rays of afternoon sun. Gonzalo had set off with the look of one possessed. I pitied his solitude, his vicarious passion for Renata, his useless costume changes. A loud bang and a cloud of dust announced his return. He pulled up, hanging out the cab of an Electropura Puriﬁed Water delivery truck. The glass bottles sparkled blue in the setting sun. Up to that point the image was epic, or at least bizarre. When we got closer, it became criminal: Gonzalo was threatening the driver with the metal pin-punch he used to carve Peace & Love signs into balsa wood. When he got out of the truck, his face had the deformed look of the demented. The priest refused to perform the sacrament with stolen water. Gonzalo showed him a ﬁstful of bills: “He refused to sell me a bottle.” “I’m not authorized to go off my route,” said the truck driver, in a slavish tone closed to all suggestions. “This water has already been suffused with sin,” declared the priest. In the dusty air, the bottles shone like treasure. “Please!” Gonzalo got down on his knees with a grand pathos directed as much at the truck driver as the priest. Two taxi drivers helped us get him into the car. He didn’t speak the whole ride back. Our outlandish Saturday fun had turned into something shameful. More than anything, it was awful to be unable to console our friend. After my most embarrassing coke-fueled episodes, he’d told me, “Don’t worry, it happens to everyone.” Effectively, anyone could become a lamentable addict. I couldn’t say the same thing to him. His loss of control was unique. I walked him to the door of his building. He hugged me tightly. I could smell his sour sweat. “I’m sorry, I’m a terrible friend,” he mumbled. Obviously, I thought he was referring to our absurd expedition to the St. Christopher church. Years later, the tennis ball found under the back seat would tie things together differently. 8. The Motto A few weeks before the failed baptism, we spent a weekend with several other couples at the hacienda of Giménez Luque, a millionaire friend of ours. Even though our host was the only one who really knew how to swing a racquet, the tennis court drew us in like an attainable oasis. More than a few balls went sailing over the metal grille that enclosed the court. But only one of them matters: the one Renata and Gonzalo went after. They came back more than an hour later, empty-handed. They’d looked everywhere for it, but couldn’t ﬁgure out where it had gone. Renata was ﬂushed. She chewed obsessively at a hang-nail on her index ﬁnger. Now I knew the truth: they hadn’t lost the ball in the ﬁeld outside the court, they’d lost it in the back seat of the Chevrolet, from where they’d just emerged. The same spot my comb had fallen into when Renata and I had made love in the Leones Desert! Lobito had ended up in the very same place. Could it be some other ball? Absolutely not. The number of lost tennis balls in the world is impossible to imagine. But the feeling I had when I touched the fuzz of that ball, so recently exposed, was irrefutable.
Romo during practice. Romo and him would routinely dissect the first defense during practice, but he was never brought up to the active roster, even with injuries to Geoff Swaim and James Hanna being more blocking oriented. Moving forward, Gathers sees that situation changing. “I see them trying to bring me up,” Gathers said on March 24, “so I can truly show my potential that I showed all year long on the practice squad, when I created a lot of problems for our defense.”Hailed by NPR Music as “one of the most talked-about names in contemporary jazz,” 35-year-old trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire has proven himself an artist of rare ability and wide-ranging aesthetic interests on his previous Blue Note albums When the Heart Emerges Glistening (2011) and the imagined savior is far easier to paint (2014). With his expansive new double-album A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard, Akinmusire reaches a new pinnacle: he and his longtime bandmates Sam Harris (piano), Harish Raghavan (bass) and Justin Brown (drums) join a distinguished strata of jazz artists who’ve made live recordings in the hallowed New York City venue. “Justin and I have talked a lot about the spirits that we can feel in the Vanguard,” Akinmusire marvels. “It’s like I’m being bear-hugged by the spirits in there. Even just the people who showed up: Lee Konitz came down during the week, Billy Hart came down. Especially in a time like now, it’s great to have a place that still exists in the way that it originally existed.” Akinmusire has worked more typically in a quintet setting with tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III by his side, but A Rift in Decorum finds him opting for the sparser texture and turn-on-a-dime execution of a quartet. “In history we don’t see too many trumpet quartets,” the leader says. “I think a lot of trumpet players shy away from it. I was into the challenge. When it’s just quartet I’m a little bit more free to express all of my influences.” About the album title, Akinmusire muses: “A ‘rift’ to me relates to investigating a single moment. I think rifts are what make things beautiful. ‘Decorum’ ties into my feelings about what’s going on these days, musically and in the world. But there’s also something about the red curtains at the Vanguard: somehow in connection with that visual image A Rift in Decorum makes sense to me. Musically, I would add, the title is about celebrating the negatives and the positives, the ugly parts as well as the beautiful parts.” How do these rifts manifest in the music? “I’ve been really into exploring extremes,” the trumpeter explains. “I take things that are really in your face and things that are so not in your face, and then it’s about rubbing those things together and hinting about a middle, or even questioning what a middle is. That’s what this quartet is about in my mind. So you’ll have a tune where we’re playing a lot of material, and then you’ll have something that’s much more spare, almost Morton Feldmanesque, or like a Chopin Nocturne. I think more and more I’m like this as a person — extremes, polar opposites, the far reaches of both.” Akinmusire’s bandmates, uniquely attuned to his musical instincts and goals, bring those extremes into vivid relief, from the rapid-fire intricacy of “Brooklyn (ODB),” “Trumpet Sketch (milky pete)” and “H.A.M.S.” (short for “hard-ass m-f’ing song”) to the prevailing calm of “A song to exhale to (diver song),” or the solemn lyricism and bass-drone harmony of “Withered.” The longest bond in the band is between Akinmusire and Justin Brown: “We’ve been playing together as long as I’ve been playing jazz. I met Justin when I was 14 or 15 years old. There’s a long history of trumpet and drums together, so it’s been great to grow up and develop with a drummer as fantastic as him.” Akinmusire met Harris and Raghavan around the same time in the mid-’00s. “Sam and I went to Manhattan School of Music together. Every time I heard him he would sound completely different. He checks out a lot of contemporary art, classical music, all kinds of things, and I think that really helps when I’m bringing in compositions. He’s so curious and he’s always studying. Harish and I met when I was at the Thelonious Monk Institute. He’s the instigator of the band: from the moment we start he’s already on a whole different path. When we do master classes I say that Harish approaches this music as some modern form of Dixieland or something — he’s improvising and thinking about melody and many times coming out of his register.” The music’s harmonic advancement and dark mysterious moods come across with particular beauty and power on the Vanguard bandstand. The expressionistic effects that Akinmusire wrings from his horn — half-valve and non-pitch sounds, breath sounds, all part of the “extremes” he mentions above — root him in a trumpet legacy that extends beyond the expected post-bop influences to include early jazz as well as the avant-garde. There’s a poignant story behind the opener, “Maurice and Michael (sorry I didn’t say hello)”: “I wrote it when I was artist-in-residence at the Monterey Jazz Festival. The place where you stay to compose is so beautiful. You’re by yourself overlooking the ocean, and if you look over to the right when it’s clear you can see San Francisco and Oakland. One day it hit me — wow, I have friends that are still over there in the hood who would never even know anything like this exists, so close by. Not long after that, I was on the BART home and I saw someone I grew up with named Maurice, who had a brother named Michael. I hadn’t seen them since high school. Maurice seemed to be on something, his eyes were red, he could barely walk, and I just couldn’t say hello. Here I am in some fancy suit with my expensive headphones and Moscot glasses, and this guy I grew up with looks like he’s homeless. It really affected me. I went through so many thoughts: ‘Do I think that I’m better?’ ‘Who am I to feel ashamed at whatever success I think I have?’” The other titles are similarly evocative: The “enclosure” in “Piano Sketch (beyond enclosure)” refers to the fact that the music is written without bar lines. “Diver song” is the composer imagining “a diver with scuba equipment going down really slowly — this is kind of the soundtrack to that.” “A moment in between the rest (to curve an ache)” deals with “right when something stops, that moment right after. It’s like if you have two moments and right in between the moments you pause, that’s what that song would be. Having an ache, then stopping it and curving it — imagine that was a sound. That’s what this song is about.” One could reasonably ask if the band felt pressure that week at the Vanguard, following in the footsteps of such giants. “I don’t feel pressure when I’m playing with my band,” Akinmusire responds. “Maybe it has something to do with me not living in New York, feeling more like a normal person, just a regular guy who plays trumpet. And also the older I get, the more of a spiritual thing it becomes for me. I really believe more than ever that I’m not the one playing, so the pressure is kinda off me. My job is to do all the work necessary to allow the spirit to come through me.”In the first article of this series, we covered the philosophy and mindset of Soros’ Quantum Fund. We learnt about (i) Soros’ belief of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, (ii) his attitudes towards risks (that its omnipresent and has to be managed in relative and subjective degrees), and (iii) his ruthless obsession about the bottom line. In this second piece, we will cover some insights as to the nature of his strategies that is built upon his philosophy. (I) Be Forward Looking! Anticipate what others may not expect This sounds so simple and painfully obvious, but few practice this. Even many in the finance and investment industries don’t do this, despite their claim in doing so (much less their clients). There are several reasons why we tend not to be forward looking, including our propensity to think that the recent past will continue and our natural instincts to herd and groupthink. Soros says: In effect, Soros is practicing what he believes from the Uncertainty Principle and human fallibility – that one should not be focused on the present facts but focused on thinking how there could be potential variables that were misunderstood or overlooked or other unexpected variables that could change the entire dynamic in the future. In John Train’s “Money Masters of Our Time”, James Rogers, an ex-colleague of Soros, mentioned that: “We aren’t as much interested in what a company is going to earn next quarter, or what 1975 aluminium shipments are going to be, as we are in how broad social, economic, and political factors will alter the destiny of an industry or stock group for some time to come. If there is a wide difference between what we see and the market price of a stock, all the better, because then we can make money.” This was also emphasised by macro maverick Stanley Druckenmiller, an investor with one of the best track records and also a former colleague of Soros at Quantum. He once mentioned that his “job for 30 years was to anticipate changes in the economic trends that were not expected by others, and, therefore not yet reflected in security prices“, and here he said “too many investors look at the present; the present is already in the price. You’ve got to think out of the box and visualise 18 to 24 months from now what the world is going to be and what (level) securities might trade at… what a company has been earning doesn’t mean anything, what you’ve got to look at is what people think a company’s going to earn and if you can see something in 2 years that’s going to be entirely different than the conventional wisdom, that’s how you make money” A recent example would be his bet on Japan in 2012 and 2013. While we don’t exactly know if its his decision or a consensus decision made by the managers of his family office, it’s an example of the forward thinking / anticipation approach at play. After the Fukushima disaster in 2011, foreign investors fled Japanese financial assets and there was a great amount of pessimism on Japan’s economic prospects (do you still remember?). There were talks of a ‘nuclear holocaust’ as people became concern about a radiation fallout, and it did not help that 2011 was also the time of the Eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis, fuelling risk aversion across the global financial markets and causing the Japanese Yen (JPY) to strengthen relative to other currencies. A strong JPY affects Japanese exporters as they earn less after currency translation, affecting Japanese equities. The Japanese equity market on aggregate did nothing much since the Fukushima disaster, and valuations were relatively cheap and depressed. No one was interested investing in Japan as everyone believed that they will continue their decade(s) long deflationary cycle. However, the catalyst to change the whole dynamic and situation was a political variable, the return of Shinzo Abe after he took over the leadership of the LDP in September 2012. Forbes reported that Soros was actively participating in the Japanese equity markets and short its currency, the Japanese Yen (JPY), as early as October and November 2012. Abe-san only assumed the role of Prime Minister in December, which means that Soros’ firm could be early in anticipating that Shinzo Abe was a potential variable to change the whole dynamic in the fate of Japan’s asset markets. He was positioned before the fact materialised. This shows the hallmark of an active speculator and a forward thinker in anticipating how variables (that the majority are not thinking about) could change the current situation that securities are priced at. We all know what happened since then. PM Abe pushed for his promise of ‘ending deflation’ in the country and the Bank of Japan (BOJ) launched its aggressive monetary easing programme in April 2013. The JPY got crushed and Japanese equities took off. A value-orientated investor using traditional valuation metrics or a technical-orientated trader would probably be reluctant to foray into Japan before Abe-san was elected Prime Minister (there would be no buy signal according to their frameworks and lenses). Like a master chess champion anticipating in tune with the battle board and anticipating his opponent’s moves, Soros was able to be ahead of the crowd and to capitalise quickly when unexpected situations materialise. This is macro investing on a higher level. Learn to anticipate! (II) False Trends & False Beliefs – be aware of them and play them if possible! Soros once mentioned that there are 3 sorts of realities: (i) things that are true, (ii) things that are untrue and (iii) things that are reflexive. He believes that we need to differentiate the circumstances around us to understand these 3 different types of realities. In particular, he emphasises on false trends as well as reflexive realities, whereby the former is defined as a belief that is founded on false assumptions, but many believe it. Soros says: Since there is nothing in the financial markets that could be precisely determined (with a 100% confidence interval), false trends and reflexive realities are prevalent, and an investor has to be comfortable in managing his/her own expectations when participating in the markets. According to Soros, false trends can be prevalent and dominant enough that it moves the financial markets, causing a cascading effect on asset prices and possible secondary effects that could reinforce the initial false beliefs. This creates a ‘false’ reality, and that is how exactly a bubble is formed. Now, the catch is, Soros thinks an investor can still make money from a false trend. In other words, you don’t really have to agree with a premise of a trend that you see forming or be theoretically correct in your reasoning. You just need to put on the right positions at appropriate times while maintaining an objective and rational composure, and staying flexible and disciplined to your risk management plan. Soros knew how to differentiate these realities and identify false trends, riding several bubbles throughout his career while at the helm of Quantum and capitalising on the mistakes of others. Learn to analyse assumptions to determine if they are true or not, look out for feedback loops that influences the fundamental reality and identify the emergence of false trends. Don’t strive towards an ideal or perfect explanation. Be sober, analytical and pragmatic, and seek to invert your thinking and understand all possible viewpoints. The big questions of our time like ‘Is China imploding?’ or ‘Cryptocurrencies are the future’ are issues that fall into these realities. Whether they are true or not doesn’t really matter to the master speculator (they matter to policy makers!), what matters is whether you can exploit them and/or reduce your risk from them. (III) Look for ‘experimental economics’ Because of his theory of reflexivity, human fallibility and the Uncertainty Principle, Soros has constantly been on the look out for situations in the financial markets where there is a ‘great amount of experimenting’. Imposing or experimenting with complex systems like an economy or a financial market usually leads to imbalances and unintended and unexpected consequences, which Soros thinks that macro speculators can exploit. In a mandarin book on the man himself, Soros mentioned that “the accumulated drawbacks of specifically-imposed economic models simply provide a playground for financial market speculators.” Is there a government meddling around with the affairs of the free market (imposing capital controls etc.)? Is there a central bank, for whatever illogical reason, pegging its currency to another currency? These are circumstances that would pipe up Soros’ interest, and he has ruthlessly speculated in many of these situations during his active years in business running Quantum. One famous example, coincidentally his most famous coup, was the bet against the Bank of England back in 1992. In the 1990s, Soros also observed that the boom experienced by Asian economies could reverse and come to a crashing halt if liquidity conditions change. The stage is set as most Asian economies had debt-service denominated in hard currencies like the US Dollar, while they book their revenues in their own local currencies. Additionally, many Asian central banks maintained a peg to the greenback for the purpose of tapping international debt financing. This was a classic reflexive scenario (as pointed out in point II), whereby a strengthening USD could cause severe economic contractions throughout the emerging Asian economies, and the more it happens, the more the situation reinforces itself (reduction in import revenue, corporate earnings decline and debt-servicing costs increase, causing stock markets to decline), forcing central banks to break their dollar peg when market forces overwhelm them. Quantum positioned itself in several markets like Thailand, profiting from the severe crisis of 1997 when it ensued. Macro dislocations, far-from-equilibrium situations, politicians meddling with free market affairs… these are all playgrounds for the macro speculator. It may be complex and a little new to most people, but to play the game at a higher level, we need to fully embrace what it takes to become a macro speculator, and work to bridge the gap accordingly. Look around you – is there any ‘experimental economics’ going on? (IV) Extreme Investor Positioning In December 2012, activist investor William ‘Bill’ Ackman went public about his crusade on Herbalife (HLF), betting against the company’s stock and accusing it of deliberately conducting a huge ‘pyramid scheme’ and deceiving clients as well as shareholders. This famous crusade has gotten a lot of news and coverage, and it has also resulted in ‘billionaire battles’ as other well-known Wall Street tycoons take sides in Ackman’s war against HLF. The most prominent of them all was billionaire Carl Icahn, who took a stake in HLF and publicly sparred against Ackman in 2013 debating about his claims against the nutrition products company. I followed the issue closely back then when it was reported that Soros went long on HLF sometime in the second quarter of 2013, which spurred a rally in HLF‘s stock price. And about 2 years later, Reuters reported that according to regulatory filings, Soros had fully exited its long position during the third quarter of 2015. In between this 2-year period, he had increased or reduced his stake in HLF along the way. And this happened when both Ackman and Icahn are caught up with the tug-of-war of whether Herbalife is ultimately doomed to fail. And it is recently reported that Ackman is still maintaining his bet against HLF… We won’t know who will be eventually right, but what we do know is that Soros probably could have made some money during the tug-of-war. Soros may have had a view on HLF‘s future, but it is also likely that due to market sentiment and positioning, there was a profit potential to due to the pressure of a gigantic short squeeze. Look around you for popular trades or overcrowded positions. You may agree with a view that a certain company’s stock will ‘go to zero’ or that interest rates are going up, but if its the consensus view and most participants are positioned that way, you may even want to fade that position (even if you agree the majority is right). This fourth point may be unorthodox, but that was how the Palindrome played the game of global macro investing. Remember, you’re here to make money, not to prove whether your opinion is right or wrong! Now that we know what Quantum’s strategies were guided by, the next post will cover this swashbuckling firm’s management style! Stay tuned! image credits to https://twitter.com/academyofft, http://www.azquotes.com/Tuesday, May 21st 2013 / Gaming Day Ten With The Oculus Rift - Mars City Today I wanted to try out a few more demos but after looking through most of the lists of what was available to download I have to say I was a little disappointed that most of it looked either pretty basic, or doesn't quite have proper support for the Rift yet. I did manage to try a few small demos but in the end I had another 10 minutes on Doom 3, now in Mars City just after all hell breaks loose.The day started with my kids wanting to have a go on the Oculus Roller Coaster, so I let the two oldest have a go. I'm not even sure how much of the 3D effect they really see since their IPD will be below the default but they seem to like what ever it is they see.After work, I had a go on the roller coaster too and I have to say it's not as extreme as I was expecting. I went round a few times then put in the console command'slomo 2' to speed time up and run the roller coaster at double speed. This did enhance the falling sensation but still felt quite comfortable. I have to admit I haven't tried it standing up ;-).Next I downloaded a very small demo simply called Sci-Fi Corridor. It's a Unity demo someone built a while back to demonstrate their modelling and texturing skills, it makes a good little Rift demo because it's relatively small but packs plenty of small 3D detail which you can look at from all angles.Unfortunately there are few visual bugs, and it is after all a very limited demo so once you've been in it for a minute that's about it.Then I loaded up Doom 3 BFG and continued on from my save. The aiming feels a bit weird since it's different than in Half-Life 2, you have to aim vertically using your head, but horizontal aiming is done with a combination of head movement and mouse movement. It also seems as though the laser sight does not always line up with where you're shooting.One of the things that was pretty cool with Doom 3 at release was it's scripted sequences with lots of things moving about. This bridge sequence looks pretty cool, especially in VR.Here's a shot of the health dispensers, which at the time were cool because of the interactive screen but Half-Life 2's blows them away. The moving parts all whizzing around on Half-Life 2's health dispensers look so cool in VR!Just round the corner was this very subtle bit of detail but it actually looked pretty cool with the Rift on:I was pleasantly surprised when faced with having to climb a ladder in Doom 3 BFG, it doesn't suffer from the same odd warping I've seen in Half-Life 2 where the ladders seem to curve above my head.For those people who have said they did not notice the lack of depth on walls, here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. If I walk another foot away I can see the depth of the normal map and it looks ok, but from just the right angle it looks like a completely flat wall with a texture painted on it.This dead guy that falls down above your head looked pretty cool so I thought I'd show you this.And finally, after encountering about 5 of these things I finally managed to get a shot of one of the monsters as it was attacking me. Kept scrambling for my screenshot key and in the end just rebound it to Q to make it easier to reach from my WASD keys :)For the next few days I will be posting much smaller updates as I want to get back on track with my work on my own game(s)! I intend to try out some more Doom 3 tomorrow but want to see if my old d1e1m1 map will work in Doom 3 BFG:Also, if anyone wants to check out all the screenshots I've been posting in Oculus native resolution on your Rift, here's a full gallery of them all:People head to Vegas Pool Parties to let loose and party in the desert you might want to think twice before paying $12 for that second vodka and Redbull. According to Jon Taffer, the host of Spike TV’s “Bar Rescue”, who has owned more than 600 bars and clubs during his career. Whoever has the alcohol is in control, and the person that is serving the drinks in Vegas may be ripping you off. He crisscrosses the country, helping to turn struggling bars back into booming businesses. In an interview with “20/20,” Taffer said the sad truth is that some bars mess with everybody, not just the rowdy drunks. Bartenders have tricks they use to cheat customers, Taffer said, from pouring less than the full amount of liquor you were charged for to watering down drinks and even secretly giving you a cheaper brand than you ordered. So what makes you an easy target? Some bartenders will apply one of the below techniques if you do a number of things when ordering from one of the busy pool party bartender: waving your hands in the air screaming the bartenders name having an attitude when your not served next, or as soon as you walk up to the bar. Cutting in front of others not having your money ready not knowing what you want, not knowing what your friends want. Splitting the check on different credit cards, telling the bartender how you want your drink telling the bartender to “hook you up” ordering a “Strong Island” or an “Adios, stiffing the bartender saying you can’t taste the alcohol complaining to the bartender about how much drinks cost. It can come down to what and how you order. Most people have trouble telling the difference between top-shelf vodka and the cheap stuff, Taffer said, so bartenders might try to charge you for the Grey Goose you wanted, but pour you a glass of something more like Nikolai. “If you come and say ‘Let me have a Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks,’ I’m not going to mess with that. I’m giving you Johnnie Walker Black,” he said. “If you come up to me and say ‘Let me have a Grey Goose and orange juice,’ that’s the ticket to pour you the cheapest vodka I’ve ever had.” Here are a few ways Taffer says bartenders can rip you off, and why you should re-think your order. 1. Swapping Good Booze for a Cheaper Brand or Even Water Sometimes bartenders will pour cheap liquor into an empty premium bottle, Taffer said, or they’ll add water to a half-finished top-shelf brand. “Either you’re getting diluted liquor or you’re getting a different brand altogether,” he said. “It’s the epitome of desperation. It’s stupidity.” This can be the bartender doing it themselves or the owner instructing the bartender to do it; with the goal being to make more money on each drink. “Let’s say drinks are $10 each, if 10 ounces of water is put into a bottle” Taffer said. “They just made $100 dollars in cash that night. Times that by working 20 days a month, and by the year, it becomes very profitable.” This turns into and extra 24,000 a month in cash for the bartender or bar owner. 2. Giving You the ‘Short Pour’ They use the appearance of more alcohol in the glass to short you on the amount of alcohol in each drink. In the heat of the summer and the ice melting so fast that the bartender might be adding water to the drink making the amount of alcohol in the cup look more. Crushed ice, meaning the ice that comes out of those large bins behind the bar, means less liquor, Taffer said, while cubed ice allows for more space for liquor and is a better deal. But a half jigger of booze poured over crushed ice appears to look like more booze than a full jigger poured over cubed ice, he said. It’s called a “short pour,” Taffer said, because “I’m going to charge you for a full drink and give you about half a drink. … You won’t know it. I’m going to rip you off and you’re going to be happy the entire time.” 3. Giving You the ‘Long Pour’ Don’t be impressed if your bartender can pour a drink a foot away from the glass, Taffer said. He is just cheating you out of booze by creating an illusion. “This idea is holding the arm up high in an exaggerated pouring motion, you think you are getting special treatment, you are only getting a special show. No extra booze, maybe even less,” he said. “When you lift that arm, you create an illusion of quantity.” 4. Giving you the ‘Sneaky Pour’ When a bartender holds the bottle over your glass for a long time, he is obviously giving you something extra, right? Wrong, says Taffer, but you’ll tip him as if he did. “The truth is they hold their finger over the air hole on the spout, which reduces the flow to a trickle,” he said. “They hold the bottle instead of the glass so you can’t see how little is flowing out. Then they quickly add the mixer and plop in that straw.” That little red straw is the key to fooling you into thinking that weak drink the bartender just gave you tastes strong because, Taffer said, unscrupulous bartenders will keep those straws in a glass of vodka hidden under the bar. “The bartender draws a swig out of that vodka and your first sip tastes strong,” he said. “You are convinced, even though the rest of the drink is weak.” What to Order at Vegas Pool Parties If you want to make sure that you don’t get ripped off when you are drinking at one of the Vegas Pool Parties then you should order a beer. Beer is the only thing that bartenders cannot mess with. “Unfortunately bottled beer is your safest bet,” he said. “It’s prepackaged. It’s sealed. You see it opened in front of you.” To read the full ABC article click hereWASHINGTON– Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Michael Huerta announced the implementation of the first operational rules for routine commercial use of small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS or “drones”). The regulations adopted on June 21, 2016 officially take effect today, Aug. 29. The provisions of the new rule – formally known as Part 107 –are designed to minimize risks to other aircraft and people and property on the ground. The FAA has several processes in place to help users take advantage of the rules that go into effect today with regard to waivers and use in various air-space classifications. The FAA is offering a process to waive some of the rule’s restrictions if an operator demonstrates the proposed flight will be conducted safely under a waiver. Users must apply for these waivers. The FAA is issuing more than 70 waivers today, Aug.29, based on petitions for Sec. 333 exemptions. These waivers will be posted on Sept. 1. The majority of the approved waivers were for night operations under Part 107. Users can operate their unmanned aircraft in Class G uncontrolled airspace without air traffic control permission. Operations in Class B, C, D and E airspace need air traffic approval. Users must request access to controlled airspace via the electronic portal at www.faa.gov/UAS. The FAA will evaluate airspace authorization requests using a phased approach. Operators may submit their requests starting today, but air traffic facilities will receive approved authorizations, if granted, according to the following tentative schedule: Class D & E Surface Area: Oct. 3, 2016 Class C:Oct. 31, 2016 Class B: Dec. 5, 2016 The FAA said it would make every effort to approve requests as soon as possible, but the actual processing time would vary, depending on the complexity of an individual request and the volume of applications the FAA receives. The agency is urging users to submit requests at least 90 days before they intend to fly in controlled airspace. The FAA said it would use safety data from each phase to ensure appropriate mitigations are in place as small UAS operations are integrated into controlled airspace. Testing also becomes available today. Testing centers nationwide can now administer the Aeronautical Knowledge Test required under Part 107. After an operator passes the test, she or he must complete an FAA Airman Certificate and/or Rating Application to receive a remote pilot certificate. It may take up to 48 hours for the website to record that the applicant has passed the knowledge test. The FAA expects to validate applications within 10 days. Applicants will then receive instructions for printing a temporary airman certificate, which is good for 120 days. The FAA will mail a permanent Remote Pilot Certificate within 120 days. In the future, the FAA said it also would address operations not covered by Part 107 without a waiver, including operations over people, beyond-line-of-sight operations, extended operations, flight in urban areas, and flight at night. Part 107 does not apply to model aircraft. Model aircraft operators must continue to satisfy all the criteria specified in Sec. 336 of Public Law 112-95 (which is now codified in part 101), including the stipulation they be operated only for hobby or recreational purposes.Patrice O’Neal will get to make ’em laugh once more. Radio hosts Opie and Anthony will say goodbye to their friend and the longtime visitor to their Sirius XM Radio show with a weekend-long tribute to the late comedian who passed away Tuesday at the age of 41, due to the complications from a stroke. According to a release from Opie and Anthony, the radio hosts, along with comedian Jim Norton, will broadcast a nonstop marathon of O’Neal’s funniest and most memorable visits to the program over the past eight years. (Highlights will include the actor/comedian reviewing popular country music, as well as receiving career advice from Chris Rock.) In addition to playbacks of O’Neal’s visits, there will be on-air tributes, stories, and memories shared by those in the comedy business mourning the loss of their friend and beloved colleague, including Louis C.K., Dave Attell, Bill Burr, Dane Cook, Kurt Metzger, Rich Vos, Amy Schumer, Joe DeRosa, Bob Kelly, Jim Florentine, and Colin Quinn, who wrote from his Twitter earlier this week that the button-pushing stand-up star was, “One of a kind. In heaven right now, charming half and infuriating half, then reversing.” The O’Neal tribute will begin 6 a.m. EST on Saturday, Dec. 3, and will run throughout the entire weekend on Sirius XM Radio’s Opie & Anthony Channel. Read more: Comedian Patrice O’Neal, 41, dies Celebrities mourn Patrice O’Neal on Twitter Comic community continues to mourn Patrice O’Neal on TwitterA view of the Amer Fort, a plunge pool to sit by, and a sprawling garden for a stroll. Mister and Art Haveli in Jaipur is a typical boutique property, but there is something unique about it — it's only open to gay men. Set to throw open its doors next month, The Mister and Art Haveli is an extension of Mister and Art House in Delhi's Greater Kailash, which is also a gay guesthouse. Properties and travel companies that exclusively serve the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community are becoming a trend now, with more and more LGBT customers shedding their inhibitions and opting for a travel experience where they can be themselves. Run by fashion designer Sanjay Malhotra, the Delhi-based company Indjapink which runs the Mister and Art is one of India’s first travel organisations catering only men. The company is expanding its stay options by adding the haveli property to their inventory. This would be followed by another Mister and Art property in Goa. Malhotra is investing Rs 5 crore to expand the chain across India. Indjapink, however, is not alone in this endeavour. There are many others who who offer bespoke luxury experiences to the couples from the queer community such as Pink Vibgyor, GaytripIndia, and Pink Escapes. Pink Vibgyor is also coming up with a property of its own in Udaipur and investing Rs 2.5 crore for the same. Unlike others in the business, it will cater to female couples too. With the idea of luring gay couples from foreign shores to India for expensive vacations, these companies are also offering special packages worth as high as Rs 6 lakh per person exclusively. “Putting up the client in a gay friendly hotel is just a part of the bespoke experience we offer," said Rajat Singla, director at Delhi-based Pink Vibjyor. "We arrange for everything from gay guides to gay tour leaders and gay friendly chauffeurs as a part of the experience. The packages are not just for couples though, we offer group tours for the community as well,” The brand has partnerships in Sydney and Chicago too. Singla is also tying up with hotel aggregators to book inventory across premium hotels exclusively for the category. These companies don't just design holidays for same sex couples but also take them to exclusive parties for the community in India, conduct yoga retreats, plan honeymoons and send newsletters to clients alerting them about upcoming queer events. Malhotra, who concentrates more on luxury travel, said: “From luxury cars to yachts we throw in as much surprises in out package as possible.” According to Malhotra, business in the segment has gone up by 40 percent in the last one year and so has the average spend of these inbound travelers. While the average stay duration is a fortnight, the average spend is close to Rs 10,000 per person per night. Preferred locations include Rajasthan, Kerala and Tamil Nadu while travelers in the category are mostly from US, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.Share Tweet Pin 6.4k shares I love cooking in my slow cooker. It’s like a magical box you put raw food in and a wonderful meal pops-out! But some nights, I don’t have time to make my favorite recipe, my Slow Cooker Taco Soup, and I don’t have time to make one of these 25 Family Slow Cooker Recipes, I break out one of these 33 3-Ingredient Slow Cooker Recipes! Every one of these recipes is a knock-out…and every one is quick! A combination that works for me every time I’m in a pinch. My favorite go-tos are like basically whatever meat I have in the freezer! LOL! Can it truly get any easier than 3 ingredients? I DARE YOU TO TRY. Not to mention, many of these recipes are just waiting to be made because you most likely have everything you need right in your kitchen. And on the off chance you don’t, think of all the money you’ll save by grocery shopping for just 3 ingredients.
admitting refugees to Germany. The far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) has worked to capitalize on anti-refugee sentiment in the country, and its victories in several state elections over the course of 2016 means the party is likely to win seats in the German parliament. Both candidates held final rallies in Vienna on Friday, making their final pitch to voters. Hofer, who spoke at Vienna’s old stock exchange Friday morning, framed the election as an opportunity to revitalize Austria. His message has been compared to that of Mr. Trump, who promised to “Make America Great Again;” Hofer wants Austrians to be “proud again.” “Austrian men and Austrian women have a strong will to succeed – to make this country a success,” he said. “The old dust has to be shaken off and we will be proud again to be Austrian.” And Van der Bellen urged voters to work within the existing system to change things, rather than give in to a desire to “destroy things.” “We know that things need to change – but let’s not destroy things,” he said. “…You don’t need to demolish the house because a couple of windows have become loose.” In Vienna on Saturday, just one day before Election Day here, things were mostly quiet on the political front: Van der Bellen volunteers handed out flyers and bags of Van der Bellen-branded fruit snacks Saturday evening in front of the city’s famous Christmas market at the Rathaus (city hall). Earlier in the day, an anti-Hofer group staged a small march through part of the city, chanting, “Anti-fascist!” and “Down with the Freedom Party!” Many of the protesters in the march – which were not affiliated with Van der Bellen’s campaign – held signs that read, “No Nazis in the Hofburg,” referring to the residence of the president. One protester held up a Hillary Clinton campaign sign saying, “Love trumps hate,” one of the campaign’s most-used phrases this year. Michael Sumasgutner, a 21-year-old who recently switched his support to Van der Bellen after voting previously for Hofer, said membership in the EU is one of the most important issues to him – and that Hofer’s position on the issue was a big part of the reason he changed his mind. “I think it’s important Austria stays in the EU because it’s a good connection,” he said. Still, he said, he understands the underlying frustration with the status quo that has drawn many Austrians -- including young voters -- to Hofer and his message of change and prosperity. “There are many problems in this country: like there are no jobs, the economy is not growing, issues of culture,” he said. He added that many voters feel that “the other parties are not working on the issues enough -- people are more attracted by the Freedom Party and want someone else in charge.” Indeed, Sunday’s result will be historic on that front: it will be the first time in more than half a decade that the presidency is not held by a member of the center-right party (the Austrian People’s Party) or the center-left party (the Social Democrats). Hofer’s supporters praised him as a defender of Austria and its national identity, saying he will bring the needed change to the country. “I think he’s the better president for us – he’s for Austrians,” said Manfred Dvorak, 54, of Vienna. He added that using the “Nazi” label for Hofer, as the candidate’s opponents have done, is “stupid.” “When people run out of arguments, then there’s always this Nazi [accusation],” he said. David Heuser, 25, marched Saturday with the anti-Hofer crowd -- but said he ultimately believes Hofer will win the election. “I fear that [Van der Bellen] will lose tomorrow … and that the right wing candidate will win,” he said. “If he does, we will protest against him.”In the Dark and the Gloom: Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Electric Literature Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 17, 2014 by Matt Bell First published in 1981, Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and its two sequels have become a famed rite of passage for many young readers. Skillfully adapted from folklore and urban legends, the stories are gory, disgusting, psychologically complex, and frequently violent, with just enough humor to keep you turning the pages even after you knew reading just one more meant a nightmare or sleeplessness. As skillful as Schwartz’s writing is, the books were also famous for Stephen Gammell’s haunting illustrations which accompanied each story. Together, the writer and the artist created one of the most enduring and memorable works of children’s literature published in our lifetime. Anne Valente and I first met in the MFA program at Bowling Green State University. While there, we discovered our mutual admiration of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, which were foundational reading experiences for both of us, certainly influencing the writers we’d become. Here, we offer readings of some of our favorite tales from the series, unpacking not just what moved us and scared us as children, but what continues to provoke and maybe terrify even now. A New Horse (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark): MB: One of the first things that strikes me now about most of Schwartz’s stories is how short they are: “A New Horse” is less than two pages, and that’s fairly typical of many of the stories in the collection. Schwartz’s stories have been cut all the way down to the bare essentials, and it creates some additional weirdness, some blankness behind the details that begs the reader to fill in what is not revealed, similar to the kinds of flatness and abstraction you’d find in a fairy tale. In “A New Horse,” two farmhands share a room, with one of the farmhands sleeping terribly. Eventually he confesses that “an awful thing happens every night,” saying that “a witch turns me into a horse and rides me all over the countryside.” The farmhands switch beds, and sure enough that night the witch — “an old woman who lived nearby” — enters the room, paralyzes him with “some strange words,” and then slips a bridle over his face, turning him into a horse then riding him cross country to “a house where a party was going on,” with “a lot of music and dancing.” Schwartz writes: “They were having a big time inside.” The story goes on to explain the farmhand’s escape, and his revenge — he returns himself to human form, then goes into the house and bridles the witch, turning her into a horse before having horseshoes nailed to her feet at the local blacksmith — but despite the vengeful ending it’s the farmhand’s undetailed journey into the house I’m most curious about. What kind of gathering was this, that the witch needed to arrive riding a man-turned-horse? “They were having a big time inside”: How disturbing is that single sentence description of the goings-on? And who are these people? I think immediately of the “grave and dark-clad company” of Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” perhaps now having taken their party inside. And for a brief moment our young farmhand is in there among them, in a space that in my imagination is not merely the inside of a house, but some more terrifying and changeable space, like the upper rooms in Brian Evenson’s “Two Brothers,” like the expanding interior landscape of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. The end of the story is intensely satisfying — as revenge almost always is, at least on the page — but I do not want to be at the end of the story. I want to be several paragraphs back, back inside that house, walking alongside the farmhand with the bridle in his hand, hunting witches throughout the “big time” happening in every room. Room For One More (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark): The brevity that you mention is something I noticed immediately upon rereading these stories — as a child they seemed expansive and neverending, almost nightmarish in the inability to escape from thinking about them. AV: The brevity that you mention is something I noticed immediately upon rereading these stories — as a child they seemed expansive and neverending, almost nightmarish in the inability to escape from thinking about them. The lack of revelation in the “big time” of “A New Horse” happens again a few pages later in “Room for One More,” another story that’s only a page long where a man visiting Philadelphia on a business trip wakes in the night and sees a hearse out his window, and the driver calls to him, “There is room for one more.” The next day on his way back from his business meeting, an elevator opens and the driver of the hearse is waiting inside among a crowd of people. The driver tells him again that there is room for one more and when the man declines, the elevator closes and then plummets, killing everyone on board. In this brief story, the minimalism of the language creates questions and also space for the reader’s imagination. When the man first awakes in the night, Schwartz writes, “In the moonlight, he saw a long, black hearse filled with people.” The hearse is clearly described, but what of the people? Are they ghostly? Do they look alive? Are they the same people who appear the next day in the elevator — along with the driver of the hearse, the only person identified — a space Schwartz describes only as “very crowded”? These people are given a voice in the last lines of the story, their “shrieking and screaming” apparent as the elevator falls down the shaft, but never faces. Their absence haunts what’s on the page. The Appointment (Scary Stories 3): MB: These are good examples of one of the things that it can take time to learn as a writer: Just because a reader asks questions doesn’t mean the reader would be more satisfied if the answers were on the page somewhere. What creates part of the effect you’re describing is how wherever the logic of a story isn’t explicitly revealed by the teller, it has to occur in the reader. In a similar vein, “The Appointment” tells of a sixteen-year-old boy who sees Death beckoning to him from the main street of his town. He rushes home to his grandfather, begging to take the grandfather’s truck to flee into the city, where he believes Death won’t be able to find him. But when the grandfather later runs into Death later in the day, he chastises Death, saying “Why did you frighten my grandson that way? He is only sixteen. He is too young to die.” Death apologizes, saying he hadn’t meant to scare the boy. He was simply taken by surprise: “You see,” Death says, “I have an appointment with this afternoon — in the city.” It’s a very simple story, barely a half-page long — it’s a struggle to summarize it without just repeating it — and in his notes Schwartz acknowledges that the story has several famous variants. When I was just starting to write seriously, around nineteen or twenty, an older writer introduced me to W. Somerset Maugham’s work, including his “The Appointment in Samarra,” which John O’Hara used as the epigraph of his novelof the same name. Reading Maugham’s version of this story years after last reading the version in the Scary Stories books — and maybe hundreds of years after the tale first appeared in oral form in Asia — I experienced a kind of double chill: First the elegant reversal in the story itself — we relished our protagonist’s escape from Death, but now we find that his efforts has only sealed his doom, a twist that is also a sudden denial of free will, of control over our destiny — then the déjà vu of the retelling itself, of reencountering a story that you have forgotten but whose beats are now delivered again in nearly precisely the same way, to the same powerful effect: In the years since you last heard this tale, each new telling asks, did you start to imagine again that you actually have free will? That there’s anything you can do to forestall the hour of your death? Oh, Susannah (More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark): AV: One of the things that makes these stories even more frightening is Stephen Gammell’s illustrations, black-and-white sketches that are so surreal and haunting. The image accompanying “The Appointment” — a grim reaper pointing to a truck floating in the sky — isn’t dissimilar to the image that appears with “Oh, Susannah,” one that actually gave me nightmares last night after digging back into these books. Here, the image is of a rocking chairing float in the sky, above which a monster’s face emerges from the clouds. The image isn’t that closely related to the story, which follows a university student returning to the apartment she shares with a friend and finding all of the lights out. She leaves the lights off, assuming her roommate is asleep, but as she tries to fall asleep she hears someone humming the tune to “Oh, Susannah.” She tells her roommate to be quiet and drifts off to sleep, and in the night reawakens to hear the same tune being hummed. She shouts at her roommate to stop and receives no answer, and after drifting back to sleep she awakes in the morning to find her roommate decapitated. The image isn’t a match for this story but enhances its nightmarish quality, occupying the facing page. As with “The Appointment,” this story ends with the narrator thinking she has free will but doesn’t. She simply goes back to sleep, whispering to herself that she’s having a nightmare and that when she wakes everything will be alright, but as readers we know this isn’t true. Something Was Wrong (More Scary Stories): MB: In “Something was Wrong,” we have the opposite situation: Here our protagonist awakes in a strange place, unable to understand what’s happened to him. John Sullivan is dead but doesn’t know it, and so as the story opens he’s in a sort of fugue, wandering the streets: “He could not explain what he was doing there, or how he got there, or where he had been earlier. He didn’t even know what time it was.” A series of brief interactions with others fails to answer John’s questions — a woman screams and runs away, a few undetailed strangers “[flatten] themselves against a building, or [run] across the street to stay out of his way,” a taxi driver speeds off after a single look — but maybe a smart reader guesses even before John calls his house to find out that his wife is not home, that she has gone to his funeral, taking place that very moment. It’s a very simple story, but when I read it as a devoutly Catholic child, I think it might have spoken to my fears that after death I would not go to heaven, or in this case even to hell, instead ending up only in some limbo or purgatory served on earth. What could be worse? As a more secular adult — who, as he reads these stories, has to continually remind himself that he does not believe in ghosts — I’m now struck mostly by the ending, how the tale finishes not with resolution but with a punchline: John has learned he’s dead, and we’re supposed to be either caught by surprise or else delighted that we figured it out before he did. But really, John’s story has just begun: Yes, John’s dead, but what’s next? That’s the most interesting part of the story, and it’s left entirely up to the reader. Yes, John’s dead, but what’s next? The Babysitter (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark): AV: That kind of open ending differs from some of the closed endings of Schwartz’s tales, like “The Babysitter.” In this well-known story, a babysitter for three children keeps getting phone calls that grow more menacing as the night wears on. Every half hour, a man whispers a countdown to the babysitter on the other end of the line. After the fourth call, the babysitter calls an operator who traces the fifth call. Just as the operator tells the babysitter that the call is coming from upstairs, a door opens at the top of the stairwell and a man emerges with a knife. The ending is closed: the police arrive, and the main is arrested. But questions still linger for the reader, the opening up of the possibility that this kind of thing can even happen. If I try to think about why this story was so terrifying to me as a child, especially since I only babysat a few times in teenhood, it’s the notion of seemingly safe borders being permeated: the domestic setting of a house, the surety of locked doors. Like many other urban legends, this story also features a man preying upon a young woman, not unlike Arnold Friend in Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” where an older man tracks a teenage girl, and where a locked screen door becomes a thin boundary between safety and danger. That story leaves the reader with an open ending, whereas here, the babysitter is resourceful enough to call the operator and the police arrive. But the terror of this occurrence lingers beyond the final lines, that there was a man upstairs the entire time the babysitter watched these children. The Bride (More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark): MB: It’s coming from inside the house! That’s become such a horror movie trope, and probably every generation will have their version of it. (That said, “The text message is coming from inside the house” is somehow not very scary.) I like the connection you made between “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and urban legends: Like you, many of the ones I remember are cautionary in nature, about the danger of crossing different thresholds. I grew up in a house surrounded by woods, and I frequently spent the days playing in them happily with my brother. But at night the woods were a completely different thing: I used to try to see how far I could walk out into them without getting scared and having to run back to the house, and it was never as far as I wanted it to be, even though I knew there wasn’t anything to be afraid of — nothing except that the backyard of our house was manicured and fenced and lit and safe, and the world beyond it was none of those things. In “The Bride,” Schwartz gives us another rare story with nothing supernatural in play: A minister’s daughter gets married, and after the celebration there is “music and dancing and contests and games, even old children’s games.” This is the trick of the story, I think: It creates tension not through the supernatural but by twisting the everyday. The wedding party begins to play hide-and-seek, and the bride hides in the attic, inside “her grandfather’s trunk,” her preacher father’s father’s trunk. The lid falls upon her, knocking her unconscious and then locking her inside. (And why was the chest unlocked when she found it? And why was it stored empty in the attic? What did it used to contain, before it contained the bride?) The wedding party searches for her, but her screams can not be heard from inside the trunk and eventually she dies. And this too was a childhood fear I remember all too well: That I would walk into the woods and at last go so far past my fear I might not be able to make it back home. That I would close my eyes and count to a hundred at the start of a game of hide-and-seek and when I opened them I would never find my brother, or else when it was my turn to hide I would not be found either. I remember the creeping terror that comes from choosing a particular good hiding spot: As the seekers expand their search, the sound of their hunting quiets, their movement perhaps now somewhere beyond the limits of your hearing. And how long do you wait? How long can you stand to be alone, in a place where no one who cares about you knows where you? At what point does that game stop being fun? The minutes were so much longer when we were kids. Inside them it could become horrible to be alone and lost even in a hidey-hole of your own making, even for the length of a single game. A Ghost in the Mirror (More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark): AV: The focus on games — hide-and-seek, and the point at which fun turns to horror — is at play in “A Ghost in the Mirror” too, along with the same terror that something as familiar as your backyard can quickly become defamiliarized and dangerous. Less story and more instruction manual, this tale begins, “This is a scary game that young people sometimes play,” even though it’s anything but a game: the story outlines the history of Bloody Mary and how to conjure her in a bathroom mirror. Schwartz discusses the possible origins of the Bloody Mary legend, from the ghost of Mary Worth who was allegedly hanged in the Salem Witch Trials to La Llorona, a “weeping woman who wanders the streets of cities and towns from Texas to California and throughout Mexico, looking for her lost child.” Much like other urban legends, the terror of this tale is the permeability of borders, only this time a lack of definition between a ghostly world and our own. As Schwartz mentions in the instructions to conjuring Bloody Mary, “If [the ghost] is angry enough, they say, it will try to shatter the mirror and come right into the room.” What is more terrifying to a kid than the notion that a ghost can break through a mirror and enter one’s house and world? As a child, after reading this tale and after seeing Candyman and after witnessing a group of girls try to conjure Bloody Mary in my elementary school bathroom, I removed the mirror from my bedroom in fourth grade (it didn’t return until I was well into high school). Schwartz writes that the conjurer “can always turn on the lights and send the ghost back to where it came from.” But who can be sure? A border has been crossed. A border as mundane yet entirely frightening as a bathroom mirror. The Haunted House (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark): MB: What I want to know now is: Where did you keep your mirror in the decade it wasn’t on your wall? I gave myself a good chill at the thought of the mirror under your bed, face up and reflecting the dark beneath, half-loaded with one or two namings of Bloody Mary, just waiting for you or someone else to slip up just one more time. Do you know that there are Youtube clips of teenagers playing Bloody Mary? Testing the thresholds of reality, Millennial-style. “The Haunted House” is a story that taps the same anxious vein, about a preacher who spends the night sitting up and reading his bible in a house “in his settlement” that has been “haunted for about ten years.” (The “settlement” is such a telling detail: These are old stories, taking place in more dangerous days.) In one of those serendipitous moments where the page layout amplifies the story, we’re told that when the preacher finally sees “the haunt” (not a ghost, but a haunts!) that it “looked like a young woman.” And then, in my edition at least, you turn to the page to find one of Gammell’s most terrifying illustrations, perhaps the one I remember most vividly across all the years between readings of these books. “It look liked a young woman,” Schwartz writes, but this young woman has no eyeballs, just “a sort of blue light way back in her eye sockets,” and “no nose to her face.” Her hair is “torn and mangled,” and “the flesh was dropping off her face so he could see the bones and part of her teeth.” It’s one of the most literal illustrations in the books, and one I will never not have lurking somewhere in among my synapses, waiting to be triggered again. Reading the story again, I’m also once more struck by how skillfully Schwartz sometimes turns a phrase. When the haunt starts speaking — and how much better of a noun is “the haunt” instead of “the ghost”? — it sounds “like her voice was coming and going with the wind blowing it.” That’s vague in a really spectacular way, a kind of description that requires a little work from the reader. And horror is all about getting the reader to imagine something worse than anything you might put directly on the page: What exactly does it sound like when a voice is “coming and going with the wind blowing it”? And why does it get more disturbing the more precisely I try to imagine it? The Trouble (Scary Stories 3): AV: That phrase was the one that stood out to me most in the story as well too, and I appreciate that subtle attention to language in Schwartz’s stories (and that image has also stayed lodged in my brain for more than twenty years now). “The Trouble” is equally interesting on a language level, but written with a heightened attention to precision rather than leaving much to the reader’s imagination due to its structure as a daily log of paranormal activity. One of the longest stories in the collection (seven pages!), this tale recounts a strange month in the Lombardo household where caps explode from bottles, record players fly through the air and crash to the floor, and in the most delicious of details, “a bookcase filled with encyclopedias fell over and wedged itself between a radiator and a wall.” The family hires Detective Briggs, a “practical man” who calls upon “an engineer, a chemist, a physicist, and others,” to help find a logical explanation for this trouble. Scientific hypotheses follow, including the possibility that vibrations from radio waves or underground water are causing objects in the house to move. The tension in this tale comes from the conflict between knowing and not knowing, and between reason and what can’t be explained by logic. Try as they might, Detective Briggs and his team of scientists can’t fully explain what is happening to the Lombardos. Schwartz writes, “Then what was causing the trouble? None of the experts knew.” This breakdown of authority’s ability to explain is never answered with reason and leaves more questions — for the reader and for the Lombardo family — than answers. The Dream (Scary Stories 3): As a reader, I can’t see any escape from the room, and so even after Lucy Morgan escapes perhaps I am still there. MB: I love “The Trouble” too, and I think there’s something really interesting about how despite its extended length we still end up at a place of not-knowing. Another that resists easy explanation is “The Dream,” about an artist named Lucy Morgan — there’s something so certain about being offered her first name and last name, so solid and reassuring — who has a dream about a “woman with a pale face and black eyes and long black hair” who comes into her room at night to warn her that the house she’s sleeping in is “an evil place.” This story is also accompanied by one of Gammell’s oddest drawings, of the pale-faced woman: her mouth a wide straight line that somehow still seems to be smiling, her small black eyes, her long hair falling over what appears to be a naked but featureless body, without breasts, without a navel, with no distinguishing marks of any kind. Down in the lower left of the page, we see the fingers of one hand, gripping a featureless white object, a wall or a divider or else the frame of Lucy Morgan’s bed, the dream-bed or else the one she finds herself in a few days later, when she escapes to another town, renting a room she realized she’s seen in her dream, “with the same carpet that looked like trapdoors and the same windows fastened with big nails.” It’s a room with two fake escapes — trapdoors that are just carpet, windows that can’t be opened — and then the door opens, revealing “the woman with the pale face and the black eyes and the long black hair,” the woman’s name not a name like Lucy Morgan but instead just this long phrasal noun that carries with it everything you can ever know about her. In the last sentence of the tale, Lucy Morgan flees — but how, with the fake trapdoors and the fastened windows and the woman standing in the doorway? As a reader, I can’t see any escape from the room, and so even after Lucy Morgan escapes perhaps I am still there. The Red Spot (Scary Stories 3): AV: That sense of nightmare — of dreamscape, of lack of escape — seems crucial to these stories, and maybe even to why we’re still talking about them today, over thirty years since the first of the series was published. Sitting down to read these now, I’m still there, still in elementary school and still under the covers with a flashlight. In the same section as “The Dream” — fittingly entitled Five Nightmares — is another Schwartz tale that stayed with me. There’s nothing supernatural about “The Red Spot” and it ends with a clear explanation, but the accompanying illustration is what continues to haunt me. The story is about a woman who wakes to find a red spot on her cheek. The story is only half a page long but across that page the spot grows into a boil and keeps getting bigger. At the end of the story the boil bursts while the woman is in the bathtub, releasing a “swarm of tiny spiders from the eggs their mother had laid in her cheek.” The ending is cut and dry. The story is horrific in a gross way but doesn’t require much imagination from the reader. But it’s the illustration that still gets me. Much like the close-up of the woman in “The Dream,” this story’s black-and-white sketch is of a woman open-mouthed in horror as a dripping splotch of blood and small spiders spreads across her face. The woman is ghostly. As with all of Gammell’s illustrations — and all of Schwartz’s tales — reality bends and shapeshifts just beyond recognition. The scaffolding falls away. Something surreal and haunting takes its place. This story shares what all of Schwartz’s stories share, whether they’re supernatural or reality-based, whether they move toward closed or open endings: all of these stories create a deeply unsettling mood and tone, and all of them push our understanding of the world further off kilter. I hope to create a similar sense of not-knowing in my fiction now, some sense of wide-open possibility in the language that leaves room for the reader’s imagination, and some sense that the world is filled with strange and mysterious things that can be discovered by nothing more than an active sense of curiosity, a willingness to believe. In the decades since their publication, the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books have been among the American Library Association’s most challenged books, with would-be censors decrying the violence in the stories and in the illustrations. In 2011, publisher HarperCollins “celebrated” the 30th anniversary of the series by replacing Stephen Gammell’s strikingly nightmarish art with much tamer, more clearly representational art by Brett Helquist. It’s one of the more obvious examples of a publisher not understanding what made a book special in the first, revising a wildly successful property into a less risky and less unique product. In our hearts, the original versions of the books will always be the only acceptable choice, and we hope new readers will seek out old copies in libraries and used bookstores, on the shelves of older siblings and friends, and surely, by now, on the shelves of their parents, who might still be able to tell you exactly what page certain illustrations are waiting on, the images and the words they accompany surely no less terrifying now than they were three decades ago. Anne Valente is the author of the short story collection By Light We Knew Our Names, recently released from Dzanc Books. Her fiction appears or is forthcoming in One Story, Ninth Letter, Hayden’s Ferry Review and The Normal School, and her essays appear in The Believer and The Washington Post.Share “People are completely flipping out.” Problems are “serious,” and they’re “mounting.” “It’s real, and Google is actively investigating.” Gimme a break. The past few days have seen mounting concerns and chatter about problems with the screen on Google’s new Pixel 2 XL smartphone — and I’m here to tell you that this hullabaloo has been blown way out of proportion. First, the facts. There are undoubtedly some issues with the plastic OLED screen from LG that Google used for its flagship smartphone. With our review unit, there’s a noticeable blue tint when you look at the phone from the sides. Is it a problem that impacts usage? No, I’ve hardly noticed it in the time I’ve used the phone — because I’m almost always looking at the phone head on. The second problem is a tad more concerning. There’s very slight burn-in, a problem that arises when a static image on the screen is permanently burned into the display, making it visible when it’s no longer supposed to be there. It used to be a thing with CRT televisions, and happens with content on a screen that’s always-present and static, like for example the Android navigation keys. I’ve never noticed burn-in during my day-to-day use of the phone, and could only faintly track it down by downloading a gray wallpaper, hiding the navigation keys, squinting my eyes, and holding my face within an inch of the screen. I saw a very faint outline of the navigation keys; it’s hardly visible. Still, even if the burn-in is minor just after two weeks, it could get worse the longer the phone is in use and be more visible a few months from now. Google is looking into this issue. There’s another complaint: Colors on the screen are muted and not as saturated as a Samsung display. This is deliberate, a Google spokesperson told Digital Trends: “We designed the Pixel 2 to take advantage of multiple facets of the innovative new POLED technology, including QHD+ resolution with 538 pixels per inch as well as a wide color gamut. One of our design intents was to achieve a more natural and accurate rendition of colors. We know that some people prefer more vivid colors, so we’ve added an option to boost colors by 10 percent for more saturation. We’ll continue to pay close attention to people’s responses to Pixel, and we will consider adding more display color options through software if that makes the product better.” I prefer the muted colors over more saturation, but if Google’s going to offer up a Vivid Color toggle in the Pixel’s settings, perhaps it should up the saturation more than 10 percent for those that want colors that pop. Again, this isn’t really a problem and a matter of personal preference. Some reviewers and device owners have noted several other issues with the screen, such as blotchy patches, reddish screens, and grain. This is clearly the result of a small batch of devices that did not pass quality control, especially considering how 9to5Google’s Stephen Hall said he’s a little happier with the screen after receiving a fresh unit. Now that I have a Pixel 2 XL that doesn't have excessive amounts of grain and image retention (so far)… I'm pretty happy with this phone. — Stephen Hall (@hallstephenj) October 24, 2017 Should any of this have happened with an $850 phone? No. It’s clear there’s a snag in Google’s quality assurance department — especially since a Google Pixel 2 that failed testing due to cosmetic damage managed to reach the hands of a customer. All of this is damaging to the public image of the Pixel brand, and Google seriously needs to up its efforts if it wants to get serious with hardware. Does it change my opinion of the phone? With nearly three weeks of continuous use — no. There are so many things about this phone that make it a joy to use, from the excellent camera to the “radically helpful” software, and many of the problems with the screen I’ve noted above are things I almost never noticed when using the phone. But sure, if you have a Pixel 2 XL with easy-to-see screen problems, like a blotchy and reddish screen, contact Google support: You likely have a device that came from this bad batch. My prime concern is with burn-in largely because it can get worse over time, and we’re waiting to hear the results from Google’s investigation. We chatted with Google Support about the Pixel 2 XL as well, which said the support team has been replacing devices with screen burn-in because it is a hardware problem. The support specialist suggested the replacement units do not have burn-in because the replacement “would be going through the quality checks from our product team so that you should [not] experience any issues further.” Considering this is just from a support specialist, we’re not sure if it’s reliable information. When I asked Google about replacing units with burn in, I was directed to the Google warranty page. For now, I’m standing by my claim that the Pixel 2 XL is the best Android smartphone you can purchase. But I recommend waiting to snag one until we hear what Google says about its investigation. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the beliefs of Digital Trends.Tom DeLay's Conviction Overturned On Appeal Enlarge this image toggle caption Ben Sklar/Getty Images Ben Sklar/Getty Images An appeals court in Texas has overturned the 2010 conviction of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who had been found guilty of illegally funneling corporate money to Texas candidates during the 2002 campaign cycle. DeLay, a Republican, had been out on bail while appealing his conviction and the three-year prison sentence he was handed afterward. But in a 2-1 ruling released Thursday, the state's Third District Court of Appeals says "we conclude that the evidence presented does not support a conclusion that DeLay committed the crimes that were charged.... The fundamental problem with the State's case was its failure to prove proceeds of criminal activity." The court found that a political action committee DeLay created, which was at the center of the case, could accept donations from corporations and that the PAC "could lawfully transfer the corporate funds out of state." Therefore, the judges write, "the State failed to prove the 'applicable culpable mental states' for the donating corporations to support a finding of criminal intent by the corporations." What's more, the appeals court says: "There was no evidence that [the PAC] or RNSEC [the Republican National State Elections Committee] treated the corporate funds as anything but what they were, corporate funds with limited uses under campaign finance law. Rather, when viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence showed an agreement to two legal monetary transfers: that [DeLay's PAC] transfer corporate money to RNSEC for use in other states and not in Texas in exchange for RNSEC transferring funds to Texas candidates out of a hard money account." The Houston Chronicle described what DeLay's PAC did this way: "DeLay was convicted of conspiracy and money laundering...
be a woman. But if they never bother to look beyond the simple tug-of-war over “Yes, trans women are women!” versus “No, they’re not!”, the word “woman” is just getting in the way of clearer communication. Again, if you’re expecting that this can be resolved in some conclusive way such that the question “But is a trans woman really a woman?” can have a universal yes-or-no answer, this isn’t going to happen. The word “woman” is used to convey many distinct meanings here, and if you don’t know which particular meaning is intended, a “yes” or “no” would not be very useful for effectively communicating anything. Practice 2: Genitals and what they represent Content note: descriptions of rape and sexual assault. This technique can be extended beyond just words, because there are many more kinds of symbols that attach to meanings and concepts. For example, parts of the human body can serve as symbols that represent certain meanings. In the ongoing controversy over trans people’s use of public restrooms and locker rooms, trans women’s bodies and genitals have often been the subject of intense scrutiny, described in terms such as “male anatomy”, “male sex organs”, “male genitals”, and so on. The mere possession of a penis by some trans women has frequently been cited as a reason why they shouldn’t be present in women’s restrooms or locker rooms, with various lawmakers and organizations characterizing this as a “security concern” or a matter of “safety”. My bill essentially states that it is ok for a facility to segregate by gender and if you are preoperative or nonoperative then you use the facility apporpriate for your genitalia and you have no right to enter a facility of the opposite gender. I see this as a privacy, safety and a security issue… – Rep. Graham Hunt (R-WA) What exactly is the nature of this supposed threat to security or safety posed by trans women’s bodies? In a court filing regarding H.B. 2, the state of North Carolina managed to find a former FBI agent who made these broad statements about human sexuality: These rules and social customs are not only because of potential deviant or criminal abuses, but also due to the “normal” sexual interest and attraction of the vast majority of society. For example, some adolescent high school boys or college males (who are not abnormal or sexual predators) might want to get into the girls’ locker room. … The raging hormones and immaturity of young males drive the activity. … For these reasons, changes in access policies made to accommodate a very small minority of society ignore the reality of the sex drive of a very large majority. Allowing a man to use woman’s rest room, locker room, dressing room, shower, or dormitory room simply because he says he feels like a woman would seem to be reckless, to ignore thousands of years of human experience, and to ignore potential criminal activity. – US v. North Carolina, “Defendants’ and Intervenor-Defendants’ Brief in Opposition to the United States’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction”, 17 Aug 2016 (Exhibit M, “Expert Declaration and Report of Kenneth V. Lanning”) Such testimonies provide useful clues as to what individuals are trying to convey when they make the argument: “Penises should not be present in women’s restrooms or locker rooms.” Clearly, there are already many issues with this argument: declaring that men’s sexual violation of women is “normal”, insinuating that the rape of women by men is the only kind of rape which should concern us, and assuming that only penises are used in the act of rape or sexual assault and that no other body parts or objects are ever used for this purpose. But even putting these problems aside, this argument still fails on its own premises. Here, penises are cited in order to invoke a wider range of physical and behavioral phenomena. A penis alone does very little outside of being controlled by the other bodily systems of a person. What is being expressed here when the penis itself is treated as some inherently self-explanatory reason why the body attached to it shouldn’t be present in women’s facilities? In place of saying “penises”, those making this argument could be saying: “Male-typical patterns of sexual interest should not be present in women’s restrooms or locker rooms.” “Male-typical patterns of sexual urges and sexual response should not be present in women’s restrooms or locker rooms.” “Male-typical patterns of erectile function should not be present in women’s restrooms or locker rooms.” However, even if these are justifiable concerns, the physical realities of trans women’s bodies significantly impact the relevance of these concerns in this situation. A frequent feature of gender dysphoria is strong discomfort with one’s original genitals. Many trans women would be uncomfortable having their penises seen by others at all, and many don’t wish to use these genitals sexually, let alone to commit forcible rape or other sex crimes in a public area. A large number of trans women take hormonal medications which reduce their levels of testosterone and increase their levels of estrogen. This treatment can alter and moderate the overall nature of their libido, and they often no longer experience sexual urges as frequently or intensely as they once may have. Additionally, many experience their sex drive prior to treatment as an uncomfortable and unwelcome presence that they are reluctant to engage with at all. Hormone therapy can cause extensive atrophy and shrinkage of the genital tissue, as well as infertility and severe erectile dysfunction – a number of these medications are also used for the “chemical castration” of convicted sex offenders or prostate cancer patients. Many trans women may be largely unable to experience erections spontaneously or in response to sexual stimuli. These traits are not universal or observed in every individual trans woman, but they do occur frequently, and show a very different distribution among trans women compared to cis men. The shape of a trans woman’s genitals is thus more of a technicality in this circumstance: it no longer reliably represents any of these concerning or threatening properties, as it does when attached to a cis man. As a symbol, her penis does not connect to those meanings. The prevalence of this argument in public debate over trans issues illustrates how these conceptual conflations can be more than an oversight or miscommunication. They may also be constructed and advanced specifically for the purpose of spreading misinformation – in this case, by grouping trans women with cis men on the basis of this one shared characteristic, and inaccurately ascribing cis men’s abilities, tendencies, and actions to trans women as well. Most people may not be aware that this characteristic is a superficial one and that the relevant traits being implied are largely absent, as the public’s understanding of gender dysphoria and hormone therapy is usually not very detailed. A more accurate grasp of these phenomena would undermine objections to trans women’s penises being present in women’s restrooms and locker rooms. Practice 3: “Am I transgender?” I often receive messages from people who’d like my help as they work to figure out whether or not they’re transgender. The question “Am I trans?” can seem rather imposing and all-or-nothing, especially when phrased so bluntly. But it’s really not. The phenomena involved in gender and transness are very complex, and so this question may actually be referring to a wide variety of other lines of inquiry. When you peel back the label and look at the concepts underneath, it’s clear that this question is far from monolithic – it’s made of many smaller parts. If we taboo the word “transgender”, which detailed and concrete questions might someone ask in place of “Am I transgender?” These could include: Am I experiencing some of the most characteristic symptoms of gender dysphoria? Do I feel uncomfortable with the sexed features of my body? Which sexed features of my body would I change if possible? How do I feel about the idea of my body aging under the influence of testosterone or estrogen? Do I wish I had been born as another sex? Do I feel I have more in common with women than with men, or vice versa? Do I feel it’s more accurate to describe myself as a gender other than the one I was assigned? Am I more comfortable in masculine-coded attire, feminine-coded attire, both, or neither? Would I prefer to take a differently-gendered name? Do I derive comfort and affirmation from presenting as another gender in private? In public? Am I compelled to transition, while also reluctant due to the perceived commitment, social adjustments, possibility of harassment and discrimination, or other factors? Would I, on the whole, feel better and more fulfilled if I were to live in all areas of daily life as a gender other than the one I was assigned? The idea that the question of “Am I trans?” must be decisively confronted all at once can be offputting to people who may be trans – yet it really doesn’t have to be. Gender is comprised of an incredible number of variables, and it’s something that everyone experiences somewhat differently. Each of these components can be contemplated in relative isolation, without it being necessary to provide a singular answer to the larger question of one’s gender or identity. This can help a person develop an understanding of themselves at a more comfortable pace, exploring these questions when they’re ready. Homework: Cracking concepts and disentangling definitions The techniques I’ve outlined here are very straightforward, but they do require some deliberate thought, imagination, and practice. Here are some gender-related questions for you to explore using these approaches. There are plenty of possible answers – this isn’t primarily about finding the correct ones, it’s just about getting used to intentionally and explicitly navigating these concepts and their structure. Locate three distinct and separate physical phenomena that have each been referred to with the term “biological sex”. How can definitions of biological sex be constructed to affirm or contradict trans people’s genders? Name three specific and relevant differences between a trans woman voicing an identity as a woman, and a cis man voicing an identity as a helicopter. How is the term “identify” used to obscure these differences? If you’d like to send in your answers, post in the comments below or email zinnia@zinniajones.com. Have fun! ■ Recommended reading Next: Answers (module 1-2)Support for actor Martin Sheen to become the next Irish president has mushroomed on the Sheen for president Facebook page, reaching over 1,500 up from 300 on Monday. A Sheen spokesman has told an Irish newspaper that they will issue a statement on the drive to have Sheen, an Irish citizen run in the election which will be held in late October. Paddy Power bookmakers have slashed his odds as pressure builds up for the American actor who is an Irish citizen through his mother,Mary Ann Phelan, a native of Tipperary to run. He is a frequent visitor to Ireland, has studied at University College Galway and has filmed several movies in Ireland. -------------- READ MORE: Campaign to have Martin Sheen run for president of Ireland Wanted in Ireland: one half-way decent presidential candidate Michael Moore urges Matt Damon to run against Obama -------------- The drive for Sheen to declare has come after yet another front-runner Gay Byrne dropped out of the race and there were widespread calls for new candidates to come forward. A twitter site dedicated to Sheen running soon became very popular and a facebook page followed. The Irish media has also begun to take a Sheen candidacy as something that could happen. Alison O’Connor writing in the Irish Independent stated “Who would have guessed that before the day had ended there would be a Hollywood angle to the whole thing, with hundreds of people having signed a newly established Facebook page to urge actor and Irish citizen Martin Sheen to be a candidate?...... "Lest we forget, the global human-rights activist has all that first-hand experience from playing US president Jed Bartlett in the phenomenally successful 'The West Wing'. It's bound to give him an added edge if he decides to head for the Phoenix Park." Sheen would be running for a largely ceremonial job which has a seven year term. However, the last two incumbents Mary Robinson and Mary McAlese have made a major impact on the world stage.I don't know who decided what to inscribe on the plaque that has just been removed from the new Holocaust memorial in Ottawa. But I can make a reasonable guess at the logic. The wording was almost certainly decided by a senior bureaucrat or even a minister who has absorbed the central ethos of the Trudeau government: make all public statements as anodyne, inoffensive and mushy — not to mention as uninformative — as possible. How does that have anything to do with the Holocaust plaque? Well, of the at least 11 million (and probably more) people murdered by the Nazis, six million were Jews. But the Nazis also systematically exterminated millions of Ukrainian and Belarusian Slavs, and their relatives, many of whom live in Canada, probably don't appreciate those deaths being overlooked. The Nazis also massacred more than a million ethnic Poles. Polish Canadians want them remembered. The Nazis systematically killed Gypsies (Romani), and gays, and the disabled, and anyone else considered an untermensch. In these days of identity politics, it just doesn't do to ignore anyone's historical victimhood, and Justin Trudeau's government is primordially attuned to that fact. So, whoever decided on the wording of that plaque probably Googled Trudeau's public statement on the first Holocaust Memorial Day after he took office, in which he paid "tribute to the memory of the millions of victims murdered during the Holocaust. "We honour those who survived atrocities at the hands of the Nazi regime, and welcome their courageous stories of hope and perseverance," it read. No special mention of Jews. A non-specific plaque Accordingly, the memorial plaque, unveiled by Justin Trudeau himself, was similarly non-specific, declaring the memorial pays tribute to the "…millions of men, women and children murdered during the Holocaust and honours the survivors who persevered and were able to make their way to Canada after one of the darkest chapters in history." As a political strategy, the Trudeau approach does makes some sense. But the trouble is that mushy talk can sometimes leave you in a big mushy hole, splashing around in mush. Jewish groups, which generally consider the Holocaust to be their tragedy, complained that there was no specific mention of Jews. And it does seem weird to discuss the Holocaust without mentioning Jews. The omission made headlines abroad. Immediately, the government removed the plaque, which is presumably being thoughtfully and inclusively re-worked somewhere. Now, in the scheme of things, the controversy isn't terribly important. The new memorial is, after all, shaped like a Star of David. But it is a perfect example of how this government communicates with the public: say nothing, reveal less, and if you can, work in a mention of how "diversity is our strength" or a reference to the "middle class and those who are working so hard to join it." A recent independent audit of the access to information system concluded that Trudeau's government is actually less transparent than Stephen Harper's, which was just about opaque. The incarnation of the Trudeau approach, apart from Trudeau himself, is his house leader, Bardish Chagger. She's remarkably expert at delivering sedulously meaningless gushers of scripted treacle. Chagger never wavers; she delivers each non-answer with the same serene, otherwise uninflected smile. The incarnation of the Trudeau approach, apart from Trudeau himself, is his house leader, Bardish Chagger. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press) Responding once to Opposition anger about the government's declared intent to unilaterally impose changes to House of Commons operating rules, Chagger said this: "Until we actually look at the evidence and look at how we can improve this place, we have to actually look at the commitments to Canadians that we are committed to delivering on." She concluded: "Canadians elect us to have these kind of tough conversations." Chagger evidently sees no irony, or condescension, in invoking the right of Canadians to hear the answers she isn't providing. I probably shouldn't single out Chagger. She's merely the most enthusiastic of the Prozac-smile Stepford wives and husbands in cabinet. A fleet of uninteresting ministers To be fair, a prime minister's options for cabinet spots come from an extremely limited pool. And Trudeau has also decided his cabinet must be half men, half women and ethnically diverse, all criteria that shrink the candidate pool even further. The result is obedient, mantra-chanting, deeply uninteresting ministers. Yes, they show up at the mic, unlike their Conservative predecessors, and yes, they respond to questions. But like the Tories, they seldom actually answer. There's Finance Minister Bill Morneau, a former Bay Street financier who is either too arrogant or too timorous to speak in anything but rehearsed sentences. Or Navdeep Bains, the air-recycling minister of innovation. He clutters his answers so thickly with mind-glazing boilerplate that by the time he's done, no one remembers the question. Or Maryam Monsef, the eternally smiling woman Trudeau selected to manage his electoral reform promise. Or Karina Gould, Monsef's even younger successor, whom Trudeau basically put in charge of breaking the promise. Gould smiles a lot, too. As Maclean's magazine put it: "When a reporter asked how anyone could trust Liberal election promises if the government is just going to break them, Gould smiled beatifically and thanked her for the question." Of course she did. And beatific is the right adjective. It's the Trudeau way. Smile, burble some inclusive-sounding tapioca, and declare it to be a different way of doing politics.The disappointing thing is that this government actually did show some early promise. That didn't last long. The PM attended the dedication ceremony at the Canadian War Museum after thunderstorms brought heavy rain and winds to Ottawa 1:20 Earlier this year, Conservative House leader Candice Bergen asked Justin Trudeau a short, simple question about his ethical hiccups: "Has the prime minister met with the ethics commissioner on the current investigation she's conducting, and if so, how many times?" As Trudeau busied himself with paperwork, evincing a breezy lack of concern, Bardish Chagger shot to her feet. Here is the first 24 seconds of her answer (she speaks very quickly): "I appreciate the opportunity to once again rise in this House and to remind Canadians exactly what this government has been doing. This government has been responding to the very real challenges that Canadians are facing and we will continue to do that work. Historic investments on infrastructure to help the provinces territories and municipalities create the opportunities in growth that they would like to create. Working better with them families with children through the Canadian child care benefit." As an aside, she quickly added that the prime minister will answer any questions the commissioner might have, which was not the question, then sat down. And smiled, beatifically. This column is part of CBC's Opinion section. For more information about this section, please read this editor's blog and our FAQ.The Recording Industry Association of America, that adorable cave man of a gigantic litigious organization, recently announced that it wants electronic devices like cellphones and music players to be legally required to incorporate FM radio receivers, both to protect broadcasters' revenue streams and to ease the transition of anyone caught up in a time tunnel from the 1960s and brought to our era. I think this is wonderful news, because I am a humor columnist. This is such a wonderfully goofy idea that I just want to hug the RIAA and ruffle its hair. Obviously the important thing, in early 21st-century America, is to make sure that no fading industry is left behind. If that means bolting outdated technology to new devices and letting consumers pick up the bill, well at least we can make sure that "morning zoo" DJs are kept off the streets and out of trouble. This is such a wonderful idea, in the sense of being a terrible idea, that I think other industries should come up with their own ways of making sure they never have to adapt to new technological realities, then lobby the government to enforce the life-saving mandates. If they all pull together, they can provide me with material for a dozen columns. Newspapers ———- Let's start with newspapers. They've been having a lot of trouble adapting to the internet, and there's no guarantee that iPads and Kindles and the like are going to help. Solution: Require companies to bundle a parakeet with every new tablet or e-reader device. This will create a groundswell of demand for newsprint with which to line the cages of the federally mandated house pets. I strongly suggest that all the major news consortium start talking to their representatives about making this a reality. This could have saved Cathy, dammit! Mapmakers ——— Mapmakers are also seeing their profits reduced by the advent of GPS and Google Maps. It hardly seems fair that they're taking a hit from unfair business practices like coming up with better and more responsive alternatives. Still, there are a lot of companies and individuals who have invested deeply in GPS devices, and we can't just cut them off. The compromise? Make it so that GPS devices can only direct you to places where you can buy maps! The Thomas Brothers get their profits back, and consumers still get to hear a slightly stilted voice tell them to turn left in 400 yards. Let's make it the law. Travel Agents ————- Travel agencies are another class of businesses desperately in need of shelter from the insidious advance of useful technology. Booking your own flight or hotel has become so easy that most people are willing to overlook how annoying most flight- and hotel-booking websites are. Clearly, travel agents need a little boost to make sure they continue in the proud American tradition of travel and the agency thereof. How about a law saying all travel arrangements must be made within 12 hours of departure? Sure, if you want to go to a bunch of websites and make all your reservations and arrangements by hand while attempting to pack, give the cats enough food and water, and remember where you put the digital camera battery, you're welcome to – but just remember, a travel agent can make those arrangements for you in a jiffy. Get lobbying, travel agents! With any luck, these proposals and more will soon make their way to Washington, providing these industries with much-needed income and me with much-needed material. I'd hate to have to lobby for the Comedy Writer Protection Act of 2011. - - - Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a lobbyist, a globalist and a lobotomist. See Also:Manchester City’s draw with Arsenal provided further evidence why these sides – the two title favourites before the reverse fixture in December – have slipped behind Leicester City and Tottenham Hotspur. The scoreline actually flattered the sides’ attacking efforts, the four goals coming from only five shots on target. Manuel Pellegrini kept faith with Kelechi Iheanacho supporting Sergio Agüero up front. There were few signs of a genuine relationship between these two, however. They combined only five times, usually when both drifted into deep positions, and never threatened to penetrate Arsenal’s defence. Peculiarly City’s runs in behind often came from Fernandinho, who charged into an advanced position to provide a knock-down for Agüero’s opener and found himself running through on goal at the start of the second half. The Brazilian is the biggest beneficiary when Yaya Touré is left out of the starting XI, and able to play the box-to-box role he became accustomed to in his Shakhtar Donetsk days. City’s formation was not enabling them to play good passing combinations but it did help them press aggressively in the opening stages, with Kevin De Bruyne and Jesús Navas pushing forward alongside the forwards to shut down Arsenal’s back four quickly. Arsenal struggled in the opening stages, in part simply because they did not have enough bodies in midfield to work the ball forward. Danny Welbeck and Alexis Sánchez started wide but played very high up the pitch while Alex Iwobi was also too advanced in his No10 position. Arsenal’s midfielders were unable to find this trio, generally playing more direct passes to Olivier Giroud. Arsenal’s shape improved after Welbeck departed through injury. Jack Wilshere replaced him, playing at the top of the midfield trio with Iwobi moving to the left. Wilshere was his usual energetic self, putting in a couple of strong challenges, as Arsenal started to compete in the midfield zone. After half-time Wenger moved to more of a 4-3-3 system, using Wilshere and Aaron Ramsey ahead of Mohamed Elneny. With the City press no longer so noticeable after the break Arsenal worked the ball forward much more effectively. While City again took the lead through De Bruyne it was Arsenal who played the better football in the second half, particularly after the introduction of Theo Walcott in place of Iwobi, with Sánchez moving to the left. Sánchez and Walcott offered the type of penetrative runs badly missing at the other end. Walcott made an excellent run in behind Gaël Clichy to reach a Ramsey through-ball, before a classic example of Giroud’s one-touch hold-up play sent Walcott through on goal, his first touch letting him down. That was Arsenal’s best route to goal and they almost immediately scored from a similar move, Sánchez running through on goal after a one-two with Giroud, again providing a brilliant flick, before firing home. One-twos were seemingly the order of the day, with Agüero firing narrowly wide after exchanging passes with De Bruyne. That was the exception to the rule, however – City’s other attempts came from an individual attempting something spectacular, with substitute Wilfried Bony hitting the bar from an excellent volley. Under Pellegrini City have rarely appeared better than the sum of their parts and their combination play will surely improve drastically under Pep Guardiola.The Two Classes of Airport Contraband Airport security found a jar of pasta sauce in my luggage last month. It was a 6-ounce jar, above the limit; the official confiscated it, because allowing it on the airplane with me would have been too dangerous. And to demonstrate how dangerous he really thought that jar was, he blithely tossed it in a nearby bin of similar liquid bottles and sent me on my way. There are two classes of contraband at airport security checkpoints: the class that will get you in trouble if you try to bring it on an airplane, and the class that will cheerily be taken away from you if you try to bring it on an airplane. This difference is important: Making security screeners confiscate anything from that second class is a waste of time. All it does is harm innocents; it doesn't stop terrorists at all. Let me explain. If you're caught at airport security with a bomb or a gun, the screeners aren't just going to take it away from you. They're going to call the police, and you're going to be stuck for a few hours answering a lot of awkward questions. You may be arrested, and you'll almost certainly miss your flight. At best, you're going to have a very unpleasant day. This is why articles about how screeners don't catch every -- or even a majority -- of guns and bombs that go through the checkpoints don't bother me. The screeners don't have to be perfect; they just have to be good enough. No terrorist is going to base his plot on getting a gun through airport security if there's a decent chance of getting caught, because the consequences of getting caught are too great. Contrast that with a terrorist plot that requires a 12-ounce bottle of liquid. There's no evidence that the London liquid bombers actually had a workable plot, but assume for the moment they did. If some copycat terrorists try to bring their liquid bomb through airport security and the screeners catch them -- like they caught me with my bottle of pasta sauce -- the terrorists can simply try again. They can try again and again. They can keep trying until they succeed. Because there are no consequences to trying and failing, the screeners have to be 100 percent effective. Even if they slip up one in a hundred times, the plot can succeed. The same is true for knitting needles, pocketknives, scissors, corkscrews, cigarette lighters and whatever else the airport screeners are confiscating this week. If there's no consequence to getting caught with it, then confiscating it only hurts innocent people. At best, it mildly annoys the terrorists. To fix this, airport security has to make a choice. If something is dangerous, treat it as dangerous and treat anyone who tries to bring it on as potentially dangerous. If it's not dangerous, then stop trying to keep it off airplanes. Trying to have it both ways just distracts the screeners from actually making us safer. EDITED TO ADD (10/23): A similar article ran in The Guardian. Posted on September 23, 2008 at 5:47 AM • 110 CommentsThe Exif4Film app is a handy tool for Android-toting film photographers, but it’s not the only fish in the sea. Similar to Exif4Film, the Photographer’s Notebook app can help you to keep track of film rolls and record information about each exposure. Although Photographer’s Notebook feels somewhat rough around the edges, and it lacks a desktop companion tool for processing the recorded data, the app has several redeeming points that make it worth a consideration. Like Exif4Film, Photographer’s Notebook allows you to create a list of camera and lens combinations as well as configure a vast array of options: from focus and aperture values, to film formats and flash settings. Populating Photographer’s Notebook with cameras and lenses is easy enough. Switch to the Settings → Camera model section, enter the camera’s name and press the Add button. You can then specify lenses for the added camera. To tweak, for example, aperture values, switch to the Aperture section, and disable entries you don’t need. You can also specify custom entries. Before you leave the Settings screen, you might want to enable the geotagging feature in the General section which automatically records geographical coordinates for each frame. Once Photographer’s Notebook has been configured, you can start using the app. First, create a new film roll using the button in the upper-right corner of the screen and provide the required information, such as the roll’s title (tap the Automatic title button to use the current timestamp as the roll’s name), film brand, speed, and type. Tap the Start film button to save the roll and open it. Recording information for each exposure is equally straightforward: use the available drop-down lists and fields to provide the required and optional info, then tap the Record picture button. As already mentioned, Photographer’s Notebook lacks a desktop utility for writing the recorded data to the digitized photos, but the app makes it possible to export rolls in the XML format. The exported XML files can be opened in any text editor or processed using XML tools. On Linux, you can use the xml2exif Bash shell script cobbled together by yours truly to extract aperture, shutter speed, and ISO values from a generated XML file and write them into the appropriate photo. Photographer’s Notebook is available on both Google Play Store and F-Droid, and you’ll find the app’s source code and additional information (mostly in German) in the project’s Bitbucket repository.King of Morocco from 1961 until his death in 1999 "Hasan II" and "Hassan II" redirect here. For other uses, see Hasan II (disambiguation) King Hassan II (Arabic: الْحسْنُ الثاني بْن مُحَمَّدُ بْن يوسف بْن الْحسْنِ بْن الشَّرِيفِ بْن عَلِيُّ الْعَلَوِيِّ‎[1], MSA: (a)l-ḥasan aṯ-ṯānī, Maghrebi Arabic: el-ḥasan ett(s)âni); 9 July 1929 – 23 July 1999) was King of Morocco from 1961 until his death in 1999. He is descended from the Hashimaites tribe. He was the eldest son of Mohammed V, Sultan, then King of Morocco (1909–1961), and his second wife, Lalla Abla bint Tahar (1909–1992). Hassan was known to be one of the most severe rulers of Morocco.[2] Biography [ edit ] Youth and education [ edit ] Hassan was educated at the Imperial College at Rabat, and earned a law degree from the University of Bordeaux. He was exiled to Corsica by French authorities on 20 August 1953, together with his father Sultan Mohammed V. They were transferred to Madagascar in January 1954. Prince Moulay Hassan acted as his father's political advisor during the exile. Mohammed V and his family returned from exile on 16 November 1955. Prince Moulay Hassan participated in the February 1956 negotiations for Morocco's independence with his father, who later appointed him Chief of Staff of the newly founded Royal Armed Forces in April 1956. In the unrest of the same year, he led army contingents battling rebels in the mountains of the Rif. Mohammed V changed the title of the Moroccan sovereign from Sultan to King in 1957. Hassan was proclaimed Crown Prince on 19 July 1957, and became King on 26 February 1961, after his father's death. Rule [ edit ] Hassan's conservative rule, one characterized by a poor human rights record,[3] strengthened the Alaouite dynasty. In Morocco's first constitution of 1963, Hassan II reaffirmed Morocco's choice of a multi-party political system, the only one in the Maghreb at that time. The constitution gave the King large powers he eventually used to strengthen his rule, which provoked strong political protest from the UNFP and the Istiqlal parties that formed the backbone of the opposition.[4] In 1965, Hassan dissolved Parliament and ruled directly, although he did not abolish the mechanisms of parliamentary democracy. When elections were eventually held, they were mostly rigged in favour of loyal parties. This caused severe discontent among the opposition, and protest demonstrations and riots challenged the King's rule. A US report observed that "Hassan appears obsessed with the preservation of his power rather than with its application toward the resolution of Morocco's multiplying domestic problems."[5] King Hassan II, on his way to Friday prayers in Marrakesh, 1967. In the early 1970s, King Hassan survived two assassination attempts. The first, in 1971, was a coup d'état attempt allegedly supported by Libya, organized by General Mohamed Medbouh and Colonel M'hamed Ababou and carried out by cadets during a diplomatic function at the King's summer palace in Rabat during his forty-second birthday party. Important guests, including the Belgian Ambassador Marcel Dupert, were placed under house arrest, and the King himself was taken to a small pavilion. Rabat's main radio station was taken over by the rebels and broadcast propaganda stating that the King had been murdered and a republic founded. The coup ended the same day when royalist troops took over the palace in combat against the rebels. It was subsequently claimed by the Moroccan authorities that the young cadets had been misled by senior officers into thinking that they were acting to protect the king. On 16 August 1972, during a second attempt, four F-5 military jets from the Royal Moroccan Air Force fired upon the King's Boeing 727 while he was travelling back to Rabat from France, many bullets hit the fuselage but they failed to bring the plane down. Allegedly, the King himself hurried to the cockpit, took control of the radio and shouted: "Stop firing you fools, the Tyrant is dead!" Eight people were killed when the jets strafed the awaiting reception dignitaries.[6] General Mohamed Oufkir, Morocco's defense minister, was the man behind the coup and was officially declared to have committed suicide after the attack. His body, however, was found with several bullet wounds.[7] In the Cold War era, Hassan II allied Morocco with the West generally, and with the United States in particular. There were close and continuing ties between Hassan II's government and the CIA, who helped to reorganize Morocco's security forces in 1960.[8] Hassan served as a back channel between the Arab world and Israel, facilitating early negotiations between them. This was made possible due to the presence in Israel of a large Moroccan Jewish community. During his reign, Morocco recovered the Spanish-controlled area of Ifni in 1969, and militarily seized two thirds of Spanish Sahara through the "Green March" in 1975. The latter issue continues to dominate Moroccan foreign policy to this day. Relations with Algeria have deteriorated sharply due to the Western Sahara affair, as well as due to Moroccan claims on Algerian territory (Tindouf and Bechar), which unleashed the brief 1963 Sand War. Relations with Mauritania were tense too, as Morocco only recognized it as a sovereign country in 1969, nearly a decade after Mauritania's independence, because of Moroccan claims on the country (see Great Morocco). Economically, Hassan II adopted a market-based economy, where agriculture, tourism, and phosphates mining industries played a major role. The period from the 1960s to the late 1980s was labelled as the "years of lead"[9][10] and saw thousands of dissidents jailed, killed, exiled or forcibly disappeared. King Hassan II had extended many parliamentary functions[citation needed] by the early 1990s and released hundreds of political prisoners in 1991, and allowed the Alternance, where the opposition assumed power, for the first time in the Arab World.[citation needed] He set up a Royal Council for Human Rights to look into allegations of abuse by the State. Death [ edit ] Hassan died of natural causes; he was in his birth town at the age of 70 on 23 July 1999. A national funeral service was held for him in Rabat, with over 40 heads of state in attendance. He was buried in the Mausoleum of Mohammed V. The coffin of Hassan II, carried by King Mohammed VI, his brother Prince Moulay Rachid and his cousin Moulay Hicham, was covered with a green fabric, in which the first prayer of Islam, "There is no god but God", is inscribed in golden writing.[11] Honours and decorations [ edit ] National orders: Foreign orders: Family [ edit ] King Hassan II had five children with his wife Lalla Latifa Hammou, a member of the Zayane tribe, whom he married in 1961: The king had one other wife, Lalla Fatima bint Qaid Ould Hassan Amhourak (cousin of Latifa Hammou), whom he also married in 1961. They had no children. The father of Hassan II was Mohammed V of Morocco and his mother was Lalla Abla b
or missing implementations of modern protection mechanisms such as DEP and ASLR,” the team wrote in its report. “Once the build environment has been updated, the team should consider rebuilding all binaries with all security features fully enabled.” They added that “lax” quality standards make the source code difficult to review and maintain, impeding vulnerability assessments. Of the four most serious bugs uncovered in the audit, the most serious involves the key used to encrypt the TrueCrypt Volume Header. It is derived using PBKDF2, a standard algorithm, that uses an iteration count that’s too small to prevent password-guessing attacks. “TrueCrypt relies on the what’s known as a PBKDF2 function as a way to ‘stretch” a users’ password or master key, and there is concern that it could have been stronger than the 1,000 or 2,000 iterations it uses currently.” White said. “The TrueCrypt developers’ position is that the current values are a reasonable tradeoff of protection vs. processing delay, and that if one uses a weak password, a high-count PBK2DF2 hash won’t offer much more than a false sense of security.” White said the OCAP technical advisors are also concerned about TrueCrypt’s security model which offers narrowly restricted privacy guarantees,” White said. So, for example, if you are not running whole volume (system disk) encryption, there are many known exploits to recover plaintext data, including decryption keys,” White said, pointing out that Microsoft’s Bitlocker software and PGP, for example, have similar attack paths. “But in the case of TrueCrypt, whole volume disk encryption is only available for the Windows port, and there exists today point-and-click forensic tools that can be purchased for a few hundred dollars that can easily decrypt data from a running machine with any of these packages, TrueCrypt included,” White said. “I have a feeling that while most in the security industry understand this, it is probably worth emphasizing to a broader audience: on the vast majority of machines that use file or disk encryption, if the underlying operating system or hardware can be compromised, then so too can the encryption software.”Finding Nemo is an Academy Award-winning computer-animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released to theaters by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution. It was released in the United States/Canada on May 30, 2003, in Australia on August 27, 2003, and in the UK on October 10, 2003. The movie is the fifth Disney/Pixar feature film and the first to be released during the summer season. The movie was released on a 2-disc DVD on November 4, 2003 in the United States and Canada, in Australia on January 16, 2004, and the UK on February 27, 2004. It went on to become the best selling DVD of all time, with 28 million copies sold. Finding Nemo Walt Disney's fish tale masterpiece Plot summary Nemo (voiced by Alexander Gould), is a young clownfish who is smothered by his overprotective father, a widower named Marlin (Albert Brooks). When Nemo tries to prove that he doesn't need all this protection, he is captured by a human diver at the edge of the Great Barrier Reef. Marlin desperately swims after the diver's boat into the open ocean but he quickly falls behind. Afraid that he is about to lose his son forever, Marlin asks for help from a number of fish before finally finding one who knows where the boat went: Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a palette surgeonfish who is suffering from short-term memory loss. Cast Don't be fooled by the title of this film, it may be called Finding Nemo but his overprotective father Marlin, and ever forgetful blue tang Dory are the real stars. This comic duo steal the show. The intrepid pair embark on an epic journey across the Benthic Zone of the Great Barrier Reef in a quest to rescue Nemo after a diver took him off the reef back to a tank in his Sydney dental surgery. Whist on their quest Dory and Marlin meet a group of vegetarian sharks, one called Bruce, who is also quite a character. They then dice with death in a sea of jellyfish and ride the EAC (that's the East Australian Current) with a group of majorly chilled out sea turtles. Hey dude! Meanwhile Nemo is making attempts to escape, aided by his tank buddies and a pelican called Nigel. They have to get Nemo out of the tank and back into the big blue before he is given to Darla, the dentist's fish-killing niece. As with all good Disney movies there is a lesson to be learned, all the major characters grow a little bit along the way and for those who like happy endings, it all works out in the end. Dory, Marlin and a chilled sea turtle puppets in a scene from the stage adaptation of Finding Nemo at Disney's Animal Kingdom Release and influence Finding Nemo set a record as the highest grossing opening weekend for an animated feature, making $70 million (surpassed in 2004 by Shrek 2). With a total domestic gross of $339.7 million, Nemo was, for a time, the highest grossing animated film of all time, eclipsing the record set by The Lion King. However, about a year later, Shrek 2 surpassed Finding Nemo's domestic gross. By March 2004, Finding Nemo was one of the top ten highest-grossing films ever, having earned over $850 million worldwide. The film's prominent use of clownfish prompted mass purchase of the animals for children's pets in the United States, even though the movie portrayed the use of fish as pets negatively and saltwater aquariums are notably tricky and expensive to maintain. As of 2004, in Vanuatu, clownfish were being caught on a large scale for sale as pets, motivated by the demand. At the same time, the film had a central theme that "all drains lead back to the ocean" (A main character escapes from imprisonment by going down a sink drain, ending up in the sea.) Since water typically undergoes treatment before leading to the ocean, the JWC Environmental company quipped that a more realistic title for the movie might be Grinding Nemo. However, in Sydney, much of the sewer system does pass directly to outfall pipes deep offshore, without a high level of treatment (although pumping and some filtering occurs.) Tourism in Australia strongly increased during the summer and autumn of 2003, with many tourists wanting to swim off the coast of Eastern Australia to "find Nemo." The Australian Tourism Commission (ATC) launched several marketing campaigns in China and the USA in order to improve tourism in Australia many of them using Finding Nemo movie clips. Queensland, Australia also used Finding Nemo to draw tourists to promote its state for vacationers. The similarities between the two creations sparked a long and expensive lawsuit between Pierrot author Franck Le Calvez and Walt Disney Pictures In late 2003, the French children's book author Franck Le Calvez was angerd by Disney, claiming that the story and the characters were stolen from his book Pierrot Le Poisson-Clown (Pierrot the Clownfish). The idea of Pierrot was protected in 1995 and the book was released in France in November 2002. Franck Le Calvez and his lawyer, Pascal Kamina, demanded from Disney a share of the profits from merchandising articles sold in France. In March 2004, Le Calvez and Kamina lost the lawsuit. Two years later, in February 2005, a New Jersey dentist named Dennis G. Sternberg filed suit against Disney/Pixar, alleging they had plagiarised his concept for a film entitled Peanut Butter the Jelly Fish, which he had discussed with Andrew Stanton in the 1990s. Sternberg soon dropped the lawsuit, saying he could not afford to lose. Not only does Nemo of 'Finding Nemo' and Pierrot of 'Pierrot la Poisson Clown' look like one another, but the plot sequence of both stories are similar, however, Pierrot was created in 1995, where as Nemo was created in 2003, although Disney still deny borrowing the idea from Pierrot author Franck Le Calvez, and have given him 0% of Nemo's profit. Finding Nemo Awards The film received many awards, including: An Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards for Favorite Movie and Favorite Voice from an Animated Movie, Ellen Degeneres. Saturn Awards for Best Animated Film and Best Supporting Actress, Ellen Degeneres Seven different Annie Awards in multiple categories Finding Nemo was also nominated for: Three additional Academy Awards (Original screenplay, Andrew Stanton, Bob Peterson and David Reynolds; Achievement In Music Written For Motion Pictures (Original Score); Achievement In Sound Editing) Two Chicago Film Critics Association Awards for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress, Ellen DeGeneres Three additional Saturn Awards Three additional Annie Awards A BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay A Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy Two MTV Movie Awards Sequel Since the great box office response to Finding Nemo in 2003, there have been rumors about a sequel. Now that Disney has purchased Pixar, there will likely be additional pressure from Disney for a Finding Nemo 2; however, one aspect of this merger agreement was that Pixar would be given back the rights to determine which of the Disney/Pixar films released to date would be made into a sequel. Pixar would also be tasked with creative responsibility and control for the making of any and all sequels. Circle 7 Animation, an in-house CGI production house started at Disney largely to create Disney sequels to Pixar movies, was disbanded shortly after the merger was announced. The Pelican in Finding Nemo Finding Nemo - The Musical The stage musical Tarzan Rocks! occupied the Theater in the Wild at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida from 1999 to 2006. When, in January 2006, it closed, it was rumored that a musical adaptation of Finding Nemo would replace it. This was confirmed in April 2006, when Disney announced that the adaptation, with new songs written by Tony Award-winning Avenue Q composer Robert Lopez and his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, would "combine puppets, dancers, acrobats and animated backdrops" and open in late 2006. Tony Award-winning director Peter Brosius signed on to direct the show, with Michael Curry, who designed puppets for Disney's phenomenally successful stage version of The Lion King, serving as leading puppet and production designer. Anderson-Lopez said that the couple agreed to write the adaptation of "one of their favorite movies of all time" after considering "[T]he idea of people coming in [to see the musical] at 4, 5 or 6 and saying, 'I want to do that'....So we want to take it as seriously as we would a Broadway show." To condense the feature-length film to thirty minutes, she said she and Lopez focused on a single theme from the movie, the idea that "The world's dangerous and beautiful." The half-hour show (which is performed four times daily) went into previews at the Theater in the Wild on November 5, 2006, and opened on January 24, 2007. Several musical numbers took direct inspiration from lines in the film, including "(In The) Big Blue World," "Fish Are Friends, Not Food," "Just Keep Swimming," and "Go With the Flow." In January 2007, a New York studio recording of the show was released on iTunes, with Lopez and Anderson-Lopez providing the voices for Marlin and Dory, respectively. Avenue Q star Stephanie D'Abruzzo also appeared on the recording, as Sheldon/Deb. It is unknown whether the show will be expanded and transfer to Broadway, though Walt Disney Parks & Resorts executive Ann Hamburger has said that "she would love for that to happen." Nemo is notable for being the first non-musical animated film to which Disney has added songs to produce a stage musical. Cultural references In Finding Nemo As usual with Pixar movies, Finding Nemo has many subtle references and sight gags. The title character's name alludes to Captain Nemo, the submarine captain in two of Jules Verne's novels: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (which was also released by Walt Disney in 1954) and The Mysterious Island. Interestingly, Verne's Nemo was an allusion to the Latin nemo, meaning "no one," making the title literally mean Finding No One. During the scene with Marlin, Dory, and the school of fish, when the fish turn into the ship, they say "oh, it's a whale of a tale, I'll tell you lad...," a reference to the Walt Disney film adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. PETA has a reference in which "Fish are friends, NOT food." is stated. Mr. Ray sings a song, The Zones of the Open Sea (about the different biological regions of the ocean), which is a pastiche of Gilbert and Sullivan's Major General's Song. Mount Wannahockaloogie ("wanna hock a loogie") is the "mountain" in the dentist's aquarium. "Hock a loogie" is American slang for expectoration, a common occurrence in a dentist's office. The obligatory A113 inside joke: the scuba diver who briefly blinds Marlin uses a camera with model code "A-113." There are two nods to director Alfred Hitchcock: The overhead shot of the seagulls gathering to dive for Marlin and Dory stylistically echoes a similar gull scene in The Birds. In the dentist's office, two shots of dangerous brat Darla's face are accompanied by the shrieking violin glissandi from the shower scene in Psycho. The dentist's office has a picture of Motif Number 1 hanging on the wall, a tribute by director Andrew Stanton to his hometown of Rockport, Massachusetts. While Marlin and Dory are in a whale, Marlin calls the whale Moby, a reference to Moby Dick. Another nod to Stanton's roots: When the story of Marlin's journey is being spread throughout the ocean, one of the creatures telling the tale is a lobster with a Boston accent who uses the common local adjective, wicked ("It's wicked dark down there, you can't see a thing..."). Unsurprisingly, this lobster was voiced by Stanton himself. Crush says "Coo Coo Ca Choo" a possible parody of a line in The Beatles song I am the Walrus Finding Nemo - Dory and Marlin "tasty bites" talk to Bruce the shark Two of Dory's several misnamings of Nemo are "Chico" and "Harpo," references to the Marx Brothers. She also calls him "Elmo", the name of a popular Sesame Street character and St. Elmo the patron of sailors, and "Fabio," likely in reference to Fabio Lanzoni, the Italian male model. The first patient seen in the dentist's office is a Mr. Tucker. Tucker was the last name of a member of the storyboard team. Recurring use of the number 42, such as in P. Sherman's address ("42 Wallaby Way, Sydney") and the time it takes the dentist to use the restroom (4.2 minutes), is likely a reference to Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which the number 42 is supposedly the answer to the question of "Life, the Universe and Everything". The Great White Shark's name is Bruce, which may be a reference to the name given to the mechanical shark used to film the movie Jaws supposedly named after Steven Spielberg's lawyer. The writers were also aware that Barry Bruce, an Australian shark researcher with CSIRO, was radio tagging white sharks. Alternatively, Bruce may just be considered to be a stereotypically Australian name. The name 'Bruce' may also be a reference to the sketch in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl, entitled Bruces' Philosophers Song, in which Eric Idle and other Python members portrayed staff of the University of Woolloomooloo's philosophy department who all called each other 'Bruce' in over-exaggerated Australian accents. Bruce the shark has a scar on his nose in the shape of a four, this is a tribute to JAWS for which they made three mechanical sharks all named Bruce. This makes the shark in Finding Nemo the fourth Bruce. Several references to Monty Python's Flying Circus : The krill and Bruce shouting "Swim away!" during various scenes is a reference to the recurring line "Run away" in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Marlin forbidding Dory to sing is reminiscent of a scene in the Swamp Castle of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In the scene where Bruce tries to eat the protagonists, Bruce says "Here's Brucie!" with his face showing through the door, alluding to Jack Nicholson's "Here's Johnny!" line in Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining. (The Nicholson scene in The Shining was an allusion itself, referring to Ed McMahon announcing Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.) A notable portion of the production crew were Filipino, and the name "P. Sherman" was chosen because it sounds like how one with a Filipino accent would say the word "fisherman." The scene where Nemo defies his father and touches the bottom of the boat as Marlin continually warns him to stop is arguably reminiscent of the ice cream scene in Kramer vs. Kramer. In one scene, Dory pronounces the word "escape" on a hatch as "ess-CAH-pay", which is the Spanish pronunciation of the word. The seagull calls have been confirmed to be "Mine! Mine!" but many audiences hear them as saying "Mate!" in an exaggerated Australian accent. Finding Nemo - Dory and Marlin dodge an Angler fish Trivia Finding Nemo was originally to be released in November 2002. The tikis in the tank are caricatures of three Pixar employees. The employees are Peter Sohn, Nelson Bohol and Ricky Nierva, who are responsible for character and art design. This film was the first Pixar film to have an advisory warning put on its G rating in Australia, which said "Some scenes may frighten young children." The movie was dedicated to Glenn McQueen, a Pixar Animator who died of melanoma in October 2002, seven months before the film was released. The royal gramma in the tank, Gurgle, is not actually addressed by name in the film script. The name of this character was worked out by fans through a process of elimination of the character list in the movie credits. The face of Gill was specifically designed to resemble Willem Dafoe who provided the voice. The small hut in the fish tank wherein Nemo sleeps in is called a "kubo", a nipa hut commonly found in farms and other agricultural areas in the Philippines. The animator of the kubo in the film is Filipino. Anchor the hammerhead shark has a mouth where a real hammerhead's neck should be. Director Andrew Stanton not only voices Crush, but is credited in "additional voices". Other characters he voices include the flock of seagulls, the lobster, and, if Lee Unkrich is to be believed, a large number of other characters. Mount Wannahawkaloogie is also a reference to Philippines' Mt. Mayon because some of the animators of the movie were Filipino. After the credits roll, there's a scene where the small green fish swims in the darkness before a light appears, a few moments later the anglerfish appears out of the dark, only to be eaten by the green fish. Dentist P. Sherman's full name is Philip Sherman (according to the audio commentary on the DVD). However, his first name is given as "Pablo" in the musical. On the floor of the waiting room of the dentist'd office there are toys from the movie Toy Story. Nemo, and a park exclusive character called Coral (although was the name of Nemo's dead mother), appear at Epcot of Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, FL, as meetable characters. LINKS and REFERENCE CARTOONS OF NOTE Dory, Marlin and Nemo A - Z FILMS INDEX Finding Nemo, Marlin the clown fish telling a joke & Bruce the friendly shark A - Z ACTORS INDEXPlease enable Javascript to watch this video GOOCHLAND COUNTY, Va. -- A spokesperson from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality said the agency is making sure a spill involving human waste in Goochland is being cleaned up properly. It happened Monday afternoon on Maidens Road, near River Road. A dump truck crashed into a ditch causing some of the waste to spill onto the road and into the ditch. “Oh my god that’s a lot,” Jessica McCourt, who lives nearby, said about the spill. “Yeah, that’s disgusting, and just look at all the water washing down through there.” McCourt said she is not comfortable with fecal matter traveling through her neighborhood. “I’m just a little surprised they transport human waste in a dump truck,” McCourt said. Especially, she said, because her kids like to play in a nearby creek. “The fact that it could have some runoff is concerning,” McCourt said. The Virginia DEQ said the waste was being transported from a sewage treatment plant in Washington, DC, through Goochland, to a storage facility in Cumberland County. DEQ spokesperson Bill Hayden said the sludge is used for fertilizer and farmers must get a permit to use it. Hayden said it is filtered to reduce germs and pollutants. Still, McCourt said she does not think human waste should be carried in dump trucks. “We transport pool water better than that,” McCourt said. Hayden said none of the waste that spilled got into any nearby waterways.Vulnerable Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2018 are already identifying areas where they’re willing to work with 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 and Republican colleagues. North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp Mary (Heidi) Kathryn HeitkampOvernight Energy: Trump taps ex-oil lobbyist Bernhardt to lead Interior \| Bernhardt slams Obama officials for agency's ethics issues \| Head of major green group steps down Trump picks ex-oil lobbyist David Bernhardt for Interior secretary On The Money: Shutdown Day 27 \| Trump fires back at Pelosi by canceling her foreign travel \| Dems blast 'petty' move \| Trump also cancels delegation to Davos \| House votes to disapprove of Trump lifting Russia sanction MORE (D-N.D.) is ready to work with Republicans on legislation to invest in “clean coal” technologies. ADVERTISEMENT More broadly, she says she’s willing to work across the aisle on regulatory reform. “My priority is standing up for North Dakota, not party politics. The reason I’m in the U.S. Senate is to work with Republicans and Democrats to get things done,” she told The Hill in a statement. Sen. Joe Donnelly Joseph (Joe) Simon DonnellyOvernight Energy: Trump taps ex-oil lobbyist Bernhardt to lead Interior \| Bernhardt slams Obama officials for agency's ethics issues \| Head of major green group steps down Trump picks ex-oil lobbyist David Bernhardt for Interior secretary EPA's Wheeler faces grilling over rule rollbacks MORE (D-Ind.) is ready to work with the GOP and the Trump administration on military mental healthcare issues, curbing the exodus of U.S. jobs to foreign countries and combating the opioid epidemic. “My responsibility to Hoosiers is to support the best ideas, regardless of whether the idea comes from a Republican or Democrat,” he said in a statement. Sen. Jon Tester Jonathan (Jon) TesterOvernight Energy: Trump ends talks with California on car emissions \| Dems face tough vote on Green New Deal \| Climate PAC backing Inslee in possible 2020 run Dems face tough vote on Green New Deal How the border deal came together MORE (D-Mont.) hopes to work with Republicans to reduce the deficit, clean up Washington by stopping former lawmakers from becoming lobbyists and passing legislation to improve service at the Department of Veterans Affairs, a major Trump talking point during the campaign. “If it creates jobs, strengthens our economy, and is good for Montana then chances are I’m on board. We can’t just say ‘no’ because the idea comes from the other side of the aisle,” he said. All three Democrats represent states that Trump won in a landslide this month. They all appear to realize they need to show off their bipartisan credentials early to avoid GOP attacks down the line. While outgoing Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid Harry Mason ReidBottom Line Brennan fires back at'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview MORE (Nev.) didn’t want Democrats to work with vulnerable Republicans ahead of the 2016 elections, his heir apparent Sen. Charles Schumer Charles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerBrennan fires back at'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview Harry Reid: 'I don't see anything' Trump is doing right MORE (D-N.Y.) is signaling a willingness to let his members do what they need to do to survive in the next Congress. Schumer named another vulnerable Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin Joseph (Joe) ManchinTrump claims Democrats ‘don’t mind executing babies after birth’ after blocked abortion bill Democrats block abortion bill in Senate The Hill's Morning Report - A pivotal week for Trump MORE (D-W.Va.), to his leadership team. Manchin voted against Reid serving another term as leader after the 2014 midterm election and recently slammed him as divisive for criticizing Trump in the wake of his victory. A spokesman for Manchin said his top priorities next year include working with Trump and Republicans to pass the Miners protection Act, roll back “harmful regulations” on coal, renegotiate trade policies and rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. Trump won West Virginia with nearly 69 percent of the vote. Tester and two other Democrats up for reelection in 2018 in states won by Trump, Bob Casey Robert (Bob) Patrick CaseyTrump claims Democrats ‘don’t mind executing babies after birth’ after blocked abortion bill Democrats block abortion bill in Senate GOP wants to pit Ocasio-Cortez against Democrats in the Senate MORE (Pa.) and Sherrod Brown Sherrod Campbell BrownWorse than nothing's been done since the massive Equifax hack Dems face internal battle over budget On The Money: Dems set Tuesday vote on Trump's emergency declaration \| Most Republicans expected to back Trump \| Senate plots to avoid fall shutdown drama \| Powell heading before Congress MORE (Ohio.), are cosponsors of the clean coal bill. That bill had little chance of moving while Reid was in charge. He once declared with typical bluntness “it doesn’t exist… there is no such thing as clean-coal technology.” Democrats in tough races have been quick to call for putting the bad blood of the election behind them and focus on delivering results for constituents. “Working across the aisle with her Republican colleagues to forge compromise and advance bipartisan ideas is exactly what Claire’s done since she joined the Senate—regardless of which party holds the White House or who’s in charge of Congress—and it’s exactly what she’ll keep doing,” said John LaBombard, a spokesman for Sen. Claire McCaskill Claire Conner McCaskillPoll: 33% of Kentucky voters approve of McConnell McCaskill: Lindsey Graham 'has lost his mind' Trey Gowdy joins Fox News as a contributor MORE (D-Mo.), who is expected to run for re-election in a state that Trump won with 57 percent of the vote. Tax reform is one area where Republicans could see cooperation from Democrats. Jim Kessler, a former aide to Schumer who now serves as senior vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, says “it’s possible” that Senate Democrats help Republicans pass a tax reform package. “I think the key words are revenue neutral,” he said. “Particularly if you’re looking at the business side. If it includes provisions to help businesses grow and stay here and employ here, there’s always been appetite among Democrats to do that.” Twelve Senate Democrats bucked their leadership in 2001 to vote for the first round of then President George W. Bush’s tax cuts. Of the defectors, only Sen. Dianne Feinstein Dianne Emiel FeinsteinHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid \| Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration \| New malicious cyber tool found \| Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Ocasio-Cortez adviser says Sunrise confrontation with 'old-timer' Feinstein'sad' Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid MORE (Calif.) is still in the Senate. “There could be a number of vulnerable Democratic senators who are up in 2018 that are going to be looking over their shoulders and thinking this is going to be pretty popular,” said Bill Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said of tax reform. Repealing and replacing ObamaCare is a tougher subject, Democrats say, because of lingering bad feelings over Republicans’ refusal in recent years to move any legislation to improve President Obama’s signature legislative issue. “I’m not sure that Democrats are going to rescue Republicans from the train they’re about to throw themselves in front of. There’s a fair amount of bitterness that Republicans were not reasonable players in the [Affordable Care Act] discussion,” said Kessler. Democratic strategists predict Republicans will pay a political price if they repeal ObamaCare, throwing as many as 20 million people off insurance plans, and fail to pass new reforms to soften the blow. “The politics of healthcare have flipped,” said the senior Democratic aide. Another issue with new momentum is authorization to build the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration shut down. Ten Democrats voted last year to approve the Keystone pipeline. Six of them are running for re-election in states that Trump won: McCaskill, Manchin, Donnelly, Heitkamp, Tester and Casey.SCP-1521 Artist's rendition provided by Observer-1521-4, currently used to verify visual confirmation. Item #: SCP-1521 Object Class: Euclid Special Containment Procedures: SCP-1521 is assigned a minimum of two “observers” and three additional support staff working in twenty-four hour shifts. Civilians observed approaching SCP-1521 are to be detained, identified, and processed as possible, future observers. Anyone observed exiting SCP-1521 is to be detained, questioned, and identified if possible. Due to the tedious nature of work with SCP-1521, staff rotation on SCP-1521 is to occur every two months. Description: SCP-1521 is a building, built in the early Baroque style, located on the ██████ ██ ██████ in Rome, Italy. While the building appears to always be present, it is not directly observable. Subjects pointed in the direction of the building fail to notice its presence. Approximately █% of tested subjects can observe the building. Those that are successful in observing the building have identified a sign attached to the front which identifies the structure as “The Most Holy Bank of His Holiness Pope Leo the Tenth, Saint in Waiting.” SCP-1521 plays host to a number of entities which appear human, often dressed in period garb of a Roman Catholic priest or nun. These entities are non-hostile and will attempt to defuse any situation in which they are threatened with physical violence. These entities have never been observed to exit SCP-1521. Presumably, anyone capable of observing the building is also capable of entry, though only six total expeditions into SCP-1521 have been approved by O5. With the level of current information, no further expeditions are planned. Please see Addenda for all currently available declassified information about the expeditions. Side One Side Two Addendum SCP-1521-1: Exploratory Expeditions of Observer-1521-2 Observer-1521-2 was given approval by O5-12 to enter SCP-1521 and perform basic reconnaissance. Observer-1521-2 entered and was greeted by an apparently humanoid figure wearing the garb of a 14th century Catholic priest, hereafter referred to as SCP-1521 Humanoid Instance 1 (1521-HI1). When Observer-1521-2 inquired as to the nature of SCP-1521, 1521-HI1 provided him with a short explanation of what a bank was, then gave him a pamphlet: SCP-1521-1. While the original has been lost, copies have been retained, noted here. Observer-1521-2 was asked to survey the inner area of the building while present, reporting frescoes of various saints decorating the walls and several other humanoid figures at various positions. In total, Observer-1521-2 noted seventeen figures. After looking over the pamphlet while 1521-HI1 waited, Observer-1521-2 inquired as to the nature of some of the services. 1521-HI1 requested an estimate of available funds, at which point, Observer-1521-2 was forced to admit that he had none. 1521-HI1 further requested the Observer-1521-2 leave the building until such a time that he had said funds. Observer-1521-2 exited SCP-1521 and was allowed two weeks leave from SCP-1521 duty. Further expeditions into SCP-1521 by Observer-1521-2 are available at [DATA EXPUNGED]. : Exploratory Expedition Observer-1521-11 was located after searching several hospitals throughout Europe. When located, he was discovered to have a malignant tumor in his stomach. Observer-1521-11 was selected to enter SCP-1521 and request a miracle. After approval from O5-12, Observer-1521-11 entered SCP-1521 and spoke with SCP-1521 Humanoid Instance 14. 1521-HI14 inquired as to the nature of Observer-1521-11's visit, at which time he was informed that Observer-1521-11 was requesting a healing miracle. 1521-HI14 immediately called for a group of Humanoid Instances (number currently unknown, estimated more than six) to escort Observer-1521-11 to the Holy Fountain of Antioch. After paying 1521-HI14, he was lowered into the fountain. After being lowered into the fountain, the water in the fountain began to "whirl and tremble" as 1521-HI14 declared that "an angel was troubling the waters." After fifteen minutes of prayer, Observer-1521-11 was reported as healed and escorted from the premises. MRI scans later revealed that Observer-1521-11 was still suffering from stomach cancer, though Observer-1521-11 was so influenced by the experience that he refused to believe the diagnosis. Observer-1521-11 died from complications due to his cancer four weeks later. Addendum SCP-1521-3: Exploratory Expedition SCP-1521 Observer 1521-13 entered the structure as normal. Upon entering, he was immediately approached by a humanoid figure wearing a priests smock and robes, designated SCP-1521 Humanoid Instance 47 (1521-HI47). 1521-HI47 asked Observer 1521-13 if he had any recently deceased relatives. When Observer 1521-13 replied that his uncle had died recently, 1521-HI47 immediately knelt to his knees and began praying loudly in what Observer 1521-13 believed was Latin. Observer 1521-13 was highly disturbed by this event. After approximately five minutes of loud prayer, 1521-HI47 rose to his feet and declared that Observer-1521-13’s uncle was currently in hell and being tortured by demons. Observer 1521-13 was extremely distraught, and 1521-HI47 offered to gather together a group of priests and “pray his soul out of hell” for a small fee. Observer 1521-13 immediately agreed. When asked how much the fee was, 1521-HI47 inquired as to the current funds available, then expressed that this was just the right amount. Observer 1521-13 was then privy to a group of twelve additional humanoid figures gathering together (tentatively classified SCP-1521 Humanoid Instances 48-59, pending confirmation) in a circle, then asking for the name of Observer 1521-13’s uncle, then beginning to pray in loud voices again. After approximately ten minutes of prayer, 1521-HI47 stepped forward from the circle, declaring that they had successfully prayed everything but his feet out of hell, and an additional 15000 lira was needed to finish. Observer 1521-13 quickly left the building to acquire additional funds from Foundation personnel on the scene. Observer 1521-13 was denied reentry to SCP-1521.Official White House photos posted Thursday of President 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's Oval Office meetings the previous day leave out Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The White House’s Flickr shows three images of Trump posing with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Left out of the group of photos is Kislyak, who also attended the Wednesday meeting according to photos released by the Russian Embassy in the United States. ADVERTISEMENT The White House’s readout of Trump’s meeting with Lavrov did not mention Kislyak. The Russian Embassy released two separate photos of Trump shaking hands with both men. Two additional photos posted on the White House Flickr at the same time were taken during Trump's meeting with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose meeting with the president was also left off the public schedule for the day. The White House is reportedly furious over photos that were taken during Trump’s huddle with Lavrov and Kislyak. An administration official told The Washington Post that the White House was misled about the true role of a Russian photographer at the event. The photographer reportedly worked for Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass but was described as Lavrov’s official photographer. “We were not informed by the Russians that their official photographer was dual-hatted and would be releasing the photographs on the state news agency,” the administration official said. Kislyak is at the center of the controversy over possible ties between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned in February
x100>" }, :default_url => "/images/:style/missing.png" validates_attachment_content_type :package_image, :content_type => /\Aimage\/.*\Z/ has_many :package_items has_many :products, through: :package_items end When I save a package it should save all the products that the package contains in the package_items table. I am using the collection_check_boxes helper in my form and this is working fine. <%= form_for @package, :url => packages_path, :html => { :multipart => true } do \|f\| %> <% if @package.errors.any? %> <div id="error_explanation" class="center"> <h2><%= pluralize(@package.errors.count, "error") %> prohibited this package from being saved:</h2> <ul> <% @package.errors.full_messages.each do \|message\| %> <li><%= message %></li> <% end %> </ul> </div> <% end %> <div class="col-xs-12 field"> <%= f.label :name, 'Package Name', :class => "text-center form-header" %><br> <%= f.text_field :name, :class => "text-center form-text" %> </div> <br> <br> <br> <div class="col-xs-12 field"> <%= f.label :package_image, 'Package Image', :class => "text-center form-header" %><br> <%= f.file_field :package_image %> </div> <br> <br> <br> <div class="col-xs-12 field"> <%= f.label :price, 'Price Per Day', :class => "text-center form-header" %><br> <%= f.number_field :price, :class => "text-center form-text" %> </div> <br> <br> <div class="col-xs-12 field"> <%= f.label :products %><br> <%= f.collection_check_boxes :product_ids, Product.all, :id, :name, {}, { :multiple => true } %> </div> <br> <br> <div class="col-xs-12 actions"> <%= f.submit %> </div> <% end %> However when I submit the form I get the wrong number of arguments (0 for 1..2) error with it highlighting my strong params method in the packages controller: def package_params params.require(:package).permit(:name, :price, :package_image, :product_ids []) end I cannot see anything obvious in the logs. Any pointers would be much appreciated. It feels like I have gone through all of the web and SO at this stage and I can't get past this. Essentially what I am trying to achieve is the same as this SO post.Logo of the CIW Farmworkers protests organized by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers Based in Immokalee, Florida, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a worker-based human rights organization internationally recognized for its achievements in the fields of social responsibility, human trafficking, and gender-based violence at work. Built on a foundation of farmworker community organizing starting in 1993, and reinforced with the creation of a national consumer network since 2000, CIW’s work has steadily grown over more than twenty years to encompass several overlapping spheres: The CIW has aided in the investigation and federal prosecution of several slavery operations in Floridian agriculture.[1][2] CIW received the 2015 Presidential Medal for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking in Persons for "pioneering the Fair Food Program, empowering agricultural workers, and leveraging market forces and consumer awareness to promote supply chain transparency and eradicate modern slavery on participating farms."[3] Previously, the U.S. Department of State presented the CIW with a 2010 Hero Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery Award and credited the CIW for developing "a multi-sectoral approach, tapping NGOs, law enforcement, labor inspectors and the survivors, themselves" to combat forced labor in the U.S. agriculture industry.[4] The CIW’s national Campaign for Fair Food educates consumers on the issue of farm labor exploitation – its causes and solutions – and forges alliances between farmworkers and consumers that enlist the market power of major corporate buyers to help end that exploitation. The CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food has secured agreements with fourteen major food retailers, including Yum! Brands, McDonald's, Compass Group, and Walmart. In 2010, the campaign resulted in the creation of the Fair Food Program (FFP), following a historic agreement between the CIW and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange to implement the "Fair Food Code of Conduct" on 90% of the state’s tomato farms, affecting approximately 30,000 acres of production and tens of thousands of workers.[5][6] Early history [ edit ] The CIW, initially called the Southwest Florida Farmworker Project, was formed in 1993 in Immokalee, Florida, a center of the state's $600 million tomato industry.[7] The group's organizing philosophy is based on principles of popular education and leadership development. One of the CIW's first accomplishments was to establish a cooperative to sell staple foods and other necessities at cost in order to combat price gouging by local merchants. Today, the CIW also owns and operates WCIW-LP (107.9 FM, "Radio Conciencia"), a low-power FM radio station that features music, news, and educational programing in several languages.[8] Between 1995 and 2000, the CIW organized several major actions to protest declining real wages for tomato harvesters, as well as frequent violence from supervisors towards field workers. This period included community-wide work stoppages in 1995, 1997 and 1999; a 30-day hunger strike undertaken by six members in 1998; and a 230-mile march from Ft. Myers to Orlando in 2000. By 1998, these protests "won industry-wide raises of 13-25% (translating into several million dollars annually for the community in increased wages).... Those raises brought the tomato picking piece rate back to pre-1980 levels (the piece rate had fallen below those levels over the course of the intervening two decades), but wages remained below poverty level and continuing improvement was slow in coming."[9] Campaign for Fair Food [ edit ] Timeline [ edit ] Fast food [ edit ] The CIW launched a boycott of Taco Bell in 2001, holding the company accountable for the wages and working conditions of farmworkers in its tomato supply chain. The CIW argued that when major buyers such as Taco Bell leverage their volume purchasing power to demand discounts from their suppliers, they create strong downward pressure on wages and working conditions in these suppliers' operations. A 2004 study by Oxfam America confirmed this trend: "Squeezed by the buyers of their produce, growers pass on the costs and risks imposed on them to those on the lowest rung of the supply chain: the farmworkers they employ."[24] During the Taco Bell Boycott, the CIW worked closely with religious and community groups and a student network, the Student/Farmworker Alliance, to pressure Taco Bell from different angles. On March 8, 2005, Yum! Brands, Inc., parent company of Taco Bell, agreed to all of the CIW's demands,[25] including: The first-ever direct, ongoing payment by a fast-food industry leader to farmworkers in its supply chain to address sub-standard farm labor wages (nearly doubling the percentage of the final retail price that goes to the workers who pick the produce); The first-ever enforceable Code of Conduct for agricultural suppliers in the fast-food industry (which includes the CIW as part of the investigative body for monitoring worker complaints); Market incentives for agricultural suppliers willing to respect their workers’ human rights, even when those rights are not guaranteed by law; 100% transparency for Taco Bell’s tomato purchases in Florida.[26] After the Taco Bell Boycott, the Campaign for Fair Food shifted its focus to the rest of the fast-food industry. In response to the campaign, McDonald’s helped create an industry-controlled code of conduct known as SAFE (Socially Accountable Farm Employers) that the CIW and its allies deemed insufficient.[27][28] On April 9, 2007, an agreement between McDonald's and the CIW was announced at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia.[29] The agreement, which met the standards previously set by the Taco Bell accord, also included a commitment by McDonald's to work with the CIW to develop an industry-wide third-party mechanism to monitor conditions and investigate abuses in the fields.[30] In May 2008, at the U.S. Capitol, the CIW announced an agreement with Burger King. The world's second-largest burger chain had originally strongly opposed the campaign, even going so far as to hire a private investigative firm to provide information on the Student/Farmworker Alliance.[31] As part of the announcement, Burger King’s chief executive, John W. Chidsey, apologized for prior negative remarks directed towards the CIW and went on to praise the group's efforts.[32] Subway, the largest fast-food buyer of Florida tomatoes, signed an agreement with the CIW six months later in December 2008.[33] With this agreement, four of the world's largest fast-food companies were now supporting the campaign. The CIW and Chipotle Mexican Grill reached a Fair Food Agreement on October 4, 2012,[34] after a six-year campaign by the CIW.[35] The Campaign for Fair Food is currently focused on Wendy's, in addition to several supermarket chains listed below. In November 2017, the Center for Union Facts filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service asserting the CIW "does not serve the public at large but instead a group of workers seeking concessions from their employers." [36] The union watchdog requested that "the IRS examine CIW's Forms 990 for 2013, 2014, and 2015, and, if appropriate, revoke its tax-exempt status." [36] Foodservice [ edit ] Throughout 2009 and 2010, the Student/Farmworker Alliance's "Dine with Dignity" campaign targeted the foodservice industry since many of these companies operate on college campuses. During this period, the CIW reached agreements with Bon Appétit Management Company,[37] Compass Group,[38] Aramark,[39] and Sodexo.[40] Supermarkets [ edit ] In September 2008, the CIW broke ground in the supermarket industry by signing an agreement with Whole Foods Market. Karen Christensen, a Whole Foods executive explained, "We commend the CIW for their advocacy on behalf of these workers. After carefully evaluating the situation in Florida, we felt that an agreement of this nature was in line with our core values and was in the best interest of the workers."[41] The Whole Foods agreement marked the first time a retailer agreed to support the CIW initiative without extended public protests. In February 2012, the CIW and Trader Joe's "signed an agreement that formalizes the ways in which Trader Joe's will work with the CIW and Florida tomato growers to support the CIW's Fair Food Program."[42] This was the first Fair Food agreement the CIW signed with a major food retailer in the aftermath of the 2010 breakthrough settlement with the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange. In January 2014, Walmart, the largest grocery retailer in the U.S., announced it was joining the Fair Food Program. In its agreement with the CIW, Walmart committed to help expand the Fair Food Program outside of Florida and into crops other than tomatoes.[43] Alexandra Guáqueta, chair of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, attended the signing ceremony and conveyed a statement on behalf of the Working Group. The statement praises the Fair Food Program for its "smart mix" of monitoring and enforcement tools, including "market incentives for growers and retailers, monitoring policies and, crucially, a robust and accessible mechanism to resolve complaints and provide remedy," adding, "Workers have no fear of retaliation if they identify problems." The statement concludes, "We are eager to see whether the Fair Food Program is able to leverage further change within participating businesses, and serve as a model elsewhere in the world." [44] In 2015, the CIW signed Fair Food Agreements with The Fresh Market.[45] and Ahold (parent company of Giant and Stop & Shop).[46] The CIW and its allies are focused on the supermarket industry leaders who remain uncommitted to the Fair Food Program, including Publix and Kroger, Florida Tomato Growers Exchange [ edit ] In November 2007, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE), an agricultural cooperative that provides its grower members with limited antitrust protection for marketing their products, announced that the Taco Bell/Yum and McDonald's deals "will not be executed and now are considered moot."[47] Citing antitrust concerns, the FTGE threatened its members with $100,000 fines for cooperating with McDonald's or Yum Brands. One month later, FTGE Vice President Reggie Brown explained, "I think it is un-American when you get people outside your business to dictate terms of business to you."[48] As a result of the FTGE's resistance, the penny-per-pound funds accrued during the stalemate were held in escrow. On April 15, 2008, the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) held hearings on "Ending Abuses and Improving Working Conditions for Tomato Workers" in which Reggie Brown claimed farmworkers earned an average wage of "between $10.50 and $14.86 per hour." Lucas Benitez of the CIW and Senators Bernie Sanders (VT-I) and Dick Durbin (IL-D) disputed Brown's claim by citing contradictory evidence. The senators also scrutinized the legal basis for the FTGE's resistance to the Campaign for Fair Food.[49] Expansion [ edit ] During Summer 2015, the Fair Food Program expanded to large operations of Florida-based tomato growers in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey. The Fair Food Program is also expanding into strawberries and green bell peppers in Florida.[50] Fair Food Program [ edit ] In November 2010, an agreement was reached between the CIW and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange to implement the Fair Food Program – "including a strict code of conduct, a cooperative complaint resolution system, a participatory health and safety program, and a worker-to-worker education process – to over 90% of the Florida tomato industry.".[51] The agreement covers more than 30,000 workers and 30,000 acres of production. Workers could receive an increase in annual wages from $10,000-12,000 a year to $17,000 if additional large buyers agree to the increase.[52][53] In an editorial, the New York Times described the agreement as a "remarkable victory in a 15-year struggle for better pay and working conditions... The Immokalee victory won’t impose fairness overnight, but after generations of exploitation, part of the farm industry is pointing in the right direction."[54] The Fair Food Program is monitored by the Fair Food Standards Council, a non-profit organization based in Sarasota, Florida. The FFSC is directed by a former New York State Supreme Court Justice.[55] The Fair Food Program has received praise from numerous observers, including: The Roosevelt Institute awarded the CIW its 2013 Freedom from Want Medal (a Four Freedoms Award), in recognition of the Fair Food Program as "a sustainable blueprint for worker-driven corporate social responsibility, winning fairer wages; work with dignity; and freedom from forced labor, sexual harassment, and violence in the workplace" [56] President Jimmy Carter echoed this conclusion in a public letter to the CIW from July 2013, stating, "You have formed innovative partnerships to find common ground between diverse interests, including some of the poorest workers in the United States and their employers, supply chain companies, retailers, consumers and law enforcement. My hope is that this will become a model for social responsibility within the agricultural industry." [57] After a year-long investigation of sexual assault in the fields from California to Florida, a PBS Frontline producer declared the Fair Food Program to be the single most effective prevention program in the U.S. agricultural industry. [58] A delegation from the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights toured the U.S. on a mission to "explore practices, challenges and lessons relating to efforts on implementing" the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The delegation visited with several Fair Food Program stakeholders as part of its broader investigation. While the Working Group found numerous shortcomings in the response of U.S. businesses generally to human rights issues, it left "impressed" with the Fair Food Program specifically, praising the FFP for "innovatively address[ing] core worker concerns" and "governance gaps relating to labour issues" through "market incentives for participating growers" and an "independent and robust enforcement mechanism." [59] The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships singled out the Fair Food Program in a major 2013 report as one of the "most successful and innovative programs" in the world today to uncover and prevent modern-day slavery.[60] The Fair Food Program was the subject of a feature-length, front page article in the New York Times on April 24, 2014. In this article Janice Fine, a labor relations professor at Rutgers University stated, ""This is the best workplace-monitoring program I’ve seen in the U.S.... It can certainly be a model for agriculture across the U.S. If anybody is going to lead the way and teach people how it’s done, it’s them." In the same article, Susan Marquis, dean of the Pardee Rand Graduate School commented on the FFP's effectiveness, noting, "When I first visited Immokalee, I heard appalling stories of abuse and modern slavery... But now the tomato fields in Immokalee are probably the best working environment in American agriculture. In the past three years, they’ve gone from being the worst to the best." [61] Anti-Slavery Campaign [ edit ] The CIW has developed an internationally recognized "worker-based approach to eliminating modern-day slavery in the agricultural industry. The CIW helps fight this crime by uncovering, investigating, and assisting in the federal prosecution of slavery rings preying on hundreds of farmworkers. In such situations, captive workers are held against their will by their employers through threats and, all too often, the actual use of violence – including beatings, shootings, and pistol-whippings."[62] The CIW is a founding member of the national Freedom Network U.S.A to Empower Victims of Slavery and Trafficking. Additionally, the CIW is a regional coordinator for the Freedom Network Training Institute on Human Trafficking (FNTI). In this capacity, the CIW trains state and federal law enforcement and NGOs on how to identify and assist people held in slavery operations. Other selected anti-slavery partnerships and collaborations include Legislature-appointed member, Florida Statewide Task Force on Human Trafficking Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement (FDLE), curriculum for Advanced Investigative Techniques in Human Trafficking Collier County Sheriff’s Department Anti-Trafficking Unit US Attorney’s Anti-Trafficking Task Forces, Tampa and Miami districts Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I), Supervisory Special Agents In-Service trainings North Carolina State Troopers Training Academy, training U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Anti-Trafficking Unit, Washington, DC[63] In 2010, the CIW developed a mobile Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum that has extensively toured the southern and eastern U.S.[64][65] The Village Voice wrote that the museum "may be Florida's most important new attraction."[66] Awards and recognition [ edit ] The CIW has received a wide array of honors and recognition, including: 2006 - Paul and Sheila Wellstone Award, Freedom Network USA, for outstanding contributions to combating human trafficking and modern-day slavery in the U.S. [67] 2007 - Anti-Slavery Award, Anti-Slavery International of London (world’s oldest human rights organization) for exceptional contribution towards tackling modern-day slavery in the U.S. agricultural industry. [68] 2008 - Sister Margaret Cafferty Development of People Award, Catholic Campaign for Human Development. [69] 2010 - Adela Dwyer-St. Thomas of Villanova Peace Award, Villanova University, Center for Peace & Justice Education. [70] 2010 - People of the Year, Fort Myers (FL) News-Press, in recognition of the CIW's "years of groundbreaking advocacy" and "landmark efforts, which have far-ranging implications beyond Southwest Florida." [71] 2010 - Hero Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery Award, U.S. Department of State. On the occasion of the State Department's release of the 10th annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, which for the first time included the United States in its rankings. In recognition of "perseverance against slavery operations in the U.S. agricultural industry" and "determination to eliminate forced labor in supply chains." 2012 - Growing Green Award, Natural Resources Defense Council, for leaders and innovators in the field of sustainable food and agriculture. [72] 2013 - Freedom from Want Medal, Roosevelt Institute, in recognition of creating "a sustainable blueprint for worker-driven corporate social responsibility, winning fairer wages; work with dignity; and freedom from forced labor, sexual harassment, and violence in the workplace" [73] 2014 - Clinton Global Citizen Award, Clinton Global Initiative, in recognition of the Fair Food Program as "a breakthrough, worker-driven approach to verifiable corporate accountability recognized by the United Nations and the White House for its unique effectiveness." [74] 2015 - Presidential Medal for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking in Persons, "by pioneering the Fair Food Program, empowering agricultural workers, and leveraging market forces and consumer awareness to promote supply chain transparency and eradicate modern slavery on participating farms."[75][ better source needed ] See also [ edit ] Food Chains, a 2014 documentary about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. References [ edit ]– Colorado’s whooping cough epidemic is getting worse as health officials confirmed Monday there are now more than 1,000 cases in the state. This is the worst year for whooping cough in seven years. Health officials say whooping cough tends to peak every three to five years. In 1997 the vaccine was changed. There are concerns it may not offer the long-lasting protection. Dr. Kathy Beauchamp is the chief of neurosurgery at Denver Health Medical Center. At home she’s the mother of seven. “Julie and Jack are the twins — Joey, Jeffrey, Janie, James and Jay,” she said. They’ve all had the occasional cold, but this year six of the seven have gotten very sick. “I thought it was just a really bad cough,” Beauchamp said. It started in July with Joey and then spread to the twins and Jeffrey. The babies were the worst. RELATED FROM DR. DAVE’S BLOG: More Than The Flu Shot “They would cough for at least a couple of minutes and then it always ended with vomiting,” Beauchamp said. It turns out all but 6-year-old Janie had pertussis, or whooping cough. “They were all vaccinated on time, every one of them,” Beauchamp said. “What we are learning is that the vaccine we’ve used since the mid 1990s actually only lasts about, give or take, five years,” Dr. Simon Hambidge with Denver Health said. Joey, who brought the disease home, was five years out from his shot. Hambidge says the other children were vulnerable. “Once you’re exposed at a really high level, even though you’re vaccinated, you have a higher chance of coming down with it,” Hambidge said. He believes Janie was protected because she’d just had her kindergarten booster. “We now recommend an additional booster starting at 11 years of age,” Hambidge said. Hambidge says being up to date on immunizations is the best protection from pertussis. It’s called the 100-day cough. Beauchamp looks forward to the day her family is finally cough free. Two of her children are still coughing. Anyone can get whooping cough but it’s most dangerous in infants and young children. It’s recommended that all adults get the Tdap booster.April TV ratings bring May cancellations — but sometimes renewals, too. Mid-spring marks the time of year when at-risk shows must sweat out their fates — sometimes right up until networks announce their fall schedules to advertisers at their upfront presentations to advertisers in May. Optimism has its place in Hollywood, but it ranks somewhere between actual advertising money and the feel-good awards that can sometimes keep low-rated shows alive. Generally, top-performing shows from each broadcast network have already received their votes of confidence for another season, and the worst performers were snuffed out months ago. But then there are the bubble shows, which could really go either way. Their fates come down to lots of hard-to-quantify factors: momentum, reviews, how much they cost to make, how much money the people who watch them make, syndication situations, diversity, and what networks have to replace them. And then there are executives’ personal tastes. It’s part science, part crapshoot. TheWrap will try to help make sense of it all, charting below what scripted series have already been renewed on each of the English-language broadcast networks, what’s been canceled or just ended, and which way each of the many remaining decisions will likely lean. Also Read: All 79 TV Shows Still Waiting for Renewal or Cancellation News (Updating Photos) NBC So far, is season’s top-rated network in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic has renewed just four scripted shows. Freshman smash-hit “This Is Us” was obviously a no-brainer, while modestly rated sitcoms “Superstore” and “The Good Place” got by mostly based on their comedic quality. “Shades of Blue” doesn’t exactly light up the Nielsen sheets, but there is no way the network was going to rock its relationship with star Jennifer Lopez just before launching her summer competition, “World of Dance.” Thus far, nothing on the peacock-mascoted network has been canceled canceled, though we’ve known for a while that Friday show “Grimm” was ending. “Emerald City” was technically booked as a limited series, and since it’s not performing so well, no surprise second season is in the offing. “The Blacklist: Redemption” was a nice spinoff idea, but it doesn’t hold a candle to its predecessor’s modest tune-in, so you can probably scratch that for 2017-2018. Finally, the network would probably like to forget “Powerless” altogether, so we’ve comfortably marked that as “Probably Not Returning,” too. With everything else, we can make a case of renewal. That said, “Trial & Error,” “Blindspot,” “Taken” and even “Chicago Justice” are no slam dunks. We’ll see what NBC’s schedule calls for after the pilots are all voted on in the coming weeks. (See the chart below for a more detailed snapshot of where NBC’s scripted fare falls.) Also Read: NBC Pushes J Lo's 'World of Dance' Debut to Align With 'AGT,' Buy More Time for Marketing Also Read: Inside 'Better Call Saul' and Cinnabon's Craziest Sponsorship Ever Fox Like NBC, Fox had one show we knew was concluding: “Bones.” That doesn’t mean every other one is coming back. Fox has a lot lined up for next fall, however: “Lucifer,” “Star,” “The Mick,” “Lethal Weapon,” “Empire,” “Bob’s Burgers” and “The Simpsons” are all officially renewed, and sources close to the program tell us “Family Guy” is definitely doing more. Beyond those, Fox is the second-toughest network to call. (You’ll see why we say that during our ABC analysis.) Based on its ratings, “Scream Queens” probably should have been slashed a year ago, and “Rosewood” has proven it can’t hang without lead-out “Empire.” “Sleepy Hollow” likely deserved the graveyard multiple seasons ago, and sans Nicole Beharie, we just see no justification for bringing it back. As for “Making History,” that one is — you guessed it — history. “Pitch,” “Shots Fired,” “APB” and “The Exorcist” could all take the next bus off the Fox lot too — or they could all stay. The rest seem pretty safe — though we thought “The Grinder” would be back on TV for this run. Also Read: Jeanine Pirro Explains Why People Would Even Take Their Cases to 'You the Jury' Also Read: 10 Highest-Rated New Broadcast TV Series of 2016-2017 Season (Photos) CW No, that’s not a typo in the below chart: “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” has been renewed again, despite it’s pretty terrible 0.3 rating among adults 18-49, thanks in large part to its love from critics and awards shows. Also coming back for another round, despite rough viewership figures, are “The 100,” “Riverdale” and “Jane The Virgin.” At this point, we should remind viewers that the CW is the youngest-skewing broadcast network, so they’re more interested in millennials than the people at the older end of the 18-49 spectrum. “Reign” and “The Vampire Diaries” are done for, which leaves four shows for CW to declare futures on. While chief Mark Pedowitz doesn’t like canceling anything, he’d be hard-pressed to consider more “Frequency.” And the title of “No Tomorrow” title should be taken quite literally, given how poorly the first-year series did. Our educated guess is that “The Originals” and “iZombie” will make it back by the skin of their teeth. Also Read: 'The Vampire Diaries' Sinks Teeth Into 1-Year TV Ratings High With Shocking Finale Death Also Read: 10 Lowest-Rated New Broadcast TV Series of 2016-2017 Season (Photos) CBS CBS is a professional broadcaster full of professionals. As such, Les Moonves has already renewed 16 series. Yes, 16. That’s the way you do it, other networks. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that CBS is once-again America’s most-watched. Meanwhile, “Pure Genius” and “Doubt” are officially goners. Unofficially, “Training Day” has met the same fate, due mainly to the passing of star Bill Paxton. CBS’ Saturday experiment series “Ransom” just so happens to be the lowest-rated show on all of broadcast television, so don’t bet on that one coming back to the airwaves. “Elementary” is always teetering, and “Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders” gets fewer than half the main demo tune-in as the franchise’s main offering. As for “The Odd Couple,” well, just check out star Matthew Perry’s tweet for to gauge our confidence level in that one. My face on the Odd Couple stage door has been painted over with green paint.I think it's safe to assume that we have been cancelled.#subtle — matthew perry (@MatthewPerry) April 10, 2017 “Code Black” probably pulls out the paddles and pulls off a return due to its decent enough rating, which is the same argument to be made in favor of more “2 Broke Girls.” Joel McHale’s “The Great Indoors” doesn’t have bad numbers, but almost anything would do well coming out of the “Big Bang Theory” — so let’s call that one a toss-up. Also Read: Les Moonves' Pay Jumps 23 Percent in 2016 to Nearly $70 Million Also Read: How 'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' Scored an Unlikely Season 3 Renewal Despite Being the Lowest-Rated Show on Network TV ABC ABC is still having a rough time, ratings-wise. As such, the Disney-owned broadcaster has already canceled the most series, burying three in this year’s early graveyard. Sadly, we have a feeling that “Dr. Ken,” “Secrets and Lies,” “The Catch” and “The Real O’Neals” might soon be joining them. But here’s the case to keep each. For starters, Ken Jeong’s sitcom is a Friday show, which helps explain its1.1 rating in Nielsen’s “most current” metric, which includes a week of delayed viewing where available. “Secrets and Lies” could stick around because it has the best 18-49 demo tune-in of the bunch, and ties or beats three shows we think will earn renewals. “The Catch” is a Shondaland show and thus part of “TGIT” — and ABC would be wise to keep Ms. Rhimes happy. And “The Real O’Neals” actually has a lot of executive support internally, we’re told, so fans can hang their hats on that. There and elsewhere, ABC is a total crapshoot. Should “Agents of Shield” come back again? Probably not, but there’s the Disney-Marvel connection to consider. Same deal for “Quantico,” though substitute “Priyanka Chopra” for “Disney-Marvel.” “Once Upon a Time” should surprise some with another season, and “American Crime” may get the franchise tag that often keeps prestige shows in business. As for the still-very-new “Imaginary Mary,” well, we really have no idea. The silly show start solidly, but has since shed quite a bit of its audience. But we figured to end this on a positive note, and can imagine Channing Dungey sticking with a series that hasn’t really had a chance yet. Also Read: Ratings: 'Scandal's' 100th Episode Surges 17 Percent From Last WeekThe national average HDI for India in 2008 was 0.467.[1] By 2010, its average HDI had risen to 0.519.[2][3] UNDP, the sponsor of Human Development Index methodology since 1990, reported India's HDI to be 0.554 for 2012,[4] an 18% increase over its 2008 HDI. United Nations Declared India's HDI is 0.586 in 2014,[5] a 5.77% increase over 2012. As for the year 2018, HDI for India stood at 0.640.[6][7][8] Human Development Index of Indian states and union territories 2018. HDI is composite index that takes into consideration (1) Life expectancy, (2) Education and (3) Per capita income. List [ edit ] This is a list of Indian states and union territories by Human Development Index as of 2017.[7] HDI from 1995–2018 Human Development Index (by UN Method) of Indian states since 1995.[7] Consumption-based HDI [ edit ] There are many ways to calculate HDI, and its calculation is sensitive to base data and assumptions. Using another approach, UNDP India and Government of India calculated the HDI nationwide average to be 0.605 in 2006.[9] This data was published by the Indian Government.[1] Note that the 2007-2008 HDI values in the table below is not based on income as is the UNDP standard practice for global comparisons, but on estimated consumption expenditure – an assumption which underestimates the HDI than actual.[10] Further, data was unavailable for the following states and union territories: Chandigarh, Lakshadweep, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Daman and Diu, Puducherry, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.[11][12] Trend analysis [ edit ] Compared with the previous Indian National Human Development Reports and the latest state-level government statistical report, India has significantly improved its HDI in all of its administrative subdivisions: Legend Very High/High Human Development Index 0.850–0.899 0.800–0.849 Medium human development index 0.750–0.799 0.700–0.749 0.650–0.699 0.600–0.649 0.550–0.599 0.500–0.549 Low human development index 0.450–0.499 0.400–0.449 0.350–0.399 0.300–0.349 0.250–0.299 ≤0.250 Lack of information [14] Human Development Index map for Indian states in 2006, as calculated by Government of India and UNDP India. This is a list of Indian states by their respective Human Development Index (HDI), as of 2008.[1] Kerala stands first in Human Development Index among the states in India. 1981 to 2005 human development index in India National Human Development Report 1981 (1981 data) National Human Development Report 1991 (1991 data) National Human Development Report 2001 (2001 data) State-level Census and Statistics 2008 report (2005 data) National Human Development Report 2011 (2007–2008 data)The passenger dragged from a United Express flight suffered a "significant" concussion and broken nose, and he lost two front teeth, one of his lawyers said Thursday. Dr. David Dao has been discharged from a hospital but he will require reconstructive surgery, said attorney Thomas Demetrio, whose law firm is representing the 69-year-old Kentucky physician. Dao was removed from the plane Sunday after he refused to give up his seat on the full flight from Chicago to Louisville to make room for four crew members. In widely distributed cellphone video, Dao can be seen being pulled from his seat and dragged away by airport police officers, his face bloodied. One of Dao's five children, Crystal Pepper, said the family was "horrified, shocked and sickened" to learn and see what happened. She said seeing her father removed from the Sunday flight was "exacerbated" by the fact it was caught on video. @United overbook #flight3411 and decided to force random passengers off the plane. Here's how they did it: pic.twitter.com/QfefM8X2cW Stay up-to-date with the latest news, stories and insider events. Please enter a valid email address Oops, something went wrong! Sign Up Try Again You've signed up to receive emails. Please check your email for a welcome confirmation. April 10, 2017 Demetrio indicated he will be filing a lawsuit on Dao's behalf, adding that airlines — and United in particular — have long "bullied" passengers by overbooking
Sunset Article Article: Aleco_P Graphics: Blizzard Journey to Un'Goro - Sunset Article With Knights of the Frozen Throne set to release in mid August and the Frost Festival in full swing, it’s time to take a look back on what has been one of the most successful sets in the history of Hearthstone. In this “sunset” article I’ll be covering the story of Un’Goro standard, beginning with the biggest flops from the Un’Goro set reviews and leading all the way up to the state of the meta today. Inspired by the sunset shows on Limited Resources, I’ll wrap things up by handing out my awards for Journey to Un’Goro and casting my first ballot for the Hearthstone Hall of Fame. Let’s begin! The Un’Goro Set Reviews: A Swing and a Miss Set reviews are hard. It's perfectly normal for a set to have cards which are overlooked and overhyped by the entire community, and it’s all too easy to look back at set reviews with the benefit of hindsight to point out the glaring mistakes. With that in mind, let’s look back on set reviews with the benefit of hindsight to point out the glaring mistakes. The Hearthstone community was down on quite a few cards which ended up being staples of the format. Lyra the Sunshard Defender Primordial Glyph Regardless, one card stands above the rest as the most misevaluated of the set: The Caverns Below The only card to receive a nerf during Journey to Un’Goro standard, you were hard pressed to find a pro player who was taking The Caverns Below Fire Fly Igneous Elemental The most hyped Quest of the entire set turned turned out to be a massive flop. The community was all but convinced that The Marsh Queen Note: I plan on doing my own set review for Knights of the Frozen Throne and will be making fun of my own terrible predictions in the next sunset article. The Release of Un’Goro and the Early Metagame The early explorers of Un’Goro returned with frightening tales. Reddit was flooded with complaints about duplicate cards in their pre-ordered packs (an issue which has since been addressed by Blizzard) and the first reports of the meta were that Quest Rogue was totally busted. After the dust had settled on the first week of Un’Goro a few things were immediately clear about the upcoming meta: Quest Rogue was going to shape the meta. Pirate Warrior was still really good. The majority of the Quests were unplayable. Especially at the higher ranks, the early Un’Goro meta was dominated by aggressive decks. Hunting for untuned and experimental lists to prey upon, the most popular decks in the first month of Un’Goro were Quest Rogue, Beast Hunter, Pirate Warrior, and Aggro Token Druid. Loaded with new cards from Un’Goro, Aggro Token Druid was too fast for Quest Rogues to handle and too big for Pirate Warriors to tussle against. To combat the prevalence of the early aggro decks, Quest Warrior became the deck du jour and for a short stretch the ladder was extremely toxic to aggro decks, allowing Murloc based Paladin decks to take over for a few weeks. Hungry Crab Eater of Secrets Evolve Though the aggressive decks emerged as early favorites, the Un’Goro meta would eventually Adapt into one of the most diverse and healthy standard formats that Hearthstone has ever seen. The Diversity of Un’Goro Remarkably, only two classes (Warlock and Hunter) produced fewer than two competitively viable decks. Let’s take a look at the massive number of decks which were viable at one time or another in Un’Goro standard: Team 5 deserves a lot of credit for creating such a stable and diverse standard environment. Though the statistics show that aggressive decks like Pirate Warrior, Aggro Token Druid, and Evolve Lessons from Un’Goro: The Failure of Quests Coming into Un’Goro there was a massive amount of hype surrounding the nine quests. Only two of the Quests are now considered to be even remotely viable in standard ( Fire Plume’s Heart Open the Waygate My biggest problem with the Quests isn’t their lack of competitive viability. I don’t even mind that the Quests were designed in such a way which makes the decks they fit into comparatively straightforward to build. The thing which worries me most about the Quests is the way they restrict design space for Hearthstone going forward. Team 5 needs to be really careful about printing cards in the near future which could make one of the Quests too powerful for standard. Since Quests always appear in your opening hand by design, it’s quite possible that some of the Quests are just a card or two away from being completely busted. There is a very small window between “unplayable” and “overpowered” when it comes to the Quest decks, and Team 5 needs to be wary of this as they add new cards to the game. How many quality one drops does The Marsh Queen Lakkari Sacrifice Quick Fixes: Saving the Warlock One of the most common complaints about the Un’Goro meta is the underperformance of Warlock decks. While it is possible a Unicorn Warlock deck exists, the three most obvious decks (Zoo, Handlock, and Quest Warlock) are all coming up short. After some early experimentation with Handlock and Humongous Razorleaf In a perfect world the Warlock class would be able to support both an aggressive deck (Zoo) and a controlling deck (Handlock). Let’s explore what it would it take to make each of these decks a viable option. Clutchmother Zavas Malchezaar’s Imp Doomguard Silverware Golem Life Tap The pieces seem to already be in place for an aggressive, discard-based Warlock deck to have its time in the sun. Perhaps the only thing Disco Zoo needs is a new card in Knights of the Frozen Throne which allows the Warlock to selectively discard a card from their hand. Perhaps the biggest obstacle in the way of the slower, more controlling Warlock decks is the prevalence of aggro in the current meta. A dip in the popularity of Pirate Warrior, Aggro Token Druid, and Evolve Reno Jackson Life Tap Blood-Queen Lana’thel My “Journey to Un’Goro Awards” Best Design: Sherazin, Corpse Flower An all-star in midrange Rogue decks, Sherazin has a unique ability which is exemplary of both the Rogue and the Journey to Un’Goro theme. With a power level worthy of its Legendary status, The Corpse Flower feels neither underwhelming nor overpowered. Worst Design: Jungle Giants Jungle Giants Most Improved: Medivh’s Valet Now an auto-include in every Mage deck, the printing of Arcanologist Medivh’s Valet Most Potential: Bloodbloom Forgotten in the death of the Warlock, Bloodbloom Bloodbloom Best Art: Fire Plume Harbinger This was a tough choice because Un’Goro had tons of great art to choose from. I settled on Fire Plume Harbinger Worst Art: Obsidian Shard Yup, that’s an obsidian shard. Not much else to say here. Best Arena Card: Pyros Good on turn 2, great on turn 6, and amazing on turn 10, Pyros Pyros Polymorph Best Wild Card: Golakka Crawler As it turns out, Pirates are pretty good in Wild as well. Golakka Crawler Deck of the Format: Quest Rogue From the first day of the format until the day it was nerfed, Quest Rogue completely shaped the format. Quest Rogue was the stopgap which prevented many decks which aimed to win in the game late from flourishing and was a constant target of complaint from the Hearthstone community until it was eventually nerfed. The runner-up for this award goes to Evolve Evolve Card of the set: Fire Fly The backbone of Elemental synergy and an essential addition to any aggressive deck, Fire Fly My Journey to Un’Goro “Hall of Fame Ballot” The Hall of Fame was introduced to Hearthstone with the release of Un’Goro as a clean solution for problematic cards. As stated in the Hall of Fame announcement: When cards show up too frequently in decks and are considered auto-includes, deck-building becomes more limited. Deck variety stagnates, potentially interesting build-around cards fall by the wayside, and the gameplay experience begins to feel less dynamic. The Hall of Fame was created with the intention to be used sparingly but I believe that we’ve reached the point where a card has met all the criteria necessary to be added to the Hall of Fame. It shows up far too frequently in decks. It limits design space for potentially interesting future decks. It has a habit of being the least favorite card in both player’s decks. Drawing this card (or not drawing it) determines the outcome of the game far too often, and it’s the card which is the most responsible for the inflated success of aggressive decks in Journey to Un’Goro. Can you guess it’s name? Patches the Pirate Patches has been far too ubiquitous for far too long. It's been the most played card by a wide margin since the release of Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, and is currently played in all of the most popular aggro decks. Patches is an auto-include in every Rogue build which runs Swashburglar As a neutral card, Patches enables every class to create two minions for one mana with a single card, most often Bloodsail Corsair Flametongue Totem Mark of the Lotus Finally, Patches is a particularly frustrating card. Nobody enjoys staring down two pirates on turn one, and the card is even more frustrating when you end up drawing it from your deck. Drawing Patches in a mirror matchup is often enough to lose a game all by itself. Gameplay experiences becoming less dynamic? Check. For the above reasons, I’m submitting my vote for Patches the Pirate Wrapping Up As the sun sets on Un’Goro I believe this set will be fondly remember the next time a metagame turns sour. Though Un’Goro was a tremendous success from a thematic design standpoint (who doesn’t like dinosaurs?), the marquee Quest cards were largely a disappointment and should be approached with caution going forward. Knights of the Frozen Throne will be inheriting a predominantly satisfied player base, thanks to the health of the current standard format and the recent player-friendly addition of festivals. I believe there’s every reason to be optimistic about the future of Hearthstone and can’t wait to see what Blizzard brings us next. Author // Editor // Photo // // Aleco_P // Hayl // Blizzard With Knights of the Frozen Throne set to release in mid August and the Frost Festival in full swing, it’s time to take a look back on what has been one of the most successful sets in the history of Hearthstone. In this “sunset” article I’ll be covering the story of Un’Goro standard, beginning with the biggest flops from the Un’Goro set reviews and leading all the way up to the state of the meta today. Inspired by the sunset shows on Limited Resources, I’ll wrap things up by handing out my awards for Journey to Un’Goro and casting my first ballot for the Hearthstone Hall of Fame. Let’s begin!Set reviews are hard. It's perfectly normal for a set to have cards which are overlooked and overhyped by the entire community, and it’s all too easy to look back at set reviews with the benefit of hindsight to point out the glaring mistakes. With that in mind, let’s look back on set reviews with the benefit of hindsight to point out the glaring mistakes.The Hearthstone community was down on quite a few cards which ended up being staples of the format.was widely regarded as a terrible card pre-launch, despite comments from the lead developer of Hearthstone which hinted that she may have “too good”. “Stonehillis a one star card” has become a meme, andreceived several terrible ratings from the pro community only to become the 4th most played card in the game.Regardless, one card stands above the rest as the most misevaluated of the set:The only card to receive a nerf during Journey to Un’Goro standard, you were hard pressed to find a pro player who was takingseriously in their set reviews. Though many thought the card was interesting the Quest was widely dismissed as being too difficult to complete. Major props to CoL.Noxious, who not only pointed out in his set review that he thought the card was busted, but noted that you could easily trigger the Quest with thepackage.The most hyped Quest of the entire set turned turned out to be a massive flop. The community was all but convinced thatwould be the best of the quests. Trump even gave the card 5 stars in his set review. Lifecoach claimed on his stream that he told Blizzard not to print the card because it was so powerful, and said there was a 50/50 chance the Quest would break the game. At this point I think it’s safe to say he lost that coin flip.Note: I plan on doing my own set review for Knights of the Frozen Throne and will be making fun of my own terrible predictions in the next sunset article.The early explorers of Un’Goro returned with frightening tales. Reddit was flooded with complaints about duplicate cards in their pre-ordered packs (an issue which has since been addressed by Blizzard) and the first reports of the meta were that Quest Rogue was totally busted. After the dust had settled on the first week of Un’Goro a few things were immediately clear about the upcoming meta:Especially at the higher ranks, the early Un’Goro meta was dominated by aggressive decks. Hunting for untuned and experimental lists to prey upon, the most popular decks in the first month of Un’Goro were Quest Rogue, Beast Hunter, Pirate Warrior, and Aggro Token Druid. Loaded with new cards from Un’Goro, Aggro Token Druid was too fast for Quest Rogues to handle and too big for Pirate Warriors to tussle against.To combat the prevalence of the early aggro decks, Quest Warrior became the deck du jour and for a short stretch the ladder was extremely toxic to aggro decks, allowing Murloc based Paladin decks to take over for a few weeks.became the trendy new tech card, which opened the door for both Burn Mage and Secret Mage to dominate the ladder. Crabs were swapped for, and the aggro decks returned in full force (though in truth, they never really went away). In mid-May theShaman decks began to emerge and has since grown into one of the most dominant and popular decks in the format.Though the aggressive decks emerged as early favorites, the Un’Goro meta would eventually Adapt into one of the most diverse and healthy standard formats that Hearthstone has ever seen.Remarkably, only two classes (Warlock and Hunter) produced fewer than two competitively viable decks. Let’s take a look at the massive number of decks which were viable at one time or another in Un’Goro standard:Team 5 deserves a lot of credit for creating such a stable and diverse standard environment. Though the statistics show that aggressive decks like Pirate Warrior, Aggro Token Druid, andShaman have maintained the best overall winrates, most would argue that the Un’Goro meta has been healthy from the start.Coming into Un’Goro there was a massive amount of hype surrounding the nine quests. Only two of the Quests are now considered to be even remotely viable in standard (and), while the Rogue Quest ended up requiring a nerf and was a continual source of complaint from the Hearthstone community. This leaves us with two design “successes” out of the nine quests, six whiffs, and one complete failure.My biggest problem with the Quests isn’t their lack of competitive viability. I don’t even mind that the Quests were designed in such a way which makes the decks they fit into comparatively straightforward to build. The thing which worries me most about the Quests is the way they restrict design space for Hearthstone going forward.Team 5 needs to be really careful about printing cards in the near future which could make one of the Quests too powerful for standard. Since Quests always appear in your opening hand by design, it’s quite possible that some of the Quests are just a card or two away from being completely busted. There is a very small window between “unplayable” and “overpowered” when it comes to the Quest decks, and Team 5 needs to be wary of this as they add new cards to the game. How many quality one drops doesneed before it becomes too good? Two or three? And how many solid discard enablers doesneed before it becomes too easy to activate? One or two? These are questions which must be asked before creating new cards due to the highly narrow way in which the Quests were designed. I hope Team 5 has learned that cards which are too easily accessible (eg: always in your opening hand) do more to constrict design space than they do to create compelling gameplay experiences.One of the most common complaints about the Un’Goro meta is the underperformance of Warlock decks. While it is possible a Unicorn Warlock deck exists, the three most obvious decks (Zoo, Handlock, and Quest Warlock) are all coming up short. After some early experimentation with Handlock and, Warlock has consistently maintained a class frequency of less than 2% since mid May.In a perfect world the Warlock class would be able to support both an aggressive deck (Zoo) and a controlling deck (Handlock). Let’s explore what it would it take to make each of these decks a viable option., andseem like a powerful core for a discard based Zoo deck. Even now the Disco Zoo deck is capable of some ridiculously powerful plays, but the deck is its own worst enemy and is held back by a lack of consistency. Every discard enabler in the deck reads “discard a card at random”, so the only way a Warlock can guarantee they are discarding the card of their choice is by keeping their hand empty. This is fundamentally at odds with their hero power,, which draws them cards.The pieces seem to already be in place for an aggressive, discard-based Warlock deck to have its time in the sun. Perhaps the only thing Disco Zoo needs is a new card in Knights of the Frozen Throne which allows the Warlock to selectively discard a card from their hand.Perhaps the biggest obstacle in the way of the slower, more controlling Warlock decks is the prevalence of aggro in the current meta. A dip in the popularity of Pirate Warrior, Aggro Token Druid, andShaman might be all that controlling Warlock decks need to return to the meta.These decks have also been badly missing a powerful healing effect sincerotated from standard. Without a way to quickly or repeatedly restore their life, Warlocks who aim to make the game go long are unable toas often as they need. A neutral minion with a powerful healing effect might be able to restore Handlock to its former glory but it could also put Jade Druid over the top. With the upcoming addition of Lifesteal to the game, I hope that Warlock will get a late game class card which enables them to restore their health in meaningful chunks. There’s a chance thatcould be the answer to my prayers.An all-star in midrange Rogue decks, Sherazin has a unique ability which is exemplary of both the Rogue and the Journey to Un’Goro theme. With a power level worthy of its Legendary status, The Corpse Flower feels neither underwhelming nor overpowered.stands out amongst a group of poorly designed Quests as the most baffling of the lot. Once you’ve had the time and mana to cast 5 minions with 5 or more attack, why would I be in the market for a cost reduction effect on minions I haven’t drawn yet? The earliest you can reasonably expect to complete the Quest is turn 7, at which point you aren’t exactly hurting for mana. Without a way to quickly draw through your deck the ability on ol’ Barney is largely useless, while a deck filled which is filled with card draw spells will have a hard time playing enough minions with 5 power to trigger the quest.Now an auto-include in every Mage deck, the printing ofturnedand his fire-wielding monkey friend loose.Forgotten in the death of the Warlock,offers an extremely powerful effect for just two mana. Playing cards a few turns ahead of schedule has the potential to be game breaking and Warlocks have historically had no problem sacrificing card advantage for tempo. If Warlock ever gets access to an effect which gains a substantial amount of life, expectto take off.This was a tough choice because Un’Goro had tons of great art to choose from. I settled onbecause it strikes an excellent balance between realism and the classic cartoon style of Hearthstone. This also wins the award for “Card Most Likely To Be Legendary Based On Its Art Alone, But Isn’t”.Yup, that’s an obsidian shard. Not much else to say here.Good on turn 2, great on turn 6, and amazing on turn 10,demands an unreasonable amount of damage to completely remove from the game. If you’re unlucky enough to face awith aeffect, your only hope is to get so far ahead on tempo that your opponent never gets a chance to play the final 10/10.As it turns out, Pirates are pretty good in Wild as well.appears in everything from Egg Druid to Aggro Shaman as a way to combat the Pirate menace.From the first day of the format until the day it was nerfed, Quest Rogue completely shaped the format. Quest Rogue was the stopgap which prevented many decks which aimed to win in the game late from flourishing and was a constant target of complaint from the Hearthstone community until it was eventually nerfed. The runner-up for this award goes toShaman, a deck which burst onto the scene after the metagame once the metagame had already started to settle down. Since then,Shaman has firmly cemented itself as a Tier 1 deck.The backbone of Elemental synergy and an essential addition to any aggressive deck,has been one of the most widely played cards since the launch of Un’Goro. Its design is clean, elegant, and perhaps most importantly, fair. Despite its widespread usage, few have raised complaints about the power level of the card since its release.The Hall of Fame was introduced to Hearthstone with the release of Un’Goro as a clean solution for problematic cards. As stated in the Hall of Fame announcement:When cards show up too frequently in decks and are considered auto-includes, deck-building becomes more limited. Deck variety stagnates, potentially interesting build-around cards fall by the wayside, and the gameplay experience begins to feel less dynamic.The Hall of Fame was created with the intention to be used sparingly but I believe that we’ve reached the point where a card has met all the criteria necessary to be added to the Hall of Fame. It shows up far too frequently in decks. It limits design space for potentially interesting future decks. It has a habit of being the least favorite card in both player’s decks. Drawing this card (or not drawing it) determines the outcome of the game far too often, and it’s the card which is the most responsible for the inflated success of aggressive decks in Journey to Un’Goro. Can you guess it’s name?Patches has been far too ubiquitous for far too long. It's been the most played card by a wide margin since the release of Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, and is currently played in all of the most popular aggro decks. Patches is an auto-include in every Rogue build which runs(which is almost all of them) and has even started popping up in Midrange Paladin decks. Showing up too frequently? Check.As a neutral card, Patches enables every class to create two minions for one mana with a single card, most often. Because of this, classes which are capable of boosting the power of more than one minion at a time with cards likeandare able leverage Patches to create massive early game advantages. The ability for all classes to create two minions for one mana has been a major reason that aggressive decks have been so successful during Journey to Un’Goro. The popularity and success of Patches based aggro decks has undoubtedly limited the variety of possible control decks in the meta, and has consequently allowed interesting build-around cards to fall by the wayside. Check and check.Finally, Patches is a particularly frustrating card. Nobody enjoys staring down two pirates on turn one, and the card is even more frustrating when you end up drawing it from your deck. Drawing Patches in a mirror matchup is often enough to lose a game all by itself. Gameplay experiences becoming less dynamic? Check.For the above reasons, I’m submitting my vote forto be elected to the Hall of Fame! Congrats, Patches. You earned it.As the sun sets on Un’Goro I believe this set will be fondly remember the next time a metagame turns sour. Though Un’Goro was a tremendous success from a thematic design standpoint (who doesn’t like dinosaurs?), the marquee Quest cards were largely a disappointment and should be approached with caution going forward.Knights of the Frozen Throne will be inheriting a predominantly satisfied player base, thanks to the health of the current standard format and the recent player-friendly addition of festivals. I believe there’s every reason to be optimistic about the future of Hearthstone and can’t wait to see what Blizzard brings us next.A woman was beaten at a marketplace in India by men who allegedly attempted to molest her. The victim of the assault has reportedly threatened to shoot herself if her attackers are not brought to justice. Video of the incident, which took place in Uttar Pradesh in India’s Mainpuri district, shows the woman in a brawl with a group of men when another man approaches with a large stick and proceeds to strike her with it. The woman reportedly asked men at the market for directions before they attempted to grope her and remove her dupatta (head covering). When she resisted, she was beaten with a stick and the men shouted abusive language at her. The woman’s husband was also struck, according to the reports, while her daughter witnessed the incident. In the video, the woman can be seen bleeding and is reported to have sustained head injuries. She registered a complaint with police and reportedly threatened to shoot herself if the culprits were not arrested. Three people are being sought by police in relation to the incident, an official told The Indian Express. One of the suspects, Anand Yadav, was arrested Wednesday morning. READ MORE: 10yo Indian girl stripped, set ablaze, thrown in abandoned well for resisting rape attempt Earlier this month, a 10-year-old schoolgirl suffered burns to 60 percent of her body after kerosene was poured on her. She told police she had been resisting rape by two men at the time.NEW DELHI — The first-ever defense deal between India and Japan is back on track after two years as Japan has offered a price concession for the purchase of 12 US-2 amphibious aircraft for the Indian Navy, according to an official with the Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD). "Japan has offered a price concession of more than 10 percent per aircraft from $133 million per aircraft to around $113 million, and the $1.35 billion government to government deal for US-2 amphibious aircraft is now ready for finalization," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity Shortly after coming to power in mid-2014 and during his first overseas visit to Japan, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his wish to buy US-2 amphibious aircraft, made by ShinMaywa of Japan, for the Indian Navy. However, negotiations suffered as the Japanese refused to lower the quoted price of $133 million per aircraft. Japanese Embassy diplomats here were unavailable for comment. An Indian Navy official said the amphibious aircraft are required immediately for operation in the Indian Ocean region. "Carrying out operational logistics support for the naval units (including ships, submarines and embarked assets) at sea, within the Indian Ocean region or beyond is an operational gap that exists in the Indian Navy inventory," the Navy official said. Anil Jai Singh, a retired Indian Navy commodore and defense analyst, said the US-2 aircraft "will offer a capability to quickly react to a developing situation in our island territories, which are almost 700 miles from the mainland and strategically vulnerable." The purchase from Japan is also regarded as strategic because New Delhi is building ties with Tokyo as part of its Look East Policy meant to counter China's influence in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean regions. "The strategic importance of this needs no emphasis. It may be the first military export from Japan since World War II and hence sends out a very significant signal on the depth of the Indo-Japan strategic relationship as well as on the geopolitical dynamic of the Indo-Pacific," Singh said. After Japan overturned its self-imposed 1967 ban on the export of arms in 2014, India was expected to become the first country to purchase defense equipment from Japan with the acquisition of US-2 aircraft. An Indian Navy purchase of US-2 aircraft is regarded as strategically critical after China announced in July that it had built the world's largest flying boat, the AG600.NEW DELHI: Even as Narendra Modi government faces criticism for the attacks on churches and Christian institutions during its 10month rule, crime records from the UPA era reveal that not only were there a matching number of such attacks between May 2013 and March 2014 but also 50% of those cases still remain unsolved.According to a secret report accessed by TOI, there were 10 cases of so-called anti-Christian attacks between May 26, 2013 and March 31, 2014, when UPA was in power.While nine were instances of church vandalization, one related to a pastor's murder. Of these 10 cases reported from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, five remain undetected while in four cases, 16 persons were arrested. An unsound person was found to be responsible in one case.In comparison, between installation of the Modi government on May 26, 2014 and March 31, 2015, 11 cases were reported. Of these, six incidents relate to Delhi and one each to West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Maharasthra, Kerala and Haryana. In two separate cases of fire at a church in East Delhi and Rohini, a short-circuit was found be the cause. The Jasola church attack, in which a windowpane was damaged, has been blamed on an unintentional throwing of a stone by a boy.Four cases (relating to vandalization of churches in Vikaspuri, Hisar, Jabalpur and Navi Mumbai) have been investigated, leading to arrest of 14 persons. Two of three cases have not yet been solved and are suspected to be that of burglary.As for the March 13 rape of a 71-year-old nun at a convent in Nadia, which evoked angry reactions from church leaders, the police have claimed that the case has been solved with the arrest of a Bangladeshi, Mohammad Salim Sheikh, and another accused, Gopal Sarkar. Four others, all Bangladeshi nationals, have since escaped to Bangladesh.The comparative data cited in the report is certain to generate controversy and escalate tensions between BJP and its opponents.Among the cases of alleged desecration of Christian institutions reported over the 10 corresponding months of UPA regime, four related to Tamil Nadu. In three cases of vandalization relating to a school in Tirunelveli, a church in Rameshwaram and Bethel church in Kannampalayan, cases were registered under Section 153A and Section 506(ii) of IPC.Two cases are still pending, while five arrests were made in another. The Trichy attack was, however, attributed by the cops to an unsound person, who was later released on humanitarian grounds.In one of the most serious attacks, a pastor was fatally attacked in January 2014 in Ranga Reddy district, Telangana. Seven accused, all Hindu Vahini sympathizers, were arrested and later released on bail. The incident was widely condemned by Christian organizations.In Kerala, a convention centre at a church in Thiruvalla, Pathanamthitta was attacked on January 22, 2014. Two per sons were arrested but later released on bail.The glass cover of a Mother Mary statue at Loretta Padav in Dakshin Kannada district of Karnataka was damaged by miscreants in October 2013.The case was closed on March 15, 2015. A similar case relating to vandalization of a statue of Jesus in Mumbai on December 1415, 2013 is yet to be solved.Two cases under UPA government related to damage to under-construction churches at Hyderabad and Kandhamal.While the Andhra case has been closed due to lack of evidence, two Hindus were arrested for the attack at Kandhamal.They were later bailed out and the case closed.Since the advent of C++11 writing more functional code has become easier. Functional programming patterns and ideas are powerful additions to the C++ developer's huge toolbox. (I recently attended a great introductory talk on them by Phil Nash at the first London C++ Meetup - you can find an older recording here on YouTube.) In this blog post I'll briefly cover some techniques that can be used to pass functions to other functions and show their impact on the generated assembly at the end. (If you are familiar with lambdas and higher-order functions you can skip the following paragraphs.) First-class and higher-order functions are one of the staples of functional programming. Wikipedia concisely describes them as follows: Higher-order functions are functions that can either take other functions as arguments or return them as results. [...] Higher-order functions are closely related to first-class functions in that higher-order functions and first-class functions both allow functions as arguments and results of other functions. The distinction between the two is subtle: "higher-order" describes a mathematical concept of functions that operate on other functions, while "first-class" is a computer science term that describes programming language entities that have no restriction on their use (thus first-class functions can appear anywhere in the program that other first-class entities like numbers can, including as arguments to other functions and as their return values). The introduction of auto, lambda functions, std::function, and many other features in C++11/14/17 effectively make C++ a language where functions are treated as first-class citizens. // Put a function in a variable. // This function takes another function as an argument. auto benchmark = []( auto f) { start_timer(); f(); cout << end_timer(); }; // Pass a function to another function. // This function captures the surrounding environment (it's a closure). data some_data; benchmark([&some_data]{ some_computation(); }); When passing functions around to other functions things are however not as straightforward as they might sound. Should you use a template parameter? Should you use std::function? A function pointer? This article aims to compare the aforementioned function-passing techniques and to provide some guidelines. Every technique will benchmarked. What your options are Without introducing any additional dependency, your options for passing callable objects around are: Function pointers. Template parameters. std::function. function_view - a lightweight class that we're going to implement in this article. (If you are familiar with everything except function_view, you can skip to its related paragraph.) Function pointers Function pointers are not just a relic from the past in modern C++ - they can be used to pass free functions and captureless lambdas. Member functions can be passed to other functions with member function pointers. void f( int ) { } void g( void (*x)( int )) { } //... g(f); g([]( int ){ }); Compilers can aggressively optimize function pointers (at least in the same TU), resulting in a small run-time overhead. Unfortunately, not being able to pass stateful lambdas and generic callable objects is a huge limitation which prevents many functional patterns. Template parameters Using a function template that takes another function via a template parameter allows any callable object to be passed without any run-time overhead. That's right: the compiler is able to completely optimize away the "indirection". void f( int ) { } template < typename TF> void g(TF&& x) { } //... g(f); g([]( int ){ }); g([i = 0 ]( int ) mutable { }); The drawbacks of this technique are: In very large codebases, the use of templates for callbacks may be problematic, as they require to be included in every TU they're used in. This can often lead to long re-compilation times and binary size bloat (which could be worse than some run-time overhead!) It's non-trivial to constrain the callable object to a particular signature and to make the type of the expected callable obvious to the user of the function. This could become much easier in the future if concepts lite are introduced in the standard. std::function I see std::function being suggested for the purpose of passing callbacks/functions way too often. std::function is a heavyweight general-purpose polymorphic function wrapper that is meant to store and "own" a callable object. It also has an empty state that causes an exception to be thrown upon invocation. void f( int ) { } void g( std:: function< void ( int )> x) { } //... g(f); g([]( int ){ }); g([i = 0 ]( int ) mutable { }); Again, this is a very general-purpose class that models ownership of a callable object. It introduces a significant run-time overhead and can potentially dynamically allocate. Use it sparingly! I strongly recommend not using std::function unless you need its general-purpose polymorphic semantics. function_view This is where things start to get interesting. It is possible to easily implement a lightweight non-owning generic callable object view with an overhead comparable to raw function pointers quite easily (and zero overhead when inlined). I am going to benchmark and show a C++17 implementation. (Note that the I've seen already the idea of a "function view" multiple times online - I don't claim to have invented this. An example is this StackOverflow answer by Yakk. Another is "The Impossibly Fast C++ Delegates" by Sergey Ryazanov.) void f( int ) { } void g(function_view< void ( int )> x) { } //... g(f); g([]( int ){ }); g([i = 0 ]( int ) mutable { }); As you can see from the example above, it looks reasonably similar to std::function - however, its semantics are way different: function_view does not own a callable object. It merely refers to an existing one. That means that any instance of function_view assumes the pointee callable object to be alive. This is very often what you want when you pass a function to another one. (The implementation of function_view will be shown and explained at the end of the article.) Benchmark - generated assembly I created a small horrible Python script that compiles a small code snippet in multiple ways and counts the lines of generated x86-
the Game Boy era, with retro monochromatic graphics, catchy chiptune music, and simple run-and-jump controls. It also walks the walk, with solid gameplay and challenging level design. 5. TETRIS Free by Electronic Arts EA is a company we all love to hate, and perhaps for good reason, but screwing up Tetris is nigh impossible. This version features crisp, vibrant visuals, catchy music, and controls that are perfectly optimized for the touch screen. Slide left and right to move the block, tap to rotate, and a satisfying downward slide slams it into place. Tetris is Tetris is Tetris, and this version is worth playing. 6. Galaxy Conquest by Arclite Systems Galcon as the simple but challenging space conquest RTS. Others may have it on Steam. Gamers with a few bucks to spare can play it in all its glory on Android or iOS, but like great cereal, successful games have their clones. Galaxy Conquest, while not quite as sweet, retains most of what makes Galcon so enjoyable and the touch screen is well suited for the click-and-drag gameplay mechanics. Those of us that used to play games on InstantAction will rememberas the simple but challenging space conquest RTS. Others may have it on Steam. Gamers with a few bucks to spare can play it in all its glory on Android or iOS, but like great cereal, successful games have their clones.while not quite as sweet, retains most of what makesso enjoyableand the touch screen is well suited for the click-and-drag gameplay mechanics. Zenonia series of games are ones to sit down with. Having established itself as one the quintessential action RPG series in the Android market, its worlds are vibrant and well-detailed and their stories engaging. The gameplay is exceptionally smooth and varied among the games' distinct classes, providing plenty of replay value. The mobile gaming market is dominated by pick-up-and-play software designed to fill in those odd gaps of time throughout our days like waiting for your microwaveable burrito, or your dog to finish his business outside. Now that you're thinking about dog turds and questionable meat product, theseries of games are ones to sit down with. Having established itself as one the quintessential action RPG series in the Android market, its worlds are vibrant and well-detailed and their stories engaging. The gameplay is exceptionally smooth and varied among the games' distinct classes, providing plenty of replay value. Full Review 8. Chess Free by AI Factory Limited I feel like I'm cheating a bit here as the game of chess has been around for centuries, but fans of the game will appreciate the ability to carry a chess board in their pocket. Players can play against AI of varying difficulty, or another human (only locally, unfortunately). Features include a timer, match playback, and the ability to export a match's PGN. It's chess. 9. Mole Kart by Elite Games Mario Kart will feel right at home with Mole Kart. It features vibrant graphics, a drift boost mechanic, and wacky powerups. That's all well and good, but the biggest advantage this game has over other free Kart racers on Android is that it DOESN'T FORCE THE TILT CONTROL GIMMICK. Nothing's more frustrating than trying to play a game that would otherwise be halfway decent, but fails miserably due to inaccurate controls. The worst part of it all is that this game is unplayable on lower-end devices, so the only alternatives (that I could find anyway) are tilt-controlled kart racers. Of course, using to play some Mario Kart: Super Circuit is another option. Fans ofwill feel right at home with. It features vibrant graphics, a drift boost mechanic, and wacky powerups. That's all well and good, but the biggest advantage this game has over other free Kart racers on Android is that it DOESN'T FORCE THE TILT CONTROL GIMMICK. Nothing's more frustrating than trying to play a game that would otherwise be halfway decent, but fails miserably due to inaccurate controls. The worst part of it all is that this game is unplayable on lower-end devices, so the only alternatives (that I could find anyway) are tilt-controlled kart racers. Of course, using My Boy to play someis another option Pixel Kingdom is a game most of us have played before. Enemies scroll from the mysterious other side of the field, and the player needs to defend their side/castle with an assortment of units. The field is divided into three lanes. As enemies approach, defending is as simple as tapping a unit and a corresponding lane. Units cost mana to deploy, but players can opt to save up mana to purchase a mana boost, which starts at ten mana and doubles each time, but will speed up the mana generation rate. Spending mana wisely and deciding w hich order to send out units to deal with the various ranged/melee enem y units makes the game highly addi cting a nd a lot of fun. My only complaint is the fact t h at unit prices make an eno rmous jump from 2500 and under to 22000 gold and up, which I can only assume is d esigned to encourage in-app purchases. Full Review At it's core,is a game most of us have played before. Enemies scroll from the mysterious other side of the field, and the player needs to defend their side/castle with an assortment of units. The field is divided into three lanes. As enemies approach, defending is as simple as tapping a unit and a corresponding lane. Units cost mana to deploy, but players can opt to save up mana to purchase a mana boost, which starts at ten mana and doubles each time, but will speed up the mana generation rate. 11. Bricknoid by Driant Games Brick-breaking games are a starting place for many indie developers so it's no surprise the Android market is flooded with them. Of the three I played, Bricknoid was the most fun. It's packed with content, featuring over 100 levels, your standard laser, paddle enlarge/shrink powerups etc., and a unique "challenge mode" where new lines of blocks periodically appear from above the screen, pushing the rest down. Google Play is filled with shmups. It's a genre that's easy to make a game around, but making one worth playing is another story. Super Laser: The Alien Fighter is worth a look, but not recommended for anyone with a weak constitution. It features your standard scrolling gameplay with predetermined patterns of enemies, a boss at the end of each stage, a few different weapon types that can be upgraded multiple times, and the standard orbital helpers, which can actually be launched as bombs. It's downright difficult, but it's a satisfying challenge. The aptly named Tower Defense is all about defending--you guessed it--a tower. Each level has predetermined paths on which enemy creeps march through. Players will need to strategically build a variety of turrets along the edges of these paths in order to keep the enemy forces at bay. A simple tried-and-true formula that's always a good time. 14. Angry Birds Space by Rovio Mobile Ltd The obligatory Angry Birds inclusion. These may very well be the most played games in the mobile scene, and for good reason. They're simple but challenging and have cute, marketable mascots. Angry Birds Space keeps things fresh by adding orbital forces into the mix. Temple Run was a huge success, and it's sequel only improves upon the formula. The player controls an explorer who bursts from a temple with a menacing beast in pursuit. The randomly generated levels will require quick reflexes in order to jump, slide, and turn through the paths. There are an endless number of endless runners on the Android platform but not an endless amount of time to try them all. The originalwas a huge success, and it's sequel only improves upon the formula. The player controls an explorer who bursts from a temple with a menacing beast in pursuit. The randomly generated levels will require quick reflexes in order to jump, slide, and turn through the paths. Temple Run 2 will have players hooked as they try to beat their score. PITFALL! would probably have taken this slot, but it was too beefy for my device. Street Fight plays like something straight from the '90s. It's your typical side-scrolling beat-em-up with some interesting elements like equipment and unlockable skills. The game controls well, with a virtual stick to move, a single button for basic attacks and hot-keys for skills. There is more reading than one would expect from a beat-em-up and it's poorly translated, but also skippable. Street Fight is classic arcade action and a lot of fun. The best way I can think to describe Major Mayhem is as a side-scrolling on-rails shooter. The Major has been ordered to take out the enemy scum, who are apparently a fan of cliche's and have kidnapped his girlfriend. As he runs through the battlefield he'll come to a stop at certain intervals. Enemy ninjas pop up and can be shot with a tap. The fun lies in trying to shoot accurately to rack up bonuses. It's very polished and majorly fun. Pixel Dungeon is one of the few roguelikes (think Dragon Crystal) that I've come across on Android. Simply put, it does the genre justice. Dungeons are randomly generated, so players have no chance to grow accustomed to their surroundings. Rats are among the weakest enemies, but even they can spell defeat if not taken seriously. It's currently in beta with 15 levels total, but the developer plans to add more. is one of the few roguelikes (thinkthat I've come across on Android. Simply put, it does the genre justice. Dungeons are randomly generated, so players have no chance to grow accustomed to their surroundings. Rats are among the weakest enemies, but even they can spell defeat if not taken seriously. It's currently in beta with 15 levels total, but the developer plans to add more. Critical Strike Portable has everything a trigger-happy FPS fan could want on a mobile device. The gameplay is surprisingly smooth, there are a variety of weapons and maps, but most importantly, there is cross-platform online multiplayer. Touch-based controls aren't exactly ideal for a shooter, so those with bluetooth controllers will be glad to know they're supported.February 25 is the 30th anniversary of the release of Tinsel City, the first episode of Bubblegum Crisis. Produced by ARTMIC, AIC, and Youmex, the sci-fi OVA series ran for eight episodes. Despite being cancelled short of its intended 13-episode run, it inspired a slew of spin-offs and sequels. Today, we’re talking about how it came to be made. In ARTMIC Design Works, studio founder and series co-creator Toshimichi Suzuki declared, “Bubblegum Crisis has the type of things I like.” That’s not surprising; Crisis was one of the most successful iterations of the ARTMIC archetype and the studio itself was created in Suzuki’s own multitalented image. Despite his prior experience as a producer at Tatsunoko Productions, Suzuki didn’t consider ARTMIC to be an “animation production house” intended to tackle the day-by-day production of a series or film. He said as much in an interview with Animerica magazine in 1993, “Artmic is more a place where we can utilize our designs and stories. We’re not interested in production work.” That might seem odd coming from a former producer, but then, Suzuki wasn’t just a producer. Throughout his tenure at ARTMIC, Suzuki helped plan and co-write anime, authored novels and audio dramas, and even had a side gig painting box art for model kit manufacturer Imai. Suzuki’s experience working from creation through production to merchandising served ARTMIC well. Not only was the studio capable of overseeing the entire lifecycle of a film or OVA (with help from a production company for the actual animation, of course), but ARTMIC also helped design everything from logos to advertising campaigns. That eye for design was apparent in the studio’s animated work and at times seemingly came at the cost of everything else. It was ARTMIC’s first major project, Technopolice 21C, that inadvertently set the studio and Suzuki on a path towards Crisis. Collaborating with Studio Nue, Suzuki intended Technopolice to be a groundbreaking sci-fi cop show set in a plausible future, but production difficulties meant that it never reached TV screens. Instead, animation from the first few episodes was patched together and released by Toho Productions as a movie in 1982. It’s easy to imagine that spending four years on the troubled series only to see it released as a salvaged film must have been incredibly frustrating for Suzuki. Three years after the theatrical release of Technopolice, he was already planning to remake it with new talent. In December of 1985, Suzuki met music exec Junji Fujita at the Fight! Iczer-1 wrap party and they hit it off. Soon enough, Suzuki’s planned Technopolice reboot was something else entirely thanks to creative brainstorming with Fujita — it was turning into Bubblegum Crisis. There were other factors at work, too. Between the release of Technopolice in ’82 and the meeting with Fujita in ’85, three notable films had been released: Blade Runner (1982), The Terminator (1984), and Streets of Fire (1984). The influence of those films on Crisis should be readily apparent. To hear Suzuki tell it, many of ARTMIC’s anime projects were linked — not chronologically, but thematically. Gall Force, Megazone 23, and Genesis Surviver Gaiarth all dealt with conflict between humanity and machines, albeit in different ways and at different stages of that conflict. For example, Gall Force dealt with humanity barely holding out against a superior robotic foe, while Gaiarth took place after a cataclysmic war between humans and machines. The meeting between Suzuki and Fujita had steered the Technopolice reboot project towards stories focused on “the fear the that rapid technological innovations will make people apathetic as to how these new innovations could be used.” In short: much of ARTMIC’s work was a generation-spanning tapestry of humanity’s conflict with technology, and Bubblegum Crisis was the opening act. Earlier that year, Fujita had founded Youmex, a subsidiary of the music company Toshiba EMI. The support of Fujita and Youmex meant that Crisis not only had easy access to musical talent, but it also had money. The OVA industry during the 1980s was closely tied to major electronics manufacturers like Toshiba and Matsushita. Manufacturers used record label subsidiaries like Toshiba EMI and Victor to funnel money towards OVA production; it was vertical integration supporting the strategy of selling hardware by providing software. Sales of OVAs were relatively small compared to a hit music album, but the breakout hit Megazone 23 (also an ARTMIC co-production) had really put the format on the map. Comparatively limited sales or not, the premium cost and hardcore nature of anime fans meant that they were a worthwhile targets of hardware manufacturers. For companies like ARTMIC that created their own stories, these type of connections were incredibly important. A studio producing an OVA based on a popular manga title would have the support of its publisher and an existing fanbase to tap into, whereas ARTMIC had to put together the funding themselves to get their animation to production. Crisis was by no means the only anime series that Youmex helped produce (other notable shows included Kimagure Orange Road, Otaku no Video, and another ARTMIC favorite, Dragon’s Heaven), but the sheer amount of music included in Crisis certainly suggested a music exec was deeply involved. Every episode had its own soundtrack album, which was an anomaly for OVAs of the era. Crisis also featured a singer with no voice acting experience as one of its main characters, as singer Oomori Kinuko played lead Priss Asagiri. Kinuko stopped singing solo vocal tracks for Crisis after the third episode, but the eighth episode featured the song Chase the Dream off the debut album of her newly band, Silk. The label releasing that album? Youmex, of course. Chase the Dream wasn’t the first time Crisis had used a pre-existing song. Mr. Dandy, the iconic ending theme for Tinsel City was off Bluew’s self-titled debut album. That album and Tinsel City were both released on the same day: February 25, 1987. In a bit of cruel irony, Crisis, like Technopolice, was never finished as intended. Originally envisioned to be thirteen episodes, production was cut short after only eight because of legal issues between ARTMIC and Youmex. A three episode sequel called Bubblegum Crash attempted to cover the material of the remaining five planned episodes, but stumbled without the same charm of the original (or Kinuko’s voice). Suzuki mentioned another sequel in his Animerica interview, but as of 2017, it is still unreleased. As for ARTMIC and Youmex? Changes in the Japanese economy and the OVA market made the ’90s a difficult time for ARTMIC. When the studio went bankrupt in 1997, they defaulted on loans cosigned years prior by Youmex. Forced to take on debt they couldn’t repay, Youmex was absorbed back into Toshiba EMI in 1998. The rights to Bubblegum Crisis, along with other ARTMIC intellectual property, ended up in the hands of long-time production collaborator, AIC. But by then it didn’t really matter — the anime industry was changing, satellite TV was about to take even more market share from OVAs, and the writing was on the wall.EDINBURGH (Reuters) - The Friday morning after Britain voted to leave the European Union, leaders in London had little to say. Prime Minister David Cameron resigned in a short statement. Boris Johnson, the face of the leave campaign, spoke for seven minutes. George Osborne, finance minister, was nowhere to be seen and would not appear in public for three days. Four hundred miles away, Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister for the United Kingdom’s northernmost nation of Scotland, appeared before the cameras, dressed in red. Her message: Scots had voted decisively to stay in the EU. That may mean Scotland would split away from the rest of the country. For the next 30 minutes, Sturgeon took questions from reporters in Edinburgh. The next day she held a crisis cabinet meeting and gave a statement. On Sunday she was on three television talk shows and three days later she traveled to Brussels to speak with EU politicians. On Twitter, she called Johnson the leader of “Project Farce” and criticized the uncertainty now faced by EU citizens living in Britain. By addressing the acute political, economic and social crisis that has gripped the UK after the referendum, Sturgeon and her nationalist party have seized on a chance to revive their ambitions for Scottish independence. It was a project considered shelved nearly three years ago after Scotland voted to remain in the UK in its own plebiscite. Sturgeon has argued since then that many voted to stay in the UK because it guaranteed Scotland’s EU membership. Now the Scottish parliament has given her a mandate to try to keep Scotland in the EU by whatever means possible. “The UK that Scotland voted to remain within in 2014 doesn’t exist anymore,” she told BBC television. “There are going to be deeply damaging and painful consequences of the process of trying to extricate the UK from the EU. I want to try and protect Scotland from that.” It remains to be seen whether Scottish independence will happen. Splitting Scotland from the UK would end three centuries of shared history, upending another tight economic relationship shortly after a divorce between Britain and the EU. Scotland sells two thirds of its 76 billion pounds ($99 billion)of goods and services exports to the rest of the UK, excluding oil and gas. But over the past two weeks, EU politicians have for the first time shown openness to Scotland’s EU predicament. That could be a negotiating tactic for Brussels with London. And the return of the Scottish cause shows how the EU referendum – originally pitched by Cameron as an opportunity to prove British unity with Europe while calming anti-EU lawmakers in his own party - is tearing at the social, economic and cultural cohesion within the four nations that make up the UK: England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. An opinion poll published in Scotland’s Sunday Post after the EU vote showed support for independence rising to 59 percent from the 45 percent who voted for it in 2014, a level roughly steady since then. The referendum’s aftermath has also created an opportunity for Sturgeon, a lawyer turned politician who two weeks ago was barely known outside Britain. She has put herself and her cause center-stage in Europe. “She’s a shining light, hardworking and with an integrity that the rest of the motley crew in British politics just doesn’t have,” said Ian Graham, a 48-year-old businessman from Kirkcaldy in Scotland. Graham said he didn’t support independence last time, but may reconsider. DOOR-TO-DOOR Since her days as a teenager in Dr. Marten boots and listening to Duran Duran in Ayrshire, Western Scotland, Sturgeon has wanted Scottish independence. In 1987, at age 16, she knocked on the door of Kay Ullrich, a family neighbor in Dreghorn and an SNP candidate who would later become a lawmaker. It was a time when many local families had lost their jobs after factories closed. Sturgeon wanted to help campaign for the Scottish National Party (SNP), which argued that Scotland would be better off socially and economically if it unhitched from the rest of the UK. At the time, SNP membership was around 2,000 nationally, said Ullrich, 73, who recalls Sturgeon as an ardent campaigner. “We’d be in the pub already and her group would come in and say ‘We’d have been here earlier but Nicola said ‘let’s do another street.’” Sturgeon studied to be a lawyer and practiced until 1999, when she entered Scotland’s devolved parliament. She had met then party leader Alex Salmond years before when he was a rising SNP star. Salmond, considered smart but divisive by those close to him, asked Sturgeon to be his deputy when he ran, and won, the 2004 contest for party leadership. She stayed by his side until 2014 and the Scottish independence vote. Scotland's First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon waves as she stands outside Buth House, her official residence in Edinburgh, Scotland, Britain May 6, 2016. REUTERS/Russell Cheyne/File Photo During the campaign, she debated the economic merits of leaving. Independence would mean Scotland had control of its own tax take and its own energy resources, most notably, North Sea oil, she argued. Being around Salmond toughened her stance and rhetoric. “When I was first in politics, women were very rare and the people around you tended to be middle-aged men and inevitably you do, subconsciously start to behave... like a man,” she told Reuters in an interview before the referendum. “It’s only now that I’m older that I have had the confidence to be myself.” That confidence has earned respect from peers and constituents. “There’s no doubt that Nicola is focused. She can be ruthless and controlling (but) remains highly professional and enormously competent,” said former Conservative Scottish lawmaker Mary Scanlon, a rival of Sturgeon’s. Constituents say Sturgeon is dedicated to political outreach, attending fundraisers with her husband Peter Murrell, who is the SNP’s chief executive, and still finds time to call her mother every day. Since she took over the party in 2014, SNP membership has risen fivefold. The party won 56 of the 59 Scottish seats in the national parliament in 2015. The SNP’s strong presence on the British political stage has helped to keep independence hopes alive at home, by giving a voice to Scottish issues. Scotland has about 9 percent of a total of 45 million UK voters and the devolved Scottish parliament decides health and education spending. From this year, it also has the power to set tax rates and bands after a deal to increase its clout offered just before the 2014 referendum. TACTICS In Brussels, Sturgeon has played a tactical game. The day before she went to the European capital on June 29, she won a rare mandate from a unified Scottish parliament to keep Scotland in the EU by whatever means possible. In meetings with officials from across the political spectrum, including Martin Schulz, the German Social Democrat speaker of the European Parliament, she did not raise the issue of independence outright. Rather, she spoke about the disappointment of EU-loving Scots, according to several people who attended. “She didn’t use the referendum as an excuse to leave. She wasn’t pushing independence at all,” said an EU source who attended. Not acknowledging the elephant in the room is a ploy for both sides, European officials say. In the past, EU officials have been cold towards potential Scottish independence. That’s because they feared igniting a nationalist fuse elsewhere in Europe, such as in Spain, where a drive for an independent Catalonia in 2014 brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets of Barcelona. Now, however, Scottish independence is more appetizing in Brussels – if only as a negotiating tool to signal annoyance at London. Sir David Edward, a Scot and a former judge of the European Court of Justice, said goodwill has been eroded by the years Britain has spent fighting for opt-outs of EU policy. European officials are “absolutely fed up to the back teeth” of the British, he told Reuters, explaining why many senior EU officials were more than happy to see Sturgeon. What Scotland can do to retain EU membership remains legally unclear. But Edward says it is “almost all about political will.” There are alternative relationships that could work for Scotland, short of full EU member status, including opt-outs or a trade agreement which would treat it as a separate entity. Sturgeon’s task at home is tough. She needs to balance keeping independence activists happy while trying not to scare off unionists, some of whom vote for her as the best defender of Scottish interests but oppose independence, according to party insiders. Slideshow (4 Images) Willie Rennie, leader of Scotland’s Liberal Democrats and a fierce opponent of secession, has agreed to support Sturgeon’s campaign to curry favor in Brussels on condition that it is not a route to independence. “You don’t get independence on the basis of a crisis. You don’t wreak chaos upon chaos,” he said.My husband surprised me with a three day mini vacation at a bed and breakfast near Lake Tahoe. In this winter wonderland of forests and snow, we were enjoying our holiday where I indulged my husband Lee in his kinks. Night had fallen over the forest, and in our dimly lit rustic bedroom, I waited for Lee to return. Dressed in his heavy cable knit sweater and a pair of socks, I was on all fours on the bed with my naked ass up in the air. He had left me this way, positioned with my back to the door where once you enter, you were greeted by my downy slit and popped open ass. “Don’t move,” Lee said, before placing my earbuds firmly in my ear and turning on my Bryan Ferry playlist before he’d left the room ten minutes ago. Bryan Ferry had been crooning in my ears for several songs now as I waited patiently for Lee to return. Suddenly, I felt a disruption of air whooshed over my naked backside as the door opened and closed. I felt hands on my bare ass. My eyes remained on the headboard as directed. Lee pulled the earbuds from my ears. “Don’t turn around.” I stared straight ahead at the headboard as the bed depressed behind me. He crawled up behind me on his knees. I popped my pussy open for him, ready for him to stick it in a fuck me like an animal. His knees nudged mine apart and I closed my eyes in anticipation of sex, but my eyes flew open when strong fingers, more sinewy than Lee’s, massaged and grabbed at my ass. I was about to look over my shoulder when Lee’s cheek nestled into mine as a strange man’s hands squeezed my ass. He whispered, “I want to see my wife get fucked.” I felt an uncircumcised dick prod at my backside. He shoved it in my gash and I fought back the desire to pull away as he pushed himself inside me. His dick felt sinfully delicious. His hands gripped my hips as he began to drive himself inside me. Lee muttered in my ear, “You know what comes next.” I closed my eyes and opened my mouth. Lee placed his smooth hard flesh inside my mouth, sliding it over my velvety tongue as a stranger’s dick slammed inside my tight hole. I’d never been double penetrated before and it was an exhilarating feeling of two men getting off on me. The dick pumping inside me picked up speed and he heaved and grunted until he came with a muffled groan. He withdrew from my sloppy hole and fell onto the bed. Lee let go of my hair as he withdrew his cock from my mouth. He walked behind me, crawled between my legs and guided himself. I moaned as pleasure uncoiled like a snake in my loins. My head hit the covers as I sank down into my elbows and melted under the dirty sensation of a second cock inside me on the same night. He pumped away, his balls smacking against my exposed clit. I turned my head to see that the man who fucked me was Steve, who we had met him as he and his girlfriend, Shana got into the hot tub earlier that day. Now he was sitting on our bed, wiping his sticking with a towel. He glanced at me as my husband fucked me doggy style. “I’m gonna cum. Fuck,” Lee exclaimed. He rammed me until he buried himself deep inside me and came, spurting his warm seed inside me to mingle with another man. Lee fell back against the bed as did I. Steve sat on the edge, swigging from a bottle of Jack Daniels. Even though I just had sex with him, I was still shy and scooted my wet bottom beneath the sheltering covers. Steve handed Lee the bottle of Jack which he accepted. I asked, “Where’s Shana?” “Sleeping,” answered Steve. Lee swigged from a bottle of Jack Daniels before handing it to Steve. Steve took another swig before handing it to me. I drank too, the three of us sitting bottomless in our wood planked room chuckling at our little secret. From Snowbound, My Kinky Winter Holiday available on Amazon. FREE on Kindle Unlimited! Thanks for reading! Other Books by Julian Delacourt All available at Amazon! For FREE erotica, exclusive previews of upcoming books and sample chapters from the Erotica Pop’s Collective catalogue, get the monthly SPLASH Newsletter! You won’t be contacted or solicited with any other services or products. Thanks for reading! AdvertisementsIt's not official, but a Clinton-Bush matchup in 2016 is looking more likely by the day. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has announced that he's exploring a run, and Hillary Clinton has been meeting with potential campaign managers. The prospect of becoming president seems increasingly reserved for those who have a husband, brother, or father who has previously held the position. American Democracy is now controlled by political dynasties. Even former first lady Barbara Bush has criticized the notion of only 2 or 3 families running for high office in a country of over 300 million people - a sentiment that 69 percent of Americans agree with. All the more disturbing are the recent reports describing the close bond the two families have developed. I'm not saying they shouldn't be friends, but a tight knit ruling class breaks down the illusion of the great partisan divide. As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald told me on HuffPost Live this week, Wall Street is giddy about the option of either candidate. While technically we're still dealing with the hypothetical, the speculation-obsessed media doesn't seem all that bothered by the prospect either. That's what happens when we treat politicians like celebrities and exchange paychecks for access. The worst offender in this case is NBC, which has formed a habit of hiring the politically connected and related and giving them cushy jobs. Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton was employed as a "special correspondent" earning a whopping 600 thousand dollars annually. Her hard hitting reporting included interviewing the Geico gekko, and feel good pieces about charity. Overall, it's estimated that Clinton produced 28 stories, or about one a month at 50 thousand dollars each. This wasn't without reported frustration within the NBC ranks, but clearly executives weren't bothered by perceptions of nepotism or the lack of any real journalistic contributions on Clinton's part.Ana Mari Cauce is the 33rd president of the University of Washington. A member of the UW faculty since 1986, she rose through the ranks while increasing her responsibilities through a number of leadership positions. Biography Annual President’s Address President Cauce delivered her annual address on Oct. 16, 2018. She discussed how public reinvestment in higher education is necessary for the UW to honor its public promise. Annual President’s Address The Purpose and Power of College in an Age of Skepticism President Ana Mari Cauce delivered an address on March 29 about the value of college to individuals and the world and what our academic community can do to advance the UW’s public service mission. Spring address Improving health around the world President Ana Mari Cauce outlines the development of a 25-year vision to advance the health and well-being of people around the world. Population Health Initiative Race and Equity Initiative In April 2015, then-Interim President Ana Mari Cauce held a dialogue with students about equity, racism and difference. Race & Equity Initiative Contacts Margaret Shepherd Chief of staff mshep@uw.edu Chief of staff Kim Dinh Senior director for finance, HR & administration kimdinh@uw.edu F&A website Senior director for finance, HR & administration Lenina Arenas-Fuentes Senior executive assistant to the president mlenina@uw.edu Senior executive assistant to the president Stephanie Court President scheduler shcourt@uw.edu President scheduler Address 301 Gerberding Hall Box 351230 Seattle, WA 98195 Parking and driving directions Phone: 206-543-5010 Email: pres@uw.eduIt has been 25 years since the inception of cult-favourite Japanese label UNDERCOVER and for the special occasion, it brought back to life a selection of its “greatest” pieces but with a twist in using new fabric constructions. Aptly titled, “THE GREATEST,” we find items that have since received “grail” status and were extremely sought-after, which are now back through its latest 2016 spring/summer collection. Despite remaining relatively under-the-radar until recent years, UNDERCOVER has produced some of the most spectacular collections and not to mention unique household items such as its hamburger lamp. It is of little surprise Nike chose Jun Takahashi to create the GYAKUSOU line of athletic-meets-fashion wear and UNDERCOVER has since collaborated with the likes of Supreme, as well as fast-fashion conglomerates such as UNIQLO. Jun Takahashi’s affinity for unique graphic designs that take a nod to punk and mod subcultures has taken UNDERCOVER from the runway to the upper echelon of streetwear brands. Take a look at some of the most prestigious retailers such as END., MR PORTER, Très Bien and you’ll no doubt find the label’s provocative cuts and prints. With such an illustrious history, we take a look back at some of the pieces from the past and how they have been brought back to life in its special 2016 spring/summer collection. 2013 Spring/Summer “Collage” Offering everything from lightweight outerwear, unstructured blazers and both tonal and printed button-downs to slim trousers, the 2013 spring/summer collection exudes the casual streetwear-infused menswear vibe that has found it’s way into the celebrated Japanese label’s collections. 2012 Fall/Winter “PSYCHO COLOR” The aptly titled “PSYCHO COLOR” collection in 2012 offered more color than we usually expected from the Japanese designer. It featured a diverse mix of materials, colors and silhouettes. Most notably, the “Geräusch” jacket, which means noise in German, was worn by none other than Frank Ocean during the 2013 Brit Awards. 2012 Fall/Winter “OPENSTRINGS” Throughout most of Takahashi’s collections, we find strong influences of British Punk Rock and it should be of little surprise as he was initially inspired by The Sex Pistols. He was even told he had an uncanny resemblance to lead singer Johnny Rotten. Minimal shirts with nihilist undertones and washed out motifs brought to life the musical themes that has such a profound effect on Takahashi. 2004 Fall/Winter “BUT BEAUTIFUL” The 2004 fall/winter collection was given birth by inspiration from Patti Smith’s androgynous, ’70s New Wave style. Slouchy shirts, military sensibilities and neck scarves were displayed to create an aesthetic that provided a resurgence to the golden era of punk and British mod subcultures. 2003 Spring/Summer “SCAB” For its Paris debut in 2003, the lineup focused on heavily deconstructed and patched up DIY techniques. Although many may think the collection was largely made up of pieces that anyone could construct in the sanctity of their own home, the attention was in the details. Intricacies in embroidery and patterns provided a stark juxtaposition to the somewhat ragged appearance.There are several ways one can go about when a trading strategy is to be developed. One approach would be to use the price time-series directly and work with numbers that correspond to some monetary value. For example, a researcher could be working with time-series expressing the price of a given stock, like the time-series we used in the previous article. Similarly, if working with fixed income instruments, e.g. bonds, one could be using a time-series expressing the price of the bond as a percentage of a given reference value, in this case the par value of the bond. Working with this type of time-series can be more intuitive as people are used to thinking in terms of prices. However, price time-series have some drawbacks. Prices are usually only positive, which makes it harder to use models and approaches which require or produce negative numbers. In addition, price time-series are usually non-stationary, that is their statistical properties are less stable over time. An alternative approach is to use time-series which correspond not to actual values but changes in the monetary value of the asset. These time-series can and do assume negative values and also, their statistical properties are usually more stable than the ones of price time-series. The most frequently used forms used are relative returns defined as \begin{equation} r_{\text{relative}}\left(t\right) = \frac{p\left(t\right) - p\left
university, no art related. And for my college classmates or colleagues, they would be surprised about me that “Oh, you can paint!” - What advice, tip, or suggestion would you give for anyone looking to start their own path in art journaling? Just be yourself! Write what you think, paint what you imagine, collect what you like, and all these will become your own journal, your own art, unique and unparalleled! - Other than art journaling, what are some of your other hobbies and interests? I nearly put all my spare time into painting. But occasionally I also play video games to get some relax. Recently I just tried this amazing independent game FEZ, which is absolutely an exquisite artwork that brings me a lot of inspiration. And I like to collect toys and figures. They are like my little imaginary friends, keeping me company while painting. I am also a person that can’t live without music, paint without music, walk without music. My recent favorites would be Flunk and Family of the Year. ********** Thank you so much, Zel, for giving us a peek into your art journaling world! And for all you wonderful readers looking to find more of Zel's illustrations and journalings, you can find her here- INSTAGRAM: @miss_zel Click here to see more journal inspirations and past guests on The Journal Diaries. I love all the colors but recently I just find myself using blue and green a lot! Haha, maybe it’s because of the hot summer! :DWell…For the people who know about my paintings, they would be surprised that I majored in finance in the university, no art related. And for my college classmates or colleagues, they would be surprised about me that “Oh, you can paint!”Just be yourself! Write what you think, paint what you imagine, collect what you like, and all these will become your own journal, your own art, unique and unparalleled!I nearly put all my spare time into painting. But occasionally I also play video games to get some relax. Recently I just tried this amazing independent game FEZ, which is absolutely an exquisite artwork that brings me a lot of inspiration. And I like to collect toys and figures. They are like my little imaginary friends, keeping me company while painting. I am also a person that can’t live without music, paint without music, walk without music. My recent favorites would be Flunk and Family of the Year. Hi everybody on Earth! I’m Zel from Guangzhou, China. I’m 28 and currently work as a graphic designer in some company.Since 2015, I’ve been journaling for like one year and a half.In recent years, journal has become quite a buzz on social media in China. I got interested about it, then I saw more different types of art journals and sketchbooks on instagram and pinterest, which is an amazing new world for me! So I regarded it as a chance to pick up my pens to draw again (I haven’t drawn since primary school), then I bought my first hobonichi, and started to write and draw about my daily fantasy in it.I love reading science fictions, fairytales, mythologies, magazines, books about dinosaurs and other unsolved mysteries since I was a little girl. And my dad used to watch these sci-fi movies with me, like E.T., Star Wars, Signs, etc. He’s like a good buddy to me to explore the world! So I guess this is why I draw so many monsters and weird stuff nowadays. I just have so much curiosity about the cosmos and the unknown that I want to create a world of wonders myself, and invite people to come visit, having a break from their busy reality.To be honest, I think I’m not enough consistent with it. I think I just get to know what art journaling is and I’m still figuring out how to do it better in my own way. But for sure it has become one of my favorite art forms to explore!Yes, I think so. In fact I change a lot and I always want to try more in art. When I was in primary school, I once learned some basic sketch, but after that I never draw again until two years ago. Right now I think I’m just a beginner in art. In this stage I hope I can find out more possibilities in myself. My drawings started with some cartoon and doodle style, and then I tried out a more realistic way to do some fantasy art in my moleskine. Also, I did some handcraft recently to make my paintings become 3D. There’s just endless fun in creating!Currently I’m keeping an illustrated weekly journal in Traveler’s Notebook, which serves as a brief diary too. And yes, I have another diary refill to write down some personal thoughts, random ideas, color experiment, etc (all done in a very casual way). And I have a notebook especially for collecting notes and materials about mythology, folklore, and other mysterious weird stuff. So there are three refills in my TN and I carry them everyday.There’re two magical times for me: One is when I’m taking shower! I feel very very relaxed and comfortable, so that I can just close my eyes, listening to the water and imagining myself floating in some other bizarre realm where I can hunt for interesting things. The other time would be when I’m stuck in those boring meetings in my office. I can’t help being absent-minded, and my hands will just keep doodling on paper, freely and mindlessly, which brings me many unexpected ideas for painting! :PI’m now mainly using Traveler’s Notebook for journals, for the paper is of high-quality that holds up to different materials, including watercolor and ink. I’m also using a Moleskine sketchbook, with thicker paper (165g) than its other notebooks. The MUJI recycled paper sketchbook is also one of my favorites that I use a lot for quick sketch and doodle. Besides, I like STAEDTLER’s stationary very much, especially their mechanical pencils, for its simple and comfortable design.For the illustrations in my TN, I usually use mix-media to achieve a rich and textured effect, including winsor&newton watercolors, CARAN d'ACHE color pencils, poster colors, STAEDTLER fine liners, some craft papers, etc. And for freehand doodles, I love to use my pilot fountain pen, which is newly bought and I just get more and more addicted to.There are only a few of such stores here in Guangzhou. One is Baihua Art Supply store where I can get some basic art supplies, the other is fangsuo bookstore where I can find some stationery.The fate of the biggest infrastructure redevelopment project in Toronto will be overseen in Ottawa by a politician from Alberta. Is that anything to be concerned about? Amarjeet Sohi is sworn in as Minister of Infrastructure and Communities during ceremonies at Rideau Hall on Wednesday; the portfolio is one that will include the Waterfront Toronto file. ( Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS ) Local Liberal MP Adam Vaughan says even asking the question is “parochial” and “cynical.” “It’s f---ing 2015 already. Stop pretending it’s the 1870s and it’s Tammany Hall and somebody who’s a power-broker is going to make all the decisions. It’s not going to happen that way,” Vaughan said. Maybe so, but it’s a question that many who have been following Waterfront Toronto’s work spent Friday puzzling out, after it was announced that the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Initiative (Waterfront Toronto) would be overseen directly by Infrastructure and Communities Minister Amarjeet Sohi, who is the Liberal MP for Edmonton Mill Woods. That makes a certain amount of sense — a large infrastructure project overseen by the infrastructure minister — but it is a break with tradition. Article Continued Below Since its inception, the waterfront organization has been overseen federally, in an equal partnership with the provincial and city governments, by the political minister for the GTA, most recently in the persons of Conservative finance ministers Joe Oliver and Jim Flaherty. Both of those men were known to be fiercely protective of Waterfront Toronto’s work — defending it from attempts by the Ford brothers to pick away at it — and were positioned to see that it got the funding it needed. The question is whether a politician who is not from Toronto, and who is not assembling the federal budget personally, will prove as reliable a champion. At stake is the redevelopment of more than 800 hectares of waterfront land in a former industrial area adjacent to downtown Toronto. The biggest item on the immediate agenda is flood protection at the mouth of the Don River. That may not sound particularly exciting, but it is absolutely essential (and expensive) work: without it, the Port Lands cannot be redeveloped at all, the proposed development at the former Unilever site (which was a linchpin precondition of Mayor John Tory’s SmartTrack plan) cannot proceed, and plans for East Bayfront transit would be scrapped. During the campaign, Oliver made a point of committing the Conservatives to the project. The question now is whether its fate is secure under the Liberals. The sense I get is that no one seriously thinks it is in jeopardy. Vaughan, a former Toronto city councillor who is now the Spadina Fort York MP, has made waterfront development one of the central issues of his political career. He says the shuffling of Waterfront Toronto into the Infrastructure department is a positive thing. “It’s good news because it ties it into the whole infrastructure play,” rather than being a personal project that lives or dies with the career of one politician, he says. Article Continued Below The other reasons for optimism both Liberals and Waterfront boosters speak of are the commitment of the new government during the campaign to spend big on urban infrastructure nationally, and that 100 per cent of Toronto seats are held by members of the Liberal caucus, which means there will be loud support for the city’s projects in the government. Officially, Waterfront Toronto greeted the news with bureaucratically neutral optimism. “We’re excited to work with Minister Sohi. The waterfront project is a great example of how investing in infrastructure creates value for the country …” Waterfront CEO John Campbell said in a statement by email. “When governments work together on the waterfront, we get more done than any one level of government can achieve on its own. We look forward to discussing waterfront plans with the Minister.” But this is a change, and change is most often greeted with caution in bureaucracies. Inside the organization, privately, Friday’s news was greeted with conversations about whether concern was warranted, simply because they do not know Sohi and expect to have to convince him and the new government of the project’s merits. Vaughan has been very categorical on behalf of his party in declaring the island airport expansion dead, so I asked him if he was equally confident that Waterfront Toronto’s funding and projects were safe. “I am confident that the goals and aspirations of the city will be dealt with in a fair and open way, and we will not be driven by private interests, but by the public good,” he responded. When I started to say that answer did not specifically respond to a simple yes or no question about the flood protection and other projects, he cut me off. “That answered that question, because if you look at who’s run the best public process, engaged the most amount of people, and delivered the most amount over the past 10 years in this city, you’d be hard pressed to find an organization as successful as Waterfront Toronto.” Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire Read more about:As Bernie Sanders laments, there are dozens of varieties of underarm deodorant, even though lots of people starve. We must not have our priorities straight. I don’t have time for a direct response, but instead, here’s a draft of a chapter on luxury goods for Markets without Limits. (We ended up cutting it, rather than filling in the gaps, because we realized we don’t need it to defend our thesis.) Here’s a key paragraph, extracted from the text below: [Peter] Singer thinks we should stop buying DVD players and iPhones and instead donate the money to charity. Our view—consistent with development economics—is that first-worlders’ willingness to buy DVD players and iPhones, not their desire to donate their income, is that thing that actually makes the bigger difference in fighting poverty. Taiwan and South Korea grew rich and became First World countries, not because of handouts, but because they produced and sold luxury goods (on the broad definition of “luxury good”) to the First World. YOUR LIFE IS REALLY EVIL The comedian Louis C. K. jokes, My life is really evil. There are people who are starving in the world, and I drive an Infiniti. That’s really evil…. There are people who are like born and then they go, “Oh, I’m hungry,” and then they just die, and that’s all they ever got to do. And, meanwhile, I’m in my car—boom boom, brrr!—like having a great time, and I sleep like a baby….I could trade my Infiniti for like a really good car, like a nice Ford Focus…and I’d get back like twenty thousand dollars, and I could save hundreds of people from dying of starvation with that money. And every day, I don’t do it.[i] Louis C.K’s joke reflects a common complaint about markets—that markets enable people to purchase luxury goods while other people starve. We suspect Louis C.K. based this bit on a famous article, “Poverty, Affluence, and Morality,” by Peter Singer. Singer has a simple, powerful argument against purchasing luxury goods. His argument goes as follows: Singer’s Anti-Luxury Argument If one has the ability to help others in dire circumstances without giving up anything morally important, then one should do so. One can help others in dire circumstances by giving up luxury goods. One can instead donating the money one would have spent on luxury goods to save those in dire circumstances. Therefore, one should give up luxury goods and instead donate the money one would have spent on luxury goods to save those in dire circumstances.[ii] To motivate premise 1, Singer asks us to imagine a scenario like the following: Drowning Toddler: You are walking along one day when you see a toddler drowning in a shallow pool. You could easily reach in and save the toddler, though doing so will destroy your $1000 suede shoes. Singer then asks readers to consider whether, according to their own moral views, they are obligated to save the child. On reflection, most people judge that saving the child is not merely a nice thing to do, but obligatory. They think it would be wrong to let the child drown. The child’s life matters more than the suede shoes. Singer then asks readers to consider how they would respond to a slightly modified case: Starving Toddler: There is a toddler starving on the other side of the world. You could easily save his life, but only if you decide not to buy $1000 suede shoes and instead donate the money to an organization that will save the child’s life. Singer thinks Drowning Child and Starving Toddler are different only in their details, rather than their essentials. If it’s imperative that you save a drowning child at the cost of your fancy shoes, then, he thinks, you should just avoid buying the shoes in the first place, and instead use the money to a save a child’s life. Most people commit themselves to saying they have a positive duty to save the toddler in Drowning Toddler. But, Singer thinks, once they admit this, they will have to accept this Anti-Luxury argument. WHAT COUNTS AS A LUXURY GOOD? In the joke above, Louis C.K. was referring to his Infiniti G35,[iii] an entry-level luxury sports-sedan that cost between $33,000 and $50,000 new, depending on the options. In contrast, a new Ford Focus—one of the very best cars in its class—goes for around $16,000. But even a new Ford Focus is in some sense a luxury good. One could instead buy a used low mileage Honda Civic for half the price of a new Focus. But even a used Civic is a luxury good for many people, who could instead get by with a cheaper car or no car at all. To our knowledge, there is no universally agreed-upon definition of the term “luxury good”. If we define a “luxury good” as anything one doesn’t need, then this just moves the question over to what counts as a “need”. PBS Kids defines a “need” as something essential to survival, but a “want” (a luxury) as anything one would like to have but is not essential to survival.[iv] However, on this definition, almost everything anyone owns, including most of the goods the poorest people in the world own, are “wants” or luxury goods. Some philosophers, such as Peter Singer, seem to favor this kind of view of luxury goods. One might instead identify as a “need” anything essential to realize Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen’s list of ten central human capabilities. Nussbaum and Sen think we should use a more expansive conception of need, such that when people get what they need, they do not merely survive, but have what is essential to leading a decent, fully human life.[v] Nussbaum and Sen argue that people need resources and an environment conducive to their being able to develop a conception of the good life, for them to be able to develop a range of proper emotional attachments, for them to be able to engage in imaginative play, for them to be free of violence, and more. On a broad conception of luxury, any car counts as a luxury good for most people. On a narrow conception of luxury, an Infiniti G35 is a luxury good, but a Ford Focus is not. On a broad conception of luxury, any leather belt is a luxury (you could get a cheaper cotton belt instead), but on a narrow conception, a $20 leather belt is not a luxury, while a $4500 Hermes Constance belt is. On a broad conception, a new Timex watch is a luxury, but on a narrow conception, a new Timex watch is not a luxury, but a Rolex is a luxury. On the broad conception, a DVD-player is luxury, but on the narrow conception, the typical $30 DVD-player is not, though the $20,000 Meridian DVD-player certainly is. CHARITY AND AID, OR DEVELOPMENT Singer believes we should avoid purchasing luxury goods, broadly defined, and instead to donate our money to charities and organizations that will fight poverty. Our basic response is that Singer is just flat out mistaken about what it takes to fight poverty. Premise 2 of his argument rests upon known-to-be-mistaken empirical claims. Overall, we are not against charity. We accept that charity is good on the margins. We both give money to various charities. But to focus on charity as means of fighting poverty is misguided. Mainstream development economics holds that that international aid and charity tend to do little good overall, and tend to do as much harm as good.[vi] When philosophers talk about alleviating world poverty, they tend to argue that we should weaken property rights, reduce economic freedom, and transfer wealth from the First World to the Third World. In their eyes, the problem of persistent Third World poverty is a problem of allocation, a problem of cutting the world’s economic pie the wrong way. But philosophers’ recommendations are the exact opposite of what mainstream development economics recommends. Philosophers advocate that we do what economists say doesn’t work and avoid doing what economists say does work. On this point, Bas van der Vossen rebukes his colleagues: As a profession, we are in an odd but unfortunate situation. Our best philosophers and theorists develop accounts of global justice that are disconnected from the best empirical insights about poverty and prosperity. Reading these theories, one might think that our best prospects for alleviating poverty around the world lie in policies of redistribution, foreign aid, reforms to the international system, new global institutions, and so on. And one might think that markets, property rights, and economic freedom are at best incidental, and more likely inimical, to the eradication of global poverty. Such ignorance, if not denial, of the empirical findings about development and growth is irresponsible.[vii] We share van der Vossen’s concerns. Mainstream development economics, in a nutshell, holds that the poverty is an institutional problem. More precisely, poverty is human being’s natural state. Poverty is normal and does not need to be explained, but wealth does. The main reason some nations are rich and others poor is not because some nations have better geography, better natural resources, or better genes. Rather, rich countries are rich because they have better institutions. Rich countries have institutions that incentivize growth and development. These institutions include strong private property rights, inclusive and honest governments, stable political regimes, a dependable and inclusive legal system characterized by the rule of law, open and competitive markets, and free international trade. Poor countries have institutions that fail to incentive growth and development, and often instead have institutions that encourage predation. These countries have weak recognition or active disregard of property rights, exclusive and dishonest governments, instable political regimes, undependable legal systems characterized by the capricious rule of men rather than the rule of law, and closed, rent seeking, crony capitalist markets, or few markets at all, and little international trade.[viii] So, for example, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, in their recent important book Why Nations Fail, argue that successful economic development depends on both inclusive political and economic institutions. Inclusive institutions empower everyone, while extractive institutions power the few at the expense of the many. Inclusive institutions encourage the benefits of cooperation to be widespread—they encourage society to be a positive-sum game. Extractive institutions encourage the benefits of cooperation to be concentrated in the few at the expense of the many—they encourage society to be a zero-sum game. On this point, Acemoglu and Robinson say, Inclusive [economic] institutions … are those that allow and encourage participation by the great mass of people in economic activities that make best use of their talents and skills and that enable individuals to make the choices they wish. To be inclusive, economic institutions must feature secure private property, an unbiased system of law, and a provision of public services that provides a level playing field in which people can exchange and contract; it must also permit the entry of new businesses and allow people to choose their careers…[ix] Now, not every development economist shares Acemoglu and Robinson’s exact views. But their general position—that private property, markets, and economic freedom—are needed for sustained growth, is the mainstream view. To be clear, we are not saying that mainstream development economics calls for libertarian politics at a domestic level. Economists have varying positions about the degree to which governments can and should correct market failures. They also have varying positions about the extent to which countries should provide social insurance to their citizens. Let’s turn back to Singer. Singer thinks we should stop buying DVD players and iPhones and instead donate the money to charity. Our view—consistent with development economics—is that first-worlders’ willingness to buy DVD players and iPhones, not their desire to donate their income, is that thing that actually makes the bigger difference in fighting poverty. Taiwan and South Korea grew rich and became First World countries, not because of handouts, but because they produced and sold luxury goods (on the broad definition of “luxury good”) to the First World. We realize that in response to Singer, we have simply rehearsed the conclusions of mainstream development economics. We have not argued for these conclusions, nor have we even repeated economists’ arguments for these conclusions. This is no oversight. Rather, we believe we have no further burden of proof here. Some philosophers talk as if the way to alleviate world poverty is to shut down global markets and instead redistribute wealth. But, as far as we can tell, they talk this way because they are ignorant and/or misinformed about the relevant empirical work. Philosophers disagree with economists not because they have read and discovered serious flaws in the economists’ work, but because philosophers have for the most part just ignored development economics. Philosophers are of course free to disagree with mainstream development economics, but they bear the burden of proof of refuting it. We do not bear the burden of defending it here. Van der Vossen thus responds to Singer, Suppose rich people in the West give away most of their money. And suppose that, as the institutionalist theories suggest, giving away our money does nothing to remove the sources of poverty. What will be the result of such an approach? It will not be that poverty in the world is alleviated. For most of the money has either evaporated or, worse, lined the pockets of those in charge of the institutions that create poverty in the first place. At this end, little change will occur. At the other end, however, we can expect quite some change. Singer’s solution will likely mean that standards of living in the West dramatically reduce. When we give away the money we would otherwise have used for our expensive jewelry, we do not just lose that jewelry. The jewelry stores lose business. And when stores lose business, employees lose their jobs. Similarly, suppliers to jewelry stores lose their business, and their employees will lose their jobs as well. And the people providing the things on which all these people would normally spend their money, will lose their business, income, and jobs as well. This is not a recipe for helping people escape poverty. It is a recipe for making the entire world poor. On this point, David Schmidtz adds that if we decide now just to redistribute the wealth of the First World to the Third World, we might, if we’re lucky, make some desperately poor people better off in the very short term. (If we’re unlucky, we’ll just help dictators build fancy airports and purchase guns to shoot their political rivals.) But in the long-term, we’ll shut down the very economic system that made the First World rich. The Third World doesn’t need to eat our success—they need to emulate it.[x] DROWNING TODDLERS AND STARVING CHILDREN Singer asks, if it’s obligatory to save the drowning child you happen to encounter at the expense of your shoes, why isn’t it obligatory not to buy the shoes in the first place, but instead to save a child in equally dire straights? Singer says Drowning Toddler and Starving Toddler differ in details, not in essentials. But insofar as Singer purposefully designs these thought experiments to differ only in details, he thereby inadvertently limits the value of the thought experiments in telling us about the ethics of rescuing people in the real world. Consider two moral “policies” you might adopt: Save One: I will save the first drowning child I come across. Save Them All: I will save all the dying children in the world I possibly can before I die. Singer seems to think that if we are committed to Save One, we are committed to Save Them All. But Save One and Save Them All are very different policies. We’re fairly confident morality requires something more than Save One, and something less than Save Them All, though we don’t know just what the actual requirement is. The problem is that Drowning Toddler doesn’t reflect the actual situation we find ourselves in. Consider instead a different version of the thought experiment: Many Drowning Toddlers: You are walking along one day when you see 10 million toddlers drowning in a shallow pool. Rescuing the first child will be easy, though it will destroy your $1000 suede shoes. After that, it will get progressively harder, as you will lose more and more. You could spend your entire life rescuing children, but never save them all. Now, in Singerian style, we ask, is it obligatory to save 1 child’s life? How about 10? How about 1,000? How about 100,000? (If you save 1 toddlers per minute, and spend the next 50 years working 12-hr shifts saving drowning toddlers, you’d rescue only 1.3 million of them.) At what point are we morally permitted to say that we’ve done our part and walk away, letting some toddlers die whom we could have saved? Suppose Singer is right that if you must save the first drowning child you come across, you should be willing to spend $1000 saving starving children on the other side of the world. Even if he is right, it doesn’t follow that you are obligated to spend your entire life saving drowning children. Save One and Save Them All are different in how costly they are. Committed ourselves to Save One has a low personal expected disutility. Most of us don’t expect to come across a drowning child, and, even if we do, once we save that child, we get on with our lives. Save Them All has a high personal expected disutility. Save Them All never lets us get on with our lives. Instead, it demands that you just make saving children your entire life. Premise 1 of Singer’s argument is “If one has the ability to help others in dire circumstances without giving up anything morally important, then one should do so.” He defends this premise by treating Drowning Toddler as equivalent to Starving Toddler, and in turn treating these both as equivalent to Many Drowning Toddlers. But there is no such equivalence. Drowning Toddler and Starving Toddler are morally similar, but they are quite different from Many Drowning Toddlers. Singer’s argument relies upon stressing the similarities among the cases while ignoring the disanalogies. We don’t have an argument that premise 1 is false, but Singer, it turns out, doesn’t have an argument that it’s true, either. Instead, we will note here that commonsense moral thinking holds that one has some positive obligations to help others, but at some point, one has done enough, and can get on with one’s life. We have duties of rescue, but they are limited. Perhaps commonsense thinking is wrong, but Singer hasn’t yet produced an argument against it. ROLEXES AND ROLLS ROYCES Are our duties of rescue limited or unlimited? If Peter Singer is right, then the duties are close to unlimited. If so, then you shouldn’t enjoy any luxury goods, broadly defined, unless doing so somehow helps you save lives. But if commonsense moral thinking is correct, then our duties of rescue are limited. Commonsense moral thought holds that we have some duties to rescue others, but we can eventually “do our share,” discharge that duty, and get on with our lives. (Commonsense moral thinking also holds that the wealthier one is, the higher the amount that counts as “doing one’s share”. But that doesn’t affect the argument here.) There is no overriding duty to spend our lives rescuing others. If so, then one this settles the question of whether it is permissible to buy luxury goods, on the narrow definition of “luxury good”. (Recall: on the narrow definition, a Rolls Royce or even an Infiniti is a luxury good, but a Honda Civic or Ford Fusion is not.) There is some finite amount that we must sacrifice to help others. Once we meet that amount, then we may spend our money as we please, even if it is on Rolexes and Rolls Royces that we do not need. Now, commonsense moral thinking may be mistaken. Perhaps Singer is right, and our altruistic duties are much stronger. But as we’ve seen, his argument for this conclusion isn’t successful, so he hasn’t given us a reason to depart from commonsense thought. Or, perhaps Ayn Rand is right, and our altruistic duties are much weaker. (We won’t review her arguments here, but we will just report we think these arguments also fail.) If our duties to rescue are limited, then we can purchase luxury goods (both broadly and narrowly defined) as much as we please, so long as we meet our quota in helping others. If they are unlimited, then we cannot purchase any luxury goods, even on the broad definition of “luxury good”. In short, it seems that either Singer is right and you can’t even buy a Ford Fusion, or Singer is wrong, and you can feel free to buy a Rolls Royce instead of saving starving children, provided you’ve already saved your fair share of starving children. MEAT A common trope among environmentalists is that eating meat takes food out of the mouths of the hungry. For instance, PETA says, “It takes up to 13 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat, and even fish on fish farms must be fed up to 5 pounds of wild-caught fish to produce 1 pound of farmed fish flesh.”[xi] Some people use statistics like this argue that the luxury of eating meat cause other people to go hungry. We don’t intend here to defend factory farming or meat eating. We leave it open that these are wrong because they inflict unjustified suffering upon animals. (Notice that either way, this coheres with our thesis. If meat eating is wrong, it’s not the market that makes it wrong. If the government produced factory-farmed meat and distributed it for free, it would still be wrong.) However, we do want to point out that if even if it takes 13 pounds of grain to produce a 1 pound steak, it doesn’t follow that if we just gave up eating steak, then starving children in the Third World would be fed. Meat eating may be wrong for other reasons, but it is not killing children in the Third World. First, the grain the cows eat was grown in order to feed the cows. It is not as though the children were going to get the grain, but then we selfish First Worlders outbid them on the market and gave the grain to our cows instead. Rather, the grain our cows eat was grown in expectation that it would be sold to feed cows. Had we not decided to raise cows for food, we would not have grown the grain in the first place. Starving childrens’ parents are so poor that they in effect are irrelevant to the domestic grain market. Second, the history of food donations is fraught with peril. Donating food to the Third World sometimes alleviates a famine—it is sometimes the thing to do in an emergency. But, more frequently, first-world food donations just put Third World farmers out of business, and make them dependent on donations in the future.[xii] Again, the consensus in development economics is not that the Third World needs us to give them grain, but, on the contrary, that the Third World needs our governments to stop subsidizing grain production in the first world, so that we First Worlders instead buy our grain from the Third World. Now, it’s true that instead of buying a steak for $8, one could purchase Kraft Macaroni and Cheese for $1 and then donate the remaining $7 to an organization that will save lives. But we have already dealt with this issue in the preceding section. Commonsense moral thinking holds that we don’t have unlimited duties of rescue. So long as a person has done his or her fair share of altruism, she may then splurge on fancier foods. [i] See url=<ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC4FnfNKwUo> [ii] Singer 1971. [iii] http://www.esquire.com/features/man-at-his-best/q-and-a/louis-ck-interview-0611 [iv] http://pbskids.org/itsmylife/money/managing/article2.html [v] Sen, Amartya. (1988). The Concept of Development. In Behram and Strinivasan, eds. Handbooks of Development Economics, pp. 2–23. Vol. 1. Elsevier: North-Holland; Sen, Amartya. (1989). Development as Capability Expansion. Journal of Development Planning 19: 41–58, reprinted in Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and A.K. Shiva Kumar, eds. 2003. Readings in Human Development, pp. 3–16. New York: Oxford University Press; Sen, Amartya. (1993). Capability and Well-Being. In M. Nussbaum and A. Sen, eds. The Quality of Life, pp. 30–53. New York: Oxford Clarendon Press. Nussbaum, Martha C. and Amartya Sen, eds. (1993). “The Quality of Life” Oxford: Clarendon Press; Nussbaum, Martha. (1993). Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach. In M. Nussbaum and A. Sen, eds. The Quality of Life, pp. 242–69. New York: Oxford Clarendon Press; Nussbaum, Martha C. (2000) Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge). [vi] William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts Have Done so Much Ill and so Little Good (Penguin, 2007); Paul Polak, Out of Poverty: What Works when Traditional Approaches Fail (Berret-Koheler Publishers, 2008); Christopher Coyne, Doing Bad by Doing Good (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2013); Peter Tamas Bauer, From Subsistence to Exchange and Other Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); see also Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Poor Economics (New York: Public Affairs, 2012) for proposals about more effective forms of aid. [vii] Bas van der Vossen, “Why Nations Fail: Lessons for Global Justice,” Global Justice: Theory, Rhetoric, Practice (forthcoming). [viii] Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Propserity and Poverty (New York: Crown, 2012); Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Hernando de Soto, The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World (New York: Harper & Row, 1989); David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (New York: Norton, 1998); Dani Rodrik, Arvind Subramanian, & Francesco Trebbi, “Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions Over Geography and Integration in Economic Development,” 9 Journal of Economic Growth, p. 131 (2004); Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation, American Economic Review,” vol. 91, No. 5 (2001), pp 1369-1401; Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital (New York: Basic Books, 2000); Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson, Unbundling Institutions, Journal of Political Economy, vol 113 (2005), pp. 949
weeks, I made the game free, with optional payment, and some people downloaded it. And I started my search for a job. 2016 was the first time I had a “real” job, in which someone payed me with real money. I also kept studying, doing some on-line courses about entrepreneurship, programming and etc. To tell you the truth, my experience in the world of (more traditional) work was… let’s say… messy. But that’s another story. Now, I’m mostly searching for a part-time job. I want to have at least half of the day free to work on my games. THE GAME: One day I was browsing the future jams on itch.io and found the “Finally Finish Something” Game Jam. I thought to myself “This sounds perfect”. I wanted to take this opportunity to get more familiarized with the LOVE framework, and to get more in touch with the itch.io community of developers. I started to organize myself. I knew I had little more than a month to start and finish a game, and I was going to be working alone, so I chose realistic and doable objectives for the time that I had: Simple graphics. Simple game design (Simple player objectives, story, gameplay, levels) Reduce text to a minimum. Based on those constraints, I designed Planet Lander to be reminiscent of old arcade games that had simple vector graphics, simple objectives, and didn’t need a lot of text, because their stories were very straight-forward. I also eliminated the problem that I had with Rita’s Game, where I had lots and lots of text, but only in one language, and this limited the game to be available only for people that understood that language; In contrast, with a game that has very little words, if they are in English, you know that most players will be able to play it and understand it, even if they really aren’t English speakers. Anyone who plays knows what “Start”, “Game Over”, and “High-Score” means, without the need of a translation. This is one of the things that I got right: Design the game from the beginning considering the limited time that you have. If you don’t have much time and resources, apply the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid. In Asteroids, for example, it’s graphics are simple vectors, the player’s objective is to survive long enough while destroying asteroids to get a high score, and the story is practically just made by the player. Planet Lander was built on those ideas. I began programming in the last days of December. My first task consisted in taking the Newton’s law of universal gravitation and apply it to every basic object in the game. I made a super class that was accelerated towards the center of the screen (Where the planet is) and the ship, particles and asteroids inherited this property. The acceleration depends on the distance to the center and the mass of the planet. The result is what you see in my first post about the game: “After much effort, (And thanks, in part, to this video: https://youtu.be/EhDtJxX0sCA) I finally finished implementing gravity. Also, as the idea is to not use sprites, but only the functions provided by the LÖVE framework to draw lines, points, circles, etc, those little ships (3 of them should be asteroids, really, but I still haven’t implemented them) are polygons, and I had to write a function to rotate every point that defines them around their centers, too.” I managed to understand how to work with classes and inheritance well enough to make every small object that exists in the game to be realistically attracted to the planet in the center. Later in development, I would even calculate the mass of the planet based on its radius, to make it even more realistic (Instead of having always the same mass independently of the planet size). It worked, and it was super exciting! Then I had to add the asteroids, or as I called them in the code “Space Rocks”. As they are polygons, you have to pass a table containing the vertices to the function love.graphics.polygon( mode, vertices ) to draw one, and my first idea was to create a table containing different sets of vertices, and give those vertices to that function at random. This would result in some variation in the shapes of the rocks. I took a couple of days to work on a “Polygon Editor”, a tool to create the shapes of the polygons more easily, saving me from the process of drawing an asteroid on a piece of paper, taking the coordinates of the points and writing them on a table by hand (This is how I made the ship). I could as well use this editor to create other graphics, like big letters for the logo of the game, or maybe even alternative designs for the ship. With this tool I could place the vertices anywhere I needed with the mouse and export them to a txt file containing a lua table, that then I would copy and paste to the game’s code. But this idea presented a couple of problems: The number of shapes for the rocks I could create was still finite, and eventually they would repeat, like in the original Asteroids. The editor wasn’t very practical, and at the end, I really didn’t have much graphics to make aside from the asteroids to justify its creation. Why not just randomize the position of the vertices? This would give me infinite possible shapes. I worked on it and made my second post about the game: “Now, we have asteroids. All of them are polygons, defined with points that are placed semi-randomly around a circle, so every space rock looks different from the others. The asteroids can be made bigger or smaller through a “radius” variable, that also affects the number of vertices that the polygon’s asteroid will have. Bigger radius => Asteroids with more vertices.” This is one of the things that maybe wasn’t a good idea: Don’t create unnecessary tools that you are not even going to use at the end. Don’t waste your time and think of other alternatives first. Another thing that I changed around this time, and you can see in the video, is the default “graphics mode” of the game. Every shape is filled instead of being just lines. You can switch the styles with “Ctrl – L” in the final game. The development continued without too much trouble and the weeks passed: The player now could control the ship, the collision detection worked, and landing was implemented. Collisions and specially landing were kind of difficult to get done, but they seemed to work well. Difficulty progression was done; In every new planet the player has to destroy more asteroids, and the number of asteroids doesn’t grow in a linear way, to make the game less monotonous: And I was getting close to the deadline. I was the only one to test the game and you should always have your games tested by everyone you can: friends, family, etc. Study what they do. Learn from how they play. They probably will find bugs and things to adjust that you won’t. Don’t be the only one to test your own game. I decided to release at least 24 hours before the jam ended, just to have some extra time in case anything unexpected happened. This was a good idea: Always give yourself more time that the one you think you will need. We never know what problem that we did not expect might appear. The problem that presented itself was related to the sound. I had the self imposed objective of making the game’s size the smallest possible, and that’s why I generated the sound effects in sfxr, a really cool program that gives you randomized sounds inside of certain parameters, always similar to the sound effects usually heard in old video game systems, instead of using pre-recorded audio. I played around with the parameters and made the program generate new sounds until I got the ones that I liked, and then I saved them in that program’s special format (That was only the information to re-generate the sounds later, exactly as they sounded when I saved them. Only 105 bytes), loaded them to the game and and re-generated them when the game was started with the library sfxr.lua. I still don’t know why, but it appears like that library worked only on my Linux System (I was developing the game on a netbook with Lubuntu). When I packaged the game and tested it on Windows, the game stopped execution to give me an error when the first sound effect should have been re-generated. Probably I should write to the author about this, now that I have the time. Maybe I will make him aware of a bug, or he will just explain me how this is really all my fault and what I did wrong. When I encountered this problem, the only solution that I found in that very limited space of time was to re-load the files of the sounds in the sfxr program, export them as wavs, and load them to the game directly, instead of generating them with the sfxr.lua library before the game started. This made the game size bigger (Instead of having files of 105 bytes, I had.wavs that ranged from 1.9 kB to 74.2 kB), but still, 126 kB for the.love file and 2mB for the windows package is ridiculously small. The next steps were to record some footage of the game, make gifs, make the itch.io page, and submit the game to the jam. THE RESULTS: One of the moderators of the subreddit “playmygame” was nice enough to record himself playing to give me his feedback. The common opinion given is that it’s difficult to grasp the controls of the ship the first time you play. This is why I said that It’s very important to test with other people. They will give you important feedback of elements of your design that you didn’t consider would be problematic for players to understand. In my case, I considered that some mechanics were difficult to understand the first time you played, and evaluated the possibility of including some optional tutorial levels, that served as sandboxes where the player could practice landing, shooting, rotating and etc. in a safe environment. But this would have taken time that I didn’t have. Regardless, now part of the fun is to learn how to control the ship. And I super enjoy watching all my fiends crash the ship again and again the first minutes they try the game. I’m very happy with the final game. The players even gave it a really nice score! It ranked #12 Overall, of 57 entries. For my first jam, I will consider this as a total success. This was an awesome experience. Thanks to everyone that in some way or another helped me with their libraries, opinion, motivation or tutorials. Fer.Every iPhone comes with one year of hardware repair coverage through its limited warranty and up to 90 days of complimentary support. AppleCare+ for iPhone extends your coverage to two years from the original purchase date of your iPhone and adds up to two incidents of accidental damage coverage, each subject to a $79 service fee plus applicable tax. Bunch told employees that AppleCare+ has been doing well in terms of both sales and customer satisfaction. She said there have been over 30 million signups for AppleCare+ and this has created over $2 billion in revenue for Apple. AppleCare+ is currently in 14 countries, and Bunch noted that expanding AppleCare+ to additional countries is a tall task due to the inconsistent insurance and government-related legal processes across the globe. However, she hinted that further expansion will soon occur. Even with the success of AppleCare+ thus far, Bunch focused on sharing information about major changes coming to the program. Currently, AppleCare+ must be purchased within 30 days of the purchase of a supported device. Bunch says that Apple has begun piloting an expansion of this timeframe to 60 days, and that the company in the future may ultimately completely move the 30 day time limit to 60 days. Currently, a customer must purchase AppleCare+ at the time of purchase online or in a store, but she said that Apple is experimenting with new online diagnostic tools to make the purchase process of AppleCare+ simpler after the time of the device’s purchase. Bunch also noted that Apple is considering further pushing AppleCare+ as a subscription service via Apple’s iTunes-based billing program that is used for iTunes and App Store content. Bunch said that Apple is also looking into a version of the AppleCare+ program for Mac computers, but she noted that such program may never appear because the economics are not prime for such an offering. Bunch also addressed the competition from third-party and carrier insurance/support programs. Many carrier programs offer support in cases of lost and stolen devices, and Bunch noted that in order to remain competitive in that space, Apple will have to move to offering those services in the future as well. Besides changes to AppleCare+, Apple will be rolling out a significant new iOS device support feature this fall, according to Bunch. Late last year, Apple rolled out the ability for AppleCare support technicians to screen share onto a customer’s Mac in order to diagnose or fix problems. This fall, that functionality will roll out to iOS devices. This sounds quite similar to Amazon’s MayDay feature which allows customers to get instant technical support from their devices, but it does not appear that Apple’s offering will include a dedicate key on future devices or that the Apple service will be a core element of iOS. Apple is also working on improvements to its 24/7 chat support service. Last summer, Apple rolled out 24/7 chat support for AppleCare in the United States. This week’s Town Hall announcements to AppleCare employees reportedly hinted that Apple is looking into 24/7 phone support for some regions. There are apparently is no firm time-table on this and the service sounds far off into the future, but it is interesting to hear that Apple is considering this. Speaking of phone support, Apple is said to have played a recording of Tim Cook’s now famous support call during his visit to Apple’s Austin-based offices earlier this month. According to employees who listened to the recording, the call between Cook and a lucky Apple customer was short, but Cook asked the user what he thought of Apple’s announcements at the Worldwide Developers Conference earlier in the month. Even while Apple is still working on improvements to its phone support, Bunch also told employees that significant enhancements would be coming to Apple’s online support site. The AppleCare executives reportedly said that they imagine a time in which all Apple support will be solely handled through online resources, and the changes coming to the support service in the near-future indicate that Apple is serious about that belief. Apple is said to be developing new tools for customers to more easily self-diagnose and troubleshoot problems with Macs, iOS devices, and other Apple hardware, software, and services. Apple is also working on complete redesigns for the user-facing support tools website and discussion forums for debut later this year, according to employees who attended the Town Hall. One of the major focuses will be improvements to social networking integration with the support tools as well as much improved searching. Apple is also reportedly working on significant enhancements to Apple IDs and how support for the IDs are handled. Approximately a quarter of Apple’s technical support calls are in regards to Apple services such as Apple IDs, iTunes, and iCloud, so Apple feels that it is important for more self-help tools to become available for troubleshooting minor annoyances such as password resets and login problems. Bunch also reportedly promoted a recently launched “One Apple” program that serves to more closely align Apple’s support offerings between online, phone, and in-store Genius Bar support. With Angela Ahrendts now running both online and physical retail stores, it is likely that the One Apple concept will be pushed even further in the near-future. Bunch reportedly ended the meeting by saying that Apple is due for a “Super Bowl” of a fall in terms of product launches, and that these new enhancements will assist Apple in helping new customers learn how to use Apple’s new products. Apple will be debuting new versions of the iPhone, iPad, a new wearable device, iOS 8, OS X Yosemite, and many new Macs, and Apple’s AppleCare support staff will be critical in ensuring that the new Apple customers have smooth product experiences.Students sitting the Leaving Certificate Economics Higher Level paper would have needed independent knowledge beyond what was in the textbooks, according to teacher Ray O’Loughlin. Students sitting the Leaving Certificate Economics Higher Level paper would have needed independent knowledge beyond what was in the textbooks, according to teacher Ray O’Loughlin. Mr O’Loughlin of the Institute of Education, Dublin, said it continued a trend seen last year. He described the paper, overall, as ”fair and balanced” and said Section A was particularly student friendly. “There was one nice, topical question on the impact and methods of dealing with flooding,” he said. In relation to Section B, he said students who concentrated on micro economics would have found it more to their liking. He said the macro questions, 5-8, were more testing, with the appearance of three challenging topics - economic policies to address in Ireland; actions taken by the government to protect the environment; the economic consequences of Ireland’s population being urbanised. “All three were very geographical, broad, non- textbook questions. They would be more suited to third level standard and have limited relevance to what second level economics students study, “ said Mr O’Loughlin. Online EditorsAs Allegheny Technologies lockout enters fifth week ArcelorMittal walks out of negotiations with USW By Evan Winters 14 September 2015 ArcelorMittal USA, one of North America’s largest steelmakers, walked out of negotiations with the United Steelworkers (USW) on Saturday. The maneuver came one day after US Steel made clear its determination to extract massive concessions from its workforce. The contracts of over 30,000 steelworkers represented by the USW expired on September 1. Despite this, the USW has ordered workers at ArcelorMittal and US Steel to continue working, leaving the company to decide whether and when to lock out its workforce. According to a statement issued by the union, USW negotiators had submitted to ArcelorMittal a proposal which would have saved the company “millions of dollars in expenses and liabilities.” The statement also outlined the role that the USW played in forcing through concessions which enabled ArcelorMittal as well as US Steel to profit from the bankruptcy of 50 steel manufacturers during the downturn in the steel industry more than a decade ago. “It seems management has forgotten that without our hard work and dedication, none of these facilities would have survived the industry crisis from 1998-2002, when 50 steel companies went bankrupt – including almost all of our previous employers,” the union wrote. What the USW means by “hard work” is their role in suppressing the class struggle as they pushed through massive concessions, especially the elimination of health care and the cutting of pensions for tens of thousands of retired workers at LTV, Bethlehem, Republic, and National Steel to name just a few. While workers at ArcelorMittal and US Steel continue to work without a contract the lockout of 2,200 workers at Allegheny Technologies Inc. (ATI) at twelve mills in six states has entered its fifth week. ATI locked out the workers on August 15 after the USW ordered its members to continue to work past their June 30 contract deadline. USW and ATI representatives met Friday and Saturday with Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services. According to the USW website, ATI rejected the union’s offer, which contains the tens of millions of dollars of concessions they offered before the lockout, and held to its previous “last, best, and final offer.” ATI is demanding steep increases in out-of-pocket health care expenses and the elimination of employer-paid pensions for new hires, creating a two-tier wage and benefits system. In addition, ATI wants to vastly expand the use of outside contractors, and impose work rule changes that would essentially turn workers into casual laborers. US Steel and ArcelorMittal are making similarly harsh demands. The steel companies see no incentive to compromise because they recognize that the USW is doing everything it can to undermine a militant, united struggle of steelworkers. ATI is currently running its facilities with a scab labor force hired from Strom Engineering, backed up with a small army of private security guards. The company has been extremely aggressive in its deployment of these strikebreaking forces against picketing workers. Locked out workers have reported multiple instances of intimidation and violence by scabs. In one instance a truck driver reportedly brandished a gun and aimed it at an ATI picket line. Workers have been hit by strikebreaking vehicles at least three times. One worker’s foot was run over while another worker was hit by a side rear-view mirror. In the most ominous case of scab violence against workers, steelworker James F. Dietz, 61, was struck by a van carrying scabs out of ATI’s Brackenridge facility on August 29. Instead of arresting the driver, the police cited Dietz for “intentionally and recklessly” obstructing a public passage, and placing “himself and others in danger of bodily injury.” If a district judge upholds this citation, Dietz could be fined, and could face disciplinary action at ATI. In other words, effective picketing has essentially been outlawed, and scab drivers have a green light to physically attack picketing workers who refuse to step aside. The USW’s response to these egregious attacks on its membership has been complete silence. Two weeks on, the USW has yet to make any public statement in defense of Dietz. Many picketing workers are still unaware of this incident, and if they are aware it is only through word of mouth or social media. Such inaction by the union serves only to embolden the company’s attacks. Left to Right, Locked out steelworkers John Fulton, Jeremiah Poole, Justin Claypool, Jim Farabough and Bill Ostach picketing outside ATI's Baghdad mill in Leechburg Pennsylvania The WSWS recently interviewed Jim Farabough and Justin Claypool, two maintenance workers at ATI’s Bagdad plant in Leechburg, PA about the ongoing lockout and their opposition to the company’s demands for concessions. Farabough, a maintenance worker with twenty-three years, told the WSWS about the harassment locked out workers have faced. “Somebody got their foot run over (bruised). A Vandergrift guy got hit by a mirror. It sounds like the 1920s. That’s what scares me. It sounds like we’re going back to the 1920s, if they get everything they want.” “If you use it, this insurance package is going to cost between ten and eleven thousand a year. They want to farm out the maintenance work, that’s our jobs. That means half of us,” Farabough stated. “They want to get rid of all non-core items,” Claypool, a maintenance worker with four years in the plant, stated, continuing, “One of the other things they want to take away is the guaranteed 40-hour work week.” “There was also language in there [the contract] that they did not want to guarantee that the Bagdad plant would stay open,” Farabough added. “They were talking about phasing it out. And there’s a market for that steel, there are only two companies that make grain-oriented steel in the United States.” In August, ATI terminated health benefits for 95 office and technical workers. The USW has filed a federal complaint claiming that this is in breach of the contractual November 30 “lag date.” The remaining workers are left wondering if and when their healthcare will be terminated. “We were told once our healthcare gets cut, we would have a written letter saying it was cut, Claypool said. “From what I understand, they would send it out the month before it would get cut. I haven’t gotten one.” “I can’t see them hurting,” Farabough said of ATI, “they’ve stocked up so many coils. Actually they paid us to make these coils. Last quarter they showed an $18 million loss. $1 billion in sales and an $18 million loss. Now they have all these coils that they didn’t make, and they’re telling everybody they’re putting out the same production, but it was stuff we made.” Bill Ostach, a maintenance worker at ATI stressed the importance of fighting for the next generation of workers. “ATI wants to go back to the 1920s. They want to take away everything the union has fought for. That they want a two-tier pension. They don’t want to have a defined pension for new guys. We’ve got to fight that. My kids might work here. Your kids might work here.” Ostach also spoke of decades of concessions contracts imposed by the USW in collaboration with ATI. “It happened in the 80s, they wanted to put a new operation in the West Leechburgh 46 line. It happened the last two contracts where they put this new hot strip mill in Brackenridge. They changed a lot of the work rules. In my opinion, this made the workplace a lot more dangerous.” Speaking of the white Strom Engineering vans that carry scabs, Bill said, “I personally have seen as many as six in my turn of four hours. The union has told us ‘do not block traffic, do not cause a confrontation.’” Another worker at the Bagdad mill in Leechburg, who asked that his name not be used, commented on the significance of the ATI steelworkers struggle, stating, “I would say that everyone is looking at this, steel, but all manufacturing around the country. They don’t want a contract, they don’t want a 40-hour week, they want us to be like day laborers. Hire us when they want and not when they don’t need us. They want to take back the things we have gained and if they can do it here they will continue to do it elsewhere.” Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.When it comes to the hijab, everybody seems to be obsessed with it. More than an article of modesty, it serves as a symbol of oppression to some and a symbol of liberation to others. But, more peculiarly, the hijab is often used as a benchmark by conservative Muslims to judge the morality of a Muslim woman and her “Muslimness”. Indeed, judging by the Islamic discourse that concerns Muslim women, one would assume that the primary religious duty of Muslim women is wearing the hijab. The restriction of religion from an ethical guide to appearances (dress-codes, rituals) is a curious phenomenon; a virus that seems to have seeped its way into mainstream Muslim consciousness. Partly due to the spread of Wahhabism, a deeply conservative sect of Islam, our religious priorities seem to have shifted from spiritual transformation to pedantic details about rituals and dress codes. Thus, the fixation with the hijab, I believe, reflects the very cursory manner in which we approach Islam. From certain imams insisting that earthquakes are caused by women not wearing a hijab to muftis excommunicating Muslim women who do not consider wearing the hijab as a religious duty, the intellectual level of discourse that surrounds Muslim women is excruciating, and is more or less concerned only with notions of modesty. This gives a gloomy insight – the obsession with the hijab is, in fact, a form of sexual objectification. Objectification, after all, involves the lowering of a person to the status of an object. By reducing Muslim women to their bodies and pretending that modesty is their primary religious duty, we strip them off their personhood and rob them off their agency as human beings. Take, for example, the analogies that are employed to convince Muslim women of the benefits of the hijab. The lollipop analogy is particularly popular among conservative Muslims on social media. Two lollipops are shown: a bare lollipop with a swarm of flies on it and a wrapped lollipop with flies moving away from it. The caption reads: “You cannot avoid them, but you can protect yourself. Your Creator knows what is better for you.” Apart from the blatant objectification, this analogy has at its core a very troubling assumption. It is that Muslim women who do not wear a hijab deserve cat-calling and sexual harassment, as some sort of retributive divine law, taking away all responsibility from men to behave morally and guard their gaze (as mentioned in the Quran). Such attitudes contribute to a culture of victim-blaming with devastating consequences for the victims involved. Furthermore, the analogy assumes that Muslim women who wear the hijab are not going to be sexually harassed. This naïve assumption shatters to pieces when confronted with evidence. According to a study carried out in Egypt, 72.5 per cent of the women who reported being sexually harassed were, in fact, wearing the hijab. And let’s not pretend that sexual harassment does not occur in countries like Iran where wearing the hijab is required by law. “Growing up in a Muslim country where the hijab is not mandatory, I have always been told: the hijab is there to protect women from men’s desire, because our body is awra (intimate parts of the body that should be covered) that can spread fitna (chaos) among men,” says Sahar, a 26-year-old non-Iranian who has been studying in Tehran for a year. “But then I came to Iran, where hijab is mandatory, and I am still harassed in the streets. Men aggressively stare at me, talk to me, call me names. I feel naked, and worthless.” Today’s world is in a state of emergency. With gnawing problems such as superstition, bigotry, sectarianism, and patriarchy in Muslim-majority states, we simply cannot afford to divert all our attention to the hijab and pedantic details of how to worship God “correctly”. If we are at all serious about preventing the so-called fitna, we must start addressing the real issue that has long been glaring at us: attitudes towards women. Education, as always, is the key here. Not the hijab. Let’s start getting offended by expressions like “men are going to be men” because men are not monolithic sexual beasts who have no autonomy over their desires. Let’s not tie down a woman’s morality to her decision to wear the hijab. And let’s stop objectifying women and seeing them primarily as avenues for sex. You would be amazed how far that takes us. Ro Waseem is a liberal Muslim. He runs a weekly blog on Patheos, and tweets @Quranalyzeit.Casgliad o Ysgrifau, by TH Parry-Williams, is the book of its author's lifetime. It brings together nearly all of the short essays that he published between 1928 and 1966, and in which he regularly cast back to his early childhood in Snowdonia. In my opinion, ysgrifau is better translated with the more literal "writings". For, more than anything else, Parry-Williams used the form to write out what Konstantin Mochulsky, referring to Dostoevsky, called the "enigma of his personality". These reflections – on physics, metaphysics and everything in between – are matter enough for a lifetime. And for life. They are rooted in experience – something read or reflected upon or perceived more obliquely – but onto the pragmatic plane the author brings to bear his intellect and immense sensitivity. And an incomparable sense of language. The impression that he is writing for his own understanding – not to achieve some writerly goal – emanates from every page. Each individual piece is a rendering of deep, complicated existence. TH Parry-Williams writes from a place of his own too: Rhyd-ddu, the small village in Snowdon's shadow which he left, more or less for good, aged 11. It is the equivalent in 20th-century Welsh-language literature of Proust's madeleine and the spur for meditations on the various shades of belonging. You come away from the Ysgrifau thinking that time spent "thinking about things", about the oddness of it all, isn't just not stupid, or a waste of time, but a fundamental requirement for a well-lived life. Join Independent Minds For exclusive articles, events and an advertising-free read for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent With an Independent Minds subscription for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent Without the ads – for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month I return to these writings regularly – not least now, with the latest census data showing a worrying decline in the number of Welsh-speakers. The regret I feel a Parry-Williams's work not being available to a wider audience – in an English translation, for example, and subsequent inclusion, perhaps, on some Penguin Classics-type list – turns into a veritable sadness, however, at the prospect of it not even being available, in a meaningful way, to its primary audience for all that much longer either. There is often a significant discrepancy between the ability to speak a smaller language and the ability to read or write it. The "Britain question" will be pulled every which way in the next 18 months. For my part, I can't help thinking that the "One Nation" that is "Stronger Together" ought, at the very least, to have been as interested in Parry-Williams's Rhyd-ddu as it ever was in Hardy's Wessex or in Dickens's London. Owen Martell's novel 'Intermission' is published by HeinemannDick’s fans are an eager bunch. More than 100,000 votes were cast in the first 24 hours after the burger chain announced it would open a new location and asked its customers to weigh in on where it should be. The outpouring crashed the company’s website. Stats are still unofficial, but in the Seattle area there may be more interest in voting on the location of the next Dick’s than there is in voting in regular elections. On Monday, Dick’s Drive-In — the local burger-and-fries chain beloved by soccer moms and late-night bar-hoppers alike — announced it would be opening a seventh restaurant in the Seattle area. Just as it did when it announced its sixth location, in 2010, Dick’s offered its fans the chance to vote on where the restaurant should be. More than 115,000 people voted in 2010, choosing a location north of Seattle, which ended up being Edmonds. Dick’s got nearly that many votes just on Monday, the first day of three weeks of voting, as customers choose whether the next Dick’s should be south or east of their current restaurants. More than 100,000 votes were cast in the first 24 hours. The surge of interest crashed the burger chain’s website within minutes of the announcement. The site is now back up and running — and on a new server — and the south region is in the lead. “We are overwhelmed by the outpouring of love,” said Jim Spady, president of Dick’s and son of co-founder and namesake Dick Spady. “We’d love to build in both regions right away, but we are a small family business and we have to pick one.” Jasmine Donovan, Dick’s vice president and Dick Spady’s granddaughter, said the company had received more than 1,000 emails with location suggestions. “We’ve transitioned to a new server and should be able to handle the volume now,” Donovan said. “Bring on the votes and keep the emails coming.”I've been doing this one for a couple of months on and off, and it has been awesome to see how it kept getting better and better. The pose, lines, colour palette, lighting and everything, and to top it off the background I wiped up just before uploading made it just that bit better in my eyes. This is Nyxrana in her combat gear, she's a Huntress and needs it to be flexible, durable, protective and functional. It serves all those purposes. All to ensure she can run down her target and capture them when possible, her right arm mounted tech giving her a'stunning' touch much like a taser. When that doesn't work... well she's a damned good shot with her Acolyte pistol; a gun that has been modified to fit her hand as if it was an extension of her body. It's all meant and built to be streamlined. Aside from her shoulder guard, it's a small upgrade for when she initiates her biotic charge and gives her a small bit more armour when in combat; she is left handed so when firing she presents her left side, just that added protection I am so happy with this piece, I really hope I can make something on this level again. And if not I am happy with the skills I got doing this; namely the shading on the head, the small erasing of the shade layer to let a little light through makes it pop all the more (I hate using that word, at least it's not wow factor lol) Nyxrana T'Neli and art @ Asari and the Acolyte @ Mass Effect and Bioware.by Paul Kennedy @pkedit, Jul 29, 2016 Atlanta United FC is the only MLS expansion team confirmed for 2017, but MLS commissioner told ESPN at halftime of the AT&T MLS All-Star Game that the league will have "another announcement in a couple of weeks" on who will join Atlanta. That should be Minnesota, though the team name and home field for 2017 remain to be determined.Minnesota United FC is playing in the NASL though it might not retain its name when it moves to MLS. It currently plays at the National Sports Center in suburban Blaine.The delays in confirming Minnesota as MLS's 22nd team appear to center around the hangup in state approval of property tax breaks for the privately financed stadium the ownership group plans on building in St. Paul. No tax bill was signed, so a special session is expected to be held in August.The two options for a temporary stadium are TCF Stadium (University of Minnesota football stadium with artificial turf) and Target Field (Minnesota twins' baseball stadium with grass). The preferred choice is believed to be TCF Stadium because it has fewer conflicts. It is MLS's strong preference that teams are added in pairs to give the league an even number of teams.Paul House left Tennessee's death row nearly four years ago a crippled man. Sure, he was free, but after 13 years of living with multiple sclerosis in prison, he was a gaunt shell of a man, unable to walk or barely talk, scared to go out in public for fear of being harassed. Now, he’s a different person, says his mother, Joyce House. He has new teeth, and an affinity for Arby’s beef-and-cheddar sandwiches has helped him gain weight. Thanks to treatment and medication, he can communicate with others and play online poker. When it’s not too hot outside, he exercises on parallel bars in his mother's backyard so that one day, he can hopefully transition from a wheelchair to a walker. Most importantly, he has overcome a fear of public scrutiny that had haunted him since his release in 2008, after a
to start camp, the Broncos have drawn more than 9,500 the past two days. The crowd of 4,813 was especially impressive for a Monday and was the largest this year. … Bronco players have the day off Tuesday. Camp will resume Wednesday. … Missing practice Monday were running back Ronnie Hillman (back) and defensive lineman Vance Walker (back). Copyright 2016 KUSAGarison Carrell (L) and Avery Anderson (R) at the Republican National Convention in Ohio, July 2016. (Ben Winsor / SBS ) "President-elect Trump will be far better for the gay community than Secretary Clinton would have been." National exit polls from the New York Times have shown that 78% of LGBT+ voters supported Clinton, while 14% voted for Donald Trump. While they’re in the minority in the LGBT+ community, they’re an ecstatic minority. Gregory Angelo, the head of the gay Log Cabin Republicans group, watched the results on Fox News in bed as his boyfriend slept next to him. “I’ve wanted him to be president since I was 10-years-old,” he told SBS. Recommended: Homophobic violence reported in wake of Trump victory “We got a new president you f*king fggots.” In a way, it’s somewhat surprising that Trump’s support wasn’t higher – he specifically included references to LGBT+ Americans in his speeches and spared them from the barbs directed at other minorities. “This is a victory for America and specifically our gay citizens,” Garison Carrell, a gay Republican in Oklahoma told us, “the fear mongering the left has done is absurd." “Trump has been branded by the left as something he is not. President-elect Trump will be far better for the gay community than Secretary Clinton would have been as our executive,” he says. Recommended: Trump could be a game-changer for LGBT+ Republicans For LGBTQIA+ Republicans, this US election is potentially a game changer. But the truth is Trump appears to have performed worse among LGBT+ Americans than previous, more socially conservative candidates Republican candidates. In 2008, McCain won over 27% of LGBT+ voters. Romney won 22% in 2012. Perhaps part of that was the concerted effort Hillary Clinton made to woo LGBT+ voters – speaking strongly for same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination legislation. Carrell rejects that. “These are state issues or have been decided by the Supreme Court. Gay marriage has been decided in the US,” he says. “While Trump was attending gay weddings and hanging out with gay friends, Hillary was supporting the Defence of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell." “The era when it actually mattered, not in the post-gay society in which we currently live,” he says. Recommended: What gay Republicans think of Australia's plebiscite idea The head of the Log Cabin Republicans has some advice for Australian marriage equality activists. But Trump’s mixed record on LGBT+ rights may have turned off those less enthusiastic than Carrell. Trump has hedged on same-sex marriage, positioning it as a state issue. He selected a strong social conservative, Mike Pence, as a running mate. As Governor of Indiana, Pence gave businesses the right to discriminate against LGBT+ people for religious reasons and also supported ‘gay conversion therapy’. Carrell says that doesn't matter to him. "The Vice President has no power, outside of breaking a tie in the Senate, of which we already have 51 plus votes, rendering his position impotent," he tells SBS. Dale Giesige, a gay Trump supporter in the swing-state of Ohio, says while he thinks Trump will be good for the LGBT+ community, he's not a single issue voter. “I'm relieved our country can address some issues that would not be addressed if Hillary won," he says. “Trump represents forward progress while Hillary Clinton represented more of a stuck in the mud, 'nothing wrong here' attitude."Story highlights Buhari removes aide who plagiarized Obama speech The lines were taken verbatim from Obama's 2008 election victory speech (CNN) Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has removed a speechwriter who caused him national embarrassment after he plagiarized US President Barack Obama. Buhari delivered the lines at the launch of a landmark campaign on September 8, unaware that part of his speech was lifted. Buhari in his speech for the "Change Begins With Me" campaign, said, "We must resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship, pettiness and immaturity that have poisoned our country for so long." The line was taken verbatim from Obama's speech, which he gave eight years ago after his victory over Arizona Sen. John McCain. The incident was particularly embarrassing for the president because "Change Begins With Me" is a flagship policy meant to demand honesty and integrity from Nigerians. Read MorePresident Barack Obama said Wednesday he will reveal his Supreme Court nominee to fill the vacancy of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, expecting to choose from a small circle of federal appeals court judges. "I've made my decision," Obama said in an email to supporters early Wednesday. Obama planned to introduce his pick at a Rose Garden ceremony, setting up a showdown with Senate Republicans who have told the White House not to bother filling the vacancy in an election year. RELATED \| In his email, Obama did not identify his choice to replace the Scalia on the nine-member court. But the president said he had devoted a "considerable amount of time and deliberation to this decision" and consulted with outside experts and groups. "In putting forward a nominee today, I am fulfilling my constitutional duty. I'm doing my job," Obama wrote. "I hope that our senators will do their jobs, and move quickly to consider my nominee." RELATED \| That will be a hard sell because Republicans control the Senate, which must confirm any nominee, and GOP leaders want to leave the choice to the next president, denying Obama a chance to alter the ideological balance of the court before he leaves office next January. Republicans contend that a confirmation fight in an election year would be too politicized. The Associated Press has reported that Obama had narrowed the list to three appeals court judges: Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the appeals courts in Washington, D.C.; Sri Srinivasan, a judge on that court; and Paul Watford of the appeals courts based in San Francisco. RELATED \| In his email, Obama said his nominee will be "eminently qualified" to sit on the nation's highest court. He said the nominee would understand the limits of the judiciary's role and "grasps the way it affects the daily reality of people's lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly changing times." Obama said the White House had "reached out to every member of the Senate, who each have a responsibility to do their job and take this nomination just as seriously." The president told supporters that his nominee "deserves a fair hearing, and an up-or-down vote." RELATED \|Image caption Igor Sutyagin was jailed in Russia in 2004 A prisoner swap is being planned to bring 10 suspected Russian spies back from the US, say Russian reports. Igor Sutyagin, a man jailed in Russia for spying for the CIA, said he and unspecified others would be exchanged, his family said. Neither Russian nor US authorities have commented on reports of the swap. Meanwhile, a New York court unsealed an indictment against the 10 alleged spies and an eleventh suspect who is on the run after escaping custody in Cyprus. The indictment came hours after a court hearing in the US state of Virginia for three of the suspected spies was postponed and orders were issued to transport them "promptly to the Southern District of New York for further proceedings". The federal indictment does not change the charges already filed against the group, which is accused of laundering money and acting as unregistered foreign agents. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said: "As the government indicated would happen when the case began, the defendants are being transported to the Southern District of New York to face the charges against them." He added: "Today's indictment is the next step in that process." 'Illegal agents' In a move which fuelled speculation about an imminent swap, a top US diplomat met the Russian ambassador to Washington. No details were given of the talks between undersecretary of state for political affairs William Burns, who is a former US ambassador to Moscow, and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak other than the fact that issue of spies came up in the meeting. Igor Sutyagin was quoted as saying he expected to be put on flights to Vienna, then London, on Thursday. No reason has yet been given for the transfer to New York, where the other seven suspects are in custody. The 10 suspected Russian spies were arrested last month on suspicion of working as illegal agents for the Russian government. An 11th suspect was arrested in Cyprus but went missing after being released on bail. On Wednesday, the New York Times quoted sources close to the case as saying the federal government was seeking a rapid resolution. 'No choice' Igor Sutyagin, a nuclear weapons specialist, is serving a 15-year jail sentence for passing information to a UK firm allegedly used as a front by the CIA. Image caption Sutyagin's lawyer (R), mother and brother spoke to media According to his brother, Dmitry, he said he had been told by Russian officials that he would be released and sent to the UK in exchange for an unknown number of spies. The officials met Sutyagin on Monday at a prison in Arkhangelsk, northern Russia, and US officials were at the meeting, the brother said. Sutyagin said he had been made to sign a confession, although he maintains his innocence and does not want to leave Russia, his brother added. After Monday's meeting, the prisoner was reportedly moved to Moscow's Lefortovo prison. Anna Stavitskaya, a lawyer acting for Sutyagin, told Reuters that her client had agreed to be swapped "as he had no other choice left". "He knew that otherwise his whole life would be broken but he still insists he is innocent," she said. EAST-WEST PRISONER SWAPS 1962: KGB Colonel Rudolf Abel freed by US in exchange for Gary Powers, pilot of a U-2 spy plane shot down over the USSR in 1960 KGB Colonel Rudolf Abel freed by US in exchange for Gary Powers, pilot of a U-2 spy plane shot down over the USSR in 1960 1969: UK frees Soviet agents Peter and Helen Kroger for Gerald Brooke, jailed for spying in USSR UK frees Soviet agents Peter and Helen Kroger for Gerald Brooke, jailed for spying in USSR 1981: Guenter Guillaume, agent for East Germany's Stasi, exchanged for Western agents Guenter Guillaume, agent for East Germany's Stasi, exchanged for Western agents 1985: US agents held in Eastern Europe handed over in return for a top Polish agent, Marian Zacharski, and three others held in West US agents held in Eastern Europe handed over in return for a top Polish agent, Marian Zacharski, and three others held in West 1986: Soviet dissident Anatoly Sharansky and three Western agents swapped for KGB husband-and-wife spies Karl and Hana Koecher and two other agents Russian media quote a member of Sutyagin's family as saying he had seen a list of names of prisoners likely to be swapped by Russia, including Sergei Skripal. Skripal is a Russian military intelligence (GRU) officer convicted of spying for the UK in 2006. The 11 alleged members of the Russian spy ring in the US are accused of conspiracy to act as unlawful agents of a foreign government. The crime is less serious than espionage but carries a sentence of up to five years in prison. Two of the suspects, Mikhail Kutzik and Natalia Pereverzeva, had been living as a couple with their children in Arlington, near Washington DC. They admitted being Russian citizens operating under assumed names. They and fellow suspect Mikhail Semenko had been due to attend the court hearing on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the US government said it would appeal against a New York judge's decision to allow one suspect, Vicky Pelaez, to be released on bail. Ms Pelaez remained in custody on Wednesday as bail arrangements were still being completed.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- On the first day of NFL free agency, NFL analyst Cian Fahey praised the Browns for their free thinking. That was enough to make him a podcast guest. In this edition of Takes By The Lake, our twice-a-week cleveland.com sports podcast, I'm joined by Fahey for a full show of unique Browns talk from one of the best NFL analysts around. Fahey is a 26-year-old from Ireland who you may have heard on the Dan Le Batard show, and he constantly offers his views at the NFL on his Twitter account @Cianaf. If you aren't following him on Twitter, you should start. You can also check out some of his writing at presnapreads.com and he'll have a full catalogue on every quarterback in the NFL coming out after the NFL Draft. For now, check out episode of 19 of Takes By The Lake. Usual co-host Zack Meisel is on vacation this week, so this is just Cian and me talking about the Browns. We discussed their free thinking ways, the signings on the first day of free agency, losing Terrelle Pryor and gaining Kenny Britt, whether Jimmy Garoppolo should be the quarterback target, how bad Brock Osweiler really is, whether this Browns plan will work and when fans could expect the Browns to contend for the playoffs. Subscribe to Takes By The Lake on soundcloud and iTunes. If you missed any past episodes of Takes By The Lake, catch up on talk about the Browns, Cavs, Indians and Ohio State featuring experts on the subject from here at cleveland.com. Ep. 18: Who is the Browns QB? Question still demands an answer Ep. 17: Are the Cavs better after mid-season acquisitions? Ep. 16: Reviewing the NFL Combine and the Browns' big decisions Ep. 15: Will Carson Wentz haunt the Browns? Ep. 14: Playing Good Cop, Bad Cop when previewing the 2017 Indians Ep. 13: Indians GM Mike Chernoff details the Edwin Encarnacion decision Ep. 12: Browns draft strategy with draft expert Dane Brugler Ep. 11: Kevin Love's injury, MLB rules changes and boycotting the Browns Ep. 10: Should sports writers talk politics? Should athletes? Ep. 9: Is there anything bad to say about the Indians entering the new season? Ep. 8: LeBron James still in Miami? Big Ben a Brown? Cleveland sports what-ifs Ep. 7: Will 'Melo or Garoppolo come to Cleveland? Ep. 6: Who deserves the next Cleveland sports statues? Ep. 5: Inside the Cavs' drama and the Indians' future All-Star Game Ep. 4: How many championships will Cleveland teams win over the next five years? Ep. 3: What's on the Cavs' to-do list between now and June? Are the right people voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame? Ep. 2: Does the NBA regular season matter? Are the Indians a lock for October? Ep. 1: On whether the Browns can handle this monumental offseasonThe Morning Joe family got heated and a bit awkward this morning during a discussion about the lack of diversity in President Obama‘s inner circle. As Joe Scarborough pointed to the lack of outrage and the Republican/Democrat double standard, Mika Brzezinski vehemently disagreed — and told him he was being “chauvinistic.” Scarborough… didn’t take it well. At one point literally snapping his fingers at his co-host. The issue of diversity took up the entire segment, but started to grow contentious when the BBC’s Katty Kay sought to downplay the lack of diversity in Obama’s cabinet while noting that Mitt Romney‘s “binders full of women” comment resonated because it reinforced the “1950s” attitude some perceived him having toward women. “This is what’s wrong with political reporting,” Scarborough charged. The left took a “faux pas” and blew it up — but in Obama’s case, they’re talking about “something that matters.” Actual cabinet positions. That led to some back-and-forth between the two, who plainly disagreed. As the segment went on, Brzezinski noted that Susan Rice could have been another woman in Obama’s cabinet had Republicans not “routed” her out. “Talk about old guys being completely chauvinistic jerks,” she remarked, as Scarborough noted David Axelrod‘s assertion that Rice hadn’t been considered for the Secretary of State position. Brzezinski countered that the president’s policies speak to his commitment to women’s issues. Still, the show went on… until Scarborough’s joking around proved to be too much for Brzezinski who told him, “You’re being chauvinistic right now.” She can make personal attacks, Scarborough retorted, but “you’ve got a president you worship on this show every day.” Yet she “savaged” Romney. Had the president been Republican, she’d have been upset about the issue, he argued. “You really — knowing me and seeing me work around here for five years — you want to call me a chauvinist on television?” Scarborough asked, with Brzezinski replying that she wasn’t calling him that. “I said the way you’re acting is chauvinistic,” she responded, “especially the way you were handling this conversation. It’s not funny.” “Do I act like a chauvinist in Congress, the way I ran my office there, the way run my office here? I am a chauvinist?” Scarborough repeatedly pressed, as they argued and talked over each other. “Read your own book!” “You can’t throw around attacks like that,” he said, “because you’re embarrassed about what Barack Obama’s doing.” (Update: Later in the show, Brzezinski apologized to Scarborough, saying his “entire career” backs up the fact that he is not, indeed, a chauvinist. She reiterated her point that she disliked how Scarborough handled the segment.) Videos of both the segment and the apology are below. Take a look, via MSNBC: Apology: Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comThank you for buying Gintama Volume 38. This is pretty late from me, but the Gintama anime is restarting in April. [NOTE: this was published in 2011, so he’s referring to season 5 of the anime that started that year. -ed.] This is also in large part thanks to everyone’s support. Anyhow, you may think that ever since the anime ended it was already decided it was gonna re-start from the production side, but it actually wasn’t. It seems that everyone certainly was in the mood of doing their best to try to get it to restart. Seeing what the consensus was, I said things like “With everyone’s help, we’ll get it restarted!” and stuff but me and my editor just had the instrumental remarks of it being a done deal. Some supervisor had “it’s finished business~” or maybe “it’s useless at this point~” stuck onto the front of his name. Well, we kept moving forward, and I said stuff like “it’ll be okay without you“ and “what’s important is the Jump brand~” and such. But both of us neither truly knew if we’d be a “source of revenue~” for each other. There wasn’t a ton of stock built up in the original manga yet so you could hear a lot of anxious voices saying things like “is this gonna be okay” and “isn’t it just gonna stop again really soon right after it starts?” but it’s all right. The heads would eliminate that kind of crappy anime before the stock would run out. Of course, I dunno when the original manga is gonna get eliminated so I can’t make any promises to quell those fears forever. But I can promise this. No matter when they’re eliminated, the manga and anime will continue like they always have, pitching without regrets. And if the time comes where we go down in a blaze of dirty fireworks, please say this, “It’s the anime’s fault. The manga was going great, so please restart it okay”. –Gintama Vol. 38Throughout the ages, people have hung some pretty weird names on what’s ailed them. While many diseases took their monikers from a primitive understanding of the human body and the burgeoning scientific practice of using Latin and Greek nomenclature as the basis of medicine, others emerged colloquially as, more or less, the symptoms the affliction presented. Here are a few of the stranger ones, and how we know them today. 1. Then: Dropsy Now: Edema Essentially water retention, edema mainly afflicts those with congestive heart failure whose bodies are unable to eliminate fluid effectively. The archaic term originated in the Middle English “dropesie” via the Old French “hydropsie” via the Greek “hydrops” via the ancient Greek “hydor,” which means, you guessed it, water. Leave it to Shakespearean times to make something as silly-sounding as possible. 2. Then: Black Death Now: Bubonic Plague To be fair, even “Bubonic Plague” has a ring of whimsy, but there was nothing humorous (no pun intended) about it. Among the most ravaging pandemics in human history, the Plague raged in Europe from 1348 to 1350 and is estimated to have killed nearly 100 million people. Historians now know that the disease was caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis, which was transmitted from rat to flea to human. “Bubonic” comes from the Greek word for “groin,” and was so named for the swollen groin lymph nodes that a plague victim would exhibit at its onset. It took on the conversational “black” designation in a poetic nod to the dread and mourning left in its wake. Then again, it could aptly have been a physical description of a late-stage victim, who’d likely be unconscious or delirious and suffering from bleeding under the skin and widespread gangrene, making their skin appear black. 3. Then: Dry Bellyache Now: Lead poisoning Before we knew just how toxic lead is to humans, it was used for centuries in the production of both paint and rum. When painters and distillers began presenting symptoms ranging from abdominal pain and headaches to anemia and seizures, doctors were baffled and dubbed the condition “Dry Bellyache” and “Painters Colic.” What they didn’t realize was that constant exposure to the heavy concentration of lead in pre-industrialized paint and in the stills used to make rum was slowly poisoning the workers. Fortunately, science caught on to its effects, and the use of lead in manufacturing has dropped dramatically over the past few decades. However, the EPA warns that it still presents a threat owing to old lead paint in houses, soil and water contamination from outdated lead-based fixtures, and the small amount of lead still used in products such as bullets, ceramic glaze, and vinyl mini window blinds. Just in case you needed another reason to avoid vinyl mini blinds. 4. Then: King’s Evil Now: Scrofula Tuberculosis may very well be one of mankind’s oldest maladies, with human remains from 4000 BC showing signs of tubercular decay. Long feared and, until the past century, poorly understood, the bacteria would wreak havoc on a person’s lung tissue, literally consuming it from the inside. Scrofula is, essentially, TB of the lymph nodes in the neck. In the Middle Ages, when kings were considered divine, many believed that royalty could cure disease with nothing more than their touch. The “King’s Evil” ceremony typically featured the monarch bestowing “touched” coins or amulets on the suffering, which they would then wear and hope to be cured. The practice was so common that, by the Restoration, Charles II is rumored to have touched some 90,000 consumptives in a 22 year period. Obviously, people still died in legion, but the custom persisted in England, and then France, for another 200 years. Give ’em a break. The learning curve was slower in those days. 5. Then: Scrivener’s Palsy Now: Writer’s cramp Long before we could just rest our hands on a keyboard and churn out page after page with little effort, writer’s cramp was a serious and sometimes debilitating condition. The most frequently afflicted were scriveners—those whose job it was to take dictations and keep records at a time when very few people knew how to read and write. As their numbers were so few, they were in high demand and, likely, overworked. Some scriveners would experience loss of precision muscle control in their hands, as well as weakness, pain, and trembling. Cases could be severe, with referred pain spreading to the arms, legs, and jaw, and sometimes lead to total disability. Though writer’s cramp is still with us, scientists have come to believe that, along with other focal dystonia, it’s the result of a neurological malfunction that affects specific muscle groups. Local Botox injections have been shown to ease symptoms, with the added bonus of ageless-looking hands. 6. Then: Milk Leg Now: Phlegmasia alba dolens Also known as deep vein thrombosis, this condition was, and still is, seen often later in pregnancy and in women who have recently given birth. Sometimes, as the uterus enlarges in preparation for delivery, the common iliac vein—which runs from the lower abdomen to the upper thigh—will press against the pelvis and cause a blood clot to form. If the condition persists, normal circulation becomes impossible and the leg will swell painfully. The dairy designation may have caught on because of the pale color the leg will take (phlegmasia alba dolens translates to “painful white edema”), or because the swelling was thought to be an accumulation of milk in the expectant mother’s limb, a now-laughable idea. 7. Then: Dancing Mania Now: Mass psychogenic illness Sounds awesome, right? From the 14th to 17th century in Europe, thousands of people were suddenly and without reason moved to dance uncontrollably with little regard to how ridiculous they looked. What’s really changed, you ask? Well, at the height of the phenomenon, choreomania (from the Greek “choros” for dance and “mania” for madness) was known to waylay both men and women, children and the elderly, who would form groups and scream, sing, and dance for days on end until they’d collapse from exhaustion or, occasionally, dance themselves to death. Diagnoses throughout the ages have included epilepsy and Sydenham chorea, a side effect of the Streptococcus bacteria. Historians now generally agree that the movement was a mass psychogenic illness, a form of mass hysteria, in which a group exhibits similar physical symptoms because of social influence that have no recognizable physical cause. And all this without the help of Beiber.The "Razor and Blades" Deal is Back Take your pick - Chrome or Black - for only 19.98 It's baaaaack. The 19.98 DE Safety Razor and Blades deal. The last time we offered this bargain, we just weren't prepared for the response and we sold every razor on our shelves in about three hours. Well, we've restocked and we'd like to offer this one again for anyone who missed out. It's your choice of the Classic Brand safety razors we had built to our specs and are proud to offer for less than the price of our cheapest DE razor. Take your pick from two Classic designs: the(whose design is based on the popular Merkur 38C Long-Handled Classic "The Barber Pole" that we sell for 51.99 ) or the(whose design is based on the popular Chrome and Water Buffalo Horn Vintage-Style Safety Razor that we sell for 59.49 ). Both razors have been meticulously engineered to give you a clean, close, smooth shave. And when we throw in a 10-pack of Treet Platinum Super Stainless Steel blades, you'll understand why people were snatching this offer up the first time around. Thank you for your continued patronage and Happy Shaving. Limit 2 razors per customer. Available while supplies last. No substitutions if these razors sell out. P.S. Some of you might notice some slight differences in our newsletter formatting. Never fear. Your private information is still safe and sound with us - actually it is safer and sounder. The changes are because we have switched newsletter providers and are now exclusively powered by Mailchimp, one of the web's most trusted and exciting newsletter managers. We hope you enjoy some of the new features and specials we will be offering through our collaboration with Mailchimp in the months ahead. It's because of your enthusiasm that our newsletter campaigns are the success they have become.CLOSE Sinclair Broadcasting is said to be near a deal to buy Tribune Media. Several reports over the weekend say a buyout could be announced this week at $45 a share. Sinclair and Tribune both own local TV stations all over the country. Newslook The WGN Radio sign appears on the side of Tribune Tower on May 1, 2017, in downtown Chicago. The nation's largest broadcast group, Sinclair is reportedly close to acquiring Tribune Media. (Photo: Kiichiro Sato, AP) Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest U.S. broadcaster, will acquire Tribune Media Co., in a deal worth nearly $4 billion that will put the combined company's stations in nearly three quarters of Americans' homes. Headquartered in Baltimore, Md., Sinclair currently owns 173 stations and reaches more than 38% of the nation. The deal will widely expand Sinclair's broadcast reach. Tribune Media has 42 stations including WGN and stations in L.A., New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, and reaches more than 43% of the nation. The result of the deal, Sinclair's largest, is "a broadcaster with as close to a national footprint as you can get," Tuna Amobi, equity analyst for CFRA Research, who maintained a Buy on Sinclair stock and a target of $44 per share. "It is going to be a very transformative acquisition." The company said Monday it will pay about $43.50 for each Tribune share, or about $3.9 billion, and will assume about $2.7 billion in Tribune net debt. Sinclair apparently won out over another reported suitor: media giant 21st Century Fox, which The Financial Times reported last week was also in talks with private equity firm Blackstone in a joint bid to acquire Tribune Media. The combined company will cover 72% of U.S. homes across 108 markets including 39 of the top 50, Sinclair says. "This combination creates the largest TV broadcasting company in the country," Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley said Monday during a conference call discussing the deal. The deal wouldn't have been feasible until last month's decision by the Federal Communications Commission to ease limits on TV-station ownership. Currently, a media company can own multiple TV stations as long as its market share doesn't exceed 39% nationwide. The FCC's reversal of a rule about how market reach of UHF, or ultra-high-frequency, channels is calculated could keep the market share of a combined Sinclair and Tribune Media low enough that a deal is workable with some divestitures, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Stations acquired in the transaction are complementary to Sinclair's current reach, Ripley said, with overlap in 14 markets. "We don’t think we need to sell any of them," Ripley said. "When you take a look at all the overlaps they really have no impact on overall competition and we hope that the regulators will agree with us." However, when asked to narrow down markets where stations might need to be sold, Ripley mentioned St. Louis, Salt Lake City and Wilkes Barre, Penn. In Salt Lake City, for instance, Sinclair owns KUTV, a CBS station, and KMYU, a MyTV station, while Tribune owns KSTU, a Fox station. Ripley also said there might be a potential to swap some stations with other broadcasters to complete the deal, which Sinclair expects to close by year's end. Consumer advocates decried the merger and the FCC rules that could allow it. With more stations, Sinclair can demand larger payments to pay-TV operators wanting to retransmit their programming, said John Bergmayer, senior counsel at public interest group Public Knowledge, in a statement. "Consumers ultimately foot the bill." Sinclair has gotten some attention for producing conservative programming that is distributed to its TV stations. During the run-up to the presidential election, the Trump campaign made a deal with Sinclair to provide better media coverage for better access to Trump, news outlet Politico reported, quoting a speech by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. Sinclair told the news outlet the offer was also extended to candidate Hillary Clinton. Last month, Sinclair hired Boris Epshteyn, a special assistant to President Trump, as chief political analyst. “Despite Sinclair’s ties to the Trump administration, we hope that the Department of Justice and FCC will closely examine this deal and reject it and any other merger that leads to higher prices for consumers or harms the public interest," Bergmayer said. Tribune stockholders will get $35.00 in cash and 0.23 shares of Sinclair Class A common stock for each share of Tribune Class A common stock and Class B common stock owned. The $43.50 total per share represents a premium of about 26% over Tribune'sclosing share price on February 28, the day before media reports of a possible deal. Tribune (TRCO) shares closed Monday up more than 5% to $42.37. Sinclair (SBGI) shares closed Monday down 0.8% ito $36.12. Follow USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider. Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2pUtV10WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Sunday he will do whatever is necessary to protect the United States from a “vile enemy” that he says has waged war on innocents for too long, vowing: “This bloodshed must end, this bloodshed will end.” Trump commented on the vehicle and knife attack that killed at least seven people in London at the conclusion of a fundraiser for Ford’s Theater, scene of one of the most famous acts of bloodshed in American history: the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. “America sends our thoughts and prayers and our deepest sympathies to the victims of this evil slaughter and we renew our resolve, stronger than ever before, to protect the United States and its allies from a vile enemy that has waged war on innocent life, and it’s gone on too long,” Trump said. “This bloodshed must end, this bloodshed will end,” said the tuxedo-clad Trump, standing on stage with his wife, first lady Melania Trump. “As president, I will do what is necessary to prevent this threat from spreading to our shores and work every single day to protect the safety and security of our country, our communities and our people,” he said.Tough new clean-air rules will target drifting pollution Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson is expected to announce tough new regulations Thursday that seek to significantly reduce emissions from many coal-fired power plants. The new measures will cover plants in as many as 28 states whose pollution blows into other states. They are expected to save 14,000 to 36,000 lives a year, says Janice Nolen of the American Lung Association. But various business groups and some congressional Republicans are calling them job-killing and unnecessary. The Clean Air Transport Rule addresses the problem of coal-fired power plants in some states creating pollution that drifts into other states, which EPA is required to address under the Clean Air Act. Under the regulation, plants in affected states will begin reducing emissions in 2012. By 2014 the new regulations are expected to reduce sulfur dioxide by 73% and reduce nitrogen oxides by 54% from 2005 levels. These emissions can form fine-particle pollution and smog, both of which are particularly dangerous to people with lung and heart disease. The new regulations will likely inflame already heated opposition in some quarters to EPA regulations. A policy rider announced Wednesday by House Republicans would prevent EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants for one year. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's Interior, Environment and Related Agencies panel, said the provision was necessary to rein in out-of-control and job-killing regulation. But EPA says reduced emissions will lead to $280 billion in lower health and environmental costs a year, which the agency says far outweighs the annual cost of compliance of $800 million. How much is cheap energy worth, asks the American Lung Association's Nolen. "Is it worth 36,000 American lives a year? That's a pretty significant price to pay." Are EPA's estimates of $280 billion in health and environmental savings realistic? While it's difficult to correctly estimate the benefits and costs of such regulations, says Ted Gayer, an expert on energy economics at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., sulfur dioxide reductions generally result in big health care savings compared with costs. But that's only if they're done in a cost-effective manner using market-friendly trading systems that let companies with emission levels below what's required to sell rights to those emissions to other firms. The exact mechanism EPA will use isn't known. EPA has estimated that the benefits will outweigh the costs by a factor of between 40 and 100 to one. The standards replace the Clean Air Interstate Rule, originally proposed by the Bush administration in 2005, which was tossed out in 2008 when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered it revised, saying it did not meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act. Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.comThe Witcher (Polish: Cykl wiedźmiński) by Andrzej Sapkowski is a series of fantasy short stories (collected in two books, except for two stories) and five novels about the witcher Geralt of Rivia. The books have been adapted into a movie and television series (The Hexer), a video game series (The Witcher), a comic book and others. The novel series (excluding the short stories) is also called the Witcher Saga (Polish: saga o wiedźminie) or the Blood of the
meeting room, rendered to help the team focus on realistic lighting. Plants, fabric, people, and other in-game objects would be brought into the office, then rendered in the game to nail realistic color reproductions on TV screens. It's hard not to be skeptical that all the elements of this game—its expressive faces, its giant scenes, its rides on horses through flaming forests while Snake blasts creatures with a shotgun—will be possible without the power of the next generation of consoles. But Kojima's emotionally charged "real-time" sequence already has the next-gen upper hand, no matter where it launches.Vietnamese Reckoning: How A Corporation Got Away With Murder Matthew Barad Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 17, 2017 Hundreds of ships litter the coast of Ha Tinh, after their owner were forced to abandon them in search of employment. If you approached the beaches of Ha Tinh, Vietnam last April, they might have seemed silver at first, reflecting the light of the midday sun. But as you drew near, a much more gruesome image would have taken shape. Meters and meters of dead fish, heaped along the shoreline in piles of decaying white and grey. In total, nearly one hundred tons of marine life sat rotting along 200 km of coast. On viewing this ghastly landscape, one might imagine it was the work of an angry god, or some more pervasive evil. And an evil god it may well have been, but not one which hides in the heavens. This god is called Formosa, and she demands sacrifice. Formosa steel plant, still operating at of June 9th, 2017 The pollution which poisoned Vietnam’s oceans was traced back to a Formosa steel plant, the largest of its kind, which is still operating in Ha Tinh. One of the divers who swam to investigate the sewage died on his way to the hospital, showing signs of heavy metal poisoning. This pollution was illegal, horrific, and intentional. It was pure, unadulterated greed that took the life of Le Van Ngay — an evil so pervasive that neither law nor humanity could contain it. After the spill, unemployment ravaged coastal communities. The government was forced to ban fishing near the shore for months, while some areas saw tourism drop to 10% of what it had been before the spill. Without fish to catch or tourists to entertain, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homeland in search of work. Those that stayed, starved. In the words of one fisherman, interviewed by a contact in Vietnam, “The catastrophe caused the complete failure of my family’s business.” “The catastrophe caused the complete failure of my family’s business.” One year after the spill, the same man reported his business has “only been worse.” He also claimed that the Formosa plant has been continuously dumping sewage for months, in spite of both a law banning pollution and an empty promise made to follow it. Another coastal worker claimed that “fish carcasses painted the sea white” just a few weeks before my source spoke with him, suggesting that pollution and death have become facts of life within the realm of Formosa. To this day the water smells foul, and the natives dare not wade into it. But even if pollution has indeed been halted, it will still take a decade for the coast to recover. That means a decade of poverty, starvation, and suffering for coastal communities. We may not know for certain whether the pollution continues; however, Formosa has shown her willingness to throw away lives in the name of profit, and there is no reason to believe that this cruel deity, in all her corporate horror, would not strike again. “Fish carcasses painted the sea white.” In return for this blood sacrifice, Formosa paid a $500 million fine. While this may seem impressive, it amounts to less than 1% of Formosa’s U.S. profits alone. To make matters worse, most of this money was never given to those affected, or even to the cleanup effort. At best, the Vietnamese government has been grossly negligent. At worst, it has been incredibly corrupt. One man said frankly, “We suspect that our money has gone into someone else’s pocket.” What hellscape do we inhabit where hundreds of thousands of lives can be ruined in the name of capital? Even with the fines and supposed new regulations, Formosa remains incredibly profitable. For this deity of unmatched cruelty, $500,000,000, one life, and decades of degradation are merely operating costs, expended in the name of further, cancerous growth. The only reason I am even aware of this ongoing catastrophe is because an incredibly brave young woman contacted my organization and asked for our help. She lives under a government which regularly suppresses its citizens, and faced a very real danger coming to us. And she will willingly face those dangers again, and again, and again until the Formosa plant is closed and her nation’s beauty restored. Those of us in the west may be unable to press the Vietnamese government into responsible legislation, or force Taiwan to regulate its native industries humanely. But we can rise against Formosa’s holdings in the United States. Here is a link to Formosa’s website. In the name of justice, in the name of equity, and in the name of Le Van Ngay, we must not back down. We must call, write, vote, scream, and protest until this god, this idol, this disgrace, ceases to exist.This 1982 Jeep CJ8 Scrambler recently received an extensive body-off restoration starting with a clean no-rust example. Restored between 2011–2014 the seller says the build included a color change repaint, a Novak 5.3L LS engine conversion with an uprated fuel-injected engine, new AX15 transmission, and new drivetrain installed less than 500 miles ago. The seller says the entire drivetrain from radiator to rear axle is new and the build process is documented in photos below. The seller says he’s invested over $12,000 in driveline parts alone. This Scrambler looks great in new black paint, fresh body decals and chrome accents. The seller says it runs great and is very sound structurally and mechanically. Photos from the restoration and receipts can be viewed in the gallery below. With 7,759 Jeep Scramblers produced in 1982 they are increasingly rare today in this condition. AMC introduced the Jeep Scrambler CJ8 to compete with the Ford Ranger and Chevy S-10, featuring 4×4 performance and Jeep toughness. This Scrambler has been thoughtfully redone and would be a nice addition for a collector or enthusiast. Here is the truck at the start of restoration. The only rust needing attention was the windshield frame which was replaced with a new reproduction piece. There is one body imperfection—a small dent and paint splinter on the hood (shown in gallery). The seller describes the paint as factory-like, very good, but short of show quality. A stainless steel hardware kit was used during reassembly. Doors were disassembled and painted, then rebuilt with new latches and rubber. All trim and reproduction Scrambler graphics were applied after the repaint, with chrome bumpers and mirrors finishing it off nicely. The factory-style interior presents a polished utilitarian look with black metal dash, other painted surfaces and all rubber components presenting very well. The original front seats show slight wear while the rear seat is new. Modern shoulder harness belts were added for safety. All gauges, lights and electrics work well, with a few gauges replaced for 100% functionality. The only issue is a non-working parking brake. The seller replaced the heater core and all heater control cables. There seems to be no audio with blanking plate shown. The fold-down front windscreen is a cool feature, although few choose to use it. Nice looking black carpet mats with white Jeep logos add a nice comfortable touch. Under the bonnet the seller installed a 23k mile, 2007 fuel-injected GM 5.3L LS truck engine, as part of the Novak LS engine conversion. He says it runs great and a good power fit for the vehicles other components. The engine bay is clean and tidy with fresh black painted firewall and all wiring in order. The seller says the entire drivetrain from radiator to rear axle is new and was installed less than 500 miles ago. The install included a new AX-15 5-speed manual transmission (regarded as the best five-speed transmission ever installed into a Jeep) new clutch, motor mounts, wiring harness, ECM computer, aluminum radiator, bell housing as well as new drive accessories on the front of the motor all from Novak for reliability. The Scrambler chassis is straight, rust-free and includes a new limited-slip Dana 44 rear axle installed to handle the V8. The seller says the factory front axle was completely rebuilt, with a new steering box and ball joints added to insure tightness. New disc brakes were installed and use full-size Ford SUV pads and rotors for easy sourcing. Both axles received 4.10 gear ratios on new carriers. The seller has provided several photos of the undercarriage and suspension which shows a great unmolested, clean condition. A 4″ Skyjacker Softride leaf spring kit and Skyjacker shocks were installed, while chrome wheels and fresh BF Goodrich Mud-Terrain T/A tires enhance the trucks look. Locking hubs on the front axles help reduce driveline wear when in 2WD. The restoration was well done and the results are apparent. The seller says he spared no expense on the build. The truck has 216k chassis miles but less than 1000 on the rebuild. The truck is being sold with a clear Ohio title and documents of all new components.No Comments Man in Georgia Cited for Eating While Driving An Alabama man got more than he bargained for when he ordered a cheeseburger from the drive-thru of a McDonald’s in Marietta, Georgia. After pulling away from the fast food joint and digging into his double quarter pounder with cheese, Madison Turner was pulled over by Cobb County police and cited for “eating while driving.” “The officer explained to me that he observed me eating a burger for 2 miles,” Turner told WSB-TV Atlanta. “He said specifically three times, ‘you can’t just go down the road eating a hamburger.’” Turner was cited under Georgia’s distracted driving law, which reads, in part: “A driver shall exercise due care in operating a motor vehicle on the highways of this state and shall not engage in any actions which shall distract such driver from the safe operation of such vehicle.” Distracted Driving: Put the Phone Away and Stay Connected with New HondaLink System While that sounds like the kind of thing aimed at criminalizing Homer Simpson’s toaster-oven-and-fax-machine-equipped vehicle, the law’s wording is vague enough that it can apparently be used to punish someone just for having one hand on the wheel and one hand on a cheeseburger. Distracted Driving: More Advanced Driving Tips from Popular Mechanics “Maybe I was enjoying the burger too much,” admitted Turner, who plans on fighting the ticket. “[Maybe] I needed to tone it down. I was certainly willing to do so, but I didn’t expect to be fined or punished.” Unless you’re eating a cheeseburger in a car like Kate Upton did in her infamous Hardee’s commercial, it’s probably impossible to be a dangerous distraction to yourself or others due to excessive burger enjoyment: News Source: WSB-TV AtlantaBeing a Malayalee, I have always gloated on the fact that I can call the 'God's Own Country' as my place of origin. Though I have spent nearly three decades in Delhi, I can still go on and on about how beautiful, divinely green and pristine is Kerala's natural beauty. And now am up to some more gloating as one more speck from my majestic homeland is taking over the world's imagination Kakkathuruthu (tiny Crow Island in Malayalam) is a tiny land mass in Kerala's Alappuzha district that has been listed in National Geographic's 'Around the World in 24 Hours', a photographic tour of travel-worthy spots across the world. Flicker "It is a matter of pride for us to be listed by NatGeo, which is among the leading magazines in the world," said Kerala Tourism Minister A.C. Moideen. The tiny island that can be reached only by boats, was captured by the magazine photographers during the time of dusk (around 6PM) when "the shadows lengthen and the sky shifts from pale blue to sapphire". TOI Don't Miss 94.6 K SHARES 49.6 K SHARES 65.1 K SHARES 20.1 K SHARES 35.3 K SHARES The magazine describes vividly, "the sunset in Kerala is greeted by a series of rituals -- Saree clad women head home in skiffs, fishermen light lamps and cast nets into the lagoon and bats swoop across the horizon snapping up moths." "If dawn is awakening and daytime illumination, then twilight is transcendence, a final burst of vitality before darkness falls," adds NatGeo Expeditions. TOI The other destinations included in the magazine's list are the Northern Lights zone in Norway at 12 am, Hawaii at 5 am, Paris at 6 am, San Francisco at 7 am, Abu Dhabi at 8 am, Melbourne at 9 am, New York at 8 pm, Budapest (Hungary) at 10 pm. With inputs from IANSThe concerns over the oil leaking from the BP well in the Gulf are increasingly focusing on the amount of oil that is still leaking from the well, and the overall rate at which the well has been producing oil and gas in the past. It is now possible to view the site where the riser insertion tube (RIT) is drawing oil from the well. Clearly there is still a considerable amount of gas and oil escaping into the sea, despite BP now drawing some 5,000 bd up through the RIT. This has led BP to recognize that the spill is larger than had originally been estimated. (Note that there are live feeds from Senator Nelson’s office and the House, both of which can be overloaded with demand. (They were when I just tried to get an illustrative frame.) This, instead, is a shot from a video of the remaining leak that is just above the BOP, and that is not currently addressed, but should also be stopped when the well is killed. Part of the problem remains in the complexity of the flow of an expanding gas in oil, coming out into an unconfined (apart from the sea pressure) space. Estimates of the flow have ranged up to 100,000 bd. At the moment the evaluation is relying largely on either visual evaluations, or relatively crude analysis, albeit with sophisticated systems, based on estimated behaviors of the flow volumes. Whether the flow has, as BP have stated, been significantly reduced by the riser insertion tube (RIT) tap, or whether the current tap has had little significant effect is largely, at present, left up to individual judgment without measurements of the actual flows. Unfortunately useful real information is not being provided in quite the open and transparent way that BP and the Unified Command had originally promised. And, having watched the video of the flow intermittently this afternoon, it largely depended on where the ROV had positioned the camera as to how much gas was visible in the plume. Since BP are the ones getting much of the data, it is therefore not surprising that the Federal Government is beginning to lose patience with them over this situation. It may be, as BP have stated, that a higher proportion of the flow is natural gas, and that this distorts the evaluation at the mouth of the riser. However it is possible, based on other available measurements, including those established using the gamma ray survey equipment from Sandia, to get a ball-park estimate of the flow upstream of the riser end. It is disappointing that BP has chosen not to make that information public. Public anger at BP is continuing to build. The arrival of oil, both as crude and emulsion in the Gulf Shores is going to become significantly worse in the short term, and questions will likely turn to how this oil was able to circumvent the booms that have been put in place to contain it. At the last count the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command lists the following efforts to stop the oil reaching the shore: • Personnel were quickly deployed and more than 24,000 are currently responding to protect the shoreline and wildlife. • More than 1,000 vessels are responding on site, including skimmers, tugs, barges, and recovery vessels to assist in containment and cleanup efforts—in addition to dozens of aircraft, remotely operated vehicles, and multiple mobile offshore drilling units. • More than 1.43 million feet of containment boom and 560,000 feet of sorbent boom have been deployed to contain the spill—and approximately 370,000 feet of containment boom and 1.28 million feet of sorbent boom are available. • Approximately 8.3 million gallons of an oil-water mix have been recovered. • Approximately 655,000 gallons of total dispersant have been deployed—600,000 on the surface and 55,000 subsea. More than 340,000 gallons are available. 17 staging areas are in place and ready to protect sensitive shorelines, including: Dauphin Island, Ala., Orange Beach, Ala., Theodore, Ala., Panama City, Fla., Pensacola, Fla., Port St. Joe, Fla., St. Marks, Fla., Amelia, La., Cocodrie, La., Grand Isle, La., Shell Beach, La., Slidell, La., St. Mary, La.; Venice, La., Biloxi, Miss., Pascagoula, Miss., and Pass Christian, Miss. It is perhaps a little surprising, seeing this effort, that the oil has been able to bypass the barriers and to come ashore in the volumes that are being reported. Regardless of the outcome of the top kill try that will likely take place this weekend, the oil that has been released will be the center of public attention for the next few weeks. Public concern has already led EPA to change their mind over the use of the dispersant Corexit 9500 being injected into the flow underwater. (A selection previously approved by EPA, after testing both on the surface and with undersea release.) But if the kill works this weekend, that concern will go away, while the concerns over the quantity of the oil released and its effects on the beaches and marshes will become more of the headline. The EPA directive reads in part:The man allegedly behind Norway’s devastating terror attacks, Anders Behring Breivik, is now under arrest. And he should count himself lucky for—if entirely undeserving of—a penal system in that country that is among the cushiest in the world. There’s no capital punishment, and the longest jail term allowed is 21 years (a caveat: if a prisoner is deemed to still be a threat, his sentence can be extended in five-year blocks indefinitely, though it’s highly unlikely, according to Norwegian officials). In Norway, rehabilitation is the guiding principle, not punishment—a somewhat difficult notion to swallow given the gravity and callousness of his crimes. Norway’s newest jail may hold rapists and murderers, but Halden Prison—the country’s second largest and most secure facility—looks more like a posh sleepaway camp. In fact, architects say they purposely tried to avoid an “institutional feel.” When it opened in 2010, some news accounts called it the “most humane” prison in the world. Indeed, one of the many perks at Halden is flat-screen televisions in inmates’ rooms. There’s no HBO, though, so reruns of Oz and The Wire are contraband. Still, prisoners get private cells with mini-fridges and large windows to let in more sunlight. Here, then, is a quick tour of what luxuries may await Breivik behind bars. (That’s a figure of speech, of course: There are no iron bars at Halden.) Read more at Foreign Policy magazine.Cheeky and inventive, Dhoni is rarely textbook © AFP In the dying overs of an ODI game, Iftikhar Anjum - the right-arm medium-pacer from Pakistan, moved the fine-leg fielder inside the circle. Next, and according to plan, he bowled a lethal yorker. Unabashedly, the batsman went down on one knee to sweep him past short fine leg. That was a tad too much for Anjum to abide by. Next ball, he sent the fine leg back to patrol the fence and brought in the third-man fielder inside the circle. This time, the batsman played a cheeky reverse-sweep past the short third-man fielder. While most batsmen would go on the defensive when the bowler is on the offensive, few, very few, retort in an equally or more aggressive and assertive fashion. This batsman did, then, and continues to even now. Mahendra Singh Dhoni may have, over the years been recognized for his gritty and unruffled sort of cricket, but it was this match - an India A encounter against Pakistan A in Kenya way back in 2004 - with his two fours in two balls, that scripted the story of his years to come. As his teammate and as a spectator, it told me almost everything there was to know about this man. For starters, it was quite evident that Dhoni wasn't the one to fuss about copious technical jargons painstakingly etched in the many revered coaching manuals. That he would create his own rules - with an air of self-assurance, was for everyone to see. The fact that his game wasn't built to please the purists parked in the plush President Box but for fans in the gallery, was unmistakable too. More importantly, it was Dhoni's raw passion and gusto that seemed to be defining each of his innings. Looking at him, one felt that he played for the sheer joy of it all. He has both the brutal force to create a big shot out of nothing and also the finesse to place the ball between the two fielders at the deep It's ironic that Dhoni, ever since he's become the captain of the Indian cricket team, talks only about the process and not the results. That's a journey only a few take and accomplish. From a technical vantage point, Dhoni's batting followed the simple principles of finding a way to score runs on every ball that was bowled to him. He built his initial game on his ability to clear the fence, for he had the strength to do it with aplomb against the slower bowlers. He refrained from using his feet too much to generate power to clear the fence and hence was always a difficult batsman to bowl to. It's a lot easier to bowl to a batsman who's a slave of his feet movement to generate power and momentum because often the eagerness to get close to the ball ends up in moving out a little earlier than one should, and that gives the bowler a chance to adjust. But if the batsman stays glued to his crease even when the intention is to take the aerial route, invariably the bowler falls into the trap. While he wasn't equally comfortable against the quicker bowlers in the beginning, he got better as his career progressed. There was something else, equally critical, which evolved at a rapid pace - his ability to read the game and change his game accordingly. If you know that you can clear the fence at will, you often end up focusing and banking on that strength a bit too much. So much so that you completely ignore the importance of rotating the strike and playing the street-smart brand of cricket. Well, why wouldn't you, for taking six singles off six balls is a painstakingly slow and tiring process, especially when you can get as many off one ball. A batsman called Atul Bedade comes to my mind here - he had the gift of hitting sixes at will. Ironically, his international career got over before you could spell 'cricket' because he didn't have a second gear. But Dhoni's maturity belied his age, for he realized the importance of taking singles very early in his career. Even though he knew how to clear the fence, he would run between the wickets like his life depended on it. Even today, after all the wear and tear, he's still extremely fast between the stumps. He's also an astute judge of how many runs are on offer considering the strengths and weaknesses of the fielder pouncing on the ball - and that's a quality worth its weight in gold. In fact, during most team meetings, players settle on throwing to the other end when Dhoni is batting, simply because it's so difficult to keep up with his pace. No wonder we seldom see him falling short of the crease. He's also blessed with legs like tree-trunks, and that has little to do with the amount of time he spends in the gym. He isn't big on lifting a lot of weights or long distance running but focuses on sprints all the time. During the same India A tour of Zimbabwe and Kenya in 2004, he would invariably find ways to chicken out of running long-distance. He'd not only be the first to participate in the short sprints session, but would come first in every sprint that we ran. He admitted that he found running long-distance quite monotonous. Dhoni has always understood the value of running singles, and even today he's one of the quickest between the wickets in the team © Getty Images Fortunately, there's never a monotonous moment when he's in the middle with the willow in his hands, for the man is always on the move. While his legs are his best ally when it comes to running between the wickets, it's his hands that do most of the talking while batting, especially against the quicker bowlers. Playing spin is his strength and that's when his feet complement the hands to either get to the pitch of the ball or take him deep inside the crease to get more time to hit the short ball. He has both the brutal force to create a big shot out of nothing and also the finesse to place the ball between the two fielders at the deep for a quick couple of runs. Spare a moment of thought for the fielders stationed on the fence when Dhoni is batting, for half the time they're looking upwards and backwards to see the ball sail over their heads into the crowd, which pushes them right to the edge of the fence. And when they're sitting on the fence without taking a long start they're made to look like fools, for Dhoni steals a double by taking the pace off the ball. His astute sense of acceleration is the most fascinating part of his limited overs game, for he invariably starts slowly focusing only on ones and twos, then an occasional boundary to keep the required run rate - if batting second - in check and then he owns the strike to bludgeon everything that's sent his way. His batting is a perfect concoction of a butcher's strength and a surgeon's precision. It's not just the slow bowling that he owns in the limited overs format, for even the world's quickest bowlers don't feel completely at ease while bowling to him in the death overs. Sample this - what would Dale Steyn or Lasith Malinga bowl to a set batsman in the death overs? It's quite straightforward that they'll use their extra pace to bowl bouncers and yorkers, and use the same pace as a decoy to slip in a few slower ones. Now, what are Dhoni's strengths? He's not the one who gets perturbed by bouncers; in fact, he's capable of hitting them for fours every time a bowler attempts that. He's found a unique way of clearing the front leg to get under the ball whenever a yorker is attempted, and his ability to stay very still at the crease in the death overs coupled with his arm-strength allows him to delay his shot without losing momentum or power the moment he spots a slower one. Since Dhoni has efficient responses to whatever a fast bowler can throw at him in the death overs, it's fair to say that his staying till the end is usually fruitful for the team he's batting for. Dhoni can play almost every shot in the book. Yet, somehow he hasn't mastered the cover drive, and in my opinion, that's one shot a batsman can't do without Batting in Test matches is a different kettle of fish though, for that's where his technique - or the lack of it - comes to the forefront and makes him fallible. Dhoni can play almost every shot that's there in the book; in fact, along the way he has also invented a few, like the helicopter shot. Yet, somehow he hasn't mastered the cover drive, and in my opinion, that's one shot a batsman can't do without. Most fast bowlers keep a few fielders in the slip cordon and bowl outside off (Test cricket allows them to drift further away from the batsman too) at a length that draws the batsman forward. There are only two shots that you can play on these deliveries - leave them alone for nothing, or drive through the covers for runs. Dhoni's basic instinct to attack and accumulate runs forces him to play the drive but his lack of feet movement keeps him a little away from the ball on most occasions, resulting in outside edges. He's predominantly a bottom-handed player and most of his strokes, even on the front foot through the off side bear an imprint of the bottom hand in action. Bottom hand domination coupled with lack of feet movement is the perfect recipe for disaster when playing an aggressive stroke off a fast bowler on a slightly helpful pitch. Also, the same can land you in trouble if the ball bends back in sharply after pitching because the front foot hasn't gone anywhere. © Harper Sport But you can always count on Dhoni to find a new way to deal with his limitations. He's coined quite a bizarre way of handling his weakness - he would walk across and down the pitch to get close to the ball, even in a Test match. Moving so much takes him outside off and then even if he gets beaten by pace of a sharp in-dipper, he gets stuck outside off ruling out the leg-before dismissal. His method isn't foolproof and that's why he hasn't scored a single Test hundred outside the subcontinent but it's still good enough to make him stay relevant. In 2014, during India's last tour of England, he displayed another facet of his mental strength - he walked down the pitch and defended, took a lot of body blows and most importantly left a lot of balls alone. He spent close to twenty hours on the pitch in the five Test matches and showed that mental resolve can even take care of a slightly inferior technique. Dhoni didn't feature much in the Zimbabwe leg of that India A tour. I would often find him bowling in the nets. As roommates we would get talking and I would tell him to be slightly greedy and bat in the nets, for his chance looked around the corner. His response was an offer - 'I'll bowl to you also in the nets if you wish, and as far as my turn in the middle is concerned, I'll be fine.' The manner in which he uttered those words betrayed his mindset, for he wasn't arrogant about his chances but simply confident that he would succeed, and boy, wasn't he right! The foundation of his cricket is not just his unique technique, his astute cricket brain or his undeniably good luck. It is his belief in his own abilities that has brought him thus far. This is an excerpt from Aakash Chopra's book The Insider: Decoding the craft of cricket, published by Harper Sports © ESPN Sports Media Ltd.Benxihu Colliery Disaster (1942) – China The Benxihu colliery disaster in China cost 1,549 lives and is believed to be the worst coal mining disaster ever. The tragedy occurred on 26 April 1942 in the Honkeiko coal mine, located near Benxi in the Liaoning province of China. The fatal explosion of the underground coal mine was caused by a mixture of gas and coal dust. The underground fire exploded out of the mine shaft entrance. The ventilation system was shut off and the pit head was sealed by the mine operator to deprive the underground of oxygen. An electric fence was erected around the pit to obstruct the entry of miner’s relatives. The coal mine was forcefully operated by the Japanese until the end of World War II in 1945. The Soviet Union conducted an investigation of the mine accident, following the liberation of Liaoning province from the Japanese Army’s control. Carbon monoxide poisoning due to the closure of the ventilation system was reported to have caused most of the deaths. Courrieres Coal Mine Disaster (1906) – France The Courrieres mine disaster in France, with a total death toll of 1,099, is the second deadliest coal mining disaster in history. The coal mining catastrophe occurred on 10 March 1906 due to a massive explosion sparked by an underground fire in one of the pits of the Courrieres Colliery. The fire was detected around 270m underground in the Cecil pit in afternoon the day before the explosion. The outlets of the pit were closed to starve the fire of oxygen. The next morning a huge explosion emanated from the still-smouldering fire at the pit and caused a blast on the surface. Workers inside the mine’s deep tunnels, as well as people on the surface, were killed in the disaster. The fissures in the pit’s walls were believed to have allowed the flammable gases to cause a coal dust explosion underground. The cause of the initial fire was suspected to be either because of the mishandling of mining explosives or due to the ignition of methane by the flame from a miner’s lamp. Mitsubishi Hojyo Coal Mine Disaster (1914) – Japan Mitsubishi Hojyo coal mine disaster, the deadliest mining accident in Japan, caused 687 deaths. It was caused by a gas explosion at the Mitsubishi Hojyo coal mine located in the Kyushu Island of Japan. The disaster took place on 15 December 1914. The gas explosion, which occurred underground, caused thick black smoke to come gushing out of the air vents before it finally blew the elevator cage 15m up into the air with a massive blast. People within a 200m radius of the mine entrance were also impacted by the explosion. Laobaidong Colliery Disaster (1960) – China Laobaidong coal mine disaster, the second deadliest in China after the Benxihu colliery disaster, killed 684 people. The disaster occurred on 9 May 1960 in the Laobaidong coal mine, located near Datong in the Shanxi province of China. The accident was caused by methane explosion. The information about the Laobaidong catastrophe was suppressed by the Chinese Government for more than three decades until it was revealed in 1992. Laobaidong disaster is the most fatal coal mine disaster since the inception of People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Mitsui Miike Coal Mine Disaster (1963) – Japan The Mitsui Miike coal mine explosion on 9 November 1963, was the second deadliest coal mining disaster in Japan after the Mitsubishi Hojyo Coal Mine Disaster in 1914. 458 miners were killed in the accident and 833 were injured. It was a coal dust explosion around 500m below the mine’s ground level entrance. The explosion led to a massive blast which collapsed the tunnel roof at multiple locations. Most of the deaths were due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Most of the poisoned survivors suffered severe brain damage. Miike was one of the oldest and largest coal mines in Japan. It was taken over by Mitsui in 1899. The coal mine ceased its operations in 1997. Senghenydd Colliery Disaster (1913) – United Kingdom The Senghenydd Colliery disaster is the worst ever mining tragedy in the United Kingdom. The disaster, also known as the Senghenydd Explosion, occurred at the Universal Colliery in Senghenydd near Caerphilly, Glamorgan, Wales, on 14 October 1913. The fatal disaster was a result of a coal dust explosion in the underground mine. 439 miners were killed in the accident. Most of the miners who survived the fire and explosion were killed due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Firedamp ignition, caused by electric sparking possibly from equipment such as electric bell signalling gear, was suspected to have started the explosion. The initial fire ignited the coal dust present on the floor and the explosion travelled through most of the underground workings. Coalbrook mine disaster (1960) – South Africa Coalbrook mine disaster with 435 deaths is the worst ever disaster in South Africa’s mining history. The disaster took place on 21 January 1960 at the Coalbrook North Mine of the Clydesdale Colliery near Sasolburg, Orange Free State, South Africa. The collapse of around 3km² of underground mine area caused the disaster. The underground collapse was caused by the disintegration of around 900 underground pillars supporting the tunnel roofs. Around 1,000 miners were at work underground at the time of collapse. Half of them could survive by escaping via an incline shaft. Few rescue workers also died getting trapped with collapsed ground and methane gas. Wankie Colliery Disaster (1972) – Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) Wankie Colliery Disaster in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) killed 426 people. The disaster occurred on 6 June 1972 at the No. 2 mine shaft of the Wankie Colliery, in north-western Rhodesia. The disaster was caused by multiple explosions in the underground coal mine. The explosion turned into a blast which devastated the main shaft. Four men were killed instantly near the surface. More than 400 mine workers trapped amid rock and deadly methane and carbon monoxide fumes died in the underground. Coal disaster victims included 36 Europeans and 390 Africans. The initial explosion was suspected to have emanated from a dynamite magazine. There were also two new explosions on the next day that filled the underground tunnels with clouds of poisonous gas making the rescue attempts impossible. Oaks Colliery Explosion (1866) – United Kingdom Oaks Colliery explosion is the second deadliest coal mine disaster in the United Kingdom after the disaster at Senghenydd Colliery. The disaster took place on 12 December 1866 at the Oaks Colliery, near Stairfoot, Barnsley, in South Yorkshire. The death toll of this major nineteenth century coal mine disaster is reported to be 388. It was a firedamp and coal dust explosion suspected to have been ignited by the digging of new workings at the underground mine. The mine was known for containing firedamp since its first disaster in 1847 that killed 73 people. There were two more explosions on 13 December 1866, which killed
Android device. Book directly from the app, email the flight info to yourself or a friend, or save it in the app for later. ABBYY Lingvo Dictionaries Get access to 58 basic dictionaries for 27 languages for only $2.99. Over 200 additional premium dictionaries for 20 languages are available for In-App Purchase. Electronic versions of dictionaries from the world’s leading publishers, including HarperCollins, Compact Verlag, K Dictionaries, and dictionaries compiled by ABBYY lexicographers. Key features: • Reliable and accurate translations • Fast and easy look-up • Comprehensive entries from several dictionaries in one window • Native audio pronunciations for most common words (in some dictionaries) • Spelling suggestions for mistyped words • Ability to look up words from the clipboard • History aTimer YO DAWG, I heard you like timers, so here are 15 on one screen. -- aTimer allows you to configure fifteen individual countdown or stopwatch timers for common activities, allowing you to quickly and effortlessly get on with the task at hand. Start a countdown timer, and when it expires, aTimer will sound a short alarm and vibrate your phone. Long press on a timer to re-configure or stop it. Now with a widget for your home screen. LifeShield Phone The free LifeShield app expands your home protection, giving you real time access and control of your LifeShield security system from anywhere in the world at any time of the day or night. The app is designed to seamlessly sync with the LifeShield system you’ve set up in your home, apartment or small business, allowing you system management and monitoring. Live Wallpapers Exodus Live Wallpaper A mass of blocks flips and fades across your home screen. Swipe the screen and watch as the mass changes direction and more blocks fade in. Features: Many options to determine how blocks flip, fade in or out, and what direction they travel Change how many blocks you want and how their sizes vary Control colors, lighting, and viewpoint positioning Choose from several built-in themes to see a variety of configurations Take screen shots of your creations and share them with your friends Use the Randomize feature to come up with an infinite number of new themes Christmas Rink Live Wallpaper Skate right into the Christmas with this beautiful winter-themed Live Wallpaper. Featuring several characters who are gliding along to the softly falling snow. Take a closer look and you can spot... someone really familiar. Who is it? Oh no, I won't tell, you guess or see for yourself :-) The Aurora FREE The aurora which is one of the natural phenomena that are the most beautiful on the earth. This live wallpaper is the aurora animation like a curtain of the light that appear in the starry night of the coniferous forest. The appearance of aurora will never be the same. They constantly change their shapes, and they repeat come and gone over and over. Galaxy Light LWP Galaxy Light live wallpaper, beautiful light emits from the galaxy core. WTF Apps Of The Week Kiss Her More "In the first level Daniel will have to kiss Selena while she's sleeping and try not to wake her up" - does that prompt an "awww" or a feeling that you're about to watch a creepy XXX scene? I'm leaning over to the latter myself... -- Daniel and Nick both want to kiss Selena. They love her and want to gain her love. Which of them will kiss her more and win her heart? Play this 3 level game with your stars and try to finish them all without losing. In the first level Daniel will have to kiss Selena while she's sleeping and try not to wake her up. In the second level is up to Nick to kiss Selena while driving but paying attention to the road too and trying not to get hit by another car. And in the last level is Selena that kisses the boys but she has to be careful not to be seen by the other one. Enjoy! The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch Bird Poop Ready, set, poop! -- Bird Poop is a fun addicting game where you play as a little bird who has the pleasure of dropping his.. well.. droppings on unsuspecting people and cars. Hit multiple people in a row to unlock Poop Streaks and increase your high score! Just a warning, watch out for that Electrician. Speaker Cleaner If this works, I will eat the dirt that comes out of my speakers. -- Get rid of dirt and debris stuck in your Androids speaker. The Speaker Cleaner App uses a unique frequency that blows the crud right out of your phone to clean your speakers & improve overall sound quality. Put away the cotton swabs, toothpicks and sticky putty. Now there’s a better way to get rid of dust, lint, ashes, cheesy poof residue and other undesirable particles jammed in your speaker. The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch Know A Worthy New App? Let Us Know! If you have an application in mind for the next issue of the roundup, feel free to send us an email and let us know. Important: there are 2 requirements in order for the app to be considered, listed below. the app's launch date has to be no longer than 2 weeks ago it has to be original, ground-breaking, well-reviewed, interesting, fun, etc - the cream of the crop Now, if and only if the above requirements have been satisfied, fire up an email to this address: [email protected]. 1 sponsored placement per week is available (your app would be featured at the top and marked as sponsored) - please contact us for details.Amid all the speculation about the validity of Tour de France leader Chris Froome's performances, three-time Tour champion Greg LeMond assured that the Sky rider's performance is 'within the realm of human performance'. Related Articles Froome dismisses Vayer's power estimates Vayer says Froome's supposed Ventoux data was leaked, not hacked Leaked power files have done nobody any good, says Froome Tour de France: Froome hits back at doubts and innuendo Froome calls out 'irresponsible' Tour de France reporting Tensions remain for Froome at Tour de France Ahead of Froome's spectacular ride on the first Pyrenean mountain finish in La Pierre-Saint-Martin, a video surfaced online that overlaid Froome's supposed power data onto footage of the 2013 Mont Ventoux stage of the Tour de France, where Froome dropped Movistar's star climber Nairo Quintana in a similar manner to this year's stage 10. Froome's power was estimated to be approximately 6 watts per kilogram on the climb of the Mont Ventoux, values that LeMond says are reasonable, especially in comparison with the power numbers riders were pushing back in the era of rampant EPO use, where race leaders were putting out up to 7 watts per kilogram. But, LeMond said on Eurosport, "I don't think you should ever make that judgement off of one climb", and called for a longitudinal study of power data combined with the biological passport to measure performance. "You have to combine the [physiological] testing with the passport. Can people do what Chris did on the first mountain stage? I think it was 6.1 watts per kilo, which I think that's within the realm of human performance." Team Sky has demonised Antoine Vayer, the former Festina team trainer who made Froome's data public, but LeMond agreed with Vayer's assertions that there should be nothing secret when it comes to race data. "I talked to him... he's just saying release the data," LeMond said. "I looked at it, and I didn't really see a whole lot to be worried about and so, and I think he's just pushing for transparency. Not to critique Brailsford or anybody at Sky but when you hear marginal gains, this is kind of what [Lance] Armstrong used in the past, so that kind of brings up a little bit of sensitivity." Team Sky has not publicly released Froome's power data, but LeMond said it is easy to estimate given the data of other riders who have posted their power numbers on public forums. LeMond stressed that it is important for teams to make the actual power data from the meters available. Estimates (such as Michele Ferrari's VAM, or speed of elevation gain) do not take into account factors such as rolling resistance, temperature, wind, etc. To judge whether or not a performance is 'human', one must look at these numbers across many days of racing. "Everybody has got to understand, it's not just a watt for a split second, what we're looking for is long-term, over 20-30 minutes or 40 minutes at aerobic capacity, as close as you can get to your VO2 max... all the world-class athletes are trying to get as close as we can to our VO2 max, that's a stable output when you can do that for higher work loads, not for just 30 minutes but repeat, even an hour and a half over a day's stage, that's what makes the difference," he said. "That's the best indicator," LeMond said. "Ultimately, it doesn't matter if it's one long stage or short stage, ultimately somebody's going to have maximum watts per kilo, and if you record that enough, it's no different than a passport profiling, you'll get to see if these rides are consistent." LeMond thinks the UCI should use all the information available to keep up with riders' performances. "This is not about Chris Froome, or anybody, it's more about the tools are there with the UCI, the Tour de France. It's not just about one rider, it's nobody likes to have speculation," LeMond said, adding that physiological testing should be done across the entire pro peloton. "Pro teams are all doing it right now, so it's not really that difficult to do."The seed vaults are at the end of a 120m long tunnel The temperature inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault will drop to -18C (0F) in order to preserve the seeds. Built deep inside a mountain, it aims to safeguard the world's crops from future disasters, such as nuclear wars, asteroids or dangerous climate change. The first seeds are scheduled to arrive at the Arctic site in mid-February. The Norwegian government is paying the $9m (£4.5m) construction costs of the vault, which will have enough space to house 4.5 million seed samples. The collection and maintenance of the seeds is being co-ordinated by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which has responsibility of ensuring the "conservation of crop diversity in perpetuity". "The seed vault is the perfect place for keeping seeds safe for centuries," said Cary Fowler, the Trust's executive director. "At these temperatures, seeds for important crops like wheat, barley and peas can last for up to 1,000 years." Future proof The seed vault will be built 120m (390ft) inside a mountain on Spitsbergen, one of four islands that make up Svalbard. The site, roughly 1,000km (600 miles) north of mainland Norway, was chosen as the location for the vault because it was very remote and it also offered the level of stability required for the long-term project. The vast collection is intended to act as insurance against disasters so food production can be restarted anywhere on the planet following a regional or global catastrophe. "It is very satisfying to see the vault evolve from a bold concept to an impressive facility that has everything we need to protect crop biodiversity," said Terje Riis-Johansen, the Norwegian Agriculture and Food Minister. Engineers are using the surrounding rock and permafrost as a "cold store", an energy efficient approach that has become popular in Norway. "We believe the design of the vault will ensure that the seeds will stay well preserved even if forces such as global warming raise temperatures outside the facility," explained project manager Magnus Tveiten.REGINA – Mark’s is partnering with the Canadian Football League to deliver something new and exciting for Canadian football fans. Mark’s CFL Week – coming to Saskatchewan March 21-26 – will bring together the game’s biggest stars, leading coaches, top prospects and most beloved legends in one place for one amazing fan experience. “We couldn’t be more excited to our CFL partnership to the next level by becoming the title sponsor of Mark’s CFL take Week. As a Canadian company, we want Canadians to know we love football just as much as they do and what better way to do that, than this,” said David Lui, Vice-President of Marketing at Mark’s. “This will be the biggest off-season event in the long and storied history of the league,” said Christina Litz, Senior Vice-President of Marketing and Content at the CFL. “We’re combining some of the most important events on our calendar, such as the CFL Combine for draft eligible prospects, with new opportunities for fans, including a week long Fan Fest, a VIP reception unveiling the 2017 Class of the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame, and much, much more.” At a special media event today at the Victoria Square Shopping Centre’s Mark’s store, details of the Mark’s CFL Week line-up was unveiled. Mark's CFL Week Announcement [1 of 24] (Mark Taylor/CFL.ca) Here are some of the highlights: Star players are coming: 50 of the CFL’s top players will be in town for the week to attend various events, including a massive TSN/RDS/adidas photo and video shoot for the upcoming season. Stars confirmed so far include Bo Levi Mitchell, Jerome Messam, DeVaris Daniels, Alex Singleton, Charleston Hughes, Mike Reilly, Adarius Bowman, Almondo Sewell, John White, JC Sherritt, Naaman Roosevelt, Rob Bagg, Henoc Muamba, Willie Jefferson, Kevin Glenn, Duron Carter, Andrew Harris, Jamaal Westerman, Weston Dressler, Matt Nichols, Taylor Loffler, Zach Collaros, Simoni Lawrence, Luke Tasker, Ted Laurent, Drew Willy, Shawn Lemon, Trevor Harris, Brad Sinopoli, Antoine Pruneau, Darian Durant, SJ Green, Bear Woods, Manny Arceneaux, and Samuel Giguere. Legends will be honoured: For the first time, the names of the 2017 Class of the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame will be unveiled to fans at a VIP Reception on March 22 at the sparkling new Mosaic Stadium. A Who’s Who of CFL greats past and present – including Don Narcisse, George Reed, Gene Makowsky and Damon Allen — will join fans for an intimate look at the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ new home and news about one of the most anticipated classes in the Hall’s history. Tickets go on sale March 1. The next generation will be on display: The CFL National Combine, presented by adidas, where the 60 best prospects from Canadian university football and the NCAA strut their stuff for CFL coaches and general managers, takes place March 24 and 25 at Evraz Place. It’s preceded by the Western Regional Combine, on March 23, the last chance for local talent to earn an invite to the national event. CFL brass will tackle the state of the game: The coaches, general managers and team and league executives will meet to chart course for the upcoming season, with the Rules Committee gathering on March 21 and 22, and the Competition Committee meeting March 22. CFL Coaches will hold court: East and West Division head coaches will talk about their plans for the upcoming season at special media conferences on March 23. Young arms will impress: The Canada West Passing Showcase on March 25 and 26 will feature first and second year football athletes from the University of Regina, University of Calgary, University of Manitoba, University of Alberta and University of Saskatchewan in a fun but ferocious touch football showdown. Fans in Saskatchewan can experience it: The CFL FanFest, at Evraz Place from March 21 to 25, features autograph sessions with players and alumni, your chance to take your photo with the Grey Cup trophy, the opportunity to participate in your own CFL Combine, and prizes and activities delivered by Kal-Tire, BOKS, Athabasca University, Michelin and other members of the CFL family. And the Fan Cave beer garden will be open on weekday afternoons and all day Saturday.This story is about The Dallas Stars season wouldn't be complete without one last troll from the now infamous video board operators. During the last game of the season, where Jamie Benn decided to win the Art Ross Trophy for the first time in franchise history, the crew threw up one more list for the offseason. And they didn't hold back going after Winnipeg (who beat out the Stars for the final wild card spot of the playoffs), the LA Kings and Chicago. -- Below is a list of all of the trolling awesomeness that happened this season. 1. Super Bowl ads - This one was pretty clever. They allegedly found the kid who died from the Nationwide commercials at the Super Bowl. 2. Maple Leafs fans, via Kermit the Frog - Excellent use of the Muppets here. 3. Winnipeg - Probably poorly timed this one seeing as the Stars got annihilated by the Jets. 4. NBC for not being able to pronounce Stars players' names on national TV - This one was fair. 5. New York Rangers - This might be the only time that Nolan Ryan and Aragorn, Son of Arathorn were mentioned in the same sentence. 6. Baylor Bears - They must be TCU fans.An actress who appeared on "Entourage" has accused Jeremy Piven of sexual assault. Ariana Bellamar tweeted to Piven on Monday, "'Member when you cornered me in your trailer on the #Entourage set? ‘Member grabbing my boobies on the [couch] without asking??" She also tweeted, "'Member when I tried to leave; you grabbed me by the ass, looked at yourself in the mirror, & said what a ‘beautiful couple’ we made?" The actress later clarified that Piven cornered her and "forcefully fondled my breasts & bum" on two occasions. "Once at the [Playboy] mansion & once on [the 'Entourage'] set." Piven has yet to respond to Bellamar's tweets and was interviewed by AOL's Build Series Tuesday morning but the allegations were not addressed. He did not return Fox News' request for comment. CBS, which airs his new series "Wisdom of the Crowd," says it's investigating a sexual harassment allegation against him, according to The Associated Press. Piven is the latest name added to the growing list of actors accused of sexual assault or harassment following the allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. Most recently, "House of Cards" actor Kevin Spacey was accused of molesting then 14-year-old actor Anthony Rapp. Spacey said he did not remember the incident that would have occured 30 years ago. NBC contributor Mark Halperin and director James Toback have also been accused in recent weeks.August 17, 2011 Why is Barack Obama claiming that he stood up to the Republicans' assault on workers when he really stood aside and let the social safety net be slashed? AFTER WEEKS of high-profile, rancorous debate over raising the federal government's debt ceiling, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats caved to almost every Republican demand. The cuts will total $2.1 trillion over 10 years--a stake in the heart of what remains of the welfare state, as SocialistWorker.org put it at the beginning of August. Cherished government programs like Social Security and Medicare are on the chopping block in the name of balancing the budget during bad economic times. And yet Barack Obama is on the road right now--on a bus tour of the Midwest--where he's trying to further the myth that he "stood up to the Republicans." Obama wants to have his cake and eat it, too. With his 2012 reelection campaign firmly in mind, Obama wants to paint Republicans as the villains of the debt ceiling debate--even though he capitulated to those same Republicans and crafted a bipartisan austerity policy that will make the lives more difficult for the millions of working people who supported him in 2008. Some liberal commentators are buying the deception and basking in the glow of what they see as the "The new old Obama." That's the title of a column by the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, who argued: Obama's aides say he understood liberal anger over the Republicans' irresponsibility in using the default threat to strengthen their own bargaining position. But while progressives wanted the White House to call the right wing's bluff, Obama insisted that this was not a risk a president could take. He preferred to escape this box with the best flawed deal he could get, provided he could take the lethal debt-ceiling weapon out of Republican hands. Having done so, the White House now sounds liberated...The president's speech last Thursday in Holland, Mich., was the first sign that the competitive Obama is re-emerging. His target, like Harry Truman's in 1948, was an obstructionist Republican Congress. He condemned "the refusal of some folks in Congress to put the country ahead of party" and urged that it "start passing some bills that we all know will help our economy right now." A question for Dionne: Wasn't 1948 also the election in which Truman promised to veto the anti-union Taft-Hartley bill--with full knowledge that Congress would override his veto. Indeed, it did, with a majority of Democrats in the House and the Senate voting for it. This is a taste of what's to come from liberal establishment as the 2012 elections approach--refashioning a corporate servant into a "friend of the working class" for the purposes of winning votes. But Obama's tough talk in the Midwest isn't working with millions of people whose disappointment in the administration is closer to the surface than ever. Many of them may eventually be pressured into voting for the Democrats in order to keep the Republicans at bay, but for more and more people, there's nothing positive to vote for. Two weeks after the debt ceiling deal, Obama's job approval rating was at an all-time low--39 percent, according to Gallup. Then again, he has a lot of company--the disapproval rating for Congress reached 84 percent. IF OBAMA and the Democrats wanted to put forward an economic agenda that addressed the scale of the ongoing economic crisis--in particular, the high level of unemployment--they could. But that would mean jettisoning the principles that they hold dear--above all, protecting Corporate America. During the debate over the debt ceiling, Congress couldn't even manage to approve a reduction in tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans, much less increase taxes for those who can afford it most. Corporate America hasn't been asked to tighten its belt during the crisis--in fact, the rich have had to let theirs out a notch. According to its May report, consultant Bain & Company forecasts an 8 percent increase in global luxury store sales in 2011. "I think there was a moment, certainly in 2009, when people felt that [embarrassment], but in 2010, the luxury car market, including Maserati, Lamborghini and Aston Martin, saw growth of about 60 percent, so that was a substantial increase after what was a fairly depressed market in 2009," David Arnold, publisher of luxury magazine, the Robb Report, told CNBC. If the government simply closed corporate tax loopholes, it could raise massive amounts of revenue in an instant. The statutory corporate tax rate is 35 percent, but myriad deductions, credits and other special breaks mean that the taxes actually paid by business are much less--an estimated 13.4 percent of profits over 2000-2005 period, according to the Treasury Department. Robert McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice reports that tax breaks for corporate and other businesses will cost the federal government about $364.5 billion in 2011--or a billion dollars every day. If this amount were collected and put to use, it could take care of about half of the $700 billion that the government spent on Social Security last year. The fact that wealthy Americans rake in so much while paying so little is no secret. "My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress," multi-billionaire investor Warren Buffett admitted in a New York Times op-ed article. "It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice." Noting the decline in tax rates for the rich, Buffett suggests immediately raising rates on taxable income in excess of $1 million, and even more for those who take in more than $10 million a year. As for the cutbacks, there are plenty of bloated federal programs to take a look at--not Social Security and Medicare, but the military. The U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--including personnel, equipment, training Iraqi and Afghan security forces, and deploying intelligence-gathering drones--cost an average of $9.7 billion a month, according to the Defense Department. In a year's time, this wasted money could pay the wages of about 2.4 million firefighters. What about other wasteful federal programs that perpetuate dependants leeching off the government? There's the Department of Homeland Security, whose contractors report a "vibrant" market despite the federal budget concerns, according to National Defense magazine. Or nuclear power, a dangerous and inefficient industry that depends on public subsidies to survive. These cuts, however, are off the table--because when Washington talks about "shared sacrifice," they mean "shared" by workers, the poor and the elderly. The consequences for those who are bearing the brunt of the burden are potentially devastating. For example, under the changes in Social Security proposed by Barack Obama's deficit-cutting commission last year--and still thought to be the blueprint for "reforming" the Social Security system--annual adjustments would fall behind the real cost of living. According to the National Women's Law Center, the average 65-year-old retiree who now gets about $16,800 a year in Social Security would get $852 less per year (after adjusting for inflation) by age 80. At 90, they would get $1,332 less in 2010 dollars, an 8 percent reduction. As Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jeff Gelles wrote: To the affluent, those differences might not seem huge. But tens of millions of elderly Americans rely on Social Security as their major source of income: 52 percent of elderly couples and 73 percent of non-married beneficiaries, according to the latest data. And those fractions could rise as traditional pensions vanish and private savings are battered by bad luck, bad decisions or bad markets. WORKERS--WHETHER they are unemployed or employed, working or retired--are being forced to pay for an economic crisis and financial market instability that they had nothing to do with causing. Washington's strategy, meanwhile--even for those politicians who are willing to talk about the need for measures to create jobs--is to lavish further tax incentives on corporations. The theory is that if Corporate America is healthy, it will employ more workers. But Corporate America is doing just fine, yet their record profits aren't making it to workers in the form of investments in new jobs or improved wages and benefits for workers who are still employed. The federal government could put people to work in good-paying union jobs, rebuilding crumbling city infrastructure like bridges, road and schools, providing affordable health care, and creating new sustainable energy resources, like wind and solar. But political leaders of both parties would rather invest in Corporate America--which in turn invests in itself. Shifting these warped priorities won't come from any bipartisan congressional "super-committee" or someone in the Obama White House. It will be up to ordinary people organizing together to expose Washington's long love affair with Corporate America--and point out that the money is there to not only stop the erosion in living standards for the majority of people, but to raise them.Obesity Facts I’m starting this page to serve as a central repository of significant concrete facts about obesity. I’m making this a page because I anticipate frequently updating it as necessary. There will be no speculative musings or inferences based on partial evidence, everything here will be solid facts as per the research. Most people who comment on this topic – especially the most vocal – tend to be quite clueless on these matters. This should be a one-stop spot to bring everyone up to speed. Sections: Individual-level heritability of obesity Group-level heritability of obesity Ineffectiveness of obesity treatments Laboratory/surgical interventions Overstated impact of obesity per se on health Individual heritability of obesity Obesity is known to be highly heritable. A meta-analysis of twin and family studies (which included the standard MZ together vs. DZ together – MZT-DZT – in addition to MZ apart, MZA), which looked at a combined total of 140,525 individuals found a heritability of body mass index (BMI) in the range of 0.75 to 0.82. The countries observed included the U.S., Britain, Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Finland, South Korea, Taiwan, China, and Japan. The results are highly consistent with little variability across the studies. If we were to rely solely on estimates drawn from MZT-DZT studies, the matter of whether some sort of environmental factor(s) that serves bias upward heritability estimates would remain. This is addressed by the smaller MZA & DZA studies (included in the analysis). One in particular had a sample of 93 pairs of MZA and 218 pairs of DZA. The correlation was for the MZA (for men) was 0.74 (n pairs = 49) and 0.66 for women (n pairs = 44). All told, the study estimated a broad sense heritability of 0.74 for men and 0.69 for women, with much of the variance being due to non-additive genetic effects. This is additionally supported by adoption studies. One review of twin and adoption studies (n adopted ~ 1,400) found significant correlations between adopted children and their biological relatives and no correlation between adoptive relatives, at least not in late adolescence and adulthood. In other words, in the adoption data, the heritability was found to be high and the shared environment impact was found to be zero, in agreement with twin studies. The high heritability of BMI was also confirmed by a genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA), which used directly measured genomic similarity to assess heritability. One analysis with 20,240 sibling pairs found that captured SNPs could explain 42% of the variance in obesity. This estimate is a lower bound of the additive heritability only, and then only the heritability explained by common SNPs. This is in agreement with the apparent additive heritability of obesity (0.3-0.4), which appears to be in that range from MZA studies. Another GCTA, from Iceland, which looked at 38,167 individuals and estimated heritability from both relatives and non-relatives, found a lower-bound broad-sense heritability estimate (additive + non-additive genetic variance) of BMI of 0.471. GCTA results are lower bounds estimates, because they are limited by genetic variants captured by the analysis. The bottom line is that genes heavily influence individual variation in obesity. It seems some people are incapable of understanding this, but it should go without saying that genetic differences are, however, not involved in the change in obesity rates over time. Genes haven’t changed significantly during the past few decades, so some “environmental” factor(s) must be in play. Please see my post Why HBD for a description of how gross environmental change can lead to gross phenotypic change without any genetic change. It is also important to note that the shared environment contribution is reliably zero. This means, as is the case with behavioral traits, parents and the family environment have no effect on adult obesity. One cannot blame adult body weight on parental choices etc. Finally, there is a marked misconception that there is some sort of “debate” about whether body weight is genetic (which it heavily is) or stems from “choices” (i.e., behavior). This is one of those things that’s not even wrong. There can be no dichotomy between “genes” and “choice.” As HBD Chick would put it, where do choices come from? As readers of this blog know, the First Law of behavioral genetics is that all human behavioral traits are heritable. Genes (i.e., specifically, genetic differences) impact all human behavior (i.e., behavioral differences) to some degree. Indeed, often considerably so. More fundamentally, the phony dichotomy between genes and choice stems from a key misunderstanding: the failure to realize that the universe is deterministic. All events, including human behaviors, have causes. (This is even considering quantum mechanics; quantum indeterminacy is merely another “deterministic” force. Random interplay is just another causal agent.) See my post No, You Don’t Have Free Will, and This is Why. To the extent that behavior (again, specifically, behavioral differences) lead to differences in body weight – whatever extent that is – those behaviors are themselves quite heritable. Indeed, in the case of “self-control” (which may or may not be causally related to obesity), it too appears to be largely heritable and not affected by the shared environment. One recent study found that 76% of the variance could be attributed to additive genetic factors. Group-level heritability of obesity As I’ve discussed previously, there is not much by way of evidence that the underlying nature of differences between groups is all that different from the nature of differences between individuals within a group – with perhaps the effects of highly deprived environments (such as encountered in sub-Saharan Africa and other highly impoverished areas) excepted. Yet there are significant group-wide differences in the obesity rate. As seen in my post A Fat World – With a Fat Secret?, we see a pattern within nations and between them. Map of average BMI by nation As discussed in the above post of mine, overall rates of obesity cluster in related groups, even when those groups live together in the same nations. As seen in the U.S., the pattern of ethnic clustering is visible among American Whites, as seen by this estimate of county-level White obesity rates by Razib Khan (blue = higher; red = lower): The obesity rate heavily tracks area of Scot and Scots-Irish ancestry – and secondarily, German ancestry, in line with the high obesity rates in Scotland and Germany, respectively. See my posts HBD is Life and Death and More Maps of the American Nations. The evidence strongly indicates that group-level differences in obesity are highly heritable, just as is individual variation in obesity – founder effects and selective migration (and, in the developing world, extreme deprivation and dietary incompatibility) notwithstanding. Ineffectiveness of obesity treatments Obesity is very difficult to impossible to treat. The most common prescription, and indeed the prevailing conventional wisdom, is that “lifestyle” changes are the best solution. This typically means diet and exercise. However, this has been extensively studied. Across the population, diet and exercise, each individually and in tandem, are completely useless to treat obesity, in the long term. In the case of exercise, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) don’t even show a short-term benefit. One 2007 meta analysis by Franz et al looked at the results of all sorts of different interventions. For exercise-alone prescriptions, it found that the treatment groups lost no weight at 6 months (well, less than 2 kgs, but even this number comes only when you look at those who remained in the study). Indeed, after a year, the control groups actually lost more weight than the treatment groups. The total weight change was small and close to zero throughout. In the case of diets, particularly the most common low-fat and low-calorie diets, a very large meta-analysis of RCTs with a combined N > 60,000 (of which ~48,000 came from a single mammoth trial) and a study duration of 2.5 – 10 years, found that diet was completely ineffective for weight loss. The subjects showed no aggregate permanent weight loss at the end of the study period. The largest of these studies, the one by Howard et al (2006) found little change, a total loss (over 3 years) of less than 1 kg (and a difference between control and treatment groups of 1.29 kg, favoring treatment). As for diet and exercise combined, several studies in both previous meta-analyses look at trials which tested both together. The result was the same: little to no significant aggregate weight loss, especially after longer periods of time. This is true of low-carbohydrate diets as well. One meta-analysis looked at RCTs. Each of the trials were individually small (n = 11 – 153), but all told there were 712 subjects in the low-carb trials. The duration of studies ranged from 12 to 24 months. The total average weight lost with the low-carb diet groups was on the order of 4 kg! And that’s with considerable attrition in the studies. Low-carb diets don’t work much better, either. A new randomized comparison trial (Bazzano et al, 2014) of a low-carb vs a low-fat diet (N = 148) found only a weight loss of 5.3 kg after 1 year with the low-carb diet, but only 1.2% change in body fat percentage. The results are visualized in this graphic from Franz et al: Drugs designed to treat obesity often don’t fare much better in trials, as seen with the drugs examined here. Randomized controlled trials are necessary to judge the efficacy of obesity treatments, especially when crafting broad prescriptions for treatment. Popular conceptions of weight-loss – even in the minds of medical professionals – are biased by odd examples of individuals with impressive short-term weight loss or rare individuals who managed to maintain a lowered weight for a long period of time. This is obviously improper, because it ignores the fact that these individuals are exceptional. The efficacy of any treatment, especially one that is to be recommended as a general prescription to treat any condition, needs to be subjected to clinical trials to judge their effect across the population to which the treatment is intended. This is what we do for new drugs. However, even these have their limits. RCTs of lifestyle modifications are plagued by considerable non-compliance, even for those who remain in the study. This is especially acute towards the later parts of the longer trials. Some commenters correctly point out that this weakens any conclusions we can draw because we don’t know what the results would be if the subjects stuck to the trial. However, I argue that this point, as technically true as it might be, is ultimately wholly academic. Patient non-compliance is an
and work that I have done to encourage others to seek help — is part of my life story, however, and I make no attempt to hide it,” he said. Perry’s spokesman also said that Roberts, after his second DWI conviction, took responsibility for his actions and “followed the appropriate protocols.” “His actions since 2006 have maintained the governor’s confidence in his leadership, and he has continued to be a hard-working public servant for Texas,” Considine said. TIMELINE: Wayne Roberts’ record Nov. 1977: Wayne Roberts is hired to his first state post, as a legislative budget examiner. Nov. 1989: Roberts is arrested for driving while intoxicated. Feb. 1990: He pleads no contest and is sentenced to two years’ probation. Aug. 1994: Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock hires Roberts as a special assistant. Dec. 1997: Gov. George W. Bush makes Roberts a deputy budget director. May 2000: Roberts is arrested on a public intoxication charge in Williamsburg, Va. Aug. 2000: He pays a fine to settle the Virginia case. Jan. 2001: Gov. Rick Perry hires Roberts as an assistant budget director; he is later promoted to budget director. April 2006: Roberts is arrested for drunken driving. Sept. 2006: He pleads no contest and is sentenced to two years’ probation. April 2009: Perry appoints Roberts to the State Pension Review Board. Dec. 2012: Roberts becomes interim director of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, known as CPRIT. Nov. 2013: CPRIT’s board appoints him fully to the job. SOURCE: Dallas Morning News researchU.S. Marshals seized over $1 million in cash from safety deposit boxes controlled by a former state representative serving a prison sentence for embezzlement. The U.S. State’s Attorney’s office said in a statement Wednesday the “trove’’ of bundled up rolls of cash were in safety deposit boxes controlled by John George, the former Dartmouth selectman and state representative who was convicted earlier this year of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Southeastern Regional Transit Authority. George, 68, was ordered to pay restitution to the transit authority and forfeit $1.38 million as part of his 70-month prison sentence. Prior to his sentencing, he was required to disclose his financial status to the courts. He listed liquid assets of about $160,000 in bank accounts and about $28,000 in cash, authorities said. The U.S. Attorney’s office said search and seizure warrants were sought because it was believed George was concealing assets. Advertisement What the marshals discovered at banks in New Bedford and Fairhaven were safety deposit boxes “filled to the brim with cash tied up in rolls of $100s, $50s, and other denominations,’’ authorities said.Teachers hear the phrase “tough love” all the time; it is used to justify hurtful practices such as not giving black students the second chances that others receive to complete assignments, suspending students for breaking minor rules that others are not punished for, or yelling at students for being playful or asking too many questions. Many black male teachers at first believe in the need for “tough love.” When they realize it is code for doing damage to black students, they are filled with remorse and often leave the field of teaching. About a year ago, a teacher named Joseph Mathews came rushing into my office saying: “I can’t look those black boys in the face and make them feel like I felt in school anymore. I have to quit.” This is a pervasive yet under-researched phenomenon that seriously affects teacher retention. To his credit, Mr. King has recognized what he calls “the invisible tax” on minority educators. This tax is paid in the extra disciplinary and relationship-building work that black teachers do beyond teaching. Unfortunately, acknowledging the tax does little to alleviate it or its consequences. Instead of fixating on black male teachers, we need to examine how teachers are trained, their beliefs about young minority men, and how they engage their students. They should be prepared to teach to each student’s unique needs, and to recognize that no student learns best under conditions that make him feel uncared for. If the notion that we must hire black male teachers in order to have positive role models for black youth makes sense, how can we not recognize that untrained and unprepared black male teachers can cause more harm than good? I vividly remember, as a boy, having a black male teacher who didn’t see any value in me as a person, and who didn’t seem to enjoy teaching black and brown boys. Our school was diverse, with students from many ethnic and racial backgrounds, and this teacher clearly treated black male students differently, raising his voice and enforcing rules more strictly. He was allowed to teach the way he did because he was dealing with black male students who were perceived to need “tough love.” But I felt targeted by the very teacher who (because he was black) was supposed to be the person I connected to.Welcome to the twenty-second issue of the Community Highlight series, dedicated to the community members of Armored Warfare and their contributions. Find out more about the game, learn something new and check out the cool community content! Paint a Vehicle Contest Results The results of the "Paint a Vehicle!" contests are here. Since we received a large number of excellent submissions, we decided to reward not three, but four players with our awesome Ammo Crate! First Place - Sebastor Second Place - Pocketrawkitt Third Place - B-Montgomery Fourth Place - LinkZero The winners will receive their prizes soon. We would like to thank everyone for participating! Community Content Shermanator plays the PL-01 and Leopard 2A7-140 Tier 10 vehicles! Check out Fizzymilk757's BMD-2 WOLF review! Daroc shows his skill with the Tier 10 SPHINX AFV in this 14.7k damage battle! and last but definitely not least, Fiaura demonstrates the potential of a Scorpion platoon! That's it for today, looking forward to seeing you on the battlefield! You can submit your community contribution to our dedicated forum section, perhaps it will be your work featured next time!So Google just announced its new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones. On paper, they look like they tick off all the boxes, but why should anyone consider them over an iPhone 7 or a Galaxy S7? Two words: Google Photos. The phones will come with unlimited photo and video storage at full resolution. Anyone can download and install Google Photos on their iOS or Android phone. But the photo storage service caps photo resolution at 16 megapixels and video resolution at full HD (1,920 x 1,080) if you want to store an unlimited amount of media for free. This means if you want to store higher resolution photos and videos at greater resolution (like 4K), you'd need to pay for a monthly storage plan, which starts at $1.99 per month for 100GB. With unlimited photo and video storage and their highest resolutions, the Pixel phones are an attractive value for people who want to store their memories in full — ahem — pixel glory.Patent boxes allow firms to pay much lower taxes on profits from patented inventions, but critics say it gives UK too much of a fiscal advantage George Osborne has watered down one of his flagship policies following a long-running dispute with Germany over a controversial UK tax break. The chancellor’s move on so-called patent boxes – which allowed companies to pay much lower taxes on profits from patented inventions – removes one of the potential flash points between the UK and Germany before this week’s G20 summit in Brisbane. The incentives were introduced last year to encourage hi-tech businesses to commercialise their intellectual property in the UK by charging just 10% tax on the resulting income. But Germany led numerous countries in arguing that the regime encouraged artificial shifting of profits to avoid tax elsewhere. Osborne described the new agreement as “a great deal for Britain” that protected the UK’s vital scientific research while making sure there were international rules that stop aggressive tax avoidance. It would involve the UK winding down its patent box rebates and joining other OECD countries in only granting tax breaks for patents directly tied to research and innovation at home. Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said: “We have reached an important agreement on patent boxes. Preferential tax treatment of intellectual property must be dependent on substantial economic activity. More and more countries are speaking out against allowing too much leeway for large multinationals to minimise their taxes. Just because something is legal, does not mean it is fair in tax terms. Multinationals must contribute their fair share to public budgets – just like any other company has to.” The Treasury denied it had performed a U-turn on the issue, although it has previously defended its original policy. A year ago, it issued a statement to the Sunday Times, saying: “We are confident that the UK’s patent box regime does not breach the EU code of conduct group’s criteria [in which member states pledged to roll back measures that constitute harmful tax competition and refrain from introducing them]; it is more tightly defined and imposes tougher eligibility criteria than other similar measures.” Jonathan Riley, UK head of tax for accountants Grant Thornton, said: “We were aware from the time the patent box regime was announced that some of the UK’s competitor nations felt this gave the UK too much of a fiscal advantage. Now it would appear that the UK will have to water down its legislated tax reliefs.” The Treasury countered that it had won important concessions including so-called “grandfathering”, which will allow intellectual property within existing regimes to retain tax benefits until June 2021.A hapless trucker drives a cargo of pigs into San Francisco and is drawn into a supernatural fight with an ancient sorcerer. It’s not the most obvious premise for a potential summer blockbuster, but that’s precisely how 1986’s Big Trouble in Little China was pitched to veteran filmmaker John Carpenter — as a big-budget adventure that could become the next Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Halloween director was just coming off of Starman, the acclaimed sci-fi love story that earned Jeff Bridges an Oscar nomination, and he was attracted to Big Trouble’s oddball mix of martial arts, monsters, and mysticism. Problem was, audiences weren’t, and the film flopped. Spectacularly. Some members of the Chinese community were upset by what they regarded as the stereotypical depictions in a “white man’s product” and by the fact that hardly any nonwhite female characters talk in the film. Other viewers were confounded by the off-kilter plot and a leading man — Kurt Russell’s Jack Burton — who was more bumbling comic relief than conventional hero. Yet, like James Hong’s villainous sorcerer David Lo Pan, Big Trouble has amassed an army of followers who delight in its sheer, nonsensical weirdness. Among their ranks? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, now set to star in a planned Fox remake. “When people come up [to me] and they say, ‘Big Trouble,’ they have a look in their eye,” Russell says. “It’s like, ‘I know what kind of person you are!’ You know, when something is a cult classic, it’s a cult classic for a reason.” The script was penned by Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein and subsequently adapted by W.D. Richter, director of another bomb–turned–cult classic, 1984’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Set in — and under — San Francisco’s Chinatown district, the Big Trouble screenplay found Jack Burton teaming with a local restaurant owner to rescue the latter’s fiancée from the evil David Lo Pan. JOHN CARPENTER (Director): I saw my first kung fu movie in 1973. It was — what the hell was the name of that thing? — Five Fingers of Death! It was truly an astonishing film. There was an innocence to these movies and a joyousness that I loved. I wanted to bring all that to Big Trouble. It had been a Western, originally, but then it was rewritten to be a modern-day movie. GARY GOLDMAN (Writer): Ours was about a cowboy in Chinatown in 1899. Instead of a truck driver, he worked providing meat to feed the Chinese workers who were building the railroad. Twentieth Century Fox tried to make it as a Western. They sent to Walter Hill [director of The Long Riders and 48 HRS]. He declined to do it. W.D. Richter came up, I presume, with the idea of making it contemporary. I wasn’t privy to that process. W.D. RICHTER (Screenplay adapter): Buckaroo Banzai mystified people. Nobody was pounding on my door to direct the next thing. I got the Big Trouble script through my agent. It struck me that it might be more vibrant if it were a contemporary movie. That was my pitch. GOLDMAN: The idea that we would be rewritten was not so unthinkable. Although, in this case, the idea that you would have something so original and not speak to the writers about it did strike us as being bizarre and unfair. RICHTER: I [understood] Jack Burton from the beginning — kind of a lovable loudmouth. He didn’t talk that away at all [in the original screenplay]. I was thinking the other day that he’s maybe a likable Donald Trump. You know, if Donald Trump weren’t reprehensible, and if he didn’t happen to become a billionaire because of his father, he might be a f—ing truck driver, driving pigs into San Francisco. It’s not beyond my imagination. And he’d be unqualified for every challenge thrown in front of him, but he wouldn’t get that, and he might persevere out of sheer ignorance and sense of “I-can-do-anything.” CARPENTER: Jack Burton is a guy who is a sidekick but doesn’t know it. He’s an idiot-blowhard. He’s an American fool in a world that he doesn’t understand. RICHTER: John gave me notes and then he went to Kurt and Kurt said, “Yes,” because he likes to work with John anyway. Kurt Russell had worked with Carpenter on Escape From New York and The Thing. The director cast Dennis Dun (Year of the Dragon) as restaurateur Wang Chi and model Suzee Pai as his fiancée, Miao Yin. Blade Runner actor James Hong portrayed the wizened Lo Pan — as well as a less ancient, incorporeal version of the character. A young Kim Cattrall landed the role of plucky lawyer (and Jack Burton’s love interest) Gracie Law, while future Scandal star Kate Burton played Gracie’s journalist friend, Margo. Other good guys were played by Donald Li and the late Victor Wong. KURT RUSSELL (Jack Burton): I thought John cast the movie right. The people fit their roles and they knew what to do. Kim Cattrall was terrific. Kate Burton… KATE BURTON (Margo): Kurt Russell, and Kim Cattrall, and I were [virtually] the only non-Asian actors in the movie. I was aware at the time that it was pretty extraordinary. CARPENTER: Dennis Dun was one of the actors from San Francisco, the Bay Area. He and Victor Wong were actors up there. RUSSELL: The real lead was Wang. DENNIS DUN (Wang Chi): It was only my second film. I was very nervous taking a part like this. John Carpenter always said, “Don’t worry, you’re fine, just be a hero, don’t worry about it.” [Laughs] CARPENTER: James Hong was a character actor who we had all seen but hadn’t really thought of too much. He came in and read for me and he was just brilliant. JAMES HONG (David Lo Pan): Sixty-three years I’ve been in the industry. For the first 50 years, I was averaging 10 feature or TV appearances every year. That schooled me for roles like Lo Pan, where I play multi-characters — the old man Lo Pan, the tall Mandarin with the headgear, and the young Lo Pan. STEVE JOHNSON (Creature creator): James Hong was such a joy, and here was my opportunity to do an amazing old age makeup… My first thought was, this script is loaded with all kinds of animatronics and makeup effects and a smorgasbord of everything that we people, you know, get erections over. HONG: When Steve Johnson worked on me, he took the upmost care with every hair, because nothing was digitalized in those days. The first day of work, I think it took him nine or ten hours to put that makeup on. JOHNSON: His character is just so funny. You know that scene where he’s in his electric wheelchair and he comes bursting into the study? “Shut up, Mr Burton!” Every time he would do that, his performance was so silly that I erupted in laughter and ruined the take. John would be like, “Cut! Cut! Cut!” The third time, John literally threw me off-set because I was ruining all these takes [Laughs]. As Jack and Wang search for Miao Yin, they’re forced to battle foes ranging from wild monsters to Lo Pan’s goons, the Storms (Carter Wong, Peter Kwong, and James Pax) — but the action sequences presented certain challenges. Dun could claim only limited martial-arts experience; Russell had none. Burton and Cattrall got to join in the “fun” when they shot scenes set in the waterlogged channels beneath Chinatown. The movie was filmed largely on the Fox lot in Los Angeles on sets designed by the late John J. Lloyd, with whom Carpenter had worked on The Thing. JOHNSON: Probably the most complicated [thing we did on the film] — and I think it may have been one of the most complicated things ever at that time — was the flying eye. The general idea is that it’s this mythological Chinese creature that is Lo Pan’s way of seeing remotely. So, this flying eye will go out and get information and bring it back to Lo Pan. It was just a huge, surrealistic ball of eyes. The challenge was, How do you make a ball of eyes look realistic and be able to emote? The only way to do it was with a huge animatronic puppet. But imagine how many motors had to go inside of it. The eyes all had to have upper and lower blinks, some of the eyeballs were actually on stalks which could retract into it and poke out, and then of course, he had a face, he had a mouth, he had a tongue. We had so many motors in that. CARPENTER: I just remember all of it being fun. Fond memories. The John Lloyd sets were incredible. HONG: I told Carpenter, he should get an Academy Award for the sets. He said, “How ‘bout you? Your acting?” So, I was very flattered by that. CARPENTER: Dennis could fake martial arts really well. DUN: I had dabbled in it since I was a kid. [Actor and stuntman] Jeff [Imada], he said, “Well you have to work on some things.”So, the stunt guys would teach me things, and I’d practice between takes. I learned how to use the tachi sword, which is what I use in the film. Even though I didn’t shoot a lot of that stuff until near the end [of production], I worked out every day…. I knew I had to make it seem like I was an expert! CARPENTER: Rather than try to make it look like our American Caucasian lead knew what he was doing with martial arts, we just went ahead and made him an idiot. RUSSELL: I couldn’t do the chop-sockey. I had to come up with ways to not be involved. So, I said to John, “How about if we come in here, and I’m all excited, and hit the machine gun, and rocks fall on my face, and I’m out? Jack’s out for the first two minutes of the fight that’s 10 minutes long, whatever. And then he gets into the fray, and sure enough he stabs this big guy, but the guy falls in a way that’s crushing Jack, and he can’t move.” I was just constantly finding things like that… I did learn how to drive an 18-wheeler. I forgot about that. It was pretty easy. BURTON: We spent a lot of time swimming underground. I spent most of the movie soaking wet. I think I was dry, like, two scenes in the movie. Every day, I would come into work and go into hair and makeup and look absolutely stunning. Then the next thing that would happen is that someone would throw a bucket of water on my head. RUSSELL: It’s wet — you get wet. That’s what it’s like getting in water. You should try it sometime! [Laughs] DUN: That’s a Kurt Russell answer… I know some people got sick. There’s water, bacteria, people running through, something came out of their sock. I was so healthy from working out all the time, I didn’t get sick. RUSSELL: One time, Kim and I kissed…. Then I noticed that the crew was smirking. I had lipstick all over my face. I said, “You know, I’ve always wondered about that. [In kissing scenes] how come that big red lipstick is always magically not there when the guy pulls back?” I looked at John, and I started laughing…. I said, “[Let’s leave the lipstick on] at least for a couple of scenes!” And he said, “All right.” I always admired John for that, because the audience is going to go, “What the f—?” HONG: The director did not really know exactly how we should portray the battle scene between [Victor] and I. But Victor and I had seen all these old Chinese films, where the two opponents would fight each other with this hand magic, where things would come out of their hands. That’s an old Chinese fable-type of magic-fighting. So, Victor decided to throw balls at me of fire, and I invented that I would cross my little fingers and little rays would come out. And Carpenter put that in the film. CARPENTER: The soundtrack was a lot of fun to do. And also, my little group at the time, the Coup de Villes, we sang the title song. [Laughs]. Then we did a music video! Unbelievable! It was all unbelievable times. Despite the casting of Dun, Hong, and Wong in prominent roles, the film became a point of controversy for Asian-American activists concerned the movie was trafficking in racist stereotypes. At one point during production, 25 protesters arrived at one of the movie’s locations to distribute leaflets complaining that film concerned “a macho, smart-aleck truckdriver and his Chinese ‘yes’ man.” CARPENTER: It was a San Francisco guy who said, “Now, this is a movie for white people.” It was really unpleasant. What are you going to do? You’re right, I am Caucasian! You’re right! And then we were picketed. It was unbelievable. What a world! DUN: They were already writing letters to Carpenter with concerns about some things in the script even before we started. I knew I had a responsibility, being an Asian-American actor. I talked with John Carpenter, and you could tell that he didn’t want a disparaging image of Asians. I’ve been on sets where you go there and you feel like you’re a second class citizen sometimes. But on that set you felt like you were part of the team. Big Trouble in Little China received mixed reviews, with Roger Ebert complaining that the characters “often seem to exist only to fill up the foregrounds.” Released on July 2, 1986, the film earned $11.1 million, one eighth of the gross of James Cameron’s Aliens, which opened later that month. RUSSELL: A lot of the people on the junket said, “How does it feel to be in a movie that you know is going to be a massive hit?” And I would be falsely humble and say, “Well, hey, you never know, you’ve just got to see how it does.” But inside I was going, “Yeah! I’m so happy!” And then it came out. HONG: The critics didn’t like it. They slashed it to pieces. RUSSELL: Without opening up old wounds, that picture really suffered a strange [marketing plan]. It was all on Jack Burton. It was all based on trying to theoretically get the audience interested in “Who is this guy?” And the answer was, “I’ve got no f—ing idea!” GOLDMAN: I have a different view of what happened. We gave them something like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Romancing the Stone and they made the decision to turn it into something like Buckaroo Banzai. Buckaroo Banzai was a really interesting movie and I like it a lot. But it was a bomb. DUN: I thought it was my big chance — I’m in this big film, and maybe it’ll take off, and my goals will keep expanding, and I’ll keep getting more interesting roles that are beyond the stereotypes of Asians. But it didn’t happen. RICHTER: Was I disappointed? [With deep sarcasm] No, I always love to have things tank. It’s so satisfying! Who wants to entertain hundreds of millions of people? CARPENTER: What do you think? RUSSELL: Fortunately for us, tapes and DVDs were just beginning to come out and Big Trouble in Little China found its life anyway. That one really grabbed a hold of the audience. Like Carpenter’s The Thing — now regarded as among the greatest horror movies ever made — Big Trouble slowly began to find fans via home video. By 2012 it was a full-fledged cult phenomenon. A “Gangnam Style” parody video called “Lo Pan Style” went viral. In 2015 the company Funko released a line of Big Trouble vinyl figures, and later this year BOOM! Studios will publish two books about the film, The Official Making of “Big Trouble in Little China” and The Official Art of “Big Trouble in Little China.” BURTON: I teach a lot and I do a lot of masterclasses at my two universities, Brown and Yale. I’m always inundated by kids who go, “Oh my god, you were in Big Trouble in Little China!” JOHNSON: I think audiences have gotten a little bit more sophisticated since the movie was put out. I think it was difficult for people to categorize it back then. What the hell is this thing? But it’s incredibly unique. Aside from certain Korean or Chinese films, I can’t think of another American film that comes close to touching the unique quality of that film. HONG: I’ve been to autograph conventions, and this film — let’s just say it this way: The production stills from this film have sold more than all the other ones combined, including Blade Runner, Seinfeld, and Balls of Fury, all those other ones. I just hope they don’t ruin it with this sequel, or prequel, or whatever they’re doing. CARPENTER: Oh god help us, I don’t know. We’ll see! RUSSELL: Dwayne Johnson as Jack Burton? Hey, I’m sure he’ll come up with a good take on it. I’ve got no problem with that. Movies are movies. You throw the dice and see what happens… At the end of the day, all that ever matters is you make a movie that holds up. And John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China holds up.Remains of pumpkins litter the shoulder of I-696 after being pulverized by passing drivers. (WWJ Photo/Ron Dewey) – The morning commute for drivers on I-696 near Orchard Lake Road got off to a smashing start Wednesday. Traffic tipsters flooded the WWJ tip line around 6:20 a.m. Wednesday reporting a truck that spilled its entire haul of pumpkins, sending the orange gourds across the freeway – pulverized by passing drivers. Tipster Pat Carmichael described the scene. “There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these pumpkins… There’s three lanes that are just covered with smashed pumpkins,” Carmichael said. “I’m just now getting toward Telegraph and the truck’s been pulled over by a police officer. The back of the truck has been sheared off.” WWJ’s Bill Szumanski was over the scene in the WWJ Chopper. “There are just so many of them down there that are getting smashed down to absolutely nothing. I-696 eastbound underneath Orchard Lake Road… and the pumpkins go from that point out another hundred yards or so,” Szumanski said. WWJ’s Ron Dewey reports about an hour after the spill, the section of I-696 was closed momentarily so snow plows could clean up the mess. Oakland County Road Commission spokesman Craig Bryson said it’s the first time he knows of the “underbelly plows,” which are typically utilized for smaller snow amounts, being used for pumpkin patrol. For the latest from the roads, stay with WWJ Newsradio 950 during Traffic and Weather on the 8s, 24-hours a day. Check for recent traffic incidents now by visiting our Traffic Page.article updated March 9, 2014 Chart Last Updated: March 9, 2014 - This graph of nominal hard drive prices, plotted on a logarithmic scale and not adjusted for inflation, shows the precipitous drop in prices that occurred over 35 years of innovation and increasing demand. Roll your cursor over each datapoint to see more information. Static versions of this image are also available: small large. Read below for sources. IT'S BEEN almost five years since I first looked at the history of hard drive cost, and a lot has changed in the market. The most salient change is that, on average, drives are no longer getting bigger. For a long time, one of the driving factors in consumer hard drive innovation was the need for more space, and that simply isn’t a huge force anymore. Increasingly, we're focusing our attentions on speed, reliability, and accessibility. There are several external forces that have shifted the focus away from the mantra of "more space cheaper", and it’s hard to imagine the industry ever pivoting back. we've stopped all the downloadin' When it comes to the decline in storage needs, the elephant in the room is the precipitous decline in media dowloads, illegal or otherwise. Services like Pandora, Netflix, and Amazon Instant Video are supplanting caches of downloaded music and movies, and making it easier for consumers to manage their media catalogs. the cloud For reliable storage of personal files, consumers are increasingly turning towards the internet. Services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Amazon Cloud Storage are making it easier for people to not only backup documents and photos, but also share across multiple devices. These services also provide redundant storage and, as with the streaming services mentioned above, make our lives simpler and less prone to catastrophic loss. the fall of the desktop (and the laptop for that matter) As smartphones and tablets become more integrated into our lives, we are seeing much less reliance on personal computers as the single point of access for digital content. This makes a monolithic hard drive in a home office feel less like home-sweet-home and more like an inconvenience. solid state drives With the introduction of super-fast drives, the focus has turned away from commodity disks and towards advancements in speed that improve the end user’s quality of life. As our digital lives become more web-centric, we have less to store but we want to get what we do store faster. Solid state drives offer a more responsive experience and, since we’re less reliant on local storage, we’re willing to make the speed vs. space tradeoff.Brook Lopez: Stanford alum, NBA All-Star, “Star Wars” Wookiee? The first two facts about the Brooklyn Nets center are true, but according to Lopez, that third item could come to fruition as well. Apparently the 26-year-old is a big science fiction fan, and after a recent Nets practice, he told reporters he’s hoping to score a role as one of the hairy bipeds in an upcoming “Star Wars” film. “My friend works on the set,” Lopez said, via the Wall Street Journal. “I don’t want to jinx it, but pretty good so far.” The seventh installment of the legendary franchise — Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens — already has completed filming and is due out next December, but the big man hopes to land a part in the eighth episode. Han Solo’s trusty companion Chewbacca is the most well-known Wookiee, but if Lopez gets involved, he could give Chewie a run for his money. Thumbnail photo via Adam Hunger/USA TODAY Sports Images Photo of the Night Rajon Rondo got a warm welcome from the TD Garden crowd during his return to Boston on Friday night. Photo via Winslow Townson/USA TODAY Sports Images Tweet of the Night Jameis Winston didn’t have the best time at the Rose Bowl, but that didn’t stop him from having a good laugh after the game. [tweet https://twitter.com/Jaboowins/status/550883460911341569 align=’center’] Video of the Night Even posters of J.J. Watt can’t be destroyed.With Madeline Roth This weekend, Kevin Cease got so fed up with his neighbor's drunken trespassing that he sprayed him (in the dck) with a hose, took video footage of the incident and uploaded it on YouTube. He says he did it just to show his friends and make them laugh. Once it hit Reddit though, it popped and made the front page in under an hour. Cease felt sorry for his neighbor and hated the backlash from online haters, so he took the video down. That didn't stop a bunch of people from stealing the video, uploading it on their own accounts and even crediting it as their own. That's why Cease decided to reload the video on his YouTube account and speak to MTV News about what happened before he hit the record button and the viral fallout afterward. MTV News: What's your relationship like with this neighbor? Kevin Cease: Hosey. It’s pretty hosey. MTV: So what's his deal? Cease: He usually means well, really he does. He’s just pissed me off several times in the past, and I’ve had to figure out how to deal with it. This really started when he would drive over my septic tank and tell me it’s OK. Like, how about just showing me a little respect and DON’T drive through my yard when I ask you not to? Nope. Continued to just drive right through the middle of it without a care in the world. He constantly is saying the worst kind of stuff to me, and expects me to not react. Like one time he told me he could kill me and he can read my mind. Who says stuff like that and expects nothing to happen? One night he came over really heavily under the influence and tried to convince me it’s OK for him to drive through my lawn, and then called my mother an idiot because she was concerned it would damage the tank. After this and some drunken life advice about how I shouldn’t lift weights, I told him to get out of my house probably 15-20 times, finally screaming at him. I felt like he was trying to start a fist fight, so I finally opened up the door and pushed him out. Later on, a friend of mine who is a cop told me that I cant get physical with him, even if he wouldn’t leave. Since then, he has come over multiple times, and I have warned him not to come over when under the influence. Yes, I have that on video as well because I want to protect myself in case something should happen. Like this. So I keep my camera phone ready if I think he’s coming. Related: Exclusive: The Untold Story Of The Naked Doggy Door Girl And Her Viral Arrest MTV: Did you put the video up for revenge, to shame him, or just because it's funny? Cease: I really didn’t expect the video to go viral. I put it up because I wanted to share it with a few people close to me. Then a friend said I should post it on Reddit, and it just took off. It made front page in like a half hour. I really had no intentions of shaming him. The thing is, I just see it as a man got wet. Some people act like I set the man on fire and pissed on him to put it out. Really, I gave multiple verbal warnings, then I fired a few warning shots. If it were really that bad, he could have just done a 180 and left, but you can tell he wants to put up a fight. He just glares at me while his hair whips around. Then if you notice about halfway into the video I say, “I will spray you again.” and he just looks at me and says, “REALLY?” Like “I dare you. I dare you to continue to spray me more.” Then I just fire it at his dck and he continues to stare. If he had any respect or dignity left, he just threw it out by trying to prove a point. Anyone else would have just left like a normal person. So it’s all his choice to get wet. MTV: Why'd you decide to take the video down? Cease: I didn’t really know what to make of the video going viral, and I felt some of the explanations I gave online weren’t thoughtful enough. I started feeling a little bad because of all the haters, but then after I pulled it I saw it continued to go viral. I also realize the internet is the source of the most hateful ignorant comments ever, and I really don’t give a f--k what anyone thinks about me getting my neighbor wet. Then I realized I was going to get the consequences but none of the credit and I decided to get copyright over the video. I mean, other people were taking credit for spraying my neighbor. No one does that but me! MTV: You had another video of him drunk and singing on your porch from earlier that day [Cease has since taken the video down]. What was that about? Cease: It was just him singing Michael McDonald or something. He really likes Michael McDonald and makes sure everyone within a square mile knows this. Look how huge Kevin is next to Santa. His drunk neighbor seems ballsier...or even dumber...for messing with him now. MTV: Has your neighbor seen the video?
The only piece which I wasn't referencing from the shows material was the big "Marysue"-esk shield, I wanted to put in some reference of power for Twilight, who is tiny in comparison, but definitely able to stand on her own even if this kind of magic isn't apparent or actually shown in the show. I think perhaps the greatest weakness of this picture is that it appears rather flat, which is something I hope to improve on in later works. Some other thoughts I had: The library/tree/house that Twilight lives in is incredibly complicated. I think I did a good job representing it, but I took a ton of liberties for the sake of time and perfection. I thought drawing Rarities hair was difficult, but duplicating that one background piece is a monumental task, and anyone dedicated to a 1>1 gets a solid 'A+' in my book, I think mine is probably a 'B-' or something to that effect. Also, I've never attempted drawing any of the Dragons, so there is a lot of room for practice and accuracy there, but I was happy enough with the results in the end. Overall, I'm really pleased with the way this turned out, despite all the shortcuts I took and I think its a great study of all of the major elements that go into making just one scene.The little brass bell dances up and down at the opening of the door. I sigh to myself as the young couple—they’d been drinking—make their staggering way to the front desk, my desk. They hold onto each other and wiggle their noses together. Without looking at me she says, “Coffin for two, please.” Jumping, she lets out a high giggling, playfully slapping the man’s shoulder. There is a sign on my desk. It clearly directs costumers to write their names in the ledger. We even have a pen for the costumer’s convenience. In thirty years no one ever just followed the sign, took their key, and departed, so to speak. I move the ledger closer to them, and point at one of our rooms. She takes the pen, and as he kisses her neck she twists, shivering and smiling at his tickling lips. Scrawling her name she passes the pen to the man. He’s moved on to her ear now, doesn’t even look at the paper he’s scribbling over. He whispers something to her. “Do you have room—ah, quit it!” she shouts laughing. “Do you have room service?” I reach under the desk and hand her a menu. They look it over. “The Italian,” she says. “I was thinking Chinese,” he says. There is, of course, no Chinese on the menu. He seems to realize this, looking at each entry carefully. “Uh,” he stammers, “you decide my little blood pudding.” She does that sort of smile a woman does, the one where they curl their lips inward and stick out just a bit of their tongue. His arm is around her waist now, and he begins pulling her a little side to side. “I’d like the Italian,” she says, beaming. A musical chiming plays behind me. Looking over to the clock, I point to the sign under it. There are ten minutes before daybreak. Her expression changes, dropping a moment. She whispers into his ear. Snatching the key from my hand the pair begin a sort of playful race to the staircase, tugging at each other as they go along. Out of my sight I hear her shrieking with delight, followed by the fluttering of leathery wings. I ring up the butcher, give him the order, “an Italian for two,” he talks, “Room six,” I hang up. When I was alive this sort of thing would have fascinated me, I loved the macabre. That’s probably how I got here, though I don’t really remember. My joints begin to make an audible creaking as the rising sun dispels the dark magic holding me to this world. Sitting back, cobwebs begin to form over me as my dried flesh melts to dust. The new hire, one of those zombies that seem to be everywhere nowadays, moans his way toward the front door. He’s a little slow, but manages to set the lock properly. I don’t think zombies are stupid at all, just slow and clumsy, yes, and inarticulate. But in our line of work, you don’t really need to talk. Theodor, puts headphones on top of his head. He complained to me about not being able to handle earbuds, couldn’t quite manage getting them in, but he seems happy with these. I can hear his brainless music, a repetitive baseline married to indiscernible lyrics, from here. A ghost possesses a feather duster and begins sweeping away my cobwebs. I hear the shuffling of mail being sorted into their respective boxes. A letter is thrown onto my desk. It reads, “To my Billy Bones.” I would have shuddered, had I been able. Even now her perfume wafted toward me from the pink envelope. A skull was imprinted on the seal. I dreaded what would happen next. My standing order was to have my mail read to me when I was in this state. If it had come in the midnight post I could have just thrown it away. The monkey-like gremlin crawls onto the top of my desk and breaks the seal. Its croaking voice does little justice to Emily’s always playful tone: To my Dearest Billy Bones, I had just made ink out of the blood of a particularly annoying monster hunter, there seems to be more of them every year, and I couldn’t think of a better use for it than to send you a reminder of my love. I can hear your joints rattling at that, but I’m sure your little hotel staff will never read this, they’d know better, so I can pour my blackened heart out to you. I often think back to that black midnight sky under the new moon, when I stole away to the old cemetery clutching my spell book next to my heart. I walked around the tombstones, reading the many clichéd epitaphs. Beloved wife, in honor of, taken too soon, but then I read yours. What was it now? Something like: William T. Baker, None of us really knew you. There was always that comical aspect of your existence, even dead you could make me laugh. I sacrificed a rat right then and there, I probably should have used a chicken, would have given you some skin, but I was afraid it would make too much noise. Anyway, there you came popping up out of the ground, screaming like you’d been through Hell. Oh, we had a mad summer, so many fun memories. It was devil’s work keeping you hidden, you smelled so bad at first, but we made it, turned the whole place into a real ghost town. I go there sometimes, it’s not the same. Anyway, my love, I heard you were running a hotel for those stuck up blood suckers, they couldn’t resurrect a better manager than you. I’ll always be in the darkness for you, Billy Bones, Emily P. S. I have some vacation time ahead of me, so I’ll be stopping by the hotel. Please make me a reservation, nothing too fancy. I’ll expect nothing but your very best. While Percival read the letter Theodor shambled over, the headphones hanging around his neck. The feather duster slowed at every word until it lay lifeless by the Gremlin. They were silent, that was the standing order for the day shift, you never want to disturb the customer’s eternal rest. But, Theodor started inhaling, something that always predicated his garbled speech. His stumbling words fell over each other like clowns tumbling under a circus tent. “He…” short moan, “…want…” a sort of wheeze, “best room,” he finished by pointing at me. I indeed did not want “best room,” as he put it. I would have preferred to hear him mumbling something more along the lines of, “Bar doors,” or “Close down,” but silence would have sufficed. The feather duster stood up and started tapping the letter. Percival looked down at the spot the ghost was indicating and croaked, “…very best.” Pulling at his beard he began pacing in front of the pink paper, his eyes skimming every line. Finally, he stopped and turned toward Theodor. “Theodor,” he said. Theodor took a minute to lower his glazed expression on the froglike creature. “Take the service demote-evator and prepare the basement. When this Emily gets here she’ll think she died and went to Hell.” Nodding, well throwing his head backward once, the zombie limped down the hall, dragging a broom behind him. “Don’t you worry, Sir,” Percival said, “We’ll make it so she’ll never want to leave.” Hopping off the counter he flew down the dark hallway. The feather duster remained where it was, but I felt a slight breeze pass over me as the pink paper folded itself and jumped into my breast pocket. Alone, I looked out the window at the rising sun. Theodor was supposed to have shut the shudders. “The sunlight, Theodor,” I could hear myself saying once night fell, “Not all of us are half rotting corpses animated by a terrible plague. Some of us can still feel pain.” He would groan, but I rarely had to tell him something twice. The letter’s scent arose from my pocket, the same rotting rosebud smell she had worn the night I was “re-born.” As she said, I was screaming coming up out of the ground, what she failed to remember was that she was screaming with me, a sort of cackling mad screaming that made my hollow chest want to burst. I was her first minion, the first minion she ever summoned. Well, let’s say the first real minion she ever summoned. Scruffy doesn’t count, he’s just an amalgam of roadkill, more possum than cat. Oh dear, I hope she’s not bringing Scruffy too. He was always chewing on me when I was like this. I still have his tooth marks to show for it. We’ll need a litter box. Barely thirteen and already she knew exactly what she wanted from life, to subjugate it under her iron will. She hid me in the cellar during the day, in the cellar with Scruffy, but would send me out at night to fulfill her dark commands. We went to work the very first evening. She hadn’t been invited to a party, specifically, the girls said that they’d sooner invite the cemetery to come over rather than her. So I came. Update: A Coffin for Two (Continued)This study examined the relationship between loneliness, health, and mortality using a U.S. nationally representative sample of 2101 adults aged 50 years and over from the 2002 to 2008 waves of the Health and Retirement Study. We estimated the effect of loneliness at one point on mortality over the subsequent six years, and investigated social relationships, health behaviors, and health outcomes as potential mechanisms through which loneliness affects mortality risk among older Americans. We operationalized health outcomes as depressive symptoms, self-rated health, and functional limitations, and we conceptualized the relationships between loneliness and each health outcome as reciprocal and dynamic. We found that feelings of loneliness were associated with increased mortality risk over a 6-year period, and that this effect was not explained by social relationships or health behaviors but was modestly explained by health outcomes. In cross-lagged panel models that tested the reciprocal prospective effects of loneliness and health, loneliness both affected and was affected by depressive symptoms and functional limitations over time, and had marginal effects on later self-rated health. These population-based data contribute to a growing literature indicating that loneliness is a risk factor for morbidity and mortality and point to potential mechanisms through which this process works.A Winchester Model 1773 found by park workers in Great Basin National Park, Nevada, in November 2014, is shown in this handout photo provided by U.S. Park Services January 15, 2015. Archaeologists stumbled upon the 132-year old rifle, leaning against a tree while conducting a survey in the park, possibly having been left there more than a century ago. REUTERS/U.S. Park Service/Handout via Reuters (UNITED STATES - Tags: SOCIETY)ATTENTION EDITORS - FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS. THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. REUTERS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE AUTHENTICITY, CONTENT, LOCATION OR DATE OF THIS IMAGE. THIS PICTURE IS DISTRIBUTED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED BY REUTERS, AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS Los Angeles (AFP) - US experts are scratching their heads after finding a more than 130-year-old Wild West rifle leaning against a Juniper tree in a remote area of a national park. The Winchester Model 1873 firearm was found in Great Basin National Park in Nevada by a park employee, Eva Jensen, who happened to be working in the area with an archaeology team. Exposed for years to the elements, the rifle's cracked wood stock was "weathered to gray," while the brown rusted barrel "blended into the colors of the old Juniper tree," officials said. Tucked into a remote rocky outcrop, the rifle appeared to have remained "hidden for many years," they added in a statement. The gun's serial number indicates that it was made and shipped in 1882. But beyond that it remains a mystery. "Who left the rifle? When and why was it leaned against the tree? And why was it never retrieved?" the statement said, adding that experts were poring over old newspapers and family histories to search for where it may have come from. The Winchester Model 1873 rifle holds a prominent place in local history -- referred to as "the gun that won the West." Some 720,610 were manufactured between 1873 and 1916 when production ended. The gun was not loaded when it was found, but would have held.44-40 caliber ammunition when in use.The second-generation Bentley Continental GT is nearly upon us, so engineers are out testing the model in production-ready form. As shown by new pictures, the car has been out in public almost completely undisguised. Slim covers do little to hide twin-section headlights and oval-shaped tail-lights, all of which are clearly inspired by the EXP 10 Speed 6 concept first seen at the 2015 Geneva motor show. Have a look at the fully revealed Continental here The upcoming GT's new look comes alongside hefty upgrades underneath. One of the most interesting is an anti-roll system called Dynamic Ride that can offset body roll to enable flat cornering. It uses electric motors to push the anti-roll bars onto the wheels, pushing the outside wheel down and inside one up. This counteracts the body's roll to improve agility, as Autocar noted during a pre-production drive in July. Bentley has been pushing the car's anti-roll system to the limit on track at the Nürburgring, as shown by new footage of the car being driven at pace below. 2018 Bentley Continental prototype driven Earlier sightings of the Continental revealed its interior and suggested it has borrowed much of its switchgear from the Bentayga, including the gearlever and steering wheel. The infotainment system is likely to have the 8.0in screen in Bentley’s SUV - although, unlike the outgoing Continental, it will be positioned higher up the dashboard, with the air vents and Breitling clock placed lower down.Let's all be honests, this is how things would go with Canon Jaunemine's would just hit her with Fluffy while he uses Flare BlitzAlso, is funny that whenever I lok into my schedule and a comic is going to be late and I war you guys, magically I manage to make it on time, huhAlso also, before people start on the coments, the sole reason Sun is here is for the lame pun, and the only reason Blake is there as well is because they're together on a boat, and the sole reason to why they're doing what they're doing is because I got Paint Tool Sai, wanted to try painting some skin to see the paint options, and this was the only scenario that I could paint enough skin (Paint Tool Sai is great for painting btw, but I still like Medibang better for drawing and lineart)also also also this is a continuation of this comic:Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Aidan says he was told by the school that it was 'a phase' A transgender teenager is taking legal action against his former school for discrimination. Aidan, 16, who was born female, claims he was effectively excluded because Hereford Cathedral School refused to let him wear a boy's uniform. This was despite the support of his mother and the family's GP as he began his transition. The action is being taken under the 2010 Equality Act. The school said it would defend its position. Aidan said that when he came out as a boy his mother was "definitely heartbroken". "I feel like she had dreams of seeing her daughter getting married and having children," he said. "She definitely needed time to mourn and I needed to let her have that time." The Equality Act: Gender reassignment guidance for schools It is unlawful for schools to treat pupils less favourably because of their gender reassignment Schools must factor in gender reassignment when considering their obligations under the Equality Act To be protected by the Act, a pupil will not necessarily have to be undertaking a medical procedure to change their sex, but must be taking steps to live in the opposite gender, or proposing to do so Schools need to make sure that all gender variant pupils are not singled out for different and less favourable treatment from that given to other pupils Source: Department for Education, The Equality Act 2010 and schools When he told the school he did not want to be addressed as a girl or wear girl's clothes, he claims staff said it was a "phase" that he would grow out of. He said he was told he was "attention seeking". "They didn't really take it seriously," he added. Mother Jackie described the school's treatment as "appalling". "They made my child out to be a freak and someone who would contaminate other students," she claimed. A letter from Aidan's mother to the school's chair of governors says she had no choice but to remove her son from the school after being told the school was "inadequately prepared to accommodate Aidan's needs and give him the high level of support and pastoral care that he deserves". The legal action is currently ongoing through the courts. It is understood part of the school's defence claims Aidan was withdrawn from the school by his family, prior to a final decision being made by them about whether his needs could be met. In a statement Hereford Cathedral School said: "The continued happiness, wellbeing and safety of our pupils is the top priority. "The family's grievances against the school are the subject of current legal proceedings. For that reason the school is unable to discuss any details relating to this matter at the present time, other than to state that it will defend its position in the proceedings." Note: The family wished to remain anonymous so names have been changed.Oglas Avstrija je na nekaterih delih meje s Slovenijo postavila žičnato ograjo. Foto: EPA Schengenska pravila se umikajo strožjemu nadzoru meje. Foto: EPA Faymann je dejal, da je treba ekonomske migrante vrniti v države izvora. Foto: EPA Kot je v intervjuju za časnik Österreich napovedal Faymann, bo Avstrija na meji povečala nadzor za vse. Z začasno odpravo schengena tako na meji z Avstrijo velja obvezno izkazovanje identitete. "Če EU ne bo uspelo, da zavaruje svoje zunanje meje, bo pod vprašajem celoten schengen. Takrat bo morala vsaka država nadzorovati svoje nacionalne meje," je v pogovoru na spletni strani časopisa opozoril avstrijski kancler. Na izjave avstrijskega kanclerja so se nato danes odzvali v uradu vlade za komuniciranje (Ukom) in poudarili, da to, da Avstrija uvaja nadzor na svojih mejah, ni nov ukrep, ampak ukrep, ki velja že dlje časa. Ob tem so napovedali, da bo Slovenija odločno in dosledno ukrepala, če bo prišlo do napovedovanja enostranskih ukrepov. Pojasnili so še, da lahko Avstrija uvede nadzor na svojih mejah v skladu s schengenskim pravnim redom, če oceni, da so podane okoliščine, ki to opravičujejo, je pa uvedbo takega ukrepa treba napovedati vsem državam članicam in Evropski komisiji. Res nadzor na meji za vse? Faymannove izjave glede prebežnikov so v tujih medijih poskrbele za zmedo, poroča avstrijska tiskovna agencija APA. "Avstrija ukinja schengen," so v soboto zvečer zapisali pri italijanski tiskovni agenciji Ansa. Podobno razburjeno so se odzvali tudi madžarski mediji. Za razburjenje bi lahko poskrbele predvsem Faymannove besede, da Avstrija začasno odpravlja schengenska pravila, ob tem ugotavlja APA. Dejansko so ta odpravljena že od lanske jeseni, je za APA-o potrdil predstavnik avstrijskega kanclerja. Tudi Faymannovo mnenje glede mejnega nadzora ni nič novega, saj je to prejšnji teden povedal že za Kronen Zeitung, so še komentirali v kanclerjevem uradu. Tujim so medijem že pojasnili stanje, so še povedali. Na odločitev Dunaja so se z zaskrbljenostjo odzvali tudi v sosednji italijanski deželi Furlaniji-Julijski krajini (FJK), še navaja APA. V pismu so izrazili obžalovanje in hkrati upanje, da to ne bo škodovalo odličnim čezmejnim odnosom med FJK-jem in Avstrijo. Za pojasnila, ali morajo zdaj tudi prebivalci schengenskega območja na avstrijski meji izkazovati svojo istovetnost, smo prosili tudi avstrijsko notranje ministrstvo in jih bomo objavili takoj, ko jih prejmemo. Dopisnik TV Slovenija iz Celovca je ob tem za MMC opozoril, da je treba biti pri tem previden z izjavami, saj da gre za predlog, ki ga vlada sploh še ni obravnavala. Dunaj pričakuje solidarnost Sicer pa je tudi po besedah Faymanna že zdaj v veljavi poostren nadzor nad begunci, ki želijo vstopiti v Avstrijo. "Kdor nima pravice do azila ali pa ne zaprosi za azil, želi pa v Skandinavijo ali drugam, je zavrnjen. V dogovoru z Nemčijo lahko v državo vstopijo tisti, ki imajo pri nas pravico do azila in jih Nemčija ne bo zavrnila," je opozoril. "Če Nemčija begunce, ki želijo recimo na Švedsko, ne bo več pustila v državo, bomo tudi mi, v natančnem dogovoru z Nemčijo, storili enako," je napovedal avstrijski kancler. "Storili smo že vse, da tiste, ki pri nas nimajo pravice do azila, v prihodnosti zavrnemo že na meji," je še dejal. Faymann je vseeno zavrnil, da bi določili zgornjo mejo za sprejem beguncev. Na vprašanje, koliko beguncev pričakuje letos, je odgovoril, da bi lahko ob ustreznih ukrepih prišlo do bistvenega zmanjšanja njihovega števila. Stavi tudi na solidarnost pri reševanju begunske krize. "Kdor ni solidaren pri reševanju begunske problematike, lahko računa na veto pri finančni pomoči v naslednjih leti. Solidarnost ni enosmerna cesta," je zatrdil. Šefic: Dogovarjanje z Avstrijo in Nemčijo Avstrijska notranja ministrica Johanna Mikl Leitner je v petek izjavila, da bodo avstrijski varnostni organi na meji s Slovenijo od konca prihodnjega tedna zavračali vse prebežnike, ki nameravajo le prečkati Nemčijo, ne pa tam zaprositi tudi za azil. Kot je pojasnila, nemški organi namreč spuščajo v državo samo ljudi, ki nameravajo tam zaprositi za zaščito, v nasprotnem primeru jih vrnejo Avstriji. Avstrijska ministrica je zatrdila, da bodo vsakega begunca, ki bo želel na Švedsko, na meji zavrnili. Državni sekretar na ministrstvu za notranje zadeve Boštjan Šefic je tudi v petek povedal, da se Slovenija z Avstrijo, Nemčijo in drugimi državami dogovarja, kakšna bodo merila za prehajanje prebežnikov. Dogovor bo skupen, a ga še niso sklenili, je poudaril. "Ko bo, bomo videli, kaj bo, in tisto bomo potem tudi uresničevali," je izjavil.The coaching carousel — at least for head coaches — stopped spinning last week and all the jobs are now filled. With the hires made and National Signing Day behind us, now’s the time rank the 15 head-honcho hires made by FBS programs this offseason. Ranking the new head coaching hires 15. Tony Sanchez, UNLV — Sanchez comes to the Rebels from nearby Bishop Gorman High School. It’s a big jump going from high school powerhouse directly to college head coach. High school coaches have obviously made the transition to college head coach, but they usually are assistants at major programs first. Assistant coach John Garrison was a good hire. 14. John Bonamego, Central Michigan — Bonamego is an alum with NFL coaching experience but hasn’t coached or recruited at the college level in 17 years. All his NFL coaching experience is on special teams. It’s nice to have someone in place who could view this as a destination job instead of a stepping-stone, but can he have the success necessary to be there long term? The program has had good success at the MAC level with Brian Kelly and Butch Jones, but Dan Enos just left to be a coordinator in the SEC. 13. Lance Leipold, Buffalo — Leipold had amazing success at the Division III level, leading Wisconsin-Whitewater. He was named the Division III coach of the year six times in the last eight years and led Whitewater to six national titles and a 109-6 record. Will it translate to Division I/FBS? Leipold is leading a program that has just two winning seasons since joining the MAC in 1999. Fired coach Jeff Quinn had one of those seasons in 2013, but he was let go in mid-October after losing to Eastern Michigan. The bad news for Bulls fans is if Leipold does thrive he’ll get snatched up quickly by a bigger program. 12. Neal Brown, Troy — Brown returns to the school where he made his name as an up-and-coming offensive coordinator. The Kentucky native later left the Texas Tech “Air Raid” offense to be the Wildcats’ coordinator in Lexington, but now he is heading South again for his first head coaching job. Having been at Troy before, the 34-year-old Brown understands the culture and the positives/negatives surrounding the job. The offense should be fine. The big question is whether Troy can stop anyone. Vic Koenning is the defensive coordinator, and North Carolina’s defenses under Koenning were less than impressive. 11. David Beatty, Kansas — Beatty’s back in Lawrence, where he had two stints as an assistant in the last seven years. Beatty’s lone year as a solo coordinator came at Rice in 2010, so the jump to head coach is a big one for him, especially at a program where it’s so difficult to win. His high school experience in Texas and his stint with the Aggies will help with recruiting. Interim head coach Clint Bowen has agreed to stay on as assistant head coach and defensive coordinator. Bowen is an alum and has been with the program for 20 years, so he’s heavily invested. 10. Mike Bobo, Colorado State — Bobo steps into a good situation at CSU, with the Rams coming off a 10-win season. Bobo was named 247Sports’ offensive coordinator of the year in 2013 and the Colorado State offense shouldn’t miss a beat. Bobo’s whole career has been spent at Georgia, so recruiting the West as a first-time head coach could be a challenge. He can start by keeping some of the better in-state players home instead of losing them to Pac-12, Big 12 and Big Ten schools. Mike Riley was a bit of a surprise hire for Nebraska after the Huskers fired Bo Pelini. 9. Phillip Montgomery, Tulsa — Montgomery is a Texas native who coordinated some powerful offenses at Baylor and Houston. He was a high school coach in Texas as well, so those relationships should help him recruit well. He has been tied to Art Briles at his previous stops, so it will be interesting to see how well Montgomery does on his own. 8. Mike Riley, Nebraska — Riley was a bit of a surprise choice for the Huskers, but so far things have worked out well for him in Lincoln. The Huskers closed well on the recruiting trail, and he seems to be the antithesis of Bo Pelini personally, which is what the Nebraska brass wanted. The Huskers need to recruit nationally, so Riley’s ties to the West Coast should help in that regard. The one downside is that even if Riley and his staff do well, the Huskers could still be looking for a new coach in a few years. Riley is already 61, the same age Tom Osborne was when he stepped down as Huskers coach. 7. Pat Narduzzi, Pitt — The Panthers have offensive stars in James Conner and Tyler Boyd and Narduzzi’s defense should help complement those stars well. Narduzzi runs hard-nosed defenses, and should be able to recruit the types of players he wants in Pennsylvania, Ohio and the surrounding areas. Narduzzi won the Broyles Award in 2013, and has often been mentioned as a coordinator who was ready to take on his own program. Narduzzi hired veteran offensive coordinator Jim Chaney to run the offense, and with Conner and Boyd in place it should be a smooth transition. 6. Tom Herman, Houston — Herman won the Broyles Award in 2014 and was also named the 247Sports offensive coordinator of the year en route to Ohio State’s national championship. No matter the quarterback, Herman’s unit didn’t miss a beat. Third string quarterback Cardale Jones led Herman’s offense against tough defenses from Wisconsin, Alabama and Oregon and came out on top. Herman spent 10 years as an assistant coach in Texas, so he knows the high school coaches around the state and should be able to recruit well, especially offensively. 5. Paul Chryst, Wisconsin — Chryst is a Madison native, a former Badgers letterman and was an assistant there for eight years before returning this season as head coach. He obviously knows what it takes to win at Wisconsin and he figures to be there for as long as the administration will have him. He has previous head coaching experience at Pitt and his Panthers offenses were some of the best in school history. He took the Panthers to three consecutive bowl appearances, and has a bit of professional coaching experience, which will help on the recruiting trail. 4. Chad Morris, SMU — Morris was the hot coordinator name in the country for several years, and his patience paid off with a head coaching job in his native Texas. The American Football Coaches’ Association in 2013 named him assistant coach of the year, and his offenses at Clemson were prolific. If he can keep some of the talented players in the Dallas Metroxplex home to play for the Mustangs he can start the rebuilding process immediately. Morris’ offenses should be fine. Van Malone is a first-year defensive coordinator, but Morris also hired veteran coach Bill Young to help on defense and Young has been a coordinator as several stops like Miami, Oklahoma, Ohio State, USC, Oklahoma State and others. 3. Jim McElwain, Florida — McElwain knows what it takes to have success in the SEC and he also proved he can be a successful head coach by rebuilding the Colorado State program and leading the Rams to a 10-2 mark last season. McElwain took over a program that had gone 9-27 in the three seasons prior to his arrival and led the Rams to a 22-16 mark in three seasons. As Alabama’s offensive coordinator he won two national championships and guided the Tide to some of the best offensive production in the storied history of the program 2. Gary Andersen, Oregon State — Andersen left Utah State for Wisconsin and the Big Ten following the 2012 season, but after two years with the Badgers he decided to return to the West. In leading Wisconsin to a 19-7 mark over two seasons, Andersen showed he could coach and succeed at a major program on the FBS level. 1. Jim Harbaugh, Michigan – Harbaugh was the no-brainer choice for No. 1 on this list. It was a coup for the Wolverines to lure him back home to Ann Arbor after such a successful run as an NFL head coach with the San Francisco 49ers. Prior to that, Harbaugh led Stanford to consecutive bowl games including a 12-1 final season. He has the name-recognition and NFL pedigree that today’s recruits are interested in. Harbaugh has shown he can be successful on the college and NFL levels, and there is no reason to doubt that he can carry the Wolverines back to “elite” status.One of Nintendo’s most successful series of games has to be Pokemon. It continues to sell millions of copies every time a new duo of games are released for Nintendo’s most current portable hardware. We’ve just seen Pokemon Black and Pokemon White released for the DS, and no doubt the next release will be a 3DS exclusive not appearing until next year we’d guess. But you don’t need Nintendo hardware to partake in a Pokemon-esque game. Visual artist and web designer Matthew Hollett has come up with a free-to-play alternative that has a nice twist to it called Favimon. Favimon replaces the creatures found in Pokemon with favicon icons acquired from sites around the web. When you start the game gives you a single favicon representing the Favimon site. This is your hero, your means of fighting other favicons in an attempt to capture them. In order to fight these other favicons you first have to find them. This is done by visiting websites by typing valid in URLs to the Favimon search box. If the site you type in has a favicon it will appear on the playfield and you can begin fighting. A turn-based battle then ensues, with each favimon having a health, attack, defense, and speed stat. If you’re good enough the rival favicon will be defeated and added to your growing army of favi fighters. Favimon is a good example of what is possible with the growing set of easy to use and free web technologies out there. Hollett created the game using a mix of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. Favicons are found using the Google favicon API and a getFavicon app. The game is a pretty fun distraction and got awarded the Most Original Game award in the Mozilla Labs Game On 2010 Competition. Head on over to the Favimon site to start playing, or read the FAQ to learn more about the game.This month I asked both Second Life designers and consumers to weigh in on an important issue: Exactly how long they think it takes, and how long it actually takes to create the staple goods of the virtual economy. Now, I'm reporting back with some of the most interesting responses I received in the hopes that, in some small way, we can try to bridge the occasionally cavernous gap between customers and creators. As I said at the time and will repeat now, these numbers vary wildly depending on what's being made, how it's being made, and who's making it. I've slapped together some tattoo layers in the past, but the time frame for that has absolutely no bearing on how long it takes for someone with serious talent to make a mesh house. These responses provide purely anecdotal information, worlds away from something that could be collected in anything more formal than a Wednesday afternoon blog post. Nevertheless, I received loads of interesting responses, and anecdotal or not they're well worth sharing. The Customers In the original post directed towards Second Life
, and the Hawks go to it to get a quick look for Korver. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6mqQX3yl7U4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> In this instance, the clock is winding down in the first half and Kyle slips behind his defender, gives him a bump, and runs to the top of the wing to take the hand-off from Teague. The separation from the bump allows Teague to get between Kyle and his defender to screen him off, and Jeff’s defender has to stay under Jeff to stop any possible drive, which leaves Korver with enough room to get off a clean shot. The Hawks have gone to this at the end of games a few times, including the game-winner against Washington. Kyle is also great when playing the weakside of the floor opposite a post-up. When Josh gets doubled, Kyle works open moving towards the top of the key to create an easy passing lane for Smoove, who is one of the best passers out of the post in the NBA. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/aZVcT2m95YE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Here, the defense collapses onto Josh and Al flattens out onto the baseline to pull the weakside defender towards the hoop to avoid giving up a layup. Kyle slides up to make the pass easier for Josh and is able to get the shot off before the late closeout arrives. With Josh getting mismatches in the post at small forward doubles often come, and Kyle does well to find the open spot on the opposite side while giving Josh an easy target to hit. Kyle’s shooting has been a huge factor to the Hawks’ success this season. Atlanta is 15-8 when he shoots 50% from three and are 9-3 when he makes four or more three-pointers. Part of the reason is that Kyle’s shooting numbers are a good measure of how well the Hawks are moving the ball. If Kyle is getting looks, they are running their offensive sets and moving the ball. As Kyle told us after his 8 three-point performance against Boston, "I don’t create my own shot." This is true in the sense that he doesn’t create shots off the dribble and that he has to have teammates setting screens and passing him the ball. However, Kyle is one of the best in the NBA at working himself into the open spots on the floor and setting up screens (see: Hamilton, Rip), and in that sense, he creates a lot of shots. Watching Korver shoot is an experience, and I have been lucky enough to watch him up close after practices and in pre-game warmups. Part of what makes Kyle so enjoyable to watch is how smooth his form is. He has perfect rhythm to his stroke and maintains all of the correct mechanical aspects of a good shooter without becoming too robotic (Jenkins, when he's on, is like this but can get too caught up in the mechanics). The more I watch Korver, in games and in watching hundreds of video clips for this piece, the more I appreciate what he does and the ways Larry Drew tries to get him the ball. I hope that reading this does the same for you and that you will begin seeing these plays and tendencies when watching the Hawks going forward.Premium Motorsports (formerly Jay Robinson Racing) is an American professional stock car racing team that currently competes in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series. The team competed for most of its history in the Nationwide Series, before moving to the Cup Series in 2012. The team folded in late 2012 and Robinson moved into a partner role at NEMCO Motorsports (renamed NEMCO-JRR Motorsports), and later was a partner in the successor team Identity Ventures Racing. For 2015, Robinson began fielding NASCAR entries again, planning to run both the Sprint Cup Series and the Camping World Truck Series.[1][2] Mike Hillman's 40 team was absorbed by Premium in January 2016 and Tommy Baldwin Racing and their No. 7 car was also absorbed by Premium in September 2017 and used it part time for their drivers at the end of 2017 and in 2018. The team currently fields the No. 15 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 full-time for Ross Chastain. Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series [ edit ] Car No. 7 history [ edit ] On September 21, 2017, Premium Motorsports' owner, Jay Robinson announced that he has acquired all assets from Tommy Baldwin Racing. The acquisition includes Baldwin's entire cup series inventory including everything from the team's race vehicles to their equipment. It also includes the trucks that were leased by TBR to the No. 52 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Team but Baldwin says there remain a few obligations from his No. 7 team to be fulfilled in future races.[3] Justin Marks drove the car at Talladega, Hermie Sadler drove at Martinsville and Joey Gase drove at Texas and Phoenix. On January 22, 2018, Danica Patrick was announced to drive the No. 7 in the Daytona 500 in her final NASCAR start. She brought sponsorship from her former sponsor, GoDaddy. The team fielded a car prepared by Richard Childress Racing, and used the charter that the No. 15 car used in 2017.[4] Following the race, the charter went back to the No. 15. The No. 7 next appeared fielded by NY Racing Team in partnership with Premium Motorsports. It would be driven by JJ Yeley at Charlotte for the Coca Cola 600 and Pocono for the Pocono 400. It was then fielded under the Premium Motorsports banner utilizing what had been the No. 55 crew. D.J. Kennington would be behind the wheel at Michigan, and Reed Sorenson was scheduled to drive at Sonoma but the team withdrew midweek and entered Chicagoland with Sorenson instead. Jeffrey Earnhardt was brought on for the next race at Daytona, bringing home an 11th-place finish in the crash filled race. Part-time Truck Series driver Jesse Little made his Cup Series debut at Kentucky with the team. Car No. 15 history [ edit ] In 2017, Premium Motorsports bought the charter from the No. 15 HScott Motorsports team, and the car number was changed to No. 15 as a result. The team got a career-best 8th in Michael Waltrip's final race in the Daytona 500, able to avoid the carnage in the 2nd half of the race. After Daytona, Reed Sorenson went to the No. 15. At Talladega and Indianapolis Joey Gase drove the No. 15 finishing 21st and 25th respectively. At Dover, Ross Chastain made his Cup Series debut, where he finished 20th which is the team's best non-super-speedway finish. Road Course Ringer Kevin O'Connell drove the No. 15 at Sonoma finishing 33rd, Gray Gaulding drove the No. 15 in the 2017 Overton's 400. Derrike Cope drove the No. 15 at Michigan. The No. 15 team returned in 2018 with Chastain driving at Atlanta. Chastain was to run every race in the No. 15 for the rest of the season. It was later announced that road course ringer Justin Marks would pilot the car at Sonoma and the Charlotte Roval with sponsorship from the Sufferfest Beer Company.[5] This resulted in Chastain missing the Sonoma race, and driving the No. 7 at the Charlotte Roval. Chastain returned to the team in 2019, running the full season.[6] Car No. 27 history [ edit ] At the 2019 Daytona 500, Casey Mears drove a No. 27 Chevy Camaro ZL1 that was built and crewed by Premium, but entered as a Germain Racing entry. This was Mears's first Cup start since 2016.[7] Car No. 40 history [ edit ] In 2016, Premium Motorsports purchased the Hillman Racing No. 40 team and brought Mike Hillman as competition director. Hillman and Robinson attempted to field the No. 40 CRC Industries Chevrolet in the 2016 Daytona 500 for Reed Sorenson but failed to qualify. The 40 did not make another attempt for 2016.[8] Car No. 49 history [ edit ] In 2012, the team announced its intent to compete in the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The team planned to race the full series schedule, running Toyotas,[9] using the No. 49. J. J. Yeley and Tony Furr served as the driver and crew chief, respectively.[10] The team had sponsorship for the Daytona 500 from America-Israel Racing, in order to educate people about Israel. One of the sponsors said that "being brought up Southern Baptist, I was always taught we stand behind Israel. This is a way I felt I could give back to society. It's something I believe in."[11] Yeley also stated that JPO Absorbents will sponsor for about 8-10 races throughout the season. In its first outing, the team missed the field for the Daytona 500.[12] On October 22, 2012, the team sold off its Cup Series equipment in an auction to NEMCO Motorsports and Joe Nemechek, with Robinson becoming a partner in the renamed NEMCO-JRR Motorsports. In October 2014, Mike Wallace, the regular driver for the Robinson-affiliated Identity Ventures Racing, ran the No. 49 Royal Teak Collection Toyota at Talladega. Car No. 51 History [ edit ] At the 2018 Daytona 500, Justin Marks drove a No. 51 Chevy with Harry's Shave Club sponsoring. The points were leased from Rick Ware Racing. Car No. 55 history [ edit ] Mike Hillman, who was partnered with Joe Falk and his team was named as a partner for 2016, purchasing equipment from Hillman-Circle Sport LLC. The team returned in Martinsville for their 2016 debut. The number was changed from No. 62 to No. 55 with Reed Sorenson. The team made the race qualifying 40th out of 40 cars. The team would then make the races at both Texas and Bristol due to only 40 cars entered for both races, at Richmond there were 41 cars entered for the race but when qualifying was rained out and the field was set by practice speeds, the 55 team made the race due to being third fastest of the non-charter teams in practice. The 55 was driven by Michael Waltrip at Talladega; his 12th place would remain Robinson's best ever in Cup until the next restrictor plate race. Sorenson drove the next several races before being placed in the No. 98 starting at Pocono, with 98 driver Cole Whitt taking his place at this race and at Michigan, while Cody Ware drove at Sonoma;[13] however, Ware failed to qualify. Sorenson returned at Daytona. Sorenson sat out Watkins Glen as well, with Alex Kennedy running the No. 55. The team has been forced to run many races without sponsorship; however, they did pick up PEAK Antifreeze for Talladega with Waltrip, the World Record Striper Company for Dover, the Sprint Showdown and the Coca-Cola 600 with Sorenson, long-time Robinson sponsor Vydox Plus at Pocono with Whitt, Carport Empire with Ware,[13] and another longtime Robinson partner, Royal Teak Collection, with Sorenson at Daytona. In the second Talladega race, they surprised many by being the fastest in the first round of qualifying, then in the race, went to the garage at the opening laps to get the car ready for racing due to the car being impounded after qualifying. The team got to a bad start in 2017, crashing out and not qualifying for the Daytona 500. After the Daytona 500, Derrike Cope came back to the Cup series to drive the No. 55, starting at Atlanta. The No. 55 team originally planned to run full time, but skipped three races along the process. The team made its 2018 season debut with driver Joey Gase driving the car at Las Vegas. Reed Sorenson returned to the No. 55 machine at Auto Club. After running 6 more races with Sorenson, one with J.J. Yeley at Martinsville and one with Jeffrey Earnhardt at the Coca Cola 600, the 55 crew was moved to the No. 7 at Michigan with D.J. Kennington as driver. Car No. 62 history [ edit ] In 2015, upon the team's return to the Cup Series full-time, Premium began fielding a second car, the No. 62 Chevrolet for Brian Scott and Brendan Gaughan and Reed Sorenson. 62 was the number Gaughan used for the majority of his racing career. The team used the owner's points and equipment of Tommy Baldwin Racing's former No. 36 team, sold to Robinson at the beginning of the year.[1][14] The No. 62 had collaborative agreements with both TBR and Richard Childress Racing (both Scott and Gaughan were RCR drivers). Scott drove an RCR-prepared car at the Daytona 500 with family sponsor Shore Lodge[1][15] but crashed in his Budweiser Duel and failed to qualify. Gaughan planned to take over for the rest of the season, though without direct RCR support.[1][16] Gaughan qualified the next week in Atlanta, finishing 28th. Gaughan would subsequently qualify at Las Vegas, with South Point Hotel and Casino (owned by his father Michael) appearing on the car.[17] Gaughan qualified for the next two races in an unsponsored entry. However, the team then failed to qualify for the next four consecutive races, three of which were supposed to be fully sponsored. Gaughan finally qualified at Talladega with DiaThrive (who originally signed on at Martinsville) sponsoring, but blew a tire and crashed after 90 laps, finishing 40th. Gaughan failed to qualify for the fifth time at Kansas, and again the following race in Charlotte for the Coca-Cola 600. Gaughan was able to make the field at Dover, and made it to the end without incident, finishing 34th. Gaughan would also qualify at Pocono, due to the entry list having only 43 cars, but suffered electrical problems throughout the race and finished 40th. Gaughan failed to qualify at Michigan and Sonoma, but qualified at Daytona (due to cancellation of qualifying) with Vydox Plus (first signed on at Bristol) on the hood, and matched his season best 28th-place finish. After only qualifying for 8 of the first 16 races, and feeling like he could not give the effort to the team he wanted to, Gaughan left the team.[1] Reed Sorenson took over the No. 62 at Kentucky, which qualified for the second week in a row (due to another qualifying rainout) finishing in 36th place. Sorenson failed to qualify at New Hampshire and Indianapolis.[1] Sorenson was reassigned to the No. 98 at Pocono, with Timmy Hill moving over to the No. 62 for this race, which ran as a Ford from the former Phil Parsons Racing stable. The 62 made the show due to the entry list having only 43 cars, and finished 36th. T. J. Bell was entered in the No. 62, once again a Chevy, at Watkins Glen, but failed to qualify.[1] Sorenson returned to the No. 62, once again as a Ford, at Michigan, but failed to qualify again, and also failed to qualify at Bristol. Hill would return to the No. 62 at Darlington, but this time failed to qualify, and failed to qualify the next week at Richmond as well. The No. 62, with Hill, qualified for Chicagoland, snapping a five-race DNQ streak since Pocono, due to a third rained-out qualifying session. Hill finished 41st. Hill made the next race at New Hampshire as well, finishing 36th, and qualified for the third week in a row at Dover, due to the entry list having only 43 cars; he finished 39th. This three-race start streak was broken when Hill failed to qualify at Charlotte. He missed the race again at Kansas. Hill was able to qualify at Talladega, with Royal Teak Collection on the hood for the first time in 2015 (the company had sponsored several races on the No. 98); this was also just the second time the No. 62 had qualified on speed when all cars ran a lap (the first time was with Gaughan at the spring Talladega race). Unfortunately, the car was plagued by electrical issues and finished 41st. Hill qualified at Martinsville, due to the entry list having only 43 cars. Due to Ryan Preece running the No. 98 at Texas, Sorenson returned to the No. 62, but posted the slowest speed and failed to qualify. Hill would run the car at Phoenix, making the field due to the entry list having only 43 cars, but suffered non-terminal engine problems and finished last. Sorenson ran the car at Homestead, but yet again posted the slowest speed and failed to qualify. The No. 62 missed 20 of 36 races and finished 2015 45th in the owners points, lowest among teams that attempted the full schedule and also behind the part-time No. 21 and No. 95 teams. Car No. 66 history [ edit ] In 2014, Robinson was involved in a collaboration called Identity Ventures Racing to field the No. 66 LandCastle Title/Royal Teak Toyota for a rotation of Toyota drivers as a Michael Waltrip Racing affiliate, a rotation which including Waltrip himself.[19] Near the end of the season, Robinson took full control of the No. 66 after legal issues with principal partner Nat Hardwick.[20][21][22] In 2015, Robinson announced his plan to return to the Cup Series full-time out of his own shop for the first time since 2012, this time under the name Premium Motorsports. Robinson brought over the remaining equipment from Identity Ventures Racing, and also brought over the No. 66 and the associated owner points. The team's driver was announced as Mike Wallace. Wallace ran the Daytona 500 with Crazy Vapors and X8 Energy Gum sponsoring.[23] Wallace raced his way into the Daytona 500, and finished 36th in the race.[20] However, Wallace failed to qualify for the next two races.[17][20] Wallace was then released in favor of Tanner Berryhill, who took over at Phoenix and applied to be a Rookie of the Year contender.[20] Berryhill also failed to qualify in his only attempt. Wallace was placed on the entry list for Auto Club Speedway, but the team withdrew midweek, with Robinson announcing no current plans for a return due to the qualifying struggles and lack of sponsorship.[17] The team didn't return again until the non-points-paying Sprint All-Star Race's Sprint Showdown with Berryhill. Berryhill failed to win either Showdown segment in the No. 66.[24] The team was later merged with the No. 98.[1] Car No. 98 history [ edit ] In early May 2015, it was reported that Phil Parsons Racing with Mike Curb would be selling their No. 98 team driven by Josh Wise to Premium owner Jay Robinson.[1][25] Evidence for the change in ownership included the removal of the logos of PPR sponsor Phoenix Construction (owned by former team owner James Finch) from the car prior to the GEICO 500 at Talladega, replaced with Premium sponsor Royal Teak Collections.[26] The ownership change was announced on May 5, the Monday after the race, on the team's Twitter.[27] Premium Motorsports officially took over the No. 98 team at the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, with Royal Teak once again sponsoring the car, and Wise remaining as the driver. Dogecoin returned to the 98 car at Sonoma, where the team ran a Chevrolet.[28] Big Red soda signed on as sponsor for four races beginning at Kentucky in July,[29] where Wise was taken out early in a crash, finishing 43rd. Wise announced the following week that he had left Premium Motorsports, due to differences in opinion about the direction the team was going in comparison to Phil Parsons Racing. This was the second driver that left the team in a span of three days after Brendan Gaughan announced his departure Friday, July 10. Robinson later stated the move was due to sponsorship circumstances.[1] Timmy Hill, part-time driver of Premium's Truck Series entry, drove the No. 98 at New Hampshire and Indianapolis.[1] Hill switched to the No. 62 at Pocono, with Sorenson switching over to the No. 98, which ran as a Chevy at this race. Hill returned to the No. 98 at Watkins Glen, with the car once again running as a Chevy. Hill also ran Michigan and Bristol in the No. 98, before returning to the No. 62 at Darlington, with T. J. Bell running the No. 98. Sorenson returned to the No. 98 at Richmond and ran it again at Chicagoland. Tommy Baldwin Racing leased the No. 98 at New Hampshire in the fall, fielding Ryan Preece. After Sorenson ran the No. 98 for the next several weeks, Premium again leased the owner points, this time to Michael Waltrip Racing at Talladega in the fall, where Waltrip himself drove. Preece then returned to the No. 98, with Premium itself this time, for Martinsville, Texas and Phoenix. TBR again fielded the car for Preece at Homestead-Miami. In 2016, after the merger with the former No. 40 team, Cole Whitt was announced as the new driver of the No. 98, running the full season. The team inherited a charter from the No. 62 (formerly Baldwin's 36) but leased it to HScott Motorsports for 2016, leaving them without a guaranteed starting spot in races under NASCAR's new qualifying system. Whitt missed the Daytona 500 after spinning and breaking his transmission in his Can-Am Duel race. However, due to a shortage of entries for the next 3 races with only 39 cars at Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Fontana, Whitt and the 98 team made all of the races. The team would later miss the race at Richmond due to the field having 41 cars, a qualifying rainout and Whitt's practice speed being the slowest of the Open teams. Whitt bounced back at Talladega, posting an 18th place finish despite being involved in a last-lap crash. Later, starting at Pocono, Whitt was moved to the No. 55, with Sorenson coming over from that team to field the No. 98 there and at Michigan. Whitt returned to the No. 98 at Sonoma, with Sorenson sitting out the weekend due to Cody Ware running the 55. The next week at Daytona, Whitt posted Premium's best ever finish after coming home 11th. After finishing 21st at Kentucky, Whitt sat out New Hampshire due to sponsorship issues, with Ryan Ellis running the No. 98. Whitt returned at Indianapolis. Timmy Hill drove the car at Dover. Whitt returned at Charlotte, however Whitt was released by the team after Kansas for a lack of sponsorship. Sorenson drove the car at Kansas (Whitt was in No. 55) after that the team skipped some races. Sorenson returned at Phoenix. In 2017 the No. 98 was renumbered to No. 15. Nationwide Series [ edit ] Car No. 28 history [ edit ] The 28 at Darlingon in 2006. The No. 28 car made its debut at the 2004 Charter 250. It was sponsored by Yahoo! and driven by Mark Green, who finished 35th in the car. Green piloted the car in six more races that season, before departing for Keith Coleman Racing. Shane Hall drove the car on a limited basis for the rest of the year. Derrike Cope was named the driver for 2005, with sponsorship from Radioshack and Motorola. Cope struggled and was replaced by Shane Hall. Hall only ran on a part-time basis, and did not finish a race. The No. 28 was driven part-time by Hall in 2006. He ran six races and had a best finish of 36th. For 2007, the team acquired the assets of the former Haas CNC Racing Busch team and ran the No. 28 Chevy full-time with Robert Richardson and Blake Bjorklund. Jeff Green and Johnny Sauter originally drove as well, before leaving to concentrate on their Cup rides. Sponsorship came from Checkers/Rally's Drive-In, U.S. Border Patrol, and Affordable Band Instruments during the 2007 racing season. Their best finish came at Montreal where Swedish road ringer Niclas Jonsson started 8th, led 5 laps and finished 12th after briefly contending to win the race. In 2008, Kirk Shelmerdine drove the No. 28 at Daytona with sponsorship from Lilly Trucking of Virginia in a one race deal for Daytona. Brian Keselowski was named the driver of the No. 28 after Daytona, however he was released after Bristol. Kenny Wallace was named the driver of the No. 28 for the rest of the year starting at Nashville with the United States Border Patrol providing sponsorship. He provided the team with its career-best third-place finish at Memphis Motorsports Park and finished sixteenth in points. In 2009, he had two top ten finishes and placed eleventh in points, the team's highest finish. The Border Patrol left at the end of the season, and the team was forced to rotate sponsors for 2010. Wallace left the team for RAB Racing, and Robinson hired Derrike Cope to drive full-time in 2011 with sponsorship from Maxelence. Cope ran all the races except for Iowa, in which Dennis Setzer drove. Cope would finish 20th in points with a best finish of 17th at Road America. J.J. Yeley drove the No. 28 in the 2012 season opener at Daytona. David Green and Cope ran one race each with sponsorship from JPO Absorbents. Kevin Lepage took over the No. 28 car with manufacturer support from Chevrolet.[30] However, the team began to focus on its Cup program with Yeley, and returned at Charlotte with Tony Raines. Car No. 49 history [ edit ] Derrike Cope racing the No. 49. JRR made its debut in 2000 at Myrtle Beach Speedway. Rodney Childers was the driver of the No. 49 Southern Marine Chevy, but wrecked after 69 laps. JRR returned to the Busch Series at the 2001 NAPA Auto Parts 300. Fielding a Chevrolet, driver Andy Kirby failed to make the field. Their first start came at the Suncom 200, with A.J. Frank driving. He finished 39th after suffering equipment failure. The team made the next race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, with Carl Long finishing 42nd, followed by Bristol Motor Speedway, where they finished 43rd with Jerry McCart driving, as well finishing 42nd at Texas with Robbie Faggert. Frank returned at Nashville, where he finished 38th after wrecking during the race. At the next race at the NASCAR Subway 300, Kirby finished in 16th, the best finish for the team that year. Other drivers who raced for JRR that year were Joe Bush, Dick Trickle, Phil Bonifield, Brian Tyler, Philip Morris, Brian Weber, and Ken Alexander. The team finished 33rd in owner's points that year. JRR started 2002 by switching to Ford and Kirk Shelmerdine finishing 31st at Daytona. Faggart returned the next week with sponsorship from Rent-A-Wreck, where he finished 35th, and Craig Raudman at Las Vegas, who finished 32nd. Joe Buford took over the next two races, before David Starr took over at Texas. After that, Kirby returned to the team, and ran until the Kroger 300, when he was killed in a motorcycle accident two days after. They made one race with Nick Woodward, then with Dan Pardus. Buford, Troy Cline, and Derrike Cope finished out the year for the team. In 2003, the team hired Bingham to and Cope to share the driving duties 49. Bingham struggled finishing races and soon moved over to the No. 39 team, while Cope would eventually be released. Shane Hall took over for two races, along with Carlos Contreras. At New Hampshire, Tammy Jo Kirk and sponsor Advil signed on. She ran 15 races that season with a best finish of 21st at Pikes Peak. Cope returned to the 49 in 2004, running 30 out of 34 races, and finishing 27th in points. Vahsholtz made one start at Kentucky, where he finished 36th. In 2005, JRR hired Steve Grissom to pilot the No. 49 full-time. His best finish was 16th at Talladega. Mara Reyes filled in for him at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, Mexico City. Steve Grissom ran the season-opening race at Daytona in 2006 until Jorge Goeters (competing for NASCAR Busch Series Rookie of the Year) drove for a few races. Derrike Cope then took over driving duties, sharing the ride with Shane Hall, Steve Grissom, and Jennifer Jo Cobb. Derrike Cope ran three 3 races in the No. 49 in 2007. The No. 49 switched to No. 4 in 2008, after purchasing owners points from Phoenix Racing. Robert Richardson ran eleven races with funding from JVC and Phantom EFX, before Cope took his place for most of the season. In the final races, Patrick Sheltra leased the number and owner's points for his own entry. At the road course events, Phoenix fielded the No. 4 for Landon Cassill, while Cope drove the 49. For the 2009 season, Kertus Davis began the season as the driver of the No. 49 again in 2009 with GetMoreVacations.com as sponsor. After several races, Mark Green returned to the team as driver. During the season, this team ran as a start and park team.[citation needed] In 2010, Green ran both the No. 49 and No. 70 cars for JRR under an agreement with ML Motorsports. This same deal was formed for 2010. Brad Teague ran the No. 49 at Bristol in March. In 2011, this team was entered on occasion, and mostly used to Start and Park which helps fund the primary No. 28 car, with Derrike Cope. Other teams [ edit ] The 39 cars were purchased from Robert Yates Racing in 2003, who had repossessed the equipment from Angela's Motorsports. The team's first race was at the Koolerz 300, with Mike McLaughlin driving a fan-supported ride. He qualified fourth, but was involved in a crash late in the race, and finished 29th. Joe Buford and Clint Vahsholtz ran the next two races. Jason White began running the 39 eventually with Three Stooges Beer as the sponsor. Eventually, road racer Chris Bingham was moved to the 39 car after struggling in the 49 car. Following his release, Jamie Mosley and Dana White finished out the year. For the 2004 season Andy Ponstein began the year in the 39 with sponsorship from Yahoo!, but wrecked several times during his tenure and was released. Tina Gordon came on after that, and had a best finish of 26th at Pikes Peak, before she was released. The 39 has not run since. JRR revived its third team in 2008 as the No. 49. Derrike Cope first attempted a race with the car at Mexico City, but failed to qualify. The car next ran at Nashville Superspeedway, when Shane Hall finished last after an early vibration problem. Kertus Davis joined the team at Kentucky and ran the rest of season in No. 49 after leaving his family owned JD Motorsports team, his best finish being 35th. JRR has not run a third car since then. Camping World Truck Series [ edit ] Truck No. 15 history [ edit ] In 2017, the team fielded another Truck Series entry, using the No. 15. Gray Gaulding was signed to drive part-time and began racing at Chicagoland finishing 25th. In 2018, the team expanded to full time with driver Robby Lyons, who previously drove in a couple races for the team in 2017. Lyons would be replaced by Cup driver Reed Sorenson in a few races midseason, and by JR Heffner for the race at Eldora Speedway. Phil Parsons son Stefan will make his truck series debut at Bristol Motor Speedway. Truck No. 49 history [ edit ] In 2015, the team fielded a full-time Truck Series entry, using the No. 94 (inverse of the 49). Wendell Chavous was signed to drive the full season, except the season opener at Daytona where he was not approved to run. Former Truck Series champion Travis Kvapil was hired to drive at Daytona. Kvapil started on the outside pole, but finished 15th after sustaining damage in a wreck. Chavous made his Truck Series debut at Atlanta. The team suffers their first DNQ at Martinsville. Chavous was replaced by Timmy Hill beginning at Dover, though he returned to the team to drive at Eldora, and drove the next three races before being released again. T. J. Bell drove at Mosport, then Hill returned once again, although Wayne Edwards drove a single race at Las Vegas (due to Hill's Cup Series commitments to the team). In 2016, Hill was announced as the full-time driver of the Truck, which switched numbers to Robinson's traditional No. 49. The team later struck a deal with JR Motorsports to loan them the Truck for use with Nick Drake. Edwards also drove in Hill's place at Texas. Spencer Boyd drove at Gateway. Hill returned at Kentucky, but has not run the Truck since and later moved to MBM Motorsports in the Xfinity Series. Drivers of the No. 49 since then have included Edwards, Sorenson, D. J. Kennington and Bryce Napier. In 2017, Wendell Chavous competed full-time in this truck and for NASCAR Rookie of the Year honors. References [ edit ]When researcher and artist Matthew Plummer-Fernandez created an app that would distort and encrypt 3D printing files beyond recognition, he did not anticipate the reaction it would get. "For me it was really tongue in cheek, but people took it really seriously," he told the audience at the Story Festival in London this weekend. The encryption app was created in reaction to a series of events that were taking place as the worlds of piracy, mass surveillance and 3D printing were colliding, he explains. It all started off with the creation of 3D printed gun files that were circulated online and caused fear and speculation among law enforcement officials around the world. Then came the copyright legislation issues, which saw 3D printing files start to be hosted on file-sharing sites like the Pirate Bay. Finally came the Snowden revelations that brought to the fore issues around encrypting communications. The way that Plummer-Fernandez's app worked, only the people sending and receiving a file that had the app and the right encryption key would be able to access it. This obviously made it possible to transfer files that might be considered illegal—of weapon designs, for example—without anyone necessarily knowing. Plummer-Fernandez started working with 3D printing way before it was fashionable. He began by printing copies of everyday objects, enjoying how their imperfections were not part of their decay—as with the original artefacts—but an original part of the new 3D-printed objects. "I liked that I was using something mundane to create something extraordinary," he says. As 3D printing started to become increasingly democratised and widespread, he refined his process, but many imperfections with the technology and the resulting objects remained. This only served to inspire him further, however. His thinking was that "if something is being eroded in this process… I might as well exacerbate this process," he says. He created two apps—one that contorted the 3D mesh and another that generated the colour. "Distortion of 3D mesh became a part of my own work." Carrying on his work with everyday objects, he embarked on a project that involved scanning Mickey Mouse. The character was interesting to him, he says, because, "no matter how much you erode him and blow his head off you can still tell it is Mickey." The other problem was that due to the don't-mess-with-the-mouse fear inspired by Disney's lawyers, he couldn't persuade any printers to actually print it for him. Eventually, he managed to blur Mickey enough that he could print it safely, which formed part of an ongoing project called "sekuMoi Mecy." It was through using similar technology that he had created for his distorted sculpture projects, that Plummer-Fernandez built the 3D printing encryption app. The practitioner part of him came together with the researcher part of him to create something that allowed him to be both playful and challenging. "Why everyone likes the project, I'm not so sure," says Plummer-Fernandez modestly. We think we can guess. This story originally appeared on WIRED UK.Oregon defensive back John Neal spoke with the media at the Alamo Bowl about the upcoming game agains TCU. With WR Josh Doctson, Garry Patterson said he’s out – Does that change at all your feelings on the wide recievers? Well, they got a whole bunch of them but when you take one of the five best wide receivers in the country out of the game plan yeah there’s a little bit of
am basically caching all the Android SDK components I download in the override block, and the Gradle dependencies and wrapper caches. The test section In CircleCI, the test section is the main section of the job. It’s the one that specifies what to do to assert that the codebase is in a good state. It’s usually used to compile, run the tests, and static analysis. In this case the pre and override sections are very simple: The pre section is invoking a script that creates a mock google-services.json — the file that the Google Services plugin uses to configure all the Play Services and Firebase API keys for you. This cannot unfortunately be done with environment variables, and you definitely don’t want to put your actual API keys into VCS, so this is the simplest workaround. The override section is simply invoking the check task on the Gradle build. The task is configured to run all static analysis and tests, and we pass the --continue flag to make sure all checks are run even if some of them fail. This way we can fix all issues in a single run instead of going back and forth for each failing check. Collecting the results By default, CircleCI supports interpreting JUnit’s output and can show it in the job page:Written by J.Michael Cole. As tour operators prepare to protest next Monday to call on the Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) administration to help the sagging tourism industry, a spokesman for the Travel Agent Association of the R.O.C. Taiwan attributes a drop in Chinese tourists to online rudeness by the Taiwanese. Ringo Lee (李奇嶽), spokesman for the Association, said on Wednesday that dwindling numbers in Chinese arrivals to Taiwan were not the result of a decision by Chinese authorities to punish the Tsai administration for refusing to acknowledge the so-called “1992 consensus,” but rather “smearing language” used by Taiwanese netizens to refer to Chinese people. According to Mainland Affairs Council statistics released this week, the number of Chinese tourist arrivals to Taiwan has dropped 22 percent since President Tsai’s inauguration on May 20 over the same period last year. On Aug. 31, Minister of Transportation and Communications Ho Chen Tan (賀陳旦) projected a decrease of 600,000 Chinese tourists to Taiwan this year from the 4.18 million in 2015. Jessica Yu (尤敏華), secretary of the Hotel Association of the Republic of China, notes that the hotel occupancy rate across Taiwan has dropped 50 percent. Meanwhile, Chang Tien-tsai (張天財), secretary-general of the National Joint Association of Buses for Tourists of the Republic of China, said that about 80 percent of the 16,000 tourist buses around the nation are currently idle due to the drop in Chinese tourists. For Lee, who says the intent of Monday’s protest isn’t to pressure Tsai to embrace the “1992 consensus,” lack of Taiwanese civility is the main cause of the drop in Chinese arrivals. “We need to stop using smearing language about Chinese people, especially on the Internet,” Lee said. Discussing the same issue earlier this week on his Facebook, Minister without Portfolio Chang Ching-sen (張景森), convener of a Cabinet task force set up to attract Chinese tourists, also beseeched Taiwanese netizens to stop posting satirical and derogatory comments about the Chinese. “These kinds of comments serve only to provoke Chinese people’s antipathy toward Taiwan. Should that become widespread, I see a real danger for Taiwan,” he wrote. “No matter how you look at the Beijing government, I hope you Internet users will be able to tell Chinese people apart from their government and realize that Chinese tourists are our most-needed friends.” (Ironically, earlier this year president-elect Tsai had to tell the same Chang to stop posting comments on his Facebook page after he ridiculed Taiwan’s civil society.) However, dwindling numbers may be part of larger trends and changing patterns in Chinese outbound tourism and not, as Lee and Chang claim, lack of online etiquette. During the January-to-June period, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan experienced a 7 percent drop in visits from China, Forbes reports. Of course we could also accuse the people of Hong Kong and Macau of being “rude” toward the Chinese online and hurting their tourism industries. But then again, this would not explain the increase in the number of Chinese tourists who visited Japan — where antipathy also runs high — during the same period. Whatever the reasons for the drop in Chinese tourists, it’s a bit precious to attribute this to “rude” comments by Taiwanese netizens. In fact, this comes very close to blaming the victim — to wit, Chinese sovereignty claims over Taiwan, the 1,600 or so ballistic missiles aimed at it, the constant threats and efforts to isolate it internationally and so on. Not to mention such controversies as the Leon Dai (戴立忍) or Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜) cases, or the denial of entry visas to Hong Kong to several Taiwanese in recent years. Of, for that matter, the many instances where Chinese netizens and “youth organizations” have viciously attacked the Taiwanese. That isn’t to say that Taiwanese netizens should not occupy the high moral ground by indeed being courteous toward the Chinese, who after all cannot be completely blamed for the actions of their quite despicable government. But to turn the tables and portray the Taiwanese public as the perpetrators in all this? Come on. For every netizen who has poked fun at the Chinese, hundreds of them have displayed nothing but patience and kindness over the years. J. Michael Cole is the chief editor of The News Lens International, a senior non-resident fellow with the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute. This article was first posted on The News Lens and can be found here. Image credit: CC by Bryansjs/Flickr.Former ‘It girl’, who was diagnosed with a brain tumour last year, found dead at her London home The Prince of Wales has said he is “deeply saddened” at the death of family friend Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, socialite and celebrity, who was found dead at her London flat aged 45. The former “It girl” and TV personality, who had appeared on reality shows including I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, revealed just three months ago that she had been receiving treatment for a brain tumour – a non-malignant growth in her pituitary gland. Her death was being treated as unexplained. A spokesman for the Metropolitan police said officers were called by London Ambulance Service at approximately 1.40pm on Wednesday to a south London address. “A woman, aged in her 40s, was pronounced dead at the scene. At this early stage the death is being treated as unexplained. We are not treating this death as suspicious. The coroner has been informed and the next of kin has been informed.” The one-time model was the daughter of former British Olympic skier and landowner Charles Palmer-Tomkinson, a close friend of Prince Charles, and his wife Patti. Her older sister, author Santa Montefiore, is married to historian and novelist Simon Sebag-Montefiore. Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall said they were “deeply saddened and our thoughts are so much with the family”. Revealing details of her tumour in November, Palmer-Tomkinson said: “I went to the doctors to talk about my latest blood tests when I got back from skiing in January. I said ‘What does this mean? Can you translate it?’ And the doctor said: ‘As I suspected, you have a brain tumour.’’’ She added: “I got terribly frightened. I started thinking ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die. I’ve only got a couple of weeks to live’. Stuff like that.” She said in the interview that she had been taking medication and, “thankfully, it seems to have gone away for now”. During a colourful life she was a regular face on the London party scene during the 1990s, frequently making headlines and appearing in the pages of society and celebrity magazines. In 2002 she appeared on the reality TV series I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! coming second to DJ Tony Blackburn. She also appeared on other reality shows, including a celebrity special of Blind Date and A Place in the Sun. A former model, she was close to young members of the royal family, attending the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in 2011. She had contributed columns to several publications, including the Sunday Times, the Spectator and Tatler, and released her first novel, The Inheritance, in 2010. She spoke candidly about her well-documented battle with drugs. She was first treated for cocaine addiction in 1999 and her septum nasi collapsed due to her habit. She told the Sun last year: “I haven’t done drugs for 10 years” and said she was now “a bit obsessed with healthy eating”. In one interview, she told talk show host Jeremy Kyle that she had almost died after taking an overdose of cocaine. In recent years she spoke of struggling with anxiety, which had seen her turn into a “recluse”. The Brain Tumour charity praised Palmer-Tomkinson for raising awareness of the disease. Sarah Lindsell, the chief executive, said: “Our hearts go out to all of Tara Palmer-Tomkinson’s family and friends. Three months ago Tara was brave enough to speak out about her brain tumour diagnosis and the impact it had on her life. “Her honesty helped to raise awareness of the disease and it was welcomed by the many thousands of people in the UK and around the world who cope with the impact of a brain tumour. Tara helped to show why we must do all we can to defeat this devastating disease which is the biggest cancer killer of children and young people in the UK.” Among tributes, TV presenter Piers Morgan tweeted: “A fun, feisty woman who battled many demons. Very sad news.”Dr. Jeremy Mao has unveiled a technique that directs the body's stem cells into a scaffolding that will aid in the regeneration of a new tooth. The loss of a tooth is a minor deformity and a major pain. Although dental implants are available, the healing process can take months on end, and implants that fail to align with the ever-growing jawbone tend to fall out. If only adult teeth could be regenerated, right? According to a study published in the latest Journal of Dental Research, a new tissue regeneration technique may allow people to simply regrow a new set of pearly whites. Dr. Jeremy Mao, the Edward V. Zegarelli Professor of Dental Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, has unveiled a growth factor-infused, three-dimensional scaffold with the potential to regenerate an anatomically correct tooth in just nine weeks from implantation. By using a procedure developed in the university's Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory, Dr. Mao can direct the body's own stem cells toward the scaffold, which is made of natural materials. Once the stem cells have colonized the scaffold, a tooth can grow in the socket and then merge with the surrounding tissue. Dr. Mao's technique not only eliminates the need to grow teeth in a Petri dish, but it is the first to achieve regeneration of anatomically correct teeth by using the body's own resources. Factor in the faster recovery time and the comparatively natural process of regrowth (as opposed to implantation), and you have a massively appealing dental treatment. Columbia University has already filed patent applications in regard to the technology and is seeking associates to aid in its commercialization. In the meantime, Dr. Mao is considering the best approach for applying his technique to cost-effective clinical therapies. Columbia University Medical CenterI was sitting on my sofa wondering how much cap space the Redskins had left after the flurry of activity this week, and it occurred to me that other people might be wondering the same thing. We all know that, a month ago, the Redskins had the 5th highest of cap limit in the league. We also knew then that it would shrink quickly if Kirk Cousins was hit with the franchise tag, which took a $24m bite out of the team’s cap space. As I sit here and type this, the best estimate I have for Redskins available cap space on the 11th of March 2017 is $14.305m. This raises a few questions for me: Is this enough? Where did all the cap space go? How much space is available in 2018? Let’s look at the second question first: Where did all the cap space go? Kirk Cousins - Kirk has a one-season hit of $23.944m. Free Agent Frenzy - The four free agents signed from other teams have taken another $16.25m Stacy McGee $3.19m Swearinger $3.33m Terrell McClain $3.73m Terrell Pryor $6m 3. Re-signing the Redskins own unrestricted free agents - Three free agents have cost $5.18m Vernon Davis $3.33m Nick Sundberg $1.052m Junior Gallette $800K 4. Tendering restricted free agents & exclusive rights free agents - Four players combine for a $5.848m cap charge Chris Thompson $2.746m Will Compton $1.797m Ty Nsekhe $690K Vinston Painter $615K So, 12 players on the roster have eaten up the majority of the Redskins 2017 available cap space. Question 2: So, is the $14m in available cap space enough? When it come to money, I guess there’s never ‘enough’, but the amount that’s left is likely to be sufficient to the Redskins’ needs. (One thing to note is that only the top 51 salaries count against the cap. Right now, the last 11 players count for $615,000 each. Any player signed at that price won’t count toward the cap, and any other player signed will push one of these guys below the 51-player cutoff, creating a $615K “credit”. In other words, if we sign a player with a $2.615m cap charge, the available cap space will only reduce by $2m because one of the players at the bottom of the list will be pushed past the 51-player limit.) A. The Redskins need to account for their “rookie pool” — the amount of money likely to be needed to sign the Redskins 10 draft picks. OverTheCap estimates the Redskins rookie pool at $7.489m. B. They need to “keep some powder dry” to be able to sign players during the season to replace injured players on the 53. They probably need to keep at least $5m available going into the season. So, the rookie pool and ‘keeping powder dry’ mean that the Redskins need to reserve around $12.5 million of the $14.3m remaining. So, the team has — say — $2.4m left to spend in free agency (The $1.8m difference + the $615K ‘credit’ from the 51 player limit). Well... maybe. The team could create a lot of new space by cutting some players: Cutting DeAngelo Hall would add $4.25m to the available money. Cutting Shawn Lauvao would add $4m. Cutting Niles Paul would add $2.2m. So, with 2 or 3 strokes of the pen (or the sword) the Redskins could add up to $10.45m in cap space. If they had to choose between retaining Hall & Lauvao or signing Bennie Logan, I don’t think there would be much hesitation. In other words, the Redskins have enough space to sign their draft picks & UDFAs, take care of all their needs, and still sign one or two more quality unrestricted free agents. Note: Of course, the Redskins cap space situation for 2017 would be affected — possibly quite dramatically — if they trade Kirk Cousins or sign him to a long term deal. Question 3: How much cap space is available in 2018? WIth all the activity the team has had, it would be easy to get worried about the impact on future years. Well, the Redskins (according to OverTheCap) have an estimated $68.7m in available cap space for 2018. The main reason for this generous amount of available cap space is, of course, that Kirk Cousins isn’t under contract for 2018. A large chunk of that money may be needed to solve the Redskins quarterback dilemma. The team will also have some significant players that will become free agents in 2018 who will need to be re-signed, extended or replaced out of that available pool of funds. The following list is not comprehensive:THE carbon tax has boosted the cost of living scarcely at all. Despite dire talk of an ''almost unimaginable'' increase (Tony Abbott) and $100 for a Sunday roast (Barnaby Joyce) the first official consumer price figures show a far lower impact than predicted by the Treasury. Last July, Treasury said the tax would push up the consumer price index 0.70 percentage points, adding $9.90 per week to average household costs. In return, households were given compensation averaging $10.10 per week. But 0.70 percentage points looks like being an overestimate. Inflation figures for the September quarter - the one that encompasses almost all of the electricity and gas price rises - show them adding 0.44 points to the CPI. It's a big figure, but not that much bigger than the usual September quarter slug. Melbourne households have endured a 13.6 per cent increase in electricity prices - unwelcome but well short of previous September quarter jumps of 19 per cent and 21 per cent. Nationwide, electricity and gas price rises have added 0.25 and 0.33 points to the consumer price index in the past two September quarters. Treasury expected the gas and electricity price hikes to account for only half of the 0.70 boost, the rest being accounted for by businesses that passed them on.In his free time, Sven Laumer serves as a referee for Bavaria’s highest amateur football league. A few years ago, he noticed several footballers had quit Facebook, making it hard to organize events on the platform. He was annoyed, but as a professor who studies information systems, he was also intrigued. Why would the young men want to give up Facebook? Social scientists had been saying the social network was a good thing. “At the time, the main paradigm in social networking research was that Facebook is a positive place, it’s a place of happiness, it’s a place where you have fun, you get entertained, you talk to friends, you feel amused, accepted,” says Hanna Krasnova, an information systems researcher at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Influential studies had shown that the social capital we earn on social media can be key to our successes, big and small. Our virtual connections were known to help us access jobs, information, emotional support, and everyday favors. “Everyone was enthusiastic about social media,” Laumer says. Laumer, an assistant professor at Otto-Friedrich University in Germany, suspected that quitting Facebook was a classic response to stress. He knew other researchers had looked at something called “technostress,” which crops up in workplaces due to buggy interfaces or complex processes. But that didn’t really fit with Facebook, which is easy to use. Something else seemed to be stressing people out. “We thought there was a new phenomenon on social media in particular,” Laumer says. Facebook’s News Feed didn’t feel entertaining; it loomed like a long list of demands. Cheer me up. Comfort me. Wish me a happy birthday. Fund my Kickstarter. Through probing interviews, surveys, longitudinal studies, and laboratory experiments, researchers have begun to shift the paradigm, revealing that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and their ilk are places not only of fun and success, but of dark, confronting, and primal human emotions—less Magic Kingdom and more creepy fun house. In many ways, researchers say, these platforms are giant experiments on one of our species’ most essential characteristics: our social nature. So it shouldn’t be a surprise there are unintended consequences. Also in Sociology Ingenious: Helen Fisher By Kevin Berger An hour into my interview about sex and love with Helen Fisher, she said, “You’re getting me to say a whole lot of things I never get to say.” Her tone wasn’t exasperation but, I think, gratefulness. She seemed to...READ MORE “No one constructed something to make people feel bad or good,” says Ethan Kross, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan. “But, what we’re looking at is, how does it actually play out and impact people in daily life?” One consequence may be that using Facebook can lead you to feel a little bit sadder—a phenomenon popularly known as “Facebook depression.” In their 2013 study of Facebook, Kross and his colleagues text messaged 82 people—mostly undergraduates recruited in Ann Arbor, Michigan—five times a day to ask how much they had used Facebook and how they felt. “What we found was that, the more people reported using Facebook during one moment in time, the more their self-reported mood declined from the beginning of that period to the end,” Kross says. Getty Images Why? Laumer and his colleagues noticed that, for some of the participants, Facebook’s News Feed didn’t feel entertaining; it loomed like a long list of demands. Cheer me up. Comfort me. Wish me a happy birthday. Fund my Kickstarter. Like this new profile picture. Read my new feature in Nautilus. Social networking sites blast users with requests in ways never before possible. Requests don’t go out one-to-one; they go out like buckshot, one-to-many. No wonder people get stressed by them. Stress is what arises when people feel that they don’t have the resources or ability to cope with some perceived threat—in this case, the threat of what Laumer calls “social overload.” Ironically, social overload is the flip side of what other researchers have found to be one of the most positive aspects of social media: social sharing. Sharing one’s problems with others online can reduce stress associated with everything from everyday pressures to life transitions to natural disasters, says medical sociologist Shelia Cotten of Michigan State University, who, in one study, found that Internet use can decrease loneliness in older Americans. “There’s a whole lot of social support that gets exchanged that can have very beneficial aspects to your health and well-being and can help to alleviate stress.” The problem is, as you’re alleviating your stress, you’re putting it onto others. Sociologist Keith Hampton of Rutgers University, who has conducted social media surveys for the Pew Research Center, calls this second-hand stress “the cost of caring.” It should be no surprise, he says, that women tend to pay this price more than men, since they carry much of the burden of care for family and friends both online and off. “When you’re aware of bad things happening to people you know, not only does it bring stress to your life, but it also allows you to provide them with social support and empathy,” he says. But not all friends are created equal online. On social media, we can keep adding contacts ad infinitum—including people we rarely or never see in real life. “For the first time in modern history, ties are persistent in a way they haven’t been before,” Hampton says. Laumer and his colleagues found social overload is more likely to strike people who have more Facebook-only friends. That makes sense. In the 1990s, anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed that human beings have the time and bandwidth to sustain 100 to 200 friendships at a time. In a recent study involving 1.7 million users, Dunbar and his colleagues found that Twitter users maintained “stable social relations” with about that same number on average. But if we have about 150 friends we regularly contact and think about on Facebook or Twitter, and they all regularly put out social support requests, then we’re already juggling more demands than our ancestors ever would have. Where do we fit in our real friends? Many overwhelmed users consider just quitting wholesale. “Social overload has a strong effect on exhaustion,” Laumer says. Facebook, Instagram, and their ilk are places not only of fun and success, but of dark, confronting, and primal human emotions—less Magic Kingdom and more creepy fun house. On top of that, studies have confirmed what’s plain to every user: Friends tend to post the things that make them look good. In one Portlandia skit, Fred Armisen’s character takes his new flame on a weekend trip to Italy. They sleep through the whole thing in a hotel and end up miserable. Earlier they had posted a bunch of photos of themselves smiling and looking happy. When he gets home and watches his friend (Carrie Brownstein) scroll through the photos, congratulating him on his trip, he tells her, “Everyone on the Internet, they’re not having as great a time as you think they are.” She replies, “I guess people are just cropping out all the sadness.” Truth be told, even if people aren’t cropping out the sadness, and instead posting dull or disparaging things about their daily lives, we’re unlikely to pay attention. Humans automatically linger on people of high status—especially people who look attractive or rich (cue the Kardashians). Charlotte Blease, a cognitive scientist who studies depression, sees social status at the root of our social media malaise. In a 2015 paper called “Too Many ‘Friends,’ Too Few ‘Likes’? Evolutionary Psychology and ‘Facebook Depression,’ ” Blease, a researcher at the University of Leeds and Harvard Medical School, turns to our ancestral environments for an explanation. One evolutionary explanation for depression, Blease tells us, is known as the “social competition theory.” It holds that depression is an adaptive suite of behaviors—withdrawal, slumped posture, low self-esteem—that enabled our ancestors to retreat from antagonistic social encounters and “signal inaction to dominant others without incurring physical damage.” In other words, get depressed, stay alive. “It acts as a sort of deescalating strategy, an involuntary response where you’re almost just putting your hands in the air,” Blease says. This adaptive behavior—assuming deference and low social status—has stayed with us. In modern environments it can be triggered when we sense we’re being outcompeted by those of high social status or prestige. “We’re drawn to those kind of individuals, which then may perpetuate the feeling of, ‘I’m a loser compared to these people,’ ” Blease says. Of course, social comparison could also turn us an ugly shade of green. Evolutionarily speaking, envy, like mild depression, is probably adaptive—it motivates us to learn from others and set higher goals. But envy is also painful, which makes it hard to study, says Krasnova. “It is a very tricky feeling, so we don’t want to admit envy, usually—not to anybody that we feel envious of, and not even to ourselves,” she says. “Sometimes the feeling could get so suppressed we don’t know what we’re feeling and why we’re feeling so angry or so sad, or so irritated or stressed.” Getty Images When Krasnova and her colleagues asked 357 subjects—mostly from Germany, where she was working—how they felt after using Facebook most recently, only 1.2 percent of them said envious. So she rephrased the question: “Many users report feeling frustrated and exhausted after using Facebook. What do you think causes these feelings?” In this case, the most popular response (29.6 percent) was envy. Not only is envy a common feeling for people using Facebook; it’s “rampant,” she says. Examples are omnipresent. Parties we wished we were invited to. Awards our colleagues have won. In Paula Hawkins’ psychological thriller The Girl on the Train, protagonist Rachel Watson is still smarting from her recent divorce when she goes on Facebook and sees her ex-husband’s baby announcement. She’s devastated. Krasnova notes that one way people find temporary relief for the pain of envy is by bolstering their own self-presentation. That threatens to generate an “envy spiral” on social networks, she warns. “Users are exposed to positive content, they post even more positive things, then their recipients post even more positive things. And so on. And then this world of Facebook becomes more and more detached from reality.” Perhaps the most intriguing finding in the recent literature, however, is that people do themselves the most harm when they’re not posting. Instead of bringing us closer to our friends, this detached world can insert distance. In her book, Reclaiming Conversation, psychologist Sherry Turkle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology talks about the tension between “our desire to express an authentic self and the pressure to show our best selves online.” But studies show we don’t actually present our best, most sympathetic selves when we write, although we think we do. Behavioral scientist Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago had business-school students do an “elevator pitch” in several formats. While the students felt that they presented themselves better in a written pitch, the evaluators judged them more favorably in a spoken pitch. This also applies to Facebook: A recent study that echoes Epley’s results showed that our friends think we are better in person than in our profiles. “At the most extreme level, our data suggest that text is somewhat dehumanizing—that is, it doesn’t convey the same kind of uniquely human qualities, qualities of thinking and feeling, that your voice does,” Epley says. The Facebook of the envy spiral can even turn us against each other. “Our research clearly shows that in many cases [self-promotional] information is seen negatively and interpreted very judgmentally,” Krasnova says. Some researchers warn we are growing more narcissistic—and correspondingly less empathetic—as a result of the time we spend managing our image online. “There’s little data that suggests that narcissism is a great thing,” Epley says. “It’s pretty good in the short run; not so good for you in the long run in terms of your relationships.” Perhaps the most intriguing finding in the recent literature, however, is that people do themselves the most harm when they’re not posting. For a study published this year, Kross and his colleagues, including first author Philippe Verduyn, a psychologist from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, invited 84 University of Michigan undergraduates to a lab, where they instructed half of the subjects to use Facebook actively and half to use it passively. Active use is “posting status updates, chatting, responding to a comment,” Verduyn explains, while passive use is “scrolling through news feeds, looking at pictures, and looking at status updates.” A few hours after the session, the active users felt the same, yet the passive users felt a drop in mood. “When you’re just passively using Facebook, you develop more feelings of envy, which in turn lead people to feel worse over time,” Kross says. On the one hand, the finding is a good thing. It means that there’s a way to escape the Facebook blues without losing access to social media’s positive benefits: Be more active. On the other hand, very few of us take advantage of that loophole. Verduyn and his colleagues found that subjects were about 50 percent more likely to use Facebook passively than actively. And that’s not limited to millennials. Market research firm GlobalWebIndex reports that only 52 percent of Facebook users were active users in 2014, down from 70 percent in 2012. It’s not clear why people are so passive. Maybe it’s just a lot less work to browse than post, but other lines of research on Facebook’s dark sides indicate that people worry about unintentionally insulting someone, putting their relationships or jobs at risk, or just looking like a loser wasting time online. The specter of public shaming looms over every post. Whatever the reason, Kross says, “most of the time that people are using [social media], they’re using it in a way that is potentially harmful”—that is, passively. Fortunately, social-networking research is one scientific field where findings can be translated into practice at light speed. Studies in the pipeline will likely reveal both beneficial and harmful behaviors that go beyond the passive and active dichotomy, as well as elucidate outcomes for different groups of users—people from different cultures, different age groups, and with different psychological predispositions. Scientists still lack a comprehensive picture of how social media technologies work on human nature, but “the hope is, by identifying the mechanisms that push people to feel worse, we can begin to come up with a formula for an optimal way to interact with the technology,” Kross says. Some of Facebook’s features can already help put the research to use. In 2011 the site introduced “friend lists,” which we can use to restrict our social support requests to the people who are most likely to care, sparing the rest of our contacts from social overload. In 2013, we got “unfollow,” which can help us reduce overload and envy for ourselves. The 2014 “nearby friends” and this year’s “video calling” features could increase the frequency of face-to-face interactions, which in Kross’s studies consistently lift mood. Soon, the anticipated “reactions” buttons—alternatives to the “like” button, including “love,” “yay,” and “sad”—may provide more options for active behaviors. The most important feature we can implement, however, may be one intrinsic to the user not the technology: empathy. An extraordinary achievement of human civilization is that, every day, people suppress the instinct to outcompete others in order to build meaningful and rewarding relationships. Yet online, with those seemingly harmless #nofilter travel pics, flawless #iwokeupthisway selfies, and relentlessly positive #humblebrags, we inadvertently make our friends feel like losers and contribute to a swirling vortex of envy, in which we ourselves risk drowning. The growing body of research on social media’s dark sides, Krasnova says, gives us the chance to build a new social media etiquette, one that will reattach the world of Facebook to reality and pay off in true friendships, full of both the costs and the benefits of caring. We should grab that opportunity—not because it will make our stress go away, but because some stress is the kind worth having. undefined Chelsea Wald is a science writer in Vienna, Austria. She recently wrote for Nautilus about why almost every language has a word for red and why our brains hate slowpokes.Quinton Jackson’s negotiations with the UFC came after a failed attempt to renegotiate his deal with Bellator. Bellator President Scott Coker claims Jackson’s relationship with the Viacom-owned promotion soured after the two couldn’t come to an agreement on a new contract, according to a statement Coker provided as part of the promotion’s lawsuit against the fighter. The statement, obtained today by MMAjunkie, provides key background on the Bellator’s legal showdown with Jackson. The promotion has filed an injunction against the fighter, asking a judge to prevent him from returning to the UFC to fight Fabio Maldonado next month at UFC 186. Jackson (35-11 MMA, 7-5 UFC) claims Bellator breached its contract with him when it failed to provide him a report of pay-per-view figures for Bellator 120, the promotion’s lone foray into pay-per-view, and then failed to resolve the dispute within 45 days. Bellator claims Jackson breached his lavish deal by signing with the UFC, among other claims. A hearing on the lawsuit is set for April 2 in Superior Court in Burlington County, N.J. In his statement, Coker claims Jackson’s longtime rep, Anthony McGann, signaled the ex-champ’s desire to renegotiate in June 2014, one month after his win over Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal at the May 17 pay-per-view event, which Bellator said garnered 100,000 “buys.” (Per Jackson’s contract, also obtained by MMAjunkie, he was entitled to make $4 for every buy over 190,000.) “McGann … told me that Jackson ‘was not happy’ with his deal with Bellator and that it needed to be changed,” Coker stated. “Because Jackson was – and is – extremely important to Bellator and its future plans, I agreed to discuss the agreement with Jackson and McGann.” MMAjunkie was unable to reach Coker or McGann for comment. Coker claims McGann told him that Bellator’s former CEO, Bjorn Rebney, had promised Jackson a $200,000 bonus payment; Coker’s statement does not reveal the reason for the bonus. Coker stated that while he believed Bellator had lived up to its contractual agreement to Jackson, he authorized the fighter be paid the bonus “to resolve the concerns he and his manager were raising, including those regarding the ‘King Mo’ fight.” “Jackson picked up that check himself at my office,” he added. The payoff, however, did not satisfy its recipient, according to Coker. The executive said Jackson told him the current contract was “inadequate” and “he only signed it because McGann had insisted that he do so.” Jackson also claimed he was no longer represented by McGann. Yet, Coker said after “a few conversations” with Jackson, McGann was again negotiating on the fighter’s behalf. “Jackson’s outrageous demands and the burden of determining who was handling the negotiation on his behalf made it difficult to negotiate with him,” Coker stated. Coker said he reached out to MMA manager Mike Kogan to “assist in the negotiation to try to bridge the gap.” The ploy was unsuccessful. (Kogan confirmed to MMAjunkie that he acted in the role described by Coker, but declined to provide details on his efforts.) At that point, Coker stated, as Bellator “considered how to respond to Jackson’s ever increasing and convoluted demands,” McGann threatened that he would disparage Bellator in the press and “make public the details of the agreement despite the fact that he was aware that the agreement contained a strict confidentiality provision.” Additionally, McGann claimed that Bellator had breached its contract with Jackson, claiming Rebney had made promises about Jackson’s pay, the performance of Jackson’s reality show and entertainment industry opportunities procured for the fighter. After five months of negotiations, on Nov. 21, 2014, McGann took action, serving the promotion with notice that Jackson was terminating his contract because it had failed to him Jackson with a summary report of Bellator 120’s pay-per-view performance. “In the end, we were not able to come to new terms with Jackson despite my best, good faith efforts to do so,” Coker stated. “I view Jackson’s demands as simply a bid to get a better deal than he could have gotten coming off his losing streak with UFC, once Bellator had built him back up. “When he was unable to extract more money than his contract provided,
you anticipate that a cop is about to grab your phone, quickly turn it off. Without your passcode, police won't be able to delete your videos or personal information even if they confiscate or destroy your phone. If the phone is turned off while Bambuser records, the recording continues after the screen goes black. Advertisement This Bambuser "black out" feature is a double-edged sword. While it could easily trick cops into thinking you're not recording them, using it could push you into more dangerous legal territory. As previously mentioned, courts have shown a willingness to convict citizens for secretly recording police. So if you're somehow caught using this feature it might be easier for a prosecutor to convince a judge or jury that you've broken the law. It's up to you to decide if the increased legal risk is worth the potential to capture incriminating police footage. Rule #7: Don't Point Your Camera Like a Gun "When filming police you always want to avoid an aggressive posture," insists Holmes. To do this he keeps his strap-supported camera close to his body at waist level. This way he can hold a conversation while maintaining eye contact with police, quickly glancing at the viewfinder to make sure he's getting a good shot. Advertisement Obviously, those recording with a smartphone lack this angled viewfinder. But you can get a satisfactory shot while holding your device at waist level, tilting it upward a few degrees. This posture might feel awkward at first, but it's noticeably less confrontational than holding the camera between you and the officer's face. Also try to be in control of your camera before an officer approaches. You want to avoid suddenly grasping for it. If a cop thinks you're reaching for a gun, you could get shot. Becoming a Hero If you've recently been arrested or charged with a crime after recording police, contact a lawyer with your state's ACLU chapter for advice as soon as possible. (Do not publicly upload your video before then.) You may also contact Flex Your Rights via Facebook or Twitter. We're not a law firm, but we'll do our best to help you. Advertisement If your case is strong, the ACLU might offer to take you on as a litigant. If you accept, your brave stand could forever change the way police treat citizens asserting their First Amendment right to record police. This path is not for fools, and it might disrupt your life. But next time you see police in action, don't forget that a powerful tool for truth and justice might literally be in your hands. Image credit: John Moore / Getty Images News Steve Silverman is the founder & executive director of FlexYourRights.org and co-creator of the film 10 Rules for Dealing with Police. This post originally appeared on Gizmodo in 2012 and has been updated to reflect technological and legal changes since. Advertisement Reason is the magazine of "free minds and free markets." Reason.com covers politics, culture, technology and ideas. It provides a refreshing alternative to right- and left-wing opinion magazines and websites by making a principled case for liberty and individual choice.When the sleek, beautiful silhouette of Roskilde 6 appeared on the horizon, 1,000 years ago, it was very bad news. The ship was part of a fleet carrying an army of hungry, thirsty warriors, muscles toned by rowing and sailing across the North Sea; a war machine like nothing else in 11th-century Europe, its arrival meant disaster was imminent. Now the ship's timbers are slowly drying out in giant steel tanks at the Danish national museum's conservation centre at Brede outside Copenhagen, and will soon again head across the North Sea – to be a star attraction at an exhibition in the British Museum. The largest Viking warship ever found, it was discovered by chance in 1996 at Roskilde. It is estimated that building it would have taken up to 30,000 hours of skilled work, plus the labour of felling trees and hauling materials. At just over 36 metres, it was four metres longer than Henry VIII's flagship Mary Rose built 500 years later, and six metres longer than the Viking ship spectacularly recreated as Sea Stallion, which sailed from Scandinavia around Scotland to Dublin in 2007. "This ship was a troop carrier," said Gareth Williams of the British Museum. It was built some time after 1025 when the oak trees were felled, and held 100 warriors taking turns on 39 pairs of oars if there was not enough wind to fill the square woollen sail. They would have been packed in tightly, sleeping as they could between the seats, with little room for supplies except a minimal amount of fresh water – or ale or mead, which would not have gone stale as fast – and dried salt mutton. It would have been an uncomfortable journey, but short: they did not need to carry much as their ship could move startlingly fast – Sea Stallion managed an average speed of 5.5 knots, and a top speed of 20 knots. Once they landed, the warriors could forage with ruthless efficiency, as many a coastal community or wealthy monastery discovered. The ship would probably not have come alone. "There are records in the annals of fleets of hundreds of ships," Williams said. "So you could be talking about an army of up to 10,000 men suddenly landing on your coast, highly trained, fit, capable of moving very fast on water or land." Such luxury ships were fabulously expensive to build and a devastating display of power, Williams said. The dates suggest Roskilde 6 may have been built for King Canute, who according to legend set his throne in the path of the incoming tide, to prove to his courtiers that even a monarch could not control the force of nature. At the time the Vikings were consolidating their power from temporary raiders to permanent invaders. With all the original timbers fitted into a steel frame that will recreate its full length and form, the ship will be the centrepiece of Viking, an exhibition opening at the Danish national museum in June, before being transported to London to launch the British Museum's new exhibition space in 2014. It will travel in two containers, by freighter and lorry. Accident The vessel was found by accident when an extension was being built to the Roskilde ship museum in Denmark, itself built to hold an earlier find of Viking ships that had been deliberately sunk to narrow the fjord and protect the approach to the town, the old royal capital of Denmark. In 1996 archaeologists watching the construction work discovered huge timbers turned up in the new foundations, some already chopped in half by the piling. It proved to be a treasure trove of nine ships, of which Roskilde 6, almost half of which was recovered, was the most spectacular. The timbers stayed in storage while the museum worked out what to do with the unexpected addition to its collection, until the exhibition provided the opportunity for full conservation. The original Roskilde ships are spectacularly displayed in a purpose-built ship hall, but could never travel: the timbers look solid but might shatter like glass. When excavated, the sodden timbers of Roskilde 6 would have disintegrated into a heap of dust if left exposed to air. National museum conservator Kristiane Straetkvern managed the project, which has been drying timbers up to 10 metres long far more slowly than the older techniques, then replacing the lost moisture with synthetic resin, leaving them lighter but stable. It was a nervous moment for her when some completed timbers were test assembled, each resting in a felt lined individually laser-cut support, in a frame that bolts together like a giant Meccano set, but that dismantles into hundreds of components for travelling. The exhibition will display finds from across Scandinavia and from deep into the countries they penetrated wherever a river could carry their shallow draft ships – as far inland as Lichfield in England, deep into Russia, to Byzantium in the east, where Vikings fought as mercenaries on both sides, and beyond. Objects from 12 countries, including many recent finds, will demonstrate that Vikings were traders, farmers, fishermen, and superb craft workers in timber, bone and metal. However the most spectacular single artefact will be the ship, a potent witness that the Vikings were also dreaded raiders. The Roskilde team are now experts on recreating ancient ships, regularly commissioned to build them. One day they hope to recreate a full-size, ocean-going replica Roskilde 6, and send it across the sea to awe rather than to terrorise the coasts of the British Isles.I love bees. For over a decade I have been a hobby beekeeper, tending to my hives, catching swarms, and following the news about my flying friends. There is a lot to like about bees, from their biology and behavior to the geometric beauty of their hives. And of course, the delicious boldness and subtleties of the sweet honey that they produce. I picked up the hobby from my late grandfather, who always talked about them. I love to talk about bees as well, and I’m also always willing to open up the hives and show what goes on inside. This week, for National Pollinators Week, I’m going to talk – and show – a lot about bees and where they intersect biotechnology, pesticides, politics, and of course, HONEY! In general, people love bees. They are symbols of both a natural force, and yet also of industriousness and ingenuity. (Rather like ourselves.) As a semi-domesticated species, honeybees may live in large insect high-rise buildings and function collectively, they also have a wild streak and can break free from human control at times. The benefits of bees to human society go beyond the mere production of honey, or even the billions of dollars worth of fruits, nuts, and other produce pollinated by them every year. The benefits are also cultural, artistic, and even sometimes political. As honeybees have been in trouble for years, it allows us to question our own role in the course of life on this planet, and our own future as well. However, there are also people who do not love bees, at least as I see it. While many people are discovering the wonders and joys of keeping bees, basic human fear sometimes works against this trend. Fears of allergic reactions send some citizens into irrational hysterics, and political causes manipulatively exploit the plight of bees for their own purposes – even to the point of lying. There are even some beekeepers who don’t seem to love bees – and will abuse and misuse them sometimes for personal profit, sometimes for political gain. Sometimes both. Neither is good for the bees. There are also people who genuinely love bees, and are concerned about them as I am. However, compassion is not always accompanied by education and reliable information. You may want the best for the bees, but through ignorance that rightly-placed compassion can have results that are little different from not caring at all. It also makes you prey to the manipulations of others. While I work to help my own bees, rescue others from houses and yards, and educate people about bees, it really stings when I see things like this. I will have a series of posts about bees this week, and beyond if I can keep up my momentum. Two weeks ago my lab had a field season preparation meeting, and after my turn in our round of introductions my adviser said to the new hourly workers, “Don’t ask him about bees!” I’ve got a lot of things to say. Needless to say I took that opportunity to talk some more about my bees. 🙂 For National Pollinators Week, I’m going to talk about what I love about bees, and show you just how much I love them. Putting the You In Eusocial The first thing I love about bees are their complex societies. At an early age, one of the manifestations of my interests in biology was an interest in social insects such as ants. From ant farms to fish tanks full of dirt, I tried it all to watch and understand what they were all about. I mentioned that I got the interest in bees from my grandfather, Emil Mogel Sr. – the “bee man” of Petaluma for those who called him to remove swarms or bought mason jars of honey from his house or car. Hearing my grandfather talk at length about bees was enough to convince me to try a social insect that flies and produces food that we can eat as well. But it wasn’t until I went to college that I actually got a hive of my own. While I studied at UC Davis, I took several courses in entomology and bee biology. I even considered becoming an entomologist, possibly a bee researcher. (This was before I decided to literally fill the role of a bee and study plant breeding and genetics!) Essentially, I had an undeclared minor in Apiculture and Bee Biology, which was then an official minor. I learned a great deal about bees, and that there was a lot more to them than most realize – or any of us even yet know. Our knowledge is always expanding. Everyone knows that bee hives have a queen, and thousands of workers. Many know that there are also males called drones. But how do these three types of honeybee fit together to make the complex societies that we find in nature, and in my backyard? While most people focus on the “queen” as the center of the hive, she is actually inaptly named. The Queen bee is a reproductive female whose role is not to control and run the operations of a hive as human royalty might, but is instead an egg factory capable of laying around two thousand eggs per day. The only hierarchy she dominates is reproduction. The queen produces pheromones, or smells, that attract the workers to her to feed, clean, and protect her while she crawls throughout the hive laying eggs cell-by-cell. The workers are sensitive to this pheromone, which suppresses their own reproduction, and when she loses her strength they will respond by raising a new queen to supersede her. If a queen has a rival, they will fight to the death, but other than that the hive is really ruled by the workers and not by the timid queen. Worker bees are sterile, female bees that lack the ability to mate with males. Raised on a diet of pollen, they develop differently from the queen, and are built to nurse and care for the young, forage for pollen, nectar, water, and plant resins, and defend the hive with their lives. Collectively, the workers make all the decisions in the hive. They decide how many bees to send out foraging and where. They decide when it is time to expand the hive with new hexagonal combs for storing honey and raising brood – and when it is time to raise new queens for the purpose of leaving and establishing new nests in the spring. They regulate the temperature of the hive with fanning, and can fill themselves up with honey to evacuate the nest if necessary. Workers, like queens, have stingers armed with potent venom that they use to defend the hive when it is in danger. Only the females have stingers because the stinger evolved from an ovipositor – an organ used to lay eggs inside prey. They can sting the exoskeletons of other insects with little problem, but when this barbed stinger is inserted into the fleshy skin of an animal like a cat, dog, or beekeeper, it tears out of the bee and remains in the skin pumping venom. In this way, worker bees who defend the hive sacrifice themselves to protect the colony. It could take only a sting or two to teach an animal not to disturb a hive ever again. (I seem to have a difficult time learning this lesson.) The stinger also gives off an alarm pheromone that helps other worker bees home in on a successful spot to sting again. Stingers are very ‘smart’ weapons. Since workers are sterile they are working to raise, promote, and defend their sisters and half-sisters – a key hallmark of “Eusociality”. Research has even been done on their collective behavior and has found that they reach decisions democratically – often better than we do ourselves. Perhaps it is their selfless nature that makes it work better for them? Finally, the drones are the males, which number much fewer than the female workers in the hive. This is because they are raised from unfertilized eggs laid in larger cells in the comb. The worker bees actually decide how much drone comb to build in a natural hive based on how often they encounter large-celled comb as they travel around in the hive. When the queen is laying eggs and senses the larger cell, she lays an egg without fertilizing it with the sperm that she has stored up from when she mated. (Again, the workers are in control here!) Having only half the normal number of chromosomes causes the egg to develop into a male. The sole function of the drones is to mate with the queen during mating flights, and all the female offspring of this mating will inherit 100% of the DNA of the drone. If the queen mates only once, this will make her daughters 75% similar on a DNA level, rather than the normal 50%. Some think that this relatedness makes it more advantageous from a genetic standpoint for workers to raise their sisters than have any offspring of their own, but not every bee species with this pattern lives in complex societies like honeybees – some are solitary. But in the right conditions, it could promote the evolution of this behavior. Once the job of the drone is done, in an act that is described as “explosive” in the literature, his life is quickly over. Drones who don’t mate with queens don’t escape this fate, however, as the stinger-less males are useless over the winter and a drain on the hive, so they are literally dragged out to die in the cold. No matter which member of the bee caste you are, life is certainly not easy business. Yet out of the individual mundane lives of each of thousands of bees, a veritable super-organism emerges capable of so much more. I was drawn to understand how they communicate and come together to produce insect skyscrapers, pounds of delicious honey, and darken the sky with swarms. Ain’t Mis-bee-having I always try to keep a few hives at my home, and I have also made pollination-for-veggies arrangements with a local farmer – at least until they got bees of their own. But I’m not your average beekeeper. I may keep bees in my back yard, I may have honey, make candles and other hive products like any other, but bees reach a little deeper into the lives of my wife Ariela and I. When I proposed to her, I did it with a bee suit in hand, and when we got married almost four years ago now, we passed out small jars of honey as wedding favors to our guests. Bees are even on our wedding rings. That’s right – our wedding rings! It is an original design that I drew and was turned into metallic reality by Hiroko Yamada, who still accepts honey from us in exchange for jewelry repairs. A local beekeeping store asked us to make a poster of the rings, too – which you can see here. The officiant at our wedding, a friend of mine from my newspaper days, said “Like a bee hive, marriage is not to be entered lightly.” Stepping into our home is much the same. Last summer, we redid the bathroom in our fixer-upper house. The new theme of the bathroom was bees, and I daresay we may have gone a little too far. (No we didn’t.) The walls are a honey-yellow, and feature honeycomb shelves. With flowers for lights, a large bee guards the sink. But the most special part of this bathroom is the tile, with a hive of bees penciled, painted, and baked onto the tile. To represent the super-organism of a bee hive, the bees are themselves arranged in the shape of a giant bee, each performing hive tasks, from nursing larvae to feeding each other, protecting the queen, reading a book, and drinking a martini. Ok, so maybe a few bees are not performing normal hive duties, but it gives our guests something to contemplate. There are even dark drones making the eyes, foragers with pollen, and one angry bee looking straight at you! It is my dream someday to have a living “observation hive” inside my house, so I can watch them as they work undisturbed. In the meantime, I surround myself with the products of bees and the designs they produce. Just last weekend, we decorated our hallway with a honeycomb of tinted hexagonal mirrors. Breakfast on the weekends is spent overlooking the hives in our back yard. I also rescue established bee hives from people’s houses, including bumblebees. I live and breathe bees. Now that I’ve built up sufficient “bee cred” (you could also say “bee crazy”), let’s talk about bees this week. Feel free to ask me questions about them, and I will do my best to answer as I roll out the different topics. I’ll leave you now with something that a random citizen of Davis, CA once wrote about me. Karl is an elemental sorcerer who specializes in the dark arts of Apiarimancy. In his traditional white robes, he summons and dispatches the hive with deft control over the natural world. Do not cross him, or you may feel the sting of his anger. For National Pollinators Week, I’ve got a lot of sweet things to say about bees and issues related to them, and some pointed stings to deliver as well. All for the love of bees. Current list of posts in this series:Former Wall Street exec wants bailout and more… much much more Steve Watson Infowars.net Friday, Sept 26, 2008 A Council on Foreign Relations member and former policy planner under prominent Bilderberger Henry Kissinger has penned a piece in the Financial Times of London calling for a “new global monetary authority” that would have the power to monitor all national financial authorities and all large global financial companies. “Even if the US’s massive financial rescue operation succeeds, it should be followed by something even more far-reaching – the establishment of a Global Monetary Authority to oversee markets that have become borderless.” writes Jeffrey Garten, also a former managing director of Lehman Brothers. Garten, now a professor of business at Yale, served on the policy planning staff of Kissinger during his time as Secretary of State. He also served on the White House Council on International Economic Policy under the Nixon administration and went on to become the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade under Bill Clinton. Citing “globalization”, A “clash of philosophies” and the “vacuum at the centre” of the current global institutional apparatus, Garten describes his vision for a new monolithic world authority to oversee all financial activity around the globe. Here are some of the highlights (emphasis added): A GMA (global monetary authority) would be a reinsurer or discounter for certain obligations held by central banks. It would scrutinise the regulatory activities of national authorities with more teeth than the IMF has and oversee the implementation of a limited number of global regulations. It would monitor global risks and establish an effective early warning system with more clout to sound alarms than the BIS has. It would act as “bankruptcy court” for financial reorganisations of global companies above a certain size. The biggest global financial companies would have to register with the GMA and be subject to its monitoring, or be blacklisted. That includes commercial companies and banks, but also sovereign wealth funds, gigantic hedge funds and private equity firms. The GMA’s board would have to include central bankers not just from the US, UK, the eurozone and Japan, but also China, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. It would be financed by mandatory contributions from every capable country and from insurance-type premiums from global financial companies – publicly listed, government owned, and privately held alike. (Article continues below) In a conclusion that smacks of problem, reaction, solution Garten adds “In terms of US and international politics, a Global Monetary Authority is probably an idea whose time has not yet come. That may change as today’s crisis evolves.” What he describes is nothing less than a global financial dictatorship, operating across borders and forcing nations and corporations to register and adhere to strict monitoring and obey the same regulations. The implementation of such a system would represent total interventionism and the absolute final nail in the coffin of the free market. Garten’s call for a GMA echoes a piece published in the FT back in June by Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Fresh from attending the Bilderberg conference in Chantilly, Virginia, Geithner called for a globalized banking system with “appropriate requirements for capital and liquidity”. This article was posted: Friday, September 26, 2008 at 11:30 am Print this page. Infowars.com Videos: Comment on this articleDefense Contractors' Funds Fuel Vote To Keep Dept. Of Defense's Police Militarization Program Funded from the that-MRAP-has-been-paid-for-several-times-over,-it-would-seem... dept Color me unamazed. Politicians who are in favor of the government's 1033 program -- which distributes excess military gear and weapons to police departments engaged in our country's two favorite "wars" (v. Terror, v. Drugs) -- received a lot more money from defense contractors than those who oppose it. Maplight, which tracks contributions to politicians, uncovered more evidence that private companies can get the legislative results they want if they just a$k nicely. In June, the House of Representatives voted on an amendment from Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) that sought to partially defund the 1033 Program. The amendment failed on a bipartisan vote of 62-355. Representatives voting to continue funding the 1033 Program have received, on average, 73 percent more money from the defense industry than representatives voting to defund it. Fifty-nine representatives received more than $100,000 from the defense industry from January 1, 2011 - December 31, 2013. Of those only four supported defunding the 1033 Program. Aircraft (Including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), Armored Vehicles, Grenade Launchers, Silencers, Toxicological Agents, Launch Vehicles, Guided Missiles, Ballistic Missiles, Rockets, Torpedoes, Bombs, Mines, or Nuclear Weapons Applying for federal student aid? You'll need to fill out a 10 page application. Social Security retirement benefits come with an eight-page form, a passport application is six pages, and the shortform Obamacare application is five. But if you are a law enforcement agency in the U.S., you can apply for a free armored tactical vehicle from the Pentagon with a simple one-page form, below. You can even apply for multiple vehicles using the same form! This amendment didn't even target some of the common transfers: assault rifles, night vision goggles, etc.. These common indicators of police militarization would have continued to flow from the US government to law enforcement agencies unabated. Instead, 355 legislators voted that local law enforcement should still be allowed access to the following equipment One wonders if armored vehicles and drones had been struck from the list, the vote might have been more even. But phrased the way it was, if you still wanted your local PDs to acquire MRAPs, silencers and helicopters, you had to also give them the theoretical ability to requisition toxicological agents and ballistic missiles.I don't imagine the government will be handing out guided missiles and nukes to law enforcement EVER, but whatbe requisitioned is still partially a secret and information released to Muckrock by the Defense Logistics Agency only denotes which state received what, rather than indicate which law enforcement agencies were involved.But even if the government has no intention of turning local law enforcement into full-fledged armies with nuclear/biological weapon capabilities, it's still handing over weapons and vehicles with little to no discretion. As Christopher Ingraham at the Washington Post notes, if you can fill out one very simple form, you'll be able to roll down Main Street, USA in an armored tactical vehicle bristling with military assault rifles.Ingraham's article oversimplifies the process somewhat (a few layers of pre-approval are needed), but the fact remains that it's incredibly easy to outfit local law enforcement units with military gear. A vetting process with some teeth would likely have prevented small towns from acquiring vehicles designed to protect soldiers in combat zones from explosives.Crime is way down and police are more heavily-armed and well-protected than ever. Part of it is defense contractors making sure there's still a growing market for their wares. As Maplight points out (quoting an ACLU report on police militarization ), 36% of the equipment transferred to law enforcement via the 1033 program is brand new. What may have seemed to be a fiscally responsible program -- making use of excess military equipment rather than simply scrapping it -- is now another way to blow tax dollars. Only this time, it's having other adverse effects on the general public.When the Defense Logistics Agency is buying brand new and transferring these purchases to law enforcement at pennies on the dollar (using DHS grants to pay the difference), the government is screwing taxpayers multiple times, at multiple levels -- and that's just in a financial sense. We shouldn't need an amendment to tell the Defense Dept. to stop turning locals cops into makeshift occupation forces, and we certainly shouldn't need to tell the government that no law enforcement agency needs ballistic missiles or bombs. Local cops really don't need armored vehicles either, but until legislators are willing to enact some serious limitations, the downhill slope from the DoD's excess property storage to the United States' police departments will continue unabated. Filed Under: alan grayson, lobbyists, militarization, militarized police, politicsRelated Content Resources for LC International Students and Scholars Dear Members of the Lewis & Clark Community: I write to express support for all of you, particularly those members of our community who are not U.S. citizens. The Trump administration’s order banning the entry of foreign nationals from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Libya will create significant problems for some faculty, staff, and students, as well as for their families. Such actions will have no impact, however, on the love, respect, and support we have for each and every member of this community. You are welcome here. We pledge our support and we do not want you to leave. You enrich our lives and we humbly hope to enrich yours in return. In the chaos created by this executive order, one that is receiving and will continue to receive serious judicial challenges regarding its legality and motivation, we will continue to work to ensure that Lewis & Clark is a safe place for all. All international community members should carefully examine travel restrictions before leaving the United States. We are examining our overseas study programs, but our preliminary belief is that no students, faculty, or staff from any of the seven countries are currently overseas on any of our programs. Of course, for the duration of the ban, students, faculty, and staff from any of the seven affected countries should understand that if they leave the United States, whether on one of our programs or otherwise, they will not be allowed to return until the ban is lifted. There continues to be confusion regarding whether this includes green card holders. I have asked Dean Anna Gonzalez and Associate Dean Brian White to collect and organize resources for affected community members. And our counseling, ombuds, and spiritual life staff are available to provide support. Our Ombudsperson Valerie White can be reached at 503-768-7336, and Mark Duntley from the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life is at 503-768-7082. Students, please note that the Counseling Service has modified its walk-in hours this semester. Those walk-in hours are Tuesdays (in the Odell Health Promotion suite) and Thursdays (in the Templeton Counseling Service) from 2-3:30 p.m. Assessments are also available by appointment (call 503-768-7160), and students in crisis will be seen as soon as possible. Anytime the Counseling Service is closed, students can reach a crisis counselor by calling 503-265-7804. Faculty and staff may contact the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) at 800-433-2320. Please, everyone, reach out to our international friends. Let them know how much our community cares for them and their safety. Together we will fight bigotry, stand for respect, and open our homes and hearts in support of every member of the Lewis & Clark community. We have much to be proud of; let’s add to that list the way we care for and support our international friends. Students, faculty, and staff are invited to attend a gathering of support for those in our community affected by the recent executive order on immigration. It will be held in Smith Hall on Tuesday, January 31, beginning at 12:30 p.m. Thank you, David Ellis Interim PresidentThe New Wave of Designer Drugs: A Review for Criminal Justice and Forensic Professionals Designer drugs are often not detected by the drug tests commonly utilized in criminal justice and forensic settings. Going forward, greater awareness of designer drugs by forensic, clinical, and law enforcement professionals and sophisticated research are necessary. View online or by PDF. Elder Abuse and Suicidal Behavior: What Forensic Professionals Need to Know Psychosocial factors found in mistreated elders are often present in elders who attempted or completed suicide, yet there has been little recognition that these two problems may be closely related. This must be remedied as the aged population increases and may drive a sharp rise in the incidence of elder suicide and elder abuse. View online or by PDF. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and Firesetting Behaviors: A Call on Fire Professionals to Become FASD-Informed Despite pervasive symptoms, individuals with FASD often go undiagnosed and untreated, sometimes resulting in interactions with fire service responders, law enforcement professionals, and other community providers. View online or by PDF. Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome (WKS): A Review for Criminal Justice, Forensic, Legal, and Mental Health Professionals It is likely that individuals with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (WKS) will become involved in the criminal justice system as either witnesses, victims, or defendants as a result of the symptoms and complications associated with latent WKS. This is problematic because these deficits likely undermine the capacity to function. Learn more. View online or by PDF.Mung bean bindaetteok is my all-time favorite Korean pancake. The unique thing about this food is that the batter is 100% ground mung beans without any wheat flour. So, if somebody can’t eat wheat and wants to try Korean pancakes, this is a great option for them. Traditional mung bean pancakes have fern brake and mung bean sprouts in the batter; however for this recipe, I will skip them since I prefer mine without them. You can make it either way by following the “Option 1 – Kimchi Style” or “Option 2 – Traditional Style” methods. This is delicious and healthier than normal Korean pancakes. Yield: 7-8 Pieces per Option Short Korean Lesson DamYo (담요) = Blanket ChimDae (침대) = Bed Video Instructions Main Ingredients, Option 1 – Kimchi Style ½ Generous Cup Well-fermented Kimchi ⅓ Cup Green Onion ⅓ Cup Onion ½ Tbsp Red Hot Pepper (Optional) Main Ingredients, Option 2 – Traditional Style ½ Generous Cup Well-fermented Kimchi ¼ Cup Green Onion ¼ Cup Fresh Mung Bean Sprouts ¼ Cup Fern Brake, Soaked Batter Ingredients ½ Cup Dried Peeled Mung Beans ¼ Cup Water ½ tsp Salt Pork Ingredients ¼ Cup Ground Pork ½ tsp Sesame Oil ½ tsp Cooking Wine (Optional) ½ tsp Garlic, Minced 2 Pinches Salt 2 Pinches Black Pepper 1 Dash Ginger Powder Directions Soak ½ cup of dried mung beans in water for 6 hours. Afterwards, you will get about 1 cup of soaked mung beans. After the beans are ready, marinate the ground pork. Combine all the ingredients for the pork: ¼ cup ground pork, ½ tsp sesame oil, ½ tsp cooking wine (optional), ½ tsp minced garlic, 2 pinches salt, 2 pinches black pepper, and 1 dash ginger powder. Set it aside while you are preparing the other ingredients. For Option 1 – Kimchi Style: Chop ½ generous cup worth of well-fermented kimchi and ½ Tbsp worth of red hot pepper (optional) into small bite-sized pieces. Finely chop ⅓ cup worth of green onion and ⅓ cup worth of onion. For Option 2 – Traditional Style: Chop ½ generous cup worth of well-fermented kimchi, ¼ cup worth of fresh mung bean sprout, and ¼ cup worth of soaked fern brake into small bite sized pieces. Finely chop ¼ cup of green onion. Rinse the soaked mung beans several times and then drain. Put the soaked mung beans in a blender and add ¼ cup of water. Grind the mung beans for a minute on high speed, or until you get a smooth bean paste batter. Combine all the chopped veggies, marinated pork, and ½ tsp salt with the batter. Mix it all together. Spread one big spoonful of the mixture into round shape in a generously oiled and heated pan. For better flavor and crispy texture, it is important to have enough oil in your pan. Fry both sides on medium until golden brown. The main difference between traditional mung bean pancakes and kimchi mung bean pancakes is: the traditional style has more ingredients such as fern brake and mung bean sprouts whereas the kimchi style has onions. Try either one of these delicious pancakes someday. Enjoy! 🙂Spencer Things are ramping up a lot around the studio in the last couple of weeks. We’ve been working really hard on heaps of new stuff on our own for ages, and its finally coming together. I spent most of this week working on planning the road to the ItemV2 release, and implementing a game mode system to support the official Team Deathmatch mode. I figured if we were going to use the deathmatch to iterate on guns, we may as well make it fun. The main function of the game mode system, is allowing us to swap out logic for things specific to a particular game mode without having hacky checks all over the place to see what we should do when something happens. The game mode drives things like: spawning, scoring, giving equipment, friendly fire etc This week I’ll be fixing a few bugs that came up in ItemV2 from our deathmatch tests, and improving the feel of the guns before unleashing it on you guys, hopefully the following week. Sleepers on Logout It’s been
the help of the Fundamental Theorem, by leaps and bounds. So we’re long overdue to update our slogan for integrals — from “It slices, it dices” to “Recalculating. A better route is available.” NOTES For more about the ways that integral calculus has been used to help cancer researchers, see: D. Mackenzie, “Mathematical modeling of cancer,” SIAM News, Vol. 37, January/February 2004. H.P. Greenspan, “Models for the growth of a solid tumor by diffusion,” Studies in Applied Mathematics, December 1972, p. 317. The region common to two identical circular cylinders whose axes intersect at right angles is known variously as a Steinmetz solid or a bicylinder. Its volume can be calculated straightforwardly but opaquely by modern techniques. An ancient and much simpler solution was known to both Archimedes and Tsu Ch’ung-Chih. It uses nothing more than the method of slicing and a comparison between the areas of a square and a circle. For a marvelously clear exposition, see Martin Gardner’s column: M. Gardner, “Mathematical games: Some puzzles based on checkerboards,” Scientific American, Vol. 207 (Nov. 1962), p. 164. And for Archimedes and Tsu Ch’ung-Chih, see: Archimedes, “The Method,” English translation by T. L. Heath (1912), reprinted by (Dover 1953). T. Kiang, “An old Chinese way of finding the volume of a sphere,” Mathematical Gazette, Vol. 56 (May 1972), pp. 88-91. Moreton Moore points out that the bicylinder also has applications in architecture: “The Romans and Normans, in using the barrel vault to span their buildings, were familiar with the geometry of intersecting cylinders where two such vaults crossed one another to form a cross vault.” For this, as well as applications to crystallography, see: M. Moore, “Symmetrical intersections of right circular cylinders,” Mathematical Gazette, Vol. 58 (Oct. 1974), pp. 181-185. For Archimedes’s application of his mechanical method to the problem of finding the volume of the bicylinder, see Proposition 15, p. 48 of T.L. Heath, “The Method of Archimedes, Recently Discovered by Heiberg” (Cosimo Classics, 2007). It’s interesting that Archimedes viewed his mechanical method as a means for discovering theorems rather than proving them. As he put it, “… certain things first became clear to me by a mechanical method, although they had to be demonstrated by geometry afterwards because their investigation by the said method did not furnish an actual demonstration. But it is of course easier, when we have previously acquired, by the method, some knowledge of the questions, to supply the proof than it is to find it without any previous knowledge.” That last line offers a timeless lesson about problem solving — when you’re trying to prove something, it helps to know it’s true. For a popular account of Archimedes’s work, see: R. Netz and W. Noel, “The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity’s Greatest Scientist” (Da Capo Press, 2009). Interactive demonstrations of the bicylinder and other problems in integral calculus are available online. You’ll need to download the free Mathematica Player, which will then allow you to explore hundreds of other interactive demonstrations in all parts of mathematics. Mamikon Mnatsakanian at Caltech has produced a series of animations that illustrate the Archimedean spirit and the power of slicing. My favorite is this visualization of a beautiful relationship among the volumes of a sphere and a certain double-cone and cylinder whose height and radius match those of the sphere. He also shows the same thing more physically by draining an imaginary volume of liquid from the cylinder and pouring it into the other two shapes. Similarly elegant mechanical arguments in the service of math are given in: M. Levi, “The Mathematical Mechanic: Using Physical Reasoning to Solve Problems” (Princeton University Press, 2009). Michael Starbird has created and filmed a fine series of lectures on the basics of calculus. Here’s an analogy that I hope will shed some light on what the Fundamental Theorem is, and why it’s so helpful. (My colleague Charlie Peskin at NYU suggested it.) Imagine a staircase. The total change in height from the top to the bottom is the sum of the rises of all the steps in between. That’s true even if some of them rise more than others, and no matter how many steps there are. The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus says something similar for functions — if you integrate the derivative of a function from one point to another, you get the net change in the function between the two points. In this analogy, the function is like the elevation of each step compared to ground level. The rises of individual steps are like the derivative. Integrating the derivative is like summing the rises. And the two points are the top and the bottom. Why is this so helpful? Suppose you’re given an enormous list of numbers to sum, as occurs whenever you’re calculating an integral by slices. If you can somehow manage to find the corresponding staircase — in other words, if you can find an elevation function for which those numbers are the rises — then computing the integral would be a snap. It’s just the top minus the bottom. That’s the great speed-up made possible by the Fundamental Theorem. And it’s why we torture all beginning calculus students with months of learning how to find elevation functions, technically called “antiderivatives.” Thanks to Charlie Peskin, for the staircase analogy; Margaret Nelson, for preparing the line drawing; and Paul Ginsparg, Tim Novikoff, Andy Ruina and Carole Schiffman, for their comments and suggestions. Need to print this post? Here is a print-friendly PDF version of this piece, with images.Disturbing details emerge in arrest of Albuquerque Police officer Copyright by KRQE - All rights reserved Cedric Greer [ + - ] Video ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - New and graphic details have emerged in the excessive force claims against an the Albuquerque Police Department officer who beat up a homeless man. Officer Cedric Greer faced a judge Sunday and while his partner isn't facing charges, he could be in trouble, too. The allegations were first reported by an APD cadet. Soon after getting that tip, State Police started their investigation and their report is now out. On March 20th, Greer and fellow APD Officer Jerry Rauch, along with that cadet, were called to the Best Choice Inn near Central and Louisiana to help a "down and out" subject. The highly intoxicated man was brought downstairs and police found some marijuana on him. According to the State Police report, Greer and the cadet stayed with him while Rauch ran to his car. Investigators said when that man looked at the cadet, Greer told him not to and started hitting him in the face and ribs. During this, Greer allegedly asked "Who's the man" repeatedly until the man told him "You're the man." When Rauch returned, he said he was "going live" and then both officers turned their lapel cameras on. If that's true, it's a big violation of APD policy. "Not only do we want them to be used, we want them turned on and it's an accountability measure we think not only protects the community, but protects the officers themselves when they do the right things," Mayor Richard Berry told KRQE News 13. According to State Police interviews, the man never posed any kind of threat to the officers. In court Sunday, Greer stood mostly silent. He's allowed to remain out of custody on a $5,000 bond. Greer was booked into MDC on a misdemeanor charge. There was a clerical error during the booking process and he was charged with felony aggrevated battery. In court Sunday, the judge read and arraigned him on a felony charge. The D.A. will now have to step in and clean things up but Greer is only facing a misdemeanor charge. "If it turns out through the justice system that these allegations are accurate, I have a lot of confidence there will be severe consequences for it," Berry said. The police report said the man never received any medical care for his injuries. According to the report, he had cuts on his face and x-rays eventually showed bruising near his ribs. APD Chief Gorden Eden has ordered an internal investigation into both officers.We lay out the first general model of the interplay between intercellular competition, aging, and cancer. Our model shows that aging is a fundamental feature of multicellular life. Current understanding of the evolution of aging holds that aging is due to the weakness of selection to remove alleles that increase mortality only late in life. Our model, while fully compatible with current theory, makes a stronger statement: Multicellular organisms would age even if selection were perfect. These results inform how we think about the evolution of aging and the role of intercellular competition in senescence and cancer. Abstract Current theories attribute aging to a failure of selection, due to either pleiotropic constraints or declining strength of selection after the onset of reproduction. These theories implicitly leave open the possibility that if senescence-causing alleles could be identified, or if antagonistic pleiotropy could be broken, the effects of aging might be ameliorated or delayed indefinitely. These theories are built on models of selection between multicellular organisms, but a full understanding of aging also requires examining the role of somatic selection within an organism. Selection between somatic cells (i.e., intercellular competition) can delay aging by purging nonfunctioning cells. However, the fitness of a multicellular organism depends not just on how functional its individual cells are but also on how well cells work together. While intercellular competition weeds out nonfunctional cells, it may also select for cells that do not cooperate. Thus, intercellular competition creates an inescapable double bind that makes aging inevitable in multicellular organisms.Gavin Grimm sits on his front porch during an interview at his home on Aug. 25, 2015, in Gloucester, Va. (Steve Helber/AP) The Supreme Court Wednesday blocked a lower court order on a Virginia school district that compelled officials to allow a transgender boy to use the boys' restroom. The 5 to 3 decision has no binding precedent, and is only a stopgap measure until the nation's highest court decides if it will hear the case. Should the court decide not to hear Gloucester County School Board's appeal, the order will be reinstated – transgender boy Gavin Grimm will again be allowed to use the boys' restrooms in that county's public high schools. Justice Stephen Breyer joined the court's conservatives as a "courtesy," thus temporarily reinstating the ban, until the court decides whether or not to hear the case. Justices Kagan, Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissented. The case, Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., No. 16A52, was instigated when the local school board in Gloucester, Virginia, adopted a policy that required students to use the bathrooms matching their "corresponding biological genders." Grimm sued, and a divided Fourth Circuit panel agreed with him in April. The school board urges the Supreme Court to reverse that decision, the district's lawyers argue: "Depriving parents of any say over whether their children should be exposed to members of the opposite biological sex, possibly in a state of full or complete undress in intimate settings, deprives them of their right to direct the education and upbringing of their children." Lawyers for Grimm, however, argue the school district would suffer no permanent harm and that the Fourth Circuit ruling in his favor "does not apply to locker rooms, showers or other situations in which students may be in a state of full or complete undress, and it certainly does not extend to every school district in the Fourth Circuit or the entire nation." The court will not act again on this issue until October at the earliest, meaning Grimm will begin his senior year at Gloucester High School unable to use the boys' bathroom. His school, however, does have a private bathroom he can use, so he will not be forced to use the girls bathroom.“The effects of El Nino will become stronger and last until next February, which means lower precipitation than what Thailand usually gets from the Pacific Ocean,” said Chawalit Chantararat, managing director of Team Group. El Nino was to blame for the sparse rainfall in the first half of this year’s rainy season, he said. “El Nino is disrupting storm patterns in the Pacific Ocean, so this year we will see fewer storms in the region, which decreases the rainfall that we get. And if this continues, we’ll have to bear with the drought until the next rainy season,” he said. Dusadee Sukawat, a meteorology researcher at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, said that due to the severe El Nino event, which will extend into next year, there is a 80-per-cent likelihood of a shortage of rain in Asia and Australia and it will definitely upset the rain pattern in Thailand. “Even if we get average rain during the last two months of the rainy season in August and September, it will not help fill up the nearly empty dams. This situation will not get better, unless there are some storms heading toward us,” he said. “There is a very high possibility that the drought will linger until the next rainy season – next June – and it will become more severe when the dry season comes,” he said. Maytee Mahayosanata, director of the Meteorological Department’s Central Weather Forecasting Division, said the rainfall between July and September is expected to be about normal. The water-shortage problem was not all about rainfall, he said. Increasing consumption was one of the major factors behind the drought. For example, in 1997, the precipitation was the same as this year, but then there was no water shortage because what was used was lower than today, he said. Thongplew Kongjun director of the Irrigation Department’s Water Management and Hydrology Office, said the department had started dredging waterways and ponds to store 295 million cubic metres of water within the Chao Phraya River basin. The work was 85 per cent complete. However, to make the best use of the limited water supply, everyone should save water. There will also be a change in planting. “The paddy fields in the Chao Phraya basin have used seven billion cubic metres of water for five harvest seasons during these last two years. If we reduce crops to two per year, we can save 2.3-billion cubic metres per year,” he said. Besides the urgent change of next year’s plan for agriculture, people in the city also have to use water wisely to conserve the scarce resource, he said. “People in Greater Bangkok draw five million cubic metres of water from the tap per day. If every household uses 20 per cent less water, we can save one million cubic metres per day, which can be allocated to 40,000 rai of farmland,” he said. The next rice planting should be reduced to 150,000 rai of land, while farm management should be strictly enforced to avoid a water famine.CATANIA have had a third bid for Dundee United forward Johnny Russell knocked back as the Tannadice outfit comes under increasing pressure to sell its prize asset. • Johnny Russell subject to third bid from Serie A side Catania • Dundee United also fighting off interest from Celtic The latest bid for Russell, who has one year left on his current contract, is thought to be in the region of £800,000, according to The Sun. The Serie A side have made no secret of their desire to land the Tannadice striker; though Jackie McNamara has said he hopes to extend the striker’s contract, the club hierarchy are thought to be willing to sell him. The 23-year-old, who has also attracted interest from Celtic, would have the option of signing a pre-contract agreement with the Sicilian side in January - a situation which would leave Dundee United without a transfer fee for the highly-rated player. McNamara, who still wants to keep Russell, said: “There will be speculation about Johnny because he’s a good player. “We’ll have that for the next few months. He’s going into the last year of his contract, so there are a lot of things to consider. Ideally, he’ll sign a new contact and I can work with him.”While it’s assumed by many drivers that gasoline taxes completely cover the cost of road maintenance, and are perhaps even too high, that appears to not even be close to the truth of the matter — going by a newly released report from the Frontier Group, in cooperation with the US PIRG Education Fund. The findings of the report are blunt: the price paid by US drivers for gas doesn’t even come close to covering the direct (much less indirect) costs of road use and maintenance. In other words, without even factoring in the effects of air pollution, auto accidents, associated healthcare costs, urban sprawl, etc, gas taxes in the US still don’t cover the costs of driving on US roads. What this means, when it really comes down to it, is that fuel costs should be higher in the US than they currently are. Or, to put it another way: Driving is, in the US, subsidized to a substantial degree. When it comes to electric vehicles, it also shows that paying for road costs will get more complicated as the market grows. Should we switch to some straight vehicle road tax fees? Should the gas tax simply be raised (good luck with that) and electric vehicles be subsidized? Should a tax based on vehicle miles traveled (and weight) be implemented? Should we switch over to a massive system of toll roads? Planetizen provides more on the topic: Federal subsidies to the highway administration system are enormous. “Since 1947, the amount of money spent on highways, roads and streets has exceeded the amount raised through gasoline taxes and other so-called ‘user fees’ by $600 billion (2005 dollars), representing a massive transfer of general government funds to highways,” according to the report. The price mechanism for road use is not based on a user fee because gas taxes, which are often referred to as user fees, are not necessarily directed to the actual roads the driver uses. In some cases, states subsidize federal highways, in other cases, the federal government has redirected gas tax revenues to pork-barrel infrastructure projects, and with the exception of tolled roads, drivers pay rates based on mileage, not the actual roads they use. Cortwright argues that if gas prices and other vehicle use fees reflected the true cost of use, single-occupant vehicle use would decrease, as drivers would opt for cheaper forms of travel. “These facts put the widely agreed proposition that increasing the gas tax is politically impossible in a new light: What it really signals is car users don’t value the road system highly enough to pay for the cost of operating and maintaining it. Road users will make use of roads, especially new ones, but only if their cost of construction is subsidized by others.” Considering that, amongst the younger generations in particular, car use is already becoming somewhat cost prohibitive at current gas prices, one can’t help but wonder how many fewer people would be driving if gas taxes were increased enough to cover associated costs.In future an accurate map might be less important than an abstract map," says Bertrand. "And maybe we've started that process." Hat tip to Metrography wasn't designed for navigation, but Benedikt and Betrand think that maps like this could become popular. "," says Bertrand. "." Hat tip to Wired who published this in their May 2012 issue. You've seen a lot of Tube Maps which attempt to show what they should look like if geographically accurate. However, students Benedikt Groß and Bertrand Clerc, from Royal College of Art in Kensington, have turned this on its head somewhat. They believe that Londoners now have the Tube Map ingrained in their heads so much that we actually think London looks like the London Underground map. Benedikt said." As we know Harry Beck's Tube map for many is "."He continued "." The black dots are from the Tube map - the red dots are the real locations.In a project called Metrography, they have taken 1,865,565 data points from OpenStreetMap & merged them with TfL's Tube map. The latitude and longitude of each point is then recalculated, keeping the positions of the Thames and stations as fixed references to produce a rather beautiful map below What do you think? Is the quest to find or design a geographically accurate Tube Map actually quite redundant and pointless now? If so many of us see London as the Tube Map, would a geographically accurate one be more of a hindrance than a help? Or should the real Tube Map make more efforts to show that distances that look far away from each other are actually quite close? Is this something that could encourage more of us to walk between stations (probably quite useful given the levels of Tube overcrowding predicted for the Olympic Games)? You might also likeBoston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens has his team on the right track. (Photo: David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports) Brad Stevens can coach. That's obvious. But what makes him a good coach? Xs and Os, sure. Strategy, yep. Use of film and advanced analytics, of course. Communication, without question. "The biggest thing is, we talk all the time about being great at what you do well," Stevens, the Boston Celtics' second-year coach, told USA TODAY Sports. "A lot of times in any walk of life, we get consumed by our weaknesses. We really try to focus on our strengths, and we'll manage those weakness. "So a part of that is, a guy who's not a driver, keep the ball moving. For a guy who is a driver, make good plays on the drive. For a guy who's not a skill player to stay spaced or in the paint. We just try to soar with those strengths. Sounds simple. But it's not always the case. Stevens has a style and approach that appeals to players: make plays for your teammates and be unselfish. "All these guys are in the NBA for a reason, and they're really, really good at something," he said. "If you can separate yourself at being one of the best at the things you do well, then you always have a spot where people are going to value you. It just makes sense to a be a superstar in your role." CLOSE USA TODAY Sports' Jeff Zillgitt breaks down why the Cavaliers were able to put away the Celtics in Game 2. In Stevens' second season with the Boston Celtics after leaving Butler in a shocking and unforeseen move, he has a rebuilding and overachieving team in the playoffs and while down 2-0 to the Cleveland Cavaliers in their first-round series, there is no evidence the Celtics are overmatched and overwhelmed. The job Stevens did this season was recognized when he finished fourth in the NBA coach of the year voting, ahead of San Antonio's Gregg Popovich. "That's bad voting," Stevens cracked. ESPN analyst P.J. Carlesimo has unique insight into Stevens' NBA career. Carlesimo also made the high-profile jump from college to the NBA and last season, Carlesimo filled in as a commentator on 15 Celtics TV games last season. "Extremely impressed with his demeanor. He's had two very challenging years," Carlesimo said. "He's been great. He's very even keel. He came in knowing he knew a lot about basketball but knowing also he had a learning curve in terms of learning the league, learning its players, learning the nuances. It's still basketball, but he was very eyes open, drank it all in. He gets better every week. I can't be more impressed with the job that he's done." It's one thing to get support from the coaching fraternity. Celtics forward Gerald Wallace is a 14-year veteran, nearing the end of his career and a players who understands the game. He's played for multiple teams and coaches. "The thing about any coach at any level is being able to communicate and get through to your players," Wallace said. "You need players to buy in to the approach you're trying to bring to the game. Brad has done a great job of getting guys to buy in to his system and then go out and put forth the effort. It's worked. "Players see the energy and effort and attention to detail he puts into the game, and that energy transfers from him to the players and it makes something extremely special." Right now, Boston plays hard, is well-coached and has some talent, and soon, the Celtics will have more talent in combination with that hard play and great coaching. General manager Danny Ainge has accumulated assets in the name of first-round picks and his goal is make the team better as quickly as possible. Yes, the Celtics made the playoffs with a 40-42 record, but that was an accomplishment, especially the multiple roster changes. Twenty-two players played for the Celtics this season. Boston traded Jeff Green and Rajon Rondo, acquired Jameer Nelson and Brandan Wright and then traded Nelson and Wright. At the trade deadline, the Celtics sent Tayshaun Prince to the Pistons and Marcus Thornton to the Suns and acquired Isaiah Thomas, Jonas Jerebko and Gigi Datome. Stevens said he was apprehensive about the trade deadline deals because the Celtics started to play well, winning four of games just before the All-Star break. But the chance to get Thomas, who finished second in Sixth Man of the Year voting, was a deal in which the Celtics couldn't pass. It turned about to be the right move. Boston closed out the season 20-9 and secured the seventh seed. "It's been really tough but this is the most connected our locker room has been," Stevens said. "This is a great environment. It's a great working environment. Guys are in great spirits, and there's a lot of guys who are really hungry for this opportunity." On Monday, Stevens just finished a news conference with reporters the day before the Celtics lost Game 2 to the Cavaliers, and he was about to start practice. His son, Brady, shot hoops with Celtics players at the far end of the court. Is Stevens enjoying this? "It became a job even in college," Stevens said. "You enjoy the challenge. You enjoy trying to solve puzzles. You enjoy trying to help these guys get to be the best that they can. But at the end of the day, I just go back and watch film because that's my job. I can go back and prepare for the next game. That's my job. You do enjoy it." "I'm much less emotionally tied in the last five or five six years than maybe I was in the first 10 years of coaching." Nearing the end of last season on a road trip, Stevens told reporters in Washington that he had a list of issues he planned to address in the offseason. Asked about those issues, Stevens said, "I'd be happy to share it, but we don't have time." When last season ended, Stevens went to work on that list, focusing on technical aspects of offense and defense and late-game execution. "That April-May time frame last year was big. I just focused on all the things of why we came up short," Stevens. "That was a real time of reflection from a coaching standpoint, a real time of reflection from who's on the court standpoint and just a real time of a study. "It was almost as arduous as the regular season. But I felt like I wanted to get it done before we headed into the summer so I felt good about what we needed to do right away." The proof is in Boston's efficiency statistics year over year. The Celtics averaged more points and allowed fewer points per 100 possessions this season than they did last season. Boston also had a better record in close games this season and were far more efficient. "We've made a lot of strides and that's even before making the playoffs. We said the progress was obvious and that was a positive," Stevens said. PHOTOS: BEST OF NBA PLAYOFFS: FIRST ROUNDApple has released iOS 8, the latest version of its mobile operating system, for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Users can download the new software by navigating to the "general" tab in their device's settings menu and selecting "software update." If you don't want to download the update wirelessly — perhaps you're on a restrictive data plan and have limited Wi-Fi access — you can also connect your phone to the latest version of iTunes to download the update. The iOS 8 update pack weighs in at 1.4GB and requires a staggering 5.7GB of free space to install on an iPhone (6.9GB on an iPad), so you may need to delete something like half a dozen games to free up some room before you get started. The new operating system brings subtle but significant changes to the functionality of the Apple devices that support it. The new version introduces HealthKit, a hub for third-party fitness apps to siphon information about your health into, and Family Sharing, which lets you share iTunes purchases, calendar information, and messages with a group of people. iOS 8 also brings improved notifications, a Spotlight search function that lets you search inside apps, and the ability to install third-party keyboards such as Swype, among other features. And once the next version of OS X is released, likely next month, iOS 8 will allow you to sync phone calls, files, and SMS messages between iOS 8 devices and Macs.Campaign Result Annoucement Winners will be chosen by a random computer process among all eligible entries. The draw will take place after the campaign closing date. Winner details will be available on the campaign result page or on GUNDAM.INFO within one month after the campaign closing date. Campaign Prizes Redemption BANDAI or BANDAI's representative will announce prize redemption details on the campaign result page or on GUNDAM.INFO, or will notify winners via email or phone or social media direct message. Depending on countries or regions, prize(s) will either be sent to redemption centre or nominated retail shops for redemption, or will be sent to the winners directly by post. Entries must be completed in full and made in the manner specified by the closing date. Failure to do so will disqualify the entry. Cancelling or unsubscribing GUNDAM.INFO member account prior to the end of the redemption period will result in the winner's prize being forfeited. Winners must produce proof of identity and present the original winning campaign serial card upon the prize redemption. All other expenses relating to the Prize is the responsibility of the winner. Where applicable, prizes not redeemed within the announced redemption period shall be disposed of at BANDAI's sole discretion. BANDAI reserves the right to disqualify all entries that do not meet the rules and regulations of the Lucky Draw. These include entries submitted with invalid or incorrect information. NoticeIt is well known in the Arab community in Israel that “Flying While Muslim” will earn you extra security checks and delayed travel. Palestinian-American journalist Noor Wazwaz shared her experience of flying into Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion International Airport across her social media channels, where she has more than 28,000 followers. Wazwaz, who says her goal is become “the first Muslim hijab [head scarf]-wearing news anchor on American television,” decided to become a journalist to better represent “[the] Arab and Muslim voice in Western media.” She shared her travail of entering Israel this week in order to get to Palestine, the most expedient way to arrive internationally; far quicker than landing in Amman, Jordan, and driving to the Israel-controlled West Bank. Wazwaz reports that she was detained for more than four hours, followed by an interrogation by Israeli security personnel who accused her family of terrorist activity based on national and ethnic origin. Wazwaz was flying on an American passport. On Instagram, Wazwaz recalls her experience, saying that the humiliation she was subjected to at the border would not stop her from returning to Palestine: On Wazwaz's social media accounts, friends and followers reached out to express support and solidarity, commiserating on similar experiences. On Instagram, Arwa Sarsour writes: On Facebook, where her post has garnered 4,000 likes and almost 800 shares at time of writing. Follower Ahlam Abutineh shares: Ph Sima Ghnaim, who is also North American although not a Palestinian passport holder, writes of similar treatment: And Maria M. Jaber Khalil questions how Israeli security's treatment of American citizens holding dual Palestinian citizenship can be legal or accepted pro forma by the United States, arguing: To those who have never experienced humiliation at the hands of border control, Shireen Nasser‘s description touches at the humanity of the experience. As many times as we all try to tell the stories to others, they really can never imagine what a mental manipulation it all is until they've experienced it. It's such a form of degradation and oppression beyond what has ever been taught in any history book. Other commenters allude to the highly controversial Right of Return, which states that the descendants of Palestinian refugees who were expelled in the 1948 War — which Israelis call the War of Independence and Palestinians call the Nakba (“Catastrophe”) — should be able to return to the land and claim their original property. An estimated 30,000-50,000 original Palestinian emigrants now have family numbering 5 million worldwide. The Right of Return has been a sticking point in peace negotiations, yet to be resolved. As a counterpart, Israeli Jews demand recognition for the 1 million Jews who were expelled from Arab lands as a result of the establishment of the State of Israel, who, like the 1948 Palestinians, were forced to leave their property and assets at home and whose value was then absorbed by their subsequent states for significant economic gain. Instagram user Enasjudeh enthuses: … I would endure that a million times to visit that beautiful country! While Rehab Eid, a self-identified Muslim Palestinian New Yorker, claims: They think that'll stop us from coming back, but we just get stronger! Echoing the popular sentiment, Beesan Arouri asserts: As for Wazwaz herself, you can follow her journey in Palestine through her frequent updates.Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Spain's soccer team celebrates with the Euro 2012 trophy on a double-decker bus during the victory parade in Madrid on Monday. Spain defeated Italy 4-0 in the final match on Sunday. Euro 2012, bringing together 16 of Europe's best national soccer teams, began June 8 in Poland and Ukraine. Look back at the action and atmosphere. Hide Caption 1 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Supporters of Spain's national soccer team are hosed down before the team's victory parade in Madrid on Monday. Hide Caption 2 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Spain's team arrives at Cibeles Square on top of a double-decker bus Monday after parading through Madrid. Hide Caption 3 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Juan Mata, left, and Santi Cazorla of Spain hoist the Euro 2012 trophy during Monday's celebrations. Hide Caption 4 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Fans celebrate in Cibeles Square during the victory parade. Organizers had the crowd cooled off with hoses. Hide Caption 5 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Spain fans gather in Madrid to congratulate their team on Monday. Hide Caption 6 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Captain Iker Casillas of Spain lifts the trophy after the team defeated Italy 4-0 in the Euro 2012 final on Sunday, July 1, in Kiev, Ukraine. Hide Caption 7 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Cesc Fabregas of Spain jumps on his teammates as they celebrate after Fernando Torres scored his team's third goal against Italy. Hide Caption 8 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Italy's Mario Balotelli reacts to Spain's fourth and final goal in Sunday's match. Hide Caption 9 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Spain celebrates after defeating Italy on Sunday. It was the team's third successive major international trophy. Hide Caption 10 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Fernando Torres of Spain celebrates scoring his team's third goal against Italy. Hide Caption 11 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon looks on during Sunday's match against Spain. Hide Caption 12 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Spain's Fernando Torres nudges the ball toward the goal past Italy's Gianluigi Buffon. Hide Caption 13 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Gianluigi Buffon of Italy looks back at the ball as Spain's Fernando Torres scores. Hide Caption 14 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Cesc Fabregas of Spain runs with the ball past Leonardo Bonucci of Italy. Hide Caption 15 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Goalkeeper Iker Casillas of Spain celebrates after his team's third goal against Italy. Hide Caption 16 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Fernando Torres of Spain speaks with his daughter, Nora, after Sunday's match against Italy. Hide Caption 17 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012: The best photos – Jordi Alba of Spain celebrates after scoring his team's second goal as Leonardo Bonucci of Italy kicks the ball in frustration. Hide Caption 18 of 370 Photos: Euro 2012: The best photos Euro 2012
block perfectly on every snap. In all, the individual linemen did not get beat particularly often. Instead, most of the pressure on Winston was a result of poor communication and recognition -- which, in turn, is on the offense as a whole, not the offensive line specifically. When the communication was on point and the blitzers did get picked up correctly, the line didn't have all that much trouble keeping Winston clean. This lack of communication and recognition may simply be the result of a lack of gameplanning due to the team's short week. No one truly gameplans for opponents in the preseason, but the Bucs offense was much more prepared for the Bengals' blitzes on Monday night, when they had nine days to prepare -- incidentally also the amount of time the Browns had to prepare for yesterday's game. So no, I'm not particularly concerned about the offensive line. I'm actually encouraged by their overall performance this preseason. They just have to clean up their blitz recognition.File pic: The last time the Delhi assembly assembled in February The Supreme Court today did not step into the political deadlock in Delhi, which has been under President's rule for six months, but said it expected the Centre to come up with a solution at the earliest, asking - should elected representatives sit at home without work?A five-judge Constitution bench of the court said, "We are not looking at political party before us. We are looking at the Delhi citizen's point of view...he may say he has elected a representative and he is drawing salary from taxpayers' money and sitting idle."The court was hearing a petition by Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to dissolve the assembly and call fresh polls in Delhi. Adjourning the case for five weeks, the judges said the Centre should take a decision at the earliest."One party says it has no strength. Other says it has no desire. Third has no strength. In a situation like this why should people suffer?" the bench questioned the Centre.The judges added that if the Centre made a statement "that the Lieutenant Governor will consider dissolving the house in two months, we will dispose the petition."Delhi has been under President's rule since February, when Mr Kejriwal quit as Chief Minister after failing to push his Jan Lokpal Bill."Our opinion is why should it go with suspended animation and elected representatives sit at home without any work? And why should people suffer?" the court questioned the Centre.AAP, which won 29 of 70 assembly constituencies, had formed government with help from eight Congress members after the BJP, which won the most number of seats, said it didn't have the numbers to rule.Mr Kejriwal has accused the BJP of trying to cobble a government by buying the support of rival legislators.The central government told the court today that it was "still making an endeavor to ensure that people's mandate doesn't go waste in six months." To which, the court responded, "What sort of endeavor you can make when both the parties are not interested to form government? Tell us after lunch."NEW DELHI: Google has extended free internet service through WiFi to 10 railway stations as part of its tie up with Railtel, the internet provider arm of Indian Railways.After the first launch at Mumbai Central last year, the high speed wireless broadband service now covers stations in Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Bhopal, Ranchi, Raipur, Vijayawada, Kacheguda (Hyderabad), Ernakulum Jn (Kochi) and Vishakhapatnam, providing internet to over 1.5 million people."As internet adoption grows in India, easy and affordable access to high-speed networks is the real need of the hour," said Gulzar Azad, Head of Access Project, Google India.We are scaling up our efforts to roll out the network quickly to cover some of smaller stations where connectivity is much more limited, he added.Google and RailTel will take the total number of covered stations to 100 within this year, which will be a fifth of the number announced by CEO Sundar Pichai in December 2015's visit to India.Chairman and Managing Director of Railtel RK Bahuguna said, “As outlined by the Hon’ble Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, - modernising and improving the amenities available to passengers of Indian Railways is big part of our focus.While the service will be free for a reasonable amount of time, the long-term goal is to make this project self-sustainable to allow for expansion to more stations and places, with RailTel and other partners, the chairman added.Goose Island Tasting Room is the perfect place to start one of Chicago’s best brewery tours. I had the good fortune to hang out at the brand spankin’ new Goose Island tasting room located at Fulton & Wood a few weeks back. Yes, the Fulton & Wood after which the awesome collection of one-off beers is named. Didn’t know those were streets? Shame on you. Anyway, the place is absolutely beautiful and oh so Chicago. I don’t mean there are Italian beefs lying around the room. I mean it’s packed with things made in Chicago. UPDATE: Goose Island’s Fulton Street Brewery is officially open to the public! Instead of slapping together a bar with some chairs and some dumb shit on the walls, they partnered with Chicago artists and contractors to build something truly local for the Goose Island Tasting Room. That should come as no surprise as they’ve gone to great lengths in the past couple years to ensure people know that GI is still a Chicago brewery. Some of the people/companies used were Duke Builders & Design, Hatch Design & Fabrication, Right Way Signs (welcome sign), Flux Studios (tiles behind bar), Icon Modern (tables shown below), VSA and DMA. The Goose Island Tasting Room serves as the jump off point for the new Fulton Brewery Tour, but there are plenty of reasons to come here just to drink. It features eight draft lines, a cask engine and a growler filling station. Those draft lines will the first place you can try most of their new beers, and the only place you can get some of the limited release options unless you’re best friends with BeerAdam. Speaking of limited release: every third Friday is Black Friday, when they’ll pour a variant of Bourbon County Stout. They also have Sour Saturdays for limited release of one of their sour beers. Yeah, you can count me in. The Goose Island Tasting Room hours are Thursday and Friday from 2:00pm – 8:00pm, and Saturday from Noon – 6:00pm. Here are the details of the 45 minute tour before you get too distracted: Throughout the 45 minute tour guests will sample beer and get an up close look at everything that goes into making Goose Island beer special, including: Visit the ‘Innovation Room,’ where brewers have full creative license to brew, developing small batch beers that may only show up in our Tasting Room Check out how Goose Island utilizes wild yeasts in the ‘Wild Fermentation Room,’ before seeing the bottling line and exterior fermentation tanks Peek in the Barrel Aging Warehouse, where visitors will learn how Goose Island’s award-winning barrel aged beers, such as Bourbon County Stout are created Stop by the new ‘Tap Deck’ which overlooks the Goose Island Brewing operations, allowing our visitors to see our great brewers at work Guests must register for the brewery tours online; walk-ins are added to a wait-list based on availability. The tours are scheduled for Thursday and Friday at 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. and Saturday at 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 p.m. The tour costs $12 per person and includes a custom designed pint glass. Goose Island Beer Company – A Right Way Sign Painting Project from Right Way Signs of Chicago on Vimeo.In a supersized world, Prague’s Museum of Miniatures thinks small. Very small. In millimetres, in fact. A short walk from Prague Castle, this odd museum houses wonders invisible to the naked eye. After entering the room filled with microscopes, I found a desert scene of camels and palms inside the eye of a needle, an animal menagerie perched on a mosquito leg and the Lord’s Prayer written on a hair. Most of these minute works are by Anatoly Konenko, a Siberia-born artist who made eye-surgery instruments before turning to micro-miniatures. In order to achieve such precision in their work, micro-miniaturists make their own chisels and gouges. Each work can take between several months and several years to complete. Konenko works between heartbeats, as the most imperceptible movement spells disaster. Peering into one microscope after another, I gazed at a 35-page, 0.9x0.9mm short story, Chameleon, by Anton Chekhov – just one of 200 micro-books he has created. I admired tiny ink portraits of Chekhov on a poppy seed and John Lennon on a sliver of mammoth bone. I then came across a particularly curious item: a flea with golden horseshoes affixed to its feet. In a supersized world, Prague’s Museum of Miniatures thinks small. Very small. A few weeks earlier, I had seen a poster in St Petersburg depicting a similar flea clad in golden horseshoes. Not reading Russian, I assumed the Prague museum was exhibiting in Russia, or the poster was promoting Konenko. What are the odds of two people in the world creating a horseshoe-clad flea, I thought? I was wrong. It turns out I had come across a popular subject in the art of micro-miniatures. The poster was probably for St Petersburg’s own Museum of Microminiatures, opened by the International Craft Guild of Masters in 2006. All of its works ‒ including a golden horseshoed-flea ‒ are by Vladimir Aniskin of Novosibirsk, Siberia. In Moscow, artist Nikolai Aldunin went one step further, creating a golden-horseshoed flea that also sported a saddle and stirrups. Kiev, Ukraine, also boasts a Museum of Microminiatures, comprising works by Ukrainian artist Nikolai Syadristy, including a portrait of a ballerina on a cherry pit and a 12-page book by Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, sewn together with cobwebs. The museum also houses a flea with the unusual footwear. According to the museum website, Syadristy is ‘the man who really shoed a flea’. What accounted for the bizarre fixation of putting horseshoes on fleas, I wondered? The frequent appearance of the flea in microminiature museums throughout the former Soviet bloc can be traced back to a Russian novella written by Nikolai Leskov in 1881. In The Tale of the Cross-Eyed Lefthander from Tula and the Steel Flea (known simply as ‘Levsha’, or ‘left-hander’), a tsar, when visiting England, is given a gift: a tiny steel flea that dances when turned on by a key. Impressed by the ingenuity of his hosts but bursting with nationalist pride, he was sure Russian craftsmen could outwit the English. The challenge to produce a more impressive invention was issued to gunsmiths in Tula, Russia’s 17th-Century ironworking capital. As the story goes, it was a left-handed craftsman that ultimately satisfied the tsar, presenting him with a brand-new flea. At first, the tsar was angry, assuming he was being shown the same invention he hoped to best – until the horseshoes, each inscribed with the name of the gunsmith involved, were pointed out. (The flea no longer danced, but, you can’t have everything.) The most imperceptible movement spells disaster. The fable wedged its way into the Russian psyche, where it has remained ever since. The St Petersburg museum is nicknamed ‘Russian Levsha’, and its website notes that gifted artisans are often referred to as ‘Levshas’. The tale is the basis for two films and an opera, all entitled The Left-Hander. The Left-Handeris screened daily at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, whose microminiature collection includes sculptures of Pope John Paul II, Napoleon and various Disney characters (this is Los Angeles, after all), each carved from a human hair, by Armenian-American artist Hagop Sandaldjian. Sandaldjian, a former music conservatory teacher in Yerevan, Armenia, was inspired to enter the world of microminiatures by a student, Edward Kazarian, who himself was a master of the art form. Some of Kazarian’s work was on display in the Prague museum. I admired his gold and obsidian backgammon board (the world’s smallest) inlayed into a grain of rice and his delicate bouquet of stone flowers whose petals were each 100 times thinner than a human hair. Other microscopes revealed more examples of the delicate art form, including Henri Matisse’s The Dance etched into a sliver of bone, a train perched on a human hair and a 3.2mm, three-dimensional, golden Eiffel Tower. But it was a tiny, humble flea clad in golden horseshoes that left the largest impression. Join over three million BBC Travel fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter and Instagram. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.One evening in 2012, in a presentation room at the Mariott Waterfront in central Baltimore, I attended one of the first meetings of the Society for Black Archaeologists (SBA). Talk about a niche association. The SBA is a welcome addition to the array of professional organizations that already exist in American Archaeology. For the longest time, the concerns of African American archaeologists was only addressed by the Gender and Minority Affairs Committee of the Society for Historical Archaeology (As far as I know, there is no corresponding minority affairs committee in the Society for American Archaeology [SAA] or the American Institute of Archaeology [AIA], which does much to explain why there are almost no black members in these associations). At the time, I didn’t really feel like the formation of this group was anything extraordinary while attending that meeting in Baltimore. After all, there are dozens of professional archaeology associations each with numerous committees and sub-committees. I was already a member of a few international and local associations. It wasn’t until weeks later that I realized the potential impact the creation of this society can make. A few academic journal authors have noted the near absence of African Americans in American archaeology. Nobody knows how few black American archaeologists there are, but the SBA is the first archaeological society for black people in the United States. One of the first black archaeologists to comment on the dearth of black archaeologists was Maria Franklin who asked in 1997, “Why are there so few black American Archaeologists?” (Antiquity 71[274]). Franklin commented on the oft quoted 1994 SAA survey that indicated only 1-2 SAA members were black, while she stated that she knew there were at least 4 that she knew of (including herself). Five years later, Anna Agbe-Davies noticed the greater number of African American historians as compared to black archaeologists in her article in the SAA Archaeological Record “Black Scholars, Black Pasts” (2002 2[4]:24–28). Marveling at the seemingly large number of African American historians, she also wondered what this discrepancy meant. While it is difficult to quantify the total number of black American archaeologists, other archaeologists are apparently encouraged by the fact that the number of black archaeologists is slowly growing. It is true. I’ve noticed a few more blacks in archaeology in the 11 years since Agbe-Davies wrote that article. When I first started attending the SHA conference, I only noticed three other black archaeologists. There were very few black students in attendance. Oftentimes, I was the only black person in the conference room. I’m from Idaho, so this didn’t seem odd to me until I thought about the fact that about 13% of all Americans are black. Today, including Agbe-Davies, whom I have met, and myself, I personally know at least nine African American archaeologists– five of whom are PhD students (which I soon will be myself). There were at least 13 black archaeologists in attendance at that meeting in Baltimore, so I guess our numbers are so large I don’t personally know all of us anymore. I have been doing CRM archaeology for about 10 years and had the privilege of working with one other black archaeologist during that entire time period. Increasing African American participation has been a central goal for the SHA and other societies. It has long been understood that the contributions of underrepresented social groups can provide invaluable perspectives to archaeological interpretation. Connecting with African Americans and members of other ethnic groups in a manner that motivates them to pursue archaeology has been a huge obstacle in increasing the numbers of black Archaeologists. I touched on this in the interview with the Society for Black Archaeologists, but wanted to more straighforwardly propose several solutions to the lack of African Americans in archaeology: 1. Demonstrate financial benefit– It’s hard to convince young people that archaeology is a viable profession when esteemed magazines like Forbes are telling them anthropology/archaeology is the worst college major. It’s also hard for college professors that raise most of their funding from grants to recognize the potential millions of dollars in government disadvantage set-aside contracts that go unclaimed by African Americans simply because there aren’t any of us trying to get them. A highly motivated, business-minded black CRM company owner would, hypothetically, do quite well for her/himself. Plus, CRM is a multimillion dollar industry that employs over 10,000 people and there have been some extraordinary success stories. 2. Relate to others like real people– Most of the black archaeologists are college professors, which means they have a PhD and are our school system’s most successful products. As such, they are generally out of touch with the “C’s-get-degrees,” 99%-ers across the country. Those of us with graduate degrees, regardless of race, are intimidating to the average uneducated American. In order to connect with everyday Americans, we need to make a sincere effort to connect with them as real people. An overly academic or “proper” persona is a major put-off for most African Americans, as my relatives have told me more than once. 3. Use some elbow grease– I don’t personally know about the efficacy of other black archaeologists’ outreach efforts in the black community, but I know my own success rate is 0%. As a CRMer, I have more opportunities to help the archaeos I encounter in my profession, which means I have had zero interactions with other up-and-coming black CRM archaeologists that I could mentor. I was a volunteer docent at the Northwest African American Museum in Seattle, which didn’t give me much of a chance to talk about archaeology to other black people either. I have also spent some time giving presentations to young people, primarily high school students, and have encouraged all of them to pursue archaeology if they’re interested. Several black students have expressed interest. All I can do is hope they go into anthropology in college. While I have done a pretty pathetic job convincing other black folks to pursue archaeology as a career, my past performance is not an indication of future success. I plan on reaching out to the black community during graduate school and working with other black archaeologists to help explain what archaeology can do to improve our understanding of ourselves and what we have contributed to our country. Following in the footsteps of Dr. Alexandra Jones, I want to do everything I can to help African Americans make careers in archaeology. Upon noting the disparity between black representation in history and in archaeology, Agbe-Davies asked, “what are we, as a field, like; how did we get this way; where do we seem to be going?” While not specifically asked in my SBA interview, these questions are at the heart of the SBA’s quest to document the backgrounds of the few black archaeologists in the United States. I am the first black CRMer interviewed by the SBA and I am more than honored for that privilege. I hope that my story will help other African Americans understand that they can make a career for themselves in archaeology. That CRM is something that we do too. That archaeology is not just for white folks and the field desperately needs to hear the voice of the underrepresented because the voices of the voiceless past can really only be heard through archaeology. Please go to the SBA website and listen to my short interview. I welcome questions with open arms. If you have something to ask, feel free to send me an email or write a comment in the box below. “Resume-Writing for Archaeologists” is now available on Amazon.com. Click Here and get detailed instructions on how you can land a job in CRM archaeology today! Small Archaeology Project Management is now on the Kindle Store. Over 300 copies were sold in the first month! Click Here and see what the buzz is all about. Join the Succinct Research email list and receive additional information on the CRM and heritage conservation field.Guest contributor Michael Coats takes a trip back to where it all began… I’ve always (sliiight fabrication there) wished that I could have watched the classic episodes of Doctor Who. Unfortunately, there were a few obstacles in my way, not least the small matter being born 3 years too late to have watched any. Actually, I don’t think being born in 1989 would’ve helped much; I doubt my newborn self would’ve been able to quite wrap his head around it. Maybe make that 7 years too late! Eventually, I realised that this situation would have to be rectified before the 50th anniversary, or I couldn’t live with the shame and would’ve had to fly a spaceship into the sun to incinerate myself. Sun filter descending…where was I? I’ve seen enough commenters on this site say that they’re not interested in watching the Classic episodes, so I’m writing this in order to convince some of the “Nu Whovians” to do so. To paraphrase the Ninth Doctor: it won’t be quiet, it won’t be safe, and I can’t promise it won’t sometimes be irreverent, but I’ll tell you what it will be: the trip of a lifetime. First, I’ll be looking at the serials of Season 1, though (even partly) missing serials won’t be covered. I cannot watch incomplete stories. An Unearthly Child It all begins with An Unearthly Child. Having seen it now, I see it shares an unfortunate similarity with Rose: that despite both being the two most crucial stories in the show’s history, both come across as rather average stories (“Burn the witch!”). Whilst the first part of An Unearthly Child is a strong episode, full of mystery and intrigue, the fire in it seems to splutter out (ironic considering the subject matter). I feel that it doesn’t do a good enough job in establishing the Doctor (William Hartnell) and Susan (Carol Ann Ford) as characters and the concept is stretched a couple of episodes too long. As a result, it’s my second least favourite serial of the series. The Daleks Next, my two favourites of the series, the first of which is The Daleks. I understand why they used to leave children cowering behind the sofa, because despite their slightly unorthodox design, they are clever, cunning and ever so slightly eerie (like their first two appearances of the revived series in Dalek and The Parting of the Ways). The methods used to to defeat the Daleks are ingenious, especially the disabling and Ian’s subsequent impersonation of one. It was also nicely fuelled by the tension between The Doctor, Ian (William Russell) and Barbara (Jacqueline Hill), something which came to a head in the next serial. The Edge of Destruction And as if I’d just hopped in the TARDIS, here we are. And speaking of the TARDIS; yes, The Edge of Destruction is notable for; amongst other reasons: it is one of only two full-length stories set entirely within the TARDIS, the other being Amy’s Choice (dreams don’t count). The episode plays out like a cross between elements of 42 and The Doctor’s Wife, which certainly is no bad thing in my book, and should be in your book too (and I’ll chuck your book into a supernova if it says otherwise). But, it’s the atmosphere of distrust which really makes this story; everyone is blaming each other for what’s going wrong which results in a really satisfying ending I’m not going to spoil for you. River would kill me. Basically, this is what drama is all about. The Keys of Marinus & The Aztecs Skipping the missing Marco Polo, we arrive at what I feel is the weakest story of the series, The Keys of Marinus. While having a different threat each week did little to establish the Voord as threatening creatures, they come across as men in suits and little else. Also, like An Unearthly Child, the episode feels stretched. After that, we had The Aztecs, which did a rather nice job with Barbara. Her being mistaken for an Aztec God was certainly an interesting concept, and I enjoyed watching her attempts to change the history of a culture, ultimately futile though they were. It also gave us the First Doctor’s amazingly brilliant line; ‘Yes, I made some cocoa and got engaged.’ The Sensorites Lastly, we have The Sensorites, which had a significant impact on the revived series. Russell T Davies stated that the eponymous creatures were the inspiration for the Ood, and the Ood Sphere is apparently located in the same galaxy as the Sense Sphere. Addition, Susan’s description of Gallifrey in the final part of the episode is paraphrased by the Tenth Doctor in Gridlock, and it also introduces the Doctor’s dislike of weapons, a prevalent theme in the RTD era. RTD was quite the fan. It is a good story, involving treachery, telepathy and probably other things beginning with “T”. Some may find some things jarring, the First Doctor’s cranky grandfather characterisation for example. He’s not quite as mellow as Nine, nor quite as angry/arrogant as Ten in Time Lord Victorious mode. He mellows out over the course of the series, but remains quick to anger. The main problem I have with is with Susan. I know that sometimes in early Doctor Who female characters were often quite weak; a product of the times. However, a constantly shrieking and mostly useless character is not what I expected of the Doctor’s granddaughter. She is more useful in The Sensorites, but the damage has already been done. Apart from that though, fans introduced by the revived series will feel reassured by how familiar it all feels, apart from the male companion filling the action man role. Ian Chesterton is absolutely awesome, a man with both brains and brawn. Barbara Wright might not be the typical action girl like the revived series companions, but as a schoolteacher and wilful character, she’s one of the strongest female characters you’re likely to have seen in 1963. Best of all, there isn’t a single serial that I’d rate worse than average. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to watch Planet of Giants. Quite so.Image caption All disabled benefit claimants are to be reassessed for their capability for work Many disabled people in Britain feel media coverage about benefit cheats has negatively affected attitudes towards them, a survey suggests. Almost half of the 500 disabled people and carers polled for charity Scope said attitudes to them had worsened. It comes after ministers released data suggesting 55% of sickness benefit claimants were no longer eligible for it. The government said it was restoring integrity to the benefits system. It is changing the welfare system to try to get more people into work and is scrapping the three main benefits for disabled people in the process. Anyone receiving these benefits will be reviewed to see if they are capable of work or eligible for other benefits. They tell us strangers challenge them in the street about the support they claim Richard Hawkes, Scope chief executive But a report from a parliamentary committee has warned that changes to disabled people's benefits may risk their right to independent living. The research for the charity Scope is released just weeks before the Paralympics is due to start. It asked 500 disabled people, their parents and carers a series of questions in England, Wales and Scotland. It found 46% of those polled said people's attitudes towards them had worsened over the past year. Some 40% said they had stayed the same and 16% said they had improved. Nearly two-thirds (64%) said they had experienced aggression, hostility or name calling, while nearly three-quarters or (73%) said they had experienced an assumption they did not work. When asked what could be contributing to such hostility, 87% singled out people claiming disability benefits to which they are not entitled. And 84% highlighted negative media coverage about benefit cheats. 'Welfare rhetoric' Scope chief executive Richard Hawkes said: "Disabled people keep coming back to the same concern: benefit scroungers. They single out fraudsters. "They are concerned about coverage. They tell us strangers challenge them in the street about the support they claim." He added: "It is telling that these figures come as the government continues to put the issue of weeding out illegitimate claimants at the heart of its welfare rhetoric." A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: "We are careful about the language we use, as it's clear that the benefit system itself has trapped many people in a spiral of welfare dependency. "That's why this government is making such a radical overhaul of the benefits system to restore integrity and ensure that everyone who needs help and support receives it." He added: "And whilst we already have laws in place to ensure equality, we need to work together and do more to change negative attitudes. "We have already been working with disability organisations on developing a new disability strategy - one of the key areas is about promoting positive attitudes and behaviours towards disabled people." The survey is released after the BBC's Panorama revealed evidence of disabled and sick people being cleared as fit to work by the government's new capability assessment in spite of medical advice given by their own GPs.There are a lot of coding tutorials out there. But only one that will have kids belting out “Let it Go.” That’s right: Seattle-based Code.org has teamed up with Disney to create a new tutorial that features Anna and Elsa from Frozen. Entitled “Artist with Anna and Elsa,” the tutorial introduces students to basic coding concepts like loops and conditionals, with appearances from the leading women in Disney’s blockbuster animated feature. In addition, the tutorial will be backed by short video lectures from women in the tech industry, like Polyvore CEO Jess Lee and Microsoft engineer Paola Mejia. The new tutorial is a part of the company’s efforts to encourage more girls to learn programming and go into tech. It’s all a part of Code.org’s Hour of Code campaign, which is entering its second year. The organization is trying to get as many school-age kids as possible to spend an hour writing code during Computer Science Education Week, which runs from December 8-14 of this year. In addition to licensing Disney characters for Code.org’s use, the massive media company has also invested $100,000 to promote the organization’s vision of attracting young people to computer science. Disney will also host Hour of Code events for kids at its offices in Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Seattle, and Kelowna, British Columbia. People who want to try out the new tutorial can visit code.org/frozen.The US Nutrition Facts label will soon be getting its first update in 20 years, including for the first time how much added sugar is in a product. The new information will be added onto labels from the beginning of 2018, and the change is being lauded by University of California food experts who believe the change will bring six key take-home messages for US consumers. 1. Listing added sugar is the key change. Added sugar ranges from table sugar to high fructose corn syrup and more, and is found in hundreds of products including cereal, yogurt, pasta sauce, salad dressing, and sweetened drinks, the biggest source of added sugar for Americans, accounting for nearly half of their intake. The change will see the amount of added sugar in a product listed both in grams and as a percentage of the daily recommended allowance, with the University of California's Pat Crawford commenting, "One 20-ounce soda will take you over the recommended amount of sugar for an entire day. The new label will allow people to reasonably see what they're doing when they're consuming high-sugar products." 2. Americans need to reduce sugar consumption Consuming sugary beverages is a contributing factor to the rising levels of obesity and diabetes, with more than one in three US adults now obese and nearly half suffering from prediabetes or diabetes. Among US children, more than 1 in 6 is obese, with diabetes and prediabetes rates also rising. "The average amount of added sugar in the American diet is more than 20 teaspoons per day, nearly all of which is added to our foods during processing," Crawford said. "Since about half of this sugar comes in the form of beverages, we have to rethink our beverage choices. Water should be the beverage of choice." 3. Manufacturers are expected to make changes to their products. When the federal government required that manufacturers add trans fat information on the label a decade ago, the move resulted in the food industry offering more products with lower trans fats, pointed out Crawford, adding, "Trans fats are now not allowed to be added to foods during processing, but it all began with labeling. It's a great first step for reducing sugar consumption. In preparation for the new labels, manufacturers are working on creating products with lower levels of added sugars." 4. The new label could lead to regulations limiting sugar. "Once you've got added sugar on the label along with a daily reference value, policymakers will be in the position to set standards for the quantity of added sugar allowed in school lunches and other federal food programs," said Laura Schmidt, a UC San Francisco professor of health policy. Schmidt also added that changes like this have happened before, "In the UK, the government said salt consumption is way too high and mandated that packaged food manufacturers reduce the amount of sodium in their products. It worked like a charm -- they just gradually reduced the excess salt in foods to everyone's benefit." 5. Other labeling changes The new label will list more realistic serving sizes and will list calories in a larger and bolder font, helping consumers to see exactly how many calories they are consuming. 6. Further steps could help consumers. Although the experts welcomed the news they also added that further steps could still be taken to help consumers make more informed and healthier choices, such as adding the label onto the front of packaging to make it even easier to see, having food vendors add green, yellow and red "stoplight" stickers, with green for the low-sugar products and red for the high-sugar ones, and promoting environmentally sustainable food practices such as consuming less meat and more plant-based foods. © AFP/Relaxnews 2019Descent Reboot Campaign Announced Eric "Wingman" Peterson (Wing Commander, Starlancer, Star Citizen) has announced a crowdfunding campaign for Descent: Underground, based on the sci-fi vehicle shooter from the 90s. Prepare to head out into space and descend, because Descent, the action shooter featuring six-degree-of-freedom is primed for a reboot in Descent: Underground. Eric "Wingman" Peterson, known for his work on the Wing Commander series, Starlancer, and most recently Star Citizen, is forming a Kickstarter campaign to fund development for Descent: Underground for PC. The game will feature Voxel technology, customizable ships, and support for up to 30 players or more to blast away at each across space and through a maze-like interior of a giant asteroid. Players are challenged to fight off rivals while mining for resources to get that big payday. Full details may be found in the full press release below. POPULAR DESCENT FRANCHISE TO RETURN WITH DESCENT: UNDERGROUND FOR PC The Latest Project from Eric "Wingman" Peterson known for his work on hit games such as Starlancer, Conquest Frontier Wars, Star Citizen, and the hit Wing Commander series launches its KickStarter campaign today Austin, Texas – March 10, 2015 – Descendent Studios, Inc. announced today it will reboot the popular Descent franchise with its upcoming first-person vehicle shooter, Descent: Underground coming to PC. A Kickstarter for the new project can be found at http://descendentstudios.com/ks The unique six-degrees-of-freedom game play has all but vanished… until now! Descent: Underground will bring the frenetic and pulse-pounding gaming experience back and add upgraded gameplay and features including Voxel technology, customizable ships, team and individual play, changeable maps, special weapons and upgrades, and so much more! Descent: Underground will offer a distinctive gameplay style that gives players the ability to pit their flying skills against players around the world. Imagine fighting with 10, 20, 30 or more people all battling and acquiring minerals to keep the people on earth alive for one more day! The game is being spearheaded by Eric “Wingman” Peterson, who is well known by PC gamers for having worked on the Wing Commander franchise, as well as Starlancer, and more recently as the President of Production for Cloud Imperium Games, the company behind the crowdfunding juggernaut, Star Citizen. Peterson is also known for being the host of the hit Internet web series, “Wingman’s Hangar.” “We are bringing back that sensational feeling of fighting with six degrees of freedom while playing Descent,” said Peterson, CEO of Descendent Studios. “But we aren’t stopping there, we aim to take it up a few notches, by allowing players to dynamically change the map & customize their ships, to play as a part of a team or simply battle it out rogue style all alone. In addition, players will be able to create items and maps for the universe and get their own creations into the game” Descent: Underground is a six-degrees-of-freedom, first-person-vehicle shooter set in the asteroid fields between Mars and Jupiter around three-hundred years into the future. Giant corporations have replaced national governments and have taken to space in a gold rush of mining operations. The flight and combat skills of their pilots help dominate enemy companies and pilots become heroes as
," said Browne, who according to advocates is the first openly transgender athlete on a U.S. professional sports team. A general view of game action between the Boston Pride and the Buffalo Beauts on March 12, 2016 Andy Marlin / NHLI via Getty Images Now, the 23-year-old says he will put to use his fame, acquired after his name change became public this month, to inspire and encourage transgender people at a time when the United States is politically divided over their rights. Becoming a public figure could have been unnerving, but Browne said his employer, the National Women's Hockey League (NWHL), offered "unconditional support." He plays for the Buffalo, New York Beauts. The NWHL this month quietly updated his online profile, replacing references to his former name and referring to the left-wing forward as "he." Since then, Browne has published online videos on YouTube to talk about coming out as a transgender man. "I thought I had to give up the sport in order to transition, but apparently I don't," he says in one video. Videos by other people about transgenders and transitioning helped him make sense of his gender identity as a teen, he said. "Maybe there's a 13- or 14-year-old that was in my shoes who is watching my videos and seeing my success in the league," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "They could look at me and say, 'Wow he did it, so you know what I just got to keep fighting,'" he said. Studies show high rates of depression and suicide among transgender people. In 2011, one study by two U.S. advocacy group found 41 percent of transgender and gender non-conforming people said they had attempted suicide. "I had dark times when I was younger," Browne said. "I wouldn't have imagined the way that I am right now, out publicly." His official name change prompted the women's professional hockey league to begin crafting a policy for inclusion of transgender people. The league was established last year and has four teams -- the Buffalo Beauts, Boston Pride, New York Riveters and Connecticut Whale. Browne, a Canadian native, has not undergone sex reassignment surgery because that could keep him from playing for the women's league, he said. This year, duathlon athlete Chris Mosier became the first openly transgender athlete to compete on a U.S. national team in an international biking and running championship. Last year, decathlon Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner came out as a transgender woman, becoming the most high-profile American to do so. Follow NBC OUT on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Albus Nox Luna's Kirill "Likkrit" Malofeyev has confirmed that he has chicken pox shortly after the conclusion of the 2016 League of Legends World Championship Group Stage. While he does admit to having chicken pox for the third time, the support player says that he will "most likely" play in the wildcard team's upcoming quarterfinal match against H2k-Gaming. to all who asked - yes, i have chickenpox. its 3rd time for me, so its expected to be easier than 2nd. most likely i will play in quarters. — Malofeev Kirill (@Likkrit) October 10, 2016 ANX's historic run through the group stage is the first time a wildcard team has made it to the bracket stage of a major international event. They tied with ROX Tigers in Group A, with both teams holding a 4-2 record, but lost the tiebreaker to place second in the group. They will take on H2k-Gaming in a best-of-five quarterfinal match on Oct. 16. Riot’s FearGorm, who works in the Esports Central League Operations and took part in scheduling the quarterfinals, commented on a Reddit post to explain why H2K’s match against ANX match was poorly timed for LoL’s European audience. In the post, FearGorm said that that match in particular was scheduled for Sunday to allow time for Likkrit to be driven from San Francisco to Chicago in case he is unable to fly due to his illness. “As a result [of his illness], we'll probably need to drive him from San Francisco to Chicago, which takes several days and severely cuts into his practice time with his team,” FearGorm wrote in the post. “To help accommodate the circumstances, we scheduled H2K vs ANX for Sunday.” Slingshot esports reported on Likkrit's Chicken Pox on Oct. 9, hours before the player confirmed his condition on social media. An earlier Slingshot esports interview with Michael “Kira” Garmash quoted the Albus Nox player as saying that Likkrit was unwell. "Especially Likkrit, now he has red circles on his skin," he told Slingshot esports' Vince Nairn. "We don’t know what the fuck is this, we just said to him ‘OK (if) you are dying, just play our game and then die afterwards, please." Likkrit posted a 1.9 KDA and 1.14 WPM over the course of their group stage matches. He played five different champions over seven games, with only Bard appearing more than once, winning only one of the three games he was picked in. Annabelle "Abelle" Fischer is a writer for theScore esports with a love for Dota 2, birds and cheese. You can follow her on Twitter.Tim Gionet (left) and James Allsup after their Uber driver kicked them out of her car outside the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, on Friday evening. Uber permanently banned white supremacist James Allsup from its ride-hail platform on Saturday after an Uber driver in Washington, DC, kicked him and alt-right leader Tim Gionet, better known as Baked Alaska on Twitter, out of her car for allegedly making racist remarks. The decision makes Uber one of a handful of tech companies that denied service to groups or individuals associated with the violent white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday. "Drivers always have the right to refuse service to riders who are disrespectful or make them feel unsafe, as the driver in this case rightly did," Uber said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. "We’ve reached out to the driver to make sure she’s okay, and express our support for her and how she handled this situation. The rider has been permanently removed from our platform." According to Uber, Allsup and Gionet were riding past the National Museum of African-American History and Culture on Friday evening when their comments finally made their driver, an unidentified African-American woman, uncomfortable enough that she ended the ride and told the pair to leave. Gionet posted a video to Twitter in which he repeatedly asks the driver, “why are we racist?” The video ends shortly after the driver pulls away, leaving them standing beside the Washington Monument. The exchange took place one day before the white supremacist group Unite the Right hosted a rally at the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. The rally turned violent, leaving one anti-racist protester dead and 19 others injured. Both Gionet and Allsup were reportedly scheduled to speak at the event, which Allsup later said he only attended in a media capacity. Neither immediately responded to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News. (Gionet was previously an employee of BuzzFeed.) Allsup has since resigned from his position as president of the College Republicans at Washington State University. "The events surrounding the white supremacist rally in the City of Charlottesville are deeply disturbing and tragic," said Uber in a statement. "We stand against this hate, violence, and discrimination." After talking with Gionet and Allsup’s Uber driver on Saturday morning, Uber decided to permanently ban Allsup, who tweeted about it Saturday afternoon. Uber said while it did initially issue Allsup an automatic refund after he filed a complaint, the driver was paid in full for the ride. Meanwhile, also on Saturday, the company shared the following note with drivers in the Charlottesville area, warning them that a state of emergency had been declared following violent clashes, and reminding them of their "right to feel safe and respected when you use our platform."Recently, Rabbi Ysoscher Katz released a teshuva permitting breast-feeding in shul. In turn Rabbi Ozer Glickman commented on Facebook, generating the start of a discussion between them. Facebook does not do well for hosting such a conversation; it was moved to this blog. The discussion will be on Facebook. But first a few prefaces. Rabbi Ysoscher Katz is the Chair of the Talmud Department. at Yeshivat. Chovevei Torah; Director of the Lindenbaum. Center for the Study of Halakha received ordination from Rabbi Yechezkel Roth, dayan of UTA Satmer. Rabbi Katz studied in Brisk and in Yeshivat Beit Yosef, Navaradok. Rabbi Ozer is a Rosh Yeshiva at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He has worked in hedge funds, banking, and risk management. He has also studied critical Talmud in the general academy. The interesting contrast here is that the former has moved from the Haredi world to the modern world and is self-conscious as modern, while the latter has moved from the Conservative Conservadox world and is self-conscious of his journey. The Topic: Breastfeeding in public was accepting in many segments of the United States for the last few decades, but the discussion was opened anew in 2007-2008 when people objected to a magazine cover. It quickly became another chip in the culture wars for the last eight years. However, recently Pope Francis made a bold action and others affirmed the act as natural. Rabbi Katz wrote a teshuva permitting breast feeding in public, here is the definitive Hebrew version online, and as PDF Breastfeeding and showing affection in shul. Word Breastfeeding and Showing Affection in Shul. Finally, who is supporting breastfeeding in public? The clearest answer is a select percentage of millennials since they are of child birthing years. Rabbi Glickman responded to the Teshvah with a Facebook post rejecting Rabbi Katz’s current self-identity as modern and his pesak as a modern pesak as meaningful for someone deciding Jewish law. Remember, the discussion will be on Rabbi Katz’s wall. The conclusion was posted three days later here. On the Politics of P’sak At the invitation of Rabbi Ysoscher Katz, I am publishing thoughts on his recent piece on nursing in shul posted on Facebook. Rabbi Katz and I have begun to develop a relationship founded on the mutual respect appropriate for two b’nai Torah in public and private discourse. At the outset, let me state unequivocally that I acknowledge Rabbi Katz to be a talmid chacham with the highest standards of integrity and honesty. I value his opinion, sincerity, and Torah knowledge. That said, there is a fundamental disagreement that has cropped up on the last three things of his that I have read. I am looking forward to discussing this difference with Rabbi Katz personally after the chagim at what we hope will be the first of several regular discussions. When Rabbi Katz published his invitation to the community to participate in Torah study and prayer on Shabbat ha-Gadol, I noticed it. The Torah was described as “progressive.” I guess that is a dog-whistle word to the base, i.e., proponents of so-called Open Orthodoxy, that the Torah would be to their social and political taste. Given our relationship of candor with one another, I wrote to him privately (eschewing the mores of social media which demand a snarky, arrogant dismissal, often anonymous) questioning whether Torah should be consciously anything other than Torah. We agreed to table the discussion. When Rabbi Katz published his post on kitniyot, I noticed it again. Rabbi Katz offered one suggestion for those that self-identify as Modern Orthodox and another for those who self-identify as ultra-Orthodox. I again responded, this time in the comments but with respect and affection. When I read his piece on nursing, I saw the trope again and this time I am moved to respond to him in more detail (I will at a later time comment on the specific textual readings he offers in his extraordinarily well-written teshuva). It is clear that poskim operate on the basis of political (in the policy rather than electoral sense) views. As human beings who engage with society, they cannot help but have views on the societies in which we live. I do not believe, however, that a genuine poseik ever proceeds with a conscious political agenda. Poskim may intend their decisions for certain ethnicities within the Jewish people that maintain distinct halakhic traditions and practices but never for groups that self-identify sociologically. Writing a Modern Orthodox teshuva is not the same. It reminds me of a cousin by marriage who is a Conservative Rabbi. When he has discussed halakhah with me, he never discusses the issues; he can only refer to decisions by the Rabbinical Assembly or the United Synagogue. There is no supposition that there is anything actually called Halakhah without a prefix. I do not teach Modern Orthodox Halakhah in the Yeshiva and I suspect Rabbi Katz doesn’t in his either. I don’t write teshuvot (there are plenty of real poskim to do that) but when I teach Torah I attempt to teach the real thing, without a prefix. It isn’t Modern Orthodox and it isn’t even consciously Orthodox- it’s Torah. This is a major difference between Rabbi Katz and me. He is much more taken with the notion of Modern Orthodoxy. This stands to reason. I grew up in a Conservadox community (the lines weren’t so clear back then) with a lifestyle very close to the one I live today, the major difference being knowledge. My rabbi was a YU musmakh. Whatever I didn’t do correctly during high school wasn’t because I held other beliefs; it was because I didn’t know better. Without being too personal, Rabbi Katz consciously affiliates with a group very different from the one in which he was raised. It is natural, I would think, that he is more conscious of his current affiliation than I am of mine. But it is more than that. In my mind, Modern Orthodoxy is descriptive, not prescriptive. I would not ever say about any practice, “We don’t do that- we’re Modern Orthodox.” There is no Modern Orthodox halakhah. There are sociological descriptions of what people who identify themselves as Modern Orthodox do. That is more for sociologists than for poskim. I note the observations that Rabbi Katz makes about “our women.” I do not think the identity between men and women that he describes regarding attitudes toward public prayer and Torah study are as widespread as he represents. If this is a teshuva for his kehillah, then he is well within his mandate. Teshuvot, though, are written for broad swaths of the Jewish people. The mores he describes are limited to small clusters. It may well be that we should aspire to these changes but I know vast swaths of the religious community that self-identifies as Modern Orthodox in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Chicago, Los Angeles, Michigan, Canada, Massachusetts, Tennessee not to mention Yerushalayim, Beit Shemesh, Modiin… where nursing a baby in a minyan would offend. It may be that the commenter was correct: this was intended as “Open Orthodoxy pesika.” That is a notion that I still find difficult to accept. Please note: Rabbi Katz and I are committed to a calm, cordial and respectful tone. Our מחלוקות are לשם שמים. It would be nice if commenters would maintain the same tone. Editors original FB comment: So what is the operative factor here? 1) a self-identified catering to an audience 2) a mistake in what the community reactions are to breastfeeding – the “our women” issue 3)The use of modern/progressive as a meta-halakha? לכבוד הגאון ר’ עוזר גליקמן שליט”א אחדשת”ה כראוי וכיאות I first want to thank you for your thoughtful comments and insightful feedback. It is reassuring to know that in a world of סתירת נערים where people who תורתם אינם אומנותם promote a Torah which thrives on an ethos of איש את רעהו חיים בלעו, there are still gedolim Be’Torah like yourself, who are able and willing to disagree with dignity and also focus on גופן של דברים. As for your actual critique: you infer from my writings that I believe in “prefix” pesika, that there is such a thing as “Modern” or “Progressive” Torah, which is intrinsically different than its non-modern or non-progressive form. You argue that such a halakhic posture is wrong. You believe that pesika should be an objective exercise in which religious affiliation or philosophical inclination plays no role. In other words, from your perspective we differ on whether the judicial process is objective or subjective. You claim that my pesika is subjective and are strongly opposed to this approach. You see a major divide in our judicial philosophies. (While you label it “politics” of psak, I prefer to call it the “philosophy” of psak. Politics describes considerations that are external to the judicial exercise. Philosophy, in contrast, describes considerations that are intrinsic to the pesika enterprise.) While at first blush it seems that we strongly disagree, we actually agree-with a caveat. I too believe that agenda driven Torah is wrong and inauthentic. I, nevertheless, maintain that it is a mistake to assume that Torah exists in a pristine and objective void. Every posek brings to bear his religious orientation when deciding halakhic matters. I will illustrate my point with an exercise I use in my halakha classes. Satmar Rav (Rav Yolish Z”L) and R. Moshe Feinstein Z”L famously disagreed on three things, chalav stam, artificial insemination, and the required height of the mechitza. I do not reveal to my students which views each of them held. I only tell them that each respectively paskened the same way on all three, le’chumra, or le’kulah. I then ask them if they can guess who paskened leniently and who stringently. Using the information they have about these two poskim’s judicial personalities, they always guess correctly: that R. Moshe took the more lenient position on all three issues, while Satmar Rav paskened more stringently on all three. This outcome is not a coincidence. Their consistent approach implies that there is an underlying principle informing their decisions, an overarching “philosophy” that animates their pesak. This to me is clear evidence that each posek brings a certain orientation to his pesika. The Satmar Rav’s orientation towards chumra was based on his suspicious view of human nature. R. Moshe had the opposite orientation. His halakhic orientation was permissive because he was less cynical about human intentions. Therefore, regardless of how much a posek claims that his psak is objective, it is simply untrue. Every psak is guided by the posek’s convictions and internal value system. A posek should consequently not strive for an objectivity which does not exist. He instead needs to develop an internal compass which will lead towards an “orientation” which is true to the text and consistent with tradition’s values. While not determinative, this orientation will then guide the posek’s pursuit of Torat emes. Personally, my pesika is agenda free but at the same time guided by a deep sense of what I believe the Torah was meant to do. In my case, it is a strong belief that a Torat chaim coupled with a Torat chesed (Mishlei 31) is one which is aware of contemporary realities and proactively responds to them. Derech agav, I also wish to address what seems to be a slight misunderstanding about a phrase I use in the Teshuva. When I mention “our women” (נשי דידן), I was talking about shul going, not breastfeeding. It was an argument I utilized in the context of addressing the judicial silence on the subject. As I researched the topic I was surprised to learn that in close to two thousand years of pesika, the question of breastfeeding in shul never arose. I believe that the explanation is sociological, that female shul attendance on the scale we are witnessing today is a relatively new phenomenon and, therefore, questions relating to female presence in shul rarely if ever came up. Until recently, women, especially those of child bearing age, would attend shul twice a year, on Rosh Ha’shana for tekiat shofar and Yom Kippur for however long they could stay in shul. (In certain communities they would also come for the kria of parshat zachor.) A Rabbi, consequently, was never asked to address this question, breastfeeding moms were not in shul. Today this sociological reality is no longer true. “Our women” have full-fledged lives even during their child-bearing years. They have rich secular and professional lives and expect the same in the religious arena. Thus when I was referring to “,נשי דידן” I was making a sociological, not a judicial claim. בידידות והוקרה, ובברכת חג כשר ושמח, To this Rabbi Glickman responded: I enjoyed again reading your thoughts. I am especially charmed by the conscious desire to narrow the gap between us. Our positions may be a reflection of either our temperaments or characters. It may simply boil down to the fact that Ysoscher Katz is a much nicer person than Ozer Glickman. This is something I suspected when I first met you. My recalcitrance, however, is unconscious and unwitting. And that is precisely my point. I may have views on economics, politics, and social policy and they may impact my view of halakhah. I suspect that they may be very different from yours. They do not, however, directly determine how I read a gemara. You and I can debate the meaning of a text and its relative weight in halakhic decision-making without dealing with the political differences between us. We are not encapsulated by our political personae and neither are the poskim to whom we both look for guidance. The parallels between Open Orthodoxy and classical Conservative Judaism are too great to ignore. Consider Professor Louis Finkelstein’s The Pharisees in which the rabbis are transformed to populists beneficently caring for the downtrodden masses and Rabbi Akiva is recast as FDR. Consider Professor Louis Ginzberg’s essay “On the Significance of the Halakhah for Jewish History.” Beis Shammai represent the mindset of the wealthy capitalist and Beis Hillel the perspectives of labor. I do not need to reject their analyses out of hand if there is historical truth in what they claim. My point was that poskim are not prisoners of their political mindsets and that Jewish law is not social policy. Classical Conservative Judaism failed when the historical analyses of Finkelstein and Ginzburg were turned from being descriptive into being prescriptive. Open Orthodoxy makes the same error. I simply don’t believe that Beis Hillel set out to decide halakhic matters on the basis of their philosophic approach. It was unwitting. They and all other poskim would not routinely violate what they believed textually should be the correct halakhah in favor of a philosophic principle. I attribute a greater degree of intellectual honesty to them. If the demands of the system say forbidden, all the orientation in the world won’t change the final decision. A detail: I didn’t misconstrue what you meant by “our women.” In the Modern Orthodox community in which I live, women attend shul but not as frequently as men do. Open Orthodoxy seeks identity between the genders. I neither believe that the facts on the ground, at least in the part of the ground that I live on, support this nor do I believe that it would be a good thing if they did. Equality does not mean identity, but that’s a discussion for another time. The exercise you describe in your halakhah class was very enlightening. I’d like to propose another exercise for your classroom. Next time you are writing on a woman-oriented halakhic question, let the students vote how their rebbe would decide before looking into any sources. I’m willing to bet they know the answer every time. Did I for a moment believe that a progressive would not assert a woman’s right to nurse? Anywhere? At any time? That isn’t the case in my classroom, by the way, so at least we are consistent. I may have a formalist notion of law and it may be a major factor in the way I weigh legal sources. You may be a legal realist and it may be a major factor in the way you weigh legal sources. When I ponder a halakhic problem, however, that orientation is unconscious. I may not be reading the sources with full objectivity but I strive to. This makes me less predictable. Another discussion for another time: rabbinic Judaism appears to me to be unassailable formalist. That’s worth dis-cussing, too. At this point in our discussion, though, which I hope will continue פנים אל פנים, I think we can be candid with one another. For my part, I think that an Orthodoxy that is dominated by progressivism is neither Orthodox nor Open. To redeem myself in your eyes, I am going to find some progressive question where my scholarly Kohanic friend will prove the point by opting for halakhic integrity over the fashionable mores of Riverdale. Uh oh! I guess I just proved that I am right: you are a nicer person than I am! בידידות ובהוקרה רבה עוזר Editors note- (1) Rabbi Louis Ginzberg’s approach to historically situate Halakhah and its evolution was used by Rabbi Ezriel Hildeshimer and Rabbis David Zvi Hoffman, as committed students of Von Savigny. So too at Jew’s College in London, see Rabbi Isidor Epstein introduction to the Soncino Talmud on the evolution of the law, or Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, even by Polei Agudah’s Rabbi Kalman Kahane approves of a historical approach. Prof. Jacob Katz, whose work is influential at YU is seen as the heir to that method. (2) See the classic Marshall Sklare, Conservative Judaism (1955, updated 1972) where he notes that in the 1940’s, 1950’s, and into the 1960’s the laity were not observant of the dietary laws or the Sabbath and they did not turn to rabbis for permission or leniency. Both Sklare and more recently Prof. Jonathan Sarna emphasized that the movement was congregational – meaning that each congregation decided on their own and even a public vote or ritual committee could decide- no halakhah was needed. A shul could choose to hold a non-kosher non-Sabbath observant Hadassah excursions. For more discussion, see Sklare chapter 7 to show that these theories of Conservative law were only a concern of a narrow right wing while unknown and with no effect on the unconcerned laity. (3) Legal realists who dealt extensively with solving practical issues to generate their response include Rav Moshe Issues, Maharam Mintz of Padua, Rav Yitzhak Elchanan, Rav DZ Hoffmann, Rav Waldenberg, and even Rabbi Liebes of the Rabbinical Alliance. Rav Ozer, It is Erev Yom Tov, but briefly, three quick points: 1) Your latest response very much reminds me of arguments I often have with my Satmar friends. In my conversations with them they will occasionally evoke the “milchama against tziyonos” as a justification for certain behaviors. I quickly remind them that the “war” is long over! Presented as a justification for particular actions, it is really an excuse for inaction. When our opponents evoke the “C” (Conservative movement) argument I feel the same way. They cite old tropes as an excuse for ignoring new challenges. It adds nothing substantive to the debate. Our scourge is internal, not external. Our dor faces real challenges (high attrition rates, religious apathy, etc.), repeating the Conservative movement’s mistakes, however, is not one of them. Instead of throwing out clichés, let us work together to inspire our communities. We desperately need to revivify a Modern Orthodoxy that has become dormant and apathetic. 2) While Professor Lieberman may have overstated his case, we now know that his claims have a strong basis in the facts. Much new scholarship has been written on Qumarn in the interim. Scholars like Chana Verman, Vered Noam, Aaron Shemesh, and others have done incredible comparative work on that community. Their arguments make it abundantly clear that Chazal were in dialogue with the Dead Sea communities, offering a more tolerant bent towards the tradition. Their research makes clear that even Chazal were informed by a particular orientation when establishing Rabbinic Judaism. 3) If we are looking at historical precedence, it would be a mistake to not also look at the 12th century. R. Tam, as is well known, revolutionized our understanding of the strictures of hilchot Avodah Zara. He consistently modified the absolute prohibitions that Masechet seems to impose on interfaith commerce. He clearly did not approach masechet Avodah Zara objectively, without a predetermined orientation. To claim that his consistently lenient conclusions are coincidental is far fetched and highly unlikely. The more likely explanation is that he approached his pesok on this topic with an eye towards the financial wellbeing of his community. Proving once again that judicial orientation is an integral part of the judicial process. Thanks again for this fruitful conversation. Hopefully this will be the beginning of many more, להגדיל תורה ולהאדירה. A freilichen yom tov, Ysoscher Editors note: We are still wishing that Rabbi Katz would be more careful in the use of words like progressive, modern, evolution, or respond to reality. These words have been the subject of denominational debates, which he is seemingly unburdened. Also what is the role of all this newly read historicist scholarship in his pesak? The pronouncements in scholarly articles relying on the latest changes in social sciences are not Aharonim. Why do they have a role? Will all of Rabbi Katz’s pesak be reactive rather than constructive? Rabbi Glickman gave him an opening to call himself a legal realist, he should have taken it. Now dear readers, like the Shakespearean narrator, I step back for the FB discussion to unfold in several acts. Be aware that as I post the opening act, they are already busy scribing their third round. Conclusion is here.An Idaho prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for a 9-year-old boy who failed to appear in court after he was charged for stealing a pack of gum. Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney Barry McHugh said the warrant was issued against the boy because it was the second time he missed his day in court, a local NBC affiliate reported. Mr. McHugh said he couldn’t comment further because the case involves someone younger than 18. Post Falls Chief of Police Scott Haug said this is the first time in his 30 years in law enforcement that he’s ever seen an arrest warrant issued for someone that young. “I was surprised that it had gotten to this level,” he told the news station. Chief Haug said the boy failed to appear because the family didn’t have the means to get him to the courthouse. “Had we known that before the court date we would have provided something for the family,” he told the station. “I wish we would have had more information that way we could have provided some sort of assistance.” The child is currently in the Juvenile Detention Center awaiting a date to be set for him to appear before a judge. Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.The logo of General Electric Co. is pictured at the Global Operations Center in San Pedro Garza Garcia, neighbouring Monterrey, Mexico, on May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril (Reuters) - Power development company Invenergy LLC and General Electric Co on Wednesday announced plans to build the largest wind farm in the United States in Oklahoma, part of a $4.5 billion project to provide electricity to 1.1 million utility customers in the region. The 2-gigawatt Wind Catcher wind farm is under construction in the Oklahoma panhandle and will come online in 2020. The facility will be linked to a 350-mile dedicated power line that will send the wind farm’s electricity to Tulsa. American Electric Power Co Inc is asking utility regulators in Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma to approve plans to build the power line, which will serve customers of its Public Service Company of Oklahoma and Southwestern Electric Power Company regulated utility units. The utilities also plan to buy the wind farm from Invenergy once it is built. GE will provide 800 2.5-megawatt turbines for the project. The cost of wind power has fallen dramatically in recent years, making it competitive with electricity generated from fossil fuels. The wind farm and transmission line are expected to save utility customers more than $7 billion over 25 years, the companies said in a joint statement. The project will also support about 4,000 direct jobs during construction and 80 permanent jobs.Rand Paul said on Friday that, if the Republican establishment tries to block an outsider candidate from winning the party's nomination through a brokered convention, "there'll be war within the party and they'll destroy the party." Boston radio host Jeff Kuhner asked Paul what he thought of a Washington Post story that reported key figures within the Republican party are preparing for a contested convention in which, the story said, "the GOP's mainstream wing could coalesce around an alternative" to Donald Trump, who continues to lead primary polls. Paul, who is polling toward the bottom of the Republican presidential field, expressed strong opposition to the plan. "If the establishment tries to block an outsider from winning the nomination, there'll be war within the party and they'll destroy the party," he said. "The establishment needs to realize that Republicans across the country are unhappy, they're unhappy with the Washington leaders who are not exercising the power of the purse. They're unhappy with Washington leaders not standing up to president Obama. And they're sick and tired of all of it." "So if they see their will thwarted through the primary process, I think you're gonna find that, uh, there'll be a war declared," Paul continued. "But it'll be a war that the establishment has decided to declare on the grassroots and it's gonna be a real problem."Advanced Micro Devices’ (AMD) share price jumped after it beat revenue estimates thanks to cryptocurrency miners snapping up the firm’s graphics cards. Shares rose 11% after the chip company announced earnings on July 25, but the firm’s stock is up 152% over the last 12 months, making it the fourth best performer on the S&P 500, CNBC reported. Lisa Su, AMD’s chief executive, said the firm saw “elevated demand” from cryptocurrency miners during the quarter. This need for graphics cards helped AMD give a “solid beat” to analyst estimates, said Kevin Cassidy of Stifel, who covers AMD’s stock at Stifel Financial Corp.”While management wasn’t specific on how much, the [graphics processor unit] revenue upside was driven by cryptocurrency applications.” Crypto miners—in particular those mining ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market valuation behind bitcoin—have been in the crypto equivalent of a gold rush since early this year. They are racing to take advantage of ethereum’s exploding price by adding more processing power to their mines. Some of them are even resorting to leasing Boeing 747s to fly the increasingly scarce graphics processors from AMD and Nvidia directly to their ethereum mines so they can be plugged in to the network as quickly as possible. “Time is critical, very critical,” in mining, Marco Streng, chief executive of Genesis Mining, a major ethereum miner, told Quartz. “For example, we are renting entire airplanes, Boeing 747s, to ship on time. Anything else, like shipping by sea, loses so much opportunity.” Up for grabs is a supply of roughly 36,000 units of new ether, the digital token associated with ethereum, per day. At current prices of around $200 per ether, that translates to $7.2 million worth of ether that miners compete for each day. “When building our data centers, we have the highest priority on time,” Streng said. “Time counts so much. We are using the fastest delivery possible. You risk the opportunity to mine for the days you are delayed. If you are deploying 10 days later, you are losing 10 days of mining—that is the cost.” To make money, miners must buy GPUS (graphics processing units) from AMD or Nvidia, then pay the costs of electricity and labor to run them, and maintain giant warehouses to store the machines. In return, miners get a supply of ether each day if they possess sufficient processing power. Because their costs have remained stable while ether’s price has surged from around $10 at the start of the year to a high of $400 in June, miners’ potential profits have increased 40-fold. “Everyone began to realize this and wanted to get GPUS to get mining. This created an absolute shortage in the market,” Streng said. “The mining gear has a certain price. And suddenly the price of coins goes from $10 to $400—so a factor of 40. The mining return has gone up by 40 but the hardware is still the same cost. This creates an incredible economic incentive for people to start mining.” The amount of processing power devoted to mining ethereum is measured in “hash rate.” Here’s a chart showing that explosion in mining resources: Streng says he has maintained “very strong connections” with his GPU suppliers, by virtue
it’s not actually a pepper. Instead, it’s the dried berries of piper nigrum, a flowering vine. This is probably the second most common spice in the world next to salt … but it does have a use in some beers. This spice can encompass black peppercorn, as well as white and green peppercorn, and our advice applies to all (even though each has slightly different characteristics). Commercial Examples: Furthermore Knot Stock, Campus Sarawak Black Pepper Beer Optimal Styles: Tripels, saisons, oat- and wheat-forward beers Measurements: ½ to 1 teaspoons (crush peppercorns first) Brewing Notes: A little goes a very long way. Add five minutes before the end of the boil. Feel free to experiment with porters and other styles, especially if mixed with chili peppers, but this spice goes best with grassy, wheat and oat-focused beers. Can also bring out the spiciness in Belgian and French yeast strains. Cardamom Related to ginger, these ground up seeds are intensely sweet and pungent. This spice is often used to spice coffee and tea, as well as in curry powders, Scandinavian breads, and more. It’s a spice to use lightly, but its power also means it can transform an ordinary beer into something wildly different. Commercial Examples: Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin, Ommegang Adoration Optimal Styles: Belgian-style dark ales, witbiers, pumpkin ales Measurements: Up to.5 oz, preferably half that. Or 3-5 seeds. Brewing Notes: This is an intense spice that can quickly overpower a beer, so tread with caution. It’s best to use just a few crushed grains your first time until you dial in your desired flavor. This is a prime “a little goes a long way” spice. Can be used in conjunction with other spices to create a pumpkin spice blend. Can also be used in Chai blends. Add at flameout or, if in a blend, as a “tea” at bottling/kegging. Cayenne Pepper The ground up husks of cayenne peppers are what make up cayenne pepper powder, a spice with a little bit of heat kick and a fruity but hot taste. Used in a wide variety of Asian and South American dishes, it can be a surprisingly interesting addition to a beer. Commercial Examples: Great Divide Yeti, Abita Louisiana Spiced Ale Optimal Styles: Stouts/porters, fruit ales, lagers Measurements: 1-5 teaspoons, depending on desired heat level Brewing Notes: Cayenne pepper powder can add a spicy kick to a wide variety of beers, or simply be used to add balance to potent sweetness. It pairs exceptionally well with chocolate, but can also be paired with fruit-infused beers, or even be used to make a spicy lager. Add five minutes before the end of the boil. Other types of chili powders can be used as well, just be sure to adjust your addition based on heat levels. Mild additions will be barely noticeable but will add an interesting character to beers like imperial stouts, while greater additions are perfect if you want a spicy lager to pair with seafood and Mexi-Cali dishes. Cinnamon Often paired with allspice, nutmeg, cloves and others for holiday-themed beers, cinnamon is probably a little more versatile than you realize. In fact, the father of all homebrewers in the United States, Charlie Papazian, uses cinnamon in every single beer he brews. Seriously! Cinnamon will blend well with chocolate and malts, and even works fine in marzens and witbiers. Commercial Examples: Bell’s Cinnamon Sunrise Stout, Clown Shoes Chocolate Sombrero, Central Waters Headless Heron Optimal Styles: Pumpkin beers, porters/stouts Measurements: 2-5 sticks, 2-3 tablespoons Brewing Notes: Charlie Papazian adds a half teaspoon of cinnamon to the mash of all his brew to minimize hot side aeration and improve the stability of his beers. He says (and this writer can confirm) that you get zero taste from this amount. Otherwise, when you want a cinnamon beer, sticks are best added to secondary (though can be used in the boil as well), ground cinnamon at the end of your boil. On its own it’s best used in chocolate-forward beers, otherwise it’s best used in conjunction with other spices on this list. Ginger The bright aroma and flavor of ginger is perhaps most prominent in Eastern-influenced foods, which makes it an interesting addition to beers you hope to pair with seafood and light pasta dishes. There is also a wintery aspect to it with the right combinations, too, which means it can come into play in heady holiday brews. And finally, ginger is itself such a potent spice that it can be the centerpiece of a drink all on its own, especially in ginger beer and ginger ale. Commercial Examples: Lost Abbey Red Barn Ale, Samuel Adams Merry Maker Optimal Styles: Marzens, pumpkin ales, saisons, tripels Measurements: (Fresh chopped), 1/8oz to 1.5oz, or 1/8 cup to 1.5 cups Brewing Notes: Keep in mind, these brewing notes are for a beer brewed with ginger, not for a ginger beer. Those are two different things. Ginger should be added 15 minutes before the end of your boil to get good ginger zing in the flavor but still retain the bright aroma. Measurements nearing an ounce per five gallons can dominate some beers styles (saisons, tripels, golden ales), so lean towards the lower side of our recommended measurements. Some brewers have “dry-hopped” with ginger. Consider this approach with holiday spice blends, incorporating nutmeg, cinnamon, and others. Lavender The fragrant, perfume-like quality of lavender doesn’t inherently lend itself to beer, at least not on the surface, but creative brewers have used it over the years in ways that add unexpected nuance to a beer. It’s also worth noting that lavender may have been used in gruits, i.e. beers brewed with herb mixtures for bittering instead of hops, though it wasn’t common. (Traditional gruit herbs include heather, sweet gale, yarrow, mugwort, and juniper berries.) It’s a spice that isn’t for everyone, but when used right can set your beer apart. Commercial Examples: Stillwater of Love & Regret, Stone Saison, Carton Decoy Optimal Styles: Saisons, farmhouse ales, wild ales, wheat ales, gruits Measurements: ½ to 1 oz Brewing Notes: A spice to tread carefully with, depending on taste. Too much lavender can be perfume-like and “soapy” to some people, almost like drinking potpourri. Also, be sure to use culinary lavender, not aromatic lavender. There is a difference! Lavender is a delicate flavor easily destroyed. While there are traditional options when it comes to adding it to the boil, the option that will give you the most control is to make a lavender tincture (a tea, essentially) and add it in secondary. Start with a lower amount and adjust upward until your desired taste is reach. Track your additions so you can dial it in the next time around. Nutmeg Much like allspice, nutmeg has a place in traditional holiday beers, usually as part of a blend of wintery spices to make a winter beer or pumpkin brew. It also has a long history of being used in gruits, and is an addition to beer that pre-dates hops by hundreds of years (if not longer). Commercial Examples: Cigar City Good Gourd, Elysian the Great Pumpkin, Schlafly Pumpkin Ale Optimal Styles: Pumpkin ales, Dark Belgian-style ales, Vanilla-forward beers Measurements: 1/8 to ¼ teaspoon, ground Brewing Notes: Despite what some recipes may suggest, don’t just add a whole nutmeg to your boil. It won’t do much when added that way. Instead, get ground nutmeg or grind it yourself. For the best flavor, grind them fresh. Add close to the end of the boil (5-10 minutes) or “dry hop” as part of a spice mix in secondary. Don’t add to the primary if your wort is still fermenting, as you’ll lose essential aroma that way. Though typically used in spice blends, nutmeg pairs nicely with vanilla or vanilla-infused beers (including beers with vanilla notes resulting from oak). Finally, here’s something to try: pair it with wintergreen or other mint-like herbs. Nutmeg is used in some specialty root beers, most notably Virgil’s Bavarian Nutmeg, since root beer is spiced with vanilla and wintergreen … Offbeat Brewing Spices The following spices are a little more unusual to find in a beer, though in all cases they have been used successfully by homebrewers and commercial brewers alike. In this section we’re going to eschew measurements and specific brewing advice, and instead give you a brief overview of each spice in the hopes of sparking an idea or inspiration. And make no mistake, even this extended list only scratches the surface. There are many more we could have included but left off in the interest of space. The world of herbs and spices is a big, big one. Curry Here’s some something a lot of people in the west don’t realize: curry isn’t a spice, it’s a blend of many spices. That’s why you see so many different varieties. It’s also what makes curry so versatile. From pungent, to spicy hot, to fragrant, it has a lot to offer. You typically find it in Indian and Thai dishes (obviously), but in today’s adventurous atmosphere it has a place in beer, too. Grains of Paradise These spicy brown seeds are sometimes used as a replacement for black pepper, but with a zesty, fruity kick you won’t find in traditional black pepper. It can also be used as a hotter, spicier alternative to coriander. It’s an excellent addition to a good beer and has been used successfully in some well known commercial brews. Mint / Spearmint The mint family of spices has been increasingly used in beer in recent years, but only sparingly, in part because it’s such a dominant spice, and in part because it’s so hard to get right. Super hard. It has a place in the brew kettle, but this is a spice with which to tread carefully, because few other spices live up to the “a little goes a long way” rule as mint and spearmint. Oregano One of the best known spices in the western hemisphere, oregano is a spice in the mint family and one that gives pizza and tomato sauces their signature flavor. Like mint, it can be pungent and very forward, cutting through almost any other flavor, which is why its usage in beer isn’t common. But you can do it. Parsley One of the most common spices in North America, parsley is used in sauces and as a garnish. It has a fresh, green, minty flavor that goes well with a variety of things. When it comes to beer, however, it’s most likely to be used with a blend of other spices. Rosemary Rosemary is a mint-like evergreen that offers hints of tea and pine in its flavor. Often used to spice meats like pork and lamb, it can be a surprisingly excellent accent to a well-crafted homebrew. You just have to tread lightly. Sage This astringent relative of mint is widely used to season just about every type of meat out there, along with cheeses and even pickles. Whether on its own or in a blend, this makes it a surprisingly good candidate for adding a subtle something extra to a beer. Saffron Saffron is pungent and bitter, with a sharp flavor that makes it popular in rice-based dishes around the world. It’s also one of the world’s most expensive spices, so the chances of it showing up in your beer to any great extent are pretty slim. It does have some uses in homebrewing, however. Sea Salt Technically not a spice, we include it here because it’s going to be staring at you from your spice rack. Sea salt is exactly what it sounds like: salt extracted from sea water. With far larger grains than standard table salt, and an aggressive presence in any dish, sea salt actually has a history in beer already, in small doses to accentuate malts, and in larger doses (such as in goses) to add a crisp snap to tart beers. Thyme With a subtle aroma and a slightly minty taste, but with a leafy green core, thyme is widely used in seasoning blends for chicken dishes, soups, and more. It’s a bit too subtle and indistinct for use in brewing on its own, but when paired with other spices there are some interesting possibilities to explore with this spice. Turmeric An ingredient in curry powders, turmeric is a relative of ginger with some zest and hints of orange. It’s only mildly aromatic and not overly strong, making it a potential candidate for creative brewers. Some Final Advice Brewing with spices can be a fun, interesting challenge that can result in beers unlike anything you’ve ever had before. It requires a delicate balance of adventurous brewing and conservative usage to get right, but when you dial one in, the results can be delightful. If you’re considering brewing with spices, we offer some final words of advice that apply to ALL the spices above and then some: These are culinary spices, so consider how they’re typically used in the food world and apply that thinking to your beers. If it tends to be used with roasted meats, consider using the spice with a porter. If it goes with salads and greens, think saisons, farmhouse ales, and wits. If it’s got an assertive kick, aim for pale ales and IPAs. And so on. Be creative. Experiment. Break the rules. And be prepared to dump a batch! Consider small batches if you’re going to go wild with experimentation. And finally, A LITTLE GOES A LONG WAY! Happy brewing!Aaliyah Ibrahim Patricia Barbeito, a professor of English at the Rhode Island School of Design, spoke to a handful of Yale community members Tuesday about the global re-emergence of the “crime noir” literary genre and its implications as a tool for understanding globalization. Entitled “Crisis Noir: Petros Markaris’ Detective Novels and the Greek Financial Crisis,” Barbeito’s talk discussed Greek author Petros Markaris’ trilogy of detective novels about Greece’s financial crisis, arguing that Markaris’ use of the crime noir genre challenges societal conventions and provides insight on Greek culture beyond recent headlines, which tend to focus on “traumatic” economic and political events. In her talk, Barbeito emphasized how artistic culture reflects an important aspect of Greek society often overlooked by the media — a view echoed by Hellenic Studies lecturer George Syrimis, who coordinated the event. “Strangely, but also somewhat conventionally, the arts thrive in crisis,” Syrimis said. “There’s a big gap in the coverage of what’s going on in Greece artistically; it’s a little secret that there’s been a renaissance in Greece the last five years.” The crime noir genre, which grew out of American economic turmoil in the ’20s and ’30s, has resurfaced and undergone reinvention in order to capture the modern moment, Barbeito said. Crime noir reveals cultural anxieties on both governmental and familial levels, exploring the effects of communism, class and corruption. Crime novelists from various countries play with the conventions of noir fiction, Barbeito said, using traditional character tropes — such as the “square-shouldered, whisky-slugging, trench coat-wearing … hyper male” who often acts as a crime noir protagonist — to show changes in modern society. Markaris’ own experiments, while playful, work to capture the Greek crisis as a complex experience. “In Greece, there is a real exhaustion with political and economic narratives,” Barbeito said. “It’s up to the arts to come up with a new language to talk about the issues that people are confronting, and Markaris is picking up that torch with the Crisis trilogy in particular.” Setting is integral to Markaris’ novels, which use geography as a way to understand character and culture, Barbeito explained. In Markaris’ novel, she noted, place functions as a character in its own right, posing the question of an environment’s “political potentiality,” and how that influences the way people interact within it. Markaris’ Athenian “adopted home” provides a setting through which the novels’ protagonist Costas Haritos can explore the national psyche in light of capitalism’s failures, Barbeito said. “Contemporary crime writers experiment with the conventions of the crime genre as entertainment,” Barbeito noted. “They insist, at the same time, on the political and cultural seriousness of their work.” Barbeito argued that Markaris is part of a network of crime writers around the world, making his cultural observations pertinent beyond only Greece. She discussed Markaris’ particular focus on fostering understanding between Germany and Greece — influenced by his German education — for which he was awarded the Goethe Medal in 2013, Barbeito said. Following the talk, Barbeito opened the floor to questions, engaging the audience in a dialogue on different interpretations of Markaris’ work. Maria Kaliambou, a senior lector in the Hellenic Studies Department, said that she found the constructive views and different readings of Markaris’ trilogy presented by audience members particularly engaging. Gerasimus Katsan, a professor at Queens College in New York who attended the talk, praised Barbeito’s framing of Markaris’ work in the global context. Kaliambou also emphasized the importance of the Hellenic Studies Department’s lecture series overall, which through workshops, seminars and conferences, provides perspective to the Yale community about Greek culture both within Greece and beyond. “Greece, or any other culture and community, cannot be reduced to numbers, which is what we have been hearing in the last years about Greece,” Syrimis said. “I want students to walk away knowing that Greece is not simply a bankrupt economy, but a vibrant, bright and hopeful cultural landscape.”A $5 million donation from a St. Paul woman’s estate will support the University of Minnesota’s Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch and its Center for German and European Studies. The gift comes from the estate of Hella Mears, who was born in Germany, worked as an actress and came to the United States on the dime of inventor Norman Mears, whom she later married. Norman Mears is the namesake of Mears Park in downtown St. Paul. After Norman Mears’ death, she married Bill Hueg, vice president of agriculture for the University of Minnesota. She and Hueg established multiple fellowships at the U. The $5 million gift will fund those fellowships in perpetuity and create two new funds to support student scholarships, research and outreach, including study abroad and the U’s College in the Schools German program.- Morgan Allen was a healthy little 8-year-old until July, when everything changed. Morgan began tilting her head to one side when she walked, her parents took her to the doctors to get checked out. "Morgan has a brain tumor," was the shocked responded from her father, Kenny Allen. The news didn't stop there, the doctors told the Allens that her tumor was inoperable. Morgan's mother, struggled with the prognosis. "3 months to a year to live, that's hard to swallow," said her mother. "It's an aggressive tumor, and we need an aggressive treeatment." They think they might have found one that could save Morgan's life. An experimental treatment in Mexico that's not covered by insurance. While they wait, the Make a Wish Foundation decided to lighten the load by granting Morgan's wish to go to Disney's Animal Kingdom.Squamish could lose the very reasons people come to town if the Garibaldi at Squamish year-round mountain resort goes ahead, according to some recreation and commercial organizations in the Sea to Sky Corridor. Tony Cailes, president of the Black Tusk Snowmobile Club, is one of those who is arguing against the project slated for Brohm Ridge which is currently in the provincial Environmental Assessment process. article continues below “Losing our riding area, that is what we object to,” Cailes said. The club was founded in 1971 just after a ski development failed in the area. The remnants of the former ski development still exist in the abandoned lift towers and in the clubhouse and chalet that the club took over as tenants in 1971. The club hosts the Alpine Learning Centre for avalanche training in the winter on Brohm Ridge. About 1,300 people have taken the training, according to Cailes. For snowmobile enthusiasts, Brohm Ridge offers a wide variety of terrain, Cailes said, with well-groomed trails for novice riders, children and advanced riders. And it is a form of recreation that is getting squeezed out in many areas across B.C., according to Donegal Wilson, executive director of the BC Snowmobile Federation. She said there are 40,200 snowmobiles registered in B.C. and about 100,500 people who snowmobile in the province, she said. In the 2012-13 season snowmobiling contributed approximately $867 million to the province’s economy, she said. “The land base is only so big, and it seems like everybody wants a piece,” she said. In terms of Brohm Ridge, she said the Black Tusk Snowmobile Club has demonstrated they are good stewards of the land. “They have been investing in the road going up there, maintaining those buildings, there is a lot of personal connection to the area,” she said. “It is one of the few basically family riding areas left in the Sea to Sky.” Cailes stressed he is concerned not just for the members of his club, but for all recreational users of the area. “People’s access to Brohm Ridge is very important,” he said. “All year long, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you and your mom, you and your dad, you and your husband should be able to access Brohm Ridge as you see fit. Giving it to a corporation to make money with is not good for the public,” he said. Wolfgang Richter, vice-chairman at Garibaldi at Squamish, said that something has to give when it comes to user groups on Brohm Ridge. “There isn’t room for everyone everywhere,” he said. “You either buy a house and you live in it, or it is not your house.” Richter said in 1995, the provincial government chose Garibaldi at Squamish as a potential development for the Crown land on Brohm Ridge. “The Crown put out a request for proposal (RFP), three potential proponents… applied, one was chosen. One of the three was un-chosen before they even went to the extra effort of making a proposal, and that was the Black Tusk Snowmobile Club,” he said. However, Richter stressed the public approval process isn’t over yet. “We are coming near to the end of it in the sense that we have done the studies asked for, and there are specific timelines now that get some people nervous,” he said. “There is lots of process left. It is not the end.” Whistler Blackcomb executives also have concerns about Garibaldi at Squamish. Dave Brownlie, president and chief executive officer of Whistler Blackcomb, said in addition to concerns about the viability of the ski resort given global warming and concerns over how water will be drawn for the resort, Squamish residents should be very concerned about traffic. “They are talking about two million visits year-round. That is impossible,” he said. “We are talking about the development of a community, a resort the size or slightly bigger than Squamish is today.” Brownlie also said development such as the Oceanfront development planned for Squamish’s Nexen Beach area is good for the whole corridor, but the Garibaldi at Squamish project is not. There is a regional growth strategy, he said, and Garibaldi is not a part of it. “It would be like us going and building a university up here,” he said. “We want Quest University to be as successful as it can be. And it had some tough times. You know universities did approach this community, and you know, we didn’t think that is what we wanted to do. It was already taken care of, so let’s work together.” Time ticking on DOS input There isn’t a lot of time for council to decide how it feels about Garibaldi at Squamish. Citing the Woodfibre LNG and FortisBC Environmental Assessment processes the district has been bogged down analyzing, council unanimously passed a motion at its meeting May 5 to request more time and access to funding for extra staff in order to thoroughly analyze the supplemental application on the $3.5 billion ski-resort. “We haven’t heard back officially, other than we did meet with a couple of the ministers a couple of weeks ago and there seems to be no inclination to make any extensions on it,” said Mayor Patricia Heintzman. She said the district gets a bit longer than the public to comment. The public comment period closes June 22, and the district would likely have a few more weeks beyond that to respond, Heintzman said, but she didn’t have an exact date. Richter said he was aware the district was struggling to analyze the project and said his company has offered to help. “We had already advised key people in the district that you know, we get it, and if you have to hire somebody, we are happy to pay for that person that you hire,” he said. To comment on Garibaldi at Squamish to the EAO, contact Chris Hamilton, executive project director, Environmental Assessment Office PO Box 9426 Stn. Prov. Govt., Victoria B.C. V8W 9V1; fax 250-387-2208.A former South Carolina state trooper who shot an unarmed motorist in 2014 was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Tuesday, but is expected to serve around three years behind the fence. Sean Groubert pleaded guilty in March 2016 to assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. More than a year later, Circuit Judge Casey Manning handed him a 12-year sentence, suspended to five years with three years probation. Because Groubert has spent the last 17 months in jail, that time will be applied to the five years he’s required to serve in prison. Once Groubert serves the five years, he will remain on probation for three years. Should he violate the terms of his probation, he would have to serve the remaining time of the 12 years, Manning said. Groubert shot Levar Jones at a St. Andrews gas station during a traffic stop on Sept. 4, 2014, and was fired shortly thereafter. He pleaded guilty in March 2016, leaving Jones waiting nearly 18 months for his assailant to be sentenced. Groubert faced up to 20 years in prison. Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The Sun News The shooting gained national attention because Groubert is white, and Jones is African-American. It was one of a number of race-related police shootings in recent years in which evidence or witnesses indicated the shooting didn’t have to happen. In initial statements to investigators, Groubert said he fired because he feared for his life. Dashcam video showed Jones being polite, complying with the trooper’s request. Groubert’s lawyers, Barney Giese and Justin Kata, said during Groubert’s guilty plea that he suffers from PTSD related to a 2012 shootout with a suspect in Columbia’s Five Points. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental condition caused by an unsettling event in one’s past that triggers uncontrollable physical and emotional reactions in the present. In that 2012 incident, Giese said, Groubert “was shot at and returned fire,” Giese said.You would think that erudite progressive sites like Jezebel and Slate would eschew the “war on women” angle for tacky celebrity scandals about nude pictures—especially when there’s a story out there about sexual abuse run rampant. Rotherham child sex scandal case of ‘not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat’ Author and Paleo lifestyle guru John Durant took a look at how their coverage broke down. Jezebel had one story about Rotherham. But the Jennifer Lawrence story? Jackpot. Durant took the same look at Slate.com. Slate stories on Rotherham? One. But look out. Boom. @johndurant yeah. i posted on this. JL stuff has been showing up over and over on FB and twitter. the contrast is pretty 'interesting' — Razib Khan (@razibkhan) September 4, 2014 @johndurant ad dolla bills yall — David D. (@david_kenneth_d) September 4, 2014 So progressives are virtually ignoring large scale injustice because of capitalism? That’s priceless. @johndurant you would think feminists would be the last people to obsess over celebrity gossip, but they spend more time than most guys. — David J Foster (@djf137) September 4, 2014 @johndurant "Feminists" can't talk about #Rotherham (or ISIS) because a real war on women would distract from their fake one. @razibkhan — Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) September 4, 2014 Heh. *** Related Rotherham child sex scandal case of ‘not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat’ Rotherham abuse whistleblower reportedly ‘booked on diversity course’ after raising concernsWhen you have failed twice to win a Triple Crown, when 12 horses have won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness but failed at the Belmont Stakes, when there hasn’t been a Triple Crown champion since Steve Cauthen rode Affirmed 37 long years ago, you pay a visit to the Ohel Chabad Lubavitz in Cambria Heights, a veritable Secretariat gallop from the track. Victor Espinoza, who missed his shot at history a year ago with California Chrome, gets another chance Saturday on favorite American Pharoah, and if the spirit of Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson proves to be a source of inspiration for him, well, a little divine intervention never hurts. People from all walks of life visit the religious visitor center near The Rebbe’s burial site to pray for blessing, guidance and inspiration, and here was Victor Espinoza, clad in a cap and jeans, writing a prayer in Spanish and lighting a candle before ripping the paper into pieces and tossing it on the gravesite. Everywhere he went, he carried the book “Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History,” by Joseph Telushkin. He read King David’s Book of Psalms. He followed instructions to walk backwards out of respect when he left the gravesite. “I’m not a superstitious guy,” Espinoza told The Post. “So whatever happens, if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. If not, then I move on like last year.” I said to Espinoza: “A little divine intervention might not hurt, right?” Espinoza, now outside the Anna House, where he painted with kids and signed a beautiful Susan Sommer-Luarca portrait of American Pharoah, smiled and replied: “At this point, yeah, if it helps, it helps.” Outside Ohel Chabad, before he was driven to Anna House on the Belmont backstretch, Espinoza was asked about his written prayer. “I think for me the most important thing is health. … Safety and health is the most important thing in life,” Espinoza said. Why is that the most important thing for you? “Not just for me, I think for everybody. Every single human being, we need health and safety,” Espinoza said. Perhaps he didn’t want to put so much pressure on the racing gods to actually pray outright for a Triple Crown. “He said he was here for inspiration, and felt that he wanted to come here and say a prayer before his race,” a man involved in the visit said. Mission accomplished. “No matter what religion you are, or what temple you go, you always come out with a different energy,” Espinoza said, and then laughed when he added, “which is good.” It was a blessing before the Preakness from Rabbi Sholom Ber Korf that prompted the visit Thursday by Espinoza. “He asked for a blessing and I gave him the blessing, that he should be successful and be safe,” Rabbi Korf told The Post from Delray Beach, Fla. “It was explained to me that Victor’s the type of person that doesn’t just do it for himself, he supports various charities, Cancer For Children, so a win for him is not just a win for himself, it’s a win for all the charity causes that he supports. So I felt a blessing was in order.” Espinoza wanted to visit The Rebbe’s gravesite when he learned about it. “Many people who are either for reasons of personal need for health or otherwise, have come from all around the world, Jews and non-Jews alike, to be at The Rebbe’s gravesite, and ask for blessings,” Rabbi Korf said. “There’s no better place where there’s a presence of holiness, and someone who’s spiritually very well-connected to God, to ask for a blessing.” I asked Rabbi Korf: “It’s pretty powerful having The Rebbe in your corner, right? He laughed and said: “I’d certainly want to have The Rebbe in my corner!” Espinoza is 43 years old and a spiritual man. “I pray probably 10 times a day,” he said. “I meditate probably five, six times a day.” The race was 53 hours away now. This has been The Week That Was for the gregarious Espinoza, who was welcomed to the big time Thursday with a Page Six item about his relationship with leggy 19-year-old blonde Kelly Kovalchick, which he insists isn’t romantic. “She’s a friend who is a big racing fan and enjoys going to events,” Espinoza told The Post. Espinoza enjoyed his time at Anna House, which received a $100,000 donation Thursday from American Pharoah owner Ahmed Zayat. “I was really looking forward to come here to just hang out with the kids,” Espinoza said. “Kids are fun, they’re interesting.” He laughed. “Because they say how they feel, right?” From the way the kids gravitated to him, it looks like they’ll be praying for a Triple Crown themselves.One year ago I stood underneath a giant old growth eucalyptus, known as the observer tree, and experienced the most amazing feeling. The world heritage committee had just announced that 170,000ha would be added to Tasmania's wilderness world heritage site. I felt honoured to have been part of the ongoing movement that had fought hard to achieve this. I first climbed into the observer tree in December 2011, uncertain of what the future would hold. That was a year and a half before the world heritage decision. Logging had just begun in the forest surrounding the tree and I didn't know if we could stop it, let alone halt the destruction of the rest of Tasmania's ancient forests. Perched 60 meters above the ground, talking to the media on Skype as helicopters flew overhead and chainsaws roared in the forest around me, I had no idea then that the loggers would cease within days once my treesit garnered international attention. Nor could I have imagined that a year and half later that tree and the forest around it would be world heritage listed. Success in any campaign can be difficult to measure and the fight for Tasmania's forests is no exception. Gaining world heritage status for some of the island's most significant tracts of tall wet eucalyptus forest, after a campaign spanning two decades, was certainly an incredible achievement. As I started to get used to my feet on the ground again, and the success we had achieved started to sink in, I knew that a long battle still lay ahead for all of us who want to see these forests survive into the future. 'Success in any campaign can be difficult to measure and the fight for Tasmania's forests is no exception.' Photograph: /Supplied Well over a million hectares of state forest still available for logging, the entrenchment of outdated forestry practices and millions of tax-payer dollars flooding to support forest destruction – yes, there was still a long way to go. We need to be out there, fighting for a transition out of industrial-scale logging of native forests. We're yet to bring an end to deals with businesses who are responsible for logging tropical rainforests, human rights violations and the persecution of indigenous communities in Sarawak. The Abbott government made an internationally unprecedented move when it applied for 74,000ha to be removed from the world heritage list. If that happens, logging could begin again in places like the Upper Florentine Valley, the site of Tasmania's longest running forest blockade. It is home to giant trees, rainforest, karst systems, Aboriginal cultural heritage and endangered species. The future of Tasmania's forests will be decided next week when the world heritage committee meets in Doha, Qatar. The initial recommendation to the committee, from the international union for conservation of nature, rejected the push to de-list, saying there was no ecological reason to do so. This is hopeful; the repercussions of the decision in Doha are not limited to Tasmania. Were the Abbott government's plan to succeed, the integrity of world heritage would be undermined. Without a layer of international protection over and above the whims of domestic politics, what will be next? Defending the gains that we have already made, while knowing there is still so far to go, can be exhausting. To find the courage to keep going, I remember my 449 days in the observer tree. The solidarity I received from people around the globe – who could not join me on the 3m by 3m platform that was my home – reminded me that my actions were not extraordinary. Quite the opposite; I was just one of so many around the world doing what each of us can do to protect these forests.* Gates pleads the case for public health * Health spending would help environment, Gates says By Bill Rigby SEATTLE, Jan 24 (Reuters) -
or purity. The top- and bottom-10 lists may surprise dog and cat lovers. While the safest foods included brands from smaller companies, foods from widely known brands such as Purina and Iams made the list. But the products Clean Label Projected tagged as under-performers were all made by companies that claimed their pet foods were made from the highest quality ingredients, including rabbit, venison, goat and berries. The same bottom-10 list also included brands that were supposedly “vegan” or formulated for puppies. Clean Label Project listed the toxins for which it tested these products. The NGO says it contracted with a third-party laboratory to test the cat and dog food products for contaminants. A group the organization described as a “medical advisory board” then analyzed and benchmarked those results. Finally, Clean Label Project gave each product a rating with five stars for those judged to be the safest, and one star for those products with the highest levels of contaminants. The report caps a tough month for several pet food suppliers. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced recalls for several products, from pig ears to “braised beef” canned dog food. The causes included salmonella, beef thyroid hormone and even a barbiturate. As Forbes reported, meat from an animal euthanized with pentobarbital was included in one company's dog food blend, which sickened five dogs and killed one in Washington state. Image credit: Jeffrey O. Gustafson/Wiki CommonsLaRon Landry's upcoming season is essentially over before it began. NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport reported Friday that the free-agent safety has been suspended without pay for the first 10 games of the 2015 campaign for violating the league's policy on performance-enhancing drugs, according to an NFL spokesperson. Landry, 30, was released last month by the Colts after a season that saw him start six games and finish as the league's 39th-ranked performer out of 87 players at his position, per Pro Football Focus. The notoriously hard-hitting defender also served a four-game suspension last season due to another PED violation. The No. 6 overall pick in the 2007 NFL Draft was bound to attract attention on the safety-depleted open market, but not anymore. Landry was already a questionable defender in coverage last season and hardly an ace against the run. It's fair to wonder if his career might be over after another lengthy league-imposed ban. The latest Around The NFL Podcast breaks down the Brandon Marshall trade and plays another game of "Go Get My Lunch." Find more Around The NFL content on NFL NOW.WASHINGTON/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. regulators have charged the Chinese arms of the world’s five top accounting firms with securities violations, raising tensions in a regulatory standoff which experts say could kill off U.S. listings for Chinese firms if not resolved. Members of the media and policemen gather outside the office of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad in this January 13, 2009 file photo. U.S. regulators on December 3, 2012 charged the Chinese arms of five top accounting firms with securities violations over their refusal to produce certain audit papers for U.S.-listed Chinese companies. REUTERS/Krishnendu Halder/Files Monday’s move indicated China was refusing to yield in talks with the United States over access to Chinese audit papers, trying to keep foreign regulators off what it sees as its turf. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) wants the firms to supply documents relating to audits of U.S.-listed companies suspected of possible wrongdoing, but the audit firms say they are prevented from doing so by Chinese state secrecy laws. “I think China has determined that it does not want to cooperate in this way. It believes this is an impingement on China’s national sovereignty, and it’s just too far for them to go,” said Paul Gillis, a professor at Peking University and author of the China Accounting Blog “They want the U.S. regulators to rely on the work of Chinese regulators, and that has been their position and apparently continues to be their position,” said Gillis. The SEC began proceedings against the Chinese affiliates of Deloitte, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), BDO and Ernst & Young. The agency on Monday also moved to pursue a case they had put on hold against Deloitte. It was the SEC’s widest enforcement effort yet to procure documents in connection with probes of possible accounting fraud of U.S.-listed Chinese companies, however lawyers voiced doubts over whether it would help them make a breakthrough. “Simply swinging the hammer of enforcement, while effective at garnering headlines, will likely not be enough to achieve the SEC’s goal,” said William McGovern, a partner at Kobre & Kim in Hong Kong and a former SEC attorney. The SEC, which is seeking documents in investigating possible wrongdoing at nine China-based companies, said an administrative law judge would schedule a hearing to determine potential sanctions against the accounting firms’ Chinese arms. It was unclear whether the SEC’s move would result in financial penalties and discourage the firms from working with certain Chinese companies, or it was designed to force a breakthrough in the larger negotiations. ULTIMATE SANCTION Peking University’s Gillis said if no diplomatic solution could be found, the SEC might ultimately suspend the Chinese firms’ right to practice - a sanction that could in turn mean that their U.S.-listed client companies would have to de-list. “That would mean they cannot audit U.S.-listed public companies,” he said. The SEC said in July it was in talks with Chinese regulators on cross-border cooperation, including access to documents, but Monday’s action suggested it was unhappy with progress. U.S. accounting regulator the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has now reached agreements with almost every major economy aside from China on being allowed to inspect foreign auditors of U.S.-listed companies. “Firms that conduct audits knowing they cannot comply with laws requiring access to these work papers face serious sanctions,” SEC enforcement director Robert Khuzami said in a statement announcing the action. The accounting firms called for regulators to negotiate a solution, noting that U.S. and Chinese laws were in conflict. “This action involves an issue that needs to be resolved between the U.S. and China,” PwC China said in a statement. Deloitte said it was unfortunate the two sides could not find common ground but “we remain hopeful that a diplomatic agreement can be reached”. China affiliates Ernst & Young Hua Ming and KPMG Huazhen said they too still hoped for an agreement. BDO did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Top accounting firms operate as global networks of legally separate member firms in each country, so all member firms are not jointly liable for auditing work done in any one country. Lawyers say there is still a queue of Chinese companies eager to tap U.S. capital markets, despite the problems faced by many of their peers that went before them. “I would estimate that there are probably 30 to 40 China-based companies in some stage of pursuing a U.S. listing at this time,” said Alan Seem, a partner at law firm Shearman & Sterling in Beijing. Separately, Canada’s securities regulator said it believed Ernst & Young had breached the Ontario Securities Act in its audits of Sino-Forest Corp, a China-focused forestry company which collapsed after being accused of accounting fraud. Ernst & Young Canada said in a statement it was confident its work “met all professional standards”. Last year, the SEC took Deloitte to federal court to try to force it to turn over documents in connection with an investigation into China’s Longtop Financial Technologies Ltd. In July, it sought a six-month delay in that legal battle, citing negotiations with Chinese regulators. On Monday, the SEC said those talks had failed and it filed a motion to proceed with the case. It also renewed efforts to obtain the documents related to the Longtop audit. Slideshow (2 Images) The PCAOB, the U.S. accounting watchdog, recently completed observations of Chinese inspections of auditors and expressed optimism about talks over access to audit documents. In a statement, PCAOB Chairman James Doty said his agency’s negotiations were proceeding on a separate track from the SEC. If the agency’s efforts do not lead to an agreement, “then we will need to consider other alternatives”, Doty said.Health legislation moving toward a vote in the U.S. Senate would reverse gains made in insurance coverage and drive up costs for all Minnesotans, the CEOs of two of the state’s largest health care companies said in an interview Thursday. It could also produce job losses and service cutbacks at the state’s hospitals and clinics and halt reforms that aim to boost quality, improve medical outcomes and cut costs, they said. “I have deep, deep concerns about where the federal framework is right now and where it is proposed to go,” said Dr. Penny Wheeler, chief executive at Allina Health, a hospital and clinic system that is Minnesota’s fifth-largest employer. “There’s nothing in this bill that talks about system reform, and in fact it actually undercuts system reform by cutting so many people off of coverage.” Wheeler joined Michael Guyette, chief executive of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, and state Human Services Commissioner Emily Piper to discuss the bill as coalitions of insurers, doctors and hospitals ratcheted up lobbying against the GOP plan. On Thursday, Senate Republicans unveiled their second attempt to repeal and replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The bill would restructure health insurance in the individual market and cut billions from projected funding of Medicaid, which covers health care for the poor, the disabled and many elderly Americans. The Congressional Budget Office is expected to release a report next week detailing the bill’s specific impacts on insurance coverage and premiums. The CBO determined that the first Senate proposal would have reduced the number of people with health insurance by 22 million by 2026. The agency said the bill would reduce insurance premiums for some younger, healthier consumers but also reduce subsidies that help people buy insurance, raise deductibles and make insurance generally unaffordable to those with low incomes. Dr. Penny Wheeler, CEO of Allina Health While providing a general framework for subsidies, the Republican proposal also leaves many elements and consumer protections up to the discretion of the states. The new Senate bill provides some money to help states assist those facing high premiums, which could slightly reduce the number of people losing coverage. But the bill does relatively little to change the Medicaid proposal, which accounted for 15 million people losing coverage under the first draft. In Minnesota, where 1.2 million people get coverage from Medicaid, the change would mean an immediate loss of $2 billion in federal funds beginning in 2020, growing to a total of $31 billion by 2030, according to a state analysis last week. The legislation most likely would force the state to cut payments to hospitals, physicians and other providers, as well as to managed-care companies like Blue Cross, which administers the Medicaid program to about 860,000 enrollees. “If reimbursement levels continue to get cut back, it would be a huge concern for our ability to continue to participate in the program,” Guyette said. Eagan-based Blue Cross is the state’s largest Medicaid managed-care provider, serving 40 percent of all people in the program. Allina Health would also suffer from lower payment rates, Wheeler said, and it would take an additional hit because it would see fewer patients if the uninsured rate increases. “There are job losses with these cuts,” Wheeler said. “It becomes a domino effect.” Wheeler and Guyette said the GOP legislation could also result in providers shifting costs to commercial insurers and insured consumers to offset losses from patients who lose insurance. “We can’t forget how highly connected all of the segments are,” Guyette said. Cuts to the Medicaid rolls and lower provider reimbursement rates could also end several experiments that seek to reduce Medicaid costs by keeping Minnesotans healthier, Wheeler said. Allina is one of several providers working with Medicaid patients, often those with chronic conditions, to help stabilize their health and prevent expensive emergency room visits or intensive-care stays. Despite Minnesota’s efforts to improve health care delivery, Piper said the proposed Medicaid changes would put the state at a disadvantage. “The financial implications of this bill for states are staggering,” Piper said. “These cuts will cause serious harm to Minnesota’s... health care system and potentially affect other state services as we struggle to manage these losses.” With passage of the Senate GOP bill still uncertain, some Minnesotans are hoping that Republicans and Democrats will work together to improve the ACA, rather than repeal it. “We need a bipartisan fix to some of the known problems in the Affordable Care Act instead of a full repeal bill and tax cut bill,” Piper said. Guyette said Congress needs to address the individual market, where insurers have struggled to market attractive plans without losing money. Michael Guyette He said the GOP bill includes changes that would help the individual market, but he criticized the introduction of new language that would allow insurers to sell low-cost policies that provide skimpy coverage — policies that were eliminated under Obamacare. “You are going to end up bifurcating the individual market into healthy and unhealthy,” Guyette said.Lucy Hornby is a China correspondent for the Financial Times. She has previously been on Sinica to speak about China’s last surviving comfort women and about women’s representation in China expertise. Li Shuo is the Senior Climate & Energy Policy Officer for Greenpeace East Asia. He oversees Greenpeace’s work on air pollution, water, and renewable energy, and also coordinates the organization’s engagement with the United Nations climate negotiation. Lucy returns to the podcast to discuss her reporting on Chinese environmental challenges — particularly overfishing and soil pollution — issues that Li Shuo, on the pod for the first time, has also researched. Recommendations: Jeremy: “The Anaconda and the Elephant,” an essay by Xu Zhiyuan 许知远 about self-censorship and how to be a Chinese writer in these strange times under Xi Jinping. Lucy: The latest book of her FT colleague Richard McGregor: Asia’s Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century. McGregor previously wrote The Party, a popular book among those wanting an in-depth look at Chinese politics. Li Shuo: A Chinese book called huanjing waijiaoguan shouji (环境外交官手记; “Notes of an Environmental Diplomat”), an autobiography of one of China’s early environmental diplomats, Xia Kunbao 夏堃堡. He was born in the 1940s, learned English, lived through the Cultural Revolution, and ended up at the highest levels of environmental governance in China. The book is written in fairly simple, short sentences. Kaiser: Washington Post reporter David Weigel’s new book, The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock.Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. So who’s a real American now? With his decisive triumph over Senator John McCain, Senate Barack Obama made obvious history: he is the first black (or biracial) man to win the presidency. But the meaning of his victory–in which Obama splashed blue across previously red states–extends far beyond its racial significance. Obama, a former community organizer and law professor, won the White House as one of the most progressive (or liberal) nominees in the Democratic Party’s recent history. Mounting one of the best run presidential bids in decades, Obama tied his support for progressive positions (taxing the wealthy to pay for tax cuts for working Americans, addressing global warming, expanding affordable health insurance, withdrawing troops from Iraq) to calls for cleaning up Washington and for crafting a new type of politics. Charismatic, steady, and confident, he melded substance and style into a winning mix that could be summed up in simple and basic terms: hope and change. After nearly eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency, Obama was the non-Bush: intelligent, curious, thoughtful, deliberate, and competent. His personal narrative–he was the product of an unconventional family and worked his way into the nation’s governing class–fueled his campaign narrative. His story was the American Dream v2.0. He was change, at least at skin level. But he also championed the end of Bushism. He had opposed the Iraq war. He had opposed Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. He was no advocate of let-‘er-rip, free market capitalism or American unilateralism. In policy terms, Obama represents a serious course correction. And more. In the general election campaign, McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, turned the fight for the presidency into a culture clash. They accused Obama of being a socialist. They assailed him for having associated with William Ayers, a former, bomb-throwing Weather Underground radical,who has since become an education expert. Palin indirectly referred to Obama’s relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who once preached fiery sermons denouncing the United States government for certain policies. On the campaign trail, Palin suggested there were “real” parts of America and fake parts. At campaign events, she promoted a combative, black-helicopter version of conservatism: if you’re for government expansion, you’re against freedom. During her one debate with Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, she hinted that if her opponents won the White House there might come a day when kids would ask their grandparents what it had been like to live in a free country. At McCain-Palin rallies, supporters shouted out, “Communist!” and “terrorist!” and “Muslim!” when the Republican candidates referred to Obama. And McCain and Palin hurled the standard charges at Obama: he will raise your taxes and he is weak on national security. Put it all together and the message was clear: there are two types of Americans. Those who are true Americans–who love their nation and cherish freedom–and those who are not. The other Americans do not put their country first; they blame it first. The other Americans do not believe in opportunity; they want to take what you have and give it to someone else. The other Americans do not care about Joe the Plumber; they are out-of-touch elitists who look down on (and laugh at) hard-working, church-going folks. The other Americans do not get the idea of America. They are not patriots. And it just so happens that the other America is full of blacks, Latinos, gays, lesbians, and non-Christians. McCain, Palin and their compatriots did what they could to depict Obama as the rebel chief of this other un-American America. (Hillary Clinton helped set up their effort during the primaries by beating the Ayers drum.) Remember the stories of Obama’s supposed refusal to wear a flag pin or place his hand over his heart for the Pledge of Allegiance? The emails about Obama being a secret Muslim? The goal was to delegitimize Obama, as well as the Americans who were moved by his biography, his rhetoric, and his ideas. It was back to the 1960s–drawing a harsh line between the squares (the real Americans) and the freaks (those redistribution-loving, terrorist-coddling faux Americans). It didn’t work. With the nation mired in two wars and beset by a financial crisis, Obama mobilized a diverse coalition that included committed Democratic liberals turned on by his policy stands (unabashed redistributionists, no doubt) and less ideologically-minded voters jazzed by his temperament, meta-themes, and come-together message. He showed that the old Republican attack tactics do not always draw blood. A candidate could advocate raising taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations and withstand being called a socialist. A candidate could advocate talking to the nation’s enemies and withstand being tagged weak and dangerous. A candidate could be non-white, have an odd name, boast a less-than-usual ancestry, be an unrepentant Ivy Leaguer, profess a quiet and thoughtful patriotism (that encompasses both love and criticism of country), and still be a real American. And become president. How He Did It — The Primaries From the start of the campaign, Obama and his advisers–notably campaign manager David Plouffe and chief strategist David Axelrod–shared a vision of how a freshman senator with relatively little national experience could reach the White House. Obama presented himself as an agent of change leading a movement for change. Given that a large majority of the voters believed the nation was heading in the wrong direction after two terms of George W. Bush, this was not the most brilliant of strategic strokes. But Obama had the chops to pull it off. He spoke well, he conveyed intelligence and energy, and he advocated policies that seemed like an antidote to the Bush years. And he effectively matched his own personal story (a best-selling book!) to this message of renewal. Throughout the primaries, Obama addressed the sense of disenfranchisement Democrats and independents (and even some Republicans) had experienced during the W years. As these citizens watched Bush and Dick Cheney dole out tax cuts to the wealthy, do nothing about global warming, launch an optional war in Iraq, and expand secrecy and executive power, many felt locked out. It didn’t help that Bush and his crowd appeared dismissive of those who disagreed with them, decrying elitism and playing to conservative know-nothingism. Obama came along and invited primary voters to join a crusade for change–which meant a crusade against them. It was a chance to strike back against the empire. Obama understood the need of many to reclaim their country. The right has often exploited such a sentiment. Think of the rise of the Moral Majority. But Obama was not playing the resentment card. Crucial to his success was Obama’s decision to keep anger (at least his own) out of the equation. For him and his supporters, there was cause to be damn mad. From their perspective, the country had been hijacked by Bush, Cheney and a small band of neocons. (A view they could hold with much justification.) But Obama appeared to have made a calculation: an angry black man could not win over a majority of the voters. He offered voters not fury, but hope. And considering his “improbable”–as he put it–rise, he was a natural pitchman for hope. Fixating on hope allowed him to talk about the problems of the United States (past and present) while remaining an optimist. Americans tend not to elect purveyors of doom and gloom to the presidency. Usually the candidate with the sunnier disposition wins. It’s not hard to fathom why. When Americans select a president, many are voting for the person who they believe best reflects their own idea of America. Voting for president has a strong psychological component. It’s how Americans define their nation. So personal attributes–character, strength, biography, personality–are important. Obama described his presidential bid not as a campaign of outrage but as a cause of hope–a continuation of the grand and successful progressive movements of the past. For Democratic voters, he had the appropriate liberal policy stances. He had a record as a reformer in the Illinois state senate and the US Senate. But he provided more than resumé; he served up inspiration. Obama could advocate these policies–policies that often stir sharp partisan fights in Washington and beyond–and at the same time convincingly call for a new politics of productivity (not partisanship) in Washington. This took some talent. Mark Schmitt credits what he calls Obama’s “communitarian populism”–a quiet, inclusive populism. Leave your pitchforks at the door. This message and his manner of delivering it led many Democratic voters to conclude that he was the right man for the post-Bush cleanup. Obama had one big obstacle in the primaries: Hillary Clinton. She had a brand name that attracted and repulsed voters. She ran a conventional campaign. She uttered no talk of any movement. She relied on her resumé, and said she was ready to roll up her sleeves and work for you. Will you hire me as your advocate-in-chief? she asked. Obama was offering music; she was offering math. It was virtually a toss-up for the Democratic electorate. What made the difference was that Obama, the heady candidate, managed his campaign more effectively than Clinton, the down-to-earth candidate, managed hers. Clinton and her crew, after losing in Iowa and then fighting back in New Hampshire, botched the middle stretch and allowed Obama to rack up a series of wins that did give him–oh, that dreadful word–momentum. More important, her campaign seemed to bounce from one strategy to the next, as infighting roiled Clintonland. Not until the end of the primaries did Clinton get her groove back, winning over blue-collar voters in once-industrial states as the scrappy working-class hero. But it was too late. The delegate math became undeniable. In beating Clinton, Obama showed that he had assembled a disciplined and skilled campaign staff. Not once was his campaign rocked by internal dissension. It never went through a staff shakeup. There were no media stories, relying on unnamed sources, revealing major disputes or fundamental disagreements at Obama HQ. (“We had our disagreements,” says one top Obama aide. “But they were always within the confines of getting to the best decision. I was stunned by how well it all worked.”) Consensus, smooth operations, no signs of turf fights or ego battles–this is virtually unheard of in a major modern presidential campaigns. Obama even handled his flip-flops–voting for the telecom immunity bill after vowing not to and opting out of public financing system after indicating he would remain within it–relatively well. The operation of his campaign sent a signal: Obama was a serious person who could ably handle pressure. Obama preached hope and at the same time he was the CEO of a well-managed enterprise that would raise and spend (in record amounts) hundreds of millions of dollars. How He Did It –The General Election Once it became clear that Obama and McCain would each be the presidential nominee of their respective parties, they faced two big tests–selecting a running mate and addressing the financial meltdown. Obama passed both; McCain failed both. Obama’s choice of Biden was not inspiring. It was, in a way, a conventional pick, a safe bet (relatively safe, given Biden’s penchant for verbal slip-ups). Obama’s campaign was predicated on the promise he would shake up Washington. Biden, a three-decade veteran of the Senate, was not known as a rebel. But he had deep foreign policy experience and had spent years courting the working-class voters of Delaware. He could reassure voters worried that Obama had not spent enough years toiling on national security matters. And Biden certainly would not compete with Obama for headlines and screen time. Obama was the inspiration on the ticket. Biden was the insurance policy. By going with Biden, Obama dared to be boring and indicated he was willing to play it straight when necessary. He abided by the first rule of veep selection: do no harm. McCain took another route. He gambled. He picked a governor little-known on the national stage–a woman whom even McCain barely knew. It gave his campaign a shot of excitement and surprise. Her performance at the Republican convention was dazzling. But this high did not last, as Palin did miserably in media interviews. Several conservative columnists had to admit she was not ready for prime time. Within weeks, McCain’s act of daring was widely perceived as an act of recklessness. Her approval ratings plummeted. Polls indicated she was a drag on a ticket and a prominent reason why some voters were not favoring McCain. Palin was strike one. Strike two was McCain’s erratic response to the financial crisis–saying different things, deciding to suspend his campaign but then suspending the suspension. His actions reinforced the impression created by the Palin misstep: he likes to shoot from the hip. But with the economy and Wall Street in a free fall, many voters were probably not eager for another cowboy president. Meanwhile, Obama, who met with establishment advisers and calmly backed the $700 billion bailout (which McCain also endorsed), looked like the adult in the room that crucial week, which culminated in the first debate. That face-off, according to the insta-polls, was a win for Obama, as were the next two confrontations. Weeks into the general election, Obama had made a pivot–but so smoothly that most of the politerati did not even see it. He had gone from the inspiring movement leader calling for wholesale change in Washington to a reassuring figure who demonstrated that he could play well with the establishment. The younger and less experienced of the two nominees seemed better suited to handle a crisis. Iraq and national security were no longer the issues; the economy was. And Obama showed he possessed the steadier hand. At the final debate, as McCain jabbed with punches that packed not much punch, Obama came across as confident if not so dynamic. But when the world is cracking up, who wants pizzazz? Losing on the economy front–and in the temperament contest–McCain, with Palin acting like his gun moll, stepped up his use of the standard GOP attack lines. He went back to basics. Obama, he contended, yearned to raise taxes not just on the rich but on everybody. Even though independent experts had concluded that middle-class voters would receive a bigger tax cut under Obama’s proposal than McCain’s, the McCain camp kept issuing charges about Obama’s tax aims that were not true. They found a mascot in Joe the Plumber (who was not really named Joe and not really a plumber). And they whipped up the old tax-and-spend fear about Democrats. “Now is no the time to experiment with socialism,” Palin exclaimed at rallies, ignoring the fact that she presides over the socialistic state of Alaska (which redistributes tax revenues collected from oil companies to the state’s citizens). She dubbed Obama “Barack the Wealth Spreader.” At a McCain rally near St. Louis, Representative Todd Akin (R-MO) said, “This campaign in the next couple of weeks is about one thing. It’s a referendum on socialism.” Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) weighed in on Obama: “With all due respect, the man is a socialist.” McCain repeatedly referred to Obama as the “redistributionist-in-chief,” often stumbling over the phrase. He must have forgotten that during a 2000 campaign event, he was asked, “Are we getting closer and closer to, like, socialism,” and McCain replied, “Here’s what I really believe: That when you reach a certain level of comfort, there’s nothing wrong with paying somewhat more.” It was an anti-intellectual attack–taxes equals socialism–ignoring basic facts and the personal history of McCain (who was roundly accused by conservatives of engaging in “class warfare” in 2000 when he opposed George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich). The point was to strike fear into the hearts of voters who make far less money than Obama’s proposed threshold for tax hikes. McCain was not appealing to the better nature of voters. Putting up a fierce fight, Obama did not make it personal. He paid tribute to McCain’s military service. But he slammed McCain for standing with Bush on economic issues. “If you want to know where Senator McCain will drive this economy, just look in the rearview mirror,” Obama told campaign audiences. And he challenged the Big Idea of the Republican Party: The last thing we can afford is four more years of the tired, old theory that says we should give more to billionaires and big corporations and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. The last thing we can afford is four more years where no one in Washington is watching anyone on Wall Street because politicians and lobbyists killed common-sense regulations. Those are the theories that got us into this mess. They haven’t worked, and it’s time for change. Obama wasn’t just taking on Bushism. He was taking on Reaganism. McCain, Palin, and their supporters did make it personal. They claimed that Obama was misleading the voters, that he was not what he seemed. They argued that he was not up to the job. The McCain-Palin campaign ran a series of ads–one falsely asserted that Obama had supported teaching kindergartners “comprehensive sex education”–that various MSM outlets pronounced untruthful and unfair. The Straight Talk Express was derided as a cavalcade of misrepresentation. The McCain-Palin campaign revived the Bill Ayers attack. It tried to brand Obama an associate of anti-Semites, pointing to his relationship with a Palestinian scholar–without producing evidence that this Palestinian was anti-Semitic. (The International Republican Institute, a group chaired by McCain, had given over $400,000 to a group co-founded by this scholar.) It was an ugly assault. Speaking in support of McCain and Palin, Representative Robin Hayes (R-NC) declared, “Liberals hate real Americans that work, and accomplish, and achieve, and believe in God.” McCain supporters referred to Obama as “Barack Hussein Obama.” At a Palin rally, Representative Steve King (R-IA) said that an Obama victory would cause the United States to turn into a “totalitarian dictatorship.” Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) declared that Obama was “anti-American.” While she was at it, she urged the media to investigate and root out anti-Americanism within the US Congress. This mud did not stick. Perhaps worse for McCain, his camp never presented a coherent strategic argument for its candidate. Obama had change and hope. McCain had no real case for McCain–other than he was a POW who put his country first. What did he want to do as president? Serve his country again. He essentially asked to be rewarded for his past service and sacrifice. He didn’t feel the voters’ pain; he wanted them to feel his. And his campaign ended up being defined mostly by its retro attack on Obama: he’s an untested and untrustworthy liberal. Most of the voters disagreed. With his victory, Obama has ended the Bush II era with an exclamation point. (The Democratic gains in Congress seconded the point.) Now Obama faces a restoration project of unprecedented proportions. It may take years for him and the rest of Washington to remedy the ills neglected, exacerbated or caused by the Bush presidency. And he will have a tough time matching progress to promise. At his victory celebration in Chicago before tens of thousands, he lowered expectations: “the road ahead will be long. The climb ahead will be steep.” And he noted that his electoral victory merely provided “only the chance for us to make that change.” But his barrier-breaking victory was indeed change in itself. Consider this: Obama ended his campaign at a rally on Monday night in Manassas, Virginia, the site of Battle of Bull Run, the opening land battle of the Civil War, in which Union troops were routed and forced to retreat back to Washington, DC There before a crowd of 90,000–young, old, black, white, affluent, working-class–Obama summed up his case: Tomorrow, you can turn the page on policies that have put greed and irresponsibility before hard work and sacrifice. Tomorrow, you can choose policies that invest in our middle class and create new jobs, grow this economy so everybody has a chance to succeed, not just the CEO but the secretary and the janitor, not just the factory owner but the men and women who work the factory floors. And tomorrow, you can end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election, that pits region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat, that asks us to fear at a time when we need to hope. A black man on the verge of being elected president said that. But race is just one part of the tale. Obama has done more than become a first. He has redrawn the electoral map (take that, Karl Rove) and reshaped the political culture of the United States. He has transformed the image of the United States–abroad and at home. (He vowed in Chicago that “a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.”) Above all, after eight troubling years and after decades of ideological civil war, Obama has redefined what is real America. “Who knew that we were the Silent Majority?” his press secretary Linda Douglass said moments after Obama left the stage in Grant Park. The voters who see President-elect Obama as the embodiment of their America can trade the Yes We Can motto for a new one: Yes We Are.The following article is part of an ongoing series exploring visual homages, themes, and motifs. For the rest of the articles in this series, click here. The concept of “controlled chaos” is by its very nature, a very cinematic notion. Taking dozens or hundreds of individual components and somehow focusing them all into one direction is basically the job description for a director, and yet so few of them manage to present turmoil on screen well. Go too far in one direction, you’re just showing disaster, shaking the camera, throwing information at the audience with little care to how the audience perceives it. The other direction gives you something simple, straightforward, and essentially boring – IE, not chaos at all. Guy Ritchie loves the idea of “controlled chaos” as a theme in his films, they often feature slick editing and fast pacing, with camerawork that achieves a certain indescribable level of “cool.” I won’t use the word “effortless”, however, as it does a disservice to the amount of work Ritchie and his cinematographers put into making sure you, the viewer, gather exactly the information he wants you to, even if it is only on a subconscious level Ritchie’s 2000 sophomore effort Snatch (d.p. Tim Maurice-Jones) features multiple tenuously related storylines and an ensemble cast in constant interaction and frequent opposition to each other. The storyline is difficult to put into words, but it essentially involves underground boxing promotors Turkish (Jason Statham) and Tommy (Stephen Graham) who suddenly find themselves in trouble with murderous gangster Brick Top (Alan Ford) when their promised fighter is hospitalized by a freakishly strong gypsy named Mickey (Brad Pitt) during an altercation over a trailer purchase. Meanwhile, a slew of other characters including Dennis Farina, Vinnie Jones, and Benicio Del Toro, are in an extended fight over a stolen diamond. A common thread in the film is the need for protection or security: More precisely, a common theme in the film is the inevitable failure of everything which we consider an element of “safety” or “security.” Common recurring elements of the film are dogs, guns, safes, security cameras, fixed bets, bodyguards… all things that people use to make them feel safe and secure. Turkish encounters Brick Top when he goes back to check his safe, Vince and Sol find their bookie hold-up foiled by a security system button and get their gun stolen, Brick Top attempts to rig a fight which is ended in three seconds. The film even opens with a group of men passing through standard security protocols before stealing a diamond. The illusion of protection powers and pervades through the arc of nearly every character. Some of them benefit from it, but mostly it leads them to ruin.(But especially Tommy.) The first time we see Tommy, he’s introduced like this: Which is an early visual cue and small foreshadowing that introduces Tommy’s main role and essential characteristics within a two-second clip. His job is to support
will rebuild America, we will make America prosperous again, we will make our roads and highways more safe again. In a word, to borrow a phrase, we’ll Make America Great Again. (Applause.) Thanks, everybody. Thank you for coming. God bless you, and God bless the United States. END 12:44 P.M. EDTAnyone walking on the streets of Egypt will notice a phenomenon that wasn't so evident only a year ago: the increasing numbers of little girls (and by "little", I mean as young as eight years old in some cases) wearing headscarves and abayas. While this sight was previously confined to third-class trains and rural areas, it has now become increasingly common in cities and among well-to-do families. In general, the age at which Muslim girls in Egypt begin to wear the scarf has dropped. Back when I was in high school, very few female students wore headscarves. Today, my younger brother (who is 15) tells me that almost all the girls in his middle school wear a scarf. It hasn't stopped there either, having caught on in primary schools. The very sight of a little girl in a scarf is both disturbing and confusing. Adult Muslim women are expected to dress modestly so that men outside the family cannot see their bodies. But what is the point of a child or pre-pubescent girl wearing a hijab? It hints at what may be a disturbed (one is tempted to say diseased) concept of sexuality in the mind of the father who thinks his little girl should be covered up. What exactly is tempting about the body of an eight-year-old that needs to be covered? Some suggest that I am overanalysing, and that the reason parents like their little girls to don the scarf is simply so they can "get used to doing the right thing from a young age". They compare it to how Muslim parents teach their children to fast until noon during Ramadan so that when they are older it won't be so hard to fast until sunset, or how fathers take their kids to the mosque on Fridays to get them used to it. We all know how hard it is to kick habits we were taught in early childhood. Getting a little girl "used to" the hijab effectively obliterates the "free choice" element by the time the girl is old enough to think. The hijab is aggressively marketed as the proper attire for a respectable woman. That isn't new. What is new is that now even children are targets of this marketing. One need look no further than Fulla, the Middle Eastern version of Barbie, designed to suit Muslim values. When I recently stepped into a Toys R Us store in Cairo, it was quite shocking to see a Fulla doll clad in a headscarf and a full length abaya, the box proudly proclaiming "Fulla in her outdoor clothes", in effect telling little girls that there is only one proper way to dress outside the house. Many defenders of the hijab point to the influence of "decadent western culture", endlessly criticising how western TV sexualises and objectifies women, though they fail to understand that they are doing they exact same thing to little girls when they constantly promote the hijab. If it is so important to cover up, there must be something worth covering up and hiding from men. Inevitably, little girls are taught to view themselves as sexual objects that must be covered up from an early age – and it is this culture permeating the minds of our younger generations. To make matters worse, what about the brothers of these girls? Will they not grow up with the same mentality? If they see that their sisters have to be covered up from a very early age to avoid being exposed in front of men, it is only natural that they grow up with the concept that women have to be covered, controlled and restricted. I once heard the naive suggestion that dressing your daughter modestly would ward off paedophiles. On the streets, though, it seems more likely that it will simply lead to increased harassment. A 12-year-old in a scarf could pass for 16 to the casual observer, making her "woman" enough to be harassed. On a more sentimental level, making a little girl wear a headscarf deprives her of her childhood. While other girls will be doing their hair or playing with Barbie or wearing cute dresses, she'll be doing what grown-ups do – wearing a headscarf and full length abaya. Her parents will defend her right to wear it, saying that the girl chose it herself because some of her friends were doing it and she wanted to fit in, or to be grown up like mummy, much in the same way as a boy asks his father for a cigarette so he can be like daddy. But parents usually know better in the latter case. Finally, I am sure that when this article is translated into Arabic and posted on Egyptian websites, the usual flood of comments will ensue; how I am anti-hijab, how I want to strip Egyptian and Muslim women of their modesty, how I want Muslim women to "walk around naked like western women", and so on. I tell them my view on the hijab is irrelevant. The issue at hand is: what exactly is the point of imposing a scarf on a little girl, and why is it becoming more common?Image by: Stryfe589 I had the pleasure of talking to Brennan Taylor when I went to GenCon this summer. One of the results of that conversation was a copy of How We Came to Live Here for me to put my eyes on and review for the lovely readers of TC. I was able to take the time to do that recently and these are the results. How We Came to Live Here is not your average RPG. The first thing to be aware of if that it is highly collaborative in nature. Like, “no GM” collaborative. The sessions are played out as the group decides they will be, using story lines that the group works together to develop. If that’s not your kind of thing, then you need not apply. This is not a new trend in RPGs. You don’t have to look for to find other examples of games in a similar vein; Fiasco and Steal Away Jordon fit the bill nicely. Where How We Came to Live Here separates itself from most RPGs on the market right now is that the setting and content are based solidly in the mythology of the native peoples of the American Southwest. As you are no-doubt aware, the majority of the RPGs the we play are based on European folklore. Sci-fi games are almost solely based on Euro-American ideas and the only exceptions to the previous two examples are the games based on the culture of China or Japan. It’s a challenging prospect to immerse yourself in a culture that, if you’re like me, is so wholly different from your own. In fact, when I first picked up the to book to begin reading it for this review, I was put off by the differences. I admit, I have a difficult time adapting to games with settings that are so far outside of the cultural ideals that I usually absorb in my games and reading. However, once you wrap your mind around the differences, you will quickly find out why this book won the Gold ENnie for Best Writing at GenCon this year a was nominated for the Best Writing ENnie for 2010. The writing in this book is excellent. The best sections are those that the head each chapter. These stories do an excellent job of setting the tone of the game. They give you good insight into the culture of The People and the way that their society is set up. The writing that is found throughout the rest of the book shines as well. All of the descriptions of play are clear and just one read-through can give you a really good idea of how a game would progress. As I mentioned earlier, this is a collaborative, GM-less game. Ideally, you need four or more players. Two of these players take on the roles of the Inside Player and the Outside Player. These players have roles as close to that of GM as you’ll get in this game. In the scenes that are set up, they deal with matter taking place inside of the village and outside the village, respectively. The other players take on the role of Hero Players, those people whose stories are being explored as the game is played. The session starts with character creation, as well as the building of the village in which the Hero Players live. As the character creation process proceeds, the players all create an interconnected web of relationships between themselves and the NPCs that are also created as part of this process. Each player selects a few different motivations for their character and the enjoyment of the game comes from seeing those motivations play out as the sessions go on. What intrigues me about the ways in which these motivations come into effect comes from the interplay between the Inside Player, Outside Player and the Hero Players. As the game progresses, the Hero Players are continually tempted to accomplish their motivations by breaking the rules and customs of The People. If a player gains too many Corruption Points, then they become an Outsider and come under the control of the Outside Player. In another departure from the majority of games on the market (although there are plenty of games that use them as well), How We Came to Live Here uses Fudge Dice to resolve its conflict. The conflicts are all largely narrative in style and the Fudge dice are used to attack and defend during the conflicts. The same system is used for both physical combat as well as conflicts occurring between players or between players and NPCs. While I like to roll dice with numbers and add modifiers to them to find out if I succeeded or not, using the Fudge dice seems like it would definitely add to the narrative nature of the game. And, really, the story is what How We Came to Live Here seems to be all about. If you’re looking for a fast-paced game with a lot of hack-and-slash combat, then you need not look here. If, however, you want to have a good time telling an interactive story set in a mythology that is very different from the one you (likely) usually take in, then this game is for you. As a final word, I will say that I initially had a difficult time getting into the world of the game as I was reading. This is not a knock on the game but more of an indication of the ways in which I usually consume game-related content. As I said above, the mythology of How We Came to Live Here is very different from the of most games and it took me a while to wrap my mind around the idea. It’s definitely a step outside of my usual comfort zone when it comes to gaming. Once I really sat down and took the time to read the book, I was very please with what I saw. That said, I am likely not the only person who will run into this issue, so make sure that everyone who plays is working to buy in to the world to the same degree. Final Verdict: 4.5 out of 5 The game looks good but if you don’t want something really narrative-driven or don’t like using Fudge dice, then you will probably want to pass. [tags]review, reviews, rpg, rpgs, role playing games, How We Came to Live Here[/tags]For Eastern Europe, Germany Is the Trouble The inability of Angela Merkel and her putative partners to form a government has given rise to persistent calls, including from the chancellor herself, that what Europe needs now is a strong Germany. In fact, it is Germany’s unquestioned strength and willingness to throw its weight around that are to blame for much of Eastern Europe’s unhappiness with the European Union at the moment. A case in point is the growing rift between Berlin and its eastern EU neighbors on some of the issues discussed by Merkel and her potential government partners. Take for instance Merkel’s position claiming that the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline is simply a commercial project. To most of her eastern neighbors, this is nothing if not crass German hypocrisy designed to further German business, while facilitating the monopolistic endeavors of Vladimir Putin and Russia's energy monopoly, Gazprom, at the expense of Eastern Europe. Or the willingness of Germany's Free Democrats to give Russia a pass on Crimean annexation, which suspiciously sounded like an apologia of the old “might is right” axiom. Or the asinine suggestion of the Greens to settle entire Syrian villages in Eastern Europe to make the migrants feel more comfortable and the locals less so. Beyond these specific disagreements, there are fundamental, perhaps irreconcilable, differences between Eastern Europe and Germany on at least two issues – defense policy and migration. Regarding the former, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, Berlin seems to have decided that there would never be another war in Europe and it stopped spending money on defense. As a result, in a short time the German military was transformed from being the second most powerful in NATO to a weakling spending barely 1.2% of GDP on defense instead of the 2% agreed minimum. Its personnel collapsed nearly four-fold (600,000 to 177,000) and it has glaring equipment shortfalls that make its functioning as an integral force very doubtful. According to Jane’s, close to half of its Leopard 2 tanks (95 of 244) are not combat ready, and neither are 28 of its 75 Tornado combat aircraft, nor are 41 of its 79 Eurofighters, nor are four out of ten Patriot air-defense systems. More troublesome than these capability issues is Germany’s unwillingness to determine where the threat to Europe may be coming from. Unlike Eastern Europe, which invariably sees Russia as a clear and present danger, Berlin appears not to be sure. During the recent election campaign, Merkel’s socialist coalition partners called for disarmament and the withdrawal of American nuclear weapons from Germany, in the face of blatant Russian aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere. This fundamental divergence in threat perceptions also results in stark differences in attitudes toward defense spending, the United States and NATO priorities. There is a palpable and growing fault line between East and West Europe on defense matters that does not bode well for NATO. There is also a huge gulf in attitudes toward migration. Western Europeans cite the easterners’s refusal to take any migrants as a sign of lack of solidarity, populist prejudice and perhaps racism. The easterners respond that nobody asked their views on opening the borders and point out the failure of western societies to integrate the migrants as a reason to not rush into this experiment. They point out that Muslims that have lived for decades in Europe, yet nonetheless voted for the Islamist dictator Erdogan in much greater numbers than their fellow Turks at home. There are also spiking numbers of migrant crimes and sexual assaults. There is another powerful reason for Eastern Europe’s reluctance to accept Muslim refugees that is seldom discussed, though it is important and it has to do with the region’s historical experience with Muslims. Very few in Western Europe are aware of it, but every child in Poland knows that Jan Sobieski saved Europe and Christendom from the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683. They also know that much of Eastern Europe, including the Balkans, Hungary, Podolia in Poland, Wallachia and Moldavia were for centuries under the Ottomans and subject to infidel taxes, rapacious military levies, the boy tribute, and the depredations of the slave raiders. It was not a happy experience and many historians trace the backwardness of Eastern Europe compared to the rest of it to its unfortunate experience with Muslim obscurantism. Not an experience that is easily forgotten. Alex Alexiev is chairman of the Center for Balkan and Black Sea Studies (cbbss.org) and editor of bulgariaanalytica.org. He tweets on national security at twitter.com/alexieff and could be reached at alexievalex4@gmail.com.NEW DELHI: Subscribers of Bharti Airtel in Mumbai will have a better calling experience in terms of call quality and faster connection after the market leader launched its voice over LTE VoLTE ) calling services in the city, taking on bitter rival Reliance Jio at its own game.The Sunil Mittal-led market leader is the first of the established telecom carriers to adopt the technology, and now plans to rapidly expand the VoLTE calling service across all its major geographies.Analysts say through its own VoLTE services, Airtel can bring down its cost per minute besides ringfencing its subscriber base amid a fierce price war for the market share. Mukesh Ambani-led Jio — with around 130 million users — was the first telecom operator offering VoLTE calling and has been touting that service as a key differentiator with its rivals.“With the VoLTE compatible device ecosystem beginning to mature, we believe it’s the right time to enable VoLTE calling as part of our service portfolio," Abhay Savargaonkar, director-networks at Bharti Airtel, said in a statement Monday. ET was the first to report on Airtel’s VoLTE launch plans in its edition of September 8."Over the next few months, we will rapidly accelerate the deployment of VoLTE to cover all key geographies to bring HD quality calling to our customers. We keenly look forward to our device partners enabling Airtel VoLTE on their smartphones," Savargaonkar added.Airtel plans to expand its VoLTE services across India well before March 2018 end. Analysts say the addressable market has become much larger following a decline in VoLTE smartphone prices in India, thereby the move to launch the VoLTE service makes sense for Airtel.VoLTE, which offers voice in a data format, is gaining in importance, they said, as it can be delivered at a lower cost per minute than traditional voice. About one in every three phones sold in the April-June quarter in India was a VoLTE device, and this share could double by the end of the second quarter of 2018, Counterpoint Research said.According to the firm, close to 200 million 4G VoLTE featurephones could be sold in India in the next five years, providing a major opportunity for carriers to offer their services and handset makers to bring in new customers."With bundling becoming the main pricing strategy, and voice being often bundled as a part of the data package, it is imperative that operators have voice offering, which is cheaper to provision than normal circuit switch voice," said Rohan Dhamija, partner and head for India and South Asia at Analysys Mason."Given that VoLTE has a lower cost per minute than traditional voice, in a scenario where the industry is under tremendous pricing pressure, in due course the importance of VoLTE could increase,” he added.AMMAN (Reuters) - U.S. backed Syrian forces repelled a major counter-attack by Islamic State militants holding out at the country’s largest dam and in the nearby town of Tabqa, the group and activists said on Sunday. FILE PHOTO: A view shows part of the northern part of the Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates River, Syria March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Rodi Said/File Photo The dam is a key strategic target in the military campaign to isolate and capture the Syrian city of Raqqa, 40 km (25 miles) to the east and Islamic State’s biggest urban stronghold. The U.S.-backed group said militants attacked their positions north-east of Tabqa and at an airbase to the south of the town where dozens of their fighters were killed; but the coalition of Kurdish and Arab militias was making slower advances in a village east of the town. Jehan Sheikh Ahmad, a spokeswoman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spearheaded by the powerful Kurdish YPG militia, said the militants were stepping up their resistance as SDF forces got closer to encircling the town and the dam. “Our forces are advancing...(Islamic State )are facing large difficulties and so they are starting counter-attacks,” said the official whose forces have U.S. special forces with them. The SDF began an assault to capture the dam and the nearby town almost two weeks ago after the coalition landed some of its fighters on the southern side of the Euphrates near Tabqa, leading to its capture of an air base. The SDF has been waging a multi-phased offensive since November to isolate Raqqa, with backing from the U.S.-led coalition taking territory to the north and east of the province. FEAR OF COLLAPSE Hundreds of families with their cattle, property, motor bikes and vans continued on Sunday to flee from villages under Islamic State control. The U.S.-backed forces say at least 7,000 people have taken shelter in their areas since the campaign to capture Tabqa. Many are also fleeing air strikes on civilian areas in Raqqa province that have left dozens dead according to activists and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Last month strikes believed to be conducted by the U.S.-led coalition hit a bakery and a local market in Tabqa town with dozens of civilians killed. Another raid that hit a school sheltering displaced people near Raqqa also killed scores. SDF denies civilians are targeted. Islamic State and the Syrian government have both said the hydroelectric dam is vulnerable to collapse after strikes by the U.S. led coalition FILE PHOTO: A view shows part of the northern part of the Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates river, Syria March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Rodi Said/File Photo Syrian officials say that would lead to catastrophic flooding in the cities and towns in the Euphrates valley downstream. The SDF and the coalition have denied the dam is in danger. Residents, however, say an SDF attempt last week to relieve the dam’s water levels by opening a canal from the Balikh River that flows into the Euphrates had flooded cultivated agricultural land in several villages.A mixed martial arts fighter, Donovan Duran, was left paralyzed from the chest down as a result of encounter with police. His family called police to report Duran being drunk and acting paranoid. He was detained and handcuffed by police outside his father’s home. Police attacked the fighter as he was getting out of the police car. Duran was cooperative when was body slammed into the parking lot pavement. As a result, he hit the pavement with the head, crushing his spinal cord. The officers then dragged Duran toward the hospital, placed the fighter in a wheelchair, who immediately slumped over his knees motionless. Duran was moved to a bed and restrained. He was never charged, but his whole life was ruined as he suffered a fractured neck, which made him unable to walk. Duran’s attorneys filed a federal lawsuit Monday in Denver against the city of La Junta and Fraker seeking unspecified damages for Duran’s injuries.Picture this. You've just finished watching one of the awesome videos from our revamped and reinvigorated Android Police YouTube channel — What?! You haven't subscribed to our channel yet? You're really missing out, go do it now and come back, I'll wait while you get sucked in and watch all our cool new videos... Where was I? Oh yeah, so you've just finished watching Android Police and you just know there are a few friends who will love that video just as much as you do. So you tap to share and you start wondering whether you'll send the link over Hangouts, WhatsApp, email, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or any other form of communication that you use. But what if there was an easier way that was available directly inside YouTube, no third parties necessary? That'd be faster and easier, wouldn't it? This is what we're here to talk about. Or, if you prefer to watch us talk about YouTube, you can do that on YouTube with Mark Burstiner in the video below. Over the past few days, we have been getting tips about a new YouTube tab that was showing up for some users on Android and that seemed to add an in-app messenger-like feature for shared videos. When we reported the news yesterday, the option was still not working well, throwing blank screens and random errors, but we've since gotten our hands on it and found those quirks mostly ironed out. So what is this newfangled YouTube tab and how does it work? First things first: the new Shared Videos tab might show up spontaneously on your device, but your best bet to get it working is to receive an invite from someone who already has it. For me, that was Artem. For Artem, it was an anonymous philanthropist. After accepting the invitation to start sharing videos, the tab might not show up instantly inside the app. I had to close YouTube and re-open it and voilà, there was a new icon for the shared videos section. Thanks blurry person! Once that new fourth tab shows up, you're in for an interesting ride. The shared videos functionality seems very mature and quite well thought out from our time with it so far. A lot of obvious options have been implemented, as well as several nice additions that really improve the experience. Here's what you should expect once it goes live. All of your conversations show up in the shared videos tab, but you can still tap View contacts to see a list of other people you might know (probably from your Google+ Circles or Google Contacts) and whom you can invite immediately. You can also send an invite to anyone else by generating a long code to share through any app of your choice. Try guessing the rest of that looooooong invite link and you might just get in. Oh the torture! There are a few things to keep in mind though when inviting new contacts. One is that they have to tap that link on Android or iOS because if they do so on a desktop computer, they'll just get the error message below. (That doesn't mean that YouTube shared videos won't ever be available on the desktop, but that they're likely limited to mobile now.) And two is that anyone who wants to use the feature has to have a YouTube channel, which is sort of annoying. Thankfully, the app will suggest creating one right away and then will let you in on the conversation. As for what the conversations are right now, they feel like a limited messenger built around YouTube videos. Obviously. You can type regular texts or emojis, but the icon you're most likely to use is the Add video one in the right corner of the text entry box. This surfaces a list of your recent YouTube searches, after which you'll get to send any video from the results. Artem likes Jimmy Kimmel whereas I'm living in the Eurovision bubble. Anyone can react to a shared video or message by tapping that heart icon on the right. The first time you try to do that, you'll get asked to confirm that you don't mind others seeing your loved videos. That's cool because you may not want to tell a huge group of people that you're a big cat person who never likes puppy videos. Messages that have been liked by others, such as Artem's "Zomg" in the screenshot above, show a heart icon with a count number and tapping that reveals who really liked the message/video. Artem likes what Artem says. Each conversation offers a couple of different options, among which is the choice to play videos automatically as you scroll (always, never, or only on Wi-Fi), leave the chat, mute all notifications from it, and view and add participants. The list of participants offers you the choice to add users if they're not in your YouTube contacts yet. You can also invite new people to the chat from your existing contacts or from those you may know. That ends our tour of the new shared videos tab, but there's one more way for you to send YouTube videos through the app. Instead of opening a chat first then searching and inserting a video, you can do it organically through the Share option while watching any YouTube video. You'll get a list of your recent conversations and existing contacts and you can even multiple select those to instantly create a new group chat. As you can see, a lot of thought has gone into creating this new shared videos experience inside YouTube. One-on-one and group chats are already functional, invites are possible for existing and new contacts, videos and text are both supported, autoplay options are included, and sharing can either be done inside a chat or while watching a video on YouTube. There are a few privacy pop-ups in place for group sharing and likes, and the options to leave or mute chats are there if you get bored. There's even Chromecast support, which you don't see in my screenshots because I wasn't near my Chromecast when I took them. Regardless of what you think of it and the redundancy of the messaging aspect with so many of Google's own social ventures (Hangouts, Google+, Messenger, and so on), this is now the fastest and easiest way to share and watch YouTube videos together on our phones, and we love its simplicity and execution.Saga 40 JetForce Avalanche Airbag Pack is rated 4.5 out of 5 by 30. Rated 5 out of 5 by Doogie Howser from Best pack ever! I bought this pack for patrolling and back country excursions. Lightweight, able to use for several deployments without recharging. Great space and pockets. Rated 5 out of 5 by Arroyo from Plenty of room in a slim profile. I stalled on buying this bag for a long time. I was mostly concerned with the real feasibility of using it as an overnight bag, and its fully loaded weight. Every review and video I came across seemed to focus entirly on the airbag method and deployment, not on the actual functionality of the bag. I hope this helps! SIZE: I was able to fit all needed overnight gear INSIDE the bag (see photos.. sleeping Bag, repairkit, first aid kit, snowsafty, snowstudy, food, clothes, skins, water sleeping pad, cooking equipment snacks..ect ) with the exception of some awkard tentpoles. There was room for some smaller items if needed, and I still had room to pack skins in for descents. WEIGHT: Though the pack is kinda heavy to start the carry system is impressive and the weight was not felt on a 10 mile Montana style tour with a lot of ups and down, crawling over logs, bridges ect. FUNCTIONALITY: The pack has everything that most good bags come with these days, back acess(huge bonus) hip pocket for quick acess to inclinometer, sugary treats, ect., swing arms for balance, large goggle/snowstudy top pocket, ice axe compatibility, helmet mount that connects to bottem to allowing for snow safty access quickly. The list goes on. Overall I am pleased with this bag. It IS large enough to be used on multiday trips and small enough to be used on day tours. Rated 5 out of 5 by Turner from Best In Industry This is the backpack. Extremely well thought out pack features with the industry standard in airbag design. The charging of the batteries is easy and packing/repacking is quick. Really durable zippers and I also love the hidden pockets all over the pack like the hip belt pockets. Avy tools pocket holds even the biggest Black Diamond shovel (evac 9) and has extremely easy access. I have used this on hut trips, ski competitions, day to day backcountry tours etc. If you are on the fence with size, get the Saga 40. Amazing product. Rated 4 out of 5 by Jorge from great bag and even better customer support BD-USA. The battery needs some care, keep it charge as it is a litium one. Besides that a very well made pack. The best in this category. Rated 4 out of 5 by Juampi from comfortable and functional pack Used it only a couple of times and found it quite comfortable for its weight. Rated 4 out of 5 by Lewi from I'm just not sure! As the title says...I'm just not sure. I bought the S/M, I'm 5'7", 185lb and the fit is great. I bought it from REI and got sent the M/L by mistake which I tried but it felt like it was moving around too much so thankfully REI swapped it out for the S/M no questions asked. I moved to this bag from an older Snowpulse Guide 30 as I wanted a bigger pack for hut trips and I liked the idea of the fan system. Why am I not sure? For a day tour in the main compartment I carry a down layer, water bottle, Minimal food, skins, Ski crampons and there is not a lot of room left over. Not sure how I would fit gear in it to be honest for an overnighter and furthermore, there are minimal points on the outside to attach anything too. That being said the goggle pocket is a good size for extra gear. The other negative is the weight. At this point I'm leaning towards moving back to a removable cartridge system that I can move between packs for day tours or hut trips. Rated 5 out of 5 by Cory from The airbag pack to have! I've skied with the 40L avalung pack for years. This is a wise upgrade. slightly smaller feeling than my other 40L, but still works well. Love the way the openings for pack access work. Especially the back access panel, which lets me lay the pack down in a way to keep the back dry, and being able to access anywhere inside. (More or less) Same weight (again more or less) as a 40ish L cylinder air bag pack. Except this one has many charges. So if you start a hut trip, accidentally blow the charge, you still have many more! Plus no problem flying. No need to find a charging spot, saving time and money. I have found only one time the indicator lights showed me an error. The way I reset it was to open the battery pocket. Pull the battery out. Loosen two screws to disconnect the battery. Then put back together. All works perfectly!October 2014 EARTH One major volcanic eruption could make Japan “extinct,” a study by experts at Kobe University warns, although the chances of that happening are relatively slim. The study, by Prof. Yoshiyuki Tatsumi and Associate Prof. Keiko Suzuki, concludes that the chance of a big eruption that would disrupt the lives of everyone in Japan are about 1% over the next 100 years. The researchers based their findings on the cycles and impacts of major eruptions in Japan on the study of the Aira Caldera near what is now the city of Kagoshima on southern Kyushu island. The caldera was created 28,000 years ago and has a diameter of 20 kilometers. If a similar eruption were to take place in the area today, within about two hours the flow of molten rock, lava and ash would cover an area in which seven million now live. A large amount of ash would be carried across the country, shutting down transportation and other key systems, disrupting the lives of nearly 120 million people, or almost everyone in Japan.Where does 'up north' begin for Wisconsinites? Draw your own line Wisconsinites don't agree when it comes to defining where "up north" begins. We learned that with a recent Facebook poll that used six state highways as the borderline. More than 6,000 people cast votes, and the winner was the area above Highway 8, which stretches from Barron, east through Tomahawk to the Upper Peninsula just south of Iron Mountain. But many commenters said our poll was flawed because it didn't include the option of voting for Highway 29, a four-laner a bit farther south of Highway 8 that stretches from Chippewa Falls to Green Bay. With that in mind, and summer vacation season in full swing, we're giving this a second try. Our new "up north" map lets readers draw their own line.Pham, a straight woman and single mother, said her gay friends inspired her to display the rainbow flag and lights with pride. “Since it’s Christmas, let’s come up with some lights,” said Pham. Her lights and flag led to controversy. When her gay pride flag fell down, an anonymous resident left a handwritten note urging her to put it back up. Meanwhile, Pham says others have driven by and yelled racial slurs. She was notified by her homeowners’ association that some of her neighbors wanted the flag to be taken down, she said. One neighbor wrote to the homeowners’ association asking “is the gay pride display protected by free speech rights?” The letter went on to say that “neighbors are shaking their heads in disgust.” “The flag has two wedding rings interlocked,” another neighbor wrote. “It’s an eyesore.” Pham told KCAL9′s Stacey Butler she was accused of making an offensive political statement that was “in your face” to neighboring residents. When someone started placing offensive fliers on her car, she filed a complaint with the Anti-Defamation League. The homeowners’ association reportedly wrote to the neighbors saying that they could not stop Pham from displaying the flag. None of those who objected were willing to speak on camera. Pham says she is asking for one thing this holiday season. “Instead of giving a gift of an item, why don’t you give the gift of kindness,” she said.At his Harlem brownstone a few days before the Gucci controversy, Mr. Day described how his ideas on fashion, business and life in general came to be. “My sense of style came from having holes in my shoes,” he said. “I was in third grade, and I would put cardboard and paper in the bottom of my shoes, but it got to the point where the soles were just gone. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I came home from church one Sunday and told my mother: ‘Ma, my feet are killing me. They hurt so bad.’ I had tears in my eyes. The next day, my older brother Cary said: ‘Come on. We’re going to the Goodwill on 124th Street.’ We got there, and Cary asked me, ‘You see anything you like?’ I picked out a nice pair of shoes on the rack and tried them on. Cary asked me, ‘How do they feel?’ I told him, ‘They feel good.’” Another experience with shoes gave him an understanding of how clothes reflect social status. “My mom bought me a nice pair of split-toe loafers with a tassel,” he said. “This kid from this snobbish family that lived in the brownstone next door to us began to tease me. He said, ‘Lily Day must’ve hit the number, because you got new shoes.’ I got so mad at that kid, because he was right. Every time my mom hit the number, she bought me and my siblings new shoes. But after those experiences, I started to do for myself. I was going through the window.” With a group of other children from the neighborhood, he used to go downtown and break the windows of haberdasheries such as Phil Kronfeld and Fred Leighton.Evolution experiment The long-term experiment is described in detail elsewhere13,46. In brief, twelve populations of E. coli B were started in 1988 and have evolved since under conditions of daily 100-fold dilutions in a minimal medium, DM25, containing 139 μM glucose and 1,700 μM citrate46. The populations undergo ∼6.
’s eyes into this warring world, making us truly involved in Middle-earth, in a way with which I initially struggled in THE LORD OF THE RINGS series. Thanks to these two actors’ performances, this film is for everyone, fans or otherwise. – Screenrelish.com And once again Richard Armitage is a powerful presence, with Thorin’s journey both touching and heartbreaking. – ign.com If all those names are so much gibberish, “Five Armies” is likely to leave you cold. But the cast, especially Armitage and Bloom, play it all like Shakespearean historical drama, which helps overcome some of the baked-in twee-ness. Also of aid there is Freeman’s wry performance as Bilbo. – nydailynews.com In a film with universally strong performances and one that is supposed to focus on the titular Hobbit, the now complete trilogy is dominated by the mesmerising presence of Richard Armitage’s Thorin Oakenshield, whose story arc finally sees the heroic leader get his big moments in the spotlight. I really can’t say enough good things about Armitage’s work here – from the moment he first arrived in Bag End he managed to immediately capture what makes Thorin such a compelling and charismatic leader and his work in The Battle Of The Five Armies is excellent. – Denofgeek.com Remember how it was mentioned earlier that the hobbits were the emotional core of the original trilogy of films? Jackson has tried time and again to provide the dwarves with a similar function, but their large quantity has often made many indecipherable from one another. And yet this is the story in which Thorin Oakenshield is finally the centerpiece of the narrative and helps to put the film back on its feet. There were seeds of his selfishness planted in earlier films, but they finally bear dramatic fruit in this one. His lust for power has turned him into a violent monster who distrusts his own kin and is obsessed with finding the infamous Arkenstone. Richard Armitage, who plays Thorin, continues to steal the show as the omnipotent and omnipresent dwarf. One must forgive some of the exaggerated speech (unfortunately Jackson, who was solid at using slow-motion technique in his first trilogy for poetic depiction, has overstepped the boundaries of indulgence at times) in which he tells Bilbo of his desire to destroy the traitor because it is the only pitfall in his performance. Once he eventually goes through his emotional trial and reaches his epiphany, Thorin retains the heroic stature that made him the trilogy’s true hero. – latinpost.com However, it’s Thorin’s movie, as Richard Armitage takes his Dwarf king character to the edge of madness. With the “Dragon Sickness” that plagued his grandfather taking hold, Thorin is a danger to everyone under his rule, yet Armitage never allows him to become a monster, allowing glimpses of the good man he was before to shine through. – gamesradar.com As a bonus, “Armies” is armed with one of the best performances in the entire Jackson Middle-earth series, and that’s saying a lot when the cast includes Cate Blanchett and Ian McKellen. As Dwarf Lord Thorin Oakenshield, Richard Armitage perfectly embodies one of Tolkien’s steady themes about man’s eternal war with his own inner demons. Even when the showy director can’t restrain himself and allows that epic battle sequence to run on too long, Armitage’s performance brings the film back to its classic literary firmament. He taps into his character’s “dragon-sickness” — coveting riches at the expense of the soul — and does it with a mad glint in his eye one instance, a conflicted expression the next. His performance is a highlight, as is the presence of Martin Freeman, whose hobbit Bilbo Baggins feels the tug of his own dark side. And, yes, “Ring” veterans Blanchett, McKellen and Christopher Lee contribute as well. – mercurynews.com The cast, including Ian McKellen and Richard Armitage are great. – huffingtonpost.co.uk Nonetheless, it’s Bilbo and Thorin’s increasingly fraught and intimate relationship that stands head and shoulders above everything else in The Battle of the Five Armies, Freeman and Armitage both doing their most wrenching work in the series yet. There’s no standout sequence here to rival either Bilbo and Gollum’s game of riddles from An Unexpected Journey, or Bilbo and Smaug’s showdown from Desolation, but instead we get the utterly compelling, quasi-Shakespearean tragedy of Thorin’s arc. (…) With comparatively few characters in whom you’re really invested, The Hobbit was always going to struggle for an emotionally cohesive payoff, and it’s thanks only to Freeman and Armitage that the climax plays as poignantly as it does. – digitalspy.co.uk Richard Armitage delivered an intense and commanding performance as Thorin Oakenshield, and is arguably the true star of the film. Armitage was also very skillful at portraying the subtle and the heightened aspects of Thorin’s internal struggles. But with Thorin being the star of the film, this also means that Bilbo Baggins plays more of a secondary role (in a film that’s named after him). This is unfortunate since Freeman’s sympathetic and caring Bilbo Baggins delivers much of the touching moments in the film. – nerdreactor.com Without Bilbo’s journey, there is no story, and Freeman has let us into that journey with exceptional skill and subtlety. Around him Richard Armitage (especially) and co have been flawless, but Freeman, in his quiet, measured, unfussy way, has been a masterclass – stuff.co.nz The tragic figure here is the Dwarf king Thorin (a splendidly conflicted Richard Armitage) who, having recaptured his people’s ancestral cave of gold, is tainted and maddened by it. – time.com Though they’re both good actors with a gift for subtlety and pathos, Freeman and Armitage are a bit swallowed up by the action surrounding them, only really allowed to shine near Battle’s end once the warring ceases and their characters’ bond is finally allowed to be addressed. In truth, Thorin is Battle’s main character with the greater arc: Early on in Battle, the noble Dwarf succumbs to madness, his lust to keep all of Erebor’s gold prompting him to declare war on Middle-earth’s other tribes, even those who are the Dwarves’ comrades. Thorin’s eventual change of heart may be simplistically dramatised, but Armitage gives it a punch, showing us how a good Dwarf can let greed temporarily blind him. – screendaily.com There are bright spots. Christopher Lee doing Kung Fu is great, and the last third is rescued by a crumbling citadel set-piece…When the dwarf leader Thorin (Richard Armitage) imagines drowning in molten gold, Jackson’s pet message that Greed is Bad resounds. At 6ft 2in, Armitage must be the tallest actor ever to play a dwarf. – Daily Telegraph Richard Armitage is perhaps the best thing about ‘The Battle of the Five Armies’. He’s utterly brilliant as Thorin and the way in which he plays the character is tremendous. – derryjournal.com Maddened by greed, the dwarf king Thorin (Richard Armitage, a dramatic standout in all three films) refuses to honor agreements to share his treasure with his elvish and human allies. – Chicago Sun Times It’s not entirely without merit, as there are a handful of standout moments – the Dol Guldur battle springs to mind, along with some notable performances from Richard Armitage and Ian McKellen – hollywoodnews.com In the series as a whole and in this movie, Armitage provides fine work. As the stoic and increasingly mad Thorin, he is ever compelling. – News-herald.com Of course, some things about the film work. Freeman, McKellen and Armitage do their best and their best is excellent. – Standard.co.uk The real standout is undoubtedly Richard Armitage. His portrayal of Thorin, as he descends into madness, provides a real gravitas to this final chapter. There is real depth to his character’s story that is brought out beautifully. – atolkienistperspective.wordpress.com Martin Freeman as Bilbo is as charmingly aloof and plucky as ever, but he’s (somewhat awkwardly) replaced as the protagonist by Richard Armitage’s Thorin, who has the most well-defined character arc of the many players in Battle of the Five Armies. The two actors not only play their respective parts well, their scenes together are, by far, the most engaging when it comes to the non-action-driven material. Battle of the Five Armies doesn’t have a huge “heart,” but the one it does posses comes from the Bilbo/Thorin relationship. – screenrant.com Jackson also carves out some more room for Armitage to show what the dwarf king is made of. With the actor’s flare for making dark, brooding introspection magnetic, Thorin’s battle with himself and his legacy is by far the film’s most interesting fight. – latimes.com And while the entire cast turn in a wonderful range of colourful performances, it is the core relationship between Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and Thorin (Richard Armitage) that the film offers a welcomed sense of realism and emotional weight amongst the fractured narrative and countless battle sequences. (…) Opposite Freeman is Richard Armitage, who offers his best performance in the trilogy, perfectly conveying Thorin’s intoxicating sickness and greed, but never overplaying it – something I feel plagued his performance on occasion in the previous offerings. His character arc comes to a head where every nuance of emotion and realisation is felt in his heart rendering final act. – moviereviewworld.com This review has been negative so far but there are positives. The cast is still game and continues with Armitage being an excellent Thorin as he becomes an irrational, paranoid figure. Martin Freeman is given more time as Bilbo Baggins and the movie refocuses on the relationship between Bilbo and Thorin, swinging from respect and friendship to animosity. – entertainmentfuse.com On the other side of the wall, Richard Armitage’s Thorin is more interesting than ever, glowering through hallucinatory sequences that illustrate how much of a hold the treasure has on him. Armitage is unafraid to take the character to dark places, repelling his friends with his Arkenstone obsession and his paranoia. It’s to the film’s credit that you’re not sure if he’ll be able to pull himself out of the spell; we may have never really been invested in him the way we were with Aragorn or any LOTR character, but this final film goes a long way to humanize (dwarvenize?) him, and the conclusion of his arc is entirely earned. – screenfellows.com Watching Thorin succumb to the dragon sickness and turn his back on his dwarves, Bilbo, and those who helped them reclaim his throne is powerful in relating the troubles of greed and its affects on those who hold power over others. Richard Armitage does a fine job recreating Thorin’s madness and the destruction and death it brings to those around him, making you feel for him and want him to be a better dwarf than he is because you know he has the ability to redeem himself. His scenes with Martin Freeman (Bilbo) are definitely the most touching, and they honor the rocky relationship these two characters have in the book perfectly. – entertainmentbuddha.com To be fair, The Battle of the Five Armies does have some beautiful shots and moments where the glory we’ve seen Jackson bring to Middle Earth before can be glimpsed. Freeman remains a delightful Bilbo, we’re treated to a heavier helping of Lee Pace (always a good thing) and Richard Armitage does great work with Thorin’s arc. – examiner.com AdvertisementsGreek Life at the College of William and Mary will see some significant changes in 2016, with the reestablishment of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity this spring semester and of the Phi Mu sorority in the fall. Recruiters from the national Phi Kappa Tau organization have been on campus reaching out to unaffiliated men to reestablish the Alpha Theta chapter after several months of communication with the administration. New member bids for the fraternity were extended this past Thursday, but total membership numbers will not be known until Feb. 17 when bids are formally accepted. In a vote held this past Sunday, the Panhellenic council voted unanimously to extend the opportunity to return to campus to the Gamma Alpha chapter of Phi Mu, and the national organization is expected to bring its recruiters to campus this fall. Both organizations have a long history at the College, with Phi Kappa Tau established in 1926. The Phi Kappa Tau chapter at the College had its national charter revoked in February 2012, in response to a string of reported hazing incidents. The National Council shut down the College’s chapter of Phi Mu in May 2013 because of declining membership. Both chapters now have the opportunity to start over at the College. “There was … a waiting period to let the former members of the chapter either graduate or leave our school, in order that they could start fresh here,” Interfraternity Council President Seroja Boyakhchian ’17 said. Phi Mu’s return in the fall follows a similar reasoning. “They asked us when they left what would be our feasible timeline, and the Panhellenic at the time agreed on fall of 2016,” Panhellenic Council President Kendall Carter ’17 said. “That way all of the people who were in Phi Mu at that time would have graduated by this time.” The process to decide to reestablish a chapter differs for fraternities and sororities. The Interfraternity Council is not involved with the decision to allow a chapter back. “When a chapter leaves our campus and they have some sort of agreement with the administration as to when they’ll come back, that’s entirely up to the school and the national organization,” Boyakhchian said. The Panhellenic Council, however, is more closely involved with the decision to bring a sorority back. The Council had originally established a timeline in 2012 for Phi Mu’s return, held a vote again in 2013 to confirm they still supported that original timeline, and held the final vote this past Sunday. According to Carter, the process is thorough to ensure the sorority’s success. “We’ve had a lot of very in-depth conversations, and people are looking at a lot of different facets of this,” Carter said. “They really want to make sure that Phi Mu will be successful, and they’re a lot of people involved in this obviously, because they want to make sure it’s going to be good for their members, Phi Mu’s members, and the William and Mary community.” With the establishment of a new chapter comes a unique set of challenges. It’s difficult for any new student organization to start up on campus. For Phi Tau specifically, there are a lot of established fraternities on campus who already have their established membership, and it’s easier for students to connect with other students. — Interfraternity Council President Seroja Boyakhchian ’17 “It’s difficult for any new student organization to start up on campus,” Boyakhchian said. “For Phi Tau specifically, there are a lot of established fraternities on campus who already have their established membership, and it’s easier for students to connect with other students.” Just as Phi Tau has been recruiting unaffiliated men using national recruiters, the recruitment process for Phi Mu would also be conducted by national Phi Mu recruiters, and would therefore not be a part of formal sorority recruitment. “They are recruiting in a different way and looking at other ways to bring women into the community, so I think that might be a challenge, because it is a different way of recruiting, so people are not necessarily used to it if they’ve gone through formal recruitment in the past,” Carter said. Kyle Rutledge, one of the Phi Kappa Tau national recruiters, said that building up a chapter comes with challenges unique to the College, such as students’ tendency to be heavily focused on academics. “The only challenge, I would say, is presenting the opportunity as not a burden, but something that enhances your college experience,” Rutledge said. “Most William and Mary students are very active and involved, so trying to present something new to add to their plate is kind of a challenge, but that’s the kind of thing we try to get across, that it’s only here to enhance your experience. It’s not here to take away from the academics or your ability to be involved in other clubs; it’s supposed to enhance that and give you more opportunities.” With a new fraternity that literally has no existence yet, there is the opportunity to shape it the way that you want it to be. That’s a great opportunity, I think, for people who feel that they want to create their own community, their own group of people, and shape it the way that they want to. — Interfraternity Council President Seroja Boyakhchian ’17 An advantage offered by new chapters is the opportunity to create a new community that isn’t marred by a prior reputation. “With a new fraternity that literally has no existence yet, there is the opportunity to shape it the way that you want it to be,” Boyakhchian said. “That’s a great opportunity, I think, for people who feel that they want to create their own community, their own group of people, and shape it the way that they want to.” Despite any possible hurdles, Boyakhchian and Carter both said they are optimistic about the new organizations’ futures at the College. “William and Mary Panhellenic is excited for the opportunity to be working with Phi Mu,” Carter said. “Greek life at William and Mary is different because there is this kind of Panhellenic love that’s shared among the chapters, and there really isn’t the kind of inter-sorority tiffs that we see at other schools. I think William and Mary will be open and be welcoming.”2+ So you’ve decided UVic is the school for you and you’re excited to call Victoria your home for the next 4+ years of your life. Congratulations and welcome! Now the next question becomes, where in Victoria will you reside for this journey? Over the course of your degree you’ll likely inhabit various places and coexist with a variety of roommates. Once you start here, make friends, and familiarize yourself with Victoria’s neighbourhoods, sorting out the details of housing becomes easier and much less intimidating. However, such reassurances don’t change the fact that you’ve got to start somewhere; likely with limited knowledge of the area, and potentially—if you’re anything like me—with a nerve-racking hyper-awareness of how few people you know in Victoria. Now that I’m done emulating your fears, let’s move on to the part of the post where I give you advice and tell you that it’s going to be okay. Off campus or on campus? The first decision you need to make in terms of housing is this: off campus or on campus? With on-campus housing applications having recently opened, now is as good a time as any to start thinking about this choice. There are many factors to consider when answering this question, but the best way to approach such a choice is to break it down. After giving a brief overview of the most common housing options, I’m going to compare the pros and cons for you under financial, social and convenience. As a fourth year student who’s lived on campus as a resident and a Community Leader, as well as off campus with friends and strangers, I hope my perspectives can offer you a wide range of considerations on the subject of housing. And in case that’s not enough, I have also collaborated with other students to give you a full range of experiences! Your Options On Campus UVic Residence Services offers a few different styles of on-campus housing: dorm rooms, cluster units, graduate apartments, and family housing. Dormitories and cluster units are the most common housing styles on campus and are the only available option for undergraduate students. Dormitory buildings consist primarily of single rooms as well as some double rooms. Cluster units are apartment-styled housing that consist of four single bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a small common room. See additional descriptions on the features of these housing styles. Family housing options are available on campus for UVic students and their families, with or without children. Which building is best? Students always wonder which building’s best, but there’s no objective answer because there are so many differences between the dorms on campus. For example, while newer buildings seem to be the most desirable, they have smaller rooms than the older buildings. Ultimately, the quality of your experience in residence really has nothing to do with the paint job, the newness of the carpet, or the size of your room. What does affect your experience in residence is the people you’re with. So my recommendation is to choose your building preferences at random and be surprised, or apply for a themed housing option and live near people with whom you share interests. Most people in residence are the same as you in that they know few people in Victoria and are looking to make friends, so you’ll have a good time no matter where you live. “I really liked having a single room because I could have my own space, especially being on a sports team when I had a pretty rigid schedule.” – Rachel “Res for me felt like a summer camp away from home, but instead of learning arts and crafts, we were growing up together, learning how to start off on our own two feet, and having as much fun as possible while doing so.” – Alex “A great transition to living on your own.” – Megan Off Campus Since off-campus housing options include any sort of housing that is not—you guessed it—on campus, they are as numerous as they are diverse. For the most part students live—either alone or with roommates—in houses, suites or apartments. Although rental terms vary, most places are rented monthly or as a part of a longer term lease (often a year). Finding off-campus housing arrangements that suit your unique needs can be a bit time consuming and may require patience, but rest assured that you’ll be able to find a place. Try the following websites to start your search: “For [my] first couple of years at UVic I was living with a Canadian host family off campus so that I [was] able to get to know Victoria faster! For my current and last year of university, I decided to live off campus sharing a basement suite with two other girls to experience living in a different environment.” – Mana Financial Innate to your mere existence as a student, financial considerations carry a fair bit of weight in your decision-making, so let’s cut to the chase and avoid dancing around the subject. Approximate monthly rent costs breakdown as follows: Dormitory on campus ~ see Residence Services website Cluster on campus ~ see website Shared accommodations off campus* ~ approx. $450-$650+ Single accommodations off campus* ~ approx. $750+ *Off-campus housing costs vary depending on location, features, number of bedrooms, etc. These are estimates based on my experience with my own off-campus living expenses and those of friends’ expenses. However, students who choose to live on campus must note that payments for residence fees are not paid monthly, but are paid as instalments as described on the website’s detailed fee schedule. Food costs Dormitory rooms on campus are considerably more expensive than other housing options, but these costs cover meal plan expenses, so when comparing to off-campus options you need to also factor in estimated grocery costs. Grocery costs can be hard to estimate since everyone has different preferences and dietary needs. The best way to budget is to consider what you’d eat in a week, make a list of all ingredients required for your meals, and spend some time in a grocery store copying down prices until you have your estimated weekly grocery bill total. (Tip: try to shop at grocery stores based on weekly deals or loyalty reward discounts to save money; my Save-On-Foods member card has saved me hundreds of dollars on groceries!) Security deposits Another financial consideration worth noting is security deposits. A security deposit is an additional amount of money given to the landlord/property owner before move-in that secures your spot as a tenant. It is often paid at the same time as a contract is signed between you and the landlord. This fee is generally half the cost of one month’s rent and will be given back to you upon move-out and after assessment of the room/apartment. The full amount of the security deposit may not be returned should any damages be found by the landlord or if you break your contract with the landlord without proper advance notice. To avoid any unfair charges related to damage not caused by you, I recommend taking pictures of any damages (such as pushpin holes or paint scratches) upon move-in and sharing these with your landlord. Social Though finances are an important consideration and estimated costs of living off-campus may be more affordable than living on campus, social considerations are also of significant importance. They may ultimately be the most influential factor of your choice to live on or off campus. I lived in residence on campus in my first year at UVic and couldn’t have been happier with my decision. Making friends was as easy as leaving my bedroom door open and writing a friendly message on the door’s whiteboard. The friends I made in my building became like family and were always there for a good laugh or a stressed out cry. Without them my emotional roller-coaster of a first year would not have been as manageable or as memorable as it was. If you’re thinking that residence may not be for you, there’s no need to fear, there are still plenty of ways to make friends at UVic! Join one of the 200+ clubs or 40+ course unions on campus, register for intramurals or a recreation class, volunteer, befriend coworkers at a part-time job, or say hi to someone sitting next to you in class. Orientation programs are also a really great way to meet people! UVic is a very friendly place and you’ll find irreplaceable friends in no time, no matter where you live! “What I loved about being in res was sharing scary and new experiences with people who also were going through the same thing.” – Rachel “I lived on campus because I was new to the city; [I] got sick of the food but the people […] were pretty awesome.” – Tristan “I sort of regret not going to university straight out of high school though, and living in residence, because that’s such a crucial time to make friends!” – Marilyn Convenience The last major piece of the puzzle when comparing the on- and off-campus lifestyles is convenience. Living on campus is definitely more convenient for a number of reasons: You can wake up 20 minutes before class and still manage to pull on some clothes, grab breakfast and be on time for class. Naps. Not having to carry your class/study materials around with you all day. If you live in the dormitories, you have a meal plan so don’t have to grocery shop, meal prep, or wash dishes. Naps. You don’t have to worry about furnishing your room or how you’re going to move a bed across town. (Some places off-campus do come furnished, but not the majority.) You don’t have to worry about what area of Victoria is a good place to rent. If you’re entering your first year of studies directly from high-school you get first-year guaranteed residence! (Double check to make sure you qualify.) “Having the convenience of res was a great first step for moving out of home – not having to worry about paying monthly bills, cooking every meal, and transportation to school in the very beginning made figuring out how to navigate through university easier!” – Rachel “[I] stayed on campus for convenience of travel and to try to force myself to be social. It was also convenient since first years got first dibs and I had never lived alone before. I didn’t like the building I lived in […] but I met some cool people.” – Chelsie Though living off campus may not always be quite as convenient as living on campus, it too has its perks: Victoria is a fairly easy city to get around and many off-campus student housing options are within close walking distance of a direct bus line to campus, or are within comfortable walking/cycling distance to campus. Living further than a few strides away from classes prevents you from going back and forth between campus multiple times a day so you quickly develop better planning & time management skills. When you go home for the day and leave campus it’s easier to relax and feel as if you have a life outside of school (even if you really don’t…). Your move-out date depends on your lease and not your exam schedule. (Residence requires that you vacate your room within 24 hours of your last exam; some exceptions are available.) You get to choose your roommates. You can cook whenever you want to and don’t have to rely on cafeteria hours. Weekends are quiet but you can go out as you please. If you’re from Victoria then you get to reap the benefits of living luxuriously at home with your awesome parents! “In fourth year I stayed with my parents in Langford. Not as convenient in terms of food, travel, and sleep but I was a lot healthier.” – Chelsie The biggest thing to recognize when comparing on campus versus off campus is that there is no single right answer. The best way for you to find your perfect housing fit is to consider what factors are most important to you and then go for it. I’ve done my best to give you a fair comparison between the two options and I hope the information is able to answer many of your questions or reassure your doubts. If you have found this post helpful I encourage you to share it with your friends or anyone you know who may benefit. Please comment below with any comments or questions you may still have about housing on campus versus off campus.Today, the Georgia House of Representatives passed three pro-gun bills. House Bills 280, 406 and 292 now head over to the Senate where they will be referred to a committee and await a hearing. Please contact your state Senator and urge them to SUPPORT these important pro-gun bills. House Bill 280, sponsored by state Representative Mandi Ballinger (R-23), seeks to amend restrictions in state law that prohibit law-abiding Georgia Weapons License (GWL) holders from being able to protect themselves on college and university campuses. HB 280 would allow law-abiding GWL holders to carry when they are in or on certain buildings or real property owned by or leased to any public technical school, vocational school, college, university, or other institution of postsecondary education. House Bill 280 was passed by a 108-63 vote. House Bill 406, sponsored by state Representative Alan Powell (R-32), seeks to amend certain issues with current reciprocity laws in Georgia. This would allow Virginia concealed handgun permit holders to enjoy permit reciprocity with Georgia. House Bill 406 was passed by a 164-7 vote. House Bill 292, sponsored by state Representative Rick Jasperse (R-11), would make several positive and important changes to Georgia gun laws, including: Providing licensees of states with reciprocal agreements with Georgia a 90 day grace period to obtain a GWL while continuing to carry legally using their previous states’ license Prohibiting a probate judge from suspending, extending, delaying, or avoiding the process of approving a GWL application Protecting any firearms instructor who lawfully instructs, educates, or trains a person in the safe, proper, or technical use of a firearm from civil liability for any injuries caused by the failure of such person to use such firearm properly or lawfully Making a code change regarding permit reciprocity. House Bill 292 was passed by a 128-48 vote. Please contact your state Senator and urge them to SUPPORT House Bill 280, House Bill 406, and House Bill 292 when they come up for a vote.A drone created by a French startup to provide information to farmers Photo by ALAIN JOCARD/AFP/Getty Images A new technology is value neutral, but society responds to the first applications that get attention—think of nuclear bombs as the first instance of nuclear technology. Unfortunately, a bad first impression can make it difficult for new technologies to reach their potential when it comes to incorporating them into our daily lives. The excitement around 3-D printing and anxiety around drones are just the latest examples of the two paths here. When 3-D printers first hit the mainstream news, the press and blogosphere regaled us with tales of how anyone would be able to make just about anything in the comforts of their own home. Jay Leno discussed 3-D printing spare parts for his rare-car collection. A 2010 article from the New York Times describing a company promising to print prosthetic limbs would later evolve into the recent reality of 3-D printed organs. When people realized that printing “anything” might include 3-D printed guns, both the government and the public had a mini panic: The State Department rushed to restrict the publication of open-source design files for the gun, and 3-D printer manufacturer Stratsys hired a team to take back the equipment it had leased to the people designing the weapons. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., introduced a bill banning 3-D printed gun magazines and firearms that could evade metal detectors. More recently, a Danish company has created software that could be embedded in 3-D printers to prevent them from printing gun components, although this may be more about reducing printer companies’ liability than effectively stopping a determined weapons maker. But no one called for banning 3-D printers—they just wanted to create a framework for dealing with one particularly troubling application. Even after the 3-D printed gun first caused widespread alarm in late 2012, President Obama praised the technology in his 2013 State of the Union speech, saying, “A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3-D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.” This stands in stark contrast to the surge of efforts to restrict the use of unmanned aerial systems, commonly referred to as drones. Most people’s first exposure to drones has come from stories of targeted strikes in Pakistan and surveillance of insurgents in Iraq. In the public eye, they have become a symbol of the war on terror and a threat to privacy. And because of this association, there has been an increase in calls for restrictions not just on particular applications for drones, but any use of the technology. The most extreme example of this was Oregon’s Senate Bill 71, which would have made it illegal to even own a device capable of capturing aerial imagery. These restrictions on the civilian use of drones keep us from taking full advantage of their many socially beneficial applications. Community organizations, artists, and entrepreneurs are testing out new uses for drones completely different from how they have historically been applied on the battlefield. (I founded a drone user group in Washington, D.C., for exactly this reason.) The most recent issue of Successful Farming magazine features an article on its cover titled “Drones: Look overhead for the latest tool in precision agriculture”—but using UAVs for this or any other commercial application will remain illegal for at least two more years under FAA regulation. With more restrictive legislation passed or being proposed in many states and cities, the wait may be even longer. Of course, other countries are not standing still in this regard. In Japan more than 90 percent of aerial crop spraying is already done with unmanned aerial systems. In America, meanwhile, it’s illegal for Americans to even test these drones, which are lower cost and more environmentally friendly than traditional manned systems. The first uses of a technology often do not end up being the most common. The people who originally developed GPS to guide military equipment around a battlefield could never have guessed that their children would be using that same technology on their smartphones to find restaurants in a new city or to find a date. By focusing our debates about privacy on restricting a particular technology, we may end up with a system that looks as antiquated as attempts in the 1800s to prevent aerial bombing by signing a convention focused on the potential dangers posed by balloons. Once we understand and accept our inability to predict all the ways a new technology might be used, we can focus on creating laws, regulations, and social norms that effectively manage what we think is safe and acceptable in a technology neutral manner while still embracing the full potential of human creativity.It happens all too often: Put a bunch of really smart people in a room, tell them to solve a problem, and watch as they dissolve into blathering idiocy. Okay, maybe it's not all that bad. But we've all seen groups of supposedly smart people who just can't work well together. That's because, according to recent research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon, and Union College, raw smarts doesn't have much to do with team performance. The researchers placed nearly 700 people into groups of between two and five, then gave them problems to solve, such as visual puzzles, games, negotiations, and logical analysis. Here's what they found: Individual smarts doesn't affect performance. The average intelligence of team members wasn't related to team performance. So if you've got a team that's struggling, putting a couple of really smart people on it isn't going to help. The average intelligence of team members wasn't related to team performance So if you've got a team that's struggling, putting a couple of really smart people on it isn't going to help. EQ--emotional intelligence-- is more important than IQ. Good communication and good coordination make teams function well. To get that, you need people who are good at reading and responding to other peoples' emotions. Teams that included even one person with superior skills in this regard had better performance. Good communication and good coordination make teams function well. To get that, you need people who are good at reading and responding to other peoples' emotions. Teams that included even one person with superior skills in this regard had better performance. A'strong' personality hurts performance. Groups where one person dominated the conversation or the decision-making, or where people didn't do as well taking turns, had worse performance. This correlates well with other research that shows'stronger' leaders are often less effective than those who perceive themselves to be less powerful. The researchers found one fairly simple answer: Add women. Women are often perceived to be more socially sensitive, and more communally-minded, than men. To the extent that's true, it's easy to see how it could be helpful in a team context. And in the experiments, the researchers found that teams that included women were more socially-sensitive, and better performing, than then all-male teams. (No word on the performance of all-female teams. I've reached out to the researchers about that, and will update if I hear back.) In
weapon. A few paces down and fleeing the boom of gunfire, his girlfriend, Melissa Butler, turned when she no longer heard him behind her, according to an account provided by a senior police official who was briefed by investigators. Retracing her steps, she found Mr. Gurley, 28, near the fifth-floor landing and rushed to a family friend on the fourth floor of the housing project to call 911. “My neighbor says her boyfriend has been shot,” the friend told the dispatcher, according to the police official, who had viewed the call logs. “Call the cops.” Upstairs, two officers already knew who had fired the shot. A gun in the hand of one young officer, Peter Liang, had gone off one time, the round flying — and possibly ricocheting — down the dark, cinder-block stairway. Within hours of the shooting late Thursday night, the Police Department had conceded a grave error. The mayor and William J. Bratton, the police commissioner, visited the family home on Friday to apologize. New York City criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield has some poignant commentary. He also points out that even though the NYPD admits that the blame here lies entirely with the officer, that didn’t stop the department and some media outlets from noting that the victim has an arrest record. Of course, if you live in New York, just being young, black and male is enough to get you arrested. This undated photo provided by the family’s attorney shows Tamir Rice. Rice, 12, was fatally shot by police in Cleveland after brandishing what turned out to be a replica gun, triggering an investigation into his death and a legislator’s call for such weapons to be brightly colored or bear special markings. (AP Photo/Courtesy Richardson & Kucharski Co., L.P.A.) We then move to Cleveland, for another tragedy. The 12-year-old boy wielding what turned out to be a BB gun when he was shot by police outside a Cleveland recreation center died early Sunday morning, a police union official confirmed. The boy [since identified as Tamir Rice]…was shot in the stomach at Cudell Recreation Center, at Detroit Avenue and West Boulevard, about 3:30 p.m. Saturday, police said... The shooting came after a man at the park adjacent to the rec center called police when he saw “a guy with a gun pointing it at people.” The caller twice said the gun was “probably fake” and told dispatchers the person pulling the gun from his waistband was “probably a juvenile,” according to audio released by police officials late Saturday. The caller’s doubt was never relayed to the responding officers – one in his first year on the force, and the other with at least a decade of experience, Follmer said. The rookie officer saw the boy at a park bench pick up what looked like a gun and placed it in his waistband, Follmer said. The officer ordered the boy to put his hands in the air. Instead, police said, the boy reached for his gun. Deputy Chief Edward Tomba said the boy made no verbal threats to the officer and there was no physical confrontation. The officer fired twice at the boy, hitting him in the stomach at least once. I suppose it could have happened that way. But it’s hard to see why a kid would knowingly reach for a BB gun when confronted by police. Suicide-by-cop seems implausible for a 12-year-old. This incident comes just days after the city of Cleveland agreed to pay $3 million to the families of a couple killed by over 100 rounds of police gunfire after a car chase. Finally, a sobering report from the Salt Lake Tribune. In the past five years, more Utahns have been killed by police than by gang members. Or drug dealers. Or from child abuse. And so far this year, deadly force by police has claimed more lives — 13, including a Saturday shooting in South Jordan — than has violence between spouses and dating partners. As the tally of fatal police shootings rises, law enforcement watchdogs say it is time to treat deadly force as a potentially serious public safety problem. “The numbers reflect that there could be an issue, and it’s going to take a deeper understanding of these shootings,” said Chris Gebhardt, a former police lieutenant and sergeant who served in Washington, D.C., and in Utah, including six years on SWAT teams and several training duties. “It definitely can’t be written off as citizen groups being upset with law enforcement.” Through October, 45 people had been killed by law enforcement officers in Utah since 2010, accounting for 15 percent of all homicides during that period. A Salt Lake Tribune review of nearly 300 homicides, using media reports, state crime statistics, medical-examiner records and court records, shows that use of force by police is the second-most common circumstance under which Utahns kill each other, surpassed only by intimate partner violence. Saturday’s shooting, which occurred after an officer responded to a trespassing call, remains under investigation. Nearly all of the fatal shootings by police have been deemed by county prosecutors to be justified. Only one — the 2012 shooting of Danielle Willard by West Valley City police — was deemed unjustified, and the subsequent criminal charge was thrown out last month by a judge. The report also looks into police training, and finds that while academy cadets in Utah do get some instruction on deescalation and conflict resolution, in much of the state, that’s all they get. The ongoing training for the rest of their careers is more one sided — lots of education pertaining to using force, but little to no guidance on how to avoid the use of force. The good news is that there is an interesting and so far somewhat successful police reform movement currently underway in Utah.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard During an interview on Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace called out Republican presdential candidate Ted Cruz for lying about Obamacare and President Obama’s record on jobs. Video: Transcript via Fox News Sunday: WALLACE: But, Senator, the fact checkers say you’re wrong. Since that law went into effect, the unemployment rate fell from 9.9 percent to 5 percent, as 13 million new jobs were created and 16.3 million people who were previously uninsured now have coverage. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of problems with Obamacare. But more people have jobs and health insurance than they did before Obamacare. CRUZ: Chris, the media fact checkers are not fair and impartial. They are liberal, editorial journalists. And they have made it their mission to defend Obamacare. (CROSSTALK) WALLACE: There’s certainly no question that more people have jobs and more people have health insurance coverage. CRUZ: Yes, there is question. Number one, we have the lowest percentage of Americans working today of any year since 1977. That’s fact. They focused on — WALLACE: But there are 13 million jobs created, sir. That’s a fact. CRUZ: The fact is that from 2008 to today, we’ve seen economic growth of 1.2 percent on average. (CROSSTALK) CRUZ: Chris, don’t interrupt me. I’ll give an answer — WALLACE: That’s changing the subject. CRUZ: No. WALLACE: Thirteen million new jobs have been created. CRUZ: And that is a historically slow rate of job creation if you look at what has occurred in any previous year. You know, Obama is the first president ever to have a year of 3 percent economic growth. Millions of people in this country are hurting. Ted Cruz was lying again. The Bush administration created 3 million jobs in eight years. Bush created an average of 375,000 jobs a year while in office and his presidency was a net jobs loser. The net economic growth under George W. Bush was 1.6%. Even Fox News, a network that is built on avoiding facts and reality, challenged Cruz on his Obamacare lies. The question is why would they go after Cruz? It has been clear since the first Republican debate that Fox News does not want Ted Cruz or Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee. Fox has spent months talking up Sen. Marco Rubio. Ted Cruz has had an awful few weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses. Donald Trump has successfully gone full birther on him, Rubio attacked him for being a hypocrite on immigration, revelations about loans for Goldman Sachs and a less than stellar debate performance have combined to hit Cruz right in the poll numbers. Fox smells blood in the water, so they are doing their part to paint Cruz as unelectable and out of touch with reality. It is good to know that Ted Cruz views facts as a liberal conspiracy, but his run of bad luck continues as Fox News is actively trying to kill his presidential campaign. 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:Former agriculture minister and interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich resigned on Friday after it emerged he passed on information about a child porn investigation, allegedly involving centre-left Social Democrat (SPD) politician Sebastian Edathy. Friedrich, from Chancellor Angela Merkel's centre-right party the Christian Social Union (CSU), told the SPD chairman, Sigmar Gabriel, about the investigation and Edathy’s name allegedly being mentioned in it. Political opponants have accused him of therefore breaching confidentiality. Christian Schmidt (CSU), parliamentary state secretary for the development ministry, will replace Friedrich as agriculture minister, it was announced on Monday. But Schmidt’s appointment has not eased tension between the centre-right Union and the centre-left SPD. The CSU is bitter that one of its ministers has resigned over a case affecting the SPD and it has demanded an explanation from the Social Democrat’s parliamentary leader. A planned coalition committee meeting on Tuesday between the SPD and Union has been cancelled. Instead the three leaders of the SPD, CDU and its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) will meet in Berlin to discuss the Edathy case, in what the German press described on Monday as an “emergency summit”. A press conference being held by the SPD on Monday afternoon will also no longer be led by the party’s secretary general, Yasmin Fahimi, but by SPD leader and Germany’s vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel. The CSU appears to be reserving its fiercest criticism for the SPD’s parliamentary leader Thomas Oppermann who was told by Gabriel about the affair. The information about Edathy was shared by Friedrich and given to Gabriel in October 2013 to apparently stop rising star Edathy getting a top job in the coalition government. 'Publicizing confidential agreements' Oppermann revealed last week that the SPD leadership had known since October that one of their politicians was allegedly the subject of a child porn investigation. He also said he held a telephone conversation in October with the head of the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA), Jörg Ziercke. Spiegel Online reported on Monday that prosecutors are examining whether to investigate Ziercke over a violation of secrecy by reportedly telling Oppermann about the case. Oppermann said on Thursday that he had phoned Ziercke in October to confirm that Edathy was being investigated. But Ziercke disputed Oppermann’s version of events and the SPD politician said on Sunday in the Bild newspaper that the police chief had given him “no details”. CSU transport minister Alexander Dobrindt accused Oppermann of having “publicized confidential agreements.” And on Monday CSU leader Horst Seehofer said Oppermann’s behaviour “demands an explanation”. Seehofer added that the SPD had not satisfactorily answered questions about the scandal such as who knew about the Edathy allegations and when they found out. 'A government crisis' But he added: “It is about working together with trust in the coalition and not about breaking up the coalition.” Der Spiegel magazine said the Edathy affair had become "a government crisis". Meanwhile, head of the parliamentary home affairs committee Wolfgang Bosbach (CDU) also spoke of a “crisis of trust” in an interview with broadcaster ZDF’s morning news programme on Monday. He told the programme the “ball was in the SPD’s court” with regards to rebuilding the shattered trust. Edathy’s home and office were raided last Monday. The state prosecutor in Hannover said on Friday that the case involved photos of naked boys aged between nine and 14 years old, but the 44 year-old denies the allegations. Edathy came to national prominence last year when he chaired the parliamentary investigative committee into the failures of the authorities when investigating the series of murders later attributed to the NSU neo-Nazi terror group. READ MORE: SPD leaders knew about child porn allegationsWhite House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Thursday that no decision has been reached on whether to pardon former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, despite President Trump's openly floating the possibility. Sanders said at a press briefing that a pardon of the 85-year-old immigration hardliner likely would go through a standard Justice Department vetting process, which features review by the Office of the Pardon Attorney and an FBI background check. "I would imagine they go through the thorough and standard process, and when we have an announcement on what that decision is after that is completed, we will let you know," she said, responding to a question about Arpaio. CNN and the conspiracy-minded news site Infowars have reported that paperwork has been prepared for Trump to pardon Arpaio outside the standard process, which requires applicants to wait five years after a conviction before submitting a petition. A Justice Department official told the Washington Examiner after Sanders' remark that the pardon attorney's office has nothing on file for Arpaio, who would have to seek a waiver from the five-year rule if he went through the standard process. Arpaio was convicted of contempt last month for defying a judge's order that his department not arrest suspected illegal immigrants without suspicion that they committed a state crime. He faces a maximum six months in prison when he's sentenced on Oct. 5, but incarceration is not guaranteed. Trump does not need Justice Department review to exercise his constitutional clemency power, which he can use unilaterally. The president initiated intense speculation about an Arpaio pardon earlier this month when he told Fox News he was considering issuing one. At a large rally in Arizona on Tuesday, he openly hinted he would follow through. "I won't do it tonight because I don't want to cause any controversy," Trump said Tuesday. "But Sheriff Joe can feel good." Trump has suggested he may use his pardon power before without following through, though not so boldly. Sanders declined to more describe Trump's pardoning philosophy, saying "I haven't had a specific conversation with him about that, but I know that the White House counsel plays a big role in that." Any act of clemency by Trump, who has been in office 215 days, would break with the recent tradition of early-term stinginess. Former President Barack Obama waited 682 days to use his constitutional clemency power, George W. Bush took 699 days and Bill Clinton waited 672 days.Jake Olson speaks to the media about his emotions after taking the field in the fourth quarter to successfully snap an extra point. (2:07) LOS ANGELES -- Blind long-snapper Jake Olson is officially a letter winner at USC. Following a Trojans touchdown that put Saturday's game against Western Michigan out of reach late in the fourth quarter, Olson came on and snapped for a successful extra point. Western Michigan was aware that Olson was entering the game and did not rush the kick. USC won 49-31. "I loved being out there," Olson said. "It was an awesome feeling, something that I'll remember forever, getting to snap at USC as a football player." Olson was born with retinoblastoma, a form of eye cancer, and he lost his left eye when he was 10 months old. In 2009, at age 12, he learned he needed surgery to remove his right eye, which would completely cost him his vision. Olson developed a close relationship with the USC program at the time and spent the night before his surgery watching USC practice. Trojans long-snapper Jake Olson, right, came on and snapped for a successful extra point late in the fourth quarter Saturday. Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports USC coach Clay Helton was complimentary of Western Michigan coach Tim Lester for signing off on Olson's debut. "Very special moment for us with a very special guy at the end of the game," Helton said. "I commend and I thank Coach Lester and the entire Western Michigan family for the honor of getting what I think is a very special person in Jake Olson in." Olson knew going into the game that if the opportunity presented itself, he might get a chance to snap. The game remained close, however, which made his chances seem unlikely. That changed when Marvell Tell III returned an interception 37 yards for a touchdown with 3:13 left in the fourth quarter, making the score 48-31. Helton asked Olson if he was ready, and he was. "I tried to suppress my emotions as much as I could because I have a job to do, and I wanted to make sure I got that done," Olson said. "Then tonight I can look at videos and get all emotional over it. It was very special, hearing my name being called over the P.A. system." In the stands, his parents, Brian and Cindy, watched with a mix of nervousness and excitement. "I didn't want him to be put in when it was really close," Cindy said. "I was like, 'Don't give him that pressure.' I would be scared, even though he isn't. He went in there like a pro, and it was a great snap." ESPN Staff Writer Here is some cool video of blind long-snapper Jake Olson being embraced by his family coming out of the locker room. Olson officially joined the team in 2015, thanks to a scholarship with the Swim With Mike program, and he has snapped in the past two spring games. He told ESPN last year that his goal was to eventually win the starting job for the Trojans. "I just have to continue to take steps forward until everyone is on board and some of those doubts that I know some coaches have are gone," he said in the spring of 2016. "I'm waiting to have more opportunities to show the coaches that I have the talent to go out there and snap." Olson spent two years as the starting varsity long-snapper on field goals and extra points at Orange Lutheran High in Southern California. Helton said there probably will be more opportunities for Olson to play in the future.The Bird as Symbol in Current Culture I first noticed the bird motif on the pro-ana sites. Girls described wanting to have bird bones, to be feather thin, ’become frail’, to be light as air, be delicate, small, like a shimmering, (starving) sparrow. The bird lust has seeped into other facets of culture, fashion primarily. Bird tats, shirts, golden necklaces on mall teens; over priced frumpy Anthropolgie dresses with hummingbird patterns splayed across the skirt and bodice. The bird, the common bird, not the scavenger vulture or populist pigeon, but the sparrow of all creatures, the frail, dumb, petite beaked thing has been adopted as a hipster talisman, a way to signify delicacy and airiness. It’s gone from collar bone tattoos and into the mainstream. Jonathan Franzen wrote in the NYT that he is a secret bird watcher, which he described as very uncool, which is not true! It is very cool, right now, probably cooler than collecting vinyls and collecting customized moleskin notebooks. Here’s what I despise about the mass bird adoption, it glamorizes frailty. It’s Victorian in its idealization of the dainty and ruffled. Further, especially for women, you are the frailer sex, you are not allowed to operate weapons in combat and if a teenage boy wanted to over power you he probably could. You are also at nature’s mercy, far more so than men. Every month you do battle with this fact as your tits and womb engorge, and you have to pop hormone pills to stave off what nature’s brutal plan is for you and as symbol you choose– a bird? Birds aren’t even mammals. They are cold, indifferent creatures. They are hatched, not born. They are like tiny raptors, eerily reptilian and unfeeling. Look into the eyes of a bird and see if there is anything you remotely recognize in yourself. You wanna pick a spirit animal? Pick one that bleeds, that has hair, FUR! fur like your crotch and your arm pits, and all over your boyfriend’s chest (god willing), pick one that fucks with hip thrusts, and nurses its young from its swollen tits, but still has the ability to tear other creatures to shreds. One that poses some credible threat on the food chain. You are existing in the twilight of an empire. The long standing edifices of authority are disintegrating and in the din of this collapse you choose to identify with a lipless worm eater? Grow up, be a mammal.Microsoft pushed its Windows Azure load balancing technology into general availability amid a widespread DNS disruption. The rollout of "Traffic Manager" was announced on Thursday, and the tech lets admins apply a policy engine to DNS queries to domain names hosted on Azure. The tech works by redirecting user queries to a Traffic Manager domain maintained by Windows Azure Traffic Manager via a CNAME record, which resolves the domain and shuttles the query to the appropriate cloud service. Coincidentally, after announcing the rollout of Traffic Manager, a variety of Microsoft services including Windows Azure and Xbox became unavailable due to an as-yet-unspecified problem with Microsoft's global DNS configuration. Azure big cheese Scott Guthrie has publicly said the problem lay outside Azure. We've pinged Microsoft for more information and will update as and when we hear back. The GA of Traffic Manager sees Microsoft overtake Google and lag behind Amazon in terms of features as Azure doesn't – yet – offer multi-region load balancing, which AWS does via its Route 53 DNS service. "Windows Azure Traffic Manager allows you to control the distribution of user traffic to applications that you host within Windows Azure. Your applications can run in the same data center, or be distributed across different regions across the world," Scott Guthrie wrote in a blog post on Thursday. The tech lets admins shuffle queries to geographically close servers, and can provide an auto-routing capability around downed servers. None of that will help if the global DNS system the tech itself may utilize is down, mind. ®Story highlights Arrest made near scene of last month's terror attack Man was arrested in 'ongoing operation,' police say London (CNN) UK police have foiled another suspected terror attack in London, arresting a man carrying knives near the British parliament. Armed officers from the Metropolitan Police's counter-terrorism command unit swooped on the suspect Thursday, as part of an "ongoing operation." The 27-year-old man was arrested at 2.22pm, a few meters from the scene of a terror attack last month that left four people and the attacker dead. Witnesses said the man was pinned to the ground on Parliament Street, within sight of the Houses of Parliament and an array of British government buildings. Downing Street, the official residence of the British Prime Minister, is a few minutes' walk away. Firearms officers pin the suspect on the ground outside the Westminister undergound train station. Forensics officers examined the scene outside the London Underground station at Westminster and recovered the suspect's backpack and at least two knives. Read MoreIt’s not just Harvard. Here's a look inside college meme culture A picture of a generic commuter bus speeding down a D.C. street is currently the most liked meme in George Washington University's “GW memes for the most politically active teens” Facebook group. It says: Bae: Come home Me: I can’t I’m on the Vern Bae: My roommates aren’t home Me: [photo of speeding bus] https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10209152357391041&set=gm.1398253673551780&type=3&theater To an outsider, it really doesn’t make that that much sense — What’s the Vern? -- but to the 1,100 students who liked and shared it, it’s a slice of their college life in a nutshell. It’s #relatable. College-centric meme groups are a subset of the larger internet meme culture that exists on online forums like Reddit and Tumblr. Typical memes in these groups chronicle student life and create social commentary on everything from crippling student loan debt to university politics and school rivalries. As meme groups spring up and grow at elite universities, they're changing college culture in unprecedented ways. College students are using memes to relieve stress online, but they can cause trouble when they take a offensive or inappropriate turn, as 10 Harvard admits just learned the hard way when their admissions were rescinded after unsavory posts in a private meme group were revealed. “I’m not even sure I’d call it a subculture anymore — it’s so pervasive and almost everyone on campus is in these groups,” Ephraim Sutherland, founder of Yale’s meme group told USA TODAY College. “It’s mainstream.” Inception and expansion These student-driven meme groups have grown online since late 2016, when UC Berkeley’s Facebook group “UC Berkeley Memes for Edgy Teens” gained traction with thousands of college students — including scores who don’t even attend the university. The group has over 95,000 members, while UC Berkeley enrollment tops out at 40,000. A viral meme can garner thousands of likes in the group — and sometimes even a sneaky re-post by a rival group. A joke about a tough professor, a favorite college-town bar or a heated school rivalry can unite students around an experience they can all relate to. The Berkeley group was spearheaded by then-junior Chris Tril in May 2016 as an exclusive hub for sharing student-created memes related strictly to Cal culture. An outsider might not understand the language and references of the memes. After all, the “official unofficial” rules prohibit reposting already-existing memes and anything non-Cal related. In a commentary Tril wrote for the Daily Californian, the student UC Berkeley newspaper, in January, he said he created the group after participating in two 4chan boards, hoping to find fellow Cal students who shared his humor. And these groups soon took off at other Ivies and elite universities. Indeed, these groups are most popular among Ivies and baby Ivies: Witness Harvard's Harvard Memes for Elitist 1% Tweens, UCLA's UCLA Memes for Sick AF Tweens, University of Southern California's USC Memes for Spoiled Pre-teens, Duke's Duke Memes for Gothicc Teens, Yale's Yale Memes for Special Snowflake Teens, and more. ‘Wit and originality’ These groups thrive because students need an outlet to express their feelings about college, Sutherland said, especially at elite universities where the pressure to perform is high. “[They] make light of on-campus issues, general student anxiety or common tensions of college life, lack of sleep, lack of a lot of things,” Sutherland said. Terence Casey, a rising senior at George Washington University, noted that memes derive their humor from relatable topics combined with pop culture references. “In college groups, an element of exclusivity is added to the mix,” Casey said. “The relatable sentiment is generally an inside joke referring to life at the university, and may not necessarily need a pop culture reference to merit recognition in the form of likes and laugh reacts.” Casey points to the bus meme, his personal creation, as a perfect example of this. He broke it down, explaining that it suggests that the speaker is going to take GW’s Mount Vernon bus (“the Vern”) to hurry over to see their love interest. Brendesha Tynes, a professor at the University of Southern California whose research focuses how young people experience digital media, says sharing memes helps students break the ice in awkward situations -- like in a group for newly admitted students. “People want a space for like-minded individuals to connect around these issues and to joke and forge a connection that they would continue through their college years,” Tynes says. “It helps people to feel connected to one another and forge these emotional bonds and community around topics that they find of interest.” Sutherland thinks these groups tend to be most popular among Ivies and other elite universities where competition is their fuel. “I think there’s another layer where it feels like a competition of wit,” Sutherland says. “I know as Harvard’s page grew, Yale’s grew, [and] we would get in little meme wars. It’s a competition of wit and originality.” ‘The darkest corners of the web’ But even in a subculture devoted to community-building, things can take a less innocent turn, spawning private GroupMe messages and group texts used as backchannels for sharing non-politically correct content. Last year, Harvard administrators issued a statement denouncing students who shared “racially charged jokes” in a private GroupMe message related to the official Class of 2020 group, the Crimson reported. No disciplinary action was taken at the time, but when some of this year’s admitted students shared sexually explicit and racially offensive memes in a similar group message, 10 students had their acceptances revoked. The memes in question, some of which were published online by college-oriented news site The Tab, made light of sexual assault and minority groups, and included references to Mexicans, the Holocaust and child abuse. Tynes said one reason these “dark” memes can spring up among elite college students is the implicit privilege and superiority some group members feel after being admitted. “[These memes] cement your position in society,” Tynes says. “If you feel threatened in some way, or you’re a privileged group in society. … It cements your status on the hierarchy when you can share this meme that denigrates a woman, or denigrates a Mexican person.” Harvard’s decision to rescind the acceptances of students who shared these memes has drawn criticism, with some detractors saying it infringes on students’ free speech. But Tynes says the sharing of offensive and explicit images has real-world effects on students, especially members of the targeted groups, who experience depression and see their academic performance suffer. “It’s passed off as ‘just a joke,’ but it reproduces some of the negative and sometimes really vile stereotypes that exist in our culture,” Tynes says. Sutherland says the “dark memes” circulated by those incoming Harvard freshmen are examples of what niche channels on Reddit and 4chan often spawn before entering the mainstream. “There is an internet subculture, and I just think it's sort of intrinsically wrapped up in that,” Sutherland says. “I know on Reddit it's a big place where people get a lot of their edgy memes or dank memes, and I think those groups have sort of splintered off getting progressively darker, leading all the way to the darkest corners of the web.” Placing a lighthearted picture -- often from a popular TV show, like Spongebob Squarepants -- over disturbing or offensive content can be a way to pass off dark humor as something more innocent. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily dampen its power to offend. Sutherland says a key factor behind the rise in dark memes is shareability. Because it’s an image, all you have to do is share it — with the goal of winning laughs and likes. “I think coming from a humor-related side, it seems to present a more innocent seeming way to get into the darker things,” Sutherland says. “Those sort of darker recesses of the web have come out through memes into more of a mainstream platform which is where they are getting more notice.” Related: Be careful what you post. It might just get you rejected from your dream school. Diana Kruzman is a University of Southern California student and a USA TODAY College intern. Sophia Tulp is an Ithaca College student and a USA TODAY College intern. This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017. Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2PbnQYoCrime alert emails are familiar to UC Berkeley students: they pop up every once in a while in your inbox to make sure that campus police keep you informed on crimes such as robbery, sexual assault or homicide. These emails typically arrive a few hours after the crime occurred. This all sounds good, but these emails and related safety services are not helpful because crime could be occurring at that moment. If you are a student at UC Berkeley, you have experienced the frightening emails from the University of California Police Department popping up in your inbox and you’ve ended up reading it in a cold sweat because you were right there on that same street when a terrible crime happened next to you. Take the example of one of the recent deadly crimes sent to our UC Berkeley student inboxes. Based on the UCPD crime alert email, on Sunday, May 28, 2017, at 8:30 a.m., an assault with a deadly weapon occurred in People’s Park, which is only about six minutes’ walk from the south entrance of the UC Berkeley campus. Even though we are students, the information we got was late and blurry. The only thing we acknowledged from the email was that a victim got hit on the back of the head with a skateboard in the morning and the suspect was not caught. Students received this information in their inboxes on May 29, a day after the crime happened. There are dorms and apartments and restaurants surrounding People’s Park. The point is that despite the number of students around the People’s Park area when the deadly crime happened, students received the alert a day later. The late alert emails do not help students avoid being around the crime scene, putting students’ safety in danger. The campus, however, does provide free night safety services to students: the night shuttle, BearWalk and the door-to-door shuttle. The Night Safety Shuttle operates from 7:30 p.m. to 3 a.m. throughout the campus and up to the Downtown Berkeley area. The BearWalk service is a night service that students can call to have a staff member accompany them when walking a short distance, and their serveries end at 2:30 a.m. The door-to-door service is similar to Uber, except that operates only from 3 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. and is free of charge. These services all sound good, but there are still problems. The shuttle is never on schedule, and the BearWalk staff and door-to-door services come 30 minutes after you call. So, you might end up standing out in the dark at night anyway and know whether the service is coming soon or not. Based on data released by the UCPD, there have been 172 crimes just in the past month. Larceny was the most common crime, followed by motor vehicle theft. Assault crimes are the third most common, directly affecting student’s personal safety. According to the College Factual website, the UC Berkeley campus and the surrounding area are less safe than average in colleges across the United States. The overall safety rate is D+ for UC Berkeley, and this is based on on-campus, city and regional crime compared with other schools nationwide. UC Berkeley has the highest crime rate per students among all other schools in the University of California system. It is time for us to think about how to improve our own safety and the safety of our school. To have a better approach, the UCPD can collaborate with students by making an online system so anyone who witnessed a crime happen can put it on the community website, which will notify all other students to avoid going to that area. Also, the night safety services that the campus provide are great but the school should monitor these services better to make sure students who called the services don’t have to wait that long at night. In the end, the campus alert system and the safety services are great ideas to ensure the safety of UC Berkeley students. However, there are ways to improve these alert systems and services so we as students don’t need to worry too much about our own safety and enjoy the great education programs we have at UC Berkeley. Iris (ChiCheng) Chong is a fourth-year environmental economics and policy major and journalism minor.Back on February 14th, Google’s self-driving car had its first fender bender to occur while the car’s AI was in control. The Associated Press managed to get footage of the accident from the bus’ own cameras and… well… it’s (fortunately for all involved) about as mundane as the original accident reports made it sound. At one point, the bus driver appears to stop eating a sandwich. Thankfully, no one reported injuries in this accident. Google says they’ve already addressed the logic that allowed the accident to happen. Update: Alas, it looks like the video has been pulled. We’re looking for another copy. Update #2: Someone else re-uploaded the video to YouTube. The new video is embedded above, though, as we don’t know why the first video got pulled, it might go too.161 SHARES Facebook Twitter Linkedin Reddit It looks like Fujitsu is adding its name to the list of OEMs producing Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headsets, which currently include the likes of Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung. Fujitsu’s unnamed headset follows the same reference design as the others in the Windows headset ecosystem, which provide inside-out positional tracking and wireless, optically-tracked motion controllers—allowing the user to set up the VR system without the need of external trackers, basestations, or sensors. Engadget Japan reports the headset includes the standard dual 2.89 inch 1440×1440 LCD panels with 90 hz refresh rate, flip-up visor and 95 degrees plus field of view. Including controllers, Fujitsu’s headset is set tentatively at a price tag of 50,000 yen, or about $440 / €370 / £330; putting it in the middle of the pack, with Acer and Lenovo’s headset + controller bundle fetching $400 at the lowest price tier, and Samsung HMD Odyssey + controller bundle with the highest price at $500. According to Fujitsu’s press release (Japanese), the headset is expected to launch sometime in late November 2017 in Japan. It’s uncertain at this time if the headset will make it to Western markets though, as the company has only released word via Japanese outlets. Fujitsu also doesn’t officially sell its full line of consumer tech in the US or Europe, so the move to release a headset there would come as somewhat of a surprise. If you want to know more about Windows VR headsets, Road to VR Executive Editor Ben Lang wrote a deep dive review of Acer’s headset, a mile marker of what to expect at the very least from any Windows VR headset.NEW YORK CITY, New York — In a lengthy speech on Saturday night in Manheim
caused a fortune to buy. On the right side, they saw two people; both dawned in cooks' outfits, working in a kitchen, making lunch and other snacks of different sorts. The first, a blue haired man, seemingly duplicated himself to work in multiple places as the other, a red-haired deer Faunus, was moving at a fast pace, like Ruby, cooking. "Wow, they really went all out for the tournament, didn't they?" Dust Yang said as M.I.T Yang nodded. "If this is just the Lunch Hall, makes me wonder what they have for the other rooms." "Yeah-" M.I.T Yang started before something crashed into her leg, almost causing her to lose her balance. "Ops, sorry miss." A young voice said as both Yangs turned to look behind them, and found Ruby. Well, a younger version of Ruby, probably around 5 years old. "Yang? Two Yangs?" They both looked at each other before they looked at the Mini-Ruby. "Aw, a Munchkin Ruby... Wow. I am spending way too much time around Canderous." M.I.T Yang said out loud as Ruby looked in awe at her bigger sister. "Um... So what are you doing here Ruby?" "..." Ruby was silent as she started stepping away slowly. "..." "And she's terrified now..." Dust Yang said as she looked around. "Um... Where's you're... Sister, Ruby? I'm sure she's worried about you." "I... Ran ahead to get some tables for us when I crashed into you." Ruby said looking away. "You shouldn't have done that Ruby; you could have gotten lost." Dust Yang scolded as looked towards the entrance Ruby used. "Alright, so let's go find them the-" "Ruby, we told you not to run so fast-" A familiar voice to the two Yangs said as Ruby perked up and ran backward. "Daddy, Mommy, Mama!" Ruby started chanting as she barreled into Taiyang. Behind him was Raven, a younger one than M.I.T Yang's, with a younger Yang, around 7 years old, on her shoulders and... Summer. Summer Rose was behind him as they all watched animatedly the young Rose hug Tai. For the first time, Dust Yang had the chance to observe Summer's aura. With her golden eyes, Yang could see the auras of the people around her, laced hand in hand with the physical world. She took a quick glance at Summer, and the image that drew itself in front of her managed to intrigue Yang: Like her sister, Ruby, Summer's aura had a nexus, forming itself around her silver eyes as well. She noticed that as Summer's aura moved, it returned to the same nexus over and over, unlike those around her, whose auras simply moved throughout their entire body, not having any preferred spots. Interesting... Yang thought to herself. So it would seem that the silver eyes' auras are similar even across timelines... "Now, my little Rose, what did we say about running off without permission?" Summer scolded as Ruby got off Tai's leg and looked down sheepishly. "Not to do it... But I found two Yang's look!" Little Ruby said as she pointed to Dust and M.I.T Yang. The three adults suddenly became aware of their oldest daughter/stepdaughter, and the differences between the two as each waved politely. "Hehehe... Awkward..." M.I.T Yang said as she rubbed the back of her head. "... Oum I'm going to get a heart attack seeing all these Yang's and Ruby's around..." Tai said as he looked behind the two and saw the dining room. "Why don't we take this inside?" "So, are you participating as well, Dad?" Dust Yang asked as they took their seats in the dining hall. "Yup, me and Summer, along with Glynda and Ozzy." Tai said as Summer nodded. "Raven wanted to join but-" "We aren't leaving them with Qrow and Winter, not after what happened last time." Summer cut in, holding Little Ruby on her lap. "We're part of Universe 8, as strange as it is." "Hey, I'm right behind you." M.I.T Yang said as she waited for the two cooks, Seth and Veronica, to come out with their foods. "Universe 7... Hey did you get any weird titles in your invitation?" "Well, I know Ozpin's title was 'Time Lord' and Glynda was 'The Psychic Witch'." Raven recalled, as she turned to Summer and Tai. "What were yours?" "I had t 'Quicksilver' while Tai had 'The Elder Dragon'." Summer said as she looked at her alternate step-daughters. "What were yours?" "Maiden in Training." M.I.T Yang said as she pounded her fist together, eyes giving a yellow hue for a second or three, before dying. "Dustmaster." Dust Yang said as she unwrapped her bandage to show her crystal arm, surprising and awing Little Yang and Ruby, and slightly horrifying the adults. "And... How exactly did you get that?" Raven said a little angered that someone did that to her daughter. Realizing that this wasn't a conversation to have with Little Yang and Ruby here, she simply said, "I made it back at Patch after looking through some of Dad's books." "You made that? The same girl that I ask every day to pick up her clothes off the ground?" Tai said teasingly as Little Yang tried to hit her dad's arms to get him to shut up. "Yup." Dust Yang said as she showed her arm to Little Ruby who was looking at it with admiration. "Dust is a permanent part of me now, and it flowed through my body just as much as my blood does. It even allows me to see and interact with auras." "That's... Handy." Summer slowly said, unintentionally punning as both Yangs and the children chuckled at that while the other two adults glared at her. "Sorry, I should have-" "I have to remember that one, handy." M.I.T Yang said wiping her eye. "What about you?" Little Ruby asked, looking at M.I.T. Yang. "What can you do?" "Well, I can do things like this." She said as her eyes developed that yellow hue again as she focused on the air around Little Ruby and levitated her in the air, giving Summer a little shock when she left her lap. "Look, I'm flying!" Little Ruby cried as M.I.T. Yang kept the idea going by moving Ruby around for a minute before setting her back down on Summer. "That was fun." "Maiden powers, like that old story that I read to you and Ruby now?" Tai asked as M.I.T Yang nodded. "Huh, well, if Summer has those Silver eyes of hers, I can believe the stuff about the maiden. So, have you meet your kid, yet?" "Kid?" Both Yangs questioned, confused. Up until Tai pointed behind them. Behind them was a group of five. The oldest being another Ruby, although this one was much older, to the point she had gray hair. She was a bit taller than Summer, but still shorter than Tai, and she had Ozpin's old Cane with her instead of her scythe. Her right leg was metallic, painted to match her outfit, which didn't change much, other than the fact she didn't have on her red cloak. To Dust Yang, her aura looked similar to her Ruby's and Summer's, but it was a bit faded due to old age it seems. The next eldest was a man with a scar over his eye, taking it out completely. He had on a dark set of armor that had scratches here and there, but didn't seem to be overly dented. On his right arm was replaced with a mechanical arm, which seemed to hold a crossbow in it. But most notable was the GIGANTIC sword strapped to his back, easily passing Ruby's scythe when it was fully extended. His aura seemed a lot like Canderous's: it had a good sense in it, but there was a dark taint in there. The three were children, or rather Beacon students from the looks of it. The first, believe it or not, was a Blind Girl, with dark hair and wearing something that looks like Raven and Ren would wear. She didn't have any visible weapons on her, nor did she have any shoes on looking closely. But she seemed to be able to tell where she was going without any help. Taking a look at her aura, she could feel it sort of expanding outward to her surroundings... Maybe that's how she's'seeing'? The next student was an archer, with blonde hair and purple shade glasses. On his back was a set of quivers that each were marked with different color feathers. He had on a sort of spandex like armor suit, which had an arrow head facing downward. On his waist were a pair of nunchucks and collapsable sword that seemed rarely used. His aura seemed to give off the same type of expanding like the last girl, but more of the observing type than the seeing type. The last girl was the one that stuck out for both Yangs. It was a teen girl, with long, black hair that reached up to her waist. On top of them were two black cat ears. She wore a white shirt under a black zip-up vest with black shorts that fold at the waist, which formed an additional utility pocket at the front. There was a short duster at the back extending to her heels. She wears a pink ribbon around her left arm and a ring on her right hand, which were covered by black fingerless gloves. But what stood out the most were her eyes and what she had on her waist. Strapped to each side of her waist were two gauntlets, which was gold and blue, with a heart on where the blue was. And her eyes had a deep red into them. Looking at her aura, Dust Yang couldn't help but get the feeling like she knew it from somewhere. "Hey, Ruby! Over here!" Tai called out as the older Ruby turned her head to look at the family of five and two Yangs. "Look what we found!" The students in the group that the older Ruby was with also turned and got a look at the two Yangs, and went into their own conversation. "Hey, look T; it's your mother... Again." The Archer said nodding them as the only Faunus punched him in the arm, causing him to flinch back. "Alright Tifa, shutting up now." "Well, they do feel like you." The Blind Girl said as she stared blankly at Tifa. "But, there's some difference between the two." "You mean other than the fact that one still has her arm and the other has golden eyes and... A dust arm?" Tifa said as she looked surprised at the choice of an arm that this Yang had as oppose to her own. "No, one has some extra Aura, more than what a usual person would have, the one with her arm intact." Blind said as she took glances between the two. "The other is a little strange... But it feels like she has dust in her." "Uh, Toph, not to point out the obvious, but..." The Archer said looking at the arm. "She has an arm made of dust." "No, Clint. I mean she literally has dust in her system. I can feel it in her." Toph explained, huffing a bit. "Well, come along students." Older Ruby said as she made her way to the table. "You too, Guts." "Yes, ma'am." "Yes, Headmaster." The four of them said as the followed her to the table. "Wow, we have Old Ruby and Young Ruby, now all we need is either of our Rubys and we have past present and future all together." M.I.T. Yang said commented as she looked at the elder Ruby. "Are you in this as well... Wow this is going to get complicated calling each other out, huh?" "I believe so. Just call me Headmaster Rose, considering I work at Beacon now." Headmaster Rose said as she took a seat. "And no, I'm getting a bit too old for this. I'm just here to watch my students and Guts go through this tournament." "Isn't that nice?" Dust Yang said as she looked at the others. "Well, I'm Yang Xiao Long, Dustmaster of Universe 12." "And I'm also Yang, Maiden in Training, Universe 7." M.I.T Yang said as she gave a peace sign. "And you guys?" "I'm Guts, Grimm Slayer." The swordsman said, swiftly. "Security at Beacon." "You'll have to pardon the big guy here; he's not one for conversations." Clint said. "Clint Barton, the Hawkeye. I'm in my final year at Beacon." "You don't see many archers out in Remnant." Dust Yang noted, looking at the collapsible bow strapped to his back. "Best archer you'll very meet." Clint stated with confident. "I never miss." "He's not exactly lying." Toph said, drawing attention to her. "I'm Toph. Toph Beifong, second year at beacon... My title was the Blind Huntress, right?" "Yup." Tifa answered, looking a bit nervous. "So, you're completely blind?" M.I.T Yang asked, curious as to why the blind girl was fighting here. "Yes, but I can still see everything in this room, but just barely." Toph explained. "My semblance is control over anything made of earth, and since metal is sort of like a material close to rocks and soil, I can kind of see things clearly, but not that far than my normal." "So, that's why I felt your aura expanding around the surroundings." Dust Yang noted, getting some looks from the five. "Dust is a permanent part of me, so it allows me to see and interact with auras." "And that's why I could feel dust in you..." Toph muttered. "Well, I guess things are possible, considering what we've seen here." Both Yangs look at Tifa, who had her hand scratching the back of her head. "Oh... Um... Well, I guess I should just get it over with." Tifa said sighing. "I'm Tifa Xiao-Belladonna, third year at Beacon, the Half-Faunus Brawler... Hi, moms?" Both Yangs looked at Tifa for a moment before M.I.T Yang cocked her head a bit in thought. "Half-Faunus Brawler... Yeah, I can see why." Dust Yang said as Tifa stared at her in disbelief. "Always figured me and Blakey were going to end up as parents together." She said with a cheerful look "Seriously though, if you were sweating up a storm because of our reaction, you shouldn't have. I mean, technically my Blake is seeing someone else, but doesn't make you any less of my kid, I guess." M.I.T Yang added. "Wait, who's your Blake dating?" Dust Yang asked, remember her reaction back at her Universe. "Oh, she's dating Weiss and Ruby." She said offhandedly and simply. "My Ruby took after dad in the romantic department." "Really? Weiss, Blake and Ruby?" Dust Yang said, trying to imagine that. "I don't see how they'd all confess." "Oh, Oum was it awkward in our dorm. You should have seen how red faced each of them would get when they caught eye of each other's eyes." M.I.T Yang said snickering. "To the point I had to lock them in our dorm bathroom to get them all to face the music." "You... Locked them in the bathroom?" Summer said, eyebrow raised. "That most be quite the story." "Well, it's not very long, it started when I noticed a few glances from Ruby towards both Weiss and Blake." M.I.T Yang started as she started her story. With Weiss and HK-47 "Observation: You seem a bit on edge, Ms. Schnee. Is there something on your mind?" HK asked, which caused Weiss to glare at him. "Never call me Schnee. I've abandoned that name long ago." Weiss said, narrowing her eyes as the two of them made their way towards the Training Hall. "Acknowledged. Revision: Is there something on your mind, Ms. Weiss?" HK-47 repeated as Weiss looked up and down the droid. "You're an assassin droid, you even admitted it back there." Weiss recalled. "Correction: I am a droid built for protecting those the Maker deemed needing protection, and programmed with various assassination protocols." HK replied. "There is a difference." "Either way, you still are able to kill anyone in your way, are you not?" Weiss said as HK pondered thus for a moment. "Answer: Only when it is within my mission parameters." HK-47 said, giving a sigh. "Statement: The Master, Mini-Master and Maker all wish that I would be non-violent, but it is in my nature." "Is that so?" Weiss noted. "What about your... Shapeshifting capabilities?" "Observation: If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you are trying to take notes to learn about any potential weak points in my programming, aren't you Ms. Weiss?" HK stated as he gave a mechanical chuckle. "Commentary: I am not surprised, nor disturbed. I've been doing the same for you and your team, specifically the male and the silvered eye child." "I don't need notes to make you into scrap!" Weiss glared at him. "And I swear, if you DARE to hurt Ruby-" Weiss started, turning her head and glare full on, but HK interrupted her. "Clarification: That does not mean I found a weak point in Ms. Roses form or technique... Yet." HK stated as he continued. "Rebuttal: And I am not suicidal. The Maker sees Ms. Rose as her own daughter in our own Universe. Conclusion: I would not harm her, even if she and I face each other sometime in this tournament." Weiss softened her glare a bit, but didn't lesson it all the way. "And what of the other member, Canderous?" She questioned. "What's his capabilities?" "Query: You are trying to see anyone of us is a threat to Ms. Rose, are you not?" HK-47 questioned. "Answer: None of us have any ill intent on your Rose, and I have no doubts that she would be able to best the Mini-Master, Ms. Torchwick and myself. I am unsure about the Master though." "And the 'Maker'?" Weiss questioned once more, trying to press for more information. "Advice: I would not try to do anything against the Maker." HK responded. "There is more to him than it would seem. Conclusion: if it were you or Ms. Belladonna that faced him in your Universe, I would not doubt that he would have won. Response: But to answer your question about the Maker vs. Ms. Rose, I do not know either. He has only faced Ms. Rose once with her silver eyes, when she first activated them, and he won with some difficulty. Your Rose is a bit different than our Ruby, and the Maker has grown stronger and tougher in battle. More data is needed for this." 'Which is exactly what we have Yang for...' Weiss thought to herself, grimacing a bit, before regaining control of herself. Before Weiss could come up with another question, they bumped into someone. "Sorry about that, should have kept out for-" A male voice started but stopped as he got a look at the two and the droid and former heiress got a look a who they bumped into. Whatever it was, it was nor Human, nor Faunus... Well, any Faunus that either had seen. He looked sort of like a lemur... Or a wombat. He had yellow fur all over his body with some brown here and there. He stood about up to Weiss's height, ear's (which were pointing upwards and also covered in fur) excluded. His orange top and blue bottom kind of gave him a look of a mechanic. "Oh, you two must be for the last batch of Universes, huh?" The man said as he looked between the two. "Well, I'm Yulan, one of the mechanics here in the ship, and the guy everyone comes to for weapon fixing and adjustments." "Introductions: Greetings, oh furry one. I am HK-47 of Universe 7." HK greeted as Yulan chuckled a bit. "Besides me is Ms. Weiss. Not Weiss Schnee. Just Weiss." Weiss didn't answer either of them, just studying the person in front of him. "Query: You are not from Remnant, are you?" "Nope, I'm just a space traveler that stumbled across this Remnant." Yulan said as he chuckled at the memory. "You meet the most interesting people nowadays." "I suppose." Weiss said as she relaxed a tad bit. "Still seems so surreal, different universes. Different versions of us." "I know the feeling, still remember when the boss herself just showed up next to my ship in an offer for this gig." Yulan said. "Was I surprised when she showed me it all." "Statement: It seems logical, in the face of the impossible." HK said as he remembered why they were there. "Query: Would you happen to know where the Training Hall is?" "The Training Hall...?" He said as he stifled his laughter. "You... Do know it's the door right behind you right?" HK and Weiss turned and, sure enough, there was a door with an overhead sign saying 'Training Hall'. "Confident Remark: Oh, well, I knew that." HK played off. "I was just... checking. To make sure you were who you say you were." "Sure buddy. Anyways, head down to my shop if you guys ever have any weapons problems." Yulan said as he walked away from the pair. " I'll be sure to tune them up to how they were." The pair turned to enter the room, as Weiss gave HK a look. "Angry Statement: Don't give me that look, meatbag. You didn't see it either." HK said harshly as Weiss glared at the droid. When they entered, they found that the Training Hall was a large room with training dummies and targets set up at various points in the room. Currently, there were two groups of people in the room. The first was Team RWBY; back it seems when they were in their first year of Beacon, before the events of the Vytal Festival happened. They seemed to be focused on one of the other group. The other team consisted of three people. The first was Penny, though she didn't have her usual outfit. She had on a specialist uniform that looked very similar to Winter's clothing, though more to her size. Speaking of Winter, she was there, too. But she was dressed very similarly to how Ironwood would have dressed, only instead of the 5 stars of the Atlassian Army, she had 3. The last person was a bit of a mystery, as he had a complete organic metal surrounding his body, like it was a suit of armor. It was white with hints of blue here and there. He was currently up in the air by means of repulsions coming from the soles of his feet. He was pressing a few buttons on his wrist board, before closing. "Alright, send me the targets." The man in the suit said as Winter nodded, and pressed a few buttons on a console nearby. Suddenly, skeet targets shot out of the wall and few in different directions as the man started flying around, firing homing missiles and repulsor blasts at the different targets. He nearly hit all before they fell, but one managed to fall. "You hit 14 out of the 15 General Ironwood." Winter said as the man landed, while Weiss froze at hearing the name. Sure enough, the organic metal started to retract into a wrist watch, leaving been James Ironwood, who just had on a blue protective jumpsuit, and had all his limbs intact. "There's still some room to improve, and bugs to work out." Ironwood said as he stretched out his limbs. "I still can't get used to getting out of the Iron Armor." "Commentary: If I can make a suggestion," HK-47 cut in, getting all of their attentions as they turned to see the droid and Weiss, who was glaring at Ironwood. "I would decrease you thrust by a tad bit so you can get your bearings in order while in the air." "I'll keep that in mind." James said as he fixed he posture a bit, noticing Knight Weiss' cold, yet murderous. "And I suppose you two are a part of the last Universes that were missing?" "Answer: Correct. I am HK-47 of Universe 7, one of two personal bodyguards to the Summer Maidens of our Universe." He stated as Yang perked up. "This here is Weiss of Universe 12. Clarification: Just Weiss. Not Schnee. Weiss. She was very adamant about the Schnee part not being part of it." "What?!" Both the other Weiss and Winter said as Knight Weiss seemed indifferent. "What happened with father?" "That man is not my father when he took me away from my Ruby and tried to make me his perfect puppet." Weiss said, simply and coldly, causing the other Weiss to look shocked. "He disowned me; I denounced him. I take my own path, and not one that others force me on." There was a long silence as both the other Weiss and Winter looked at this Weiss in surprise. There respected colleagues looked at them respectively, before James moved to take a look around at HK-47. "You don't seem to be one of the average droids that are walking around in our Universe." He said. "I must say you're a pretty good knock-off for one of the AK-200's." That one word kept replaying in his processors: knock-off... "Angered Statement: KNOCK-OFF?! I am one of the most highly trained assassin droids you will ever meet in your lifetime, organic meatbag!" HK declared rather harshly. "I am not one of your pathetic droids that could be destroyed or reprogrammed so easily!" "... Assassin droid?" Winter repeated, now a bit on guard. "... And who exactly are you guarding..?" "Clarification: Yes, assassin droid, but I have been repurposed as a bodyguard droid now." HK-47 said as he turned to Winter. "And my primary targets for protections are one Yang Xiao Long and one Raven Branwen, each with half the power of the Summer Maiden." "There's another mom here?" Yang said as she looked hopeful. "And she's the same type of Maiden as me? Awesome!" "Response: Yes, alternate Mini-Master... You are also, quite older, by three years if my data is correct." HK-47 said as he looked at Winter. "Query: May I use the training facilities target practice? I would like to test my capabilities." He drew his rifle as Winter nodded, preparing to draw up several targets. But as he started walking up to the line, his entire being, and weapon was engulfed in a white light. "What is he doing?" Blake questioned as she looked at the changing droid, as he's silhouette started looking less droid like and more human. "It's part of his programming, from what his maker told me." Weiss said as HK's outline changed of that of a medium height's feminine form, with a sniper rifle leaning on her shoulder. A cape suddenly shot out of her neck area with a hood. They stopped near a line on the ground, and drew her rifle as they took aim, light fully dying out, as Ruby and Yang both drew a quick breath. "Alright, I'm ready." A young version Summer Rose said as she was waiting for Winter to start dispersing the targets. "M-mom?" Ruby said as she looked at her (fake) mother as Winter punched in for 15 skeet targets. "The droid has some type of Scan and Copy ability." Weiss said as they turned to her. "He can scan people while they fight or from recordings and copy their form for a fight, semblance and dust excluded. He did this in our dimension a couple of times. Though, he usually did one of us, I've never seen this one." While she was talking, HK, in the form of Summer, had already sniped 8 of the 15 skeet targets. "That's because -" BANG "- the Maker did not -" BANG "- wish to reveal all the secrets -" BANG BANG "- that I possess." She said as she took out four targets in that duration. She continued to take out the last remaining targets, and unloaded the clip from the bottom, with a smirk at her handiwork. She changed back into HK-47 and turned around, only to find himself in front of Penny. "Salutations!" Penny greeted as HK stepped back a bit in surprise, before fixing himself of the shock. "Greetings." HK responded. "It is nice to see another non-organic meatbag in this tournament." "... Meatbag?" Penny said as she cocked her head a bit. "Explanation: Well, all organic life has all those squishy parts, you know." HK explained. "And all that water! How the constant sloshing doesn't drive them all mad, I have no idea…" "That's... Huh, I never thought of it that way." Penny said out loud as HK nodded. Meanwhile, Weiss was talking with her counterparts. "So, what do you all have to bring into this tournament?" Weiss asked as Yang grinned and pounded her fist together. "Well, we're all have the power of the maidens." Yang said proudly. "I have Summer; Ruby is Spring, my Weissicle -" "YANG!" "- is Winter and Blake has Fall." Weiss paused as she looked between the upbeat Maiden Yang and the embarrassed Maiden Weiss. "... You two are together?" "Yup!" She said as she wrapped an arm around Maiden Weiss. "...Revolting." Weiss said with cold indifference. "Hey!" Maiden Yang made an angry face. "How can you even say that! I'll have you know that me an-" "Not that, though I for one have my Ruby." Weiss interjected and turned to her alternate self. "What I find utterly DISGUSTING," She made a conscious effort to emphasize that word. "Is the sheer fact that you only chained yourself further with those powers. What happened with going to Beacon to become our own person?! What happened to escape the Schnee madness?!" "I did no such thing!" Maiden Weiss called to her. "I use these powers to help others, and-" "And yet, the only thing you truly did, was bind yourself with further responsibility and fate, locking yourself behind a facade of good will and graces." The group stared at her, as even Ironwood found it hard to believe the proud heiress, or at least former heiress of the Schnee line would talk like this. "And what makes you any better?!" Maiden Weiss yelled in anger. "What makes you think you are any better than me?!" Knight Weiss simply grinned, and went to the side, bringing a combat dummy, placing it on the ground next to her. She readied Myrtenaster, and called upon the summoning glyph, now corrupt by her selfishness and desire. Winter and Maiden Weiss watched in shock as the glyph passed through her, tethering white, shining armor that the two recognized onto her body, overlaying with her clothes. In the end, even Myrtenaster was covered completely, as Weiss finished her summoning, showing her full splendor to the crowd with great pride. "THIS, is what makes me different." She called out, as the knight's blade shimmered, answering her heart, and growing in size, reaching that of the original. Weiss vanished with impeccable speed, appearing on the other side of the training dummy, and it was torn asunder, leaving behind only scraps of metal and cloth. "I took my fate into my own hands! Gained control of my own life! And THIS was my reward!" "What, HAPPENED to you in order to make you like that?!" Maiden Ruby asked without thinking. "I don't think you want to know." Weiss said as she looked away. "It can't be that bad." Maiden Weiss said, now curious as well, now feeling more pity for her counterpart then anger. "Well, if you really want to know, it started around the time of the singles in the Vytal Festival..." With Raven and Ruby The patio was a nice and calm place, with the trees like the ones from Forever Fall surrounding the area, and small river going down. Above was a nice clear view of the stars with the sun giving the area a beautiful view of everything. It was here that Ruby and Raven were sitting, legs crossed and by the river. Raven had made some herbal tea that Summer in her dimension showed her before she had to disappear, and was sharing some with Ruby. "So, in your world, I'm a soulless being, under the control of Salem..." Raven summarized, as Ruby nodded. "I see... That's... Troubling to say the least." "Yeah. She, uh, really has you deep in her palms." Ruby said drinking the tea. "The fact that she has a faux-aura and emotionless frightens me... And she's tried to kill you in the past?" Raven said as Ruby confirmed it again. "I see. So, what is the plan to do with her?" "Yang thinks that we should try and save her." Ruby said as Raven nodded. "It's not wrong for a child to try to save their mother from an evil." Raven commented. "There's no shame, and a large benefit, considering that, though I can momentarily act as your Yang's mother, I am not her." "Yeah..." Ruby said half-heartedly as Raven stopped mid-sip and set her cup down. "But that's not what you think you should be doing, is it?" She asked as Ruby, after a moment, reluctantly nodded. "I see, what do you think you should do then?" Ruby was silent, for a minute, before she took a sip from her cup and answered. "I think we should... kill our Raven. Before she does any more harm." Raven was silent, after all, how do you talk to your stepdaughter about killing an alternate version of yourself? "I'd be lying to you if I said I didn't think the same thing, Ruby." Raven said after some time, surprising Ruby that she thinks she should kill her own self. "Do not get me wrong; I think there should be an attempt to see if your Raven can be saved... But if she truly is an emotionless husk... I fear that it will only bring more harm than good." "Yeah, I'm torn between the two choices." Ruby said as she looked up to the stars. "Kill my sister's mother, and any chance she could have at having a reunion to save the people. Or try and save her, and possibly lose more lives based on our action." Raven nodded as she took a look where Ruby was looking. "Strange, how time changes people." Raven chuckled, as Ruby gave her a curious glance. "Four years ago, my biggest concern was finally visiting Yang with Canderous at Beacon to tell her why I left, then Cinder stole Amber's powers, and things went from complicated to very to not at all, and finally very once again with Salem." Ruby nodded as she thought back to when she just entered Beacon Academy. "I know what you mean. It seems just like yesterday that me and my team had a food fight with Team JNPR in the Dining Hall, worrying about tests and dances." She said with a sad chuckle. "How times change, huh?" "I only hope that things can go up from here." Raven said as she took another sip. "But it's nice to take a break out of our universes to get out of stressful situations we find ourselves i-" She wanted to speak more, when both of them heard a strange call from nowhere. To Raven, it felt oddly familiar, but she couldn't place exactly where she heard it from. But to Ruby, there was only one person who ever tried to make that noise. "Hold that thought, Ms. Branwen." Ruby said as she stood up to investigate. "Please, call me Raven. Ms. Branwen makes me feel as old as Ozpin." Raven jokingly said as she watched Ruby leave. When she reached her destination, she found a very familiar sight from after the Vytal Tournament. Team RNJR. There was Lie Ren, laying similarly to how Ruby and Raven just were, sipping a cup of his custom tea. Next to him, in tree, was his partner and loyal friend Nora Valkyrie doing her usual sloth imitation. Along with them were two younger versions of herself and Jaune. Jaune was laying down looking at the stars and, unlike his counterpart, seemed a little bit more relaxed than her Jaune. Likewise, Ruby was a little different, as she was looking over a book that she occasionally saw Blake read, one that was rather steamy, now that she remembered. "I thought I heard Nora around here." Angel Ruby said as she made her present known, causing the other Ruby to drop her book and, for a millisecond, Angel Ruby though she saw her eyes in an Amber color, but now they were back to Silver. "Oh, look Ren, another Ruby!" Nora said as she dropped off her branch. "Uh, hey there." The other Ruby said as she placed her book away, as Ruby notice the number of weapons that she wielded. Not only did she have Crescent Rose attached, but she had Gambol Shroud on her back, Myrtenaster on her hip, and the Ember Celica's on her wrist. "So, uh, nice to meet you, me. I'm RWBY Ruby of Universe 2... I didn't choose the name, it's what they sent in the invitation." "It's nice to meet you, too. My invitation said Remnant's Angel, so I guess you can just call me Angel Ruby." She begrudgingly at the mention of her title as she waved. "So... Why are you called that?" rwbY Ruby made a move to speak when her eyes actually did change to lilac and her posture changed from a bit shy and relaxed, to upbeat and confident. "Because, my dear Ruby, she has three kickass partners inside her noggin'." She said, but her words didn't really match
of all the possible implementations. For example, the first test corresponds to the subset that return success when passed the given url via GET request. Since we’re in Haskell, we also get a guarantee that the set of implementations that fulfill the test is a (non)strict subset of the set of implementations that fulfill the type, as if this were not the case, our test case wouldn’t type check. The problem with the first test, of course, is that there are all sorts of bogus implementations that fulfill it. For example, the handler that always returns success would match that test. But even still, it is a strict subset of the implementations that fulfill the type (for example, the handler that always returns 404 is not in this set), so we’re guaranteed to have improved the chance that our code is correct, even with such a weak test (granted, it actually may not be that weak of a test - in one project, I have a menu generated from a data structure in code, and a test that iterates through all elements of the menu, checking that hitting each url results in a 200. And this has caught many refactoring problems!). Where we really start to benefit is as we add a few more tests. The second test shows that the handler must somehow get an element out of the database (provided our create () test function is creating relatively unique field names), which is another (strict) subset of the set of implementations that fulfill the type. And we now know that our implementation must be somewhere in the intersection of these two subsets. It shouldn’t be hard to convince yourself that through the process of just writing a few (well chosen) tests you can vastly reduce the possibility of writing incorrect implementations. Which, when we are writing relatively straightforward code, will probably be good enough to ensure that the code is actually correct. And will continue to verify that as the code evolves. Pretty good for a couple lines of code.QR Code Link to This Post 1) You simply forgot where you got the chair and why you even wanted it in the first place and have been mesmerized by an Abbazabba wrapper ever since.2) You forgot that they were free and are currently piled (along with 3 or 4 friends) on the single chair, passing the dutch and laughing about how you got away with a free chair.3) On your way home, you forgot where you lived and are still driving around with that damn chair dangling out the window. In which case, am willing to wait a little longer for you to find your way home because I'm certain that once you do, you'll come back for the rest.4) You smoked the chair.Either way, it is quite annoying having 3 chairs and I have found that it is much harder giving away a set of 3 than a set of 4. Admittedly, it will be hard to re-post these chairs because every time I see them I think of the two of you and wonder just what exactly became of that lone chair. I hope that whatever you did with it, it was well enjoyed.Godspeed, you crazy potheads.Men ride their horse carts past an umbrella with a Vodafone logo on a road in Jammu November 21, 2011. REUTERS/Mukesh Gupta/Files NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India should scrap a law that taxes asset transfers retrospectively, a government panel recommended in a draft report that could save Britain’s Vodafone $2 billion. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh set up the panel to look at a series of tax measures introduced this year that were criticised by global business groups and dampened investor sentiment in India. The panel said in the report that the government should, as a matter of policy, avoid anything that “comes as a surprise” to the taxpayers. The decision to tax indirect asset transfers retrospectively came only months after the Supreme Court ruled that mobile phone operator Vodafone was not liable for $2 billion dollars in tax and interest on the 2007 purchase of the Indian assets of Hutchison Whampoa. The government panel’s draft report recommended that the rules be applied only to future indirect asset transfers, which would let Vodafone off the hook. The panel also suggested that no interest should be charged if the government did decide to apply tax retrospectively - a move that could potentially lower Vodafone’s tax liability. The panel will wait for public feedback on its recommendations before publishing a final report.Netflix will premiere war thriller “Jadotville,” starring Jamie Dornan (“Fifty Shades of Grey”), across all its territories in 2016. The film is slated to go into production in April, shooting in Ireland and South Africa. The project was brought to the European Film Market at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival by Alex Walton’s Bloom; the deal with Netflix was negotiated by UTA Independent Film Group. Netflix acquired all rights to “Jadotville” and will debut the film on its Internet subscription VOD services. In addition, the company may also release the film theatrically for a qualifying run. “Jadotville” tells the true story of the 1961 siege of a 150-member Irish U.N. battalion under Commander Patrick Quinlan (Dornan) by 3,000 Congolese troops, led by French and Belgian mercenaries working for mining companies. Film also stars Guillaume Canet (“Tell No One”) as the French commander who sought to defeat Quinlan and his men. Netflix announced the pact for the Dornan-toplined film after erotic drama “Fifty Shades” pulled down a record $94.4 million over the four-day Presidents’ Day weekend at the U.S. box office. Dornan is repped by UTA and United Agents. Related Netflix Picks Up 'The Fall' Season 2 Starring Gillian Anderson, Jamie Dornan “Jadotville” is directed by Richie Smyth, a commercial and musicvideo director (U2, Bon Jovi, the Verve) and written by Kevin Brodbin (“Constantine”). Alan Moloney will produce for Parallel Films (“Haywire,” “Albert Nobbs,” “Byzantium”). “The story of how Pat Quinlan led his troops against an overwhelming force without losing a single man is one of the great stories of the 20th century, and we are proud to be working with such a talented and committed team to bring it to life,” Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said. “This film will be an amazing addition to our global original films initiative.” Added Moloney, “As filmmakers, we are constantly looking for new ways to bring a movie to the largest possible audience. Netflix has already reinvented the TV market and is now moving front and center into the film business.” Netflix’s other movie projects include a deal with Adam Sandler for four films and an agreement with Weinstein Co. and Imax to debut the sequel to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” simultaneously in theaters and on Netflix in August 2015. In addition, Netflix last month reached a deal with indie filmmakers and thesps Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass to produce four movies, which will have a brief theatrical release before becoming available exclusively on Netflix.Dec 26, 2015; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Indiana Pacers center Jordan Hill (27) dribbles the ball as Minnesota Timberwolves center Karl-Anthony Towns (32) defends in the first half at Target Center. Mandatory Credit: Jesse Johnson-USA TODAY Sports As most of the heavy lifting of the NBA free agency period is finished, the Minnesota Timberwolves are still making low key moves to sure up their up and coming squad. As the Minnesota Timberwolves play in the Las Vegas Summer League, new Head Coach and President of Basketball Operations is still making moves in the background. After signing Bloomington native Cole Aldrich and shooting threat Brandon Rush, the Timberwolves were still in the market for one or two players to round out their roster. The speculation was that the Timberwolves were still in the market for a big man. Free agent center Jordan Hill has agreed to a two-year, $8M deal with Minnesota, league source tells @TheVertical. — Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojVerticalNBA) July 13, 2016 Just announced, former Indiana Pacer big man Jordan Hill has agreed to a two year deal suspected to be worth $8M, with the Timberwolves. Hill will be a nice depth player for the Timberwolves. With no guarantees that Pekovic will come back to form, or come back at all, this gives the team more insurance in their front court. Hill will also bring some veteran presence to this very young team. Coming on a team friendly contract, Hill will be a nice pickup. As we mentioned last week, it looks like Thibodeau is putting together one or two year deals for players in free agency, making sure that the franchise is ready for their young stars when they come off the books. Hill averaged 8.8 points and 6.2 rebounds while shooting 50.6 percent from the field in 73 games with the Indiana Pacers last season. He averaged about 20 minutes of playing time per game. The signing of Hill gives the Minnesota Timberwolves fifteen guaranteed contracts. It will be interesting to see if there is a trade in the future. The Timberwolves still have an estimated $15M in cap space after this deal. Common theme from #NBA folks in Vegas: #Twolves having enough dialogue w/ teams. Certainly well-positioned to make a trade eventually. — Darren Wolfson (@DWolfsonKSTP) July 13, 2016 Tom Thibodeau is doing more than just watching Summer League games in Las Vegas. He is surely talking to other team’s staffs and front offices.Let’s talk about mannequins. They’re like clowns, in that they’re terrifying creations that simply shouldn’t exist, but because they do I’m forced to live a life knowing one may be waiting for me, silently, around every corner. Fortunately for me, clowns don’t currently have a noticeable presence in video games. Mannequins, on the other hand, seem to find a way to sneak into every other horror game. After the break I’ve compiled a list that anyone with even the slightest hint of a mannequin-related phobia should shy away from. No need to thank me, even though you should, since I had to endure every one of these games for research. Let’s get this over with before I change my mind. Kraven Manor Kraven Manor is one of the more original horror games I’ve played. It’s absolutely terrifying and successfully kept me on the edge of my seat for the duration of my playthrough. It also happens to be free, so there’s really no reason not to check it out (a download link can be found in the above video’s description). This is the product of a team of thirteen graduate students, ranging from level designers and artists to producers and programmers, who crafted the game in just six months. I’m very much looking forward to seeing what they do next, so long as it has nothing to do with mannequins. Condemned Both entries in the short-lived Condemned series have used mannequins in brilliant ways, but like all good scares the first encounter was far more effective than the second. As if walking through a mall only to discover some of the mannequins aren’t really mannequins at all wasn’t traumatizing enough — to this day I still pat down department store mannequins to make sure they aren’t armed — it doesn’t take long for the mannequin themed hallucinations to really start messing with your head. Pages: 1 2 3The "laboratory" at Baga Village, where technology is stress-tested in the field. The testing table in this hut in Baga Village is made from split bamboo, like the floor. There is dry cane grass hanging from the ceiling to keep the flies away from blood samples, while light and curious children peek through the floor boards. It's swelteringly hot and the conditions aren't exactly controlled, but this is a field trial, designed to see if these experimental methods and equipment can hold up in a situation like this. Inside this hut in the Tufi District of Oro Province, Papua New Guinea, are two biospectroscopists — scientists who use light to analyse tissue or fluids — from Monash University. Associate Professor Bayden Wood is leading their research into developing a new way of detecting malaria in poor, remote communities. "What we've developed here is really a game changer in terms of disease diagnostics," he said. "The technology is very simple to use, it's very portable and weighs about 7 kilograms so we can actually carry it into villages like this, we can set it up very quickly." That technology is a small spectrometer, an even smaller centrifuge for blood and a laptop. It's all powered by a battery smaller than that which starts your car. Capacity to almost wipe out malaria The researchers are using this kit to screen the blood of villagers in the hope of finding those who harbour the malaria parasite. "So we actually use infra-red light, and infra-red light essentially heats up the samples and causes molecules to vibrate and we're actually detecting the vibrations of these molecules," Professor Wood said. "So in, say, a malaria parasite, it has its own chemistry, its own RNA, its DNA, its own distinct, unique chemical fingerprint and it's from this basic fingerprint that we do the diagnosis." The advantages of this approach are that it's quick and the test can detect multiple strains of the malaria parasite, but Professor Wood believes the benefits are potentially much bigger. He thinks the technique could almost wipe out malaria if it's used to screen entire communities to find "asymptomatic carriers", the people who harbour the parasite but don't get sick. "These people act as a reservoir, because they get bitten by mosquitoes and pass it on to other members of the community," he said. "Really what our project is about is about detecting these people and treating these people and in that way eliminating malaria." Malaria endemic Malaria is one of the biggest health problems in developing countries and is estimated to affect almost half the world's population. PNG's health authorities warn it's a devastating disease that's particularly dangerous for pregnant women and young children. The provincial health advisor for Oro Province, Copeland Ihove, said it's the most prevalent illness in the region. "In PNG, malaria is endemic," he said. "It's still the number one killer of our patients that are admitted… malaria is still the highest burden in the province." This type of field trial — visiting remote villages in Papua New Guinea and taking blood from people — is not straightforward. To overcome the significant logistical and cultural hurdles, the researchers joined a volunteer team of nurses from the charity No Roads to Health, who have been conducting clinics and building relationships in these communities for several years. Group leader Andrew Grasby said the health volunteers have seen the prevalence of malaria and know its impact in these places. "Malaria is prolific within the communities, everybody is talking about malaria, it has a high mortality rate, so malaria would be the number one health priority in these communities," he said. Endless possibilities The researchers now need to check their on-site analysis of the blood with a different kind of test back in the laboratory in Melbourne. Professor Wood said if it's shown to have worked, the next step is to commercialise and refine the technology, in the hope it could be brought back to these remote villages and widely used. "It would be the most exciting thing for us and what we really strive for as scientists, to develop a technology people can use and it's really about translating the technology into the field," he said. "If we can do that as scientists, we really feel like we've made a significant difference to the communities and to the people of PNG." In the future, this test could detect more than just malaria. The researchers are working on applying it to other serious diseases like HIV, hepatitis and diabetes. "This type of technology, once you build the models, can be applied to a whole range of different diseases," Professor Wood said. "Here in this village, we're not only doing malaria, we're also doing glucose testing for diabetes and also haemoglobin testing. "So really the technology has the advantage of being a multi-disease diagnostic technology, that from the one pin-prick of blood we can diagnose a variety of diseases."OTTAWA – Environmental guru David Suzuki is convinced the Harper government is secretly building prisons for people guilty of criminal charges related to eco-activism – charges he believes the government is clandestinely devising at this very moment. Speaking on Australia’s ABC TV network Monday, Suzuki assured host Tony Jones and his studio audience that he’s no conspiracy theorist, it’s just that, "In Canada, we now have a government that is increasing the number of prisons at a time when the rate of crime has been dropping steadily over the last 10 years." "So I’m wondering, I’m not a guy that thinks about conspiracies, but I’m wondering whether our Prime Minister thinks he’s going to be creating new categories of crime, like eco-terrorism." Jones replied: "With all due respect, that does sound like a conspiracy theory." The feds’ take on Suzuki’s claim was similar to Jones’. "David Suzuki is showing once again how completely out of step he is with average Canadians," Jean-Christophe De Le Rue, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, told QMI Agency. "(Our 2012 budget) was clear: we have not built any new prisons and we have no plans to do so. David Suzuki is wrong once again: we only lock up criminals and terrorists." That Suzuki was in Australia in the first place is fascinating and notes a marked change from a fairly strong position he took several years ago when he announced righteously he would no longer travel there because of the carbon emissions inherent in air travel. He’d still talk to Australians – "but only by video conference." Australia just elected Tony Abbot, whose conservative party won a sizable majority, and the country’s environmentalists have been hyperventilating ever since. Perhaps it was Abbot’s election that prompted Suzuki to break his own vows and make the trip in person. The political discussions in both Canada and Australia, he warned, need to shift from being driven by ideology to being evidence-based. "We now have governments that seem to feel that the corporate agenda is the job of government and this is an issue we have to face up to," he said. Asked by an audience member whether he still believes all climate-skeptic politicians should be jailed, Suzuki said yes. "You bet," he said, adding he believes the criminal element is "wilful blindness. "I really haven’t thought it through, but I certainly – personally I think there is a great deal of wilful blindness and it ought to be pointed out in some way, yes."MONTREAL – The Montreal Impact announced on Thursday that FC Montreal midfielder Louis Béland-Goyette has signed a first-team contract as an MLS Homegrown Player, starting with the 2017 season. Béland-Goyette, 21, is returning to the first team after signing his first professional contract with the Impact on September 12, 2014, making his MLS debut the following day against the Revolution in New England. In the last two seasons, he has captained FC Montreal in the USL, appearing in a total of 41 games and 3,256 minutes, including 38 starts, and recording four goals and one assist. He won the USL Goal of the Month last August and was also named on the USL Team of the Week once. “We are excited to add Louis to our roster for next season. He has done very well with FC Montreal this past season and has developed well over the course of two seasons with FC Montreal,” said Montreal Impact technical director Adam Braz. “He has shown that he also deserved a spot within the first team. He’s a central midfielder with a good understanding of the game and good range of passing.” “This is a new step in my career for which I am very happy and excited,” said midfielder Louis Béland-Goyette. “This is a reward for much work and determination. My situation wasn’t easy, but I managed to show the character that I have. I want to thank the FC Montreal and Academy staff that has shown confidence in me and helped me develop both as a person and as a player.” A native of Pointe-Claire, he joined the Impact Academy in September 2011, playing with the U18, U21 and U23 teams. He registered two assists in eight games and 566 minutes in 2014 in the PDL and also played in three MLS Reserve League games. On the international scene, Béland-Goyette played two games with the Canadian U23 national team at the Pan American Games as well as four games with the U20 at the CONCACAF U20 Championship in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in 2015. He has also played with the U18 selection. Transaction: Montreal Impact signs Louis Béland-Goyette to a Homegrown Player contract on November 10, 2016, for the 2017 season. LOUIS BÉLAND-GOYETTE Position: Midfielder Height: 5’9” Weight: 147 lbs Date of birth: September 15, 1995, Montréal, Québec Place of residence: Pointe-Claire, Québec Previous team: FC Montreal Date acquired: November 10, 2016(CNN) Students at UC Davis can now press A4 for Plan B. A new vending machine in a University of California Davis study room traded the usual Hot Cheetos and Red Bull for condoms, tampons, pregnancy tests, Advil, and the morning after pill (or Plan B). They call it the "Wellness To Go" Machine. Stocking contraception rather than caffeine may seem out of place in a study area, but to former UC Davis student Parteek Singh it makes total sense. Although the Wellness To Go machine was installed in early April, Singh spent two years working to make it happen. "The more skeptical and negativity I got from people like 'oh it's not going to happen,' kind of pushed me more," Singh told CNN affiliate KTXL Read More0 County controller says she's "deeply troubled" over Pittsburgh mayor's plan to restructure PWSA Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto is calling for a financial and legal advisory team to assist the city with what he called a “critical need to improve” the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority. The team would consider long-term plans for the authority's operations and improve customer services to Pittsburgh residents. "The City of Pittsburgh owns the water and sewer system that was leased to the PWSA decades ago. It's time to reevaluate this structure," Peduto said in a news release. "After systemic problems with inadequate billing, lead in our service lines and this week's flush and boil water advisory, the city has the duty to find new ways to improve our water services and create the safe, effective and sustainable water authority our residents deserve." A request for proposals, known as an RFP, was issued Friday to identify an advisory team to manage evaluations of a possible restructuring of the PWSA to enhance water and sewer service delivery. “This team, once chosen, will help kick-start a process of addressing the agency's repeated structural failures. This could include plans to implement alternate ways to provide water services, possibly through a public-private partnership to jointly manage some authority operations,” the release said. The PWSA board has been advised of the request for proposals and supports it, the news release said. In a statement regarding external reviews, PWSA officials said they support the mayor's initiative to have a team of experts review the authority: "The Board and Executive Staff of PWSA are fully supportive of the City Council and the Mayor’s request to the Pennsylvania Auditor General and Pennsylvania Attorney General to conduct a review of PWSA. We will take all requested actions and cooperate fully to ensure that a complete and open review can be conducted. "In addition, we fully support the Mayor’s initiative to hire a team of experts to take a fresh look at the Authority. The employees, contractors and Board of PWSA are working very hard to address the problems we face and welcome all of the support we can get in evaluating and fixing the Authority’s operations." The Allegheny County controller, however, said she is opposed to the mayor's announcement. In a statement, Chelsa Wagner said: "I am deeply troubled by Mayor Peduto's announcement today that he plans to partially privatize and further outsource control of our most basic public resource: Water. I and thousands of Pittsburgh residents will not be distracted from this abdication of responsibility by smoke and mirrors. "The City continues to duck and hide in the face of our water crisis. This ducking and hiding, epitomized by today's announcement, is an affront to Pittsburgh residents and PWSA customers, who continue to go day to day without safe water. "Mayor Peduto's announcement today is dead wrong. Let me address why specifically: "Restructuring' will not bring the leadership or accountability that has been lacking. We don't need restructuring to recognize that we have a crisis of lead in our water, and that our government has the responsibility and the resources to fix it now. "Privatization of our public water utility-which the mayor tried to mask in today's proposal as a public-private partnership-will result in lower health and environmental standards and increased customer rates. Just look to Coatesville in Eastern PA for a recent example of this. "There are answers that are affordable and practical, but they will take work and action. Other cities have taken the bull by the horns and stepped up and solved these problems to address safety and affordability for their ratepayers. These cities have done so by looking inward and finding the best efficiencies. Pittsburgh does not need more studies, more excuses, or more consultants. We need clean water, and a Mayor who takes ownership, is ready to lead, and is accountable. "I'm calling on Mayor Peduto to pledge to the public that he will not privatize our water in any way, shape or form. Let's instead get to work on finding a solution that is safe and affordable for our taxpayers and ratepayers. "I offer my assistance to Mayor Peduto, and stand ready to take meaningful, democratic action to protect the public." The mayor’s administration is also considering plans to gauge interest from organizations to partner with the city in the operation of the water and sewer assets, including a capital improvement plan to invest in critical infrastructure needs. The advisory team will help with that endeavor by studying the financial condition of the city's water and sewer lines, engaging with residents and other water consumers for their input, recommending ways for the city to maximize public control in any partnership; and helping in other matters, according to the mayor's office. "While we are not presently considering a full privatization, nor a third-party arrangement similar to the previous engagement with Veolia, we are seeking a full financial and operations partner. With disintegrating water infrastructure, massive debt problems and repeated failures in customer service and billing issues, deep changes to the PWSA are obviously necessary. We will work diligently with City Council, and the public, to identify the best solutions for our residents," said the mayor's chief of staff Kevin Acklin. On Thursday, the City Council issued a news release that said all council members are "collectively requesting an audit" by the Pennsylvania auditor general and attorney general "regarding PWSA's contract with Veolia, Inc., outside contractors, PWSA's procurement process and all other areas under their respective jurisdiction." In the news release, council members said, "Other areas that have prompted this level of scrutiny include, but is not limited to, the high lead levels in the water supplied to the residents of the City of Pittsburgh and the ongoing billing issues that have plagued the City of Pittsburgh residents for over two years." Council members are collaborating with Peduto and City Controller Michael Lamb to resolve the issues with PWSA. Responses to the RFP will be evaluated in the coming weeks, with hopes of hiring an advisory team by the end of February. A copy of the RFP is available here. Stay with Channel 11 News and WPXI.com for continuing coverage. © 2019 Cox Media Group.Kolkata: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee are engaged in shadow-fighting to fool people, according to state Opposition leader Surya Kanta Mishra. "Whom are they trying to fool? People have already understood that the so-called fight between Mamata Banerjee and Narendra Modi are shadow fights to fool the masses. Their policy is that they will have a friendship in New Delhi and stage a fight in Bengal," Mishra said. Mishra also lashed out at the policies of the Centre and the state government, terming them anti-people. "The policies of both governments are anti-people, anti-worker and anti-farmer. They don't believe in democratic rights and that is why they are against strikes," Mishra alleged. He also accused the state government of trying to save miscreants who are trying to organise communal violence in the state. "The state government is trying to save those who are trying to spread communal violence. They are trying to create a wedge between two communities in the state for vote bank politics," Mishra alleged. PTI Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.Backyard gardens become income generators in lean times Green-thumb entrepreneurs turn a grocery list of items they can grow, hunt or collect themselves into extra cash. A few feet away, chef de cuisine Ken Takayama glanced curiously at the lanky stranger in jeans and a worn plaid shirt. He's heard this sort of pitch before. "Hi," said Slocum, 50, his deep voice straining to be heard. "I grow Italian mache in my backyard. It's really good, only $8 a pound. Would you like to buy some?" A cook set down his knife and walked over to greet the stranger. Slocum held out a Ziploc bag filled with lettuce. Locking up his station wagon, the one with the scratched paint and unpaid bills covering the floor mats, Cam Slocum crossed the parking lot and stepped into the kitchen of the swanky French restaurant Mélissein Santa Monica. "Every day, every week, it's something new," Takayama said. "You name it, they have it." Since the economy took a dive three years ago, Takayama and others say they've seen more and more people showing up unannounced at restaurants, local markets and small retailers, looking to sell what they've foraged or grown in their backyards. No one keeps track of the number of people selling their homegrown bounty, but scores of ads have cropped up on Craigslist across the country, hawking local produce, home-filtered honey and backyard eggs. One Los Angeles resident with a lemon tree posted an offering on Craigslist to let customers "save over 50% over Vons, Ralphs, etc. $1.00/pound." At the Orange County Swap Meet, officials said the number of people selling home-canned beans and other homemade edibles grew to 30 vendors this month, up from eight vendors in early 2007. In the South, hunters are selling venison and wild boar meat. In the Midwest, people are combing the forests for morel mushrooms, which can fetch $10 to $40 a pound. Tacey Perkins decided her best customers may be the neighbors around her Riverside County home. Last fall, the mother of two and former real estate agent posted a sign on her front lawn in Mira Loma advertising home-grown pumpkins. She sold $100 worth. This summer she plans to have a farm stand on the family's picnic table with baskets of zucchini, peppers and eggs. "My husband works in the construction industry, and while he still has a job, things are slower," said Perkins, 35. "Every little bit helps." The trend harkens back to the U.S. depression of 1893, when cities encouraged owners of empty lots to let unemployed people farm them and sell the excess produce, said Laura Lawson, an associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "It was seen as engendering the capitalist ideal of this country, that people were bettering themselves by being outside and working," Lawson said.WASHINGTON D.C. — Today, the FCC proposed to extend price regulation of business broadband services to cable and fiber. The Commission voted on a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (not yet public) that places the commission a step closer to imposing a new regulatory framework for the provision of business data services (a.k.a. special access), proposing burdensome new rules for cable and fiber-based providers and ex ante price regulations for their broadband services. “The FCC is once again shredding long-standing bipartisan consensus,” said Tom Struble, Policy Counsel at TechFreedom. “The Clinton administration recognized that a light-touch approach to broadband regulation was essential to encouraging broadband competition, for both residential and enterprise customers, and that facilities-based competition is the best way to serve consumers. Hardly a year after flipping the script and imposing Depression-era common carrier regulations on broadband providers, the FCC doubles down, proposing to micromanage business practices and impose price caps on special access providers.” “Until recently, the FCC had respected Congress’s preference for facilities-based competition over top-down regulation, and kept its hands off the special access market,” explained Struble. “Since deregulation in 1999, modern IP-based Ethernet and fiber alternatives have entered the market with huge success in serving buildings and businesses with greater communications needs — like backhaul for wireless cell towers or server farms. New entrants, such as cable companies and middle-mile providers like Cogent, have deployed enough infrastructure to now offer a competitive alternative for 86% of buildings with enterprise customers. Chairman Wheeler constantly invokes the mantra of ‘competition,’ but what he really means is driving prices down as much as possible by regulatory fiat, even if it means discouraging investment in competing networks.” “The FCC’s actions today cast a pall over the market, with some economists predicting a massive decrease in fiber investment,” concluded Struble. “With 5G services and much denser wireless networks on the horizon, the need for high-speed backhaul will continue to grow. But this new regulation may significantly depress investment in the special access market, decreasing the number of fiber and other high-capacity service options for carriers, and perhaps significantly delaying the rollout of 5G wireless services. We can only hope the FCC appreciates the dire effects its regulation could have, and uses its broad discretion to forbear from applying this new special access framework in most or all markets going forward.” ### We can be reached for comment at media@techfreedom.org. See more of our work on competition, including: Our podcast with Hal Singer, author of a new study on the potential impacts of the FCC’s special access regulations Our statement on the problems with the FCC’s conditions on the TWC-Charter merger Comments from TechFreedom and the Competitive Enterprise Institute on the FCC’s set-top box proposalKandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan is reckoned to be as busy as Gatwick. Every few minutes the cloudless skies are filled with the roar of a military fighter taking off – hugging the ground to avoid pot shots by the Taliban’s crude rockets before disappearing into the heat haze. In between there is a more persistent sound: the high-pitched whirr of 'drones’ – military aircraft without a human on board – as they head out for 18-hour stints monitoring the vast empty spaces of Afghanistan. This sound, generated by the aircraft’s tail propeller, is a constant white noise for the inhabitants of Kandahar Airfield. It is said the term 'drone’ originated with a 1930s pilotless version of the British Fairey Queen fighter, the 'Queen Bee’. But, with the new generation of insect-like small aircraft, together with its monotonous engine noise, the name has never been more apt. Before 9/11, drones were a new, untried technology. Now it is estimated that 40 countries are trying to buy or develop unmanned aircraft. The United States operates 7,500 drones or, in the official parlance, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), making up more than 40 per cent of Department of Defense aircraft. They have been the weapon of choice for the US to assassinate 'high value targets’ – as the military call them – from al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Last year in Libya an American drone identified and attacked the convoy Colonel Gaddafi was travelling in. A few hours later, after fleeing, he was caught by rebels and killed. And since the killing of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s top ranks have been eviscerated by drone strikes, culminating in June in the killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi, the al-Qaeda deputy in Pakistan. In military terms, their success is not in doubt. They have disrupted al-Qaeda by forcing its commanders to abandon telephones (drones can listen in on calls) and avoid meetings, communicating only by courier. But drone strikes have also led to mass protests in Pakistan and spawned numerous campaigns against them. Do they really represent a new, sinister form of battle in which moral judgments are delegated to machines? And does their deadly accuracy ensure that 'collateral damage’ is minimised, protecting civilians in war zones? Or do they encourage trigger-happy pilots, free from risk in their cockpits on the ground? Since 2007 the RAF has operated 39 Squadron, a detachment of five US-built MQ-9 Reaper aircraft at Kandahar Airfield. While America has a sprawling UAV programme targeting Islamic militants everywhere from Pakistan to Somalia, British Reapers have only ever been used as part of the official combat mission against the Taliban over Afghanistan. The vast majority of the 38,500 hours of operations flown by the RAF Reapers have been in intelligence-gathering rather than in attacking targets. Most of the 35 RAF Reaper pilots are based at Creech, an airfield near Las Vegas, where they control the aircraft via satellite as they fly over Afghanistan. An RAF Reaper drone in its shelter at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, armed and ready for a mission (NEIL DUNRIDGE) But the two-second delay between a pilot moving a joystick in Nevada and an aircraft responding in Afghanistan is enough to cause a crash during take-off and landing. Crews in Afghanistan control 'launch and recovery’ through direct contact with antennae on the aircraft. Half an hour after take-off, control of the Reaper is handed to a crew in Nevada; half an hour before landing, it returns to the crews on the ground in Kandahar. Kandahar Airfield is a vast, crowded military camp, full of private-security contractors in new SUVs, soccer pitches
or blue OK? Yes, milk isn't always white. Like the flavor of breastmilk, the color can change depending on what Mom eats. A diet full of yams, squash and carrots could turn milk yellow or orange, La Leche International says. Similarly, sports drinks can affect milk's color. Talk to a lactation consultant or doctor if it's red though. Red, pink, brown, black or olive green breastmilk could suggest it contains blood, the Australian Breastfeeding Association advises. Most often, blood in breastmilk is caused by cracked nipples and is harmless, but it's still best to contact a doctor to confirm the cause. Can women with small boobs breastfeed? Of course. "Mothers of all shapes and sizes can breastfeed," said Gina Boling, clinical director at Breastfeeding Center for Greater Washington. Women with smaller breasts do have a smaller storage capacity though, Boling said. So, they might need to feed more frequently. Can women with inverted nipples breastfeed? Yes, but it's a good idea to prepare. "We can do some stretching before the baby comes," Boling said. If moms with inverted nipples can't manually stimulate the nipple before feeding, a silicone nipple shield often helps, Boling said. Can women with implants breastfeed? Yes, usually. Nicky Naoko Lawnsby, founder of Honolulu Breastfeeding and Wellness Center, said she’s worked with many moms who have implants and successfully breastfed exclusively. It’s possible, but can present some challenges. “There is an extra object in the chest cavity,” she said. “It’s much harder work for baby and mom.” Lawnsby said implants can delay milk production and increase the chance of mastitis. Will boobs sag after breastfeeding? Pregnancy and genetics are usually to blame for changes in breast size and shape, Boling said. But, breasts do increase in size while breastfeeding. So, Gruber said after women breastfeed, they can see a decrease in cup size. How long can milk stay in your breast after weaning? "Some moms will see milk for a long time, months or years after," Boling said. Follow Ashley May on Twitter: @AshleyMayTweets Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2vtNukHI haven’t done a character analysis in a while, so I thought it’s about time I did a character analysis for our favourite guy in black, Batman. When it comes to an analysis of Batman, the discussion often revolves around his psychology, and to put it simply, if he’s insane or not. Long story short, no I don’t think Batman is crazy, but there’s a lot more to it, so let’s get into this Batman character analysis! So you know him, and may or may not love him, he’s Batman! He witnesses the murder of his parents and ever since then has been on a mission for justice…blah blah blah, you know how the story goes. But Batman is one of the most interesting superheroes out there. He’s also one of the most popular. With many, many iterations of the character, any character analysis of Batman is purely an interpretation of the character, obviously. So you can agree or disagree with my analysis, and that’s perfectly fine. Because overall Batman is represented very differently according to the writer, you have psycho-Batman, Bat-God, humanised Batman etc. Lets start this Batman character analysis with the questions that is often asked of Batman, is Batman crazy? Is Batman insane? Is he a psycho? First of all, as most of you know, insanity is a legal term. And in legal terms, insanity is a term given to individuals who basically cannot determine the difference between right and wrong. Yes technically Batman is an illegal vigilante, who goes around terrorising people, but Batman is more than capable of discerning the difference between what is right and wrong, and therefore it is silly to label Batman as crazy. Psychopaths on the other hand, know the difference between right and wrong, and choose to take part in wrongful acts anyways. And sometimes when Frank Miller gets his hands on Batman, he comes off as kind of psycho, but overall, Batman is not a psychopath either. He doesn’t just go around punching people for fun. A simple technique Batman uses to keep his sanity, is through the use of strong moral codes and rules. Batman will not kill. As Nietzche once said, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee”. Batman spends his day surrounded by monsters who abuse, torture and kill. In order to separate himself from those he hunts, he creates a line, that line being not killing, as a psychological reminder that he is not one of the monsters he hunts for. Unlike most of his enemies, Batman is cerebral and logical, and uses logic and reason to hunt monsters. And through this logic he is able to retain his sense of sanity. His sanity is further proven through his relations with authority. Batman is often a character associated with obsession, and is often labelled a ‘control freak’. Yes Batman can become obsessive and often controlling over what needs to be done and how it needs to be done, but Batman knows the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong, and understands that his mission is one that should not be a personal vendetta, but rather a means to attain justice and order for all. Batman knows the justice system in Gotham is messed up. His parents were victims to that. The disorder of the Gotham police and further justice system, resulted in the random killing of his parents, where often the killer is never brought to justice (depending on the story you’re reading). But Batman didn’t become Batman to replace the justice system, rather he became Batman to assist the justice system, to help create order in Gotham. He understands that he cannot be a one-man justice system, that he needs to work with authority in order to bring…order. Which is something that is emphasised with his relationship with Jim Gordon. Now I know we just touched on part of Batman’s motivations, and before we get deeper into that, lets discuss the identity of Bruce Wayne/Batman. Most people would say that answer to the identity question is obvious, Batman is the real identity, and Bruce Wayne is the mask. And I have to disagree with that statement. If you’re a reader of the New 52 Batman, written by the wonderful Scott Snyder, then you may be able to see where I’m coming from. Our personal identity is a collection of the personas we create. We have a certain persona when with our family, than when we are with our boss (unless you’re super tight with your boss). Batman and Bruce Wayne are both personas, that together create the whole identity. Scott Snyder’s Batman, often aims to humanise Batman a lot more than other writers’ interpretations. Batman’s internal monologue often refers to himself as Bruce, and he continually needs to reassure himself of his actions, question his actions, and whether he is capable or not. From this you get a portrait of a man, the complete identity that is Bruce Wayne and Batman. He isn’t just this machine who knows what to do and how to do it all the time, just “because he’s Batman”, he’s a real person with real struggles. Stick with me here: it is our experiences and choices that often shape our identity. For Bruce, it took him years of self-discovery from finding the symbol of the Bat, to training and travelling to find his sense of identity. By creating the persona of Batman, Bruce is able to complete his sense of identity by, as said perfectly in ‘Batman and Philosophy’, “instilling in him a new sense of authentic conscience, one that is not clouded by revenge, burdened by the expectations of others, or anchored in any single all-embracing moral vision, but rather speaks to the actualization of freedom and human potential.” “You play the hand you’re dealt. What I am, I am of my own choice. I don’t know if I’m happy, but I’m content.”–Legends of the Dark Knight #23 Okay so now lets really get into the motivations of the Dark Knight. What started out as a mission for vengeance, Batman is now a crusader for justice. The question often arises, why would a guy risk it all, to dress up as a bat, and fight bad guys? Personal tragedy is the obvious answer. Bruce went through something terrible, and decided to become Batman. But that answer is far too simple. Many people go through intense personal tragedy, and don’t become well…Batman. And sure it’s easier for him to become Batman because he has access to resources through his billion dollar fortune, however even that isn’t motivation enough for any normal person to become Batman. Bruce is a man of intense will and self-discipline. This sense of will and self-discipline is a trait that strengthened over the years. However what in particular motivated Bruce to become Batman? Well really there isn’t a definite answer to that, and that is what makes the character so interesting. Batman is such a complex character, with numerous and even questionable motives. Bruce, like most other people, doesn’t completely understand himself either, so how are we supposed to ever determine why Bruce out of all people decided to become Batman? A combination of personal traits and personal experiences created Batman. In The Long Halloween, Bruce recalls his motivation as “a promise to my parents that I would rid the city of the evil that took their lives”. However, as I mentioned earlier, Batman’s crusade is no longer a personal vendetta. That promise is merely to give Bruce a sense of purpose, and to help create a sense of unity for his broken life. He has grown a lot since that promise he once made when he was younger. Another attribute often associated with Batman, is that he is a loner. Batman has no friends, because he don’t need them, because he’s the goddamn Batman! Right? Well not really. As Epicurus mentions as the secret to happiness, everyone needs friendship “Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship”. Now Batman may not be the happiest person on Earth, but I don’t consider him to be depressed or a total loner either, everybody yearns for a little bit of friendship in their lives, as does Batman. Bruce does often shut people out of his life. He isn’t the best when it comes to romantic relationships, and finds it difficult to keep anyone close to him. His excuses often come down to the fact that what he does is dangerous, and keeping people close to him is bad for them. Ehh. I think it more comes down to the fact that Bruce had people close to him, his parents, and they were ripped from him. And that caused him so much pain and grief that he can’t bear to have it happen to him again. Bruce doesn’t hate people or relationships or friendships, he loves it. That love is clear from the immense pain he felt from his parents’ death. It’s just easier for him to keep people out of his life, out of fear of losing people close to him again. But as much as he tries to keep people out of his life, there are a few that manage to occasionally crack a smile from the master of brooding. Selina Kyle is one of those people. But when it comes to romance, Bruce isn’t the best, so that relationship spends more time going downhill than up. Then you have people like Alfred and Jim Gordon. Although they are close to Bruce, I wouldn’t necessarily call them his friends. Alfred and Bruce have a major power imbalance in their relationship, as Alfred is still Bruce’s butler, and although Bruce has sometimes found a father figure in Alfred, he still views him as somebody that works for him. Then you have Jim Gordon. In a sense they are friends, but at the same time, Jim Gordon only knows Batman, he doesn’t know the man behind the mask. There’s only so far that friendship can go, whilst Bruce keeps half of his identity secret from Gordon. Then you have somebody like Dick Grayson. Dick and Bruce are quite close as well. Dick is one of the few people Bruce really trusts. But again I wouldn’t necessarily call the two of them friends. Bruce and Dick have more of a father/son relationship, than a true friendship. So no Bruce isn’t a loner, as he has many people in his ‘Bat-Family’, and in my eyes the only one true friend Bruce has, is the other half of the World’s Finest, Superman. Clark and Bruce may seem like their on the opposite sides of the spectrum, but Clark is the only person who I could actually say is Bruce’s true friend. It’s pretty clear that the pair don’t often always understand each other, but that doesn’t stand in the way of their friendship. Clark may not always understand Bruce’s methods and motivations, and Bruce may not always understand Clark’s optimism, but Bruce and Clark together create a balance, that creates a strong friendship. Clark needs Bruce to be his logic, and reality check at times. And Bruce needs Clark to be his light and sense of positivity at times. There is a great level of respect between the pair, and a sense of strong loyalty, that they don’t often share with other people, especially in Bruce’s case. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, then I suggest reading the current arc of the New 52 (Superman’s Joker arc) Batman/Superman, which really highlights the nature of their friendship. But now lets talk about the other people in Batman’s life: his enemies. When looking at Batman’s villain, you can see that they are often reflections of certain parts of his personality, and often represent the extremities of those certain aspects of his personality. Here a few: Two-Face: this one is obvious, Two-Face is a reflection of Batman/Bruce Wayne’s duality, and his constant identity struggle. As I said his identity is a combination with Batman, and he is often struggling to find the balance with his humanity and the darkness he fights. this one is obvious, Two-Face is a reflection of Batman/Bruce Wayne’s duality, and his constant identity struggle. As I said his identity is a combination with Batman, and he is often struggling to find the balance with his humanity and the darkness he fights. Mr. Freeze: it’s not random that Mr. Freeze is associated with everything cold, as he has a cold personality, devoid of emotion, after the death of his wife. Emotions are something that Bruce also struggles to show, and if he does completely shut off his friends and the people close to him, he could end up as devoid as Freeze. it’s not random that Mr. Freeze is associated with everything cold, as he has a cold personality, devoid of emotion, after the death of his wife. Emotions are something that Bruce also struggles to show, and if he does completely shut off his friends and the people close to him, he could end up as devoid as Freeze. Penguin: Penguin is quite the aristocrat, as wealth and status are the most important things in his life. Bruce, being a billionaire and all, could easily become just as obsessed with his wealth and status in society. Penguin is quite the aristocrat, as wealth and status are the most important things in his life. Bruce, being a billionaire and all, could easily become just as obsessed with his wealth and status in society. Catwoman: she’s all about the excitement and the adrenaline of the heist, and the outlaw life. Batman is often written as finding pleasure in living in a place outside the law, where he is able to put on a costume, and do basically what ever he wants, however taking that excitement too far can lead him to the darker path of Catwoman, she’s all about the excitement and the adrenaline of the heist, and the outlaw life. Batman is often written as finding pleasure in living in a place outside the law, where he is able to put on a costume, and do basically what ever he wants, however taking that excitement too far can lead him to the darker path of Catwoman, Ra’s Al Ghul: Ra’s is what you get when you take the ideal of order and justice too far. Ra’s idea of order and justice often involves the mass death of humanity to start anew. Batman’s obsession with order could lead him down a similar path if he gives up on truly helping people. Ra’s is what you get when you take the ideal of order and justice too far. Ra’s idea of order and justice often involves the mass death of humanity to start anew. Batman’s obsession with order could lead him down a similar path if he gives up on truly helping people. Scarecrow: Scarecrow utilises fear to defeat his enemies, as does Batman. However Scarecrow takes it many steps too far by creating mush of the minds of his enemies with his fear toxin Overall as I said earlier, Batman is represented very differently according to the writer, however personally, this is how I view the character. Batman is an incredibly complex character that can’t just be written off as an utilitarianist, or deontologist, or a consequentialist. Batman is a character of great intelligence who assesses each individual situation and acts accordingly. Therefore occasionally his ethics and morality can come into question, however you can’t disagree that he is a man of logic. His relationships are complicated as are his motivations, which is why we love him so much. But what are your views on Batman? Disagree with this Batman character analysis? Think there’s a lot more to the character? Let me know! If you like GirlonComicBookWorld and would like to support the site, you can head HERE to make a contribution, anything is appreciated! AdvertisementsActor LeVar Burton wants to bring his upcoming Reading Rainbow project to a host of new platforms, including gaming consoles like Xbox and PlayStation systems. For that to happen, though, funding for the Star Trek actor's newly launched Kickstarter campaign needs to reach $5 million. Right now, the campaign stands at $2.8 million from more than 64,000 backers. "Let's do this, ya'll. I'll see you later. But you don't have to take my word for it," Burton said in a Kickstarter video update today. The campaign ends on Wednesday, July 2. Burton's new Reading Rainbow project was originally announced as a web application only, but after considering comments and suggestions, it was decided that to be "accessible to more kids and families," the initiative would also need to expand to new platforms. In addition to the unspecified Xbox and PlayStation consoles, if the $5 million stretch goal is met, the new Reading Rainbow program will be released for mobile devices, as well as over-the-top boxes like AppleTV, Roku, and Kindle Fire TV. Burton's overall ambition for his new Reading Rainbow initiative is to bring the program to "every child, everywhere." The service will include an "unlimited library" of books and video field trips for "today's digitally connected kids." He's calling on people who grew up with Reading Rainbow to help fund the new Kickstarter to support the children of the next generation. Reading Rainbow went off the air in 2009. It originally aired on PBS and Burton was its host and producer.PHILADELPHIA -- In a decision that could become routine this season, the Miami Heat decided to sit Dwyane Wade Wednesday night against the Philadelphia 76ers because it was on the second night of a back-to-back. Wade has no official injury and was listed as being out for rest. Roger Mason Jr. started in Wade's place. Wade, who played 36 minutes and scored 13 points in the Heat's season-opening win against the Chicago Bulls Tuesday, played in just four preseason games and didn't play in any back-to-backs. He has battled knee issues over the last two seasons. "It was not pre-planned, it was something our trainers and coaches came to me with," Wade said. "It's early in the season, it's just precaution." Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, however, implied this could happen throughout the season. Wade took planned time off in each of the last two seasons to manage or prevent injuries. "It's really part of a plan, it won't be consistent necessarily all year that he won't play back-to-backs," Spoelstra said. "It's just been a long week, he's just a little bit sore. It's nothing dramatic." Wade had treatment on his knees over the summer but came to training camp in good shape and had no significant setbacks. He planned to play Friday when the Heat play the Brooklyn Nets. "The most important thing is his health," LeBron James said. "If he needs to take the second game of the season, the 30th game, the 50th game, the 80th game, then that's the way it is."As the Duchess of Cambridge knows only too well, windy weather is one of the prime causes of wardrobe malfunctions. But 'gale fail' as it has been nicknamed could soon be a thing of the past if one British department store gets its way. Debenhams is to temporarily introduce wind machines to its flagship store so customers can put their floaty dresses on trial before purchase. Scroll down for video Debenhams has installed a wind tunnel in-store to allow party goers to see if their outfit is prone to gale fail Those looking for the perfect wedding or Ascot frock will be able to put them to the test at the Oxford Street store over the bank holiday weekend. Special industrial fans which can be adjusted to mimic a gentle breeze or a full-blown 40 mph gale have been set up in the fitting area and cost nothing for shoppers to use. Personal stylists will also be on hand to advise customers on which garments are best for beating gale fail, from the right head-gear to skirts, dresses and even footwear. Speaking about the wind tunnel, Alain Mehada, the head of styling at the Oxford Street store, says he hopes customers will take the opportunity to wind test their summer ensembles. 'It can ruin a special day when someone has spent a long time choosing what to wear, only to find themselves battling with the wind, holding on to their hat with one hand and the hem of their skirt with the other, while teetering in skyscraper heels,' he says. The Duchess of Cambridge fell victim to gale fail during last year's tour of Australia and New Zealand 'A big part of many summer events, particularly weddings and big race meetings such as Ascot, is wearing a special outfit that makes you feel confident that you look your best, but relaxed enough to enjoy the day. 'It is very difficult to do that if you are worried about your dress flying up to reveal more than you bargained for, or your lovely new hat soaring off into the distance.'Appeal: These woman are looking for eligible bachelors (Picture: Facebook) It’s the kind of news that could make Don Juan feel faint. A Brazilian town that is entirely made up of young, ‘extremely attractive’ women has made an appeal – for single men. Noiva do Cordeiro, in southeast Brazil, has a 600-strong population that is entirely female, with sons sent away at 18 and the few husbands only allowed in town on weekends. And while that might sound perfect to some, the young women in the town are growing increasingly frustrated at the absence of men – and have made an appeal for eligible bachelors to step forward. Any men in the town are expected to live according to ‘female’ rules (Picture: Facebook) Don Juan ‘Here, the only men we single girls meet are either married or related to us, everyone is a cousin. I haven’t kissed a man for a long time,’ Nelma Fernandes, 23, told The Mirror. Advertisement Advertisement ‘We all dream of falling in love and getting married. But we like living here and don’t want to have to leave the town to find a husband.’ The unusual settlement was founded by Maria Senhorinha de Lima, branded an adulterer and excommunicated after fleeing her forced marriage. Other women rejected by society joined her in isolation – and Noiva do Cordeiro was born. The settlement was founded by women rejected by society (Picture: Facebook) The residents say the town is ‘prettier and more organised’ than it would be if men ran it (Picture: Facebook) But before you book your flights, gents, there is a caveat: ‘Do what we say and live according to our rules,’ says Nelma. ‘There are lots of things that women do better than men. Our town is prettier, more organised, and far more harmonious than if men were in charge. ‘And there’s always time to stop and gossip, try on each other’s clothes and do each other’s hair and nails.’ Form an orderly queue, fellas. The woman say there’s always time to ‘stop and gossip’ in the town (Picture: Facebook)Racism is dead, long live racism. For years, researchers have argued that the (misguided) social norm of colorblindness changed the rules of racial engagement in politics. Voters have grown hostile to overtly racist appeals and racial language, so when modern candidates want to stoke racial fears, they usually do so indirectly, with dog whistles and coded language. Donald Trump, however, tests the limits of this theory. He sounds the dog whistle loud enough to shatter glass and built a mountain from the molehill of birtherism, a racially coded conspiracy theory former RNC Chair Michael Steele eloquently described as “bullshit racism.” Despite his baseless and bigoted attacks on President Obama, Trump and his surrogates insist he has “a great relationship with the blacks.” This is, of course, untrue, as polling consistently suggests the opposite. But Trump’s dissonance is illustrative of an even more troubling phenomenon, especially as the first debate approaches: the remarkable persistence of “racism without racists,” a phrase coined and explained by sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Even though the truly evil racists seem to have disappeared, support for policies and narratives sustain racial inequality remains powerful as ever. Advertisement A few days ago, Kathy Miller, a Trump volunteer chair from Ohio provided a perfect example of this trend. Miller said there was no racism before Obama was elected, and “If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault.” When faced with criticism, she could not understand what she had done wrong, and asked, “What did I say that was racist?” Ignoring or denying persistent, documented, and legally condemned discrimination against people of color and blaming them for their own suffering is, in fact, racist. Still, Miller and others remain confused. Get Today in Opinion in your inbox: Globe Opinion's must-reads, delivered to you every Sunday-Friday. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here Which brings us to the debates, which are sure to be equally confusing. Each side will insist they won. Some facts will be checked, and others will not, and viewers desperately need the moderator to maintain a firm grip on reality, as Trump insists on living in his own dystopian fantasy world. Though veteran debate moderator and journalist Bob Schieffer warns, “Nobody goes to a ballgame to watch the umpire,” we need someone to clearly call out the balls and strikes. And when it comes to racism in America, we need courage and clarity about what racism is and how the candidates plan to address it. Trump has an arsenal of offensive beliefs and statistics that should force the moderator to broach these topics. In 2015, Trump tweeted that blacks killed 81 percent of white homicide victims. He also suggested that Mexican immigrants are little more than drug dealers and criminals. More recently, Trump’s son circulated an equally deceitful and bigoted graphic comparing Syrian refugees to poisoned Skittles. Whoever moderates the debate has an obligation to directly refute such vile nonsense. There is no statistical basis for these suggestions, and again, the entire purpose of such appeals is to fan the flames of ethnic bigotry and xenophobia. These appeals, along with prideful ignorance about world affairs and naked sexism, are the heart of the Trump campaign. Of course, the bigotry of Trump’s campaign won’t be the only racially charged topic at the upcoming debates, as police killings of black people and resultant protests continue unabated. There are some, like North Carolina Congressman Robert Pittenger, who continue to misconstrue the facts, suggesting, “The grievance in their [protestors’] mind is — the animus, the anger — they hate white people because white people are successful and they’re not.” Such narratives ignore the stated purpose and demands of the protestors and run parallel to the sort of racism via denial peddled by Miller. If the debate moderator has the courage to ask a direct question about racism and police violence, nobody expects the candidates to simply dismiss the killing and protests the way Pittenger did. Trump is likely to pivot towards a further condemnation of the imaginary crime epidemic and promise to solve any and all related problems by being tougher than Clinton. More earnest attempts to analyze the intersection of racism and police shootings are often shaped by discussion of bias, which undoubtedly influences officers’ decisions to shoot. But the problem with bias is that it reduces the epidemic to a series of individual failures. And because bias is a natural cognitive process, deadly mistakes in those situations are viewed as almost inevitable. Advertisement Obsessing over bias and individual prejudice as the essence of racism can impede systemic change. The most powerful anti-racist efforts require more than developing litmus tests for exposing the “real” racists, or merely saying the words “Black Lives Matter.” They require institutional upheaval. If we are to explore such possibilities, we need presidential debates where candidates address the demilitarization of police and revisit processes of internal investigation and the expectations placed upon state prosecutors. We need debates where candidates discuss court cases like Graham vs. Connor (1989), which grants extreme leeway to police officers who use deadly force, with the same fervor and depth that we discuss Roe vs. Wade. These are not “racial issues” in the traditional sense, but they are fundamental to institutional racism. They must be openly discussed, rather than drowned out by the sounds of dog whistles, empty promises to return to law and order, and platitudes about rebuilding trust between police. Our democracy and our lives depend on it. Michael P. Jeffries is an associate professor of American studies at Wellesley College and author of “Paint the White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America.”Anand Patwardhan's 'Ram Ke Naam' will make VHP, BJP very uncomfortable: Here's why Three cheers for the internet! After ILS Law College in Pune cancelled the screening of Anand Patwardhan's 1991 documentary Ram ke Naam (In the Name of God), the filmmaker has put the film on YouTube. Although the Pune college has denied that it backed out of showing Patwardhan's film because of threats from right-wing Hindu groups, the institution hasn't explained its change of heart. Patwardhan claims the organisers were threatened. It isn't difficult to imagine political groups like Vishwa Hindu Parishad would take issue with Ram ke Naam. The VHP has a long tradition of restricting freedom of speech and causing disruptions and the organisation's hate politics are laid bare by Patwardhan in this documentary. Ram ke Naam was mostly shot in 1990, before the demolition of Babri Masjid, and as a result, Patwardhan's interviewees speak candidly. VHP and Bajrang Dal members brazenly speak of inflicting violence upon those who stand in their way. Common people explain how political groups have vitiated the atmosphere in their neighbourhoods. Some expose their ignorance of Indian history and Hinduism; other offer hope by not falling for toxic political rhetoric. Patwardhan shows that the entire debate about Babri Masjid being built on the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram is fuelled by nothing but politics. That the mosque was built upon a razed temple was something the British circulated in order to divide Hindus and Muslims during colonial rule. It didn't work too well -- Hindus and Muslims both worshipped their respective gods in the same complex for decades. The first disruption to this peaceful status quo happened in 1949, when Hindu idols were found in the mosque. Subsequently, it became a disputed site, the mosque was shut down and since there were Hindu idols in the structure, the court appointed a priest to officiate over this makeshift temple. Among the people that Patwardhan interviews in Ram ke Naam is a mahant who freely admits that he, with help from the district magistrate, put the idols in the mosque in 1949. Patwardhan also spoke to the court-appointed priest, who is forcefully critical of the VHP and the campaign to demolish the mosque. "This is a political game," says the priest, who later says that no one from the VHP has ever come to offer prayers at the temple, but VHP workers have disrupted prayer schedules with their threats of violence. "Why demolish a building where god [the Hindu idols] already exists?" asks the priest, pointing out that to raze the mosque now would effectively be destroying a temple because according to Hinduism, any building that houses an idol becomes a temple. If it is indeed true that those who consider themselves custodians of Hinduism are the ones standing against Ram ke Naam, then we need to dig a double grave because irony just died along with common sense. Anyone who is a devout Hindu should work actively to make sure this film is seen because it distinguishes those who believe in Hinduism from those who swear by Hindutva. It's a distinction that bears repeating as Patwardhan shows how callously political parties either turn a blind eye to riots and other acts perverting our fundamental rights or actively encourage them. The ones who will find Ram ke Naam thoroughly uncomfortable viewing are political parties like VHP and BJP, along with their supporters. The fact that LK Advani went on record to say his 1990 rath yatra would not be cause communal riots is placed alongside the numbers of people killed in violent incidents that followed Advani's trail. VHP would probably be embarrassed by Patwardhan revealing its old financial scandals. Patwardhan doesn't pull his punches and armed with research and testimonies, the filmmaker points fingers at godmen and politicians who have exploited religion for power and personal gain. From footage of riot victims to political rallies to the voices of the common people who bear the brunt of these vicious strategies, it's all in Ram ke Naam. To see the way politicians have used the Ram Janmabhoomi issue to incite people to violence and stoke flames of communalism is a bitter pill to swallow if you're politically-inclined towards the right-wing. For everyone else, there is hope held out by those from villages surrounding Ayodhya, who talk about how Hindus and Muslims have lived together in harmony for as long as they can remember even as tensions escalate and kar sevaks arrive in thousands. As the priest at the Ram Janmabhoomi tells Patwardhan, "There is a storm, but we mustn't lose our bearings. Like the tidal wave, it will recede." We live in hope that his words will come true. Watch the video here: Updated Date: Jan 07, 2015 08:47:19 ISTYesterday, Rajesh Mishra, a journalist working with Dainik Jagran newspaper, was shot dead in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur district by unidentified motor-bike borne assailants. As per media reports, assailants fired several rounds at Mishra at 7 am on Saturday and fled the spot. Most media persons, who carried out protests and prime time debates, and also quickly blamed Narendra Modi for left-leaning journalist Gauri Lankesh’s death in September this year, maintained radio silence over Mishra’s death because he was right-leaning and associated with the RSS. While most didn’t trend a hashtag, hold protests at Press Club of India or change their profile picture to Mishra’s, few condemned Mishra’s murder. Killing of any journalist is unequivocally condemnable assault on freedom. Doesn’t matter if he/she’s linked to Left/Right or to no ideology https://t.co/S2jL5ifMzl — Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) October 21, 2017 But most of these champions of ‘protect press’ remaining silent on Mishra’s murder is not as bad as this abusive murderous troll, celebrating his death. Remember how primetime debates were held because one Twitter handle followed by Prime Minister Modi had tweeted disrespectful tweet following Lankesh’s murder? - Advertisement - - Article resumes - This abusive troll is followed by various journalists and Congress leaders, many of whom wanted Prime Minister Modi to resign because of a tweet by someone PM follows. Here are some of the followers of the troll who celebrates murders: There are more people, most of whom are Congress workers, supporters, alleged journalists, and left-leaning propaganda websites, who follow this genocidal maniac troll. Sample these: Among these sundry followers, alleged journalist Aditya Menon has been known to stoke violence in Kashmir by using fake images of Syria and passing them off as Kashmir violence images. India Resists is a platform which overlooked the sexual harassment by the founder, Kumar Sundaram, and many of his supporters even tried to normalise it since it was ‘brave’ of him to at least accept his ‘mistake’. These people can’t give excuses that they didn’t know that the user named “Comrade Nambiar” was a genocidal maniac troll before they followed him. This troll was earlier suspended for celebrating death of RSS activists and even CRPF jawans, and even his second account was suspended by Twitter for such hateful tweets. We had earlier reported how, before suspension of his original account, the troll was followed by Congress leaders and workers like Ajay Maken, Priyanka Chaturvedi, Salman Soz and Shehzad Poonawalla among others. While these have not, yet, followed the genocidal maniac troll for the third time, all others mentioned above are following him despite knowing his history. Does this mean they endorse his views? Should these people also take moral responsibility for the blood-thirsty tweets by Nambiar? Shouldn’t there be prime-time debates on his tweets celebrating death of a journalist as well? Especially when this is not the first time he has tweeted such venom. Here are some of his sample tweets from his earlier Twitter accounts: Some more gems from his previous account (Now suspended) pic.twitter.com/WmG2R0tZvB — DynastyCrooks (@DynastyCrooks) October 22, 2017 So Comrade 420 @ArvindKejriwal RTs Comrade @DasBolshevik Who Calls 4 Hindu Persecution! Fantastic! Wil AAP Assist Comrade Bro’s in Killings? pic.twitter.com/5YNWLKN0gm — Mahaveer Mehta (@MahaveerM_) October 21, 2016
, Plekhanov witnessed the levels of discontent within the emerging urban working class. An article he wrote in this period, “The Law of Society’s Economic Development and the Tasks of Socialism in Russia,” testifies to how he had started to include the proletariat, alongside the peasantry, in his developing conception of the revolution.[20] Meanwhile, as Ter-Vaganian observed, “he still thought that the workers’ revolution in the major cities would be in support of the peasant revolution. He thought that the social revolution would be completed by the peasants, and that the workers would only be their allies.”[21] In his articles for the second issue of Chernyi peredel, which was published in August 1880, Plekhanov continued to repeat the slogans of the old populism.[22] But his respect for Marxism was developing as he followed with particular attention the literary activities of Nikolai Ziber [Sieber] (1844–1888). Ziber had popularized the teachings of Marx in Russia, although he did so “as a true guardian of the sciences, not as a revolutionary.”[23] The next important advance in Plekhanov’s development was his stay in Paris during the winter of 1880–1881. There, he met Lavrov, witnessed workers’ demonstrations, and participated in major meetings devoted to honoring the amnestied émigré leaders of the Paris Commune. He also worked in the National Library and regularly attended meetings of the Paris socialists, making his acquaintance with the leading French supporters of Marx, Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, whose help with and influence on the development of his critical thought “were exceptional.”[24] It is in this period that the decisive breakthrough in Plekhanov’s evolution from populism to Marxism occurred. In January 1881, he replied to a question about the character of socialism in a letter to the editorial board of Chernyi peredel in the following way: Socialism is the theoretical expression, from the standpoint of the interests of the toiling masses, of the antagonism and the struggle of classes in existing society.[25] In this letter, the peasantry ceased to be the social basis for socialism. From then on, Plekhanov was to regard socialism as the result of the “antagonism and the struggle of classes in existing (i.e., bourgeois) society.” Further, Plekhanov wrote: The practical task following from this [the class struggle] for the revolutionary activity consists in the organization of the layer of workers [rabocheyo soslovia], in pointing out to it the ways and means for its emancipation … Outside the organization of forces, outside the awakening of consciousness and the self-activity of the people, even the most heroic revolutionary struggle can only benefit the higher classes, i.e., precisely those layers of contemporary society, against whom we must arm the toiling, disadvantaged masses. The emancipation of the people must be the work of the people themselves.[26] Plekhanov also decisively changed his attitude to federalism, now regarding state centralization as an important prerequisite for restructuring society on the basis of social equality. The next milestone in his movement toward Marxism was his article “The Economic Theory of Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow,” which was published in several issues of the legal Russian journal Notes of the Fatherland (Otechestvennye Zapiski) in 1882–1883. In this article, Plekhanov argued that in the eyes of bourgeois authors all people were divided into those who acknowledged the right of the working class to struggle for its emancipation and those who did not acknowledge this right. He wrote: The practical strivings of the authors of these theories, and above all, of course, the question of the political self-activity of the working classes, are of decisive importance in their eyes. The writer who is against the organization of the workers in a special political party will probably gain the sympathy of bourgeois economists, regardless of what theoretical conceptions he is meanwhile guided by.[27] Here, Plekhanov, in early 1882, was formulating, in an absolutely clear manner, the necessity of organizing the working class in a special, class-based political party. Parallel to the theoretical advances of the exiled Plekhanov, the terroristic efforts of the “People’s Will” (Narodnaya Volya) reached their apex. In March 1881, yet another attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II ended with his murder. In the eyes of all democratic Europe, the revolutionary authority of the populists had reached its high point. However, the very “success” of the terrorist tactic simultaneously became the beginning of the end of the “People’s Will.” The ensuing cruel repressions removed the best cadres from its ranks. The “disorganization” of the government, if it took place at all, was short-lived and failed to shake the foundations of Russian absolutism. After a temporary shock, the new Tsar Alexander III and his entourage began another “cold period” in Russia, and for the next 15 years they maintained a regime of fierce nationalist reaction in the country. An atmosphere of social decline was accompanied by the growth of pessimism and disappointment among broad layers of the radically oriented intelligentsia, which encouraged moods among them inclined towards adopting a theory of achieving “small things” and insignificant land reforms. In the aftermath of the assassination of Alexander II, Plekhanov’s main efforts were focused on clarifying questions of decisive importance for the future Russian revolutionary movement. In carrying through his theoretical condemnation of the populists, Plekhanov displayed immense physical and intellectual courage. The final result of Plekhanov’s theoretical labors was the founding of the “Emancipation of Labor” group in Switzerland in September 1883. The group existed until the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1903. Plekhanov had wanted the organization to adopt a name that underlined its social-democratic character. But he met with opposition from the other members of the group and, as a result, reached a compromise solution. The pamphlet Socialism and the Political Struggle The founding of the “Emancipation of Labor” group was preceded by the publication of Plekhanov’s pamphlet Socialism and the Political Struggle, in which, for the first time, he formulated in distinctly Marxist terms the basic points of his political program. Plekhanov This work proved to be critical in the development of Russian socialism and attracted the attention of socialists throughout Europe. While in London, Plekhanov met Frederick Engels, who acknowledged him as an expert in philosophy. Plekhanov recalled that Engels agreed with the proposition that modern materialism was, in essence, Spinozism, cleansed of its inadequacies and carried to its logical completion—a thesis that lay at the foundation of all Plekhanov’s further struggles in defense of materialism against all sorts of idealist distortions and attacks. Unable to entirely disregard the social significance of the emerging urban proletariat, the populists reluctantly acknowledged that the workers were important “for the revolution.” Turning this phrase against the populists, Plekhanov replied in “Our Differences”: “This is by no means the way the Social Democrat speaks; he is convinced that it is not a case of the workers being necessary for the revolution, but of the revolution being necessary for the workers.”[28] This sentence concisely summed up the results of Plekhanov’s struggle against the populists’ conception of a supra-class peoples’ revolution. In the coming revolution against the autocracy, the working class would occupy a distinct, independent and decisive role, and would act independently, with a consciousness of its own class interests and objectives. In this same work, Plekhanov also declared: To Marx’s teaching is attributed the absurd conclusion that Russia must go through exactly the same phases of historical and economic development as the West.[29] This statement alone refutes the claims of Plekhanov‘s critics, according to whom he supposedly “mechanically” applied Marx’s theory to Russia. Plekhanov insisted that, …the history of West European relations was used by Marx only as the basis of the history of capitalist production, which emerged and developed precisely in that part of the world. … Neither the author of Capital nor his famous friend and colleague lost sight of the economic peculiarities of any particular country; only in those peculiarities do they seek the explanation of all a country’s social, political and intellectual movements.[30] In particular, Plekhanov explained that Marx’s teaching did not ignore the significance of the Russian land obshchina. He quoted from the foreword, written by Marx and Engels, to the Russian translation of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which was written in January 1882. In it, they said that the Russian obshchina might, under certain conditions, “pass directly to the higher, communist form of land ownership.” Plekhanov continued: These circumstances are, in their opinion, closely connected with the course of the revolutionary movement in the west of Europe and in Russia. “If the Russian revolution,” they say, “becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting-point for a communist development.” (Manifesto of the Communist Party, VIII.) … hardly anyone who understands the significance of international relations in the economic life of modern civilized societies can deny that the development of the Russian village commune “into a higher form of communist common ownership” is closely linked with the destiny of the working-class movement in the West.[31] In other words, Plekhanov insisted that the analysis of the internal socio-political development of Russia was possible only within the framework of a general international perspective of the proletarian revolution. Another claim of Plekhanov’s critics is that he “uncritically” based his conception of the Russian Revolution on the experience of the Western European bourgeois-democratic revolutions of the 19th century. But Plekhanov never employed such a sterile approach. He wrote: West European history tells us most convincingly that whenever the “red spectre” took at all threatening forms, the “liberals” were ready to seek protection in the embraces of the most unceremonious military dictatorship.[32] From these words it is evident that Plekhanov was very aware that the threat of anti-capitalist political action by the proletariat in Russia would push the liberal bourgeoisie into the embrace of absolutist reaction. He sought to avoid this outcome, while at the same time strengthening the position of the working class within the framework of the struggle for democracy. Seeking to find an appropriate response to an inherently contradictory situation, Plekhanov argued: …our socialist intelligentsia must concern itself with changing the factual relations of Russian social forces in favor of the working class even in the pre-constitutional period. Otherwise the fall of absolutism will by no means justify the hopes placed in it by the Russian socialists or even democrats… The socialist party itself, having won for the liberal bourgeoisie freedom of speech and action, may find itself in an “exceptional” position similar to that of German Social-Democracy today… the Russian socialists … can and must place their hopes first and foremost in the working class. The strength of the working class—as of any other class—depends, among other things, on the clarity of its political consciousness, its cohesion and its degree of organization. It is these elements of its strength that must be influenced by our socialist intelligentsia. The latter must become the leader of the working class in the impending emancipation movement, explain to it its political and economic interests and also the interdependence of those interests and must prepare it to play an independent role in the social life of Russia. They must exert all their energy so that in the very opening period of the constitutional life of Russia our working class will be able to come forward as a separate party with a definite social and political program. [Emphasis added][33] Writing that “the Russian socialists … can and must place their hopes first and foremost in the working class,” and that the “socialist party will win for the liberal bourgeoisie freedom of speech and action,” Plekhanov formulated his theory of the hegemony of the proletariat (and its party) in the struggle against Tsarism. Without detracting from Plekhanov’s theoretical achievement, it is also necessary to acknowledge that his formulation advanced a two-stage theory of revolution. The first stage would fight for the establishment of a bourgeois democracy. A second stage, at an unspecified future point of development, would carry forward the fight for workers’ rule and socialism. Plekhanov saw no possibility for the proletariat to immediately go over to the building of a socialist society under the conditions of socio-economic backwardness of Tsarist Russia in the early 1880s. However, he sought an answer to the question of how the workers’ party had to conduct itself in the event that the development of the Russian Revolution put on the order of the day the necessity of overthrowing absolutism while the dominant bourgeois rule was still maintained in Europe. Plekhanov provided a deeply dialectical answer to this question, from a historical point of view, in accordance with the objective social reality of Russia at that time. But for this very reason, this answer was not a final one and it contained entirely discernible traits of contradiction. The Russian proletariat, Plekhanov insisted, had to be the political leader of all other social layers, including the bourgeoisie, in the struggle against despotism. But it could not begin to realize its own class program immediately after the victory over Tsarism. The question, which objectively remained open, was reduced, therefore, to the following: Is it possible to hand over power to the bourgeoisie if and when the proletarian party is victorious in the democratic revolution, and what should the concrete mechanism of this process be? Moreover, if the proletariat handed over power to the liberal bourgeoisie, what guarantee would there be that the latter would not become frightened of the threat of the “red spectre” and attempt to suppress it with the methods of “the most unceremonious military dictatorship,” or even try to restore the monarchy? Given the conditions of his time, Plekhanov was not able to provide a final answer to these questions. While insisting upon the decisive role of the proletariat in the revolutionary process, he did not believe that the revolution could advance, without a fairly lengthy interval, beyond its bourgeois democratic stage. The transition from a bourgeois democratic to a socialist revolution would, in all probability, span decades. The sources of the future Menshevism can, no doubt, be discerned here. Trotsky, in his 1939 essay, “Three Conceptions of the Russian Revolution,” called attention to the limitations inherent in Plekhanov’s perspective: Plekhanov not only separated the bourgeois revolution as a task from the socialist revolution—which he postponed to the indefinite future—but he depicted for each of these entirely different combinations of forces. Political freedom was to be achieved by the proletariat in alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie; after many decades and on a higher level of capitalist development, the proletariat would then carry out the socialist revolution in direct struggle against the bourgeoisie.[34] Plekhanov did not see the possibility of directly combining the struggle for political freedom with the struggle for socialism. In fairness to Plekhanov, this possibility did not exist in the 1880s and 1890s. But even as he rejected a direct and immediate link between the democratic and socialist revolutions, Plekhanov indicated that the conscious action of the proletariat would strive to facilitate the transition—albeit over an extended period of time—from the democratic to the socialist stage. In Socialism and the Political Struggle, Plekhanov stated: Thus, the struggle for political freedom, on the one hand, and the preparation of the working class for its future independent and offensive role, on the other—such, in our opinion, is the only possible “setting of party tasks” at present. To bind together into one two so fundamentally different matters as the overthrow of absolutism and the socialist revolution, to wage revolutionary struggle in the belief that these elements of social development will coincide in the history of our country, means to put off the advent of both. But it depends on us to bring these two elements closer together.[35] It is important to note that Plekhanov, although dividing the course of the Russian Revolution into two stages, passionately wanted to “bring” them “closer together” as much as possible. Plekhanov’s American biographer, Professor Samuel Baron, called attention to the contradiction inherent in his position. Plekhanov, according to Baron, was prepared to countenance the shortening if not the elimination of the capitalist stage of development. And this would be achieved by a modification of the historical process through the political activity of the revolutionary party. Of course, Plekhanov sharply delimited his outlook and strategy from that of the Narodniks, on the ground that the voluntaristic activity of his revolutionary party must always be kept within the confines determined by the prevailing level of economic development. In his estimation, recognition of those limits set Marxism off from the assorted utopianisms. It subordinated revolutionary will to the historical process and its laws, thus guaranteeing the rationality of Marxian revolutionary policy. For all that, it is apparent that Plekhanov’s system embraced elements both of voluntarism and determinism, which he did not succeed in reconciling.[36] Plekhanov continually stressed the significance of the Social Democratic movement in developing the class consciousness of the working class and preparing it for revolutionary action. The claim that Plekhanov’s insistence on history as a law-governed process led him to underestimate revolutionary practice is fundamentally false. “The earliest possible formation of a workers’ party,” Plekhanov argued, “is the only means of solving all the economic and political contradictions of present-day Russia.” [Emphasis in the original] [37] Thus, he acknowledged that the practice of the party could, under certain conditions, influence and shorten the passage from the bourgeois democratic to the socialist stage of the revolution. But he was unable to say how, and under what conditions, this was to be accomplished. The objective conditions of Russian socio-economic development, as understood by Plekhanov, appeared to impose insurmountable limitations on the party’s striving for socialism. But the very posing of the contradiction left open the possibility of another solution to the historical problem identified by Plekhanov. This solution was discovered by Trotsky on the basis of an analysis of the changed objective conditions revealed by the 1905 Revolution. The theory of permanent revolution advances a strategy that not only “brings together” the democratic and socialist stages of the revolution, but also insists that the first stage is impossible without adopting the methods of the second. There is no question that Trotsky’s theory represented an immense advance beyond the perspective of Plekhanov (and, it must be stressed as well, beyond Lenin’s own pre-1917 program of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.) Nevertheless—and herein lies both the greatness and tragedy of Plekhanov’s life—his own identification of the central role of the Russian proletariat in the democratic revolution laid the foundations for all subsequent advances initiated by both Lenin and Trotsky in the sphere of revolutionary strategy and tactics. These advances were anticipated in Plekhanov’s speech at the founding congress of the Second International in 1889. He electrified the delegates when he declared: “The revolutionary movement in Russia will triumph only as a workers’ movement or it will never triumph at all.”[38] No other European socialist had previously recognized the decisive revolutionary role of the proletariat in backward Russia. It is precisely on the basis of this great insight that all subsequent struggles over the strategy of the socialist revolution in Russia developed, culminating in Trotsky’s elaboration of the theory of permanent revolution. This is why Trotsky insisted, in the 1918 funeral oration, that Plekhanov’s political and theoretical work laid the foundation “of the whole of our revolutionary struggle.” [Emphasis added] Several years later, in 1922, Trotsky was compelled to answer an assault by the historian Mikhail Pokrovskii on Plekhanov’s conception of certain unique features of Russia’s historical development. It was well known that Trotsky’s own understanding of Russian historical development had been greatly influenced by Plekhanov’s earlier theoretical work. In attacking Plekhanov, Pokrovskii, who was emerging as an ardent supporter of Stalin’s faction, was seeking to undermine the historical foundations of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. In support of his assault, Pokrovskii recalled Plekhanov’s political weaknesses and ultimate betrayal of the socialist revolution. Defending Plekhanov’s historical theories against Pokrovskii’s attack, Trotsky replied: The weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie and the illusory nature of Russia’s bourgeois democracy undoubtedly represent very important features in Russia’s historical development. But it is precisely from this, given all other existing conditions, that the possibility and the historical necessity of the proletariat’s seizure of power arises. True, Plekhanov never arrived at this conclusion. But then neither did he draw any conclusion from another of his undoubtedly correct propositions, namely: “The Russian revolutionary movement will triumph as a working class movement or it will not triumph at all.” If we mix up everything Plekhanov said against the Narodniks and the vulgar Marxists with his Kadetophilia[39] and his patriotism, there will be nothing left of Plekhanov. Yet in reality a good deal is left of Plekhanov, and it does no harm to learn from him now and again.[40] Our defense of the theory of permanent revolution and insistence on Trotsky’s historic role in the preparation and victory of the October Revolution is not in the least compromised by paying tribute to Plekhanov. We agree with Trotsky that it “does no harm” to both study and learn from this great Marxist theoretician. Particularly in this day and age, when intellectual life has been degraded by the foulest forms of anti-materialism and philosophical irrationalism, the writings of Plekhanov serve as essential weapons in the struggle for a scientific understanding of the development of the historical process, and, on this basis, the revival of revolutionary socialist consciousness in the working class. Moreover, at a time when the innumerable representatives of reactionary petty-bourgeois pseudo-leftism do everything in their power to slander the working class and deny its decisive revolutionary role, the struggle waged by Plekhanov to establish the revolutionary hegemony of the working class acquires immense contemporary relevance. Plekhanov remains, 160 years after his birth and almost a century after his death, a major figure in the history of socialist and Marxist thought. Lenin’s final tribute to Plekhanov, in 1922, was entirely justified: Let me add in parenthesis for the benefit of young Party members that you cannot hope to become a real intelligent Communist without making a study—and I mean study —of all of Plekhanov’s philosophical writings, because nothing better has been written on Marxism anywhere in the world.[41] *** Fundamental Problems of Marxism by G. Plekhanov is available (paperback) from Mehring Books for $7.65 The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left by David North is available from Mehring Books in hardcover, paperback, Kindle and ePub formats—on sale! Notes: 1. “Essays on the History of Materialism,” in Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. 2 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), p. 158. 2. “On the Materialist Conception of History,” in Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. 2 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), p. 235. 3. Ibid., pp. 235–236. 4. Ibid., p. 237. 5. Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), p. 402 [italics added]. 6. Ibid., p. 416. 7. Ibid., pp. 416–17. 8. Ibid., p. 422. 9. “Our Differences,” in Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. 1, p. 164. 10. “Cant Against Kant, or Herr Bernstein’s Will and Testament,” in Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. 2, p. 352. 11. “N.G. Chernyshevsky’s Aesthetic Theory,” in Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. 5 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981), p. 223. 12. Ibid., p. 225. 13. Ibid., p. 648. 14. Aleksandr K. Voronsky, Art as the Cognition of Life: Selected Writings 1911–1936, translated and edited by Frederick Choate (Oak Park, MI: Mehring Books, 1998), p. 120. 15. Nikolay Valentinov, Encounters with Lenin (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 180–81. 16. “In Memory of Plekhanov,” reproduced in The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left, by David North (Oak Park, MI: Mehring Books, 2015), pp. 281–82. 17. Ter-Vaganian: G. V. Plekhanov: An Attempt at a Characterization of his Socio-Political Views, (Moscow 1924). 18. Wilhelm Tell—the legendary popular hero of Switzerland, who supposedly lived from the end of the 13th to the beginning of the 14th centuries, a skilled marksman and fighter for the independence of his country from Austria and the Holy Roman Empire. 19. Ter-Vaganian, pp. 42, 43. 20. G.V. Plekhanov, Sochinenia, edited by D. Ryazanov, Vol. 1 (Moscow, 1922), p. 70. 21. Ter-Vaganian, p. 30. 22. Ibid., p. 53. 23. Ibid., p. 35. 24. Ibid., p. 56. 25. Sochinenia, Vol. 1, p. 134. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., p. 220. 28. Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. 1, p. 339. 29. Плеханов Г.В. Избранные философские произведения в пяти томах. Том 1. (М., 1956), с. 72. [G.V. Plekhanov, Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. 1, pp. 68–69]. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., p. 99 [Ibid., p. 94]. 33. Ibid., p. 108 [Ibid., p. 102]. 34. Writings of Leon Trotsky 1939-40 (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973), p. 56. 35. Плеханов Г.В. Избранные философские произведения в пяти томах. Том 1., с. 110. [Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. 1, p. 104]. 36. Samuel Baron, Plekhanov: The Father of Russian Marxism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963), p. 114. 37. “Our Differences,” Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. 1, p. 346. 38. Ibid., p. 419 [Ibid., p. 400]. We are using here the text of Plekhanov’s speech as it was published in his collected works in the 1920s. (See Vol. 24, Moscow 1927, pp. 319–320). In the five-volume edition of Plekhanov’s Selected Philosophical Works, which came out in the 1950s, this text appears as the “second version” of his speech. Along with this the “first” variant is cited, which is identical in terms of its content. 39. Trotsky is referring here to Plekhanov’s increasingly opportunist advocacy of an alliance with the bourgeois Cadet Party after 1905. 40. Leon Trotsky, 1905, translated by Anya Bostock (New York: Random House, 1971), p. 332. 41. V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), p. 94. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Angel is a writer on the Original Content team at LittleThings. Check out her articles about crucial tips on female and doggie health. She loves to take long walks, volunteer with kids, try new food, browse through burger recipes, and code in her spare time. Feel free to let her know what you'd like to see her write up next. Animal abuse is one of the most abhorrent crimes that can be committed by humankind. Today, animal cruelty is generally classified as a “crime against society,” and can be tried on the same level as a murder case. Unfortunately, though, this was not always the case. Back in 1994, Gucci, a 12-week-old chow mix pup in Alabama, was terribly beaten, strung up in a tree, and lit on fire by a group of vicious teenagers. Luckily, Gucci recovered from his injuries. But only one of the teenagers was sentenced to six months in jail. Taking the horrifying level of abuse into account, the punishment was nowhere near enough. For more than a decade, Gucci and his rescuer, Professor Doug James, worked to reform the way the law treated animals and their abusers. They triumphed, and in 2004, Alabama passed the Pet Protection Act, which would deal with animal crimes in a much more stringent way than ever before. Scroll further to read more about Gucci’s story, and how he changed the way the law saw animal abuse. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below! Warning: This article contains brief photo evidence of animal abuse, which some readers might find disturbing.As part of its ongoing effort to compete with Amazon in the cloud computing game, Google has beefed up the technical support options for businesses who use its sweeping collections of cloud services. The Google Cloud Platform now includes online services for running software applications and storing data, such as: Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, and BigQuery. These services began as a bit of an experiment, but then the company got serious, hoping to convince big businesses to run on its cloud. In in October 2011, it began offering commercial support for Google App Engine, and it soon followed suit with other services. But buyers had only one option for paid support: a $500 "premium" account. Now the company is giving users a wider range of support options for its entire line of cloud services, starting at $150 a month. The plans include: Bronze: A free tier with only online documentation, support forums and billing support. A free tier with only online documentation, support forums and billing support. Silver: All of the above plus e-mail support "for questions related to product functionality, best practices, and service errors," for $150 a month. Gold: This $400 plans adds 24/7 phone consultation. Platinum: Google didn't post the cost of this option, which will get a customer "direct access to a Technical Account Manager team." The support plans are probably a move to make the services more competitive with the likes of Amazon Web Services, Joyent, and Microsoft Azure. It's hard to say how well the Google family of cloud products has done in the market, but research conducted by cloud management vendor Zenoss found that Google App Engine was the most popular "platform cloud" among its users. With a platform cloud, companies and developers can build and operate applications without having to juggle the raw infrastructure running beneath them, such as individual virtual servers. This differs from an infrastructure cloud – such as Google Compute Engine – where you're given nothing but virtual servers. In some ways, an infrastructure cloud is less of a hassle, but it also gives you more freedom to do whatever you want. Meanwhile, Google App Engine is continuing to evolve. On Thursday, Google announced that the service will now offer high-memory virtual server instances that allow customers to buy more memory without also paying for more CPU power, an updated plugin for the popular Eclipse development environment, experimental support for the Java 7 programming platform, and more. These announcements follow the big unveiling of the company's first high-end Chromebook, the Pixel. Google pitches its browser-based Chromebook as consumers, but it also sees them as business machines.CALGARY, Alberta – The Penguins are built for Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin to carry the majority of the offensive load, which is precisely what they’ve done. And it’s a good thing, because they aren’t getting much help. Scoring from the third and fourth lines, in fact, is fairly nonexistent right now. Consider the following goal-scoring droughts: • Right wing Craig Adams hasn’t scored in 42 games. • Left wing Tyler Pyatt hasn’t scored in 26 games with the Penguins and Rangers this season. • Left wing Tanner Glass hasn’t scored in 19 games. • Right wing Joe Vitale hasn’t scored in 18 games. • Center Zach Sill hasn’t scored in 17 career NHL games. • Third-line center Brandon Sutter hasn’t scored in nine games. The Penguins once boasted one of the highest scoring third lines in the NHL when center Jordan Staal, left wing Matt Cooke and right wing Tyler Kennedy occupied that spot. All three of those players, though, have departed the Penguins. The third line, in particular, remains a question mark with the NHL trade deadline less than two months away. Ideally, the Penguins would like for right wing Beau Bennett (broken wrist) to develop some chemistry with Sutter. However, staying healthy has been a significant problem for Bennett, the team’s 2010 first-round pick. Glass has played some recent games with Sutter and wouldn’t mind more work on the third line in the future. “That would be great with me,” Glass said. “The thing I like about playing with Brandon is that he’s so easy to play with. You always know where he’s going to be. He’s a really reliable guy out there.” Although the Penguins don’t require their third lines to score with the proficiency of other top NHL teams — Crosby and Malkin don’t need that much help on most nights — a little bit of offensive punch could go a long way. Lack of discipline Few things irk coach Dan Bylsma more than penalties in the offensive zone. The Penguins were called for two of them — including Malkin’s peculiar decision to knock away goaltender Devan Dubnyk’s stick in plain view of the officials — in Friday’s 4-3 overtime loss in Edmonton. Bylsma wasn’t pleased with his team’s lack of discipline but also was uncharacteristically animated with the officiating crew throughout the night. Crosby stays hot Crosby entered Saturday’s game in Calgary with a seven-game scoring streak, having produced 13 points in those games. It marks the third time this season he has enjoyed a scoring streak of at least seven games. In fact, Crosby has produced a point in 17 of his past 18 games, dating to the beginning of December. He has recorded multiple points in 20 of his 46 games this season. Crosby, having perhaps his most consistent season, has produced at least one point in 38 of his 46 games. Injury update Injured defenseman Paul Martin and Jayson Megna are skating in Pittsburgh while the Penguins are in western Canada. Both are candidates to return to the lineup shortly. It remains unknown when Bennett will return, but he did have the cast removed from his broken right wrist, according to Bylsma. Vitale banged up Vitale, one of the Penguins’ most physical and fastest forwards, appeared to sustain an injury to his right wrist against the Oilers.PAK GOVT RESCUED BROKE A.Q.KHAN WITH $ 2500 PER MONTH PENSION WASHINGTON: An angry, humiliated, and wounded A.Q.Khan has finally made public and official what has long been suspected: his nuclear proliferation activities that included exchanging and passing blue-prints and equipment to China, Iran, North Korea, and Libya was done at the behest of the Pakistani government and military, and he was forced to take the rap for it. ( Watch Video ''The bastards first used us and are now playing dirty games with us,'' Khan writes about the Pakistani leadership in a December 2003 letter to his wife Henny that has finally been made public by an interlocutor. ''Darling, if the government plays any mischief with me take a tough stand,'' he tells his wife, adding, ''They might try to get rid of me to cover up all the things they got done by me.''But Henny was unable to play hardball because Khan had also sent copies of that letter to his daughter Dina in London, and to his niece Kausar Khan in Amsterdam through his brother, a Pakistan Airlines executive. Pakistani intelligence agencies got wind of it and threatened the well-being of the family, forcing him to recant and publicly take the blame for the proliferation activities in a humiliating television spectacle engineered by then military ruler Pervez Musharraf.However, a copy of the four-page letter reached Khan��s long-time journalistic contact Simon Henderson in 2007. In fact, in the letter, Khan tells his wife, ''Get in touch with Simon Henderson and give him all the details.'' Henderson says when he acquired the copy of the letter, he was shocked. His acquaintance with Khan goes back to the late 1970s, but it was never intimate, and consisted of an occasional interviews and conversations, and seasonal greetings.Describing the four-page letter as ''extraordinary,'' Henderson says in numbered paragraphs, it outlines Pakistan��s nuclear co-operation with China, Iran and North Korea, and also mentions Libya. Some of the disclosures are stunning, and in one para that is bound to embarrass Beijing, besides implicating it, Khan writes about how Pakistan helped China in enrichment technology in return for bomb blueprints.''We put up a centrifuge plant at Hanzhong (250km southwest of Xian),�� Khan writes. ��The Chinese gave us drawings of the nuclear weapon, gave us 50kg of enriched uranium, gave us 10 tons of UF6 (natural) and 5 tons of UF6 (3%).'' UF6 is uranium hexafluoride, the gaseous feedstock for an enrichment plan.On Iran, the letter says: ''Probably with the blessings of BB [Benazir Bhutto]...General Imtiaz [Benazir��s defence adviser, now dead] asked me to give a set of drawings and some components to the Iranians. The names and addresses of suppliers were also given to the Iranians.''On North Korea: ''[
as bad, Oklahoma offered little more than words in the way of apology. A couple of decades ago, the state commissioned an official investigation to get an accurate historical account of the events that surrounded the night Greenwood burned. The findings were released in 2001 – you can read it in PDF format here or by clicking on any of the pictures – and the legislature refused to take up almost every single one of the proposed actions to make up for the events. Specific families had well-documented, clearly identifiable monetary losses that set them back decades. They weren’t compensated even though the grandchildren of those entrepreneurs would likely have been able to afford college with the present value of the investments they lost. The official report released to the public includes images that had been provided by various sources, detailing the aftermath of what must have been unimaginable terror. Here are just a few of them: I think it’s a useful exercise to try to work out what you would do if you lived in a hostile society where your business, home, and assets could be taken from you. How would you protect yourself, your family, and your net worth? How would you rebuild, if you had to rebuild? What would your response to the injustice be? History has a way of repeating itself if you allow it. It can happen again. It was only 15 or 20 years later when Adolf Hitler and his regime began one of the largest systematic mass execution programs ever devised, targeting Jews, Romani, Slavs, the disabled, gays, and religious minorities as they were considered incompatible with Nazism. If I had been born in Germany, and I hadn’t had the foresight to flee, I’d have eventually lost all of my assets and been shipped off to a camp (and even if I managed to survive, people seem to forget that those who were branded with the Pink Triangle weren’t liberated in the same way other prisoners were as the Allies thought their imprisonment was justified, allowing the §175 convictions to stand. They generally agreed being gay was a criminal act but in a moment of “compassion”, allowed the years spent in the concentration camp to be deducted from the original Nazi prison sentence as time served. So deep was the prejudice, computer genius Alan Turing helped win the war against the Nazis and England rewarded him by convicting him for gross indecency upon discovering he was gay when investigating a burglary of his house. He was convicted, ordered to undergo hormone shots designed to destroy any physical desire he may feel while being subject to probation (the alternative was prison so he opted for the injections), and, as a result of the mistreatment, is largely believed to have committed suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple.) This group handled it by going stealth, marrying a person of the opposite sex, and sacrificing personal happiness and fulfillment for the sake of never being discovered. [mainbodyad]Asians were targeted in the United States at one point, rounded up and put in detention camps or prohibited from marrying outside of their race. When you look at the history of that civil rights movement, I think there’s a strong argument the turning point was the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982 when a plant superintendent for Chrysler, Ronald Ebens, along with his stepson, Michael Nitz, beat and killed the Chinese American. Chin was attending his bachelor party when the two men attacked him. They mistook him for Japanese, yelling, “It’s because of you little motherf*ckers that we’re out of work”. Despite their clear guilt – the murder was witnessed by two off-duty police officers – they were given a pathetic three year probation sentence as a symbolic slap-on-the-wrist. The resulting outrage is what caused political change. This group handled it by incredible levels of asset accumulation relative to income. At one point in the 1970’s or 1980’s, certain Asian American immigrants were something like 5x as likely to build a 7-figure net worth and it was far beyond stealth wealth; it was like Black Ops wealth. There were multiple generations of families living in tiny apartments over dry cleaners that looked broke from the outside but were among the most affluent people in town. Their defense was remaining totally hidden while accumulating resources. Other than economists and academics, nobody even knew this group had money. Right now, it’s happening to Christians in North Korea. Some of the intelligence that is coming out of the country is heartbreaking. Merely professing faith is enough to get to you and your family sent off to a labor camp. The thing that gets me when I reflect upon all of this is that it really wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things. While Black Wall Street was burning, somewhere across the country in New York City, a 26-year-old named Benjamin Graham was learning the investment business. Unable to get a job on white Wall Street – the gentiles wouldn’t even hire Catholics so him being a Jew meant employment was out of the question at most of the partnerships – he ended up going into business for himself creating the Graham Newman Corporation. It was there that Warren Buffett got one of his first jobs, and learned the ins-and-outs of running what amounted to a hedge fund; that gave him the ability to go on and launch his own set of partnerships, which led him to taking over Berkshire Hathaway, which now ranks as one of the five most valuable corporations in the world. That’s how relatively recent these events are. Graham is still my role model. You push through, outperform everyone, and go about your life as best you can. I think it’s the only intelligent way to behave unless you want to make yourself miserable all the time. He didn’t sit around and whine about the oppression, he just outsmarted everybody and gathered the resources to change it. Sometimes, though, like I told people almost two years ago before the trouble with Russia started, the most intelligent thing to do is emigrate. Move to greener pastures.Paris Hilton spent three weeks in jail earlier this year Hotel magnate Barron Hilton, 80, will donate 97% of his $2.3bn (£1.2bn; 1.6bn euros) fortune to the Conrad N Hilton Foundation, set up by his father. The funds come from the $20bn sale of Hilton Hotels to The Blackstone Group. Reports have said that Mr Hilton is embarrassed by the behaviour of his granddaughter. Ms Hilton, known for her party lifestyle, spent three weeks in jail earlier this year for violating probation in a drink driving case. Mr Hilton will give $1.2bn immediately to a charitable trust that will eventually benefit the foundation. The rest of the money will follow after his death. The foundation supports projects that provide clean water in Africa, education for blind children and housing for the mentally ill.The video will start in 8 Cancel Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email An ex-sailor fatally stabbed a transgender woman 119 times with a 10-inch blade minutes after they had sex - because she confessed she was born a man. Dwanya Hickerson butchered Dee Whigham after 'losing it' at a hotel room in Mississippi, US. An autopsy showed many of the stab wounds were to Dee's face. Her throat was had also been slashed three times. Hickerson was arrested on Keesler Air Force Base two days after killing the nurse at a Best Western Hotel. (Image: Facebook) (Image: Jackson County Sheriff's Department) A court heard the pair had met up to have sex after talking online for a couple of months. Hickerson admitted murdering Dee. He said he flew into a rage after the pair had sex and then she revealed she had been born a man. "I lost. I lost it," he told the court. (Image: Facebook) (Image: Jackson County Sheriff's Department) Before his sentencing, Hickerson apologised to Whigham’s family, the Sun Herald reports. "I apologise to the family," he said. "I really, really wish it had turned out differently. If I could take it back, I would." Hickerson could have faced the death penalty if he had gone to trial on the original charge of capital murder. (Image: Facebook) Because of his early plea, Hickerson was sentenced to 40 years in prison with no possibility of parole. "I didn’t approve of his [Dee's] lifestyle," the victim's sister, Denisha Whigham, said to Hickerson. "So, I can understand what you say happened, happened. I can understand your anger. "But, I miss my brother."Michigan State defensive lineman Lawrence Thomas (8) celebrates during the fourth quarter against Oregon (Photo11: Raj Mehta, USA TODAY Sports) Ohio State remains atop the USA TODAY Sports 1-128 Re-rank, but the Buckeyes are being challenged from a rival within their own conference. Michigan State leaps seven spots to No. 2 after a 31-28 win against Oregon. This is a Re-rank first, in all its various incarnations: Two teams from the Big Ten Conference sit first and second overall. The Big Ten was one of the week's big winners in Week 2, while the Southeastern Conference was clearly one of the losers. Three SEC teams — Auburn, Arkansas and Tennessee — fell out of the top 25, though a fourth SEC team, LSU, filled one of the open spots. It was also a week of big moves from Group of Five teams. Temple, Memphis, Western Kentucky and Houston were rewarded for their strong starts, with the Owls and Tigers moving into the top 25. These teams moved into the top 25: Temple, LSU, Memphis and Utah. These teams fell out of the top 25: Auburn, Arkansas, Tennessee and Minnesota. Mobile users click here for the 1-128 chart.Government rolls out recycled water scheme Updated The State Government has announced recycled waste water will become Perth's next source of drinking water. The government plans to roll out its groundwater replenishment scheme, which has been trialled in a water recycling plant for the past three years. Under the scheme, household and industrial waste-water that would normally be pumped out to sea, is instead filtered and disinfected before being pumped hundreds of metres underground into aquifers. The treated water then mixes with groundwater, undergoing natural filtration for up to three decades before extraction. The Water Minister Terry Redman says the water is pure after the treatment process, but putting it in the aquifers for naturalisation means by the time the water is extracted, it will be the same as the groundwater in the aquifer. Mr Redman says he is confident the community will support the scheme. "I think it is appealing to the public when you look at the fact we live in a drying climate, our population is growing, our water levels and the inflows to our dams are decreasing, we need to be securing and sourcing climate independent sources of water," he said. Mr Redman says the scheme will initially supply seven billion litres of water every year and has the potential to supply up to 20 per cent of Perth's drinking water needs. He also says treating waste water is cheaper than a desalination plant and uses about half the energy. Concerns The State Opposition has welcomed the plan, but says they have concerns about the level of public consultation. Labor's Water Spokesman Dave Kelly says he is worried the Government will not listen to people's concerns. "The Government has an obligation to get out there and educate the public and win over the public, to this idea, rather than just doing it," he said. "The Government are the custodians, if you like, of the confidence that we have in the drinking water that comes out of our tap." Topics: water-supply, perth-6000 First postedBlake is the content manager for DailyMTG.com, making him the one you should email if you have thoughts on the website, good or less good (or not good). He's a longtime coverage reporter and hasn't turned down a game of Magic in any format ever. During previews for Magic Origins, we teased you a bit with the face cards of the Intro Packs as well as the front cards of the Clash Pack (plus that sweet alternate art Seeker of the Way). What we didn't show you, however, were the deck lists. Given that you'll be able to purchase and play with all of these very soon, it's about time we showed you what's inside, don't you think? Good. Glad we agree. First up, the Clash Pack, which is a set of two decks (Armed is one, Dangerous is the other) that can be played against one another or combined to make one deck (Armed and Dangerous).. And, as a bonus, it comes with some pretty cool alternate art cards. Next, we have all five of the Intro Packs. Prereleases for Magic Origins take place this weekend, and the full set releases July 17!The witnesses were seizing a midsummer Saturday. They were waking up from naps after leisurely breakfasts. They were fixing gutters and heading to their afternoon jobs. They were listening to gospel music in their cars. And then came the screech of tires that snapped their attention to the street. One image is consistent in their recollections: a young black man in yellow socks in a confrontation with a white police officer driving a police SUV. But no clear picture of what truly transpired emerges from thousands of pages of grand jury testimony released this week by St. Louis County prosecutors. The witness accounts provide new and often conflicting details about what happened leading up to the moment when police officer Darren Wilson shot dead 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. After a three-month investigation involving 60 witnesses and 70 hours of testimony, the grand jury found Monday that there was insufficient evidence to charge Wilson with a crime. Overall, the witnesses provided a consistent account of many of the events surrounding the Aug. 9 encounter, which began through the window of the SUV and ended with Brown dead in the street. An undated evidence photograph made available by the St. Louis County prosecutors office shows the cap that Michael Brown was wearing when he was shot to death by police officer Darren Wilson. (European Pressphoto Agency) But the testimony fails to definitively clarify some of the most crucial details of the interaction between Wilson and Brown that day. Witnesses differed on critical aspects of the physical struggle, as well as what Brown was doing with his hands — whether he had them up in surrender as his supporters have insisted — when the fatal bullets struck. The inconsistencies in a few cases stemmed from efforts by witnesses to mislead. But in other instances, it was more likely natural confusion, the result of people going about their day when suddenly a startling narrative unfolded. According to the documents, in which most eyewitness names are redacted, some observed the events through car windows, while others came to their apartment windows and balconies when they heard a scuffle, catching only glimpses of what happened. Some watched, rapt, but missed key moments when they fumbled with cellphones in hopes of videotaping the incident. For the grand jurors, the conflicting statements may have provided a boost to Wilson’s credibility or made it difficult to conclude there was probable cause, which is required for sending a case to trial. But for Brown’s supporters, who have long cast the police officer as the aggressor, the inconsistent accounts add fuel to their argument that Wilson should have been put on trial so the clashing evidence would be vetted in open court — not as part of a secretive grand jury deliberation. County prosecutors have laid out an official version of events that closely tracks with Wilson’s. The officer, after urging Brown and a friend to stop jaywalking, cut off their path with his vehicle when he realized Brown matched the description of a suspect wanted in connection with a theft at a convenience store. There was an altercation at the window, and Wilson squeezed off two shots with his gun. Brown then took off running, with Wilson behind him in pursuit. Brown then swiveled around and moved toward the officer — provoking Wilson into firing a final barrage of gunfire, according to this official rendering. Medical examination photos that show Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shortly after the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown were presented as evidence to the grand jury by the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s office. (Reuters) In testimony, presented in the form of in-person and recorded interviews over the course of more than three months, some of the grand jury witnesses corroborated the narrative provided by the prosecutors. “Initially, um, I thought wow, um, did he have to use force on him?” one male witness told detectives in a recorded interview that was played to jurors. “And after thinking about it and reviewing everything and putting myself in the police officer’s shoes, I feel like he handled the situation correct force-wise.” But others, in equally stark terms, offered entirely different versions. “The officer unloaded on him,” another witness told the grand jury. “I mean, he fired four or five shots in rapid succession. He gunned him down.” Said another, “And the police just stand over him and shot him like he playing darts at a board.” The material presented to the grand jurors included forensic evidence, media reports and expert testimony. The grand jury transcripts show prosecutors, who led the inquiry, grilling eyewitnesses, testing their memories and asking for minute details. Often the specifics clearly recalled by one were entirely at odds with the clear memories of another. For example, some described a physical struggle inside the SUV, while at least one witness said the whole conflict took place entirely outside. Some said Brown, after spinning around to face Wilson, staggered toward him, while others described it as a “charge.” While some recounted that Brown had his hands up in surrender when he was killed, others described his hands as clutching his torso or hovering at shoulder-level. One witness even claimed to hear him say in those final moments: “I give up.” In some cases, inconsistencies seemed to reflect the fact that witnesses saw only part of the incident. They were in their apartments, their windows offering only partial views of the scene. They looked up only when they heard the first staccato of gunfire. Some were focused not so much on what was happening in front of them than on their own safety. One witness had been in a car nearby when it became obvious that something very bad was about to happen. He said he turned to his co-worker and said, “Man, you see this? We’ve got to get out of here.” He said the officer’s window was down, and Wilson and Brown were reaching through the window. “The next thing I heard was a shot, pow, and then the young man took off running.” Some, however, told entirely contradictory or made-up stories and were called out by prosecutors, who went to great lengths to discredit some witnesses. One woman told an elaborate story about driving around looking for a friend’s apartment when she pulled into a parking lot to ask for directions. She said she was there in time to see Brown “lunging” into the car to his waist, she said. Later, she said, Wilson had his gun drawn and pointed at Brown. That’s when “Brown started to charge... kind of like a football player, like this, with his hands out,” she said, clenching her fists. But federal prosecutors later discredited the woman, demanding to know the spelling of the friend’s name and asking to look at her e-mail records to prove that she had written a message to the friend. The prosecutors then returned from a break to say they viewed her computer search history, finding suspicious searches, and that there was no report of a car matching hers near the scene of the crime. One witness described Brown facing the officer on his knees and had previously said he heard Brown pleading for his life. “What you are saying you saw isn’t forensically possible based on the evidence,” a prosecutor said. The witness later asked to leave. A woman who lives in the Canfield Green apartment complex gave two statements to police but later told the grand jury she didn’t see the shooting. “The statement that I made, it was with what my boyfriend... saw,” she admitted. “I just felt like I want to be part of something.” One witness who had spent the morning having breakfast with his family and taking a nap testified that he watched most of the events from his second-floor apartment. The prosecutors asked in painstaking detail how the police car was oriented and where Brown’s body fell. But after the witness laid out his story, they presented him with photos and diagrams that apparently conflicted with his recollection. “I was there,” the witness said. “I know you were there,” the prosecutor said. “But people remember things differently or they see things from a different perspective. Distances are hard to judge.” Ellen Nakashima, Tom Hamburger, Sari Horwitz, John Sullivan and Kimbriell Kelly in Washington and Kimberly Kindy in St. Louis contributed to this report.Whyte Avenue, spanning from Bonnie Doon to the University of Alberta, is one of the busiest stretches of road in Edmonton and now there’s talk of putting an LRT there. READ MORE: Public consultations underway for Edmonton LRT expansion The Centre LRT is being touted as a way to connect the south side of the river from east to west. It would specifically connect downtown, the University of Alberta, Old Strathcona and Bonnie Doon. The city says the line would be a low-floor LRT, meaning stops would be located at street-level, operate at posted speeds and use traffic signals; this is the same type of style being used for the Valley Line LRT. READ MORE: Edmonton’s Valley Line LRT is on time, even the Bombardier rail cars The route is being studied but city administration has already identified what it believes to be the most sensible route going east to west. “Administration is confident the preferred east/west connection of the route will be located on Whyte Avenue and not 76 Avenue,” reads a pamphlet distributed to residents who live along Whyte Avenue. Councillor Ben Henderson, whose ward’s south edge is along Whyte Avenue, said that route makes the most sense. “I’m not sure there is another connection that would work,” he said. “It’s certainly where the businesses [are], where the most need and demand is for transit. It’s the natural straight route to get from Bonnie Doon through to the hospital.” The city explored 76 Avenue but Henderson said that would have been very disruptive to those neighbourhoods. READ MORE: Does Whyte Avenue or 76 Avenue make more sense for southern LRT corridor? He dispels concerns over traffic and the long wait times that have plagued other LRT lines in the city, adding there is the possibility for the line to run underground or above ground at intersections. “It’s really hard to know until the planning is done or, you know, if it’s really running as the low floor is expected to do with traffic and not getting full priority at the traffic lights. You may actually see very little change in the intersections,” Henderson said. “There’s no way to retrofit something like the LRT without there being impacts. Absolutely I think there will be.” Henderson tried to stem concerns about congestion on Whyte Avenue as a result of an LRT. “I think most of the congestion on Whyte Avenue happens not in terms of the width of the road but where Whyte Avenue meets with other major intersections that come across it – 103, 104, 99 and 109 Streets,” he said. Kim Clegg, the planning and development co-chair for the Queen Alexandra Community League, said an LRT on Whyte Avenue is “a good idea.” “I think it’s a brave choice because it makes sense. We’re a growing up city. We [have to] put on the big boy pants and say what is the best place for the LRT – it’s obviously Whyte Avenue,” he said. “A lot of people are going to be upset. It’s going to change the way Whyte Avenue looks to people. If it’s done right, I think it’ll ultimately be a real boon to the area.” Clegg acknowledges his neighbourhood will likely feel the impact, both positive and negative, of a nearby LRT. “Our neighbourhood is right there. Will it be cutting off access to our neighbourhood? Maybe that’s a good thing in some ways. But in terms of getting out and about, into the city in our cars, it will make it harder for sure,” he said. “But I think the convenience in having that central line pass our neighbourhood will offset the lack of access in our vehicles somewhat.” Edmontonian Wanda Fawcett does not want the city to use Whyte Avenue as part of an LRT route. “I think that it’s going to congest the whole neighbourhood up and it’s going to be an issue for traffic and pedestrians,” she said. “It’s too busy of a place. I think it should stay a walking neighbourhood. That’s why people like it here – they like to come down and walk.” Fawcett lives in the Pleasantview neighbourhood and sees the impact the nearby LRT has on her life. “Driving out of my neighbourhood takes a while sometimes when the trains start coming through. It can back up traffic on 51 Avenue and you can sit at the lights… for five minutes at a time,” she said. “For a congested area like this already, it’s, I think, going to make it worse.” Fawcett said Edmonton is a driving city and does not believe an LRT would bring more people to Old Strathcona. “I think enough people come down here that already walk and take transit and bike that I don’t think they need the LRT to bring more people to this area,” she said. While Whyte Avenue is seen as the preferred route, at this point, the city has not yet decided what street the LRT will be on or whether the tracks will run in the middle or along one side of the roadway. Henderson said the project is roughly a decade away from fruition. City administration will solicit public feedback before taking the official recommendation to council for approval in the New Year. There is currently no funding or timeline for construction.PHOENIX -- The Detroit Lions will not use all 30 of their pre-draft visits on receivers this year. University of Alabama cornerback Dee Milliner will visit the Lions' facility in Allen Park prior to the NFL draft, according to sources. Tennessee receivers Cordarrelle Patterson and Justin Hunter, plus USC wide receiver Robert Woods, have already visited with members of Detroit's coaching staff in Allen Park. Detroit could use its first-round pick (No.5 overall) to draft Milliner, who is expected to go in the top 10. The Lions re-signed cornerback Chris Houston and safety Louis Delmas last week, and acquired former Houston Texans safety Glover Quin. Milliner could solidify Detroit's secondary, but that would likely mean that Bill Bentley would become the team's nickel cornerback. Milliner had surgery on March 12 to repair his torn labrum. The injury prevented him from lifting at the NFL Scouting Combine, but did not hinder him from running the 40-yard in 4.31 and 4.37 seconds. Last season, Milliner finished with 54 tackles, 4.0 tackles for loss, 1.5 sacks, one forced fumble and two interceptions. He also led the SEC with 22 passes defended and earned First Team All-SEC honors.poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201612/944/1155968404_5264926446001_5264918039001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Israeli ambassador: Obama, not Trump, is the one being ‘outrageous’ Ron Dermer says the outgoing administration should not have let the U.N. resolution go through without the president-elect’s support. The White House’s decision not to block a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel for its construction of settlements in occupied territories was “outrageous,” Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer said Thursday morning, especially given impending transfer of power in Washington. Dermer told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he had personally lobbied the administration of President Barack Obama not to abstain from the Security Council vote and that he had warned senior administration officials that if they proceeded with their plan, Israel would be compelled to appeal to President-elect Donald Trump. Story Continued Below The Obama administration opted to abstain from the Security Council vote, breaking with a long tradition of using the U.S. veto power to protect Israel. Trump quickly weighed in on Twitter, announcing on Christmas Eve that “the big loss yesterday for Israel in the United Nations will make it much harder to negotiate peace. Too bad, but we will get it done anyway!” He chimed in again Wednesday that “we cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect” and urged Israel to “stay strong” because his inauguration “is fast approaching!” “I know a lot of the talk in the press for the first few days was how outrageous it was for a president-elect to weigh in and to breach this policy of one president at a time,” Dermer said Thursday morning. “But what I actually think is outrageous for an outgoing administration in the waning days of its presidency is to radically shift U.S. policy without the knowledge or the support of the incoming administration.” The Israeli ambassador said he expects Trump’s administration to warm relations between the U.S. and Israeli governments but that “there is damage now that has been done” by the U.N. resolution. Dermer refused to offer proof that the Obama administration was behind the resolution, a claim made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Instead, Dermer said his government would provide that proof to Trump’s administration, which would then be free to make it public or not. “The prime minister doesn't make such a charge on international television without it being based 100 percent on evidence,” he said. “So you'll have to be a little patient. Invite me back in a little while on your show.” Dermer also seemed unfazed by Trump’s selection of David Friedman as America’s ambassador to Israel. Friedman is an Orthodox Jewish attorney who has expressed skepticism toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the preferred solution by multiple U.S. administrations and the stated goal of Netanyahu. Friedman is also a supporter of Israeli settlement activity, but Dermer said that it will ultimately be Trump and Netanyahu, not their ambassadors, who set policy. “People are choosing this story to suggest that somehow his ideology is going to drive events,” Dermer said. “I don't set the policies of the government of Israel, and Mr. Friedman will not set the policies of the government of the United States. That will be set by the president and prime minister.”The Devils don’t mind hosting the Rangers in the Eastern Conference finals. They just don’t want to host their fans, too. The Devils have implemented a “No Blue” initiative on their official website to keep Rangers fans out of The Rock for Games 3, 4 and 6 (if necessary) of the seven-game series. The website says there are three ways to protect home-ice. 1. Do not list your tickets on the secondary market. Instead, post them on Devils fan blogs so you can sell directly to other Devils fans. And if there are any questions about their loyalty, “ask for pictures or meet them to deliver the tickets.” 2. If you are having trouble, call the Devils Fan Experience Team line at 855-DEV-ARMY “and as a service, they will help you sell your seats you can’t use to other Devils fans.” 3. Buy tickets on the team’s online Ticket Exchange. “Thousands of seats still remain for both Rangers home games at The Garden. Therefore, there is a window right NOW, for Devils fans to swallow up all the remaining tickets for the upcoming Devils home games at the Rock. Seize that opportunity now while it is still available.”Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation. By Alan Burdick. Simon & Schuster; 320 pages; $28. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. TIME is such a slippery thing. It ticks away, neutrally, yet it also flies and collapses, and is more often lost than found. Days can feel eternal but a month can gallop past. So, is time ever perceived objectively? Is this experience innate or is it learned? And how long is “now”, anyway? Such questions have puzzled philosophers and scientists for over 2,000 years. They also began to haunt Alan Burdick of the New Yorker. Keen for answers, he set out “on a journey through the world of time”, a lengthy trip that spans everything from Zeno’s paradoxes to the latest neuroscience. Alas, he arrives at a somewhat dispiriting conclusion: “If scientists agree on anything, it’s that nobody knows enough about time.” Humans are apparently poor judges of the duration of time. Minutes seem to drag when one is bored, tired or sad, yet they flit by for those who are busy, happy or socialising (particularly if alcohol or cocaine is involved). Eventful periods seem, in retrospect, to have passed slowly, whereas humdrum stretches will have sped by. Although humans (and many animals) have an internal mechanism to keep time, this turns out to be as reliable as a vintage cuckoo clock. “It’s a mystery to me that we function as well as we do,” observes Dan Lloyd, a philosopher and time scholar at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. St Augustine, a fourth-century philosopher and theologian, was the first to recognise time as a property of the mind, an experience of perception and far from absolute. His insight turned what had been a subject of physics into one of psychology, and it informs much of the work of later scientists. In the mid-1800s William James, a philosopher and psychologist, noted that the brain does not perceive time itself but its passage, and only because it is filled in some way. He grew baffled by efforts to quantify the present, observing that any instant melts in one’s grasp, “gone in the instant of becoming”. Of all interior clocks, the circadian is perhaps best understood. Nearly every organism has a molecular rhythm cycle that roughly tracks a 24-hour period. In humans all bodily functions oscillate depending on the time of day. Blood pressure peaks around noon; physical co-ordination crests in midafternoon; and muscles are strongest at around 5pm. Night-shift workers are not as productive as they think they are. Cataclysms of human error, including accidents at Chernobyl and aboard the Exxon Valdez, all took place in the small hours, when workers are measurably slowest to respond to warning signals. Long-distance travel often makes a hash of the body’s “synchronised confederacy of clocks”, disrupting not only sleep but metabolism. The jet-lagged body recovers at a rate of about one time zone per day. Mr Burdick spent quite a lot of time on this book, beginning it just before his twin sons were born and finishing it when they were old enough to suggest titles. It reads like a discursive journey through a vague and slippery subject, a thoughtful ramble across decades and disciplines. Although the study of time has yielded few firm conclusions, one lesson is poignantly certain: most people complain that time seems to speed up as they get older, in part because they feel more pressed for it. “Time”, writes Mr Burdick, “matters precisely because it ends.”Photo The upstart stock exchange SecondMarket has made a name for itself allowing investors to buy shares of hot private companies like Twitter. Now that those companies are going public, SecondMarket is turning its attention to the next new thing — bitcoin. On Thursday, SecondMarket is expected to begin raising money for an investment fund — the first of its kind in the United States — that will hold only bitcoins, giving wealthy investors exposure to the trendy but controversial virtual currency. The fund, the Bitcoin Investment Trust, aims to provide a reliable and easy way to bet on the future price of bitcoin, a currency generally traded on unregulated, online exchanges based overseas. “If you speak with people who have tried to purchase bitcoin in the past — you’ll hear, ‘it’s a difficult process,’ ‘it’s a confusing process,’ ‘it’s a scary process,’ ” said Barry Silbert, the chief executive of SecondMarket, based in New York. “We want to make it an accessible asset class.” SecondMarket’s venture into bitcoin represents the latest effort to bring the virtual currency into the mainstream. But it is also likely to fuel the debate around the legitimacy and legality of a form of money that exists outside the conventional banking system, and has already attracted scrutiny for being used in illicit transactions. Created in 2009 by a still unknown individual, or group, known as Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoins exist only in digital form and can be bought with traditional money through the Internet. New bitcoins are “mined” by programmers solving complex math problems. The original programmers determined that only a finite number of bitcoins would be created. While bitcoin is accepted as a form of payment by a growing, but still small number of businesses, it is mostly the domain of speculators, some of whom are drawn to its potential as an alternative to national currencies. The fortunes of bitcoin have in some ways paralleled the postfinancial crisis interest in gold, another asset that has appealed to investors skeptical of the monetary policy of the major central banks. “It’s still at a point where the value is set by what the next guy is willing to pay for it,” said Brian Riley, senior research director at the CEB TowerGroup. “Even though it’s got the cool factor to it, it’s still not a place to park your 401(k).” Bitcoins gained much wider public exposure this year, when the price doubled and then collapsed over a few weeks. Recently, the price of a single bitcoin has stabilized, trading at $135, down from its peak of more than $250 in April. The total value of all outstanding bitcoins is currently over $1.5 billion. The SecondMarket fund’s creation comes just a few months after Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the technology investors best known for their involvement with Facebook, announced the creation of a similar product. The Winklevosses’ vehicle, though, will be an exchange traded fund, or E.T.F., accessible to all investors. As a result it must go through a lengthy and uncertain review process with federal regulators. Video In contrast, the SecondMarket fund can begin raising money immediately because it will be available only to investors who meet a wealth threshold set by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Those who qualify, called “accredited investors,” must have a net worth of at least $1 million, excluding their primary residence, or annual income of more than $200,000 in each of the previous two years. Mr. Silbert said that because of the risky nature of bitcoins, they should not be sold to ordinary retail investors who could buy E.T.F.’s. “It’s premature for this kind of product to be in the public market,” Mr. Silbert said. “It should not be available to unsophisticated investors.” Mr. Silbert, who started SecondMarket in 2004, has built a business making markets in risky, inaccessible investments. The company operates an exchange
forgive him "all the ills she has suffered for my sake and for any grief that I may have caused her in the course of our marriage, as she may be certain that I hold nothing against her". The guilt of Louis was easily established. In total, 691 members of the National Convention voted that he had conspired against the state; there were a few abstentions but no one voted against. The family was allowed down to the King's apartments that evening. It was a piteous scene. The Queen huddled against the King, holding Louis Charles, their surviving son (Louis Joseph, the former Dauphin, had died of TB in 1789). The little boy clutched both his parents' hands tight, kissing them and crying. Maria Therese shrieked aloud. It was the sound of drumming shortly before half past ten, followed by loud shouts of joy from the spectators, that told the listeners in the Tower that the King was dead. Marie Antoinette could not speak. Two weeks later, the martyrdom of Marie Antoinette commenced. On the night of July 3, commissioners arrived at the Tower and brusquely informed the Queen that she was to be separated from her son. Louis Charles flung himself into his mother's arms, crying out. For the next hour she absolutely refused to release him. Threats to kill her left the Queen unmoved; only threats to kill Maria Therese produced some kind of reaction. Finally her resistance broke down. Marie Antoinette no longer had the strength to dress her son before he was led away - that was done by Maria Therese - and had to be content with wiping away his tears before being taken to the Conciergerie prison. Her appearance in a crowded courtroom on October 14, 1793, caused an immediate sensation. The 37-year-old Queen looked ghastly. Here was a white-haired woman with sunken features and an extreme pallor. Her haggard appearance contrasted bizarrely with the mental image that most of the spectators had of her. If she was not the Austrian she-wolf, then she was the glittering Queen with her diamonds and her nodding plumes, last seen properly in the glory days of the Versailles court more than four years before. Among the many charges brought against Marie Antoinette, arguably the most cruel was that she had sexually abused Louis Charles. The eight-year-old boy had been cajoled into making these accusations by his jailers, who had been feeding him a diet of wine and violence. When forced to answer them in court, Marie Antoinette's marble composure deserted her. "If I have not replied," she said in a tone quite changed from the politely indifferent one she had previously been using, "it is because Nature itself refuses to respond to such a charge laid against a mother." At the very last, after 16 hours in the courtroom (and 15 hours the previous day), she was asked if she had anything further to say in her defence. "Yesterday I did not know who the witnesses were to be," answered Marie Antoinette. "I was ignorant of what they would say. Well, no one has articulated anything positive against me. I finish by observing that I was only the wife of Louis XVI and I had to conform to his wishes." On Wednesday October 16, 1793, the head of Antoinette was cut off cleanly at 12.15 precisely, and exhibited to a joyous public. The body, together with its severed head, was taken unceremoniously to the graveyard off the rue d'Anjou, where Louis XVI had been interred nine and a half months previously, and where, more than 20 years before, the spectators who had been crushed in ecstatic celebrations at the couple's wedding had been buried. Back at the Conciergerie, the effects of "the Widow Capet" were listed as follows: a few linen chemises and corsets in fine toile; two pairs of black stockings; a box of powder, a "big fine sponge", and a little box of pomade - the last remnants of a toilette that, in all its pomp, had once preoccupied the whole of Versailles.I was definitely way too late to the guacamole party. Gua’mole, as it is affectionately referred to in my house, never used to be a snacking staple when I was growing up. I remember finding a recipe online after having some homemade guac’ at a party one summer night. I was immediately hooked. I made a huge batch and it sat in my fridge, untouched by others, for the rest of the week as I slowly nibbled away at it, using it as a dip for corn chips, crackers, raw veggies, guacamole deviled eggs. If you could put guac’ on it, I did. I offered some to my mom and my sister to try, but both turned their noses up at it saying “I’m sorry, but I just can’t get over that colour”. Finally I urged them. That was a mistake. Now the stuff doesn’t last for more than a couple of days, I’m always being asked to make it, and people in my family get oddly territorial over the percentage of guacamole to which they feel entitled. As my mom once exclaimed, “I could drink this stuff straight!” Well now you can, or by the spoonful at least. With green split peas adding some protein to the traditional dip ingredients, this gazpacho makes a tasty dish, perfect for patio dinners, and just in time for spring! Greens and Guac’ Gazpacho: (serves: 4 \| prep time: 1 hour \| chill time: 2-4 hours) soup: 2 cups green split peas 1 cube/package vegetable stock 1 large cooking onion, diced 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 1/2 cup fresh spinach, packed 3 ripe avocados, peeled and pitted 1 lime, juiced 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped, divided pinch cayenne pepper toppings: chili powder, sprinkled to taste whole cilantro leaves salsa or diced tomato crushed corn chips In a large stock pot add 8 cups of water and vegetable stock, bring to a boil. Once the stock is boiling, add split peas, onion, and garlic. Reduce heat to a simmer, and cook uncovered for 45 minutes. Once the peas become tender, add soup to blender with avocados, spinach, lime juice, and 1 tbsp of chopped cilantro. Blend until smooth. Pour soup into a large bowl, mixing in the chopped cilantro and cayenne pepper. Chill for 2-4 hours, or overnight. Stir before serving, and garnish with desired toppings. AdvertisementsCorporation Domains Right now we are in Stealth Mode, Pre-Launch (but our company is 32 years old). (Launching end of Q4 2018. A few domains are newly on the market, below. ) Behind the scenes, we are actively and directly helping CEO's leverage keyword domain names for their bottom line. Keyword urls strengthen corporate branding, by tying a category to the brand. The company that owns the keyword domain name in a category is perceived as serious, and as the leader of that category! Email us! We are the Exclusive Broker for VideoEquipment.com. Visit the VideoEquipment.com site to find out more. VoterIDs.com Domain Name for sale ComprehensiveBackgroundChecks.com Domain Name for sale GolfFlorida.net Domain Name for sale StringOfPearls.com Domain Name for sale GentlemensJewelry.com Domain Name for sale CurledHair.com Domain Name for sale ACGuitars.com Domain Name for sale MenRunningShoes.com Domain Name for sale ClimbingBoot.com Domain Name for sale IndoorSoccerShoe.com Domain Name for sale CyclingBoots.com Domain Name for sale WomensPump.com Domain Name for sale PurseHandbag.com Domain Name for sale BigGirlsApparel.com Domain Name for sale in plus size market GirlsApparel.com Domain Name for sale CustomHoodie.com Domain Name for sale WomensSnowboardJackets.com Domain Name for sale SnowboardsSale.com Domain Name for sale Kindergarteners.com Domain Name for sale for early learning, early ed EngagementRingDiamonds.com Domain Name for sale for engagement ring ecommerce site SkiersInsurance.com Domain Name for sale WildfireInsurance.com Domain Name for sale AirplaneInsurance.com Domain Name for sale WealthBanking.com Domain Name for sale, a natural bridge to wealth asset management services OpenOnlineBankAccount.com Domain Name for sale for online banking ChildrensSavingAccount.com domain name for sale. COPDLungs.com domain name for sale for COPD patients and lung patients HepCTesting.com domain name for sale. Hep C Testing is the on-ramp to Hep C Treatment MDRTB.com domain name to fight multi drug resistant tuberculosis Antacid.in domain name for acid reflux sufferers inside and outside India Trampoline.tv domain name for sale for trampoline parks or makers OverproofRum.com domain name for sale PrivateYachtHotel.com domain name for sale. DiamondBellyButtonRing.com Boutiquer.com domain name for sale Dementias.com domain name for sale Surveillancer.com domain name for sale Unforgivable.com domain name for sale Barricading.com domain name for sale uHealthcare.com domain name for sale FitU.com domain name for sale MonogrammedGolfBalls.com domain name for sale Bailiwicks.com domain name for sale Thousands more domain names for sale, coming soon. === Meanwhile, Pre-Launch here are some Seasonal Domain Names For Sale TAXES DoingYourOwnTaxes.com Deductibles.org FastestReturns.com FilingExtensions.com FederalEnergyTaxCredit.com IRSProblemResolution.com RefundFast.com WhatIsTaxDeductible.com IRSInsurance.com ROTH/IRA INVESTMENTS IRAEligibility.com IRARetirementPlan.com IRAWithdrawalRules.com MaximumIRAContribution.com RothIraIncomeLimits.com RothIRAIncomeLimit.com RothIRAWithdrawals.com WINTER SPORTS SkiersInsurance.com SnowboardsSale.com Hurling.org VIRUSES AboutFlu.com AvoidingTheFlu.com Enfluenza.com FluDeaths.com FluNoMore.com FluPreventionTips.com FluSwipes.com SprayFlu.com USSwineFlu.com HIVAidsStatistics.com PreventHIVAids.com SKIN HEALTH DOMAINS SevereAtopicDermatitis.com Epidermus.com* RosaceaLotion.com SevereAtopicDermatitis.com NonSurgicalLift.com EyeBagSurgery.com Liposuctioning.com UltrasonicLipo.com Firming.com Many more... * Epidermus.com is a great brandable, memorable domain name for a skincare solution. We don't know why companies insist on using hard to remember/spell/pronounce working LAB names for their commercial products! It simply doesn't make sense in this day and age. Email us today! or call 765-426-2202Tonight I decided to give a try at creating a decorative bullet journal page. I usually post stuff I do from my work bullet journal, so to switch things up a bit, I decided that this would be a nice change. Comic Book Bullet Journal List Page Creation If you’ve read my “About Me” page, you’ll know that I started off with the dream of being a comic book artist. Unfortunately, taking a school councilor’s advice, my life took a very different direction. I recently came back to drawing comics, and decided that at least one of the pages in my personal bullet journal should be comic themed. What better way to do this than for a “comic books I want to read” list? I started off using a Pentel 4H drawing pencil to lightly outline the header box and characters. I wasn’t a difficult process, but it took about an hour to get things the way I wanted them. I lightened up the lines using a kneadable eraser, and then began the pen work. I use Staedtler pigment liners (0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7 sizes) to do most of the lines, but some of the finer work required the Kuretake Bimoji Fude pens (fine, medium). It was fun to create, and I might do this more when I have time. AdvertisementsData Protection Bill to be welcomed but still needs work ORG responds to the Government's statement of intent on a Data Protection Bill Javier Ruiz – policy director at digital rights campaign organisation Open Rights Group – said, “We welcome the Government’s intention to bring European data protection laws into UK law. It will strengthen everyone’s ability to control what data can be collected about them and how it can be used. These laws could be fundamentally altered after Brexit. The Government must explain how these data protection rights will be guaranteed after the UK has left the EU. We are disappointed that UK Ministers are not taking up the option in EU law to allow consumer privacy groups to lodge independent data protection complaints as they can currently do under consumer rights laws. Citizens face increasingly complex data ecosystems. It is almost impossible for average person to be able to know which organisations hold their personal data. Enabling privacy groups to take independent action will ensure consumers’ rights are properly enforced.”This is not Félicette. This is an image via Shutterstock This article originally appeared on VICE Australia. You may not care about space. You may not care about France. But something you can definitely get behind is French cats who went to space. Someone else who feels that way is Matthew Serge Guy from London, who has a Kickstarter page for the construction of a statue in Paris for a cat named Félicette, who was the first cat in space. As Guy explains on his page: “Other animals in space, such as Laika the dog and Ham the chimpanzee, are well-known within popular culture and have lasting memorials, but very few people are aware that a cat went to space at all. “Now it's time for Felicette to get the memorial she rightly deserves.” His Kickstarter explains how the French space program—which doesn’t just exist, but is actually the world’s third largest after the US and Russia—used cats to examine how living creatures handled zero gravity conditions. Félicette on a celebratory postcard released in France after her flight. Screenshot via YouTube In 1963, a collection of 14 cats were put into space training. The training included spinning them in a giant centrifuge and implanting electrodes in their brain to monitor neurological activity. There was some debate over whether Félicette finally made the cut because of her docile nature and because the rest of the cats had put on weight, but she was ultimately chosen. On October 18, 1963, Félicette was strapped into a Véronique AG1 rocket, a direct descendant of the Nazi’s V-2 rocket. She was then blown into space from Algeria, surviving a gravitational force of nine-and-a-half. She spent 15 minutes in orbit, before safely parachuting to Earth in a capsule. She was finally retrieved alive and well and became, for a brief moment, something of a national hero in France. Three months later, in keeping with the long-standing tradition of any science that involves animals, Félicette was euthanized for the purpose of neurological study. Today, few people know the story of Félicette and her contribution to international aeronautics. On several commemorative stamps, her achievements were incorrectly attributed to a non-existent cat named Félix. And all of this is a wrong that Matthew Serge Guy is trying to put right. Guy's Kickstarter goal is $52,000, with a number of contribution incentives along the way. For example, if you contribute $15 you’ll get a paw-print signed replica of Félicette’s original postcard from 1963, with a thank you written on the back. Guy also says that if he somehow raises more than the goal, the statue may end up larger and fancier than promised. “I’m not saying we should make this statue out of gold,” he writes, “but I’m certainly implying it.” The statue will be ultimately designed by a UK animal sculptor named Gill Parker and is expected to be completed at an unknown date because as Matthew explains, “creating a statue is a long process. A really, really long process.” Anyway, if this is your thing you’ll have until November 17 to contribute. He’s about halfway there, so go on, throw a cat a bone. Follow Julian Morgans on Twitter."We're thrilled to unveil another new DEK hockey rink in the Valley," said Coyotes' Owner, Chairman and Governor Andrew Barroway. "The Coyotes are committed to the Valley and to growing the great game of hockey in our state. We are excited to partner with our great friends at the YMCA and the City of El Mirage and hope that the kids enjoy playing DEK hockey on this great rink throughout their lives." FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, August 2, 2017 GLENDALE, ARIZONA --- The Arizona Coyotes unveiled a new outdoor DEK hockey rink at the YMCA in El Mirage, Arizona today. The total cost of the project was $250,000. The Coyotes, along with the NHL and the NHLPA launched an initiative last April to build several new DEK hockey rinks around the Valley and state. "The YMCA is a tremendous organization and the Coyotes are very excited to partner with them," said Coyotes' President and CEO Steve Patterson. "The Coyotes realize the importance of giving back to the community and this facility will allow kids to learn, play and fall in love with the great game of hockey for decades to come." "The Y is extremely excited to be a part of this wonderful initiative," said Todd Heinecke, Vice President of Operations, Valley of the Sun YMCA. "To play an integral role in creating real opportunity for kids of all socio-demographics to learn the great game of hockey, makes it even that much more fulfilling." The Coyotes previously unveiled a DEK hockey rink at Luke Air Force Base on April 13 and have identified a number of additional sites in the Valley where the next DEK hockey rinks will be constructed. These rinks will allow kids and adults access to newly constructed, outdoor hockey rinks with an opportunity to learn and play DEK hockey. Prime consideration for the placement of rinks will be in local city or county parks or adjacent to managed youth development facilities. Details regarding the new sites will be announced in the future."I will accept that we need to do more," said ACTRA Toronto head Theresa Tova. Spurred by the Harvey Weinstein scandal, ACTRA Toronto, the Canadian actors union's biggest branch, has hired a veteran labor lawyer to conduct a review of its internal sexual harassment policies. The Directors Guild of Canada has also agreed to an independent audit of its own internal policies around sexual harassment. The moves follow accusations that Canadian performers allegedly experiencing workplace harassment have not felt adequately protected by Canadian unions and guilds. "The industry collectively has not done enough. Have we done enough? Absolutely not," Theresa Tova, president of ACTRA Toronto, told The Hollywood Reporter on Monday. Her union, now facing a flood of workplace complaints by Canadian performers, has tapped Victoria Shen as a special adviser to look internally at policies and practices around sexual harassment allegation and resolution processes. But Tova claims the Canadian film and TV industry as a whole has to grapple with systemic sexual harassment and bullying of young performers that mostly takes place away from film and TV sets and often in casting sessions. "I know there's things we can do now, like we [the industry] agreeing that we're not going to enable it, agreeing that you don't set up casting sessions in hotel rooms — simple things that protect 18- and 19-year-olds from abuse," she said. Shen, a veteran human rights and labor lawyer, most recently served as director of national industrial relations and counsel at the Canadian Media Producers Association, representing indie film and TV producers, including in labor disputes. Her hire follows industry calls for ACTRA to introduce measures against sexual misconduct like a database to monitor how many performers are denied work because they filed sexual harassment complaints against offending producers and directors. Tova conceded ACTRA in the past did not keep a database of alleged offenders and is discussing via industry-wide talks how such a reporting system may be introduced and shared. Canadian actress Mia Kirshner in a recent Globe and Mail column called for such an industry monitoring system to be put in place. "Any effort to blacklist an actor who refuses sexual advances (by a producer, director, etc.) should trigger real consequences against the offender. But again, how can the unions produce evidence of blacklisting if no monitoring is in place?" Kirshner wrote. Her call to action included alluding to "an ordeal in a hotel room" with Weinstein where "he attempted to treat me like chattel that could be purchased with the promise of work in exchange for being his disposable orifice." Tova, who admitted she has experienced sexual harassment on four occasions during her own career in an impassioned Oct. 27 YouTube video, said an "alarming number" of unionized performers have spoken up with their own sexual harassment allegations. "The stories I'm hearing are horrific," she said. ACTRA has enlisted other Canadian industry players like the CMPA and the DGC to bolster efforts to curb sexual harassment and bullying. Top Canadian directors aligned with the DGC met in Toronto over the weekend and approved a motion for a "wide-ranging" independent audit of their own policies on sexual harassment and a second motion urging "stronger measures" following cross-industry talks to end harassment. "It's clear there's powerful momentum right now for stronger action to end these abuses and the Directors Guild intends to seize the opportunity for change created by the brave women and men who've come forward," Brian Burke, DGC national executive director, said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. CMPA president and CEO Reynolds Mastin, representing indie producers, said in his own statement that his association is working with ACTRA and others to create a safer workplace for industry talent. "As leaders in the industry, we owe it to all we employ to address this problem, to encourage reporting and an open dialogue, to support victims and to take action to prevent these behaviors in the future," he said. The UBCP, the actors union in British Columbia, will hold a town hall meeting in Vancouver on Monday to allow female performers to share stories of sexual harassment. "We know that our brothers are not exempt from this abuse of power, but this town hall is offered to women members (and those who identify as female) who want a safe place to express their fear, anger and sorrow," Christine Willes, chair of the UBCP/ACTRA women’s committee, said in a statement.The Syrian revolution has witnessed the clear rise of the Salafist current in its traditional and jihadist forms and as a movement. This is due to the nature of the revolution itself, which was launched and grew in the countryside and on the outskirts of small cities. Meanwhile, the Sufi movement, which is hostile to the Salafist interpretation of Sunni Islam and has predominantly thrived in Syria’s urban centers, split into pro-regime, pro-opposition and neutral currents. This Sufi component raises fundamental questions about Syria’s religiosity, which during the past decades was dominated by Sufism. There are now questions regarding whether the religiosity of Syria's Sunnis will permanently adopt the Salafist trend or just temporarily while the rebellion continues, with Sufism reverting to its previous status, especially in its strongholds in the cities of Damascus and Aleppo, once the revolution concludes. Over the past decades, Sufism divided into divergent political trends, the most prominent of which is the Zayd movement. It was founded by Sheikh Abdul Karim al-Rifai in the early 20th century. It spread in Damascus through conservative social circles and a network of mosques and sheikh-pupil-follower relationships. In the 1980s, the Zayd movement suffered a heavy blow, when many of its members joined the Muslim Brotherhood’s insurrection against the regime in the 1980s, drawing the wrath of the regime. Its leader, Sheikh Osama al-Rifai, the eldest son of Abdul Karim al-Rifai and his successor as the movement’s leader, left the country, returning in the mid-1990s. The Zaydis quickly restored their religious network and expanded in Damascus. Osama al-Rifai's stature was widely respected, so much so that in 2002 President Bashar al-Assad visited him, which was contrary to the tradition of the religious leader visiting the president. Another Sufi trend is the Qubaisiate movement. It is a women-only movement, but does not have a feminist agenda in the Western political and human rights sense. The movement was headed by Sheikh Munira al-Qubaisi in the 1960s and active among the Syrian bourgeoisie. It later established schools and associations in Syria and abroad, in Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait. It has a purely religious, proselytizing and educational character. One other Sufi trend of the past few decades has been the official religious establishment, represented by the Ministry of Religious Endowments and the General Fatwa Institute. All its branches have taken clear positions in support of the Syrian regime, specifically when the latter confronted the Brotherhood. Back then, a number of Sufi sheikhs filled the vacuum caused by the exile and arrest of the Brotherhood’s religious scholars and leaders. The most prominent of these Sufi scholars was Ahmad Kuftaro, the former mufti of Syria. His relationship with the regime goes back a long way, including a special relationship with late president Hafez al-Assad. He helped build the Abu al-Noor religious complex in Damascus, at which thousands of students received their early and university educations and a large number of religious scholars and preachers received their training. The Sufi movement in the revolution The political truce between the regime and several Sufi currents collapsed during the revolution despite the absolute support given to the regime by the official religious establishment. The mufti of the Republic, Ahmad Hassoun, issued a fatwa in March 2013 calling for jihad in defense of the regime. That same month, Sheikh Mohammed Said Ramadan al-Bouti, a well-known Sufi cleric who had close ties to the authorities, was killed in a bombing at the Iman Mosque in Damascus. He had strongly criticized protesters and demonstrators in his support for the regime. The government and the opposition have accused each other of the assassination. Kuftaro’s supporters, now led by Rajab Deeb, secretary general of the Abu al-Noor complex, stood against the revolution and supported the regime. Former member of parliament Mohammad Habash, a prominent leader in the current, tried to hold the stick from the middle and spoke of a “third way” between the regime and revolution. Both sides rejected him, and he subsequently sided with the revolution. The Qubaisiate movement chose to remain silent, refusing to choose between the regime or the opposition. While the opposition interpreted this silence as support for the regime, Syrian opposition circles note that a number of the Quaisiate members have joined the revolution. The only Sufi movement to clearly side with the revolution is the Zayd movement. Its sheikhs resisted government pressure to condemn the opposition's demonstrations. On the contrary, Rifai called for releasing detainees, a halt to their torture, and political reforms. The turning point in the Zayd movement’s position occurred when regime supporters beat Rifai and attacked his mosque and supporters. That provoked the people of Damascus, who came out to demonstrate the next day in support of Rifai. He and his younger brother left the country and declared their clear support for the revolution. In addition to the Zayd movement, a number of well-known Syrian sheikhs, among them Mohammad Ratib al-Nabulsi and his students, have supported the armed opposition. Even though the Sufi current has no significant armed factions as the Salafists do, observers claim that many Sufi individuals have joined the armed struggle. Some have even established armed factions, among them the Magawir Battalions, the Companions of the Prophet Brigade, and the Descendants of the Prophet Brigade. Between the Sufis and the Salafists: Prospects for the future The Salafists' influence has risen greatly during the Syrian revolution. This is the antithesis of that for the Sufis, who are in decline despite the official Syrian religious establishment having a mostly Sufi character and the Sufis having had a truce with the regime, with some supporting the government against other Islamist movements. The reason for the Sufis decline in political power, however, is that the armed revolution was launched from the countryside and grew there, while the major cities, such as Damascus and Aleppo, lagged behind, perhaps against their will. Sufism is active in the cities and is allied with the bourgeoisie and the merchant class, while the armed rebellion has predominantly been driven by rural and poorer classes. As the armed conflict turns increasingly sectarian, with the Sunni majority feeling that it faces an existential threat with most standing against the regime, the Sufis will sooner or later find themselves with no choice but to side with the revolution, as the regime’s grip weakens. The current Sufi decline is the result more of events and the Sufis’ political decisions rather than the movement’s social influence. Note: Part of the information in the article was taken from Mohammad Abu Rumman's latest book, The Islamists, Religion, and the Revolution in Syria (2013). Mohammad Abu Rumman is a researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan and writes for the Jordanian daily Al-Ghad. He has published a number of books, most recently The Salafists and the Arab Spring and The Islamic Solution in Jordan.Photo: AP Today Donald Trump indulged in a special Memorial-Day-weekend flavor of bigotry, because there’s no holiday from this man’s rhetorical hell. Speaking at the annual Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally in D.C., Trump told the crowd that immigrants in the United States who don’t have a legal status are better cared for than American military veterans. This from a man who once criticized Arizona Sen. John McCain’s military service in Vietnam by saying, “I like people who weren’t captured.” The Rolling Thunder rally honors soldiers who are missing in action or prisoners of war, and raises awareness about veterans issues. Trump told the crowd, “We have a lot of things to straighten out in this country,” and, “ We need to rebuild our military.” He also reminded them of that wall he plans to build. Trump has said on several occasions that veterans love him.So what makes a good manifesto? 1. Manifestos usually include a list of numbered tenets. The format has been de rigeur since at least as far back as The Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789). It conveys a sense of urgency and straight talk. This is also why manifestos feel so contemporary: their close resemblance to click-bait top 10 lists. 2. Manifestos exist to challenge and provoke. Any manifesto worth reading demands the impossible. Surely the best first line since Marx and Engels’s The Communist Manifesto (1848) is the breathless opener to Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto (1967), which reads: “Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.” It is dangerous and unpredictable, like the “thrill-seeking females” it imagines as its foot soldiers, and is nothing if not ambitious. 3. Manifestos are advertisements. The Futurist Marinetti made this especially true, embracing and pioneering new techniques for advertising (one of Benjamin’s “shocks” of modernity) to promote his international movement. Since Futurism, the manifesto has come into its own as something that advertises mainly itself. But it also, in most cases at least, advertises an “ism.” Marinetti’s favorite lesson from advertising was the old adage “there’s no such thing as bad press.” He wrote about “The Pleasure of Being Booed” and picked fights with audiences across Europe. Soon other isms followed his lead, using shock and outrage as their chief mode. The Vorticist Wyndham Lewis described it as a game played by artists with the press and public before the rude intrusion of the First World War. It has been a popular technique ever since: the film director Lars von Trier, for example, who contributed to the genre with his "Dogme 95" manifesto, has in recent years elevated bad press to an art form. 4. Manifestos come in many forms. During the “second-wave” avant-garde of the 1960s, the manifesto experienced a major rebirth, becoming again part of the general atmosphere as it was in Europe before and after the First World War. One anthology, BAMN (By Any Means Necessary): Outlaw Manifestos and Ephemera, 1965-70 (1971), described some of the situations in which the manifesto might have appeared and the forms it might have taken: perhaps it caught your eye as a flyposter, nailed to a tree, published in a “now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t” magazine or news-sheet. It could have been incanted at a wedding service, passed round as trading cards, posted as a chain letter, read on a menu. It may even have whizzed past your head while wrapped round a brick. The BAMN anthology provides some good examples from the heady late-'60s, including the “Outlaws of Amerika” trading card series. Created for the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the cards depict various members of the Black Panthers and “200,000 pot smokers” (a figure that sounds charmingly conservative today). Also from 1968 is a manifesto reportedly written by Salvador Dali and found “behind the barricades in Paris” —perhaps even wrapped around a brick and ready to be tossed at The Establishment.* Centre-right People’s Party expected to win big * Voters angry over the economy * Likely new prime minister, Rajoy, pledges swift action By Fiona Ortiz MADRID, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Spain’s likely new leader, centre-rightist Mariano Rajoy, pledged on Friday to restore confidence to the troubled economy and boost business after a parliamentary election in which voters are set to throw out the Socialist government. Opinion polls ahead of Sunday’s election show the People’s Party, led by Rajoy, has a double digit lead over the Socialists, widely seen by Spaniards as having mishandled the response to the mounting euro zone debt crisis. Spain will become the latest precarious euro zone country to replace its leadership, following Greece, Ireland, Italy and Portugal. Economic woes have dominated the campaign, with more than one in five workers out of a job, a recession looming and government borrowing costs soaring to levels that forced other euro zone countries to resort to international bail-out funds. Rajoy, a cautious former interior minister, will not be sworn in until around Dec. 20. But before that he is expected to try to calm financial markets by laying out the details of how he will shrink the public deficit and reform the economy to make it more competitive in the medium term. “The worst thing is the doubts hanging over Spain, the lack of confidence. My fundamental objective is to provide that confidence,” Rajoy said on Friday morning on Onda Cero. He will name economy heavyweights to his cabinet and immediately implement tax cuts for small companies that hire. “We need a shock plan for entrepreneurs,” he said. “There are going to be specific measures from the start for entrepreneurs and there is going to be a clear message from the government that we’re counting on them, with the help of the government, to steer us out of this crisis by creating employment.” Rajoy will have little time to act. Spain sold a 10-year government bond on Thursday with a yield of almost 7 percent. That high a borrowing cost has forced other countries into seeking international aid. However, investor concerns over European government debt have shifted to Italy and France, which means that unless the euro common currency area comes up with a big picture solution, Rajoy may not be able to save Spain from a fiscal meltdown. Austerity measures have provoked violent protests in Italy and Greece. Demonstrators have also taken to the streets in Spain although events have generally been peaceful. On Thursday night, thousands of teachers and students marched in Madrid and other cities to protest against job and budget cuts in public education. SOCIALISTS STRUGGLED Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero announced earlier this year he would not run for a third term as his approval ratings sank in tandem with employment. The Socialists chose veteran politician Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba as their leader for the campaign, but he has struggled to differentiate himself from Zapatero, since he served in his cabinet for years, most recently as his deputy. Rubalcaba spent the last week of the campaign trying to get out the Socialist vote, not to win, but to prevent the PP taking an absolute majority in Parliament. “I’m worried that the right takes over with absolute power,” he said in an interview published on Friday in El Pais newspaper. Spain’s economic trouble dates to after it joined the euro in 1999 and a flood of cheap credit led to a housing and building glut. When the property market crashed in 2007 the government, companies and consumers all found themselves over their heads in debt. At first Zapatero tried to spend his way out of the economic crisis but he reversed tactics and drastically cut spending after the euro zone crisis claimed Greece as its first victim in 2010. Spanish austerity measures, along with bail-outs and forced recapitalization of banks, so far have been successful in keeping the country from following Portugal and Ireland into financial rescues. But they also aggravated unemployment. In 1.4 million households no one has a formal job, and consumer groups say a million homeowners are at risk of having their property seized by the bank. “In this situation you’ve got to vote for a change of government to see if they can turn the situation around. In almost every Spanish family there are people in trouble,” said Manolo, 61, a retired driving instructor standing outside an unemployment office in Madrid. Inside, his daughter, an out-of-work social worker, lined up for benefits. In May this year young Spaniards fed up with rescues
covers add another pocket in the back, which is much more valuable. Rear seat passengers actually get no storage space in the Model S– well, except for the little notch by the door handle which my daughter likes to leave batteries in so they will crash and bang on every turn and slowly DRIVE HER FATHER CRAZY. Aside from those meager holes where spent tissues also go to die, the typical seat back pouch is missing on the Tesla. These covers add it back in a generously sized pouch that should have some piping on the seam, but doesn’t. It’s large enough to hold magazines and books but probably not padded enough to protect a tablet’s screen from the hard plastic on the other side if things get bouncy. I’d also recommend you avoid large or heavy items. The neoprene isn’t likely to stretch out badly like my Chrysler’s leather did: it has become a gaping maw of abused leather, like the seat went on a diet and forgot to buy new clothes. However, excessive volume or weight in the neoprene will cause it to droop and unflatteringly open up the airbag slit on the side. SUMMARY With modern car seats becoming more difficult for an owner to replace due to the integrated airbags, protecting the original seats becomes a wise choice– particularly on a car with a potentially long lifespan. These seat covers designed for the Model S and offered through EVannex do more than just protect the original seats, they actually enhance them in a number of ways like increased comfort, better positioning, added storage and, of course, superb materials and construction. The drawbacks are few and mainly involve personal choices related to the heating, seat control access and ease of ingress/egress. Given the level of detail and quality, the price seems to be very reasonable at $349/set and well worth it for a custom fit product. VIDEO REVIEWBy: Galen Andress The silhouette tease of an arc-winged warrior of Aiur was only a brief taste of what's in store for Protoss players in the first Starcraft 2 expansion: Heart of the Swarm. After a quick playthrough, here's a brief rundown of the new Protoss units and abilities in the Heart of the Swarm multiplayer demo. Nexus Abilities In Heart of the Swarm, the Nexus has a pair of new abilities that will help Protoss players on the defensive. Arc Shield Cost: 25 Energy Effect: Place an anti-light cannon on top of any structure for a brief period of time. This will be a nice defensive ability for Protoss players protecting an early expansion, and later on in the game for protecting outlying expansions against small raids. It seems like there could be potential to use this ability to protect proxy Pylons during an early attack as well. Recall Cost: 75 Energy Effect: Transports selected units to target Nexus The Mothership is gone, and the Recall ability has been moved to the Nexus. Because of the high energy cost, it seems that this is an ability we'll only see in the later stages of the game, and as a defensive/retreat measure. New Units There are three new units added to the Protoss arsenal in Heart of the Swarm, while the Carrier and Mothership have been removed. There are two new units that come from the Stargate, and a new unit from the Robotics Facility. Replicant Built from: Robotics Facility Cost: 200/200 The Replicant is a really interesting unit. It builds quickly, has very low hitpoints, and has no base attack. The core function of this unit is that it has the ability to transform itself into any non-massive unit. It seems like it will help Protoss players be more flexible in the early game, being able to replicate a Sentry for a few more Forcefields or an Immortal for some extra stopping power early. I can see alot of potential for speeding up tech switches as well in the later stages of the game, by banking up a few Replicants and transforming them into a shiny new Stargate army. We'll have to see. Oracle Built From: Stargate Cost: 150/200 The Oracle was the most interesting addition to the Protoss arsenal. It is a spellcaster with no base attack, moves quickly, and has three different, very unique spells. Phase Shift – Target structure is phased out of existence for a brief period of time. During this time, it can't be attacked, use abilities, provide power or tech. Massive structures (Command Centers, Hatcheries, Nexus, etc.) are immune. This ability seems like it will be very flexible, with offensive and defensive capabilities. Phasing out important buildings of your own during an attack could prevent having to rebuild a tech tree, and powering down important tech buildings of your opponent can slow down certain timings and upgrades. Preordain – Placed on a target enemy structure to gain vision of what it is producing. This will be a useful scouting tool, gaining intel on what upgrades and units your opponent is getting. I feel like this will be very nice against Zerg to see what Hatchery upgrades (Burrow, Overlord Upgrades) they are getting, as well as the upgrades from their tech structures, and seeing what is coming out of Terran Techlabs at specific times. Entomb – Prevents mining from target Mineral patch for 45 seconds. Can also be used to remove Entomb from patches of your own. This is a nice harrassment ability that can do a ton of economic damage, especially if you get a few Oracles flying all around the map. Tempest Built From: Stargate Cost: 300/300 Although it pains me to see the Carrier go, I have a feeling that the Tempest is going to fit into the Protoss arsenal very nicely. One nice upgrade from the Carrier is the movement speed is a little quicker on the Tempest. It's AtA attack does AoE damage, which will be good for dealing with masses of Mutalisks, and help soften up flocks of Vikings and Corrupters that are aiming to take down Collosi. Its AtG attack is slow, but does a pretty good amount of damage, so it will be best to target down high-hitpoint targets. I feel like the AtA attack will be the most important part of the Tempest for the most part. After only 30 minutes of play, it's hard to say exactly how the units will carry over into competitive play, but there is definitely alot of potential. Stay tuned for a rundown of the new units and abilities of Terran and Zerg! You should keep in mind that none of these changes are final. What we have here at BlizzCon is a work in progress.Josh Reese George Springer has made a number of highlight catches this season, but his most recent catch – amazing catch on a dead sprint right behind him – caused him make an amazing highlight grab but also caused him to face plant the right field wall. That catch cost Springer seven days on the DL and gave him his first ever concussion. The contact he made with the wall was so hard it was able to jar his contacts lose. “I’m going to play the same way” George Springer said when asked if after this experience was going to change the way he played. “I’m really not to concurred about the wall” Springer said “i’m going to get out there and play, if I have to hit it again i’ll just try not to hit it with my head.” Springer’s defensive WAR 3.1 is the highest for all right fielders, no doubt due to his “no ball is to far away” attitude, Springer is clearly one of the better defenders in baseball. “My job is the ball gets hit, I’m suppose to go catch it” Springer said. It’s a simple job, and he won’t go changing it, and one bad experience won’t cause him change the way he goes about his job. “You can’t, cause that’s when you play scared and that’s not how I am.” Springer said. It’s hard to tell Springer who is as good as he is in the field to be more cautious and reign it in when going after fly balls. Springer’s all out style is what helps him get to those baseball’s you don’t think he will be able to get.The Harper government has announced a new funding arrangement for Medicare, which after 2016 will be tied to economic growth in the nominal GDP. According to one estimate, this will translate into $21 billion in cuts to health-care funding over 10 years. By unilaterally imposing health-care funding cuts on the provinces, the Harper government is putting its own brand on a familiar prescription for privatization: scapegoat Medicare, ignore private health costs, pretend you don't have any money, and then cut public health care to encourage privatization. 1. Scapegoat Medicare Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, fresh off his attack on Muslim women, was the first Tory to open the campaign against Medicare -- scapegoating it for cuts to social services. Suddenly a public education advocate, he claimed that public health-care costs are soaring and devouring provincial budgets. Kenney stated that, "For some of the provinces, if they continue in that trajectory, there will be nothing left for education, for universities, for anything else." This is a common myth, repeated by the corporate media, that manipulates statistics created by decades of Tory and Liberal cuts at both federal and provincial levels. The relative rise in provincial health-care budgets is a statistical effect from greater cutbacks elsewhere. According to the 2011 report, "Neat, plausible and wrong: the myth of health care unsustainability" by Canadian Doctors for Medicare (CDM): "The change in share of provincial budgets is not primarily due to increased health care spending. It is the result of decreases in other provincial spending to accommodate political decisions to cut taxes … Deep cuts in federal transfers to the provinces in the mid-1990s were compounded by provincial tax cutting policies in the latter part of the decade, causing significant reductions in total provincial budgets. Provincial revenues have fallen almost $30 billion since 1997, causing decreases in other government program spending through cuts to education, social services, and municipalities … It is tax cuts that have 'crowded out' these priorities, not Medicare." 2. Ignore private inefficiencies Overall health costs have increased, but it's crucial to differentiate between public and private. While Medicare costs have been constant and sustainable over 30 years, overall health costs have increased -- from those sources not covered by Medicare. As the CDM report explains: "The real cost driver is precisely the thing that critics of Medicare tout as the solution: private health care. Currently 30% of all health spending is in the private sector, up from 24% in 1975 … the overall cost of care has been driven most significantly by the rising cost of pharmaceuticals." If we want to control rising health care costs, we need to control the profit-driven private sector, federally and provincially. It's estimated that developing a universal public pharmacare program could save $10 billion annually. But federal governments have refused to make this "efficiency." Meanwhile a year ago the B.C. government slashed funding for the Therapeutics Initiative -- an independent evidence-based review board that helped promote safe and affordable pharmaceuticals. 3. Pretend there's no money While ignoring the heightened costs of private medicine, the Tories are using the economic crisis to justify cutting public health care, claiming there's no money to cover it. According to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, "We all realize that public finances relate to revenues and we can't pretend that we can spend money that we don't have." This ignores massive tax cuts, bank bailouts and military spending sprees. While the new health plan could cut $21 billion from health, the Tories gave a $69 billion bank bailout, are wasting $220 billion on tax cuts, and have been going on a military spending spree -- from $30 billion fighter jets, to $25 billion warships -- as part of a $490 billion military plan. 4. Cut the public to promote the private But the Tories don't want to debate the spending priorities of the 1 per cent, so they've chosen to unilaterally impose cuts to the provinces, to encourage privatization. According to Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, "This investment also provides the opportunity to put the divisive issues funding behind us to allow us all to focus on the real issue -- how to improve the system so you can ensure timely access to health care when needed." In other words, the government is trying to bury the question of federal funding -- which initially comprised 50 per cent of Medicare's funding -- in order to starve the provinces and encourage "timely access" through privatization, a strategy many provincial governments are happy to oblige. Occupy Medicare This passive-aggressive approach is similar to Harper's campaign against abortion: claim to "not open the debate" while imposing cuts anyways. But this is based on a position of weakness: an overwhelming majority of people support public health care, the legacy of a grassroots movement that won Medicare and continues to defend it. Public health care is not a divisive issue: it unites us, as do other issues. The funding is there, not only for public health care but for all the social determinants of health: income and social equality, housing and food security, education and a clean environment. But to occupy health and health care, we need to move beyond the 1 per cent world of tax cuts, bank bailouts, military spending and profit-driven medicine.Reuters/Joshua Roberts White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway cited a demonstrably nonexistent "massacre" as justification for President Donald Trump's temporary immigration ban in an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine days before making headlines by mentioning the falsehood on MSNBC's "Hardball." Conway said in a phone interview with Cosmo on January 29, and a video interview with TMZ that the Obama administration had called for a temporary ban on Iraqi refugees after a "massacre" she said was carried out by terrorists in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The magazine described the comments in an article published Monday. "Why did he do that?" Conway told the magazine, referring to Obama. "He did that for exactly the same reasons. He did that because two Iraqi nationals came to this country, joined ISIS, traveled back to the Middle East to get trained and refine their terrorism skills and come back here and were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre of taking innocent soldiers' lives away." Conway told TMZ a very similar story. The Obama administration did review and slow down its program admitting Iraqi refugees after an incident in Bowling Green, but it did not introduce an outright ban the way Trump's executive order temporarily has. Two Iraqi refugees in Bowling Green were arrested in 2011 and indicted on federal terrorism charges accusing them, in part, of providing material support to Al Qaeda in Iraq — but no attack ever took place in the US. The refugees were ensnared in an FBI sting operation and later convicted. When Cosmo reached out to the FBI about Conway's account, it said, an FBI spokesman told the magazine "a couple of your facts seem incorrect." Cosmo didn't publish Conway's remarks initially, but on Friday, Conway told the same story on "Hardball." She quickly corrected herself, issuing tweets saying she only misspoke and meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists" instead of "Bowling Green massacre." In an interview with Fox News' Howard Kurtz on Sunday, Conway again defended the legitimacy of her story. "I should have said plot or I should have just called them terrorists … I clarified immediately," Conway said. "I should have said terrorists and not massacre. I'm sure it will live on for a week." "I misspoke one word." she added. "The corrections in the newspapers that are attacking me are three paragraphs long every day."Hassan Ali / Reuters Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Saud speaks at a news conference about haj preparations in Mecca in this November 1, 2011 file photo. As Saudi Arabia mourns the death of Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, heir to the throne, there are likely to be as many gasps of apprehension as secret sighs of relief. It’s still not clear where Nayef, 78, was at the time of his death. Late last month he left Saudi for routine medical tests and a holiday at an unknown destination. Government officials, who said he was in good health as recently as June 3, had expected him back in the country “soon.” The death of Nayef, who was also deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, comes just eight months after the death of his brother and former Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, who was 86. Nayef’s appointment as crown prince last year was controversial in some circles, particularly among a younger generation of would-be leaders who perceived him to be more socially conservative and less reform minded than his brother the king. There were fears that if he were to take the throne he might overturn some of the King’s reforms, such as the promise that women would be able to vote, and run, for the first time in 2015’s local council elections. (OBITUARY: Crown Prince Nayef Has Died) But the death of a second heir to the throne in less than eight months threatens to upset the kingdom’s fragile stability. King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, who, at 87, has outlasted two heirs, will have some difficult decisions to make in the coming days as he presides over the appointment of the next crown prince. King Abdullah’s third brother, former governor of Riyadh and current defense minister Prince Salman, 75 is a likely choice, though the king’s half brother and Foreign Intelligence Chief Prince Muqrim, at a relatively sprightly 68, is also a contender. With most of those directly in line to the throne hobbling about with canes, hip replacements or in wheel chairs, one could be forgiven for thinking of Saudi palaces as particularly well-appointed old age homes. The next few decades in Saudi Arabia are likely to be marked by a succession of funerals and coronations as the top position in the world’s largest oil exporter cycles through a generation that had more to do with the Kingdom’s foundations than it does with the country’s future. As the crown passes from head to head, it is likely to slow the process of reform and progress in a kingdom that in many ways still feels mired in the last century. The ruling family’s authoritarian grip on power may provide stability in the short term, but with half the population under the age of 18, and with a leadership almost entirely above the age of 70, it seems inevitable that tensions will rise. (MORE: Why the Saudi Succession Spells Instability in the Long Term) As I wrote in October last year, there is some speculation that the popular Mecca Governor Prince Khalid bin Faisal could also be in the running. At 71 he may hit the mid range of the succession age spectrum, but his position of grandson to modern Saudi Arabia’s founding monarch, Abdul-Aziz, as opposed to son, would represent a revolutionary change that would have repercussions not only in the uppermost ranks of the country’s leadership, but could also open doors to a much younger and progressive generation in key ministries. As for the younger generation of Saudi rulers? There is certainly talent to be mined. But with more than 22,000 descendants of the founding royal family clamoring for position and recognition, it is unlikely that the succession will be smooth. As long as the sons of Abdul-Aziz are in power, the transitions will go in relatively orderly fashion, says says Gregory Gause, International Relations professor at the University of Vermont and a specialist in the opaque world of Saudi government. “But at some point it will have to go to the next generation. Some lines of the family will be privileged, and others will be sidelined. That will be tricky.” It opens up the possibility of splits in the family, political mobilization and mass politics – in short the very kind of instability that King Abdullah is currently trying to prevent. It may take a generation or two, but the Arab spring could yet bloom in the Saudi desert. Aryn Baker is TIME’s Middle East Bureau Chief, based in Beirut. Find her on Twitter at @arynebaker. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEWorld.State to consider medical marijuana use HARRISBURG -- A state legislator from Philadelphia said today it's time to get rid of the decades-old negative image surrounding marijuana and replace it with "a new, honest image." How? By legalizing the use of small amounts of marijuana for medicinal purposes, such as reducing pain for sufferers of cancer or multiple sclerosis, helping people with glaucoma and assist with insomnia and mental disorders such as manic depression, said Democratic Rep. Mark Cohen. He introduced House Bill 1393, which would put Pennsylvania in a league with 13 other states that permit a person, with a doctor's recommendation, to apply to the state Department of Health for a "registry card" that would allow the patient to purchase or grow one ounce of marijuana at a time. "The only thing blocking this bill's passage is the old image that marijuana has from the 1930s," Mr. Cohen said. "It's time to create a new image, as a form of treatment that, when prescribed by responsible doctors, could help thousands of patients in Pennsylvania." People with state-issued registry cards could either grow up to six marijuana plants at their home or buy it at yet-to-be-created "compassion centers," legal dispensaries of medical marijuana. The sale of marijuana would be subject to the state's 6 percent sales tax, and Mr. Cohen claimed that the state could get up to $25 million a year in new revenue. He appeared at a news conference today with Chris Goldstein, an advocate with Pennsylvanians for Medical Marijuana, and Chuck Homan, a 58-year-old roofer from York County who was arrested last year for growing marijuana plants on his property. He uses marijuana to allow him one or two hours of sleep a night. Without it, he said, he can't even sleep that long. He attributed his insomnia to suffering from depression. His legal case is still pending, he said, but now he has joined the effort to legalize medical uses for marijuana. Mr. Cohen said he has six co-sponsors for his bill, far short of the 102 votes he needs in the House. The Senate, controlled by Republicans, many of them social conservatives, will likely be even tougher. More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Harrisburg Bureau Chief Tom Barnes can be reached at tbarnes@post-gazette.com or 717-787-4254. First published on April 29, 2009 at 11:55 amAirRace plane loses wing, watch what happens next! FREE DAILY NEWSLETTER: Get the latest videos delivered to your inbox by subscribing to the free "Video of the Day" newsletter here. Flixxy editors search the internet daily, to find the very best videos for you: SELECTION: From over 300,000 videos uploaded to YouTube daily, Flixxy editors select only 1-3 videos to be added to the site daily. PG RATING: Flixxy videos and comments are all PG rated. They are "Safe For All Ages" and "Safe For Work". All content is “uplifting”. SELECTED START AND END POINTS: Many of Flixxy’s videos start late or end early. We skip lengthy introductions and get to the point. CONCISE CAPTION AND DESCRIPTION: We know your time is valuable. so we distill the information down to what you want to know. This video has been circulating widely on the internet as fact. Actually, it is complete fiction. At first the aircraft looks real and the wing separation seems authentic. If you listen closely, you'll hear that the engine sounds are not properly synchronized, the radio chatter seems out of place and the people are definitely over-acting. What really gives it away is the landing - there is no way an airplane with one wing missing could straighten itself out to level flight to do a perfect touch-down. But for its intended purpose, KillaThrill got a great viral advertising campaign. Congratulations!Yes, if the plane has a high enough thrust to weight ratio, i.e. an aerobatic R/C plane or a fighter jet. Here are videos of a world class R/C pilot landing his plane after one wing fell off and another of a F-15 losing its wing and making a safe landingCats and beer; two brilliant things. However, much like ice cream and ketchup they are best enjoyed separately. Of course, locals and tourists alike have been amused by the "cat pub" in Bristol, which features 15 cats and beer on tap. The pub is called "Bag 'O' Nails" and it is an old-fashioned pub with a furry twist. A photo posted by mary burgers (@maryburgers) on Oct 10, 2015 at 7:36pm PDT "We have 15 cats in the pub — we once had 24 but that was too much," landlord Luke Daniels told the Bristol Post. "The reaction is mostly positive. Occasionally you might have some people walking in and leaving and some might be allergic to cats but people love it." "It's a proper old fashioned pub. Coming here is all about beer and talking." cat pub #bristolbucketlist A photo posted by Stephanie Marques (@ste_marques) on Jun 25, 2015 at 4:37pm PDT All the cats were born in the pub, according to Mr. Daniels – and one even came into being in a crisp box during a quiz night. This is undeniably a cute idea, and many people would love to have cats in the pub. CAT PUB IN BRISTOL WITH @aquagrrrrl A photo posted by Joe Mallory-Skinner (@malloryman) on Aug 31, 2015 at 11:33am PDT However, the RSPCA told The Telegraph that they are not very pleased with this idea. A spokesperson said: "Interaction between people and cats can be of huge benefit to both human and animal, but we of course always ask for consideration for their welfare. "Some cats might not enjoy being handled by strangers and generally we do not recommend keeping a lot of cats in one place. • Move over cat cafes - inside a dog cuddle coffee shop • Cat café opens in London "We certainly wouldn't recommend drinkers sharing their favourite tipple with the cats, as alcohol is a poison which can cause them serious harm and suffering. "If people want to have the companionship of a pet, we would recommend people go to their nearest rescue centre instead and meet some of the cats looking for new homes." Kittens and beer. What else do you need? A photo posted by Andy (@sirandytaylor) on Aug 31, 2015 at 12:08pm PDT So, fifteen cats seems like an excessive number, especially when the pub is full of people. Time for treats at the cat pub #caturday #catpub #bristol #catsofinstagram #catladiesofinstagram #drunkwithcats #catbeer #meow A photo posted by rebecca b. king (@amillionredroses) on Sep 27, 2015 at 9:25am PDT Also, it would be hard to monitor all of them and see that they don't eat or drink anything that is harmful to them. You can find your local RSPCA centre here.Optimist: Person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness. –Mark Twain Some people are more optimistic by nature, but optimism is not a fixed attribute. It’s a choice we have control over. Every morning, we either choose to wake up grumpy or wake up with a positive outlook. Research has shown that, in the long run, optimistic people handle stress better, get sick less often, live longer, and are happier and more successful than their pessimistic counterparts. The good news is that we can all develop skills to improve optimism. Here are nine ideas to get you started: 1. Find the opportunity in every difficulty. ‘Optimist’ is a word which here refers to a person who focuses on the positive. For instance, if an optimist lost her left arm in a car accident, she might say in a hopeful voice, “I’m alive. I don’t have my left arm anymore, but I do have my right one, and my life still to live.” Optimism does not mean ignoring the problem entirely; it means understanding that setbacks are inevitable, often temporary, and that you have the skills and abilities to combat the challenges you face. What you are dealing with may be difficult, but it is important to remain hopeful and positive about a brighter future. Optimism will inspire a sense of hopefulness and the confidence that is required to take full advantage of the opportunities that do exist. Remember, the most beautiful rainbows come from the sunlight after a very dark storm. Read Full Catastrophe Living. 2. Surround yourself with positive people. You are only as good as the company you keep. If you’re around gloomy people, there’s a good chance you won’t be smiling. Make it your mission to dodge negativity. Surround yourself with supportive friends who have positive outlooks. As they say, if you want to soar with the eagles, you have to stop hanging out with the ducks. Optimism is a learned habit, and it is positively contagious. Surround yourself with people who could infect you with positivity. In turn pass your new good mood on to a friend or stranger in words and deed – let somebody have that parking space, let that person with only a few items cut in front of you at the market. The simple act of doing something nice for others is actually a good pick-me-up all by itself. 3. Give love, receive love, and invest in love. LOVE: It’s the greatest force in the universe. It’s a treasure that people would give anything for, yet it costs nothing to give and receive. There is an endless supply, and it can be extended to family, friends and strangers at any moment. It increases positivity and acts like a shield against negativity. It forgives, heals, encourages and inspires. Give love, receive love and invest in love every day. Because where you invest your love, you invest your life. 4. Be realistic, and expect ups and downs. A foundation of realism keeps things in perspective, and helps prevent things from being blown out of proportion. Just because you’re an optimist doesn’t mean you’re not going to have bad days. You will – that’s reality. Life isn’t always rainbows and butterflies. Trying to be 100% positive all the time is wanting to be an ocean in which waves only rise up and never come crashing down. However, when we recognize that the rising and crashing waves are part of the same one ocean, we are able to let go and be at peace with the way things are. Bottom line: Prepare for the worst but hope for the best – the former makes you sensible, and the latter makes you an optimist. Read Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality. 5. Inspire yourself with a smile and positive reminders. If you expect the worst, the worst will happen. If you let things bother you, they will. But if you smile, you’ll feel better. Studies have shown that putting a cheerful smile on your face can trigger a part of your brain that actually makes you feel happier and more optimistic about the present and future. Also, feed your optimism with positive reminders. Write down short statements that inspire optimism. Put them in places where you’ll see them every day, such as on your bathroom mirror, the inside of your locker, and on your computer monitor. “Anything is possible.” “Lead a life of positivity.” “The only thing I can control is my attitude towards life.” “I always have a choice.” “Even the longest journey begins with a single step.” “I will look at the sunny side of everything and make my optimism shine.” Read The Happiness Project. 6. Work on the things you can control. Pessimism is impractical because it causes you to spend time dwelling on negative things that haven’t happened yet, while simultaneously preventing you from getting things done now. Pessimism breeds indecision. It’s a waste of time, and time is a limited resource that you can’t afford to take for granted. Every minute spent worrying guarantees nothing but less time to enjoy what life has to offer. The solution? Acknowledge the things you can’t control and don’t become a victim. Stop thinking about what is happening to you, and start thinking about what you can do to make it better. Know that you almost always have a choice. Is your job a bummer? Find a new one. Not ready to leave because of your 401K and vacation time? Then celebrate those reasons and remember that you chose to stay. 7. Count your blessings. There is so much good, so much beauty, so much love in your life. You have so much right now to be thankful for, you just need to pause long enough to appreciate it. Do so. This will help frame a better attitude and take your mind off of the negatives. Start a feel-good journal. Buy a blank journal and fill it with things that make you smile, like a photo of your pet, or a compliment a friend gave you. Use it to track your accomplishments and celebrate your victories. Stick only positive things in your journal and open it up whenever you’re feeling down. 8. Appreciate that nothing in life is permanent. Research has shown that optimists and pessimists attribute the reasons for success and failure differently. Pessimists tend to attribute negative events to permanent, personal, and pervasive factors. Optimists tend to attribute negative events to non-personal, non-permanent, and non-pervasive factors. ‘Permanent’ are factors that will be with you throughout life; ‘personal’ are factors that relate to us as individuals; and ‘pervasive’ are factors that affect our ability in other parts of our life. Bottom line: Nothing is permanent. However good or bad a situation is now, it will change. 9. Focus on the present. People often obsess themselves with the past and the future. But life is happening right now. You can’t learn something or remember something that’s happening now if your mind is stuck in another time. It takes about eight seconds of intense focus to process a new piece of information into your long-term memory. So don’t let your life and your mind slip away. Instead of dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, practice being and living in the present moment. Remember, right now is the only moment guaranteed to you. Right now is life. Don’t miss it.MIAMI, July 21, CMC – The United States Coast Guard offloaded approximately 2,300 pounds of cocaine, worth an estimated wholesale value of US$35 million interdicted in the Caribbean Sea. Coast Guard officials reported that on July 14, a deployed Air Station Miami aircrew aboard an HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircraft located a go-fast vessel with suspicious packages visible onboard.On receiving the report, the Coast Guard in Puerto Rico diverted the Coast Guard Cutter Legare to respond. The Legare launched a boatcrew and a helicopter crew, on detection, the suspected smugglers jettisoned 42 bales, which later tested positive for cocaine. Four suspected smugglers were eventually detained. The interdiction was a result of Operation Unified Resolve, a Department of Homeland Security multi-agency law enforcement operation to support ongoing efforts in the Caribbean Sea, executed under the San Juan Regional Coordinating Mechanism,Caribbean Border Interagency Group. All of the contraband was transferred to the Coast Guard Yered to be offloaded in Miami. The smugglers were transferred to law enforcement officials in Tampa, Florida.The U.S. Supreme Court handed medical marijuana patients and advocates a resounding victory on Monday, refusing to hear a case brought by San Diego County, which has long chafed at implementing statewide medical marijuana laws. The state of California, in an effort to systematize the 1996 voter-approved initiative, required localities to implement identification card programs for patients with doctor approval in 2004. Such ID cards are required to enter medical marijuana shops in California and can be shown to police officers who find patients in possession of marijuana. San Diego County, however, argued that the federal ban on marijuana trumps the state law, meaning they are not required to follow the state law. The county filed suit in 2006. Both the San Diego Superior Court and the Fourth District Court of Appeals rejected the argument, which was followed by the California Supreme Court's refusal to review the case in 2008. The San Diego Board of Supervisors voted to appeal to the Supreme Court. "The courts have made clear that federal law does not preempt California's medical marijuana law and that local officials must comply with that law," said Joe Elford, chief counsel with Americans for Safe Access (ASA), a national medical marijuana advocacy group with a large presence in California. "No longer will local officials be able to hide behind federal law and resist upholding California's medical marijuana law." It is not the job, in other words, of local cops or municipalities to enforce federal laws. In fact, the federal government has never made such an argument. The California counties acted on their own. The Supreme Court ruling, following the Obama administration's decision not to raid medical marijuana clubs acting in accordance with state law, removes one of the last barriers to full implementation of the state law. ASA has now given notice to 10 conservative holdout counties (Colusa, Madera, Mariposa, Modoc, Mono, San Bernardino, San Diego, Solano, Stanislaus, and Sutter) of their legal obligation to implement the ID card program. In January 2009, ASA, something of an industry trade group, filed a lawsuit in January against Solano County for its refusal to implement the state ID card program. ASA was joined by the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project in assisting the California Attorney General in the case against San Diego. San Bernardino teamed with San Diego. "The Supreme Court and the lower courts in California have blown away the myth that federal law somehow prevents states from legalizing medical marijuana," said Rob Kampia, executive director for the Marijuana Policy Project. Thirteen states have laws that allow certain folks to use medical marijuana if their doctor recommends it. Illinois, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York are currently considering medical marijuana bills in their state legislatures. Ryan Grim is the author of the forthcoming book This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in AmericaIn this series, I will compare Bobby Jindal’s pledges as a candidate in 2007 with his record in the Governor’s office. I begin with the centerpiece of Jindal’s 2007 campaign, ethics reform. In 2007, when he kicked off his second and, ultimately, first successful campaign for governor, U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal talked frequently about the urgent and pressing need to completely transform state ethics laws. Some legislators were actually lobbyists, he suggested
records; that whole culture also really inspiring to me. I made that record in my bedroom not really knowing what I was doing, but it just kind of came out. Can you talk about what dubstep is, that sound that came out of the U.K.? Dubstep came from grime. Grime is a style of music production: around 135 to 140 BPM, kind of urban, almost carnival-y music, but had some elements of bass and even drum 'n' bass. Guys who were making dubstep in the early 2000s — Skream and Benga and Artwork and guys like that -- were taking those elements of grime but removing the vocals and making them a little bit more aggressive. That's how dubstep sort of started. The thing I always associate with it is the drop: that moment where the bass just kind of freaks out and you're in a different zone. Yeah, and I think I took it to a bit more of an extreme level. But I feel like with a lot of records made for DJing, there's always some sort of buildup. Even in techno, where it's really simple, it'll be the same loop over and over again, but then the "drop" comes — and that's usually when the kick drum comes in. Or if you listen to funk and disco, the drumbeat comes in, and then all of a sudden the bass line comes in. It's a similar, dynamic way of approaching how to write music, but taken in so many different ways. In a song like "Scary Monsters," what are you doing to make those kinds of sounds? How do you get that? Just toying around with a lot of virtual synthesizers. I always think it's fun to make sounds that almost sound human — even though they come from a computer, there's something organic-sounding about it. That's where the "monster" thing comes from, I think: It sounds like someone's actually talking, but every one of those vowel sounds is just a lot of detailed drawing in little curves. It's funny — when you make music, you don't really think about how you're going to explain it at the end. People are really, really into the idea of, "What were you thinking of when you made that?" And I don't really think of anything; it just happens, and it's hard to explain. Well, you're somebody that a lot of people like to talk about, to define you and where you fit into dance music. You've been called "brostep," which was originally meant as an insult — what did that mean? I guess it was the whole idea that girls didn't like my music, which is really funny and opposite. I think "brostep" was just a derogatory term that came from the heads, the purest dubstep fans that weren't into anything that had too much mid-range sound in it; for whatever reason, they're not into that. But then, I feel like it was either Rolling Stone or Spin who gave Bangarang a review — and it was a positive review — but they called it brostep. And Bangarang is probably the furthest thing from brostep, because the tempos aren't even dubstep tempos. So some people took it as, "Oh, it's a legit thing and it's not a negative thing." It's just a really funny word that has polar-opposite meanings for different types of people who experienced it. YouTube Another criticism that's been directed at you is that this isn't really dance music, that you can't dance to it. "Dirty Vibe" is an interesting example; how can you dance fast enough to keep up with that? It's all about what your preference is; people hear rhythms differently. I bob my head to it and it gets me into that zone that I intended it to be in. It's what's cool about records like that: You can interpret the rhythms in so many different ways. It kind of doesn't really sit anywhere. That song includes some guest performers. Who are they? G-Dragon and CL are two artists that come from Korea. G-Dragon comes from this group called Big Bang; they've been signed and putting out records in Asia since they were, like, 15. They can sing, they can dance, they can rap. They're really in their own world and so disconnected from the media over here; that's why it was really fun working with them. Me and Diplo did the track and CL and G-Dragon are the ones rapping over it. And rather than using synths on the drop, we're using all vocals, just chopping up vocals. We just wanted to do something really weird and fast and crazy. I'm curious about the collaboration process when you work with other artists. When I imagine you working, you're by yourself in a studio with a bank of computers, just doing your thing. How do you integrate your style and work with other people? Well I'm mixing and mastering everything myself, so that's where that part comes in. But I come from singing and playing guitar and instruments, so I love collaborating. Some people like to just get a vocal and do it all in post [production], but I'm really involved with the artist. Hear The Extended Interview When I did the record with Chance the Rapper, "Coast is Clear," I recorded his entire band, The Social Experiment — live horns and keyboard solos and all that stuff. I wrote some chord progressions out, had them replay it, reinterpret it. Chance started toasting over it, and it happened really quickly in the sort of whim of the moment. But it was all of our energy together. Before I was doing Skrillex stuff, I was helping my friends record and mix their demos. The group process is half the fun. You got your start fronting an emo band, From First to Last, when you were a teenager. How did you get from there to the DJ world? I always loved electronic music growing up. Bjork was always one of my favorite vocalists and I loved how involved she was with the production, how she took elements of IDM and drum 'n' bass and created something really awesome and melodic. I was listening to a lot of Prodigy and Nine Inch Nails as well, so I always had this sort of love for electronic sounds. Between the ages of 15 and 16, I was making records on FruityLoops and Reason for fun, and even did some programming in my band. And then I felt like it was time for me to leave the band. I spent two years doing it and it wasn't what I wanted to do anymore. The computer was just the way I could express myself, basically. It was just another instrument. The release of Recess was a surprise — in fact, people first got to hear it through an app you released called Alien Ride, which was billed as a video game. Before the video game component even came, I wanted to leak my record — but I didn't want anyone to know a record was coming out. And at first I thought about just dropping a link in a Reddit forum or something really random. Then we had this idea of creating an app that you would download and it just had a countdown timer; no one knew what it was. But I was thinking, maybe that's a little boring, and maybe some people are gonna delete it off their phones. So we're like, "How can we keep people engaged for three days and talking about it?" So we created this little video game that's actually really fun and kind of addicting. It's an Asteroids-style game, really simple, and on the website we had the highest scores. So kids are just playing, trying to get the high score — and we're battling the kids, me and my team. But the whole time, at the top, there's a countdown timer. People are like, "What is this? What's going on?" And some people were like, "Man, I hope it's a new record." It could have been anything, so it's awesome that what they were hoping for, we got to give them. When you make music, you don't really think about how you're going to explain it at the end. When I first heard about it I thought, "Well, that sounds like a clever marketing gimmick" — but it's a lot more esoteric. This is kind of more for your hardcore fans, right? Yeah, it's not to change the world. We didn't do a press release about it or anything. I put it on Facebook, let all my fans download it for free and then just gave them the record. We've never done marketing for any of my records: It's always just been announced on the day of, through my Facebook. I was planning on just doing that with this record, and then I was like, "Let's do something a little extra just for the core fans, who are gonna be stoked." When you create something niche like that, you're gonna see the sort of people who really are dedicated to you, and that's gonna narrow down a lot of the traffic so you can actually become really engaged with these people. You are huge now; there's no getting around the fact that you've made it big. It's kind of amazing that this is actually your first studio album. Yeah. What does studio album mean? You tell me. I don't know! I didn't really do my record in one studio, you know what I mean? When you say "studio album," it feels like I went away to a studio in the mountains for a month. But it was made in so many different places — like, the Chance the Rapper record was done in Seattle after one of his shows, just randomly. You can release music in so many different ways, and even though the mainstream media and certain people might not pick up on it because it's not through the normal avenues, it's still effective. I've put out four EPs in the last three and a half years, and probably just as many or more singles and remixes throughout those years. So I've put out the equivalent of many studio records, just in a different way. I feel like people don't take you as seriously unless you've done a "studio record" — which is OK, but I think it's also important to not limit yourself to that, and show that you can release music and be successful in other ways. Especially in the world of electronic music, kids are so fast and prolific. They're making stuff, and then the night they made it they're playing it out live, it gets shot on a cellphone, it's already on SoundCloud. So how do you accentuate that movement? That's how I've always kind of seen things. Recess happened naturally. In the beginning, I wasn't even sure if I was gonna release an LP or what it was gonna be, but those were the songs that I wanted to put out at the time. Does it feel weird for you to release a "studio album" in that way? To do the traditional thing? The only thing that's weird to me is when people say that — all of a sudden, it's this thing. You definitely get a lot more attention when you put more songs together. But my core fans have never complained; when Bangarang came out, it wasn't like, "Where's the album?" Because they know that I'm putting out remixes and stuff in between. I don't think there's any right way to do it. Maybe I'll make a four-disc epic record one day, and maybe the next day I'll make a single or something. There's so much texture, so much fine detail and layers in your music. When you're in the final stages of making an album, do you agonize over it? How do you know when you're done? See, that's the one curse: I feel like anybody that's mixing and mastering alone, it's always hard. When I was in a band, you would write the songs, your producer would record it and that was it. When you're mixing yourself and it's all in the box, in the same place where you've made the record, it's easy to start changing stuff last-minute. So it's all about just committing to whatever you have. It can be agonizing, and there's some things that probably took longer than they should have. Somebody once said, "A work of art is never completed, only abandoned." That's the perfect way. I definitely abandoned this record, man.Mr Dutton on Thursday said it has been a year since a successful operation by "evil people smugglers" seeking to bring asylum seekers to Australia. The last boat containing 157 Tamil asylum seekers who had fled Sri Lanka arrived in June last year. It was intercepted near Christmas Island and the passengers were detained on a Customs boat for a month, before being transferred to the Curtin detention centre, then Nauru. Since December 2013 when the turn-back policy began, 633 people on 20 boats have been turned away and thousands more dissuaded from making the perilous journey to Australia, Mr Dutton said. "If people smugglers see ventures getting to Australia successfully, that is a green light for the people smugglers to be back in business," he said. "We are not going to allow the deaths at sea to recommence." The government has previously revealed that 12 boats arrived in the six months to May last year. It means eight boats have been turned back in the past 14 months, indicating the rate is slowing. It is widely accepted that the turn-back policy, described as cruel by critics, has dramatically stemmed the flow of asylum seeker boats headed to Australia. At Labor's national conference last month, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten headed off an attempt by the Left faction to amend the party's platform to prohibit a future Labor government turning boats back to Indonesia. Labor frontbenchers Anthony Albanese, Tanya Plibersek and Penny Wong opposed the move – division the government has seized on to claim the party lacks conviction on the issue. On Thursday, Mr Dutton said Labor was "split down the middle … you need to have the resolve to stare these people smugglers down and the Abbott government has had that resolve". Mr Dutton confirmed 46 people on a boat from Vietnam were returned last month – the government's first admission of the boat's existence. Late last month, Prime Minister Tony Abbott would not say if the government was in talks with Vietnam about the return. Mr Dutton said on Thursday Australia had "negotiated their return". "We have been able to stare down that venture and it's a significant outcome," Mr Dutton said, adding the operation was a "good outcome for the sovereignty of our nation." Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said there were no guarantees the Vietnamese asylum seekers were safe. She said disclosing the number of asylum seekers turned back "proves nothing but how callous these policies are by sending people back to danger". "If the government wanted to be honest about what is really happening on the high seas, they would tell the Australian people what happened to the people who are turned back," she said. "The government trumps turn-backs as saving lives. But... it merely forces people back to unsafe situations where they are faced with other life-threatening dangers." Follow us on TwitterSato Revels in Indianapolis 500 History with Marmon Wasp On the eve of seeing his likeness unveiled on the Borg-Warner Trophy as the latest Indianapolis 500 winner, Takuma Sato had the opportunity to sit where it all began. Sato, winner of the 101st Indianapolis 500 presented by PennGrade Motor Oil on May 28, was at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum on Monday to record a media interview a day before his sterling silver likeness was revealed on the iconic Borg-Warner Trophy. While at the museum, he had the opportunity to climb into the famed Marmon Wasp that Ray Harroun drove to victory in the first Indianapolis 500 in 1911. The first Japanese driver to win “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” leapt at the opportunity to get into such a historically significant machine. “It is absolutely amazing to be able to sit in Marmon Wasp and realize this is the same car that won the very first Indianapolis 500, 106 years ago,” Sato told the Verizon INDYCAR Mobile app. “To think that these drivers drove cars this big and bulky and the entire race course was bricks for 500 miles is an incredible achievement. “It shows the courage those drivers had back then. And to think this is the car that won the first Indy 500 is unbelievable.” Sato was all smiles as he settled into the seat used by Harroun – and Cyrus Patschke, who relieved Harroun behind the wheel for approximately 35 laps in the middle of the race – on May 30, 2011, starting an international tradition that continues to this day. A few inches above the huge steering wheel on the Marmon Wasp sits what is regarded as the world’s first rear-view mirror. Harroun, an automotive engineer of note in his day, devised the mirror so he could see traffic approaching from behind and eliminate the need for a riding mechanic that other drivers used to let them know when a car was getting close. The innovation paid off with a lighter weight car. Harroun won the first Indianapolis 500 at an average speed of 74.59 mph. By comparison, Sato won this year’s Indy 500 in the No. 26 Andretti Autosport Honda with an average speed of 155.395 mph. On Monday night, Sato looked through the Wasp’s rear-view mirror, taking in the history of the Indianapolis 500. The next day, his permanent likeness on the Borg-Warner Trophy – joining those of Harroun and every other Indy 500 winner – was shown to the public for the first time. Following the unveiling, Scott Gallett, vice president of public relations and marketing for BorgWarner, Inc., toasted Sato and made a historic announcement. For the first time since it debuted in 1936, the Borg-Warner Trophy will travel outside the continental United States on a trip with Sato to his native Japan in December. “We wanted to make sure we could do it safely, but it's a go and we're going to have a trophy tour in Japan,” Gallett said. “It's going to be really big. It's going to be very special. “With the exuberance Takuma has, they really appreciate it (in Japan). They take things very seriously, especially tradition, and that is what this trophy is all about. I know it is going to be honored by the people of Japan.” Sato is thrilled that he will get to accompany the Borg-Warner Trophy to his homeland. “I'm very excited,” Sato said. “I really appreciate everyone making this happen and thank you, BorgWarner, for doing this. Japanese fans will get a chance to physically see the Borg-Warner Trophy. This is the first time in history (it is traveling abroad) and it is so exciting. I'm really, really, really thrilled. “I think they will be amazed at the size of the trophy and the history of it with 104 faces on it. It's incredible and I think they will really enjoy it.” Sato added that, during the tour, he will drive the winning car from the Indianapolis 500 at Twin Ring Motegi, where Indy cars raced from 1999-2011. “That is also an extra bonus and I'm grateful for that,” said Sato, who will drive for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing in the 2018 Verizon IndyCar Series season. In addition to being the namesake for the prestigious trophy, BorgWarner makes the turbochargers used in every Verizon IndyCar Series engine. “We have a number of facilities in Japan and have business with every automaker on the planet already as a company,” Gallett said, “but it's something special when it comes to the trophy.”According to Gazzetta dello Sport, a meeting took place between AC Milan VP Adriano Galliani, Robinho, and his lawyer to negotiate the rescission of the Brazilian's contract. Robinho's intentions are to sign with the new MLS franchise, Orlando City, and join his teammate Kaka in this American venture. Both Brazilian players are now in their thirties and are keen on the idea of retiring in America. It has been rumored for quite some time that Kaka will be joining Orlando City; and after this report coming from Italy, his arrival appears more evident. Orlando City will make its MLS debut not until the 2015 season, meaning Robinho will have to find another club if he wants to play next semester. According to the report, the Brazilian forward will find refuge in Flamengo before settling in Orlando.Albany A major component of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's NY SAFE Act gun control law is a state secret. Almost a year after the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act was passed by lawmakers and signed by the governor, state officials say they aren't required to reveal how many people have registered assault weapons with the state. The law appears to have been written with such secrecy in mind — but it's become apparent only as requests for that information are being denied. The law bans owning and selling assault-style weapons. Those who already owned such guns before the measure was signed can keep them if they register with the State Police by April 15, 2014. The Times Union recently asked how many assault-weapon owners have registered their weapons to date. The answer came in the form of a little-known clause tucked into the law that says the information is confidential: "State Police cannot release information related to the registration of assault weapons including the number of assault weapons registered." "Those records you seek are derived from information collected for the State Police database and are, therefore, exempt from disclosure,'' State Police spokeswoman Darcy Wells said in a written statement. More Information To learn more about which weapons must be registered by April 15, visit http://www.governor.ny.gov/nysafeact/gun-reform The State Police are charged with creating and maintaining a database of the registered guns. Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi referred questions to the State Police. Officials pointed to a section in the SAFE Act that says, "Records assembled or collected for purposes of inclusion in such (a) database shall not be subject to disclosure." Advocacy groups — including those that supported the gun control measure and those that took no stance — said they disagree keeping SAFE Act data secret. New York Public Interest Research Group has neither supported nor opposed the SAFE Act. But its legislative director, Blair Horner, said he believes the number of registrants shouldn't be a secret. "I can't think of a policy reason why that shouldn't be public information," he said. "It is absolutely appalling," said Barbara Bartoletti, legislative director for the state League of Women Voters, which supported the SAFE Act. "There is no question that the public should know how many weapons are being registered," she said. Robert Freeman, executive director for the State Committee on Open Government, said he agrees that the total number of registrations should be made public if that information exists. "It should be public, in my opinion," he said. The secrecy has also upset SAFE Act opponents, some of whom had earlier sought a registration total and had been denied. "We don't care about names or addresses (of registrants). We just want totals," said George Rogero, who heads the Orange County NY Shooters group and runs a blog on Second Amendment issues. He tried getting the number earlier this year under the state's Freedom of Information Law, but was turned down. Rogero said the law makes a provision for getting the number with a court order but said, "I don't have $15,000 or $20,000 to take (a legal fight) any further." Gun rights advocates say they are interested in tallying registrations, in part, because with many local sheriffs opposed to the SAFE Act, they believe that only a handful of those with the grandfathered weapons will bother to register. No one knows how many assault-style weapons are in New York state. Shortly after the law was passed, State Police Superintendent Joseph D'Amico estimated that there could be hundreds of thousands. Others have said 1 million isn't an unrealistic number. "There is no way to know," said Rogero. The newly banned weapons have certain military or combat-style features, such as a bayonet lug or a pistol grip. rkarlin@timesunion.com • 518-454-5758 • @RickKarlinTUSee http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/02/10/rumor-google-to-begin-forcing-oems-to-certify-android-devices-with-a-recent-os-version-if-they-want-google-apps/ which shows how short a window phone manufacturers have to license their product to run a particular version of Android. In other words, how little Google is concerned with supporting legacy devices. Old MediaTek chips are cited as physically lacking support for more recent Androids, but with Android's rapid evolution manufacturers are put off even trying to save pennies bringing the latest release to outdated chips. References: I've been saying it for years, but in preparing this (independent) article, I have it on good authority MediaTek is in its ascendancy. This article begins by looking at their ethical and legal position before examining more practical considerations. You've probably already heard that MediaTek areand even criminal in breaking Linux's GPL. Ultimately, that is for the courts to decide. Their case is presented here without prejudice.There's an argument against Chinese firms that they gain an unethical advantage in their sourcing of cheap MediaTek processors. Consider the relevant expense of the processor in PCs for comparison. It is often said the law protects the rich; by analogy it is easy to sympathise with the recently industrialised Chinese producing cheap phones. Many of the developers who might feel aggrieved their intellectual property (IP) is being abused by non-disclosure are individuals without recourse to "justice".Android is Google's project, who are best placed to litigate MediaTek for breach of GPL terms. Quite how Google would stand in Chinese courts with their cultural perspectives on both the letter and the spirit of the law is open to debate. On the one hand non compliance with GPL licensing is a threat to every small, academic, or non-profit developer hoping to improve the public codescape and gain recognition. On the other hand MediaTek's competitors most impacted by the infringement are residents of salubrious Silicon Valley and had their time in the sun pioneering the field of mobile SOC's. Understanding that technology sector was always cut-throat competitive, can they expect a court to force disclose of what MediaTek might argue are trade secrets? There have been enough long winded (read:) technology cases to enforce competitive practice and intellectual property rights that I suspect QualComm makes do with existing import restrictions or whatever has preserved them so long in the face of such a fierce competitor.MediaTek profit from forcing us to buy a new phone every time Google update their software, which feels entirely in keeping with Google's intention. No one enjoys unnecessarily migrating phones, or ROM's, and while Google attempts to make this easier (blowing their own trumpet) nobody is so naive as to believe Google isn't going to profit from gathering our personal data. See the SkyHook case from 2011 for uncle G's less friendly face.Google's entryism with Android prevents it gaining any moral high ground. Android was Google's Trojan Horse to protect it's "economic castle" that was the AdWords funded Google Search[ 1 ]. Theenemy at the gate as it were, the nascent iPhone, was threatening to dominate the emerging mobile market at the time of Android's inception.Android, originally touted as free and open source, soon forked the ecosystem with its proprietary GMS. These services are often denied to smaller (Chinese) manufacturers. The legality of this situation, like many, is unclear, and rather outside the scope of this post. The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) sets out Google's relationship with bigger partners like Samsung. The OHA are forced to take GMS all or nothing and to accept Google's final decision on firmware configuration[ 2 ][ 3 ].Lenovo, as the largest single smart phone manufacturer in China steps up to the plate with kernel source code for several MediaTek SOC's[ 4 ]. The lack of source code for MediaTek phones has more to do with phone manufacturers, who profit much more than the pennies MediaTek make on each SOC. The bigger customers of QualComm have developers on retainer to publish and maintain source code. MediaTek is slowly winning these customers[ 5 ].Chinese consumers accept power (i.e. frequent) users will need to replace their phones every few years. Why waste effort and resources supporting outdated tech? The apps market is the proverbial place to extend the functionality of long cherished devices, at a market rate. This reckoning has guided the hugely popular AOSP (Android Open Source Project - a code base focused on keeping the open source part of Android up to date on many supported devices). It is estimated[ 6 ] 70% of China's users eschew Google Play (remember this is the proprietary (GMS) licensed part which Google is rumoured to sell to manufacturers) in favour of alternatives like Baidu and Tencent.As part of the great firewall of China, GMS is banned there. Shenzhen is a hot bed of innovation as smaller companies operate without GMS overheads. This may help explain how the phones are so cheap and why they typically aren't "intended" for worldwide use (though by happy coincidence, the modems might be).Cyanogenmod, while ignoring MediaTek, describes the build process as gathering device specific kernel and configuration before extractingfrom the existing device[ 7 ]. Modularisation is a key consideration in GPL compliance.Opinion is divided. http://www.gizchina.com/2014/03/24/mediatek-dont-share-source-code/ being just one example. To publish and be damned, in this case accepting responsibility to patch bugs and vulnerabilities, a cost which many consumers baulk at. MicroSoft even took advantage of AOSP's open nature to find IP infringements[ 8 ]. Motorola's attempts at retaliation were largely preempted by the former monopoly's closed sources. This again illustrates the price of justice.For balance, an esteemed (technologist's) post that has no sympathy for MediaTek's withholding of source code can be found at http://www.xda-developers.com/have-you-paid-your-linux-kernel-source-license-fee/ We'd allnew software, especially the propeller heads at xda-developers, but MediaTek get my vote for making cheap hardware its priority. When you're ready MediaTek.NEARLY 50 YEARS ago, the U.S. Department of Labor issued one of the most controversial and influential reports of our time, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” aka “The Moynihan Report,” named after its author Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The March 1965 report offered our nation’s first comprehensive look at the roots of poverty in the African-American community 100 years after the Civil War. The picture wasn’t pretty. Pointing to black poverty’s roots, Moynihan started with the hell that was the U.S. slave system: “American slavery was profoundly different from, and in its lasting effects on individuals and their children, indescribably worse than, any recorded servitude, ancient or modern.” Going on to quote Nathan Glazer, Moynihan illuminated the absolute powerlessness and dehumanization of enslaved black people under antebellum law and within the social structures of slavery. Moynihan went on to examine the impact of the Reconstruction period, urbanization, unemployment, and inequitable wages on African Americans’ economic station in U.S. society. He concluded that the single greatest result of these forces was black families’ demise. And the single greatest result of this demise was entrenched poverty, according to Moynihan. A 2013 Urban Institute report, “The Moynihan Report Revisited,” reflected that in the early 1960s Moynihan was alarmed that 20 percent of black children lived in single parent households with their mothers (not their fathers), but by 2010, 20 percent of white families lived in such households while 53 percent of black children were being raised by their mothers. According to the Urban Institute, fatherlessness in the U.S. has gotten worse, and it is no respecter of race.There’s an imminent environmental threat to water quality in southern North Dakota from oil leaks, but not from the Dakota Access pipeline. Protesters left behind about 200 cars and trucks in a floodplain, sending cleanup crews scrambling to tow the vehicles before the spring melt can carry them into the Cannonball and Missouri rivers, along with potentially thousands of gallons of oil, gasoline and diesel. “There are roughly 200 vehicles down there at last count, ranging from cars and pickups to rental trucks,” George Kuntz, vice president of the North Dakota Towing Association, told Western Wire. “We’re going to have a very drastic situation trying to keep these vehicles from getting into the river — what everybody’s been trying to protect from Day One.” The vehicle estimate is more than double the original count by local officials, who have aided the Standing Rock Sioux in hauling off tons of garbage scattered across U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land at the former Oceti Sakowin camp, the largest of the pipeline protest encampments. “We can’t leave them (the vehicles) there. We don’t know what kind of biohazard is going to be produced with all the fluids or any other garbage that’s inside the vehicle,” Mr. Kuntz said. The irony of the anti-pipeline movement’s “water protectors” leaving behind a fossil fuel mess isn’t lost on local officials like Rob Keller, spokesman for the Morton County Sheriff’s Department. SEE ALSO: Dakota Access pipeline executive compares lawless protesters to terrorists “You talk about wanting to protect the water, and yet not a lot of people are staying around to clean up what they started,” Mr. Keller told Western Wire. The corps has given protesters until Feb. 22 to vacate the campsite, but they may not need any prodding. Parts of the camp are already under several inches of water as this year’s heavy snowfall begins to melt in the floodplain. Bo Evans, a reporter for KFYR-TV in Bismarck, took video footage Monday of his boots sinking into the water and mud as he walked through the seemingly abandoned campsite past empty, flooded tents and teepees. “The ice and snow has started to melt, and it is very deep. That is my whole entire shoe under the water,” he said in the video. “I think it’s even deeper in some places. Obviously this is causing some issues for the cleanup effort. Everything is flooded.” The melt has in some ways helped with the tribe-led cleanup effort, which began in late January and is about halfway completed. “It’s easier to get some of the structures up because they were iced down, and they’re starting to come up a little easier,” Standing Rock cleanup coordinator Hans Youngbird Bradley told KFYR-TV. After months of protests and delays, Energy Transfer Partners is working to finish the final 1,100-foot sliver of the pipeline and begin running oil by May 1. U.S. District Court Judge James A. Boasberg rejected a request Monday by tribes to block temporary construction on the 1,172-mile, four-state pipeline’s last piece under Lake Oahe. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe has tried to stop the project over concerns about water quality from the pipeline, which runs about a half-mile from the reservation, while the company insists the state-of-the-art engineering is safe. A 30-year-old natural gas pipeline runs alongside the Dakota Access oil pipeline route. After a two-year review the corps approved the easement for Lake Oahe in July, but then delayed and ultimately pulled the approval under pressure from thousands of protesters camped out at the site. Shortly after taking office, however, President Trump ordered an expedited review of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines. The corps then canceled an additional environmental review and reissued the easement last week. Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC witnessed other migrants being escorted away from the tracks by security forces, as Tomos Morgan reports A Eurotunnel freight train had to stop in the Channel Tunnel after a migrant was seen on wagons bound for the UK. The discovery led to long delays for passengers in the UK and France. The freight train from the Frethun yard stopped near the tunnel entrance on the French side, Eurotunnel said. The company said several other people were found on the halted train after it was searched by police and security staff. Those found were returned to France. A Eurotunnel spokesman said: "A suspicion of migrants on a freight train led us to stop and search the train. "We decided to stop it just at the entrance to the tunnel." The company said a "number" of people were found on the train, but was unable to confirm how many. At the scene Image copyright Reuters By Tomos Morgan, BBC News, Calais We have been hearing rumours from the camp that some migrants have found success crossing over into the UK through the Channel Tunnel. And the suspicion is, those reports are based around the Frethun freight yard. It is located between the terminal and the tunnel's entrance. Eurotunnel has earmarked Frethun as a potential weak spot on the line in the past - there are no fences protecting its perimeter. On Thursday, when Home Secretary Theresa May visited Calais, Eurotunnel asked for increased security at Frethun. On Friday we saw two migrants being detained in broad daylight right next to the track. This is just another example of the desperation of these migrants to get into the UK - so additional security would have to be reinforced if authorities want to completely deter migrants from crossing over illegally into Britain. After the train was moved out of the tunnel, the rail operator said it was working to get services back to normal. Latest travel reports said vehicle passengers in the UK faced a 60-minute wait before check-in at the Folkestone terminal in Kent and a three-hour wait after that. Travellers in France were also facing a two-hour wait and passengers without reservations were not being accepted. Lorry drivers have been warned their journeys from check-in to arrival would take about five hours. Eurostar said its services from St Pancras International and Ashford were being delayed by about 30 minutes. Cher Williams, who is travelling to Dordogne in France, said passengers were told the delay had been caused by a broken-down train.When FDR died before the end of the war, Lyndon LaRouche despaired that a great man had passed, and warned that a very little man was taking over. Looking back on 1945 from today's perspective, do Americans recognize that the United States won the war based on FDR's defeat of the British bankers on Wall Street, by restoring the American System of credit for development, not for speculation, through the Glass-Steagall legislation? Do they recognize that the "arsenal of
said Mrs. Assad was “extremely thin and very well-dressed, and therefore qualified to be in Vogue.” This spring, the magazine removed the article from its Web site. On Sunday, Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, issued a statement about the article saying, in part: “Like many at that time, we were hopeful that the Assad regime would be open to a more progressive society. Subsequent to our interview, as the terrible events of the past year and a half unfolded in Syria, it became clear that its priorities and values were completely at odds with those of Vogue. The escalating atrocities in Syria are unconscionable and we deplore the actions of the Assad regime in the strongest possible terms.” Even among the world’s most repressive governments, Syria stands out in its treatment of journalists. The only way for many reporters to cover news emerging from the bloody crackdown on dissidents is to sneak into the country — often putting their lives at risk. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 13 reporters have been killed in Syria since November, including Marie Colvin, a veteran war correspondent from Long Island. (Anthony Shadid of The New York Times died of an asthma attack during a clandestine reporting trip to Syria.) Syrian officials have denied targeting journalists, but state media outlets have said that foreign reporters killed in Syria “must be spies or have links to terrorist organizations.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Ms. Walters, who has a lifetime of experience chasing and winning interviews with world leaders, said she spent six years establishing a relationship with the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Jaafari, including once dining at his home. The connection eventually paid off. “Assad decided he would do an interview; according to the ambassador, he had requests from all over the world,” Ms. Walters said in a telephone interview last week. “And he chose to do it with me, based on the recommendation of the ambassador, and also because I had been to Syria twice before and knew something of its background and history.” Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said this kind of interview is highly sought after. “In a strange way, political leaders, presidents and prime ministers who are highly repressive and restrictive are good ‘gets’ for these types of interviews, precisely because there’s no fair media coverage in their countries,” he said. Ms. Walters’ interview, broadcast in December, made worldwide news, with Mr. Assad issuing claims that he was not responsible for the Syrian military and that people were not being killed by his government. Ms. Walters said, “I went to Syria and conducted what was a very tough and strong interview that President Assad did not like.” But her offer of help to the ambassador’s daughter has cast a shadow on that interview. Two people close to Ms. Walters said she had reacted to a plea from Ms. Jaafari for help because Ms. Jaafari was being removed from her position as a media adviser to the Syrian president. Mr. Tabler said that he didn’t “find it surprising what Walters did for her.” The issue, he said, was the timing. “At that point, how many had been killed — 7,000?” he said. “This is an attractive young woman, and she speaks English. Maybe you help her with an introduction. To get beyond that is a little difficult to swallow.”WASHINGTON -- A former Subway sandwich maker in Washington claims his employer used an inventive scheme to avoid paying him overtime: Creating fictional workers. Erwin Zambrano Moya alleges in a lawsuit filed in federal court Wednesday that the Subway franchise at 2301 Georgia Ave. NW, near Howard University, systematically shortchanged him for the two years ending in June. According to the complaint, the owner accomplished this, in part, by paying Moya as if he were multiple workers, thereby keeping the real Moya under 40 hours each week. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, most hourly workers like Moya are entitled to time-and-a-half pay for any hours worked over 40 per week. Moya says he worked 70 hours per week on average, but was paid in "straight time," thanks to the multiple paychecks. "To hide Plaintiff's very high number of hours worked per week, Defendant regularly paid Plaintiff about half of his wages under his name and about half under a fictional employee name, typically, Ever Ventura," the complaint states. It goes on, "Sometimes during Plaintiff's employ, Defendant took it one step further to attempt to hide [minimum wage and overtime] violations by paying Plaintiff under the payroll of another Subway owned by Defendant or its agents or owners." In addition, Moya claims he was paid at just $7.25 per hour, less than the $8.25 minimum wage in effect in D.C. during his tenure. He also says he wasn't paid at all for a 45-hour period shortly before his employment at Subway came to an end. The franchise operator, identified in the complaint as Parvin Feroz, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It isn't unheard of for low-wage businesses to be accused of splitting paychecks to dodge overtime rules. Last June, workers at eateries in the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington alleged in a complaint filed with the Labor Department that their bosses forced them to accept pay through two separate checks. Some of those employees said they worked more than 80 hours per week. Moya's suit is a proposed class action against the franchise. According to the complaint, more than a dozen workers were employed at the shop while Moya was there and "were paid in the same manner and under the same standard employment procedures." Subway, which could not be reached for comment late Thursday, was not named in the lawsuit.David Bowie may be gone (back to his home planet), but he is certainly not forgotten. This year marks the 40th anniversary of The Man Who Fell to Earth, the sci-fi flick which may or may not be Bowie’s autobiography. Actually, it’s loosely based on the novel by Walter Tevis. The story follows an alien (Bowie) who heads to our giant blue planet in search of water for his dying world. He takes on the name Thomas Jerome Newton and builds up a high-tech company in order to fund his way back home. While making his fortune, he falls in love with a clerk named Mary-Lou. The big question, however, is will he ever make it home? Those in the U.K. who haven’t already seen the movie can find out on September 9th, when it’s re-released in theaters. Fans will get to see Bowie in bright new colors thanks to a 4K restoration just in time for the special occasion. “I had been disappointed with previous editions of the film for which I hadn’t been involved in the grading process,” said cinematographer Anthony Richmond, who worked closely on the project, according to IndieWire. “The colourist Steve Bearman and I have brought the new 4k restoration in line with the original film print. I felt that certain scenes were lacking that look and feel.” If you can’t it make out to theaters, you’ll have a chance to grab the newly restored film on DVD, Blu-Ray and digital on Oct. 24. Per Gizmodo, you can also grab a vinyl version of the soundtrack on Nov. 18. The box set comes with the vinyl, a CD version, a poster, a 48-page hardcover book with rare photos, and a new essay from music critic, Paolo Hewitt. You could say it’s out of this world. (Sorry, I had to.) (via IndieWire, image via cea on Flickr) Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site! —The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.— Follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google+.Leon Bennett/Getty Images LaVar Ball, father of UCLA star Lonzo Ball, has not been shy in front of a microphone and has an idea of where he'd like his son to play in the NBA. In an interview on the Kevin and Mike Show on KCUB 1290-AM in Arizona, Ball said his son has one destination in mind. "My son will only play for the [Los Angeles] Lakers," he said, via Michael Luke of KCUB. Per ESPN's Jeff Goodman, Ball later clarified those comments to make sure other teams know the Lakers aren't the only club he will play for when he's drafted: All I said was that my boy is going to play for the Lakers, and I'm going to speak it into existence. I want him to be a Laker, but I wasn't saying he's only going to play for the Lakers. I'm not trying to say he won't play for a different team. But I'd like him to play for the Lakers because it's home and I'd love him to learn from Magic (Johnson) He's the best guard ever to me, and nobody better for Lonzo to learn from than Magic Johnson. UCLA's super-freshman is from the Los Angeles area and played locally at Chino Hills High School. While the full NBA draft order won't be determined until the lottery May 16, there's a good chance the Lakers, who own the NBA's third-worst record at 19-40, will be in the mix for one of the top picks to draft Ball if they want to. B/R NBA draft analyst Jonathan Wasserman projected Ball to be the No. 2 pick, to the Phoenix Suns, in his most recent mock posted February 24. The Ball patriarch has recently drawn headlines for telling the Pac-12 Network his son is better than two-time NBA MVP Stephen Curry (via Frankie Vision): On Saturday, the elder Ball addressed those claims with KCUB and why he made them (via AllSportsTucson.com's Javier Morales): I have my opinion of my son and I watch people play. I said he's better than (Curry) … to me! That don't have to be for everybody else. But to me I think my son is better than (Curry) and I don't care what nobody says. I'm saying he's taller, faster, stronger.... Put him in the right situation. (Curry) shoots the ball. Lonzo shoots the ball. He dribbles the ball. Lonzo dribbles the ball. Like I said, he's going to have problems if he tries to go against my son one-on-one, but it's a team game. I don't know why everybody gets mad for. What I'm not going to say is Lonzo is pretty good but he's no (Curry). Stop it. (Curry) is pretty good but he's no Lonzo Ball. While Ball's statements continue to mount pressure on his son for when the NBA comes calling, there's no denying the UCLA star's profound impact on the court this season. The Bruins entered Saturday with a 25-3 record, their highest amount of wins in a campaign since 2013-14, and Ball is averaging 15.0 points, 6.3 rebounds and 7.5 assists per game. Whenever he turns pro, he'll have a huge target on his back because of the checks his dad keeps writing for him.If 2015 had anything to say about drones, it's this: They're coming. Whether the topic was military drones operating overseas, or examining how to regulate the growing presence of private and commercial drones in U.S., drones emerged as the unavoidable topic about future tech. But, as recent events have proven, that future is "now." See also: The 100 best iPhone apps of all time Law of the Sky: Drone Rules Take Off The deliberations took longer than anyone might have guessed, but in December, just before the end of the year, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), along with a high-level advisory panel, finally introduced rules governing the use of drones in the U.S. And the rules are strict. FAA Administrator Michael Huerta, left, at the Dept. of Transportation in Washington, Monday, Oct. 19, 2015, following the drone registration announcement. The new rules will require drone owners, private and commercial, to register with the FAA's drone database before sending devices 0.55-55 pounds into the sky. Those who flout the law will face stiff penalties of up to $27,500 and up to $250,000 — possibly even jail time. The FAA has posted a helpful list of smaller drones that will not require registration, but all other drone owners have until February 19, 2016 to register (the rule officially went into effect on Monday). "The FAA [new rule] is promising, in that it indicates the agency's willingness to loosen up their regulations around how close regulated drones can come to humans," says Joerg Lamprecht of Germany-based Dedrone, a company that creates systems for detecting and tracking small drones. "While there are still a lot of details to be worked out, this willingness should give delivery and other commercial drone usage companies hope of being able to use drones more broadly in the coming year." For those unfamiliar with the drone debate, a set of stringent rules governing their use might seem like overkill. But as a number of reports (more on that later) throughout the year indicated, left unchecked, many drone users risk endangering public safety and invading the privacy of unsuspecting neighbors. Of course, the new rules won't necessarily solve all of these issues in the coming year and beyond, but by making every drone user directly accountable, the chances of someone operating a drone recklessly will probably decrease. One troubling aspect of the new registration system is how it treats the privacy of drone operators themselves. According to a report from Forbes, the names and home addresses of those who register their drones will be available to the public. Predictably, this has led to some hand-wringing from some privacy advocates. In the meantime, most drone users interested in avoiding possible penalties will likely pony up the $5 registration fee and start flying. Breaking news: Drones are everywhere The beginning of the year started with concerns from some that drone-wielding paparazzi would make it even more difficult for celebrities and high-profile individuals to maintain some semblance of privacy. But those concerns were quickly eclipsed by the more important issue of some drone users flying their remote-controlled devices near airports. Aside from the issue of hobbyists and photographers, with recent terrorism events hitting Paris and the U.S. alike, the notion of the drones being used to carry out terror attacks on commercial planes is no longer far-fetched. Image: PHYO HEIN KYAW, AFP Potentially putting the lives of airline passengers in danger by invading the tightly controlled airspace of the airports, the increasing frequency of the airport incidents likely spurred the FAA to move even faster to enact the current set of rules. The drone news got even crazier as some property owners turned to shooting drones out of the sky as some have been seen as amateur spying devices that can peek in on neighbors with relative ease. One of the more disturbing drone-related news reports emerged in November when a child named Oscar Webb in the UK lost his eye to a drone. The owner of the drone was attempting to land the device when he lost control of it and it hit a tree and collided with the child, who needed several surgeries before being fitted for a prosthetic eye. Image: Imaginechina/Associated Press In that case, the drone used uncovered rotor blades, a design many brands avoid in order to prevent such accidents. But many other drones still use the uncovered rotor blade design so, for some, the danger of such accidents is still a concern. "The challenge is that the rules are being written as the use of drones rises. Regulations and industry are being reactionary," says Mike Kelly, of ProSight Specialty Insurance, a firm that offers insurance for drone operators. "We can’t be reactionary in innovation. If we are going to change the landscape of industries with the use of drones, rules have to support that innovation. We have to be proactive so that stories like Oscar’s never happen." Sky to doorstep: Drone deliveries coming Finally, what seemed like fanciful science-fiction talk in 2013 moved a little closer to reality as Amazon revealed a prototype of its Prime Air delivery drone. The sleek, Amazon-branded flying machine was even shown carrying out a delivery to a customer. Using obstacle avoidance sensors, the drone used a small square compartment to transport a package to a waiting customer right on their front yard. Image: amazon And while the logistics of the drone delivery system appear to work well in the video, the reality of drone deliveries is stilly likely years away as Amazon and its competitors, along with federal authorities, continue to navigate the legal and safety issues surrounding the road toward real drone deliveries. "As drone technology develops, and drones can fly further and longer, with a greater load, it will likely prove more efficient and cost effective than traditional truck delivery, for many use cases," says Lamprecht. "The concern will be managing drone traffic across our skies, especially in very crowded metropolitan areas. Drones may not deliver to large skyscrapers, but you may see them deliver to various logistic points in these cities from which they are then transported by car, bike or foot." Taking the entirety of 2015 into account, it's hard not to see 2016 as the year that drones truly begin to come into their own as tools for startups and major players alike. No, we're not likely to see drone deliveries in 2016, but you can definitely expect more companies to announce development of drone deliveries in the coming months. The year ahead For private users, the new FAA registration requirements will either cull the herd, leaving behind only the most serious drone users, or it could turn into a data privacy nightmare when the FAA's name and address database inevitably gets used for unsavory purposes. A police drone in West Salem, Wis. on Sept. 16, 2015. Image: Peter Thomson, La Crosse Tribune /Associated Press Most importantly, 2016 will be the dawn of real robotics, now equipped with official, government-backed rules, entering the U.S. mainstream before autonomous cars or humanoid robot assistants find their way into the lives of most citizens. Will 2016 see the first police force involved in a fatal incident involving a suspect and a department drone? Will a major airline suffer an accident due to the wayward flight path of an amateur drone? Is it really time for insurance companies to add a clause that includes injury from drones falling out of the sky? That we're even seriously asking such questions tells us that we're entering a new era in which drones are no longer toys, but a real technology poised to impact every aspect of our lives. "Consumer drone sales are expected to reach four million this year, and 16 million by 2020," says Lamprecht. "Add to that their commercial use, and it's clear that drones are here to stay. We will continue to see drones get more powerful and sophisticated and, with that, their use cases will expand significantly."Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi questioned by an international audience 3 February 2015: City Mayors invited those who participated in World Mayor 2014 to put questions to Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, winner of the 2014 World Mayor Prize. From the questions received, a representative selection was forwarded to the mayor. He replies below with candour and thoughtfulness. QUESTIONS By Chris R, New York City, USA Question: Given your background as well as your progressive social and political views, did you have to think long and hard before entering local politics in a conservative province like Alberta? Mayor Nenshi replies: I reject these terms ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’. I think they are meaningless to the vast majority of people, who just want good government at a decent price. As the former Governor of Washington and Senator, Dan Evans, wrote in 2002, “There are no Republican schools or Democrat highways, no liberal salmon or conservative parks.” I really believe that this kind of categorization alienates people and keeps them from participating in the political process. So, the answer is no. I know my community and I had a good sense of what people want and need. What I did think long and hard about was the personal cost: was I willing to give up my personal life to be in the public eye? Could I do better on the inside than as an academic and punditas an ideas guy? Could I develop a thick enough skin to deal with really mean people on the internet? Could my family? These are questions that I still think about: how can we remove some of these barriers to get more good people entering politics? I think not pigeon-holing folks before they even get there might be part of it. By Vivian H, Calgary Question: In the University of Calgary alumni magazine (Spring 2011) you are quoted as saying, “To this day I still don’t really think of myself as a politician. I see myself as continuing to be a community advocate, just trying to build a better city.” I would hope that the aim of most politicians is to build a better city, province or nation. In your experience, is this the case? Or do most enter politics for less altruistic reasons? Mayor Nenshi replies: This is a really tough question. I deal with politicians in various orders of government every day, and I can say that the vast majority of them do this job because they truly believe in a better community. Indeed, I can’t imagine why anyone would get into this business for any other reason. The costs are too high - there are easier ways to make money, and many would argue that there are even easier ways to influence decisions. That said, citizens often see acts by politicians that are inexplicable when viewed only through the lens of public service. Citizens can be forgiven for asking “who benefits from this decision? Who are these politicians working for? Who are they listening to?” I do it too. I’m not naïve enough to say there’s no self-interest or even corruption in politics. But I’m also not willing to say that these factors influence the majority of politicians or the majority of decisions. However, the systems we have created tend to amplify some voices the echo chamber is very real. As public servants, we have to work hard to listen to the community in a deeply authentic way, invite people into our decision-making process, and ultimately, apply a decision based on our values, our judgment, and our best view of the future. Some people, mostly in media and political science, find my attitude not only a bit unsophisticated, but ultimately self-defeating, since it flies in the face of current political thinking about micro-targeting groups of citizens. I reject that. I think people are fundamentally good, and fundamentally smart, and can be trusted to support us when we do the right thing. By Ian R, Calgary Question: Calgary's wealth is largely due to the oil and gas industry in Alberta and you've used this wealth to bolster the city's infrastructure and transit with continued success. We know oil is a finite resource, and an addiction we have to wean ourselves off if the city is to prosper after the oil is gone. What steps are you taking to ensure Calgary diversifies its industry and wealth, ensures its future, and sets and example to the rest of the world for life without oil dependency? Mayor Nenshi replies: I often discuss the need for us to monetize the resources we have while we have them and to ensure that we are using the proceeds to secure a legacy for future generations. There are, I think, two ways of doing this: save cash and build infrastructure. We can’t do too much about the first one: that really is up to the provincial government. But we need to manage our debt and build up cash reserves now, as best we can, to ensure that future Calgary governments have flexibility in providing services and are not crippled by interest payments, for example. This is one of the reasons I’m pushing hard for full cost-recovery in suburban development. I’d rather have the costs covered up front than recovered from all taxpayers over decades. The second one infrastructure - relies on a lot of funding from other levels of government, and we continue to advocate hard for it. Transit is a great example: It’s incredibly expensive, but has extraordinary positive externalities for many decades to come. Finally, and somewhat out of my authority, the best way to diversify an economy is not for government to pick winners and losers, but for us to invest in education at all levels, and in continuing a vibrant entrepreneurial environment. By Nauman S A, Calgary Question: Would you support a provincial sales tax in Alberta that provides a certain percentage to local municipal government infrastructure projects? Mayor Nenshi replies: I don’t think we will ever have the political will for a provincial sales tax. That said, we need to diversify municipal revenue sources in a way that allows cities predictable, stable, long-term revenue to invest in infrastructure. I’m agnostic on what this looks like, but I think our new Premier understands the issue and will help us find better ways of sharing revenue. By Sadruddin N, Chicago, USA Question: What is your plan to bring international tourists to Calgary to allow the city to have global name recognition, and most importantly generate revenue through tourism. Mayor Nenshi replies: I encourage everyone to check out visitcalgary.ca. Our tourism programs in Calgary are getting better and better, since we have such a great product to market arts, culture, great restaurants, and, of course, landscapes that are amongst the most beautiful on the planet. Come visit soon! By Deborah McC, Calgary Question: You have often spoken of the different challenges that large cities face compared to smaller ones, as well as the significant issues facing cities that are rapidly growing. Can you please tell us what some of those challenges are and how you propose to deal with them? Mayor Nenshi replies: We have created a system of diseconomies of scale - where it is more expensive to serve a larger population than a smaller one, and where the property taxes new residents pay don’t cover the costs of the services they need. Transit is a good example. In a smaller centre, transit is sometimes seen as a necessary evil: you have to have it, but you can get away with a minimal level of service. In a larger city, it’s absolutely necessary as you simply can’t afford to build roads to accommodate cars for everyone, and not everyone can afford a car. But once you build rail, you’re in a completely different world of cost and it’s impossible to cover capital costs with property taxes alone. Social issues such as homelessness are another example. People in need tend to congregate in larger centres, and so dealing with social issues becomes a regional issue, where the big city is managing the issues for the smaller towns. To address this, we need to fundamentally rethink how we fund cities. We need to be able to access revenue sources beyond the property tax and carefully delineate the responsibilities of the city with that of the province and federal government, and fund it appropriately. By Nauman S A, Calgary Question: The next major issue in Calgary appears to be housing costs. With developers not responding very positively to your ‘build vertical’ instead of urban sprawl, what are your next steps to make housing affordable for current and future residents? Mayor Nenshi replies: Actually, we are well on our way to achieving a better balance between growing outward in new communities and infilling established neighbourhoods with greater density. Since I took office, we’ve seen about one-third of our population growth occur in established communities; this is a substantial shift from less than a decade ago when established communities were losing population and new communities comprised over 100 per cent of growth. I’d also suggest that our new communities are much denser today than in the past, and they are more mixed use and provide a better variety of housing choices. Within the development industry (with a few notable exceptions) we also see many builders who traditionally only build new single family homes now developing more multi-family projects as well as infill in older communities. To make housing more affordable, we need to provide more housing choice and greater housing supply across the entire housing spectrum from new rental housing stock through entry-level home ownership. By Vicki W, Calgary Question: Considering the amount of damage to property during the Calgary flood because so many of the areas were close to the river what would you like to see done to prevent future destruction to and flooding of Calgary? Mayor Nenshi replies: We have already taken a number of practical steps at the municipal level to better protect individual properties and communities. This includes things like local flood protection through the construction of berms and regulations for individual properties to ensure that buildings are more flood-resilient. The province is also working on better regulating water levels of upstream dams, and examining a ‘Room for the River’ approach to make floodplain development more resilient. As you may have heard, we are also looking at three very large capital projects: a dry dam at McLean Creek, the Springbank Reservoir (or dry dam) and the Glenmore Diversion tunnel. Work on analyzing all of these is proceeding. It is likely we will need multiple projects to protect the city from the kind of damage we sustained in the 2013 floods (or even worse flood events). By Edward A, Calgary Question: Hello. What is the current value of Calgary’s municipal debt? How is it being paid off? Mayor Nenshi replies: Current debt is about CAN$4 billion. This is relatively high compared to other Canadian municipalities, but we do have a sound plan to reduce our debt-load in the coming years. A substantial portion of this debt was accumulated during the 2000s as a result of a development levy agreement for new growth in The City that failed to collect money to pay for water and wastewater infrastructure (in particular). As a result, City Council had to make the very difficult, but necessary, decision to increase utility rates to pay off this debt. The current development levy agreement does help cover more of these costs, but it is not enough. We are establishing a new development levy agreement this year and one goal of that agreement is to ensure that growth better pays for itself so we don’t accumulate debt and burden future generations. Another substantial portion of our debt is short term and was used to develop major projects like the West LRT. Our debt (and its carrying costs) were negatively affected by a slower than anticipated payment of the Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI) grant by the provincial government. Once those MSI grant dollars finally flow to The City in the next few years, our debt load will be greatly reduced. By Cheryle C, Calgary Question: When do you estimate that homelessness will be eliminated in Calgary? Mayor Nenshi replies: Calgarians should be proud that we’ve shown great leadership using a “housing first” strategy to eliminate homelessness. Cities around North America are now following our lead. The Calgary Homeless Foundation is responsible for implementing our 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness with a deadline of 2018. I’m not naïve - it’s not going to be easy to eliminate homelessness by the deadline we’ve set for ourselves. During our last count in October 2014, there were 3,531 homeless in Calgary. That’s a lot of people, but I am optimistic because - given our record population growth over the past few years - that number has stayed relatively static when it could easily have gone up. I’m confident we are on the path to eliminate homelessness. Over the past seven years, we’ve helped house nearly 6,000 people. And we continue to worth with other orders of government to create more affordable housing for our citizens. I’m optimistic because we are seeing the success of other housing programs like the Attainable Homes Calgary Corporation (which helps middle-income Calgarians purchase their first home) and the RESOLVE Campaign (which brings together homebuilding companies to create affordable housing for 3,000 vulnerable and homeless Calgarians). By Azim J, Toronto, Ontario Question: We have seen high racial tension in many major cities in Europe and the United States. Toronto, has reached the point where foreign-born residents outnumber locally-born ones. Do you think Canada's policy of multiculturalism is heading towards disaster, and how would you, as Mayor, ensure that racial harmony is maintained. Mayor Nenshi replies: Calgary is often held up as an example about how a community can thrive in a multicultural and pluralistic society. Our city continues to benefit by being an attractive place for people from around the world who want to live and work. I can’t speak for the realities of other communities, but I know that Calgary will continue to work hard to draw smart, passionate people our city. Even during the current economic downturn, Calgary business needs more skilled workers to succeed. I believe that our success with multiculturalism is linked to a history of true meritocracy. In Calgary, few people care about where you come from, what you look like, whom you love, or how you worship - they care about what you bring to the table. Certainly, we all have our cultural differences, but Calgarians have created a unique Calgarian culture that is influenced by all cultures which come to our city. If we continue to resist insularism and close-mindedness in all communities, and actively fight intolerance in all its forms, we will continue to be a successful multicultural city. By Kimm R, presently in India Question: Community Association membership can include individuals who do not actually live or have a business in the community. Where there is rapid development, this can lead to an imbalance in how the voice of the community is represented when major new developments are proposed. What do you believe is the role of the Community Association in municipal affairs and how will you ensure that they are equipped to fulfill that mandate? Mayor Nenshi replies: Especially in dealing with development or redevelopment, we’ve ended up in a situation where Community Associations are a de facto fourth order of government. In my opinion, this is inappropriate and unfair to the members of the community association. While we have some Community Associations in dealing with development and planning matters that are well equipped, experienced, well governed, and highly representative, there are some tha not as experienced or even not well governed or not representative of the community as a whole. We need to both better define a meaningful role for the Community Associations and move to more authentic consultation with people who live in communities. We have a lot of work to do in this area, and I look forward to working with community members and my colleagues at The City on solutions moving forward. By Lori R H, Calgary Question: Your passion for the arts and especially literacy are always at the forefront of your civic activities. Why is literacy so important to you, and how do you feel it impacts the economy of a city? Mayor Nenshi replies: Canada is one of the most educated countries in the world, and Calgary’s levels of post-secondary completion are among the highest in Canada. We are, by definition, a well-educated community. Undoubtedly, that is part of why our economy and our community is so successful. Literacy for everyone is an important foundation for our community - a point from where we build great places to live, great cultural institutions, and great businesses. It allows people to participate in civic live and in their community. It’s not just about kids, either. While early childhood development is vital to community health, we need to ensure that literacy programs are available for all adults and particularly for new Canadians. That said, focusing on children is also important. That’s one reason I started a regular series called ‘Mayor Nenshi Reads’ where I read books to children in person and online. Another reason: it’s lots of fun! By Jennifer D, Calgary Question: What urban or social initiatives have you seen in other cities that you would really like to see implemented in Calgary? Mayor Nenshi replies: I am constantly looking for good ideas to borrow or shamelessly steal, and I encourage others to shamelessly steal from us. Here’s one interesting example: under the leadership of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City has seen a lot of success through their Vision Zero initiative in reducing collisions and fatalities in their streets. There are a lot of things that we can learn from their work and implement in a Vision Zero initiative of our own to make Calgary safer for everyone drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists. By Marian Z, Calgary Question: What is your vision for Calgary in 2020? What do the citizens of the city need to do or understand to help achieve your vision? Mayor Nenshi replies: My vision for Calgary is that of a city of opportunity for all - a place where every Calgarian has the chance to thrive. That requires a lot of hard work from both the government and its citizens. From a government perspective, this involves: • Building great neighbourhoods - new suburbs with a choice of housing and amenities and thriving established neighbourhoods with thoughtful redevelopment and renewed infrastructure. • Creating a complete transportation system that makes it easy to move around the city, regardless of what mode you choose: car, transit, bike or foot. • Ensuring all communities are safe, attractive, and vibrant with housing options and services for people of all walks of life. • Continually improving municipal government to keep it citizen-focused and efficient. But, of course, government can’t do it alone. To be successful, we need the involvement of citizens for every step along the way. We have a good start with ImagineCalgary - our citizen-created vision for the future of Calgary - and that continues to guide The City of Calgary in all it does. But citizen engagement and feedback as we move forward will ensure we are on the right track and nimble enough to adjust to serve Calgarians better. Finally, our community is only as good as its citizens. Every act of volunteerism, large or small, is an act of community-building that makes Calgary even better. When we started the 3 Things for Calgary project to encourage every citizen to do at least three things to improve their street or neighbourhood or even the entire city, we wanted to help prompt every Calgarian to action. Thousands of actions later, I’m inspired by the power of everyday Calgarians, and I hope we will continue to make our city better together. By Kris S, Lethbridge, Alberta Question: You are an outspoken proponent in many areas that matter to a great number of social democrats in Alberta. Would you consider a future career as a national or provincial representative of the people? Mayor Nenshi replies: I have the best job in Canada, if not the world. I get to serve the people of this great city every single day with all I’ve got. And I have at least three years left in my mandate. Why would I want a demotion? By Janet W, Calgary Question: You are a recognizable, popular and highly visible personality not just in Calgary but also across Canada. How and when do you get private time away from the office? Is there ever a time when you can be somewhere where nobody recognizes you and you can just be yourself for a little while? How do you feel about living in the spotlight? Mayor Nenshi replies: This is likely the biggest surprise of my job. I really didn’t expect this level of notoriety. Even when I took a rare holiday with my family recently
Of course, who knows—the Scioto madtom could still be out there. A 2003 article in the Darby Creek Advocate characterized the fish as "small, inconspicuous, and nocturnal," making it hard to find. The fact that the fish was only ever observed in fall and early winter has also led to suspicion that it bred (or still breeds) elsewhere. Perhaps the fish found in Big Darby Creek were outliers, caught swimming somewhere they would not normally be found. Another madtom species, the northern madtom (N. stigmosus) went unseen for 31 years until ichthyologist Milton Trautman, who discovered the Scioto madtom, found two of them elsewhere in Big Darby Creek. Maybe the Scioto madtom will follow suit. Or maybe it won't. People have been looking for the Scioto madtom for years. In all likelihood, it is gone for good—another species that disappeared when we weren't looking. Scioto madtom photo by M.R. Thomas, via the Florida Museum of Natural History. Big Darby Creek photo by Jinjian Liang via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license“Still Star Crossed” finally has a premiere date on ABC, with the network announcing Thursday that the new Shondaland drama will launch on May 29. The series, from executive producer Shonda Rhimes, was originally supposed to debut midseason 2017. It was picked up to series by the network last May. The period drama series from Shondaland and ABC Studios picks up where the famous story of “Romeo and Juliet” ends, charting the treachery, palace intrigue and ill-fated romances of the Montagues and Capulets in the wake of the young lovers’ tragic fate. The series is based on the book of the same name by Melinda Taub. It air will immediately after “The Bachelorette,” which will debut its 13th season the week prior. It was developed for television by Heather Mitchell, who serves as the writer and executive producer. Rhimes, Betsy Beers, Mark Wilding and Michael Goldstein are executive producers. Michael Offer is also an executive producer and director of the pilot. It stars Grant Bowler, Wade Briggs, Torrance Coombs, Dan Hildebrand, Lashana Lynch, Ebonee Noel, Medalion Rahimi, Zuleikha Robinson, Sterling Sulieman, Susan Wooldridge, and Anthony Head. In addition, ABC also announced the premiere dates for the new reality series “Boy Band” and the revival of “Battle of the Network Stars,” both of which Variety exclusively reported were being picked up by the network. Read the full ABC summer schedule below WEDNESDAY, MAY 17 “Downward Dog” (Sneak Preview) 9:31-10:00 p.m. SUNDAY, MAY 21 8:00-11:00 p.m. “Billboard Music Awards” MONDAY, MAY 22 9:00-11:00 p.m. “The Bachelorette” (Season 13 Premiere) TUESDAY, MAY 23 8:00-8:30 p.m. “Downward Dog” (Time-Period Premiere) WEDNESDAY, MAY 24 8:00-11:00 p.m. “Dirty Dancing” (Three-Hour Movie Event) MONDAY, MAY 29 10:01-11:00 p.m. “Still Star-Crossed” (Series Premiere) SUNDAY, JUNE 11 8:00-9:00 p.m. “Celebrity Family Feud” (Season 3 Premiere) 9:00-10:00 p.m. “Steve Harvey’s FUNDERDOME” (Series Premiere) 10:00-11:00 p.m. “$100,000 Pyramid” (Season 2 Premiere) WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14 10:00-11:00 p.m. “To Tell the Truth” THURSDAY, JUNE 22 8:00-10:00 p.m. “Boy Band” (Two-Hour Series Premiere) 10:00-11:00 p.m. “The Gong Show” (Series Premiere) THURSDAY, JUNE 29 8:00-9:00 p.m. “Boy Band” 9:00-10:00 p.m. “Battle of the Network Stars” (Series Premiere) WEDNESDAY, JULY 12 8:00-11:00 p.m. “The 2017 ESPYS” MONDAY, JULY 24 10:01-11:00 p.m. “Somewhere Between” (Series Premiere) MONDAY, JULY 31 8:00-10:00 p.m. “The Bachelorette: The Men Tell All” TUESDAY, AUGUST 1 8:00-11:00 p.m. “CMA Fest 2017” TUESDAY, AUGUST 8 8:00-10:00 p.m. “Bachelor in Paradise” (Season 4 Premiere) WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9 9:00-11:00 p.m. “The Story of Diana: Part One” THURSDAY, AUGUST 10 9:00-11:00 p.m. “The Story of Diana: Part Two” MONDAY, AUGUST 14 8:00-10:01 p.m. “Bachelor in Paradise” (Time Period Premiere)Our very own Alex Bateman has been awarded the prestigious Benjamin Franklin award! This is an annual award presented to someone in the community who has made significant contributions to promoting open access in the life sciences. Nominations are made by at least two members of the community and then votes are collected by the good people at bioinformatics.org. Alex faced some stiff competition from many greats in the field yet still managed to win. He is the third Xfam associate who has won the award, joining Ewan Birney and Sean Eddy. Naturally, all of the Xfam members are very happy with this result and are currently glowing in the reflected glory (or is that the result of the celebratory bubbly or the unseasonal weather). Posted by: Rob and Paul. Advertisements Share this: Google Twitter RelatedThere were some panicked posts earlier this week in some other firearms-focused sites which claimed the ATF had redefined wetted nitrocellulose as a high explosive, and that this redefinition would dramatically affect the availability and cost of ammunition. Wetting nitrocellulose is (apparently, I don’t claim to be an expert here) the primary means of rendering this material non-explosive for shipping and storing nitrocellulose. When nitrocellulose is then needed for the manufacture of firearms propellant, it is then dewetted (dried out) in the requisite amounts for making batches of propellant. Someone had a question about wetted nitrocellulose, the ATF tried to answer that question in their newsletter, and did so in a manner that drew an unintended and unexpected “the sky is falling!” response. They’ve now issued an addendum to their newsletter which amounts to, “Dudes, chill.” There is no threat to the ammunition industry. Breath.Recieve emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Email Address Zip Code Subscribe Pacemakers and implantable defibrillators malfunction far more often than manufacturers acknowledge, according to ongoing research in California. Zian Tseng, a physician who researches cardiac devices at the University of California, San Francisco, realized as far back as 2006 that he wouldn’t necessarily know if the pacemakers and defibrillators he implanted in his patients failed. When a person with heart disease dies of a heart attack, it’s rare for anyone to look deeply into the cause. “It’s really the medical examiners that see those cases, the coroners,” Tseng said. “But the problem is that coroners and medical examiners often are busy with legal cases. The natural deaths almost never get investigated.” Support Provided By Learn More There’s a wide range of reasons why a cardiac device could malfunction—from drained batteries to serious mechanical failures. So Tseng decided to investigate heart attacks as thoroughly as medical examiners investigate murders. For 35 months, he and his team tracked down everyone who died suddenly in San Francisco County, regardless of the cause. If the person’s body had a cardiac device, the team removed it for examination and performed an autopsy to identify the cause of death. The results the team published in 2015 stunned Tseng: Half of the cardiac devices had some kind of defect, ranging from drained batteries to serious mechanical failures. Among defibrillator patients, 6.4% of those who died suddenly had a problem with their device. Tseng quickly realized that cardiac devices could be malfunctioning much more often than the manufacturers indicated. “If you do a back-of-the-envelope calculation on the rates of failure based upon the overall pool of devices out there, it’s orders of magnitude higher than the device companies publish,” Tseng said. So he approached three major manufacturers—St. Jude Medical, Medtronic, and Boston Scientific—to tell them what he’d found. “When I went to each of these device companies, I got a range of responses from ‘Wow, this could really help our [quality control] processes’ to outright abject denial that these were even issues,” Tseng said. Tseng found Medtronic the most receptive of the companies he contacted. According to Tracy McNulty, a Medtronic spokeswoman, they offered Tseng technical support to continue his research. Medtronic was the only one of the three companies that agreed to comment for this story. Tseng says that St. Jude Medical listened to what he had to say, but was less enthusiastic than Medtronic. A St. Jude spokesman initially responded to a request for comment, but did not provide one before press time. Tseng says he and his research got a cold greeting at Boston Scientific. The company did not respond to repeated requests for comment. “They didn’t want a collaborator, let’s put it that way,” Tseng said. “That was the least constructive response.” Manufacturers aren’t the only ones responsible for keeping tabs on medical devices. Once devices have been released into the market, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is in charge of making sure they’re as safe and effective as clinical trials indicated. If a doctor thinks her patient has been hurt or killed by a device problem, she can report it to the FDA. “There are two flaws with that,” Tseng said. “Number one, it’s voluntary. Number two, we only see the people who make it to the clinic, who are by definition alive.” Joseph Ross, a Yale cardiologist who studies health-care delivery, agrees. “The way we are able to monitor medical devices…is quite limited, actually,” Ross said. That’s partly due to the lack of data. When a patient is given a medication, the exact drug and dose are reported to whoever ends up footing the bill. But when a patient gets a medical device, the bill is for the implantation surgery. There’s no record of what brand of device the patient got, and no way to track down a specific device in the future. “The FDA recognizes limitations in its current medical device post market surveillance,” said FDA spokeswoman Stephanie Caccomo. She also said that the FDA is pursuing “big data” solutions to reveal patterns more quickly. Better analysis would do a lot of good for the FDA database, which Ross called “a black file of data.” But it won’t change the fact that fatal problems are hardly ever reported to begin with because natural deaths are so rarely investigated. That’s why Zian Tseng has continued to learn from the dead. His new data, released later this year, will be welcomed by researchers who have spent years trying to study device failure using the tiny handful of published cases. As Ross put it, “that’s a tip-of-the-iceberg type of signal.”EVANSTON, Ill. --- Northwestern University graduate student Jonathan Barnes had a hunch for creating an exotic new chemical compound, and his idea that the force of love is stronger than hate proved correct. He and his colleagues are the first to permanently interlock two identical tetracationic rings that normally are repelled by each other. Many experts had said it couldn’t be done. On the surface, the rings hate each other because each carries four positive charges (making them tetracationic). But Barnes discovered by introducing radicals (unpaired electrons) onto the scene, the researchers could create a love-hate relationship in which love triumphs. Unpaired electrons want to pair up and be stable, and it turns out the attraction of one ring’s single electrons to the other ring’s single electrons is stronger than the repelling forces. The process links the rings not by a chemical bond but by a mechanical bond, which, once in place, cannot easily be torn asunder. The study detailing this new class of stable organic radicals will be published Jan. 25 by the journal Science. “It’s not that people have tried and failed to put these two rings together -- they just didn’t think it was possible,” said Sir Fraser Stoddart, a senior author of the paper. “Now this molecule has been made. I cannot overemphasize Jonathan’s achievement -- it is really outside the box. Now we are excited to see where this new chemistry leads us.” Sir Fraser is the Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. In the late 1980s, he was one of the early pioneers to introduce an additional type of bond, the mechanical bond, into chemical compounds. The new Northwestern compound has attractive electronic characteristics and can be made quickly and inexpensively. Down the road, it may be possible to expand this first linked pair into a longer chain-like polymer where this methodology could be useful in new technologies for batteries, semiconductors and electronic memory devices. Driven by curiosity, Barnes only began to look at the radical chemistry of the ring cyclobis (paraquat-p-phenylene) two years ago, nearly 25 years after the ring was first made. “I wondered what would happen if we took it all the way to the max,” said Barnes, the paper’s first author and a member of Stoddart’s group. “Can we take two of these rings, each with four positive charges, and make them live together?” The rings repel each other like the positive poles of two magnets. Barnes saw an opportunity where he thought he could tweak the chemistry by using radicals to overcome the hate between the two rings. “We made these rings communicate and love each other under certain conditions, and once they were mechanically interlocked, the bond could not be broken,” Barnes said. Barnes’ first strategy -- adding electrons to temporarily reduce the charge and bring the two rings together -- worked the first time he tried it. He, Stoddart and their colleagues started with a full ring and a half ring that they then closed up around the first ring (using some simple chemistry), creating the mechanical bond. When the compound is oxidized and electrons lost, the strong positive forces come roaring back -- “It’s hate on all the time,” Barnes said -- but then it is too late for the rings to be parted. “That’s the beauty of this system,” he added. Most organic radicals possess short lifetimes, but this unusual radical compound is stable in air and water. The compound tucks the electrons away inside the structure so they can’t react with anything in the environment. The tight mechanical bond endures despite the unfavorable electrostatic interactions. The two interlocked rings house an immense amount of charge in a mere cubic nanometer of space. The compound, a homo[2]catenane, can adopt one of six oxidation states and can accept up to eight electrons in total. “Anything that accepts this many electrons has possibilities for batteries,” Barnes said. “Applications beckon,” Stoddart agreed. “Now we need to spend more time with materials scientists and people who make devices to see how this amazing compound can be used.” The research was supported by King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, Intel Corp., the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Defense, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the Ryan Fellowship from Northwestern’s International Institute for Nanotechnology. The paper is titled “A Radically Configurable Six-State Compound.” In addition to Stoddart and Barnes, other authors of the paper are Albert C. Fahrenbach, Dennis Cao, Scott M. Dyar, Marco Frasconi, Marc A. Giesener, Oleksandr Chernyashevskyy, Hao Li, Srinivasan Sampath, Charlotte L. Stern, Amy A. Sarjeant, Karel J. Hartlieb, Zhichang Liu, Raanan Carmieli, Youssry Y. Botros, John B. Ketterson and Michael R. Wasielewski, of Northwestern; Diego Benítez, Ekaterina Tkatchouk and William A. Goddard III, of the California Institute of Technology; Weon Ho Shin and Jang Wook Choi, of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; and Alexandra M. Z. Slawin, of the University of St. Andrews.Thunder Hole in Acadia National Park is a popular spot for visitors to see the power of the sea first hand. Known for its thundering noise, and big splashes, it can be a great place to visit. But what’s it really like? These videos tell the story best. It’s known for being very loud … and wet. But, if you go with good humor, it can be a lot of fun to see and experience. These folks sure enjoyed it. Of course, it can be dangerous too. Leading up to, during and after storms — from hurricanes and tropical storms to smaller storm systems, it can be rough and dangerous. At those times, the observation area is closed for safety. But often, it’s pretty calm, like in this video. Still, it’s pretty amazing. And sometimes, like in this winter video, it’s absolutely majestic.ORLANDO, Fla. - A woman who had her infant son with her is accused of pointing a gun at another driver during a road-rage incident Sunday in Orlando, according to the Orlando Police Department. The victim said he pulled his red Dodge onto Conroy Road and was nearly hit by a silver Jeep that was in his blind spot. The driver of the Jeep sped up then braked to avoid hitting the Dodge and both vehicles continued down the road, authorities said. The victim and his passenger had lunch at a nearby restaurant, and when they tried to leave, the family from the silver Jeep stood in front of the Dodge to prevent it from leaving, police said. The man said, "You about hit my car" and Kayla Nogues, 24, passed her infant son to her mother and started to yell at the man, according to the arrest affidavit. Nogues grabbed a small black handgun from her backpack, pointing it directly at the victims and telling them she would "bust a cap," police said. Nogues stepped back, allowing the Dodge to leave, when she noticed one of the victims was attempting to film her, the report said. The victims drove off and called 911 while Nogues and her family went into Picture People. Police found Nogues while she was in the portrait studio. She admitted getting into a verbal dispute but denied brandishing a gun, the report said. Police said they searched Picture People and found a small black handgun in a trash can in the restroom. Employees said Nogues was the only customer to use the restroom since the trash can had been emptied. Nogues is charged with aggravated assault with a firearm, destruction of evidence and carrying a concealed firearm. Copyright 2017 by WKMG ClickOrlando - All rights reserved.WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery Simplifies Home Brewing For The Rest Of Us We have no idea why you will want to make beer when you can just buy it. I mean, that sounds like work, specially if you're a lazy bum like yours truly. Still, if you want to ferment your own "commercial-quality" brew, this WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery looks like a lovely equipment to do it with. Billed as the "world’s first all-in-one brewing appliance," the machine lets you fashion your own alcoholic beverage in just seven short days -- three weeks shorter than many traditional methods of brewing (way longer than a trip to the convenience store or a push of the fridge tap, though). Like any good appliance, you just set a bunch of controls and let it work, requiring minimum effort to secure a fresh batch of beer for your personal consumption. The WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery bundles a brewing tank, refrigeration system and ergonomically-designed dashboard panel inside the frame, integrating all necessary components to whip your own brews in one table-height stainless steel appliance. It can produce 23 liters of beverage at a time, which sounds like a decent volume for personal consumption. Makers Anders Warn and Ian Williams claim that their product has eliminated the 12 most common problems that occur during home brewing, like oxidization, temperature control and lengthy carbonation time, allowing it to produce beer at a considerably faster rate than your friendly neighborhood home brewer. It can be used to brew beer in three different ways, too: basic (an idiot-proof system for beginners), advanced (a more relaxed approach for making up to 78 different flavors) and creative (for experienced home brewers who like to experiment). We're not sure about international availability, but the WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery is now available from the New Zealand company, priced at NZ $5,660 (US $4,400). [Product Page]Roll up, roll up for the Kate clothes show (Pippa not included). Half a million expected to file past wedding dress at Buckingham Palace Amid the pomp and splendour of a truly unforgettable day, The Dress was undoubtedly the star of the show. And just like the most gracious stars, the Duchess of Cambridge’s stunning wedding gown is returning for an encore. Those of us who admired it from the comfort of our sofas at home, can now see the £250,000 Alexander McQueen dress right up close – if we can get our hands on what is rapidly becoming the hottest ticket in town. Fit for a Duchess: Kate Middleton's stunning wedding gown is going on display at the weekend, alongside other items from the big day Beauty in the detail: 58 gazar buttons run from the collar to the waist on the gown, while Kate's veil is made of soft ivory silk tulle and stitched with flowers The dress is to take pride of place at Buckingham Palace’s annual summer exhibition this year, ensuring we can bask in the afterglow of Kate and William’s wedding day just that little bit longer. While most brides carefully wrap their bridal gowns in tissue paper and store them away with their memories, Kate’s will be shared with the nation all over again. In fact visitors can relive every joyful moment of the day, with everything from the Duchess’s veil to her shoes and even the royal wedding cake on display. Record demand means advance ticket sales are more than double on last year’s summer opening, with 600,000 people paying £17.50 per ticket to troop through the doors over the next ten weeks. That would comfortably beat the palace’s previous highest attendance of 420,000 in 1994. Here, the Daily Mail, which was offered an exclusive tour yesterday, can reveal the treasures in store for the first visitors this Saturday. Something borrowed: This 1936 Cartier tiara was loaned to Kate by the Queen and contains 1,000 glittering diamonds Icing on the cake: The top three layers of the cake are replicas, with two saved for the couple's first child's Christening, as tradition dictates The first cut: The mark made by the couple using a ceremonial sword is clearly visible on the bottom tier of the cake The Duchess herself was treated to a sneak preview on Wednesday night when she stole another look at the dress that featured an intricate Grace Kelly-inspired lace bodice hand-stitched by the world’s best seamstresses at the Royal School of Needlework. The craftswomen had no idea what their commission was for, such was the secrecy surrounding the design. The bodice was cinched into a tiny waist above the full silk skirt. Twinkle toes: The duchess's hand-stitched shoes were designed by Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen and are size five-and-a-half Bouquet of memories: A silk replica of Kate's flowers include sweet william, myrtle, lily of the valley and hyacinth The exhibition’s curator Caroline de Guitaut would not be drawn on what size it was, saying only: ‘Small.’ Then there are the shoes, barely noticed in the excitement of the day, which are worth a look in their full glory. If you stoop beside the glass case, the tiny letters that reveal Kate’s shoe size, five and a half, are just visible. At a willowy 5’10”, she certainly has a dainty pair of feet. Also created by the McQueen creative director Sarah Burton and her team, the shoes feature yet more impressive lace detailing hand-stitched over ivory duchess satin. Little acorns: The Duchess's diamond earrings were a present from her parents for the wedding, and bear acorns as a nod to her family's new coat of arms They appear to have been barely worn as, apart from stepping outside the Goring Hotel into her waiting car as a single woman, Kate spent most of the day walking on carpet. SARAH BURTON ON THE DRESS We wanted to look to the past, yet look to the future as well. There were a lot of references to Victorian corsetry, the padded hip, the tiny cinched-in waist, and also to the arts and crafts movement with all of the hand-work on the lace of the dress and also the bustle inside to create the shape of the back of the dress. It has an essence of Victorian but we cut the dress in a very modern way, it is in a very light fabric, also the pleats and the folds create a modern feel rather than a historical piece. I think what we wanted to achieve was something that was incredibly beautiful and intricately worked. A lot of it is in the subtlety of the detail, the handcrafted lace, and the cuts and the shapes and the folds involved in the construction of the dress, yet we still had to remember it was in Westminster Abbey so it still had to have a presence. It was this idea of having a dress with a presence and of historical importance yet being modern at the same time. Then there are the diamond earrings given to the bride by her parents, bearing a diamond acorn to show the Middleton family’s new coat of arms. And in the Ballroom, where the couple’s reception was held, visitors can see the 1936 Cartier tiara, glittering with 1,000 diamonds, that the Queen lent to Kate as her ‘something borrowed’ item. The Duchess will join Her Majesty to formally open the exhibition this afternoon. It also includes a short video, featuring Sarah Burton talking about her inspiration for the dress and Kate’s ‘hands-on’ involvement in the design process. She explains that the Duchess had hands on involvement and wanted to create a gown with "presence and of historical importance" but one that had a contemporary feel. ‘We wanted to look to the past, yet look to the future as well,’ she says. Finally to the State Dining Room, where visitors can see some of the eight-tiered wedding cake designed by Fiona Cairns. Sadly, the top three levels on display are not the originals. The uppermost two were kept by the newlyweds, in line with tradition which says you should keep them to serve at your first child’s christening, while the third was served to guests. However, look closely among the sugary flowers on the bottom tier and you can see the mark left by the ceremonial sword the couple used to cut it – an unbroken link to a magical day. The Royal Wedding Dress: A Story of Great British Design runs until October 3 at Buckingham Palace. Tickets are priced at £17.50 and can be obtained from www.royalcollection.org.uk or 0207 766 7300. Showstopper: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, wearing the dress in all its glory, emerge from Westminster Abbey on their wedding dayBELGRADE – Sweden and Finland are strongly supportive of Serbia’s European perspective, Swedish and Finnish FMs Margot Wallstrom and Timo Soini said in Belgrade on Tuesday. “Serbia is achieving good economic results and demonstrating the necessary stability,” Swedish and Finnish FMs Margot Wallstrom and Timo Soini said at a meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić on Tuesday, expressing the expectation there would be more Swedish and Finnish investments in Serbia. Serbia has good political relations with both Sweden and Finland, which is a good foundation for increasing economic cooperation, in particular for boosting investments from the two countries, Vučić said. According to a statement from the presidential press office, they discussed bilateral and regional cooperation as well as European integration. Finland and Sweden agree on this and you can rely on us, Soini said after a meeting with Serbian FM Ivica Dačić. He said his and Wallstrom’s trip to Belgrade – their first joint visit to any country in the world – showed neighbours could cooperate and maintain good relations. Soini said his country wanted to encourage the Western Balkan region – which he said had had a dramatic history – to create stability and cooperation. That will ensure jobs for young people and a better future for all, Soini said. “Despite all its problems, the region now has potential for investments,” he said. Wallstrom said Sweden would do all to help Serbia on the EU path. “It will motivate young people here,” she said.2013 FA Cup winners Wigan crashed out in the first round in humiliating fashion with a heavy defeat at Bury. Tom Pope headed in Chris Hussey's cross to open the scoring for the Shakers. Haris Vuckic could have levelled for the Latics, but was denied by Daniel Bachmann, before Danny Mayor doubled Bury's lead following a quick break. Nathan Cameron's header on the stroke of half-time put the hosts clear before Leon Clarke's strike rounded off the victory just past the hour mark. Wigan's last victory in the FA Cup came when they beat Manchester City 2-1 in the 2014 quarter-finals, less than a year after beating them in the 2013 final. Bury manager David Flitcroft told BBC Radio Manchester: "Wigan are one of the best teams in the league, they've spent heavily and recruited well. They've probably more than two players for every position. "We had to get about them. We had to make it a difficult afternoon for them. If you let this team pop you and pass you they can destroy you. "We worked on a game plan for two solid days. I told the players on Thursday that I wanted that real focus and to a man the crosses they put in, the way they hurt their team, the way we threatened that back line was outstanding." Wigan manager Gary Caldwell told BBC Radio Manchester: "It's probably the lowest I've been as a manager since I got the job. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. It's one we have to take, we had great support again so I apologise to the fans. "It's not good enough in terms of result and performance, we have to take it on the chin, regroup and go again. "I thought we started very well and had opportunities to score and we said we can't take them for granted, they aren't going to keep coming, we have to be more clinical. We were a bit wasteful. "The first goal is a mistake and we crumbled after that as a team, that's something we haven't done this season. It's a massive disappointment."Kalahari tree skinks associate with sociable weaver nests despite African pygmy falcons In the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa sociable weaver nests are a prominent feature in the landscape. These large nests typically occupy camelthorn trees and provide a refuge to a range of organisms, including Kalahari tree skinks (Trachylepis spilogaster). They also provide refuge for a predator of the skink: the African pygmy falcon, which roosts and nests in these large colonies. In a recent study published in Austral Ecology, Tasmin Rymer, Robert Thompson and Martin Whiting show that skink abundance was positively correlated with weaver nests. Skinks also frequently perched on the nest and used it as a refuge from predators. Surprisingly, the presence of pygmy falcons did not affect skink abundance perhaps because of the abundance of refugia created by the nest’s presence. The authors suggest a number of potential benefits that the nests provide including greater prey availability, thermal refuges and lowered predation risk, all of which remain to be tested. The article abstract The way in which animals use habitat can affect their access to key resources or how they are buffered from environmental variables such as the extreme temperatures of deserts. One strategy of animals is to modify the environment or take advantage of structures constructed by other species. The sociable weaver bird (Philetairus socius) constructs enormous colonial nests in trees. These nests are frequented by Kalahari tree skinks (Trachylepis spilogaster) and the two species coexist over a large portion of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa.We tested whether skinks were more abundant in trees containing sociable weaver nests and asked whether the physical features of trees were important predictors of skink abundance. We then focused on potential costs of this association by examining the relationship between skink abundance and the presence of a potential predator, the pygmy falcon (Polihierax semitorquatus), which exclusively uses weaver nest colonies for roosting and nesting. Finally, we simulated a predatory threat to determine if skinks assess risk differently if a weaver nest is present.We found a significant positive association between the presence of weaver nests and skink abundance. In the absence of nests, the type of tree did not influence skink abundance. Skinks used weaver nests and were more likely to perch on the nest than the tree. When threatened with predation, skinks preferred to take refuge in nests. Surprisingly, the presence of nesting pygmy falcons in nests did not influence skink abundance, perhaps because of the abundance of nearby refuges within nests, tree crevices, or in debris at the tree base. We suggest that sociable weaver nests provide multiple benefits to skinks including lowered predation risk, thermal refuges and greater prey availability, although this requires experimental testing. In the current era of global climate change, sociable weaver nests may become a crucial resource for skinks seeking refuge as the Kalahari climate warms. Rymer, T.L., R.L. Thomson, and M.J. Whiting. 2014. At home with the birds: Kalahari tree skinks associate with sociable weaver nests despite African pygmy falcon presence. Austral Ecology DOI: 10.1111/aec.12152 Download PDFMONTREAL—Andrei Markov cut the play off at centre ice, rushed over the blue line and feathered a pass over to Artturi Lehkonen. It was an assist that led to the third goal of a 4-1 win for the Montreal Canadiens over the Dallas Stars on Tuesday, and it was the 572nd point of the 38-year-old’s illustrious career, which tied him for second all-time among Canadiens defencemen. If it hadn’t been for a torn Achilles tendon and two ACL reconstructions that limited him to just 65 games from 2009-2012, and the two lockouts that stole away prime years of his career, Markov would’ve pulled even with Canadiens legend Guy Lapointe long ago. It’s safe to assume the Russian rearguard would’ve also narrowed the gap considerably more between himself and all-time Canadiens leader Larry Robinson—who scored 883 points in 1,202 games—had it not been for those lost years. "It’s a big honour to be even close to those people," said Markov. It’s an honour that was met by a rousing ovation from the fans at the Bell Centre, who chanted Markov’s name after P.A. announcer Michel Lacroix made the accomplishment public. Canadiens captain Max Pacioretty was exuberant for his teammate, repeating over and over again that Markov is the best player he’s ever played with. "He’s just got such a good mind for the game, the way he does things," said Pacioretty. "He’s just got little techniques; the way he holds his stick in certain situations; the passes he makes. I said to [Canadiens forward Alex Galchenyuk] I never want him to retire because that’s at least 10 goals a year, and the left shots all feel the same." Lehkonen—the lefty who scored his 14th goal of the year—is the latest in a long line of left-handed shooters who have benefited from Markov’s brilliance. You think of the players who left Montreal for big payouts as unrestricted free agents, and Markov’s fingerprints are all over their contracts. Sheldon Souray and Mark Streit immediately come to mind as examples. Markov also had a hand in keeping Marc-Andre Bergeron in the NHL for three more seasons after his 13-goal stint with the Canadiens in 2009. And his vision and smooth passing skills were huge factors in turning Alex Kovalev and Mike Cammalleri into two of the most popular Canadiens in recent history. As Pacioretty notes, the devil is in the details of how Markov has registered the bulk of his 453 assists. "When a lefty passes the puck, the puck spins counter clockwise," explained Pacioretty. "So when a lefty shoots that puck, you keep the spin going counter clockwise. If it’s a righty shooting the puck, he has to reverse the spin on the puck and it’s harder for it to come off your blade." Pacioretty insists that Markov is so aware that he made the necessary adjustments to help right-handed shooters P.K. Subban, James Wisniewski and Mike Komisarek just as much over the years. Right-shooting Shea Weber, who plays as Markov’s regular defence partner, is currently reaping the rewards. On this night the pairing was on the ice for just under 22 minutes, driving the offence and doing their best to shut down prolific scorers Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin. They had
they came up with the concept. "We wondered if we could create our own. We wonder a lot of things, and rarely push them past concept, because we’re as collectively creative as we are frustratingly idle. This particularly concept was simple enough to outstrip the temptations of grinning, saying 'Yeah!', and wandering off to see what was on [television]."[5] Several newspapers have also compared toothing to dogging.[2][6] In toothing, a Bluetooth device is used to find other Bluetooth enabled devices within a close distance (on trains or buses, for example), and then send the expression "toothing?" as an initial greeting, letting the person with the enabled Bluetooth device know you are looking for sex.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12] If sending of text messages via Bluetooth is not possible, the Bluetooth name of the mobile phone can be set to "toothing?" or something else to indicate interest.[13] The pair of hoaxers wrote fake news articles on the forum about toothing and sent them off well-known Internet-based news services. Byron said he had to write "Penthouse-letters-page style sexual adventure stories" for articles and interviews with the media.[14] The point with hoax was, according to Byron, to "highlight how journalists are happy to believe something is true without necessarily checking the facts."[2] Spread in media [ edit ] The concept of toothing quickly reached a large audience, even in countries outside of the UK.[15][16][17][18] Curran and Byron said they kept a record from the start of all their mentions in the media, "but there were soon too many to record in full."[2] They agreed to do an interview with The Daily Telegraph and "many papers read that and followed up, broadsheet and tabloid, regional, national, all over the planet."[5] One of the hoaxers made an appearance on BBC Radio 5 Live, and a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom reportedly declared his interest in toothing as a way of meeting women. The couple also received offers to license official toothing merchandise such as sex lines, websites, and mobile-phone software.[2] Dozens of news organizations, including BBC, Wired News, Infosyncworld, and The Independent fell for the story and printed it.[4][19][20][21][22] The Guardian also printed the story, but the article's author suspected it to be an April Fools' Day prank.[13] The BBC wrote in their article: One practitioner is Jon, a "Toother" living near London. "One morning I received an anonymous text message via bluetooth," he told BBC News. "I didn't understand what had happened, but that evening I did some research and worked out how to send my own." The pair started to exchange messages on a train station platform; messages which got gradually more flirty. "Eventually she asked me if I fancied a quickie in the toilets at the station we were travelling to. "It happened, but I never saw her again." Since that day Jon - who claims to have had Toothing success five times - has set up a website dedicated to the practice but he admits it takes a degree of perseverance.[22] Aftermath [ edit ] The toothing hoax has been studied by a sociologist at University of Amsterdam (pictured). On April 4, 2005, the creators of the forum admitted that the whole thing was a hoax.[5] Though the concept of toothing is possible, the hoaxers never intended for it to turn into something real. The couple said: "It's like going into a crowded nightclub, throwing a brick at the dance floor with a love letter attached, and hoping that the person it hits will agree to sleep with you."[2] When announcing the hoax, Curran and Byron reassured that toothing was nothing more than a practical joke gone too far and despite all the articles in newspapers and tabloids, "no one has ever ever, ever toothed."[5] Shanna Petersen, a sexologist, disagreed with the hoaxers' statement that no-one has ever toothed: "It's simple, doesn't take a lot of guts and rejection is nowhere as personal. Of course it's popular. Show people a new way through which they have a chance to have more sex and they'll do it. No matter how much effort goes into it or how meager the results."[2] Multiple forums were in fact created throughout Europe, Asia and America within months of the original post of toothing. People signed up to the forums looking for good locations in their area to tooth, and to share their toothing stories with other members.[2] There have later been real Bluetooth dating devices to hit the market. University of Bath psychologist Linda Blair said the practice of toothing is down to the human need to take risks: "I think we protect ourselves too much in modern society, and risk is a human need. We need motivation. In some ways this is a tame way of picking people up, it's almost a natural follow up from randomly picking people's names out of the phone book. It's voluntary at all stages, and has choice. As long as that's there and it's legal, then people should be able to do what they want."[22] Sue Peters of the Terrence Higgins Trust worried that anonymous sex made possible by toothing would cause an increase of sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia in the United Kingdom.[22] University of Amsterdam sociologist Albert Benschop researched the hoax. He said toothing is "the next logical step" in dating and that the "old game is just adapting to new times". Benschop added that toothing is "just like picking up people in bars but without the silly time-consuming conventions of decorum that people are obliged to keep to these days. This is much more direct. You both know what you want." He also sees it as a way for people "to satisfy their need for intimacy. As long as it helps people out of loneliness and gives them more to enjoy in life, I think it's a very good development."[2] The term "toothing" was included in the 2006 version of The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. It was described as an "anonymous casual sexual activity with any partner arranged over Bluetooth radio technology enabled mobile phones."[23] In addition, toothing is listed in the Sex Slang dictionary, authored by Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, with an explanation similar to the one in the New Partridge Dictionary.[24] Toothing was referenced in an episode of the American television series CSI: Miami, called "Killer Date", that aired in the United States on April 18, 2005.[25] See also [ edit ]BOSTON (Reuters) - Gun rights advocates have sued Massachusetts over the state’s ban on assault weapons, saying that a crackdown begun last year on “copycat” assault rifles is a vague and unconstitutional violation of gun ownership rights. FILE PHOTO - Salesman Ryan Martinez clears the chamber of an AR-15 at the "Ready Gunner" gun store In Provo, Utah, U.S. in Provo, Utah, U.S., June 21, 2016. REUTERS/George Frey/File Photo The lawsuit, filed in federal court late Monday, challenges a 1998 state law banning rifles including the AR-15 and AK-47 and a July 2016 directive by the states attorney general banning guns that are similar in function but have been slightly modified to meet state requirements, such as by replacing folding stocks with fixed models or removing flash suppressors. The group of gun owners, dealers and the state’s Gun Owners Action League, who have the backing of the National Rifle Association, said the July decision by Attorney General Maura Healey banned guns that had been purchased legally in the state over the past two decades and infringed on the right to bear arms protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. “Massachusetts prohibits firearms it pejoratively defines as ‘assault weapons,’ which is a non-technical, entirely fabricated, and political term of uncertain definition and scope,” the 33-page lawsuit contends. It said that 1.2 million such weapons were sold across the United States in 2014 and that that type of firearm represented 20 percent of U.S. gun sales in 2012. The suit asks a federal judge to overturn the 1998 state law and to block the state from enforcing its July ban on “copies or duplicates” of assault rifles. “The assault weapons ban keeps dangerous, military-style weapons off our streets,” said Jillian Fennimore, a Healey spokeswoman. “We will vigorously defend the law and continue our enforcement efforts.” Gun rights are a hotly debated issue in the United States. Advocates for years have succeeded in fighting off attempts to restrict weapons possession on the federal level, contending that access to a wide range of weapons is needed for personal protection, hunting and shooting sports. Gun-control advocates, who highlight the guns’ use in mass shootings at places such as schools and nightclubs, have responded by focusing their efforts on promoting new restrictions at the state level. Liberal-leaning Massachusetts has some of the strictest gun regulations in the country. “We are drawing a line in the sand where Massachusetts’ gun control agenda tramples the fundamental individual right to defend oneself and family in the home,” James Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners’ Action League, said in a statement.CSUN LOGO The CSUN logo must be included on all external and internal marketing collateral, including print pieces, online ads, multimedia production and other media. This will help to establish the institutional identity and clearly link any campus entity’s good work to that of the university. The University’s wordmark is a custom serif logo that was inspired from the idea that CSUN is a source of elevating impact, connecting the Valley and surrounding region. The ligatures – or connections between the letters – represent the connection between CSUN and the community. The form between the letters is curved to represent the arches in the CSUN seal.. The balance of both thick and thin line weights in the letter forms were inspired by the idea of sunlight seeping through the wordmark. The connection between only the last three letters also emphasizes the pronunciation of the mark (“see sun”). In addition to our official name, the use of “CSUN” has grown in popularity as it uniquely distinguishes our University from other CSU campuses and regional universities. It is the only pronounceable acronym in the entire CSU system; “sun” conveys the weather, warmth and energy of the region; sun imagery has been used in the official seal since the University’s founding as well as for student publications such as the Sundial and the Sunburst annual yearbook; and the sun is an apt metaphor for the light that knowledge sheds. The form between the letters that connect them also represent the arches in the CSUN seal. The wordmark is then juxtaposed with the full name creating a balance of a modern and institutional logo. OFFICIAL LOCKUPS SECONDARY MARKS AND CO-BRANDING Secondary Marks A system has been developed to identify specific colleges, departments, centers, auxiliaries and other affiliated campus entities. To differentiate the secondary marks from the official CSUN lockup, we use Sentinel as the typeface and a combination of red and black. The scale and weight of the associated mark depends on the length of the name, specifically, whether the name takes up one, two or three lines. Additionally, emphasis can be given to a portion of the name by alternating between the bold and regular weights of the typeface. The Marketing and Communications department will create the approved sub-identity marks in consultation with campus partners. Please contact M&C to request a new secondary mark. Existing secondary marks outside of this system will be evaluated moving forward. CO-BRANDING When pairing the CSUN logo with another brand, such as VPAC, each entity should have an equal visual weight. The hairline separation is extended one more unit above and below the line used in secondary marks in order to make each entity stand on its own. This guideline also relates to off-campus organizations, co-sponsors and other partners. OFFICIAL LOCKUPS WITH SEAL WORDMARK WITH SEAL The official Seal of California State University, Northridge depicts the San Fernando Valley’s heritage of mission settlement, the mountain ranges that bound the Valley, the sun, and a crow quill pen and paper, encircled by the words “California State University, Northridge” and “1958.” Except on business collateral, use of the Seal is optional on publications as shown. The University Seal can be reproduced in any of the official University colors, but is traditionally reproduced as all red and white with black type. OFFICIAL WORDMARK WITH SEAL SECONDARY MARK LOCKUPS WITH SEAL LOGO MARKS CORRECT USAGE The official wordmark should appear in a prominent position, preferably in the bottom right or top left corner, on all communications. The wordmark should not be used as body copy in ads, fliers, or other publications. It should be placed prominently and separate from other copy and/or elements in all layouts. CLEAR SPACE An area surrounding the logo equal to 3/5 of the cap height (5x), should be kept clear of any copy or imagery layouts. This page outlines the appropriate color usage of the CSUN logo and its variations. INCORRECT USAGE As was the case with the CSUN Oviatt library banners, these guidelines may require modification to allow for appropriate placement. Ideally, the Matador should not be flipped, nor should the CSUN logo be split up into four letters. For exceptions to the guidelines, please contact the Marketing and Communications office.An article has been making the rounds on the internet claiming there is a link between vaccines and epilepsy. This is outrageously false, but worth taking a deeper look. Mainly because this article highlights some key points which can be used to teach others how to skeptically read things on the internet. The article’s first paragraph nicely highlights all that is wrong in what follows: The rate of epilepsy among children and the elderly has been skyrocketing, with 1 in 20 children under five now suffering from the seizure condition in the United States. More and more parents say that vaccines triggered their children’s seizure disorders. The government maintains that while vaccines can trigger febrile (fever related) seizures, the many cases of epilepsy that begin immediately following infant vaccination are merely coincidental or were bound to occur eventually. There are two main claims here, which i will dissect separately. The first claim is that epilepsy is skyrocketing. The second claim, which is a bit more complicated, involves the relationship between Doctors and parents, and their differing standards of evidence. “Skyrocketing”: I Don’t Think It Means What You Think It Means A rocket is something that goes from slow to fast at a fairly quick pace. In order for the analogy to work, something that skyrockets must dramatically change between two time points in roughly close proximity. For example, in places that do not vaccinate, measles can skyrocket. Where measles was almost eliminated in the United States, 113 cases were linked to the Disney Land outbreak last year, which spread due to low vaccination rates. Therefore, there was an environmental cause of the skyrocketing disease; a decrease in herd immunity. To my surprise, with the 1 in 20 figure listed in the articles title, there was no mention of a preceding number. We can’t determine based on one number alone what the trend of diagnosis is. With a simple google search, no news was found indicating any trend in epilepsy cases. In fact, the only thing that came up, was the article itself! Those two facts alone should be sufficient for an immediate quick skeptical read, but I decided to go a bit deeper into the research to see what I could learn about the prevalence of epilepsy. Epilepsy is highest in children younger than 5, which is what the 1 in 20 figure represents. However, kids younger than 17, have a prevalence between 6-10 in 1000, depending on which study you look at. These studies were mostly conducted in the mid 90’s, and as far as I can tell, none of them claim that this number is indicative of an increase in epilepsy, but simply a more robust accounting of its prevalence. Again, this leaves me wondering, how this author concluded epilepsy was skyrocketing? Even more telling, in the study cited in the last paragraph, they acknowledge the difficulty in measuring childhood epilepsy. What they say is worth quoting in full: Almost 40% of children in our study previously diagnosed with epilepsy/seizure disorder were not reported by parents to currently have the condition. Although these data could reflect a true remission of seizure activity, they could result from an initial “misdiagnosis” of epilepsy/seizure disorder, inclusion of some children with single febrile seizures, or variation in interpretations of the terms “current” versus “ever” having seizures. If epilepsy is frequently misdiagnosed, so that the prevalence is probably lower than the 1 in 20 figure, then it doesn’t seem like the rocket has even been launched. The Pitfalls of Patternicity: The Plural of Anecdote is NOT Data Michael Shermer, in his book The Believing Brain, describes what he calls patternicity “…the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise”. Patternicity is not always bad, after all, our folk psychology, and folk physics, tend to lead us towards correct predictions some if not most of the time. However, our tendency to find patterns, even where none exist, can lead us into trouble. This is why we do science, and why we should approach anecdotes skeptically. The main body of the article is basically a list of anecdotes, which are almost always useless in determining the causal relationship between an environmental stimulus and a disease or disorder. There are three main problems with the anecdotes provided; the problem of diagnosis, the differences in time between the supposed cause and its effect, and the problem of biased sampling. Given the frequency of misdiagnosis as pointed out in the previous section, some cases of febrile seizures will be diagnosed as epilepsy. Febrile seizures are a possible side effect of vaccines, although they are relatively harmless they can be scary to witness as a parent. One of the anecdotes is as follows: My daughter had her first seizure about 12 hours after her mmr shot at 12 months. When I contacted the administering gp we were told it was a normal reaction to the vaccination febrile seizure, and it will not happen again. from then on she started having myoclonic seizures where her eyes would roll for a split second. when i mentioned this to the GP they said, those will go away with time. Instead of going away they have increased in length and frequency. Notice how the seizures changed? It is possible that the child had a febrile seizure initially, but then later developed epilepsy. This is portrayed as Doctor incompetence, but diagnosis can be complicated. Given that the symptoms of a febrile seizure and epileptic seizure can manifest themselves similarly, diagnosis is difficult. Notice as well that it seems like the patient self-diagnosed their child with myoclonic seizures. Diagnosis is not simple, you can be misdiagnosed, you will tend to self-diagnose, and in the future your diagnosis could change. In fact, 70% of children outgrow their epilepsy. None of the anecdotes provided gave any indication of whether or not the epilepsy remained, improved, changed etc. The times between the vaccine and the seizure differ from anecdote to anecdote. Some range between minutes after, to days after, to weeks after. My son had his 1st seizure IN THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE 1-2 minutes after receiving two vaccinations. The seizures continued from that day forward. My son is now 6 years old and has been having seizures since he had his first vaccine at 2 months of age. He had his first seizure about 36 hrs after his needle. He did not have any fever, actually has never had a febrile seizure ever, but has had a multitude of others. My son has been having neurological problems, seizures, movements that doctors aren’t sure what to call, etc. since last May. He was a healthy 18 mos. old little boy and then 11 days after his checkup (vaccines) he vomited and had a 1+ hour seizure. Even in the first anecdote, there is a gap in time between the first febrile seizure and the supposed myoclonic seizure. We are not told how long the myoclonic seizure occurred after the initial seizure. It could be that the child had both a febrile seizure that was vaccine related, but was also going to eventually develop epilepsy, the two having nothing to do with each other. If vaccines do cause epilepsy, or autism, or anything, there should be some consistency between the onset of the problem and the supposed cause. Given that no mechanism has been provided, probably because no mechanism exists, people can just decide that their child’s seizure is vaccine related even when it occurs weeks after they received their shot. There is also the concern of the ‘post hoc, ergo propter hoc’ fallacy, which is related to the oft quoted phrase, correlation does not equal causation. Just because something occurs after something else, does not mean that that something caused it. This is why scientists try to isolate potential causes in order to increase our confidence in the causal relationship. A simple anecdote is worthless, since it wasn’t isolated from the myriad of potential causes which make determining causation almost impossible. This is especially problematic in the field of health, since a lot of what goes on beneath the skin is hidden from us. Finally, all these anecdotes were culled from a message board of an epilepsy foundation. In other words, this is a biased sample, from a population of worried people. A proper epidemiological study will look at the population at large, and given that there is no reason to suspect that epilepsy is increasing, such a study would most likely be a waste of time, energy, and resources. All of which is why the Doctors are not worried of, or suspicious of, a link between vaccines and epilepsy. Notice the title of the article states that parents are questioning; not Doctors, not scientists. The parents see this as Doctors being dismissive, but really it is probably because most people don’t understand what consists of good evidence. Personal anecdote, no matter how compelling, is simply not good enough. A Narrative Confusion It is clear that the author of this piece is trying to create a narrative, especially considering the lengths she goes to avoid the obvious pieces of evidence sitting right in front of her. Notice the first sentence of the article: The rate of epilepsy among children and the elderly has been skyrocketing, with 1 in 20 children under five now suffering from the seizure condition in the United States. It took me awhile to see it, but when it finally struck me, it was so obvious what was going on. Why did she include the elderly in this first sentence? Think about it; if the article is claiming that childhood vaccines are causing an increase, a skyrocketing increase, in epilepsy, why is epilepsy skyrocketing in the elderly? A population which would really only be exposed to a single vaccine. Notice how she also avoids the evidence that 70% of children outgrow their epilepsy: Approximately 1 in 100 adults now has epilepsy in the United States, while 1 in 20 children under five years old are now believed to have the disorder. How odd, that she would include the elderly as having skyrocketing epilepsy, acknowledge that adults do not, but then use that fact to bolster how frightening it is that more children have it. Odd, or clearly the case of someone trying to fit the evidence to their narrative. Funny, however, that the evidence so obviously does not fit her narrative that she can’t even succeed at contorting the evidence to make it work in her favour. Conclusion Vaccines don’t cause epilepsy. They don’t. Seriously, internet. Stop. AdvertisementsDipoto enters the Major League Baseball Winter Meetings on Monday in Nashville in the final stages of his offseason plan. In a two-month span during his first offseason as general manager of the Mariners, Jerry Dipoto has completed six trades that netted nine players and sent away 12 players, signed four free agents, claimed three players off waivers and pretty much revamped the roster left behind by his predecessor, Jack Zduriencik. The massive amount of moves has caught some Mariners fans and baseball insiders by surprise. But on the day he was hired, Dipoto said he wanted a roster that was more athletic, better defensively, struck out less, walked more and had pitching depth. Instead of implementing the changes slowly, he jumped the offseason market before the hot stove was even lit. Baseball calendar Dec. 7-10: Winter meetings in Nashville, Tenn. Feb. 18: Spring training begins. Voluntary reporting date for pitchers, catchers and injured players. Feb. 23: Voluntary reporting date for other players. March 2: Mariners’ spring training opener, vs. San Diego in Peoria, Ariz. April 3: Opening day for baseball April 4: Mariners’ regular-season opener, at Texas April 8: Mariners’ home opener, vs. Oakland “We’ve done a lot of roster reshaping, if that makes any sense, and we didn’t go into the garden with a spade,” Dipoto said. “We kind of went in with a backhoe, and I think we’ve effectively restructured the way our offense moves and the way our defense is positioned.” By doing that, Dipoto enters the Major League Baseball winter meetings on Monday in Nashville in the final stages of his offseason plan. “To me the winter meetings aren’t a particularly stressful time,” he said. “You get there, you have had months to work through your game plan, what you’re doing with your roster, and if you did it right that is where you finish deals, not where you create them. We’ve had exhaustive conversations with a lot of other clubs about potential trades, and there will be more trades. I shouldn’t say plural; at least trade.” But given what Dipoto already has done this offseason, keeping it plural might be more fitting. Don’t expect Dipoto to be inactive at the winter meetings. There still are moves to be made. The roster is changed but unfinished. “Anything is possible for us, and we have had numerous conversations with free agents around the league that we feel fit us,” he said. Two pressing needs are starting pitching and a first baseman. Since he took over as GM, Dipoto has made it clear that re-signing starter Hisashi Iwakuma was a priority. That has not changed. But if Iwakuma decides to sign elsewhere, then Dipoto would have to sign another free-agent pitcher. He prefers to have more depth among starters Felix Hernandez, Taijuan Walker, James Paxton, Nathan Karns and Roenis Elias. “That is Plan A for us. That is our choice is to bring him back if that’s possible,” Dipoto said of Iwakuma. “The one thing that we have not done to this point is get very aggressive in the starting-pitcher market. We would prefer to wait and see what happens with Kuma, because frankly if we get him back we’re very satisfied with the way our rotation looks at that point. If we don’t, then we’re going to have to dig in on what we consider to be the next tier.” Dipoto has been in “constant contact” with Iwakuma’s representation — Wasserman Media Group. “These are guys that I know I’ve dealt with a lot in the past,” he said. “We have a good personal relationship, so they know where we are. We know where he is. The day we get a sense that it’s moving any quicker you guys will know as soon as we do.” The Mariners reportedly have offered a two-year contract to Iwakuma, who will turn 35 in April. He wants a three-year contract. The outside market could have some influence. Teams such as the Dodgers, Giants and Cubs could make a push for Iwakuma after missing out on top-line pitchers Zack Greinke and David Price. With J.A. Happ recently signing a three-year, $36 million contract with the Blue Jays, Iwakuma’s price tag has gone up and he could get closer to $40 million to $45 million for three years. The only thing that might limit Iwakuma’s market is the qualifying offer attached to him — something Happ did not have. Because Iwakuma turned down the Mariners’ qualifying offer, any team that signs him would have to forfeit a pick in the upcoming draft — possibly a first-round pick. After trading Logan Morrison in November and Mark Trumbo on Tuesday, the Mariners have two first basemen listed on their 40-man roster — Jesus Montero and recent waiver claim Andy Wilkins. Neither is likely to be the Mariners’ everyday first baseman. When news of the Trumbo trade broke, teams began to contact Dipoto immediately knowing of Seattle’s need at first base. “We should be on people’s call list,” Dipoto said. “Clearly it’s an area that we would like to improve and there are players whether it be on the free-agent market or the trade route that we do have our eye on. I don’t know if we’ll get any of them or one of them, but we certainly know the targets that we prefer at this point.” The best free agent available is slugger Chris Davis, who led the majors with 47 homers. But the Mariners are unlikely to commit to another contract over $100 million. “We are not likely to be about marquee names and big signings,” Dipoto said. But veteran free agents such as Mike Napoli or Justin Morneau could be available for lesser deals or even perhaps Garrett Jones in a platoon role. If Dipoto tried to go the trade route, which usually is his preference, the dream of Mariners fans would be Atlanta first baseman Freddie Freeman. But Braves general manager John Coppolella told USA Today: “I’d give my right arm before we trade Freddie Freeman. It is not happening.” So with lost appendages being a nonstarter, Dipoto could look to the rebuilding Brewers and their first baseman, Adam Lind, or perhaps the Minnesota Twins, who could unload Trevor Plouffe after signing Byung Ho-Park. Beyond those two areas, Dipoto would still like to add at least two relievers and assess possible utility-infield candidates. There’s still some gas left in that backhoe.As the sun descended over the red apartment in the South Bronx, the hitman continued his stakeout. Growing weary, he phoned an associate with a request: “Bring me water, bananas, and cocaine.” His name was Rafael Francisco, nicknamed Six-Seven in a nod to his former cabbie dispatch number. Now his livelihood depended on home invasions and murder-for-hire. And his method was almost always the same: police impersonation. The year was 1997, and Six-Seven ran his operation from a Bronx parking lot he extorted from its owner. Two weeks later, his men readied themselves for the hit. For $50,000, they’d been hired by a high-ranking drug lord whose teenage brother was killed during a robbery gone bad. Under the afternoon sun, the ex-cabbie and his associates donned police garb and sped away from the lot. Six-Seven carried his favorite gun, a.38 caliber revolver dubbed The Abuser. “ When it goes off, it sounds way too beautiful,” he’d say. Outside the red apartment, the hitmen spotted a target with another man. They flashed their badges and escorted them into a van. Back at the parking lot, the kidnappers hovered over the face-down victims. “Where’s the money?!” one demanded. Another crewmember fetched a gas tank. The van, along with an SUV, sped off. “ When it goes off, it sounds way too beautiful. ” — Six-Seven Hours later, a group of students spotted the SUV engulfed in flames near a highway. One heard a noise. It was caused, the medical examiner would testify, by either the twisting of the van’s metal, or the steam escaping the fractured skulls of the two dead men inside. Plastic flexicuffs dangled from one man’s wrist, duct tape residue pasted to his mouth. The other man’s body was fused to the vehicle. Both had been shot in the head. The story blew up on the morning news and rose to the top of the NYPD’s priority list. That day, police received a call about a pink-shirted gunman behaving erratically in the Bronx. A responding officer pulled the man over and discovered inside a treasure trove of police impersonation gear: a bulletproof vest, walkie talkie, duty belt, fake police ID and zip-ties, along with a loaded.40 caliber gun. As the officer cuffed him, the man declared, “Don’t arrest me, I’m one of you!” “What do you mean?” said the cop. “I’m a police officer.” The cop didn’t buy it. At the precinct, a police-impersonation detective was met with derision. “Go fuck yourself,” the suspect said. The suspect was released, but the detective opened a file on him. The detective didn’t know it then, but he just interviewed one of Six-Seven’s hitmen. They would meet again, 16 years later, in the Dominican Republic. Six-Seven was one of the baddest dudes living in one of the baddest neighborhoods during one of New York’s baddest crime eras. But his legacy extends to this past March, when the last of 20 defendants was sentenced for a series of cold-case murders and robberies tied to his organization and two affiliated gangs. Collectively, these three interconnected crews, along with a few associates, were responsible for at least 13 murders and several dozen robberies. Their payout was close to $1 million worth of stolen drugs and money, with witnesses suggesting a far higher take. During the 1990s, police impersonations in New York were at a peak, largely because the fake-cop ruse facilitated home invasions. With kilos of dope and millions of dollars hidden inside drug stash houses, the potential for high payouts spawned sophisticated robberies plotted by tipped-off criminals undeterred by violence. “There was more money in the ghetto than Midtown Manhattan,” recalls an ex-NYPD detective. Originally, the robbers would bum-rush apartments, with limited success. Then they got creative. One approach involved posing as deliverymen, perhaps with flowerboxes concealing guns. In other instances, robbers knocked on doors with beautiful women flanking them, dropping the guards of dealers inside. But police impersonation was the closest thing to a slam-dunk method. Following a flash of a badge, victims could be handcuffed in an instant. During a 17-year investigation beginning in 2000, an NYPD detective and an ATF agent rolled up the most notorious police impersonation crew in the city. After spearing the most wanted police impersonator in New York, they were led to a bigger fish, a drug dealer responsible for six murders. And that led them to a bona fide whale: Six-Seven. In 1992, a Dominican teenager named Ray Flores immigrated to the Bronx and began selling fruit, aspiring to the American dream. When his landlord visited his family’s tenement, Ray’s father ordered him to hide because only two tenants were permitted to live in the apartment. But Ray had to use the bathroom. “You gotta shit yourself, shit yourself,” his father suggested. Ray moved out and met a local crack dealer named Jimmy, who offered Ray a place to sleep. When Jimmy was jailed, he asked Ray to watch over the block. Ray did much more. He learned to cook crack in a double boiler, mixing it with rum or beer, making it more flavorful. The recipe was a boon: Ray went from selling 100 grams to more than a kilo a week. His $7,000-a-day earnings allowed him to recruit more people. The crew members boasted names like El Grande, El Actor, Rambo, and Asesino—“killer” in Spanish. To brand themselves, Ray’s mostly Dominican crew sold their product in gold-capped vials, distinguished from the red-capped vials sold by blacks, and the blue-capped vials sold by Puerto Ricans. They called themselves Solid Gold. Though he wasn’t yet 20, Ray was the most powerful person in the neighborhood. Upon his release, Jimmy challenged his one-time protégé, demanding his block back. Ray held a meeting, where it was determined that Jimmy must be killed. “I spent a lot of time putting my business together,” Ray says now. A contractor carried out the hit. Ray, who attended the funeral, was surprised by the ease of the job; everyone on the block knew what happened, but no one said anything. Afterward, killing got easier for Ray. His next target was a dealer who sold crack in gold-capped vials, which Ray considered trademark infringement. The father of Ray’s godson did that murder, killing an innocent man in the process. Next on Ray’s hitlist was an ex-con who ran the block before Jimmy. A Solid Gold member shot him in the head in broad daylight. Next up was the rival dealer of Ray’s mentor—the guy who taught him how to cook crack with beer. The target survived a fusillade of bullets unloaded by a Solid Gold gunman, but not so lucky was the 16-year-old girl in the vestibule behind him. She was shot 11 times and died. Police began raiding the neighborhood in response to the girl’s death, and Ray started losing money. One day, he was griping about his problems to Hector “Montana” Pena, the uncle of a Solid Gold member who belonged to Six-Seven’s crew. “You think you’re in the wild wild west,” Montana lectured. “You don’t shit where you eat. If you had talked to me, we could have kidnapped him, pretending to be police officers. We would have killed him and thrown him somewhere. And the block would have been nice and quiet.” (In a written exchange, Montana, who is serving a life sentence, declared his overall “innocence” but declined to respond to the individual claims in this article.) After the girl’s death, Solid Gold migrated to Manhattan’s East Village, but a local cocaine dealer named Pedro Medina didn’t appreciate another crew’s presence. Medina confronted Ray with a machete, demanding that he leave Manhattan. Medina became the next man on Ray’s hitlist. This time, Ray took Montana’s advice: He called Six-Seven. The ex-cabbie lived in a trailer in the back of his parking lot. Known to snort coke off Penthouse covers with an Uzi on his lap, the wiry 48-year-old kept his AK-47 next to the trailer door, once boasting that if a visitor opened it at night, the gun would fire automatically. His crew stashed other guns inside random cars at the lot, and stole those cars to do their jobs. To ensure that clients could call them at any
increase for the military and for immigration enforcement and massive cuts to domestic discretionary spending. While the budget was released with fanfare, the White House seemed to retreat from the talks, leaving congressional Democrats and Republicans to continue their work without much guidance from Trump. Yesterday, that changed. Mick Mulvaney, a Republican and former congressman who was one of the House members who agitated for the 2013 shutdown and is now Trump’s budget director, announced that “elections have consequences.” The consequence, it would seem, was a divisive proposal. Mulvaney suggested that if Trump didn’t get his defense spending and border wall—which, it should be noted, he promised would be paid for by Mexico—then the federal payments, known as cost-sharing reduction subsidies, or C.S.R., that pay for health insurance for millions of Americans under Obamacare had to be cut from the spending bill. The ruination of Obamacare is once again tied up with keeping the government running. The funding legislation likely can’t pass in the House without some Democratic votes, and it certainly can’t pass without Democratic votes in the Senate, where Republicans need eight Democrats to reach the sixty-vote threshold to prevent a filibuster. The two sides aren’t even close. “There’s a big spread between the bid and the ask here,” the White House official said, noting that Trump wanted thirty billion dollars for defense, several billion for more ICE agents and the border wall, as well as eighteen billion dollars in cuts to domestic spending and the ability to withhold federal money from cities that don’t coöperate with immigration officials. The big priorities for Democrats are the money for those people who need Obamacare subsidies, the protection of domestic spending, and increases for programs for opioid addiction and health care for coal miners, the last two being issues that Trump ostensibly campaigned on. These shouldn’t be a big deal, Democrats say, and they have accused the White House of throwing a grenade into negotiations in order to wrest some sort of political victory in the first hundred days. “For weeks, the House and Senate Democrats and Republicans have been working well together,” a Democratic aide said. “Then, all of a sudden, the White House is looking at next week and they have nothing to show for the first one hundred days, and they either want a health-care bill to pass next week, which seems like a heavy lift, or to get more on immigration from this process. Even Republicans don’t want this fight, and they don’t want a shutdown on Day One Hundred of the Trump Administration.” The White House, which is trying to force another vote on an Obamacare repeal, seems desperate to either win some of Trump’s priorities in a deal next week, or force a government shutdown that it can blame on Democrats. That might energize Trump’s supporters, who don’t have much to celebrate yet. But it’s not just the Democrats who oppose several Trump priorities. Congressional Republicans, who are generally united in support for the increase in defense spending, are divided on the border wall, which is not popular among border-state Republicans, and the deep domestic-spending cuts. So far, it does not look like a bridgeable gap. “This is going to be high-stakes poker,” the White House official said. When I asked if a shutdown was likely, the official paused for several seconds. “I don’t know,” the official said. The official added, “I just want my wall and my ICE agents.”"Insect music" redirects here. For other uses, see Insects in music Zoomusicology is a field of musicology and zoology or more specifically, zoosemiotics. Zoomusicology is the study of the music of animals, or rather the musical aspects of sound or communication produced and received by animals.[1] Zoomusicology is a separate field from ethnomusicology, the study of human music. Human interaction [ edit ] Snowden and Teie created species-specific music and tested it on cotton-top tamarins, Saguinus oedipus at the University of Wisconsin.[2] The results of this study, indicated that species-specific music was the most effective music to elicit a response.[2] There have also been cases where composers have performed with animals for example, David Rothenberg, is a musician who has created music with humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae.[3] Both of these examples are discussed in greater detail below. Composers have evoked or imitated animal sounds in compositions including Jean-Philippe Rameau's The Hen (1728), Camille Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals (1886), Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue of the Birds (1956–58) and Pauline Oliveros's El Relicario de los Animales (1977).[4] Other examples include Alan Hovhaness's And God Created Great Whales (1970), George Crumb's Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) (1971) and Gabriel Pareyon's Invention over the song of the Vireo atriccapillus (1999) and Kha Pijpichtli Kuikatl (2003). The Indian zoomusicologist, A. J. Mithra has composed music using bird, animal and frog sounds since 2008.[5] Functions and effects of music on animals [ edit ] Mammals [ edit ] Saguinus oedipus (Linnaeus, 1758) Snowden and Teie performed an experiment on Cotton-top tamarins, Saguinus oedipus, to determine if music would lead to behavioural changes, and whether music made by other species would elicit similar behavioural responses as the music of one's own species.[6] This experiment involved two separate categories of music - one was affiliation-based, the other was fear/threat-based music. Within the two categories, the experimenter varied whether the music was produced by humans or tamarins.[6] During the experiment, a baseline behaviour measurement was established, proceeded by the experimental condition, which was a piece of music that was played for 30 seconds. Following this, behaviour was analyzed for a total of 5 minutes. This analysis was made by an observer who was unaware of the true hypothesis of the experiment, and simply noted different behaviours which they had witnessed.[6] The experimenters found that the Tamarins altered their behaviour specifically when listening to Tamarin music. For example, when music from the affiliation condition was played, the behavioural response of the tamarins involved a decrease in overall movement and an increase in both social and foraging behaviour.[6] This contrasted the behaviour observed when the fear/threat based music was played. During this condition, the Tamarins were more likely to move around and show anxiety-based behaviour, as well as, an increase in social behaviour similar to that seen in the affiliation condition. It should also be noted that while the Tamarins did not show behavioural changes to human music as clearly as they did to their species-specific music, there was some behavioural change.[6] The Tamarins showed decreased movement when listening to human fear/threat based music and a decrease in anxious behaviour when listening to human affiliation music. This experiment, demonstrates that music is capable of eliciting changes in the behaviour of animals, most especially when the music is species-specific. Baleine à bosse et son baleineau 2 Humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae, are capable of the production of complex songs.[7] These songs are amongst some of the longest measured in animals. Only male humpback whales perform these vocalizations; it was initially hypothesized that these songs may be a part of the sexual selection process. This point however, is unclear. It has been found that males only began their song after joining a group where pairs of mother and calf were present.[8] Although the reason behind this behaviour is uncertain, some have hypothesized that the songs produced by male humpback whales may be a part of escorting, or accompanying females. It should also be noted that singing can be a costly behaviour, because it can lead to more attention being drawn. In the humpback whales’ situation, their singing can attract other competing males.[8] Yet, the singing behaviour continues and therefore, it is assumed that the songs are critical to the courtship behaviour of the humpback whales. Birds [ edit ] Song Sparrow Perhaps the most well-known form of music found in non-human animals is birdsong.[9] Birdsong is different from normal calls. For example, a call will usually simply function to communicate a direct message.[9] For instance, a bird call could be used to direct attention that a predator is near. Meanwhile, a song contains more repetition and usually will have distinct structure to it, with a specific beginning, middle, and end.[9] In many species of songbirds, songs seem to be used both as a way to attract potential mates, as well as to mark and defend one's territory. It has been observed that young songbirds acquire their ability to produce song from imitation of adult birds.[9] Interestingly enough, there seems to be a critical period for song learning. In one experiment, they compared birds raised in isolation, (this involved isolation from other birds as well as the vocalizations of other birds), with those raised in a colony, without these forms of isolation.[9] Using an fMRI scan and the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) as a measurement of brain activity, it was found that birds raised in the isolation condition did not appear to show a preference between their own songs and a repetitive song. Meanwhile, colony-raised birds showed a stronger reaction to their own song being played back.[9] Insects [ edit ] Imago O furnacalis One potential barrier in the study of zoomusicology is that there are some forms of music produced by various animals which humans are incapable of hearing.[10] This music is very low in amplitude and is known as quiet song, whisper communication, or soft song.[10] This low amplitude music has been shown in birds, as well as insects and is linked to behaviour. Moth species have been shown to have developed the ability to communicate using ultrasonic sounds, and this ability has transferred over to their production of soft songs. In the Asian corn borer moth, Ostrinia furnacalis, males produce an ultrasonic soft song to initiate courtship behaviour.[10] The song that the male produces is so quiet that the female must be within a range of three centimeters in order to hear the song. In hearing the song, the female stays in one place and is completely still, this allows the male to initiate mating behaviour.[10] The reason that the female remains still, is because this song sounds very similar to sounds that a bat would produce. The female therefore remains still in order to avoid potential predation. There is of course another added benefit to this soft song produced by the male Asian corn borer moth, and that is that the song is so quiet that it decreases the males’ predation risk.[10] Although these soft songs are far less well known to the general public, they are an important aspect of zoomusicology and the further understanding of animal behaviour. Auditory enrichment and therapeutic effects of music on animals [ edit ] Cows [ edit ] In a study at the University of Leicester, Liam MacKenzie and Adrian North found that playing music for dairy cows had an effect on the amount of milk that they produced.[11] Over a nine-week period, dairy cows were exposed to fast (> 120 BPM), slow (< 100 BPM), and no music. Music was played for the cows 12 hours a day from 5 AM to 5 PM.[11] The study found that cows exposed to slow music, like REM's 'Everybody Hurts' or Beethoven's 'Pastoral Symphony,' produced 3% more milk than cows that were exposed to fast music, like Pumping on your Stereo by Supergrass and 'Size of a Cow' by Wonderstuff.[11] Bovine milk production has long been thought to be affected by exposure to music. Some farmers already expose their cows to music to aid in milk production.[11][12] Dogs [ edit ] Decreased stress levels have been observed in kennelled dogs that were exposed to Classical music, but rapid habituation was also observed.[13] In a 2017 follow up study, kennelled dogs were exposed to five different genres of music including soft-rock, motown, pop, reggae, and classical in order to determine whether or not increased variety of music could reduce habituation.[13] The study found the Heart Rate Variability, which indicates a decreased stress level, was significantly higher when the dogs were played Reggae and Soft Rock, but the other three genres had a similar but less pronounced effect. In addition, the dogs were much more likely to lie down rather than stand while the music was being played.[13] The study suggested that the increased variety of music decreased habituation that was present when playing exclusively classical music, though the dogs responded best when exposed to Reggae and Soft Rock.[13] Zoomusicologists [ edit ] Researchers in a wide range of fields including music, semiotics, philosophy and biology conduct zoomusicology research. This is due to the fact that the field of zoomusicology is so broad and reaches many disciplines. Musician and zoomusicologist Hollis Taylor has conducted an extensive study of the Pied Butcherbird, Cracticus nigrogularis over the past 15 years, including interdisciplinary research with philosophers and scientists.[14] Clarinetist, and philosopher David Rothenberg plays music with animals, and has written books on the relationship between bird, insect, and whale song and human music.[3] Composer Emily Doolittle has written numerous pieces based on animal songs, and has published interdisciplinary music-science research on the hermit thrush[15] and the musician wren.[16] Susan Belanger has also contributed to the field of zoomusicology, with her work on soft song in the Asian corn borer moth, Ostrinia furnacalis and its relationship to the initiation of mating behaviour.[10] Researcher Patricia Gray has examined the music that can be seen in whales and songbirds.[17] This list is by no means all encompassing, but simply lists some notable members of the zoomusicology research community. See also [ edit ] References [ edit ]Changing phone platforms is easier than ever before, and if you’re moving from an Android phone to an iPhone, you’ll find that Apple has made this process incredibly simple with the help of a free migration tool. Appropriately called “Move to iOS”, the utility is easy to use and migrates all contacts, photos, calendars, notes, and much more, transferring everything from the Android phone to the new iPhone. The best time to migrate everything from an Android to an iPhone is when the iPhone is being setup as new, if you’ve already set it up you can easily reset it to factory settings and start over, making the transfer process simple. We’re going to work under the assumption that the iPhone is new and being setup as new. How to Migrate Everything on Android to iPhone with “Move to iOS” Begin the new iPhone setup as usual, when you get to the “Apps & Data” screen, tap on “Move Data from Android” Now on the Android, download the “Move to iOS” app from the Google Play Store here and launch the app when finished Tap through the agreements and continue through Move to iOS on the Android app, in a moment an option for verifying the transfer will appear with a code Back on the iPhone at the Move from Android screen, wait for the confirmation code to arrive and enter this code as seen onto the Android phone Choose the items, content, contacts, photos, and other details you want brought from Android over to the iPhone, once the transfer process starts let the Android and iPhone sit still for a while as the migration completes – this process can take a while depending on how much stuff you have and how fast the connection is Once finished, tap on “Done” and continue setting up the iPhone as usual When the process has completed you should double-check the iPhone Photos app, Contacts, and other places to make sure everything you wanted to copy over has migrated. Move to iOS is quite reliable and works well, so everything should be in order. If you have issues, you can always transfer contacts from Android to the iPhone manually as well with these instructions, and you can copy pictures from an Android to a Mac yourself as well, which can then be copied to the iPhone or just maintained on the computer. Once you have finished migrating everything from the Android to the iPhone, confirmed everything is in order and that you have all your stuff, you’ll probably want to reset the Android to factory settings so that you can sell it or give it to a new owner. And finally, enjoy the new iPhone! Start exploring and have fun. You can get started by learning tons of iPhone tips and tricks here.MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Sunday published its proposal for a new Euro-Atlantic security treaty that would restrict its ability to use military force unilaterally if the United States and its European allies agreed to do the same. Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev smiles during meeting in Minsk, November 27, 2009. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko President Dmitry Medvedev has said the European Security Treaty is needed to replace Cold War-era institutions like NATO that are ill-suited to defusing tensions in a multipolar world, but his proposals have received a muted reception in the West. Medvedev has invited proposals from Western countries on how to build a new security treaty. The draft, which would “finally do away with the legacy of the Cold War,” has been sent to all relevant leaders, the Kremlin said in a statement. The treaty is essentially “a legal obligation under which no state or international organization in the Euro-Atlantic area can increase its security at the expense of the security of another state or organization,” the statement said. It would be open to “all states of the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian space from Vancouver to Vladivostok,” as well as members of NATO, the European Union and groupings of former Soviet countries. The document, published on the Kremlin web site (here), reaffirms the role of the United Nations Security Council, in which Russia has a veto, as the ultimate arbiter of international conflict. It would place restrictions on the use of force by signatories and create a new mechanism for conflict resolution. Any security measure taken by a signatory country would have to pay “due regard to the security interests of all other parties.” START OF DISCUSSION Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, told Reuters: “It is hard to imagine anyone agreeing to it in its current form. The Kremlin more likely sees it as an opening point for a broader discussion.” “Russia is offering the possibility that Moscow would take obligations not to act unilaterally toward the states of the former Soviet Union and is asking the same from the West.” Russia has objected to U.S. plans to place elements of a missile defense shield in countries near its border and is opposed to the presence of NATO bases in former Soviet republics which it considers its sphere of influence. Lukyanov said Western powers would be particularly wary of Article 7 which says “every party shall be entitled to consider an armed attack against any other party an armed attack against itself.” This could give Russia justification to use force if one of its allies was attacked, and could require other signatories to help Moscow in a future conflict with, for example, Iran or China, he said. A clause that appears targeted at NATO operations not sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council, would require signatories to make sure that any military alliances they are members of do not violate the principles of the U.N. charter. It would also prohibit signatory countries from allowing third parties to use their territory in a way “affecting significantly the security of any other party” to the treaty.Merkley Announces $36 Million In Housing Funds for State of Oregon Portland, OR. -- Today, Oregon's Senator Jeff Merkley announced that Oregon would receive over $36 million from the U.S. Department of Treasury to assist homeowners struggling to avoid foreclosure. Today’s announcement from the Treasury Department includes an opportunity for the state of Oregon to apply for an additional $110 million to address housing needs in the state. Senator Merkley has been instrumental in advocating for additional funding to address the foreclosure crisis that has rocked Oregon since the Great Recession and called on the Treasury Department to release this funding. “Homeownership is the greatest wealth-building tool the middle class has ever known, but too many Oregonians are still struggling with underwater mortgages and high interest rates and are on the brink of foreclosure,” said Merkley. “This funding will help many Oregonians stay in their homes and get back on track to the American Dream.” The announcement today from the Treasury Department comes from their authority to obligate up to $2 billion in additional Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds to the Hardest Hit Fund (HHF) program. The additional investment in HHF will enable participating states to continue assisting struggling homeowners and stabilizing neighborhoods in many of the nation’s hardest hit communities. The fifth round of HHF funding will be allocated among participating states in two phases of $1 billion each. The first phase will allocate $1 billion using a formula based on state population and the state’s utilization of their HHF allocation to date. The second phase will utilize an application process open to all participating states. This phase will allow Treasury to focus additional resources on states that have significant ongoing foreclosure prevention and neighborhood stabilization needs, a proven track record in utilizing funds, and successful program models to address those needs. Senator Merkley worked closely with the Oregon Housing and Community Services to administer the initial HHF and helped design the Loan Refinancing Assistance Pilot Program (LRAPP) that has used HHF in Oregon since 2012. This program has helped hundreds of Oregonians avoid foreclosure through an innovative strategy in which their home is purchased through a short sale and resold to them at its current value. This additional funding announced today will be used to ensure the LRAPP program continues, as well as targeting new programs aimed at helping Oregonians who are struggling to stay in their homes. The HHF was created in 2010 to provide $7.6 billion in targeted aid to 18 states and the District of Columbia deemed hardest hit by the economic and housing market downturn. The program was designed to leverage the expertise of state and local partners by funding locally-tailored foreclosure prevention and neighborhood stabilization solutions.Aksys has announced they will release the first official English localization of a Langrisser game in over 25 years with Langrisser Re:Incarnation Tensei! Langrisser? Aksys? Why Should I Care? If you are wondering why we’re reporting on this, it’s because the Langrisser series has a long history with Sega fans. The first game was released in North America by Treco on April 25th, 1991 as Warsong. Later installments in the Langrisser series followed on the Mega Drive, Saturn and Dreamcast in Japan; but they were never brought over to the West, sadly. Fan translations exist for many of these games, thankfully! Enter Langrisser Re:Incarnation Tensei Langrisser Re:Incarnation Tensei (ラングリッサーリインカーネーション -転生- in Japan) is the first new entry in the series in 15 years. Noriyuki Iwadare, who wrote music for most of the games in the series as well as Lunar and Grandia games, returns as composer. Satoshi Urushihara did not return for this entry as character designer. ラングリッサーリインカーネーション-転生- ゲーム紹介PV Watch this video on YouTube Langrisser Re:Incarnation Tensei Japanese trailer Aksys writes of the game on their blog: Wield the mighty sword Langrisser as you journey through a massive world at war. Define the path before you by lending your talents to one of three factions and secure your place as your faction’s greatest hero by executing strategic supremacy over your enemies. Key Features The Hero’s Path Branching story paths will present themselves during battle based on the choices you make. Will your heroic deeds blaze a righteous path to glory or will your villainous treachery lead you down the road to ruin? The balance of the fates hangs heavy as your choices define the course of battle! Who Will You Fight For? 3 unique factions desperately need your command skills! Will you lead the armies of light to victory in the name of your Goddess? Will you side with the enigmatic forces of darkness and embrace chaos or will you take the reins of an ancient imperial juggernaut? Forge your legendary command skills in the fires of war! Your Cunning Will Be Tested 100+ hours of gameplay ensure your war chest will never run low! Choose mercenaries from the guild, shop for stronger gear and gather tide turning items in your unending quest for tactical supremacy! An epic campaign, divergent battle routes and bonus secrets will push your strategic skills to the limit! Unfortunately, the Japanese version game has not received many good reviews with a lot of fans feeling disappointed in various aspects. That said, it’s possible Aksys might make some adjustments beyond the script prior to it’s release here. Only time will tell. Hell, we never thought we’d see a Langrisser game come stateside again! Aksys is aiming for a Spring 2016 release in North America on the Nintendo 3DS. The game’s official website is here. If you can’t wait the handful of months, you can order the Japanese game on Amazon and Play-Asia even has the limited edition still in stock. If you want to learn more about the Langrisser series, then check out Hardcore Gaming 101’s page or Langrisser Wiki.A bill that eliminates the 48-hour waiting period for handguns purchases is now moving to the full Senate, the last step before landing in Gov. Scott Walker’s desk. The bill, which would eliminate the 48-hour waiting period between getting a background check and purchasing a handgun, passed through a Senate committee last week and is now headed to the full chamber. The Assembly approved the bill Tuesday. The bill would instead allow dealers to give the handgun to the person buying it right after the state’s Department of Justice says the person is allowed to buy a handgun, according to a Legislative Reference Bureau analysis. Walker voiced some support for the bill in a recent interview with the National Rifle Association’s news network, the Wisconsin State Journal reported. In the interview, Walker noted Wisconsin has been “the leader when it comes to freedom” since he became governor. “We’ve gone big and bold with a lot of issues,” Walker said. “That’s one of those where with new technology, we want to make sure the bad guys don’t get firearms, and the good guys do.” Current law mandates a 48-hour waiting period before a person can buy a handgun, giving the state’s Justice Department enough time to run background checks on the individual. But given today’s technology, that waiting period is outdated, according to Jeff Nass, the legislative affairs liaison for Wisconsin’s National Rifle Association chapter, which supports the bill. Nass said the past system consisted of indexed charts, and officers were required to call counties to perform these checks, Nass said. Today, he said, the entire system is online, making the waiting period an outdated procedure that’s no longer viable. “Currently, there is a 48-hour wait to obtain a pistol, but you can take a rifle or shot gun home immediately if you pass the background check,” Nass said. Rep. Melissa Sargent, D-Madison, however, said the 48-hour waiting period is an essential cooling off period that maintains a more checked and secure system. The background checks are necessary to close all loopholes, Sargent said. “The reason we have a 48-hour waiting period is to protect our individual freedom and security as members of society,” Sargent said. The waiting period does not exist in 42 states, Nass said. He said some individuals have to travel long distances to obtain a gun and may have to do two trips because of the waiting period, which can be costly. Moreover, the waiting period prevents people who wish to protect themselves from acquiring a gun quickly, Nass said. He said domestic violence victims are an example of such individuals, and the bill might make it easier for them to obtain handguns. “The 48-hour wait hurts potential victims,” Nass said. Sargent said she believes each individual has the constitutional right to own firearms and to feel protected, but the fact that an individual would be in a situation where he or she needs to own a firearm immediately draws suspicion, Sargent said. She said she would like to institute a 48-hour waiting period for all firearms, not just handguns, to ensure safety at the highest degree and is opposing the bill. “Regardless if you’re a student, a mom or a person working three jobs, this bill affects everybody,” Sargent said.America is always on the move. The data related to relocations in the U.S. shows that 70% of all moves are related to domestic long distance moves, and 30% are related to auto transport. And all of these residents who are relocating need a reputable long distance moving company to help plan and implement a successful relocation. That’s why our partners from Global Van Lines share with us some interesting and useful insights. Who is Moving Where? What does the data from the last U.S. Census suggest about moving trends? A look at the population projections show that the South and West continue to attract new residents. In addition, smaller cities with a lower cost of living than many of the larger metropolitan regions are proving to be a draw, even in states that may otherwise be losing population overall, such as Minnesota, Michigan, and Ohio. Which Cities are Gaining Residents? Many Millennials are leaving cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago for places with a good reputation for livability, places with good schools, walkability ratings, parks, and other amenities. Who are the big winners? The state of Texas gained population in 2015 with an addition of 490,000 residents, and the trend is expected to be the same as 2016 winds down. Four metro areas added 412,000 residents in the 12 months between July 2014 and July 2015. Houston added 159,000, and Dallas-Fort Worth added 145,00 residents. Considering that Miami has a population of 430,000, Texas essentially added another entire city of people. Overall, the country’s 381 metropolitan regions have approximately 275 million residents, and 285 of those regions sustained growth. Growth at the County Level Net growth at the county level is also interesting. Population changes result from a variety of ways: births, deaths, and relocations. So, which counties gained or lost in the population game? The fastest growing counties were primarily in the South and West, including Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, and Houston. However, El Paso, Texas lost residents. While it may seem as if the entire United States is packing up and moving to Florida or Texas, other states have gained residents as well. Here’s the full list and net gains in residents: Texas: 106,216 Florida: 54,524 Colorado: 18,819 Washington: 16,438 South Carolina: 13,613 North Carolina: 12,493 Arizona: 11,961 Oregon: 11,250 Nevada: 9,193 Tennessee: 8,248 Based on the information, it seems that more people are moving for a better way of life, although moving for a job continues to rank high as well. Don’t hesitate and check how much cost to ship a car with Montway Auto Transport Read what our customers say about their experience with Montway at Montway Auto Transport reviews.Patrick Roy and Joe Sakic will hold a news conference Thursday at the Pepsi Center, ostensibly to catch up fans on what has been going on this offseason and plans for moving forward. A prime topic could be the seemingly frosty relationship, again, between the team and top left wing Ryan O’Reilly. On Sunday, the Avalanche filed for salary arbitration against O’Reilly, 23, a forward who led the team in goals with 28 and the NHL in takeaways with 82 this past season. The Avs and O’Reilly’s agency, Newport Sports, can keep negotiating toward a new contract, but if one isn’t reached by July 15, they will have a hearing scheduled with one of eight NHL-NHL Players’ Association designated arbitrators. Why did the Avs file for arbitration against one of their best players? Essentially because of a difference in his perceived current value. While O’Reilly made a salary of $6.5 million in 2013-14, his cap hit was $5 million. The Avs would like to use the $5 million number as a starting point in negotiations, but Newport Sports seems more interested in starting with the $6.5 million figure. Under arbitration rules, O’Reilly can’t be awarded anything less than 85 percent of his last base salary, which would guarantee him a minimum salary of $5.525 million for 2014-15. If the case goes to arbitration, which is becoming rarer in the NHL these days, O’Reilly can choose from one- or two-year contracts from the arbitrator’s decision. O’Reilly can become an unrestricted free agent after two more seasons, but until then, the Avs can keep him if they choose, and at possibly a lower salary than they paid this season. The Avs may save a few bucks in paying O’Reilly, but their decision to file for arbitration has seemingly thrown a new chill on their relationship. “We had some warning that the ‘arb’ might be taken advantage of. It’s within the CBA. Ryan understands that. He also understands that it’s unique, that no player has been arbed for a pay cut that is of his stature,” Newport Sports agent Pat Morris told Canada’s Sportsnet. “Ryan is unrestricted in two years, and under the model now, given that Colorado has arbed him, short-term looks like what the future is for Ryan going forward, possibly year to year or for the next two years. … Some people might look a little sideways that a team has done that to a special player, but they certainly have the business right to do that and Ryan is mature, but there’s a history a little bit on the previous contract, and Ryan is a stubborn young man.” O’Reilly’s last contract of $10 million over two years was originally offered to him by the Calgary Flames in early 2013. The Avs matched the offer, which was much higher than they wanted to pay and led to an impasse that saw O’Reilly miss the first half of the lockout-shortened season.Your brain can fix bugs while you sleep. Santhosh Sundar Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 18, 2016 Sometimes you spend hours or if not the entire day trying to find a solution that can fix a bug in your code, but might end up in causing a regression or not finding any solution at all. The same applies if you are trying to refactor your code or maybe add new features that might not work well with your existing approach. Needless to say, that is extremely unproductive. This doesn’t mean you are not capable of finding a solution, but would mean that you lack enough sleep. According to National Center for Biotechnology¹, sleep deprivation impairs attention and working memory and it also affects other functions, such as long-term memory and decision-making. This impacts your ability to solve problems. Your brain needs rest. At times, going to bed and waking up with fresh mind in the morning can do miracles in getting those daunting bugs fixed. Don’t burn out yourself, take enough breaks, get enough sleep and exercise every morning. You are a human being, you get exhausted, your brain seizes to function at it’s maximum potential when you are drained out. Next time you find yourself burning the midnight oil with no sign of positive outcome, just hit the bed!Business urges calm in mine visa debate Updated Big business is urging Labor MPs not to be swayed by emotional debate about the use of foreign workers on mining magnate Gina Rinehart's Roy Hill iron ore project in Western Australia. In an open letter, the Business Council of Australia (BCA) has told Labor's Caucus that there are already enough rules in place to ensure Australian workers are protected, including a consultation process with unions and social inclusion targets. Last week, it was announced that Ms Rinehart had reached an enterprise migration agreement (EMA) that would let her sponsor 1,700 overseas workers on 457 visas for the Roy Hill project in the Pilbara. Caucus is expected to examine placing tougher conditions on EMAs today. But BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott says there is already enough red tape around business activity in Australia. "This was a policy they announced in the 2011 budget and we want them to stick to it," Ms Westacott said. "And secondly, we want them to avoid the temptation to add lots of process to this, thereby adding red tape and effectively defeating the purpose of it." Ms Westacott says business must be consulted if Caucus does decide to change the law. And she warns that jobs are at risk if mining projects are unable to proceed due to a shortage of labour. "Many Australians do not want to go to these remote locations," she said. "We're talking about needing to top up the Australian labour force, particularly during these construction phases. "Once those construction phases are ended then the jobs fall back to Australians to operate these major projects, so we've got to remember that these projects will create jobs for Australians. And it's always everyone's preference to employ Australians and to train Australians." Ms Westacott also sounded a note of caution on the emotional tone of the debate surrounding the visa agreement. "It has become very emotional, and it's very disturbing to see the play on the word 'foreign' all the time, which obviously is intended to touch those emotional chords," she said. Topics: business-economics-and-finance, mining-industry, work, immigration, australia First postedMichelle Obama insisted that Hillary Clinton was her "friend" at the pair’s first joint rally on the campaign trail, addressing speculation that the Clintons and Obamas did not get on well. Speaking in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Ms Obama said: "People wonder if Hillary Clinton is my friend. Yes, she is my friend." "[Hillary and Bill Clinton] they have been supportive from the very day my husband took the oath of office," she added. 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. Her speech, and her first joint rally with Ms Clinton, came more than three months after her husband first stumped for the Democrat, saying he was "ready to pass the baton". Ms Obama also addressed criticisms that she has been active on the campaign trail. She responded: "Well, that’s true. But this is
and the Arab monarchies on a “southern front,” and another against the Kurds, on a “northern front.” Even as US-directed mopping-up operations against ISIS continue, Iran is executing its two follow-on strategies, most visibly to the north against the Kurds, but perhaps even more significantly in the long term to the south. There, Iran is continuing the long struggle for hegemony within Islam and in the broader Middle East, Shia against Sunni, Persian against Arab. Israel is just unlucky enough to be in the middle, not to mention being a prime target for Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. Russia is also benefitting from America’s Middle East myopia. Moscow built from scratch a new air base at Latakia in Syria and increased its overall regional influence to levels not seen since Egypt’s Anwar Sadat expelled Soviet advisers in the 1970s. Russia’s next objectives are not yet clear, but the 180-degree reversal of more than four decades of successful US efforts to keep Russia from meddling in the Middle East is stunning and dangerous. President Trump must not allow bureaucratic inertia to block his efforts against Iran’s threat. Washington should recognize Kurdish independence and urgently supply training and equipment, particularly armor and artillery which the Kurds need to withstand the US equipment previously supplied to Baghdad’s forces. But broader leadership is also required. Rapidly increased pressure against Iran’s role as the world’s central banker of international terrorism, stressed in Trump’s October 13 speech, cannot come fast enough. Abrogating Obama’s Iran nuclear deal cannot be delayed further. Moreover, US efforts to pressure Iran are undercut if the Europeans, through trade and investment, are propping up the ayatollahs. The administration should not allow the Europeans a free ride, but should instead pressure them to reduce their business dealings with the mullahs. If not, Tehran will rightly conclude the United States is really not serious about confronting their threat to us and our allies. That is the legacy of the Obama administration. It should not also be the legacy of the Trump administration. John R. Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) served as US ambassador to the United Nations and as undersecretary for arms control and international security affairs at the Department of State under President George W. Bush. He is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. This article was originally published in The Hill.The Cuban Literacy Campaign (Spanish: Campaña Nacional de Alfabetización en Cuba) was a year-long effort to abolish illiteracy in Cuba after the Cuban Revolution.[1] It began on January 1 and ended on December 22, 1961, becoming the world's most ambitious and organized literacy campaign.[2][3] Before 1959 the official literacy rate for Cuba was between 60% and 76%, largely because of lack of education access in rural areas and a lack of instructors.[4] As a result, the Cuban government of Fidel Castro at Che Guevara's behest dubbed 1961 the "year of education" and sent "literacy brigades" out into the countryside to construct schools, train new educators, and teach the predominantly illiterate guajiros (peasants) to read and write. The campaign was "a remarkable success." By its completion, 707,212 adults were taught to read and write, raising the national literacy rate to 96%.[4] In 2011, producer and director Catherine Murphy released the 33-minute documentary Maestra about the Cuban Literacy Campaign. The film includes interviews with volunteers who taught during the campaign and archival footage from 1961. Background [ edit ] The dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by an armed guerrilla movement known as the 26th of July Movement (Movimiento 26 de Julio) on January 1, 1959.[5] The new revolutionary government, led by Fidel Castro, immediately began a series of social and economic reforms. Among these were agrarian reform, health care reform, and education reform, all of which dramatically improved the quality of life among the lowest sectors of Cuban society.[6] During the turmoil of the first several years of the revolution, the flight of many skilled workers caused a “brain drain.” This loss of human capital sparked a renovation of the Cuban education system to accommodate the instruction of new workers, who would take the place of those who had emigrated from the country.[7] In addition to the renewal of Cuba’s infrastructure, there were strong ideological reasons for education reform. In pre-Revolutionary Cuba, there was a dichotomy between urban citizens and rural citizens (who were often agricultural workers). The Cuban Revolution was driven by the need for equality, particularly among these classes. Before the campaign, the rate of illiteracy among city dwellers was 11%, compared to 41.7% in the countryside.[8] The Literacy Campaign was designed to force contact between sectors of society that would not usually interact. As Fidel Castro put it in 1961 while addressing literacy teachers, “You will teach, and you will learn.”[6] Volunteers from the city were often ignorant of the poor conditions of rural citizens until their experiences during this campaign. Besides literacy, the campaign aimed to create a collective identity of “unity, [an] attitude of combat, courage, intelligence, and a sense of history.” Politicized educational materials were used to further these ideals.[9] The effort was labeled a movement of “the people” and gave citizens a common goal, increasing solidarity.[10] Organization [ edit ] It is estimated that 1,000,000 Cubans were directly involved (as teachers or students) in the Literacy Campaign.[11] There were four categories of workers: “Conrado Benitez” Brigade (Conrado Benitez Brigadistas)—100,000 young volunteers (ages 10–19) who left school to live and work with students in the countryside. The number of students leaving schools to volunteer was so great that an alternative education was put in place for 8 months of the 1961 school year. Popular Alphabetizers (Alfabetizadores populares)—Adults who volunteered to teach in cities or towns. It is documented that 13,000 factory workers held classes for their illiterate co-workers after hours. This group includes the individuals who taught friends, neighbors, or family members out of their homes. “Fatherland or Death” Brigade (Patria o Muerte Brigadistas)—A group of 15,000 adult workers who were paid to teach in remote rural locations through an arrangement that their co-workers would fill in for them, so that the workforce remained strong. Schoolteacher Brigades—A group of 15,000 professional teachers who oversaw the technical and organizational aspects of the campaign. As 1961 progressed, their involvement grew to the extent that most teachers participated full-time for a majority of the campaign. The "Fatherland or Death" brigade, along with the Schoolteacher brigade, is sometimes simply referred to as the Workers Brigade (Brigadistas Obreros).[1][7][12][13] The government provided teaching supplies to volunteers. Workers who traveled to rural locations to teach received a standard grey uniform, a warm blanket, a hammock, two textbooks — We Shall Read and We Shall Conquer — and a gas-powered lantern, so that lessons could be given at night after work ended.[3][14] Challenges [ edit ] Hundreds of thousands of alfabetizadores marched euphorically to the Plaza de la Revolucion on December 22nd 1961, carrying giant pencils, chanting, "Fidel Fidel tell us what else we can do". "Study, study, study!" came the reply.[3] Supporters of the revolution who were too young or otherwise unable to participate in the downfall of Fulgencio Batista saw the campaign as an opportunity to contribute to the success of the new government and hoped to instill a revolutionary consciousness in their students.[7] Many of the instructional texts used during the Literacy Campaign focused on the history of the Revolution and had strong political messages, which made the movement a target of opposition.[9] Counter-revolutionaries used violent acts of terrorism to destabilize Cuba and create an atmosphere of fear. Several acts were committed on public property, notably the bombing of the country’s largest department store, El Encanto, on April 13, 1961. That year, teachers, students, and peasants were tortured and murdered to terrorize the farming community and reduce support for the literacy campaign.[15] Young teachers were shot, lynched, and stabbed by militants.[16] There are numerous accusations that these militants were backed by the United States Government.[17] Results [ edit ] "Before 1959 it was the countryside versus the city. The literacy campaign united the country because, for the first time, people from the city understood how hard life was for people before the revolution, that they survived on their own, and that as people they had much in common. This was very important for the new government." Luisa Yara Campos, Cuban literacy museum director [3] Many of the Literacy Campaign’s volunteers went on to pursue teaching careers, and the rate of teachers is now 11 times higher than it was before the revolution.[18] Before the revolutionary government nationalized schools, private institutions often excluded large segments of society; wealthy Cubans often received exemplary instruction in private schools, while children of the working class received low-quality education or did not attend school at all.[7] Education became accessible to a much larger segment of the population after 1959. The percentage of children enrolled in school in Cuba (ages 6–12) increased dramatically over the years: It is estimated that 268,000 Cubans worked to eliminate illiteracy during the Year of Education, and around 707,000 Cubans became literate by December 22, 1961.[19] By 1962, the country’s literacy rate was 96%, one of the highest in the world.[12] Cuban literacy educators trained during the campaign went on to assist in literacy campaigns in 15 other countries, for which a Cuban organization was awarded the King Sejong Literacy Prize by UNESCO.[20] Additionally, over the past 50 years, thousands of Cuban literacy teachers have volunteered in countries such as Haiti, Nicaragua and Mozambique.[3] Museum [ edit ] The thank-you letters to Fidel Castro, used by UNESCO to evaluate the success of the campaign in 1964, are kept with photographs and details of all 100,000 volunteers in a museum in La Ciudad Libertad (City of Liberty), which is in Fulgencio Batista's vast former headquarters in the western suburbs of Havana.[3] Notes [ edit ] References [ edit ] Kellner, Douglas (1989). Ernesto "Che" Guevara (World Leaders Past & Present). Chelsea House Publishers (Library Binding edition). ISBN 978-1-55546-835-4.Codi Wilson, CTV Toronto The TTC is rolling out several new express bus routes across the city. As part of previously promised transit improvements, Mayor John Tory announced Thursday that several new express bus routes are now running. Speaking to reporters at Kipling Station Thursday, the mayor said the new routes are part of his administration’s efforts to expand transit across the city. The new express buses are part of the $95 million public transit investment city council made in 2015. The routes with new or enhanced regular-fare express service include: • 24E Victoria Park Express (Victoria Park Station to Steeles Avenue) • 185 Don Mills Rocket (Pape Station to Steeles Avenue) • 186 Wilson Rocket (York Mills Station to Humber College) • 188 Kipling South Rocket (Kipling Station to Lake Shore Boulevard) • 199B Finch Rocket (York University to Scarborough Centre Station via Finch Station) • 199C Finch Rocket (Finch Station to Morningside Heights)CLOSE The Back Door Tavern reopens in Knoxville on Friday, March 10, 2017. Brianna Paciorka/News Sentinel Buy Photo The Back Door Tavern held its grand re-opening on Friday, March 10, 2017. (Photo: BRIANNA PACIORKA/NEWS SENTINEL)Buy Photo The Back Door Tavern's Facebook page has been revamped and with it an announcement that Friday, March 10, will be the grand reopening of the popular Bearden tavern, 4951 Kingston Pike. The bar had been open for more than 30 years before owner Barry Cook announced that Feb. 22 would be the final evening of operation. Longtime fans flocked to the tavern to mourn its closing and came back on Feb. 25 for Cook's "Drink Me Dry" party and auction. Everything from wall art, University of Tennessee memorabilia, chairs and tables were sold. On March 4, a notice was posted on The Backdoor Tavern's website that said a patron's meeting would be held at the establishment in hopes of reopening the business. Steve Polte, who helped organize the reopening, said approximately 60 people attended. He had already created a business plan, which he presented to the gathering. "Part of the plan was that we needed a significant amount of money to make improvements to the bar. Within two hours, we had raised the money and probably could have doubled it," he said. He didn't want to disclose the amount raised but said it was "a crazy number." Barry Cook will continue to own the business. Cleve May will be the bar manager and Polte will oversee the business end of the operation. "We presented our plan to Barry, and he decided that if we handled the day-to-day operation that he would like to continue. This is not new ownership, it's just new management that is running the bar. Everything is still in Barry's name," he said. Polte said most of the tables, chairs and memorabilia purchased at the "Drink Me Dry" auction have been returned. NEWSLETTERS Get the Sneak Peek newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong A weekly email of entertainment news and cool things to do in Knoxville. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-844-900-7097. Delivery: Thurs Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Sneak Peek Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters "It was pretty much cleaned out, but the patrons have brought all of their stuff back and started putting it back on the wall. There is a new energy level here. People are even asking if they can bring some of their own things to post on the wall. The bar is a patron-run gathering place for the community," he said. The doors open at 3 p.m. Friday. There will be plenty to drink, a fire in the pit, live music, Wi-Fi and for the first time the establishment will accept credit cards. For more information, visit the Back Door Tavern Facebook page. Read or Share this story: http://knoxne.ws/2mq6PxgGuilty Gear Xrd SIGN Starts Its Arcade Run With A Location Test In August By Spencer. July 25, 2013. 9:30pm The next entry in the Guilty Gear series will be playable on August 9 when Arc System Works begins location tests for Guilty Gear Xrd –SIGN-. You can try Guilty Gear Xrd –SIGN- at Sega Akihabara Building 1. Cabinets running the game will be on the fourth floor. Daisuke Ishiwatari, general director of the Guilty Gear series, and Pachi will be at the opening event on August 9 from 10:00 AM to 10:30 AM. Guilty Gear Xrd –SIGN- will be playable until August 12. When we asked Minoru Kidooka, president of Arc System Works, about the Guilty Gear series he said we’ll find out more next year and they are considering to bring Guilty Gear Xrd to the next generation of consoles.Joseph Parker is in Auckland, but Hughie Fury isn't - and their world heavyweight title bout is now in doubt. Joseph Parker's WBO heavyweight title fight against Hughie Fury is off after the Englishman pulled out claiming injury less than two weeks out from the event in Auckland. Parker was due to fight Fury in a mandatory defence of his WBO world heavyweight title on May 6 but Stuff revealed doubts about the fight last week. World Boxing Organisation (WBO) president Paco Valcarel said in a tweet on Sunday the fight was now off and "the problem lies within the Fury camp". As of today, it seems there will be no WBO Heavyweight World Title fight in New Zealand @danrafaelespn @boxingscene — Paco Valcárcel, Esq. (@PacoValcarcel) April 22, 2017 Parker has been mucked around by the Fury camp throughout the build up. The Kiwi champion has been through an extensive training camp and arrived in New Zealand on Saturday ready to step into the ring next week. READ MORE: * 14 boxers who Parker could fight in place of Fury * Parker fires broadside at Fury * Fury camp still trying to avoid trip to NZ * Parker reveals tactics for Hughie Fury Parker's promoters, Duco Events, fired a shot at the Fury camp for pulling out at such late notice. "I spoke to the WBO president a minute ago he said the Furys are claiming to have an injury and therefore we can fight whoever we want when we want as a voluntary defence out of the top 15," Duco co-owner David Higgins said. Asked about the nature of Fury's injury, Higgins said: "I know exactly what it is; their moral compass has broken in half - a nasty fracture of the moral compass. It's not just Hughie, the whole camp has. "That's boxing. Sometimes this sort of thing goes on. They didn't appear to want to come to New Zealand." Higgins is yet to speak to anyone from the Fury camp. "I don't think I'll bother." Peter Fury, Hughie's father and trainer, told World Boxing News website he hoped the fight would go ahead at a later date. "We will be releasing details of the postponement in an announcement shortly," Fury told WBN. "However, we are looking to put the fight back on in New Zealand as fast as possible." But Higgins ruled out postponement, saying Duco had authorisation to push on with alternative plans. "The WBO clearly gave us permission to take a voluntary defence and that's what we are going to do," Higgins said. "The wranglings of the Furys have cost us a lot of time and money so we're going to take a voluntary. If the Furys provide a medical certificate that is sound then I'll apologise for being suspicious, but that doesn't change that fact it's been very difficult and we would not be in a hurry to work with them again." A decision is yet to be made about whether Parker will still fight on May 6 but finding an opponent willing to step up on two week's notice seems unlikely. Higgins also ruled out Parker taking on Australian heavyweight Lucas Brown, who was quick to put his hand up, as he does not sit inside the WBO's top 15. "We've got to regroup and look at what we do. Obviously we have respect for the paying public so we'll keep them informed and provide refunds where appropriate but there will be more information tomorrow [Monday]. "The life of a promoter is not easy but it is interesting." The development came just a day after Hughie Fury declared his readiness for the fight in a tough-talking first-person column in Britain's Mirror newspaper, headlined "I'm firing on all cylinders, Joseph Parker won't know what's hit him". "With just two weeks until I take on Joseph Parker, everything has gone well in training. I know every fighter says that, even when it's not true, but I'm raring to go," Fury wrote. "Because of the problems I had with my skin that I talked about in my first column, this is the first time in a long time that I've had a proper training camp. "I feel 100 per cent better than I did for my previous fights. I'm bigger, stronger, and more powerful. In fact, I'm a different fighter and Parker won't know what's coming. "I've watched a few of his fights and I'm confident we have the game plan to beat him - but I can't reveal it here! "I'll fly out to New Zealand with my team in the next few days so that we have plenty of time to get settled." Immediately after Duco won the purse bid to stage the fight and were weighing up their venue options which then included New Zealand, Samoa and Singapore, Fury's father and trainer Peter Fury said coming to New Zealand would be "the worst". "At the moment the worst way is going to be New Zealand, we'd like it to be somewhere else," Peter Fury said. "It all depends where it is going to make the most money I suppose, and that's not really my end of it. We will have to see." Duco pledged $4.1m to stage the promotion, pipping Fury's promoter Frank Warren in the February purse bid. Parker was set to walk away with $US1.8 million (US) and Fury $US1.2m, the biggest pay cheques of their careers. The event has been plagued by delays. Originally planned for early April, it was put back a month as Fury had an anti-doping hearing postponed. He has to answer to allegations of a failed test for banned substance nandrolone in 2015. Hughie Fury has not fought since April last year when he extended his record to 20-0 in a laboured win against American Frank Kassi. The fight was stopped in the seventh round with Fury suffering a cut eye but ahead on points. This development echos the troubles endured in trying to get Tyson Fury and Wladimir Klitschko in the ring for a rematch. Tyson Fury rocked the division by beating long-time Klitschko in late 2015 to win the WBO, WBA and IBF titles. But the first scheduled rematch was postponed after Tyson Fury suffered an ankle injury and then a second attempt to stage that fight was aborted when Tyson Fury was deemed "medically unfit to fight". Klitschko's bosses hit out at the Furys then as their fighter effectively lost a year of his ageing career. "Nobody of us ever wants to deal with this group of people again, especially including myself," Bernd Boente, Klitschko's manager, said at the time. It was then revealed the extent of Tyson Fury's problems as his battles with drugs, alcohol and weight issues forced him to eventually relinquish his belts. That saw Parker win the vacant WBO title by beating Andy Ruiz in Auckland last December. Parker's five-month wait for his first defence represents the longest break in his busy career since late 2013. The two camps were in discussions a fortnight ago about possible changes to the fight venue, even taking it to England. But Parker insisted he wanted the fight to happen as scheduled. "We've already changed the fight once before and extended our training camp. All these things, they just play into their hands. I want to get into the ring, I want to do my thing. Whatever the outcome so be it, but it's time... it's time to get it on," Parker told Fairfax on Saturday before the fight was called off. "I just want to get the job done. I've been training very hard so I'm ready to get in the ring and let my hands go." Parker had accused the Furys of skulduggery over the promotion. "In boxing there are lot of things that happen where they try to slow down the process and try to get to the other team, trying to get into our heads. They are trying every trick in the book to try to upset us."In 2007 Microsoft approached Teague to serve up a few proposals for future Zune players. There were 3 proposals, 2 of which moved forward into models. This design “Cohiba” took inspiration from cigar boxes and the mystique of 1970’s audio gear. As a child I remember being in awe of reel-to-reel tape players, for me they were the epitome of cool. Something about those spinning metal reels, the requisite headset and a deep lounge chair spoke to me of absolute abandon into a sonic landscape. Unfortunately for me, by the time I was able to scrape enough cash together to buy one they were already hard to come by. In this design we proposed a CNC’ed veneer with an aluminum base. One cool feature worth noting was the tray. The original idea was that a setting at the back of the unit would allow the user to toggle between larger and smaller models allowing the tray to deploy to the proper depth when it sensed the player. WHY I LIKE IT: It may be a little heavy on the design sauce, but it’s still a great dream – and an act of love. COLLABORATORS: Saro NalbandianThe best way for Canada to defend its people from a nuclear-armed North Korea is to join the U.S. anti-ballistic missile defence program, argues a former chief of the defence staff. And Tom Lawson, who served as Canada's top general under former prime minister Stephen Harper, said he's heartened to see signals from the Liberal government that they might be open to it. "If a rogue nation fired a ballistic missile at the United States and it went off course towards Canada, it's not a certain thing that that missile would be brought down by American ballistic missile defence, because Canada hasn't signed on," said Lawson, who also served as the deputy commander of the North American Aerospace Defence Command. This picture taken on July 4, 2017 and released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on July 5, 2017 shows the successful test-fire of the intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 at an undisclosed location. (STR/AFP/Getty Images) "It just really makes sense that if the Americans are asking Canadians to come on board this would provide Canadian politicians, at times of crises, a say on what happens with that portion of Norad defence." Lawson said just a few years ago it looked more unlikely that North Korea would be able to build up its nuclear capacity to what it has today. North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, now claims his country has missiles with the range to hit Chicago. 'Emerging threats' covered in defence plan The Liberal government chose in its recent defence policy to remain outside of the U.S. anti-ballistic missile program, upholding a decision made more than a decade ago by former prime minister Paul Martin. But Lawson said the defence policy does have a line about engaging "the United States to look more broadly at emerging threats and perils to North America, across all domains as part of Norad modernization." "What it means is we've got an open mind to other things," said Lawson. "We should come on board. There is kind of an open invitation from our American hosts […] Most military advisers find it a very odd stance that Canadian politicians have taken, that we don't get on board with ballistic missile defence." Former defence minister Peter MacKay said recently he laments not joining the U.S. ballistic missile defence program when he had the chance. The policy was a matter of intense debate for the former Conservative government, as it was for the Liberals. "We share a great deal of intelligence with the United States and if they're alarmed, we should be alarmed," MacKay told CBC News last month. Not being involved in the program is "a huge problem," he added.Nor does it slow down from there. Granted, the book isn't wall to wall warfare, as the early pages might indicate, but Alix has a wonderful knack for getting into trouble (in her defense, that's apparently a Black family tradition). After the initial battle, Alix is reappointed as a member of Erik's (the King's) bodyguard. Through her eyes the reader gets a front-row view of the political and military action, as Erik tries to juggle an invading army, his own retreating army, and the betrayal of his brother (and his army). Add to that assassination attempts, espionage and a hint of black magic, Erik and Alix have their hands full. Alix Black, one of the scouts in Alden's forces, has a great perspective on the battle - not only can she see her own side getting thoroughly beaten, she can also spot how the King's brother is very much not riding to his aid. Clearly inspired by her liege's chivalric naivete, Alix sprints headlong down into the fray. The Oridian empire is greedily devouring its neighbours. The King of Alden, rather nobly, decided that Alden shouldn't start for that sort of thing (also, there were treaties and such) and leads his country personally into battle. And his reward for doing the honourable thing? The armies of Alden are getting absolutely thumped. To add one final ingredient into the mix - as a Black, Alix is a member of one of Alden's banner houses. Although she's more or less'slumming it' as a scout (she should be all armor-and-horsed-up as a knight and whatnot), she still has all the perks - and responsibilities - of one of the kingdom's elite. In the perks category: a magic sword and a passing acquaintanceship with most of the key players in Alden. In the responsibilities? Try as she might, she's not 'one of' her comrades, and, somewhere on the horizon looms an inevitable arranged marriage. Alix is fairly understanding of the situation - that's just what happens with people of her rank, men and women alike - but it does cast a pall over her budding frisson with Liam, a fellow scout. Or, for that matter, Erik. On paper, here's what we've got: the heroic remnants of a noble army, an invading empire of invadingness, a love triangle involving three people and sixteen thousand crossed stars, an eeeeeeeevil sorceror, a magic sword and a fairly Chosen sort of heroine that's a noblewoman/spy/scout/strategist/swordswoman/everything. That is to say, nothing new under the sun. And there's nothing wrong with these particular plot points and set-pieces: The Bloodbound is one of the most enjoyable fantasies I've read in a long time; a book I cheerfully devoured in a single sitting. But... and here's the thing with The Bloodbound. It isn't reinventing traditions, but it does bring them up to date. If anything, this is an immensely reassuring book. It provides all the high fantasy comfort we love, but with fresh, high quality ingredients and contemporary presentation. The Bloodbound is the gastropub of high fantasy. For one, although The Bloodbound is by no means erotica, it also doesn't pretend that everyone is a virgin and consensual physical contact is a literary taboo. The Bloodbound treats sex and violence with equal weight. Sometimes this is 'casual': Alix kills people on the battlefield; she has a rendezvous with a sexy man-friend. Sometimes this is more meaningful: a sorceror's ritual killing affects her deeply; a midnight encounter in her tent leaves her equally touched. At the risk of generalising a little too broadly, this makes The Bloodbound doubly-exceptional. First, for not hiding the sex (so many fantasies are cavalier about killing but assume anything remotely risque is too naughty for readers); second, for showing this range of significance. Just like violence in fantasy novels, sex is a means of developing characters, demonstrating growth, providing entertainment, and creating powerful impact. Another: although I wish it went without saying, Alix is still a novelty - a female character with agency, intelligence and capability. The Bloodbound also treats the equality of men and women with a lovely casualness. Alix has to deal with an arranged marriage - so do all the men and women of her rank. She saves Erik and Liam's lives. Erik and Liam save her life. And one another's. She's in the military - all men and women have to serve in the military. She has issues with romance, her upbringing, getting taken seriously - so do the male characters. Her agency is further reinforced as her love triangle heads to a conclusion: the menfolk swiftly realise that it isn't their decision who she loves. It gets to the point where, when the book notes that Oridians have an all-male army, it is a subtle piece of world-building; illustrating not that Alden is particularly enlightened, but that Oridia is stuck in the past. That's actually another point in favour of The Bloodbound. There's very little in the way of explicit world-building. The various cultures and kingdoms are brought to life through details like the above or the occasional conversational snippet. No appendix. No map. The way magic works is explained in a matter of sentences, not chapters. Even the names are almost ridiculously simple, take, for example, the banner houses of Green, Grey, Black, White and Gold. The plot is complex, the characters are deep - but the world itself is there to support, not distract. Just as The Bloodbound hits the ground running with its opening battle, the decision to keep everything uninterrupted by exposition helps the pace immensely. The Bloodbound isn't a dense doorstopper of an epic, it is fast, fun and - despite being the first in a series - self-contained. In fact I have a whopping two criticisms of The Bloodbound, lest you think I've grown soft. The first: I really dislike the cover. It is a little too old-school for me, and yet not in the way that makes me feel particularly warm and nostalgic about said old-school. My other issue is perhaps even more subjective: I think Alix up with the wrong guy. This is less a literary stance than one than an utterly personal one. I grew very attached to all of the characters, and, I suspect it is impossible to read through this book without choosing one 'team' or the other. Fortunately, although The Bloodbound is self-contained, it does hint towards future entanglements, and I can only hope that [redacted for spoilers] also has his chance to wind up happy in love. The Bloodbound is - in its own right, a blast: a fun, fast, invigorating and inspiring book, packed to the gills with tension, heroics, twists and adventure. And, more than that, it is also a symbol of something more: an epic fantasy with all the scale and excitement readers demand, but infused with a casual modernity. It demonstrates that the genre - however familiar - is still far from fatigued.Hello, I've been reading many threads on this website for a while, but now I have decided to make an account. Here is my story Well one night I awoke abruptly in the middle of the night, looked at my clock, and it said 3:33 am. I thought nothing of it so went back to sleep. After this time I kept waking up multiple times at 3:33am. At this point I thought it was only a coincidence so I just ignored it. Then I saw the movie "the fourth kind". In this movie people awake at 3:33 am and are apparently abducted by aliens or something of that nature. This movie disturbed me because I had been waking up at the same time multiple times. So at this point I was scared. I woke up the next night at 3:33 and was very frightened, it took me a while to fall back asleep. Some time passed and then I awoke again at 3:33.. I layed there in my bed full of fear waiting for the minute to pass. Then my cell phone started ringing telling me that I had 1 new voicemail (but no missed call). At this point i was scared #less. I forced myself back to sleep. I tried to ignore this event and dismissed it as coinciednce, however, the next night the same thing happened. I decided to listen to the voicemail and all i heard were strange static noises. I decided I would unplug my clock so that maybe I would stop waking up at 3:33. Some time passed and I had no knowledge of what time I was waking up at night because my clock was off. One night I woke up and went to the bathroom and came back, and layed back down in my bed. I looked at my phone and it said 3:34, therefore meaning i had woke up at 333. I felt a strange erie presence in my room. I could swear i heard a faint singing/humming coming from in my house or outside. I layed there frightened and noticed a light in my room, I looked towards it and it was gone. I was staring directly in that direction and witnessed an orb of light glow near the desk in my room. I saw another one glow near my closet door. I then left the room and slept on my couch. I am unsure about what the significance of these events are if any. I am slightly scared because of the strange connection to the fourth kind movie. If anyone has had similar expieriences or information on this please post.Those Strokes boys like to keep themselves busy. When they’re not down in the studio recording album number six or sporadically touring, they’re all up to something. Julian recently produced the The Growlers new record and Nick Valensi just released his first solo record with CRX. Strokes bassist Nikolai Fraiture is no different. We’ve just had a first taster of his latest project Summer Moon: the song ‘With You Tonight’. Not only that, but the group have also shared an 360° interactive video for it too. We caught up with Nikolai to get the lowdown on the new record and of course, tap him up for Strokes news. How did the project come together? “Things began with some songs and playing with friends in NYC. Recording started in NYC and Brooklyn and then went on to Austin, TX. Eventually, I made it out to LA where I met Stephen Perkins, Camila Grey and Noah Harmon. We just finished a small promo tour for our single ‘With You Tonight’ which is out now. The vibe has been feeling great.” Why did you decide to do this and not another solo album? “That solo album was a time and place. It meant a lot to me, maybe too much. It was an album I wanted to make, and felt compelled to. I was happy Rykodisc picked it up but I never intended it to be a big release. The very nature of using an old shoebox of poetry as its genesis made it even more esoteric. For this record, my aim was to make an album that’d I’d want to listen to as well rather than just get things off my chest.” Sharethrough (Mobile) Do you enjoy being the frontman? Is it something you’re comfortable with? “Our recent shows in LA were the first time I felt that anything is possible
, the Church simply shuffled Geoghan around from one parish after another, and that Cardinal Law was involved in the cover-up. For its explosive two-part series on January 6 and 7, 2002, and relentless follow-up reporting, the paper would claim the Pulitzer Prize the next year. The Globe revelations proved the ultimate wake-up call to the culture. One by one, the walls of silence came tumbling down. In January, Jack Connors–the millionaire businessman, philanthropist and once-close advisor to Cardinal Law–broke ranks with him. Sickened by The Globe revelations, he went on to withhold a $300 million contribution to the archdiocese’s capital campaign. “I don’t have problems with my faith. I have problems with the leaders of my faith,” he told The Washington Post. On March 5, Paul LaCamera, WCVB’s general manager, aired a station editorial saying Law had lost his moral authority and should consider resigning. Other power brokers stepped up as well. On March 13, a Boston Herald editorial, personally approved by its publisher/owner Pat Purcell, called for Law’s resignation. Ironically, Father John Geoghan had officiated at his daughter’s wedding. Finally, on December 13, 2002, four days after 58 Boston-area priests sent a hand-delivered letter to the cardinal’s residence calling on Law to step down, the disgraced cardinal announced his resignation. Looking back, the scandal underscores the need for continued soul-searching and vigilance by Boston’s TV stations. For too many years, they wore blinders when covering the Catholic Church. And, in the face of a Church that was notoriously secretive and lacking in transparency, there were far too many “friendly stories” and too many reporters “who would kiss the ring and genuflect.” As WBUR’s David Boeri put it, “It took a long time for the Church mice to get brave.” *Correction: This paragraph originally said Joe Bergantino was retired from NECIR. He has announced his retirement, but remains in the role of executive director as NECIR searches for his successor. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Terry Ann Knopf has been a lecturer at Boston University’s Journalism Department for the past 13 years. Earlier in her career, she was a TV critic for The Miami Herald, a Boston Globe correspondent, a TV critic for The Patriot Ledger, and contributing writer to Boston Magazine. Her freelance pieces have appeared in The New York Times and the Boston Globe Magazine. She is currently at work on the forthcoming book, Best of Boston: The Golden Age of Local Television, to be published by the University Press of New England.Mentat Active Ingredients (Per Tablet): Extracts: Thyme leaved gratiola / Bacopa / Brahmi (Bacopa monnieri) 136mg Indian pennywort / Mandukaparni (Centella asiatica) 70mg Winter Cherry / Ashvagandha (Withania Somnifera) 52mg Morning glory / Vishnukrantha (Evolvulus alsinoides) 52mg Musk root / Jatamansi(Nardostachys jatamansi) 52mg Indian valerian / Tagara(Valeriana wallichii) 50mg False Black Pepper / Vidanga(Embelia ribes) 50mg Almond / Vatadha(Prunus amygdalus) 50mg Sweet Flag / Vacha (Acorus calamus) 42mg Chebulic myrobalan / Haritaki(Terminalia chebula) 36mg Indian gooseberry / Amalaki (Emblica officinalis) 36mg Gulancha tinospora / Guduchi(Tinospora cordifolia) 36mg Staff tree / Jyotishmati(Celastrus paniculatus) 32mg Trumpet creeper / Shyonaka(Oroxylum indicum) 32mg Powders: Brahmi (Bacopa monnieri) 80mg Ashvagandha (Withania Somnifera) 18mg Cow-itch / Kapikachchu (Mucuna pruriens) 18mg Cardamom / Ela (Elettaria cardamomum) 18mg Arjuna (Terminalia arjuna) 18mg Fennel / Shatapushpa (Foeniculum vulgare) 18mg Giant potato / Vidari (Ipomoea digitata)18mg Salep Orchid / Salabmisri (Orchis mascula)18mg Ginger / Srungavera (Zingiber officinale) 14mg Beleric myrobalan / Vibhitaki (Terminalia bellerica) 14mg Nutmeg / Jatiphalam (Myristica fragrans) 14mg Clove / Lavanga (Syzygium aromaticum) 10mg Processed Pearl / Muktapishti 3mg Herbs & Mineral Powders in Mentat Himalaya Mentat Dosage How do the herbs in Mentat promote brain health? Bacopa/Brahmi is a well researched herb that supports brain health, memory and promotes mental calm. There have been various studies on Bacopa. A 2018 study published in the Current Neuropharmacology journal showed the neuroprotective effects of Bacosides present in Bacopa. 2 Bacosides help to scavenge free radicals, suppress of lipid peroxidation and activate antioxidant enzymes Bacosides help to scavenge free radicals, suppress of lipid peroxidation and activate antioxidant enzymes Indian pennywort (Centella Asiatica)also known as Gotu kola or Mandukaparni is considered a brain tonic in Ayurveda that revitalizes the nerves and cells in the brain. It is also known for its blood circulation properties. A 2018 study published in Front Pharmacology indicated that a compound called Asiaticoside present in this herb appeared to prevent human brain cells from dying (apoptosis). It also reduced cell growth inhibition 3 A 2018 study published in Front Pharmacology indicated that a compound called Asiaticoside present in this herb appeared to prevent human brain cells from dying (apoptosis). It also reduced cell growth inhibition Ashvagandha or Winter cherry is another well known herb that promotes energy yet helps to soothe the mind. A 2018 study showed that Withania somnifera reduced oxidative stress on cells. It also had an ameliorating effect on cognition and mitochondrial functions. 4 A meta analysis of 28 studies on Ashvagandha also showed that it had a beneficial effect on oxidative stress markers (superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione peroxidase, glutathione and lipid peroxidation) 5 A meta analysis of 28 studies on Ashvagandha also showed that it had a beneficial effect on oxidative stress markers (superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione peroxidase, glutathione and lipid peroxidation) Morning glory or Dwarf Morning Glory also known as Vishnukrantha is said to be useful in purifying blood and promoting memory powers. In a 2018 comparative study of ayurvedic herbs for the mind, it was found that Evolvulus alsinoides helped protect against neurotoxicity and had significant antioxidant activity. This was attributed to the plant steroids (stigmasterol and betulinic acid), coumarins (scopoletin) and flavonoids (β-carotene and chlorogenic acid) present in it6 Mentat from Himalaya Herbals Himalaya Mentat Research and Clinical Studies References: Other Products for Brain Health Mentat supports brain function in normal and demanding situations of life. The benefits of taking Mentat daily have been demonstrated in a broad range of cases. Mentat is beneficial to both adults and children.1 or 2 tablets twice daily with meals. Allow several weeks for long lasting benefits.The herbs used in Mentat are a synergistic blend according to ayurvedic knowledge.This is from the renowned Himalaya Herbals brand endorsed by over 250,000 doctors worldwide and used by customers in over 60 countries. Himalaya Herbals products have been researched clinically and standardized to guarantee bioequivalence. Bioequivalence refers to ensuring that the product on the market is equivalent to the one on which clinical trials were successfully conducted. Himalaya Herbal Healthcare uses chromatographic fingerprinting, one of the most sophisticated standardization techniques, to ensure consistent quality and performanceMentat has been subjected to various clinical studies and its benefits for maintaining brain health have been documented in several medical journals.1. Himalaya Herbals Company2. Current Neuropharmacology 2018 Apr 19. doi: 10.2174/1570159X16666180419123022. [Epub ahead of print]Insights into the molecular aspects of neuroprotective Bacoside A and Bacopaside I.Sekhar VC, Viswanathan G, Baby S.3. Front Pharmacology. 2018 Jan 30;9:28. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2018.00028. eCollection 2018.Asiaticoside Attenuates Cell Growth Inhibition and Apoptosis Induced by Aβ1-42 via Inhibiting the TLR4/NF-κB Signaling Pathway in Human Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cells.Song D, Jiang X, Liu Y, Sun Y, Cao S, Zhang Z4. Metabolic Brain Disease 2018 Apr 18. doi: 10.1007/s11011-018-0234-2. [Epub ahead of print]Indian Ginseng (Withania somnifera) supplementation ameliorates oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunctions in experimental model of stroke.Sood A1, Mehrotra A, Dhawan DK, Sandhir R.5. Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology. 2015 Jul;67(7):879-99. doi: 10.1111/jphp.12398. Epub 2015 Apr 1.Withania somnifera (Ashwagandha) in neurobehavioural disorders induced by brain oxidative stress in rodents: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Durg S, Dhadde SB, Vandal R, Shivakumar BS, Charan CS.6. Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine. 2018 Mar 9. pii: S0975-9476(17)30242-5. doi: 10.1016/j.jaim.2017.08.012. [Epub ahead of print]Neuropharmacological evaluation on four traditional herbs used as nervine tonic and commonly available as Shankhpushpi in India.Sethiya NK, Nahata A, Singh PK, Mishra SH.Many of the jobs -- 680 of them -- will be filled by the 1,000 workers the company laid off from its Lansing Delta Township plant Greg Middleton, a GM employee for 28 years, assembles a 2015 Buick Enclave on April 30, 2015 at the GM Lansing Delta Township Assembly plant. (Photo: Jeffrey Sauger for General Motors) General Motors announced plans Wednesday to add or retain approximately 900 jobs across three Michigan plants over the next 12 months in advance of President Donald Trump's visit to Willow Run later today. Many of the jobs -- up to 680 of them -- may be filled by 1,000 workers the company laid off from its Lansing Delta Township plant. GM said the new jobs are in addition to 3,300 jobs it promised to add in the U.S. as part of its four-year contract with the UAW that was signed in 2015. GM also said the new jobs are not directly connected to any new policies proposed by Trump. “The job commitments announced today demonstrate the confidence we have in our products, our people and an overall positive outlook for the auto industry and the U.S. economy,” GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra said in a statement. The new jobs also are in addition to the 7,000 jobs and $1 billion in U.S. investments GM announced earlier this year. Related: Specifically, GM said it plans to: Add 220 jobs at Romulus Powertrain Plant: GM will add jobs to increase production of the 10-speed automatic transmission to be used in multiple GM products, including the current 2017 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. GM will add jobs to increase production of the 10-speed automatic transmission to be used in multiple GM products, including the current 2017 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. Retain 180 jobs at Flint Assembly Plant: GM will retained 180 jobs by redeploying workers from Lansing Delta Township to support production of the Chevrolet Silverado HD and GMC Sierra HD pick-up trucks. GM will retained 180 jobs by redeploying workers from Lansing Delta Township to support production of the Chevrolet Silverado HD and GMC Sierra HD pick-up trucks. Retain 500 jobs at Lansing Delta Township: GM laid off 1,000 workers at this plant because it is transitioning from building three models to two models -- the all-new Chevrolet Traverse and Buick Enclave. During this transition, the plant will not operate a third shift. When the plant has fully launched the new crossovers by early 2018, GM will bring back about 500 jobs to give the company flexibility to meet market demand for the new vehicles. Trump has invited a number of automakers, automotive executives and auto employees to attend an event today at the American Center for Mobility at Willow Run. The president is planning to announced plans to pull back on the U.S. EPA's decision to leave fuel economy standards in place that are scheduled to take effect from 2021 to 2025. Contact Brent Snavely: 313-222-6512 or bsnavely@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @BrentSnavely. Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/2mIZeZ6Barack Obama has instructed the Department of Justice to monitor the reaction of law enforcement authorities in Missouri in the aftermath of the shooting dead by police of an unarmed 18-year-old, but has so far stopped short of ordering a more dramatic federal intervention. After four nights of violent disturbances in the city of Ferguson, the president on Thursday did not go as far as to condemn local police and appealed for calm from all sides, but urged the state governor, Jay Nixon, to ensure the official response was proportionate. Obama said he had asked the attorney general, Eric Holder, to provide a report on the crisis, adding to an existing FBI investigation into possible civil rights violations during the death of Michael Brown last weekend. “Now is the time for an open and transparent process to see that justice is done, and I have asked that the attorney general and the US attorney on the scene to continue to work with local officials to move that process forward,” said Obama. “They will be reporting to me in the coming days about what’s being done to make sure that happens.” The heavy-handed police response to protests in Ferguson prompted growing political anger in Washington on Thursday, including calls from the veteran civil rights activist and congressman John Lewis for the White House to send in national guard troops under federal control to take over local policing and ensure protesters were protected. “This is not China or Russia or Syria,” said Lewis. “This is America, and in this country we have a right to protest in an orderly non-violent fashion.” He compared the need for some “martial law” to restore trust in Ferguson to President Kennedy’s decision to send federal marshals to Montgomery, Alabama, during violent civil rights protests that Lewis took part in during 1961. Similar moves were taken by President Johnson in 1965 when he sent the national guard into Selma, Alabama, under direct control from Washington to protect marchers from local police. The last time the national guard was “federalised”, or put under the control of the president rather than state governors, was in 1992 during the Los Angeles riots that followed the beating of Rodney King by LA police officers. In total, national guard troops have only been sent in to deal with domestic crises in this way on ten occasions since the second world war – mostly to help protect civil rights protesters in the 1950s and 1960s. Such a move in this instance is likely to add to fears of an overly militarised response by police, however. Though the national guard has units of military police who are trained to deal with civil disturbances, 90% of its members are made up of part-time volunteers who would have to be called up and may rely on similar equipment to that currently used by Ferguson police. Previous presidents have largely used executive orders to make deployments, something that Obama has currently shown no sign of wanting to do in this instance. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A man watches as police walk through a cloud of smoke during a clash with protesters on Wednesday night. Photograph: Jeff Roberson /AP Instead, the White House seems to be relying on the civil rights division of the Department of Justice to oversee actions by state and county police in Ferguson as well as the local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. The FBI confirmed it was already taking a lead role in investigating potential civil rights violations connected with the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson but was currently providing a support role for police in responding to the protests that followed. “We are the lead investigative organisation for federal civil rights violations, which is why we opened a separate case,” Cheryl Mimura, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s St Louis field office, told the Guardian. “But there are a lot of overlapping [alleged] violations, so it depends on when the investigations are complete which prosecuting agency is going to have the evidence to support an actual charge.” She declined to say how many federal officers were involved, citing safety concerns and threats against law enforcement, but revealed that FBI intelligence analysts were also assisting local and state police deal with public order problems. “I wouldn’t say we have agents handling riot control, that not’s something we would do unless the scale of it continues to grow, but we do have agents providing support – on the investigative end of it and just looking at the intelligence, for example Anonymous claiming hack attacks against the police department,” added Mimura. Civil rights activists said the crisis pointed to the need for greater national monitoring of racial discrimination by police. “The tragic shooting of Michael Brown and the events in Ferguson underscore the gap between what our constitution requires and our society is currently confronting in terms of race discrimination,” said Chandra Bhatnagar, senior staff attorney at ACLU Human Rights Programme. Ejim Dike, director of US Human Rights Network, added: “In addition to a legal response from the Department of Justice, there is a need for moral and political leadership from the executive branch, from Obama and Holder. We think the federal government should show moral leadership by making clear statements about what policing should look like.” Other national politicians, including the Republican senator Rand Paul, criticised what they called an already overly militarised police response in Ferguson and linked it to government abuse of individual rights in wider cases. “When you couple this militarisation of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury – national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture – we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands,” said Paul in an opinion column for Time magazine.Facebook organ donation push results in instant spike in donors We have talked a bit about the new Facebook tool that allows users of the social network to sign up to become organ donors in their state. I’m sure I’m not the only one who wondered if the move by Google would result in an increase in organ donation registration. According to organ donor registries in 10 states the new Facebook tool has resulted in a significant increase in new donors. According to the donor registries in two different states, on the first day after Facebook started the new organ donor initiative, the states recorded as many new donor registrations as they typically see in a month. By Tuesday night, the first day the new organ donation tool was in place, 100,000 people had declared that they were organ donors via their Facebook profile. Out of the 100,000 people that said on their Facebook profiles that they were organ donors, 10,000 of that number link through Facebook to sign up directly with state organ donation registries. That means that the Facebook tool accounted for 10,000 registrations in a single day. Organ donation advocates think Facebook’s program could help save untold numbers of lives. “I think it’s possible that we will see an impact over the next couple of years, where we would imagine eliminating the transplant waiting list,” Dr. Andrew Cameron, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who helped bring the idea to Facebook, told ABC News. [via ABC News]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 is out with her first Spanish-language television and radio ads in Nevada as her campaign looks to shore up her lead in the state as 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 is threatening to defeat her in New Hampshire. The ads focus on her work on health care reform and college affordability, as well as immigration reform and "keeping families together," a phrase that references halting deportations. ADVERTISEMENT Opening with video of Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the narrator says in a translation of the 30-second television ad, "It’s when things get tough that you see the friends by your side. There is no other candidate who has fought as hard for our families as Hillary Clinton." The radio ad expands on those points, as it is one-minute long, and includes a campaign organizer giving supporters instructions to caucus. The advertising push is targeted directly at Nevada's Hispanic population, which makes up a notable piece of the Democratic electorate in the state. Clinton polls well ahead of Sanders in both South Carolina and Nevada, the two early voting states with more diverse electorates than in Iowa and New Hampshire, where Sanders is performing well. That has prompted many Democrats to believe that Clinton has a minority-voter firewall as the primary race goes on, protecting her from any momentum Sanders might earn in the first two contests. Sanders and Clinton have incorporated calls for immigration reform as key pieces of their platform but the candidates have sparred over immigration in the past. Clinton has chided Sanders for voting against a 2007 immigration reform bill while she received flack for calling on child migrants to be sent back to their home countries.Not great (Picture: PA) Tories are likely to be looking at the weather forecast with glee, as driving rain – and even thunderstorms – are predicted in Labour seats. But it’s not because they enjoy misery. There’s an old theory that Labour do better on sunnier days, while Conservatives fare better in the rain. Firm running NHS supply chain after Brexit was company behind KFC crisis It’s apparently based on the belief that Tory voters are more likely to brave the rain to cast their vote, whereas Labour supporters are more put off by inclement weather. And tomorrow’s weather looks extremely inclement. The polls open at 8am – and from 7am, it will be pouring down with rain all over south east England, the Midlands and Wales. Doesn’t look great (Picture: Met Office) It’s going to be rainy (Picture: PA) It will only get worse as the day goes on, too. According to the Met Office forecast, the heavy rain and strong winds will spread over northern England and southern Scotland. In London and the south east, it will be less wet, but it will be cloudy and chilly with strong winds. What is causing the Surrey earthquakes, and is it related to fracking? Later in the afternoon there will be thunderstorms in Wales, Northern Ireland, the Midlands and the North, while the rain elsewhere worsens. Advertisement Advertisement In Scotland today, storms are already so bad that they’re keeping people from leaving their homes. Alas, the weather will only start clearing up at around 10pm – which is when the polls close. Bad weather could stop people from being able to vote (Picture: Getty Images) While people say it’s a myth that bad weather hinders liberal turnout, storms and flash floods on EU referendum polling day were blamed for Vote Leave’s shock win last June. ‘Apocalyptic’ wildfires ravage British countryside from Cornwall to Edinburgh Hundreds of voters were stuck at railway stations desperate to get home and cast their vote – but, with cancellations and delays, many tweeted saying they wouldn’t make it for the 10pm cutoff. Conservative voters, just like Leave voters were last year, are also more likely to cast their ballot with a postal vote ahead of the general election – meaning they’ll have their say regardless of the weather.Last month’s release came with it CCPs most ambitious change to EVE’s PvE, arguably since Incursions. The release of Shadow of the Serpent (SotS) was unlike most of the other events we have seen in the last year, as it includes an entirely new interface, and likely sets the pace for PvE content moving forward. Unfortunately, it hasn’t really gone over well. However, it is always important to realize with such things that often the best solution isn’t too far from the less-than-great solution you see, and in EVE this is even more true. Only by looking at a features, component pieces, and with sober but optimistic lense may we unpack what has gone right, what has gone wrong, and how to best change the feature moving forward. So let’s do just that. SCOPEing Out the Feature As mentioned above, the SotS brought with us a new interface courtesy of the SCOPE Broadcasting network. Gone are the days where Empyreans must trek across space to find agents looking for work to be done. Now, at any given time, four agents will have basic tasks they need you to perform. These tasks can be as simple as “mine x amount of y mineral” or as complex as “End an Incursion”. Many of these tasks are also tied to the SotS events as several kinds of Serpentis and Angel locations have been made accessible to capsuleers, and each have a task assigned to clear them out. Most of these sites are a simple “go to this area and kill everything” with no acceleration gates or anything else to get in your way. One exception – the “shipyard” – has a loot container that requires you to clear the center guarding pack before opening it. Taking the reward inside ends the site. There are also Angel and Serpentis guards on gates that can be the target of an assignment. Each task completed awards you with points. Hitting key thresholds will unlock gift boxes which come with several random items, and at least one guaranteed item. The boxes come in three tiers, and the higher tiers come not only with their own rewards, but lower tier boxes as well. The bronze box is unlocked at 10k points, the silver at 25k, and the final gold tier at 50k. Tasks often require players to complete 1 to 10 sites, and reward up to 1k points on completion (not per site done. When the event started the only known reward was that the 50k tier had a guaranteed BPC for the new Serpentis Vehement class dreadnought. Ultimately it was discovered the loot was primarily Serpentis SKINs for Gallente hulls, SP boosters, Serpentis ship BPCs, and clothing. Smashing Snakes Together Before beginning to unpack what made this feature not really work, let’s talk about the feature’s main winning points. Unlike previous events in EVE, and really pretty much all previous PvE content of the game, the Serpentis sites err on the side of giving credit to everyone. Any pilot on grid at the time of a site’s completion will receive credit if they have the assignment to complete that site regardless of whether you had fired a single shot, or even decloaked. While some initially pulled away from this as being a good thing, over time the true power of this decision came forward. the cooperative aspects of this event have brought people together EVE is a game of players interacting with other players. However, historically every single encounter with strangers is tense at best, and outright hostile the majority of the time. In a game that essentially requires you to make friends, the basic cornerstone of communication is death, and while killing is just a means of communication, it is often not the right foot to start a friendship off of. However, in highsec, you do not worry about the hostility of other players in those sites, as CONCORD provides a “good enough” protection most of the time, and with the change from events like the Guristas bunny, where only one person can get the reward of any given site, there is no outright sign of competition. Many may say that this isn’t “EVE-like”, but in space all kinds of interactions are possible, and in practice the cooperative aspects of this event have brought people together in a way that hasn’t really happened without significant work in the past Another thing done very well was the division of priority between sites. While the sites spawn throughout space for everyone, your tasks will only allow you to gain benefit from a small subset of those sites. This means if you are traveling alongside others, chances are you will soon find yourselves prioritizing different things. This is a vast improvement from other events where everyone was going after every site, which made it so that if you happened to be on the same track as someone else, nothing but bitterness followed. On Your Belly You Will Go There are a few things that makes SotS struggle to really hit it’s true potential. The fixes for some of those issues could be complicated, but many of them are quite simple. The reward structure is… unrewarding: The notion of loot boxes, prizes for accumulated effort over time, is great, but the barrier to recieve your reward is not. The purpose of your low tier reward should be to implant the idea in your player’s mind that it is “easily obtainable.” If your reward structure requires several hours of work at minimum to hit the first tier (which it does), that reward better be significant. Beyond that, there should be an additional token reward that can be gained within a moderate session time (think 30 minutes). This doesn’t have to be much. A random item worth ~10 million ISK would be enough. It is important to make players feel like they can have a win early, and relatively frequently. A better solution would be to give the bronze tier lootbox prize every 1k points until 5k, and then every 5k after. If there is anything we have learned about reward structures, they have to come early, often, and then peter out over time. This is why leveling systems increase the amount required to obtain each level, often logarithmically. This problem is even more compounded by the fact that the feature prefers highsec operations, and is strongly supportive of new players. Yet the final reward, the Dreadnought BPC, is nothing useful for those players. While trade is important in EVE, the people mostly supported by this event likely have no idea how to deal with the BPC, how to get value out of it, or anything of the sort. With such a low barrier to entry, the rewards should also have a low barrier to enjoyment. The Enemy is Presented Poorly: Serpentis was formed by V. Salvador Sarpati, adopted son of Igil Sarpati. The outlawing of the boosters that made the Serpati corporation so successful should have crushed them. However, thanks to the aggressive maneuvering of V. Salvador, it lives on as the Serpentis Corporation. The key to their success lies in Serpentis Prime, which was opened up as a freeport for the outlaws within the Phoenix constellation. This ‘Tortuga’ of sorts has allowed the Serpentis to simultaneously provide a semi-legitimate corporate front, but also gave them the resources and allies to continue their drug empire. Soon the Serpentis, along with their newfound allies in the Angel Cartel, had the force to hold off the Gallente Federation, and in fact has engaged in two high profile hijackings of Federation equipment: the Titan Molyneux and a Nyx class supercarrier. The Serpentis are also well known for acquiring the ORE corporation via hostile takeover nearly a decade ago, and more recently, their loss of the same corporation at the hands of Upwell Consortium and Mordu’s Legion. most of this backstory is buried within the EVE Source book’s six pages dedicated to the organization However, most of this backstory is buried within the EVE Source book’s six pages dedicated to the organization. Where other organizations – such as Mordu’s Legion and Sansha’s Nation – have had a lot of flavor added over the years, in the form of books and videos, the Serpentis Corporation is largely only treated as “those drugs guys” and not the free market/piracy defenders they truly are. Additionally, we already were hired by Upwell to smash them earlier this year, and there really doesn’t seem to be a direct motivation for continued attack beyond eradication. The closest thing we have is the interruption of Fanfest, and while this was very good, there wasn’t enough follow up to make anyone care. Lore and “things happening” in the universe entice people to invest in the universe itself, and is a necessary component of a real PvE overhaul. These events should be used to develop the characters within the universe, and allow players to become even more invested in the game they take part in. Additionally, from what we do know about the leader of the Serpentis, he would not be silent as his empire is picked apart. He has every reason, and every argument to compel Capsuleers to work for him, not against. Not including that is a huge miss. The Tasks Are Unclear: For the first few days many people thought the SotS sites were outright bugged. While this may have been true for some, the vast majority of players simply did not understand what is being asked of them. Even the site where you needed to loot an item says that you need to attack the enemies there (although this was later clarified). You need to limit the barrier to entry, and the best way to do that is to make the given tasks clear, and inspiring. Additionally, and this is a much smaller nitpick, the login screen shows you the tasks of the last logged in person. This can often lead to confusion especially for those who have trade or market alts they switch to often. Either a) make the tasks share account wide b) make the tasks for each player part of that player’s selection area or c) remove the tasks completely from the login and use that space to give players reasons to care such as more breaking news. provide another bland, repackaged way to shoot at the same red crosses Nothing Really Matters: Ultimately, this brings us to the biggest failing of this, and most of the previous events. They do not provide any life to the universe itself, but instead just provide another bland, repackaged way to shoot at the same red crosses. With the dynamic system of SCOPE, CCP could allow things to play out over time. Perhaps the invasion of the Serpentis started only in certain sections of space, or different regions should have more or less spawns. In the attempt to ensure that everyone can take part in these events they have removed the most characteristic thing about EVE that your choices, planning, and ability to capitalize on them have consequences. There is nothing to think about in these events, and ultimately the best method of doing them is to simply trawl randomly around highsec completing your tasks. Ouroboros – Eating Your Own Tail The ancient symbol of the Ouroboros is that of a serpent biting its own tail. It is a symbol of introspection, self-reflexivity, and the cyclical nature of creation. There is perhaps no better symbol for what we can take from this event. What we see is the culmination of almost a year of events and attempts to revitalize PvE in EVE, but what we also see is that CCP has missed what the core engagement of PvE should be:allowing us to be invested in the universe itself. I don’t feel like I have ability to learn about my enemy, or even have that matter beyond knowing its resistance profile. There is no chronicle to go along with the event which could introduce us to the wider conflict, and no purpose or consequence to performing the tasks, or if you even should. What EVE PvE is largely missing is a sense of importance of your actions, and the SotS continues to highlight that. All that said, it is important to not forget the things that made the feature really good, as we have learned a few things about how to engage especially newer players in a way that doesn’t cause 90% of players to quit thanks to exclusively negative interactions. This isn’t about a bad feature, this is about an imperfect one, one that could use improvement, and thankfully CCP has demonstrated they are willing to iterate on their plans here. It is clear that no one truly knows how to actually make PvE in EVE engaging, but perhaps with a bit of realistic introspection we can get another step closer. Featured artwork by Gabriel CassataIt was a mantra heard time and again amid the cosy fug of 2012's British sporting success: with a Tour de France title, another clutch of Olympic golds and Bradley Wiggins our sports personality of the year, we were now officially a nation of cyclists. Except we're not. Exclude racing or tourism and Britons are near the bottom of just about every European cycling ranking. Just 2.2% of people use a bike as their main means of transport, lower than all but a handful of EU nations such as Bulgaria, Malta and Cyprus. Other statistics are equally damning. About 2% of British children ride to school, compared with 40% in Denmark and 20% in Sweden. Almost three-quarters of British cyclists are men, a statistic that speaks of a macho, gung-ho cycling culture where riders are expected to mix it with speeding cars, buses and trucks. "When it comes to cycling as everyday transport the UK is so far down the table it's almost scary," said Kevin Mayne, director of development at the Brussels-based European Cyclists' Federation. "With all these Olympic medals people maybe have this idea that the UK is doing OK in cycling. But it's not." And yet cycling advocates hope things could be
welds and support structures. “They did address the anomalies, the things that failed the testing, but they were addressed in a way that was like patching it back together, cutting a section out that included a dent and welding in a new piece of pipe. The new pieces did not have to be hydrostatically tested because of the expense to the company,” she said. Public Citizen also documented the flawed pipeline infrastructure in a separate report. That report discloses that TransCanada had undertaken 125 excavations for problematic welds, dents and other issues that could lead to leaks and spills. Public Citizen also has made several open records requests to PHSMA for information regarding the anomalies in the pipeline and any attempts to correct them, but the agency was unable to meet the requests before the weekend pipeline start-up. Tom Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, told Truthout that PHSMA declined to confirm to Public Citizen whether or not the agency was investigating the pipeline’s construction beyond the two warning letters the agency sent in September. “They used bureaucratic language in such a way that it wasn’t clear how much they ever did [follow up on the warning letters],” he said. A PHSMA spokesperson provided the following statement in an email message Truthout: PHMSA’s safety inspectors have spent over 150 days inspecting the construction of the Gulf Coast Pipeline project overseeing welding, coating, installation, backfilling, testing and all other construction activities to ensure that the newly constructed pipeline will operate safely. Now that the construction phase is complete, PHMSA will continue to monitor TransCanada’s compliance with federal pipeline safety requirements and keep the public updated on our safety activities. Public Citizen, alongside other advocacy organizations and grassroots advocacy groups including the Tar Sands Blockade, are calling on PHSMA to issue a Corrective Action Order that would require the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline to be reinstalled correctly, according to current regulations, or permanently shut down. While a legal challenge to the Gulf Coast Project by the Sierra Club recently was denied by the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, another landowner’s legal challenge over eminent domain has been presented by petition to the Supreme Court. The pipeline crosses Julia Trigg Crawford’s farm in Direct, Texas, and she is holding out hope that the high court will take up her case challenging the seizure of her land by eminent domain. “[The line’s start-up is] pretty much a kick in the gut, because we’ve been trying to bring to light the shoddy construction, the non-transparency on what the products are and how landowners were treated. So it’s disappointing to see, even when the president brings all these things up in his latest statements, that the jobs were not there and the product is probably going outside of the country,” she said. “So it’s disappointing to see the start-up, but that does not in any way diminish my desire to get the Supreme Court on my case. I am still maintaining [TransCanada] did not have the right to take my land for this thing.” The southern segment of the Keystone XL is all that is needed for TransCanada to have a direct line from Alberta to pipe tar sands down to Gulf Coast refineries for export to the global market – and that’s with or without the Keystone system’s northern leg, which would serve as an expansion to a pre-existing pipeline system that has the capacity to deliver hundreds of thousands of barrels of tar sands crude every day. The Keystone’s system’s first two phases of construction established the Keystone I pipeline, running from Alberta and making a stop in Steele City, Nebraska, before turning and heading east to Patoka, Illinois. The pipeline was finished in June 2010 and has since spilled more than 35 times. Shortly after completion of Keystone I, the company finished a much smaller extension of the system, phase two, from Steele City to Cushing in February 2011. The Gulf Coast Project continues from Cushing down to Gulf Coast refineries. “The thought that as I’m standing here this sludge may be starting to ooze across my property … it’s a very strange feeling. It’s like an unseen monster. Is it out there? How long does it take to go 100 miles? I don’t know. I’d like some information. It’s not like a thermometer where it starts turning red as it comes across my property,” Crawford said. Full Disclosure: In the beginning of the Tar Sands Blockade’s campaign, this reporter initially supported some of the media outreach activities of the organization. She no longer engages in those activities.Update! (01/04/2016); Gold version is live! Added sections for Dash Dancing and Pivot Fsmash under "Fundamentals". Updated hitboxes for attacks. Minor adjustments across the board. Cleaned up some wording and formatting, and removed a bunch of information that is no longer relevant. Most likely to be the final update. Update! (12/16/2014); Added some mentions for how some moves changed for the 3.5 update! Notes are for grab, uair, dair, DED x>, xxV, xxxV, Flareblade, and Counter. (Look for the red 3.5 update! text for the new notes.) Added in a Stage section after Moveset Analysis. Also added a Table of Contents, because jeez is this thing getting big. Gonna try to get 3.5 hitbox gifs sometime relatively soon. Vi. Controlling Space Vii. Movement Viii. Recovery iX. Crouch Cancelling X. Grab Game Xi. Edgeguarding Xii. Ledgedashing Xiii. Dash Dancing XiV. Pivot Fsmash XVi. Grounded Attacks XVii. Aerial Attacks XViii. Special Attacks XX. Standard Neutral Stages XXi. Standard Counterpick Stages I. What do I Need to Know Ahead of Time? II. Roy's Pros and Cons III. What is Roy? IV. How do I win with Roy? (Aka; What should my gameplan be?) V. Fundamentals Vi. Controlling Space Spoiler: Roy's threat zones Spoiler: Metaknight's threat zones it was the proper space control that made the set up possible rather than attacking where your opponent currently is, you should be attacking where he is going to be if they ever get too comfortable picking one of those options, punish them hard VII. Movement movement is the biggest pillar upon which a player's skill level sits Shuffling any and all aerials Wavedashing in all shapes and forms Ledgedashing Jump Cancelling all of your grabs! Dash dancing brawl-style foxtrotting Melee's pivot fsmashes Pushing yourself to the absolute max offstage distance you can edgeguard and still recover from And all manner of the above mixed together in any way you can imagine. a lot. 5-10 minutes a day VIII. Recovery 1. Good DI. 2. Aim for the ledge. 2. Proper DED stalls. 3. Optimal UpB angles. 4. Conservation of recovery resources. IX. Crouch Cancelling If you hold down right when you are being hit by a move, you will ASDI down At high enough knockback, crouch cancelling will result in you getting knocked down onto the ground While in full crouch, you receive 1/3 less knockback than normal characters like Charizard/DK will be able to CC Roy's jabs and DED pretty much regardless of their current percent A Roy sitting in full crouch controls the space around him very well an opponent sitting still is in a difficult position to dislodge X. Grab game Roy has an exceptionally good grab Chain grabbing. Fthrow/Dthrow combos. Tech chasing. XI. Edgeguarding Whiffing either move offstage as your opponent is recovering can easily mean a dead Roy u se his ledge invulnerability to do an immediate rising dair it is especially important that you are comfortable in getting to the ledge XII. Ledgedashing Roy has a fairly potent ledgedash XIII. Dash Dancing XIV. Pivot Fsmash XV. Moveset Analysis XVI. Grounded Attacks Jab Spoiler: Jab1 Good times to use Forward tilt Spoiler: Ftilt Good times to use Down tilt Spoiler: Dtilt Good times to use Uptilt Spoiler: Utilt Good times to use Forward Smash Spoiler: Fsmash Good times to use Spoiler: Dsmash Good times to use Up Smash Spoiler: Usmash Good times to use Up Smash DACUS Good times to use Dash Attack Spoiler: Dash Attack Good times to use Grab Spoiler: Standing Grab Good times to use XVII. Aerial Attacks Neutral Air Spoiler: Nair Good times to use Forward Air Spoiler: Fair Good times to use Spoiler: Dair Good times to use Up Air Spoiler: Uair Good times to use Back Air Spoiler: Bair Good times to use XVIII. Special Attacks Neutral Special, Flare Blade Spoiler: Grounded Flare Blade Good times to use Counter Side Special, Double Edge Dance Spoiler: Double Edge Dance, upward swings Spoiler: Double Edge Dance, sideways swings Spoiler: Double Edge Dance, downward swings Double Edge Dance terminology; > x> x^ XX> XX^ xxV xxx> xxx^ xxxV xxx< XIX. Stages XX. Standard Starter Stages Pokemon Stadium 2 Battlefield Green Hill Zone Smashville Dreamland 64 XXI. Standard Counterpick Stages Distant Planet Final Destination Fountain of Dreams Yoshi's Island (Brawl) Yoshi's Story (Melee) WarioWare XXII. Closing Notes on Updates So, you want to learn how to play as Roy. Or maybe you just want a better understanding of him. Maybe you just want to learn his gimmicks so you can tell your crewmates what to look out for against him.You've come to the right place.This guide is written with thein mind. I expect you to already know what all of the standard Smash terms are (DI, "Nair", crouch cancelling, pivot, etc). If this is your first time contemplating competitive smash, go watch the Advanced How To Play guide on youtube, get a feel for the game, then come back.This guide will focus, rather than the overall mindset you should put yourself in while playing Smash (which is a big enough subject that I could write entire guides on that alone). If you want to delve more into that can of worms, my suggested material;But on to the good stuff.+ Excellent range on attacks and grabs+ Very strong CC game via dtilt conversions+ Strong KO power through Fsmash, Bair and nB+ Low KBG on aerials result in combos that rack up a lot of damage- Poor offstage edgeguarding and lack of kill set ups against some characters can lead to opponents surviving to high percents- Low knockback aerials make approaching a grounded opponent from the air a poor option- Fast fall speed makes it so that most characters that can combo off of throws do so wonderfully vs Roy- Fast fall speed plus one of the shorter distance upBs in the game can mean death early, especially to attacks DI'd improperlyHe has range, but has to get in fairly close to get his better rewards. He has a great dash dance, but middling overall movement speed. His combos are potentially great, but often require either a read on (or flat out bad) DI from your opponent. His crouch cancel game is great, but CC is simultaneously one of his biggest weaknesses. Roy has strong KO options, but on the flip side is fairly squishy. Smash fundamentals are the pillars that hold Roy up, so you'll be able to flourish with those, but without them you will quickly crumble.Overall, Roy is an aggressive character. His real strength lies in landing the sweetspot on his attacks, which is the middle+hilt of his blade. Roy can use his range to control space, but to really put the hurt on, Roy needs to get up in his opponent's face. Unlike other full rushdown characters, though, Roy's movement isn't any faster than average, and he doesn't have tools like the space animals' shine to crank out crazy shield pressure. Instead of rushing headlong into his opponent, Roy's gameplan should be to advance steadily and carefully with a combination of dashdancing, crouch cancelling, and his long reaching attacks to control space and eventually pin his opponent down and set up for dtilts and grabs."But Sethlon, what is??"I'm so glad you asked., so thats what a majority of this guide will focus on.Every character in the game has a space that they control, and a space where they work their best magic. Sheik wants to be just inside the range of falling needles, or just inside ftilt range. Marth wants to be just inside tip range. Fox wants to be dancing just outside of YOUR range, so he can make you whiff moves and then dive into you with his superior speed and mobility. Roy, with his rather long sword, has a rather large zone of control.This is sort of a shoddy picture, but I think visualizing the zones is a good idea;Red is the zone where Roy can safely and reliably land his sweetspots (with jab, dilt, DED> and uptilt), black is the area where he can put out attacks to stuff his opponent's moves/movement (with the tip of various moves), and yellow is the area where Roy could potentially attack with some risk (such as fsmash, ftilt, and dash attack).Conversely, lets look at Metaknight;Red is the zone where MK can easily land hard hitting moves and combo starters (dtilt sweetspot, nair, grab), black is the area he can put out attacks with relative safety (ftilt, fsmash, tip dtilt, fair), and yellow is the area that he can threaten if he wants to take a risk (with dash attack and dash grab).Comparing the two, you can see that MK has a larger area that he can "threaten", but for around half of that area (the yellow area), he has to take a risk to do so. Roy, on the other hand, has a slightly smaller overall threat zone, but comes with a larger area to bully people with his sweetspot, and a larger area that he can throw out safe pokes.So do these zones factor into how the neutral will go in this matchup? MK has the speed advantage and can dive into Roy at practically any moment with dash attack/grab, so Roy has to play it careful. While MK should be dancing around with wavedashes and dash dances, keeping Roy guessing for when he's going to go in, Roy should be advancing steadily, using his larger safe threatening zone to keep MK out while steadily boxing him in so he can set up his optimal spacing. Important to note is that Roy does not necessarily have to actively attack to threaten his space! Simply sitting patiently with the intent to rebuff any invasions into his space will often have that effect. If your opponent doesn't respect your space, then great; swat away their attempts to push in, and then take the momentum.Also important to note is that WHERE you currently threaten on the stage is just as important as how big your threat area is. In the above pictures, Roy and MK are both in complete neutral, at equal distance from the center of the stage. If that picture were to have either character even a couple of character lengths to the side, there would be a clear advantage; the player closer to the middle could move in just a bit and establish that space, cutting off some of the area that their opponent can safely move around in. Having your back to the ledge is a very bad place to be! Your options are cut down severely; your opponent can simply sit at a safe distance away and wait, since most characters have to take a sizable risk to push in towards the stage. If you do nothing, they can advance a bit and begin poking at you, and there's no where for you to run to. Take for example; Me vs Dizzy's marth. Slow that down and watch closely. Dizzy has me near the edge of the stage, but goes for a risky fsmash; he DIs my wavedash OoS punish fairly well, so I can't combo after the fair. I do still have some frame advantage, though, so I rush in for an attempted follow up grab. Dizzy is ready to buffer a roll away, and escapes the trap, but in doing so, puts himself near the ledge, "on the ropes" so to say. Knowing that his options to keep me out are limited, I move to try to box him in with a nair; he attempts to dash dance to fake me out, but gets caught by the nair since he doesn't really have any space to move, and I convert from the (fairly safe) nair into a kill combo.That example isn't one directly in neutral, though, thats an example of me taking advantage of landing a hit and keeping momentum. Lets look at another one where it starts closer to neutral; Me vs K9's metaknight. I'm actually at a slight advantage right off of the bat, since I spawn closer to the middle of the stage, whereas K9 is close to the ledge. K9 immediately puts out an ftilt in an attempt to contest any movement into the space that he does have; I advance slowly and try to find my own range, however, so the ftilt ends up serving no function other than to whiff a move and put himself at a bit of a disadvantage. (If I had rushed in headlong, with either a dash attack or grab or short hop aerial, the ftilt would have stuff it clean, and the stock would have gone very differently.) I can't safely punish the ftilt, so I simply move in just outside of each of our ranges, and wait in crouch. At this point, K9 essentially has two options; he can try to invade my space, in the hopes of beating out my pokes/cc, or he can move away. If he stays in the current position, I have to inch just a bit closer to be in the range to safely attack him. He decides to play it safe and dash dance away. I walk forward a little more to put more pressure on him and cut off more of his space, but don't want to actively invade it yet, so I pull back with a wavedash and crouch, ready to CC any impatient dash attack attempts. K9 dashes in a bit and shields, likely in an attempt to net a shield grab or nair OoS vs an unsafe attack that didn't come. At this point, I'm well out of reach of any attack that he could do OoS, but still in the range that I could try a relatively risky attack if I wanted to, so he plays safe again and jumps OoS to try to avoid any grabs or active pressure. This actually puts him in a WORSE position, however; with the platform protecting me from potential angled dair space invasions, I can safely wavedash in to actively threaten him. He could attempt to land on the platform, but then he would be subject to flurries of uairs and upsmashes with no real way to counterattack. He decides to pull back even farther to land closer to the edge of the stage, and this gives me my opportunity to wavedash in again. He could fall with a fair, but I'm entering crouch as soon as I finish my wavedash, so CC dtilt would blow it up. I poke at him with a dtilt, well within sweetspot range, and it catches him in his landing animation. He attempts to DI away from the fthrow in the follow up, but doesn't do so fast enough, gets caught with a dash attack, and dies very early to an improperly DI'd fsmash.With proper DI he could have survived, surely, but the important part of this lesson is that. I didn't press a single attack button until several seconds into the match, but I could still pressure K9 and control space regardless.Another important thing to take away from that example is thatIf your opponent is going to move in on you, be ready to poke them out of it or counter the attack with CC. If your opponent is going to stay still, approach safely. If your opponent is going to retreat, move in and keep the pressure on. AndAgainst some characters however (such as DK), Roy can't play to his usual gameplan, since they threaten the space he usually likes to stay in and punish harder off of those conversions. Against these characters, Roy has to play a bit more of an evasive style, using dash dances to stay safe, tricky DED timings to poke, and running JC grabs to go for all-ins to take the momentum. Fortunately, these characters are the exception rather than the rule for his normal style of play.Project M is a game lush with movement options, similar to its predecessor. In a way,It doesn't matter how much space you control if you can't comfortably move that space around. It doesn't matter how smart you are if your movement isn't smooth enough to take advantage of the things you know will happen. Movement is also a bit of an abstract thing. A lot of players move in different ways; its one of the reasons you can spot one player from another by simply watching their gameplay. I can however, give a short list of some of the things you should be 100% comfortable doing;(especially long strings of repeated uairs)for quicker attacks vsin a short hop for a tighter offense(forward, back, on stage, to the ledge, onto platforms, sliding off platforms, out of shield, etc)especially is an especially strong tool for Roy, enough so that I'm dedicating a section just to that belowRoy has an exceptional standing grab. JCing your dash grabs will improve range and safety for grabbing while moving in on an opponent.and, andUnfortunately, there isn't any way to get better at movement than to simplyPreferably,The more time you're willing to put towards this the better (especially for newer players who don't have movement techniques ingrained in their muscle memory), but if you don't have the patience/drive/time to sit down and grind out a ton of training mode,Roy is squishy. He's fairly light, falls like a rock, and his recovery doesn't go all that far. Because of these things, optimal recovery becomes paramount. There are several aspects that factor in to optimal recovery;This seems fairly self explanatory, but is too huge to not mention. The better you DI, the farther up you'll be while drifting back the to stage, cutting down the distance you'll need to burn resources to attain. Good DI can make a Roy stock last nice and long.Trying to bully your way on stage while recovering is a bad idea, and a great way to get counter hit and killed. Even if you're directly above the ledge, rather than pushing in and dropping with an aerial, you should pull back a bit and aim to land safely on the ledge instead. The ledge isn't a great position to be in, but its a ton better than being dead, and from there Roy can take advantage of his ledgedash.Using the first swing of DED will give Roy a bit of a boost in horizontal recovery. This distance degrades over swings, with a very small boost for the third swing, and not any boost at all past that. DED swings won't "recharge" the distance boosted until Roy actually touches that stage. Be careful when trying to boost yourself with DED when you've only made it to the ledge.Roy's UpB, Blazer, is actually one of the best in the game for cutting through an opponent trying to intercept offstage, if used properly. In general, you want to angle yourself straight up if you want to counter-hit an opponent coming offstage to attack you, to hit an opponent holding the ledge, or to stall out an opponent who is trying to edgehog your with a ledge roll/get up. You'll want to angle in as far as possible to snap to the ledge quickly, and to hit an opponent out of trying to edgeguard you from the ground on stage.Perhaps the MOST IMPORTANT of these aspects. Your double jump and your DED boosts are your lifelines; if you ever get pushed offstage without them, Roy is basically dead. Use them sparingly, and only when necessary. If you can get to the ledge using just aerial drifitng and your double jump, do so.Crouch cancelling is a deceptively complex mechanic, simultaneously one of Roy's greatest strengths and his greatest weaknesses. The gist of it is as follows;putting yourself straight into a crouch animation instead of standard hitstun.(complete with the ability to tech). At higher knockback, you'll hit the ground and then slide offstage at a low angle, and at especially high knockback, you won't be able to CC at all.making full crouch CC much stronger than simply holding down when you're hit. (Note that you have to actually befor this to come into effect, not simply holding down ahead of time)Crouch cancelling of course takes knockback growth of a move into account when determining if the person CCing will get knocked down/away. Keep in mind that some moves have little to no knockback growth, however;Knowing these attributes is very important for knowing how to correctly use and fight against CC.since he'll have the full crouch knockback reduction for any attacks thrown at him, and will likely be able to retaliate with CC dtilt. For the same reason,the knockback reduction makes it so that any character can CC and punish Roy's weaker aerials (such as fair).There are many different ways to actively combat CC. Rather than trying to butt heads against someone in full crouch, Roy could poke around at the edges of their space, be ready to flick opponents out of any of their movement (which will no longer have the benefit of knockback reduction), and then take momentum from there. Sometimes, Roy can CC them back; for instance, while dropping with a fair that you know your opponent will CC, you can do the move, l-cancel, and then go directly into full crouch. If they try to CC and attack back with a move that isn't very strong, then you can CC that attack and then dtilt them in the endlag of it. Alternately, you can drop with a fair/uair/dair at the last moment and then immediately go into shield to block their attack. If you're ABSOLUTELY sure that they're looking to CC and then punish, you can possibly sneak in an empty landing into a grab! And yes, this trick can work against high level opponents. His grab comes out in the average 7 frames and has great reach, with the only characters having greater reach being the large characters (D3/DK/Chairzard) and tether grab characters. Opponents will have to play a little further outside of your shield than normal to space around shield grabs, though obviously characters with great pressure through speed (like the space animals) will be able to play their usual game.There are three main ways to use Roy's actual throws;Roy's upthrow eats space animals alive. Upthrow chain grabs start at around 0% and last till around 60% (depending on your opponent's DI), and you can still follow up with potentially more combos at that 60%. It isn't unheard of for Roy to kill space animals off a single grab at zero percent. For any space animal fool enough to leave FD open as a counter pick, make them regret it.(ProTip; no space animals around you to practice upthrow chain grabs against? A trick I used in Melee was to take a CPU space animal to FD in training mode, and set the CPU to "Evade". Their DI won't be entirely random, but its close enough that you should get a feel for the timing of each angle at varying percents!)Against any character floatier than space animals, fthrow is a fairly good combo starter. Fthrow -> dash attack is a great way to start combos aggainst opponents who are DIing away, and if they DI in you can punish with fsmash or go for fair chains. Against some of the floatier characters, fthrow -> nair works quite well at low percents. Against all but the floatiest characters, however, DIing away and down will stop any potential fthrow follow ups. Quick fthrows will make this difficult, but expect expert level opponents to escape some of your set ups.Dthrow doesn't combo quite as well as fthrow, but mixing it in sometimes can lead to nice follow ups. Dthrowing and opponent at the ledge can lead to ftilt/fsmash (if they DI poorly), and any time you think your opponent is going to try to DI out of your fthrow combos, you can switch to dthrow and get a regrab or a quick one two combo.Similar to Marth, Roy gets great tech chases off of his throws at low percents. Covering as many options as possible can make your tech chasing a terrifying thing for opponents. Wavedash in -> dtilt is a great way to cover tech in place/no tech, and its fast enough that you can usually pressure your opponent still if they chose another option. Wavedashing in and then chasing with a regrab to extend the tech chase is the low risk - low reward option, but watch out for opponents choosing to not tech. Fsmash is an obvious finisher for opponents at high percents, though it requires a stronger read and a bit of a gamble. Tricky movement with bair can finish a stock with a little more safety, but is significantly harder to pull off. Dair can cover multiple options if used correctly, but proper CC from your opponent will sever follow up potential.Offstage edgeguarding is one thing that Roy is unfortunately rather bad at. Flare blade can secure kills, but it has significant start up that seasoned opponents will often be able to dodge. Fair comes out fast and covers a lot of space, but often isn't powerful enough to finish the job.Some characters do have target windows that you can hit them out of (Ness starting his upB, Marth/Roy boosting with sideB, Luigi's downB/sideB, etc), but the majority of your successful edgeguarding won't be done offstage.Roy's onstage edgeguarding is fairly good. Dtilt will pop up opponents that miss their sweetspot for a free follow up, and fsmash will often take a stock. Angled downward ftilt can poke an opponent out of their recovery, sometimes disrupting their flow enough for them to miss a sweetspot. Several of Roy's aerials, (dair and flare blade, especially,) can reach below the stage to snipe people sweetspotting.The place where Roy's edgeguarding truly shines, though, isGrabbing the ledge won't often lead to Melee-style edgehog kills, but it will open up other ways to punish your opponent. One of the simplest edgeguards is toto force them up onto the stage; from that position, you can ledgehop an aerial to punish. Depending on the aerial, you can either do a meaty hit (nair), set up for follow up combos (uair/dair), flick them safely for some damage and momentum (fair), or straight out end their stock (bair/flare blade). Against opponents with especially long recovery on stage landing (say, Sheik), you can often simply stand up from the ledge or wavedash on to the stage, and then punish with grab set ups or raw smashes!Another strong way that Roy can use the ledge is to grab the ledge at a similar time for the above set up, but thenRoy's double jump goes high enough that he can dip fairly low before dj'ing and dairing, covering a lot of space below and around the ledge. The beauty of this set up is that any part of the blade is (at least somewhat) useful if it connects; the tip will send opponents out, possibly killing them and often giving Roy time to wavedash back to the ledge to set up another dair if not. The middle of the blade will pop opponents up for a bair (to kill) or a fair string (for potentially more damage). If you manage to connect with the deep dair sweetspot, the spike is often enough to kill characters that low to the stage. In addition to all of that, ledgehop dair is probably one of the safest ways to edgeguard if done correctly, since you are invulnerable for most of the dair, and immediately onstage afterwords. Low risk, medium - high reward!Because of this,There are many things you'll have to practice as Roy, and this is definitely one of them. Get comfortable in making it to the ledge as fast as possible, from any distance; whether that be with a full run -> rar wavedash, wavedash -> turn around -> wavedash, or simply walking forward a tad -> turn around -> wavedash.Speaking of the ledge.... Its one of the few "advanced techs" that he really has (though its not specific to just him).Ledgedashing, of course, is simply wavedashing onto the stage from the ledge. (Dropping down from the ledge, double jumping, and then quickly airdodging.) The true power of Roy's ledgedash comes when you can get it down well enough to do it extremely fast; when done fast enough, Roy actually retains some of the invulnerability granted by grabbing the ledge while he's moving on stage. Correct use of ledgedashing will completely blow away any pressure your opponent is putting on you while you're on the ledge. This is especially nice for Roy, since his recovery is so poor; any interception from your opponent when trying to muscle your way on stage can often result in a dead Roy. Even if you aren't doing the ledgedash tight enough to have full invuln, getting hit in crouch on stage is much better than getting caught out of your double jump trying to do something like ledgehop fair/nair.This is one technique that will take a lot of practice to get down. You will SD, a lot. Even when you have the technique "down", there will be times where you'll SD when attempting it in tournament. Its worth it.Roy's ledgedash isn't quite as potent as it was in previous versions of PM, but still very much worth learning. With a frame perfect ledge dash, Roy has 7 frames where he can commit to any action and still be intangible. This means that jab, dsmash, uptilt, grab, and DED will all come out before the intangibility goes away! Dash dancing has been an integral part of Smash movement since Melee, and PM is no exception. Marth has always been great at using dashdancing to shut opponents down, and Roy's is useful for nearly all the same reasons. Proper dashdancing when combined with wavedashing and crouch cancelling can make for an opponent thats frustratingly difficult to pin down.The general idea for Roy dashdancing is to be dashing just outside the distance where you could run in for crouch dtilt. From this distance its hard for opponents to effectively attack you, since you're in a prime position to move away or intercept their movement (since they have to move a decent distance to actually get in range to hit you). This is also a good distance for aggression, since if your opponents start respecting you cutting off their options and begin acting defensively, you can move in with crouch dtilts or JC grabs to break through and start momentum of your own. Dash dancing is rather complicated, and there's plenty more to learn about it that I wouldn't trust myself to accurately convey. If you have trouble applying it, there are many other resources online that could be beneficial. I would recommend starting with Dash Dancing 101. Fsmash is one of the key moves in Roy's arsenal. It hits hard, comes out fairly fast, and has pretty big range. Its also got a good amount of risk with its cooldown lag, however, and finding the right spot to throw one out can be tricky. This is where pivot fsmashes come in.Pivoting is a technique that exists in all smash games (though its less useful in Brawl and Smash4). When a character transitions from dashing one direction into dashing in the other direction, there is one frame in between the two dashes where your character is in a normal "standing still" animation. During that one frame, you can input practically any grounded attack and have it come out. Being faster than transitioning from a wavedash into an attack, pivotting is extremely useful for quick "random" fsmashes. Useful for converting off of some things that normally wouldn't combo into fsmash quickly dodging an attack and counterattacking hard, and many other situations.As mentioned already, Roy has a fairly well balanced moveset. Basically every single one of his moves is useful in some sort of scenario, and the only real way to go over them is to go over each move itself in detail. So, here we go, full moveset analysis!For more indepth frame data, check out the sticky in the PM Roy section Active on frame 4-7-16 on shieldFairly good, as far as jabs go. A little slower than the best jabs (frame 4 vs frame 2), but solid 3 frames of active hitbox, and tons of range. A great interrupt move, jab can sometimes lead to follow ups if you hit with the tip and your opponent DIs in, and has enough base knockback that it will still lead to a tech chase opportunity in most situations. A frame perfect falling fair -> jab on shield will hit on the same frame as an opponent's 7 frame grab, making it a decently safe frame trap against shielding opponents, even when your fair is not spaced optimally. as a staple interrupt, after landing with an aerial, after teching in place, after invincible ledgedashingActive on frames 8-12, 9-12-21 on shieldThe definition of a good neutral poke. Huge range, low risk, low reward. Best to use when you either can't hit your opponent because they are too far away (like when they are offstage), or when they're zoning you out and you can't get through their walls. Dthrow/Fthrow -> ftilt works fairly well as a low reward follow up. Note: this move becomes quite a bit better when playing against characters with weak recoveries. Against them, the good base knockback of ftilt can often push them far enough offstage that you can set up edgeguarding,
payment of as little as $1, while the full list of games can be unlocked with a payment of $20. Indie Game: The Movie is also included.The last two games, Fez and Prison Architect, will be unlocked for all purchasers when once certain sales targets are met.The bundle can be purchased from the MacHeist website for the next 10 days. MacHeist is also giving away prizes and other free software titles (Defend Your Life, A Bird Story, and Cloud Knights) through a mini adventure game on the website. 10% of each bundle purchased will be donated to charity, with each person who purchases a bundle able to pick the charity of their choice.MacRumors is an affiliate partner of MacHeist.Here’s an architectural study exploring the possibilities of game engine technologies for architecture. here’s the link to download and play: Download (Dropbox) extract archive anywhere and run spacewarp.exe (no installation required). Use WASD or arrow keys for movement; ESC to quit. The idea to use computer game technology and virtual reality to present architecture is not new. This “project” started as a personal research into the topic: is it efficient to use free open source 3d engine (in this case Irrlicht game engine) to present architectural ideas to a client? Irrlicht has number of advantages: the finished map can be distributed easily – there is no need for the client to install anything on their machines, the engine takes a few megabytes, it is free and open source. The disadvantages include long development period it takes to prepare such a presentation, relatively poor visual quality of the renderings. But as I was preparing a testing map the priorities changed quickly. It became apparent that the game technology provides in itself a new way of thinking architecture. The content created with this technology is not a representation of a building-to-be but a finished work in itself. It defies representation. This particular “map” explores the fundamental concepts of architecture. It explores spaces around, spaces between and spaces inside an architectural body. It explores the effects of light and shadow. It explores the relationship between masses and voids. It is an inverted belvedere – directing the viewer not towards a beautiful view that lies outside architecture but towards the architecture itself. Belvedere and Labyrinth are the two types that find their semiotic trace in this structure. This is how it relates to (history of) architecture. It also share the same theoretical grounds as Bernard Tschumi’s Folies and related writings (Derrida’s, Eisenman’s). Unlike computer games the map does not give challenges (monsters and other hostile mobs) and puzzles (like for example in Valve’s Portal) to a “player”. It postulates a problem – can architecture alone – devoid of external functional programs – be interesting, immersive, playable. Video games is a media that provides architects new possibilities to explore. It is becoming evident that the 3d gaming technology should have its place in architectural education. The limits that the physical world imposes are architecture’s allies. 3D engines simulate physical properties of the world (gravity, impassable solid objects, first person perspectives). This way the students will have better awareness on the visual and interactive qualities of their projects. Second challenge would be to create “maps” that – as said above – are worth playing and interacting with because of their pure architectural qualities. The focus then can shift towards exploring new ways of thinking space – when the expectations we have already acquired from physical world are broken. This last approach has already been explored by computer game industry (Portal 1 and 2…) and indie game creators (games like: Void, The Bridge, Anti-Chamber, Perspective…). In these games we see how the traditional concept of space is broken and/or extended. It makes us imagine new ways of moving through the space and unusual ways of interacting with the environment. Interesting observations on architectural practices could be made in the creations by Minecraft community. Both in single player and multiplayer maps the players are given a world that they come to see as theirs. Soon they develop sense of a place; often this is followed by giving a name to a place. Marking a place, naming it and making a space (room) from it are the primordial actions of architecture. It is especially interesting to observe how places and structures are made collectively. This clearly relates to an earliest tradition – architecture is a common cause, it is something that a community does together. Of course the most common thing that one encounters in Minecraftia are re-creations that reference (popular) culture: medieval castles, underground laboratories, space-ships. In some cases the players explore what could be called true Minecraft architecture – new types of dwellings that are only made possible by the absolute rule of The Module (block). Another challenge could lie in creating custom multiplayer maps for popular first person shooters; developing these maps could give unique insight to an architect. In this case the “map” is not a pure architectural sign devoid of pragmatic meanings; the users of these kind of maps (fps fans) expect immersive environment (venustas) together with functionality (utilitas). The “map” should not only be eye-catching but provide the player with numerous possibilities to use it. It is a stage where the players have certain limits and enough freedom to plan their own scenarios. The architect should know the habits and expectations of the community (in this case the gamers) he is designing for. Traditionally the computer worlds are designed by artists. First a theme is chosen (desert, industrial, tropical, medieval), then a ton of reference images are gathered and made into a kind of collage from the already existing visual materials. The architect, when designing a game world is expected to take a completely different path – he/she is expected to make (new) architecture, instead of a mere interpretation of an already given theme. The tradition goes on. Bauhaus, Constructivism and other movements have sought to expand the boundaries of architectural thought and practice. Digital age offers new realms beyond the current boundaries. David Bostanashvili Georgian Technical University Studio Poetics of Architecture Info: The main volumes of this “map” were modeled in 2008. It took some time to design the labyrinth paths and lightning. I finally found some time to finish it in 2011. The old technique of pre-rendered lightning (illumination baking) is used instead of more advanced real time HDR lightning. Hence the effects that I expected from this model in 2008 are diminished – at some places the volume is gone and the scene appears flat and dull. The map comes as a.rar archive. Extract it anywhere and run spacewarp.exe (it just launches the map). the Irrlicht.dll file is the Irrlicht engine (ver. 1.4.2) and res.pk3 is a container for model and textures. Modeled in 3DS Max. Put together with limited knowledge of C++. Powered by Irrlicht 3D engine. The model is an original creation. Feel free to distribute the files.Legislation pending in 31 other states Steve Watson Infowars.com April 12, 2013 Idaho has become the second state in the US to ban warrantless spy drones being used by police or government, in an effort to protect privacy. Idaho Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter signed legislation into law Thursday that restricts the use of unmanned vehicles by public agencies, and mandates that warrants must be obtained in order to collect evidence using the technology. “We’re trying to prevent high-tech window-peeping,” Idaho Senate Assistant Majority Leader Chuck Winder, sponsor of the measure in the Republican-led Idaho legislature, told Reuters earlier this year. The bill was passed by both the Idaho House and Senate last week, and it strictly prohibits the use of drones to spy on anyone in the state, or to conduct surveillance of their private property, without the person’s express written consent. In February, Virginia became the first state in the US to pass such legislation, as the state General Assembly approved a two year moratorium on drone aircraft, sending the legislation to Gov. Bob McDonnell’s desk. Since that time, McDonnell, who has previously applauded the use of drones has sought to weaken the legislation to allow certain parties to use drones. The move did not surprise anti-drone activists in the state who have pointed to his strong connections with law enforcement. “He’s a former prosecutor, and law enforcement wants these (drones),” John Whitehead, president of the Charlottesville-based Rutherford Institute, a civil-liberties group said last week. “Get ready, Virginia. The moratorium is an illusion. We will be one of the leading states” for drone use and technology. Whitehead added. The approval of the Virginia moratorium came in the wake of the passage of legislation by city officials in Charlottesville, Va to keep drones out of their airspace altogether, making it the first US city to enact such a ban. Whether city officials will be able to extend their ban to federal drone aircraft or not remains to be seen. Legislation has been introduced by lawmakers in 36 other states to regulate domestic drone use, and bills are still actively being considered in 31 states. Recent reports have noted that the drone industry is engaged an all out PR offensive to convince Americans that the unmanned vehicles are more than just tools for spying and assassinations. Recent surveys suggest that most Americans now have significant reservations about the use of drones by government and law enforcement, with over half believing they have a right to shoot down a drone if it flies over their property without their permission. —————————————————————- Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.The case for making Marco Estrada a qualifying offer looked awfully similar to the case against making one: He just had the best year of his career by far. Estrada’s 2015 season was as unexpected as it was productive, leaving the Toronto Blue Jays with a potentially tough decision. Ultimately the club made Estrada the $15.8 million qualifying offer before Friday’s 5 pm ET deadline, and the right-hander now has a week to consider his next move. He can either accept, negotiate a multiyear deal with the Blue Jays or decline and hit the open market linked to draft pick compensation. Though the Blue Jays ultimately made Estrada the qualifying offer, there were arguments on both sides… GLOSSARY & CALENDAR: Qualifying Offers explained Reasons to qualify Estrada If Estrada declines the offer and signs elsewhere, the Blue Jays would obtain a compensatory pick in next year’s draft. Those top draft choices are vital to a franchise’s chances of developing impact talent. Even if Estrada accepts, you get a pitcher who thrived in Toronto. His 3.13 ERA ranked fifth in the American League this year and he led the league with just 6.7 hits allowed per nine innings. He pitched even better in the postseason, with a 2.33 ERA in three starts. Along the way he logged 200.1 total innings. Look beyond the results and there’s a reason for Estrada’s success. His arsenal may be pedestrian at first glance, but his swing-and-miss change-up allows him to throw his 89 mph fastball up in the zone to induce strikeouts and all kinds of weak contact. At 32, he’s younger than many free agent arms. The Blue Jays’ rotation needs multiple pieces, and signing free agent pitchers hasn’t always been easy given that Rogers Centre favours hitters. Mid-tier free agent starters regularly sign three or four-year deals for $10-16 million per season, so a one-year deal seems modest in comparison, even if few expected Estrada to merit a qualifying offer this time last year. The Blue Jays’ decision to make Estrada the offer suggests they expect him to be in demand this winter. AT THE LETTERS: Should the Blue Jays qualify Estrada? Reasons not to qualify Estrada Just because Estrada had one great season doesn’t mean he’s going to have another. He led the American League with a.216 batting average on balls in play this year and his typically high home run rate fell off considerably. If those figures return to his career norms in 2016 you might see Estrada’s ERA climb closer to his 4.40 FIP. Losing a little fastball velocity could have a similar effect. At that point you’re not looking at a $16-million pitcher anymore. Then there’s the question of innings. Every starting pitcher to obtain a qualifying offer has a 30-start season on his resume. Estrada has never made 30 starts or pitched 200 innings in the regular season, so he’ll be in unchartered territory if asked to start for a full season. None of this is a secret to other teams, who could be hesitant to surrender a top pick and a hefty contract for a player who just had what may end up being a career year. It’s not as though the Blue Jays are playing with infinite resources, either. They need two starters, a backup catcher and bullpen help yet their existing salary commitments exceed $100 million when you account for arbitration-eligible players. If Estrada accepts, the Blue Jays can’t trade him without permission, limiting their flexibility. Mark Shapiro declined to say Monday whether the Blue Jays are considering a qualifying offer for Estrada, but for what it’s worth, the Blue Jays’ new team president was disciplined enough to sell high on elite pitchers such as Bartolo Colon and Cliff Lee in Cleveland.NTT America NTT America soon will be able to claim a data center that runs on biogas. The Japanese telecommunications company today said it will install five Bloom Energy fuel cells in its California data center that will use biogas as a fuel. It's a sign of the growing interest in cleaner fuel cell technology, which proponents say will increasingly be adapted for residential customers. The fuel cells will be able to generate 500 kilowatts of power, which is enough for about 500 U.S. homes. At the data center, they will generate 4.2 million kilowatt-hours per year and reduce NTT America's carbon dioxide emissions by 1.6 million pounds. Utilities in California offer the option of purchasing biogas, a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide captured from dairy farms. The Bloom Energy "servers" are designed to run on natural gas, which is mostly methane, but will also convert biogas to electricity. The decision to go with Bloom Energy's fuel cells stems from NTT America's efforts to improve the efficiency of its computing operations. Its data center also uses other efficiency techniques, such as hot and cold aisles, and a sensor-based system to control the temperature. Fuel cells are typically more expensive than pulling power directly from the grid, but the on-site, continuous power of fuel cells does bring reliability, which data centers need. Bloom Energy, which seemingly came out of nowhere with a splashy 60 Minutes segment last year, builds fuel cells geared at corporate customers looking for alternative power sources that lower their environmental footprint. AT&T earlier this month said it intends to install Bloom Energy fuel cells to power its data centers in California, a state that has incentives to install fuel cells. The systems will generate 7.5 megawatts of power and be fueled by natural gas.A recent book claims the gun industry successfully created American gun culture solely with clever marketing. It is Pamela Haag’s The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture (Basic Books, 2015). This is nonsense. The gun industry was born and grew in response to a real need expressed in consumer demand. This is easily discoverable from a quick look at accessible archives. That a Yale professor could make such an easily refutable claim reminds me of another familiar case. Bellesiles Redux If you were around in 2000 or so, you might remember. Professor Michael Bellesiles of Emory University published Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture. Bellesiles claimed that in the Colonial period, the government tightly regulated gun ownership and use; that guns were very scarce before 1840, that there was essentially no civilian market for handguns before 1848, that violence between whites was rare, and that few Americans hunted until the 1830s. In response, Bellesiles resigned his tenured position, and Columbia University revoked the Bancroft Prize it had awarded him. Most academics initially responded with fawning reviews of this courageous attack on the “gun lobby.” A few troublemakers (myself leading the villagers with torches to the castle where Bellesiles’ monster dwelled) pointed out that he was not just misinterpreting the documents of the past, but that he was making up his own! Eventually, academics such as James Lindgren of Northwestern University started to ask questions based on their own areas of specialization. Bellesiles’ attempts to defend himself became increasingly difficult to believe. He could not produce notes from his examination of probate inventories; this data had given a certain credibility to his initial claims of a nearly gun-free America. Worse, he could not produce the spreadsheet from which the graphs in Arming America were created. He claimed the paper notes were destroyed in a flood and could not be restored from their mushy state. He said someone set his front door on fire, and he had to move his family because of “threats” from angry gun nuts. A very detailed account of this scandal by James Lindgren gives some idea of the scale of the problems. This included Bellesiles’ claim to have read probate inventories in archives that Bellesiles had not visited. In another case, he claimed to have “count[ed] records in the Gloucester County courthouse in Chelsea, Vermont, when there is no Gloucester County or Gloucester County courthouse…” Independent verification of his summaries of probate records often found them at great variance from his claims. Emory University asked a panel of prominent historians to look at the controversy, and their report was devastating. Example after example of Bellesiles’ responses to the committee and their comments make it clear that he was not believed. In many cases, committee staff were unable to find Bellesiles’ cited documents. Their conclusions included the following observation: "But in one respect, the failure to clearly identify his sources, does move into the realm of 'falsification,' which would constitute a violation of the Emory 'Policies.' The construction of this Table implies a consistent, comprehensive, and intelligible method of gathering data. The reality seems quite the opposite." In response, Bellesiles resigned his tenured position, and Columbia University revoked the Bancroft Prize it had awarded to Bellesiles for Arming America, the very first time that has happened. Bellesiles, at last report, now tends bar. As this paper of mine, and my book-length examination demonstrates, Bellesiles intentionally falsified hundreds of footnotes (at least). Bellesiles to Haag The similarity of Bellesiles’ book to Haag’s claims are astonishing. She has one astonishing admission buried in one of the early endnotes at p. 407 n. 9: Michael Bellesiles' Arming America (New York: Knopf, 2000), whose count of gun ownership, which [Churchill] concluded was quite low (19 percent), based on colonial probate records, was subsequently challenged and rejected for questionable sources and technique. Setting aside his gun inventory, this book agrees with one of Bellesile's [sic] conclusions, namely, that the alliance between the government and the gun industrialists in the antebellum years was crucial to the development of a commercial market.” Haag acknowledges an emotional commitment to the gun control cause that Bellesiles was cagey enough to avoid. As we saw above, the problems of Bellesiles’ work were far broader and more severe than some questions about counts of guns in probate inventories. Making false claims of finding inventories in archives he never visited, and in non-existent courthouses, is a bit more than “questionable sources and technique.” It suggests that Haag took Arming America at face value, and made no effort to review the voluminous literature detailing Bellesiles’ spectacular “crash and burn.” Haag’s book commits herself to Bellesiles’ theory of gun culture formation in America. Worse, at p. 409 n.15 she asserts that “[t]here are very few histories or cultural histories of guns in the United States….” Except of course for my book Armed America (2006), which demonstrated not just that Bellesiles was a fraud, but that his claim about gun culture formation was wrong. Haag acknowledges an emotional commitment to the gun control cause that Bellesiles was cagey enough to avoid: On the first page of the introduction, she admits this book was caused by “the tragedy of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newton, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012.” She then launches on p. x into several pages of assertion that there was some guilt associated with gun manufacturing. Nevertheless, I wanted to know what allowed Oliver Winchester and his successors not to feel at least a little encumbered by the fact that they manufactured and sold millions of “fearfully destructive” guns. We hear a great deal about gun owners, but what do we know about their makers? The gun debate has been mired in rights talk for so long—what gun owners have a right to do—that it is forgotten as a matter of conscience. I do not (yet) assert that Haag has intentionally falsified her work, but she starts with assumptions that raise serious questions about whether she looked for and misread evidence to prove her assumptions. She begins by saying that the gun culture was created through intentional manipulation of public tastes to create a gun culture for commercial reasons: On p. xviii, she says, “'Why do Americans love guns?' is, simply, that we were invited to do so by those who made and sold them at the moment when their products had shed much of their more practical, utilitarian value." By this, she explains on p. xviii, “Logically, sales should have dropped, but the WRAC [Winchester Repeating Arms Corporation] did quite well from 1890 to 1914.” Her argument is that as America urbanized, guns no longer served as critical a need for hunting or defense against Indians. There are problems with this argument. As the U.S. Census Bureau shows in Table 10, America remained a primarily rural population until 1950. She also seems unaware that urban America, then as now, had significant criminal violence problems for which a gun might be a very practical and utilitarian tool. The Loathing of Business It would be surprising indeed if Haag’s clear upset about Sandy Hook and the evils of capitalism did not color her interpretation of documents. Haag also exhibits a not-terribly-subtle hostility towards business on p. xxiii. “A perceptual habit of the gun industry and technology—to fracture parts, labor, and relationships into smaller pieces, to focus deeply inward, to see components over the whole—was also a habit of conscience, the innovation in technology and accountability one and the same,” she writes. On p. xxv, she also takes to task Adam Smith’s description of capitalism in similar terms: “Smith described complex interdependency, but he absolved the capitalist from conscious accountability for distant human fates beyond the narrow actions of his accounting.” It would be surprising, indeed, if Haag’s clear upset about Sandy Hook and the evils of capitalism did not color her interpretation of documents, in much the same way that Bellesiles’ implicit desire for a gun-free American Eden colored his “research.” Haag could well have started from a wrong assumption and reached the right conclusion, but an examination of her work provides evidence of very careless research and many factual errors. One of her claims on p.48 is that Samuel Colt “had sent out an agent to California to tap into the gold-rush market in 1853, but he found the market saturated. This new crop of settlers was more interested in agriculture than gold, and they had little need for the guns.” So what should we conclude from looking at ads like this from the January 1, 1853 Sacramento Daily Union? J.A. McCrea thought there was a market for handguns in California. Perhaps he was mistaken and this ad was a mistake. Why, then, did he run this same ad 199 times in 1853 and 281 times in 1854? Why keep advertising something for which there was no demand? McCrea was not the only such fool: There are three possibilities here. Merchants continued to advertise products for sale in a “market saturated” with guns. If advertising was cheap, this might make sense. But the Sacramento Placer Times charged $4 for 10 lines of a column and $2 for every “subsequent insertion,” which in 1850 would seem a discouragement to wasting money advertising unsellable goods. The gun industry marketing was very successful in creating demand for guns, which demolishes Haag’s claim about Colt finding the California Gold Rush gun “market saturated.” Demand in California was strong enough for guns that either Colt was wrong in his claim, or Haag has misinterpreted Colt’s letter on this subject. In light of Haag’s clear hostility to the gun industry and gun ownership, it is worth examining Colt’s letter that she claims makes this statement. Furthermore, ads for shooting galleries (what today we would call a shooting range) appear repeatedly in California Gold Rush newspapers. Searching articles instead of ads found 2886 matches for “shooting,” a few of which are metaphorical (“grass shooting up on the prairies”), but most are of this form: All of these incidents are from the first seven months of 1850. J.D. Borthwick’s Three Years in Calafornia [sic] (1857), described how San Francisco was awash in places of entertainment with signs that announced, “No weapons admitted.” While Borthwick thought little of the entertainments available, he did say it was nonetheless worth going: “[I]f only to watch the company arrive, and to see the practical enforcement of the weapon clause in the announcements. Several doorkeepers were in attendance, to whom each man as he entered delivered up his knife or his pistol, receiving a check for it, just as one does for his cane or umbrella at the door of a picture-gallery. Most men draw a pistol from behind their back, and very often a knife along with it; some carried their bowie-knife down the back of their neck, or in their breast; demure, pious-looking men, in white neckcloths, lifted up the bottom of their waistcoat, and revealed the butt of a revolver; others, after having already disgorged a pistol, pulled up the leg of their trousers, and abstracted a huge bowie-knife from their boot; and there were men, terrible fellows, no doubt, but who were more likely to frighten themselves than any one else, who produced a revolver from each trouser-pocket, and a bowie-knife from their belt. If any man declared that he had no weapon, the statement was so incredible that he had to submit to be searched; an operation which was performed by the doorkeepers, who, I observed, were occasionally rewarded for their diligence by the discovery of a pistol secreted in some unusual part of the dress.” [emphasis added] Rifles appear repeatedly in 1850-59 California newspapers: 3272 matches, including ads for the “Sharp’s Patent Rifles.” Sometimes these are articles in which rifles play a part: The Spaniard on the opposite side of the table then rose, and fired a revolver at Mr. Clark, missing him. Mr. B.F. Moore then came in, and the Spaniard fired at him, but missed. He then took up a rifle and fired, at about five inches’ distance, blowing off the top of the Spaniard’s head.” Colt’s letter (or at least Haag’s characterization of Colt’s letter) is clearly wrong: A strong and vigorous gun culture already existed in California before 1853. Worse, that Haag never questioned the validity of this idea suggests either a gross ignorance of California’s turbulent history during the 1850s or an intentional unwillingness to verify the claim she purports to have found." Semiautomatic? Throughout her book, Haag uses the word “semiautomatic” to refer to guns that are not. On p.179, she writes, “The family name, which became the rifle name, eventually stood for the genus, becoming a synonym for repeating, semiautomatic rifles.” On p.88, she asserts that “As the semiautomatic ancestor of automatic machine guns, the Henry performed ‘a terrible work of death…'”[emphasis added] On p. 204, “Winchester had emerged the preeminent name for semiautomatic rifles.” But the Henry and Winchester rifles were not semiautomatic rifles. “[T]he semi-automatic rifle—that is, the military rifle fitted with self-loading mechanism but fired by the trigger shot for shot,” does not describe the Henry or Winchester rifles, which must be reloaded by operation of the operating lever. Because Haag describes the mechanism and how it works on pp. 180-1, this is clearly not ignorance, but perhaps an attempt to transfer some of the horror she associates with guns in the historical period she is examining to modern semiautomatic weapons (or maybe the other way around). This is especially problematic because the proper term “repeater” or “repeating” appears in several places in her book, such as on p. 179. Regardless of her motivation, this repeated use of the wrong word casts serious doubt on either her level of research or her honesty. It would be like referring to the role of airplanes for reconnaissance in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 instead of the more accurate “balloons.” I confess to being surprised that a Yale professor would produce such a sloppy and factually defective book, but Bellesiles surprised me too.Your country needs your vote. Here's how to register in Virginia. Attention: Voter information and Voter information and identification requirements may change prior to an election. Please check with the Department of Elections website to make sure you have the most current information. To exercise your right to vote in the state of Virginia, you must first register to vote. Voter registration is available through several state agencies, as well as online and by mail. Read below for more information about registering as a voter in Virginia, including eligibility requirements and deadlines. Voter Eligibility Requirements You can register to vote in Virginia if you: Are a U.S. citizen. Are a Virginia resident. Are 18 years old on or before the date of the next general election. Are not registered or plan to vote in another state. HAVE NOT BEEN: Judged to be mentally incompetent by a circuit court, unless your rights have been restored by the circuit court. Convicted of a felony, unless your rights have been restored.* *Check the Secretary of the Commonwealth website to find out how to restore your rights. Just Moved? Find all the information you need to finish your moving requirements with the DMV. Register to Vote in Virginia Virginia allows you to register to vote online, in person or by mail with government offices, and at your local Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)office location. Online You can register online using the state's online voter registration website. The website will walk you through the completion steps and then you'll print and sign the form before mailing it to your local voter registration office. For you to use the online format: The VA DMV must be able to send the Virginia Department of Elections an electronic copy of the signature the agency has on file from your driver's license or identification card; this means you must have a driver's license or ID card with a “customer number" you can enter on the application in order to use the online format. If you have a customer number but don't want to enter it online, you can choose not to consent and use another means of voter registration (see below). the Virginia Department of Elections an electronic copy of the signature the agency has on file from your driver's license or identification card; this means you with a “customer number" you can enter on the application in order to use the online format. You must have and enter a Social Security number. Again, if you don't want to enter the number online, you can choose another registration option (see below). . In Person or By Mail To register in person or by mail, complete the Voter Registration Application (Form VA-NVRA-1) and either deliver it in person or mail it to your local voter registration office. NOTE : You can download the form using the link above, or you can obtain one from the voter registration office. At the DMV Like other states, Virginia allows you to register ot vote or change your voter registration information at any DMV office location. Registering to vote at the DMV is as easy as filling out the voter information section on the Driver's License and Identification Card Application (Form DL 1P).“The Secret of Tremendous Corporation is an awesome game you play when you got some time to kill. Art style is just amazing, I love it, it kinda looks like you gave an artist just a simple grayish marker and he did a miracle with it. Game features a few puzzles that can be easily solved, well most of them, some will actually require some thinking, but it's nothing too complicated - trust me.” 8.5/10 – Epic Reviews “this game deserves 10 potatoes out of 10” 10 potatoes out of 10 – Philyrood “graficos potato, animación potato, secuestro potato, puzzles potato. 20/10 GOTY” 20/10 – Zilch About This Game A game about games, secrets and stuff. In the near future, thanks to copyright and patent law abuse, all of the gaming industry became controlled by one corporation, producing low quality but highly profitable casual freemium games and ceasing development of any other more ambitious genres. Any game development outside of the company became outlawed, ending the era of indie games. Assist young Max Burton, a mighty gamedev wannabe and enthusiastic fresh intern on his first day at his first job in the only gamedev company out there in this short, (soon to be) award-winning free point-and-click adventure game. Explore the deepest SECRETs™ of the Tremendous Corporation®. Find out what happened to indie devs and save the gaming industry! Now on GNU/Linux and Windows, Mac OS X coming soon. The first version of this game has been made during Global Game Jam 2015 in Poznań, Poland under the name "The Game Jam Game About Games, Secrets and Stuff".Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (second right) is briefed during his tour to the tsunami-crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Okuma, northeastern Japan on Sept. 19, 2013. [AFP] Heavy rain at the Fukushima nuclear plant caused a leak of radioactive water containing a cancer-causing isotope, possibly into the sea, its operator said Monday, as a typhoon approaching Japan threatened further downpours. The leak is the latest in a long line of setbacks at the site, and further undermines agreements between operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) and the government which limit the level of radioactive contamination in water that goes outside the plant. TEPCO said a barrier intended to contain radioactive overflow was breached in one spot by water contaminated with strontium-90 at 70 times the legal limit for safe disposal. Strontium-90 is produced during nuclear reactions. It accumulates in bones and remains potent for many years, and causes several types of cancer in humans. The admission came as a team of experts from the UN’s nuclear watchdog ended their review of Japan’s progress in cleaning up the wider environment after the tsunami-sparked meltdowns of March 2011 created the worst atomic disaster in a generation. TEPCO has poured thousands of tonnes of water onto badly-damaged reactors at Fukushima to keep them cool and prevent repeat meltdowns. This huge volume of water must be stored in large tanks until it is cleaned of the radioactive substances it picks up in the cooling process. Rain worsens the problem because as it hits polluted surfaces, it becomes contaminated, meaning TEPCO needs to scoop it all up for storage and treatment. While the storage tanks all appeared to have survived the battering from heavy rain on Sunday, the concrete overflow barriers around them were not high enough to contain the rainwater runoff in several places. Meteorologists say a typhoon that is likely to bring further heavy rain is churning its way slowly towards Japan. Forecasters expect it will hit later in the week. In August, 300 tonnes of badly-polluted water leaked from a tank. It is now believed to have mixed with groundwater that is on its way to the sea. Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose experts have been in Japan, sounded a largely positive note on progress in dealing with the mess around the Fukushima plant. The mission, which came at Tokyo’s request, is a follow-up to an IAEA visit last year. Japan must review its communication strategies to improve public confidence in the process, the team said in its interim report. “Japan has done an enormous amount to reduce people’s radiation exposure in the affected areas, to work towards enabling evacuees to go back to their homes and to support local communities in overcoming economic and social disruption,” team leader Juan Carlos Lentijo said in a prepared statement. The report said that “food safety measures (have) protected consumers and improved consumer confidence in farm produce”. Existing screening programmes ensure that whatever is shipped to the market place “is safe for consumers,” he told a press conference. “We ate fish” during the mission in Fukushima, he told reporters. The Japanese government must better inform the public to reduce uncertainty as well as explain the costs and benefits of public programmes, Lentijo said. But he hailed what Japan has done so far, at least outside of the Fukushima plant. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has repeatedly insisted the situation is under control, has said he eats Fukushima-grown rice daily.Buying a house is the biggest financial transaction most people ever make. And because you may only buy one house in your lifetime, there's a risk that you'll make a lot of mistakes. And most of the people you'll be dealing with in the home-buying process will be more experienced than you. There's a danger that they'll take advantage of your ignorance. So here are 6 ways to be a savvy home-buyer. These tips will help you find a home that's right for you, avoid common pitfalls, and could save you thousands of dollars in the process. 1) Only buy a home if you plan to live there for a long time Many people want to buy a house as quickly as possible because they think paying rent is "throwing money away." But buying a home too quickly can be an even bigger financial mistake than not buying at all. For starters, the idea that renting is throwing away money is a little misguided. Almost everyone needs to
you feel might just come from (relatively) nowhere to have a big impact at the World Cup. Full-backs who aren’t allowed past the halfway line Despite the absences, the basic shape of the team remained clear against Canada. Firstly, this is as ‘flat’ a flat back four as you will ever find in any top-class side in the world. Maradona has repeatedly insisted that he wants his defenders to purely defend, and despite us being at a stage in football where rampaging full-backs are all the rage and are arguably the most important players in the team, Maradona does not want his to attack. “Why do they need to cross the halfway line?”, he recently asked. “That’s what my wingers are for.” Gutierrez’s natural attacking instincts meant that he naturally got forward more than Otemandi would have at right-back, but on the opposite side Gabriel Heinze largely followed his instructions – being involved in build-up play and receiving the ball from midfield when it was on his side of the pitch (don’t think that the full-backs are literally shying away from the ball), but when the ball was in possession on Argentina’s right, Heinze stayed level with his two centre-backs. The defensive nature of the full-backs means Argentina can afford to play only one holding midfielder, when many sides play two. Mascherano plays a role both more energetic and cultured than with Liverpool, where he is used to having Lucas alongside him. He is forced to cover a greater amount of the pitch laterally (where at Liverpool, Lucas would cover one side of the pitch) and also plays more ambitious passes – he has one fewer central midfield colleague, and of course, the full-backs are rarely an attacking outlet. Considered attacking style Veron’s role in the side is near enough that of a deep-lying regista, although he does look to move forward and support the attack when the ball is wide. Against Canada, his replacement Pastore played much higher up the pitch, looking to drop back when out of possession, but generally looking for a straight, direct forward pass from Mascherano, rather than the shorter, simpler balls Veron would prefer to receive. Pastore effectively plays one pass ahead of Veron – Veron will distribute the ball to the attacking players who in turn look to play the killer pass, whilst Pastore will look for the killer pass himself. Angel di Maria plays on the left-hand side and provides a genuine goal threat from a wide area – against Canada he curled a beauty into the far post with the outside of his foot – whilst also covering his full-back well. On the opposite side Gutierrez plays a less flashy, more energetic role (Maxi actually did a good job of replacing him against Canada) in a not dissimilar way to Park Ji-Sung at Manchester United, almost as if he is under strict instructions to make sure he has the highest ‘distance run’ figure of the 22 players. Messi plays a central role, in behind Gonzalo Higuain – the two playing fairly fluid roles in terms of moving to the left and then the right in turn, and it’s not unusual to see Higuain working the channels in a deep position, allowing Messi to take up a more orthodox striking position. The team is essentially depending on Messi to provide a moment of magic, something he has rarely done at international level so far. Conclusion The surprise is basically that Maradona has not gone crazy with attacking players. Carlos Tevez, Sergio Aguero and Diego Milito will be substitutes, and rather than Maradona playing a 4-2-3-1 and trying to cram all his flair players into the same side, he’s actually constructed a defensive-minded team based around two banks of four, with only one player, Messi, given anything approaching a free role. With many sides playing on the counter-attack, Maradona’s tactic of keeping five defensive players in strict positions at all times might just make life difficult for opponents. The centre-backs at full-backs might create a new challenge for opposing wingers. Maradona will possess the most talented bench in the tournament with the aforementioned players should Argentina need to change things, and amongst all this is Lionel Messi, the best footballer of his generation. Argentina should progress past the group stage – but predicting what will happen after that is impossible. But again, it’s a Latin American side doing something different defensively which is more than welcome, and whatever happens, with Maradona, it won’t be dull. Related articles on Zonal Marking:Patrick Murphy has some choice words for fellow laser-lovers tempted to train their beams at aircraft in the sky. “Don’t screw it up for the rest of us,” says the 58-year-old beacon buff and head of the International Laser Display Association, a trade group for the laser show industry. Bitten by the light bug three decades ago, Murphy has emerged as a leading proponent for safe and responsible laser use in the last few years, which is around the time when the FAA and FBI began taking notice of people aiming high-powered pointers at airplanes and helicopters. He’s published white papers on lasers and aviation safety and runs the website LaserPointerSafety.com, an exhaustive catalogue on the topic. DON'T LASE ME, BRO: The number aircraft tagged by people with laser pointers has risen dramatically since the FAA and FBI started tracking them in 2005. FAA As silly as all this may sound, federal officials remain fearful that a stray beam from a laser pointer could take down a helicopter or airplane. The FBI has spent the last two years hunting and locking up culprits who aim pointers at aircraft and they’re about to double-down on their efforts. Last week, the Bureau announced that it will expand a program that offers $10,000 to people who help nab those who shine lasers at aircraft. These days, laser tagging can get you up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine. Given the expanded crackdown, we thought it was a good time to chat with Murphy. You’ve been messing around with lasers for more than 30 years. What’s changed? When I was in college in 1980 I built a laser pointer. It was a tube about 18 inches long, which required three 6-volt lantern batteries in a belt pack. The cost was about $400, or about $1,150 today. The output was about 1 milliwatt. Today, you can get the exact same thing for less than $5, in a pocket-sized, button-battery powered pointer. If you want to spend $700, you can get the brightest possible handheld laser: 500 milliwatts of green light, which would be 10,000 times brighter than my 1980 belt-pack laser pointer, at only 60 percent of the cost. Patrick Murphy strikes a pose with his belt-pack laser pointer in 1980. Today's pointers are the size of pens and 10,000 times more powerful. Courtesy Patrick Murphy The triumvirate of lower prices, higher powers, and brighter-appearing colors like green made laser pointers an impulse purchase. Unfortunately, no one thought to warn buyers that they should not point them at aircraft, so naturally people tried out their new gadgets to see if the beam could hit one. Who shines a frickin’ high-powered laser at an airplane? Half the people don’t know any better and don’t mean anything by aiming a laser into the air. It looks really cool. It’s like a big light saber. They have no idea their beam is going inside a plane and forming this large ball of light in the cockpit. The other half are anti-social people. They couldn’t care less what happens. They don’t like the sound of helicopters or the sound of planes taking off overhead. They don’t really care about the danger because they’re a bunch of stupid criminals. What’s the worst accident that’s been caused by one of these? We’ve had 17,000 reports of laser incidents and there have been no accidents yet. More children have been injured by bounce houses. But I don’t want to denigrate the situation. I think the FAA has a responsibility to require proper training, maybe even simulated lasers so they can get an idea how to react and recover from them. Know of anyone with a green laser pointer like this one who likes to tag airplanes or helicopters? The FBI says it will pay you $10,000 to rat them out. www.techlasers.com What about laser bans or restrictions? That’s a complex subject. Bans may help. But they’ve been proven not to work. Australia banned laser pointers in 2008 and laser incidents went up 300 percent. There’s always the law of unintended consequences. Amazingly, in the U.S., there is not a regulation for warning labels on lasers. I’ve been saying for years there should be a law mandating that. If they do want to restrict lasers, my favorite idea is a tax tied to milliwatts. How on earth does someone even get caught doing this? If it’s an airplane, especially a commercial airplane, it’s very hard to capture someone. The pilot, you know, is trying to land a plane. It is very easy to catch somebody if you’re in a helicopter. The laser points directly down at them. They may as well sign up for the “Just Prosecute Me” program. Still, there have only been a few hundred prosecutions out of the 17,000 reported incidents. So culprits have a relatively low chance of getting caught. But you’re still a jerk if you do it. The narrow beam of a laser can turn into a blinding ball of light inside a cockpit. In 2013, there were 3,960 reports of laser strikes against airplanes and helicopters. FAA What’s the allure of a laser pointer anyway? There’s legitimate uses for laser pointers, like identifying stars in the sky. Beyond that, there are people who just like the laser light. It’s the purest light known to man. When it sparkles, it’s very beautiful, very awesome. I think it’s a gene among some of us or something. We see beautiful lights with pure colors and we just want to do more with them. I also think it’s sort of a guy kind of thing. My laser is bigger than yours. My laser is brighter than yours. Any parting words for folks itching to tag a plane with a laser? My impolite message is this: don’t screw it up for the rest of us. A more polite message might be: please, never aim a laser beam at an aircraft or total stranger. Don’t annoy people. It’s not that hard.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Mr Abbott is staying in a tent while governing from remote regions Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is spending a week governing the country from a remote indigenous community in the Northern Territory. He arrived in Arnhem Land on Sunday, honouring an election promise to spend a week every year in an indigenous area. Mr Abbott says he wants to hear from local people about community needs. His visit comes a day after he committed Australian troops to the fight against Islamic State militants. On Sunday Mr Abbott announced the deployment of 600 troops to the United Arab Emirates ahead of possible combat operations against Islamist militants in Iraq. Late last week, Australia also raised its terrorism threat level to "high" for the first time in over a decade, amid concerns over the effect of Islamist conflicts on domestic security. Mr Abbott said he would be in regular contact with Canberra. "Obviously, if there are dramatic new developments I can move if needs be," he said. Referendum timetable The prime minister, who is staying in a tent at a site sacred to the local community near Nhulunbuy on the north-east tip of the Northern Territory, was given a traditional welcome when he arrived on Sunday. On Monday morning, he visited an indigenously-run sawmill and the site of a possible new bauxite mine. Mr Abbott has described the visit as a chance to "gain a better understanding of the needs of people living and working in those areas". Phil Mercer, BBC News, Sydney Painted Yolngu dancers greeted Tony Abbott on his arrival at Yirrkala in Arnhem Land, one of the largest Aboriginal reserves in Australia. He is camping near the mining town of Nhulunbuy where, according to legend, the didgeridoo was created by the revered spiritual figure Ganbulabula. On a typically warm Northern Territory morning, Mr Abbott started the week at a site where an indigenous community hopes to develop a bauxite mine. Economic independence is the ambition of tribal leaders, and employment has been the focus of the conservative prime minister's first full day in the Top End of Australia. In a rugged part of the country, there is a strong sense of goodwill towards Mr Abbott, who is seeing for himself the privations and cultural pleasures of life in such a remote corner of the Australian continent. Politicians from Canberra have made bold, but ultimately misguided, pledges about Aboriginal jobs and health in the past. Tony Abbott will not want to make promises he can't keep. Local indigenous leaders say they are seeking a renewed focus on a referendum for constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians. Last year, parliament passed a bill recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the country's first inhabitants, but the constitution contains no mention of them. "I think we're all in favour of doing the right thing by Aboriginal people," Mr Abbott said. "The important thing now is to set a timetable for this [the referendum]... It's more important that we get it right than we rush it, because the last thing anyone ought to want is to put a proposal of this nature to the people and have it fail." High rates of unemployment in indigenous areas will also be on the agenda. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Mr Abbott received a traditional welcome in northeast Arnhem Land Indigenous Australians, who make up about 2% of the population, are the country's most disadvantaged group. They have higher rates of infant mortality, drug abuse, alcoholism and unemployment than the rest of the population. Mr Abbott will remain in the Northern Territory until Friday.Water, barley, hops and yeast—that’s all it takes to brew beer, right? While these four cornerstone ingredients have remained the foundation of the brewing process for hundreds of years, the enormous boom of craft brewers around the globe has seen the process take on an entirely new meaning. As the industry continues to evolve, brewers are constantly experimenting with a cornucopia of unusual and inventive ingredients, including fruits, vegetables, herbs and much more. 1. Short’s Bloody Beer City: Bellaire, Mich. ABV: 7% The Bloody Mary. While you might be more accustomed to seeing this popular cocktail served alongside a scrumptious brunch or as a lifesaving hangover cure, Short’s Brewing Company of Bellair, Michigan has something else in store for us. Fermented with Roma tomatoes, then spiced with dill, horseradish, peppercorns, and celery seed, they recreated the Bloody Mary experience in a brand new, beery format. Sure, this sounds a little imposing, but don’t be afraid to take a chance on something from one of the bravest brewers in the industry. 2. Cigar City Cucumber Saison City: Tampa, Fla. ABV: 6% Refreshing, light-bodied and invigorating, Cigar City’s Cucumber Saison is a play on a classic Belgian brewing style with the addition of the one and only cucumber. Designed to keep Tampa locals cool during the scorching hot summer months, this takes the vegetable out of the garden and into the brew to create a truly unique profile. Help yourself to an extra serving of veggies with Cigar City’s combination of citrusy, fruity, hoppy and ‘cucumbery’ flavors. 3. Midnight Sun Berserker City: Ankorage, Alaska ABV: 12.7% The aptly titled Berserker hails from America’s final frontier, delivering a monstrously delicious imperial stout drinking experience all the way from Anchorage, Alaska. As bold and fearless as the Norse warriors themselves, this viscous beer is brewed with maple syrup and molasses, then aged in bourbon and red wine barrels. After months of slumber in the boozy oak, Berserker is unleashed at nearly 13% abv, dropping a rich, decadent beat down of flavor that will leave your senses aching for more. 4. Twisted Pine Ghost Face Killah City: Boulder, Colo. ABV: 5% This one has it all – Wu-Tang references, smoky chilies and the spiciest pepper on earth. A ridiculous 200 times hotter than our friend the Jalapeno, Ghost Peppers are so intense they’ve even been considered for use in hand grenades and defense sprays. Combined with a potent cocktail of Anaheim, Fresno, Jalapeno, Serrano and Habanero chilies, Ghost Face Killah is one of the most intense bottles of beer on the market, making up for its lower alcohol content with a flamethrower-like blast of peppery heat. 5. Mamma Mia Pizza Beer City: Campton Township, Ill. ABV: 4.7% A homebrewing experiment turned novelty sensation; the Seefurth family’s Mamma Mia Pizza Beer is one of the most notorious experimental brews lingering on shelves from coast to coast. Created by adding a margherita pizza to the mash, this utilizes everything from basil and oregano to tomato and garlic in an attempt to truly liquefy America’s pizza obsession. 6. Hardywood Gingerbread Stout City: Richmond, Va. ABV: 9.2% The famous holiday cookie is officially drinkable, thanks to Richmond, Virginia’s Hardywood Park Craft Brewery. Brewers used Madagascar bourbon vanilla beans, Vietnamese cinnamon and milk sugar, combined with a sampling of local ingredients such as baby ginger and wildflower honey to transform the Gingerbread Man into a super smooth, robust stout. Settle in, kick off your shoes and enjoy the notes of chocolate, vanilla, gingery spice and warmth. 7. The Bruery / Dogfish Head Faster, Bigger, Better, Bolder City: Placentia, Calif. ABV: 8.25% Originally brewed and inspired by the earthquake that hit Japan in 2011, this collaboration between two of the country’s most popular and experimental breweries contained a wild mash-up of ingredients and styles from Eastern and Western culture. The base beer was created with rice, and then brewed with a traditional Japanese spice blend containing ginger, cayenne, white sesame seeds, black sesame seeds, poppy seeds, and nori. Finally, they added citrusy kumquats and fermented this crazy concoction with a blend of sake yeast to finish off their exceedingly complex recipe. Pipeworks Pastrami on Rye City: Chicago ABV: 8.5% No, you haven’t stumbled into the local corner deli; this is one of Chicago’s newer craft creations from Pipeworks Brewing Company. A nod to the traditional deli sandwich, brewers used a blend of 11 herbs and spices typically used to cure pastrami to create their sandwich-inspired beer. Mustard seed, bay leaf, red pepper, coriander, ginger, allspice, clove, caraway seed, Tellicherry black peppercorn, cinnamon, nutmeg, rye, dark candi sugar and smoked malt all join the party here, creating a potent strong dark ale with a complex, confounding profile. Short’s PB & J Stout City: Bellaire, Mich. ABV: 8% The team at Short’s has consistently tested the limits of brewing since opening their doors in 2004, building up an enormous lineup of specialty beers, including their PB & J Stout. Created by blending Uber Goober (imperial oatmeal stout made with peanut puree) and The Soft Parade (fruit rye ale with strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries), this is a deliciously adult version of the popular childhood sandwich.Photo: FaceMePLS We knew it was going to happen, and now it has: Republicans have killed the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming. They did so as promised, shortly after taking office. The committee was designed specifically to shape policy on global warming and energy issues. Since its creation in 2006, it held 80 hearings and briefings, according to Mother Jones. Here's what the Committee accomplished, and why it will be missed: Tackling issues from the politicization of climate science to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, the committee held 80 hearings and briefings. It played a role in shaping policy for the 2007 energy bill, the 2009 stimulus package (which included $90 billion in energy, efficiency, and other green elements), and, of course, the 2009 climate bill (the one that never became law, of course, because the Senate didn't act on it). That's Mother Jones on a few of the highlighted achievements of the science-based committee's tenure. The committee, lead by a bipartisan coalition of both Republican and Democratic leaders, helped steer the US towards greener policies. It brought climate scientists and skeptics together for debate, and put on Congressional record the scientific evidence behind the wide scope of the threat posed by global warming. Under the leadership of chairman Ed Markey (D-MA), it was a prolific and productive body -- and its influence will be missed in Congress. This will especially be the case as those who disbanded the committee assume power -- the nascent Republican-lead Congress is unlikely to make any effort at all to address climate change. Over 50% of the incoming Republican congressmen are on record as being opposed to any kind of climate policy (and most are stated climate skeptics), and the leadership is actually considering opening a congressional investigation on alleged wrongdoing of climate scientists. Some Republicans even wanted to keep the global warming committee alive solely to use it to mock Democrats and climate scientists. Needless to say, we're going to see some tough times in US climate politics -- if there's anything to see at all. Politics have prevailed over science, at least for now. More on Climate Politics GOP Congressman Calls for Climate Action (Video) 50 % of the New Congressmen Deny Climate ChangeCanberra playmaker Jack Wighton wants to assure Raiders fans he and teammates were hurting badly after last weekend's 54-18 hammering by the Manly Sea Eagles, regretful for a post on social media that has irritated some supporters. Reacting to negativity online about his selection in the centres for NSW Country, Wighton confronted his "haters" by posting on Instagram after Sunday's loss: "One week they love you. Next week they hate you. Both weeks I got paid." Wighton has been selected in the centres for the NSW Country Origin side. Wighton deleted the post that night and was cautioned by the Raiders about reacting to criticism, but Canberra coach Ricky Stuart says he's taking a "big picture" approach and will continue to back to the 21-year-old in his positional switch to five-eighth. Wighton has been under enormous scrutiny since his shift from the outside backs to the halves, a role he hasn't played regularly since Raiders Under 20s three years ago.Yoshikazu Tsuno, Pool, AFP \| Japan's Emperor Akihito, 81, here with his spouse Empress Michiko, is revered by many in Japan. Japanese Emperor Akihito marked 70 years since the end of World War Two with an expression of "deep remorse" over the conflict on Saturday, a departure from his annual script which could be seen as a subtle rebuke of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. ADVERTISING Read more Abe on Friday expressed "utmost grief", but said future generations should not have to keep apologising for the mistakes of the past. He offered no fresh apology of his own. "Reflecting on our past and bearing in mind the feelings of deep remorse over the last war, I earnestly hope that the ravages of war will never be repeated," Akihito, 81, said at a memorial service on the anniversary of the day his father, Hirohito, announced Japan's defeat. "Together with all of our people, I now pay my heartfelt tribute to all those who lost their lives in the war, both on the battlefields and elsewhere, and pray for world peace and for the continuing development of our country." The legacy of the war still haunts relations with China and South Korea, which suffered under Japan's sometimes brutal occupation and colonial rule before Tokyo's defeat in 1945. The soft-spoken Akihito has often urged Japan not to forget the suffering of the war and tried to promote reconciliation with Asian countries. His comments have attracted increased attention at a time when Abe appears to be pushing for a less apologetic tone towards Japan's past. Akihito had expressed remorse before, but not at the annual service. The constitution bans the emperor from any political role, so his remarks need to be carefully nuanced. On Saturday, Abe sent a ritual cash offering to Yasukuni Shrine for war dead but did not visit the shrine, seen in China and South Korea as a symbol of Tokyo's wartime militarism. ‘Honour and dignity’ Visits to Yasukuni by Japanese top politicians outrage China and South Korea because the shrine honours 14 Japanese leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal, along with war dead. Abe has not visited in person since December 2013. The remarks on Friday by Abe, seen by critics as a revisionist who wants to play down the dark chapters of Japan's wartime past, received mixed reviews abroad. Tokyo's close ally the United States welcomed Abe's commitment to uphold apologies made in the past. The United States approves of Abe's plans to play a greater security role in Asia in the face of a rising China, but also wants a lessening of tensions over history. China said that Japan should apologise sincerely to countries that suffered from its military aggression and urged Japan to "take concrete actions to gain the trust of its Asian neighbours and the global community". South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Seoul was focused on Abe's decision to uphold previous cabinets' understanding of history, but added that the speech contained "regrettable elements". She said she hoped Japan "soon and properly" resolved issues regarding women's "honour and dignity". Abe on Friday said Japan should "never forget that there were women behind the battlefields whose honour and dignity were severely injured". But he made no direct reference to "comfort women", a euphemism for the girls and women - many of them Korean - forced into prostitution at Japanese military brothels. Tokyo and Seoul have long been at odds over the issue of comfort women, with South Korea saying Japan has not done enough to atone for their suffering despite a 1993 apology. North Korea condemned what it called an attempt by Japanese "rightist conservatives to conceal its crime-woven past". While Abe, who has said he wants to repair ties with China and South Korea, did not visit Yasukuni in person, two of his cabinet ministers did along with the LDP's policy chief, Tomomi Inada and scores of other conservative lawmakers. Abe's conservative supporters are keen for Japan to put an end to what they see as a humiliating cycle of apologies. "We need to terminate (the cycle of apology) for our grandchildren and the grandchildren's grandchildren," said a 64-year-old man visiting Yasukuni. (REUTERS)Belfast and its Causeway Coast may have caused a stir by being voted the best region in the world to visit in 2018 by Lonely Planet today; but that’s not the only surprise in the rankings. Detroit, Canberra and Lanzarote are also surprise big hitters in the four lists, which cover top 10 countries, cities, regions and best value destinations. The cities list is particularly surprising. Seville tops the rankings, followed by Detroit – whose controversial gentrification has seen hipsters migrate in huge numbers over the past few years – and then Canberra, the much-maligned capital of Australia, usually dismissed as boring. Join Independent Minds For exclusive articles, events and an advertising-free read for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent With an Independent Minds subscription for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent Without the ads – for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Shape Created with Sketch. Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities Show all 10 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities 1/10 1: Seville, Spain 12019 2/10 2: Detroit, USA Vito Palmisano 3/10 3: Canberra, Australia Jason Tong 4/10 4: Hamburg, Germany Falco 5/10 5: Kaohsiung, Taiwan Getty 6/10 6: Antwerp, Belgium Getty 7/10 7: Matera, Italy Turkish414 8/10 8: San Juan, Puerto Rico Sam Valadi 9/10 9: Guanajuato, Mexico Bud Ellison 10/10 10: Oslo, Norway Corinna 1/10 1: Seville, Spain 12019 2/10 2: Detroit, USA Vito Palmisano 3/10 3: Canberra, Australia Jason Tong 4/10 4: Hamburg, Germany Falco 5/10 5: Kaohsiung, Taiwan Getty 6/10 6: Antwerp, Belgium Getty 7/10 7: Matera, Italy Turkish414 8/10 8: San Juan, Puerto Rico Sam Valadi 9/10 9: Guanajuato, Mexico Bud Ellison 10/10 10: Oslo, Norway Corinna The list continues with Hamburg, and Kaohsiung in Taiwan. Matera – a formerly destitute town of cave dwellings, or sassi, now popular with the Instagram crowd in Italy’s Basilicata region – is at number seven, and San Juan, the hurricane-hit capital of Puerto Rico at eight (Lonely Planet's partners CNN Travel have written about how they felt it important to keep on the list despite the damage). Oslo – again, often dismissed as dull and expensive– is at number 10. Less of a shock is Tallinn, ranked the best value destination, followed by Lanzarote, Arizona and La Paz in Bolivia. The UK in its entirety comes in at number seven – helped by the plummeting pound. As for the countries, Portugal - which has seen an astonishing explosion in popularity in 2017 - is only at number three, after Chile and South Korea. Djibouti - which has no direct flights from the UK, and was described by Bloomberg as "a forgotten sandlot of a country" - is a surprise entry at number four. Djibouti might also be off the list for ethical travellers - one person who recently visited told The Independent: “Given the abject poverty, chronic health provision and job shortages under which half the country's population subsists while the authorities reap billions in rent from Western bases, ethical tourists should browse for their luxury Red Sea scuba diving holiday with their eyes open.” The full lists are: Top 10 countries Chile South Korea Portugal Djibouti New Zealand Malta Georgia Mauritius China South Africa Top 10 cities Seville Detroit Canberra Hamburg Kaohsiung Antwerp Matera San Juan Guanajuato Oslo Top 10 best value Tallinn Lanzarote Arizona La Paz Poland Essaouira UK Baja California Jacksonville Hunan Top 10 regions Belfast and the Causeway Coast Alaska Julian Alps Languedoc-Roussillon Kii Peninsula Aeolian Islands Southern USA Lahaul & Spiti Bahia Los Haitises National ParkSinger/songwriter Sia sings of loss and yearning on '1000 Forms of Fear.' (Photo11: Pretty Puke) Pop has a new queen — with a familiar ice queen right behind her. Singer/songwriter Sia (seen here with her face obscured) has for the first time landed atop the Billboard album chart with her new album, 1000 Forms of Fear. According to Nielsen SoundScan, 1000 sold 52,000 copies in its first week — the lowest sales for a No. 1 album in almost two years, says Billboard. Though she has released several solo albums, Sia got more attention in the past for collaborating with David Guetta and Flo Rida, and serving as writer and/or featured vocalist for such top stars as Eminem, Beyoncé and Rihanna. Landing at No. 2 is the resurgent Frozen soundtrack (up from No. 5 last week), with 46,000 copies, with Sam Smith's In the Lonely House pretty much holding steady at No. 3 (42,000). Trey Songz's Trigga, which entered the chart at No. 1 last week, falls to No. 5 (34,000), while Ed Sheeran's x dips from No. 2 to No.4 with sales of 35,000. There's better news for a veteran rock act, Judas Priest, which enjoys its highest-charting album ever as its Redeemer of Souls debuts at No. 6 (33,000). The Now 50 compilation sold 22,000, enough to take it from No. 11 to No. 7, and the Dirty Heads enter at No. 8 with Sound of Change (21,000). Rounding out the top 10 are Miranda Lambert, down from No. 7 to No. 9 with Platinum (20,000), and recent chart-topper Lana Del Rey, falling from No. 8 to No. 10 with Ultraviolence (18,000). Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1mhK1FlWhich Buffyverse Death Hurts The Most? By Hannah Sole \| Lists \| July 10, 2017 \| Yes, I know that this is an item based on a show that finished well over a decade ago, but hear me out. Since the 20th anniversary of the first airing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, SyFy have been running the series from the beginning, and we’re getting close to the end. Again. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched this show, but this time around, with 2 episodes airing every weekday, for some reason the parade of death from Joss ‘Overlord of Pain’ Whedon’s legendary show has been hurting my heart even more. This brings me to today’s cheerful topic: which Buffyverse death hurts the most? It’s hard to measure. Plus, you may have changed your minds over the years — I think I have. Let’s have a look at the Big Deaths in Buffy and Angel, see how big their emotional punch is now, and try to figure this out. I’ve omitted deaths of demons and vampires that don’t at least try to be good some of the time, so there are no Big Bads unless they were only bad part-time. And some of the human deaths don’t make the cut either. We might have been shocked or troubled by their deaths, but I’d wager no viewers shed a tear over people like Warren or Holland Manners. You could make a case for being hurt by the dark side of Giles when he killed Ben/Glory, but I bet you didn’t have a cry about it. To make it easier to try and whittle it down to a winner, I’ve sorted the Big Deaths into categories. Winners from each category go into the semi final, then I’ll narrow it down again. Easy, right? Who am I kidding? This is going to hurt. And it’s going to be impossible. I fully expect you to disagree with me, and for there to be a lot of sad gifs in the comments. I’m braced. Need a refresher? Here’s a montage to remind you of some of the Buffyverse legends we lost along the way… 1: ‘First Soldier Down’ ‘How can you have more than one first soldier?’ I hear you ask. Because I make the rules, and there are different types of soldiers: civilians and slayers, for instance. Plus, Buffy and Angel get to set up their own ‘first soldiers’. The ‘First Soldier Down’ death is a warning shot for the audience. It’s a reminder not to get too comfortable, not to take anyone for granted. It should be sudden, shocking and violent. It won’t be the focal point for a season, and it won’t necessarily be the main character, but there are no guarantees. Kendra’s death? That just reminds us that slayers can die, for real - without a handy resuscitation from a nearby Scooby. It’s a death that ups the stakes. Jenny Calendar belongs here too. Her death shows us that Angelus isn’t mucking about. But the winner of ‘First Soldier Down’ goes to Doyle. There is an argument for Doyle’s death to go in the sacrifice category, but he belongs more neatly here. He went down fighting, and protecting those he cared about. Besides, killing off one of the three main characters before you’re halfway through your first season? Bold. And Cruel. ‘First soldier down’ became his eulogy in the 100th episode. So he has to win this category, really. 2: ‘Kill One Off To Make Another Grow’ Now this one’s particularly annoying, because it’s not about the dying character’s arc so much as the impact their death has on those around them. And in Buffy, the characters that were killed off to encourage others to grow were perhaps the most missed: Joyce and Tara. Joyce’s death and, oh god, the episode ‘The Body’, were emotionally brutal. This is one of the episodes I have to psych myself up to watch, because it involves an epic mascara sacrifice. I get it; Joyce’s death forced Buffy to grow up and take on a more maternal role with Dawn. But man, poor Joyce. Tara’s death, which didn’t really affect me so much the first time, stings more each time I watch it. I don’t think I ever gave Tara enough credit. In a post-Joyce world, she was the warm and loving mother figure that the Scoobies needed. She was so kind, non-judgmental and sensible in season 6. But ‘Bury Your Gays’; in order to bring on Dark Willow, Tara had to go. That was not a fair exchange. Winner: Back then, definitely Joyce. Now? I’m just mad about Tara. 3: ‘Nowhere Else To Go’ This is where Xander’s
Python module it is nice to be able to quickly run some tests specific to that module, without having to run all the tests for the full package. Using pytest-helper it is easy to make files self-testing whenever they are run as scripts. During development you can then just run the file, say from your editor or IDE, to see the test results. Below is a simple example to illustrate the idea. This is a Python module which is possibly part of a larger package. It contains its own test functions at the bottom. Whenever the module is run as a script the tests will be run with pytest; when the module is imported it runs normally. So as the module is being written or modified it can be executed to see the results of tests, and new tests can be added as you go along. import pytest_helper # # Run the tests, but only when the module is invoked as a script. # if __name__ == "__main__" : # Guard conditional, optional but recommended. pytest_helper. script_run ( self_test = True, pytest_args = "-v" ) # # Regular imports and program code go here. # code_var = "foo" # # Test functions are below; they can easily be moved to a separate module. # pytest_helper. autoimport () # Do some basic imports automatically. def my_setup (): # Could be a pytest fixture instead of a regular function. setup_var = "bar" locals_to_globals () # Copies setup_var to the module's global namespace. def test_var_values (): my_setup () # Run the setup code. assert code_var == "foo" # Set in the regular code above. assert setup_var == "bar" # Copied to the global namespace. test_dict = {} with raises ( KeyError ): # Pytest function raises was autoimported. test_dict [ 5 ] There are more examples in the Examples section below. They include the case where the tests to be run are in separate test files and the case of making the separate test files themselves self-testing. It is easy to move tests originally written inside the module being tested to a separate test file. In order to simplify the functional interface, some of these helper functions use very basic introspection look up the names of modules. Other functions use introspection to modify a module’s global variables. Some people might object to the use of introspection “magic,” but the level used by these functions is less than what pytest itself does already. Where introspection is used, a fallback is usually provided to do the task without introspection. Installation¶ The easiest way to install is to install from PyPI using pip: pip install pytest-helper Alternately, you can download or clone the repository directory from the pytest-helper GitHub pages and then install using either pip install. or python setup.py install from the root directory (pip is preferred). In lieu of installing you can just add the pytest_helper/src subdirectory to your PYTHONPATH environment variable. Functions to help in running tests¶ These are short descriptions of the functions which simplify the invocation of pytest on a given test file. The links go to the more-detailed functional interface descriptions. pytest_helper.script_run The script_run function is used to actually invoke pytest on a test file or list of files. It takes a path or a list of paths and, when called from a script, will run pytest on all those files. The script_run function is useful because it allows Python modules to be easily made self-testing when they are run as scripts. When working on a module in, say, Vim you can invoke a command to run the current file as a script in order to verify that it still passes whatever tests are defined for it. Those tests can be in the same file and/or in other files. Test files themselves can similarly be made self-executing when run as a script, which can be useful when writing tests. One use of modules with self-contained tests, like in the example in the Introduction, is to quickly start writing a simple module while including a few tests. As (or if) the module continues to evolve it is easy to extract those tests into a separate test module at some point. If script_run is not called from a script’s __main__ module then it returns without doing anything. Any relative paths passed to the function are expanded relative to the directory of the module from which the script_run function is called. The example in the Introduction shows how to use script_run to run a self-test on a file. The line below shows how the script_run function would be used to run pytest, with the -v verbose argument, on a test file named test/test_foobar.py : pytest_helper. script_run ( "test/test_foobar.py", pytest_args = "-v" ) When the module that calls the above function is not run as a script the function call does nothing. If the pytest option --pyargs is used to include dotted Python package descriptors you should also use the pyargs=True option to script_run. Setting the pytest-helper argument automatically passes the argument to pytest. pytest_helper.sys_path The function sys_path takes a directory path or a list of paths and inserts them into Python’s sys.path list. This is often necessary in order for Python to find the imports in test files. A benefit of using this function is that relative paths are allowed, and all relative paths are expanded relative to the directory of the module which calls the function. This is in contrast to the default evaluation of relative paths in Python, which is relative to Python’s current working directory (CWD). The CWD can vary depending on the particular command used to invoke the Python interpreter. Using relative imports within a project’s directory structure makes it more portable. The line below shows how to use sys_path to add both the directory../test and the parent directory to Python’s sys.path : pytest_helper. sys_path ( "../test", add_parent = True ) This line does the same thing as the line above: pytest_helper. sys_path ([ "..", "../test" ]) pytest_helper.init Calling the pytest_helper.init function is optional, but sometimes it is useful. This function should be called directly after importing pytest_helper : import pytest_helper pytest_helper. init () The main benefit of using an early init call is to make sure that the introspective lookup of the calling-module’s path continues to work even if some intervening command or module import changes the Python CWD (which is rare, but it happens). This function can also be used to disable the use of configuration files (see below). Functions to help in writing tests¶ These convenience functions are used to help in writing the tests themselves. They are good for quickly setting up tests. They can always be replaced by their more-conventional (non-magic) equivalents. pytest_helper.locals_to_globals The locals_to_globals function is intended to be run from a fixture (i.e., from a test setup function) in the same module as the tests. It mimics the effect of declaring all the local variables in the setup function global in order to access them from the test functions that use the setup. By default it never overwrites an existing global variable unless that variable was set by a previous run of locals_to_globals. Can optionally clear any variables set on previous calls so that they do not accidentally affect the current tests. This function is usually called without arguments, near the end of a setup function or fixture. If autoimport is used then it is automatically imported into the module’s global namespace. Note that some linters will complain about variables being used without being set. pytest_helper.clear_locals_from_globals The clear_locals_from_globals function is called by locals_to_globals when clear is set true. This function can also be explicitly called to do the clearing. pytest_helper.autoimport The autoimport function is a convenience function that automatically imports certain pytest-helper and pytest functions into the calling module’s global namespace. The names can then be used essentially as builtins in the test code. By default an exception is raised if the imports shadow any existing variables. This function imports the pytest module as pytest. From pytest-helper it imports locals_to_globals, clear_locals_from_globals, and unindent. From pytest it imports raises, fail, fixture, skip, xfail, and approx. This function is usually called without arguments: pytest_helper. autoimport () Note that some linters will complain about variables being used without being set. pytest_helper.unindent The unindent function allows for cleaner formatting of multi-line strings, for example to compare with in a pytest assertion. The first argument, unindent_level, gives the number of characters to unindent. The second argument is the string (typically a triple-quote string). The string is split into lines, keeping all empty lines, and then the first and last line are discarded. Each line is then unindented by the unindent_level argument number of characters, and the lines are re-joined with newlines. An exception is raised on trying to unindent non-whitespace on a line or if there are fewer than two lines. Here is a simple example usage, comparing a parse result with an expression tree of tokens in a multi-line string. The assertion is assumed to be inside a pytest testing function, already indented four spaces. The parse result is assumed to start on the first column: assert result_tree. tree_repr () == unindent ( 12, """ <k_plus,'+'> <k_identifier,'x'> <k_float,'0.22'> """ ) Examples¶ The Introduction gives an example of a self-testing module, which contains both the code to be tested as well as pytest test functions for that code. Below are some examples of using the pytest-helper functions in other common cases. Whenever script_run is called from a module to run tests it is best to call it from the beginning of the file, especially for files inside packages which do intra-package imports. This placement is more efficient and avoids some potential headaches with imports. I like to put the import of pytest-helper and the call to script_run directly after any __future__ import and before all the others, but it really just needs to be before any imports which use intra-package imports (since the module is being run as a script when script_run executes). Whenever script_run is called in the examples below the optional if __name__ == "__main__" guard conditional is used. It can be left off, but it is slightly more efficient to use it since without it the module’s name has to be looked up by introspection to see if anything should be done. Using the conditional also makes the code more explicit in what it is doing. Running tests contained in separate test files and test directories. This is an example of a module with its tests in separate test files and directories. When invoked as a script it the module will run all the tests in the subdirectory test and then run only the test file test_var_set.py in a sibling-level test directory called test2 : # # Run the specified test files, but only when invoked as a script. # if __name__ == "__main__" : import pytest_helper pytest_helper. script_run ([ "test", "../test2/test_var_set.py" ], pytest_args = "-v" ) # # Regular imports and program code from here to the end. # code_var = "foo" Using pytest-helper inside a separate test file. In this example there is a separate file, containing only tests, which when run as a script executes pytest on itself. This file is assumed to be inside a test subdirectory, and imports the file do_things.py from its parent directory. That directory is added to Python’s sys.path by a call to sys_path (the test directory is not in the package of the parent directory, since it is usually not recommended to have an __init__.py file in test directories). The test file below can still be run from other files with script_run or via the usual invocation of pytest from the command line. import pytest_helper # # Run the test file with pytest when invoked as a script. # if __name__ == "__main__" : pytest_helper. script_run ( self_test = True, pytest_args = "-v" ) # # Put calls to these pytest_helper functions AFTER the script_run call. # pytest_helper. autoimport () # Do some basic imports automatically. pytest_helper. sys_path ( add_parent = True ) # pytest_helper.sys_path("..") # Does the same thing as the line above. # pytest_helper.sys_path([".."]) # Does the same as the two lines above. # # Test code below. # from do_things import * # Since we're testing this module, import all. @fixture def my_fixture (): fixture_var = "bar" locals_to_globals () # Copies fixture_var to the module's global namespace. def test_var ( my_fixture ): assert code_var == "foo" # Assumed to be set in do_things.py. assert fixture_var == "bar" # Now in the module's global namespace. test_dict = {} with raises ( KeyError ): test_dict [ 5 ] # The raises function was autoimported. def test_skipped (): skip () # The skip function was also autoimported. Notice from these examples that very little needs to be changed in order to extract a separate test module from the testing part of a module which initially contains its own tests (like in the first example, in the Introduction). You would basically do the following: Copy the Python file to the test directory with a new name. Delete the code from one file and delete the tests from the other. (Both still need to import pytest-helper if they use any of the helper functions.) Add an import statement in the test file to import what it needs from the code file. If necessary, sys_path can be called in the test file so that it can find the module or package to import. Change the pathname on the script_run call in the code file to point to the new test file. If desired, a self-testing script_run call can also be added to the test file. Note It is traditional to run tests from the end of a Python module, but script_run is calling another program (pytest) to extract and run the tests. The test functions themselves can be placed anywhere, but it is not recommended to place a script_run call near the end of a module. In many cases it works, but it can cause problems with explicit relative imports. Some such problems can be fixed by running the script as module – either with python -m or by importing pytest_helper near the top of the module and, before any explicit relative imports, calling its init function with the set_package flag set. Running the script as a module may cause pytest to complain about modules being defined twice. Putting the script_run call near the end of the module is also less efficient, since the module’s initialization code gets run twice.I originally wrote this review for Monitoring Times Magazine, May 2013 issue (pages 56-57). The review that follows has been expanded and includes updates. You may have noticed that in the past few years, while more and more software defined radios (SDRs) are appearing on the market, fewer and fewer traditional tabletop shortwave receivers are being introduced. Most of the receivers in production, meanwhile, are quite mature, having been in production for years. For those of us who still have an appreciation for the traditional front panel, tuning knob, and portability of an all-in-one tabletop receiver, perhaps we should look to the active ham radio transceiver market. Introducing the Elecraft KX3 Besides being an avid SWLer (ShortWave Listener, for the newbies out there), I’m also a ham radio operator (callsign: K4SWL). But if you’re not a ham, you may not be familiar with the innovative, US-based radio designer and manufacturer, Elecraft. First of all, note that “US-based” adjective: this is an increasingly rare phenomenon in the world of radio production, and it deserves a word of praise up front. Elecraft started life as a kit manufacturer, focusing on QRP ham-band-only radio transceivers that were effective, affordable, and maintained a very high level of performance. Their K1, KX1 and K2 transceivers are legendary, and I’ve had the good fortune to own them all at some point along the way. Their K3, introduced in 2008, became a benchmark transceiver and still tops the charts in performance; it’s truly a choice DXpeditioner’s radio. In 2011, Elecraft introduced the KX3–a portable SDR transceiver with a full-featured knob-and-button user interface that doesn’t require connection to a computer to operate. At the Dayton Hamvention, the KX3 instantly drew crowds, as it was unlike any other transceiver on the market. I was there, and like others in the crowds around the Elecraft booth, I was eager to try out this full-featured transceiver, especially upon learning that even the basic, no-options model has a general coverage receiver. A ham transceiver with “general coverage,” incidentally, means that its receiver is not limited to the ham bands only; these receivers typically receive between 100 kHz and 30 MHz (i.e., the full shortwave radio spectrum). That morning at the Hamvention, I quickly made my way to one of Elecraft’s owners, Wayne Burdick, to ask him,“Would the KX3 make for a good shortwave radio receiver?” Wayne’s prompt response: “Yes.” That was enough for me: more than ever, I simply couldn’t wait to get within reach of a KX3. Why? I love to travel and take radio along, but I’ve always had to haul separate transceivers and receivers for my separate-but-related hobbies: 1) ham radio and 2) SWLing. Perhaps the KX3 would suit both purposes? I was hopeful. If this was true, with a KX3, I could have a full-featured QRP transceiver and a shortwave receiver in one…and a portable one at that. Ideal! I just had to get my hands on one to find out. A closer look Though the KX3 was introduced in the summer of 2011, it didn’t start shipping until a few months later, and there was a backlog of orders for it. Fortunately, my good buddy, Dave Anderson (K4SV), was among the first purchasers of the KX3, and he was generous enough (and trusted me enough!) to let me borrow it. At first glance, the KX3 resembles just the faceplate of a tabletop radio: it has a large tuning knob, wide, clear amber backlit display, and a traditional set of function buttons and multi-function knobs…but not much else. Or so it appears, as there’s no bulky chassis. Connections for microphones, DC power, headphones, IQ out, key and PC interface are located on the left side panel of the radio, while the RF connection (a female BNC) is on the right side panel. The KX3 has built-in folding feet, quite sturdy, that allow the radio to be tilted at a comfortable angle for tabletop operation. To best evaluate the KX3, I’ll first discuss some of the features that would interest a ham radio operator, then focus on those best suited to the SWLer. Everything for the Ham If you’re a ham, you’ll love the feature set on the KX3. It must be one of the most comprehensive set on any radio I’ve ever used. At a bare-bones level, meaning without adding any options, the basic KX3 is truly an all-in-one QRP transceiver. Of course, it will function on any mode: USB, LSB, CW, data, AM and FM. The output power is adjustable from 0 to 10 Watts. You can easily adjust the DSP filters, AF, RF, passband, and notch all from dedicated buttons and knobs. It even has a memory keyers for both CW and voice. You say you prefer digital modes? Not only will the KX3 natively decode RTTY and PSK31 and display the scrolling text on the display, but you can also send RTTY and PSK31 without a PC. How? Simply set the appropriate data mode and use your key to tap out your message in CW. Though you will hear the CW side tone, the KX3 will transform your code into RTTY or PSK-31, and send. Hypothetically, armed with only a KX3, you could run a RTTY contest from the field with no computer. Remarkable. The variable DSP filtering is most impressive and the KX3’s ability to block adjacent signals is benchmarked. Indeed, if you look at Sherwood Engineering’s receiver test data rankings (http://www.sherweng.com/table.html), which are sorted by third-order dynamic range (narrow spacing), the KX3 is second only to the Hilberling PT-8000A, an $18,000 transceiver. With the installation of the $170 optional internal automatic antenna tuner (the KXAT3), you will be able to tune most any wire antenna on the go, with no need to carry an external ATU. In short, for the ham, the KX3 offers a cornucopia of features, too numerous to list here; but I can at least tell you that I discover something new on this radio almost every day and continue to be amazed by the features on this transceiver, especially considering that it costs only $1000 ($900 in no-solder modular kit form). For the SWLer We’ve talked about the KX3 as a ham radio transceiver, but how does it stack up if your primary interest is to just sit back and listen to broadcasts? Short answer: Very, very well. The KX3 is loaded with features that would please even the most discriminating DXer. First, on the faceplate, the KX3 has a multi-function knob that controls both the AF and RF gains. It’s very simple to use, even though I’m not a fan of switching between the AF/RF gain controls on the same knob. AF gain is what most of us refer to as a volume control and many dedicated shortwave receivers lack an RF gain control even though it’s a vital tool for broadcast listening in noisy conditions. By default, the KX3 RF gain is set to zero; turning the RF pot counter-clockwise will decrease RF gain. The KX3 also has three different preamp settings, which are useful for amplifying weak stations, as well as an attenuator for local or strong broadcasters. The KX3 has passband and notch filtering, and an auto-notch function that effectively deals with heterodynes from nearby carriers. The KX3 also has DSP noise-reduction (NR) for noisy band conditions (or to help a signal “pop” out from the noise) and noise blanking (NB) for local RFI. Many automatic gain control (AGC) parameters are adjustable, too, so they can be tweaked for AM fading and weak-signal DXing. The fact is, the KX3 has more built-in receiver controls than the dedicated tabletop shortwave receivers I’ve owned. Audio To be clear, however, there is one negative in the architecture of the KX3 when viewed through the eyes of an SWLer. The KX3 is designed around the amateur radio operator and AM bandwidth is narrower than you will find on most dedicated tabletop shortwave receivers–indeed, a commonality on any general coverage ham transceiver. The KX3’s AM bandwidth can only be widened to 4.2 kHz–a figure that almost made me dismiss this radio’s SWLing abilities out of hand. I’m glad I didn’t let that spec stop me, though: I had read many a favorable comment from KX3 owners who used the radio to listen to the broadcast bands. Their comments on the audio were very positive, and for good reason. What the KX3 lacks in wide bandwidth is made up for by the 32-bit floating point DSP architecture. I’m not sure how, but the KX3’s audio fidelity “sounds” much wider than 4.2 kHz. Indeed, I still have a difficult time believing that the filter is not closer to 7-8 kHz in width. When using headphones or amplified speakers, the bass response rivals some of my tube receivers. There are even adjustable 8-band equalizer settings for audio to improve this even further. In addition, Elecraft has unique audio effects available in the audio effects menu. One I’ve found very valuable in broadcast listening is called “delay,” a stereo simulation effect that broadens the mono sound in such a way that the audio sounds even richer. Memories, scanning and tuning The KX3 has 100 general-purpose VFO A/B memories with optional alpha numeric labels. It also supports channel-hopping or scanning within any number of labeled memory groups. Auto scan is simple and works in both muted and (my favorite) non-muted, or continuous, modes. The KX3 can also use the “K3 Memory” application from Elecraft’s K3 transceiver, which allows for longer labels and the instant selection of desired memories from a PC. The “K3 memory” application is a free software download on Elecraft’s website. The tuning knob on the KX3 is substantial and of good quality. It’s only slightly smaller than the tuning knob on my Alinco DX-R8T, so it’s a substantial knob, which is helpful to big (or buttery) fingers. The drag can be easily adjusted with a supplied hex wrench. The tuning rate can be adjusted to.5 kHz increments, allowing you to quickly tune through the band. The small multi-function knob next to the main tuning knob can also be set for a 1 kHz rate. At first glance, you might not realize that the KX3 has a direct frequency-entry keypad. Check out the photo, however [MAKE REFERENCE TO POSITION ON PAGE]. The buttons and multi-function knobs in the lower left quadrant of the KX3 double as number pad, decimal point, and an “enter” button for a keypad. I thought this a bit odd at first, but now find I use this all the time. Optional ATU: Worth the Cost As I mentioned earlier, the optional automatic antenna tuner, the KXAT3, makes a lot of sense for the ham who operates portable. If you are a licensed amateur radio operator, the ATU can be a powerful tool for matching random length, or multi-band antennas to your desired broadcast band by tuning to a nearby ham band frequency. The L and C parameters of the tuner can be manually adjusted to optimize without transmitting. The user can select one of 8 L’s or one of 8 C’s parameters in the ATU MD menu entry. When an L is selected, C is set to 0, and vice-versa. However, it is not presently possible to select combinations of L and C to achieve a closer resonance. Still, selecting an L or C value in this way will provide a useful increase in gain. In addition, if you like medium wave (MW) DXing, the ATU comes with MW (AM broadcast band) filtering that tracks the VFO, somewhat improving image rejection between 300-1,000 kHz. I have tested the KX3 on medium wave both with and without the ATU installed and find that it certainly improves rejection. To be clear though, sensitivity decreases as you tune below 1,500 kHz. Elecraft informed me that it was necessary because the KX3 uses PIN diodes in its T/R switch, and the signal must be high-pass filtered to avoid IP2 problems with the diodes. When you tune through the 300-1200 kHz range (or so) you will certainly notice the loss of sensitivity. Elecraft also noted that selectivity in the AM broadcast band was not a major design criteria, so in this band the 160 meter low pass filter is used. This is not ideal from a harmonic rejection standpoint, and there will be some 3rd and 5th-harmonic images from strong stations. Adding the ATU helps with this. However, adding the ATU doesn’t generally improve sensitivity in this range. The ATU is very easy to install–almost “plug and play” (see photo). Oh, yes–and it’s an SDR, too! As if the KX3 didn’t do just about everything, it also has a quadrature down-sampling mixer compatible with PC-based SDR (software-defined radio) applications. This means, via a shielded stereo audio patch cable and a supplied USB control cable, you can connect the KX3 to your PC and use a freeware SDR application like HDSDR to turn your KX3 into a proper software-defined receiver. SDR functionality is limited to receiver functionality, and depending on the bandwidth and sampling rate, will be dependent on the quality of your sound card. The true benefit is the ability to see a wide–48 kHz or more–chunk of spectrum. Summary Every radio has its pros and cons. When I begin a review of a radio, I take notes from the very beginning so that I don’t forget some of my initial impressions. Here is the list I formed over the time I’ve spent evaluating the KX3. Note that I created this list with the shortwave listener in mind, not necessarily the ham radio operator. Pros: World class, benchmarked receiver performance powered by high-performance 32-bit floating-point DSP Rich, full audio fidelity on AM despite limited bandwidth (see con) AF and effective RF gain controls Adjustable filters (no optional roofing filters needed for SWLing) Superb sensitivity and selectivity; outperforming even my WinRadio Excalibur with weak signal DXing Very low noise floor Auto-notch, which helps eliminate annoying heterodynes, even in AM Internal ATU option brings improved MW image rejection (see MW con) and hams have the ability to tune a random length antenna Natively decode (170 Hz) 60-WPM RTTY and display it right on the KX3’s VFO B display, which is alphanumeric Battery operation via 8 AA batteries Lightweight Dedicated headphone jack For non-ham radio operators, the transceiver can be disabled and re-activated once you have a license with a simple hardware adjustment. No need to fear accidental transmission For hams, or those who plan to become one, the KX3 is a QRP transceiver in the top of its class Cons: AM bandwidth limited to 4.2 kHz (see pro) Hand mic connector is the less standard 3.5 mm audio plug Built-in speaker is small with limited volume and fidelity–only intended as a back-up when headphones or external powered speakers are unavailable AA batteries fit a bit tightly in internal holder and can present a challenge to remove Medium wave reception is mediocre at best, but with the optional ATU, is improved though slightly better image rejection (see ATU pro) Very slight audio whine (similar to a faint heterodyne sound) heard in some zero beat AM stations; may be fixed in future firmware update No AM sync detector (AMS) Did I buy one? Confession time I must admit, I was appreciating my buddy Dave’s KX3 very much. Maybe too much… I have three hobbies: shortwave radio listening, ham radio, and traveling. After using the KX3 for a few hours, I knew it would be my perfect companion. Not only is it a top-notch amateur radio transceiver, its also an excellent shortwave radio receiver. It’s portable, but also makes an excellent tabletop radio. It’s an all-in-one radio, but can also double as an SDR when connected to a PC. So, is the KX3’s broadcast audio fidelity as good as a purpose-built broadcast receiver like the legendary Drake R8B? Not quite. But I would argue that its ability to receive weak signals would give even a Drake a run for its money. I have to admit, the KX3 receiver outperforms my Alinco DX-R8T in every respect. Even though the AM bandwidth is limited to 4.2 kHz, I think the audio also sounds better than my Alinco and any of my portable radios with wider bandwidth. Needless to say, I bought one. It was only fair to Dave, who needed to discover for himself what his loaned-out rig could do. The KX3 is a game changer for me. Though I’ve always carried portable transceivers in my travels, I’ve also had to carry a separate tabletop receiver and an SDR or portable radio for my SWLing. No more. Moreover, I like the broadcast audio on the KX3 well enough to record and archive shortwave broadcasts, which I frequently do for my blog, The SWLing Post and The Shortwave Radio Audio Archive. In my shack, I’m even considering purchasing Elecraft’s 100 watt amplifier and doing away with my 100 watt tabletop transceiver. As for support? No worries there. I’ve been an Elecraft customer for years and I can tell you that they believe in and stand behind their products. I purchased with confidence. I encourage you to try on the KX3 as well. It may very well be all the radio you’ll ever need. RelatedA new study finds that without Planned Parenthood "tens of thousands of low-income Texas women could lose access to affordable family planning services and to other women’s health services." Meanwhile, the State of Texas is trying to make up for a provider gap it has contended didn't really exist. A new university study has found Texas wanting when it comes to reproductive health care in the state. Researchers at George Washington University have found that if Texas manages to exclude Planned Parenthood from participating in the Texas Women’s Health Program (WHP), “tens of thousands of low-income Texas women could lose access to affordable family planning services and to other women’s health services.” GWU has had its eye on the state since May, when it released a report questioning claims by Texas’s Department of Health And Human Services that non-Planned Parenthood providers could easily see the 50,000 or so Texans who currently rely on Planned Parenthood for breast and cervical cancer screenings, contraceptive supplies, and other basic preventive care. Lawmakers in Texas want to exclude Planned Parenthood from the program because they consider it an abortion “affiliate,” even though no Planned Parenthood clinic enrolled in the WHP provides abortions and the WHP itself cannot ever be used to serve a pregnant person—it’s intended solely for the use of Texans who do not want to be, and who are not, pregnant. The study released this week casts even more doubt on the state’s ability to find new providers to pick up the slack, focusing especially on poorer rural areas where alternatives to Planned Parenthood are few. Where alternatives do exist, researchers concluded, “they are generally at, or close to, the limits of their capacity and will not be able to expand much, if at all, due to other resource or staffing constraints. There is no evidence that they are prepared to sustain the very large caseload increases that would be required to fill the gaps left after Planned Parenthood affiliates are excluded.” Get the facts, direct to your inbox. Subscribe to our daily or weekly digest. SUBSCRIBE In a statement released today by HHSC Executive Commissioner Kyle Janek in response to the study, the department says it intends to add new providers to the program on top of the 500 added since the spring. “We’re confident that we’ll be able to provide women with access to family planning services and fully comply with state law that bans abortion providers and affiliates from the program.” In his statement, Janek said that HHSC has “five family planning clinics and more than 70 individual physicians waiting to take the place of every clinic that won’t qualify under the new rule.” Indeed, if the WHP provider base is not increased in Texas, existing providers will be asked to take on huge numbers of former Planned Parenthood clients. From the GWU study, which looked at five Texas markets, including rural Lubbock, Hidalgo and Midland counties as well as urban Bexar County, which contains San Antonio, and Dallas County: “If Planned Parenthood affiliates were excluded from WHP, the remaining non-PPFA clinics would have to absorb a massive increase in WHP patients in order to maintain the overall 2011 caseload level. Non-PPFA clinics in Bexar and Dallas Counties would have to double their capacity. Lubbock County providers would need to expand by 250% if the Planned Parenthood affiliate was excluded. In Hidalgo and Midland Counties, the average non-PPFA clinics would have to serve more than five times their current caseloads. In these five markets, the WHP caseloads would need to expand by two to five times their current capacity in order to absorb the patients already served by Planned Parenthood.” This is a situation entirely of Texas lawmakers’ and bureacrats’ making, achieved through drastic family planning budget cuts in 2011 and this year’s attempt at excluding Planned Parenthood from the WHP, though pending litigation has held up the ultimate ruling on Planned Parenthood’s fate. The State of Texas is in an interesting position. By taking steps to address the demonstrable gaps left by the exclusion of Planned Parenthood, Texas and its governor, Rick Perry, have to admit that what they’ve been claiming along—that Planned Parenthood’s participation in the program is insignificant and easily replaceable—is completely false. Texas already has a shortage of primary care physicians, and while bringing in five clinics and 70 doctors is a step in the right direction, it’s not clear whether those clinics and doctors can see the number of patients served by Planned Parenthood. In 2011, for example, Planned Parenthood saw nearly half of Texas’ 115,226 WHP clients. Five clinics seeing 200 patients, and 70 doctors seeing 15 patients, adds up to just 2,050 patients served. That’s a far cry from addressing the needs of the fifty thousand Texans who will have to find non-Planned Parenthood providers. If the State of Texas cannot find the hundreds of new providers and clinics it will take to fill the gap left by Planned Parenthood, the negative consequences won’t just be borne by the low-income enrollees in the WHP, but in higher bills for the state. Taxpayers will end up paying for more Medicaid births in the state. GWU estimated that, if Planned Parenthood had been excluded from the WHP in 2011, the state would lose $5.5 million to $6.6 million as a result of paying for the entirety of the program itself—instead of benefiting from the 90 percent federal match in funds it saw in years past—in addition to paying the costs for a larger number of Medicaid births to women who wanted to avoid a pregnancy and who before the program shift would have had access to free or affordable contraception and, by extension, more freedom to plan their families.German state exploits terror alert to expand police powers By Dietmar Henning 30 November 2010 Two weeks have past since German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere warned of what he claimed to be a specific threat of terrorist attacks. Since then, the public has learned nothing more about the origin, nature or cause of the threat. A bomb, supposedly loaded onto a German plane in Namibia, proved to be a dummy. Nevertheless, leading government and opposition politicians are exploiting the terrorist alert to expand the use of armed police and attack democratic rights. Infringements of personal liberties—such as a
BEIJING (RNS) On a hazy Sunday morning, the fourth floor of a dingy gray office building in a far-flung region of this city is bursting with prayer. In the Chinese capital, it’s not uncommon for church services to be held in Soviet-era office buildings. But the poorly lit, cracked-concrete dankness of this particular location cannot dampen the enthusiasm of this evangelical congregation. Several hundred Chinese Christians pack the cavernous, L-shaped suite, clapping their hands and stomping their feet while a quartet at the front of the room lustily belts out songs praising “Yesu” (“Jesus” in Mandarin). The men and women in attendance at the government-sanctioned Yizhuang Church are young, under 40, though several elderly Chinese women with their grandchildren in tow pack the venue. When the band is finished, the bespectacled pastor, Du Jian Jun, takes the podium to deliver his sermon and the crowd settles into row upon row of blue, folding chairs. READ: Cardinal Wuerl rebukes Georgetown University for invite to Planned Parenthood chief Du, who speaks in Mandarin only — the only English heard in the service is a smattering of worshippers’ “amens” — delivers his message with the soothing cadence of a polished orator. His sermon is simple: The lives we lead can be difficult, but with the guidance of Yesu we have the tools to carry on. The pastor’s message is concise and straightforward; the relationship between Christianity and the Chinese government, however, is more complex. A Chinese version of Christianity In August 2014, a top-ranking official in the Chinese government informed the world that China was planning on nationalizing Christianity. Wang Zuoan, director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, told a forum in Shanghai that the “construction of Chinese Christian theology should adapt to China’s condition and integrate with Chinese culture.” The announcement, unsurprisingly, triggered significant consternation among Christian groups in China and around the globe. A pastor from Zhejiang province in eastern China said the intent of sinicizing Christianity is “to reform and remold Christianity into a (Communist) Party-dominated tool that can be used in its service.” China Aid, a Christian human rights organization based in Midland, Texas, released a report stating that sinicization is nothing less than an attempt to “de-Christianize the church in China.” It’s difficult, of course, for anyone outside the Communist government to know exactly what that means or what version of Christianity it might look like. READ: Israel fractures by faith on politics and society But what cannot be disputed is the budding friction between the state and Chinese Christians: Over the past two years, Chinese authorities — citing building code violations — have torn down more than 1,200 crosses from churches across the country, destroyed several churches, and rounded up Christian activists. There has been some resistance. Chinese Christians in Zhejiang either rebuilt or replaced some of those crosses after the authorities tore down the originals, and other worshippers hung small crosses outside the windows of their homes or from car mirrors. More intriguingly, provincial branches of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, two of the three government-approved Christian organizations in China, sent letters to party leaders condemning the crackdown on Christian symbols. Against this backdrop of alleged persecution and violence, Chinese Christians and government leaders eye each other warily, both sides unsure of what the future of Christianity in the Middle Kingdom might be. Chinese Christianity ‘here to stay’ Missionaries brought Christianity to China’s shores as early as the 7th century. Much like the entrepreneurs that followed, European and American missionaries were irresistibly drawn to the hundreds of millions of potential converts. Missionaries were successful in spreading the gospel far from the port cities of Shanghai and Tianjin, and deep into mainland China. The creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, though, gave rise to sweeping religious repression throughout the country. From 1966 to 1979, during the so-called Cultural Revolution, the Communists shut down all churches, mosques and temples. But in 1979 when Mao Zedong’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, steered the Chinese economy away from socialism and toward the free market, he also ushered in other freedoms and people were granted some religious autonomy. READ: Congo-born priest resigns from German parish after racist threats The Communist Party released a document in 1982 stating that there were about 3 million Protestants in China, but the number of Christians rose significantly over the following decades. A 2010 Pew research report claimed there were 68 million Christians in China. That number is expected to grow to 70 million by 2050, a modest increase. Other estimates suggest somewhere between 100 and 130 million by 2050. This growth of Christianity is a source of alarm for Chinese authorities, according to Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University, and one of the world’s foremost experts on religion in China. Yang projects that if “modest” growth rates are sustained, China could have as many as 160 million Christians by 2025 and 247 million by 2032. The Chinese authorities “are afraid of losing control,” Yang said. “Many Christians do show a level of independence from government interference. This worries officials. They want to find some way to maintain control, and sinicization is the latest effort to tame Christianity through a more systematic campaign.” Yang notes that the push to sinicize Christianity manifests in different ways, such as church buildings being constructed in a traditional Chinese style, the music in church services sounding more Chinese, and preachers using Chinese stories in their sermons. But he believes the most important aspect of the current campaign is to make sure Christian churches are politically aligned with the current government, and are not spreading subversive ideas from outside China’s borders — an idea he finds preposterous. “I think it’s ridiculous to still regard Christianity as a foreign religion,” he said. “For those Christians, they don’t see a foreign religion, but a Christian God they perceive to be real, powerful and that’s helped in their lives.” Xi Lian, professor of World Christianity at Duke University, suggests the tension between Chinese Christians and the Chinese government is a relatively new phenomenon. “The tension has arisen because of the hostility of the state toward all forms of religion — not just Christianity — that do not subject themselves to government control and domination,” Lian said. China has been accused by various human rights organizations of brutally repressing the Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic minority group in western China. If Chinese authorities do, indeed, fear the rise of a robust, defiant Christianity in China, they should think carefully about the strategy they use to address it, warned Lian. He thinks Christianity is “here to stay,” and that its membership and influence will only expand. “The harsher the state’s treatment of Christianity, the more vigorously and unpredictably it will grow,” he said. Something to believe in Fear of the state’s intentions hasn’t trickled down to Chinese Christians. Caleb Peng is a self-proclaimed “proud son of Holy God.” The 37-year-old insurance broker comes from a Christian family, and goes to a Protestant church in Beijing each week. Peng is from a town in southern China, and it was there that he was introduced to Christianity by an uncle. Over the course of several years, Peng’s parents and siblings all converted to Christianity. Peng says many people “still don’t accept Christianity because it’s a ‘foreign religion,’” but he doesn’t feel he needs to hide his faith. “Most of my friends are nonbelievers, but they respect my religion. It’s OK for most Christians in China. I think,” he said. Amy Huang, a preschool teacher, feels the same way. “People in China are lost,” says the 47-year-old Beijing resident. “They’re looking for something to believe in other than Communism.” Huang says she spent years exploring different religions and, after a brief exploration of Buddhism, she was baptized in 2000. She has since converted her mother to Christianity, too. Huang says she recognizes that the government sees religion as a rival, and that it is likely to become increasingly protective of its power as Christianity grows in popularity. But she doesn’t consider the Chinese government a threat to Christianity. She simply feels that there is little the Communist Party can do to limit Christianity’s growth. “Christianity will continue to grow in China and I don’t think the authorities can stop it because the appetite is there,” she said. “Communism lets too many people down.” (Matt Moir is a reporter based in Beijing)I want to preface this article by saying what the New York Jets did in 2007 will have no bearing on what they do in 2016. The purpose of this article is not to say the Jets are going to hit a major regression this season but to point out the oddly high amount of similarities between this past season and offseason and another Jets past season and offseason less than a decade ago… The 2006 New York Jets kicked off a new regime led by first time Head Coach Eric Mangini and first time General Manager, Mike Tannenbaum. Coming off a 4-12 season in 2005, the Jets cleaned house and saw immediate positive results with a surprising 10-6 record and a playoff appearance despite limited pre-season expectations. The Jets benefited from a relatively easy schedule, only beating one playoff team (New England, who they split with) and racking up three wins against a weak NFC division and sweeping a crappy 6-10 Miami Dolphins team. They also benefited from better than expected quarterback play from a physically limited veteran, Chad Pennington. The 2015 New York Jets kicked off a new regime led by first time Head Coach Todd Bowles and first time General Manager, Mike Maccagnan. Coming off a 4-12 season in 2014, the Jets cleaned house and saw immediate positive results with a surprising 10-6 record despite limited pre-season expectations. The Jets benefited from a relatively easy schedule, only beating one playoff team (New England, who they split with) and racking up three wins against a weak NFC division and sweeping a crappy 6-10 Miami Dolphins team. They also benefited from better than expected quarterback play from a physically limited veteran, Ryan Fitzpatrick. Post 2006, the Jets had a relatively quiet offseason. Their headline move was adding a veteran running back from the Chicago Bears, Thomas Jones. They stayed with their veteran Pennington as the starting quarterback with a recently drafted second rounder as the backup, Kellen Clemens. Despite some concerns, they went with a few questionable pieces starting on the offensive line, namely Anthony Clement and Adrian Clarke. Their offensive line was further diminished when they were unable to renegotiate with veteran Pete Kendall, who was traded before the season to Washington. The Jets struggled with a harder schedule in 2007, finishing 4-12 as Pennington got banged up and struggled when healthy. They were swept in their NFC games by a strong division that had two playoff teams and all four teams at least 8-8. They also went 1-3 against the AFC South, which had two 10-6 teams. The offensive line was a pain point all year and their lack of speed on defense consistently hurt them. Post 2015, the Jets have so far had a relatively quiet off-season. Their headline move has been adding a veteran running back from the Chicago Bears, Matt Forte. They are likely to stay with their veteran Fitzpatrick as the starting quarterback with a recently drafted second rounder as the backup, Geno Smith. Despite some concerns, they are likely to go with a few questionable pieces starting on the offensive line, namely Brian Winters and Breno Giacomini. Their offensive line may further be diminished if they can’t renegotiate with veteran D’Brickashaw Ferguson. The Jets will have a harder schedule in 2016, on paper. They are playing the NFC West, which had two playoff teams last season and could easily have three teams at least 8-8 this year. They will also play the AFC North, which had two playoff teams last season. The offensive line as of now looks like it could be a pain point and they still lack speed on defense. Now, let’s look at the differences before you get too depressed. The 2016 team is substantially more talented overall, namely at wide receiver, secondary and defensive line. Jerricho Cotchery and Laveranues Coles were a solid veteran receiver duo, Brandon Marshall and Eric Decker are in the discussion as the best receiver duo in the NFL. The 2007 defensive line prominently featured Kenyon Coleman and Dewayne Robertson and didn’t have the versatility and depth of having Muhammad Wilkerson (currently), Sheldon Richardson, Leonard Williams and Jarvis Jenkins. In the secondary, Darrelle Revis was only a rookie and paired with David Barrett, Abram Elam and Erik Coleman. These Jets have Pro Bowl Revis, an ascending Calvin Pryor and Marcus Williams, a strong nickel in Buster Skrine and a steady starter alongside Pryor in Marcus Gilchrist. Furthermore, there is no guarantee the Jets schedule will actually play out to be that much harder with how much can change between now and September. There is also no guarantee the starting quarterback will get banged up in week 1 and struggle with injuries throughout the year. As we said at the top, nothing in 2007 has a bearing on the 2016 Jets. But the parallels certainly do jump off the page, no? – Photo Credit: NewYorkJets.com RelatedBuffer overflows are one of the most widespread memory corruption classes and are usually caused by a programming mistake which allows the user to supply more data than there is available for the destination variable (buffer). This happens, for example, when vulnerable functions, such as gets, strcpy, memcpy or others are used along with data supplied by the user. These functions do not check the length of the user’s data which can result into writing past (overflowing) the allocated buffer. To get a better understanding, we will look into basics of Stack and Heap based buffer overflows. Stack Overflow Stack overflow, as the name suggests, is a memory corruption affecting the Stack. While in most cases arbitrary corruption of the Stack would most likely result in a program’s crash, a carefully crafted Stack buffer overflow can lead to arbitrary code execution. The following picture shows an abstract overview of how the Stack can get corrupted. As you can see in the picture above, the Stack frame (a small part of the whole Stack dedicated for a specific function) can have various components: user data, previous Frame Pointer, previous Link Register, etc. In case the user provides too much of data for a controlled variable, the FP and LR fields might get overwritten. This breaks the execution of the program, because the user corrupts the address where the application will return/jump after the current function is finished. To check how it looks like in practice we can use this example: /azeria@labs:~/exp $ gcc stack.c -o stack/ #include "stdio.h" int main(int argc, char *argv) { char buffer[8]; gets(buffer); } Our sample program uses the variable “buffer”, with the length of 8 characters, and a function “gets” for user’s input, which simply sets the value of the variable “buffer” to whatever input the user provides. The disassembled code of this program looks like the following: Here we suspect that a memory corruption could happen right after the function “gets” is completed. To investigate this, we place a break-point right after the branch instruction that calls the “gets” function – in our case, at address 0x0001043c. To reduce the noise we configure GEF’s layout to show us only the code and the Stack (see the command in the picture below). Once the break-point is set, we proceed with the program and provide 7 A’s as the user’s input (we use 7 A’s, because a null-byte will be automatically appended by function “gets”). When we investigate the Stack of our example we see (image above) that the Stack frame is not corrupted. This is because the input supplied by the user fits in the expected 8 byte buffer and the previous FP and LR values within the Stack frame are not corrupted. Now let’s provide 16 A’s and see what happens. In the second example we see (image above) that when we provide too much of data for the function “gets”, it does not stop at the boundaries of the target buffer and keeps writing “down the Stack”. This causes our previous FP and LR values to be corrupted. When we continue running the program, the program crashes (causes a “Segmentation fault”), because during the epilogue of the current function the previous values of FP and LR are “poped” off the Stack into R11 and PC registers forcing the program to jump to address 0x41414140 (last byte gets automatically converted to 0x40 because of the switch to Thumb mode), which in this case is an illegal address. The picture below shows us the values of the registers (take a look at $pc) at the time of the crash. Heap Overflow First of all, Heap is a more complicated memory location, mainly because of the way it is managed. To keep things simple, we stick with the fact that every object placed in the Heap memory section is “packed” into a “chunk” having two parts: header and user data (which sometimes the user controls fully). In the Heap’s case, the memory corruption happens when the user is able to write more data than is expected. In that case, the corruption might happen within the chunk’s boundaries (intra-chunk Heap overflow), or across the boundaries of two (or more) chunks (inter-chunk Heap overflow). To put things in perspective, let’s take a look at the following illustration. As shown in the illustration above, the intra-chunk heap overflow happens when the user has the ability to supply more data to u_data_1 and cross the boundary between u_data_1 and u_data_2. In this way the fields/properties of the current object get corrupted. If the user supplies more data than the current Heap chunk can accommodate, then the overflow becomes inter-chunk and results into a corruption of the adjacent chunk(s). Intra-chunk Heap overflow To illustrate how an intra-chunk Heap overflow looks like in practice we can use the following example and compile it with “-O” (optimization flag) to have a smaller (binary) program (easier to look through). /azeria@labs:~/exp $ gcc intra_chunk.c -o intra_chunk -O/ #include "stdlib.h" #include "stdio.h" struct u_data //object model: 8 bytes for name, 4 bytes for number { char name[8]; int number; }; int main ( int argc, char argv[] ) { struct u_data* objA = malloc(sizeof(struct u_data)); //create object in Heap objA->number = 1234; //set the number of our object to a static value gets(objA->name); //set name of our object according to user's input if(objA->number == 1234) //check if static value is intact { puts("Memory valid"); } else //proceed here in case the static value gets corrupted { puts("Memory corrupted"); } } The program above does the following: Defines a data structure (u_data) with two fields Creates an object (in the Heap memory region) of type u_data Assigns a static value to the number’s field of the object Prompts user to supply a value for the name’s field of the object Prints a string depending on the value of the number’s field So in this case we also suspect that the corruption might happen after the function “gets”. We disassemble the target program’s main function to get the address for a break-point. In this case we set the break-point at address 0x00010498 – right after the function “gets” is completed. We configure GEF to show us the code only. We then run the program and provide 7 A’s as a user input. Once the break-point is hit, we quickly lookup the memory layout of our program to find where our Heap is. We use vmmap command and see that our Heap starts at the address 0x00021000. Given the fact that our object (objA) is the first and the only one created by the program, we start analyzing the Heap right from the beginning. The picture above shows us a detailed break down of the Heap’s chunk associated with our object. The chunk has a header (8 bytes) and the user’s data section (12 bytes) storing our object. We see that the name field properly stores the supplied string of 7 A’s, terminated by a null-byte. The number field, stores 0x4d2 (1234 in decimal). So far so good. Let’s repeat these steps, but in this case enter 8 A’s. While examining the Heap this time we see that the number’s field got corrupted (it’s now equal to 0x400 instead of 0x4d2). The null-byte terminator overwrote a portion (last byte) of the number’s field. This results in an intra-chunk Heap memory corruption. Effects of such a corruption in this case are not devastating, but visible. Logically, the else statement in the code should never be reached as the number’s field is intended to be static. However, the memory corruption we just observed makes it possible to reach that part of the code. This can be easily confirmed by the example below. Inter-chunk Heap overflow To illustrate how an inter-chunk Heap overflow looks like in practice we can use the following example, which we now compile without optimization flag. /azeria@labs:~/exp $ gcc inter_chunk.c -o inter_chunk/ #include "stdlib.h" #include "stdio.h" int main ( int argc, char* argv[] ) { char some_string = malloc(8); //create some_string "object" in Heap int some_number = malloc(4); //create some_number "object" in Heap some_number = 1234; //assign some_number a static value gets(some_string); //ask user for input for some_string if(some_number == 1234) //check if static value (of some_number) is in tact { puts("Memory valid"); } else //proceed here in case the static some_number gets corrupted { puts("Memory corrupted"); } } The process here is similar to the previous ones: set a break-point after function “gets”, run the program, supply 7 A’s, investigate Heap. Once the break-point is hit, we examine the Heap. In this case, we have two chunks. We see (image below) that their structure is in tact: the some_string is within its boundaries, the some_number is equal to 0x4d2. Now, let’s supply 16 A’s and see what happens. As you might have guessed, providing too much of input causes the overflow resulting into corruption of the adjacent chunk. In this case we see that our user input corrupted the header and the first byte of the some_number’s field. Here again, by corrupting the some_number we manage to reach the code section which logically should never be reached.First off, let’s begin by asking a question: did any of you laugh like how we laughed when Mordney pops up at the beginning of the song? I don’t know what it is now, but after we reviewed U-Kiss’ “Shut Up” a while ago, and then used Mordney for our jokes for the next, like, 20 episodes, we just can’t take him seriously anymore. In fact, I think we would have liked this song more if we weren’t so biased against Mordney. Just, please Mordney, if you’re reading this, stop saying “Mordney Present” at the beginning of your songs. It’s a lot better than the “Hello, Hello, do you know me? This is Mordney Present” you did in Shut Up, but, still, it’s just…better if you stop saying it altogether. Otherwise, this is a really sweet song, and the singing is really nice in it. Really nice. And the video’s really interesting as well. It took us a while to figure out what was happening, but it turned out to be quite sad when we realized he was imagining a girl that wasn’t there. We’re just upset a bit at how quickly the video wrapped up. Laughing doesn’t cure Schizophrenia, last time I checked. Dong-Ho needs professional help. That is his name, right? Dong-Ho? I don’t know. I just know that his fans call themselves Dongholics, and for some reason that sounds dirtier than any of the “that’s what she said” jokes we’ve done to date. Another thing we didn’t mention in the video: we’re kinda weirded out by the idea of this being “Bran New Kiss,” for a couple of reasons. 1, because Bran makes me think of Fiber, and I don’t really think that Kpop bands should associate themselves with fiber. But that’s a minor quibble. We just find it weird that two members left U-Kiss and two new ones replaced them. Doesn’t that make them a different band? I didn’t think that groups are like basketball teams, where you can simply swap out some people. No? –EDIT– Turns out that Kevin from U-Kiss saw our video. And, surprisingly, he didn’t hate it! @eatyourkimchi Hey Guys~ I Think your videos are absolutely hilarious Lol I’m addicted to watching them now ^^ Thanks for the U-Kiss vid~ Kevin Woo â˜… ìœ í‚¤ìŠ¤ ì¼€ë¹ˆ Kevinwoo91 As always, thanks to JB and Annie from [ë‹‰ì‘¤] Enjoy Your Happy Life~* for the Korean subtitles. Also, if you like Simon’s shirt, you can get it here. Threadless FTW!. And, finally, if you’re a U-Kiss fan, you can buy the U-Kiss 0330 CD by clicking the banner below, and it’ll ship to you anywhere in the world. Yeah!Conservative news outlets, including one with links to a top White House official, are singling out individual career government employees for criticism, suggesting in articles that certain staffers will not be sufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump by virtue of their work under former President Barack Obama. The articles — which have appeared in Breitbart News, the Conservative Review and other outlets — have alarmed veteran officials in both parties as well as current executive branch staffers. They say the stories are adding to tensions between career staffers and political appointees as they begin to implement Trump’s agenda, and they worry that the stories could inspire Trump to try purging federal agencies of perceived enemies. Story Continued Below The claims posted on the conservative sites include allegations of anti-Israel and pro-Iran bias against staffers at institutions such as the State Department and the National Security Council. Breitbart News, whose former executive chairman Steve Bannon is now Trump’s chief strategist, has even published lists of workers that the president should fire. Washington veterans say they can’t recall similar targeting of government employees, who are required to stay apolitical and generally shun the spotlight. “It’s deeply unfair to single people out and question their loyalty,” said William Burns, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former longtime diplomat. “It’s demoralizing for institutions. It’s demoralizing for professionals, and it’s offensive.” Elliott Abrams, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration who was passed over last month for the role of deputy secretary of state because of his past criticism of Trump, agreed with Burns. Career staffers, he said "are trying to do their jobs and will respond to presidential leadership — including from a new president when an administration changes.” U.S. civil and foreign service officers have long been seen by Republicans and Democrats as the backbone of government — subject matter experts who help political appointees administer their policy agenda regardless of who serves as commander in chief. But many in the Trump administration and its allies on the right are skeptical of career staffers, believing they are part of an American “deep state” that is working in secret to undermine the president. Several people who have been targeted did not respond to requests for comment. But one said the information being spread is unnerving, in part because even if Trump’s top aides don’t always believe the reports they read in the conservative press, they may still feel pressure to act from voters in the Republican base who do believe the accounts. “I, of course, worry about the fact that there are people inside the administration and outside it who may believe what they read in these things, who don’t necessarily appreciate what it means to be a career staffer,” said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity for job protection reasons. “Most people don’t understand that that does not come with politics attached.” It’s unclear whether the articles are part of a coordinated campaign in the conservative media or the result of leaks from Trump appointees inside the administration. State Department career officials have faced the most aggressive criticism from conservative news outlets. Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a career civil service officer in State’s policy planning office who's been targeted in the past, has come under renewed fire because of her role shaping the Iran nuclear deal and other Iran policy during the Obama administration. Nowrouzzadeh, an American-born U.S. citizen of Iranian descent who joined the government in 2005 during the Bush administration, also has been criticized for once working for the National Iranian American Council, an activist group that some on the right accuse of lobbying on behalf of the Iranian government. According to Nowrouzzadeh’s LinkedIn profile and NIAC, she was an intern in the organization more than a decade ago. NIAC President Trita Parsi said Nowrouzzadeh interned part-time as a college undergraduate. “At the time our organization was very new, and our focus was primarily on voter registration," Parsi said. "We had no profile or position on foreign policy matters at that time.” Parsi also denied suggestions that his organization is tied to the Iranian regime. “The idea we’re an agent for the Iranian regime is preposterous,” he said. “We are the largest Iranian-American grass-roots organization, sustained by our own community, who overwhelmingly opposes the government in Iran.” Alan Eyre, director of the Office of the Middle East and Asia at State’s Bureau of Energy Resources, has also been targeted. Eyre served as State’s first Persian-language spokesman, and he’s been involved in Iran nuclear talks and outreach to Iranians. Calling him a “leftist State Department official,” the Conservative Review published an article this week reviewing Eyre's Twitter feed, saying he’s retweeting articles that are critical of Trump. But Eyre’s Twitter feed also includes plenty of Trump-friendly retweets that the article doesn't mention. Other targets for conservative news outlets have included Chris Backemeyer, State’s deputy assistant secretary for Iran; Michael Ratney, who deals with Syria and Israeli-Palestinian issues at State; and Anne Patterson, a recently retired former ambassador to Egypt and Pakistan. Secretary of Defense James Mattis wanted to tap Patterson as his undersecretary of defense for policy, but he ultimately withdrew her name from consideration after encountering resistance from the White House, another chilling signal to career officials. In a statement to POLITICO, Patterson said: "I believe that it is important for our elected officials, their appointees, and career civil service and foreign service personnel to know and respect the boundaries between their different roles." State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the agency had tried without luck to get the publications to correct mistakes in the articles. “We are concerned that much of the information in these articles is not factual,” Toner said. “For example, parts of the article about Ms. Nowrouzzadeh are in fact sourced to Iranian state-run media, which often publishes Iranian state propaganda and falsehoods. We did reach out in this case to correct the record and they did not do so.” Asked whether the employees’ jobs were in danger, Toner said, “The department does not base any of its personnel decisions on allegations made in the press.” Yael Lempert, a National Security Council official who deals with Israeli-Palestinian issues and has nearly 20 years of government experience, also has been targeted by reports casting her to be anti-Israel. People from across the political spectrum have risen to her defense, noting that she’s well-liked by Israeli officials and served as a top negotiator for a recent $38 billion security assistance package for Israel. Lempert also served in the Bush administration and was asked by the Trump team to stay on at the NSC. In a statement to POLITICO, Jason Greenblatt, a Trump special envoy for international negotiations, described Lempert as “extremely hard-working” and one of several people across various agencies who are “enthusiastically working to advance the president’s agenda.” “She’s not an Obama lackey. She has served all presidents because she’s valued,” added another U.S. official who has worked with Lempert. A February article in Breitbart News called the Department of Homeland Security and its U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services component a “hotbed of career open borders ideologues, many of whom intend to directly and indirectly subvert President Trump’s agenda.” Citing “DHS sources,” the article listed eight department staffers Trump should “fire or remove now in order to remove potential obstacles to his agenda.” Andrew Quinn, a longtime career staffer at multiple agencies who was appointed last month to serve as an international trade adviser to Trump, also has been cast as an "enemy within" by Breitbart for his role in negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Trump opposes. “Generally, the new White House has been wary of staffing itself with people who oppose the ideology that got Donald Trump elected,” Breitbart reported earlier this month, adding later, “There is no public record of Andrew Quinn changing his ardent public support for the multilateral, globalist Trans-Pacific Partnership.” Conservative Review reporter Jordan Schachtel, a former Breitbart writer who’s written many of the stories criticizing career foreign policy officials, told POLITICO, “What’s driving our coverage is that the American people are very much alarmed that there are individuals in government who have a track record of supporting dangerous and destructive policies related to our foreign engagements.” He added, “No one in or connected to the administration has tipped me off about any of the investigative reporting we have completed concerning these stories.” “CR is proud of Jordan’s work,” Conservative Review Executive Editor Gaston Mooney said in an email. “Obviously, the truth is making career staffers at State uncomfortable. That is not our problem.” A Breitbart spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. A White House official, speaking on background, said: “We don’t control the stories that any of these outlets write any more than we control the stories at POLITICO.” The stories come amid growing frustration among career employees, many of whom say they feel increasingly marginalized by Trump’s political appointees. One civil servant said Trump’s appointees sometimes neglect career policy experts who they fear are loyal to Obama administration officials. “Key staff are being kept out of the loop on major decisions,” said the civil servant, who requested anonymity to speak freely about internal agency deliberations. Union officials stressed that Trump can’t fire career workers because of their personal opinions. Morning Defense newsletter Sign up for Morning Defense, a daily briefing on Washington's national security apparatus. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. “They didn’t work for Obama and they don’t work for Trump. They work for federal agencies, and the agencies carry out the laws,” said Jacqueline Simon, policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union. “This is a completely apolitical civil service. Their employer is the American people.” Gerald Feierstein, a former ambassador to Yemen who spent more than 40 years in the foreign service, warned that going after career staffers could set a bad precedent the Trump administration would be wise to avoid. “If you go down this road, people are going to be less willing to follow through with the policy of the administration in power if it means that further down the road they’re going to be criticized or their careers will be jeopardized because of that,” Feierstein said. “What goes around comes around.”Apple's meteoric rise in the prestigious Fortune 500 corporate rankings continued this year as the iPhone maker moved past Texas oil and gas giant Phillips 66 to take the fifth slot in the 2014 edition. Apple was the only technology company to crack the top 15, with Hewlett-Packard's 17th-place showing the next best for a Silicon Valley firm. Joining Apple in the top five are retail monolith Wal-Mart, petrochemical behemoths Exxon Mobil and Chevron, and Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate.Apple's stratospheric ranking is a marked change from its position just 10 years ago, when it ranked a relatively lowly 301st. Much of that improvement is owed to the blockbuster success of the iPhone and iPad, which have collectively sold more than half a billion units in the last seven years.Those sales have translated into immense financial success. Apple's $170 billion in total revenue for 2013 —up nearly 10 percent year-over-year —is more than the revenue booked by fellow corporate icons Microsoft and Boeing combined.At press time, Apple shares were trading at more than $630 in advance of a 7-for-1 stock split that the company says is designed to make it more accessible to independent investors. Apple is also in the midst of a $90 billion share buyback program and recently bumped its quarterly dividend to $3.29 per share.Hey PHP, those variables look like garbage don’t you agree? No? Well look again… tl;dr: We have found two use-after-free vulnerabilities in PHP’s garbage collection algorithm: One vulnerability affecting all PHP 5 versions >= 5.3 (fixed in PHP 5.6.23). One vulnerability affecting all PHP versions >= 5.3 including all PHP 7 versions (fixed in PHP 5.6.23 and PHP 7.0.8). Those vulnerabilities could also be remotely exploited over PHP’s unserialize function. In particular, they were used to get RCE on pornhub.com, helped us to earn $20,000 and were each awarded with $1,000 by the Internet Bug Bounty committee at Hackerone. Credits: Many thanks go out to Dario Weißer for writing an unserialize fuzzer and helping to identify initial bugs in unserialize! In the context of auditing Pornhub we have identified two critical flaws in PHP’s garbage collection algorithm (c.f. How we broke PHP, hacked Pornhub and earned $20,000). In particular, two critical use-after-free vulnerabilities were discovered when PHP’s garbage collection algorithm interacts with other specific PHP objects. Those vulnerabilities have wide reaching effects like allowing the exploitation of unserialize to gain remote code execution on a target system and will be discussed in
’s Accelerated Program. Another option is to search outside of the United States where a structure of less than two years is more prevalent. 10. Is an MBA degree even the right degree for you? If you are a younger applicant with little or no experience, you might choose to pursue a Masters in Management degree (e.g. London Business School’s Programme). Although keep in mind that HBS’ 2+2 Program and Yale SOM’s Silver Scholars Program are intended for MBA applicants applying directly from undergraduate school. Other non-MBA degrees focus on particular subject areas, like Financial Engineering Programs (e.g. Haas’ Master of Financial Engineering Program). MBAPrepAdvantage can help you determine which MBA program suits you. We offer a free initial assessment that includes Program and School Selection as well as helps you gauge your MBA admissions chances and the strength of your candidacy. Email us a brief description of your goals along with your target schools, resume, GPA, and GMAT or GRE at info@mbaprepadvantage.com. If you wish to learn more about the different MBA and non-MBA options, feel free to refer to the blog post Different MBA Program Types.A few weeks ago, The Sporting News published a ranking of the NFL's general managers from 1-32. (Warning: It's a slideshow). The best GM? The Denver Broncos' John Elway. The worst? The Philadelphia Eagles' Howie Roseman. Appearing as a guest on the Mike and Ike show on 94.1 WIP Friday afternoon, Roseman was told of his ranking and asked for his opinion on it, to which Roseman optimistically replied, "Nowhere to go but up!" The reasoning for The Sporting News' ranking was as follows: Roseman returns to the roost after being displaced by Chip Kelly, and the pressure to come though was immediately back. He spent much of the offseason trying to clean up Kelly's messes but created a different one at QB, spending too much money on Sam Bradford and too many draft picks on Carson Wentz. That's dumb. A look at some of the things Roseman did this offseason: • Trading DeMarco Murray for literally anything was an enormous win. Frankly, I can't even imagine what was being said on the Titans' end of this deal. "You mean to say that we can have a bad, slow, massively overpaid complainer at an incredibly easy position to find talent, and I have to give you something to get him? Deal!" For "losing" Murray and his awful contract, the Eagles moved up 13 spots in the fourth round. • When Roseman traded Byron Maxwell and Kiko Alonso, the Eagles were able to dump a bad contract (Maxwell) while throwing in a player who was downright bad a season ago (Alonso), and for those "losses," the Eagles moved up from 13 to 8 in the first round of the 2016 NFL Draft. • There was no way the Eagles were going to keep Mark Sanchez around after handing out lucrative deals to both Sam Bradford and Chase Daniel. Sanchez was set to count for $5.5 million against the cap in 2016. Had the Eagles released him, they would have saved $3.5 million of that. By trading him, they saved $4.5 million. That alone was incentive enough to trade him, but the Eagles will get the Broncos' seventh round pick if Sanchez makes the team, which will become the Titans' sixth round pick if he starts at least four games. Those three moves alone were masterstrokes of turning trash into something. Not to mention, if you hate the signings of S Rodney McLeod and OG Brandon Brooks, speak now or forever hold your peace. As for the quarterback situation, are the Eagles paying them a lot of money? In 2016, yes. Of course, if you only think in terms of 2016 and don't bother to view the quarterback situation over the long haul, you would have no clue that the Eagles really aren't paying their quarterbacks that much compared with the rest of the league. In 2017, there's a very low probability that Sam Bradford will be on the roster. Assuming the Eagles are able to trade him next offseason for literally anything, here is how the quarterback cap numbers will look over the next three years: Year Bradford Daniel Wentz TOTAL 2016 $12,500,000 $5,000,000 $4,827,767 $22,327,767 2017 $5,500,000 (dead money) $8,000,000 $6,034,709 $19,534,709 + a small cap number if the Eagles add a #3 QB 2018 $0 $8,000,000 $7,241,651 $15,241,651 + a small cap number if the Eagles add a #3 QB The cost of the Eagles' quarterbacks is currently eighth in the NFL in 2016. It will be right around the middle of the pack in 2017 if the Eagles can deal Bradford, and then among the league's lowest numbers in 2018. After seeing how the Eagles' offseason has played out, it certainly wasn't a picture of perfection, but the allocation of dollars to the three quarterbacks on the roster is justifiable when viewing it over the long-term instead of just in a narrow, short-term window. As for trading up to acquire Wentz, was the cost high? Sure. But the bottom line in the NFL is that you either have a quarterback, or you don't, and if you don't, you have no chance. Would the Eagles have been better served to stick with Sam Bradford for the foreseeable future? In my view, heeeeellllll no. Wentz will ideally be the starting quarterback in 2017 and beyond, Daniel will be slated as the long-term No. 2, and Bradford the guy who can maintain short-term competence, albeit at a high cost. If Wentz pans out (which of course isn't a certainty), the Eagles will not be included among the 16 or so teams who could be shopping for a new franchise quarterback in the not-to-distant future. Many of those teams may have to give up a hell of a lot more to get their guy than the Eagles did this offseason, or have a disastrous enough of a season to draft one high. Howie Roseman's resume is far from stellar, but the worst GM in the NFL? Get out of here with that nonsense. Follow Jimmy on Twitter: @JimmyKempski Like Jimmy on Facebook.Arrested Development fans are busy counting down the hours until Season 4 premieres this Sunday at midnight on Netflix, and here at Flavorwire, we’re no different. So, we’re passing the time by declaring this Arrested Development Week, all leading up to a Recap-a-thon on Sunday, when our own Jason Bailey will review the whole season, episode by episode. Click here to follow our coverage. It began with a throwaway joke on the first season episode “Staff Infection,” with G.O.B. accusing Buster of being a chicken, and proceeding to imitate… well, not a chicken, but some sort of animal that clucks and claps. It then became one of Arrested Development’s best running jokes, with Lindsay, Lucille, and George Sr. each providing their own variation, none of them all that similar to a chicken. Here’s our supercut of all of them—along with our hope that we’ll see more variations (how’s about one from Buster?) in season four. All the ‘Arrested Development’ “Chicken” Dances from Flavorwire on Vimeo.It’s been two years since Jackie used his power to kill the men responsible for his girlfriend’s murder. The Darkness II is the sequel to the critically acclaimed 2007 release The Darkness. Inspired by the popular comic book series produced by Top Cow Productions, Inc., The Darkness II is an intense first person shooter that puts you in the role of Jackie Estacado, don of a New York crime family and wielder of an ancient force of chaos known as The Darkness. It’s been two years since Jackie used his power to kill the men responsible for his girlfriend’s murder. He’s been unable to shake the memory of Jenny’s death since bottling up The Darkness and now it wants out. A botched attempt on Jackie’s life opens the door for The Darkness to reemerge, and sets Jackie on a brutal and personal journey as he unravels the mystery behind the attack and the motives of The Darkness. FEATURES Quad-Wielding Chaos: Slash, grab, and throw objects and enemies with the Demon Arms while simultaneously firing two weapons, adding a new dimension to the FPS category. Harness an Unstoppable Power: Master the Demon Arms and summon the powers of The Darkness for even more explosive gameplay. Kill the Lights: The vicious powers of The Darkness manifest only in the shadows so use the environment to your advantage and watch out for enemies who will use light as a weapon. Intense and Personal Journey: Experience a dark, twisted and gripping story written exclusively for the game by acclaimed comic book author Paul Jenkins whose credits also include The Incredible Hulk, Wolverine, and the original The Darkness game. Distinctive Graphic-Noir Style: Graphic novel shading and color combined with the dramatic lighting of film noir pays tribute to the source material and brings the pages of the comic series to life. Inspired by the popular comic book series created by Top Cow.The BBC's long-running investigations program Panorama turned its focus onto Apple this evening. Reporter Richard Bilton spent an hour looking at Apple's supply chain, workers' conditions, and indirectly challenged Apple to raise the working standards of those involved in the manufacturing of its hardware. With a healthy slice of emotive language, phrases such as the 'Cult of Mac' arrived within minutes of the program starting, and Apple's strong performance in terms of sales and revenue was used to put Cupertino on a pedestal. And then the investigation brought forward a number of allegations to knock Apple off that pedestal in the week before Christmas. Bilton went over a number of incidents in factories run by Foxconn and Pegatron, incidents previously reported here on Forbes and in the mainstream press. BBC News details the incidents that were aired tonight: Filming on an iPhone 6 production line showed Apple's promises to protect workers were routinely broken. It found standards on workers' hours, ID cards, dormitories, work meetings and juvenile workers were being breached at the Pegatron factories. Exhausted workers were filmed falling asleep on their 12-hour shifts at the Pegatron factories on the outskirts of Shanghai. One undercover reporter, working in a factory making parts for Apple computers, had to work 18 days in a row despite repeated requests for a day off. Another reporter, whose longest shift was 16 hours, said: "Every time I got back to the dormitories, I wouldn't want to move. Bilton and the BBC also noted that "Apple said it strongly disagreed with the programme's conclusions." These issues have been discussed time and again, and anyone with even a passing interest will not have found anything new in this episode of Panorama. What is of interest is the singular focus on Apple, and judging the workers' conditions using Western standards. While these issues are faced by every manufacturer, only Apple was specifically named in the programme. More than any other company, Apple has been the leading target for campaigners on working conditions, but it seems unfair to single out one manufacturer for the alleged sins of an industry, Attempts to address similar issues around Child Labour by Senator Bill Harkin in 1993, and examined by Timothy Ivins in 'A Contextualist Approach To Child Labour': [Senator Harkin] introduced a bill which proposed a ban on imports to the US from countries that used child labour at any stage of production. The passing of this bill resulted in 75% of the garment industry’s child workers being dismissed from their jobs as factory owners feared losing their business abroad. Ivins also addresses the contrasting issues of competitive elements in the supply chain and the concern over workers conditions: The Egyptian trade minister Yussef Boutros-Ghali best summed up the sentiments of developing nations in 1999 when he asked ‘[w]hy, all of a sudden, when third world labour has proved to be competitive, do industrial countries start feeling concerned about our workers?’. The Western belief was that children rescued from these factories would go to school. Instead the children ended up working in more dangerous and less regulated conditions. Ultimately Harkins' Bill did not create a better life for the child labour in Bangladesh: ...it aggravated the situation because it encouraged children to shift into less regulated sectors. In Bangladesh, the Bill was perceived as ‘a case of Westerners selectively applying universal principles to a situation they did not understand’. As one child labourer stated, ‘I could go to school, but then who would feed my mother and sister?’. Many of the discussion points brought up by Panorama have been addressed before. Charles Duhigg and David Barboza took a comprehensive look at conditions inside Foxconn for The New York Times, and articles using undercover reporters going into the Shenzen factories are not uncommon (such as this report from The Guardian). Apple is not alone in having to address these complicated political and cultural issues, and there are no simple answers. Complicated macro-economic and social issues do not make exciting and accessible programming for a mainstream audience. Focusing purely on Apple when Foxconn, Pegatron, and other suppliers, deal with almost every smartphone and tablet manufacturer does not create a balanced view of the industry. How much change should we expect Apple and other manufacturers to implement overnight? As Forbes' Tim Worstall has pointed out previously, wages for workers in the Foxconn factories have been rising. The last six years has seen a 120% increase for workers. Change cannot happen immediately, but change is happening. No solitary manufacturer can walk into the supply chain and demand working conditions far in advance of the prevalent conditions of the country. Change will be gradual, and measured over years, if not decades. Apple is rightly proud of the efforts it is making to improve conditions, and returning to claims that in some cases are years old and are in the process of being addressed could damage the progress that has already been made. Western society has to decide where it wants manufacturers' priorities to lie. Should it be biased towards ever-cheaper hardware with more functionality and capability, or should it be more towards elevating workers' conditions to a level that makes our consumer-first society comfortable? Is it even the place of companies like Apple to take on the responsibility of changing the entire social framework of these countries? Readers in the UK can watch 'Panorama: Apple's Broken Promises' via the iPlayer catch-up service until 9pm, December 18th, 2015.MOSCOW (Reuters) - Deadly toxins that were to have been removed from Syria by December 31 under an international effort to rid the country of its chemical arsenal have not yet been delivered to port to be put on ships, a Russian diplomat was quoted as saying on Friday. A Free Syrian Army medical group trains people on how to cope with chemical weapon attacks in Aleppo December 25, 2013. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah The deadline will be missed because toxins that can be used to make sarin, VX gas and other agents were being packed up and still faced a potentially hazardous trip to the port of Latakia, RIA news agency quoted Mikhail Ulyanov as saying. “The removal has not yet begun,” he said after an international meeting on the chemical arms removal effort. Syria has agreed to abandon its chemical weapons by next June under a deal proposed by Russia and hashed out with the United States, after an August 21 sarin gas attack that Western nations blamed on President Bashar al-Assad’s government. Damascus agreed to transport the “most critical” chemicals, including around 20 tons of mustard nerve agent, out of the northern port of Latakia by December 31 to be safely destroyed abroad away from the war zone. But the head of that global chemicals weapon watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said earlier this month that the deadline could be missed. Russia, which has given Assad crucial support during the nearly three-year-old civil conflict in Syria, airlifted 75 armoured vehicles and trucks to the nation last week to carry chemicals to Latakia. Syrian government forces took control of a key highway connecting Damascus to the coast earlier this month, but Ulyanov said the trip could still be treacherous. “They will have to be taken on dangerous roads, there are several dangerous stretches,” RIA quoted Ulyanov, head of the Foreign Ministry’s disarmament department, as saying. He also said experts from several countries, the United Nations and OPCW had reached a “common understanding of the main points” of a plan to get the toxins from the port into international waters, but gave no details. Ulyanov said on Wednesday that while they are in Syrian waters, Russian and Chinese warships would escort the Danish and Norwegian container ships that are to carry the toxins away for destruction further from the war zone.Given all you have read, do you believe that New York's affordable-housing crisis is more severe than in other large cities, and do you believe it is getting worse here at a faster pace than it is elsewhere? Your answer is probably yes. But the correct answer is no, according to new research from the Citizens Budget Commission that does something usually missing from housing debates: comparative analysis. The CBC first looked at median rent in the 22 most comparable large cities in the U.S. New York is cheaper than three California cities, as well as Boston and Washington, D.C., and is ranked in almost the same place as it was a decade ago.Rents by themselves tell us little, so the federal government defines affordability as the portion of rental households spending more than 30% of their income on housing. New York ranks ninth by that measure of unaffordability, with 51% of households exceeding the benchmark. In the past decade, the city's relative position has not changed much.Finally, the federal government combines housing and transportation costs to come up with what it calls location affordability—obviously a good concept. The typical New York household spends $20,452 on both. As a portion of income—32% here—it is the third best among the 22 cities.UVF boss Winston 'Winkie' Irvine's £30million job BelfastTelegraph.co.uk UVF boss Winkie Irvine is treasurer of a housing charity which has assets worth £30million. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/news/uvf-boss-winston-winkie-irvines-30million-job-35431672.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article35431573.ece/8f3b4/AUTOCROP/h342/ss%20Eye%20Belfast.jpg Email UVF boss Winkie Irvine is treasurer of a housing charity which has assets worth £30million. Irvine has no accountancy qualifications but the leading figure in the illegal paramilitary gang has a major say in controlling the huge finances of the Woodvale Shankill Community Housing Association (WSCHA). The housing charity is currently being investigated over claims it staged a “sham tender” process ahead of awarding lucrative building contracts to its subsidiary firm WGS construction, which also has Irvine on its board. Sunday Life has also previously revealed how the charity has installed three large RHI wood pellet burning boilers at housing schemes in the Woodvale area. Latest company accounts published by the WSCHA show the millions of pounds it has at its disposal, and as its board member and treasurer Winston ‘Winkie’ Irvine has an influence on how the cash is spent. The WSCHA owns more than 400 homes in the greater Shankill area, the majority of which are occupied by people claiming housing benefit. According to its latest audited accounts this housing stock, land and associated buildings are worth a cool £31m and it has current assets of nearly £3.9m, including £3.7m cash in the bank, as of March 2016. Less depreciation its land and buildings are valued at around £25m and less various other liabilities the charity is valued at around £12.7m. Last year the WSCHA had a turnover of £2,192,236 with an operating surplus (profit) of £752,588, up more than £150,000 from its 2015 surplus, according to the report by the auditors which gave the firm’s accounting procedures a clean bill of health. Its rental income from social housing topped £1.3m while it received just shy of £285,000 in sheltered dwelling rent. In the past 12 months it has spent some of this money on establishing four subsidiary companies into which it has pumped £330,000. These firms are WGS Green Energy Ltd, WGS New Developments Ltd, WGS Property Enterprises Ltd, and WGS Residential Ltd. UVF boss Winkie Irvine — the WSCHA treasurer — also sits on the board of all four WGS companies. It is these firms that are at the centre of “sham tender” claims over the awarding of maintenance contracts by the WSCHA for repair work. The Department for Communities has confirmed it is considering issues raised about WSCHA. A spokeswoman said: “The department has received a complaint in connection with this housing association. This complaint is being taken forward under the department’s ‘Raising Concerns’ procedures.” The WSCHA was also criticised during an ongoing industrial tribunal which heard claims that it was “not fit for purpose, badly structured”, and “lacking managerial expertise”. Last year the housing charity awarded its WGS subsidiary company a contract worth thousands of pounds to carry out improvement work on 47 properties around Cambrai Street and Disraeli Street. According to evidence heard at the tribunal “this was a mistake as WGS is not fit for purpose and WSCHA failed to undertake at the proper time full risk assessments for following this procurement route”. The tribunal has not yet heard the response of the WSCHA to claims made against it and the case will proceed later this year. Sunday Life’s revelations about Winkie Irvine’s involvement with WSCHA has led other loyalists to ask questions about how he managed to get onto the board of the multi-million pound charity. One UVF veteran admitted to being “stunned” when told Irvine was its treasurer and had an important role in its finances. He said: “I’d love to know what qualifications Winkie has for him to be appointed treasurer of a firm with £31m worth of assets. “It wasn’t that long ago he was a bottle-lifter paid to clean empty pint glasses in the Liverpool club.” Irvine is understood to be seething with Sunday Life for detailing his links to the WSCHA and growing involvement in the property trade which includes his recent purchase of a detached house in north Belfast. Senior UVF figures hit the roof last week when this newspaper revealed the housing association had installed three huge RHI (Renewable Heating Incentive) wood-pellet boilers to power three of its sheltered apartment blocks. Details were obtained from WSCHA planning applications. The PUP has lambasted the DUP over its promotion of the disastrous RHI scheme. However, this criticism has now been tempered given Irvine’s role in the WSCHA and its setting up of three wood-pellet boilers on the Woodvale Road and Cambrai Street. Our source added: “Bunter (UVF leader John ‘Bunter’ Graham) wasn’t happy when he read about Winkie’s links to the wood-pellet boilers. “He knew nothing about it and reckons it could weaken the PUP vote at next month’s Assembly elections.” cbarnes@sundaylife.co.uk Belfast Telegraph Digital[At Kapilavasthu] Now at that time Sarakaani the Sakyan, who had died, was proclaimed by the Blessed One to be a Stream-Winner, not subject to rebirth in states of woe, assured of enlightenment. At this, a number of the Sakyans, whenever they met each other or came together in company, were indignant and angry, and said scornfully: "A fine thing, a marvelous thing! Nowadays anyone can become a Stream-Winner, if the Blessed One has proclaimed Sarakaani who died to be Stream-Winner... assured of enlightenment! Why, Sarakaani failed in his training and took to drink!" [Mahaanaama the Sakyan reported this to the Buddha who said:] "Mahaanaama, a lay-follower who has for a long time taken refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha — how could he go to states of woe? [And this can be truly said of Sarakaani the Sakyan.] How could he go to states of woe? "Mahaanaama, take the case of a man endowed with unwavering devotion to the Buddha, declaring 'He is the Blessed One...,'[1] the Dhamma... the Sangha... He is joyous and swift in wisdom, one who has gained release.[2] By the destruction of the cankers he has by his own realization gained the cankerless heart's release, the release through wisdom, in this very life, and abides in it. The man is entirely released from the hell-state, from rebirth as an animal,[3] he is free from the realm of hungry ghosts, fully freed from the downfall, the evil way, from states of woe. "Take the case of another man. He is endowed with unwavering devotion to the Buddha... the Dhamma... the Sangha... he is joyous and swift in wisdom but has not gained release. Having destroyed the five lower fetters,[4] he is reborn spontaneously[5] where he will attain Nibbaana without returning from that world. That man is entirely released from... states of woe. "Take the case of another man. He is endowed with unwavering devotion to the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha. But he is not joyous in wisdom and has not gained release. Yet by destroying three fetters[6] and weakening lust, hatred and delusion, he is a Once-returner, who will return once more to this world and put an end to suffering. That man is entirely freed from... states of woe. "Take the case of another man. He is endowed with unwavering devotion to the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha. But he is not joyous in wisdom and has not gained release. Yet by destroying three fetters he is a Stream-Winner, not subject to rebirth in states of woe, assured of enlightenment. That man is entirely freed... from states of woe. "Take the case of another man. He is not even endowed with unwavering devotion to the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha. He is not joyous and swift in wisdom and has not gained release. But perhaps he has these things: the faculty of faith, of energy, of mindfulness, of concentration, of wisdom. And the things proclaimed by the Tathaagata are moderately approved by him with insight. That man does not go to the realm of hungry ghosts, to the downfall, to the evil way, to states of woe. "Take the case of another man. He is not even endowed with unwavering devotion to the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha. He is not joyous and swift in wisdom and has not gained release. But he has just these things: the faculty of faith, of energy, of mindfulness, of concentration, of wisdom. Yet if he has merely faith, merely affection for the Tathaagata, that man, too, does not go to... states of woe.[7] "Why, Mahaanaama, if these great sal trees could distinguish what is well spoken from what is ill spoken, I would proclaim these great sal trees to be Stream-Winners... bound for enlightenment, how much more so then Sarakaani the Sakyan! Mahaanaama, Sarakaani the Sakyan fulfilled the training at the time of death.'[8]Tracking cities at night from the Space Station Any amateur photographer knows the problems of taking pictures at night: the low shutter speeds required to capture enough light make images prone to camera shake. Blurry and unsharp pictures are the result. Professional photographers use tripods to steady their camera and take clearer pictures. ESA astronaut André Kuipers has installed ‘NightPod’ on the International Space Station, an aid for taking night-time pictures of Earth. The first batch of pictures offer stunning images of cities at night. The International Space Station orbits Earth at 7 km/s so using a tripod is not an option for night-time photography. Even if the camera is perfectly still, the Station moves so fast any images of Earth at night will still look blurred. Athens, seen by Paolo Nespoli from ISS ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli took many breath-taking images of our planet at night during his MagISStra mission last year, from Cupola, the European observation module on the Space Station. He had to estimate the correct speed to move his camera and compensate by hand, a difficult task at the best of times. To help astronauts take better pictures, ESA developed a motorised tripod in collaboration with Dutch company Cosine. Called NightPod, this device compensates for the motion of the Space Station by tracking single points on Earth automatically. The subject stays centred in frame so the final image is in focus. NightPod Astronauts enter data regarding the Station’s orbit and attitude and then NightPod can start taking pictures. It can even be set to run on its own for up to six hours. “We designed a very flexible tool that can be used by a large variety of cameras,” says Luigi Castiglione from ESA’s Human Spaceflight & Operations payload development section. “The astronauts are enthusiastic about using NightPod,” says Massimo Sabbatini, Head of the Erasmus Centre in ESA’s Directorate of Human Spaceflight & Operations. “The images are sharper and have more detail than images from previous missions. By combining consecutive images from NightPod, we can use software techniques to enhance the images even more.” Naples This is only the beginning for NightPod. The system has been designed to be adaptable, and astronauts on the Space Station are already thinking of using NightPod to look the other way, into space, taking images of stars. Check ESA’s Flickr account and follow us on Twitter for more images as they come in.A mother’s heart continues to ache after a mistrial was declared in the early stages for the people accused of killing her sons. Leda Watts says she understands why the judge declared a mistrial, but says what happened in the courtroom is disrespectful to her and the case. "I think I had dropped my head, because I was so disappointed. They declared a mistrial in the case because the defense attorney fell asleep during the court proceedings," said Watts. A day before Thanksgiving, the jury trial wasn't even a week old when the judge made the decision. "When an attorney falls asleep during court proceedings, it doesn't look good and they could have very well missed something important," said Watts. However, Leda says she understands why the judge made the decision. "The judge, I think that she’s fair, and that I think she’s going to do what’s right to make sure it is a fair trial," said Watts. Watts’ two sons, 28-year-old Louis Phillips and 24-year-old Alex Stewart were shot and killed in front of a home on Schaefer on April 9. "It’s just like living everything all over again, going through the process," said Watts. Two brothers and loving fathers taken too soon, at the wrong place at the wrong time. "I want to be able to have some type of closure to move forward and just love on my grandchildren that I have left from them," said Watts. A painting of her sons now sits on top of her fire place. A memory of two lives, that had so much to live for. "I miss them and if I could go back and change time I would," said Watts. Since the mistrial was declared on November 22, a new pre-trial hearing has been scheduled for November 28.You probably know all about Carrie Fisher, the actress — her big breakthrough in the original Star Wars trilogy, her villainous turn in The Blues Brothers, her slew of best-friend roles in the ’80s (with her character in When Harry Met Sally… being the epitome of the trope). But you might know less about Carrie Fisher the writer. Sure, she gained fame as a novelist for her autobiographical tome Postcards From the Edge, which tells of a drug-addicted actress coming to term with her personal demons (one of which being her overbearing mother, an aging actress desperately clinging onto her legacy). It is based on her own issues with drugs and alcohol — and her mother, the famed Debbie Reynolds. (Meryl Streep would get an Oscar nomination for playing, well, Carrie Fisher in the movie version, with Shirley MacLaine delivering a brilliant performance as a pseudo Debbie Reynolds.) Fisher adapted her own novel as a screenplay, and while it’s her only credited work on a feature film (she co-wrote the made-for-TV movie These Old Broads, starring her mother alongside, shockingly, Elizabeth Taylor, for whom Fisher’s father Eddie left Reynolds in the late ’50s), it’s not the only script she worked on. Throughout the ’90s, after stepping out of the limelight as a leading actress, Fisher worked as a script doctor on numerous films — plenty of which you probably didn’t know about. Some notable films she worked on — without credit, by the way — include Hook, Sister Act, The River Wild, The Wedding Singer, Coyote Ugly, Scream 3 (in which she also has a cameo), Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and the Star Wars prequels (a gig she got from her working relationship with creator George Lucas, naturally). Of course, Fisher isn’t the only Hollywood A-lister who has taken uncredited jobs working on previously written scripts. Oscar-winner Aaron Sorkin touched up the Best Picture-winning Schindler’s List, and Joss Whedon worked on variety of films in the ’90s, including Speed, Twister, and Waterworld. The most surprising, though, might be Quentin Tarantino, who worked on the SNL sketch-to-movie flop, It’s Pat. Like what you see? Follow Decider on Facebook and Twitter to join the conversation, and sign up for our email newsletters to be the first to know about streaming movies and TV news!Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told Fox News' Sean Hannity in an exclusive interview that his organization published hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman "to give the American people true information about the players that they were going to have to deal with." "We’re in the business of publishing information about power," Assange said. "Why are we in the business of publishing information about power? Because people can do things with power, they can do very bad things with power. If they’re incompetent, they can do dangerous things. If they’re evil, they can do wicked things." In Part III of the interview, which aired Thursday on the Fox News Channel, Assange also said that governments "hate transparency. They loathe it. Because they have to work harder." Assange sat down with Hannity for the exclusive at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange has been holed up for the past five years as he battles extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges. Governments are "full of incompetent people," Assange told Hannity. "And the more secretive the area is, the more incompetent it becomes because there’s no proper oversight." However, the Australian conceded that secrecy was necessary in some areas. Assange noted that Wikileaks keeps its sources confidential, but added that secrecy "should be as small as possible [in terms of] how much it encompasses and for how long it’s encompassed." "If you don’t know what’s happening in the world with powerful individuals, corporations and governments... immoral actors within the state or within those big corporations prosper," Assange said at the conclusion of the interview. "[But] if you have true information coming out about how people actually behave, what’s the result? The rest of the society goes 'You know what? I don’t want to deal with you.'"In the Christianity I grew up with in the ’90s, humanism was a dirty word. Reading the monthly alarmist political propaganda newsletter from Focus on the Family which came to our house, I remember most distinctly learning about the secular humanist monster Norman Lear. Norman Lear, I learned, was the television writer and producer most responsible for All in the Family and The Jeffersons in the ’70s. In the ’80s he founded the evil liberal organization “People for the American Way”. For some reason the farthest back I can remember the label of “humanist” applying to a specific person is Lear. I must have heard of others being described with the label before him. But he stuck out to me the most. In no small part this was because of his connection to TV shows that I grew up on. What also may have helped cement the association of Lear with humanism in my mind was watching an interview with him on television, already knowing of his reputation. Whatever other villainous humanists I may have been told about by Focus on the Family, or by various preachers whose sermons I attended, were probably for the most part relatively obscure figures who one wouldn’t just come across elsewhere by accident. So I watched this interview with Lear with a certain fascination. My back was up. I was preparing myself to hear lies and upsetting offensive things that went well beyond what your average liberal might say. I was used to liberals. But this was someone even worse, this was someone self-consciously a secular humanist, which, as I had come to understand the meaning of the term, would mean he must be deliberately anti-Christian in his disposition. It was like the devil had agreed to sit down for an interview. But the devil turned out to be an utterly charming, genial, and thoughtful 70-something year old man who made me like him in spite of myself. The moment that stuck in my memory and has stayed with me my whole life was when he talked about how he would like to look around the room at a restaurant and think about how every person in that room had a closet. The closet was a synecdoche for the fact that each one had a private inner life. To extrapolate the idea for myself (since I can’t remember the specifics of how he developed it, but only the gist), he expressed the consciousness that all these other people weren’t just extras hired to fill out a restaurant scene in his own story. For each of us, located as we are at the center of our own universe, it is easy to slip into thinking of ourselves as the star of the story of life itself and understand everyone else in relationship to what supporting role they play in our own story. But here was this famous and influential TV executive meditating on his acute awareness that everyone around him had their own story, was their own person, had their own inner-life inaccessible to anyone else, and had their own closet

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.