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ically entrenched in pure sensibility that it can't be thoroughly traced or explained outside of historical sciences, like philology and anthropology."[21] L. S. Dembo's influential study of The Bridge, Hart Crane's Sanskrit Charge (1960), reads this 'logic' well within the familiar rhetoric of the Romantics: "The Logic of metaphor was simply the written form of the 'bright logic' of the imagination, the crucial sign stated, the Word made words.... As practiced, the logic of metaphor theory is reducible to a fairly simple linguistic principle: the symbolized meaning of an image takes precedence over its literal meaning; regardless of whether the vehicle of an image makes sense, the reader is expected to grasp its tenor.[22]
Difficulty [ edit ]
The willows carried a slow sound,
A sarabande the wind mowed on the mead.
I could never remember
That seething, steady leveling of the marshes
Till age had brought me to the sea. From "Repose of Rivers"
from White Buildings (1926)[5]
The publication of White Buildings was delayed by Eugene O'Neill's struggle (and eventual failure) to articulate his appreciation in a foreword to it; and many critics since have used Crane's difficulty as an excuse for a quick dismissal.[23] Even a young Tennessee Williams, then falling in love with Crane's poetry, could "hardly understand a single line—of course the individual lines aren't supposed to be intelligible. The message, if there actually is one, comes from the total effect.".[24] It was not lost on Crane, then, that his poetry was difficult. Some of his best, and practically only, essays originated as encouraging epistles: explications and stylistic apologies to editors, updates to his patron, and the variously well-considered or impulsive letters to his friends. It was, for instance, only the exchange with Harriet Monroe at Poetry when she initially refused to print "At Melville's Tomb" that urged Crane to describe his "logic of metaphor" in print.[25] But describe it he did, then complaining that: "If the poet is to be held completely to the already evolved and exploited sequences of imagery and logic—what field of added consciousness and increased perceptions (the actual province of poetry, if not lullabies) can be expected when one has to relatively return to the alphabet every breath or two? In the minds of people who have sensitively read, seen, and experienced a great deal, isn't there a terminology something like short-hand as compared to usual description and dialectics, which the artist ought to be right in trusting as a reasonable connective agent toward fresh concepts, more inclusive evaluations?"[26]
Monroe was not impressed, though she acknowledged that others were, and printed the exchange alongside the poem: "You find me testing metaphors, and poetic concept in general, too much by logic, whereas I find you pushing logic to the limit in a painfully intellectual search for emotion, for poetic motive."[27] In any case, Crane had a relatively well-developed rhetoric for the defense of his poems; here is an excerpt from "General Aims and Theories": "New conditions of life germinate new forms of spiritual articulation....the voice of the present, if it is to be known, must be caught at the risk of speaking in idioms and circumlocutions sometimes shocking to the scholar and historians of logic."[28]
The "Homosexual Text" [ edit ]
As a boy, he had a sexual relationship with a man.[notes 2] He associated his sexuality with his vocation as a poet. Raised in the Christian Science tradition of his mother, he never ceased to view himself as a social pariah. However, as poems such as "Repose of Rivers" make clear, he felt that this sense of alienation was necessary in order for him to attain the visionary insight that formed the basis for his poetic work.[original research?]
Recent queer criticism has asserted that it is particularly difficult, perhaps even inappropriate, to read many of Crane's poems – "The Broken Tower," "My Grandmother's Love Letters," the "Voyages" series, and others – without a willingness to look for, and uncover, homosexual meanings in the text. The prominent queer theorist Tim Dean argues, for instance, that the obscurity of Crane's style owes itself partially to the necessities of being a semi-public homosexual – not quite closeted, but also, as legally and culturally necessary, not open: "The intensity responsible for Crane's particular form of difficulty involves not only linguistic considerations but also culturally subjective concerns. This intensity produces a kind of privacy that is comprehensible in terms of the cultural construction of homosexuality and its attendant institutions of privacy."[29]
Thomas Yingling objects to the traditional, New Critical and Eliotic readings of Crane, arguing that the "American myth criticism and formalist readings" have "depolarized and normalized our reading of American poetry, making any homosexual readings seem perverse."[30] Even more than a personal or political problem, though, Yingling argues that such "biases" obscure much of what the poems make clear; he cites, for instance, the last lines of "My Grandmother's Love Letters" from White Buildings as a haunting description of estrangement from the norms of (heterosexual) family life:
Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
Through much of what she would not understand;
And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.
The critic Brian Reed has contributed to a project of critical reintegration, suggesting that an overemphasis on the sexual biography of Crane's poetry can skew a broader appreciation of his overall work.[31] In one example of Reed's approach, he published a close reading of Crane's lyric poem, "Voyages," (a love poem that Crane wrote for his lover Emil Opffer) on the Poetry Foundation website, analyzing the poem based strictly on the content of the text itself and not on outside political or cultural matters.[32]
Influence [ edit ]
Crane was admired by artists such as Allen Tate, Eugene O'Neill, Kenneth Burke, Edmund Wilson, E. E. Cummings and William Carlos Williams. Although Hart had his sharp critics, among them Marianne Moore and Ezra Pound, Moore did publish his work, as did T. S. Eliot, who, moving even further out of Pound's sphere, may have borrowed some of Crane's imagery for Four Quartets, in the beginning of East Coker, which is reminiscent of the final section of The River, from The Bridge.[33]
Important mid-century American poets like John Berryman and Robert Lowell cited Crane as a significant influence. Both poets also wrote about Crane in their poetry. Berryman wrote him one of his famous elegies in The Dream Songs, and Lowell published his "Words for Hart Crane" in Life Studies (1959): "Who asks for me, the Shelley of my age, / must lay his heart out for my bed and board." Lowell thought that Crane was the most important American poet of the generation to come of age in the 1920s, stating that "[Crane] got out more than anybody else... he somehow got New York City; he was at the center of things in the way that no other poet was."[1] Lowell also described Crane as being "less limited than any other poet of his generation." [34]
Perhaps most reverently, Tennessee Williams said that he wanted to be "given back to the sea" at the "point most nearly determined as the point at which Hart Crane gave himself back.".[35] One of Williams's last plays, a "ghost play" titled "Steps Must Be Gentle," explores Crane's relationship with his mother.[36]
In a 1991 interview with Antonio Weiss of The Paris Review, the literary critic Harold Bloom talked about how Crane, along with William Blake, initially sparked his interest in literature at a very young age:
I was preadolescent, ten or eleven years old. I still remember the extraordinary delight, the extraordinary force that Crane and Blake brought to me—in particular Blake's rhetoric in the longer poems—though I had no notion what they were about. I picked up a copy of The Collected Poems of Hart Crane in the Bronx Library. I still remember when I lit upon the page with the extraordinary trope, "O Thou steeled Cognizance whose leap commits / The agile precincts of the lark's return." I was just swept away by it, by the Marlovian rhetoric. I still have the flavor of that book in me. Indeed it's the first book I ever owned. I begged my oldest sister to give it to me, and I still have the old black and gold edition she gave me for my birthday back in 1942...I suppose the only poet of the twentieth century that I could secretly set above Yeats and Stevens would be Hart Crane.[37]
More recently, the American poet Gerald Stern wrote an essay on Crane in which he stated, "Some, when they talk about Crane, emphasize his drinking, his chaotic life, his self-doubt, and the dangers of his sexual life, but he was able to manage these things, even though he died at 32, and create a poetry that was tender, attentive, wise, and radically original." At the conclusion of his essay, Stern writes, "Crane is always with me, and whatever I wrote, short poem or long, strange or unstrange—his voice, his tone, his sense of form, his respect for life, his love of the word, his vision have affected me. But I don't want, in any way, to exploit or appropriate this amazing poet whom I am, after all, so different from, he who may be, finally, the great poet, in English, of the twentieth century." [38]
Such important affections have made Crane a "poet's poet". Thomas Lux offered, for instance: "If the devil came to me and said 'Tom, you can be dead and Hart can be alive,' I'd take the deal in a heartbeat if the devil promised, when arisen, Hart would have to go straight into A.A."[39]
Beyond poetry, Crane's suicide inspired several works of art by noted artist Jasper Johns, including "Periscope," "Land's End," and "Diver," the "Symphony for Three Orchestras" by Elliott Carter (inspired by the "Bridge") and the painting by Marsden Hartley "Eight Bells' Folly, Memorial for Hart Crane." [40]
Depictions [ edit ]
Crane is the subject of The Broken Tower, a 2011 American student film by the actor James Franco who wrote, directed, and starred in the film which was the Master thesis project for his MFA in filmmaking at New York University. He loosely based his script on Paul Mariani's 1999 nonfiction book The Broken Tower: A Life of Hart Crane.[41] Despite being a student film, The Broken Tower was shown at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2011 and received DVD distribution in 2012 by Focus World Films.
Crane appears as a character in Samuel R. Delany's novella "Atlantis: Model 1924" and The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.
Bibliography [ edit ]
White Buildings. (1926)
. (1926) The Bridge. (1930)
. (1930) The Collected Poems of Hart Crane. Ed.Waldo Frank). Boriswood. (1938)
. Ed.Waldo Frank). Boriswood. (1938) Hart Crane and Yvor Winters: Their Literary Correspondence. Ed. Thomas Parkinson. Berkeley: University of California Press (1978)
Ed. Thomas Parkinson. Berkeley: University of California Press (1978) O My Land, My Friends: The Selected Letters of Hart Crane. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows. (1997)
. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows. (1997) The Complete Poems of Hart Crane. Ed. Marc Simon. New York: Liveright. (1986)
. Ed. Marc Simon. New York: Liveright. (1986) Hart Crane: Complete Poems and Selected Letters. Ed. Langdon Hammer. New York: The Library of America. (2006)
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ Exact date seems to be April 1st, but is described somewhat unclearly in Mariani p. 35 ^ "[That] Hart Crane was homosexual was by now well known to most of his friends. He said to Evans that he had been seduced as a boy by an older man." Rathbone, Belinda. Walker Evans: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. p. 4
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]
Biographies [ edit ]
Fisher, Clive. Hart Crane: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-300-09061-7.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-300-09061-7. Horton, Philip. Hart Crane: The Life of An American Poet. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1937.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1937. Meaker, M.J. Sudden Endings, 13 Profiles in Depth of Famous Suicides. Garden, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964. pp. 108–133.
. Garden, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964. pp. 108–133. Mariani, Paul. The Broken Tower: A Life of Hart Crane. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. ISBN 0-393-32041-3.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. ISBN 0-393-32041-3. Unterecker, John. Voyager: A Life of Hart Crane. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969. Weber, Brom. Hart Crane: A Biographical and Critical Study. New York: The Bodley Press, 1948.
Selected criticism [ edit ]As political observers watch as we learn more about Hillary Clinton’s ongoing health problems, comedian Jeff Foxworthy has some tough words for Hillary.
He’s not happy about what’s going on in American politics, and how lying to millions of people is deemed acceptable. And he’s furious about what Obama has done to this country.
More from The Political Insider
These are powerful words:
Said Foxworthy as part of his comedy routine: “If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for entering and remaining in the country illegally — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.” Added Foxworthy: “If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or to take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.” Foxworthy is so spot on! How stupid can our country get under the Democrats? Well, you’ll be thrilled to learn that Foxworthy is fully behind Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump, and is terrified what would happen if we elected his political rival Hillary Clinton. Here’s what Jeff had to say about Trump: “Trump is such a fascinating thing, which is a great litmus test for the pulse of the country. I think people are fed up with career politicians. I think it’s an interesting statement.”
Foxworthy knows that Trump is unique in American politics, and speaks for voices that typically don’t get heard in presidential elections. He’s talking to the average Americans who have been hurt in Obama’s economy, and can’t seem to clean up the mess he has made. As Foxworthy was asked if he supports Trump, he responded: “Absolutely, he is tapping into the American spirit. I think people are fed up with having a commander in chief that does the apology tour around the world.”
Read this Next on ThePoliticalInsider.com Border Patrol Chief Agrees With Trump That There Is A Border Crisis
Do you support Trump in 2016? Please share this with your friends on Facebook and Twitter!Gordon Brown today moved to lift Labour's depressed morale on the first day of its pre-election conference by mounting a populist warning to reckless banks that he will use new laws, and unprecedented ministerial pressure, to demand they rein in bonuses.
As party officials tried to portray the conference as the start of a concerted fightback, Brown insisted in an interview: "I do not roll over" – but admitted he had thought privately as to whether he was the right man to lead Labour.
In a move to pitch Labour on the side of the middle classes, and portray the Tories as once again the unreconstructed allies of the rich, Brown is attempting to capture a bash-the-bankers mood in the country at large.
But as senior ministers lined up in weekend interviews to demand that the party finally takes the fight to the Tories, Brown, on-air on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, suffered the indignity of being forced to deny that he was on anti-depressants. The line of questioning infuriated Downing Street aides already angry that a denied rumour in the rightwing blogosphere had been pursued by the mainstream media.
Meanwhile, the chancellor, Alistair Darling, in common with the French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, will call in bankers this week to issue his toughest warning yet that he will act against bonuses and will have public backing to do so. Both claim they now have the support of G20 leaders, who met in Pittsburgh last week to demand collectively that banks focus on rebuilding their capital base, rather than paying out unjustified bonuses. Ministers want action to rein in what is expected to be a bumper round of bonuses at Christmas.
Regulators will have the power to force individual banks to build their capital base if they continue to pay excessive bonuses.
It is also likely Darling will demand greater transparency, with boardrooms required to do more to publish salaries below boardroom level. He will promise "legislation to end the reckless culture that puts short-term profits over long-term success".
He will tell the conference: "It will mean an end to automatic bank bonuses year after year. It will mean an end to immediate payouts for top management. Any bonuses will be deferred over time, so they can be clawed back if they are warranted by long term performance.
"We won't allow greed and recklessness to ever again endanger the whole global economy and the lives of millions of people."
He will also stress that the bankers do not have to wait for legislation to act responsibly this Christmas.
Although Labour is not going to back caps on individual bonuses, the rhetorical shift is important, with the party moving from a mainly managerial critique of the risk structure of bonuses to a wider criticism of their absolute level.
Labour has been given polling advice that the public still responds to the idea that the Conservatives are led by privileged public schoolboys.
In another populist move, Brown is on the brink of committing himself to giving voters the power to recall MPs found to have broken parliamentary rules on expenses or standards.
The prime minister was still debating whether to include the plan in his conference speech as part of a wider theme of increasing the accountability of politics.
Brown, who will offer himself to voters as a man who has overcome political and personal adversity all his life, is desperate to come out of the conference season with a lift in the polls. He fears that if Labour remains 15 points behind the Conservatives at Christmas he will face calls from within the cabinet to stand aside.
A ComRes poll for the Independent showed the Tories on 38% and Labour neck-and-neck with the Liberal Democrats on 23%. It also showed that Labour would do better with any one of eight other possible leaders than with Brown.
Brown told the BBC: "I've become utterly convinced as I've talked to my fellow colleagues at Pittsburgh, just how far we all have to go because they're all reporting to me that the banks are just anxious to return to the bad old days. Some of them are ready to announce big bonuses that are completely unacceptable".
Brown also moved to restore faith in his ability to bring the deficit under control by saying he will introduce a law requiring the Treasury to halve the deficit by 2014. It was not clear what sanctions could be imposed if it missed the target.
Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, was one of an array of ministers to defend Brown's leadership and judgement.
He said: "As to the prime minister, I'd rather have a man who knows his own mind, grasps the picture and sticks to his guns, rather than a shallow flibbertigibbet who has not had the guts to take on his own party, let alone find any ideas to change the country."
The Labour conference is being billed as "operation fightback" with cabinet ministers admitting they are the underdogs, but insisting that if the party can regain its will to win, the election need not be lost.
The Welsh secretary, Peter Hain, said: "We must not behave as if a Tory win is inevitable," and argued that unless the party picked itself up "we might as well wrap conference up now, go home and wait for David Cameron to give that smarmy smile of his from the steps of No 10".
Many ministers were also privately pressing Brown not to dwell on his record in handling the recession, but instead on offering an optimistic prospectus for the future.The Broncos have the sixth-best odds of winning Super Bowl LII, according to Bovada LV. Keep in mind this is before free agency, before the NFL draft and more than a month before the 2017 NFL calendar officially begins. A lot can change and surely will change, especially in Denver, where the coaching staff has been overhauled and where key positions are not finalized.
But even with all the questions heading into the new season, the Broncos, with their top-ranked pass defense, are still projected to go far, while the Patriots, on the heels of their record-setting Super Bowl LI victory, are projected to repeat. The full odds by Bovada:
New England Patriots — 5/1
Dallas Cowboys — 9/1
Green Bay Packers — 9/1
Pittsburgh Steelers — 12/1
Atlanta Falcons — 14/1
Denver Broncos — 16/1
Minnesota Vikings — 16/1
Oakland Raiders — 16/1
Seattle Seahawks — 16/1 Related Articles February 4, 2017 Terrell Davis selected to Pro Football Hall of Fame
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Carolina Panthers — 25/1
Indianapolis Colts — 25/1
Kansas City Chiefs — 25/1
New York Giants — 25/1
Arizona Cardinals — 33/1
Tampa Bay Buccaneers — 33/1
Baltimore Ravens — 40/1
Detroit Lions — 40/1
Houston Texans — 40/1
Cincinnati Bengals — 50/1
Miami Dolphins — 50/1
New Orleans Saints — 50/1
Philadelphia Eagles — 50/1
Tennessee Titans — 50/1
Washington Redskins — 50/1
Buffalo Bills — 66/1
Jacksonville Jaguars — 66/1
Los Angeles Chargers — 66/1
Los Angeles Rams — 75/1
New York Jets — 75/1
Chicago Bears — 100/1
Cleveland Browns — 150/1
San Francisco 49ers — 150/1Azzurri manager’s stubborn refusal to utilise Lorenzo Insigne of Napoli from bench in goalless draw against Sweden condemned the four-time World Cup winners to miss out on finals for first time since 1958
Apocalypse, how? The Italian Football Federation’s president, Carlo Tavecchio, had defined the prospect of missing out on the 2018 World Cup as a disaster of biblical proportions. Now the worst has come to pass, the Azzurri failing to qualify for the first time in 60 years, after losing their play-off with Sweden. All that remains for a proud football nation is to analyse where it went wrong.
A partial answer could be found on the pitch at San Siro. Italy dominated Sweden with more than 75% of possession, yet lacked the subtlety to unpick a packed defence: pumping endless crosses into a penalty area where their opponents held a clear height advantage. A lack of nuance in the final third has been an ongoing problem for a team that has scored just three times in its last six competitive fixtures.
‘This is the apocalypse’: Italian press mourns nation’s World Cup exit Read more
More revealing scenes, though, were playing out on the bench. Midway through the second half, a member of Italy’s coaching staff asked Daniele De Rossi to warm up. The midfielder reacted angrily, appearing to reply: “Why should I go on? We don’t need a draw, we need a win.”
His words were accompanied by a gesture in the direction of Lorenzo Insigne. De Rossi would later explain that he was making a broader point about the need for attackers, rather than seeking to single any individual out, yet many will wonder how the Napoli forward could be overlooked by manager Gian Piero Ventura.
Insigne is a man in the prime of his career, one who scored 18 league goals from the left wing for Napoli last season and almost reached double-digits for assists as well. He is the only Italian valued at over €100m by the CIES football observatory, and yet never made it on to the pitch on Monday – after making only the briefest of cameos in the first leg.
Nobody who has followed Ventura’s career could even be all that surprised. It is not that he underrates Insigne so much as that the manager is extraordinarily rigid in his selection process: a man fixated on square pegs and square holes. Insigne is a wide forward, and Italy were lined up in a 3-5-2. Therefore, there was no space available.
Quick guide Not so ace Ventura Show Hide Italy 1-3 France (1 Sep 2016) An inauspicious start to his tenure as his side are comprehensively second best in a friendly Spain 3-0 Italy (2 Sep 2017) A defence renowned for being tight is torn apart at the Bernabéu, with Isco scoring twice to leave Italy staring at the prospect of a play-off Italy 1-1 Macedonia (6 Oct 2017) Italy must win to have any chance of qualifying automatically but a lifeless display leads to the world's 85th best team equalising in the 77th minute, causing an eruption of booing at the final whistle in Turin Sweden 1-0 Italy (10 Nov 2017) Italy lack invention and barely threaten the Sweden goal as a deflected Jakob Johansson strike is enough to leave Italy on the brink of missing out on Russia 2018 Italy fail to qualify for World Cup for first time in 60 years (13 Nov 2017) Italy have 75% of possession and 23 shots on goal but look predictable. With the score 0-0, they desperately need a goal but Ventura leaves the creative forward Lorenzo Insigne on the bench. The final whistle blows and Italy have lost 1-0 on aggregate. "Apocalypse, tragedy, catastrophe," says the Italian press Photograph: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP
Ventura had sought to make room earlier in the qualifying campaign, sending his team out in a 4-2-4 and later a 3-4-3. The first formation was made to look wildly naive during a 3-0 thrashing by Spain in Madrid, while the latter yielded only a 1-1 draw at home to Macedonia.
It might actually have been player power that provoked a retreat, with veteran stars arranging a team meeting independent of the coaching staff after the latter result. Reports at the time suggested they were agitating for a return to the more familiar 3-5-2. That formation had been used to great effect by Antonio Conte at Euro 2016, but the truth is that all these numbers become meaningless without a coherent plan. Italy were fluid under the now Chelsea manager, a dynamic shape-shifting collective. Under Ventura, the connections between defence, midfield and attack have all but disappeared.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Agony for Italy forward Andrea Belotti at full-time. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images
The fact that players felt compelled to meet without him might itself offer evidence – supplemented by De Rossi’s pitchside rebellion – of a lack of faith in his ability to lead them. Ventura’s coaching CV was always a modest one, when compared to his predecessors in the role. The biggest club he ever coached was Torino, whom he took to the Europa League in 2014.
In some sense, that was a part of his appeal. Prior to Euro 2016, Conte had always seemed restless as Italy manager – too young and too brilliant not to miss the week-to-week intensity of club football. Ventura was 68 when he took the job, and knew it was likely to be the greatest he ever held. He was perceived to have the right temperament to hang around and bring through the next generation of talent, and for a substantially lower salary, too.
That he was not up to this task, with hindsight, is clear. Italy’s talent pool has dwindled since their 2006 World Cup win and, despite the recent success of Atalanta with a squad founded on homegrown talent, investment in academy systems remains patchy. “In Spain the big clubs spend at least 10% of their enormous turnover on their youth teams,” noted one editorial in Tuesday’s Gazzetta dello Sport. “In Italy the most virtuous get to €10m.”
And yet Ventura had more to work with than Conte before him. The likes of Ciro Immobile and Andrea Belotti have blossomed at club level in the last 18 months. It is unforgiveable that Insigne’s club-mate Jorginho, a key pillar of the Napoli team leading Serie A, had not made his competitive debut for Italy before Monday.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz of Spain gestures when talking to Italy coach Gian Piero Ventura. Photograph: Luca Bruno/AP
Which is not to say that all blame should be placed on one man’s shoulders. Ventura will doubtless be removed from his post, his recent contract extension understood to contain a break clause covering this eventuality. Whether or not a similar fate awaits the men who appointed him remains to be seen.
Gianluigi Buffon retires from Italy duty as Gian Piero Ventura clings to job Read more
Carlo Tavecchio’s presidency has been turbulent from the get-go: with many Italians outraged that he could win an election in the first place despite remarks about “banana eaters” flooding the league. There is a valid discussion to be had about whether a growing foreign presence – 53.3% of Serie A players hail from abroad, according to Transfermarket.com – has harmed the national team, but never on such grim racist terms.
Supporters of Tavecchio might argue that he has otherwise been a moderniser: playing his part in the introduction of video assistant referees in Serie A. Both Italy and Sweden might have had several penalties at San Siro had Fifa been similarly proactive.
It was telling, though, that the beaten team did not dwell on the latter point at full-time. No slow-motion replay could change the reality that they will not go to the World Cup next year.
• Sign up to our weekly email, The Recap, here, showcasing a selection of our sport features from the past seven days.See also: esposá
Asturian [ edit ]
Etymology [ edit ]
From Latin spōnsa.
Noun [ edit ]
esposa f (plural esposes)
wife ( married woman ) handcuff
Catalan [ edit ]
Etymology [ edit ]
From Old Occitan esposa, from Latin spōnsa.
Pronunciation [ edit ]
(, Central Balearic ) IPA (key) : /əsˈpɔ.zə/
IPA : ( Valencian ) IPA(key): /esˈpɔ.za/
Noun [ edit ]
esposa f (plural esposes)
Wife; espòs feminine equivalent of
Synonyms [ edit ]
wife la cònjuge
costella ( figurative ) dona
muller
Antonyms [ edit ]
husband el cònjuge
espòs home
marit
Hypernyms [ edit ]
spouse el cònjuge
Galician [ edit ]
Etymology [ edit ]
From Old Galician and Old Portuguese esposa, from Latin spōnsa.
Pronunciation [ edit ]
Noun [ edit ]
esposa f (plural esposas)
wife muller ( in the plural ) handcuffs 1457, F. R. Tato Plaza (ed.), Libro de notas de Álvaro Pérez, notario da Terra de Rianxo e Postmarcos. Santiago: Consello da Cultura Galega, page 171: Torre de Rriãjo. O que rreçebeu Gonçaluo Mariño de Fernando de Catoyra cõ a casa e fortalesa de Rriãjo. Primeyramẽte: Húa cadea de ferro cõ seu cãdado e çinco farroupeas e dúas esposas. Hũas coyraças. Tres huchas. Tres ballestas: J de aseyro, IJ de pao. Quatro baçinetes. Hũu trono cõ seu serujdor e hũu fole de póluora. Dos carcaixes de biratõos. Hũu torno de armar ballesta. Tower of Rianxo. What Gonçalvo Mariño received from Fernando of Catoira, together with the tower-house and fortress at Rianxo. First: an iron chain with its padlock and five fetters and two handcuffs. Some cuirasses. Three chests. Three crossbows: one of steel, two of wood. Four bascinets. A bombard with its server and a skin of powder. Two quivers of bolts. A winch for charging crossbows.
Derived terms [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
“esposa” in Dicionario de Dicionarios do galego medieval, SLI - ILGA 2006-2012.
, SLI - ILGA 2006-2012. “esposa” in Xavier Varela Barreiro & Xavier Gómez Guinovart: Corpus Xelmírez - Corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval. SLI / Grupo TALG / ILG, 2006-2016.
. SLI / Grupo TALG / ILG, 2006-2016. “esposa” in Dicionario de Dicionarios da lingua galega, SLI - ILGA 2006-2013.
, SLI - ILGA 2006-2013. “esposa” in Santamarina, Antón (dir.), Ernesto González Seoane, María Álvarez de la Granja: Tesouro informatizado da lingua galega (v 4.0). Santiago: ILG.
(v 4.0). Santiago: ILG. “esposa” in Álvarez, Rosario (coord.): Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués, Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega.
Papiamentu [ edit ]
Etymology [ edit ]
From Portuguese esposa and Spanish esposa.
Noun [ edit ]
esposa
Portuguese [ edit ]
Etymology [ edit ]
From Old Portuguese esposa, from Latin spōnsa.
Pronunciation [ edit ]
Noun [ edit ]
esposa f (plural esposas)
esposo feminine equivalent of wife
Quotations [ edit ]
For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:esposa.
Related terms [ edit ]
Spanish [ edit ]
Pronunciation [ edit ]
Etymology 1 [ edit ]
From Latin spōnsa.
Noun [ edit ]
esposa f (plural esposas, masculine esposo, masculine plural esposos)
wife mujer señora ( usually in the plural ) handcuff marrocas ( Peru )
Related terms [ edit ]
Etymology 2 [ edit ]
See the etymology of the main entry.
Verb [ edit ]
esposa
tú) affirmative imperative form of esposar. Informal second-person singular () affirmative imperative form of usted) present indicative form of esposar. Formal second-person singular () present indicative form of él, ella, also used with usted?) present indicative form of esposar. Third-person singular (, also used with) present indicative form of
Further reading [ edit ]LOS ANGELES — “The stories begin. The stories end. But the work of Eddie Mannix will never end.”
So says a booming voice at the end of “Hail, Caesar!” — a movie set for release by Universal Pictures on Feb. 5.
The film is a Hollywood fantasy, written and directed by Ethan and Joel Coen. Josh Brolin stars, in a role inspired by and named for Eddie Mannix, a studio “fixer” who for decades kept obstreperous celebrities in line, and out of the gossip columns.
The real Mr. Mannix, who died of a heart attack in 1963, was the general manager of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. According to E. J. Fleming’s “The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine” and other sources, his was an all-purpose job. It involved keeping tabs on movie budgets (Mr. Mannix reported daily to Louis B. Mayer, and spied on him for the studio’s New York-based overseer, Nicholas M. Schenk); monitoring Western Union traffic (he was said to have been handed every telegram sent or received by an M.G.M. player); and burying the misdeeds of stars like Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer (who married the production chief Irving Thalberg, after a fling with Mr. Mayer, or so writes Mr. Fleming).
In “Hail, Caesar!,” Mr. Brolin gets into the spirit. He hunts up a husband for his bawdy, pregnant water ballet star, played by Scarlett Johansson, and slaps |
prominent journalists simply aren't fair reflection of what happened.
The idiots that ran on the pitch before full time
The first couple of times were overexcitement when we scored the goals. There were simply not enough stewards or police to cover the lower Holte. They celebrated with the players and left relatively quickly.
In the 90th minute they may have mistaken the ref blowing for a throw in, but probably overexcitement got the better of them. A chorus of boos and "Get off, get off, get off the f****** pitch" greeted them from the rest of the stadium. As stupid as they might have been, they were eventually shepherded off without anyone getting hurt.
The final whistle blew. Everyone in the lower tiers flooded onto the pitch. The absolute vast majority of those jumped around, sang, waved flags.
Some went to the Villa players to congratulate them. This was reckless, they should have recognized that this makes the players uneasy, but I wouldn't have said their safety was in question given the situation.
Some went over to taunt the West Brom fans, which is pretty much to be expected, but the police barrier there was strong and nobody crossed it. Again, antagonising is not something I condone, but it stopped short of real danger.
A few morons confronted the West Brom players and staff. These fans absolutely and clearly crossed the line. This is blatantly not acceptable and they deserve to be identified and have the book thrown at them. Hard. Nobody should have to feel physically threatened for doing their job and I'm pleased that Villa issued this statement in apology.
Fans throwing seats
Fans in the top tier of the north stand ripped up parts of seats and threw them at the fans in the tier below. I didn't see this happen at the time but I am led to believe this was West Brom fans throwing down on Villa fans. This is deplorable, incredibly dangerous behaviour and anyone caught doing it should face criminal charges and stadium bans. Again - this was a very small minority and has been widely condemned by the West Brom fans. It has been referenced though not so much apologised for in this statement from West Brom. Incidentally this actually contributed to Villa fans in the lower North stand spilling forwards and on to the pitch.
Evening kick off for a derby - massive mistake by the broadcast schedulers
Fan trouble was inevitable. The insane 5:30 kick off time had allowed time for several hours of drinking before the game. Seriously, well done BBC. How did you not see it coming? Or is this media frenzy exactly what you hoped for?
Given the situation, there were nowhere near enough police and stewards. Not even close. There were enough to stop the West Brom fans entering the field, but three quarters of the stands were completely unguarded.
Villa fan mentality
By the end of the game Villa fans had seen a team that battled and worked really hard to win, to a man. Not a great performance but certainly a mammoth effort to be proud of. They'd seen their team beat their local rivals twice in a week - in two massively important games. They had been part of a special atmosphere, a huge crowd unified and completely behind the club for the first time in several years. Their team were on their way to Wembley - and totally deserved it - for the first time since Martin O'Neill, under a new passionate manager who has instilled belief and hope.
It doesn't in any way excuse violent behaviour, but it partly explains why the celebrations might have got a little out of control.
Perspective: Who has lost it?
In short, everyone. I find myself apopleptic with rage at the rhetoric being used. I'll just mention a few.
Patrick Barclay on Sunday Supplement comparing yesterday to Hillsborough. An absolutely disgraceful comparison. Be ashamed of yourself Patrick.
Phil McNulty, getting completely carried away. "It was an atmosphere heavy with threat". No, Phil, it was an incredible atmosphere with a handful of drunken idiots that did their best to ruin it.
Match of the Day have certainly changed their tune in the space of four months:
Jonathan Pearce & Mark Lawrenson call #avfc pitch invasion 'disgraceful'. Strange. #MOTD previously encouraged it: pic.twitter.com/gS4R4OnvGO — Guy Woodward (@guyawoodward) March 8, 2015
What can be done better in future?
A lot more Police and Stewards. There were nowhere near enough.
Early kick off. If this had been United against Liverpool, Spurs-Arsenal, there is no way in hell they'd let it be a late kick off. Why us? Play derby games early. You know this. So do it. Accept that you helped create a situation that was difficult to control.
Permanently ban anyone that overstepped the mark from excitement to endangering safety.
Stop the game and clearly threaten cancellation if early pitch invasions happen.
VERDICT
To the minority of Villa and Baggies fans causing real danger: never come back, you deserve to be vilified and locked up.
Congratulations to the other 35,000+ fans now universally despised for passionately but fairly celebrating a huge victory. Do not let yourselves feel persecuted for supporting your team.
To the reporters equating celebrating on the pitch post-game to tragic events from another era. Take a look at yourself. That is unfair, inaccurate, ridiculous and counter-productive. We all want to improve safety and behaviour but you are not helping here.
To the Villa team and staff: congratulations, we're all hugely proud of what you have pulled off this week. I hope you realise the significance of this swing in fan mentality. We're all behind you. Que Sera, Sera... :)Behind the Mormon Church's Ironic Defense of Discrimination
Karen Paglio arrived at the mass resignation early, clutching a sealed envelope addressed to the records department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“This policy was the last straw for me,” she says, referring to a new provision in the LDS Handbook introduced on November 3, 2015, that bars children of same-sex couples from joining the church or being blessed or baptized until and unless they turn 18, move out of their parents’ home, and disavow all same-sex relationships. “I also included a personal letter to let the records department know how I felt about the policy and its effects on the community.”
The slippery-slope argument against same-sex marriage, that it will inevitably lead to polygamy, bestiality, incest, etc., has long been cited by opponents. Polygamy-as-cautionary-tale is being employed again — ironically, this time, by elders in the Mormon Church — to defend the new
provision.
“For generations, we’ve had these same kinds of policies that relate to children in polygamous families,” explained David Todd Christofferson, one of the church’s highest administrative and ecclesiastical authorities, in a video released by the church on November 6. He explained that children raised in polygamous households who want to go on a proselytizing mission must first disavow the practice. “We think it’s possible, and mandatory, incumbent upon us as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ to yield no ground […] maintaining the standards he maintained.”
Lauren Elise McNamara yielded less ground maintaining her own standards when she learned about the policy, which was leaked to social media on the evening of November 5.
“You can really judge the Christianity of an organization by how easy or hard it is to leave,” says McNamara, who immediately engaged with Mormon and ex-Mormon online forums. “Everyone was posting similar messages, using similar expletives. I jokingly wrote, ‘Maybe it’s time for another mass resignation.’ The response was immediate and definitive. So I created a Facebook event and went to sleep. When I woke up, it had over 2,000 RSVPs.”
Nine days later, on November 14, across the street from the LDS church’s international headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City, thousands of soon-to-be former Mormons from 20 states and multiple countries gathered — some with resignation envelopes already signed and sealed, others planning to complete them with assistance from Mark Naugle, a 30-year-old immigration attorney on-site offering his services pro bono. Naugle, who left the church with his family when he was 15, explained that doing so can be as cumbersome logistically as it is emotionally.
“You start receiving what can only be described as harassment from your
community, your family, and everyone you know,” Naugle says. “The church sends local ecclesiastical leaders to attempt to sway you back into the fold. I don’t think they do it maliciously, necessarily. They feel that your eternal salvation is on the line. It is not an easy thing to escape from. But when you use an attorney [to submit the
resignation], you receive no contact and your resignation is usually processed within a couple of weeks.”
Naugle says he personally mailed 3,200 resignation letters to the LDS records department, including 1,300 from the November 14 event and more than 1,900 he’s received via fax, mail, and email since the policy announcement.
“I have helped people all over the world: New Zealand, Australia, U.K.,
Germany, South Korea, Japan, India, France, and Scotland,” Naugle says. “I just want to help as many people escape as I can. If you would like, I’ll even buy you your first beer.”
Above: A woman celebrates before mailing her resignation letter on November 18, 2015.
Excommunicated
Donald Braegger resigned earlier this year, after raising his hand in formal opposition at the semi-annual LDS General Conference in April. Votes of dissent are exceedingly rare; there had been none since 1982, when hands were raised in protest of the church’s opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.
Braegger was directed to meet with his local stake president, the head of a regional group of congregations. “He pleaded with me not to take my name off the record of the church. I then disclosed to him that I was a gay man and was actively sexual with other men. He paused, then said, ‘Well, we’ll have to hold a disciplinary council on you, and you will likely be excommunicated.’ I decided to resign rather than endure that.”
Six months later at the mass resignation, in the shadows of the LDS Temple, Braegger addressed thousands of fellow defectors.
“Trust your own sense of what is right and wrong,” he urged. “I promise that the feelings of inspiration which you have previously assigned to the Holy Ghost will not abandon you now that you are no longer a member. The church does not have exclusive rights to that, as you have been taught. That spark of the unexplainable, the divine, is an innate part of each of us. And it is the collective power of that divinity that gives even this not-so-small group of committed individuals power to change the world.”
It’s OK. You are loved. You can go.
“The policy change was a breaking point for my wife and me,” explains Sage Turk, a 33-year-old straight married father of two and lifelong member of the LDS Church. He and his wife attended the event with a dozen like-minded friends and family they had mobilized on social media. Turk recorded more than 40 interviews at the event, the audio of which can be found on the Infants on Thrones podcast, and a documentary is currently in the works.
“The Mormon Church is historically very good at both dismissing and punishing any form of dissent,” he explains. “Since our own advocacy had come from simply taking the time to listen to the stories of real gay individuals and their families, I figured I could pay it back by capturing the stories of as many allies as I could — folks who were willing to forgo one of the most important influences in their lives for a righteous cause.”
Turk concluded each interview by asking people to look into his camera and repeat a simple phrase, the inspiration for which he explains came on a nightly jog shortly after he decided to resign.
“Tears were pouring down my face,” he recalls. “I was so hurt and angry but also so conflicted. But then, clear as a bell, a thought came into my head. Maybe it was my Mormon upbringing and the tendency to seek approval by authority, but the thought of giving myself permission to leave — to do what I knew I had to do — was so liberating. I kept repeating it over and over in my mind, then aloud. Before long, I was shouting it into the night air:
“It’s OK. You are loved. You can go.”
For more from C. Brian Smith: www.cbriansmith.comSo since it’s a #SlowNewsDay (and also a #SnowNewsDay) and all, I figured I’d mention this nugget I saw about the Eagles from a column recently written by NFL insider Jason La Canfora.
The Eagles are still open to myriad trade possibilities. General manager Howie Roseman loves to make deals and while he’s parting with some players he’s already shopped (Connor Barwin, Chase Daniel), he’s still open to moving center Jason Kelce, linebacker Mychal Kendricks and one of his recently drafted receivers as well, league sources say, after adding Alshon Jeffery and Torrey Smith in free agency already.
Nothing too earth-shattering going on here, but the note about Roseman being open to trading “one of his recently drafted receivers” piques a little interest.
We’ve already heard that the Eagles are open to trading Jordan Matthews, so perhaps it’s him. Matthews is going to be a free agent next offseason as it currently stands. So will Alshon Jeffery and Torrey Smith (if the Eagles don’t pick up Smith’s option). If the Eagles don’t feel like they can or want to retain Matthews, it might be best to get value for him now as opposed to losing him for nothing. Then again, it would be nice to see how Matthews performs in an offense with Jeffery and Smith on the outsides in 2016.
Or perhaps the wide receiver being referenced here is Nelson Agholor. But I’d hesitate to believe that because Roseman wasn’t involved in drafting him. Roseman had been moved out of the team’s personnel department during the 2015 offseason. Agholor was a Chip Kelly pick.
With that said, I’m sure the Eagles wouldn’t mind shipping him out. Philadelphia can’t cut Agholor because it would cause them to lose $2.3 million in cap space, but trading him would save a little over $17,000. I just highly doubt any team is offering anything for Agholor. At best, maybe it could be a bust-for-bust trade (hello, Kyle Fuller).
There’s no question the Eagles’ 2017 wide receiving corps will be a significant upgrade on 2016’s group. But that doesn’t mean the Eagles can’t stop thinking about the future of the position. There’s still work to be done and decisions to be made. Taking a wide receiver at some point in the 2017 NFL Draft is still a necessity.
As for the non-receiver section of La Canfora’s report, we’ve already known Kendricks and Kelce are on the block. It’ll be interesting to see exactly how those situations play out, though.
The Eagles reportedly aren’t cutting Kelce and they’ve publicly said that they want him back. Is the team telling the truth or is it all just posturing? The offensive line is crowded so Kelce still seems like the odd man out here. Maybe the team hopes to use him as a trade chip during the draft. His departure would save the Eagles $3.8 million in cap space.
As for Kendricks, the Eagles kept him past a date his salary became guaranteed. To me, that says the Eagles are confident they can still trade him at some point (perhaps during the draft). You could theorize the Eagles also just want to keep him but I really doubt that. He clearly fell out of favor with the coaching staff last season by only playing less than 30% of the team’s defensive snaps.
La Canfora wasn’t kidding when he said Roseman loves to trade. Sine 2010, Roseman has pulled off twice as many deals as the next most active teams. Just because trades haven’t happened yet doesn’t mean they won’t happen at all. Lots of offseason left. Stay tuned.Team Canada finalized its roster for the 2017 World Junior Hockey Championship on Wednesday night, and tonight the club faces its first test as a 22-man unit.
The team is in Montreal before making a stop in Ottawa on Wednesday on its way to Toronto, where Canada will play a third and final tune-up match and battle it out with their Group B opponents for a spot in the quarter-finals.
To kick things off, the club welcomes Team Finland to the Bell Centre. The Finns knocked Canada out of the tournament in the quarters before ultimately claiming the trophy a year ago, and Canada will be looking to restore a bit of pride.
For Montreal Canadiens fans. all eyes will be on Noah Juulsen, whose spot was never really in jeopardy this year; much different from his situation last year when he was one of the players sent home on the final day of roster finalization. Juulsen’s offence has recovered after a down season, but his biggest asset on the team will be his defensive play, which he has honed under the tutelage of Everett Silvertips head coach Kevin Constantine.
Many fans will be seeing Juulsen play for the first time in this tournament, and tonight should offer a glimpse of the various skills that earned him a selection in the first round of the 2015 NHL Entry Draft.
You’ll also get to see projected 2017 first-rounders Eeli Tolvanen and Kristian Vesalainen — both currently projected to go within the top 10 — suit up for Finland.
How to watch
Puck drop: 7:00 PM EST / 4:00 PM PST
In Canada: TSN2 (English), RDS2 (French)
Streaming: TSNGO
Canada’s projected lineup
Left Wing Centre Right Wing Left Wing Centre Right Wing #18 Pierre-Luc Dubois #19 Dylan Strome #27 Mitchell Stephens #11 Mathieu Joseph #14 Mathew Barzal #16 Taylor Raddysh #17 Tyson Jost #25 Nicolas Roy #12 Julien Gauthier #9 Dillon Dubé #22 Anthony Cirelli #21 Blake Speers #20 Michael McLeod
Left Defence Right Defence Left Defence Right Defence #5 Thomas Chabot #6 Philippe Myers #2 Jake Bean #3 Noah Juulsen #8 Dante Fabbro #10 Kale Clague #15 Jeremy Lauzon
Goaltenders Goaltenders #1 Connor Ingram #31 Carter Hart
Finland’s projected lineup
Left Wing Centre Right Wing Left Wing Centre Right Wing Alexandr Polunin Mikhail Vorobyov Kirill Kaprizov Pavel Karnaukhov Danila Kvartalnov Denis Guryanov Danil Yurtaikin Denis Alexeyev German Rubtsov Yakov Trenin Kirill Belyayev Kirill Urakov
Defence Left Defence Right Defence Left Defence Right Defence Juuso Välimäki Vili Saarijärvi Olli Juolevi Miro Heiskanen Robin Salo Otto Leskinen Urho Vaakanainen Juho RautanenEx-NFL star and current Denver Broncos President John Elway waded into the current "Star-Spangled Banner" controversy Tuesday, saying he believes in standing for the national anthem and wants to keep politics out of football.
Elway, a Pro Football Hall of Famer and the president of football operations and general manager of the Broncos, made the remarks during his weekly interview on the Broncos website.
“I'm one that believes in standing for the national anthem, and I've always believed that," Elway said. "I believe that this is the greatest country in the world. We are very fortunate to live here, but it's obviously not perfect."
He added: "There are a lot of things that need to be corrected, and we will continue to work on those things. I'm one that really believes in standing for the flag. I understand the players and the way they felt from the comments that were made earlier in the week. They felt they had to go down and kneel and that's up to them. Hopefully as we go forward we can start concentrating on football a little bit more. Take the politics out of football. But I think last week was a good show of unity by the NFL and hopefully this week we can move forward."
AMERICAN SNIPER’S WIFE TAYA KYLE: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE NFL
On Sunday, about half of the Broncos’ roster knelt or sat during the national anthem, The Associated Press reported. The amount of protests around the NFL multiplied this weekend following President Trump’s comments criticizing players who protest during "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Trump, speaking at a rally in Alabama Friday, said: “"Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, you'd say, 'Get that son of a b---- off the field right now. Out! He's fired.”
Trump’s comments were criticized by a number of athletes. The Associated Press reported that more than 200 NFL players sat or knelt during the anthem Sunday.
I’M DONE WITH THE NFL
Quarterback Colin Kaepernick started the kneeling movement last year when he played for the San Francisco 49ers, refusing to stand during "The Star-Spangled Banner" to protest the treatment of black people by police. Kaepernick became a free agent and has not been signed by a new team this season.
Vance Joseph, the Broncos head coach, also said he believed in standing for the flag but honored those who wanted to protest, the Denver Post reported.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.After largely avoiding the topic during the Republican Party's first two nationally televised debate, GOP candidates and the right-wing media erupted in a spasm of outrage last night over supposedly liberal media bias, and how the CNBC moderators Wednesday night were so mean to Republican players on the stage.
Donald Trump even launched a preemptive attack, labeling the debate as "unfair" before it began.
The debate was certainly a raucous one, and at times was marked by disjointed questions and regular interruptions. (Some mainstream observers praised moments from the moderators, but most others belittled them.) But seeing darker forces at work, conservatives not only called out the business news channel moderators for losing control of the event, but went further, critiquing supposed liberal bias and a fanciful collaboration with Democratic forces to spoil the GOP night.
"The CNBC moderators acted less like journalists and more like Clinton campaign operatives," bellowed liberal media bias cop Brent Bozell. "They clearly war-gamed this thinking that a relentless series of personal attacks on the candidates would somehow drive their ratings and help Hillary Clinton."
The layers of irony surrounding the eruption are many. Let's count them.
First, CNBC, which chronicles and celebrates the exploits of Wall Street tycoons, is hardly a bastion of liberalism. Among the six total CNBC questioners last night were Jim Cramer, who once famously announced President Obama was destroying wealth in America, and Rick Santelli, whose anti-Obama screed in 2009 was credited with sparking the Tea Party movement. (Santelli then paraded around talk radio claiming the White House had targeted him.)
That's who Brent Bozell and company are claiming conspired with their fellow questioners and liberals to quash the GOP last night.
Second, Fox News' own Megyn Kelly was accused by Trump of being hostile and unfair during the first debate, yet now Fox News is leading the charge against CNBC, tagging it as hostile and unfair.
Third, the one person who would have a completely legitimate beef with the press this campaign season, and the one person who has been the target of an unprecedented barrage of negatives attacks is, of course, Hillary Clinton. Yet Marco Rubio last night complained that the press is doing her bidding.
Not likely.
Also, too many "snide" and "hostile" questions at the debate last night, according to Fox's Howard Kurtz? Did conservatives not watch Clinton's marathon appearance before the Benghazi Select Committee, where she endured hour after hour of gotcha questions? Afterwards, I didn't hear Fox News bemoan the tone.
Fourth, lots and lots of Republican candidates have been on the receiving end of fawning press coverage for a very, very long time. Over the years, Republicans such as Marco Rubio and, until his bridge troubles, Chris Christie, banked on glowing, free press coverage to build their brands.
Does this sound like a D.C. press corps trying to do damage to GOP hopefuls?
Or this, pre-BridgeGate?
In the last month alone, TIME magazine has declared that Christie governed with "kind of bipartisan dealmaking that no one seems to do anymore." MSNBC's Morning Joe called the governor "different," "fresh," and "sort of a change from public people that you see coming out of Washington." In a GQ profile, Christie was deemed "that most unlikely of pols: a happy warrior," while National Journal described him as "the Republican governor with a can-do attitude" who "made it through 2013 largely unscathed. No scandals, no embarrassments or gaffes." ABC's Barbara Walters crowned Christie as one of her 10 Most Fascinating People, casting him as a "passionate and compassionate" politician who cannot lie.
Meanwhile, when was the last time we witnessed a post-debate, all-consuming conservative movement roar like this aimed at a moderator? It came in October 2012, when the conservative press declared war on CNN's Candy Crowley after she had the audacity to publically acknowledge during the debate that yes, President Obama had called the Benghazi attack an act of terror.
Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson immediately compared Crowley to John Wilkes Booth assassinating Abraham Lincoln, while Rush Limbaugh announced, "What she did last night would have been the equivalent of blowing up her career like a suicide bomber."
That spasm seemed to be triggered by flashes of fear; fear that Obama had defeated Mitt Romney during the debate and fear that Obama was poised for re-election.
So what sparked this recent eruption? My hunch is the real reasons for the self-pity party were off-stage. I think it's because of Hillary Clinton's sudden surge in the polls and her widely-applauded appearance before the Republican's misguided Benghazi Select Committee. I think it's because there's growing anxiety and panic over the idea that Donald Trump might be the party's nominee and because of the creeping prospect for four (eight?) more years of a Democratic president that ignited the return to the right-wing roots.
For conservatives, 'liberal media bias' represents the ultimate comfort blanket.Donald Trump: My friend here is clumsy, I hope he doesn’t break something.
One of the most plausible predictions of the kinds of long-term damage Donald Trump might do to the United States was written by Matthew Yglesias a week after the election. He described a scenario in which Trump used government power to coerce business to support him and his agenda. “Those who support the regime will receive favorable treatment from regulators, and those who oppose it will not,” in this haunting scenario, which resembles the nexus between business and government that prevails in Russia and other authoritarian capitalist states.
Noam Levey reports an example of this already happening. The thrust of Levey’s story is focused on the belief by insurers that uncertainty fostered by the Trump administration is killing health-care exchanges. Deep in the piece, Levey describes a Trump staffer threatening to withhold cost-sharing-reduction payments, called CSR, which are a vital part of making individual insurance profitable. “At one recent meeting, Seema Verma, whom Trump picked to oversee the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs, stunned insurance industry officials by suggesting a bargain: The administration would fund the CSRs if insurers supported the House Republican bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act,” reports Levey.
The Trump administration has pursued policies that are extremely friendly to incumbent businesses. But there is a discretionary quality to Trump’s governance that is ripe for abuse. Which firms will he call out for eliminating jobs? Which ones will he praise? Trump’s ability to hand out discretionary favors to pliant firms is a power to coerce large segments of the business community to endorse, or at least not oppose, his agenda.In the MY STORY section, we present some of the most compelling and pertinent stories and experiences shared with us by our readers. Do you have something to share? Write to us: contact@thebetterindia.com with “MY STORY” in the subject line.
“I still think I’ll never be able to speak fluent English with the right accent,” said Mr. G.S. Gurung as we talked about the schools and education system in Sikkim. “That’s the main reason we need volunteers from other parts of the country (and world) so that children don’t end up pronouncing words like we do,” he continued. Carrying on with the conversation, he shared his views on government schools, their condition across Sikkim and how it needs to change soon.
Mr. Gurung has lived in Sikkim all his life and is now running Sikkim Himalayan Academy, a primary school for less-privileged kids in Buriakhop, a remote village of West Sikkim.
Raising funds to run the school successfully has been a problem for him but it is by no means the only one. The struggle to convince parents to admit their children to school and to let them continue with their education has been equally tough, if not more. “The parents don’t care about their kids. When hostel kids come back from their homes after the winter break, we’re disgusted to see how careless mothers and fathers can be. A lot of those kids look like they haven’t been given a bath even once in two months. For some, it actually holds true,” said his wife Maree, who works with him at the school.
She paused for a while on seeing the disbelief on my face, and then continued, “The parents aren’t even concerned about the documentation their children will need once they’re out of this school, after Class 5. We’ve chased after so many families, even visited them in far-flung villages, requesting them to arrange for birth certificates that will be required for further admissions elsewhere. But they don’t understand. Given an option many of these kids will probably never go home. This school, right here, is where they like to belong. Teachers and their fellow students are their family.”
Along with Mr. Gurung and his wife, there are five more permanent teachers (for a total of 65 students) who deal with such challenges on a daily basis. This team of roughly 70 people plays football, watches TV, cooks, paints, does cleaning and washing, travels, and studies together – their enthusiasm only increases with every passing day.
When I chose to volunteer with this school, all I had expected was spending quality time with kids and living a simpler life in the Himalayas. The idea was to perhaps also teach them one or two new things.
Instead, I learned more about life, its challenges and how to find happiness amidst all of it. On my previous trip to Gangtok, Sikkim seemed to be a really progressive state and in many ways it is, but the problems that exist are deep-rooted and not easily visible.
Sikkim Himalayan Academy was founded in 2003 by local teachers and a few volunteers. In 13 years, they have faced a number of challenges like insufficient staff, unavailability of medical help in the village and lack of enough space.
The weather also acts as a constraint sometimes – heavy rainfall in monsoons and harsh winters make it more difficult to work and connect with the outside world.
In spite of that, the enthusiasm of Mrs. and Mr. Gurung and the entire team is truly inspirational. It’s only when we start with one child that we’ll be able to transform the lives of hundreds of them. The beginning always needs to be small if one wants to make a huge difference.
To volunteer with Sikkim Himalayan Academy or to donate funds, get in touch with them on their Facebook page or their new website.
-Swati Saxena
Like this story? Or have something to share? Write to us: contact@thebetterindia.com, or connect with us on Facebook and Twitter (@thebetterindia).
About the author: An accountant turned travel blogger and freelance writer, Swati Saxena is currently working in rural Madhya Pradesh as an India fellow. When not amidst nature, she is usually found in Delhi cribbing about the city life and dreaming of owning a book café in mountains.The Russian-backed Syrian army has crossed the border into Raqqa province, the heartland of ISIS, and there are reports they have promised to team up with US-backed rebel forces who share a common hatred of Daesh.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said ISIS was retreating following Russian air strikes but there has been no confirmation from Moscow or the Assad regime in Damascus.
Some reports say the Assad regime has agreed to join forces with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a rebel group dominated by the Kurdish Popular Protection (YPG) militia.
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ISIS forces swept into Raqqa two years ago (pictured) but now they are said to be in retreat with the frontline only about 50 miles away
The SDF are said to have 30,000 fighters coming down from Kobani in the north.
ISIS is said to have around 5,000 fighters in Raqqa province and the city of the same name has been its de facto capital since it was taken in 2014.
The Syrian troops are said to be aiming at the Tabqa air base, 30 miles west of the city of Raqqa, which would give a base to Russian fighter jets.
The pro-Damascus newspaper Al-Akhbar in Lebanon said the short-term objective was Tabqa and nearby Lake Assad.
Malek Barghout (second from left) mourns the death of his father, who was killed in an air strike by Syrian government forces on the rebel-held neighbourhood of al-Sakhour in Aleppo. The fighting is extremely complex with the Assad regime, ISIS and other rebel forces at war with each other
ISIS is under attack on all sides.
In Iraq it is struggling to retain control of Fallujah following major advances by the Iraqi Army and allied Shia militias.
And in northern Syria the SDF rebels have advances towards Manbij, potentially closing off ISIS access to the Turkish border, which is a key supply line for them.
ISIS has lost 34 villages to the SDF and they are engaged in fierce battles for Marea, a town 50 miles west of Manbij.
'The fighting is very intense on three fronts in Marea,' said opposition activist Baraa al-Halaby.
Firemen douse the flames after Syrian government air strikes in Aleppo on Saturday
On Friday Russian jets bombed ISIS territory in neighbouring Hama province as Assad regime troops moved east.
Damascus radio said Syrian army troops gained ground and inflicted heavy casualties.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 26 ISIS fighters had been killed along with nine from the Syrian army.
But the Syrian civil war remains hugely complex with the Nusra Front, an Islamist offshoot of al-Qaeda, having made gains against the Assad regime near Aleppo.
And dozens of people were reportedly hurt by Syrian government air strikes in Aleppo.Pee-wee, Pterri, Cowboy Curtis, Miss Yvonne, Reba the Mail Lady, Chairry, Penny, and The King of Cartoons have never looked as good as they do in the new Shout! Factory Blu-ray boxed set of Pee-wee's Playhouse: The Complete Series, a painstakingly restored collection that is a boon for fans of the beloved 1986-1990 Saturday morning classic.
In honor of the release, we're dishing up 20 fun facts you may not have known about the Playhouse, from the TV shows that inspired Paul Reubens's creation to the next time you might see Pee-wee on the big screen. These facts are so fun, in fact, that we're sure you're going to love them. So why don't you just go ahead and marry them?
1. Paul Reubens, a member of The Groundlings comedy troupe, created a stage show called The Pee-wee Herman Show in 1980, following a failed audition for Saturday Night Live. HBO taped and aired one of the Herman Show performances in 1981. That led to the 1985 cult-classic Pee-wee's Big Adventure, which led to the debut of CBS's Saturday morning series Pee-wee's Playhouse on Sept. 13, 1986.
2. CBS originally approached Reubens to create a cartoon series, but the actor — a fan of classic live-action series like The Howdy Doody Show and Captain Kangaroo — countered with the idea of a live-action series that would be a less-adult version of The Pee-wee Herman Show.
View photos Laurence Fishburne as Cowboy Curtis and Paul Reubens as Pee-wee Herman More
3. Several future stars appeared as Pee-wee's Playhouse pals throughout the series' five-season run: future Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Laurence Fishburne played Cowboy Curtis; Golden Globe and Emmy winner S. Epatha Merkerson (Law & Order) was Reba the Mail Lady; Orange Is the New Black star Natasha Lyonne was Playhouse Gang member Opal; Reubens's Groundlings pal Phil Hartman (who also co-wrote Pee-wee's Big Adventure) was Captain Carl; Emmy winner and current Sons of Anarchy star Jimmy Smits played Conky repairman Johnny Wilson; John Paragon — best known outside the Playhouse for playing Cedric, half of the gay couple who menaced Kramer on Seinfeld — was genie Jambi; and Calvert DeForest — aka David Letterman's buddy Larry "Bud" Melman — played Rusty.
View photos Lynne Stewart as Miss Yvonne, Paul Reubens as Pee-wee Herman, and S.Epatha Merkerson as Reba, the Mail Lady More
4. That is Cyndi Lauper singing the show's theme song, even though one of her backup singers is credited as the performer. Lauper explained the situation in Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir: "[Pee-wee] wanted me to sing the theme song. I told him I would, but I couldn't have it under my name, because I was going to put out True Colors, which had a serious tone. In our superficial world, people couldn't accept both at the same time. So I sang the theme song using the pseudonym 'Ellen Shaw.' And then Paul sent me back a tape that was so hilariously funny, of me singing the theme with him in between saying, 'Oh no! My career is ruined, oh no!' He's a nut. I love him."The Miami Dolphins are highly interested in selecting former Georgia running back Todd Gurley with their first-round choice in this week’s NFL draft, |
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U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995),[1] was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that states cannot impose qualifications for prospective members of the U.S. Congress stricter than those specified in the Constitution. The decision invalidated the Congressional term limit provisions of 23 states. The parties to the case were U.S. Term Limits, a non-profit advocacy group, and Arkansas politician Ray Thornton, among others.
Background [ edit ]
Amendment 73 to the Arkansas Constitution denied ballot access to any federal Congressional candidate having already served three terms in the U.S. House or two terms in the U.S. Senate. However, such a candidate was not barred from being written-in and winning by that method.
Soon after the amendment's adoption by ballot measure at the general election on November 3, 1992, Bobbie Hill, a member of the League of Women Voters, sued in state court to have it invalidated. She alleged that the new restrictions amounted to an unwarranted expansion of the specific qualifications for membership in Congress enumerated in the U.S. Constitution:
No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen (Article I, section 2),
and:
No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen (Article I, section 3).
Also critical to the issue is the 17th Amendment, which transferred power to select US Senators from the state legislature, to the people of the state:
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.
U.S. Term Limits claimed that Amendment 73 was "a permissible exercise of state power under the Elections Clause".[1]
Both the trial court and the Arkansas Supreme Court agreed with Hill, declaring Amendment 73 unconstitutional.[2]
Supreme Court decision [ edit ]
The Supreme Court affirmed by a 5-4 vote. The majority and minority articulated different views of the character of the federal structure established in the Constitution. Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens concluded that:
Finally, state-imposed restrictions, unlike the congressionally imposed restrictions at issue in Powell, violate a third idea central to this basic principle: that the right to choose representatives belongs not to the States, but to the people.... Following the adoption of the 17th Amendment in 1913, this ideal was extended to elections for the Senate. The Congress of the United States, therefore, is not a confederation of nations in which separate sovereigns are represented by appointed delegates, but is instead a body composed of representatives of the people.
He further ruled that sustaining Amendment 73 would result in "a patchwork of state qualifications" for U.S. Representatives, and described that consequence as inconsistent with "the uniformity and national character that the framers sought to ensure." Concurring, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the amendment would interfere with the "relationship between the people of the Nation and their National Government."
Justice Clarence Thomas, in dissent, countered that:
It is ironic that the Court bases today's decision on the right of the people to "choose whom they please to govern them." Under our Constitution, there is only one State whose people have the right to "choose whom they please" to represent Arkansas in Congress... Nothing in the Constitution deprives the people of each State of the power to prescribe eligibility requirements for the candidates who seek to represent them in Congress. The Constitution is simply silent on this question. And where the Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by the States or the people.
He also noted that the amendment did not actually prevent anyone from election since it only prevents prospective fourth termers from being printed on the ballot but not from being written-in, and therefore did not overstep the qualifications clause of the federal Constitution.
See also [ edit ]Skipping Breakfast Makes You Fat? Not So Fast
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The world of dieting is awash in half-truths and wishful thinking. Just have a look at some of these fad diets to be reminded of how much we are willing to stretch reason in pursuit of weight loss.
David Allison, a researcher and director of the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, is fascinated by the mountain of myths and assumptions about what makes us fat. Lately, he's turned his attention to understanding why so many researchers recycle these myths despite the lack of good evidence supporting them.
In a paper out this week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Allison and colleagues examine the long-running presumption that it's better to eat breakfast than to skip it if you want to lose weight. They found that this presumption is common in obesity research, and it's usually a result of researchers' bias — when describing their own or others' work.
But wait a second. Does that mean there is zero connection between breakfast and weight? No, says Allison.
"Studies show there is an association between regularly skipping breakfast and higher body mass index," Allison tells The Salt. "But it is an association, so it does not necessarily represent cause and effect."
(There's also an association between skipping breakfast and a higher risk of heart attack, as Allison Aubrey reported in July.)
The only way to truly understand cause and effect is with a randomized control trial — the gold standard for clinical research. Only one such study — conducted in 1992, with 52 women participating — hinted at a link between breakfast and weight change, he says, and no similar trials have been done since then.
But in the meantime, Allison says, hundreds of papers have presumed that skipping breakfast does affect weight.
So why are researchers so susceptible to repeating unproved ideas? Allison says he hasn't studied this question specifically, but he can speculate.
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Allison isn't just complaining; he's doing something to address the situation. Since there is no big controlled trial on the effect of breakfast on weight loss, he has one in the works. It will involve 300 adults at six sites around the country. He says he hopes to have results in six months.A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the company's Dragon capsule on an uncrewed cargo run to the International Space Station on April 14, 2015. The same Dragon is scheduled to launch toward the orbiting lab again on Dec. 12, 2017.
SpaceX's next robotic resupply mission to the International Space Station has been pushed from Friday (Dec. 8) to next Tuesday (Dec. 12) at the earliest.
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To date, SpaceX has aced 19 such rocket landings and re-flown Falcon 9 first stages three times.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.Military cemeteries are places of especial reverence because each grave therein is not only the final resting place of an individual but also stands as a monument to valor and the enduring truths for which that soldier gave his life.
Tombs dedicated to unknown soldiers, those fallen comrades whose identities have been lost to all but God, stand as poignant reminders of the gravity of duty to one’s country and of the awful price freedom may demand of those who serve in the military. Although every soldier’s grave should be such a reminder, it is easy to pass by those of known individuals and not be struck by the day-to-day act of courage that it is to be a soldier. Yet before the tomb of an unknown serviceman, that realization strikes home. The man interred therein represents all soldiers; his courage, valor, and sacrifice represent the promise of all who serve that when called upon they will do no less. Before the tomb of an unknown, we honor the dead and are awed by the living.
When Hurricane Isabel hit the Atlantic Coast of the United States on 19 September 2003, she struck with fury and left in her wake a trail of devastation. Yet not even a hurricane is stronger than a soldier’s sense of duty.
The text quoted above, which was picked up by Associated Press out of the Texarkana Gazette, is for the most part accurate. Sentries charged with guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia did indeed spend the entire night out in the weather rather than leave their posts. It is untrue, however, that they disobeyed a direct order to do so, as some e-mail versions of this story maintain:
The Regimental Commander of the U.S. Third Infantry sent word to the nighttime Sentry Detail to secure the post and seek shelter from the high winds, to ensure their personal safety. THEY DISOBEYED THE ORDER. During winds that turned over vehicles and turned debris into projectiles … the measured step continued. One fellow said “I’ve got buddies getting shot at in Iraq who would kick my butt if word got to them that we let them down … I’m sure as hell have no intention of spending my Army career being known as the idiot who couldn’t stand a little light breeze and shirked his duty.”
A contingency plan had been established that if winds reached 120 mph the guards could retreat from their usual exposed-to-the-elements posts in the tomb plaza to take up positions in trophy room, which is above the tomb plaza and has a clear view of the sepulcher. (The Tomb of the Unknowns is a small box-like white building situated in an open area close to the middle of the cemetery.) This plan was not put into effect.
The Tomb of the Unknowns holds three sets of remains, one each from World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. A fourth set of remains from the Vietnam War used to be part of this august company but was formally disinterred in 1998 after DNA testing determined them to belong to First Lieutenant Michael Joseph Blassie. Lt. Blassie is now buried in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. The tomb is guarded 24 hours a day and 365 days a year by specially chosen soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Regiment (Old Guard) stationed at nearby Fort Myer.During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson and the military argued that we had to win in order to prevent communism from taking over other nations in the vicinity, the so-called domino theory. The military asserted repeatedly that provided we sent over more troops, they could win the war. They also argued that we needed to get the local people on our side, which, not surprisingly, we were never able to do. Government officials argued that we could not leave Southeast Asia because that would be admitting defeat; the families that had lost loved ones would feel their sons and daughters had died in vain.
Unfortunately, over 58,000 did die in vain. Another 150,000 plus Americans were wounded. Those figures ignore the million-plus North Vietnamese who lost their lives and the quarter of a million South Vietnamese who were killed.
What did we get out of the war? Nothing! Cambodia and Laos both did go communist, as did South Vietnam. Forty years later, this no longer matters. Now we have good relations with Vietnam and Cambodia. Tourists visit those countries by the thousands. Trade with them is booming. Had we not entered the war or had we abandoned it earlier, we could have established relations with Indochina sooner and avoided such horrendous casualties. The only thing to show for this war is a poignant monument in Washington, D.C., to the fallen.
Nearly 40 years later, after 9/11, the U.S. became angry and sent its military to get revenge. First we invaded Afghanistan, which had housed Osama bin Laden and his aides, even though Afghanistan proper had had nothing to do with the attacks on New York and Washington. In fact, the perpetrators had planned their operation in Hamburg, Germany. The ringleader was from Egypt; 15 of the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia; three were from the United Arab Emirates; and one was from Jordan. Right from the first, a number of neocons in President George W. Bush’s administration believed we should attack Iraq, a country that had actually been hated by bin Laden. In Afghanistan, the administration failed to pursue Osama bin Laden actively, leaving it up to the local warlords to go after him in the mountains of Tora Bora. The locals and al-Qaeda agreed on a brief truce, which gave the latter the time to escape, probably into Pakistan. The U.S. then turned its attention to conquering Iraq. In March 2003 our troops invaded that country.
Thus, within two years of 9/11, we had attacked two countries that had nothing to do with that strike, and our troops are still in both. Initially, our objective in Afghanistan was to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his aides. As everyone knows, that effort failed. We also wanted to eliminate a refuge and hideout for al-Qaeda, and we may have succeeded in that. According to CIA reports, there are probably fewer than 100 operatives from that group in the country. Reports are that the Taliban has severed relations with al-Qaeda, who are no longer using Afghanistan as a safe haven.
Our objective in Iraq has never been clear. Except for removing their military dictator, Saddam Hussein, from office, our purpose in going into Iraq remains confused. There are many nasty dictators in the world; why take out this one? We claimed that there were weapons of mass destruction in that country, a claim which turned out to be untrue. But even if Saddam had had nuclear weapons, and few claimed that he did, the military in such a poor country had no means of using them against the United States.
Whether the U.S. has now established a democracy in Iraq is a matter of definition. What passes for a government in that country is riven with ethnic and religious divisions. Four months after electing a new parliament, the political leaders are unable to agree on who is to have what job.
For what purpose are we remaining in Afghanistan and in Iraq? We may be leaving the latter country, although our military seems reluctant to go. It is argued that the country will dissolve into civil war once our troops are gone. But can our troops do anything about a civil struggle? And should they do something? To the extent Americans become involved, we will be seen as playing favorites. We have already lost over 4,400 soldiers in that country, and staying longer mean more fatalities and more casualties. For what purpose?
The reasons given for staying in Afghanistan are even more specious. Proponents of fighting in that mountainous country assert that we cannot simply leave, for the Taliban would take it over. That seems improbable. Even before 2001, the Taliban had been unable to control the whole country. A number of provinces were ruled by warlords and not by the religious fanatics. The articulated U.S. objective has been to establish a viable government in the capital, Kabul, and extend its control over the whole country. This is a country in which most men and women cannot read. Transparency International rates it as the second most corrupt country in the world, behind only Somalia. There is no possibility of securing an efficient, honest government, a police force that is not corrupt, and a military that is effective. Even if we stay 10 years or longer we cannot achieve this goal.
Pulling out of Afghanistan will result in the Taliban’s taking over much of the country. That will be terrible for the women, who will be deprived of education, medical care, and many rights. It will, however, save American lives, which are now being lost at rates comparable to the losses in Iraq during the worst years. If the U.S. stays longer, even 10 years more, it will not result in a significantly better government. For one thing, it is impossible to educate people that fast, nor can you eliminate corruption that quickly. NATO troops have so far been unable to provide security in most of Afghanistan’s southern provinces. The one bright spot from pulling our troops out is that the Taliban will probably be more effective than the West in eliminating poppy growing, the staple of the heroin trade. Prior to our invasion, the Taliban had stamped out much of the drug trade as un-Islamic.
There is no purpose for the U |
.
“No,” he replied.
Ten months had passed since the day Adria took that photograph, so I asked what he thought of her now. “I think that nobody deserves what she went through,” he replied.
“Maybe it was [Hank] who started all of this,” Adria told me in the cafe at San Francisco airport. “No one would have known he got fired until he complained... Maybe he’s to blame for complaining that he got fired. Maybe he secretly seeded the hate groups. Right?”
I was so taken aback by this suggestion that at the time I didn’t say anything in defence of Hank. But later I felt bad that I hadn’t stuck up for him. So I emailed Adria. I told her what he had told me – how he’d refused to engage with any of the bloggers or trolls who sent him messages of support. I added that I felt Hank was within his rights to post the message on Hacker News, revealing he’d been fired.
Adria replied that she was happy to hear that Hank “wasn’t active in driving their interests to mount the raid attack”, but that she held him responsible for it anyway. It was “his own actions that resulted in his own firing, yet he framed it in a way to blame me… If I had a spouse and two kids to support, I certainly would not be telling ‘jokes’ like he was doing at a conference. Oh, but wait, I have compassion, empathy, morals and ethics to guide my daily life choices. I often wonder how people like Hank make it through life seemingly unaware of how ‘the other’ lives in the same world he does, but with countless fewer opportunities.”
I asked Hank if he found himself behaving differently since the incident. Had it altered how he lived his life? “I distance myself from female developers a little bit now,” he replied. “I’m not as friendly. There’s humour, but it’s very mundane. You just don’t know. I can’t afford another Donglegate.”
“Give me an example,” I said. “So you’re in your new workplace [Hank was offered another job right away] and you’re talking to a female developer. In what way do you act differently towards her?’
“Well,” Hank said, “we don’t have any female developers at the place I’m working at now. So.”
“You’ve got a new job now, right?” I said to Adria.
“No,” she said.
Later, I saw another photograph Adria happened to take that day at the conference. It was an audience shot. A sea of men – practically only men – stretching to the horizon.
***
In October 2014, I took a final drive to visit Lindsey Stone. Four months had passed since I’d last spoken to her or Farukh – and given that they’d only taken her on for my benefit, I’d half-wondered if maybe it had all been quietly wound down in my absence.
“Oh God, no,” said Lindsey. We sat at her kitchen table. “They call me every week, week after week.” She took out her phone and scrolled through her innumerable emails from Farukh. She read out loud some blogs his team had written in her voice, about how it’s important when travelling to use the hotel safe – “Stay alert, travellers!” – and how, if you’re in Spain, you should try the tapas.
Lindsey got to pre-approve everything, and she’d only told them no twice, she said – to a blog about how much she’s looking forward to Lady Gaga’s upcoming jazz album (“I like Lady Gaga, but I’m not really excited about her jazz album”) and to her tribute to Disneyland on the occasion of its 50th birthday: “Happy Birthday Disneyland! The Happiest Place on Earth!” “Happy Birthday Disneyland!” Lindsey blushed. “I would never… I mean, I had a great time at Disneyland. But still…” She trailed off. “One of my friends from high school said, ‘I hope it’s still you. I want people to know how funny you are.’ But it’s scary. After all that’s happened, what’s funny to me… I don’t want to go anywhere near the line, let alone cross it. So I’m constantly saying, ‘I don’t know, Farukh, what do you think?’”
“This journey started with my identity being hijacked by a spambot,” I said. “Your personality has been taken by strangers twice now. But at least this second time around it’s nice.”
Lindsey hadn’t Googled herself for 11 months. Ex-army people were wondering where she was – ‘not in a good way’
Lindsey hadn’t typed her name into Google for 11 months. The last time had been a shock: it was Veterans’ Day, and she found some ex-army people “wondering where I was, and not in a good way”.
“They were thinking about tracking you down so they could re-destroy you?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. She hadn’t looked since. And now she swallowed and began to type: L… I… N…
Lindsey shook her head, stunned. “This is monumental,” she said.
Two years ago, the photograph stretched to Google Images horizon – uninterrupted, mass-production shaming, “pages and pages and pages”, Lindsey said, “repeating endlessly. It felt so huge. So oppressive.” And now: nearly gone. There was still a scattering, and there would inevitably be some reversion, but for now there were lots of photographs of Lindsey doing nothing bad. Just smiling.
Even better, there were lots of photographs of other Lindsey Stones – people who weren’t her at all. There was a Lindsey Stone volleyball player, a Lindsay Stone competitive swimmer. The swimmer had been captured mid-stroke, moments from winning the New York State 500-yard freestyle championship. It was captioned, “Lindsay Stone had the right plan in place and everything was going exactly to plan.”
Here was a whole other person, doing something everyone could agree was lovely and commendable. There was no better result than that.
This is an edited extract from So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson, published next month by Picador at £16.99. To order a copy for £13.59, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.
• This article was amended on 21 February 2015 to move the Arlington picture further down the article. It was further amended on 22 February 2015 to remove a sentence that suggested Hank was fired after Adria Richards wrote a blogpost. This was incorrect; a production error meant the sentence was not removed earlier in the editing process."The Wedding!" is a story from The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 in which Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker (a.k.a. Spider-Man) get married. It was published in 1987 and written by David Michelinie, featuring cover art by John Romita Sr.
Plot [ edit ]
Spider-Man is web slinging through town and runs into Electro. He defeats him and then returns home, to find Mary Jane in the process of moving in. MJ leaves for a photo shoot, leaving Peter to ponder how on earth he'll be able to provide for him and MJ.
Peter takes his photos of Spider-Man defeating Electro to the Daily Bugle and is surprised by the staff with a party in honor of his upcoming wedding to Mary Jane. J. Jonah Jameson arrives, clearly irritated, and starts to complain about why they are hosting a party when they're supposed to be working. As soon as Peter leaves, he states that he wants to cut the pay of everyone who didn't attend.
Peter is barely able to sleep that night, contemplating his impending wedding. The next day he meets Mary Jane. He leaps to the ceiling and goes down to one knee, asking her to marry him once again. "I hate cleaning footprints off the ceiling," she responds with a smile. They both eat, but can't help shake their worries about the wedding. Mary Jane leaves for a meeting, where her old boyfriend presents her with two tickets to Paris, that she can only take if she skips the wedding. Peter goes to Aunt May's house, and goes through a scrap book, remembering his most prominent times with Mary Jane. MJ and her aunt arrive, and they announce the upcoming marriage to their family. She leaves in a Ferrari with her ex-boyfriend, and Peter takes the subway home. Both are starting to have second thoughts about their marriage. When they meet up again that night, Spidey takes MJ out web-slinging to clear their heads.
The next day, Peter's best man, Flash Thompson, and his best friend, Harry Osborn, take Peter out for a bachelor party, but he's beginning to show his true feelings about the wedding. They try to convince him that love conquers all. Meanwhile, Mary Jane is having a grand party across town. Peter finally decides to go home for the night, and has nightmares about all of his enemies trying to attack MJ, and being helpless to stop them. He wakes up in a sweat, wondering what he should do. Meanwhile, MJ is out with Liz Allan, wondering the same.
Later at City Hall, all of the guests are in attendance, but both Peter and Mary Jane are late, leaving everyone confused. At the last minute, they both appear and are married by Mary Jane's uncle, judge Spenser Watson.[1] (MJ's wedding dress was designed by real-life designer Willi Smith.)[2] MJ gives Peter the tickets to France with which her ex-boyfriend tried to tempt her, and they go off on their honeymoon to begin their new life together, as Mr. and Mrs. Parker. The wedding occurred simultaneously in the Spider-Man comic and in the daily news strip.[1]
Spider-Man: One More Day [ edit ]
In an attempt to save Aunt May's life, the 2007 storyline, Spider-Man: One More Day erased the wedding from continuity by Mephisto. Both participants are single again. How the changes prevented the wedding was explained in the storyarc O.M.I.T.
Spider-Man: One Moment in Time [ edit ]
In the first issue, Spider-Man stops Electro and his gang. One of the gang members, Eddie, makes note of the arresting officer's name. Then Mephisto, as a red pigeon, swoops down and unlocks the door of the police car Eddie is in. The officers are all occupied with cuffing Electro and Eddie escapes. Spider-Man is out patrolling that night and hears the gunshots of Eddie shooting at the arresting officer and his wife. While saving the cop and his wife, Spider-Man gets hit in the head with a cinder block. He chases after Eddie and tackles him off the side of a building. Spider-Man misses his web shot to save them because of the cinder block to the head, so he turns his body to absorb the impact and they both crash to the ground with Eddie on top of Spider-Man. On the wedding morning, MJ shows up but Peter does not as he is lying unconscious in an alleyway. When he wakes up and rushes to where the wedding was to take place, he finds Mary Jane there and the two decide to take what happened as an omen and simply live together. At that point, the bulk of the Spider-Man stories from that point to the events of One More Day take place as they did normally, but with the two as a couple and living together while being unmarried. However, Mary Jane makes it clear she does not want to be an unmarried mother, and thus Peter and MJ probably never conceive their child.
Background [ edit ]
Stan Lee, who co-created Spider-Man and was writing the Spider-Man newspaper strip at the time, recounted:
I suggested [that Spider-Man and Mary Jane be married] to whoever was in charge, and they thought it was a good idea, too. Now, I wanted to find a way to have them get married in the comics books and the newspaper strip at the same time. There is no way I can explain to you how difficult that was, because the comics books are written two or three months ahead, [and] the newspaper strip is written a certain period of time ahead. To synchronize the two was almost impossible. Also, the Spider-Man strip had one storyline going on, and in the newspaper strip we had a totally different storyline going on, and in order to make them sort of come together so there'd be a marriage... well, it was the toughest thing creatively that I think I have ever done or the people at Marvel had done. [emphasis in original][3]
Marvel's promotion director Steve Saffel came up with the idea of having a famous fashion designer make the design for Mary Jane's dress.[4] The newspaper strip version of the wedding was dedicated to designer Will Smith, who died shortly after designing Mary Jane's wedding gown.[5]
Other versions [ edit ]
There have been several references, variants and adaptations of The Wedding!.
MC2 [ edit ]
In the MC2 timeline, Peter and Mary Jane remain happily married, and the annual remains part of its continuity. Unlike the 616 version, May Parker died of natural causes in Amazing Spider-Man Issue 400, and Mary Jane's daughter Mayday Parker survived a difficult delivery; although her death was initially faked by Norman Osborn, she was eventually returned to the Parkers.
UK Continuity [ edit ]
In November 2008, the U.K based The Spectacular Spider-Man comic revealed that, in their future history, Peter and Mary Jane are married and have a daughter, Mayday Parker, who is currently active as Spider-Girl. Peter reveals to his daughter that he lost his leg in battle, making this timeline the second to carry the MC2 explanation for Peter electing to put his costumed identity behind him.
Newspaper comic [ edit ]
Spider-Man married in the newspaper strip the same time as he did in the comic book. On December 31, 2008, the strip announced to its readers that it would be going through major changes. On January 1, 2009, the strip underwent a vanilla reboot (a reboot of an existing timeline without a real explanation for the changes based in the storylines), restoring Peter Parker to an unmarried young man. On January 2, 2009, the strip went on to reveal that it was now reflecting the "current storyline" in the Amazing Spider-Man title. Peter now lives alone in a renovated apartment, attends college, and dates long-time best friend Mary Jane whenever she is available. On January 3, it was revealed that the current timeline of the rebooted strip is set "in the days before Peter and Mary Jane were married". This confirmed that the newspaper strip's previous canon had not been compromised and that the present day timeline was on hold. On May 24, 2009, the marriage was restored to the dailies, the previous storyline involving Electro having been revealed to be a dream. The revelation dawns on Peter as MJ walks out of the shower, paying homage to the infamous cliffhanger of Dallas involving the return of Patrick Duffy as Bobby Ewing. The couple have now been married for over 30 years in the newspaper strip.
What If? [ edit ]
In What If? (Volume 2) #20 and #21, the reader is presented with a variant version of the classic issue, in which Peter had not married Mary Jane, but instead he married the Black Cat, the marriage ends in tragedy with the death of Black Cat and Peter and Mary Jane going separate ways, but at the end seemed to lead to a possible relationship between Silver Sable and Spider-Man. Another version was also seen in What If? (Volume 1) #24 - "What if Spider-Man had Rescued Gwen Stacy?". In this issue, Peter ends up marrying Gwen Stacy, but the wedding is interrupted by Jameson, who has been given evidence that proves that Peter is Spider-Man that was mailed to him by Norman Osborn, who seemed to be reformed later.
Universe X [ edit ]
In the Universe X alternate timeline, Peter is shown (while under a hypnotic influence by Spiders-Man) marrying Gwen Stacy and not Mary Jane. Meanwhile, Mary Jane ends up marrying Harry Osborn. In reality, however, Mary Jane had passed on, leaving Peter to raise May on his own and in a state of depression. Later in life, May somehow becomes the new host of the Venom symbiote, much to Peter's chagrin.
Other media [ edit ]
Television [ edit ]
Peter and Mary Jane wed in a 1997 episode of the animated series.
Live performance [ edit ]
Spider-Man's wedding was performed in 1987 as a live action tie-in held at Shea Stadium, and also featured an introduction by Stan Lee.
Parodies [ edit ]
Marvel Zombies [ edit ]
The Marvel Zombies #5 cover is a parody of The Wedding! It depicts a zombie variant of Spider-Man holding Mary Jane's half-eaten corpse, the heroes and villains in the background are decaying, and the Spider-Man shaped heart in the background has a bite taken out of it.
The Simpsons [ edit ]
The Simpsons shows a parody of the cover of the original comic after Comic Book Guy gets married.(Season 25, Episode 10, 19:41)
Trade paperback collections [ edit ]
A trade paperback, The Amazing Spider-Man: The Wedding (ISBN 0-87135-770-4) was published in October 1991, collecting the comic book wedding storyline from The Amazing Spider-Man #290-292 (July-Sept. 1987), The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 (1987), and Not Brand Echh #6 (Feb. 1968). It also reprinted the newspaper strip wedding, and the media tie-in live action wedding held at Shea Stadium.
In 2005 a wedding themed trade paperback called Marvel Weddings ( ISBN 0785116869) was published. This collected FANTASTIC FOUR #150 and FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #3, INCREDIBLE HULK #319, AVENGERS #59-60 and #127, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #21 and X-MEN #30.Last year, the federal government trumpeted anti-counterfeiting legislation as a key priority. The bill raced through the legislative process in the winter and following some minor modifications after committee hearings, seemed set to pass through the House of Commons. Yet after committee approval, the bill suddenly stalled with little movement throughout the spring.
Why did a legislative priority with all-party approval seemingly grind to a halt?
My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) suggests that the answer appears to stem from the appointment of Bruce Heyman as the new U.S. ambassador to Canada. During his appointment process, Heyman identified intellectual property issues as a top priority and as part of his first major speech as ambassador, singled out perceived shortcomings in the anti-counterfeiting bill.
Heyman’s primary concern relates to in-transit shipments, which involve goods that do not originate in Canada and are not destined to stay in Canada. The Canadian bill excludes in-transit shipments from the scope of new rules that grant customs agents unprecedented powers to seize suspect shipments without court oversight.
According to Heyman:
“We are pleased Canada has introduced legislation that will give its border officials the authority to seize pirated and counterfeit goods, but the United States is concerned because the bill does not apply to goods that are shipped through Canada, from a third country to the U.S.”
The Canadian position is based at least in part on serious concerns about misuse of in-transit seizures. For example, in November 2008, Dutch customs agents seized a shipment of AIDS/HIV medications at Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam. The Nigeria-destined medications originated in India, which produced a generic version of abacavir, an anti-retroviral drug. The global health group UNITAID had purchased the 49 kilograms of abacavir with the Clinton Foundation scheduled to assist in their distribution once they reached Africa.
The seizure in the Netherlands came at the request of GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical giant that claimed the Indian drug violated its patent rights and contained counterfeit materials. UNITAID maintained that the drugs were not counterfeit, but the seizure dragged on for months.
The Dutch seizure was not an isolated incident. During 2008 and 2009, Doctors Without Borders found at least 19 shipments of generic medicines from India to other countries were impounded while in transit in Europe. Several years later, the Court of the European Justice ruled against in-transit seizures, concluding that there was no infringement in the EU.
While Dutch seizures of Africa-bound pharmaceutical drugs have little connection to Canada, the experience with in-transit seizures of generic pharmaceutical drugs provides an important cautionary tale of why countries are right to resist targeting shipments that do not originate domestically and are destined for a different country. Indeed, many groups maintain that the seizure of generic pharmaceuticals in transit would pose a threat to international trade, development and public welfare.
Despite the delay, there is little doubt that the anti-counterfeiting bill will ultimately become law. In fact, with some of the bill’s provisions included in the Canada – Europe trade agreement, there may soon be a treaty requirement to address border measures.
With the fall parliamentary session set to start in a few weeks, the emerging question is whether the government will continue to resist foreign lobbying to distort the balance in the bill, by maintaining both the in-transit shipment exclusion and a personal traveler exception, whose removal could lead to increased border searches of physical luggage and electronic devices. If amendments are made late in the legislative process, it may well be a case of caving yet again to unwarranted U.S. pressure on intellectual property laws.An indie-music festival in Austin, Texas. Photo: Jennifer Hattam.
With foodies getting flack for being elitist, fad-focused, and out of touch with how and what people really eat, The Guardian's "Ask the indie professor" columnist comes along with a piece comparing them to indie-rock fans -- an analogy that, somewhat surprisingly, brings out some of the best qualities in both groups.Sure, anthropology professor Wendy Fonarow points out, trendy consumption patterns of both music and food can encourage a greater focus on documenting (and bragging about) obscure finds than actually enjoying what you're hearing or eating, but both also share a set of healthy and positive core values:
The indie music scene finds ownership and means of production to be ethical issues, preferring small independent local operations to large corporations. Indie values include DIY aesthetics, simplicity, purity, an antipathy to the synthetic and manufactured, a desire for authenticity, a longing for the past... These concerns are shared by new hip food obsessives who want to know how food is made, where it comes from, how far it travels and how much integrity it has.... If you are paying attention to food production and consumption isn't that similar to paying attention to how your music is made, who owns it, and how it is delivered to you?
This is not to say, of course, that every person listening to the latest underground band or searching for the next food fad is concerned about the "indie values" Fonarow identifies in artisanal food : "locally sourced, independently owned, limited quantities, traditional methods, purity, simple ingredients, and most of all organic, uncontaminated by additives.... Food entrepreneurs should be small and local, producing food with methods you could do yourself if you chose to."
But in that last part lies the promise -- just as independent bands and musicians have shown that you don't have to have label backing to create great (and popular) music, inspiring lots of people to go out and make their own, foodie-ism has the potential to bring people closer to food, cooking what they like instead of eating what's dished out for them by the big conglomerates of the world.
Stop Cycling Through Food Trends
Focusing on the underlying values rather than the flavor of the month could help people who care about food do what chef Eddie Huang suggests in a thought-provoking anti-foodie rant for Salon: be "slower to absorb new ingredients into the canon so that they have staying power" rather than cycling through food trends "running from new ingredient to new ingredient."
If you don't get people to "buy into the culture" rather than just the fad, he writes, there's no longevity, "no lasting effect on national eating habits, on getting people to be open-minded about what they eat." After all, to paraphrase Huang, a few dedicated people can eat all the obscure organic greens and sustainable fish they want, but if everyone else is still eating McDonald's, we all go down together.
More On Music And Food
Music And Food Are Inseparable at Localmotive Farm
Green Gift Guide: The Foodie (Slideshow)
Eat Local, Like a Rock Star, Guster's Gardner Says
Pitchfork Music Festival 2010: Great Indie Music and Green Efforts
Gregory Alan Isakov's Small Indie Footprint (Interview)
Experimental Indie Noise Pop Band Fights to Stop Canadian SealKIEV (Reuters) - In a country torn between Russia and western Europe, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s decision to resume an offensive against pro-Moscow rebels has carefully ignored both neighbours to show an ear acutely tuned to Ukrainian domestic politics.
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko is seen during his televised address to the nation in Kiev July 5, 2014. REUTERS/Mykhailo Markiv/Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via Reuters
Telephone diplomacy involving the leaders of Germany, France and Russia, as well as Ukraine, has dwelt on extending a truce that could help ease tensions between Moscow and the West.
But in the end, in calling off a patchy 10-day ceasefire a week ago, Poroshenko may have been as influenced by more radical views within Ukraine. They are summed up in the voice of a young man who made his name in the street protests that toppled his predecessor and who is now fighting in the east.
“I would advise you, Mister President, to listen less to Europe or to Russia, but pay attention to the Ukrainian people,” wrote Volodymyr Parasyuk, 26, who became the toast of Kiev in February with an impassioned speech on Independence Square - the Maidan - telling president Viktor Yanukovich to get out of town.
“We will go to the end, as we did on the Maidan. We have enough resources and enough will to build our own thriving government and dance neither for Europe nor Russia,” Parasyuk wrote on his Facebook page, which also carries photographs from eastern Ukraine, where he is now fighting pro-Russian rebels.
Parasyuk’s belligerent view may well gain more traction after Saturday’s notable rebel defeat in which Kiev’s forces recaptured the separatist stronghold of Slaviansk and hoisted the Ukrainian flag in place of the Russian one.
Six weeks after he was elected, and facing a slew of problems that range from the revolt to Ukraine’s economic feasibility, Poroshenko may have decided it is more prudent to show he is listening to popular political support and the voice of the gritty “Euro-Maidan” revolution that put him in office.
In the short term, that may mean sitting out the diplomatic dance with the European Union, which many Ukrainians accuse of failing to live up to promises of support and hesitating to punish Russia with new sanctions over its role in their country.
“We’ve already seen more than once that European partners don’t always adequately appraise the situation in our country in time. To act in the interests of other countries, and not pay attention to the mood of one’s own citizens would be dangerous,” said Kiev-based political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko.
For now, the 48-year-old confectionery magnate may have done enough to prove to Ukrainians that he will be no Yanukovich, who spent his last months in office playing the EU and Russia off against each other in the hope of gaining larger aid deals and ignoring the massive protests against him on his own doorstep.
“TACTICAL NOT STRATEGIC”
Yet if Poroshenko is putting pressure on both Russia and the European Union by advocating publicly for the continued military offensive against rebels, in the wings he might still be preparing for the possibility of a resumption of the ceasefire.
Unlike the EU, which is especially anxious to ease tensions with Moscow, the United States has put less emphasis on calling a ceasefire and even defended the military drive against the rebels, saying Poroshenko has a right to defend his country.
All the same, he promised U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday that the truce could be renewed if he had assurances the rebels would hold to it, that they would free hostages and that Ukraine would be able to control its border with Russia.
As one Western diplomat put it, Poroshenko’s decision not to extend the ceasefire last week may be “tactical not strategic”.
Far from turning a deaf ear to western Europe, Poroshenko, who signed a landmark free trade agreement with Brussels last month, is likely to continue to probe diplomacy with both the West and Moscow for lasting solutions to the crisis in the east.
On Friday, he told EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton of a plan for new ceasefire talks on Saturday among a “contact group” involving envoys from Kiev, Moscow and the rebels.
Yet he had already appointed a tough-talking new defence minister the day before whose troops then routed the rebels in Slaviansk, dramatically shifting the calculus of the ceasefire debate. Diplomats assume the planned talks did not take place and Poroshenko on Sunday made clear the offensive would go on.
VOICE OF THE MAIDAN
Poroshenko, who has served in governments of various shades for the past decade, does not have a strong base in a parliament elected two years ago. Despite his own landslide victory in May, the revolutionary mood of the country that ousted Yanukovich means he still needs to be closely tuned in to opinion at home.
In central Kiev, many protest tents have been removed around Independence Square but they still stand on the Maidan itself as a reminder of the power ordinary Ukrainians wielded after Yanukovich broke a pledge to integrate more closely with the EU.
A week ago the square turned into the stage for one of the biggest protests since Poroshenko took office, when a few thousand people rallied to urge him to end the ceasefire with the eastern rebels. On Monday, June 30, he duly did.
“I want us to put up a fiercer fight in the east and kill the terrorists that have invaded our lands. This is a war, and every second lost costs the life of one of our patriots,” said Viktor Kamenev, 66, a former soldier, walking through the barricades in central Kiev this past week.
“This is not a civil war, this is Putin’s intervention against eastern Ukraine,” he said, voicing a widespread view that President Vladimir Putin wants to grab more ex-Soviet territory for Russia after annexing Ukraine’s Crimea in March.
“No one in their right mind would want to get stuck in a diplomatic quagmire with Putin,” said Kamenev, dismissing efforts by the Kremlin to play a role as defender of the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine.
The bloody street protests after Yanukovich chose to tighten ties with Moscow showed many Ukrainians would rather fight than make a deal with the Kremlin leader who has become the object of popular hatred even among those who play down domestic divisions between eastern Ukrainians and the Ukrainian-speaking west.
Likewise, many of those who took to the streets against Yanukovich in February have joined the armed forces, lending some of the Maidan’s political power to the long neglected military and the newly formed National Guard.
A second Western diplomat said it was Poroshenko’s meeting with his hawkish security council on June 30 that drove home to him the need to call off the 10-day-old ceasefire, seen widely to be have been giving rebels a chance to rearm and regroup.
Poroshenko had extended a week-long ceasefire, called on June 20, at the urging of the West and Russia, for 72 hours when it expired on Friday, June 27. But by June 30 the foreign ministry said 27 Ukrainians had been killed during the truce, increasing pressure on the president to go on the offensive.
In the end it may have simply come down to common sense for Poroshenko, who saw little sign of compromise from the rebels: “He looked at the four points that the EU said there should be progress on and saw little progress and that’s why he didn’t extend,” said the first Western diplomat.
After the success of the offensive in taking Slaviansk, Poroshenko shows no sign of negotiating another truce. He took triumphantly to Twitter on Sunday: “My order is now in effect - tighten the ring around the terrorists,” he wrote. “Continue the operation to liberate Donetsk and Luhansk regions.”By Andrew J Hoffman
There are two extremes in the debate over capitalism’s role in our present climate change problem. On the one hand, some people see climate change as the outcome of a consumerist market system run rampant. In the end, the result will be a call to replace capitalism with a new system that will correct our present ills with regulations to curb market excesses.
On the other hand, some people have faith in a free market to yield the needed solutions to our social problems. In the more extreme case, some see climate policy as a covert way for bigger government to interfere in the market and diminish citizens’ personal freedom.
Between these two extremes, the public debate takes on its usual binary, black-and-white, conflict-oriented, unproductive and basically incorrect form. Such a debate feeds into a growing distrust many have for capitalism.
A 2013 survey found that only 54% of Americans had a positive view of the term, and in many ways both the Occupy and Tea Party movements share similar distrust in the macro-institutions of our society to serve everyone fairly; one focuses its ire at government, the other at big business, and both distrust what they see as a cozy relationship between the two.
This polar framing also feeds into culture wars that are taking place in our country. Studies have shown that conservative-leaning people are more likely to be skeptical of climate change, due in part to a belief that this would necessitate controls on industry and commerce, a future they do not want. Indeed, research has shown a strong correlation between support for free-market ideology and rejection of climate science. Conversely, liberal-leaning people are more likely to believe in climate change because, in part, solutions are consistent with resentment toward commerce and industry and the damage they cause to society.
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This binary framing masks the real questions we face, both what we need to do and how we are going to get there. Yet there are serious conversations within management education, research and practice about the next steps in the evolution of capitalism. The goal is to develop a more sophisticated notion of the role of the corporation within society. These discussions are being driven not only by climate change, but concerns raised by the financial crisis, growing income inequality and other serious social issues.
The market’s rough edges
Capitalism is a set of institutions for structuring our commerce and interaction. It is not, as some think, some sort of natural state that exists free from government intrusion. It is designed by human beings in the service of human beings and it can evolve to the needs of human beings. As Yuval Levin points out in National Affairs, even Adam Smith argued that “the rules of the market are not self-legislating or naturally obvious. On the contrary, Smith argued, the market is a public institution that requires rules imposed upon it by legislators who understand its workings and its benefits.”
And, it is worth noting, capitalism has been quite successful. Over the past century, the world’s population increased by a factor of four, the world economy increased by a factor of 14 and global per capita income tripled. In that time, average life expectancy increased by almost two-thirds due in large part to advances in medicine, shelter, food production and other amenities provided by the market economy.
Capitalism is, in fact, quite malleable to meet the needs of society as they emerge. Over time, regulation has evolved to address emergent issues such as monopoly power, collusion, price-fixing and a host of other impediments to the needs of society. Today, one of those needs is responding to climate change.
The question is not whether capitalism works or doesn’t work. The question is how it can and will evolve to address the new challenges we face as a society. Or, as Anand Giridharadas pointed out at the Aspen Action Forum, “Capitalism’s rough edges must be sanded and its surplus fruit shared, but the underlying system must never be questioned.”
These rough edges need be considered with the theories we use to understand and teach the market. In addition, we need to reconsider the metrics we use to measure its outcomes, and the ways in which the market has deviated from its intended form.
Homo economicus?
To begin, there are growing questions around the underlying theories and models used to understand, explain and set policies for the market. Two that have received significant attention are neoclassical economics and principal-agent theory. Both theories form the foundation of management education and practice and are built on extreme and rather dismal simplifications of human beings as largely untrustworthy and driven by avarice, greed and selfishness.
As regards neoclassical economics, Eric Beinhocker and Nick Hanauer explain:
Behavioral economists have accumulated a mountain of evidence showing that real humans don’t behave as a rational homo economicus would. Experimental economists have raised awkward questions about the very existence of utility; and that is problematic because it has long been the device economists use to show that markets maximize social welfare. Empirical economists have identified anomalies suggesting that financial markets aren’t always efficient.
As regards principal-agent theory, Lynn Stout goes so far to say that the model is quite simply “wrong.” The Cornell professor of business and law argues that its central premise – that those running the company (agents) will shirk or even steal from the owner (principal) since they do the work and the owner gets the profits – does not capture “the reality of modern public corporations with thousands of shareholders, scores of executives and a dozen or more directors.”
The most pernicious outcome of these models is the idea that the purpose of the corporation is to “make money for its shareholders.” This is a rather recent idea that began to take hold within business only in the 1970s and 1980s and has now become a taken-for-granted assumption.
If I asked any business school student (and perhaps any American) to complete the sentence, “the purpose of the corporation is to…” they would parrot “make money for the shareholder.” But that is not what a company does, and most executives would tell you so. Companies transform ideas and innovation into products and services that serve the needs of some segment of the market. In the words of Paul Pollman, CEO of Unilever, “business is here to serve society.” Profit is the metric for how well they do that.
The problem with the pernicious notion that a corporation’s sole purpose is to serve shareholders is that it leads to many other undesirable outcomes. For example, it leads to an increased focus on quarterly earnings and short-term |
led iPad images as far back as January, we are hesitant to attach any significant timeline to these discoveries, but they are simply more signs that Apple plans to release a Retina Display-equipped iPad.Already vague, report now omits details on complaints with no investigation
Yale University continues to impose sanctions on students and faculty even when they are not found responsible for sexual misconduct, according to its latest half-year report on sexual misconduct.
Issued by Deputy Provost Stephanie Spangler, who is tasked with universitywide Title IX compliance, the so-called Spangler report covers reports of misconduct from Jan. 1 through June 30.
It reveals harsh punishment following complaints about seemingly minor infractions, as well as minor or no punishments for alleged attempted assaults – suggesting that assaults aren’t being taken seriously, many people are making evidence-thin complaints, or both.
MORE: Yale Uses ‘Hearsay,’ ‘Scarlet Letter’ Against Accused
In contrast to previous Spangler reports, this one has totally scrapped details on complaints that didn’t result in investigations, though it continues to list such complaints in statistical tables.
The move suggests that Yale does not want to provide information that “might cast doubt on the suggestions that the university is experiencing an unprecedented crime wave,” according to Brooklyn College Prof. KC Johnson, who has critically analyzed the Spangler reports from their start five years ago.
‘Unwanted’ is harassment
The latest report, issued Aug. 16, says the university received 88 complaints of sexual misconduct. According to the Yale Daily News, that’s an all-time high number of complaints.
It lists five new complaints registered with the University-wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct (UWC), a body of “about 30” faculty, professional or managerial staff, fellows and students.
One complaint summary reads: “A YC [Yale College] student alleged that another YC student engaged in sexual penetration without consent. The complainant withdrew the complaint. No-contact restrictions, which were imposed as an interim measure during the proceedings, were continued.”
MORE: Yale ignored evidence, violated own rules to judge athlete a rapist
Meanwhile, the school suspended a student until May 2018 for “sexual touching without consent,” citing “sufficient evidence to support the allegation” – meaning the UWC ruled it was “more likely than not” the violation happened.
Because of the vague descriptions in the report, there’s no way to know if the student suspended for two years was a stranger or part of a relationship which had previously been intimate.
Ex-Brentwood star Jack Montague sues Yale over dismissal https://t.co/akPgM1W5cL pic.twitter.com/9sTRGCtN3q — TN Game Time (@TNGameTime) June 9, 2016
The data also show that the Yale community, including students, faculty, and staff, prefers to report complaints to a Title IX coordinator.
Sixty-nine went to the coordinator, 14 to campus police and the aforementioned five to the UWC. (The UWC implies that anyone who needs immediate attention should report to another authority, saying it can’t handle “emergencies.”)
MORE: Former Yale QB indicts rape panel for trashing his rep
In an update on an older case, the report says Yale suspended a graduate student until June 2017 for sending “unwanted messages” to another graduate student.
The initial complaint about unwanted messages was apparently informal, because the update says the accuser then filed a formal complaint alleging sexual harassment. However, the UWC did not find “sufficient evidence to support the allegation of sexual harassment.”
It did find sufficient evidence of “stalking and unacceptable conduct.” As few as “two instances” of unwanted messages can constitute stalking, under Yale’s definitions, while “unacceptable conduct” appears to be undefined.
As a result, the accused student was suspended and “required to receive training on awareness of stalking behavior and harassment.”
Expelled after ‘stop, that hurts’
Title IX coordinators also investigated students for “unwanted attention,” “unwanted advances” and “making inappropriate comments in a classroom,” with the last complaint coming from a faculty member.
One especially vague summary says an undergraduate told a Title IX coordinator “that a faculty member engaged in conduct of a sexual nature,” without specifying whether the conduct was verbal, physical or a combination.
Under a three-year-old “blueprint” agreement with the University of Montana that the federal government reiterated is binding on all colleges this spring, “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” – including verbal comments that aren’t directed to anyone in particular – constitutes sexual harassment.
MORE: Yale’s actual evidence standard is 31 percent certainty
Louisiana State University is currently being sued by a female professor who was fired for making sexual jokes in class.
Yale declined to comment on pending cases in an email to The College Fix.
Instead, spokesman Thomas Conroy quoted from the guide to the report: “While intended to be broadly informative, the report does have limitations. Because of privacy obligations, the report cannot fully convey the variety and complexity of circumstances associated with cases that may appear similar in the brief narrative descriptions.”
Conroy referred to a list of possible penalties from a 2013 guide to penalties for sexual misconduct.
The guide features harsh punishments for scenarios such as getting a partner’s consent for sex but continuing after the partner says “stop, that hurts” – a decision that would result in expulsion for the partner who continued.
Hiding evidence of ‘a seemingly panicked student body’
In an article for Minding the Campus, Prof. Johnson speculates on why the latest Spangler report might have dropped information on complaints that don’t result in investigations.
“The now-suppressed data showed that these allegations often involved second-hand claims, in which a third party reported that a student whose identity he or she didn’t know was allegedly sexually assaulted another student whose identity the reporter didn’t know,” Johnson wrote.
“That type of information demonstrated a seemingly panicked student body—and the absurdities of the university’s excessively broad definition of sexual assault,” he continued: “No wonder Spangler removed it.”
Spangler herself wrote in the introduction to the report why it doesn’t include details where “the complainant decided to take no further action at this time,” or where the Title IX coordinator reached out to a “potential complainant” but that person did not “engage” or provide “additional information” to the coordinator.
MORE: Lawsuit says cussing in class is not ‘sexual harassment’
“Since those categories contain complaints in which no further action was taken, the descriptions provide little, if any, additional information,” Spangler concluded.
Johnson wrote that the university should be wary of its own figures because they strain credulity in the context of other crime reports.
If all 26 undergraduates who filed sexual-assault complaints from January through June were female, “it would mean an annual violent crime rate for Yale undergraduate women of 1.9 percent, without taking into account any attempted murder or felony assault claims,” he wrote.
“That would be just under the annual violent crime rate for the city FBI stats deem the most dangerous in the country, Detroit,” according to Johnson – and yet Spangler herself has said the misconduct complaints are “only a fraction of the instances of sexual misconduct at Yale.”
The Title IX office did not respond to a request for comment by The Fix.
MORE: Yelling ‘Cocks Not Glocks’ and brandishing a dildo? ‘Sexual harassment’
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IMAGE: Elnur/ShutterstockOne of the great horrors of the novel 1984 was the thought police who punished people for having incorrect thoughts. That’s the sort of communist worldview that the vast majority of Americans reject.
It’s dismaying that liberals have adapted communist tactics and implemented a new thought police in the guise of the judiciary. Liberal judges have decided that they can read peoples innermost thoughts. That’s the basis for both the 9th and 4th Circuit Courts declaring that Trump’s temporary travel ban is unconstitutional.
Both courts agree that the executive order as written is constitutional. Both courts agree that if Hillary or Obama had issued the exact same order it would be constitutional. Both courts declare it to be unconstitutional because they claim to know what Trump was really thinking when he signed the orders.
Those two circuit courts are saying that they know that Trump’s thoughts are not sufficiently pure and hence that disqualifies him from exercising his constitutional authority.
Essentially, liberals are declaring that federal judges are a thought police that has the authority to punish a President whose thoughts don’t toe the line defined by the judges.
Earlier liberals realized that even judges who think they are god can’t actually read people’s minds. That’s why the Supreme Court ruled that all a court should take into account when assessing the constitutionality of an executive order is what the order says.
That makes sense since if the government started acting outside of what an executive order said, by say banning all Muslims from entering the U.S., the court could take action against that activity. Hence there’s no reason to ban an order that is itself constitutional.
Unfortunately, this latest power grab by liberal judges goes far beyond anything they have tried before. Essentially, the judges are saying that if they determine that a President, or presumably Congress, has ever expressed displeasure with any group for any reason they, the judges, can declare that the President, or Congress, can make no laws that the court doesn’t approve of that impact that group.
For example we know that Obama disparaged Christians, who “cling” to their religion, and hence using this new principle of law the HHS mandate would be unconstitutional.
Of course the liberal judges would not rule the HHS mandate unconstitutional because they agree with it. Which points to the most troubling aspect of this new trend; the judges are saying that if the President disparages any group a judge likes, than the judge is entitled to take over the President’s power, as defined in the Constitution, as it relates to that group.
This means, for example, that if Trump should decide to take women out of combat roles in the Army the courts could tell him he can’t do that because he’s spoken poorly of women in the past.
The court’s actions are a gross violation of separation of powers. The Supreme Court has ruled many times that the Executive Branch is responsible for immigration and foreign policy. Yet these judges have declared that they can usurp the Executive Branch’s powers if they decide that they don’t like what the President is thinking. Clearly since the judges are the ones who decide what thoughts and policies are acceptable there is no limit to what authority the judges can steal.
There’s really no reason the courts can’t extend this same reasoning to areas other than discrimination against a group. For example, the courts could conclude that Trump can’t exit the Paris accords because he’s expressed doubt about the reality of global warming… err climate change and because the judges believe in climate change they know that Trump’s thoughts are wrong.
This takes judicial tyranny to a whole new level. These two circuit courts are saying that if judges don’t like a President’s attitude, not his actions, on an issue there is no limit to what the courts can do.
A woman from the Baltic countries who had lived under both communists and Nazis said she preferred the Nazis because as long as you did what they wanted they left you alone, but the communists insisted that people think the way the communists did.
The same is apparently true of modern liberal judges; following the Constitution — as reimagined by liberal judges — is no longer enough. Now politician’s thoughts must be judged to be pure, in the sense of following the liberal line, in order for them to be able to exercise their Constitutional authority.
Of course the reality is that the judges know what they’re doing and hence they are simply traitors who refuse to accept the results of the election. As with their communist forbears the ends justify the means, and hence anything that crosses the judge’s minds is a positive good so long as it “resists” Trump.
We must recognize that we are at war in America. While conservatives accepted Obama’s elections and even stuck to the legal process when Obama repeatedly violated the Constitution, the neofascists, nee liberals, are willing to use violence and illegal actions by the Deep State to negate the peoples votes.
Clearly liberal judges feel absolutely no need to follow the law, the Constitution, or even common sense if those conflict with their fascist desires for a new Amerika. Liberals who aren’t judges support both the fascist acts of the judges and the violence that “antifa” thugs use to silence speech they don’t like.
These are not our father’s liberals whose policies were wrong but who believed in Democracy, God, and Freedom of Speech. These are the sons and daughters of the liberals who sided with Hitler until he attacked the Soviet Union and who spent the Cold War telling us it was America’s fault.
If the new fascists succeed, our children will grow up in a dictatorship of evil where the elites rule over us from their coastal retreats.
No matter what you think about Trump, we have to go to war with the President we have, and so far he’s done a pretty good job of fighting the neofascists. Worrying about Trump’s tweets while judges are stealing our freedom is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic; it’s only going to help those who are trying to enslave us all.
We need to return to an America where judges only decide what laws mean instead of deciding what the laws should be.
We must resist the “resisters” with as much energy as they use in trying to enslave us. None of us can sit by and just assume things will work out because we’re not fighting people of good will anymore; we’re fighting monsters that want to steal what our forefathers died to give us, our freedom.
Original Article
Share ThisIn future, Turkey will take back immigrants who entered the European Union illegally, if the persons in question entered the EU from Turkey. Turkey is an important transit country for refugees from North Africa and Asia. Tens of thousands reach Greece and Bulgaria – EU territory – from Turkey. Currently most illegal immigrants use this route. The readmission agreement is set to be signed on December 16. In exchange, the EU agreed to resume negotiations about visa liberalization for Turkish citizens.
"It is astonishing that we reached this breakthrough," said Renate Sommer, a member of the EU parliament, during a delegation trip to Ankara. She is part of a parliamentarian group which focuses on EU-Turkey relations and frequently travels to the Turkish capital.
So far, she had the impression that Turkey did not want to implement the readmission agreement. For the last eight years, Turkey and the EU had been negotiating this agreement and it has been ready to sign for the past year, according to Sommer. However, the Turkish attempt to combine the readmission agreement with visa liberalization for its citizens will not be implemented soon, said Sommer from the European People's Party (EPP group). The proposal has generated considerable opposition from several EU member states.
Easing visa travel
Currently, many immigrants enter EU territory through Turkey
At the EU level, all member states have to agree to the visa liberalization plan. At the current stage, only a discussion process has been initiated. The implementation of the visa liberalization deal for Turkish citizens will take years, according to Sommer. Both Turkey and the EU are tough negotiators and a lot can happen. However, Turkey knows "that the EU is more willing to negotiate, if the agreement is signed," said Sommer in an interview with Deutsche Welle.
Franziska Keller, a member of the EU parliament for the Greens, cannot understand why it is so difficult for the EU to agree on easing visa restrictions for Turkish citizens. "In Turkey it's a major topic, because many Turkish citizens have huge problems getting a visa," she said.
Border security
Franziska Keller is critical of the agreement because, she says, it makes it more difficult for other people to immigrate to the EU. Officially the agreement only applies to illegal immigrants and not to people in need of protection. The so-called readmission of illegal immigrants provides that people who are illegally in the EU have to return to Turkey, even though Turkey is just a transit country to which they have no relation, says Keller. What happens to these immigrants is totally open, as they cannot apply or get asylum in Turkey.
Turkey has taken in more than half a million Syrian refugees
Although immigrants can register with the UNHCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees does not support immigrants in Turkey, according to Keller. "My wish is that the political pressure on Turkey increases, so that Turkey finally implements a functioning asylum system and opens its doors to refugees from around the world," she said.
But in the case of Syrian refugees, Turkey is far ahead of the EU, emphasized the EU parliamentarian. "The Turkish government does a lot for Syrian refugees," she said. Turkey offered protection for more than half a million Syrian refugees. The EU agreed to accept 8,000 Syrian refugees. "That's nothing compared to Turkey's engagement," she said.
The EU has bilateral readmission agreements with 15 countries, like Armenia, Cape Verde and Hong Kong. Franziska Keller sees an obvious trend in these agreements. The EU is shifting the responsibility for securing borders to third countries. "The refugees are supposed to be stopped on there way here by third countries, so that the EU does not get its hands dirty with the plight of the immigrants. But, the violation of human rights at the borders still takes place," Keller maintains.This story was originally published by Reveal and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
In the midst of a searing drought, one home in this exclusive West Los Angeles neighborhood used an astonishing 11.8 million gallons of water in one year — enough for 90 households.
A lushly landscaped, mansion-studded enclave of wealth and celebrity, Bel Air has been home to Michael Jackson, Jennifer Aniston, and even former President Ronald Reagan.
Now, according to records obtained by Reveal, Bel Air has another distinction: Its 90077 zip code is also home to the biggest known residential water customer in California.
The city of Los Angeles won’t identify this 11.8 million-gallon user, whose water bill for the 12 months ending April 1 likely topped $90,000, according to the Department of Water and Power’s rate structure.
Nor has the city taken any steps to stop this customer — or scores of other mega-users — from pumping enormous quantities of water during a statewide crisis now in its fourth year.
It’s the same story throughout urban California.
Despite the drought, well-heeled residential customers in affluent neighborhoods are being allowed to use as much water as they want to buy, according to a review of utility records from the state’s biggest urban water agencies.
In all, 365 California households pumped more than 1 million gallons of water apiece during the year ending in April, the records show.
One million gallons is enough for eight families for a year, according to a 2011 state estimate, and many of California’s mega-users pumped far more than that. Of the total, 73 homes used more than 3 million gallons apiece, and another 14 used more than 6 million.
These mega-users live in San Diego’s posh La Jolla beachfront community, in affluent suburbs of Contra Costa County in the Bay Area, and especially in Los Angeles’ wealthy neighborhoods.
In addition to the state’s biggest user, Bel Air had 19 customers pumping more than 2.8 million gallons per year. In nearby Beverly Hills, the famously upscale zip code of 90210 had 32 customers using 2.8 million gallons or more.
The names of all these mega-users are secret. Los Angeles and all of the state’s other major water agencies declined to name any of their big guzzlers, saying that identifying a customer — even one using extraordinary amounts of water — would raise privacy concerns.
Reveal’s findings of wanton water use during the drought are “absolutely shocking,” said Tracy Quinn, a water policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Santa Monica.
“Looking at the list that you’ve provided … I’m actually shocked by the amount of water that can be used in a single-family residence,” she said in an interview. “It’s appalling.”
While the water flows to the mega-users, the state’s urban water agencies have mounted a furious public relations campaign to persuade the public to cut water use in response to what they call “the drought of the century.”
In a barrage of public service broadcasts, emails, and fliers, Californians have been urged to rip out their lawns, stop washing their cars, and even limit their toilet flushing to save water. The conservation campaign has been pronounced a success: In August, the state said urban customers had cut their use by 31 percent.
But the agencies have shown little enthusiasm for restricting use by high-end customers who are consuming huge amounts of water. Only recently did two agencies — one in Oakland, the other east of Los Angeles in the Coachella Valley — begin imposing penalties on mega-users. Other agencies haven’t followed suit.
Instead, the agencies have fined hundreds of Californians for offenses such as hosing down their driveways or failing to replace broken sprinkler heads.
David Wilson, a homeowner in Los Angeles’ Mid-Wilshire neighborhood, got slapped with $600 in fines for watering on the wrong day of the week and letting runoff flow into the street. He blamed a sprinkler malfunction.
Wilson thought the fines were excessive, and he said he was shocked to learn that the city was publicizing his name and address because of the violation.
When a reporter showed him a list of mega-users, with names withheld by the city to protect their privacy, Wilson said, “That’s asinine. These are the people that people should be going after.”
Looking at the top user on the list, Wilson asked, “Is this 11 million gallons? How do they even do that?”
Drought or no, simply using a lot of water can’t get you in trouble in L.A.
As long as Angelenos follow the other usage rules, they can pump as much water as they can pay for, said Martin Adams, senior assistant general manager for the water system at the Department of Water and Power.
“There’s no ordinance on the books in Los Angeles to go after an individual customer strictly for their use,” he said in an interview.
In a follow-up email, he suggested that concerns about mega-users were overblown, noting that the city’s top 100 residential customers account for only about two-tenths of 1 percent of L.A.’s total usage.
“This underscores the importance of focusing on water conservation citywide,” he wrote.
But other considerations come into play when a conservation program is based on voluntary compliance, noted Jack Humphreville, who monitors water issues for The Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council civic group.
“Are you sending the right message if some S.O.B. is out there using 11 million gallons?” he asked.
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Keith Warner, a Franciscan friar and ethicist at Santa Clara University, said water agencies have an obligation to make sure all Californians share the burden of conservation during the drought.
“It’s ethically problematic” to do otherwise, he said.
Of course, residential water use forms only part of the conservation picture during California’s drought; the state’s agriculture industry uses four times as much water as its cities and towns.
For this story, Reveal set out to identify the top 100 residential customers at the state’s biggest public water agencies. All the agencies resisted providing the information.
For decades, utility data was a matter of public record in California. During a 1991 drought, an Oakland Tribune news story that identified water wasters by name caused an outcry.
In the end, the biggest water users were forced to reduce their use by 20 percent or the East Bay Municipal Utility District threatened to limit the flow of water to their homes.
But in 1997, the legislature weakened the state’s Public Records Act and gave utilities the legal right to keep customers’ names and usage a secret. The measure was pushed by the city of Palo Alto, citing the privacy concerns of Silicon Valley executives. Still, the revised law said utilities could reveal this information if they determined that disclosure was in the public interest.
Earlier this year, Reveal asked California’s 22 largest public water agencies to identify their 100 biggest customers for the 12 months ending April 1, arguing that the public has a right to know about water use during a statewide emergency.
All refused.
But eight big districts — including Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco — agreed to provide usage data after deleting customers’ names and addresses. Three also identified the zip codes where their biggest users reside.
But 14 agencies, including Sacramento, Fresno, and Modesto, refused to give any information at all.
Some contended that the law doesn’t require them to provide data about customers’ water use. Others said they didn’t keep track of consumption by their biggest customers — a remarkable assertion in the middle of a drought.
Silicon Valley’s water data also was unavailable because the San Jose Water Co. is a private company, and thus not subject to open records laws. But the data Reveal acquired showed that the mega-users were clustered in some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the state. Here are the details by region:
LOS ANGELES
In August, Mayor Eric Garcetti said L.A.’s water use had dropped by 21 percent during two years of drought.
But the city also has 92 of the top 100 residential water users known in California. On average, L.A.’s mega-users pumped 4.2 million gallons per year apiece. The mega-users live in neighborhoods favored by the rich and famous.
The towering green hedges that line the winding streets of Bel Air screen the expansive homes of actors, film executives, and a host of entertainment lawyers, real-estate developers, and plastic surgeons.
Also living in Bel Air: not just the state’s biggest known water customer, but four of California’s top five, with usage ranging from 7.4 million to 11.8 million gallons per year.
Another pocket of mega-users was in Beverly Hills’ 90210 zip code, namesake of the 1990s television series about the problems of the young and wealthy. It’s home to actor Tom Cruise, soccer legend David Beckham, and corporate farmer Stewart Resnick, who owns more than 100,000 acres of heavily irrigated orchards in the Central Valley.
Also residing in 90210: the third-biggest water user identified in the state. At 8 million gallons per year, the customer used water for about 60 families.
Yet another concentration of mega-users was in Brentwood. The sixth-biggest known water user in the state (7.39 million gallons, which is enough for 56 families) also lives in Brentwood, along with 13 other residents who used 2.9 million gallons or more.
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
Oakland’s East Bay Municipal Utility District says it has begun assessing “excessive use penalties” on customers who pump at a rate of more than 359,000 gallons per year.
In the meantime, the agency’s 100 biggest customers all used at least 1 million gallons apiece. Most live in the Contra Costa County suburbs: 18 in the exclusive Blackhawk subdivision, 17 in upscale Alamo.
The district’s biggest single user pumped 3.5 million gallons in a year. This customer lives in an unincorporated area near the Diablo Country Club, where some properties have vineyards or orchards. Nine other customers in Diablo used 1.1 million gallons or more.
Utility district board member Doug Linney wanted to know more about the mega-users.
“I don’t know if they have a private golf course in their backyard or what, but it is a lot of water,” he said in an interview. “It certainly seems like it would warrant an investigation to send our team out there.”
Fremont’s Alameda County Water District had eight million-gallon customers — the biggest used 1.7 million. But in cool, foggy San Francisco, there were no million-gallon users at all. The biggest user pumped 781,000 gallons, enough for six families.
SAN DIEGO
The city’s biggest user, at 4.6 million gallons, lives in La Jolla, the beach town where former Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain keep homes. Two other La Jolla residents used 4.5 million gallons, and 29 topped the 1 million-gallon mark. Carmel Valley, a sprawling community north of downtown, had 36 customers who used 1 million gallons or more.After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans came back more unequal than before.
That's the conclusion of a recent report from the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, a left-leaning legal organization. The report's authors argue that in the wake of the 2005 storm, reconstruction efforts were handled in such a way as to broaden the gap between whites and minorities in the region, and to make it harder for local people of color to find jobs.
"The limitations on labor and equal opportunity protections, as well as the inequitable application of federal resources, significantly diminished the opportunities and heightened the inequalities in the Gulf Coast," the report states.
That inequality has since become a matter of national record. A Census Bureau report issued last year found that in the period from 2005 to 2009, New Orleans had the second highest level of income inequality of any large American city. According to the Census report, only Atlanta had a higher wealth gap.
One might expect that in New Orleans, a city 60 percent black and 33 percent white, inequalities across different strata of society would be especially pronounced. At the national level, the income gap between whites and blacks recently grew to its greatest width in more than a decade.Iraqi parliament. AP File Photo.
BAGHDAD, Iraq— A senior member of the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) says that Kurdish factions will not take part in the new Iraqi cabinet, if the number of ministerial posts for the Kurds remains unchanged.
Speaking to Rudaw Thursday, Fazil Mirani said the current two ministerial positions allocated for the Kurds in the new Iraqi government “do not correspond to the fair share of the Kurdistan region in Iraq.”
“We agreed in a meeting with the other Kurdish factions that we would not participate in any Iraqi government that refused to consider the true share of Kurdistan region and its people,” Mirani said.
The Kurdish factions in Baghdad had earlier demanded 20 percent of all government positions in return for their support of Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi’s new cabinet.
Kurds have received two ministerial positions in the new cabinet, oil and reconstruction, out of 16 ministries. The Iraqi parliament is due to vote on the list of nominees before the April 10 deadline.
Kurdish and Sunni factions in the parliament are likely to reject the new list, which they already have described as “sectarian and excluding.”
Speaking to Rudaw on Thursday a Kurdish lawmaker said that there might be a no confidence vote for both the cabinet and the prime minister in the parliaments coming extra sessions.
“The parliament might also call for prime minister’s resignation,” Ala Talabani told Rudaw.
On Friday one of the two Kurdish ministerial nominees rejected his candidacy and said he would no take part in any cabinet “without broad political consensus,” which he said the new government lacked.
The withdrawal of Nzar Doski from the Iraqi government only a day after he was nominated by Abadi is an early sign of greater challenges the prime minister will face in securing endorsement for his controversial cabinet.SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Dilma Rousseff was thoroughly charmed.
The Boeing logo is seen at their headquarters in Chicago, April 24, 2013. REUTERS/Jim Young
Brazil had been struggling for years to decide which company to choose for a $4 billion-plus fighter jet contract, one of the world’s most sought-after defense deals and one that would help define the country’s strategic alliances for decades to come.
But Rousseff, the leftist president known for being sometimes gruff and even standoffish with foreign leaders, was thrilled after a 90-minute meeting in Brasilia on May 31 with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.
After Biden’s reassurances that the United States would not block crucial transfers of technological know-how to Brazil if it bought the jets, she was closer than ever to selecting Chicago-based Boeing to supply its fighter, the F/A-18 Super Hornet.
“She’s ready to sign on the dotted line,” one of her senior aides told Reuters at the time. “This is going to happen soon.”
And then along came Edward Snowden.
Documents leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor, released in the weeks after Biden’s visit, ended up enraging Rousseff and completely changing her plans, several Brazilian officials told Reuters.
On Wednesday, she surprised the defense and diplomatic worlds by tapping Sweden’s Saab to supply the jets, a move aides said was made in part as a deliberate snub to the United States.
The decision was one of the biggest and most expensive consequences yet of the NSA revelations, which have strained Washington’s relations with countries around the world.
Anger over espionage was not the only reason for Rousseff’s decision. Saab’s Gripen jet offered the best combination of price, transfers of technology to Brazilian companies and low maintenance costs compared with the other two finalists, Boeing and France’s Dassault Aviation, Defense Minister Celso Amorim told reporters on Wednesday.
Still, the NSA revelations were clearly the determining factor for Rousseff, the Brazilian officials told Reuters, for reasons that were both political and deeply personal.
A former guerrilla who had fought a U.S.-backed military dictatorship in the 1960s, Rousseff had spent the first two years of her presidency edging closer to Washington, fending off pressure from leftist elements of her Workers’ Party and scheduling a rare state visit to the White House for last October.
Snowden’s documents, many of which were published by Brazil-based U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald, revealed that Washington had spied on Rousseff’s personal communications, those of state-run oil company Petrobras - which Rousseff once chaired - and countless Brazilian citizens.
Rousseff could not understand why Washington would spy on an ally with no history of international terrorism, aides said. She reacted by canceling her White House trip, despite attempts by U.S. President Barack Obama to ease her concerns, including a one-on-one meeting on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in Russia.
This week, she made a decision she believed would hit the United States where it hurt most - its pocketbook.
Defense analysts struggled to recall a major contract decided on such grounds.
“The irony is that we expected politics to play a big role, but always on the selling side, not on the downside,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with the Teal Group. “Then things went horribly wrong with this NSA story.”
A DECADE-OLD SAGA
The final decision on the jets contract had not been expected until next year, so the bidding companies were surprised when it was announced. Brazilian military leaders said publicly that Rousseff informed them of her decision this week.
At a time when the United States and European countries are tightening their defense budgets, the contract was considered a particularly lucrative prize.
For French, Swedish and U.S. diplomats in Brasilia, pushing for the deal had been near the top of their agendas for more than a decade.
In 2009, Rousseff’s predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said Brazil would choose Dassault’s Rafale fighter jet. But negotiations over price and transfers of technology - particularly important to Brazil, which wants to increase its geopolitical influence by building a homegrown defense industry - never resulted in a deal.
Shortly after Rousseff took office in January 2011, she surprised Republican Senator John McCain when he visited Brasilia by bringing up Boeing’s bid and saying she thought its F/A-18 was the best of the three jets, according to two people who were in the room.
Boeing particularly appealed to Rousseff, people familiar with her thinking said, because the company has a growing relationship with Embraer SA and the jet deal would advance the Brazilian planemaker’s technological know-how.
And unlike some hard-liners in her party, Rousseff believed in the importance of the United States as a trade partner that could help Brazil with its first-world aspirations.
U.S. diplomats worked hard to follow up, excited not only about the price tag but also the possibility of a strategic deal with a rising power that at times has seemed closer to U.S. antagonists in the region such as Venezuela and Cuba. Because of the extensive maintenance required and the technology transfers, big aircraft deals can bind companies and militaries together for decades after a deal is signed.
Obama visited Brazil in 2011, Rousseff went to the White House in 2012, and the jets deal was discussed at length by the leaders during both trips. But it wasn’t until Biden’s visit in May that Boeing was finally on the verge of winning the deal, Brazilian officials said.
Rousseff remained concerned that the U.S. Congress, especially Republican Party members who are traditionally skeptical of leftist governments in Latin America, could block the technology transfers on national security grounds even after a deal with Boeing was signed.
But Biden, based on his 36 years of Senate experience, offered Rousseff a detailed and convincing explanation of why that wouldn’t happen, said Brazilian and U.S. officials who were present.
In comments after the meeting, Biden made it clear where U.S. priorities were: “We’re ready for a deeper, broader relationship across the board on everything from the military to education, trade and investment.”
Boeing executives, U.S. diplomats and even Brazilian officials were exuberant. The expectation, confirmed by Rousseff’s aides, was that she would likely announce her choice of Boeing in October, when she was due to make the first formal state visit to Washington by a Brazilian leader in nearly 20 years.
IT ALL FELL APART
The optimism began to fade just five weeks later, when the first Brazil-related NSA documents were released. Then, on September 1, when a report said Rousseff herself had been a target, it became clear that all bets were off and that the Boeing bid was in severe danger.
The day after that report, a person who had been pushing for Boeing angrily questioned whether the intelligence obtained from Rousseff’s communications justified possibly losing the deal. “Was that worth $4 billion?” the person asked rhetorically, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Facing renewed pressure from her party’s anti-Washington flank, Rousseff requested an apology from Obama, still hoping to salvage the trip. Instead, Obama said only that he would order a review of U.S. intelligence-gathering techniques.
It wasn’t enough.
Rousseff announced on September 17 that she was canceling the state visit. Her aides told Reuters that day that Boeing was likely now out of the running.
Still, things got even worse.
Upon new revelations in October that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had her BlackBerry spied on by the NSA, Rousseff and members of her team saw Washington’s response as much more contrite, officials close to the Brazilian president said.
Ironically, U.S. officials, when pitching the jets deal to Rousseff, had said Brazil could |
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (Gain) also works on the production and distribution of micronutrients. Dominic Schofield, Gain's director, says there are three steps to getting a scheme up and running: You have to get government backing by showing them scientific evidence, develop the product and enable manufacturing and then stimulate demand and distribute. One of the key elements of this is finding families that need support in nourishing their babies and engaging with them.
An example of this is Gain's work with a company called Renata that produces micronutrient sprinkles, which can be added to the baby's portion of food in order to give them minerals that aren't available in the 'family pot'. Gain then put Renata in touch with the Bangladeshi NGO, Brac, who work with 97,000 community health workers at village level. The health workers, known as shasthya shebikas, distribute the micronutrient sachets and encourage pregnant women and the mothers of newborns to add them to food.
Schofield is an advocate of this kind of market-based system which he believes enables the widest distribution of the nutrients. "Brac guarantees the purchase of significant amounts of the sachets, which reassures Renata that it has a customer for these products, and then the shasthya shebikas earn a small amount of commission based on the amount that they sell."
"Renate sold 60m sachets across Bangladesh last year, 47 million were purchased by the poor themselves through the shasthya shebika network."
Ultimately, whether through 'whole population fortification' or through targeted supplement distribution, policymakers and donors will have to decide what steps must be taken to ensure that the poorest communities have access to the micronutrients needed for development.
This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this direct to your inbox, sign up free to become a member of the Global Development Professionals NetworkCAIRO (Reuters) - Four beheaded corpses were found by residents of a town in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Wednesday, security sources said, blaming Islamist militants waging an insurgency against Cairo.
The security sources in Sinai and Cairo, said residents of Sheikh Zuwaid found the bodies two days after the men were abducted by gunmen while traveling in a car in the town, a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip.
Though the men were civilians, they may have been targeted for their perceived allegiance to the police and army, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. They gave no other indication of the identity of the men.
The militants have stepped up attacks on policemen and soldiers since then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July 2013.
The government does not distinguish between the Sinai militants and the Brotherhood, which it has designated a terrorist group although the movement says it is peaceful and denies any links to the wave of militant attacks.
Sisi, now elected president, said last month that Islamist militants were ravaging the Middle East and pose a threat to security globally.
The Sinai militants are not believed to be officially linked to Islamic State insurgents who have swept through parts of Iraq and Syria and have released a video purporting to show the beheading of a U.S. journalist.
The attacks by the Egyptian militants initially targeted security forces in Sinai - a remote but strategic part of Egypt located between Israel, the Gaza Strip and the Suez Canal - but they have since extended their reach to the mainland with bombings of security installations.
The government says nearly 500 people, mostly from the army and police, have been killed in clashes and in attacks by Islamist insurgents angered at Mursi’s removal. Rights groups have put the number far higher, saying that many hundreds of Brotherhood supporters, meanwhile, have been killed at the hands of security forces.
A security crackdown since Mursi was ousted has also seen many thousands of Islamists arrested. More than 1,000 have been sentenced to death. Secular liberals accusing the government of rights abuses have also been jailed.
Seventeen pro-Brotherhood protesters were sentenced to life in prison by an Egyptian court on Wednesday on charges including murder and possession of arms during clashes that erupted at a protest in August 2013.
Rights groups say trials of Islamists have generally violated the most basic rights of citizens to fair hearings due to a lack of evidence against the defendants, among other problems.I’ve always wondered why women were so slow to leave religion, as they have been over the last few decades. Men were leaving religion in greater number, even though patriarchal religions like Christianity exalted them, while women were staying, even though their holy books still have passage like 1 Timothy 2:12:
I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.
But that trend is reversing:
Millennials who spurn organized religion tend to reject belief systems before they leave home, said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University and author of “Generation Me.” One surprising aspect of this well-documented phenomenon: Teenage girls appear to be disproportionately driving the attitude shift. … The majority, however, still practice some form of religion. They’re just “significantly less religiously oriented” than their parents and grandparents, the study said. The trend is especially pronounced among girls and young women. They are still more likely to say they go to church or pray than boys and young men. But the gender gap in religious participation has in recent years significantly shrunk. Over the last four decades, the number of 12th-grade girls who reported never attending church has surged 125 percent. The increase among their male peers was 83 percent. In the late 1970s, 12th-grade boys were 50 percent more likely than girls to say they never go to church, Twenge said. By 2010, that difference haddwindled to 22 percent. “Given shifts away from traditional female roles, females may have been affected more than males,” the study team wrote.
Wonderful. Much of the bible talks about women having to live in subservience (while saying this is what validates their worth). I wouldn’t wish anybody to stay in a system that mistreats them so.Former Cal quarterback Zach Kline intends to transfer to Oregon State, according to the Portland Tribune.
Kline lost the starting job to Jared Goff during training camp. After fighting all season for playing time, the quarterback from Danville, Calif., announced his intent to transfer from Cal on Dec. 1. During the season, Kline completed 43 of 82 passes for 443 yards with three touchdown passes and four interceptions.
As per NCAA rules, Kline must sit one season before he becomes eligible to play for the Beavers. His first year of eligibility will be 2015, and he will have three years of eligibility left once that season begins.
Oregon State starter Sean Mannion will be a senior in 2014, which may leave the door open for Kline to take the starting job in 2015.
Contact Riley McAtee at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @riley_mcateePA/ AFP GETTY French election: ISIS has called for attacks this weekend
Voters will head to the polls on Sunday in the election, dubbed France’s most important in decades, with Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron vying to become president. Security chiefs have already announced extra police to patrol key areas on voting day as ISIS called for a day of attacks in its propaganda magazine. Terror and national security have dominated the campaign with Ms Le Pen vowing to oppose Islamist fundamentalism.
Security chiefs have already announced extra police to patrol key areas on voting day
France remains in a state of emergency following the Paris attacks in November 2015 which saw 130 people killed in a rampage claimed by ISIS. More than 230 people have been killed in such attacks in Paris and other parts of France in the past two-and-a-half years. Just three days before the first round of voting on April 23, a policeman was shot dead in central Paris by a gunman – an attack which ISIS also made a tenuous claim to.
AFP GETTY Police in Paris have stepped up security at the Eiffel Tower
Police arrested a “radicalised” former soldier near a military airbase near the town of Evreux northwest of the French capital in an incident that judicial sources said was related to a counter-terrorist inquiry today. Sources said a shotgun was found in nearby undergrowth, in addition to a cartridge and a Koran in the car he had left at the edge of the airbase, where he was arrested in the early morning on returning to the spot. Police in Paris have stepped up security at the Eiffel Tower ahead of Sunday’s vote after Greenpeace activists scaled the landmark and hung out a big political banner.
REUTERS Police in Paris have stepped up security amid protests and security threats
AFP GETTY Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron will go head-to-head on Sunday
Activists used mountaineering helmets, ropes and shackles prompted the Paris police chief to call an emergency meeting where the new security measures were decided. Police said a dozen Greenpeace activists were arrested after climbing the north face of the Eiffel Tower to hang a banner carrying the French national motto, "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity). Beneath the French republican slogan in large black letters was the word 'Resist', a message directed against Ms Le Pen and her National Front party.
Eiffel Tower protest amid French presidential election Fri, May 5, 2017 Greenpeace climbers unfurled a banner emblazoned with the French republican slogan "Liberty, Equality Fraternity" and the word "Resist" on the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Friday, a message urging people to vote against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in Sunday's presidential election Play slideshow REUTERS 1 of 4 A ballet dancer attends a photo shooting as activists from the environmentalist group Greenpeace unfurl a giant banner on the Eiffel Tower, in ParisGovernor Pat McCrory/Facebook
Governor Pat McCrory says he supports increased transparency for police, but clearly not through access to police-cam footage.
Can a state achieve more police accountability by giving the public less access to police field procedures? On Monday, Governor Pat McCrory signed into law the bill passed by North Carolina’s general assembly late last month that makes police camera footage off limits to the public. North Carolina is now officially a case study for this seemingly backward approach to police transparency. Now, citizens who’ve been recorded via police-worn body cameras or police dashboard cameras can only view the recording at the discretion of a police chief or sheriff. If those law-enforcement officials decide not to let a person see the recording, that person will now need a court order to view it. In general, police-cam footage will not be a matter of public record—nor will it become part of a police officer’s personnel file. Protecting those who protect us while promoting uniformity, clarity & transparency. Read abt legislation signed 2day https://t.co/ZnwUwJcVaF — Pat McCrory (@PatMcCroryNC) July 11, 2016 “Body cameras should be a tool to make law enforcement more transparent and accountable to the communities they serve, but this shameful law will make it nearly impossible to achieve those goals,” said Susanna Birdsong, Policy Counsel for the ACLU of North Carolina, in a press statement.
But McCrory said at the law’s signing that shielding police-cam footage from the public actually bolsters transparency: “[The law] seeks to gain public trust while respecting the rights of public safety officers,” reads a statement from McCrory’s office. The new law also establishes a “Blue Alert,” which acts as an “AMBER alert” for cops, alerting the public about suspects who’ve harmed or killed police officers. McCrory signed the law as the nation reels from a number of high-profile tragedies involving African Americans shot and killed by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota. But the new North Carolina law feels more like a response to last Thursday’s ambush attacks in Dallas that led to the deaths of five police officers and the injury of many others. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the police officers involved in killing Alton Sterling were both wearing body cameras, and had a camera in the dashboard of their car. However, the body cams were dislodged from the police officers as they wrestled with Sterling, and it remains unclear if footage from the dash-cam is usable. Civilian cellphone footage and live-streaming social media helped expose what happened in the shooting deaths of Sterling and Philando Castile, and also in the Dallas ambush. But so far, increased camera surveillance has only seemed to bring added protections for police regarding the release of some footage—as in the case of this new North Carolina law.
The City of Chicago recently released hundreds of audio and video files of police involved in violent actions on citizens. This was done after a court ordered the city to release video of Chicago police officer Jason van Dyke shooting the African-American teen Laquan McDonald. The city kept police-camera footage of that killing from the public for more than a year. McCrory referenced this as he signed the North Carolina law on Monday, saying, “We’ve learned in Chicago that if you hold a piece of film for a long period of time, you completely lose the trust of individuals.” Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter. The best way to follow issues you care about. Subscribe Loading... And yet, McCrory has now sent North Carolina in the exact opposite direction of Chicago’s moves toward reform. This, along with the Baton Rouge police-cam malfunction, is not likely to inspire much confidence among people who are already cynical about the efficacy of police cams. As Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza told Jelani Cobb in The New Yorker: Being able to watch the execution of a black person doesn’t further any kind of consequences for the murderer. In all of the cases of police violence in the last three years, 0.01 per cent of those officers have been convicted, so body cameras are not the solution. I think as we saw in Baton Rouge, there were body-camera mandates for those officers. Supposedly those cameras fell off during the struggle that didn’t happen, and of course the dash cam wasn’t working, so, again, it’s an interesting idea in the direction of transparency, but in its implementation, it’s deeply, deeply flawed. Police cams helped bring federal criminal charges against a Las Vegas police officer in January, but it remains to be seen if the footage will actually bring a conviction in that case. There’s no justice here if these cameras are only helping to protect the police from public accountability instead of helping the police better protect the public.Image caption The cryptochrome protein comes in more than one type - and the human one can perform as the fly's
A light-sensitive protein in the human eye has been shown to act as a "compass" in a magnetic field, when it is present in flies' eyes.
The study in Nature Communications showed that without their natural "magnetoreception" protein, the flies did not respond to a magnetic field - but replacing the protein with the human version restored the ability.
Despite much controversy, no conclusive evidence exists that humans can sense the Earth's magnetic field, and the find may revive interest in the idea.
Although humans, like migratory birds, are known to have cryptochrome in their eyes, the idea of human magnetoreception has remained largely unexplored since pioneering experiments by Robin Baker of the University of Manchester in the 1980s.
Dr Baker used a long series of experiments on thousands of volunteers that suggested humans could indirectly sense magnetic fields, though he never definitively identified the mechanism. In subsequent years, several groups attempted to repeat those experiments, claiming opposing results.
Time, flies
At the heart of the current study is a molecule called cryptochrome - an ancient protein present, in one of its two major forms, in every animal on Earth.
The protein is implicated in the regulation of circadian rhythms - the "body clocks" of humans and other animals - and in the navigational skills of several species including migratory birds, monarch butterflies, and the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.
The exact mechanism behind animals' navigational abilities remains a mystery, however, and an active area of research.
I would be very surprised if we don't have this sense... the issue is to figure out how we use it Steven Reppert, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Steven Reppert of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and his colleagues have been following the roles that cryptochrome plays in some of these species for a number of years.
D. melanogaster flies can be genetically engineered to produce cryptochrome-2, the version of the protein present in monarch butterflies and in vertebrate animals including humans.
Last year, Dr Reppert's team showed in a Nature paper that flies without either cryptochrome were unable to align themselves with magnetic fields, but that the magnetoreception ability was recovered when the flies produced the non-native cryptochrome-2.
"We developed a system to study the real mechanism of magnetosensing in fruit flies... we can put these proteins from other animals into the fly and ask, 'do these proteins in their different forms actually function as magnetoreceptors?'," Dr Reppert told BBC News.
"Of all the vertebrates, the one that seemed to make the most sense was trying to put in the cryptochrome from humans."
The results mirrored the experiments with monarch butterflies. D. melanogaster flies with no cryptochrome showed no evidence of magnetoreception, but when genetically engineered to produce the human version, they recovered their abilities.
Dr Reppert said that the difficulty in unpicking the nature of human magnetosensing - if it exists - was that, like the circadian rhythms that cryptochromes are also implicated in, we react to it without knowing that we are.
"I would be very surprised if we don't have this sense; it's used in a variety of other animals. I think that the issue is to figure out how we use it."
Dr Baker, who maintains his results proving human magnetoreception were "overwhelming", hopes that the find re-invigorates the pursuit of a final word on the matter.
"I think one of the things that put people off accepting the reality of human magnetoreception 20 years ago was the lack of an obvious receptor," he told BBC News.
"So these new results might actually be enough to tip the balance of credibility. I shall be fascinated to see."Craig Button TSN Director of Scouting Follow|Archive
I wrote in last season’s report card about Winnipeg’s terrible triad of poor discipline, weak penalty-killing and porous goaltending. It’s a new season, but there has been no significant change in any of these areas. The Jets currently lead the league in times shorthanded per game, have a weak penalty-kill and a poor save percentage. Until these issues change for the better, the Jets will grade no higher than a D. There’s no doubt in my mind that they have significantly underachieved.
Below are the Jets’ individual player grades.
Three factors were considered in assigning grades: performance, results and expectations, as framed by age, previous performance and cap hit/contract average annual value (AAV). Skaters must have appeared in a minimum of 25 games and goalies, 15, to be graded.
Spotlight Player Grades: Patrik Laine (A+) has been as advertised: He is the second iteration of the Finnish Flash. Laine brings fans out of their seats and provides an excitement level that is palpable. Mark Scheifele (A+) has emerged as a No. 1 centre and sits among the scoring leaders in the NHL. Nikolaj Ehlers (A+) has shown no signs of a sophomore slump. His ability to create offence and add excitement makes him and Laine must-see hockey.
Editor’s Note: Follow TSN Director of Scouting Craig Button at @CraigJButton and join the discussion on his Interim Report Cards.
Grading System
A Excellent
B Very Good
C Satisfactory
D PoorA global study of adolescents from low-income neighborhoods revealed that teenagers from Baltimore, a city located just 40 miles from the US capital, are faring worse than their counterparts in Nigeria.
Many people tend to associate child poverty with desperate scenes out of Africa or India. But according to a recent WAVE study, an international survey that examined the living conditions of 15-19 year olds in poor areas in Baltimore, Shanghai, Johannesburg, New Delhi and Ibadan (third largest city in Nigeria), the problem is much closer to home than many people realize.
READ MORE:China overtakes Japan to become world’s second largest stock market
In the five neighborhoods examined in the study, poverty was the common thread that linked these culturally diverse locations. Differences among the teens in these urban areas became obvious, however, when it came to how they perceived their state of well-being.
Teens from Baltimore and Johannesburg, South Africa, viewed their communities more negatively than the other locations in the study.
The two cities showed the lowest number of teenagers who felt safe in their neighborhoods (percentages ranged from 43.9 percent among males in Johannesburg to 66.1 percent of females in Baltimore), as well as the highest averages for witnessing violence (8.9 percent for males and 7.0 percent among females in Johannesburg; 7.0 percent among males and 6.3 percent among females in Baltimore).
These two cities also showed “poor perceptions about their physical environments, their sense of social cohesion, and their sense of safety within their neighborhoods.”
In Baltimore, teenagers exhibited high rates of mental health problems, drug abuse, sexual violence and teen pregnancy. In comparison, teens in New Delhi, despite residing in a much poorer country than the United States, showed fewer signs of such social behavior.
The lead author of the study, Kristen Mmari, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, said the perception teenagers have of their communities plays a large role in how they behave.
“For example, a young man in New Delhi and a young man in Baltimore may both live in neighborhoods with poor living conditions and little opportunity, but because the teenager in New Delhi is able to see his environment in a more positive light, he is less likely to experience to adverse health problems,” Mmari told Vocativ. “He paints a different picture.”
Also, the prevalence of violence and weak social cohesion, which ranks higher in Baltimore and Johannesburg than in the three other cities, also has an impact. In Baltimore, a high number of teenagers from impoverished homes grow up in single-parent homes, in many cases with the father in prison, while many adolescents in Johannesburg have lost a parent to HIV/AIDS.
“When you look at how they perceive their environments, kids in both Baltimore and Johannesburg are fearful. They don’t feel safe from violence,” Mmari said. “This is something we didn’t really see in other cities. In Shanghai, for example, there wasn’t a great deal of violence. You’d ask kids about their safety concerns, and they would say something like, ‘I’m afraid of crossing a busy street.’”
The study indicates a connection between the prevalence of violence and weak social bonds with issues of a sexual nature. Fifty percent of adolescent girls in Baltimore, and 29 percent in Johannesburg, had been pregnant, while more than 10 percent of teenage girls in both cities said they have been raped or assaulted by someone in the previous year.
The study tends to show that the issue of poverty, together with its many disturbing social symptoms, is a worldwide phenomenon. The results also show that the total wealth of a nation is not necessarily linked to the social circumstances of a large portion of its population.
READ MORE:‘BRICS system’ – healthy alternative to ‘defunct dollar system’
The study concluded that individuals from Baltimore and Johannesburg give their neighborhoods the lowest ratings, while people from Ibadan and Shanghai recorded the highest ratings. Citizens from New Delhi ranked in the midrange.
“It is worth noting that in spite of its location in a high-income country, the Baltimore neighborhood had some of the lowest ratings,” Freya Sonenstein, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, wrote in the study’s introduction. “In contrast, Ibadan with its high ratings is located in a lower middle-income country with substantially fewer resources.”"Offline Glass" Fights Smartphone Addiction in Bars
The solution to your addiction could lie in a beer glass—if your narcotic of choice is your smartphone, that is. With tech dependence sweeping the planet, even the most devoted drinkers have likely experienced the siren song of the smartphone calling them away from booze and conversation. But there's now help: the Offline Glass—a beer glass that won't stand for your smartphone habit, literally. Conceived by ad agency Fischer & Friends for the Salve Jorge bar in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Offline Glass is designed with half its bottom cut away. So the only way to keep your glass upright—and prevent beer from spilling on the table—is to wedge your smartphone into the cutaway, out of reach from compulsive texting and Facebook status-checking. It's not entirely foolproof, since enterprising tech addicts could hold the glass and the phone at the same time or wedge a napkin underneath. But having a beer glass that forces you to put your phone down may act like a dunce cap that shames you into sociability. Though it could take a number of spilled drinks before patrons remember to balance the glass on their phones, it's a novel idea that provides a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem. Check out the creation and use of the glass at the Salve Jorge bar below:
The Offline Glass from Mauricio Perussi on Vimeo.(Natural News) Thanks to the acoustic forensic analysis I’ve publicly posted, the FBI now knows there was a second shooter at the Las Vegas massacre. The math is undeniable, and the acoustic analysis proves the existence of a second shooter. (See the video summary below.)
So why is the FBI now deleting all evidence of a second shooter? According to The Daily Sheeple:
According to multiple reports, as well as additional sources cited by Infowars, people who worked at the Route 91 festival where the mass shooting took place have had their phones and laptops returned to them by the FBI only to find that ALL their videos and messages from the night of the horrific attack have been completely wiped clean.
A Facebook status update by a Las Vegas resident who worked the festival reads, “A bunch of people that worked the Route 91 said they got their cell phones back today. They all said that all their phones are completely wiped clean! All messages and info from that weekend are completely gone. Anyone else experience this?”
A more recent post by The Daily Sheeple also confirms that even local police believe there is a massive cover-up being run by the FBI to destroy all evidence of a second shooter:
Officers within the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department believe that there was more than one shooter during the horrific mass shooting that killed 58 people and that officials are engaging in a coverup to hide this shocking information… there are at least six different eyewitness reports that detail or prove multiple shooters even as the authorities and media desperately try to convince the American people that one old man conducted the largest mass shooting in the country’s history.
***Visit our new FREE SPEECH community built exclusively for our readers. Click to Join The Deplorables Network Today!***
Watch my summary of the forensic acoustics evidence that mathematically proves the existence of a second shooter
The FBI knows there was a second shooter at Las Vegas. Here’s a short summary of my forensic acoustics analysis that proves it.
Remember: For years, the FBI ran a fraudulent hair analysis lab that fabricated fake “evidence” to send people to prison. Sadly, the FBI has a history of cover-ups and evidence fraud, which is seriously regrettable, as we all want the FBI to do their jobs and take this investigation seriously. That’s why I’ve even offered to help the FBI with an acoustic analysis of the shooting, but so far they seem to be focused on the “lone gunman” theory.
Courtesy of Natural NewsSpoiler warning: Do not read this article until you have seen Orphan Black Episode 503, “Beneath Her Heart.”
“Keep ’em outta the garage.” —Donnie
Saturday’s new episode of Orphan Black, “Beneath Her Heart,” represented a tonal change from the first two instalments of Season 5, not only because we got to enjoy a trippy visit with the Hendrixes and their friends (both dead and alive) in Bailey Downs, but because we got our first hints of closure as the series heads toward the finish line.
Alison facing down her addictions, guilt and perceived lack of purpose to one-up Rachel and keep Helena hidden from Neolution felt like the completion of her character arc, a feeling that was punctuated by her surprise announcement to go away for a while. As a result, Alison and Donnie’s sweet rendition of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” played like the first goodbye of the final trip—and was a bittersweet reminder that our time with the sestras is indeed winding down.
To learn more about Alison’s big episode—including if and when we’ll see her again—we caught up with writer Alex Levine.
This episode focuses on Alison, and I understand all the core clones will have similar episodes this season. Why was the choice made to give each clone her own episode this season?
Alex Levine: The writers had always considered whether clones other than Sarah could carry an episode. Even in Season 1, we were asking ourselves that question—coincidentally, about Alison. But we backed off because we really felt, at least in the first and second seasons, that Sarah had to drive the story. She was the capital “H” hero, the woman of action, always asking the questions, always trying to uncover the conspiracy. So while we discussed and even tried to make an Alison-centric story early, we decided as a group to stick with Sarah. She’s really the heart of the show. But in Seasons 3 and later, the other clones started elbowing themselves to the front of the stage. Helena was especially riveting as a hero in her own right. And Rachel also started to carry hefty amounts of story. And Graeme had written a particularly powerful, more personal story for Sarah in Season 4 (Episode 407 – her ‘dark night of the soul’). So when John and Graeme came into the development room last summer for Season 5, they were committed to doing separate, more personal stories for each of the clones, not just Sarah. And each of the characters were so well developed by then, their worlds so rich and fleshed out, that it was easy to see how it could finally work.
In a flashback, we see Alison and Donnie do mushrooms with Aynsley and Chad. (It was SO great to see those characters again!) The scenes were hilarious but also showed that Alison chose to cope by using drugs very soon after finding out she was a clone. Why was it important to show that moment?
Early in the development of Season 5, John Fawcett wanted to have a church picnic. John’s really the curator of Alison’s suburban world. That church picnic morphed into the Fall Fun Fair that you see in the episode. We also knew we were going to focus pretty early on the stakes of Leekie’s body and Rachel using police leverage to try to force the Hendrixes to give up Helena’s whereabouts. What we didn’t have was Alison’s personal story. That character has been through so much over four seasons: drug dealing, adultery, pill addiction, letting Aynsley die, burying Leekie. She’s a high-strung suburban train wreck. Point is, we have delved deeply into Alison’s character, but we wanted to showcase a side of her that we haven’t seen.
So when we landed on the idea of exploring what she was like at the time she first learned she was a clone, it was exciting. But we still didn’t know how to dramatize her struggle from denial to acceptance, both in flashback and in the present. It’s a complicated personal story, but we also wanted to tap into that feeling everyone has that they might be living the ‘wrong life,’ so to speak. At the end of the day, this is an episode about one of our central themes: identity. We spun a bunch of versions of that flashback story before we landed on a mushroom trip. Not only was it realistic to show how Alison has used substances to cope in the past (and present), but the trip allowed her to explore and talk about her feelings about being a clone, her identity, and her life in a thoughtful, navel gazing, but realistic way.
After Donnie collapses on stage, Alison sees ‘ghost Aynsley’ in the audience. Does this mean she has forgiven herself for Aynsley’s death?
Yes. We wanted to resolve Alison’s feelings of guilt about letting Aynsley die in this episode in order for her to be able to move forward in her life, forgive herself, and recommit to her sisterhood. So that was an important part of the story that Graeme Manson really helped to focus in on during the rewrite process. The flashbacks allowed us to show that Alison and Aynsley were once extremely close and not as competitive and adversarial as we see them in Season 1. In that light, it’s easier to see how Alison might get over what she did—with Chad’s help of course.
After all the times that Helena has saved Donnie and Alison, the big payoff is that Alison—who is repeatedly told that she is useless—faces off with Rachel and saves herself, Donnie and Helena. What does that moment mean for her?
This is really the culmination of Alison’s growth as a character. She’s gone from this somewhat selfish person to someone who gets involved in the clone fight reluctantly, to a real hero who is willing to put her neck on the line to save her sisters. Remember when we met her, Alison was the person who wanted to throw money at the problem and keep herself and her family far from the front lines. But so much has happened, including Helena having saved Alison and Donnie from the Cheek Choppers last season. So Alison hasn’t forgotten that. And she finally realizes it’s time for her to step up.
Alison tells Donnie that she is going away for a while. Does that mean we won’t be seeing much of her the rest of the season?
Every season we have to park one or more of the clones in a bunch of episodes for production reasons. Season 5 is no different. The time it takes to change Tat from clone to clone in terms of hair and makeup is very difficult on production. We just can’t afford to show them all every episode, and frankly, we don’t have the screen time. So yes, Alison is going away, but she’ll be back before you know it. And she will come back with surprises!
Kira isn’t telling Sarah or Mrs. S much about what happens when she meets with Rachel, but also she appears to be holding Rachel at a distance. What is going on in Kira’s head right now?
Kira, at this point in the story, is growing into a more mature person, realizing she’s not just an object anymore, not just something that everybody wants. Sarah has let her down a bit, in the sense that she has been overprotective like many mothers are. But Kira knows she’s finally in a position to make choices for herself. And Rachel is offering her the opportunity to understand herself and her biology. That’s an offer Kira has to take seriously. But Kira understands Rachel better than anyone. She knows there’s strings attached somehow… How’s that for a vague answer?
Art was prepared to go all in and kill Engers when she dug up Leekie’s body. He’s in a really tough spot. What can we expect from his storyline in the next few episodes?
Art narrowly escaped putting himself and his family in terrible danger. He has to continue to toe the line—to work with [Engers] for Neolution in order to keep his daughter safe, but he has to try not to jeopardize the clone sisterhood. Art’s life ain’t easy!
Whose idea was it to have Alison and Donnie sing ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ to end the episode? That was very sweet and moving.
We knew Kristian is this multi-talented guy, that he could highland dance and play mandolin. So using those talents were targets of Graeme’s early on. As usual, when we use a known song, it comes down to fit and cost. We had a bunch of tunes we were choosing from, but we wanted to find a song that gets going quickly, where both singers in the duet get to sing pretty much right away. This song was perfect emotionally, but truth be told, we had no idea it would play so well. That’s a testament to the actors. Tat and Kristian have worked together in these characters for so many years there is a lot of trust and understanding there. I thought Kristian’s vulnerability in that scene was amazing. It felt real and honest and I was blown away.
Can you give us any hints about Episode 504?
I consider 503 a change up, a different kind of OB episode. 504 is more of a traditional thrill-ride. Sarah and Mrs. S team up and have to work through Sarah’s lingering resentment from 502/503. And we welcome back an old adversary…
Orphan Black airs Saturdays at 10 p.m. ET on Space.
Images courtesy of Bell Media.After a long campaign, the Union Academy U13 and U15 teams competed in the National Premier Leagues Regional Finals in Glastonbury, Connecticut, on June 18th and 19th.
The U13s reached the finals after coming out on top of a back-and-forth battle in the semi-finals against Bethesda-Olney. The two teams traded blows, but the Union eventually came out on top with a 3-2 victory.
The next day, the U13s found the finals against Baltimore Armour to be a little more straightforward. The Union entered the match focused and ready to play. The U13s were rewarded for their efforts with a 3-0 victory, and an NPL Northeast Region championship. The boys have now qualified for Nationals, which will take place in Aurora, Colo., from July 14-18.
In the semi-finals, the U15s found themselves locked in a defensive battle against Players Development Academy. Neither team was able to break the other down, so the match had to be settled with penalty kicks. Union Academy keeper Dylan Smith ensured that the U15s would advance to the finals to face Oakwood with multiple saves in the penalty rounds.
In the finals, the U15s found themselves locked in yet another tight game. Both teams were able to find the back of the net once during regular time, but neither could find a decisive goal in regulation. Oakwood took the lead in extra time, and were crowned champions of the Northeast Region.
As the U13s and U15s wrap up their season, both the USS |
died due to lack of the vaccines needed.
Similar incidents have been reported in ISIS’ de fact capital of Al-Raqqa.
Herds of wild dogs are roaming the streets day and night in ISIS-held cities; the large number of corpses being thrown is blamed for such phenomenon.
The ISIS-controlled city of Deir ez-Zor is suffering a severe shortage of vaccines, medicines and medical supplies since ISIS called off all forms of trading with medical organizations, be it local or international.
Areas in both Syria and Iraq currently under the control of the Islamic State are plagued with different contagious diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and polio. The death toll from these diseases is increasingly growing since medical care has dropped nearly to nothing.
AdvertisementsQuote of the Week
"At our conference, producers largely did not provide specifics on what capex/ production would look like at $35/bbl of oil. Instead, producers spoke largely of their agility to spend within cash flow and … ramp up when needed. Commentary suggested $50 per barrel WTI is now where producers would raise activity."
Goldman Sachs, in a note to investors
1. Oil and the Global Economy
Crude futures settled below $30 a barrel on Friday with New York closing at $29.42, down 10.5 percent for the week, and London closing at $28.82, down 13.7 percent for the week. The global oil glut, a stronger dollar, and reports that the sanctions on Iran were about to be lifted contributed to the move. The now familiar factors of a circa 1.5 million b/d surplus in global oil production; a strong US dollar, up 20 percent since mid-2014; the Chinese economy continuing to slacken; and problems on the horizon for US growth were the main reasons behind the price slump. A couple of new concerns have arisen lately. Analysts are worried about the optimism being expressed by US shale oil producers over the likelihood of higher oil prices just ahead. Many US drillers are not trying to cut back on production but simply tying to hold things together until later this year. Another factor is reduction in demand for diesel used to drill and frack oil wells which is down by nearly 50 percent in the last 18 months. The drop in demand for diesel along with warm weather is leading to large surpluses of distillates.
Adding to the problem is the fact that much of the world’s oil production is being sold at prices well below the London and US futures benchmarks which are now around $29 a barrel. This because most oil is of lower quality than the benchmark specifications or that there are large shipping costs involved in getting the oil to refineries. OPEC announced, before the most recent price drops, that its members were getting an average of $25.69 for their oil. Dubai crude which is the benchmark for much of the oil going to Asia from the Middle East was at $25.88 on Wednesday. Oil sold at the wellhead in the Bakken shale is now down to $20 a barrel, and low grade oil from western Canada is going for $15.
The consensus of government agencies, oil analysts, and traders is that we still have a way to go before oil prices bottom out. There is still nothing on the horizon that suggests anything other than increasing production from Iran, and weakening demand from China and its suppliers. This situation has led to several investment banks coming up with worst possible cases for the bottom of the oil price slide. Last fall, many laughed at Goldman Sachs’ assertion that oil could fall as low as $20 a barrel this year. With Brent now going for less than $29 a barrel, this no longer seems particularly outlandish. It the past week, Morgan Stanley joined Sachs in talking about $20 oil. The Royal Bank of Scotland suggested that oil may go to $16 and Standard Charter topped them all by saying “prices could fall as low as $10.”
The EIA forecast last week that the oil glut will continue until late 2017 and that global production will likely rise by another 800,000 b/d from 95.9 b/d in 2016 to 96.7 b/d next year. The Energy Department expects that prices will stay below $50 for the next year or two. With exception of some in the shale oil business, who are trying to get bank loans extended, most observers are not forecasting higher prices within the next 18 months. US oil production may slip from 9.5 million b/d in 2015 to 8.5 million in 2017 as the EIA recently forecast, but the Iranians insist that they will be able to bring another 1 million b/d to market offsetting any drop in US production.
There has been much discussion in the financial press recently on the ill-effects of $30 a barrel oil. Obviously many bank loans are not being repaid and bankers are scrambling to absorb defaults. Some are saying that between one third and one half of the smaller oil producers will be bankrupted in the next 18 months if oil stays anywhere near current prices. BHP Billiton announced that it was taking $7.2 billion write-off on its US shale assets. S&P is warning of mass downgrades of oil and gas firms in the next couple of months. State tax revenues are being squeezed. In Texas, revenues from energy production are down 50 percent year over year. While Texas may have a large and diverse enough economy to survive, other such as North Dakota are in trouble.
While the next couple of years seems to be headed towards low prices and overproduction, it is the longer term that is more of a question. A recent analysis concludes that in the last 18 months some $400 billion in oil exploration and production projects have been postponed awaiting higher prices. These projects were intended to produce some 27 billion barrels of oil at an eventual rate of 2.9 million b/d. The production of this oil will now be delayed by at least 2-3 years and possibly much longer if prices do not rebound to levels at which it can be produced at a profit. It is numbers like this which are raising of question as to whether the world is at or is approaching peak oil.
2. The Middle East & North Africa
Iran : Now that the sanctions are lifted, the question of how much Iran can increase its production in the coming year and how much oil can it sell into a global market is coming to the fore. Although Iranian officials have repeatedly said that they can increase production by 500,000 b/d immediately and by 1 million b/d within six months, many foreign observers are skeptical of these claims. Iran was producing 4 million b/d back in 2008, but this was down to 3.6 million just before the sanctions were imposed. Recently they have been producing 2.9 million b/d. Since the sanctions were imposed, little maintenance has been done on the aging wells and drilling new ones will take several years. Some believe that an increase in Iranian exports has already been priced into the current low oil prices so we should not expect the lifting to result in much lower prices immediately.
The median estimate in a recent survey of foreign observers of Iran’s oil situation was that the country can add about 680,000 b/d to the oil supply by the end of the year. The most pessimistic of those surveyed said that the Iranians can only increase production by 150,000 b/d in the next six months and by 250,000 b/d by the end of the year. The 680,000 b/d figure is higher than the amount that the IEA says non-OPEC countries will cut production in 2016, suggesting that over production could grow.
For the last few months, Tehran has been quite active in attempting to find customers for any increased oil production. First it has to unload the 7 to 50 million barrels (depending on the estimate) stored aboard tankers, and find steady customers for the increased supply. The Iranian Tanker Company says it expects to start transporting 200,000 b/d to traditional Iranian customers in Europe and another 200,000 b/d to India. The Iranians have said several times that they expect the other OPEC members to cut production so that they can regain their rightful share of the markets. With Dubai crude, the benchmark for middle eastern oil, already down to $25 a barrel, Tehran is not going to be getting much for its oil especially if it has to sell at deep discounts to regain market share. Iran’s Oil Ministry, however, claims that its costs of production are only $10 a barrel so that it has plenty of room to bargain and still make some kind of profit.
There is already talk of the Iranians offering to barter their oil for foreign produced goods, which would at least prevent the actual sales price at which they are “selling” their oil from becoming public. Another way to unload oil would be for Tehran to trade oil for stakes in foreign refineries, with the understanding that the refinery would take Iranian oil under long-term contracts. This way oil could be “sold” without revealing the size of the discount to other customers who would demand the same prices.
Syria/Iraq : Over one million civilians are facing starvation in Syrian towns that have been surrounded and cut off from food supplies by the fighting. Some 400,000 are blocked from getting regular food supplies, some 180,000 are besieged by government forces, 12,000 are besieged by rebel groups, and 200,000 are trapped by the Islamic State’s siege of Deir al-Zor. Some relief convoys are getting through, but these are no where near enough to solve the pending disaster. The UN Security council will take up the issue next week.
ISIL is making a renewed push to capture the Syrian city of Deir al-Zor which is on the road and river between Raqqa and Ramadi. Several sources are reporting a massacre of government supporters and their families is taking place as ISIL forces push into the city. Some are saying that those being executed could run into the hundreds.
In Iraq, fears are increasing that the Mosel dam, which is back under government control but not receiving the maintenance necessary to keep it from failing, is in danger of collapse. Should this happen suddenly, 500,000 Iraqis living downstream could be killed in the resulting flood and more than a million made homeless.
In southern Iraq clashes among Shiite tribes have broken out around Basra, forcing the army to send an armored division to the city to restore order and disarm the tribal militias. Security forces backed by helicopters entered Basra, raiding homes and seizing large quantities of weapons stored there. As Basra and its oil are the backbone of Iraq’s economy its security is a top government priority. Forces had been deployed earlier to restore calm to rural areas north of the city near the West Qurna and Majnoon oilfields. Local officials are assuring the foreign oil companies that their equipment and facilities are secure. On Saturday, an executive of the South Oil Company said that the tribal clashes have not affected oil production and that so far in January exports have been running at 3.3 million b/d which is higher than in December.
In Kurdistan, the government is suffering from low oil prices. The government is four months in arrears on its bills and deep in debt. Erbil is unable to meet a bloated government payroll, take care of thousands of refugees that have swarmed into its territory and fund the salaries of the Peshmerga which is the frontline of the forces opposing ISIL. The Kurds have ramped up independent exports of 600,000 b/d, but the low prices still leave the Kurdish government with a monthly deficit of $717 million. A deal last year to export most of the oil produced in Kurdistan through the government in Baghdad’s marketing organization never got off the ground as Baghdad had higher priorities than sharing its reduced revenue flow with the Kurds.
There does not seem to any political reconciliation between the Kurds, and Baghdad in sight. The Kurds who are supposed to play a role in the capture of Mosel do not believe the government can get its act together for an offensive this year.
Libya : It now appears that the formation of a new UN-mandated government by January 17th will not take place as many in the two existing governments are opposed to the agreement. The new unity government is supposed to eliminate the second national oil company which is trying wrest control from the established oil company in Tripoli. It is further hoped that a unity government would be able to attract military support from the European powers to deal with the growing threat from the Islamic State, which two weeks ago attacked and set fire to seven oil storage tanks at the Ras Lanuf and El Sider oil terminals. These terminals lie between Sirte, which is controlled by the Islamic State, and Benghazi. Efforts by Tripoli to send tankers to empty the endangered oil tanks at Ras Lanuf was been blocked by local security forces loyal to the Tobruk government. Last week the major oil pipeline supplying the Ras Lanuf terminal was blown up; however, the pipeline has not been operational for two years.
Libya is currently producing less than 400,000 b/d which is about a quarter of the country’s pre-uprising production. Production in the eastern part of the country, however, has remained relatively stable. The Arabian Gulf Oil Company which operates the region, says it exported 64 million barrels of oil last year.
In the meantime, the threat to Libya’s oil industry from the Islamic State is growing. European intervention is possible at some point, but for now everyone seems to waiting for a new government to be formed. If this proves to be impossible we may be back to square one. At some point the threat of the Islamic State may become so serious that foreign intervention will be inevitable.
Saudi Arabia : Concerns about the long-term future of Saudi Arabia are starting to appear with increasing frequency in the media. The Saudis’ proxy wars with Iran in Yemen and Syria are not going well. Its arch-enemy, Iran, just achieved a negotiated end to nuclear sanctions and is now free to grow stronger and compete with the Saudis for a bigger share of the oil market. Saudi efforts to drive American shale oil producers out of business is turning out to be much more expensive than planned and the low oil prices, which are partially the fault of Saudi policies, are forcing Riyadh to burn through its financial reserves. Net foreign assets are down by $100 billion in the last 15 months.
Last week Riyadh announced that it has established a new sovereign wealth fund to diversify its investments. It has asked investment banks and consultants for proposals. The new fund could affect some of the world’s largest assets managers, particularly in the US where the Saudis keep most of their money. The growing rift with Washington could be one of the reasons for the move.
The fiscal situation is becoming serious and large cuts in the state budget have been announced. These cutbacks may threaten the social stability of the country which has been maintained for years by large government spending and subsidies to keep its growing populace quiescent. Outside of oil and gas exports, the country has few other sources of revenue. Global warming is forcing the desert country to spend an increasing share of its oil production on keeping cool in the summer and the Gulf states will be among the first to suffer serious consequences from rising temperatures.
While Riyadh spends vast sums on the latest military hardware, its military power is relatively weak compared to its neighbors. In the interests of safeguarding the royal family, Saudi military leadership is heavily politicized and certainly no match for Iran and probably not even the Houthis in a direct military confrontation. In Yemen, it has not committed its own ground forces from fear of taking casualties, but has relied on mercenaries from the other Gulf states. While there does not seem to be any immediate threat to the kingdom or its oil exports on the horizon, the trends are not good.
There has been much discussion as to what the Saudis might sell if they put a piece of Saudi Aramco Oil Company up for sale to raise money. Many believe that the Saudis could group the down stream parts of Aramco, mainly refineries, into a separate company and then offer shares in this entity to the public. The oilfields and production could remain completely in Saudi hands. However, the company’s chairman said in an interview that potential sale of shares in its state-owned oil giant could include listing at least part of its exploration and production assets, countering speculation that any IPO would focus solely on its refining and petrochemical arms. (1/12)
3. China
Beijing’s demand for oil imports has remained more robust than expected in the past year, with December imports hitting a record. Much of the increase in imports can either be attributed to opportunistic buying for strategic reserves or for refining into oil products for exports which have been increasing rapidly in recent years. A new study by Barclays, however, says that the bank can detect the beginning of a contraction in demand as the industrial portion of China’s economy slows. While actual oil consumption in China is not published and is difficult to calculate, Barclays believes that implied oil demand in November was 2 percent lower than in November 2014 as the use of diesel for industrial production declined. The study concludes that China’s demand for oil will grow by 300,000 b/d in 2016 as compared to 510,000 last year.
Last week was a bad one for Chinese stock markets as they slid to the point where they may break through the lows seen during the market crash last summer. The Shanghai market now is down 18 percent this year and 20 percent from the December 22nd high. Many expect that the “National Team,” which is the way the Chinese government intervenes to keep the market from crashing totally, will be back in business this week. Even after the recent decline, shares on Chinese stock markets are still trading at 24 to 33 times earnings as compared to 15 to 16 times earnings in the US and Europe. This suggests that the markets still have considerable potential to fall before prices come back into reality. Fears are rising, however, that a major drop in the Chinese stock markets will have serious repercussions in the rest of the world’s equity markets.
In addition to the volatility in China’s stock markets, the 6 percent decline in the value of the yuan in the past five months is becoming another cause for concern. While the decline may not sound like much, it comes amidst herculean efforts on the part of banking authorities in Beijing to stabilize the currency. To prop up its currency, the Bank of China has spent more that half a trillion dollars of its foreign reserves in the last 12 months, cutting them to a mere $3.3 trillion. The fear is that capital outflows, which Bloomberg calculated to be approaching $1 trillion last year, could turn into a rout creating problems across the global economy.
Some see China’s debt to GDP ratio which has gone from 147 percent in 2007 to 231 percent today as a pending disaster. China has very little room to borrow more money to finance the transition from an export oriented industrial economy to one driven by domestic consumer services. All this seems to say that from several perspectives there are trends that could wreak serious trouble on China’s economy in the next few years and cut its demand for oil.
4. Russia
Falling oil prices and their impact on Russia’s economy continues to dominate the news. With the ruble deep in all-time low territory as it approaches 78 to the dollar, Moscow continues to scramble in bring its 2016 budget into line with resources. Last week the government announced another round of budget cuts, this time by 10 percent. The 2016 budget had been based on an average crude price of $50 per barrel which is looking rather quaint as prices slide past $30 and could see $25 or lower.
Russian stocks fell by the most since 2012 last week as oil broke through the $30 psychological barrier. The Bank of Scotland says that the ruble may drop to 80 rubles to the dollar should Brent crude fall to $26 a barrel. There are new fears that foreign investors may start pulling their money out of Russia contributing to a further fall in the ruble.
Last week Prime Minister Medvedev said that “the oil price declines of the last few days creates serious risks for the budget.” The government could burn through its $50 billion reserve fund as early as this year if serious cuts to the budget are not made and oil prices remain low. The new cuts, however, donot include the military and social services. Military costs have skyrocketed in the past year due to the interventions in the Ukraine and Syria. In October the government cut back on an earlier plan to reduce the defense budget for this year as the costs of the Syrian venture ballooned.
5. The Briefs
OPEC’s average price for a basket of crudes from their producers fell to $25 a barrel on Thursday even before unrestrained exports from Iran hit the market. Benchmark global oil prices took a fresh hit on Friday with the market bracing for more supplies from Iran earlier than expected. (1/16)
Bahrain and Oman on Tuesday reduced government subsidies on gasoline, becoming the latest Gulf Arab countries to try to cut back on spending and offset the effect of oil prices, which have fallen to their lowest level since 2003. (1/13)
China’s state-run oil refiner Sinopec Corp has purchased its first ever batch of US crude oil for export, a landmark transaction after the ending of a four-decade ban on domestic exports. The cargo, due to be loaded from a Gulf Coast port in March, may mark the start of a sustained flow of US oil to China, the world’s second-largest buyer, which is eager to diversify its energy sources. (1/15)
China is forecast to overtake the U.S. as the world’s biggest crude importer in 2016 and that’s largely thanks to a group of buyers—independent privately-held refineries known as teapots—who weren’t allowed to purchase foreign oil a year ago. (1/13)
China’s government, worried that energy has gotten too cheap, said it will tighten its hold over domestic prices for gasoline and other products in response to a slide in global crude-oil prices. Price adjustments for oil products such as gasoline and diesel will be suspended when global crude prices are below $40 a barrel. (1/14)
Demand for LNG from Asian economies that are the world’s biggest gas importers dropped in 2015, according to a report published Wednesday, including a first-ever decline in China’s imports. Global production of the super-chilled natural gas rose 1.6 percent. The increase in supply comes amid a steep drop in spot market prices in Asia over the past year to below $7 per million BTUs. Prices may remain depressed with the start of shipments this year from the US Gulf Coast and a ramp-up in gas exports from Australia. (1/13)
Bad LNG timing: Chevron Corp. said it is on track to export the first cargo of liquefied natural gas from its Australian Gorgon project – the world’s most expensive – early this year. Natural gas supplies from the $54 billion project will come to market just as a raft of other Australian projects come on line and the US is due to export its first cargo from abundant shale gas supplies. Prices for the fuel in Asia have plummeted as slowing economic growth has dented demand growth. (1/15)
In Nigeria, a government official said the way to get Nigeria back on track economically is to direct attention to the production of natural gas. In particular, this would support chemical, agricultural and electric generation sectors. (1/16)
Petrobras’s finances have come under intense strain since a multibillion-dollar bribery scandal emerged at the company in 2014. With about $104 billion in net debt — the highest for any company in the energy sector and a fourfold increase since 2010 — Petrobras has sought to sell assets and reduce spending. The company has stopped paying dividends. The company said on Tuesday that its planned cuts in capital spending would probably reduce its expected oil output in Brazil this year from 2.185m b/day to 2.145m. (1/13)
Venezuela on Friday released its first economic data in more than a year, showing its economy contracting by 7.1 percent during the most recent quarter and inflation at an historic high of 141.5 percent. Ahead of the surprise data release, President Nicolas Maduro said he would declare an economic emergency giving him 60 days to unilaterally enact sweeping reforms. The decree includes tax increases and puts emergency measures in place to pay for welfare services and food imports. (1/16)
Oil sands: Think oil in the $20s is bad? Canadian oil sands producers are feeling pain as bitumen hit a low of $8.35 on Tuesday, down from as much as $80 less than two years ago. Producers are losing money with each barrel they produce. (1/14)
In British Columbia, the provincial government said it did not support efforts by pipeline company Kinder Morgan to triple the capacity of a regional crude oil network to 890,000 b/d. The government said it wasn’t confident the company had done enough to address spill potential from the system. (1/13)
The US oil rig count declined by one rig last week to 515, Baker Hughes Inc. said. That is 851 fewer oil rigs from the 1,366 oil rigs operating in same week a year ago. Drillers cut on average over 16 oil rigs per week in 2015. Additionally, rigs drilling for natural gas declined by 13 to 135 last week, down 175 from one year ago. (1/16)
Mid-sized oil producing companies are proving more resilient against weak oil prices than expected as they are able to slash more costs, allowing them to press ahead with projects that are set to add even more barrels to a global supply glut. British-listed oil producer Tullow surprised analysts on Wednesday with a smaller-than-expected rise in debt to $4 billion. (1/14)
US oil exports: The ink is barely dry on legislation to lift a 40-year-old ban on exporting US crude and energy companies already are jockeying to ship American oil overseas. Two tankers filled with freely traded US oil have pulled out of Texas ports in the past two weeks, with more shipments expected. The first American oil sales abroad are flowing to Europe but, in the longer term, Latin America and Asia could become natural markets. (1/14)
$$ losers: North American oil-and-gas producers are losing nearly $2 billion every week at current prices, according to a forthcoming report from AlixPartners, a consulting firm. (1/12)
Half of US shale oil producers could go bankrupt before the crude market reaches equilibrium, Fadel Gheit said Monday. The senior oil and gas analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. ultimately sees crude prices stabilizing near $60, but it could be more than two years before that happens. By then it will be too late for many marginal U.S. drillers. (1/12)
CAPEX slashed: Oil and gas projects worth $380 billion have been postponed or cancelled since 2014 as firms slash costs to survive the oil price crash, including $170 billion of projects planned between 2016 and 2020, energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie said. Oil and gas firms were being forced into survival mode as oil prices fell 70 percent from around $100 to just under $30 on Friday. (1/14)
Permits down: A Texas state energy regulator said 51 percent as many original drilling permits were issued for December (727) than for the same month in 2014.
In North Dakota, the number of active oil rigs dropped to 49, the fewest since Aug. 2009. The state’s industry produced 1.18 million barrels a day during November, up`10,000 b/d from October. (1/16)
Pulling Exxon’s chain: New York’s state pension fund and the Church of England, both investors in Exxon Mobil Corp., plan to file a shareholder resolution demanding the largest US oil company assess the impact on its business of climate change policy. The resolution is evidence of a growing trend in Europe crossing the Atlantic–large European investment companies have become increasingly vocal about climate change business. (1/16)
Shell offshore Alaska: A group of environmental activists filed a challenge to leases held by Royal Dutch Shell in Alaskan waters, citing the need to act on behalf of the climate. (1/15)
In Oklahoma, 14 residents of Edmond filed a lawsuit against 12 energy companies, claiming their fracking operations contributed to a string of earthquakes that hit central Oklahoma in recent weeks. The plaintiffs are specifically targeting the companies’ wastewater disposal wells, alleging that the injection of fracking wastewater into these wells “caused or contributed” to earthquakes and constituted an “ultra hazardous activity.” (1/16)
The amount of oil hauled on US railways has declined steeply in the past year as refineries swallow more foreign supplies in the face of falling domestic crude output. Tank cars, once feverishly ordered during the US shale boom, are sitting on sidings. Lessors are obtaining car rents 20-30 per cent below early 2015. From a peak in January 2015 to last October, movements of crude by rail declined more than a fifth. The spot market for crude delivered by rail from North Dakota’s Bakken region “is at a near standstill.” (1/11)
LNG glitch: Cheniere’s first shipment of LNG from its Sabine Pass plant in southwest Louisiana has been delayed at least one month. Cheniere said the shipment has been postponed until late February or March, citing “instrumentation issues“ uncovered during the final phases of the commissioning of the first of its five so-called trains, or refrigeration units. (1/15)
States squeezed: In Texas, the nation’s top oil producer, tax revenues from energy are down about 50 percent year-on-year, though overall economic diversification means resulting budget cuts may be minor. In North Dakota oil tax revenues dropped 43 percent to $2 billion as a result of lower crude oil prices. For the first five months of the 2015-2017 budget, total revenues were off nearly 9 percent below the state’s forecast. In Alaska, tax revenue has fallen further and faster than other states in part because tax policies emphasize the income from energy companies rather than the amount of oil extracted. Last year, Alaska received "practically no revenue" from the sector. (1/14)
IHS has agreed to acquire Oil Price Information Service, a pricing-reporting agency for the oil, natural gas and biofuels industries, for $650 million. (1/12)
Dog days for coal: The US Interior Department said Friday it is halting most new leases for coal mining on federal lands and launching a review that could result in higher costs on coal companies and greater scrutiny of carbon emissions. Coal production on federal lands accounts for about 40% of US coal production. (1/16)
Peak coal here? Chinese coal use peaked back in 2013, as Climate Progress first reported in May. China was responsible for some 80 percent of the growth in global demand since 2000. Additionally, the U.S. and most of the industrialized world have also started cutting coal use. Goldman Sachs concluded in September that “Peak coal is coming sooner than expected.” Goldman projects global demand for coal used in electricity generation will drop from a peak of 6.15 billion metric tons in 2013 to 5.98 billion in 2019. (1/16)
Climate tax? New York and four other states are exploring ways to put a price on the air pollution spewing from cars, trucks, trains and other vehicles — the source of more than a third of greenhouse-gas emissions in the northeastern U.S. The result may eventually be new taxes, tolls or a pollution-trading system that could raise $3 billion a year or more for mass transit, electric-vehicle rebates and other climate-friendly projects. (1/12)
RE surviving: The slump in oil prices that’s brought upheaval and cost-cutting to the traditional energy industry spared renewables such as solar and wind, which raked in a record $329.3 billion of investment last year. The 4 percent increase in clean energy technology spending from 2014 reflected tumbling prices for photovoltaics and wind turbines as well as a few big financings for offshore wind farms on the drawing board for years, according to research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. (1/14)
U.S. auto executives, convinced that low oil prices are here to stay, shrugged off concerns about a potential plateau in global automobile demand, issuing bullish forecasts for 2016 and pledging billions of dollars in additional proceeds for shareholders. (1/14)
Auto MPG standards: The next U.S. president will decide the fate of Obama’s goal of boosting average fuel efficiency to 54.5 miles per gallon (23.2 km per liter) by 2025. A decision on whether the final 2021-2025 regulations are feasible is due by April 2018, under a new president. The average fuel economy of new vehicles sold in the United States has improved over the past few years, standing at 24.9 mpg in December. It is down 0.9 mpg from the peak reached in August 2014, but still up 4.8 mpg since October 2007. (1/11)
Driverless cars: The Obama administration is hoping to accelerate testing of fully autonomous vehicles in the US by creating a “consistent national policy”, threatening to override a patchwork of state rules around driverless cars. The US secretary of transportation told the Detroit Auto Show on Thursday that it would propose new principles of “safe operation for fully autonomous vehicles” within six months. (1/15)
Chindia car sales: After a slow start last year, China’s car sales picked up pace to increase by 4.7 percent, averaging well over 2 million new private vehicles a month. Growth this year is forecast at 6 percent. Much of the recent growth in sales has been pegged to generous tax breaks for car buyers but current tax breaks are due to expire on Jan. 1, 2017, which should cool sales. In India, passenger car sales have been growing at an even faster pace, and are forecast to increase by more than 10 percent in the year to March, providing another strong pillar of fuel demand. (1/14)The United States must rethink its huge military outlays, big footprint abroad and summon the courage to defuse debt woes, Chinese state-run media has said, reflecting the political pressures on Beijing with its big stash of dollar assets.
Commentaries in official Chinese media said the economic troubles facing the US and European Union grew out of the political dysfunctions of the Western democracies and their unsustainable appetite for spending.
The Xinhua news agency also linked the weekend US debt downgrade to another Chinese complaint: US military spending, which Beijing sees as aimed at frustrating China's rise.
‘Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States, as the world's sole superpower, has relied on its powerful military to meddle everywhere in international affairs, advancing hegemonism, and paying no heed to whether the economy can support this,’ said a commentary issued by Xinhua, which noted the heavy bills for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
‘Now is the right time for the United States, trapped in economic hardship, to reflect on its domineering thinking and deeds,’ said Xinhua, which urged Washington to ‘change its policies of interference abroad’.
Such media comments do not amount to a definitive response from China's top leaders, who may tread a more careful public line, knowing that their comments could stoke market alarm and a political backlash in the US.
Officials have been mute about the blow to Washington after Standard and Poor's stripped the US of its top-tier AAA credit rating.
But media have decried the potential damage to China's growth and huge holdings of US treasury assets.
‘It must be understood that if the US, Europe and other advanced economies fail to shoulder their responsibility and continue their incessant messing around over selfish interests, this will seriously impede stable development of the global economy,’ said a commentary in the People's Daily newspaper.
‘People have deepening misgivings about the political decisiveness of the Western nations, and this has also seriously hurt global investors' confidence in world economic recovery, exacerbating market turmoil.’So much for strawberry shortcake. Something's been munching on my fruit before it gets a chance to ripen. View Full Caption DNAinfo/Patty Wetli
LINCOLN SQUARE — Something is eating my strawberries.
And they/it must pay.
The strawberries are actually a holdover from last year, when they were a major disappointment through no fault of their own. Note to self: When a plant says June-bearing and you buy it in July, Mother Nature will not change her schedule to accommodate your stupidity.
But the plants came back strong this spring, mushrooming to bush-like size with the promise of approximately a gazillion berries. Visions of strawberry shortcake and this Tarte Tropézienne have been dancing in my head since May.
So it's been sickening to discover some creature's been munching on every berry that's come close to approaching its glorious red-ripened stage.
I flipped over one of these decimated rubies and sure enough, there were the culprits. Grubs, I called them — grubs being what I call everything that isn't an ant, worm or spider. Pill bugs, aka, roly-polys, a fellow gardener corrected. Our plots, apparently, were all infested with them.
I went home and immediately googled "pill bugs are eating my strawberries," a subject I quickly learned is as hotly debated among gardeners as the authenticity of President Obama's birth certificate is among the American electorate.
In one camp: Those who insist pill bugs only eat decaying matter, and if they're spotted on your strawberries, it's because some other critter attacked the fruit first.
In the other camp: Those who think the people in the first camp are idiots.
Having caught the suspects red-handed, I went with the second group.
The question then became how to deal with the infestation. Suggestions abounded, including placing straw under the berries ("they're called'straw' berries for a reason") and spreading something called diatomaceous earth around the seedlings.
I opted for hand-to-hand combat.
We set a couple of "traps" for the bugs — placing large pieces of bark at various points in the garden bed, hoping to attract the roly-polys with the cover of darkness. Maybe a dozen fell for this ruse, the rest we would have to hunt. My goal: total annihilation.
I'm not normally a ruthless or mean-spirited person and I definitely don't have the mindset of a killer. Once, when we were dating, my husband Dave took me to play laser tag. I spent the entire "game" cowering behind a wall.
But something about defending my strawberries against the pill bugs triggered a heretofore latent Clint "Get off my lawn" Eastwood instinct, circa "Gran Torino."
Scouring the garden bed square foot by square foot, I began squashing the bugs tentatively at first, then with increasing aggression, especially the pests I unearthed beneath innocent, unsuspecting berries.
"Die, you bastard, die," I snarled as I crunched a particularly large specimen between my fingers.
A "pow, pow, pow" with finger guns accompanied |
6 did Goldman Sachs quietly pay out $5 billion for wrongdoing. Informed observers claim that the penalty is itself another sham and that the actual fine is going to be far less. To this day not a single Goldman Sachs executive has been indicted for crimes, let alone gone to jail. Goldman made billions every step of the way.
Phil “My Pockets” Murphy
Murphy’s vast personal fortune comes from the astronomical pay package he was entitled to as a Goldman executive. Murphy made his political connections over the course of his 23 years at Goldman Sachs.
As reported in The Nation:
Murphy’s Goldman connections were instrumental in his transition from Wall Street to politics. “He is a close confidant of former treasury secretary and Wall Street veteran Robert Rubin…” reported the German weekly Der Spiegel….“It was through his connection to Rubin that Murphy began working as a Democratic Party fundraiser.” Murphy also had ties to Michael Froman, Rubin’s chief of staff at the Treasury. According to WikiLeaks, in 2008, it was Froman who recommended to John Podesta, then overseeing Obama’s transition, that Murphy get a top job in the administration. In 1999, Murphy joined the firm’s management committee, an elite group that included Hank Paulson, later George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary, and Gary Cohn, now President Trump’s top economic adviser. Two years later, he became co-head of the division overseeing the assets of pensions, foundations, hedge funds, and other institutions…which totaled $373 billion by 2003. And as a prime broker for investors, his division fed hedge-fund clients enormous lines of credit, fueling Wall Street’s speculative bubble. Murphy returned to the New York headquarters in 1999, just as the firm—and Wall Street—were undergoing a dramatic transformation. That was the year Glass-Steagall was repealed and a ban was placed on the regulation of derivatives. Both moves were orchestrated by Robert Rubin, the Clinton administration’s Treasury secretary and another Goldman Sachs alum…
While Murphy bankrolled the hedge funds with billions for their gambles, his confidant Robert Rubin turned Wall Street into a casino. Murphy’s colleagues on Goldman’s elite management team were Henry Paulson and Gary Cohn. Paulson orchestrated the largest Wall Street bailout in history and Cohen fueled the sub-prime mortgage market. Today, Cohn is calling the shots for Donald Trump.
This is how “Government by Goldman” rolls.
Now Murphy claims he will take on Trump. This is hard to believe when Trump –more than any other president — is himself surrounded by former Goldman Sachs executives.
Trump’s administration has had six major players with deep ties to Goldman Sachs: Gary Cohn at the helm; Steve Bannon, now disgraced but still champion of the far right; Steve Mnuchin is in as Treasury Secretary; Dina Powell, economic advisor with ties to important Democrats and Republicans; Jay Clayton, chair of Securities and Exchange Commission. And, briefly, Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director.
The most powerful is Gary Cohn, who is Giving Goldman Sachs everything it ever wanted from the Trump Administration.
The Trump economic agenda…is largely the Goldman agenda….If Cohn stays, it will be to pursue an agenda of aggressive financial deregulation and massive corporate tax cuts — he seeks to slash rates by 57 percent — that would dramatically increase profits for large financial players like Goldman. It is an agenda as radical in its scope and impact as Bannon’s was.
The Trump economic agenda is the Goldman Sachs agenda — created and pitched by Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin.
Money Makes the Machine Go Round
Murphy has made no effort to get money out of politics. The reality is just the opposite: Money Won.
Instead of following the example of Bernie Sanders or Seth-Kaper Dale in refusing corporate donations, Murphy’s campaign would have been a big nothing without his Wall Street fortune. Murphy’s investments made $7.3 million in 2015 alone. He relied on personal wealth to win the nomination.
Big money was decisive. Murphy paved the way by donating at least $1.15 million to state and local Democratic organizations since 2001. As early as October 2016, Murphy had put up $10 million for his own campaign. “He’s raised another $613,000, with 30 percent of that coming from people once associated with Goldman Sachs.” By the time the primary was over Murphy had spent “$21.7 million — or 64 percent of the $33.7 million spent by all the contenders put together. He loaned his campaign $16.3 million.”
Once in the general election Murphy shifted gears and went for the public matching funds that gives him tax dollars while limiting his spending and personal loans to his own campaign. But, the program sets no limits on the spending of outside groups.
Chief among those outside groups is the Democratic Governors Association. A September 25, 2017 fundraiser has revealed both the influence of money and the cozy relationship between Murphy and the old-line Democratic machine. According to Observer.com:
The Cherry Hill event is a collaboration between Democratic gubernatorial nominee Phil Murphy and South Jersey power broker George Norcross. Tickets were $2,500 per person, but the invitation noted that the DGA can raise unlimited amounts from U.S. donors. Murphy and Rep. Donald Norcross (D-1) shared top billing…and another Norcross brother, lobbyist Phil Norcross, was one of the hosts.
Murphy and the Norcross trio. It’s both money and the machine but its also more than that.
Although Murphy has never held elected office he did “serve” New Jersey.
In 2005, then-Gov. Richard Codey appointed Murphy chair of a task force on New Jersey’s pension crisis. One of his recommendations was to sell off public assets, which Corzine proposed but failed to get passed. He also suggested raising the retirement age and base pensions on a longer salary window, both of which were later put into effect. [emphasis added]
And who would put the recommendations into effect? Chris Christie, that’s who. And, of course, his Democratic enablers, Steve Sweeny and Sheila Oliver.
So Murphy’s script is Wall Street’s script: privatization of public assets and cutbacks to workers. The report did not recommend stopping tax breaks to corporations, reforming regressive tax structures or identify universal health care as the best solution to our budget problems.
Instead Murphy recommended “sacrifice.” It’s the same language used by elites to win concessions from workers following the 2008 crash. Did Goldman Sachs sacrifice? In the third quarter of 2007, when every other big bank showed huge losses, Goldman Sachs reported a $2.9 billion profit. Former Goldman Sachs executives have held positions of immense power in the Treasury, Federal Reserve and as economic advisors to Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, and now Trump.
“Shared sacrifice” is for suckers and adverse interest is the sucker-punch.
Adverse Interest and the Lesser of Two Evils
“Adverse interest” is when someone claims to “have your back” while they are stabbing you in the back.
Goldman Sachs claimed it was acting in the best interests of its clients. It clearly did not. They made billions betting against their own clients. The Democrats and Republicans claim to represent the American people. They clearly do not. Their real interest is the billionaires and big corporations, and no one else.
American democracy has been ruined because we have accepted a no-win situation. Lesser-of- two-evils voting is the terms of our surrender. Which former Goldman Sachs executive will deliver prosperity? Which faction of the secret police will protect us: the FBI, the CIA or the NSA? Should we vote for the vulgar racists that call the fascists forward or the systematic racists hiding behind Wall Street, endless war and mass incarceration. Which of the two bankrupt parties will lead?
The lack of real democracy leaves us with a servant’s choice: do we want a kindly master or a cruel master? A truly free people would have no masters at all.
We must stop signaling to the elites that it’s okay if they do not represent us — that it’s okay if they just hurt us a little less than the “other guy.” Lesser-of-two-evils voting gives the two-party system no incentive to represent us, just like bailing out Wall Street gives them no incentive to restrain their reckless greed.
Instead we must only vote for parties and candidates that actually represent our interests and values. That is, after all, what representative democracy is supposed to be about.FBI executes search warrant at The Scooter Store
Agents cluster at the front door of Building No. 1 during the February raid. Agents cluster at the front door of Building No. 1 during the February raid. Photo: TOM REEL, Tom Reel/Express-News Photo: TOM REEL, Tom Reel/Express-News Image 1 of / 19 Caption Close FBI executes search warrant at The Scooter Store 1 / 19 Back to Gallery
SAN ANTONIO — Executing a search warrant, federal agents Wednesday swarmed the New Braunfels headquarters of The Scooter Store, one of the nation's largest suppliers of power wheelchairs and scooters.
Authorities wouldn't comment on the reason for the raid, but a source familiar with the investigation said officials were looking for details of how The Scooter Store bills for its equipment.
The Scooter Store recently has drawn scrutiny for receiving millions in Medicare overpayments from 2009 to 2011.
Earlier this month, the company underwent another round of layoffs. That came after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that reimbursements for power chairs, scooters and other equipment will be sharply lower starting July 1.
Company officials were mum about the raid. Neither Michael Clark, chief administrative officer, nor spokesman Tim Zipp responded to phone calls.
The Justice Department last week obtained search warrants for at least three Scooter Store locations in New Braunfels, according to people familiar with the matter.
A search warrant also was executed at a San Antonio information management services company that stores Scooter Store records.
The search warrants were filed under seal.
About 150 law enforcement officials — including from the FBI, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Texas attorney general's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit — combed The Scooter Store's offices Wednesday.
Most Scooter Store employees were directed to leave, but first had to show identification to agents, according to an employee who asked to remain anonymous because the person didn't have authority to speak.
A group of employees — presumably executives whose names were on a list — remained behind to be interviewed.
“The employees went out in an orderly fashion,” Timothy J. Menke, a senior adviser for investigations with OIG, said outside the company's headquarters. “We're executing the search warrant on the entire site.”
The Scooter Store employs about 1,200 people at its New Braunfels headquarters and about 1,800 overall, Zipp told the San Antonio Express-News earlier this month. The company laid off 150 people this month and 220 people in September.
For now, uncertainty swirls around The Scooter Store. It's not clear when employees will be able to return to work. They've been advised to call a phone number starting Thursday morning for instructions on when to report.
FBI Special Agent Erik Vasys said the agency was “conducting a regular and usual investigative activity, the details of which I can't discuss further.”
A search warrant was executed in The Scooter Store building that houses IT servers and billing information before the search warrant for the company's main offices was carried out, a second employee said.
The raid came as company executives were set to depart for off-site training that was scheduled to last until Friday afternoon, the first employee said.
The Scooter Store's business has experienced a lot of tumult lately.
Power-mobility devices are a target in the crackdown on Medicare fraud. Government officials have raised concerns that scooters and power chairs are being prescribed to people who don't need them.
CMS is conducting a three-year demonstration program that requires durable medical equipment providers to get “prior authorization” from Medicare before patients living in any of seven states can receive a scooter or power chair.
Texas is one of the seven states, which were chosen for their “high populations of fraud- and error-prone providers,” according to CMS.
In January, CMS announced that Medicare will pay on average 36 percent less for scooters and power wheelchairs starting July 1.
As a result, The Scooter Store announced plans to expand its offerings of products and services, though it didn't provide any details.
Last year, an independent auditor found The Scooter Store received anywhere from $46.8 million to $87.7 million in Medicare overpayments from 2009 to 2011.
The company, however, only has to repay $19.5 million. That led two U.S. senators to ask CMS why it agreed to accept an amount “significantly less” than what it overpaid The Scooter Store.
In a Jan. 22 reply, CMS said it accepted the amount based on The Scooter Store's analysis of the auditor's report.
The company was given five years to repay CMS, though the agency said the agreement doesn't absolve The Scooter Store from further liability related to the billed claims.
Back in 2005, the Justice Department alleged in a civil lawsuit that The Scooter Store defrauded Medicare and Medicaid.
The company disputed the allegations but agreed to settle by paying the federal government $4 million and forgoing $13 million in Medicare payments.
As part of the settlement, The Scooter Store in 2007 entered into a five-year “corporate integrity agreement.” Under the terms of that agreement, The Scooter Store had to report and repay any overpayments within 30 days of identification.
But The Scooter Store agreed to repay the $19.5 million only after the OIG last February threatened to exclude the company from federal health care programs.
It's not clear if Wednesday's events are related to issues surrounding the 2007 agreement with the Justice Department.
The agreement expired on May 11. The OIG still is evaluating The Scooter Store's compliance for the last year of the agreement, an agency spokesman said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, The Scooter Store retail location along Interstate 35 remained open Wednesday, though a store representative said the computer and phones weren't working.
Word of the raid spread quickly through New Braunfels.
“I feel sorry for the employees who may lose their jobs,” said Dianna Cotten, 67, a New Braunfels resident and Scooter Store customer since the 1980s.
pdanner@express-news.net
Staff Writers Zeke MacCormack and Guillermo Contreras contributed to this report.One of the greatest archaeological riddles—and one of the grossest academic omissions—of our time is the untold story of the parallel ruins left by two seemingly unrelated ancient civilizations: the ancient Mayans on one side of the Pacific Ocean and the ancient Balinese on the other. During the course of my research, I have uncovered several mysterious, unprecedented and unexplained similarities in their architecture, iconography, and religion. These similarities are so striking and profound that the Mayans and Balinese seem to have been twin civilizations—as if children of the same parent. Yet, incredibly, this mystery is not only being ignored by American scholars, it’s being suppressed.
What does archaeology have to do with politics and big business? Everything, it seems. This next statement, written in boldface, may sound extreme; but please keep reading, then look at the photographic evidence in this article, then draw your own conclusion:
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a group of researchers and independent thinkers have started to believe that by controlling major academic institutions and the mass media, a vastly wealthy elite group of powerful corporate families is successfully hiding historical and spiritual truths of our ancient past. The goal of this group, according to this theory, is to maintain a secretive global system of economic and political tyranny that their forefathers established more than a century ago that was once termed the “Invisible Government” by influential American leaders.
More specifically, this elite group is concealing the fact that there once existed a highly-sophisticated “Golden Age” civilization on earth in remote prehistory. This Golden Age civilization ended abruptly, but left behind a powerfully-advanced spiritual doctrine that was later inherited by the world’s first known civilizations, all children of the Golden Age.
The world’s first cultures inherited and practiced this “Universal Religion” via the now-academically-taboo process called “hyperdiffusionism,” a pejorative 20th century term recently invented by the establishment media and academia:
“Hyperdiffusionism — the theory that all cultures originated from one [Golden Age] culture. Hyperdiffusionists deny that parallel evolution or independent invention took place to any great extent throughout history, they claim that…all cultures can be traced back to a single culture.”
— Wikipedia
By denouncing, and thus debilitating, any academic study even remotely related to the so-called “hyperdiffusionist” model of history—a model that was widely accepted by scholars of past centuries, who called the Golden Age civilization “Atlantis”—the elite have successfully kept the Universal Religion out of our reach. In doing so they have prevented masses of people from accessing a deep, self-empowering body of wisdom that has the potential to stir a paradigm shift in humanity which would endanger their global hegemony.
The present article examines this possiblity, by relating a single example of hyperdiffusionism in the ancient past. It’s a revealing look at how the ancient culture of the Mayans, a highly-advanced civilization that flourished on the Yucatán Peninsula in southeastern Mexico, is mysteriously similar to a parallel culture on the other side of the globe, the ancient Balinese, who flourished on the tiny island of Bali in Southeast Asia. What you are about to see is evidence of the Universal Religion on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, apparently handed down by the same Golden Age civilization.
Establishment scholars say the Maya and Balinese were never in contact, since they were separated by the Pacific Ocean, which these scholars say was impassible by the ancients. Yet these scholars never offer to explain the profound parallels the two cultures shared. Here are 12 examples of these parallels:space
#1 – Stepped Pyramids (With Temples On Top)
BALINESE (LEFT): The Mother Temple of Besakih, or Pura Besakih, is the most important, the largest and holiest pyramidal temple in Bali, Indonesia, and one of a series of Balinese temples. It has stepped terraces, resembling a stepped pyramid.
MAYAN (RIGHT): This stepped pyramid, called the High Priest’s Temple or Ossuary, has four sides with staircases on each side. The sides of the stairways are decorated with interlaced feathered serpents. Pillars associated with this building are in the form of the Toltec feathered serpent and human figures.space
#2 – Twin Dragons / Serpents Balusters Running Down Temple Sides
BALINESE (LEFT): The last stage of Besakih temple is called Stairway to Heaven, and it is made of twin serpent / dragon balustrades that run down the full length of the stairway. At the bottom of the stairway their mouths are open.
MAYAN (RIGHT): The pyramid of El Castillo features plumed serpents that run down the sides of the northern balustrade. At the bottom of the stairway their mouths are open. During the spring and autumn equinoxes, the late afternoon sun strikes off the northwest corner of the pyramid and casts a series of triangular shadows against the northwest balustrade, which creates the illusion of a feathered serpent “crawling” down the pyramid.space
#3 – Sacred Corbel Arch Architecture
BALINESE (LEFT): This corbel arch from a temple complex in Ubud is constructed by offsetting successive courses of stone (or brick) at the springline of the walls so that they project towards the archway’s center from each supporting side, until the courses meet at the apex of the archway. Often, the last gap is bridged with a flat stone.
MAYAN (RIGHT): Notable throughout Maya architecture is the corbel arch, which directs the weight off of the lintel and onto the supporting posts. The corbel vault has no keystone, as European arches do, making the Maya vault appear more like a narrow triangle than an archway. Often, the last gap is bridged with a flat stone.
Renowned 19th century Mayanist Augustus Le Plongeon, who has since been discredited because of his hyperdiffusionist idea that the world’s first cultures were children of a much older civilization named Atlantis, believed that the universality of the corbel arch in Antiquity was strong evidence of hyperdiffusionism:
“…Augustus Le Plongeon, a pioneering Mayanist, renowned for having made the earliest thorough and systematic photographic documentation of archaeological sites in Yucatan… …for Le Plongeon, the most important evidence of cultural diffusion was the Mayas’ corbelled arch. The arches… he believed, had proportions that related to the “mystic numbers 3.5.7” which he stated were used by ancient Masonic master builders…Those same proportions, he also noted, were found in tombs in Chaldea and Etruria, in ancient Greek structures and as part of the Great Pyramid in Egypt… Throughout his writings, including “The Origins of the Egyptians” published posthumously in 1913, he compares modern and ancient Maya and Egyptian ethnography, linguistics, iconography and religious practices…He was basically on the right track methodologically, and he did make a number of intriguing observations and analogies…” —Lawrence G. Desmond, Augustus Le Plongeon: A Fall From Archaeological Grace
#4 – Parallel “Fearsome” Deities At Temple Entrances
BALINESE (LEFT): Note the face, right hand, left hand, and left foot. This fearsome looking Balinese deity marks the entrances to Balinese temples. He has a torch in his left hand, huge teeth and fangs, long hair, a beard, and a fearful expression. In the bottom photo you can see his left foot points out to the left while his right hand is close-fisted just below his chest, elbow out—similar to the Mayan photo.
MAYAN (RIGHT): Note the face, right hand, left hand, and left foot. This fearsome looking “howler monkey god” statue marks the entrances to Mayan temples. The howler monkey god was a major deity of the arts—including music—and a patron of the artisans among the Classic Mayas, especially of the scribes and sculptors. He holds a torch in his left hand, has huge teeth, long hair, a beard, and a fearful expression. In the bottom photo you can see his left foot points outward to the left while his right hand is close-fisted just below his chest, elbow out—similar to the Balinese photo.space
#5 – Sculpted Stone Serpents>
BALINESE (LEFT): Balinese serpents carved in stone protrude from the sides of temples. The serpent is one of the oldest and most widespread mythological symbols; it represents fertility or the creative life force. As snakes shed their skin through moulting, they are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing. The ouroboros is a symbol of eternity and continual renewal of life.
MAYAN (RIGHT): Mayan serpents carved in stone protrude from the sides of temples. The serpent was a very important social and religious symbol, revered by the Mayans. The shedding of their skin made them a symbol of rebirth and renewal. The chief Mesoamerican god, Quetzalcoatl, was represented as a feathered serpent. The Vision Serpent was also important. During Mayan rituals participants would experience visions in which they communicated with the ancestors or gods. These visions took the form of a giant serpent which served as a gateway to the spirit realm. The ancestor or god who was being contacted was depicted as emerging from the serpent’s mouth.space
#6 – Spiritual Energy Harnessed Through Hand Gestures
BALINESE (LEFT): Notice the yoga-style position of the hands of Acintya (Statuette of Acintya, Bali Museum) the chief deity of the ancient Balinese religion. An important aspect of the ancient worldwide practice of yoga is the subtle but key practice of hand, body and eye postures, to invoke certain flows of energy and create certain states of consciousness, called in India “yoga mudras” or “hand yoga gestures.”
MAYAN (RIGHT): Stela at Copan of king Waxaklahuun Ub’aah K’awiil, believe to have been erected December 5, 711. Note the position of his hands as compared to Acynta. Hand yoga gestures generally work by preventing the dissipation of prana (life-force) from the fingertips. In order to do this, one brings the fingers together in various ways, which helps create certain subtle energy circuits. These circuits then channel prana along particular pathways to affect the mind/body complex in specific ways.space
#7 – Frightening Faces Above Doorways (With Recessed Lintels)
BALINESE (LEFT): Many Balinese temples depict faces of deities—often grotesque or scary visages— above the main doorway. Note how the top of the doorway steps inward in successive steps. In one sense, these were used as apotropaic symbols, having the power to prevent evil or bad luck and to scare away evil spirits. The doorways and windows of buildings were felt to be particularly vulnerable to evil. On churches and castles, gargoyles or other grotesque faces and figures would be carved to frighten away evil and other malign influences.
MAYAN (RIGHT): Many Mayan temples depict faces of deities—often grotesque or scary visages— above the main doorway. Note how the top of the doorway steps inward in successive steps. Some scholars believe these to be masks. The Mayan’s created masks showing the faces of snakes and various animals and these masks were quite common.space
#8 – Twin Elephant Deities<
BALINESE (LEFT): An elephant head at the entrance to a Balinese temple. The elephant here may or may not predate the practice of Hinduism on the island. In Hinduism, the most widely worshiped Hindu god deity is Lord Ganesha: The Elephant God. He represents “perfect wisdom” and is considered to be the “remover of obstacles” and “bestower of prosperity.” He combines the natures of the two most intelligent beings—man and elephant.
MAYAN (RIGHT): An elephant head on a Mayan sculpture. Elephant heads are prominent in art and sculpture throughout the ancient Americas. This is a bit of a mystery, since elephants were supposed to have disappeared from America about 10,000 years ago as the Ice Ages waned. Scholars in the past who subscribed to diffusionist theories believed the elephant imagery was created by the Mayans either because they themselves originated in the Old World or because they had seen elephants first hand after traveling there themselves. It is also possible that cultures in the Americas are far more ancient than scholars realize, and stretch back to a time when elephants were still living in the Americas. British surgeon and sinologist. W. Perceval Yetts (1878 – 1957) wrote:
“So far back as 1813 doubts were thrown on the autochthony attributed to Maya culture, and about ten years ago the famous anatomist Professor G. Elliot Smith revived some of the old arguments and fortified them with many ingenious speculations of his own…to prove that a certain motive used in Maya design was derived from the Old World. The motive is well displayed twice on a carved monolith at Copan…and Professor Smith champions the identification of these two forms as heads of elephants, and, above all, as heads of Indian elephants.” —W. Perceval Yetts, Elephants and Maya Artspace
#9 – Monster Temples With Massive “Mouth” Entrances
BALINESE (LEFT): This is the Goa Gajah temple, also called Elephant Cave. On the façade of the cave is an enormous zoomorphic mask with the entrance to the temple as its mouth. Next to this figure in relief are various menacing creatures and demons carved in the rock at the cave entrance. The primary figure was once thought to be an elephant, hence the nickname Elephant Cave. The site is mentioned in the Javanese poem Desawarnana written in 1365. An extensive bathing place on the site was not excavated until the 1950s. These appear to have been built to ward off evil spirits.
MAYAN (RIGHT): Uxmal: Pyramid of the Magician. On the façade of the pyramid entrance is an enormous zoomorphic mask with the entrance to the temple as its mouth. Next to this figure in relief are various menacing creatures and demons carved in the rock at the entrance. Linda Schele (1942 – 1998) an expert in the field of Mayan epigraphy and iconography, wrote:
“The façades of Maya architecture served as a stage front for ritual and carriers of important religious and political symbolism…One of the most impressive techniques was to treat the entire façade as a great monster head with the door as its mouth, as on…the Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal…People entering such buildings appeared to be walking into the gullet of the monster.” —Linda Schele, The Iconography of Maya Architectural Façades during the Late Classic Period
#10 – Chakana Cross Symbols
BALINESE (LEFT): Scholars have mostly ignored this esoteric spiritual symbol that repeats on Balinese stone monuments, here shown on the Bali Pavilion of Taman Mini. But in Andean culture (Incas, pre-Incas) it’s well-known as “Chakana,” which stands for “Inca Cross.” The Chakana symbolizes for Inca mythology what is known in other mythologies as the World Tree (i.e., the Tree of Life). A stepped cross, with three steps on each side, it is made up of an equal-armed cross indicating the cardinal points of the compass and a superimposed square
MAYAN (RIGHT): Chakana symbols similar to those created by the Incas and pre-Incas of the Andes in Peru exist throughout Mayan art and architecture where they held the same religious meaning and served the same spiritual purpose. As in Bali, the Chakana takes the form of a stepped cross, with three steps on each side. It is made up of an equal-armed cross indicating the cardinal points of the compass and a superimposed square.space
#11 – Third Eye Dot Between Eyes On Forehead
BALINESE (LEFT): The Balinese sculpted faces and wood carvings at left display the Third Eye dot in the forehead, symbolic of the ancient “Third Eye” explained in the religions, mythologies and spiritual systems of indigenous cultures around the world. The Third Eye is available to all of us and we can open it and use it to see the “inner soul,” which is who we really re (i.e., we are the soul, not the body). You can learn more about the Third Eye here.
MAYAN (RIGHT): Mayan stone faces at right display the Third Eye dot in the forehead, symbolic of the ancient “Third Eye” explained in the Mayan religion. You can learn more about the Third Eye here.
#12 – “Triptych” Three-Door Temples—With Accent On Center Door
BALINESE (LEFT): The Triptych three-in-one temple is common throughout Bali, visible on countless temples all over the island. The Triptych pattern relates the central teaching of the indigenous Balinese religion, which is related to the Third Eye. You can learn more about this religion symbolized by the Triptych here.
MAYAN (RIGHT): The Triptych three-in-one temple is common throughout Mexico, visible on countless Mayan, Aztec and other cultural temples all over the Yucatan. The Triptych pattern relates the central teaching of the indigenous Mayan religion, and pre-Columbian religion in general. You can learn more about this religion symbolized by the Triptych here.space
Why Scholars Fail To Study The Parallels
These are 12 major parallels still visible in the ruins of the ancient Balinese and ancient Mayan cultures—twin civilizations that developed on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean who scholars say were never in contact and who scholars believe developed independently of each other. The parallels shared here point to a far different story than scholars tell. The evidence indicates a much deeper relationship shared by the ancient Balinese and ancient Mayans.
Yet establishment scholars are completely ignoring these parallels, not out of spite or because they are purposely trying to cover something up; but because they are being controlled to do so in a way so subtle that even they themselves aren’t unaware of it.
How?
These scholars—mainstream historians and archaeologists—are fundamentally honest and hard-working people who perform the extraordinarily laborious task of unearthing artifacts from our ancient past. When they say “there’s no mystery in the past” and “hyperdiffusionism is an outdated model of history” it seems clear that they themselves genuinely believe it; they’re not trying to deceive the public in any way.
The problem is that they are locked into a particular paradigm that sees our society as the apex and pinnacle of the human story. They view history as a straightforward evolutionary process that went from primitive cavemen through a gradual development into agriculture and then down into the Greeks, Romans, the Middle Ages, and finally the Enlightenment and beginning of Science, all ending with our highly technological civilization of today, which in their minds is the “supreme” one.
They are 100% locked into this “evolutionary” idea of how history works, and so it’s very difficult for them to accept that deep in the remote past there existed a civilization or Golden Age that was even higher than we are, and that was able to do things that we cannot. This is the lens through which they view reality, and so they dismiss any anomalous evidence or find plausible explanations for any evidence that does not jive with this reality.
Moreover, being a “scholar” or an “academic” is a job, a profession, which is part of a larger structure. If you want to get a job as a “scholar” or “academic” you absolutely need to buy into its mindset; buy into the paradigm. If you don’t buy in then you simply won’t get hired, and you won’t climb the ladder and move up. Thinkers and researchers who might have wilder or different or more extra ordinary ideas of the past are thus weeded out so that the ones who are left are those who have bought into the existing paradigm.
Thus, no scholar dares challenge the “established” model against hyperdiffusionism, that is, if he or she wishes to get published or win research grants or move along in the profession. This is the simple way in which research into the human past is being controlled by forces we can’t see and most of us don’t understand.
In Conclusion
This is a very brief look at highlights of the parallels common to two ancient civilizations separated by the Pacific ocean. Like a jig-saw puzzle, the missing pieces of these twin cultures separated by the Pacific Ocean can be put together to reveal a common ancestry.
Scholars of the 18th, 19th and early 20th century believed they understood this ancestry. According to their research, in the dimness of remote Antiquity, in an age so prehistoric it is now lost to time and memory, there once existed a spiritually-advanced “Golden Age” civilization which far surpassed our own modern society culturally and spiritually. The world’s first cultures were all children of this Golden Age “Mother Culture,” and we can still see traces of it today in the many similarities shared by those civilizations that we understand to be the world’s first cultures.
The trouble is, if you mention this Golden Age culture to scholars by using the words “hyperdiffusion,” “Atlantis” or “Lost Civilization,” then not only have you lost their ear, but you’ve lost the ear of most people who hinge on every word the academics say (without thinking for themselves). Hyperdiffusionism is bubkis; that’s the academic line, and if you don’t tow it you’re through.
Richard Cassaro is the author of the groundbreaking new book Written In Stone: Decoding The Secret Masonic Religion Hidden In Gothic Cathedrals & World Architecture:
Richard Cassaro’s new book, The Missing Link, explores the meaning, transformations and propagation of the ancient world’s most important religious icon. His first book, Written in Stone, is a wide-ranging exploration of hitherto-unknown connections among Freemasons, medieval cathedral builders and the creators of important ancient monuments, in support of his theory that a spiritually advanced mother culture, lost to history, is behind many of the world’s architectural and artistic traditions.
Prior to the publication of Written in Stone, Cassaro enjoyed a successful career as a U.S. correspondent, professional journalist, and photo researcher for Rizzoli Publications, one of the world’s leading media organizations. Cassaro, who is a graduate of Pace University in New York City, has examined first-hand the ancient ruins and mystical traditions of Egypt, Mexico, Greece, Italy, Sicily, France, England, India, Peru and Spain; he has lectured on his theories to great acclaim in the United States, Egypt, Italy, Spain and Peru.
Richard Cassaro © Copyright, All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to www.RichardCassaro.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was the first major commercial online service provider in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major influence through the mid-1990s. At its peak in the early 1990s, CIS was known for its online chat system, message forums covering a variety of topics, extensive software libraries for most computer platforms, and a series of popular online games, notably MegaWars III and Island of Kesmai. It also was known for its introduction of the GIF format for pictures, and as a GIF exchange mechanism.
AOL's entry into the PC market in 1991 marked the beginning of the end for CIS. AOL charged $2.95 an hour versus $5.00 an hour for Compuserve, until 1996, when AOL switched to a monthly subscription instead of hourly rates, so for active users AOL was much less expensive. AOL also used a GUI-based client, and while such systems existed for CIS, it only supported a subset of the system's functionality and was purchased separately. In response, CIS lowered its hourly rates on several occasions. The number of users grew |
. This is exactly what our new code was supposed to do, a very peaceful deployment that doesn’t cause any spike.
However, at about 6:10:30, the ELB seemed to abruptly drop all the remaining client connections, causing yet another spike that was hard to explain, because the ELB was in draining mode and should have kept the client connections open. Since the disconnections seemed to happen roughly 2 minutes after deregistering the instance, I initially thought that maybe this was a problem of idle connections being prematurely closed by ELB, so I charted the amount of inbound network bytes on the instance being deployed:
My connections seemed all but idle, there was a very decent amount of constant traffic up until the moment ELB terminates them.
After playing around with the various options in the ELB configuration and not finding anything, I started assuming that the problem could be in my code, so I tried to disable the connection draining from our application and did a traditional deployment, with connection draining enabled just on the ELB side (like in the original scenario): to my surprise, the behavior changed and no client connections were closed within the first 2 minutes of deployment, and ELB properly waited the whole draining timeout (600 seconds) before closing all of them.
Was it a problem in my code then? A quick look at the sources didn’t reveal anything, the code seemed so straightforward that it was hard to not get right. Or was it an ELB issue? I could have opened a support ticket with AWS, but admittedly my case was not strong enough, especially because all the clues pointed to my application being somehow at fault, considering that the wrong behavior stopped if I disabled my manual draining. To get more answers, it was time for some serious troubleshooting!
In-depth troubleshooting of Amazon ELB bug with open source sysdig
I decided to take a deeper look with the command line sysdig, a natural choice for the troubleshooting workflow started with Sysdig Monitor. I took a trace file on the instance being deployed and started analyzing it, looking for clues. In particular, I wanted to study the behavior of the network connections during the draining process, as opposed to when they were abruptly closed.
Let’s start by picking an interval of 2 seconds (from 6:09:01 to 6:09:02) while the collector was in the draining process. What I’m looking for is the list of connections that were terminated during this specific interval, so I can just use a sysdig filter on the time range, including close() calls on network connections:
$ sysdig -r trace.scap "evt.rawtime.s >= 1459534141 and evt.rawtime.s <= 1459534142 and fd.type=ipv4 and evt.type=close and evt.dir=>" 36724048 18:09:01.006251319 1 java (12583) > close fd=1122(<4t>10.2.3.74:41329->10.2.2.170:6666) 36724242 18:09:01.006540360 1 java (12537) > close fd=1480(<4t>10.2.3.74:42404->10.2.2.170:6666) 36725001 18:09:01.010982953 1 java (12342) > close fd=1394(<4t>10.2.3.74:42146->10.2.2.170:6666) 36725719 18:09:01.013094686 0 java (12423) > close fd=1301(<4t>10.2.3.74:41866->10.2.2.170:6666) 36725858 18:09:01.013230480 1 java (12489) > close fd=1585(<4t>10.2.3.74:42721->10.2.2.170:6666) 36799359 18:09:02.002792042 1 java (12545) > close fd=1611(<4t>10.2.3.74:42799->10.2.2.170:6666) 36799961 18:09:02.006753813 0 java (12565) > close fd=1113(<4t>10.2.3.74:41302->10.2.2.170:6666) 36800347 18:09:02.007930225 0 java (12595) > close fd=1382(<4t>10.2.3.74:42110->10.2.2.170:6666) 36800948 18:09:02.010518022 1 java (12541) > close fd=1733(<4t>10.2.3.74:43166->10.2.2.170:6666) 36802082 18:09:02.014709068 0 java (12561) > close fd=1619(<4t>10.2.3.74:42823->10.2.2.170:6666)
Here I can see the connections closed during this 2 seconds interval. They are all from 10.2.3.74 (one of the IP addresses of the ELB) to 10.2.2.170 (my collector instance) on port 6666, where my Java application listens for incoming connections. Notice how there are exactly 5 per second, matching the draining rate set in my code and visible in the chart. Let’s focus on one and let’s study its evolution over time. I’m going to pick the connection 10.2.3.74:42110->10.2.2.170:6666, and analyze its events:
$ sysdig -r trace.scap "fd.port=42110"... 36712412 18:09:00.881506163 1 java (12595) > read fd=1382(<4t>10.2.3.74:42110->10.2.2.170:6666) size=32768 36712413 18:09:00.881511356 1 java (12595) < read res=10732 data=..)..............}.|.....$...I.....b(...vW........c;.s...{..-K.Kr......$...l.WJ 36799705 18:09:02.004217776 0 java (12595) > read fd=1382(<4t>10.2.3.74:42110->10.2.2.170:6666) size=32768 36799706 18:09:02.004222203 0 java (12595) < read res=4344 data=..'..............}.x....G.myl.EI.E.....d...F..5..$V...y.o....V,K.$;q...54K...)P. 36800347 18:09:02.007930225 0 java (12595) > close fd=1382(<4t>10.2.3.74:42110->10.2.2.170:6666) 36800349 18:09:02.007931045 0 java (12595) < close res=0
Here I can see my Java application periodically reading a constant stream of data that the ELB is sending on behalf of the client. Then, at 6:09:02 the backend decides to gracefully close it because it is in draining mode, and it simply does it with a close() event. Overall, a pretty uneventful connection, and there’s everything I was already expecting: my Java process was closing network connections at a controlled rate, hence the gentle curve in the chart.
Now, let’s do the same by focusing on the interval where the connections were abruptly terminated. In the chart, it seems to be happening starting from 6:10:20, so I can use the same filter as before, changing the time:
$ sysdig -r trace.scap "evt.rawtime.s >= 1459534220 and fd.type=ipv4 and evt.type=close and evt.dir=>" 41807067 18:10:20.919093433 1 java (12441) > close fd=1434(<4t>10.2.3.74:42266->10.2.2.170:6666) 41807075 18:10:20.919097290 1 java (12441) > close fd=1687(<4t>10.2.3.74:43028->10.2.2.170:6666) 41807202 18:10:20.919172265 0 java (12326) > close fd=1388(<4t>10.2.3.74:42127->10.2.2.170:6666) 41807212 18:10:20.919176173 0 java (12326) > close fd=1642(<4t>10.2.3.74:42892->10.2.2.170:6666) 41807294 18:10:20.919254145 0 java (12336) > close fd=1391(<4t>10.2.3.74:42137->10.2.2.170:6666) 41807298 18:10:20.919257078 0 java (12336) > close fd=1645(<4t>10.2.3.74:42901->10.2.2.170:6666) 41807348 18:10:20.919342001 0 java (12401) > close fd=1542(<4t>10.2.3.74:42590->10.2.2.170:6666) 41807352 18:10:20.919344824 0 java (12401) > close fd=1290(<4t>10.2.3.74:41833->10.2.2.170:6666) 41807430 18:10:20.919442575 0 java (12403) > close fd=1415(<4t>10.2.3.74:42209->10.2.2.170:6666) 41807434 18:10:20.919445783 0 java (12403) > close fd=1291(<4t>10.2.3.74:41836->10.2.2.170:6666) 41807515 18:10:20.919538091 0 java (12477) > close fd=1199(<4t>10.2.3.74:41560->10.2.2.170:6666)...
Tons of connections being closed within few microseconds, so these are definitely part of the dip I’m interested in analyzing. Let’s pick one, 10.2.3.74:41833->10.2.2.170:6666, and let’s analyze it thoroughly:
$ sysdig -r trace.scap "fd.port=41833"... 41694910 18:10:19.369680049 0 java (12401) > read fd=1290(<4t>10.2.3.74:41833->10.2.2.170:6666) size=16384 41694916 18:10:19.369685017 0 java (12401) < read res=11281 data=..,..............}.|....7I.t.B.....ZPbu..<7.V..<"..-......n..6.MR....."..../.ED 41744806 18:10:20.550291594 1 java (12401) > read fd=1290(<4t>10.2.3.74:41833->10.2.2.170:6666) size=16384 41744808 18:10:20.550295939 1 java (12401) < read res=1448 data=..*..............}.|...xo..tZ....8.-..d&.e..~v.,.)R.......I_......*.....X7D.T.. 41773710 18:10:20.840430741 1 java (12401) > read fd=1290(<4t>10.2.3.74:41833->10.2.2.170:6666) size=16384 41773711 18:10:20.840432849 1 java (12401) < read res=0 data= 41807352 18:10:20.919344824 0 java (12401) > close fd=1290(<4t>10.2.3.74:41833->10.2.2.170:6666) 41807353 18:10:20.919345100 0 java (12401) < close res=0
The connection seems to behave exactly the same as the previous one: it has a considerable amount of traffic until it is terminated, and it is closed by our application. This would seem to reinforce the theory that my code is to blame for this weird behavior.
However, if you look carefully, you’ll see an interesting detail: the last read() call done right before closing the connection (event #41773711) returns zero, and that didn’t happen in the previous analyzed connection. The man page of the read() system call states: “On success, the number of bytes read is returned (zero indicates end of file)”. So, the backend closed the connection because it received an end-of-file from the kernel, which essentially means that the connection was closed from our peer, the ELB, even if it shouldn’t have because the draining period was not expired yet!
There was still one possibility to rule out: could it be possible that my clients somehow were the initiators of this connection termination, and the ELB was merely closing the connections on behalf of my agents? It seemed strange, but I did the exact same analysis above on a bunch of clients (omitted here for brevity) and I could clearly see that ELB was the one to terminate the connections in both directions.
Correlating system and network activity with Wireshark
All these observations were already a pretty solid proof that our collector was behaving as expected and that ELB was deliberately closing the network connections when it shouldn’t have, not respecting the draining protocol described in the documentation. However, to further reinforce my case, I decided to take a look at the same behavior, but from a network traffic protocol point of view, and then correlate the two different angles.
To make this possible, during the deployment I not only took a sysdig capture, but also a tcpdump trace file, which I then explored with Wireshark. This is how the first of the two analyzed connections (the one on port 42110) looks like:
Notice how all the read() calls that I was seeing in sysdig are matched by TCP packets carrying data (length column) flowing from 10.2.3.74 (ELB) to 10.2.2.170 (my instance), whereas packets in the other direction are empty and are just acknowledgements that my host is sending to the peer to confirm data was received.
What is very interesting here is how the close() system call shows up in this trace file: it is translated in a TCP RST packet (#82930) sent from my application, which essentially means the collector decided to reset, and thus close, the connection. Again, nothing I didn’t really know already since the connection was being actively drained by my application, but it’s quite interesting, when doing troubleshooting, to know how a specific system behavior translates into a particular network activity pattern.
Let’s see what happened with the other connection:
This time, things look different. Notice how, with packet #191848, the ELB is sending a TCP FIN packet to my instance, cleanly terminating the connection from its side. Immediately after, my application follows up by sending a FIN packet itself in order to close the connection from its side as well, but what’s important is that the ELB sent the first FIN, thus starting the termination.
How does this translate to the sysdig events in the trace file we’ve seen before? The first FIN packet shows up as the read() system call returning zero, which is the way through which the kernel, handling the TCP connection, informs my application that the peer closed it (end of file). The second FIN packet, instead, is generated right after my application calls the close() on the connection. Notice also how, up until the very last moment, there’s data flowing on the connection, so that rules out every possibility of my connection being terminated by ELB because of idle timeout.
Overall, the sequence of TCP packets completely matched the behavior I was able to reconstruct by looking at the Sysdig Monitor charts and the sysdig trace file.
Conclusions
With all this rich set of troubleshooting data at hand, I reached out to the AWS support with confidence, and after some brief email exchange it was confirmed to be a glitch in ELB and I was given more details about this wrong behavior. In my test environment I had 3 instances registered to the ELB, and each instance was in a separate availability zone.
When using ELB with backend instances in different zones, ELB physically allocates at least one “internal ELB node” in each zone where there is an active backend instance, and every ELB node in a specific zone is responsible for forwarding a portion of the incoming traffic to all the backend instances in that zone. All the IP addresses of these ELB nodes are then registered in a single user-facing DNS name that clients will use.
The problem occurs when one backend instance is de-registered, and that instance is the only remaining instance in its availability zone (like in my case): in this situation, upon de-registration ELB also removes the ELB node that belongs to that availability zone, since there are no more backend instances to connect to.
In theory, the removal should happen smoothly in order to allow all the client connections to be closed according to the draining timeout, but this doesn’t seem to work well when there is a long connection draining timeout and a high number of client connections: in such case, the removal of the internal ELB node happens abruptly, causing all the connections in that zone to be instantly dropped.
AWS support confirmed they are working on fixing the issue, but after this explanation, a simple workaround consisted in making sure there were always at least 2 backend instances per availability zone pointed by ELB, and by deploying a total of 6 instances evenly spread across my 3 zones I was indeed finally able to get a smooth collector rollout in my test environment:
Other lessons learned? As usual, having a deep knowledge of your application and its surrounding components is going to be incredibly important, and the right way to gain such knowledge is by constantly monitoring all the pieces of your infrastructure. The observation of the entire system must be done at different levels: there are times when slightly glancing at the statsd metrics pushed by your application will be enough, and there are other times, like today, where you are going to need some solid troubleshooting at a low level.The younger members of the U.S. men's basketball team made their love of Vanessa Carlton's song "A Thousand Miles" well-known over the weekend. In a video posted by DeMarcus Cousins, veteran Carmelo Anthony is clearly not impressed:
@jimmybutler back at it.... Looking like Willie Beamen A video posted by DeMarcus Cousins (@boogiecousins) on Jul 30, 2016 at 8:51am PDT
After Monday's final tuneup for Team USA before the Olympics (a 110-66 victory over Nigeria), Melo apologized to Carlton and clarified that his issue was not with the song, but with mornings -- and likely his teammates' shenanigans.
Carmelo Anthony talking about the Jimmy Butler's playlist/Vanessa Carlton angry look he gave. pic.twitter.com/uxatyqWMLe — ⓂarcusD (@_MarcusD_) August 2, 2016
Carlton tweeted over the weekend that she understood where Melo was coming from.
@carmeloanthony I get it. Though the boys did sound pretty good. x — Vanessa Carlton (@VanessaCarlton) August 1, 2016
Perhaps there's a halftime duet in the works?The literary agent Deborah Rogers, who represented writers including AS Byatt, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and Peter Carey has died suddenly.
Rogers worked as an agent all her professional life, starting with Peter Janson-Smith in the 1960s, before setting up her own agency in 1967. Rogers, Coleridge and White – as it became – worked with a host of prize-winning authors from Angela Carter to Bruce Chatwin and from Thomas Keneally to Jenny Uglow.
Her colleague Peter Straus, who joined Rogers at RCW in 2002, lamented her "untimely death" and paid tribute to her as the "greatest literary agent of her generation".
"She was the most extraordinary person," he said. "The world without Deborah is totally unimaginable. She defined literary taste."
Rogers was deeply embedded in literary culture, serving both as president of the Association of Authors' Agents, on the management committee of the Man Booker prize and on the committee that established the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society. She became the first agent honoured with the London Book Fair's lifetime achievement award earlier this year. Speaking on the occasion of the award, the chair of Penguin Random House UK, Gail Rebuck, called Rogers a "legendary agent" and hailed her "unsurpassed contribution" to publishing.
"Her entrepreneurial spirit in setting up an agency in the 1960s and seeing it grow successfully, adding brilliant new agents over the years is beyond compare," Rebuck said. "Deborah is equally known for nurturing the careers of an enviable list of authors where her genius has been not only to negotiate and develop their careers with their chosen publishers, but also to care passionately about every aspect of their lives. Deborah also has an unfailing eye for recognising and encouraging editorial talent."
For McEwan, speaking at the same event, Rogers never fit the archetype of the "hard-edged, calculating agent".
"She's looked after me for most of my writing life, and I think I'm beginning to understand that her genius as an agent is simply an extension of her character," he said. "To her writers she extends infinite care, kindness, hospitality, patience, fierce loyalty, very sound critical judgement and good taste. To the publishers she deals with, she offers much the same, which is how she generally comes away with what she wants."
A skilled negotiator, Rogers combined a resolute defence of her writers' interests with a keen eye for new talent. Speaking on the occasion of her LBF award, she saluted the work of colleagues at RCW and beyond who "shared our values, celebrated our authors, rejoiced in their writing and furthered our mutual interests".
"But most important of all are the writers themselves with whom I have had the privilege of working and without whom none of this would have been possible," she said. "Those who have entrusted their work to us over the years will never know the intense pride that they have brought, and the anticipation and excitement that greets each new manuscript never palls. I have them to thank most of all."
She is survived by her husband, the composer Michael Berkeley, their daughter Jessica and grandson Nathaniel.Looking for news you can trust?
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A federal appeals court in Washington, DC, on Friday tossed out an injunction over the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of American’s phone records, but left open the question of whether the program itself is legal.
From Politico:
The three appeals court judges assigned to the case splintered, with each writing a separate opinion. But they overturned a key ruling from December 2013 that critics of the NSA program had used to advance their claims that the collection of information on billions of calls made and received by Americans was illegal. That ruling, issued by Judge Richard Leon in Washington, sent shockwaves across the legal landscape because it was the first in which a federal court judge sided with critics who questioned the legality of sweeping up data on vast numbers of phone calls–nearly all of them completely unrelated to terrorism. The new decision Friday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit did not kill the lawsuit brought by conservative gadfly Larry Klayman. The appeals court voted, 2-1, to allow the lawsuit to proceed in the district court, but the judges left doubts about whether the case will ever succeed.
In June, Congress phased out the NSA’s controversial program with the passing of the USA Freedom Act. The new law forced the NSA to obtain private phone records for counterterrorism investigations on a case-by-case basis through a court order. After the law mandated a six-month transition program for the new program, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the NSA could continue its existing bulk collection program through November.
The American Civil Liberties Union has also filed an injunction to block the program, arguing that the surveillance court should not have reinstated the program after a federal appeals court in New York found it to be illegal.I've created a project named detectem, trying to solve the issues described in the previous post. Let's review its main strengths and features, as well as the roadmap in the short and long term.
Technology
detectem is an open-source project written in Python and powered by Splash, an open-source project developed by Scrapinghub to render web pages with a lot of great features, including Javascript support and a convenient API.
detectem uses Splash to render the URL and gets the list of requests/responses (as a list of HAR entries) that the browser sent and received to render the page completely.
Having the list of requests and responses gives detectem an incredible power. For instance, most current detectors do regular expressions on response body, then they could fall into false positives. For instance, a page with the following content:
<html> It's an article about Jquery. To install, please add to your page: <xmp> <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.1.1.js"></script> </xmp> Then, play! </html>
Both Wappalyzer and WhatWeb detected JQuery incorrectly since it's not used nor loaded by the web page. This kind of issue happens when you do regular expression matches without caring about context (escaped code, comments, etc). However, detectem had the right behavior because didn't detect JQuery since it works a bit different.
How it works
detectem is a command line program that detects web software and its versions. It's based on a system of plugins like WhatWeb and sets of tests.
$ det http://www.fayerwayer.com [('nginx', '1.1.19'), ('jquery', '1.8.3'), ('moment.js', '2.8.2')]
As we see in the previous post, both Wappalyzer and WhatWeb detected only Nginx. detectem detects more software since has Javascript support provided by Splash and currently it has only 4 plugins, 3 of them were identified as present in FayerWayer.
Currently, detectem supports detection through:
Patterns in the URL
Patterns in the response body
Patterns in headers
It works in a special way to (try to) avoid false positives and be so robust as possible. I'm going to explain why in the previous example both detectors failed and detectem succeeded.
detectem works on the list of requests/responses
made by the browser to render the web page. So in the case of URL matching, it's applied on the list of requested URLs. The common case is that libraries requested by the browser are surely loaded in the DOM, then with a good probability we can say that a library is used by the website. That's the explanation why detectem didn't fail in the previous example, JQuery wasn't in the list of requests/responses.
Patterns in response body are made on the list of responses. For instance, a site using Jquery 3.1.1 has a clear signature in its file:
/*! jQuery v3.1.1 | (c) jQuery Foundation | jquery.org/license */
We could look for that to assure JQuery version. The best thing is it doesn't involve any additional requests since that content is in requests/responses list if the site uses that library.
In the absence of signatures, we can implement hash comparisons as WhatWeb does. It's in the queue to be implemented.
Tests
For this kind of software you need a strong test suite since a minor change in a matcher could leave sites undetected. For instance, it's the current JQuery plugin:
matchers = [ {'body': '/\*\! jQuery v(?P<version>[0-9\.]+) \| \(c\)'}, {'body': '\* jQuery JavaScript Library v(?P<version>[0-9\.]+)'}, {'url': '/jquery/(?P<version>[0-9\.]+)/jquery(\.min)?\.js'}, {'url': '/jquery-(?P<version>[0-9\.]+)(\.min)?\.js'}, ]
It uses body and url matchers. What happens when the first body matcher doesn't get the version fully but the second one does? If you move the second matcher to the first position, you could break the detection on some sites. How we can do this kind of fixing reliably? Testing our changes against the tests. For JQuery plugin these are the tests ( tests/plugins/fixtures/jquery.yml ):
- plugin: jquery matches: - url: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js version: 1.8.3 - url: https://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.3.min.js version: 1.11.3 - url: https://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.4.js version: 1.11.4 - body: /*! jQuery v1.12.4 | (c) jQuery Foundation | jquery.org/license */ version: 1.12.4 - body: \* jQuery JavaScript Library v1.4.4 version: 1.4.4
So if you made a change, then you run the test suite and if every test has passed it's ok.
$ py.test tests/plugins/test_generic.py --plugin jquery ===== test session starts ===== platform linux -- Python 3.5.2, pytest-3.0.3, py-1.4.31, pluggy-0.4.0 rootdir: /tmp/detectem, inifile: collected 5 items tests/plugins/test_generic.py..... ===== 5 passed in 0.19 seconds =====
Contribuiting
Adding your own plugin is easy. There are few requirements:
Be compliant with detectem.plugin.IPlugin.
. Be a subclass of detectem.plugin.Plugin.
. As matcher you can use functions or regular expressions with the named parameter version.
The first is an interface that enforces certain attributes to be mandatory in the plugin. The base class Plugin has some useful methods to handle plugin data. There are many examples in detectem/plugins directory.
Along with that, to create a valid plugin it's a must to provide a test file to be merged in the master branch. Let's create an example plugin right now to make it clearer. We will save the plugin at detectem/plugins/example.py.
from detectem.plugin import Plugin class ExamplePlugin(Plugin): name = 'example' matchers = [ {'url':'version is v(?P<version>[0-9\.]+)'}, ]
Let's add the test file. You have to drop a YAML file in tests/plugins/fixtures/ and it will be automatically included in the testing suite. For this case, it will be tests/plugins/fixtures/example.yml.
- plugin: example matches: - body: version is v1.1.1 version: 1.1.1
Then, it's time to run the tests against the new plugin:
$ py.test tests/plugins/test_generic.py --plugin example ===== test session starts ===== platform linux -- Python 3.5.2, pytest-3.0.3, py-1.4.31, pluggy-0.4.0 rootdir: /tmp/detectem, inifile: plugins: bdd-2.18.1 collected 1 items tests/plugins/test_generic.py. ===== 1 passed in 0.19 seconds =====
The plugin is ready. Of course if the plugin needs more complete tests they can be created in the tests directory.
Roadmap
The main purpose of detectem is to get the software and its version. In the short-term, there are some ideas to implement:
Increment the number of supported plugins, there are good sources to do that. Hash comparisons as in WhatWeb. Support for special headers in the request. Aggressive mode as in WhatWeb to get version if it's not available in current requests/responses (it's not for software discovery) Support of lists of urls. Create the documentation.
In the long-term:
Wait that Splash fixes cache control and move from current creation/destruction of docker container to a constant container (it will speed up detectem a lot). Research in the field of minifiers. Improved bundle split and single libraries detection.
It's an open source project with MIT License and you're welcome to contribute, report errors and new features/plugins in the detectem repository.Things have yet to get better for New York Jets third-year quarterback Geno Smith. He holds a career passer rating of 71.5 and posted a QBR of 35.4 in 2014, which was second-worst in the league ahead of only Blake Bortles. Going into 2015, his third season as a pro, Smith's stock may have plummeted more than ever.
For the second-straight season, Smith was voted the league's worst quarterback, according to a poll of NFL insiders and coaches done by ESPN. He ranked 32nd behind fellow AFC East quarterback Matt Cassel, who may not even be the starter come regular season.
It's never a title you want to hold, but someone has to do it, and Smith has held it for two-straight years.
Article continues below...
"Geno is a 5, and that is it," one coach told ESPN. "He cannot process fast enough. He is not a natural guy, sliding in the pocket and knowing when to run it. He has some legs to run, but no, he is trying to prove he is a pocket passer. Let's do something at the position before we start limiting ourselves for image."
Not exactly what you want to hear said about your quarterback, but let's face it — it's the truth. Smith hasn't shown enough in two years to solidify his spot as a starting quarterback in this league, and he may never do so. If there is a time for Smith to elevate his game and prove his worth, it's in 2015.
He's surrounded by arguably the most talent in his professional career with guys like Brandon Marshall, Eric Decker, and Jace Amaro on offense. Marshall should be be a good safety net for Smith as a big-body receiver on the outside and a serious red-zone threat.
This season could be make-or-break for Smith with Bryce Petty waiting in the wings and Ryan Fitzpatrick fighting for the starting job. It doesn't have to be pretty or spectacular, but Smith has to get the job done if he wants to make a living in the NFL.
(h/t ESPN)
Photo Credit: Jim McIsaac/Getty ImagesWill Shortz (born August 26, 1952 in Crawfordsville, Indiana ) is an American puzzle creator and editor, and crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times.
Shortz began his career at Penny Press Magazines,[6] then moved to Games magazine for 15 years, serving as its editor from 1989–1993. He has been the crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times since 1993 (the fourth in the paper's history, following Eugene Thomas Maleska), and has been the puzzle master on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday since the program was started in 1987. He is the founder of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (1978), and has served as its director since that time. He founded the World Puzzle Championship in 1992 and is a director of the U.S. Puzzle Team.
Shortz is the author or editor of more than 100 books and owns over 20,000 puzzle books and magazines dating back to 1545, reportedly the world's largest private library on the subject.[7] He is a member and historian of the National Puzzlers' League.
Shortz provided the puzzle clues which The Riddler (Jim Carrey) leaves for Batman (Val Kilmer) in the film Batman Forever.[8]
He has said that his favorite crossword of all time is the Election Day crossword of November 5, 1996, designed by Jeremiah Farrell. It had two correct solutions with the same set of clues, one saying that the "Lead story in tomorrow's newspaper (!)" would be "BOB DOLE ELECTED", and the other correct solution saying "CLINTON ELECTED".[9] His favourite individual clue is "It might turn into a different story" (whose solution is SPIRAL STAIRCASE).[10]
Shortz resides in Pleasantville, New York, where he works from home. He is an avid table tennis player. In May 2011, with Barbadian champion (and his long-time friend) Robert Roberts,[11] he opened one of the largest table tennis clubs in the Northeast in Pleasantville.[12] In 2012, Shortz set a goal for himself to play table tennis every day for a year, but surpassed his goal, playing for 1000 consecutive days.[13]
In February 2009, Shortz helped introduce the KenKen puzzle into The New York Times.[14]
In 2013, Shortz lent his name and talents in puzzle writing and editing to a new bimonthly publication entitled Will Shortz' WordPlay, published by PennyPress.[15]
In March 2016, FiveThirtyEight reported on allegations of plagiarism regarding USA Today editor Timothy Parker's use of themes, clues, and grids previously published in the New York Times. The Times also reported on the story, in which Shortz is quoted as saying: "When the same theme answers appear in the same order from one publication to the next, that makes you look closer. When they appear with the same clues, |
a hollow-eyed, flatlining Theresa, sounding diffident and introverted. “We talked a bit about Russia and immigration and I am sure we can make a success of Brexit so long as people stop making it difficult for me. Now, does anyone have any questions?”
Theresa looked up, hoping that just this once no one did. No such luck. Did she really expect 27 countries to listen to us when we’re leaving? Wasn’t the EU out to embarrass us and make things difficult for us? How come she had made such a complete balls-up over the appointment of Dame Lowell Goddard to the child sex abuse inquiry?
“Um... er... people really are listening to us,” she said. “They’ve just a funny way of showing it. Now is there anyone from the overseas media here?”
A hand shot up. Theresa fell on it gratefully, relieved to be able to show the whole world that at least one other country was listening to her. The hand turned out to belong to another UK journalist who was usually ignored and was trying to blag a question. There really was no one else out there listening to her after all. Theresa had never felt quite so alone.Environmental advocates are mounting pressure against the U.S. State Department over a Keystone XL review process they say is "plagued by conflicts of interest."
"Imagine if the surgeon general was replaced with a tobacco executive," Robin Mann, past president and board member of the Sierra Club, said during a press call on Tuesday. "At the State Department, we're seeing something just as outrageous."
The advocacy group filed a lawsuit on Monday asserting that the State Department is withholding key documents related to the latest Keystone XL environmental impact statement, including evidence related to potential conflicts of interest at Environmental Resources Management (ERM), the third-party contractor hired to conduct the analysis of the fiercely-debated proposal to ferry heavy crude from Alberta's oil sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
During the press call on Tuesday, advocates pushed for a State Department investigator general analysis of the impact statement. Mann added that ERM is a "dues-paying member" of the American Petroleum Institute, the largest U.S trade association for the oil and natural gas industry.
An API spokesman said the group had not yet reviewed the lawsuit and therefore would not comment. ERM deferred HuffPost's inquiry to the State Department.
While stating that it does "not comment on pending litigation," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki defended the department's ethics.
"Our rigorous conflict of interest procedures ensure that no contractors or subcontractors have financial or other inappropriate interests in the outcome of a project," she said in an email to The Huffington Post. "To save taxpayers' dollars, third-party contracts are common for environmental reviews of projects proposed by private applicants."
Environmental groups began seeking public disclosure from the State Department shortly after the March 1 release of the Keystone XL draft environmental impact statement, which concluded that the pipeline would be "environmentally sound."
"We got a biased EIS," said Mann, calling its conclusion "deeply flawed."
Devorah Ancel, the Sierra Club attorney working on the lawsuit, noted that in March the group formally requested evidence that the State Department had screened for conflict of interest when selecting ERM for the project. They also asked for documents supporting the report's conclusions that Keystone XL would have no significant impact on the environment and that the expansion of tar sands development would occur with or without the project.
Ancel said that the department has "refused to hand over documents" and was "not able to provide a timeline or even a promise that the information would be disclosed before they make a final decision," a milestone she said she and other experts now anticipate by the end of the year.
"We felt that the Sierra Club had tried every means possible to get that information," Ancel told HuffPost. "This lawsuit was the next step we had to take to get these documents, as they are critically important in the public's evaluation and the overall review of Keystone XL."
The lawsuit also asks for the State Department to reopen the public comment period and hold off on finalizing the environmental review until the documents are made available.
In addition to the API affiliation, ERM apparently redacted biographies of staff members from its report. Among the conflicts that went undisclosed, as Mother Jones would later uncover, was the fact that the second-in-command of the review had worked on three previous pipeline projects for TransCanada, the Canadian company leading the controversial proposal, and had worked on projects for ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips -- oil companies that could also stand to benefit from Keystone XL.
"The State Department has an obligation to ensure its review is both transparent and unbiased, and they have given no indication that they have done so," Ancel added. "It's even appeared that they've actively concealed relationships on their website."
Psaki detailed how the State Department ensures its selected contractors avoid such bias.
"The contractor certifies that it has not had, and does not have, any contracts with the applicant, and the contractor is not permitted to communicate with the applicant unless specifically directed to do so by department officials," she said. "That's good government, pure and simple."
Nearly 73,000 people have contributed to the advocacy groups' campaign by signing petitions that urge Secretary of State John Kerry to postpone the final environmental impact statement until the investigator general completes a thorough review of the alleged conflicts of interest. In April, a coalition of environmental and public interest groups sent a letter to the State Department highlighting many of the same conflict-of-interest concerns.
The State Department also received a letter in April from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA criticized the draft environmental impact statement, suggesting the review contained "insufficient information" on environmental, climate and community impacts associated with the project.
"The question is whether Secretary Kerry will listen to the EPA and scientific community, or whether the oil industry will triumph once again," Erich Pica, president of environmental group Friends of the Earth, said during Tuesday's press call.
News released on Monday of a 1.4 percent increase in energy-related carbon dioxide in 2012, Pica added, "dictates we can no longer go along with business as usual."
"The United States must help lead the world in combating global warming and reducing greenhouse gas emissions," said Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a statement on Tuesday. "It would be incomprehensible to give approval to a tar sands oil project when producing tar sands oil creates more carbon emissions than conventional oil, and when it poses the risk of extremely damaging oil spills."
Ancel and Pica both noted that this is not the first time that the State Department has faced scrutiny over a biased analysis of the Keystone XL. Two years ago, during the first assessment of the project, financial ties were discovered between the contractor, Cardno Entrix, and TransCanada. As the New York Times reported at the time, Cardno Entrix "provides a wide ranges of services, including assisting in oil spill response."
That initial analysis concluded that Keystone XL would have "limited adverse environmental impacts."MINNEAPOLIS — In October, USA Today listed “16 times President Obama said there would be no boots on the ground in Syria.” The report came on the heels of Obama’s plan to send in 50 special ops troops, though reportedly not for combat.
Flash-forward to April: What went from no boots on the ground, to 50 boots on the ground, suddenly became 250 boots on the ground.
While the State Department has pointed out that it specifically does not dispute the fact that “we have troops on the ground, and they’re wearing boots,” these soldiers don’t qualify as “boots on the ground” in the administration’s calculus.
It’s important, though, that we don’t put these semantics aside. There are important distinctions to be made between large-scale ground troops on combat missions and those deployed in an “aid and assist capacity,” as the latest wave of boots on the ground in Syria and 4,000 troops in Iraq are currently deployed.
Yet, given the ongoing propaganda train that’s pushing U.S. intervention in Syria, it’s become increasingly difficult to believe that these 250 boots on the ground will be the extent of U.S. involvement there. Indeed, even without sending in any troops, the U.S. and its allies like NATO and Gulf states have already intervened in Syria.
What has that intervention looked like so far? And what should we expect moving forward?
Here to pull back the curtain on the forces at work in Syria is Vanessa Beeley, an investigative journalist who covers the Middle East for 21st Century Wire. She discusses the media manipulations putting a pro-intervention spin on the Syrian crisis that’s left 300,000 Syrians dead, 3 million roaming the world as refugees, and 6.5 million internally displaced.
Learn more about using students as a commodity, and the propaganda train pushing for US intervention in Syria:German Chancellor Angela Merkel has confirmed her decision to run for a fourth term, vowing explicitly to take on the forces of anti-establishment populism currently sweeping the West.
“We are facing struggles in Europe and internationally for our values and our interests and, simply put, for our way of life,” Merkel told reporters at the headquarters of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party on Sunday night, Euractiv has reported.
“This election will be more difficult than any before it, at least not since national reunification [in 1990]” she said, pointing to a strong “polarisation of our society.”
Merkel, currently the EU’s longest-serving leader, said this had played a part in her decision to stand again as she felt many leaders were looking to her as a source of stability in “distinctly difficult, even insecure times.”
But on referring to the suggestion by some commentators that she should be considered the new “leader of the free world,” she said she was “indeed honoured, but I also find it grotesque and even absurd.”
Merkel followed up the press conference with an in-depth, 25-minute interview with German broadcaster ARD, during which she vowed to press ahead with a “strong Europe” following Brexit, Die Welt has reported.
Commenting further on her decision to run, which she appears to have made following the result of the American Presidential election, she said: “I am sure that I have taken the decision conscientiously, to the best of my knowledge and conscience.”
She also criticised rival party AfD, and anti-Islamisation movement Pegida, saying she could not understand why only those who opposed mass migration and criticised her policies were suddenly being identified as ‘of the people.’
“I am just as much ‘the people’ as others are ‘the people’,” she insisted.
“The AfD is challenging me, of course,” the Chancellor admitted, but she claimed: “I am already part of the solution.”
Hans-Joachim Maaz, a German psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who earlier this year suggested that Merkel may be suffering from “narcissism” brought on by people lauding her position as ‘mother of the nation,’ said that while Merkel was adamant she did not believe the world would collapse without her, it is possible that she thinks Germany, and her party, might.
“I think the decision is bad for the party because it obviously does not allow any alternative,” he said, adding, “One always has the impression that the men especially hide behind Mutti [‘Mother’].”
But establishment figures welcomed her candidacy.
“Merkel is the answer to the populism of our time,” said Saxony state premier Stanislaw Tillich. “She is basically the anti-Trump,” he told Redaktionsnetzwerk.
Obama, who visited Merkel at her chancellery on Friday night along with leaders from Britain, France, Spain, and Italy, also applauded her candidacy, praising her as an “outstanding partner” and adding: “If I were German and I had a vote, I might support her.”Despite the migrant crisis chipping away at her popularity, polls still put Merkel ahead.
Despite the migrant crisis chipping away at her popularity, polls still put Merkel ahead.
A survey by Kantar Emnid, released Sunday, found that 33 per cent of German voters planned to back Merkel’s CDU party. Although the figure is down nine points on the 2013 national election, it still puts the party ahead of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), junior partners in Merkel’s “grand” coalition, who commanded 24 per cent. The AfD are currently on 13 per cent.At Saturday’s commencement address at the University of Michigan, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg condemned universities for coddling students with safe spaces and trigger warnings.
This isn’t the first time that the billionaire has blasted the way progressives have decided to run American universities. In his 2013 commencement address at his alma mater, Harvard University, he criticized universities for their lack of intellectual diversity and accused administrations of “trying to repress conservative ideas.”
“Think about the irony: In the 1950s, the right wing was attempting to repress left wing ideas. Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species. And perhaps nowhere is that more true than here in the Ivy League,” Bloomberg said at Harvard in 2013.
This year, Bloomberg, at the University of Michigan, turned his criticisms to the increased demand for safe spaces and trigger warnings on college campuses. His remarks were mainly pointed at administrators who have allowed college to become a place where students can be coddled instead of challenged.
“The fact that some university boards and administrations now bow to pressure groups and shield students from these ideas through safe spaces, code words, and trigger warnings, is in my view a terrible mistake. The whole purpose of college is to learn how to deal with difficult situations, not to run away from them,” Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg’s criticisms were met with both cheers and boos from the University of Michigan crowd. Some displeased parties took to social media to condemn Bloomberg for daring to contradict them. One Twitter user accused Bloomberg of misunderstanding “safe spaces,” and claimed that “the world is a ‘safe space’ for wealthy white men.”
"Micro-aggressions are just that–micro!" -Michael Bloomberg aka rich white dude at umich commencement #MGoGrad #yadonefuckedup — Rachael (@doyoulikepugz) April 30, 2016
great speech, however, Bloomberg misunderstands'safe space' is- its not isolation from conflict, its having place 2 refuel, let guard down. — Jen Engquist (@EngquistJen) April 30, 2016
https://twitter.com/Ava_Jae/status/726425396296716288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
“A microaggression is exactly that, micro,” Bloomberg finished. “But in a macro sense, one of the most dangerous places on a college campus is the so-called safe space, because it creates a false impression that we can isolate ourselves from those who hold different views. We can’t, and we shouldn’t try. Not in politics, not in the workplace.”
Tom Ciccotta writes about Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity for Breitbart. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or on Facebook. You can email him at tciccotta@breitbart.comIf mankind has been on earth over a million years, as the evolutionists tell us, then why do the records of their activity only go back a few thousand years. The evidence agrees with the Bible account, not with the evolutionists. Evolutionary theory is a myth. God created everything; the evidence clearly points to it. Nothing else can explain the mountain of evidence. This is science vs. evolution—a Creation-Evolution Encyclopedia, brought to you by Creation Science Facts.
CONTENT: How Far Back do the Records Go? - 2
Languages - Ancient languages never back beyond c. 3000 B.C., and radiate outward from Mesopotamia
Ancient Historical Records - The oldest dates go back to about 3000 B.C.
The Oldest People - They do not go back before c. 3000 B.C., and were located in Mesopotamia
Conclusion - Man, whom the evolutionists claim to have come into existence over a million years ago, is said to have "stopped evolving" 100,000 years ago. Why then do we not have at least 100,000 years of civilizations, cities, and human remains?
This material is excerpted from the book, AGE OF THE EARTH. (See BOOKSTORE) An asterisk ( * ) by a name indicates that person is not known to be a creationist. Of over 4,000 quotations in the books this Encyclopedia is based on, only 164 statements are by creationists.
You will have a better understanding of the following statements by scientists if you will also read the web page, Age of the Earth.
Ancient languages never go back beyond c. 3000 B.C., and radiate outward from Mesopotamia.
Mankind is so intelligent that languages are soon put into written records which are left lying about on the surface of the earth. It is clear that language and dialect differences suddenly developed shortly after the Flood, at which time men separated and traveled off in groups whose members could understand one another (Genesis 11:1-9).
The records of ancient languages never go back beyond c. 3000 B.C. Philological and linguistic studies reveal that a majority of them are part of large "language families," and most of these appear to radiate outward from the area of Babylonia.
For example, the Japhetic peoples, listed in Genesis 10, traveled to Europe and India, where they became the so-called Aryan peoples. These all use what we today call the Indo-European Language Family. Recent linguistic studies reveal that these languages originated at a common center in southeastern Europe on the Baltic. This would be close to the Ararat range. Thieme, a Sanskrit and comparative philology expert at Yale University, gives this estimate:
"Indo-European, I conjecture, was spoken on the Baltic coast of Germany late in the fourth millennium B.C. [c. 3000 B.C.]."—*Paul Thieme, "The Indo-European Language," in Scientific American, October 1958, p. 74.
For more information on languages, see our book, Ancient Man.
The oldest dates go back to about 3000 B.C.
Historical records constitute the only dating information we really have. Prior to the beginnings of history, which is only a few thousand years ago, we have only rocks, water, sky, and conjectures. Here are additional statements in regard to the dating of our earliest actual information about recorded history:
The earliest records only go back to about 3000 B.C.
"The earliest records we have of human history go back only about 5,000 years."—*World Book Encyclopedia, 1966 edition, Vol. 6, p. 12.
Another scientist tells us that historical records only go back to 2000 B.C.
"It is a common error to think of man's existence in terms of recorded history, Historical records go back to about 3000 B.C., but this is only a small fraction of the time man has lived on earth."—*A.M. Winchester, Biology and Its Relation to Mankind (1964), p. 600.
*Montague suggests 4000 B.C. as the absolute limit of possible historical records.
"Recorded history is no more than six thousand years old, whereas human beings have been making history ever since they have been on this earth, a period believed to be about one million years."—*Ashley Montagu, Man: His First Million Years (1957), p. 21.
Even with the use of certain time-extending devices, the very earliest possible dates given for the invention of writing only go back to 4000 B.C.
"The invention of writing, about 6,000 years ago, ushered in the historic period of man. The time prior to 6,000 years ago is known as the prehistoric period."—*Mark A. Hall and *Milton S. Lesser, Review Text in Biology (1966) p. 354.
Although it is said that the earliest writing goes back to 4000 B.C., the earliest written language only goes back to 3500 B.C.
"The earliest written language, Sumerian cuneiform, goes back to about 3500 B.C."—*Ashley Montagu, Man: His First Million Years (1957), p. 116.
We have no data on any human civilization prior to 4000 B.C.
"Historical records of any human civilization before 4000 B.C. are completely absent."—H. Enoch, Evolution or Creation (1967)? p. 137.
Oddly enough, man has accomplished more in the last 6,000 years than he did in the previous million years. This would be true in light of the fact that we have not one shred of evidence that man did anything in that previous one million years!
"In the last six thousand years, man has advanced far more rapidly than he did in the million or more years of his prehistoric existence."—*Louise Eisman and *Charles Tanzer, Biology and Human Progress (1958), p. 509.
The developer of radiocarbon dating was astounded to learn that there are no records of mankind prior to 3000 B.C. (His teachers had not mentioned it in college.)
"The research in the development of the [radiocarbon] dating technique consisted of two stages—dating of samples from the historic and prehistoric epochs, respectively. Arnold [a co-worker] and I had our first shock when our advisors informed us that history extended back only for 5,000 years.. You read statements to the effect that such and such a society or archeological site is 20,000 years old. We learned rather that these numbers, these ancient ages, are not known accurately; in fact, the earliest historical date that has been established with any degree of certainty is about the time of the First Dynasty of Egypt."—*Willard Libby, Science, March 3, 1961, p. 624.
Prior to a certain point several thousand years ago, there was no trace of man having ever existed. After that point, civilization, writing, language, agriculture, domestication, and all the rest—suddenly exploded into intense activity!
"No more surprising fact has been discovered, by recent excavation, than the suddenness with which civilization appeared in the world. This discovery is the very opposite to that anticipated. It was expected that the more ancient the period, the more primitive would excavators find it to be, until traces of civilization ceased altogether and aboriginal man appeared. Neither in Babylonia nor Egypt, the lands of the oldest known habitations of man, has this been the case."—P.J. Wiseman, New Discoveries, in Babylonia, about Genesis (1949 ), p. 28.
Dates going back to 3000 to 4000 B.C. are estimated as the longest possible dates. But "well-authenticated" dates from Egypt, which scientists consider to have been history's oldest civilization, only go back to 1600 B.C.
"Well-authenticated dates are known only back as far as about 1600 B.C. in Egyptian history, according to John G. Read."—*Journal of Near Eastern Studies, (1970), Vol. 1, p. 29.
They do not go back before c. 3000 B.C., and were located in Mesopotamia.
The various radiodating techniques could be so inaccurate that mankind has only been on earth a few thousand years.
"Dates determined by radioactive decay may be off—not only by a few years, but by orders of magnitude.. Man, instead of having walked the earth for 3.6 million years, may have been around for only a few thousand."—*Robert Gannon, "How Old Is It?" Popular Science, November 1979, p. 81.
We have no records indicating human civilization going back beyond a few thousand years.
"Only six or seven thousand years ago.. civilization emerged, enabling us to build up a human world."—*Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (1982), p. 181.
There are no written records before about 3000 B.C.
"In the Old World, most of the critical steps in the farming revolution were taken between 1000 and 5000 B.C... Only for the last 5000 years has man left written records."—*Reader's Digest, the Last Two Million Years (1984), pp. 9, 29.
Almost as soon as there was civilization, there were towns and cities, and the oldest were in Mesopotamia.
"In most civilizations, urbanization began early. There is little doubt that this was the case for the oldest civilization and the earliest cities: those of ancient Mesopotamia."—*Robert M. Adam, "The Origin of Cities," Scientific American, Vol. 203, September 1960, p. 154.
The earliest king lists only go back to shortly before 3000 B.C.
"The Egyptian king lists go back to the First Dynasty of Egypt, and little before 3000 B.C. Before that, there were no written records anywhere."—*Colin Renfrew, Before Civilization (1983), p. 25.
Man, whom the evolutionists claim to have come into existence over a million years ago, is said to have "stopped evolving" 100,000 years ago. Why then do we not have at least 100,000 years of civilizations, cities, and human remains?
Evolutionary estimates of the age of the earth have constantly changed and lengthened with the passing of time. (It currently stands at 5 billion years.) But the scientific evidence remains constant and, as new authentic evidence emerges, it only fastens down the dates even more firmly. It all points to a beginning for our planet, about 6,000 years ago. Some may see it as 7,000 to 10,000 years, but the evidence points most distinctly toward a date of about 4000 B.C. for the origin of our planet. The evidence for a recent earth is scientifically solid.
The earliest man is said, by the evolutionists, to have existed one or two million years old. Yet, they add quite emphatically, that he "stopped evolving" about 100,000 years ago.
—Why then do we not have 100,000 years of civilizations, cities, and remains of all kinds? But we do not. The reason is the Bible is right and the evolutionists are wrong.
The God of heaven created our world about 6,000 years ago. Then, about 2348 B.C., a gigantic Flood covered the earth. Keeping in mind that we are dealing with very ancient events, all the evidence can be reconciled with these figures.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Forward to the next major topic in this series: DATING OF TIME IN EVOLUTION - Evidence that the 19 evolutionary dating methods are not reliable and do not correctly date materials on earth.
SOURCEThought I’d check in this week with another small update! I’ve been meaning to do a bigger one but there’s some last minute stuff that’s happened over the last two weeks that is really awesome, but can’t talk about at the moment. I will be able to soon though. :D
Anyways, progress has been great on getting some gameplay video up and going. I’ve implemented a particle engine and have almost finished finalizing some of the foods that will be showcased in the vid, as well as having a general idea of how the video will be cut. There were a few small setbacks (the deep fryer and the way you “dunk” the foods took way way longer than expected…I had no idea it would be so complex due to the camera perspective, but the amount of layers and such really made it a tough challenge). From here though it feels like I just need to get all the stuff up and running and I’ll be ready to make some vids.
I was going to talk about some of the sound design in CSD 2 but I’ve opted instead to not put in the final sound engine for the game, and will just do it in post on the video (specifically, the background ambient sounds). This saves time and lets me get finished with the video quicker. So I’ll have that update later once I get it in the game.
I’ve also been tinkering a bit with the UI. Along with the new classic list menu I’ve decided to make the UI cleaner by shrinking it down a bit and getting it out of the way so that the delicious food art can shine that much more.
I think it looks much cleaner compared to the original style, and will likely be what I’m going forward with on the video.
Next week I’ll be submitting the Coming Soon page for Steam so I can have it ready when the gameplay trailer is finished, and finishing up any loose ends so I can have another mini-launch of the game since it’ll be the first time anyone has seen it in action. I don’t think I’ll have the new website ready though, as I want to get everything up and done as quick as possible.
Sorry for the short update but I’ve just been crazy busy with everything related to CSD, which is very much a good thing! I like that better than being crazy busy trying to build an office. I’ll answer some Tumblr questions over the weekend and will have more news next week, so until then!LISBON (Reuters) - An outbreak of dengue fever on Madeira island is waning after infecting 2,000 people in Europe’s first sustained transmission since the 1920s, Portugal’s health secretary Fernando Leal da Costa said on Monday.
Speaking to reporters during a visit to Madeira to assess the outbreak, Leal da Costa lauded the island’s dengue detection and treatment system, saying dengue-carrying mosquitoes had apparently been brought inadvertently from a tropical country earlier this year.
“With this imported Aedes aegypti mosquito we’ve had the cases of the illness in humans, but it is diminishing and is being treated in exemplary fashion,” he said in televised comments.
He warned, however, that the complete eradication of the mosquito on the island, which is popular with tourists, “will be very difficult since it has found a habitat here”.
Dengue fever is a mostly tropical viral infection producing symptoms that can range from mild flu-like illness to potentially deadly forms which develop in around 5 percent of patients. It is sometimes known as “breakbone fever” because of the severe pain it can cause.
On December 5, the health ministry said in its latest weekly report that 1,993 cases of dengue had been reported since the start of the outbreak, with a 54 percent drop in the number of cases registered in the week of November26-December2 from the preceding week and that all those infected were recovering.
A total of 118 people have received hospital treatment in Madeira since October, but there have been no deaths.
The ministry said 42 cases of the disease had been found in Britain, Germany, Sweden and France among travelers returning from Madeira.Sixty years ago this week, the Photo League fell victim to Cold War witch hunts and blacklists, closing its doors after 15 intense years of trailblazing – and sometimes hell-raising – documentary photography. From unabashedly leftist roots, the group influenced a generation of photographers who transformed the documentary tradition, elevating it to heady aesthetic heights.
Yet with the accusations leveled against the group and Sid Grossman, one of its founders and legendary teachers, the narrative, such as it is known, was a flawed tale.
“They’ve been erased by history,” said Mason Klein, curator at the Jewish Museum in New York. “They’re just considered a bunch of old leftists, and that is not a fair charge. The influence Mr. Grossman had on the variety of work being done at the league is something unappreciated.”
Mr. Klein has helped correct that narrative, co-curating a show opening Friday at the museum titled “The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951.” The exhibition, which runs through March 25, is a collaboration with the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, whose collection also has dozens of vintage prints by members of the league. As a whole, the show takes the viewer from overtly political images that decry poverty, racism and violence to more nuanced observations of postwar American life. It also shows a vibrant photographic milieu where women, including Berenice Abbott and Lisette Model, were influential members.
“It covers those tumultuous decades of the first part of the 20th century,” said Catherine Evans, photography curator at the Columbus Museum, “from the late ’30s through World War II and the Cold War, as the country shifted from one direction to the extreme opposite direction. And the Photo League was in the middle of that shifting story.”
Given its origins during 1930s New York, it would have been difficult to escape political inclinations. The league had its origins in the Workers Film and Photo League, which itself had come from Workers International Relief. The show’s hefty catalog described it as a “leftist Red Cross” for strikers.
“Of course there was that Socialist, Communist fervor of the 1930s that possessed many young artists in New York City,” Mr. Klein said. “Because of the Depression, there was a need to tell the story of suffering.”
But instead of traveling to rural America to find the faces of need, the league – and Grossman – encouraged its members to look in New York, where many of them had grown up as children of immigrants.
Ida Wyman
“First-generation Americans wanted to look at themselves as subjects for the first time,” Mr. Klein said. “The city had a large Jewish presence. Since two million of the city’s seven million residents were Jewish, they were well-suited to interpret that story. But the narrative we’re also trying to tell is how the goal of documentary photography went from being somewhat objective – as it needed to be to bear witness to suffering and inequality – to developing an aesthetically considered work of art.”
And for members of the league, such considerations were not far from their minds, even in the early years.
“They literally quarreled in the ’30s about how much to emphasize politics in their subjects,” Mr. Klein said. “But there was always this understanding that photography was a constant. What constituted a good photograph was always discussed.”
Sonia Handelman Meyer, 91, joined the league in 1943, after hearing about it while working in Puerto Rico for the Army Signal Corps. She took courses with Grossman, who was famous for long workshops that dragged on into the morning hours.
“You had to bring your work,” she said. “And if you didn’t he wouldn’t pay attention to you or he’d tell you to get out. He was rough. He was very demanding. He was very wonderful.”
Chief among the demands of Grossman, who died in 1955, was an insistence that photographers had to understand why they were taking pictures and how they related to the subject in the viewfinder.
Ms. Handelman Meyer said those lessons changed her.
“When you go out on the street and you see things, they don’t seem to have an impact,” she said. “But after you begin to work with a camera and have the discussions we had in class, you see details. Faces, buildings and streets seem to have much more significance. Maybe that could have happened without the workshop. But in some way what he taught us made an impression on me and many more of his students.”
It also made an impression on the government, whose investigation of Grossman’s political leanings brought the league into question. In 1947, the United States attorney general placed the league on a list of subversive groups. This came at a time when the group was itself evolving, and embracing a more modern style that would influence the coming generation of photographers, like Robert Frank. And while some members no doubt had belonged to or sympathized with the Communist Party, others were apolitical.
Big names rallied to the league’s side, lending their reputation and work in support. But it did not ease the pressure from Washington. A paid F.B.I. informant accused Grossman of being a Communist and the league of being a front.
“It got to be too much,” said Ms. Handelman Meyer, who was the group’s secretary when it was declared subversive. “They were blacklisting people. There were photographers who could not get their passports for overseas jobs. Little by little, it dissolved. It’s tragic, because there has never been another organization like the Photo League. It was such a time of fear and disgust.”
Aaron Siskind / Courtesy Bruce Silverstein Gallery
Yet the group’s transformation – of its members and their art – is reflected in the show, where the images detail that growth.
“As these 20-somethings became a little more skilled, they went from their little neighborhood to realizing what their cameras could lead them to,” Mr. Klein said. “They went from bearing witness to losing their bearings, and determining for themselves how they wanted to see the world.”
The league’s influence on those who followed was evident later in the decade, when Robert Frank debuted “The Americans.” So, too, was the legacy of its undoing.
“When Robert Frank and that generation of the New York School emerged and were validated by the art world, they had to distance themselves from politics,” Mr. Klein said. “Art and politics had to be separate.”
On Wednesday morning, George Zimbel, 82, got up before dawn and jotted down in his notebook a thought that had come to him while visiting New York for the opening of the show, which includes a photo he took in 1951. He wrote about John Ebstel, who had taught him the painstaking art of printing at the league.
“Everybody is concentrating on the political aspect of this,” he said. “But what I wrote in my notebook this morning was what I got from John Ebstel – a respect for the image. A beautiful image. He kept you at it.”
Mr. Zimbel kept at it through his long career. “I threw away a lot of paper,” he joked. But at an advance visit to the show Tuesday night, he found that shared love and concern for the image front and center. “It was amazing to see so much at one time; it really made me shaky,” he said. “It was emotional, in a good sense.”
Just as amazing – and not in a good sense – is how far photography has gone.
“I think the humanism of the Photo League was amazing, and that’s lost now,” he said. “Contemporary art and the scene have now pushed people where they’re afraid to photograph on the street. They’re afraid to use people, except as objects in an image. That is such a tragedy. People are the most interesting things on earth.”
Follow @nytimesphoto and @dgbxny on Twitter.Story highlights Fallon Fox became a woman through surgery in 2006
She |
lose significant cultural works created in digital formats.
But what about individual records of our existence?
As we rely more and more on cloud storage used at public service providers, succumbing to the convenience and the utility of having access to one's "lifestream" from any endpoint device, we also put the collective records of our existence in the hands of third parties that do not necessarily have long-term data preservation as a core priority.
Our data at public service providers like Facebook and Google has a single purpose -- to be monetized in exchange for being able to be share that data with others. That is the contract which is well-understood.
The data has significance to the provider only if it can be monetized in some way. So status updates, tagging, photographs, videos and the like will only be stored long term if they have value to the provider.
It's easy to understand how something that is much as a year old, perhaps five years old might still be of interest to a provider like Facebook. But ten year old data? Twenty? Difficult to say.
Unless providers have an implicit SLA that is defined according to levels of paid service -- which doesn't really exist today because Facebook, like many others is strictly a free service to end-users -- then there is no guarantee of data retention at all, even on a relatively short term basis that is measured in a single decade.
special feature AI and the Future of Business Machine learning, task automation and robotics are already widely used in business. These and other AI technologies are about to multiply, and we look at how organizations can best take advantage of them. Read More
And as devices are more and more capable of recording higher density and more complex data formats such as high-definition or even 4K video, and public clouds start making those formats shareable, there will be a higher level of investment that will be required by the public cloud provider in their storage infrastructure.
This is going to cause a significant change in how public cloud providers classify data, and it is also going to drive heavy commoditization of the storage industry itself. Hyperscale providers will look for increasingly more ways to store that bulk data cheaply instead of using proprietary technology such as SANs.
But even with heavily commoditized technology such as JBODs acting as cost drivers, the amount of exponential growth of publicly stored data is going to consign a lot of material into the bit bucket. There's just no way we can store all of it forever.
Snapchat at least operates on the principle that it can't save anything permanently. Everything it does is considered disposable.
So let's face it. Your social data is doomed. Your status updates, your uploaded photos, your videos, all of it is going to be inaccessible sometime in the future. Not just by you, but by your descendants as well.
If you really want to preserve this stuff then you are going to have to take steps to maintain them yourself.
Part of the problem is going to be what data formats to use, and just how much of it do you care about it being accurately reconstructed.
A folder full of JPEGs or even MPEG4 videos may be easy to move between storage providers over the course of multiple decades as long as you diligently keep track of this stuff and you maintain multiple copies.
But reconstructing your Facebook or Twitter stream? Assuming you always have the capability to export that data over the lifetime of those services, how would you reconstruct it anyway?
Let's assume you have the full XML of ten years worth of Facebook data that you yourself generated. There are no good tools that exist today that would allow you to view that data offline or at a different provider in the exact same context as using Facebook itself.
special feature The Evolution of Enterprise Storage How to plan, manage, and optimize enterprise storage to keep up with the data deluge. Read More
And Facebook, like many public cloud social networking services, constantly changes the way its data structures are stored as it adds new features. Facebook data isn't like Microsoft Office documents, PDFs or even Open Document Format where the source data is expected to persist and be restored and viewable over long periods of time as long as copies are kept.
Facebook also doesn't have to publicly document the way its internal data is stored because it isn't required to share its data with anyone. It only shares its data when it sees a benefit to doing so.
If you took snapshots of your Facebook stream at one year intervals, chances are that the XML definitions are going to look completely different each time.
You would need tools capable of reconstructing different versions of that feed. And Facebook is just one of the public cloud services people use every single day.
So maybe digital forensics experts might be able to re-assemble culturally pertinent records, assuming they can get copies of things. But your children and grandchildren? I wouldn't count on it.
What are you doing to preserve records of your "lifestream" for you and your family? Talk Back and Let Me Know.Share
Targeted ads are always a little uncanny – it’s kind of disconcerting to see ads for those ski boots you were just looking at, since it’s pretty clear advertisers are keeping a watchful eye on your browsing habits. But things are getting even stranger. Now, if your daydreaming and looking up info about a potential trip to Hawaii on your work computer, you can see ads from places like Expedia on your iPad at home. Ads can follow you from one device to another.
There are a few different ways advertisers are learning to trail you off your desktops and onto mobile devices (and vice versa.)
“Triangulation:” Creepin’ by any other name, or simple innovation?
One of the methods used by targeted ad specialists like Drawbridge involves sending cookies to various devices in the same area. If the cookies reveal patterns of behavior on multiple devices, it “triangulates” the position of multiple devices with the same owner, and begins a targeted ad campaign. There’s no limit to the amount of devices that can be paired up, so even if you have a ton of different gadgets, you’ll have no reprieve from the targeted ads (unless you keep them very far apart from each other.)
CEO and Founder of Drawbridge Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan feels confident that the measures Drawbridge uses do not invade privacy. “Drawbridge’s technology does not access a single piece of Personally Identifiable Information about the user, be it an email handle, a social handle, full legal name, phone number, physical address, etc. Our technology is based on fully anonymous signals – also known as “features” – that are spatio-temporal and behavioral in nature. For example, features include the applications and sites that a user visits on their mobile and desktop devices, and the times of day and locations where their devices are are accessing the internet,” she says.
So even though they’re figuring out if that Galaxy S3 and MacBook Pro belong to the same person, they’re not cataloging personal stuff like your Twitter handle – just that you’ve gone on Twitter frequently on both devices. This makes it harder to be 100 percent accurate, but may assuage some privacy concerns. Right now, Drawbridge normally has around a 60-70 percent accuracy.
When asked if people who don’t like the idea of being followed by Drawbridge clients can opt out, Sivaramakrishnan explains that there is a simple way to avoid getting these ads: “It is very easy, if the users opts out of being targeted on any one of his or her devices and we have identified the user across their other devices, we will carry over their preference on every other device. Drawbridge has partnered with TRUSTe and offers the ad choices preference manager (an industry first) on all in-application banner inventory. The user can therefore not only opt out on their desktop or laptop device, but also can do the same on their mobile devices.” Sivaramakrishnan pointed out that more information about the TRUSTe partnership is available online – so that’s a good sign that even targeted ad servers are cognizant that their behavior might freak some people out.
Social media ads know you no matter what device you use
When advertisers go through Facebook, the company says it doesn’t give them the data necessary to determine how to reach you across multiple devices, but they don’t have to – since you use the same Facebook account no matter what device you’re on, you’ll see ads targeted towards you whether you’re browsing from an iPad or looking at a friend’s pictures through the new Facebook Home. And Facebook now partners with four data brokerage companies, Acxiom, Datalogix, Epsilon, and BlueKai. When a company wants to launch a targeted ad campaign through Facebook, they use data from these brokers to hit your account, no matter what device you use. And even though Facebook made it marginally easier to opt out of some targeted ads, you still have to opt out of each partnered service, and even then your page won’t be ad-free, just rid of ads from specific companies.
And, of course, beyond Facebook, there are other powerful social networks that work with targeted ads – Google being potentially the most major ad player. And even though ads aren’t as garish on Twitter as they are on Facebook, promoted content based on user interest is still a thing – so even though promoted tweets blend in with your normal feed, they’re still there – and they’re still tailored to your interests.
So what should I do if I hate targeted ads?
You can opt out of as much as you can, and complain when services don’t give you an opportunity to opt out. Digital Trends talked to Aleecia M. McDonald, the Director of Privacy at the Center for Internet and Society. She wasn’t too optimistic about the situation. “There are very limited tools for users to control this sort of tracking and linking.”
“The most pervasive is the DAA opt-out, but it does not help much here. DAA opt-outs only change the types of ads people see, but not change data collection or other uses like linking devices together. Unfortunately, right now the best way to limit tracking is to block all advertising. Ad blocking is a very blunt approach when most people are OK with seeing ads, just not OK with giving up personal data that goes with ads. It is a shame to lose ad revenue for all ads, but that is the state of privacy today. Unless and until there is a meaningful solution to limit data collection through self-help tools like Do Not Track or from legislation, the best privacy protection is to use ad blockers.”
So you might want to adjust your expectations, because this sort of targeted ad delivery is highly unlikely to go away, unless serious legislative changes prevent companies from using services like Facebook’s personalized ads or Drawbridge. If companies see an opportunity to get their ads in front of people who are more likely to buy their products, they will always take them.You’ve been challenged to an arm wrestling duel, and the guy has pythons that would make Popeye squirm. But don’t sweat it—as long as you’ve got these tricks up your sleeveless shirt, you’ll still walk away victorious.
1) Get Off On the Right Foot
If you’re a righty, stand with your right foot forward, hugging your right hip against the table. That way, your arm won’t do all the work, and your body strength may give you the extra boost you need.
2) Take the Upper Hand
Leverage is your friend. Get as high a grip as possible on your opponent’s hand. Raise your wrist so that their wrist is lower than yours, which will give you a huge edge.
3) Master the Hook
When the ref yells “Go!” curl your wrist toward your body. This move, known as “the hook,” weakens your opponent by flattening their wrist. Once you’re locked in, pretend you’re trying to reach into your shirt pocket. Pushing for the near corner saps your challenger’s strength while relieving any pressure on your upper arm.
4) Go on a Roll
If you’re scrawny, the hook may not work. Luckily there’s a backup—the “top roll.” Inch your elbow forward and curl your thumb beneath your fingers. Keep your upper arm as close to your upper body as possible. Bend your knees, tuck your hips under the table, and turn your wrist so that your knuckles face your opponent. This applies immense pressure to their pinky finger.
5) Disarm Yourself
If you’re desperate and left handed, pretend to be a righty. Convince your opponent that you both should wrestle with non-dominant hands. (Say that it’s a true test of strength!) Now flex your secret southpaw into the win column.
* * *
It’s important to be a good winner, so once you’ve vanquished your opponent, reward yourself and let him know there are no hard feelings by buying the first round of Dos Equis.Well, there are few mid players as well known and respected as CLG.eu's very own Henrik 'Froggen' Hansen. I instantly got the impression that between his schooling, avid anime watching and budding professional e-sports career that this was a very busy (pardon the Englishness in me) chap. It took some time before we could finally get the interview underway but I think you'll all agree that it was worth the wait.
Whilst no doubt well-known throughtout Europe, it is, I think, fair to say that Froggens stature on the world stage took a sharp increase when he joined CLG.eu. More importantly, his stellar performance in the Kings of Europe tournament caused people to literally sit up and take note.
Hi, Froggen. Can you tell me a little about yourself?
Froggen: Hey, I’m Froggen the AP carry from CLG.EU I’m 18 years old and I’m Danish. I started playing League around 1 year 9 months ago after being introduced to it by my older brother. When I don’t play league I’m going to school and I also watch lots of anime.
Some would say you're the best AP player worldwide, do you agree with those that believe so?
Froggen: I have only played vs a few AP players from NA and no AP players from korea yet and I haven’t been at any really big offline event yet so it’s a bit hard to say who the best is, although I feel like I’m better than the others.
What attributes do you think are most important to becoming a successful mid player?
Froggen: The ability to understand how the game works; hitting skillshots/juking and have the right position. That would be 3 best things to have as a mid player. Beside from that, always do your best and have fun while playing.
Anivia is often banned by the opposing team; is it frustrating for you to see that happen so often?
Froggen: Not at all. Anivias kit is just too strong and then people usually have no idea how to fight vs anivia and they get caught 24/7 and lose a game easily like that.
How would you define your style of play?
Froggen: It’s really hard to say. My style is different from every match; it depends on what champion I’m playing and on how the jungle is going. If a player keeps doing weird stuff on lane I might want to kill him or care a bit for ganks.
Are there any other AP players you think highly of?
Froggen: Not really anyone comes to my mind. I think the APs are pretty equal, some are good in laning some are good in teamfights. I like Alex Ich more than the others since he is able to play other roles on a competitive level. Not a lot of APs that can do that. bigfatjiji also has a special place in my heart since he was the first pro Anivia player I saw and it was the first pro player I played against.
How did you come to join CLG.eu?
Froggen: First I were in minor teams like infused, then the team got disbanded and I got a lot of offers from other “upcoming teams” I eventually formed a team with lyumi, wetdream, kbap and wickd under the AL tag. Then we had many roster changes and finally ended up with my current team and then we were picked up by CLG. So I’ve been in from the very start.
M5 seem to encounter problems when they come up against your Anivia. Do you think she offers a little more than most AP champions against teams that have a penchant for intensive counter jungling and invading?
Froggen: I think it’s a combination of the way I play Anivia and the utility she provides. Anivia is generally not strong in midlane before she gets some items so it’s rather easy to counter jungle against an Anivia. But with good team communication it’s possible to prevent counterjungle. I think they run into problems because they allow me to do whatever I want in teamfights and never hard engage on me.
Is there any particular 'Crystallize' (Anivia's wall) moment that you remember as your favourite?
Froggen: I usually don’t remember my Anivia walls since I think it’s really simple to place a wall infront of someone to lock them out of a teamfight. I do remember 1 wall though because people talked about it for a while. Kings of Europe finals vs M5 in a teamfight around dragon where I wall MF completely out of the fight with a lvl 1 wall, which allowed us to pick up 3 easy kills.
Are there any teams you're wary of playing against?
Froggen: Hmm not really, but if I have to name one it would be aAa since they knocked us out in some qualifiers.
Do you think that, with you being so synonymous with a singular champion that when it comes to bans and picks this gives you a upper hand in any pre-match mindgames?
Froggen: If it’s only one champion it doesn’t matter too much. The problem is when it comes to the point where you have 5 champions the enemy wants to ban and it’s only possible to lock out 4 if the champions (if they have first pick); then you will for sure get your champion that you are really strong with. I think that’s why some teams sometimes just leave Anivia open since they know I’ll pick it and then they will try to get a teamcomp that can shut Anivia down.
How do strong early game junglers affect the mindset of your laning phase?
Froggen: Really a lot. Everything an early game jungler should do is look for ganks. Any mid champion with an alistar gank can burst down the other mid in no time. Early game junglers usually lose a lot of damage when it comes to mid/late game so if you can get through the early game you have a good chance of winning. My mid pick would usually be something safer if they have early game jungler.
What would you consider to be your list of 'tier 1' mid champions as of this moment?
Froggen: Any champion played the right way would be tier 1 which means the FOTM champions would almost anytime be tier 1. My list would be: Anivia, Ahri, Kog maw, Kennen, Orianna, Morgana, Ryze, Karthus, Cassio, Galio, Twisted fate, Veigar in no specific order. Every single champion of those I listed can do something unique (except for ryze where you just destroy your keyboard)
And one last question. Do you ever get the urge to kill Wickd with a well timed Anivia wall?
Froggen: Funny question. Before Wickd and I were in team together I used to wall him out to let him die and then pick up the kills afterwards. Oh the memories! I don’t do that anymore even though it was a fun way to troll.
Huge thanks to Froggen for taking the time to answer the questions and being a genuine delight to interview. You can find him here on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter @LeagueOfOreo.No doubt after losses in Nevada and South Carolina, Bernie Sanders faces a tough uphill battle for the Democratic nomination. But as an economic conservative, I urge Super Tuesday voters to give Bernie a closer look.
On some key areas of policy, his views should be attractive to disaffected voters on both the left and right, who together—as demonstrated by Donald Trump’s and Sanders’ strong challenges to political establishments in the primaries—likely constitute a majority of the general electorate.
Increasingly, the economy is monopolized. For example, prices for medical procedures and insurance are much higher in locales where the Affordable Care Act has permitted hospitals and insurance companies to enjoy limited competition.
Germans pay about a third less for health care—and Britain nearly half—than Americans. Obamacare didn’t make it cheaper but instead imposes terrible bureaucratic burdens and requires too many young people to purchase coverage with huge deductibles they cannot afford.
Bush Care, which mainstream Republicans want to resurrect with tax deductions and other gimmicks, left too many people without insurance, because sometimes the free market doesn’t work very well.
Like it or not, sometimes the government has to create a regulated public utility or do the job itself. A single payer in the model of Britain, as both Sanders and Trump have advocated, may be the only way to relieve the hassles and rein in high costs.
In the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, Dodd-Frank has not limited the power of the big banks. Instead it has imposed mindless reporting burdens onto community banks—who didn’t cause the crisis in the first place. Now small businesses can’t get loans and create enough jobs.
Big banks are absorbing smaller regional banks, gambling with our deposits on commodities and foreign exchange, and stuffing executives pockets with huge bonuses.
Bernie’s got it right on the big banks—bust them up and instigate more competition
His skepticism of free trade is well founded. With Republican support, President Obama implemented a free trade pact with South Korea that has ballooned the bilateral trade deficit and killed 130,000 jobs.
Overall, badly implemented trade deals are costing Americans some 4 million jobs.
Certainly, I find many of Bernie’s redistributionist policies too expensive and badly conceived.
Soak the rich taxes and free tuition won’t fix income inequality.
Aggressive taxes could easily drive more businesses off shore and make everyone poorer in the bargain.
The problem with higher education is not access but high prices—more subsidies won’t fix that.
However, the country is already spending a ton on national health care. It’s really a problem of redirecting that money to a national health care agency—businesses and ordinary folks may be paying more taxes to fund it but they will get to skip those huge health insurance premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
Banks have proven too big to regulate and their huge political contributions have motivated federal antitrust cops to turn a blind eye to their abusive behavior.
I would prefer any of the Republicans to Hillary Clinton. She is too tainted by acts of questionable integrity, too beholden to powerful business interests that are bilking ordinary Americans and fighting battles long ago won—young women now receive 60 percent of college degrees, often earn more than young men and increasingly are assuming positions of leadership throughout society.
Bernie is straightforward and honest. He learned about the dreams of ordinary people the same place I did—playing stickball on the streets of New York.
– Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of MarylandWashington Capitals right wing T.J. Oshie is on pace to score 30 goals for the first time in his career. (Photo11: Charles LeClaire, USA TODAY Sports)
While general managers may be spending considerable time plotting moves before the March 1, 3 p.m. ET, NHL trade deadline, they are also starting to define their objectives for this summer’s free agent availability.
Here’s our ranking of the top 25 most intriguing potential July 1 unrestricted free agents. Players such as Brian Campbell (expecting him to re-sign in Chicago), Shane Doan and Jarome Iginla (retirement candidates) weren't included.
1. T.J. Oshie, right wing: Picked a perfect time to uncork the best season of his NHL career. He’s 30 and he’s on a pace to score 34 goals.
2. Kevin Shattenkirk, defenseman: With several contenders looking for a defenseman, he might get $7 million per season. At 28, he’s the only difference-making offensive blueliner available in the market.
3. Ben Bishop, goaltender: You can’t coach someone to be 6-7. That and the fact that he’s been to the Stanley Cup Final make him attractive. The Dallas Stars and Calgary Flames, among others, will have to consider him.
4. Alexander Radulov, right wing: It’s clear that with a creative playmaker, he might score 25-30 goals.
5. Martin Hanzal, center: He’s a 6-6 center who can score 15 goals and match up effectively against any top-line player.
6. Thomas Vanek, right wing: He’s a gifted offensive performer who has impressed the Detroit Red Wings with his hockey IQ. They will attempt to re-sign him.
7. Joe Thornton, center: The assumption is he will return to San Jose. He’s still one of the top passers in the game.
8. San Gagner, center: While it seems as if he’s been around forever, he’s only 27. He’s a skilled player who can help a power play.
9. Brian Boyle, center: A 6-7 checking center who can score 10-15 goals and win faceoffs can be important to championship-caliber teams.
10. Michael Stone, defenseman: Because many teams are looking for a dependable defenseman, Stone’s age (26), size (6-3) and experience (324) make him desirable.
11. Patrick Marleau, left wing: Can still skate and score, two attributes that serve him well in the modern game. Would not be surprising if he finished his career with a team other than San Jose.
12. Justin Williams, right wing: At 35, he is still a 20-goal scorer with a wealth of big-game experience. He’s Mr. Game 7, a man with a history of rising up in do-or-die situations.
13. Patrik Berglund, center/wing: The read on Berglund is that you are always left wanting a little more. But he’s 6-4, and he has scored 17 goals this season.
14. Ryan Miller, goalie: He’s always been a student of his position and that may explain why he has been effective this season at age 36. Miller could be a bridge goalie for a team waiting for a youngster to mature.
15. Karl Alzner, defenseman: He’s hard-edged, durable, reliable and he’s 28. He owns 567 games of NHL experience. What’s not to like?
16. Nick Bonino, center: Was an important contributor to the Penguins’ championship run last spring. Can’t carry a load by himself, but can be an important contributor.
17. Jaromir Jagr, right wing: Best guess is that he will return to Florida, but if he doesn't he still has the hands and drive to help a team’s offense.
18. Radim Vrbata, right wing: The 35-year-old is on pace for 58 points while playing with the Coyotes, the 27th-ranked offense.
19. Dwight King, left wing: He’s a 6-4, 230-pound role player with the potential to score 10-12 goals. You need players like King to be win Stanley Cups.
20. Brendan Smith, defenseman: Good teammate. Prickly. Can move the puck well enough. Has some offensive ability. Downside is he is a risk-taker. Still only 28.
21. Kris Russell, defenseman: At 29, he leads the NHL with an average of three blocked shots per game. Depending upon the strength of a team’s defense, he can play 16-20 minutes per game.
22. Trevor Daley, defenseman: Has proven in Pittsburgh that his skating ability can be a valuable asset.
23. Johnny Oduya, defenseman: At 35, he is not a long-term contract candidate. But his defensive mindset, championship experience and poise make him marketable.
24. Michael Del Zotto, defenseman: Watching how Justin Schultz’s game has come together in Pittsburgh enhances Del Zotto’s value. He’s only 26.
25. Scott Darling, goalie: Is he this year’s Cam Talbot, a player who is waiting for his chance in his late-20s (28) to be a starting goalie?The US national team isn't playing for loftier perch in the FIFA World Rankings these days. But on the heels of a strong 2-0 win over South Korea to start off 2014, that's just what they've earned.
Jurgen Klinsmann's Yanks climbed one spot to No. 13, leaping past a stale, tumbling England in the process. The ranking is tied for the highest the USMNT have been under Klinsmann, as the team spent two months at the end of last summer at No. 13.
They haven't been higher than that since October of 2009, when they were ranked No. 11 on the heels of a Confederations Cup final appearance and a Hexagonal-topping World Cup qualifying run.
Even with the current climb, however, the US are still prohibitive underdogs in their World Cup group. Favorites Germany held steady at No. 2, while Portugal jumped past Colombia into the No. 4 spot, and Group G remains the only group with two top-5 teams.
Ghana, following a punchless African Nations Championship in which they scored just four goals in six games while using a domestic-based team, dropped 13 spots, out of the top 30 to No. 37.
Elsewhere in CONCACAF Mexico held their No. 21 spot, while Costa Rica dropped three places to No. 35 and Honduras climbed three to No. 40.Screenplay Excerpt from the Upcoming Film “When Chris Met Pat”
Act Eleven
Fade In:
College Green - Sunrise
Two sweethearts are stretched out on the grass, watching the sunrise.
Pat
“Chris, do you remember the day we met?”
Chris
“How could I forget? You came scurrying across the Green, waving that tail for everyone to see!”
Pat
“It seems like just yesterday, but think of all we’ve seen and done since then!”
Chris
“And the people we’ve seen! Jerry Seinfeld, Margaret Cho, The President of the United States … we sure can’t complain about a lack of entertainment.”
Chris and Pat freeze for a moment while a lady jogs by without noticing the pair.
P at
“Don't forget a bout the natives. Just give us a fresh spring day and in no time we’re surrounded by jugglers, hula hoopers, protesters, dancers... never a dull moment, just how we like it."
Chris
“Exactly. Just how we like it.”
Pat
“Do you ever wonder where they go? They walk by us for what seems like forever, and then one day, they’re replaced with new faces, smells, voices... ”
Chris
“I guess I’ve never really thought about i t. Perhaps I would be more curious if they weren’t so quickly and consistently replaced.”
Pat
“Some of them come back, have you noticed? Some as special guests, some with tiny ones, reminiscing on their days here just like we are now.”
Chris
“ We’re not so different, them and us. At some point, we all find ourselves on the kissing circle or waiting for the Burrito Buggy to ope n or huffing an d puffing after yet another trip up Jeff Hill.”
Pat
“And look at us now, Chris, old and tired critters, reminiscing on the good ol’ days, just like we used to make fun of our parents for doing.”
Chris
“How lucky we are to spend our brief lives here, making these memories. It’s no wonder I hear our human friends often say ‘there’s no place like OHIO.’”
Fade Out.
End of Act Eleven
****************************************************************************************
On this day of love, our squirrel friends can’t help but think of all the special times they’ve experienced with the students and alumni of Ohio University. On this special day, we hope that you are thinking of us as well.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Bobcats!This is music to our ears!
Our friends over at iHeartRadio have gotten an exclusive interview with Queen Britney, and she has revealed that there might be a new app coming out next May that will allow her to better connect with her fans! See the interview below:
In less than a week, Britney Spears will perform live at our 2016 iHeartRadio Music Festival with a hit-filled set, offering the live audience a rare chance to see the pop titan up-close-and-personal outside of her Las Vegas “Piece of Me” residency. During her promotional circuit for her just-released new album, Glory, iHeartRadio sat down with the 34-year-old Princess of Pop for an exclusive chat to discuss just how important it is to connect with the Britney Army in-person and over social media. “I meet like 30 to 40 people every night,” she explained of her Sin City M&G sessions. “They come in, I say hello to them, and we take pictures and they show me their tattoos, and they show me all these different things and it’s cool. It’s really fun. There’s a lot of regulars that come back every week.”
Despite having released her own mobile game “Britney Spears: American Dream” in May, the pop star also plans on bringing fans one step closer towards her ever-so-average Instagram-worthy lifestyle. “With my app that I’m coming out with soon, there’s a lot of skits and a lot of interaction with the fans where I actually ask them questions and bring them into the situation so we can have some kind of connection going on,” she explained. As for who Britney is eager to see perform this weekend, let’s just say that she’s “really excited” to see the men of the evening. “I love Sam Hunt. I can’t wait to see him perform. I think my heart melts for him and probably Sting,” she revealed. “I absolutely love Sting and twentyonepilots. Those are my three favorite.” Stay tuned for more on our exclusive chat with Britney Spears.
A Britney app that connects her to the fans?!?!?!?!? SOMEONE PINCH US PLEASE!! THIS IS AMAZING NEWS!
We can’t wait to hear more about this app coming in May of 2017!
Thank you iHeart for sending this over to BG! We LOVE you guys!! XOXO
SourcePHILADELPHIA — As a contentious convention got underway under stormy skies in Philadelphia, a prominent Georgia Democrat came under fire Monday for seeming to compare Israeli settlers to termites during an event supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement held on the convention’s sidelines.
Speaking at an event sponsored by the pro-BDS organization US Campaign to end the Israeli Occupation, Johnson complained that “there has been a steady [stream], almost like termites can get into a residence and eat before you know that you’ve been eaten up and you fall in on yourself, there has been settlement activity that has marched forward with impunity and at an ever increasing rate to the point where it has become alarming.”
Johnson’s comments were initially reported in the right-wing Washington Free Beacon, and the Georgia congressman has not challenged their accuracy, although his office did challenge the original report’s headline that the legislator had called Israelis termites.
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“It has come to the point that occupation, with highways that cut through Palestinian land, with walls that go up, with the inability or the restriction, with the illegality of Palestinians being able to travel on those roads and those roads cutting off Palestinian neighborhoods from each other,” Johnson continued during his Monday morning comments. “And then with the building of walls and the building of checkpoints that restrict movement of Palestinians. We’ve gotten to the point where the thought of a Palestinian homeland gets further and further removed from reality.”
The Anti-Defamation League called Johnson’s comments “offensive and unhelpful” and asked the lawmaker to retract his remarks. “Demonization, dehumanization of settlers doesn’t advance peace,” the organization tweeted.
Johnson later apologized for his remarks, saying they were a “poor choice of words.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition asked how long it would take for Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party to officially denounce Johnson.
Johnson is also listed on J Street’s website, which allows readers to donate to his re-election campaign. According to the organization, Johnson has traveled both to Israel and to the Palestinian territories, and “is a strong supporter of J Street’s mission.”
The Anti-Defamation League described Johnson’s comments as “an offensive and unhelpful characterization.”
In a tweet directed at the congressman, the organization chided that “demonization, dehumanization of settlers doesn’t advance peace.”
Johnson responded directly to the organization, also using the social media platform to say that the comment reflected a “poor choice of words.”
“Apologies for offense,” continued the legislator who represents Atlanta suburbs in DeKalb County. “Point is settlement activity continues (to) slowly undermine 2-state solution.”
In addition to challenging the original headline in a statement to Johnson’s local newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the congressman’s office emphasized that “Congressman Johnson did not call Israelis termites but did say the settlement policies threaten peace and the two-state solution.”
“Congressman Johnson did not intend to insult or speak derogatorily of the Israelis or the Jewish people,” the statement continued. “When using the metaphor of termites, the Congressman was referring to the corrosive process, not the people.”
Ironically, Johnson was elected to replace former representative Cynthia McKinney who garnered headlines over the weekend when she claimed on Twitter that an Israeli photographer had been on hand for massacres in Nice and Munich, proving in her mind that Israel had a hand in both attacks.
McKinney, a former Democrat now affiliated with the Green Party, posted a conspiracy theory video on Twitter, adding her comment: “Same Israeli photographer captures Nice and Munich tragedies. How likely is that? Remember the Dancing Israelis?…”
“Dancing Israelis” refers to a widely discredited conspiracy theory that five Israeli men were arrested in New Jersey on September 11, 2001, after being seen celebrating the terror attack.
This was not the former Georgia representative’s first brush with complaints of anti-Semitism. McKinney, who served from 1992 to 2002, was defeated in the 2002 Democratic primary day after her father appeared on TV saying “Jews have bought everybody … J-E-W-S.”
Johnson’s comments came at a convention in which Palestinian claims have sprung to the forefront of the fractious politics of the left-leaning party. Yellow stickers proclaim |
McConnell said. "Together we've invested a lot to ensure that Kentucky's voice in the U.S. Senate is heard from the front of the line rather than the back bench, and I intend to earn the support to keep it there."
McConnell, 71, already has raised more than $13 million for his re-election bid and had $8.6 million cash on hand at the end of March.
"I'm no stranger to being an underdog," Grimes said Monday.
Grimes is expected to get the support of big-name Democrats, especially former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They are close to Grimes' father, former state Democratic Party chairman Jerry Lundergan.
Lundergan said he did not know how much money his daughter's campaign would need to raise, but "she will be OK."
National political pundits said after Grimes' announcement that McConnell was still the favorite, but many predicted a tight, tough race.
"This will be the nastiest race in the country," wrote Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post.
The New York Times, on its FiveThirtyEight blog, said McConnell was likely to win re-election because of Obama's unpopularity in the state and McConnell's huge money advantage. But McConnell "is unlikely to sail to victory" since Grimes has strong ties to state and national political leaders, the newspaper wrote.
Its analysis of four partisan polls taken in the race (three by the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling and one by the GOP-leaning Wenzel Strategies) suggest a relatively tight race, with McConnell leading by an average of 4.5 percentage points.
Meanwhile, the candidates' partisan supporters predicted victory and shed light on what might be the campaign's major talking points.
Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, called the race a toss-up.
He said committee polling done by Fred Yang of Hart Research showed 62 percent of Kentucky voters disapprove of McConnell's job performance while 35 percent approve.
Dan Logsdon, chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Party, said Grimes "will be a strong, positive candidate for the Democratic Party who will work for Kentucky families and end Mitch McConnell's 30-year legacy of just working for himself."
Republicans remained eager to portray Grimes as a liberal.
Gail Russell, a board member of Kentuckians for Strong Leadership, said Grimes was "an ambidextrous politician who will sell out Kentucky in exchange for national liberal support."
Rob Collins, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, noted that Grimes last year "stood proudly at the Democratic National Convention to nominate Barack Obama, who has followed through on his promise to destroy the coal industry; in essence declared a war on the state of Kentucky and the middle-class families who call it home."
Kentuckians aren't going to trade McConnell "for a rookie rubber stamp for the Obama agenda," said Kelsey Cooper, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Republican Party.
It was uncertain what type of Democratic primary election Grimes might face in May.
Other Democrats mentioned as possible candidates for the U.S. Senate include former Miss America Heather French Henry of Louisville, Lexington attorney and former state Democratic Party chairman Bill Garmer, and environmental attorney Tom FitzGerald of Louisville.
Henry and Garmer said Monday that they would not enter the race. FitzGerald said he had not decided whether to run.
Owensboro contractor Ed Marksberry, Louisville musician and music promoter Bennie J. Smith and University of Louisville communications professor Greg Leichty have said they would seek the Democratic nomination, but none has a statewide following.
McConnell also could have an opponent in May's Republican primary election.
"There will absolutely be a Tea Party candidate," said Tea Party activist David Adams of Jessamine County. Asked to name that candidate, Adams said, "We will let the sacrificial lamb have her day in the sun and we'll get back to you."Perhaps in a whimsical mood, Sigmund Freud cited some unusual evidence for the aggressive impulse he found in mankind. In his essay “Reflections on War and Death,” he writes that French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau “asks the reader what he would do if without leaving Paris he could kill, with great profit to himself, an old mandarin in Peking by a mere act of his will. Rousseau implies that he would not give much for the life of the dignitary.” Imagine if great numbers could so exercise their will. What violence would be unleashed, how many prostrate bodies around the globe who never knew what hit them. Ecstasy!
And so it has come to pass. With the will to do it, the United States—that is, the White House—can now eliminate undesirables anywhere in the world by means of the unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, with over 2,300 remote executions so far. A case in point was the assassination last September of a U.S. citizen, suspected terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, as he was driving in Yemen. This was accomplished with less oversight than capture and extradition would have required—paperwork and negotiations avoided. Clean.
Attorney General Eric Holder says execution by drone is not assassination if the victim is threatening the state. It may not be due process as provided by the U.S. Constitution, but it’s “judicial process” as decided by the White House. Holder offers only scant details on the targets—classified, you know—but rest assured they have been painstakingly selected, and we are at war, though not, to be sure, in Yemen. That country, we’re told, at least partially approves of these attacks.
Pakistanis have complained that too many civilians are killed in American drone strikes. At a recent meeting with President Obama, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani demanded that drone attacks stop in Pakistan. No way, responded Obama. They’re needed to wipe out terror.
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That’s what they all say, notes Freud, a congenital skeptic. Acts of violence are usually given some justification, deserved or not, to relieve the conscience. In this regard, he quotes Shakespeare’s Falstaff, who says that when excuses for any doubtful action are needed, reasons are “as plenty as blackberries.” Pick away. And drones can continue to pick away without impediment.
So far the United States, Israel, and the UK are the only nations to carry out drone strikes. But what’s to stop others? Drones aren’t costly and are risk free, at least for their users. A top-line drone costs about $10.5 million as compared to a fighter jet at some $70 million. It’s expected that in the coming decade, global drone sales will reach $94 billion. “Countries have an insatiable appetite for drones,” Northrup Grumman executive James Pitts told the Financial Times. Can we anticipate an arms race with a perpetual buzzing overhead from a swarm of drones?
That’s quite possible since China is getting into the game. Every Chinese military manufacturer is now reported to be involved in drones. Both China and the United States are developing sea-based carrier drones for any possible future confrontation between the two states. But is the drone the answer to modern warfare? All the strikes on the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan have not improved the prospects for winning that war. Anticipating U.S. withdrawal, Afghans of means are preparing to leave the country, the New York Times reports. Will this be the first drone defeat?
Nothing deterred, Israel is second only to the United States in production of drones and second also in their export. Attack drones provide the operational answer to any need, says Tommy Silberring, head of the drone division at Israel Aerospace Industries. “Automated systems are better than people. Computers don’t get sick, and they’re never in a bad mood.”
They also get around. According to the Washington Post, the United States has protested Israeli sales of sophisticated drones to Russia. Moscow, in turn, objected when it encountered Israeli drones in its 2008 war with Georgia. In January, Turkey scrambled F-16s to intercept an Israeli drone spying over the country’s southern provinces of Hatay and Adana. In 2004, the Turks themselves purchased ten Heron drones from Israel for $183 million.
Drones make wars so easy, say critics, that we’re likely to see more of them in the days ahead. Just a flick of the wrist and home for lunch. But wait—soon enough, not even the human hand will be needed. Software will deal the blow with a will of its own. All the destruction desired without having to give it a second thought, or even a first. Pity all those mandarins. Even Freud might be surprised, but war by robot proxies would hardly force him to revise his view of the aggression stubbornly lodged in mankind.
Ed Warner is a former editor-reporter for the Voice of America.The internet is terribly upset because “A Catholic high school in Illinois was so concerned about the modesty of their female students, they made a 21-page manual directing the girls at the school how to dress.”
According to a Scarymommy article, “It’s so perfect that this dress code exists. Because it proves in great detail why dress codes are so unbelievably sexist and ridiculous.”
No, it doesn’t.
First, let’s clarify: it’s not precisely a “21-page dress code manual,” which brings to mind a glossy, multi-page volume of draconian minutiae plus a bonus look book of modest and immodest gals. Instead, the school wesbsite includes “dress code guidelines,” accompanied by a slide show with examples of what their dress code looks like in real life. The copious illustrations are what makes it one of the more sensible, rational dress codes I’ve seen. More about that later.
Let’s take the objections in turn.
Hey, this dress code is all about girls, and not much is said about boys! That’s sexist!
Possibly, but probably it’s just practical. Boys’ clothing is generally designed for style and comfort. Girls’ clothing is generally designed to be provocative. (See this essay in the Huffington Post, which rightly calls Target to task for the ways girls’ shorts are designed and sized.) When prom clothing is concerned, this discrepancy is magnified times a thousand. Boys are still wearing more or less what they’ve worn for the last hundred years: Long pants, a dress shirt, and a jacket. Sometimes the pants are super tight, and that’s no good. Beyond that? A suit is a suit.
Scarymommy says:
What if they decided against sleeves? Can they were[sic] those 90’s style cropped tuxedo jackets with a tail? What if they wear flip flops? Will that work? Oh, you don’t care?
Nope. Those clothes would look silly, but they wouldn’t be immodest. And that’s the purpose of the dress code: Not to crack down on girls, but to crack down on anyone dressed immodestly. It is almost always girls who are turning up dressed immodestly; therefore, the manual is directed mainly toward girls.
Now, I can easily imagine a future where boys start turning up at prom in skin tight, shiny pants that cling to their testicles, or filmy skirts that barely cover their butt cheeks, or strapless bodices made up of transparent netting, or pants with cut-outs designed to draw attention to their penises or asscracks. These styles could become popular, and when they do, I suppose there will have to be guidelines addressing that kind of thing.
But, folks. Boys don’t have as many sexy parts as girls do. Even if a boy did turn up wearing a stripper costume, he just wouldn’t have that much to show off. A man’s exposed or semi-exposed chest may be sexy, but it’s not sexy in the same way as a girl’s exposed or semi-exposed breasts. File under: How Does One Explain Things That Any Cat Would Understand?
Second objection: They want girls to dress modestly, and that is stupid because modesty is stupid!
The writer assumes all right-thinking people agree that immodesty itself is an arbitrary standard people apply to girls just because they like jerking girls around, and not because modesty is an actual (if subjective) standard we ought to expect from our kids and ourselves.
Here’s a screen shot that Scarymommy shares as evidence of... something or other.
Scarymommy is incredulous that girls are not supposed to show cleavage, because, it snarks, “God doesn’t like cleavage.” I don’t see the school bringing God into it, actually. (I suspect the military also disallows cleavage, and it’s not because it will upset God.) And anyway, if a religious school does design its rules based on what God likes, where is the freaking problem with that? If you think Catholicism is oppressive and God is lame, maybe don’t go to a Catholic school? I promise you, a ban on thigh-high slits is not the hardest thing you’ll encounter in God’s law.
As I read through the guide, I was amazed at how permissive it is. A top shouldn’t be cut below the navel, and we’re supposed to be outraged? They allow spaghetti straps and strapless dresses. They allow slits and mid-thigh skirts. They even allow two-piece dresses that expose midriff skin. I’ve seen far more restrictive dress codes. Scarymommy is just upset there is such a thing as guidelines at all. And that is bonkers.
Objection #3: They are bringing actual inches into it! This objectifies girls and reduces them to bits of meat that can be measured and weighed! More sexism!
Scarymommy shares the next section of the guide
and says
NO NAVEL. And we’re bringing a ruler, so don’t even try to show more than two inches of your midsection. Dresses should not be excessively tight, so good luck if you’re girl with actual curves. And no cover-ups are allowed over dresses that do not meet dress code. You can’t hide your immodesty with a sweater, ladies!
Let’s pick this one apart, thereby giving it much more thought than Scarymommy did.
Using rulers, or even giving specific numbers of inches for this and that, can be a tricky game. There is something intensely dehumanizing about laying even a hypothetical ruler on a girl’s body. But if they don’t get specific, then girls will claim they had no idea their little scrap of sequin-encrusted lycra could possibly be considered inappropriate.
So the school is in a bit of a bind. If they get too specific, they look petty, and appear to be objectifying girls, as if their fittingness as human beings can be reduced to how many inches of flesh they reveal. But if they don’t get specific, some girls will show up dressed like strippers. Or, even worse, if they don’t get too specific, some overzealous monitor will tell a specific girl that, in his or her judgment, her dress has crossed a subjective line — leaving everyone to conclude that (if it’s a man) he has the hots for that girl, and is a pervert, or (if it’s a woman) she is just jealous because she’s old and fat.
So that’s why the school gives these specific guidelines. It can lead to heartache for girls with very long legs or girls with especially big busts, but what is the alternative? Subjective standards? No standards?
That is Scarymommy’s soluation, I guess. Many kids and parents and readers will say that it’s always wrong, always sexist, always objectifying, and always body shaming to apply standards to girls’ clothing.
I can only ask you to ask my cat, which I don’t have, to explain these things to you.
(I don’t understand the part about no cover-ups. Probably they have noticed that girls wear a little jacket to get past the door, and then take it off to dance, and then someone has to worm him way through the crowd and shout over the blaring music, “Marissa! Marissa! Principal Horace J. Patriarchy says you have to put your jacket on! I said put your jacket on, Marissa! Your jacket!” and then next thing you know, the Huffington helicopters of outrage are circling the gym and Marissa is crying because it’s really hot in the gym, which puts a damper on the party. )
Objection #4: The same dress can look very different on different girls! This is body shaming, and just proves how ridiculous it is to even try to impose objective standards!
Scarymommy riffs, “Dresses should not be excessively tight, so good luck if you’re girl with actual curves.” (I’ll just proactively deploy my meta-anti-shaming comment here and say that girls without curves are “actual” girls, too, okay, Scarymommy? Check your reverse body positive privilege, sheesh).
Guys, I am a bona fide fatty, and I have an enormous bust. A lot of the clothes I try on are too tight. What I do then, see, is I get the next size up. 21st-century America is actually a really, really good time and place to “have actual curves.” There are options for proportionately-sized clothing that were unheard of when I was shopping for my own prom dress, where you had to travel (by car! No internet!) to a specialty store to find clothing above a size 14.
All they’re saying is, different dresses look different on different girls.
My potential cat is getting exhausted here, with the explaining.
Next:
Scarymommy splutters:
Translation: if you weigh a little more, there are a lot of dresses you can’t wear. Because, curves. Sorry. They don’t make the rules. God does. Oh, wait. They totally make the rules. Never mind.
Um? The guidelines are pretty clear that it is, indeed, the school making the rules, and they’re trying to do so in cooperation with the kids and parents. And the school didn’t even mention weight. Maybe they’re talking about girls with short legs and long torsos, or girls with huge boobs and tiny hips. My cat thinks the Scarywriter is projecting a little bit, but my cat is, well, kind of catty.
And now we’re getting down to what is actually the best part of this dress code.
So many dress codes behave as if you’ll be fine if you just follow some very specific, numerical guidelines; and so many others behave as if you’ll be fine if you just decide to be less of a slutburger for once, what with having not one but two breasts and all.
Instead, this dress code acknowledges that any modesty guidelines are going to have shortcomings, because of what a subjective thing modesty is, and it does girls and parents the favor of asking them to “not put school administrators in the difficult position of upholding school standards.”
In other words, it asks them to think about and uphold those standards themselves. To behave as adults, and not to throw a temper tantrum over their sacred civil right to have a cut-out heart on their ass. “We’re all in this together,” is the basic message, “So please help us have a nice time at the dance, rather than turning this into one more exhausting battle over stupid stuff.”
No dice, Boylan Catholic. The internet chooses temper tantrum every time.
Now, let’s talk about why the internet is mad about the idea of a dress code. There is actually some reason for it.
In some places, especially in some religious circles, modesty really is something people only care about if they are interested in making girls feel bad, or if they believe that boys are ravening beasts who just can’t stop themselves from rapin’ everything that insists on exposing its – gulp – knees.
There are really are people, including some Catholic institutions, that say “teach modesty” when they really mean “teach girls that their bodies are dangerous and shameful, and any time a boy does something bad to a girl, it’s because the girl wasn’t following the Very Clear Rules.”
There are people who really do believe girls and women are, by their nature, always at fault, because if they didn’t want their pussies grabbed, then why’d they have to go out in public with female bodies? What did they expect?
I get it.
I know that people abuse the idea of modesty. I know that some dress codes are sexist. I know that some people treat girls badly. I know that, every year, nice girls show up to prom and get harassed by weirdos with hang-ups, even though their dresses are perfectly modest and pretty. I know that there are problems with many dress codes.
But it does not follow that any dress code is, by definition, sexist and oppressive and worthy of jeers and outrage. If girls are going to turn up wearing intensely sexual clothing, then the school is going to have to respond in some way.
And boy, is it tough to get it right.
If they make objective rules, they’ll be mocked for reducing girls to inches.
If they make subjective judgments, they’ll be excoriated for shaming individual girls, or for projecting their own personal issues onto girls.
If they tell girls to use their common sense, girls will show up wearing inappropriate things.
If they set down rules and turn away girls who don’t follow the rules, they’ll be raked over the coals for humiliating kids who paid for the right to be there.
If they ask girls to submit photos of their dresses ahead of time, so there’s no embarrassing surprises, they’ll be vilified for holding an inquisition and not trusting girls.
And that’s where the much-maligned “21-page manual” that provides dozens of examples of actual dresses comes in. It’s not some kind of freakazoid Scrapbook of Shaming put together by “two women with way too much time on their hands,” as Scarymommy claims. It’s an acknowledgement that it’s hard to just describe what is and is not acceptable. It’s an attempt to be as clear as possible about how the standards of dress look in real life, so we can avoid unpleasantness and just spend the prom, you know, dancing, or crying in the bathroom, or whatever.
Scarymommy concludes with turgid sarcasm:
We’re really doing a great job inspiring confidence in our young women, America. As if being a teenage girl isn’t hard enough — now they have to shop with a manual in their hands to make sure that dress that shows their back (the horror!) doesn’t show too much of their back.
It is hard to be a teenage girl. I remember. And I have three teenage daughters. It is hard. But we’re not going to make life easier by telling them anyone who helps them make decisions is just out to get them. That’s not how you train people to be adults; that’s how you treat people to be perpetual victim babies. Girls should be shopping with a manual, in their heads and hearts, if not in their hands.
That is part of growing up: learning that there are boundaries. There are some things you want to do that are not acceptable in certain settings. I refuse to be outraged that there is such a thing as boundaries, even when those boundaries are called “modest dress.”
Another objection: But what if this dress code is just a symptom of a larger problem, and girls really are being treated unfairly?
I know nothing about this particular school. I hope with all my heart they are also teaching boundaries about other sorts of things, especially to boys, who tend to lag behind girls in figuring out where boundaries are.
I hope they are teaching boys there are clear standards of behavior toward girls (and toward other boys). I hope they are teaching boys it’s okay to say certain things but not okay to say certain other things. I hope they are encouraging boys and their parents to do their part in learning how they behave, so they can have a prom (and a locker room, and a science classroom, and lunch) without being perpetually at war with each other.
And I hope they are teaching all these things to girls, too. I hope the kids don’t graduate thinking that anything goes, except when it comes to prom dresses.
For all I know, these modesty guidelines are the tip of the iceberg, and the school is positively riddled with sexism and injustice and oppressive patriarchal garbage. Maybe it is. But this modesty guide is not evidence of something wrong. It’s just evidence of a school trying to teach kids how to act decent, because no one else is telling them.
Final objection: But it’s so hard to find a dress that meets these guidelines.
If it’s really so hard to find dresses that fit these not-excessively-strict guidelines, then why be angry at the school? Be angry at fashion designers, who are hell bent on turning girls into sparkly little buffets.
And be angry at the nitwits at Scarymommy, who are teaching girls to think that sexy is the only kind of pretty, and that rules are inherently oppressive.
Good luck building a happy life after learning those lessons from hell. I’d rather take my chances with a dress code.
Liked it? Take a second to support simchajfisher on Patreon!Luiz Gustavo: Happy to stay and fight for a place at Bayern Munich
The Brazilian midfielder has seen his place in the Bayern side called into question following the summer arrivals of Mario Gotze and Thiago Alcantara.
It is difficult to see how Pep Guardiola is going to fit the wealth of talent he has at his disposal into a starting XI, and keep everyone happy over the course of the 2013/14 campaign.
The potential availability of Gustavo has been noted at Wolfsburg, who have admitted to holding an interest, while Arsenal have also been linked with an imminent approach.
Gustavo is aware that his future has become the subject of much conjecture, but the 26-year-old says he has not sparked the rumours and would be happy to remain at the Allianz Arena.
A man who helped Bayern to an historic Treble last season told Deutsche Presseagentur: "I want to stay on at Bayern Munich.
"I am under contract with the club and I want to fulfil that commitment.
"I have been in a position to fight for a first team role throughout my career. I will keep on fighting this year, too."It's good that the Government is going to pardon the thousands of Army deserters who enlisted in the British forces during World War Two. Of course, no army can allow desertion; however, these men were not court-martialled, but were subject to a blanket ban on state employment that deprived them of their constitutional right to due process. Moreover, the vast majority of them deserted from June 1941 onward, when the theoretical possibility of a German invasion had all but vanished, and after De Valera's government had, by deciding to retain the volunteers indefinitely, violated the original terms of enlistment (between one and two years) for which most had signed up in 1940. The men who deserted did so after being effectively cheated into becoming soldier-serfs, cutting turf on the Bog of Allen.
It's good that the Government is going to pardon the thousands of Army deserters who enlisted in the British forces during World War Two. Of course, no army can allow desertion; however, these men were not court-martialled, but were subject to a blanket ban on state employment that deprived them of their constitutional right to due process. Moreover, the vast majority of them deserted from June 1941 onward, when the theoretical possibility of a German invasion had all but vanished, and after De Valera's government had, by deciding to retain the volunteers indefinitely, violated the original terms of enlistment (between one and two years) for which most had signed up in 1940. The men who deserted did so after being effectively cheated into becoming soldier-serfs, cutting turf on the Bog of Allen.
That was the second great lie of their young lives. The first one was that Ireland ever faced a serious threat of invasion by Germany, which was the spawn of an even vaster falsehood -- that in 1940, Hitler wanted to invade Britain. But he didn't. He actually admired the British Empire, with its inherent presumption of racial superiority. We know from the diaries of Lord Halifax, the British foreign minister, that Hitler offered terms that did not involve German control of Britain. Churchill refused to allow these terms to be read to the cabinet, and they remain prudently concealed under the 100-year rule.
Instead, Churchill's determination to keep Britain at war turned what had been merely a continental defeat of its army into the enduring myth that in 1940, Britain faced a war for national survival.
But the German naval leader, Raeder, had repeatedly forbidden his staff from planning an invasion of Britain. And far from wanting to continue the war, in June 1940, Hitler ordered 20pc of his army to be demobilised, in order to get the German economy going again. The "invasion fleet" that the Nazis began to assemble that summer was no more capable of invading Britain than it was Hawaii. It was war by illusion: its purpose was to get the British to the negotiating table.
This "fleet" consisted of 1,900 canal barges, only one- third of which were powered, to be towed cross-channel, in clusters of three, by just 380 tugs. These barges had tiny keels, blunt prows and small rudders, with just two feet of freeboard: the distance between the water and the top of the hull. They would have been swamped during even a direct crossing of the English Channel, a shallow and violent waterway linking the raging North Sea and Atlantic. But an invasion would not be direct. The barges, with their untrained crews, would be able to make only about three knots, from the three "invasion" centres: Rotterdam, Le Havre and Boulogne. These ports are, respectively, from any south-coast landing beaches, at best, 200 miles and 60 hours, 100 miles and 30 hours, and 50 miles and 15 hours, with seasick soldiers crammed into keel-less floundering barges without toilets or water. What army would be fit to fight after a journey like that? And then there's the 55,000 horses that the Wehrmacht would need: its transport was still not mechanised.
All being well, and that really is a relative term, the first "wave" would take 10 days to land, with the barges plying to and from those three distant ports, requiring tides that would have to obey the demands of the Fuehrer rather than the older ones of the sea, in convoy, often at night, and always without navigation lights.
Why no lights? Ah: the Royal Navy. This is where matters become quite phantasmagorical. In August 1940, the British Home Fleet ALONE consisted of 140 destroyers, 40 cruisers and frigates, five battleships and two aircraft carriers.
The entire German navy, the Kriegsmarin, consisted of just seven destroyers, one cruiser with unreliable engines, two working cruisers, no aircraft carriers, and no battleships or battle cruisers: the Bismarck and Tirpitz were still building, and the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were damaged and out of action until the following winter.
What about the Luftwaffe? Well, it had no torpedo-carrying aircraft, whereas the British had two (the Beaufort and the Swordfish, both of which were later to show their mettle in disabling German capital ships), and air-bombing vigorously defended warships accurately over an open sea is incredibly difficult, even for dive-bombers: Stuka bomb sights were calibrated for stationary targets. All right, but were not British shores defenceless in 1940? No -- aside from a largely intact British army, two fully-equipped Canadian divisions arrived that summer, as did 200,000 rifles from the US on the 'SS Britannic'.
This doesn't diminish the validity of the allied cause, or the later decision of the nearly 7,000 Army deserters who enlisted in it, for they were taking arms against one of the most evil regimes in world history.
Nonetheless, just about everything that people believed about Hitler's intentions towards Britain in 1940 -- and still believe today -- was a myth created by Churchill, which he probably came to believe himself. Consider all the facts above, and then consider how that myth has endured, despite them. Makes you wonder, no?
Irish IndependentRecently, I decided to give my toolbox a makeover, and assembled what I’ll call my tool committee. The members: Joe Ball, a vice president for construction operations for Pulte Group, a prolific home builder; Ken Stone, director of the Hobby Shop, a playground of sorts for some of the top engineering minds in the world, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Donna Shirey, president of Shirey Contracting and chairwoman of the National Association of Home Builders Remodelers Division.
They didn’t agree on everything, but there was near consensus on the major stuff.
The upshot: spend $250 or so on about a dozen tools, and you’ll have all you need to avoid repeated treks to the hardware store. It’ll cost $253 if you include Ms. Shirey’s purple spray paint, but more on that later.
To start off, you need a hammer. In theory, at least, there should be nothing nuanced about this purchase. It’s steel, it smashes things, you’re good.
But there’s also nothing nuanced about the elbow pain you’ll feel if you choose a steel-handled hammer for your annual nail-banging jag.
Do yourself a favor and buy a hammer with a hickory or ash handle, since wood absorbs shock instead of delivering it straight to your bones. It’ll look beautiful when you hand it off to your grown child, and your arm will be in much better shape to present your gift.
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You’ll want a hammer with a curved claw for pulling nails, not the straight claw favored by wrecking crews and framers. And you’ll want a smooth-face hammer, not corrugated, so you don’t permanently crosshatch your door frame (or thumb) when you swing and miss. While you’re at it, look closely at the hammer’s face to make sure it’s good and flat. Nails that are hit with an angled or otherwise flawed surface are more likely to bend. (You can go on the cheap, with a $5 hickory-handle hammer from Sears, or spend around $16 on something more refined, like Plumb’s 16-ounce Premium Hickory Autograf curved claw hammer.)
A screwdriver purchase can be even more nuanced, if you let it happen. Don’t let it happen.
Buy a multihead screwdriver instead, said Mr. Stone of M.I.T. It should have at least two different size bits for slotted and Phillips screws, as well as Robertson (square) and Torx bits.
My screwdriver is ratcheted, which is easier on the wrist, but that’s not essential. Nor is it crucial to buy a screwdriver that stores the bits in the handle, but it will save you from buying replacements.
“You can’t really see the quality of the steel from looking at it, so buy a good-quality set from a reliable source,” Mr. Stone said. “It doesn’t have to be expensive.” One option: the Stanley FatMax Ratcheting Multi-Bit Screwdriver, for about $10.
And those bits you store in your screwdriver? They’ll come in handy for the testosterone-boosting,.357 magnum of the toolkit: the cordless drill.
If you have to ask, you don’t understand.
But just for the record, toolmakers could charge much more than the $50 going rate for one of these bad boys, and home repair kings would gladly pay.
Mr. Ball, of Pulte Group, actually recommends a cordless hammer drill, which is twice as expensive as a standard drill. “That really opens up the ability of the tool,” he said. “And it’ll last you a lifetime.” One suggestion: the DeWalt 1/2-inch, 18-volt Cordless Compact Hammerdrill kit, including battery and charger, for around $220.
He also recommends a one-inch-wide, 25-foot-long tape measure with a lock. You may never need one that wide, but the first time you encounter a high ceiling and your skinny tape measure droops instead of standing straight, you’ll pine for one.
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In the “things that grab” category, pliers are vital. Buy a standard pair and needle-nose, and add a pair of 12-inch slip-joint pliers, for times when you need maximum torque or a wide mouth (think pipes). “They’re very versatile in general,” Mr. Stone said. “They’ll give you a much wider range of options.”
Finally, crown your arsenal with Mole-Grip pliers, commonly known as Vise-Grips.
“If you’re trying to turn that faucet that’s all frozen up, or if you strip the bolt off a bicycle, you’ll need something with some teeth and some leverage,” Mr. Ball said. “This will do it.”
Next, wrenches. You’ll need one adjustable wrench and a set of standard and metric wrenches — each with one closed, or “box,” end and one open end. (Ms. Shirey said she can do without the wrench set: “I like the adjustable one because I don’t want too many things in my toolbox.”)
A set of socket wrenches — metric and standard — also helps in the age of unassembled furniture.
Few homeowners or renters will escape their tenure without a shelf-building escapade. You can prevent it from becoming a shelf-building calamity with a level and an electronic stud finder. They’re sold as a unit, but you may want to buy them separately if you like the feel and versatility of a two-foot-long level.
If you succeed in building shelves, you may graduate to hanging a door or replacing trim. A footlong wrecking bar is essential, especially one with a nicely tapered edge so you can slip it beneath existing wood. “You don’t want to go with anything crude for this,” Mr. Stone said. “Otherwise you can damage the wood around the area you’re working on.”
Light carpentry jobs will also require a handsaw small enough to fit in your toolbox. Be sure it cuts on the pull stroke — that’s easier than cutting on the push stroke. One popular option is the Stanley FatMax Single-Edge Pull Saw, about $16.
As an untrained owner of a circular saw who has nearly severed a finger more than once, I was swayed by his advice to eschew circular saws in favor of jigsaws. “They’re fast, and they can cut straight or in curves,” he said. “They’re also way safer.” He recommended the Bosch JS470E 7-amp jigsaw with a top handle, for about $190. Another option is Bosch’s |
for Windows Phone to succeed is to steal market share from Android and the #DroidRage campaign is an attempt to do just that. The company just needs to make sure that it doesn’t shoot itself in the foot.
What do you think of Microsoft’s #DroidRage Twitter campaign? A viable attack against Android or a marketing campaign gone horribly astray? Let us know in the comments.
Top image courtesy of developer isidromxz on XDA Forums.Although Perl is no longer finding the excellent numbers, it’s still a big part of my process. Perl ran out of steam a long time ago, but it’s still managing everything.
I could do big numbers through the Math::GMP module, the time to convert between Perl data structures and GMP data structures kills performance. But, I don’t need Perl for that part. I switched to a pure C program for the number crunching part. That does make me appreciate Perl a little more as I do really common things with a lot of typing in C.
But I’m also at the point where a single run of the program takes an unreasonable amount of time. By my back of the envelope calculations, with the fastest hardware available to me, a single processor would take 4 years of continuous running to exhaust the 30-digit space, which I’m working on now. As I noted in the “Benchmarking” chapter, I came up with a much better algorithm, and while I might have more micro-optimizations, I’ll need something much different to get reasonable runtime for the 32-digit space (40 years of processor time). This is several orders of magnitude faster than I thought I’d ever achieve when I started in May.
That’s not a technical problem with PaaS offerings. I could spin up two Amazon EC2 c4.8xlarge instances (72 processors) and finish in a month. I’d spend a bit under $3,000 to get through the 30-digit space. Or, $30,000 for the 32-digit space. I’m not enjoying this problem that much.
Fortunately, ServerCentral donated a phat testing box for me to use when they aren’t playing with it. I have 80 very fast processors to play with as long as I stay out of their way. These are actual hardware processors too so they are much faster than anything EC2 offers since I don’t have the virtualization tax. Even if that virtualization overhead is only 2%, that means quite a bit. But, managing all of that in C would be a nightmare. Perl to the rescue!
First, I need to break up the job to run on multiple processors. I could do all sorts of fancy things to distribute work and give workers new jobs, but I’d spend quite a bit of time making that work. I want to get this done in a month, including the month of run time.
First, I need a way to figure out how many processors I have. That’s not a big deal, but it is slightly dependent on the operating system. I tried a few CPAN modules, but most of them were much too complicated. I wrote my own CpuCount module and used the $^O variable to switch on the operating system like I write about in Chapter 11: “Configuring Perl Programs”:
use v5.22; use feature qw(signatures); no warnings qw(experimental::signatures); package CpuCount; use Exporter qw(import); our @EXPORT_OK = qw(get_cpu_count); __PACKAGE__->run unless caller; sub run { say get_cpu_count() } sub get_cpu_count () { state $dispatch = { freebsd => \&_freebsd, _default => \&_posix, }; my $uname = $dispatch->{ $^O } // '_default'; $dispatch->{ $uname }->(); } sub _freebsd () { _get_conf( 'NPROCESSORS_ONLN' ) } sub _posix () { _get_conf( '_NPROCESSORS_ONLN' ) } sub _get_conf ( $key ) { state $command = '/usr/bin/getconf'; chomp( my $number = `$command $key 2>/dev/null` ); $number; }
This is also a modulino (Chapter 18: “Modules as Programs”) so I can run the module to get an immediate count of the CPUs:
% perl lib/CpuCount.pm 80
When I know that, I can parcel out the work. That’s not a big deal. I decide where I want to start and where I want to end then partition that into the number of processors I want to use. Here’s the meat of my launch program:
for( my $a = $opts{'start'}; $a <= $opts{'end'}; $a += $interval ) { state $i = 0; $i++; my $end = $a + $interval - 1; $end = $opts{'end'} if $end > $opts{'end'}; my @args = ( $opts{'length'}, $a, $end ); my $output_file = make_filename( $opts{output_dir}, $opts{length}, $a, $end ); push @output_files, $output_file; if( my $child_pid = fork ) { # parent say "*** Parent process $$ forked child $child_pid, saving in $output_file"; $children{$child_pid} = { file => $output_file, start => $a, end => $end, done => 0, }; } else { # child open STDOUT, '>:utf8', $output_file or die "Could not open $output_file: $!"; exec $opts{command}, @args; die "Could not exec! $!"; } }
There interesting bits that come out of Mastering Perl are in the child portion. I re-open STDOUT to the file I want to store the stuff in then I `exec` the command I want to run. I spent a couple hours trying to do something with shell redirection, then pipes, and all manner of other things to get my launch program to monitor the children (which was the genesis of that %children hash). But that didn’t work out.
So I rethought it. I don’t need to connect all these bits. The C program will print to normal files and Perl will post-process those files.
The C program prints an excellent number as soon as it finds it, and prints a progress message every 15 minutes or whenever they get a USR1 or TERM signal. I grab those files by committing them to the git repo from a cron job and rsyncing them from another host. My program might go down at any time.
And here’s the fun Perl parts.
I’ve already started the processes and they are mostly doing their thing. But then I need to get out of someone’s way without coordination. Instead of making anyone wait for me, I tell anyone who heeds the processors to kill my stuff. Since the programs respond to the INT signal by printing a final progress message to its output file, I know where I left off.
I wrote a restart_run program to read all of the log files. Each output file has its intended range:
*** [46345] start a is 58627205437732 *** [46345] end a is 62000000000000
And is has progress information:
+++ [46345] Checked [58627205437732] to [58668609925922]
If my run is interrupted, I can read through the output files to discover the start point and last progress, then pick up there with a new run that adds to that file. This simple glue role of Perl has been easier to manage and quicker to produce results rather than architecting something fancier (and more fragile). I’ve designed from the start to handle failure and interruption by separating the concerns.
But that’s just part of the fun. I also figured that I didn’t want to lose any excellent numbers so I wanted to stash them in more places. With Net::Twitter, I can post them to the @excellent_nums Twitter account. When I wrote that script, I never thought I’d pass 200 excellent numbers. The maximum number of Twitter statuses I can fetch in one go is 200, so today I had to modify this program to page the results. That’s a pretty good problem to have.
There are two parts to my get_tweets program. I get all the status updates to see what I’ve already tweeted and tweet the numbers I’ve discovered that aren’t on Twitter yet. That goes through all of the output files, finds all the numbers, and checks them against the existing list. At the same time I fix up the local lists and README files.Home >> Life >> Society 74-year-old attacks cars that run light + - 08:55, July 13, 2009
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"I just want to catch people's attention and tell the drivers to think of pedestrians," the 74-year-old man told Lanzhou Morning Post on Saturday.
Many residents in the community applauded his behavior and two elderly men joined the former teacher, while others found them more bricks and brought them water.
More than 30 cars were damaged during last Thursday's incident, Xinhua News Agency reported.
The elderly man, whose name is unknown, has attracted a lot of attention online, with nearly 400,000 netizens responding to a Sina.com poll. Nearly 80 percent said they supported his actions.
A netizen called Biyuding20008 said too many drivers do not follow traffic rules like stopping at red lights and not talking on phones while driving.
The man became a crusader for road safety after a female pedestrian was killed in his community last year.
The old man attacked cars that run light. (Lanzhou Morning News Photo)
The old man attacked cars that run light. (Lanzhou Morning News Photo)
He successfully lobbied the local police for traffic lights at the intersection. He said motorists still go through the red light when they want to turn.
"Even when the light is green, drivers just ignore it and don't slow down for pedestrians," the man told the paper.
In order to punish drivers and draw attention to poor driving habits, the man planned to throw bricks at all cars that ran red lights for one week, starting last Thursday, but police stopped him on the first night. The man was interviewed and later released without charge.
The man said he knew his behavior was illegal but he had tried all he could and it did not help. Among netizens that responded to the Sina poll, yjz12 said people like this former teacher save lives.
But other netizens thought the behavior extreme. Luting1314 said the police should do more to safeguard citizens' safety.
Guo Shouan, director of Qilihe traffic police department in Lanzhou, told the Post it will put traffic police on duty at night and apply for cameras to be installed to safeguard the residents.
Last year, 73,484 people died in car accidents, according to statistics from the Ministry of Public Security.
Source: China Daily A retired teacher has become an Internet sensation after he lobbed dozens of bricks at cars that ran a red light at an intersection in Lanzhou, Gansu province."I just want to catch people's attention and tell the drivers to think of pedestrians," the 74-year-old man told Lanzhou Morning Post on Saturday.Many residents in the community applauded his behavior and two elderly men joined the former teacher, while others found them more bricks and brought them water.More than 30 cars were damaged during last Thursday's incident, Xinhua News Agency reported.The elderly man, whose name is unknown, has attracted a lot of attention online, with nearly 400,000 netizens responding to a Sina.com poll. Nearly 80 percent said they supported his actions.A netizen called Biyuding20008 said too many drivers do not follow traffic rules like stopping at red lights and not talking on phones while driving.The man became a crusader for road safety after a female pedestrian was killed in his community last year.He successfully lobbied the local police for traffic lights at the intersection. He said motorists still go through the red light when they want to turn."Even when the light is green, drivers just ignore it and don't slow down for pedestrians," the man told the paper.In order to punish drivers and draw attention to poor driving habits, the man planned to throw bricks at all cars that ran red lights for one week, starting last Thursday, but police stopped him on the first night. The man was interviewed and later released without charge.The man said he knew his behavior was illegal but he had tried all he could and it did not help. Among netizens that responded to the Sina poll, yjz12 said people like this former teacher save lives.But other netizens thought the behavior extreme. Luting1314 said the police should do more to safeguard citizens' safety.Guo Shouan, director of Qilihe traffic police department in Lanzhou, told the Post it will put traffic police on duty at night and apply for cameras to be installed to safeguard the residents.Last year, 73,484 people died in car accidents, according to statistics from the Ministry of Public Security.Elon Musk, Malcolm Turnbull in talks on renewables after billionaire's '100 days or it's free' pledge
Updated
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he has held a "great, in-depth discussion" with Elon Musk, after the billionaire tech entrepreneur offered to fix South Australia's energy problems within 100 days.
On Friday, Mr Musk said energy storage could solve the state's electricity problems with a Tesla battery farm, and work could be completed within 100 days, or it would be free.
He followed that up in talks with South Australia's Premier Jay Weatherill, later tweeting that he was impressed by the State Government's commitment to a "smart, quick solution".
Twitter was again the preferred medium of communication on Sunday, with Mr Musk and Mr Turnbull swapping appreciative tweets after speaking for nearly an hour.
A statement from the Prime Minister's Office said that: "The pair had an in-depth discussion on the value of storage and the future of the electricity system".
Yesterday, Mr Weatherill said he was keen to discuss the matter further with Mr Musk and was "certainly not ruling it out".
The idea also had the support of Opposition Leader Steven Marshall, who urged Mr Weatherill to consider the proposal.
While it is not clear what an array in South Australia would cost, Tesla did deliver on a battery farm in Southern California, built using an array of 400 Powerpack 2 batteries.
South Australia suffered a statewide blackout last September, while during a recent heatwave customers were intentionally blacked out because there was not enough power to meet demand.
Topics: alternative-energy, energy, electricity-energy-and-utilities, federal---state-issues, government-and-politics, federal-government, sa
First postedIntroduction
Jim Bopp, a conservative attorney, speaks in favor of a measure amending the state’s constitution to ban gay marriage during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee at the Statehouse in Indianapolis, January 2014. Michael Conroy/AP
States from Wyoming to Maine are surveying the fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s high-stakes campaign finance decision this week in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which held that the federal government cannot prevent wealthy individuals from donating a limited amount of money to an unlimited number of candidates.
At least eight states — and possibly as many as 20 — could see similar laws overturned, depending on how regulators, government officials and judges interpret the McCutcheon ruling.
Conservative attorney Jim Bopp, who has been fighting campaign finance regulations for decades, told the Center for Public Integrity that states either need to repeal their existing aggregate limits on campaign contributions “or they’ll be sued.”
“We are challenging some of them already,” he said.
Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Wyoming and the District of Columbia all currently have laws on the books that are similar to the one struck down by the Supreme Court in McCutcheon, according to lawyers and the National Conference of State Legislatures.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to strike down aggregate contribution limits to candidates and parties but kept base limits intact. Thus, at the federal level, a donor may still only give no more than $2,600 to a candidate per election, no more than $5,000 per year to a single PAC and no more than $32,400 to a national party committee. But there is no longer a limit on how many candidates, party committees or PACs a single donor can financially support.
Hours after the McCutcheon ruling came down, Massachusetts’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance announced it would “no longer enforce the $12,500 aggregate limit on the amount that an individual may contribute to all candidates.”
Spokesman Jason Tait said Massachusetts officials were also reviewing the current $5,000 aggregate limit that individuals may contribute to party committees.
Meanwhile, Jared DeMarinis, director of the Maryland Board of Elections’ candidacy and campaign finance division, told the Center for Public Integrity that the agency will be issuing new guidance “as soon as possible,” adding that “we won’t be waiting for a court case to see if the law is enforceable.”
Such rapid action, however, may not ensue in other places.
“We would have to wait for the legislature to make changes, unless a court ruled differently,” said Peggy Nighswonger, Wyoming’s elections director.
She added that lawmakers aren’t scheduled to reconvene until January 2015.
New York Board of Elections spokesman Tom Connolly said he didn’t know if legislators would “be proactive” about passing a new law, adding that any kind of action “might be the result of a lawsuit.”
Officials in Connecticut, Maine, New York, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., also said they were reviewing the Supreme Court’s decision.
But these states aren’t the only ones that could be affected by the McCutcheon ruling.
Indiana, for instance, imposes aggregate limits on the political contributions of corporations and labor unions.
Louisiana limits contributors from giving more than $100,000 to non-candidate committees during a four-year election cycle.
Washington limits how much money an individual can give party committees and political action committees during the final 21 days of a general election.
Alaska restricts the percentage of money that can be raised from out-of-state donors.
Additionally, other states — such as Kentucky and Minnesota — limit the amount of money a candidate can raise collectively from party committees or PACs.
Bopp also sees these laws as ripe for legal challenges.
“Whether the punishment is on the receiver or the donor, it has the same effect,” Bopp said.
“It’s an aggregate limit that’s unconstitutional,” he continued. “Why would you doubt it?”
But others — including many state campaign regulators themselves — are not yet convinced their rules are unconstitutional.
“I don’t see McCutcheon directly affecting Minnesota at all,” said Gary Goldsmith, executive director of the state’s campaign finance and public disclosure board.
Goldsmith said he would not characterize Minnesota’s law — which limits the combined amount of money a single candidate can receive from all political committees, lobbyists and large-dollar campaign donors — as a “close relation” to the federal law overturned by McCutcheon.
And Sarah Jackson, executive director of Kentucky’s Registry of Election Finance, said that “there doesn’t seem to be anything immediate that needs to be done.”
“We don’t have a law that’s exactly like what was struck down,” she continued.
Kentucky’s rules prohibit candidates from collecting more than 50 percent of their campaign funds from party committees, or from collecting more than 50 percent of their campaign money from PACs.
Likewise, Paul S. Ryan, an attorney at the Campaign Legal Center — which encourages the government to implement campaign finance reform measures — said state caps on what percentage of money candidates collect from political parties or from PACs may not be “automatically invalid.”
Nevertheless, he also issued a stark admonition.
“I wouldn’t consider any campaign finance law safe with this Supreme Court.”JAFFA, Israel – Arab social media users were fuming at reports that the Obama administration gave the Iranian government $400 million in cash while it was negotiating the release of captive American soldiers.
The Obama administration has denied it was paying ransom money. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that the cash transfer was part of a resolution to a longstanding financial dispute, and the cash was used because Iran and the U.S. at the time didn’t have a banking relationship due to sanctions.
On Thursday, Obama himself flatly denied that the payment amounted to ransom, calling the charges “the manufacturing of outrage” and stating his administration publicly disclosed the transfer in January.
The response on Sunni Arab social media was scathing.
“Maybe the pig is Shi’ite,” Zizal tweeted, referring to President Obama. “He clearly sympathizes with them, that’s why he turns a blind eye to their violations of the nuclear deal.”
https://twitter.com/zilzal01/status/760801369045536768
“His brother-in-law is Iranian originally,” Abu Omar replied.
@nasserturki11 صهره من اصل إيراني — ابو عمر (@oommaarr14091) August 3, 2016
Ali Abu Yassin tweeted: “They don’t need excuses to give Iran some cash so that it could do their bidding.”
https://twitter.com/aliabuyassin/status/760936015364231168
“It’s outrageous,” Abu Mubarak tweeted. “These funds give Iran tailwind and enhance world terror.”
فضيحه هذه الأموال تشجع إيران وتدعم الاٍرهاب الدولي. — suhail (@suhail8054) August 3, 2016
“We used to say jokingly that Obama was a Shi’ite, but I think it’s true,” Ahmad Alomar tweeted. “We’ve never seen America so weak, it happened only during his presidency, and because of his support for the Shi’ites.”
كنا نسمع ان اوباما شيعيا ونضحك يبدو ان اﻷمر صحيح فما وجدنا امريكا بهذا الضعف اﻻ بعهده و ذلك بسبب دعمه للشيعة وقضاياهم — احمد العمر (@shmm2567) August 3, 2016
“If he paid Iran $400 million, why doesn’t he just pay North Korea another $400 million to help her develop her nuclear arsenal?” Muhamad wrote.
https://twitter.com/Epic_moi/status/760996995993567232
Yasser Aldiri wondered: “America pays Iran $400 in ransom for four American prisoners. If Iran is a terrorist country, why put up with it?”
امريكاتدفع 400 مليون دولار لايران مقابل فدية 4 أسرىأمريكيين في إيران السؤال
ان كانت ايران ارهابيه وتخطف لماذا السكوت عن فضحها # رتويت — الشيخ ياسر الديري (@Tjvip4rMoot8wvt) August 3, 2016
“Everybody knows that they are allies and lovers,” tweeted another. “It’s a well-known fact.”
https://twitter.com/alqal3ah_/status/760809193746079748
“So Obama outrageously pays Iran $400 million in ransom,” Latif wrote. “Why don’t we find a couple of Americans to abduct?”
https://twitter.com/latifyahia/status/760788732249268224
The news media in the Persian Gulf didn’t spare Obama either.
The Saudi news site SABQ wrote: “Obama’s greatest scandal… $400 million airlifted in boxes to the Revolutionary Guards. And in return for what?”
Readers lambasted the American government, blaming them for Iran’s “ruthlessness” in the region.For the first time in the country's history, Slovenia will be playing in the Winter Olympics men's hockey tournament.
The Slovenians clinched an Olympic berth on Friday with a shocking 2-1 win over host country Denmark, giving the Slovenians a 2-0-0 record in the four-team qualifying tournament being staged this week in the small Danish town of Vojens.
Slovenia came into the tournament ranked third among four teams, ahead of only Ukraine. But a tournament-opening 4-2 victory over Belarus set the stage for the win over Denmark, qualifying the underdog Slovenians for the 2014 Winter Olympics, which will kick off Feb. 2, 2014 in Sochi, Russia.
"A great success, not only for our sport, but for our nation," Slovenian coach Matjas Kopitar told the International Ice Hockey Federation's website.
Kopitar, the father of Los Angeles Kings star Anze Kopitar, has spearheaded the Slovenian national program for the past few years. When asked by the IIHF's Szymon Szemberg, the elder Kopitar confirmed that his NHL star son would represent Slovenia at the 2014 Winter Games.
"He told me before we came here that if we make it to Sochi, he will be with us," said Kopitar. "At that point, we were maybe not thinking of this seriously."
Anze Kopitar's brother, Gasper, is a forward on the team, which is arguably the least likely country to qualify for 2014 thus far.
David Rodman scored both goals for Slovenia against Denmark, continuing a great run for the 29-year-old veteran of the Austrian League who played junior hockey with the Val d'Or Foreurs of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. Rodman scored a goal and added an assist in the tournament opener against Belarus, which competed at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
"I am speechless," Rodman told IIHF.com. "Nobody expected this from us, we came here as the third-ranked team. We have beaten both the favorites and we are going to the Olympics."AP Photos What's the designated survivor?
At every year’s State of the Union address, one cabinet official known as the “designated survivor” is asked to sit out the speech and watch from a distant location. While this year’s hasn’t yet been announced, here are some things to keep in mind when you find out who’s missing from Tuesday’s speech:
1. Who and Why? A designated survivor is a cabinet-level official appointed during the State of the Union every year in order to maintain the continuity of government should a “calamity” happen while all other members of the federal government are in a single location.
Story Continued Below
2. Line of succession: According to the detailed line of succession, the vice president takes over if something happens to the president, followed by: the Speaker of the House; the president pro tempore of the Senate; the Secretary of State; the Treasury Secretary; the Defense secretary; the Attorney General; and all the way down the line of cabinet officials. The designated survivor takes over if all parties in that line are wiped out.
( PHOTOS: The designated survivor from SOTU)
3. Presidential Security: The designated official is given presidential level security in an undisclosed location for the night. A military aide also accompanies the cabinet official, equipped with a briefcase containing the nuclear war plan.
4. Cold War Concerns: Presidential succession and government continuity emerged as a huge concern in the Cold War era, when the possibility of a devastating nuclear attack against Americans hovered uncomfortably over the U.S. government.
5. Tradition: The practice of appointing a designated survivor during State of the Union addresses dates back to (at least) the 1960s. The selection of the designated survivor was not customarily made public until the 1980s.
( WATCH: POLITICO’s issue-by-issue SOTU preview)
6. Mini Legislature: Since 2003, Members of Congress from each chamber have also been asked to sit out the State of the Union speech to maintain legislative succession.
7. Secrecy: Each year’s designated survivor must keep their selection under wraps until the night of the speech.
8. Inaugurations: State of the Union addresses aren’t the only occasion in which designated survivors are used. During President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration agreed to name then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates the designated survivor. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki was the designated survivor for last year’s inauguration.
9. She’s a survivor: In 2010, both Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan missed the SOTU. Although Donovan was the official designated survivor, Clinton would have been next in the presidential line of succession.
10. Last year: The designated survivor in 2013 was Energy Secretary Steven Chu.From now until the start of free agency, on March 7, we'll take a position-by-position look at the Los Angeles Rams in eight installments. The Rams -- coming off a 4-12 season that prompted the hiring of rookie head coach Sean McVay -- have about $40 million in cap space but do not have a first-round draft pick. They also have a lot of needs, all of which can feel a little overwhelming without breaking it down by section. We'll do that here. Next up: quarterback. (Previous: WR/TE, DL, OL, LB, RB)
The Rams will see if Jared Goff can develop into the franchise quarterback they seek. Harry How/Getty Images
Key returnees: Jared Goff, Sean Mannion
Notable free agents: Case Keenum
Top free agents available (for now): Kirk Cousins, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Josh McCown, Shaun Hill, Matt Schaub, Matt McGloin, Mike Glennon, E.J. Manuel, Matt Cassel, Blaine Gabbert
Key stat: Among rookies with at least 200 pass attempts, Goff's 63.6 passer rating was the 12th-lowest since 2000. The 11 who were worse: Andrew Walter (55.8 in 2006), Jimmy Clausen (58.4 in 2010), Kyle Orton (59.7 in 2005), Josh Freeman (59.8 in 2009), Joey Harrington (59.9 in 2002), Matthew Stafford (61.0 in 2009), Chris Weinke (62.0 in 2001), Kyle Boller (62.4 in 2003), Ken Dorsey (62.4 in 2004), David Carr (62.8 in 2002) and Mark Sanchez (63.0 in 2009). Those 11 have combined for one Pro Bowl invite, for Stafford.
As you might have noticed, the quarterback market drops off considerably after Cousins. That's why trading for Jay Cutler sounds like such an appealing proposition. And it's why so many teams are expected to line up for Tony Romo if the Dallas Cowboys release him. The Rams have been mentioned as a potential landing spot for Romo, but their biggest question at quarterback is whether Mannion, a third-round pick in 2015, is ready to be a full-time backup. If not, the Rams could bring in a fringe veteran.
But it's Goff's turn to start, for better or worse.
By the end of 2017, we'll all have a much better understanding of how good, or bad, Goff actually is. The No. 1 overall pick in 2016, Goff never challenged Keenum for the starting job in training camp last summer and didn't get the nod until Week 11. He started each of the Rams' last seven games, all losses, and finished with the NFL's fewest yards per attempt (5.31), second-worst Total QBR (22.2), fourth-worst completion percentage (54.6) and fourth-lowest touchdown-to-interception ratio (0.71).
But Goff also didn't have any help, at receiver, along the offensive line or within the scheme. Now he'll get a chance to play under Sean McVay, who helped Cousins ascend while serving as the play-caller for a quarterback-friendly Washington Redskins offense these last two years. And he'll work alongside Greg Olson, who has spent 15 years in the NFL as either an offensive coordinator or a quarterbacks coach or both. Olson, who watched Goff closely at Cal, sees "tremendous arm talent" and said the key to Goff's development rests on "being comfortable within a system."
"This is a guy that we believe in," McVay said of Goff at his introductory news conference. "We’re encouraged and excited about developing him."Crowds fled New York's Penn Station Friday night after an Amtrak police officer deploying a Taser was mistaken for gunshots, causing a stampede that left 16 injured.
NBC New York reported that tourists, commuters and New Yorkers alike were hiding behind garbage cans, diving behind pillars and leaving belongings as they scrambled to escape the calamity. Rumors of a shooter spread to nearby Macy's at Herald Square, where people were seen rushing from the exits. At a press conference Friday night, the FDNY said 16 people were treated for non-life-threatening injuries after the Penn Station stampede. The NYPD said police received dozens of 911 calls to report shots fired at Penn Station, reports that were ultimately unfounded. Tensions were already high at the busy station after power problems caused a NJ Transit train carrying 1,200 passengers to get stuck in a Hudson River tunnel, leading to cancellations and delays for NJ Transit, Amtrak and LIRR trains just a week after a minor derailment led to days of service disruptions.
The stuck train spent three hours in the tunnel before it returned to Penn Station, where six people were treated for minor medical issues, officials said. As people were leaving the train they witnessed what one person described as a "wave of screaming and falling people."
A man near the Amtrak waiting area of the station had become belligerent and Amtrak police used a Taser on him, authorities said. News 4 video shows the man being led away in handcuffs.
The pop of the Taser and the reactions of people nearby spread fear through the Amtrak waiting area. Some people thought there was a shooter and ran. Others followed, unsure why hordes of people were fleeing.
"People were dropping luggage, kids, everybody was just running," one witness said. "Everybody was really scared. It was a stampede."
People were seen crying and screaming as they ran out of the station. Those still inside the waiting area stood around in shock or disbelief as the mayhem began to subside.All untrue, except for the demise of Mr. Thicke, which was easily verifiable.
“Rationality seems to have fallen out of vogue,” said Brooke Binkowski, Snopes’s managing editor. “People don’t know what to believe anymore. Everything is really strange right now.”
That is certainly true at Snopes itself. For 20 years, the site was dedicated to urban legends, like the purported existence of alligators in New York City sewers, and other benign misinformation. But its range and readership increased significantly during a prolonged presidential election campaign in which the facts became a partisan issue and reality itself seemed up for grabs.
One way to chart Snopes’s increasing prominence is by measuring the rise in fake news about the site itself. If you believe the internet, the founder of Snopes, David Mikkelson, has a longer rap sheet than Al Capone. He was supposedly arrested for committing fraud and corruption and running a pit bull ring. In the wake of a deal that Snopes and others made this month to start fact-checking for Facebook, new slurs and allegations poured forth.
The underlying message of these spurious attacks is that the movement to fact-check the internet is a left-wing conspiracy whose real goal is to censor the right, and therefore must be resisted at all costs.
“Smearing people just because you don’t like what they’re saying often works to shut them up,” Ms. Binkowski, 39, said. “But at Snopes you learn to grow a thick skin. I will always push back. At least until someone shows up at my workplace and kills me.”Against The Current hoped to avoid any major change when signing with Fueled By Ramen just last year. Instead, lead vocalist Chrissy Costanza’s ultimate goal was to enhance the band’s strengths and pop rock mentality. Most importantly, she didn’t want their unique image to transform into something phony and unoriginal: “Ramen said, ‘We love what you’re doing now, we just want to blow it up and make it huge.’ Not, ‘What you have is good, but we can do this better.’ They really understood where we were coming from and where we saw the band going with what we built so far.”
And for a young band from Poughkeepsie, NY, Ramen’s success with other obscure-turned-massive bands (including twenty one pilots and Paramore) rendered enough hype for an ideal partnership. Costanza’s experience recording the debut album In Our Bones was extremely eye-opening compared to the independent release of their EP Gravity last year.
“Take a step back and breathe. Look at what you’re doing and what you want.”
“Finally with a label,” says Costanza, “we had time and [money] to make multiple trips to L.A. We had all of these other elements to play with and access to all of these amazing writers, and that really taught us so much about songwriting, since we hadn’t really done any co-writing sessions before. Ramen supplied these connections we’d have no access to.”
Although Costanza isn’t one to tweet about what she ate for breakfast, the “Wasteland” singer does encourage consistent cyber updates that help boost fan interactions:
“If you decide to boycott social media, you’re only really going to hurt yourself. It’s an enormously awesome, unparallelled tool and a great way to cultivate a universal connection. It’s a huge resource you can’t compete with anymore.”
Above all, always approach the industry creatively, but never lose sight of your brand and business standards:
“Take a step back and breathe,” she advises. “Look at what you’re doing and what you want. Too many people go right for it, but you need to have a vision. It’s important to know what serves the band and your image.”
Against The Current are performing on the Vans Warped Tour this summer.
Photo by David Aday
For more of Music Connection's Signing Stories, click HERE!BREAKING: Cruz Camp Caught Cheating in St. Louis County to Steal Delegates from Trump
The St. Louis County Republican Caucus was held Saturday at the Missouri River Township Caucus at the Westminster Christian Academy – near highways 40 and 270 this afternoon.
Lloyd Sloan was at the conference Saturday.
Here is his firsthand account:
There were two slates that were voted on today at the convention. One was called “Cruz” and the other “ |
published by Kroll, a global risk solutions provider.The report said that of the 545 respondents who were reached out to as part of the global survey around risks to business emerging out of fraudulent practices and cyber security lapses, 19% of the respondents said they had been ‘dissuaded’ from investing in India due to such concerns. In the survey, India ranks second only to China which saw 25% of the respondents saying the same.“These statistics reveal the contradictions in the Indian economy. On the one hand, India is an attractive destination for foreign investors…, on the other hand investors are deterred due to fraud, corruption and security concerns,” said Reshmi Khurana, head of South Asia at Kroll.The report also found out that among the major reasons that accounted for the frauds, 27% originated from management conflict of interest, 27% from corruption and bribery, 27% from market collusion and 25% from internal sources.While the report did indicate a bleak figure for the Indian investment environment, it also noted the fact that 68% of Indian companies were affected by fraudulent actions in 2016 compared to 80% last year.“The reported 12% drop in the number indicated that there is a gap in the perception of fraud in India between internal and external stakeholders,” said Khurana. “In many cases Indian companies shy away from reporting such attacks and incidents fearing reputation loss.”Kroll also said that while companies were mostly targeted for their top secret business information, there were also attempts to extract information about their employees. Employee details are things that have a huge market in India and more the details higher is the price in the grey market, said Khurana.Unlike in the developed world cyber security was never part of the priority list of companies in India but steps like demonetisation and also increased digitisation have brought the entire discussions around cyber security to the foreground.“Cyber risk is set to grow in India as the country becomes more digitised. At the same time, as the laws governing cybercrime strengthen companies in India will face greater reputation risk from having more obligations to disclose breaches that they may suffer,” said Tarun Bhatia, managing director, investigations and disputes, Kroll.Winemakers have long been using oak barrels for winemaking, but in recent decades oak alternatives become widely used with some advantages and disadvantages. The choice between oak barrels and oak alternatives depends on the winemaker and the situation. You might want to consider oak barrels, oak alternatives, or some combination of the two. Below you will find some guidance to help with your choice.
Oak Barrels
We now have much more convenient means of storing large volumes of wine, yet wineries and winemakers continue to use oak barrels for there reds... why? Part of the answer is consumer appeal. People like to see stacks of barrels and it does give a winery some level of street cred. The main reason that oak barrels are used though is that they offer some benefits that are very difficult to replicate with oak alternatives and stainless tanks.
Micro Oxidation
Wine barrels breathe and allow a minuscule amount of oxygen into wine. In small doses, oxygen stabilizes pigments directly after primary fermentation. As more time passes, oxygen encourages the polymerization of short chain tannins into long chain tannins. These long chain tannins contribute to a silky mouth feel, whereas short chain tannins are harsh and unforgiving. It is very difficult to replicate the micro-oxidation that occurs in a barrel with out the use of very expensive MOx equipment. Even with this equipment, it is easy to introduce oxygen too quickly and ruin the wine.
Even old wine barrels that are not so oaky anymore will offer the benefit of micro-oxidation and can be quite useful if maintained properly.
Concentration
Because a barrel is slightly porous, some wine will be lost to evaporation as it seeps into the pores of the wood and floats off into the air. Winemakers generally need to top up the barrel with wine every two to three weeks because of this phenomenon. To keep a 59 gallon barrel topped up through the year, you may need to set aside an additional 6 or 7 gallons of wine. This hardly sounds like a benefit of a barrel, but it is. This slow evaporation of wine concentrates the flavor compounds, tannin structure, and aromas of the final wine.
It is very difficult to replicate the effect without very expensive equipment or unconventional procedures. Large wineries can use reverse osmosis to achieve a similar result. At home you can remove some juice before primary fermentation to improve the skin to juice ratio (and make a rosé from that juice...). You can also achieve some level of concentration by chilling the finished wine until ice crystals form and racking the wine off the ice.
Oak Character
This is the obvious benefit of oak. Oak can add flavors like vanilla, spice, coconut, chocolate and nut and more. The type of oak and the level of toast on the barrel can significantly effect the oak character imposed on the wine. A heavy toasted american oak will add a smoke and spice to the wine where a medium toasted french might add more vanilla. The process used to make the oak staves can also effect the flavor. American oak staves are generally sawed, while french oak is generally split.
Downsides of Oak Barrels
A major downside to oak barrels is that they are expensive. A new 59 gallon oak barrel costs anywhere from $500 to $2000 and releases most of its oak in the first two years. Another inconvenience is the maintenance involved in a barrel. To store a barrel without wine, sulfur wicks need to be burned inside periodically or the barrel needs to be gassed with sulfur to reduce the risk of microbial contamination or mold growth. To avoid this, most winemakers will not empty one wine from a barrel until another wine is ready to replace it. This is more challenging with the small size barrels (<30gal) as they impart oak dramatically faster and often the wine will need to be removed well before the next harvest.
Oak Alternatives
For the home winemaker, a great way to dabble in oak is to use oak alternatives. Oak alternatives include barrel staves, oak chips, oak cubes, spirals, etc. Oak alternatives can provide all the benefits of regular oak barrels with the exception of micro-oxidation and concentration. Oak alternatives offer several unique benefits over oak barrels
Price
Arguably the biggest advantage to oak alternatives is the price. A 1lb bag of toasted oak chips can usually be found for less than $10 and is enough oak to treat 10-30 gallons of wine, depending on the level of oak that you are looking to achieve.
Flexibility
With oak alternatives, many levels of toast or even different species of oak can be added to perfectly dial in the finished wine. All of the toast levels available for barrels are available for oak alternatives, including; light, medium, medium plus, medium long, and heavy toast. An advanced winemaker may choose to stagger the oak addition and add lighter toasts with harsh yet protective tannins during fermentation and progressively heavier toasts with softer tannins as the wine is aging. You may also consider some combination of french and american oak to achieve more complexity.
Speed
Oak alternatives have a high surface area to volume ratio, causing them to very quickly release oak into the wine. The smaller chips release most of their oak in the first two weeks of use. This allows the winemaker to gradually add oak and quickly see results to decide of more oak is necessary. Be careful when adding oak alternatives though, because within a couple weeks you can go from no oak to over oaked. Taste frequently when using oak chips to minimize the risk of over oaking.
Sustainability
One large oak tree can only produce between one and three full size oak barrels but can produce several tons of oak alternatives. American oak barrels are in
extremely high demand with the recent boom in small distilleries causing some concern for a shortage. Rather than discarding of old, yet healthy wine barrels one can continue to use them for their micro-oxidation effects and concentration effects but supplement with oak alternatives. This is more sustainable and should not cause any reduction in final wine quality if done properly.
Final Words
Oak barrels are great but they are a large investment. If you are just getting started in winemaking, consider using oak alternatives for a couple years. You may be very happy with the results using alternatives and great wines can be made without the use of barrels. Once you have built some confidence with your wine
For more information about home winemaking, subscribe to my youtube channel.
The Home Winemaking Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCukfI_LTN8MqOLZq96ACbjAThe real victims of the purges are the thousands of Turks who have been detained for almost a year on what are, more often than not, spurious charges. Among the detained are the Altan brothers, Ahmet and Mehmet, one a renowned novelist and journalist, the other an economist and professor. One of the crimes they are accused of: sending subliminal messages on the eve of last year’s coup through a television program encouraging the overthrow of the government.
The Erdogan government’s efforts to blame foreigners for the coup attempt is a cynical effort to shore up support at home. Some 10 German or German-Turkish dual nationals are currently being detained by Turkey. Ankara most likely wants Berlin to extradite some Turkish generals purged after the coup attempt who have sought asylum in Germany.
But Germans are not the only ones being targeted. Andrew Brunson, an American pastor, found his life inexplicably upended when he was arrested in early October 2016, also for supposedly supporting a terrorist organization. He has been kept in jail since, and the pro-Erdogan Turkish press has had a field day conjuring up ludicrous stories about him. One such story: that Brunson is a CIA employee who helped the Gülen organization and the Kurdish insurgency. There is also Serkan Göle, a 37-year-old Turkish American NASA scientist who went to Turkey to visit family with his wife and two young sons, but was picked up by Turkish authorities on his way home. He has been in jail for a year. He, too, stands accused of being a CIA agent and, because he had a $1 bill in his possession—not unusual for someone who lives in America—a member of a terrorist organization. In his youth, he attended Gülen-linked schools, including one university where he benefitted from a Turkish state scholarship.
One particularly absurd case is that of Hamza Uluçay, a 37-year employee of the U.S. consulate in Adana, who was picked up on “terrorism” charges. He is a foreign service national, a local hire who helps U.S. diplomats arrange meetings and navigate the local political and social scene. I have known Hamza for 25 years—I first met him in the 1990s in Adana during a research trip. When I saw him last in March 2016, I joked with him that he ought to never retire because Consulate Adana, notwithstanding his American colleagues, could not function without him. These audacious charges amount to nothing less than sticking a thumb in America’s eye.
The Turkish leadership is playing hardball: It has gone after the Americans because the United States has yet to positively respond to Ankara’s request to extradite Gülen. Ankara has supplied reams of material that supposedly support the case for his extradition that the Justice Department has found to be inconclusive and well below the evidentiary threshold needed to take away someone’s green card. In addition, the Turkish government is seeking the release of Reza Zarrab from a detention center in Manhattan. Zarab is the Iranian-Turkish-Azeri owner of a *company that engaged in sanctions busting. Turkey’s international reputation has suffered immensely from all this. Only this week, Turkish judicial authorities withdrew their formal accusation lodged with Interpol against almost 700 German firms, including the giants Daimler and BASF, of colluding with terrorists. Turkish officials often accuse the Europeans, be they Dutch or Germans, of being Nazis. At a rally in March, Erdogan, angry at the Europeans’ refusal to allow Turkish politicians to campaign on their soil, said, “I thought Nazism was dead but I was wrong. … The West has shown its true face.” The Erdogan government has done a great deal of damage to Turkey’s relationship with Europe, and it will take a very long time for it to be mended.Kids today think they know everything, but we know that's not true. Technology? Sure, they might have the one-up on us. But we come from the generation that knew how to do things with our hands other than taking selfies.
Our generation had a slew of hand tools that we used on a daily basis. If we brought them out today, this generation would probably think we were going to use them to torture people!
So that begs the question, do you remember what this odd tool was used for? Almost everyone we've asked has no clue what it could be. The most common response was "a strawberry corer" but that couldn't be farther from the truth!
The answer?
It's a vintage oil can opener spout! Back in the day, we used these to open engine oil cans. The tool would puncture the top of the tin and give you a spout to pour the oil from.
It looks similar to a juice can opener, and that's probably where they got the idea for those! Both tools leave a puncture hole in the shape of a triangle.
You may think this tool is from waaaay back in the day, but it's actually only from the 1980s! Although in terms of tool evolution, that's definitely the dark ages.
I remember having one of these in my first car! My dad always made me keep it in the trunk.
Did you know what this tool was? Share if you remember!ADVERTISEMENT
In the two weeks since Donald Trump's shocking victory, the press has devoted a substantial chunk of its coverage to enumerating the president-elect's many faults. He's temperamentally unfit to serve as president. He's ignorant of policy. He's corrupt. His early choices to serve in his administration are racist, anti-Semitic, extremist, unhinged. And of course the whole thing is frightening, terrifying, horrifying.
Most of that is true, and it's perfectly appropriate that we focus on the considerable dangers the nation now confronts. Yet it's also the case that our appreciation for the distinct character of the threat Trump poses to the country's political order would be enhanced if we devoted a little more time to acknowledging that the risks are at least as much a product of Trump's talents as they are of his many faults.
The ominous fact is that Trump is undeniably one of the greatest intuitive political geniuses in history. Think about it: A wealthy businessman with no political experience at all takes on more than a dozen experienced politicians and manages to prevail, winning the presidential nomination of a major party. He then runs what an army of experts and analysts consider to be a train wreck of a general-election campaign and nonetheless manages to prevail to become the president-elect of the most powerful nation on Earth. It's an astonishing accomplishment.
This doesn't mean that Trump had it all planned out ahead of time, like some Machiavelli from Manhattan. On the contrary, I suspect he's as surprised as anyone that the quixotic campaign he launched in June of 2015 has delivered him to the front door of the White House. As I said, he's an intuitive genius. Radicalizing certain recent tendencies of the Republican Party and diverging from it in others, Trump tried something new and it worked. The most discontented voters in the party listened to his message and responded to it, probably without realizing that this is what they wanted until they heard it. In that sense, Trump conjured into existence the very populist movement that has now catapulted him to the presidency. In the process, he managed to rejigger the GOP electoral coalition and wrest control of the party away from its leadership.
The revolution was about policy — immigration, trade, and the economic and cultural decline of the white working class — but it was at least as much about attitude. Trump was (and continues to be) George Wallace with a Twitter account — a demagogue spewing venomous anger and disgust about the multiple "disasters" confronting the country directly to like-minded voters with no intermediary at all, circumventing the heads of his party, mainstream media outlets, and even the retinue of advisers who ran his campaign.
Trump's unorthodox actions, regularly ridiculed by pundits, revealed just how institutionally conservative the gatekeepers are. They strive to uphold norms, propriety, habits — and Trump shredded them over and over again. By shredding them, he amplified his message, showing voters what he repeatedly told them: that he wouldn't abide by the ordinary rules of the political game or accept the constraints that they impose on other politicians. And in an act of supreme recklessness, just enough voters in just the right number of states decided to make the leap into an experiment in radicalism with Trump as their demagogic leader.
To see the populist dynamic in action — and catch a glimpse of how its logic is likely to shape our political future — you need look no further than this past weekend's conflagration surrounding Mike Pence's visit to the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. As everyone knows, Pence was booed by members of the audience at the start of the play, and at the conclusion one of the lead actors directed a critical statement to the vice president-elect.
Pence's response was exactly what one would expect from a public figure operating at the national level. He rose above passion to speak high-mindedly, graciously, magnanimously: "I wasn't offended…. That's what freedom sounds like." That's standard politics enacted with competence.
But Trump? As always, he did the "wrong" thing — the thing that everyone from George Washington on down to a present-day political consultant would advise against: For two days in a row, he took to a public forum (Twitter, of course) to lambast the cast of the play, take umbrage on behalf of his running mate, and petulantly demand an apology.
Once again, I don't want to presume strategic intent. Whether Trump's reaction was the product of a conscious decision or an impulsive response to a provocation, it's uncanny how Trump's unorthodox, demagogic behavior just so happens to advance his political fortunes.
Consider:
Trump's Twitter outburst distracted media attention from two potentially radioactive stories — his far-right Cabinet nominees and his $25 million settlement in the Trump University lawsuit.
It ensured maximal, extended coverage of Pence's treatment at Hamilton — an event that instantly became the latest example of liberal elite condescension toward the political views of "ordinary Americans."
It guaranteed that the faction of the GOP base that responds most passionately to Trump would remain angry and politically engaged. That will be extremely important in ensuring that Trump gets what he wants from the Republican Congress — including a pass on behavior that might otherwise prompt investigations into corruption.
It provoked an equal and opposite freak-out among liberals, who will now be more inclined than ever to engage in actions that inspire the next round of indignant Trump tweets — which will of course lead the demagogic dynamic that benefits Trump to repeat itself yet again.
According to the normal rules of politics, Trump is a mess who gets nothing right. And yet he keeps succeeding, which just might mean that the normal rules of politics no longer apply — or at least that they apply differently than they used to.
More than anyone else on the political scene, Trump has managed to discern the populist potential of the social media age, and to go a long way toward mastering the funhouse rules that appear to apply within it. Until the rest of us catch up and adapt to the laws that govern this topsy-turvy world, we will remain at the mercy of our troll-in-chief.Product Details
Note: Viticulture is required to play Tuscany.
Tuscany: Expand the World of Viticulture significantly extends the original game of winemaking. Using a tiered system that lets you gradually unlock ("uncork") 12 new expansions to Viticulture in an order that is unique to your game, Tuscany enhances and completes the rustic world that Viticulture introduced.
These expansions add asymmetric starting resources, new and advanced visitor cards, an extended game board for actions in all four seasons, special types of worker meeples, and more.
Includes:
1 Special Worker Expansion
1 Extended Board Expansion
1 Advanced Visitor Expansion
1 Mama & Papa Expansion
1 Property Expansion
1 Patronage Expansion
1 New Visitor Expansion
1 Structure Expansion
1 Arboriculture Expansion
1 Formaggio Expansion
1 Mafia Expansion
1 Automa ExpansionReportedly inspired by a divine message, the architect of this poultry-shaped church initially set out to create a place of worship in the form of a giant dove, but the locals quickly dubbed his creation the Chicken Church (Gereja Ayam in the regional language).
Indeed, despite the best intentions to craft it otherwise, it is impossible not to see a domestic egg-laying bird when looking at this open-beaked architectural creature.
In a remote Indonesian forest, this creation of Daniel Alamsjah was once a place of prayer as well as a rehabilitation center for children and drug addicts, but finishing the building proved too costly and the place closed down over a decade ago.
Covered in graffiti and crumbling at a structural level, the Chicken Church is likely not long for this world. For now, though, travelers (sometimes with romantic partners) can be found inside at times, cooped up away from prying eyes, but eventually the building will doubtless be either demolished or perhaps simply collapse on its own (story via Colossal and images via uzone.id, Punthuk Setumbu and Alek Kurniawan).NMDOT introduces preliminary plan to ease congestion at Montgomery and I-25 Copyright by KRQE - All rights reserved Video
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) - If you have ever used the Montgomery interchange during rush hour, your likely to face heavy congestion coming on and off the freeway. Now, the state is looking into ways to get traffic moving.
Copyright by KRQE - All rights reserved
"It's pretty ridiculous, sometimes," said Albuquerque local Brianna Trujillo.
Trujillo says traffic in the area where Montgomery and Montano meet I-25 is only getting worse.
"About 15 minutes, sometimes, just to get out of my apartments," said Trujillo with a laugh.
She says speeds slow to a snail's pace when traffic backs up on the bridge over I-25.
"Something to help it would be very necessary, I think," Trujillo said.
The New Mexico Department of Transportation agrees.
Early renderings reveal what the department has in store.
The bridge is wider with more lanes to get more cars through faster. Instead of two turn lanes onto Montgomery from I-25, there are three. There is also an additional lane to turn from the bridge onto the freeway.
What's more, if you're looking to get from an off-ramp right back onto I-25 in the other direction, this proposal would allow you to avoid the lights by taking a dedicated outside lane next to oncoming traffic. Another change is the removal of the on-ramp from Montano to I-25 southbound.
"That would actually be pretty smart, I think," said Trujillo.
Others say it won't be enough.
"There are too many cars already," said local Roy Padilla.
Department of Transportation officials tell KRQE News 13 there have been some proposed alternatives for this project, but they say this concept is the best so far. Officials say they should be close to a final design by the end of the year.
DOT says this project would cost close to $50 million. It's all part of the state's plan to widen I-25 to four lanes, southbound from San Antonio to Jefferson.Replace the usual underline text decoration of links while on hover
I used a small animated gif arrow image as my underline for the links when hover,. (size of image depends on you, just make it sure it is small and will look like a line when on repeat-x)
this is the image i used (the size is 10x5)..
you can do this on all links on your entire site or just a section of your site links only..
this code is for navbar links only
a.topt:hover, a:visited.topt:hover, a:link.topt:hover, a.toptsel:hover, a:visited.toptsel:hover, a:link.toptsel:hover {
text-decoration:none;
padding-bottom: 2px;
background: url(image_url_here) repeat-x bottom ;
}
this code is for entire links..
a:hover, a:visited:hover, a:link:hover {
text-decoration:none;
padding-bottom: 2px;
background: url(image_url_here) repeat-x bottom;
}
just choose a proper selector where you want to apply this..
you can adjust the padding to place it at the top(as overline), bottom(underline) or midlle(like strike-through)..
value of text-decoration must be none..
NOTE: if you use the second code.. all links will have that underline image,. including photos
in album, thumbnails (if sets in thumbnails) and all headshot links.. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
if you want the usual text decoration, here are some you can use,.
Value's of text decoration
text-decoration: underline;
text-decoration: overline;
text-decoration: linethrough;
text-decoration: blink;
text-decoration: underline overline;
See original article at Multiply Themes, Layouts and Tutorials site
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Hoctro | Jack Book Widget byEditor’s note: Anthony Bourdain tragically took his own life on June 8, 2018. This story was first published on mensjournal.com on October 2015, and remains here in its original form.
In the cover story for the October 2015 issue of Men’s Journal, contributing editor Josh Eells puts in some quality time in Kuala Lumpur with professional globe-trotter Anthony Bourdain as he shoots for the upcoming season of Parts Unknown. In it, we learn about how Bourdain grew from the arrogant young chef and author of Kitchen Confidential to a man who can appreciate a great hotel. We also see first-hand how Bourdain gets himself immersed in a city. Here, gleaned from the feature story, are rules to follow if you’re looking to experience a place in all its grit and glory, like Bourdain does.
Chef, Author, and TV Host Anthony Bourdain Dead at 61
1. Head straight to the central market.
“You see what’s for sale, you see what’s in season, you see the fundamental color palette of a cuisine. You really get a sense of what a culture loves most dear.”
2. Beware the buffet.
“Stay away from the hotel buffet. It’s the food that has the most number of hands on it and the least amount of love given to it. It’s for a transient audience — they know you won’t be there when you’re shitting like a mink, so why should they care? Also the hotel buffet is ethically a crime. If you’re eating spaghetti Bolognese in Chiang Mai, there’s something wrong with you.
Life Advice from Anthony Bourdain
3. Don’t worry about capturing the moment.
When Bourdain explores a city, he needs to record his movements for television, but he strives to keep the authenticity of the place. “I’ve said a million times that I’d rather miss the shot than disturb the mojo. If you’re stopping people to move a light, it fucks up the dynamic and the spontaneity.”
4. Get your workout in early.
Every morning, Bourdain makes sure to get in a bout of jujitsu, which he credits for having helped shed 30 pounds and kicking his two-pack-a-day cigarette habit. “You get your ass kicked, spend the day thinking about it, then go back the next day to see if you figured anything out.”
5. The hotel is key.
“I’m a whore for the Chateau Marmont. I will do all sorts of terrible things so I can stay in that hotel. Hazzlit’s in London is quirky and wonderful. I love any majestic old colonial hotel in Asia or Africa left behind by the French of the Brits — the Metropole in Hanoi, the Grand Hotel d’Angkor in Angkor Wat, the Continental in Tangier. If Graham Greene stayed there, chances are I’ll like it.”
6. Watch your hands.
“I always go out of my way to be briefed on offensive gestures in a country. We learned that lesson a long time ago. Nobody on our crew does ‘A-OK’ anymore — early on, our cameraman Todd was relentless at it, until finally I was like, ‘You do understand that you’re asking if they’ll ass-fuck you, right?'”
Seal of Approval: Anthony Bourdain's Favorite Gear
7. Seek out quality commodes.
“We talk about bathrooms a lot. Good plumbing is something you hold dear, because it’s few and far between. The best toilets are in Japan — any old-school ryokan with the deep tub, or the toilet that plays Guns N’ Roses. And the worst would have to be Harbin, in China, in the winter. It’s freezing cold, and you go in there and it’s two slats and a deep trench and a 25-foot frozen stalagmite of shit. Just an Everest-size mount of shit in the hole. Mother of God.”
8. Savor the moment.
“My happiest moments on the show are when we’ve finished shooting, maybe had a couple drinks or a joint and say, ‘Wow — who gets to do this?'”See bottom of story for update
EXCLUSIVE: While controversy continues to swirl around the huge Hamas tunnel network in Gaza, an internal United Nations audit report reveals that a U.N. Development Program office that funds and monitors spending on construction in the territory allowed at least five non-staff contract employees to handle “core” procurement processes that only staffers are supposed to handle, including those for ordering up “significant” civil construction activities.
Moreover, the report says, of the UNDP office: “the Office was not monitoring and recording actual work” performed by these individuals and other contract employees handling “core” functions, and the terms of reference for their employment “did not include specifications for services provided to particular projects” — in other words, were relatively undefined.
At the same time, the office’s internal financial tracking system — a UNDP-wide system known as Atlas — was improperly recording at least $8 million worth of civil construction spending at far less than its full value, a practice that UNDP auditors noted could keep the activity under the radar of higher-level U.N. officials who must approve purchase orders above defined cost threshold levels.
Moreover, the Palestinian program office was not properly keeping track of expenditures or receipts in the financial system. The auditors noted that in a sampling of 41 payment vouchers, 12 purchase orders did not have receipts recorded in the system. “This practice,” the report noted, “increases the risk of paying for goods that are not delivered.”
[pullquote]
The same office of the anti-poverty United Nations Development Program (UNDP) failed to use an electronic funds transfer system with local banks that would have allowed the UNDP program to “be notified electronically when any bank transactions take place,” including, as the report delicately puts it, “transactions not made by UNDP.”
Taken together, the findings in the carefully manicured audit report — which was vetted by UNDP management at the affected office — point to a possible black hole in the supervision of civil construction, and perhaps other programs in Gaza and the other Palestinian territories for at least a year before the current explosion of terrorism.
The report adds a new level of potential credibility to Israeli accusations that internationally-managed relief supplies to Gaza were diverted into construction of the elaborate and highly-engineered tunnels under the territory that were used by Hamas terrorists to launch and coordinate rocket attacks and incursions into Israel that dramatically escalated in March.
The audit report itself calls the performance of core jobs by contract staffers a “critical” lapse, where “prompt action is required to ensure that UNDP is not exposed to high risks. Failure to take action could result in major negative consequences for UNDP.”
The main purpose of the UNDP program, based in Jerusalem and like all U.N. activities operating under diplomatic immunity from any national authorities, was to provide funding and support for what the document chastely calls “another U.N. entity” that coordinates the world organization’s activity in Gaza.
That “entity” is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, which has been accused for years — and especially during the last major Israeli military response to Palestinian terrorist attacks from Gaza in 2009 — of allowing Hamas to divert humanitarian supplies to its own military purposes. UNWRA has some 13,000 employees in Gaza, the overwhelming majority of them local Palestinians.
The watchdog report on the UNDP office, formally known as the UNDP Program of Assistance to the Palestinian People, covered all of 2013 — the period immediately leading up to the current explosion of Hamas rocket attacks and Israeli’s now-suspended counter-incursion.
The document, produced by UNDP’s Office of Audit and Investigations, does not offer anything like full insight into the irregular pattern of activities surrounding the Palestinian program, although it clearly indicates that there are more areas of concern.
Among other things, it notes that 43 people beyond the five specifically mentioned as “examples’ are also “incorrectly” providing “core functions” while operating on service contracts, without specifying their activities.
The entire tally of non-staffers performing “core” functions represents about one-quarter of the 187 service contract holders listed as part of the program, which spent $90 million in 2013.
The UNDP offices’ activities cover not only Gaza, but East Jerusalem and a large amount of the West Bank.
They also had an additional point of potential vulnerability. Unlike UNDP offices in some other sensitive locales — or places where local skills are not available — the Palestinian program of assistance during all of 2013 (and for six months previously), had no provisions in place for what is called “direct implementation.”
That is a method of work meaning that UNDP itself, without any cooperating partners, would be not only a funding agency and manager, but would also be “accountable for achieving project results,” as the report puts it. Direct implementation is used when local partners are not believed capable of providing the needed skills, or where possibilities of financial mismanagement or other risks are deemed to be high.
The alternative is called “national implementation,” meaning that projects are carried out “in cooperation with national counterparts,” which in this case means Palestinian civil authorities — in a government that includes Hamas.
According to the audit report, the UNDP Palestinian program’s “direct implementation” authorization expired on June 30, 2012, and “the office did not seek its renewal until March 2014” — roughly around the time that Hamas commenced its latest large-scale rocket assault on Israel.
Moreover, that authorization still did not exist at the time the report was written; based on internal evidence, apparently in June. (The document was finalized in early July, and posted on UNDP’s website over the past weekend.) It says only that “management is following with Headquarters” to get direct implementation renewed “as soon as possible.”
Questions from Fox News concerning the report, sent to UNDP headquarters over the weekend, had not been answered before this article was published.
CLICK HERE FOR THE REPORT
For their part, and despite the “critical” alarm bells set off by auditors, the managers of the UNDP program claim in the document that they were doing nothing inappropriate in their use of the service contracts in whatever functions the holders filled, and said what they had done “has been subject to review by several Headquarters missions.”
However, they then agreed to “review job descriptions and terms of reference to ensure better clarity on the purpose of positions and whether they serve projects or core functions.”
The review, however, is not slated for completion until September.
UPDATE
UNDP responded to questions from Fox News late Monday to declare that “the 48 people on service contracts are not fulfilling core functions but a number of project staff needed to have their job descriptions enhanced in order to clarify what project tasks they were carrying out.” The organization did not reply directly, however, to a question from Fox News about which specific projects the staff were working on. Instead, it declared that “many people fulfilling the same or other functions were shifted from project to project without fully updating the specific tasks under their terms of reference.”
The U.N. organization also said that the lapse in its Palestinian support office’s mandate to use “direct implementation” in its projects—an authorization in place since 1978—was due to “an internal miscommunication between two different units on requesting the renewal. As soon as the audit report identified this delay, action was taken immediately, and a request for renewal was submitted and the approval has been obtained.”
In explanation of its lack of electronic banking transfers, UNDP told Fox News that “the electronic banking interface is not mandatory” for its offices, and cited the Democratic Republic of Congo—which has been torn apart for years by a vicious civil war—as an example of where “electronic banking interfaces are not used because they are not operational or up to standard”—conditions that did not apply to its Jerusalem office, according to UNDP’s own audit.
As to whether a review of the situation in the Palestinian office would be completed by September, UNDP replied that delays beyond September “are possible in light of the current crisis in the Gaza Strip.”
George Russell is editor-at-large of Fox News and can be found on Twitter:@GeorgeRussell or on Facebook.com/George RussellConstructed Decklists 10/26/15
These are decklists from the Daily Scheduled Constructed tournaments on October 26th, 2015 (UTC) that achieved 3 or more wins. This also includes Gauntlet decks that achieved 5 wins on that day.
2015-10-26 19:00:00 GMT – Tournament 1034135644 – live-daily-constructed
———-
Player: Daarther
Points won: 3 Wins/Losses: 7/3
Champion: Tetzot, Son of Omoc
Azurefate Sorceress socketed with Minor Sapphire of Sky Azurefate Sorceress socketed with Minor Sapphire of Sky Azurefate Sorceress socketed with Minor Sapphire of Sky Azurefate Sorceress socketed with Minor Sapphire of Sky
Player: Rarlig
Points won: 3 Wins/Losses: 7/5
Champion: Kranok
Player: Coelacanth
Points won: 3 Wins/Losses: 6/3
Champion: Urgnock
Player: dameneon
Points won: 4 Wins/Losses: 8/2
Champion: Cressida
Arborean Rootfather socketed with Major Ruby of Destruction Arborean Rootfather socketed with Major Ruby of Destruction Arborean Rootfather socketed with Major |
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The Yaqui Diaspora is well documented in the historical record, and little is offered in the way of authentication with this short synopsis. Careful to avoid pigeonholing Don Juan into any recognizable ethnicity, Castaneda further muddies the image of his Indian with a caveat acknowledging the sorcerers murky heritage: I was not sure, he maintains, whether to place the context of his knowledge totally in the culture of the Sonoran Indians. But it is not my intention here to determine his precise cultural milieu.
Prefacing the book with this disclaimer, Castaneda effectively shields his ethnography from charges of misrepresentation and fashions his depiction of the Yaqui sorcerer in such a manner as to render the Indian cultureless or as Spicer phrases it, suspended in cultural limbo. Don Juans origin is thus couched in ambiguity and skillfully blurred, rendering him both inoffensive to discerning critics and appealingly enigmatic to the lay reader.
However innocuous his presentation might appear, Don Juan nevertheless aroused the suspicions of more skeptical readers who exposed further aberrations in Castanedas work. As the series progressed, many critics observed glaring discrepancies in the details and chronologies of events, as well as a general drift in tone from scholarly observation towards more whimsical storytelling. Yet even with his first book, Castaneda's literary techniques invited some serious scrutiny. The Teachings of Don Juan is allegedly a translation of the anthropologists field notes from Spanish to English, with occasional bracketed asides imparting the polyglot Indians original dialogue. Why is it then, wondered some critics, that Don Juan tutors Carlos solely in their lingua franca especially when certain concepts would doubtless be more genuinely articulated in his native tongue?
The conspicuous absence of Yaqui terminology in the text raised the eyebrows of more than one scholar in Castanedas audience, and prominent critics such as Spicer, Wasson, and De Mille sounded the alarm to this anomaly. In his letter to Carlos, Wasson inquires whether he managed to gather any Yaqui translations of the recurring philosophical terms Don Juan uses in his teachings. Castaneda replies that he has, indeed, learned a few Yaqui words but is loath to expound further on the issue. De Mille is far less congenial in his disputation, pointing out that the young anthropologist apparently learned not one word of Yaqui during his first five years with Don Juan, and then in later writings, makes reference to only two, rather commonplace terms.[8]
Spanish expressions abound, on the other hand, as Castaneda repeatedly employs the words brujo and diablero to denote those experienced in the knowledge of Yaqui sorcery. Conveniently for Castaneda, brujo is sometimes used in Yaqui culture to refer to dabblers in black magic. The nature of sorcery as practiced by Don Juan, however, differs strikingly from that traditionally understood to exist in Yaqui society. Anthropologist Muriel Thayer Painter notes that, according to Yaqui belief, those persons that practice witchcraft (i.e., sorcery) are timorous and feeble both traits utterly incongruous with Don Juans depiction as a man who has vanquished fear and is remarkably fit, despite his advanced age. Furthermore, the knowledge of witchcraft is thought by the Yaquis to be an inborn quality, a power that cannot be taught or inherited. This statement directly contradicts Castanedas accounts of the art of Yaqui sorcery as a cycle of apprenticeship handed down across generations from a benefactor to his chosen man.
In her book With Good Heart: Yaqui Beliefs and Ceremonies in Pascua Village, Painter presents a sampling of Yaqui vocabulary associated with spirituality: morea, an equivalent to the Spanish brujo; saurino, used to describe persons with the gift of divination; and seataka, or spiritual power, a word which is fundamental to Yaqui thought and life.[9] It is indeed hard to believe that Castaneda's benefactor, a self-professed Yaqui, would fail to employ these native expressions throughout the apprenticeship. In omitting such intrinsically relevant terms from his ethnography, Castaneda critically undermines his portrait of Don Juan as a bona fide Yaqui sorcerer.
Linguistic concerns aside, the Indian depicted in The Teachings of Don Juan departs from traditional Yaqui behavior in other significant ways, most notably in his usage of entheogenic plants such as peyote and psilocybe mushrooms. As Spicer and several others have argued, Don Juans psychedelic forays are not consistent with our ethnographic knowledge of the Yaquis. His exploits do, however, resemble those of Native American tribes like the Huichols who have a well-documented history of peyote consumption. Anthropologist and outspoken Castaneda critic Jay Courtney Fikes spent several years embedded in a community of Chapalagana Huichols during which time he became intimately acquainted with shamanism and the ritual practices of Mexican Indians. Once a fan of Castanedas work, Fikes soon grew disillusioned with what he viewed as outright caricatures of Huichol culture.
In his 1993 book Carlos Castaneda, Academic Opportunism, and the Psychedelic Sixties, Fikes explains how the character of Don Juan was likely modeled on Ramon Medina Silva, the Huichol shaman popularized by the ethnographic studies of Peter Furst and Barbara Myerhoff. These anthropologists were UCLA graduates and peers of Castaneda, and there is convincing evidence that Ramon and Carlos had actually met prior to the publication of The Teachings. A dramatic waterfall leap performed by Silva, allegedly with Castaneda as a witness, finds a curious parallel in his second book, A Separate Reality, wherein a companion of Don Juan performs similar supernatural feats at a waterfall. Further complicating the matter, Fikes also disputes the veracity of Furst and Myerhoffs ethnography, noting that the Huichol shamanic practices they detail are at odds with his own findings. In developing his account of Don Juan, suggests Fikes, Castaneda likely plagiarized from his classmates a distorted portrayal of Huichol culture in the character of Silva, and unscrupulously applied it to his fictional Yaqui sorcerer, thus perpetuating the misrepresentation of Native Americans across cultural boundaries.
The effect of this caricaturing is two-fold: first, as De Mille and Fikes bemoan, erroneous ethnographic research is quite difficult to remove from the anthropological record once canonized. By accepting such questionable documents as authenticated knowledge, the truth about indigenous peoples becomes diluted with misinformation and (perhaps more lamentable) the halls of academia are tarnished with the elevation of charlatans to pedestals of high esteem. Indeed, as he remarks in his Introduction, Fikes heard nothing but praise for Castanedas first four books in his graduate studies at the University of Michigan in 1975, despite their disputed validity.[10]
Second, the misrepresentation of the Yaqui people as portrayed by Castaneda negatively impacts Native American culture as a whole. In order to assess this detrimental influence of Don Juan and his teachings, one must consider the social context into which he was born. The decade colorfully referred to as the psychedelic sixties, with its adherence to counterculture ideology and self-exploration through drug use, was an era ripe for an iconic figure such as Don Juan to materialize.
As The Teachings of Don Juan introduced thousands of psychedelically-inclined readers to its mysterious sage, the deserts of Mexico were subsequently inundated with droves of Don Juan seekers determined to find, and be enlightened by, the elusive sorcerer. Anthropologist Jane Holden Kelley reports the harassment of Pascuan Yaquis during the 1970s by long-haired hippies in search of Castanedas muse. Seizing an opporunity, the crafty villagers played along, divesting the deluded youths of money, booze, and cigarettes before they realized they had been duped.[11]
It was not the Yaquis, however, but the Huichols who bore the brunt of the hippie influx throughout the seventies. As Fikes explains, the Yaquis offer relatively little to guru-seekers since they do not use psychedelics and are somewhat more acculturated than the peyote-ingesting Huichols. He relates accounts of traditional Huichols harassed, jailed, shot at, and almost murdered by guru-seekers and offers an anecdote depicting the attempted stabbing of his Huichol father by a gringo peyote hunter. These incidents grew more infrequent with time, but the lasting impact of The Teachings on Native Americans, asserts Fikes, lies in the marketing of the Don Juan archetype.
New Age shamans modeled on Castanedas sorcerer exist in abundance in todays society. Offering travel packages to psychedelic meccas, these pseudo-shamans profit from the misappropriation of rituals and liturgical objects sacred to Native American religions. While some operations offer legitimate and conscientious experiences of traditional shamanism, others are little more than opportunistic scams. As Fikes contends, such shameless exploitation trivializes Huichol, Yaqui, or any Native American culture by masking or ignoring its true genius. Furthermore, these profiteers increase the Western fascination with psychedelic drugs such as peyote, bringing unwanted government attention to authentic Native American practices.
A New York Times article from July 23, 1970 describes the plight of Oaxacan Indians suffering from the flood of American mushroom addicts and the subsequent crackdown by Mexican authorities; once considered a great medicine, the fungi are now contraband in Oaxaca.[12] In the United States, similar legislative measures currently threaten Native Americans' religious freedom. The Smith vs. Oregon decision of the Supreme Court, for instance, banned the ritual use of peyote among members of the Native American Church from 1990 until its repeal in 1993. Within a War on Drugs political climate, the mystique engendered by Don Juan and his imitators represents a real and direct threat to the special rights Native American cultures have been granted in American society.
Most troublingly, the fallout from nearly four decades of Castaneda-inspired drug tourism in Mexico now threatens to wipe out some indigenous shamanic cultures entirely. According to a recent National Public Radio report, the rampant, unsustainable harvesting of peyote by foreigners and drug traffickers from the desert surrounding Real de Catorce has placed the slow-growing cactus in danger of vanishing from the region. The area is held sacred by the Huichol who regularly pass through the north Mexican desert on shamanic pilgrimages. Once thriving in abundance along their route, the peyote cactus has become increasingly scarce, prompting the Indians to lobby the government for protection of the holy site. If the peyote disappears, so does the unique knowledge system of one of Mexico's most vital remaining tribal cultures.[13]
* * *
Carlos Castaneda reemerged in the public eye in the early nineties espousing the virtues of a meditation technique he named Tensegrity, after a term coined by R. Buckminster Fuller. Consisting of movements called magical passes (allegedly the lost knowledge of Mexican shamans in the lineage of Don Juan Matus), this discipline was taught by the author himself to devotees at exorbitantly priced seminar-workshops. Castaneda had, in effect, fulfilled the Don Juan archetype, adopting the role of pseudo-shaman as identified by Fikes. His death in 1998 was followed by the release of his final book, The Active Side of Infinity, rounding off the Castaneda oeuvre at an impressive thirteen titles. Along with a multi-million dollar estate, the anthropologist-guru left behind him the legacy of a successful career marred by charges of academic fraud and opportunism.
His seminal achievement, The Teachings of Don Juan, has been simultaneously embraced and vilified since its appearance, yet its influence cannot be overstated. Richard de Mille once speculated: Is Carlos multistaged confessional narrative the next step in the history of ethnography, or a further development in the novel, an ultimate fiction? Although the answer remains to be seen, almost forty years later it is evident that Castanedas work of ethnography and allegory has had an indelible effect for better or worse on the way the Western world interprets entheogens and Native American culture.
Notes:
[1] Edward H. Spicer as quoted in Daniel Noel, Seeing Castaneda (New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1976) 31-32.
[2] Richard De Mille, The Don Juan Papers (Santa Barbara: Ross-Erikson Publishers, 1980) p 19.
[3] Spicer as quoted in Noel, Seeing Castaneda 32.
[4] Noel 32.
[5] De Mille, The Don Juan Papers 324.
[6] Ibid, 325.
[7] Richard de Mille, Castanedas Journey (Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1976) 78.
[8] Ibid, 52.
[9] Muriel Thayer Painter, With Good Heart: Yaqui Beliefs and Ceremonies in Pascua Village (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1986) 11, 43-44.
[10] Jay Courtney Fikes, Carlos Castaneda, Academic Opportunism, and the Psychedelic Sixties (Victoria: Millenia Press, 1993).
[11] Jane Holden Kelley as quoted in De Mille, The Don Juan Papers 33.
[12] Reuters, "Hippies Flocking to Mexico for Mushroom 'Trips'" The New York Times Thursday 23 July 1970: A3-A4.
[13] Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, "Mexico's Peyote Endangered by 'Drug Tourists'," (National Public Radio, 2007), http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14064806 (accessed on January 10, 2008).
Image credit: "Homage to Don Juan" by True2Source, used under Creative Commons licenseColin Powell, former secretary of state under President George W. Bush, endorsed President Obama for re-election in 2012, saying that he supported him in 2008 and will “stick with” Obama in 2012. Powell made the announcement in an appearance on “CBS This Morning” Thursday.
“I voted for him in 2008 and I plan to stick with him in 2012,” Powell said.
SLIDESHOW: PollTracker’s Top Polls You Need To Know
Powell cited several reasons for the endorsement, namely the economy and foreign policy. On the economy, Powell said Obama has turned things around from the crisis in 2008, saying “I think generally we’ve come out of the dive and starting to gain altitude.” Powell said Romney’s solution to the economy is “essentially let’s cut taxes and compensate for that with other things,” adding that the compensation doesn’t cover all the cuts.
On foreign policy, Powell called Romney a “moving target” who contradicted his previous positions in Monday night’s foreign policy debate, including on when to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Conversely, Powell said he approved of Obama’s move to get us out of those countries and said his efforts to protect the United States from terrorism have been “very, very solid.”
Finally, Powell said he was more comfortable with Obama’s policies on a range of issues including climate change, immigration, education, and his view that ‘Obamacare’ should stay in place.The air is nice and crisp. The snow gently falls upon my head, getting stuck in my hair. I shove my hands into my pockets, knowing it won’t do anything against the cold.
I see her.
Not like I haven’t seen her before.. I just haven’t seen her like this..
Cold. Beautiful… alone.
“You know… last I heard, you were dead” I say to her with a slight smirk.
“Far from it, sir.” She thrusts her arms out to the side and looks up closing her eyes and spinning. I give her another smirk, “You are just as adorable as I remember you.. how are you doing?”
She stops spinning and lazily drops her arms. “After 4 years, you are SERIOUSLY going to ask the most boring question in existance? You aren’t even going to ask me where I’ve been? You, sir, have lost your touch. I expected more from you”
“Then I’ll just rephrase… How WERE you doing?
She gives a giggle and wraps her arms around me. “I’m okay. Life has this way of throwing you through the biggest loops, and expects you to survive. Work sucks, but at least i have a job. You know, there’s only so much an associates in ‘general education’ can get you in life. I am moving into an apartment next week. Fuckin one bedroom, but it’s a place to stay. Been single a few months.. but I’m sure you don’t care about that?”
I open my eyes a little wider. “what makes you say that? I want to hear ALL about your wonderful adventures with the boys and girls.”
She shakes her head smiling. “No you don’t. You just wanna know if I am emotionally stable enough to ask me out on a date.”
I snap my fingers playfull. “Darn.. ya got me.” I look into her eyes, moving a piece of her hair out of her face. “I think I might just take a chance and ask you out to some coffee.”
“I can’t. I need to get to class.”
“That’s a lie.”
“My dog needs to go on a walk”
“You hate pets.”
“I’m gay?”
“…..”
She lets out a long sigh. We start walking down the sidewalk towards the nearest coffeeshop.
“I’m not.. you know.” She says after a few minutes.
“Not.. what?” I reply, genuinely curious.
“Emotionally stable.” she looks down. “The last guy I dated left me for some 18 year old…”
“Well,” i say taking a deep breath, “Seeing as we aren’t dating… i think you don’t have to worry about that.”
She smiles and grabs my hand.
The snow is falling harder now. Luckily, we are not in it. We are watching each speckled flurry of white fall upon the what-used-to-be black top. I sip my mocha as she stirs her hot tea.
“Do you remember,” I say with a tone that could be reminiscent of an an excited kid, ” like, 4 years ago when that HUGE snowstorm came through?”
She smiled, “Yes, how could I forget? The apartment I was in had no heat.. That was probably the most miserable week of my life.” She rolls her eyes and tilts her head like she was remembering something.
She blinks after a few seconds and states,” Actually, my girlfriend at the time left this beautiful red rose on the porch. I’m surprised she actually did that. I mean, she didn’t even have a car! But she walked 15 blocks, in the snow just to do that and i felt like the luckiest girl in the world.. Too bad she didn’t stick around…”
I laugh a bit, and sipped my mocha. “Yeah! I remember that! I was talking to you online when that happened. That was the same day my bike decided it didn’t want to be a bike anymore, but a lovely thing with one tire.”
“Aww, I’m sorry..” She apologizes. Why was she apologizing I started thinking to myself…
“Why are you apologizing?”
“huh?” She replies, obviously caught off guard.
“You said you were sorry. You obviously had nothing to do with it, besides that was FOUR years ago. I have a car now.” It was obvious I was a little annoyed.
She looks a little confused and hurt,” You realize I say that because I don’t know what else to say. You have this way of getting people to feel sorry for you, and then when they do, you don’t want anything to do with it. I remember later that night, ya know. You were a real dick.”
I silently sip my mocha. I too remember that night.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Ambiguous_Jester: Hey. Are you busy tonight?
Lost_Girls_Bite_Tires: Nope. Work is cancelled, house is freezing, and my liquor cabinet needs to be raided.
Ambiguous_Jester: I VOLUNTEER! I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE!
Lost_Girls_Bite_Tires: Huh?
Ambiguous_Jester: >.< Nevermind. Book reference.. you probably don’t get it. Hunger Games. I’m kinda obsessed….
Lost_Girls_Bite_Tires: haha. Okay, nerd. You wanna come over?
Ambiguous_Jester: Of course… but could you pick me up.. my bikewheel no longer exists..
Lost_Girls_Bite_Tires: K. I’ll be there in about 30 minutes. Gotta throw on some pants.
Ambiguous_Jester: Oh baby :]
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thirty minutes later she arrived at my house. I lived about 20 minutes walking distance, but the snow messed up any chance of that. Besides, my bike was broken. I hopped in the car.
“I really hope you didn’t speed. It’s icey out, and I fear for our safety” I smirked.
“Are you saying I am a bad driver?” She smirked back at me.
“NO. Why would I say that?” I smirked still
“Dick.” Oh that smirk.
We headed back to her house, the sound of techno softly playing out of the speakers. The entire city looked like a different place. I barely recognized it. Everything was white. The tall buildings rising out of the white mounds reminded me of what was my city, but the ground was just too clean. It was beautiful.
We carefully walked up the stairs to her porch and enter her house. I take off my hoodie and toss it on her couch. I notice the rose. “Who got you that?” I asked.
“I found it on my porch. I think my girlfriend left it.” She was smiling as she brought back two shots of what I assumed to be rum.
“Peach shnapps?” She asked me. You know what they say about assuming….
“Um.. yeah?” I said as if to say “Duh?”
We took the shots. They down smoothly and I slowly felt my body get a little warmer. I decided to tell her the one thing that has been on my mind.
“She called again.” I said after another shot.
“Who? Your ex? She’s a bitch.”
We had moved upstairs to her room, where a big tv and a video game console sat in front of us. We were playing some zombie game. It was mind numbing. If only I could have said the same about the shots.
“She yelled at me. Said I was good for nothing, worthless, and will amount to nothing. I couldn’t say anything back…” I choked back a cough.
“What?! Man, you better be lucky she isn’t anywhere within reach right now. I mean, not only is she wrong, but she is ignorant.” She had paused the game.
I looked over at her with eyebrows raised.
We kissed.
We pull away, I am obviously blushing.
It’s the alcohol. It’s got to be the alcohol. Alcohol makes you blush. Kissing a girl you like also makes you blush. Alcohol makes you kiss the girl…. The Boy you…… It’s the alcohol.
“I have to go.” I said. I got up and ran downstairs, grabbing my hoodie off the couch, and I was out the door into the snow. I didn’t care that I was tipsy. I didn’t care that it was cold. I just wanted to be as far away from… it…. as possible..
~~~~~~~~~~
My Mocha is gone. We sit in silence for a while. I know she wasn’t always this beautiful woman I had met many years ago. I had figured it out a few days after we started talking. I don’t know why it didn’t phase me. Maybe because nothing really phased me anymore.
“You walked out on me. I thought we were friends.” she is still a little irrate.
“We were drunk… I was confused.. i’m so sorry” I don’t know what else to say
“And why the sudden kindness? Huh? Why would you, of all people show kindness to a freak like me? Do you realize how much that hurt!? How much I cried over you? I liked you, you asshole.” She gets up and starts to walk off. Tears are forming under her eyes
“Hey, don’t go” I put my hand on her shoulder. She stops and pushes it away. She starts walking towards the door. I have to tell her….
“I LEFT YOU THE ROSE!”
She stops and turns around, confusion on her face. “My girlfriend left that for me. She even told me it was her.”
“Well your girlfriend lied.“ I reply with confidence in my voice. "Remember how my bike was broken? It’s because I rode it all the way to your house to leave you that rose. Hit a pothole on the way back…”
Tears were streaming down her face.
“You did that for me? And then you kissed me and ran away? That doesn’t make any sense.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“I was scared. I’ve never kissed a-” I stopped so I could choose my next words carefully.
She finished my sentence: “A boy.” I nod slightly. She walks up to me and wrapped her arms around my waste and put the side of her head into my chest, still slightly sniffling.
I wrap my arms around her and kiss the top of her head. I did miss her. She looks up at me with watery eyes and in that moment I say the two words that I will never regret to this day. “Fuck It.”
We kiss long and passionately. I dont care what once stood between her legs. I don’t care what other people thought. I don’t care about all the shit I could get from this. I just care about her.
We end the kiss. I am blushing. No alcohol this time. Just pure joy.
The EndNow that we have reached the point where the general public are being fed rugby stories every day as the third biggest world sports tournament reaches its climax, does the dedicated rugby follower have the expert answers for his or her work colleagues as the questions and comments are thrown?
“Have Ireland any chance of winning?”
“I heard France have sacked their coach”
“The young Welsh team must have a great chance against the Irish old guys, aren’t they always getting injured?”
“Those English guys are having a good time out there, they’re always getting into trouble!”
Leaving aside the prospects of the English and French teams, the coaching and technical staff of the Irish and Welsh teams have had to work overtime over the past four days as they analysed and prepared how to play against each other. Sure, they have done it all before during the Six-Nations Tournament, but this is different.
Firstly, unlike the Six Nations where fixtures are set in stone about two years in advance, the certainty of whom you play and when was not finally determined until last Sunday morning, after Ireland beat Italy.
Secondly, it became apparent during the Pool games that both Wales and Ireland have expanded their playing repertoire way beyond that which they showed in this season’s Six Nations games.
Thirdly, the Six Nations is not a knock-out event. Whilst defeat can spell the end of Grand Slam or Triple Crown hopes for the season, to be beaten does not mean the end of your competition.
Because of those differences and also because the squads have now had almost ten weeks together honing their skills and teamwork, analysis and preparation in the World Cup is a very different challenge.
So what will the Irish coaching and analysis team [Gert Small, Alan Gaffney, Les Kiss, Mark Tainton, Greg Feek, Les Kiss and Mervyn Murphy] have uncovered about Wales? How can their work assist Declan Kidney in developing a game plan in which the senior Irish players can be confident and apply with conviction for the 80 minutes next Saturday?
This is key to the outcome. For both the games against Australia and Italy, it was apparent that the Irish players were very confident that their game plan and tactics were correct and they stuck with instructions until the points began to accumulate on the scoreboard.
So often this is not the case and talented players that they are, they are always encouraged to use their initiative to “play what’s in front of you”. When coaches say this, they usually mean, “if the opposition screw up when attacking us, don’t be afraid to run the length of the pitch from your own 22 and score, rather than finding touch on our 10 metre line” or “if two of their mid-field collide when we’re attacking in their 22, cancel the planned cross-kick and just take the break down the middle”. However, having confidence in the game plan and tactics is the keystone of good teamwork and high tempo rugby, just as Ireland demonstrated in the second half against Italy.
So confidence in the game plan and tactics are critical for success. But they’re not the most important things. The most important attribute the Irish players will take onto the pitch on Saturday is knowing how not to lose a vital match.
Individually and collectively, they have earned this experience from countless losing Grand Slam, Triple Crown and Heineken Cup games over the past decade. This is not experience gained when you collect a medal or a trophy, whether big or small. These are the scars of the bad days, which become tougher than the surrounding surfaces and inure you against repeating the habits of past failures.
The likes of O’Driscoll, Darcy, O’Gara, Reddan, Best, O’Callaghan, O’Connell, Cullen, Jennings and Leamy have been playing in three competitions each year on major rugby stages for up to a dozen years; whilst they may have won five or six trophies each in that period, each has the recollection of between twenty-five and thirty really ‘bad days at the office’ from which to accumulate vital and unique experience.
For good and great players, experience has been the single most important factor in the make-up of previous World Cup winners. In knock-out tournaments, it’s at a premium. Knowing how bitter loss tastes, knowing how to snatch a victory … the only currency worth a curse is experience.
While recognising that experience of players will play a key role in how the match unfolds, it’s essentially an intangible. Analysis is about working from concrete evidence and precedents. What have the Irish back-room discovered about their Welsh opposition?
These are the dozen most discernable patterns that emerge from close review of their games against S Africa, Samoa (World Cup Pool Games), England and Argentina (warm-up games in August):
Wales frequently play a different pattern in the first and second half of games;
Wales has a very heavy pack, well over 910 Kg, amongst the heaviest remaining [along with England];
Wales throw almost 90% of their line-out to Nos. 2,3 or 4 in the line-out;
Wales always wheel their opponents scrum left – because scrum-half Phillips is so strong, he is able to attack the strongest opposition No 8;
Only Shane Williams, James Hook and Mike Phillips play with free licence, everyone else plays to a disciplined pattern;
Wales prefer to play on the right touchline and they kick to opponents accordingly;
From line-out possession, the passes from Phillips to Jamie Roberts wreak the greatest havoc among opponents. Against World Champions South Africa, this tactic yielded five clear breaks during the 2 nd half of the game;
half of the game; Wales have created more than 85% of their line-breaks in the four matches mentioned playing on the right side of the pitch – Shane Williams excepted, their backline are all right-handed!;
Denying Wales line-out throw-ins is the most effective way to negate their back-line. Any coach reviewing their game against Samoa would recognise the tactical patterns that almost worked;
Hooker, Huw Bennett, the smallest man in the Welsh pack, was only 4 th choice for 6Ns;
choice for 6Ns; With the exceptions of Alun Wyn Jones and Toby Faletou, all of their forwards lead with their head and go low into contact, they re-cycle the ball between their legs, with the length of their body protecting the ball from turn-over;
Except for Sam Warburton, who is their resident expert at recovering the ball from opponents (turnovers), every Welsh player concentrates on tacking opponents by the legs, as low and quickly as possible – they do not “grapple” with opponents in upright wrestles;
Knowing the opposition is just part of the battle in any Test Match. In this case, it only serves to convince that an Irish win will be very well earned!
AdvertisementsAfter defeating the Boston Bruins in six games, the Ottawa Senators are focusing solely on their second round series with the New York Rangers, but that doesn't mean we can't celebrate the many victories in Round 1.
Over simplified, the Senators' combined success in team play and individual production made them the far better group in the first leg of the postseason and was the reason why they are moving on to Round 2.
Let's take a closer look at why Ottawa came out on top in their first ever playoff series with Boston.
Team Play
While the series was only one goal away from going the distance and each game was decided by a single tally, the Senators were the better team in nearly every category.
They won the possession battle against a team that finished second in the league during the regular season with a 54.7% 5v5 Corsi For rating, and had better goaltending by the smallest of margins.
Special teams impacted the series largely with the Senators receiving 23 power plays - the Bruins' staggering six puck-over-glass penalties largely affecting those numbers - and scoring on five of them. Ottawa's 21.7% success rate on the man advantage was most prominent with Clarke MacArthur's series-clinching power play goal in Game 6.
Bobby Ryan - Offence
After putting up unfavourable offensive numbers in the regular season due to a nagging hand injury and an overwhelming case of bad luck, Bobby Ryan came alive in the first round.
Only six games into the postseason, the 30-year-old has already tied his career high in points and is one back of his career high in goals. Ryan leads the Senators in goals with four and in 5v5 individual scoring chances with five.
Since every game in the series was determined by a single goal, the game-winning goal statistic may have been the most important category during the best-of-seven. If that's the case, then Ryan completely deserves to be named a star of the series. He was in on three of the four game-winners (two goals and one assist) Ottawa needed to get past the Bruins.
Derick Brassard - Offence
After six games of brilliant hockey during his first playoff series as a Senator, the legend of Derick "Big Game Brass" Brassard continues to grow.
Only Pittsburgh Penguins forward Evgeni Malkin has more points than Brassard after the first round. The Hull native leads all Senators with eight points and is tied for the team lead in power play points with four.
Brassard had points in five of the six games during the series and was in on 53.3% of Ottawa's 15 goals (two goals and six assists). In the four wins, he racked up two goals and five assists.
By far the player with the most success in the playoffs on the team, Brassard has 52 points in 65 career games. Since 2013, only Malkin, Sidney Crosby, Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews have more points in the postseason. That's pretty decent company.
Ryan Dzingel - Possession
After being a healthy scratch in Game 1, Ryan Dzingel came in and provided a unique boost of speed, skill and structurally sound play for the final five games of the series.
Dzingel recorded a primary assist on Kyle Turris' go-ahead goal in Game 6 and showed flashes of finesse with a breakaway and a couple other fantastic scoring chances throughout the best-of-seven, but what was most important were his possession numbers.
The 25-year-old led all Senators forwards with a plus-26 5v5 Corsi rating, far ahead of Turris in second place with a rating of plus-18.
The Senators benefitted greatly from depth players in the first round. Along with Dzingel, Ben Harpur and Freddy Claesson were magnificent coming in when injuries hampered the blue line.
Erik Karlsson - Offence, Possession, Time on Ice
The hockey world had witnessed Erik Karlsson take over a series before, but never like this.
The Senators captain recorded six assists against the Bruins - only Malkin had more in the first round - a couple of them creating two of the most iconic goals in franchise history. And though you already assumed so, yes, he leads all NHL defensemen in points during the postseason.
The 26-year-old controlled the play with ease. No one was more influential, no one had more poise and no one was more electrifying than Karlsson. All this came together to give him the third best 5v5 Corsi For rating amongst defensemen with over 100 minutes played. Karlsson finished Round 1 with a rating of 56.7%; only Minnesota's Ryan Suter and Montreal's Jordie Benn boasted better numbers.
Then there was the sheer amount of ice time No. 65 racked up. Karlsson led all players with 30 minutes and 23 seconds of ice time per game and 182 minutes and 23 seconds overall; Boston's Zdeno Chara was the closest with 10 fewer minutes.
Karlsson may have been the league's MVP for the first round.
Craig Anderson - Increasing SV%
Senators goaltender Craig Anderson may have stumbled a bit in Game 2 and Game 3, but when the team needed him most, he was unbeatable. His play down the stretch in the final three games of the series was a huge |
The recession is hitting us hard, and the euro limits the tools that we have to play with. Labour unions are strong. There are still a few big manufacturing players like Kone, Wärtsilä, and Konecranes. Many startups and gaming companies are doing fine, but they can’t save the whole country.
Size counts
Finland is a large, sparsely populated country, which means we need to make everything work remotely. Health care is especially good at pioneering new solutions for elderly care, checking X-rays remotely and so forth.
The size of the country also has a negative affect. If you add logistics costs to high employee costs, you have to cross out concepts like UberEATS. It’s also expensive to get anything sent to Finland. Unless, of course, you’re Santa who lives here in Lapland.
Rules rule
If you look at the time it takes to form a company, globally Finland stands somewhere in the middle. It could be faster or loads slower. I’d say the same about entrepreneurship in general; it could be harder, but it’s not favoured in any specific ways. In the USA and Russia, you have tax-free zones or tax-free years when you start. There’s no such thing in Finland. That said, Finland is a great country if you can operate in the cloud without needing to hire lots of people. If you’re going that way, you’d better fix your cash flow first.
Finland is funny when it comes to bureaucracy. There are no speed lanes. Most things have been digitalized, and most services are available in English. If the lady says no, it means no. There is no way around bureaucrats. It’s different in Russia. Sure, they have their insane mountains of bureaucracy, but there are loads of shorts cuts (and unfortunately, corruption) and plenty of room for discussion.
These are a few things that I’ve realized while running Apped here in Finland. I’m sure there are plenty of other points to be made, both good and bad, that illustrate the unique position of startup culture in Finland. If you have had a different experience, I’d love to hear your own thoughts on the matter in the comments below.
Peter Lindberg is the CEO of the Finnish startup Apped, which aims to revolutionize the way people work. Check him out on Twitter for more information.
Header image: Timo Newton-SymsImagine you had just picked up your kids from school. You're driving home on a secluded country road when your car is pulled over by armed US law enforcement agents who threaten you with a knife and taser. That's what happened to me last May and my kids and I still haven't recovered from the experience.
I live in a desert community outside of Tucson, about 40 miles from the US-Mexico border, where my family owns thirty acres of land. Border Patrol agents around here roam our country roads, supposedly on the watch for migrants and drug-runners that sneak across the border. A few times before this particular incident agents had followed me and my kids, in my soccer mom van, for no reason I know. But until last May 21st, I had never been directly confronted by them.
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That afternoon, after leaving my daughter's school with my two kids in the back seat, I turned down the dirt road that leads to our property. I stopped briefly to check my tires, and noticed a Border Patrol car parked on the side of the road, but didn't think much of it. I continued down the road as usual, talking to my kids about how their day went and what we would do when we got home. Suddenly I noticed in my rear view mirror that the Border Patrol vehicle was behind me. At first I was more curious than concerned, and then they forced me to pull over.
One of the agents approached my van and asked if I was an American citizen, which I am. He then told me to get out of the car so they could search my vehicle. When I asked what reason they had for searching my car, the agent got aggressive. He demanded in a gruff voice that I comply with his order. I continued to insist that I thought I had a right to know why they had pulled me over before I would get out of the car, and when they wouldn't answer I decided to leave. That's when the agent's behavior turned really threatening. He called back to the other agents, "This one's being difficult, get the taser." Next he opened my door, pulled out a knife, and holding it against my seat belt, he shouted at me, "Ma'am, do I need to cut you out of your seatbelt?" Then he reached into the car and grabbed my keys.
There I was, alone in the middle of the desert, with my five and seven year old, surrounded by three hostile armed men who had my car keys. I was really afraid. So I finally stepped out the car, trembling, while my kids watched from the back seat. I stood next to my van while they bullied and lectured me about their right to search my vehicle, stating that my questioning them put me under suspicion. When the agents finally left, I grabbed my keys from the hood of the car where they'd left them, and started to drive away, only to realize that I had a flat. That's when I discovered that my rear tire had been slashed, a clear knife cut down the side. So I called my brother, who came with a jack to help me change the tire and get my scared kids home safely.
Unfortunately the arrogant and abusive behavior I experienced from the Border Patrol is not at all unusual for those of us who live in this border community. Roving patrols are always watching us from the side of the road, and questioning and harassing people. It's like living with an occupying army. My neighbor who runs the market and cafe in the town of Three Points down the road had to put up with Border Patrol agents coming onto the premises and searching through all the rooms, without any explanation. She finally got so angry she put her foot down. She now has a sign in the cafe, "No armed men allowed."
The saddest thing for me is that my kids are still afraid when we see Border Patrol. They keep asking me if we are going to get pulled over again by the agents, and "if they are going to be mean again and take mommy away." I finally decided that the constant threat of being harassed and interrogated driving back and forth from school to home just wasn't worth it. So I pulled my kids out of school, and with my mother's help they're being home schooled now.
I am still outraged that Border Patrol agents seem to think they have authority near the border to do whatever they want and face no consequences. The very day of the incident last May I tried to file a complaint. Our local sheriff told me to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency in charge of the Border Patrol. A DHS officer took down my story and said the incident would be investigated, but he told me there was no report from any Border Patrol agent about the incident. I never heard back from DHS until an ACLU lawyer in Tucson called on my behalf. Another DHS officer who then contacted me said my $50 claim to have my tire replaced was denied. They decided the tire was torn not slashed, and suggested I could file a lawsuit. He told me he would contact me after he interviewed an agent involved in my case. That was almost a year ago and I've never heard back from any DHS official since.
I'm proud to say I'm now one of the people named in a complaint the ACLU has filed with DHS on behalf of five Arizonans, US citizens who were subjected to abusive behavior by roving patrols. I believe strongly that we have rights under the Constitution that should be protected, and I want to see the Border Patrol held accountable. I recently accepted an invitation to go to Washington DC to speak to members of Congress about my experience, hoping my story could help bring a change in the way cases of Border Patrol abuse are handled. No one should be treated the way I was –leaving me and my family terrified and then ignored by an agency that is supposed to be in charge of our security. I'm standing up for my rights and I hope others will join me.
Read more about Border Communities Under Siege.Somewhere on a burnt-out ork infested desert world Gymnopedie IV, an ancient evil has awoken. Ordos Xenos Inquisitor Jasok Hane discovered evidence of a Necron tomb while pursuing routine surveillance and redirection of the orks native to the world. Resolved to stop the Necrons before they get up to full-power, the Inquisitor requests aid from Marneus Calgar of the Ultramarines, who commits fully a quarter of the Chapter to the task.
The Necron Ressurection Core is located in the middle of a valley pass in a large mountain range. Inquisitor Hane has discovered the existence of four entry obelisks that can be used to access the Necron tomb, however, the ravages of time (and ongoing warfare of the orks) have destroyed two of these obelisks, preventing their use.
The Marine's plan calls for 3rd company to land a short distance from the valley, on both sides of the mountain range, and establish a perimeter around the Necron Core, warding off the native Orks. Members of the Ultramarine's First Company, along with Inquisitor Hane and a few squads of Deathwatch Marines will then arrive and attempt to gain access to the tomb world, where they will place demolition charges to prevent the Necron tomb world from fully awakening.
Throughout the duration of the mission, the Ultramarines 6th Company (Bike-mounted) will be used as a mobile reserve, seeking to exploit openings and shore up any ork breakthroughs.
------
The Rules:
Spoiler:
- Obelisks work as transports - You embark into one and disembark into one in the tomb world. Necron models may choose which tomb-world Obelisk they disembark from. Any Imperial or Ork units using the Obelisks will randomly determine which tomb-obelisk they arrive from. Once disembarking from an obelisk, the transported models may not shoot or assault further that turn. This means only units that can legally use a transport can use the Obelisk, so no bikes or vehicles. (Dreadnoughts are okay, as they can embark on stormravens)
- It is not possible to Deep Strike into the tomb unless a model with a teleport homer is already down there. Without this guidance, the risk of teleporting into solid rock is too great.
- The mountains are invisible in the pictures, as they're where the cut-out on the table is. Line-of-Sight cannot be drawn through the cut-outs, but indirect fire can go over the mountains, and flyers and jump units can take a short-cut over the mountain if they can end their move on the other side.
- There's an Ultramarine teleport homer that crashed into the desert. If controlled by the Imperial side, all Imperial Deep Strikes scatter only 1d6.
- There's a crashed Aquilla lander. If the Imperial forces can get to the cockpit, they may use a radio inside to call down an extra Orbital Bombardment each turn.
- The Green Necron Orb will allow the Necron player to use an Orbital Bombardment if controlled by a Necron unit. It is also considered the Necron table edge.
- Necron summoning core and power generators are AV14 with 4 Hull Points (for purposes of destroying them) Any Necron unit within 6" of the Summoning core is Fearless.
- To speed things up, we used 5th ed wound assignment (i.e., pick who dies after the roll, so that we didn't need to micro-manage model placement within units) for shooting attacks.
- Any destroyed vehicle was removed from the table for simplicity, and replaced with a crater.
- Marines deploy and go first, barring stolen initiative.
- Reserves as normal for Apocalypse: Half show on turn 2, half on turn 3.
The Tables
Spoiler:
The desert wastes of Gymnopedie IV:
The Necron ressurection complex:
The desert wastes of Gymnopedie IV:The Necron ressurection complex:
The Armies:
Imperial Invasion Force
Spoiler:
Ultramarines 1st Company
Marneus Calgar
10 Sternguard in Drop Pod
10 Tactical Terminators (2 Hvy Flamers)
10 Tactical Terminators (2 Missile Launchers)
5 Assault Terminators
Ultramarines 3rd Company
Captain of 3rd Company
Librarian of 3rd Company
Command Squad in Razorback
6 Tactical Squads in Rhinos
2 Devastator Squads in Rhinos (1 Heavy Bolters, 1 Plasma Cannons)
2 Assault Squads
Ultramarines 6th Company
Captain 6th Company (Khan rules)
Biker Command Squad, including Chaplain, and Librarian)
2 Tactical Squads in Rhinos (deployed alongside 3rd Company)
2 Devastator Squads on Attack Bikes
6 Tactical Squads on Bikes
Ultramarine support elements
20 10th Company Scouts
Land Raider Redeemer
Land Raider Godhammer
Land Raider Achilles
Techmarine w/ Thunderfire Cannon
2 Predators (1 Tri-lascannon, 1 autocannon/heavy bolter)
Chaplain Dreadnought
Inquisitor Hane & Deathwatch
Inquisitor Hane (Ordos Xenos Inquisitor, Grenades and stuff)
Hane's Bodyguard (6 Deathcult Assassins, 4 Crusaders)
Hane's Stormraven
Deathwatch Captain
Deathwatch Chaplain (Cassius)
6 Deathwatch Marines (Sternguard) w/ 4 combi-plasmas & Teleporters
6 Deathwatch Marines (Sternguard) & Teleporters
Deathwatch Mortis Contemptor Dread w/ Kheres Assault Cannons
Deathwatch Air-defense Whirlwind
10 Inquisitorial Stormtroopers w/ 2 flamers (Using IG rules)
10 Inquisitorial Stormtroopers w/ 2 meltaguns
Valkyrie transport for stormtroopers, missile pods & multilaser.
Marneus Calgar10 Sternguard in Drop Pod10 Tactical Terminators (2 Hvy Flamers)10 Tactical Terminators (2 Missile Launchers)5 Assault TerminatorsCaptain of 3rd CompanyLibrarian of 3rd CompanyCommand Squad in Razorback6 Tactical Squads in Rhinos2 Devastator Squads in Rhinos (1 Heavy Bolters, 1 Plasma Cannons)2 Assault SquadsCaptain 6th Company (Khan rules)Biker Command Squad, including Chaplain, and Librarian)2 Tactical Squads in Rhinos (deployed alongside 3rd Company)2 Devastator Squads on Attack Bikes6 Tactical Squads on Bikes20 10th Company ScoutsLand Raider RedeemerLand Raider GodhammerLand Raider AchillesTechmarine w/ Thunderfire Cannon2 Predators (1 Tri-lascannon, 1 autocannon/heavy bolter)Chaplain DreadnoughtInquisitor Hane (Ordos Xenos Inquisitor, Grenades and stuff)Hane's Bodyguard (6 Deathcult Assassins, 4 Crusaders)Hane's StormravenDeathwatch CaptainDeathwatch Chaplain (Cassius)6 Deathwatch Marines (Sternguard) w/ 4 combi-plasmas & Teleporters6 Deathwatch Marines (Sternguard) & TeleportersDeathwatch Mortis Contemptor Dread w/ Kheres Assault CannonsDeathwatch Air-defense Whirlwind10 Inquisitorial Stormtroopers w/ 2 flamers (Usingrules)10 Inquisitorial Stormtroopers w/ 2 meltagunsValkyrie transport for stormtroopers, missile pods & multilaser.
The Filthy Xenos
Spoiler:
Necron Tomb Defenses
Destroyer Lord w/ Scythe
2x 3 wraiths
2x Tomb Spider
Scarabs
Tomb Stalker
5 Lych Guard
Necron Surface Defenses
Nemesor Zahndrekh and Varguard Obyron
10 Destroyers, 3 Heavy Destroyers
5 Praetorians
3 Annihilation Barges
2 Ghost Arks
1 Tomb Spider
3 Doom Scythes
Assorted Warriors and Immortals
Native Orks
Warboss in Mega Armour
Warboss
2 Big Meks w/ forcefields
1 Big Mek w/ Forcefield and powerklaw
1 Pain Boss
2 Warbosses on Bikes
4x 6 Warbikers w/ PK Nobs
2x 7 Nob Bikers w/ Various stuffs
45 Lootas, in 6 squads
4x 30 shoota boyz w/ rokkits & PK Nobs
4x 19 Slugga boyz incl. PK Nobs
15 Burnaboyz
4 Battlewagons
1 Battlewagon w/ deffkannon
6 Killa kans w/ grotzookas
2 deff dreads w/ all combat arms
2 Looted Leman Russ Tanks (Allied IG )
1 Looted Basilisk
1 Looted Leman Russ Demolisher
1 Fighta-bommer
2 Dakkajets
1 Big Squiggoth w/ Kannon
1 Kill-blasta
1 Stompa
Destroyer Lord w/ Scythe2x 3 wraiths2x Tomb SpiderScarabsTomb Stalker5 Lych GuardNemesor Zahndrekh and Varguard Obyron10 Destroyers, 3 Heavy Destroyers5 Praetorians3 Annihilation Barges2 Ghost Arks1 Tomb Spider3 Doom ScythesAssorted Warriors and ImmortalsWarboss in Mega ArmourWarboss2 Big Meks w/ forcefields1 Big Mek w/ Forcefield and powerklaw1 Pain Boss2 Warbosses on Bikes4x 6 Warbikers w/Nobs2x 7 Nob Bikers w/ Various stuffs45 Lootas, in 6 squads4x 30 shoota boyz w/ rokkits &Nobs4x 19 Slugga boyz incl.Nobs15 Burnaboyz4 Battlewagons1 Battlewagon w/ deffkannon6 Killa kans w/ grotzookas2 deff dreads w/ all combat arms2 Looted Leman Russ Tanks (Allied1 Looted Basilisk1 Looted Leman Russ Demolisher1 Fighta-bommer2 Dakkajets1 Big Squiggoth w/ Kannon1 Kill-blasta1 Stompa
The Players
Spoiler:
Unfortunately one of the players had to drop out at the last minute due to getting sick, so the Imperial players had to handle half the battle each.
SparkeyG - Ultramarine Captain, makes all his saves.
Ken,ran the other half of the Ultramarine armies
Side Xenos is at full strength
Art, played the Necrons, made all the Necron terrain and took photos
Tommy, checks out the beer, played half the orks.
Redbeard, played the other half of the orks
Consulting Generals.
Unfortunately one of the players had to drop out at the last minute due to getting sick, so the Imperial players had to handle half the battle each.SparkeyG - Ultramarine Captain, makes all his saves.Ken,ran the other half of the Ultramarine armiesSide Xenos is at full strengthArt, played the Necrons, made all the Necron terrain and took photosTommy, checks out the beer, played half the orks.Redbeard, played the other half of the orksConsulting Generals.
Snacks!
Spoiler:
What battle doesn't need good snacks.
The Healthy (apart from the bacon dip):
And the unhealthy, theme cookies, made by Mrs. Redbeard, and beer, made by Redbeard.
What battle doesn't need good snacks.The Healthy (apart from the bacon dip):And the unhealthy, theme cookies, made by Mrs. Redbeard, and beer, made by Redbeard.
On to the Battle
Deployments
Spoiler:
We actually did deployment a couple of nights before the game, so as to get maximum gaming time on the day of the battle. I recommend this for anyone planning an Apocalypse game who can leave models set up overnight like this.
The Marines have 12" deployment zones on each table corner. The Orks deploy in the 4x4 section in the middle of each table side, and the Necrons deploy in the 4x4 valley section.
The Ultramarines split 3rd Company, and the two Tactical 6th Company squads between the four corners:
Northeast:
Northwest:
Southwest:
And Southeast:
The Orks deploy with at least one Battlewagon full of Slugga boys to meet each corner, putting long-range fire towards the middle of the board:
The Shoota Boyz deploy into buildings:
With lootas deployed on top of them:
And the Necrons deploy to protect their Obelisks
We actually did deployment a couple of nights before the game, so as to get maximum gaming time on the day of the battle. I recommend this for anyone planning an Apocalypse game who can leave models set up overnight like this.The Marines have 12" deployment zones on each table corner. The Orks deploy in the 4x4 section in the middle of each table side, and the Necrons deploy in the 4x4 valley section.The Ultramarines split 3rd Company, and the two Tactical 6th Company squads between the four corners:Northeast:Northwest:Southwest:And Southeast:The Orks deploy with at least one Battlewagon full of Slugga boys to meet each corner, putting long-range fire towards the middle of the board:The Shoota Boyz deploy into buildings:With lootas deployed on top of them:And the Necrons deploy to protect their Obelisks
Ultramarine Turn One
Wait a second...
The Xenos roll to steal the initiative...
Xenos Turn One
Spoiler:
The Xenos steal the initiative, throwing the Ultramarine's plans into disarray! Rather than being able to advance 3rd company to screen off the Obelisks, now 3rd Company are sitting in the open, with the weight of the undamaged Ork forces pounding on them in their deployment zone. Things just got real for the Imperium.
The whole damn city will be coming down on top of them... We just lost the initiative. - Blackhawk Down.
The Killblasta unloads on a squad of marines...
All the walkers advance, presenting must-kill threats:
The Stompa fires it's Supa-gattler thing...
... and doesn't roll doubles - firing only ceases due to lack of targets!
Lootas kill the Thunderfire cannon...
But the other one on the Achilles survives:
All-in-all, the Xenos first turn takes a horrific toll on the Marines. The Southeast table edge is decimated with only an unarmed rhino surviving. The Marines don't return here... The North sides of the table fare the best, with most of the Tacticals, Devastators and the Achilles able to return fire to the Northwest, and the assault marines to the Northeast able to mount a charge on their turn...
The Xenos steal the initiative, throwing the Ultramarine's plans into disarray! Rather than being able to advance 3rd company to screen off the Obelisks, now 3rd Company are sitting in the open, with the weight of the undamaged Ork forces pounding on them in their deployment zone. Things just got real for the Imperium.- Blackhawk Down.The Killblasta unloads on a squad of marines...All the walkers advance, presenting must-kill threats:The Stompa fires it's Supa-gattler thing...... and doesn't roll doubles - firing only ceases due to lack of targets!Lootas kill the Thunderfire cannon...But the other one on the Achilles survives:All-in-all, the Xenos first turn takes a horrific toll on the Marines. The Southeast table edge is decimated with only an unarmed rhino surviving. The Marines don't return here... The North sides of the table fare the best, with most of the Tacticals, Devastators and the Achilles able to return fire to the Northwest, and the assault marines to the Northeast able to mount a charge on their turn...
Ultramarines Turn One
Spoiler:
Badly surprised by the Xenos response to their invasion, the Emperor's Finest grimly fight on, hoping their reinforcements will arrive soon...
Assault Marines to the Northeast prepare to charge the Necron Warriors guarding the Obelisk:
The southwest is quiet, as the surviving marines get into their rhinos and bunker down.
To the northeast, a lone meltagunner and his rhino fight bravely. The Rhino guns its engines and rams the killa kan. The kan survived, and chewed through the rhino in the assault phase. The lone meltagun failed to damage the battlewagon.
The Deffdread and closest Kan to the Achilles are turned into smoking rubble, leaving the deadly thunderfire cannon free to fire at lootas in cover - none survive.
Badly surprised by the Xenos response to their invasion, the Emperor's Finest grimly fight on, hoping their reinforcements will arrive soon...Assault Marines to the Northeast prepare to charge the Necron Warriors guarding the Obelisk:The southwest is quiet, as the surviving marines get into their rhinos and bunker down.To the northeast, a lone meltagunner and his rhino fight bravely. The Rhino guns its engines and rams the killa kan. The kan survived, and chewed through the rhino in the assault phase. The lone meltagun failed to damage the battlewagon.The Deffdread and closest Kan to the Achilles are turned into smoking rubble, leaving the deadly thunderfire cannon free to fire at lootas in cover - none survive.
Xenos Turn Two
Spoiler:
Xenos reserves start showing up. Four units of nearby ork warbikers ride into battle, gunz blazing!
But most of the reserves are Necrons, as more warriors, barges, and flying croissants appear on the battlefield.
The remnants of the Southeast corner are destroyed, leaving this approach uncontested.
To the Northeast, only a few marine stragglers hang on.
The Northwest corner holds on...
But the devastators are killed.
Doomscythes and destroyers combine to put three structure points on the Achilles
A Spider, Killakan and unit of lootas pile into the Assault marines to the Northeast.
And the Marines are fought off...
Xenos reserves start showing up. Four units of nearby ork warbikers ride into battle, gunz blazing!But most of the reserves are Necrons, as more warriors, barges, and flying croissants appear on the battlefield.The remnants of the Southeast corner are destroyed, leaving this approach uncontested.To the Northeast, only a few marine stragglers hang on.The Northwest corner holds on...But the devastators are killed.Doomscythes and destroyers combine to put three structure points on the AchillesA Spider, Killakan and unit of lootas pile into the Assault marines to the Northeast.And the Marines are fought off...
Ultramarines Turn Two
Spoiler:
The Marines concentrate their reserves to the southwest, near one of the functioning Obelisks. Bikes, and a Landraider roll in...
While the Sternguard and Deathwatch Deepstrike into position.
Imperial Air Defenses show up to the Northwest, along with anouther land raider and some more bikers.
The east table is quiet, the west table is where the action is...
The Sternguard and Deathwatch focus on Necron warriors...
The Imperials also call down their airstrike!
Lots of robots fall down... lootas just die...
The Marines concentrate their reserves to the southwest, near one of the functioning Obelisks. Bikes, and a Landraider roll in...While the Sternguard and Deathwatch Deepstrike into position.Imperial Air Defenses show up to the Northwest, along with anouther land raider and some more bikers.The east table is quiet, the west table is where the action is...The Sternguard and Deathwatch focus on Necron warriors...The Imperials also call down their airstrike!Lots of robots fall down... lootas just die...
Xenos Turn Three
Spoiler:
The rest of the Xenos reserves have to arrive this turn. Most are deployed to the west, with one unit of Nob bikers held for the east, just in case...
Kans and dred go after the last of the Marines to the northwest
But the west is where the fight is going down...
The Stompa and other eastern units start heading that way...
Boyz pile out to assault the deathwatch.
Burnaboyz in their wagon prepare to roast a biker squad.
And the ork flyboyz start dropping bomms on marines!
Devastation is wrecked where the Demolisher and Burna wagon showed up...
The Sternguard are shot, and their droppod eaten by scarabs.
Necron Praetorians assault the deathwatch with Chaplian Cassius...
The slugga boyz win their fight with the deathwatch.
To the southwest, it's bike-on-bike combat.
But with the nobs rolling in, odds aren't in 6th Company's favour.
The rest of the Xenos reserves have to arrive this turn. Most are deployed to the west, with one unit of Nob bikers held for the east, just in case...Kans and dred go after the last of the Marines to the northwestBut the west is where the fight is going down...The Stompa and other eastern units start heading that way...Boyz pile out to assault the deathwatch.Burnaboyz in their wagon prepare to roast a biker squad.And the ork flyboyz start dropping bomms on marines!Devastation is wrecked where the Demolisher and Burna wagon showed up...The Sternguard are shot, and their droppod eaten by scarabs.Necron Praetorians assault the deathwatch with Chaplian Cassius...The slugga boyz win their fight with the deathwatch.To the southwest, it's bike-on-bike combat.But with the nobs rolling in, odds aren't in 6th Company's favour.
Ultramarines Turn Three
Spoiler:
It has all been an elaboate feint - the rest of 6th company arrives to the Northeast!
As do the first-company terminators, heading for the functioning Obelisk.
There's some shooting, but nothing as relevant as the Marines preparing to enter the Necron Base.
It has all been an elaboate feint - the rest of 6th company arrives to the Northeast!As do the first-company terminators, heading for the functioning Obelisk.There's some shooting, but nothing as relevant as the Marines preparing to enter the Necron Base.
Xenos Turn Four
Spoiler:
All available xenos forces scramble to intercept the terminators!
Boyz pile out of buildings!
And the flyers in close pursuit...
You've got one on your tail, Luke
The stompa lines up its shot...
Direct Hit!
All available xenos forces scramble to intercept the terminators!Boyz pile out of buildings!And the flyers in close pursuit...The stompa lines up its shot...Direct Hit!
Ultramarines Turn Four
Spoiler:
But Marneus and his Assault retinue make it through the Obelisk!
As do two other members of First Company...
6th Company continues to intercept the orks that might interfere with the Ultramarine mission.
But Marneus and his Assault retinue make it through the Obelisk!As do two other members of First Company...6th Company continues to intercept the orks that might interfere with the Ultramarine mission.
The Battle for the Resurrection Core
Spoiler:
At this point, after over 8 hours of dice rolling, the battle shifts to the battle for the core. Having lost the initiative means that fewer Ultramarines made it than expected, but with Marneus on duty, anything is possible.... He did single-handedly kill 100,000 orks remember...
The Brave Few...
Necrons funnel towards the invaders...
Wraiths get there first.
The two tacticals don't fare so well.
And most of Marneus's retinue is killed...
But he fights on!
Through spiders...
And Scarabs...
He's killed the Scarabs, but took a wound, and lost his 2+ save... (most of what's left is AP2 anyway though)
Through Lychguard...
Boss Monster!
And another Spider...
Marneus hits 5 times, but fails to wound once, so the next turn, he dies to the Tomb Stalker...
Wait, we forgot he gets to re-roll wounds! He kills the Tomb Stalker.... only to die to the last unit of wraiths instead...
The Agony of Defeat.
At this point, after over 8 hours of dice rolling, the battle shifts to the battle for the core. Having lost the initiative means that fewer Ultramarines made it than expected, but with Marneus on duty, anything is possible.... He did single-handedly kill 100,000 orks remember...The Brave Few...Necrons funnel towards the invaders...Wraiths get there first.The two tacticals don't fare so well.And most of Marneus's retinue is killed...But he fights on!Through spiders...And Scarabs...He's killed the Scarabs, but took a wound, and lost his 2+ save... (most of what's left is AP2 anyway though)Through Lychguard...Boss Monster!And another Spider...Marneus hits 5 times, but fails to wound once, so the next turn, he dies to the Tomb Stalker...Wait, we forgot he gets to re-roll wounds! He kills the Tomb Stalker.... only to die to the last unit of wraiths instead...The Agony of Defeat.
More assorted Pics
Spoiler:
Last weekend, several south-suburban Chicago gamers got together for a large themed battle.Somewhere on a burnt-out ork infested desert world Gymnopedie IV, an ancient evil has awoken. Ordos Xenos Inquisitor Jasok Hane discovered evidence of a Necron tomb while pursuing routine surveillance and redirection of the orks native to the world. Resolved to stop the Necrons before they get up to full-power, the Inquisitor requests aid from Marneus Calgar of the Ultramarines, who commits fully a quarter of the Chapter to the task.The Necron Ressurection Core is located in the middle of a valley pass in a large mountain range. Inquisitor Hane has discovered the existence of four entry obelisks that can be used to access the Necron tomb, however, the ravages of time (and ongoing warfare of the orks) have destroyed two of these obelisks, preventing their use.The Marine's plan calls for 3rd company to land a short distance from the valley, on both sides of the mountain range, and establish a perimeter around the Necron Core, warding off the native Orks. Members of the Ultramarine's First Company, along with Inquisitor Hane and a few squads of Deathwatch Marines will then arrive and attempt to gain access to the tomb world, where they will place demolition charges to prevent the Necron tomb world from fully awakening.Throughout the duration of the mission, the Ultramarines 6th Company (Bike-mounted) will be used as a mobile reserve, seeking to exploit openings and shore up any ork breakthroughs.------Wait a second...The Xenos roll to steal the initiative..."Till I Waltz Again with You" is a popular song written by Sid Prosen and published in 1952. Rather than a waltz, it is a slow AABA shuffle.
The recording by Teresa Brewer took place on August 19, 1952, and was released by Coral Records as catalog number 60873. It first reached the Billboard magazine Best Seller chart on December 6, 1952, and lasted 22 (7 weeks at #1) weeks on the chart, peaking at #1.[1] The song also reached number one on the Cash Box chart for six weeks in 1953. In April 1953, during his senior year in high school, Elvis Presley sang the song in his high school's "Annual Minstrel" show. Presley recalled that the performance did much for his reputation: "I wasn't popular in school... I failed music—only thing I ever failed. And then they entered me in this talent show... when I came onstage I heard people kind of rumbling and whispering and so forth, 'cause nobody knew I even sang. It was amazing how popular I became after that."[2]
According to some sources, a record by Dick Todd reached #17, one by Russ Morgan reached #23, and one by The Harmonicats reached #26 on the charts, as well. Coral successfully marketed the song to the country audience. A version by South Carolinian Tommy Sosebea reached #7 on Billboard's most played by country disc jockeys survey.
The song was recorded by Alma Cogan and Joan Regan in the United Kingdom around the same time. In Australia in 1953, it was recorded by Bob Gibson & His Orchestra, featuring vocalist Ross Higgins, on Pacific label catalogue number PB-086, backed with Have You Heard?.
Alma Cogan and The Kordites with orchestra cond. Frank Cordell recorded it in London on February 10, 1952. The song was released by EMI on the His Master's Voice label as catalog number B 10469.
Semprini, pianoforte with Rhythm accompaniment recorded it in London on March 11, 1953, as the third song of the medley "Dancing to the piano (No. 20) - Hit medley of foxtrots" along with |
a landslide, grabbing 404 electoral votes while Bush only manages to secure 114 electoral votes in Republican stronghold states like Texas.
With more than 400 Electoral College votes, the Democratic ticket—Bernie Sanders, president, and Martin O’Malley, vice president—was declared the winner in Western Illinois University’s third Mock Presidential Election [Image via WIU] While it remains to be seen whether these 2016 predictions are accurate, the WIU notes that they have “yielded spot-on results” in the past.
“Western’s MPE may be the most accurate political bellwether in the country. In 2007, Western students accurately elected Democrat Barack Obama president of the United States—one year before it actually happened. In 2011, WIU students accurately predicted a narrow Obama reelection over the Republican ticket of Governor Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan,” WIU Centennial Honors College Director Richard Hardy explained.
Bernie Sanders (Photo by Charlie Leight/Getty Images)
Bernie Sanders’ Socialist Beliefs Won’t Prevent Him From Winning The Election
Considering the history of socialism in the world, many might assume this track record would hold back a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist. To some, Sanders’ brand of Democratic Socialism is only a step away from the socialism of the former USSR and the Cold War, but polls indicate that 47 percent of Americans are now willing to vote for a socialist, no matter how it is defined.
“For people 30 years of age and younger, saying, ‘Bernie Sanders is a socialist’ cuts exactly no ice,” explained economics professor Richard Wolff. “It’s useless. It doesn’t persuade anyone. Those battles are now two or three decades old. For young people, this is barely known history.”
Do you think Bernie Sanders will win the election in 2016? What do you think about the WIU prediction that Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio will take on the Democrats, not Donald Trump?
[Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images]It looks like we may be getting BioShock: The Collection soon as the Brazilian Classification Board put up a rating on its official website.
BioShock: The Collection was rated on February 19th, 2016 so it’s a very new listing. Not to mention the game was classified for PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS3 and Xbox 360.
As noted by Gematsu, this collection will include BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite. This is the first time that the series will be available for the PS4 and Xbox One consoles.
No other additional details were revealed about this collection. It’s possible the PS4 and Xbox One versions have been remastered to look better for modern day standards. The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions might just be the exact same experience.
This might be good news for fans of the series as this collection could be used to help fund a potential sequel. Publishers usually release collections like this to see if a potential franchise is still popular. Considering how all of the games were critically acclaimed, it’s safe we can assume a sequel could be coming out soon.
It’s worth mentioning 2K has not announced this collection yet, but the Brazilian Classification Board has rated several unannounced video games before.Building 'The Big Roads'
In his new book The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways writer Earl Swift looks at the history and people behind the world's largest public works project— the U.S. interstate superhighway system.
IRA FLATOW, host: Up next, fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride. Well, actually, it's going to be a pretty smooth ride, thanks to concrete, asphalt, macadam and tarmac. Those are the materials that transformed the muddy trails and paths that once crisscrossed the U.S., transformed them into our massive system of superhighways, a system that in many ways now defines what the U.S. is.
Where would California be without the 405 - they say the out there - or Washington with no Beltway? And New Jersey, you know, what's your exit? The American highways are such a part of our life for the most - that probably most of us never stop and think about how the world's largest public works project came to be, and it is the world's largest public works project.
It's really a fascinating story. It's filled with mythology like this: You probably heard that it was President Eisenhower, right, who was responsible for the system. It's named after him. Well, he knew virtually nothing about it until he stumbled upon it by accident while in a traffic jam. It's a really fascinating story, and it's told in a new book "The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Highways." Earl Swift is the author, and he is here. He joins us from WHRO in Norfolk, Virginia. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.
EARL SWIFT: Ira, thanks for having me.
FLATOW: You know, that is a big myth, is it not? We all say it was Eisenhower who created the superhighways.
SWIFT: Oh, it's been - I mean, the fact that it is named after him certainly leaves one with that impression, and I know I grew up believing that it was as much a part of his era as the polio vaccine and, you know, Telstar.
FLATOW: Right. Well, I'm going to quote from a page in your book where you put that all to rest, and you say the Federal Highway Act of 1921 signed into law in November was the foundation for modern highway building in the U.S. It remains the single most important piece of legislation in the creation of a national network, far more so than the later Interstate Highway Bill, which would not have - been possible or necessary without it. Wow.
SWIFT: That's true, yeah. 1921 is really when we got modern - the modern partnership between the federal government and the states that enabled the country to build the network of highways we have today.
FLATOW: You mean the states were building their own roads, and the government was not involved on the state level?
SWIFT: The government was involved, but it was not - there was no coordination built into the planning between states. So you had states and federal government sharing the expense of building highways, but you had no overall plan for how these things would link up into a network that made sense. There was no rational, you know, vision for the thing. The 1921 act changed that.
FLATOW: And you talked about some of the visionaries, about - that when Eisenhower got into office, there was a plan that had been well thought out and the whole highway system put on paper already, and he didn't even know about it.
SWIFT: This had already been authorized by Congress. We had an interstate highway system already approved, already on, you know, on the books. The only thing it lacked was money, and, in fact, it had already received a couple of years worth of funding, although at a token amount at that point.
So it was a done deal in every important respect: in planning, conception, in routing. Where these highways would go had already been decided, what they'd look like, you know, how fast you'd be able to go on them and where you'd be able to go on them.
FLATOW: And you told a really interesting anecdote about how Eisenhower stumbled on the plan in a traffic - stuck in a traffic jam one day.
SWIFT: Well, that's one version of the story. He - of course, when he got stuck in that traffic jam, that would have been in 1957 or '58. He was well aware of the system by that time. He had signed the act and had financed it. What he wasn't aware of when he ran into that traffic jam in suburban D.C. was that the interstate highway system that he conceived of, that he thought he was signing into law, was very different from the interstate highway system that had actually been planned back in the '30s and '40s and authorized by Congress and is the system that we're familiar with today.
He had no idea that that system would venture into the cities. In fact, he was very much against that.
FLATOW: All right, we'll talk more about it, the wake-up call that Eisenhower got about what the system actually does and where it went. We're talking with Earl Swift, author of "The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Highways."
Our number: 1-800-989-8255. You can tweet us @scifri if you'd like to answer or ask questions. So please stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FLATOW: You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking about the creation of the superhighway system in the United States. Our number: 1-800-989-8255. We're talking with Earl Swift, author of "The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways."
And this book is so chock full of little anecdotes and stories and stuff, it's hard to know where to begin. Let me begin or continue by asking you who would be considered, then, the great father of our superhighway system? Who would you credit? I know you talk a lot about Thomas MacDonald as being that...
SWIFT: Thomas McDonald would probably get my vote as the first among equals of the triumvirate of men I think I'd most credit. It was an evolution. You know, the interstates evolved from the numbered U.S. highway system that dates to the mid-'20s. Those evolved from a very primitive network of mostly dirt auto trails that we had throughout the teens and early '20s.
And so, really, to credit just one guy is a bit misleading. It really started for my - for the purpose of coming up with a line that makes sense with a guy named Carl Fisher, I think. He was an Indiana wild man and speed demon, a bicycle racer, auto dealer.
He marketed the first practical automotive headlight, which made him a millionaire, and he built the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with his winnings and then singlehandedly pretty much built the city of Miami Beach and along the way convinced a bunch of his automotive buddies to finance a rock highway from New York to San Francisco, the Lincoln Highway, which they did in fact built.
And that effort inspired businessmen in other cities to get behind private-sector road building, as well, and that's how we got this primitive network of auto trails that sprung up in the late teens.
MacDonald came in as the head of the federal road building effort in 1919, a job he kept for 34 years. He was - he finally retired in 1953. And he turned that primitive network that Fisher and company had conceived into a rational numbered network, a real grid that made some sense, and then conducted, oversaw the research in the '20s and '30s that spawned the interstate system and rode herd on the proposal that became the rough blueprint for the interstate system.
And then his protege, a guy named Frank Turner, turned that vision into the concrete and steel that started to sprout around the country in the '60s and '70s. Those three.
FLATOW: Yeah, and then they had to come up with a numbering system. It's fascinating how you describe how they decided how to number the highways.
SWIFT: Well, they did because back in the days of the auto trails, the long-distance roads in America all had names like the Lee Highway, the Lincoln, the Arrowhead Trail. And they identified themselves, if you were a driver, you knew when you were on a - on the road you were on because it had a signature color scheme, and they painted that color scheme in rings on telephone poles.
And, you know, they literally blazed the trail that you followed. But after a while, it became so unwieldy because you had multiple trails overlapping, you had 250 trails around the country, 64 in Iowa alone, and you couldn't keep track of where you were. I mean, the telephone poles were painted from ground to 15 feet up, and trying to figure out one color scheme from the next became a dangerous distraction.
So the feds and the states stepped in and decided to take the private auto trails, the associations that promoted these trails, out of the road-building business, and they came up - they assigned a committee to come up with a numbering scheme, and a guy name E.W. James probably deserves the most credit for coming up with the scheme they devised in 1926, which was that all north-south highways would be numbered with odd numbers, all east-west highways would have even numbers.
And the lowest numbers of each would be in the far northeast corner of the country up in Maine. So numbers would increase as you went west and south, and it had the advantage not only of being expandable, you know, you could always add more numbers to the system as you built new highways. But it also allowed a motorist to figure out where he was based on an intersection between, you know, two of these highways. He could roughly kind of pinpoint - you could triangulate your position in the Lower 48.
The interstate system took that same idea and just used a mirror image of it, again odd numbers are north-south, even numbers east-west, but the lowest numbers are down in San Diego, and they increase in number as you go east and north.
FLATOW: And then you had the triple digits, which showed that there was like a spur. Like you had 95, 195 led into that, or...
SWIFT: The odd-numbered - on a three-digit number, the first number, if it's an odd number, denotes a spur. It means that it connects with the main highway only in one point. An even number means that it's a loop and that it connects in two places.
FLATOW: And that gave rise to the beltway.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SWIFT: Yes, it did.
FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255 is our number. You talk about an interesting character, Louis - architect Lewis Mumford, who was very influential in those days, who started out as a great proponent, defender of the highway system until he saw the havoc it was wrecking into - as people wanted to move it into downtown urban areas, and then he turned around, changed his mind.
SWIFT: Mumford is a very interesting guy because he did a complete 180. In the summer of 1931, he co-authored a piece in Harper's with a friend of his named Benton MacKaye, in which they advocated what we would now consider a limited-access, high-speed expressway. There were none of them in the country at the time, so this was pretty theoretical stuff that they were advocating.
But they described in this piece, you know, the modern interstate experience, pretty much, with grade separated intersections, with development and access to the highway only at certain points. And, you know, he - this - the interesting thing here is that MacKaye, his co-author in this, was also the guy who proposed the Appalachian Trail a few years ago, or a few years before that.
Over the course of the next 25 years, after this story appears - and they were - there were a number of thinkers who were, you know, kind of dovetailing on this idea of limited access at the time. But over the next 25 years, Mumford completely shifted his thinking on highways.
And as you say, it was especially when he saw the collateral damage caused by trying to ramrod a, you know, 200-, 300-foot road right-of-way through a densely settled older city, especially in the east...
FLATOW: And in the poorest neighborhoods, to try to get - and people...
SWIFT: Most often, but, you know, in the case of some road projects weren't real picky about what kind of neighborhood they blasted through, and that caused Mumford a great deal of heartache, as did his realization, over time, that building more roads didn't alleviate traffic congestion, it just created more congestion on newer roads.
And he came to recognize, earlier than most people I think, that highways are almost like mountains: They create their own weather. They fill up as quickly as you build them, and it really doesn't seem to matter how quickly or how big you build them, they still fill up.
FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255 is our number. Let's see if I can get a phone call in here from Nicholas(ph) in Bethesda. Hi, Nicholas.
NICHOLAS: Hi, how are you?
FLATOW: Hi there.
NICHOLAS: I had a question - actually, you were just addressing that - about the cultural impact of building highways. I used to live in Detroit, and one of the neighborhoods that was, sort of, decimated by I-75 was known as Black Bottom, and I wanted to know if there were, sort of, other neighborhoods that had caused such cultural impact, where the highway had caused such cultural impact and changed sort of the landscape of ethnic neighborhoods in the community.
And also, Detroit doesn't have much of a public transportation system. Can we blame on the highways, the development of the highway system? Thank you.
FLATOW: Thank you, Nicholas.
SWIFT: Well, on the first point, just about every city in the United States in which these highways appeared suffered some collateral damage from the experience, and that was mostly - that was more true in older cities. You know, there are some like Atlanta and Houston that were actually kind of shaped by the interstates rather than disrupted by them.
But just about every city of the east and most of the older cities of the west, as well - Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Nashville, Memphis - they were all grievously disrupted by the process of building roads, just as they would have to be. People had been living there for a long time in close proximity, and these were big, big roads.
FLATOW: You single out one person, Joe Wiles in Baltimore.
SWIFT: Baltimore was the city, I suppose...
FLATOW: It was fighting back. Yeah.
SWIFT:...that's kind of the test case. Yeah. And Joe Wiles is one of tens of thousands of people, who, you know, just regular homeowners and residents who decided, you know, they weren't going to stand idly by and allow homes and neighborhoods they had spent years building to be bulldozed. And there were a number of protest movements that sprung up in cities around the country that were successful.
In San Francisco, the Embarcadero Freeway was stopped at the halfway point. In Baltimore, freeway construction was stopped at the city limit. Baltimore is one of the few cities that is not pierced by an interstate today. And you saw the same thing happen in Memphis, where Interstate 40 was stopped before it could slice through a beloved park, Overton Park. Now it does an interim completely around the city.
FLATOW: But Robert Moses wanted to run a highway straight down Manhattan, didn't he?
SWIFT: He wanted to go around three of them straight through Manhattan.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
FLATOW: So what stopped him?
SWIFT: You know, it's amazing that he was stopped, because he managed to get so much built. But he overstepped even his own supporters on that one, I think. The idea of drilling an interstate through Washington Square was a bit more than people can handle. And also, he would have taken out the entire just recently completed kind of midtown high-rise district that included the Rockefeller Center, if he had gotten his way. And people were pretty happy with those buildings at the time.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Tell us about Miller McClintock. He was an engineer, correct?
SWIFT: Yeah. Miller McClintock was another one of the thinkers, who, in the very early '30s, proposed pieces of what we now recognize as kind of the interstate model. And he was a Harvard professor, who reputedly had the first doctorate in traffic. And he was on loan to the city of Chicago, doing a traffic study, and realized that all of the traffic accidents that he saw and most of the congestion he witnessed could be ascribed to four of what he called frictions.
And he came to see traffic as this kind of working like fluid mechanics, where it came to see cars as cork puzzles in a system of veins and arteries. And these four frictions, in almost every case, interrupted the flow or caused clog and one of the most intersectional friction, which is what you run in to if you have traffic crossing in front of you. And he found that it caused about one in five accidents. Another one was medial friction, which is head-on kind of friction, you know, caused by incursions over the center line. And then there was internal stream friction, which is when you have friction between cars traveling in the same direction. So you - sideswipes, rear-enders, that sort of thing, the most common kind of car accident. He found that 44 percent of accidents were caused by that internal stream friction.
Finally, marginal friction which was caused by hitting objects off of the road, which account for an enormous number of accidents, many more than you would expect. And that involved boulders, guard rails, trees and the unlucky pedestrian who happen to be too close to the pavement.
FLATOW: Talking with Earl Swift, the author of "The Big Roads" on SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow. I - one of the most fascinating aspects of your book is - because it interests me so personally, is concrete and the development of roads in the country, and how we got the word tarmac and concrete and things like that.
SWIFT: Well, you're the first person who said to me, Ira, that that is the part of the book that most interested them, so I'm glad to hear it, because I was fascinated by concrete. (unintelligible)
FLATOW: I love concrete. It never stops curing, I understand, but that's another story.
SWIFT: Yes, true. Yeah. It just clips along. Yeah. You know, the - I find out a lot more than I ever expected to know about concrete in the course of doing the book. And one of the things that really surprised me was that this is an ancient technology that we just kind of lost for hundreds of years. You know, this was something that the Romans were very adept at using, and their concrete constructions stand today. And yet, we, for the entire for the first millennium and right up until, really, the opening of the 20th century, kind of just somehow misplaced that technology completely and didn't get it back in full until 1918.
FLATOW: Right.
SWIFT: He was one guy...
FLATOW: Go ahead.
SWIFT: An American engineer named Duff Abrams in 1918 came up with the very simple recipe for modern concrete. And, basically, what their recipe says is - there have been a lot of competing theory about what constitutes the correct mix for concretes, various components, and there are only three components: there's cement, you know, Portland cement. There's water, and there's aggregate, which is sand or gravel or whatever it is that you mix to, you know, to give it body. And - no one had been able to come up with a way to properly regulate mixing of this, so you get a predictable result. And Abrams was able to do that by just pointing out that after putting together 50,000 some-odd batches of concrete, he was able to say that the only thing that really determines the strength of concrete is that you use as little water as you possibly can...
FLATOW: Just enough.
SWIFT:...in mixing it. Just enough to make it plastic, so that you can mix it. Anything more, and its strength just drops off the cliff.
FLATOW: And you talk about the early roads being made out of Macadam, which is a rocky stuff?
SWIFT: Macadam is just - it's gravel of various types, various sizes. Usually, you lay down big gravel, and then you lay down little gravel on top of it. You roll it, and voila, you have a macadam road. And it dates from the 1820s, 1830s, and takes its name from a guy, John McAdam, who developed the process. And, really, what American engineers brought to it was adding either tar or asphalt to the macadam to create bituminous macadam. And that's what we now know as blacktop.
FLATOW: Or tarmac, tar and macadam.
SWIFT: Tarmac would be the tar.
FLATOW: Tar.
SWIFT: And tar is basically just a coal derivative. It's a fake asphalt.
FLATOW: See what you learn from this book. I mean, the rest of my listeners are nodding off, but I'm enjoying all the talk about the concrete.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
FLATOW: Thanks for being with us. I promise we'll change subjects after the break. We're talking about roads and highways and concrete, and we'll wake up with Earl Swift, author of "The Big Roads," a terrific book about how the highways were created, and a lot personal stories in there, not just talking about watching concrete dry - "The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries and the Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways." We'll be back with Earl after this break, so stay with us. We'll get some of your questions in. This is - 1-800-989-8255. I'm Ira Flatow. Stay with us. We'll be right back.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FLATOW: You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking about highways this hour with Earl Swift, author of "The Big Roads." Our number: 1-800-989-8255. Just a couple of more minutes left. Let's see if we can get a couple of phone calls in here. Susan in Alexandria, Virginia. Hi, Susan.
SUSAN: Hi, Ira.
FLATOW: Hi, there.
SUSAN: I always heard that Eisenhower, being of a military mind, required that there be these long, straight passages on the interstate systems - say, a mile long - that could be used as runways in case of some sort of a national emergency, to be used in a military way. Is that true, or an urban myth?
FLATOW: Good question.
SWIFT: That is, Susan, that's sadly an urban myth, but it's such a good story. It's a shame it is. But, yeah, it's - yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SUSAN: Well, it's kind of a good idea.
SWIFT: Well, it would, but, you know, the fact they are...
FLATOW: Didn't he see in World War II the great autobahns the Germans had when he was over there and say, I want some of that stuff?
SUSAN: Yeah.
SWIFT: Well, he sure did, yeah - unknowing that, of course, we already had something on the books back here. But - in fact, the Air Force would have loved to have seen that, I think. And they approached the Bureau of Public Roads about having a look to see whether it was possible to incorporate an emergency runway system into the interstates. And the Federal Highway folks just found that it could not be done.
FLATOW: In Europe - they have some in Europe, do they not, some of the highways?
SWIFT: Well, that was - of course, you got to understand, the autobahns were designed to be military roads. They were not designed to move people and commerce.
FLATOW: Right.
SWIFT: I mean, they were - you know, when - they were open, nobody in Germany had a car. The only people using them were, you know, trucks full of soldiers and tanks. And that was amply clear to all of the American highway officials who went over to take a look at them. They admired their construction and design. But, to a one, they came away concluding that something like that wouldn't have a lot of utility in the United States because, yeah, it was designed to move the German army to the country's frontier so they could wage war on their neighbors - pretty clearly designed to do that.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. You start your book by taking a cross-country tour on the Lincoln Highway, and you've seen a lot of highways and byways. Can you give us a - an idea of what the state of America's superhighways is today?
SWIFT: Well, it's a bit troubling, really. Of course, it varies from state to state. These are state highways. The U.S. Interstate Highway System is not owned by the federal government. And so the level of maintenance on the system varies from state to state, according to each state's ability to cut loose the money to maintain them.
And, you know, the system is now at or nearing its expected service life, and will require a great infusion of capital in the coming years to stay useful, to stay in one piece. We put a tremendous load on this thing. This - the 47,000-mile system constitutes 1.2 percent of our highway mileage, and it carries 25 percent of our traffic, so that it's just an incalculable amount of wear that we subject these roads to. And we simply have not done a very good job in quite a few states at making sure that it's up to the - continue to be up to the task.
There are 55,000 bridges on the system. So think about that the next time you drive over an interstate bridge. It may have been a few years since it got a lot of maintenance. What we'll see happen if money isn't forthcoming to fix this, the bridges will be downgraded on what they can carry, and they'll become far less useful. And, eventually, you'll see stretches of the highway subjected to the same constraints.
FLATOW: They'll close them?
SWIFT: They will limit the amount of weight they can carry.
FLATOW: So trucks, heavy trucks won't be able to go on them.
SWIFT: Which is an awfully big piece of the reason that they're useful.
FLATOW: When it's why the interstate highway was built in the first place.
SWIFT: It's a huge piece of the argument for them. You bet.
FLATOW: To go from big city to big city. I suppose Eisenhower thought they should be going to little towns. That's why he was so surprised, you know?
SWIFT: Yeah, he wanted - he envisioned kind of an autobahn system that avoided the cities. You might be able to get into a city off of the interstate system on a spur, but the system itself would avoid the cities. And he was very surprised when he found that that wasn't the case. The concrete was already being poured when he found that wasn't the case.
FLATOW: Well, there are a lot of great, big surprises in your book, Earl. "The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways," with Earl Swift. We only had a fraction of the time we need to cover this book. And I - it's a great book, and it's got all my geeky stuff in it, too, Earl, so...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SWIFT: Well, thank you.
FLATOW: Thanks for the details. The beauty is in the details. Thanks for the - and have a good weekend.
SWIFT: Oh, thanks so much for having me.
FLATOW: And one more time: Earl Swift, author of the "The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries and...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SWIFT: Well, thank you.
FLATOW: Thanks for the details. The beauty is in the details. Thanks for the - and have a good weekend.
SWIFT: Oh, thanks so much for having me.
FLATOW: One more time, Earl Swift, author of "The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways."
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10/25/15 -Because of severe time constraints, we are no longer able to do regular updates at Dastardly Dads. We will occasionally post articles on general studies on child abuse/domestic violence, news pieces involving abusive fathers in custody/visitation situations. We wil also be updating the Killer Dads and Custody lists, while looking for a better, more accessible platform for the data.
7/11/16 - We started this blog on June 24, 2009--just over seven years. And like all good things, it's time to bring this project to a close. It has served its purpose. We have close to 10,500 postings regarding fathers and child abuse, with hundred of those cases being enabled by the family courts, social services, and others in authority. The documentation is clear. It is now time to stop documenting and put that energy into changing the situation that puts thousands of mothers and children at risk every day.The Miami Dolphins ultimately never signed a big-name left tackle in free agency, but they did add dyed-in-the-wool right-sider Tyson Clabo.
His arrival means that second-year pro Jonathan Martin will take over for the departed Jake Long at left tackle, where Martin thrived at Stanford. Following an offseason of frantic free-agent signings, the success of Miami's rebuilt offense arguably boils down to how Martin adjusts.
Darlington: Miami makeover In the midst of an active offseason, Jeff Darlington about embracing change.
In the midst of an active offseason, Dolphins coach Joe Philbin chats withabout embracing change. More...
"I'm excited. It's a position I want to play, obviously," he told the team's official website. "I'm excited for the challenge, I'm excited for the opportunity, so I'm going to try to make the most of it during these OTAs and do whatever I can to help this team win."
Martin struggled mightily as a rookie on the right side. ProFootballFocus graded him 76th out of 80 qualifying offensive tackles, but his teammates saw something different when he stepped in at bookend for an injured Long in December.
"He's more fluid over there," center Mike Pouncey said this week. "You can tell when he's kick sliding that way he's more comfortable being in a left-handed stance. Obviously, he wanted to play over there last year, but he was forced to play the right side, and I think he's going to do a great job."
Martin must improve his pass protection, but there's something to be said for returning to a position he knows well. If he can package away last year's troubles and pick up where he left off at Stanford, the Dolphins will be in good shape up front.
Follow Marc Sessler on Twitter @MarcSesslerNFL.Earlier today, the extreme right Catholic group, Civitas Institute (consisting mostly of senior military and business leaders), took to the streets of Lyon, France, to demonstrate against the legalization of same-sex marriage, which appears to be hopefully imminent, as the draft law will be voted on in early-to-mid 2013. To protest the demonstration, which has been in the works for the past three months, a feminist group called FEMEN showed up in full force to basically be all, "You're wack, just knock it off!" Then, people from Civitas allegedly started to physically attack the people of FEMEN, who ABC News says, "turned up topless, chanted 'in gay we trust' and sprayed white powder [fabulously labeled 'holy sperm'] from bottles."
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According to the Google Translated piece from Le Monde, but you'll get the gist, "'The girls took shots in all parts of the body', as well as journalists who had filmed. Photographers were'molested' also reported an AFP photographer."
The video is disturbing, showing a man slapping a woman, and more extremely bothersome behavior. If heterosexuals are raising their kids like this, I feel like it's an extremely strong argument in support of same-sex marriage that I've ever seen. I just want them to live in a world of Zach Wahls.
More info as it becomes available.With LeBron James and Dwyane Wade set to square off on Saturday night at 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC, take a look back to when the two teamed up for four remarkable seasons in Miami, capturing two titles. (1:43)
CLEVELAND -- When LeBron James faces off against Dwyane Wade on Friday, with James in a Cleveland Cavaliers uniform (after he changes out of his Chicago Cubs jersey, but we'll get to that in a minute) and Wade in a Chicago Bulls one, it could be seen as the ceremonial end to the super-team era they shared together with the Miami Heat.
In the summer of 2010, James |
’s meeting, Muncie City Council voted on the city’s updated bicycle ordinance, defining the responsibilities of both bicyclists and motorists and detailing what’s expected and what won’t be tolerated.
“We wanted to make Muncie a more bike- and pedestrian-friendly town,” said Kyle Johnson of the committee that worked for several months updating the city’s bicycling ordinance.
“The bicycle code was nearly 50 years old,” Johnson said, and didn’t reflect the city’s new emphasis on bicycling not only as a means of exercise and transportation but also as a quality of life feature.
The city has designated bicycle lanes — particularly downtown, but also in other areas — in the past two years and Mayor Dennis Tyler said his plan is to connect bicyclists to area trails.
Johnson, who is also Delaware County’s GIS director, said the ordinance would cover operations of bikes and vehicles around “our new bike lanes.”
“We have two great trails, Cardinal Greenway and White River Greenway, and we need to connect people to those trails,” Johnson said.
Among the provisions of the revised bicycle code are definitions of harassment of bike riders, including “throwing any object at or towards a bicyclist” and “taking any action to aggressively swerve” toward a bike or “engaging in a sharp acceleration for the purpose of creating a greater than normal accumulation of vehicle exhaust.”
Requirements for bicyclists include an audible bell, lights and reflectors and prohibitions of practices like hitching rides on motor vehicles and carrying packages.
An element of the revised ordinance is the three-foot passing rule, which requires motorists to maintain a three-foot distance when passing a bicyclist.
The ordinance establishes fines beginning at $100 for violations of any provisions of the code.
During Monday’s city council meeting, Johnson said the plan going forward was for “education and outreach.”
Monte Hitchcock of Kirk’s Bike Shop said he had read through the ordinance.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Hitchcock said. “It’s definitely a step in the right direction.”
Read or Share this story: http://tspne.ws/1FxJmMoA coalition of U.S. cities, states, companies and universities said on Saturday that they still plan on meeting the commitments of the Paris climate accord, despite 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 announcement earlier this year that the U.S. would withdraw from the deal.
"It is important for the world to know, the American government may have pulled out of the Paris agreement, but the American people are committed to its goals, and there is nothing Washington can do to stop us," former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a climate conference in Bonn, Germany, according to The Associated Press.
The group, called America's Pledge, said that many states, cities and private entities in the U.S. would continue to pursue efforts to reduce carbon emissions, including promoting renewable sources of energy.
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The group consists of 20 U.S. states and more than 50 major cities.
But in a report released by America's Pledge, the group acknowledged that any effort to meet the Paris accord's carbon-reduction commitments by 2025 would require some level of federal action.
"[W]e cannot underscore strongly enough the critical nature of federal engagement to achieve the deep decarbonization goals the U.S. must undertake after 2025," the report reads.
Trump announced in June that the U.S. would pull out of the 195-nation climate agreement as soon as it is able to, saying that the accord was "unfair" to the U.S. and would ultimately hurt American business interests, while allowing developing countries, like India, to continue to rely on fossil fuels.
At the time of that announcement, only one other country, Syria, had not joined the pact. That changed this week when Syria said during the climate conference in Germany that it would sign onto the deal.Children from poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles who took regular music lessons for two years were able to distinguish similar speech sounds faster than their peers.
(Photo: Tiplyashina Evgeniya/Shutterstock)
There is much evidence that poverty, and the chronic stress it creates, hinders the development of young brains. However, new research finds one important aspect of neural functioning is gradually strengthened when underprivileged children engage in a challenging but fun activity: Music lessons.
A newly published study of six- to nine-year-olds living in gang-infested areas of Los Angeles finds those who spent two years participating in a free music-instruction program processed the sound of certain syllables more rapidly than their peers with less musical training.
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"This research demonstrates that community music programs can literally remodel children’s brains in a way that improves sound processing, which could lead to better learning and language skills."
“This research demonstrates that community music programs can literally remodel children’s brains in a way that improves sound processing, which could lead to better learning and language skills,” reports lead author Nina Kraus of Northwestern University. Her study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Kraus and her colleagues followed 44 children for three years. All were students in the Los Angeles public schools; all lived in designated gang-reduction zones.
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At the beginning of the first year, 18 students enrolled in the music-training program conducted by the Harmony Project. After six months or so of introductory musicianship classes (one-hour sessions twice weekly in which they learned fundamental skills), they moved on to group instrumental instruction.
Another 26 students had these lessons deferred for one year, starting their instruction at the beginning of year two.
At the end of each school year, all participants took part in neurophysiological testing, in which researchers determined how quickly their brains processed the distinction between the sounds “ba” and “ga.”
“Children with two years of training showed a marked improvement in the neural differentiation of the syllables,” Kraus and her colleagues report. “Across both groups, more music training was associated with larger enhancements in neural function.”
“This suggests that music training transferred to non-music listening settings to influence automatic auditory processing,” they add. “These improvements were in processes that are important for everyday communication.”
“Previous investigations have revealed that, as groups, children who are better readers, and children who hear better in noise, show stronger neural distinctions of these same syllables. These findings therefore provide support for the efficacy of community and co-curricular music program to engender improvements in nervous system function.”
Importantly, the researchers found this particular benefit of music education doesn’t kick in until after two full years of training. A few lessons won’t do it.
The good news, however, is that you don’t have to enjoy the privileges of wealth, or even middle-class status, for music training to make a difference.
It all adds to the mass of evidence—see here, here, and here—that music training impacts young brains in ways that go far beyond aesthetic appreciation. As Kraus and her colleagues put it: “Our findings support efforts to reintegrate music into public schooling as an important complement to science, technology, math, and reading instruction.”
Is anybody listening?This 1972 Autobianchi A112 Abarth Radiale runs a 1,000cc four tuned to in excess of 100 HP, and breathes through a wicked looking set of Webers screened in behind a Lexan cover poking through the grille. It’s said to be quick, street-legal, and is prepped for rally or hillclimb action with period equipment. Looking like a gallon of fun stuffed into a pint-sized package, it’s being offered here on Craigslist in San Francisco, California for $22k.
A112s are pretty cool little cars right out of the box, but this one ratchets things up several notches with a fantastic Abarth themed two-tone livery, blacked out hood, and a perfect stance accentuated by Cromodora mags. With the aforementioned Webers sticking out like an overbite and a race-spec looking canister exhaust poking out near the center of the rear, the little OHV four should make a spine-tingling soundtrack.
Inside, low-back Fusina race seats and what appears to be awood-rimmed Nardi or perhaps Motolita steering wheel look right at home. There isn’t much detail-pictured or written-on the rest of the cabin, but we can just make out a stripped dash with safety toggles and utilitarian looking door cards, while a prominent, tech inspection sticker plastered Sparco roll cage is hard to disguise from any angle. If the leather strap located spare is anything to go by, tires are Avon race items-great for track use, scary on the street.
With standard cars weighing in at about 1,500 pounds, this one should really fly along the road thanks to a very healthy power-to-weight ratio. Everything photographed looks well-maintained and ready for business, but not overly sanitary either, just as it should on a proper race car. Sold with extra parts and records too, there’s something about the short, no-nonsense, but decently informative ad that gives us the impression the seller knows his stuff and could easily provide a lot more info should you be inclined to ask. Nice photos reinforce this feeling.
We’d like to know what kind of racing it’s eligible for, but even if you were to only drive it on the street you’d get plenty of thrills. We know a local gas station that sells 108 octane, and it just happens to be situated right at the foot of some twisty canyon roads with more elevation changes than an escalator-what a blast it’d be to fill this thing to the brim with a few quarts before shedding some big black rubber marbles into the weeds.It’s time for city hall to consider clamping down on privately owned parking lots in downtown London, one politician says.
As one Londoner’s Facebook post over a parking ticket costing up to $74 gathered steam Monday, Coun. Mo Salih decided he’ll raise the issue next month.
He’ll ask his colleagues on council’s community and protective services committee to direct staff to study two things:
To “ensure parking infractions on privately owned lots are enforced in the same manner as city-owned parking lots.”
To “ensure that any fines are set at a reasonable level and fines, or appeals of fines, are handled with fairness and consistency.”
In an interview Monday, Salih said he believes a review of options is important to the health of downtown.
“We want to ensure people come to the core, come and visit our city,” he said. “And when they’re getting penalized, sometimes with excessive fines, it sends the wrong message.
“People should really follow the city’s lead when it comes to private lots.”
The Facebook post, by Jeremy McCall, prompted the owner of a downtown business, Scotty’s Shine Shop on York Street, to respond with his own concerns about downtown parking-lot management.
“It’s beyond frustrating,” Scott Perkin said. “Ultimately, it’s an encumbrance in terms of the time I’ve spent dealing with issues with their patrollers. It’s a waste of my time and energy.”
pmaloney@postmedia.com(Afp)
"Non esistono accordi segreti tra Libia e Italia che possano minare la sovranità della Libia nelle sue acque territoriali". E' la dichiarazione del capo del Consiglio presidenziale del governo di concordia nazionale libico Fayez Al-Serraj, in riferimento alla missione navale italiana nel contrasto al traffico di esseri umani, riportata dall'agenzia ufficiale libica. Le parole di Serraj sono arrivate durante una riunione con ufficiali libici della marina militare, della guardia costiera e della sicurezza dei porti svoltasi a Tripoli.
"Le richieste al governo italiano sono nientemeno che quelle avanzate dai capi della marina militare e della guardia costiera durante le precedenti riunioni e consistono nel fornire supporto tecnico e logistico", ha sottolineato Serraj. "Non abbiamo richiesto - ha proseguito - alcun intervento o azioni all'interno delle acque territoriali e tutto ciò che viene diffuso da alcuni media o individui non è vero. Sono solo polemiche politiche per distorcere l'accordo" allo scopo di "fomentare l’opinione pubblica contro il governo per indebolirlo".Kenneth Alan Taylor has been associated with the Nottingham Playhouse’s pantomime for more than 30 years, a tradition he brought from Oldham where he was artistic director in 1984. Now in his 80s, he has hung up his heels. Does he miss it? As he told The Stage recently: “When I look at the schedule – there are 84 performances this year – I don’t miss playing the dame. If I could do a short week then yes, but otherwise it’s a killer. But working on the panto is still the highlight of the year.”
Paul O’Grady is one of our finest (and filthiest) drag queens. He emerged from a career as pub drag queen Lily Savage, to become a national institution. Last year he and Julian Clary returned to the London Palladium, in a pantomime that Michael Billington, in the Guardian, referred to as a “tsunami of smut”. Clary returns in this year’s Dick Whittington, so perhaps we can expect more of the same; it’s a pity O’Grady isn’t joining him.
4. Christopher Biggins
Biggins – as he is almost universally known – announced last year that after 40 years of playing the dame he was going to hang up his frock. He told the Daily Mail : “I don’t mind getting old, in fact I’m rather enjoying it. But I was doing 12 shows a week and I had 13 costume changes every show. So that’s 26 costume changes a day, matinee and evening… I don’t want to go on too long and finish my career as a panto dame in some little theatre you’ve hardly heard of. And on walking sticks! I don’t want to die in a dress.” His presence every Christmas will be missed.
5. Clive Rowe
A fixture of the Hackney pantomime, Clive Rowe even earned an Olivier nomination for his Mother Goose – but it is undeniably hard work. As he said in a 2015 interview : “It’s tiring to your bones and when you’re in the middle of an 11-show week or getting up for two shows on Boxing Day, one can be forgiven for having a sense of humour bypass! But there’s nothing quite like that feeling of organised chaos.” This year he’s swapping Hackney for Wimbledon, where he’s starring in Jack and the Beanstalk as Jack’s mother.
6. Roy HuddWho's got the best odds to sign Masahiro Tanaka?
The Yankees, according to Bovada.
The Yankees are a 3-2 favorite to land the 25-year-old Japanese pitcher, the gambling website says.
The Dodgers are right behind at 11-4, it says.
The rest of the odds: Seattle (5-1), Cubs (7-1), Red Sox (10-1), Diamondbacks (12-1), Angels (15-1), Rangers (15-1), White Sox (18-1), Blue Jays (18-1).
Tanaka went 24-0 with a 1.27 ERA for the Rakuten Golden Eagles last season. He's expected to fetch a deal worth around $100 million for six years, and the team that signs him must give his former team a $20-million posting fee.
The Yankees are expected to aggressively pursue Tanaka. The righty could help bring stability to a rotation surrounded by question marks and comprised by CC Sabathia, Ivan Nova and Tanaka's countryman Hiroki Kuroda.
The Dodgers just agreed to a historic seven-year, $215-million contract with lefty Clayton Kershaw, but could still be in the market for another big-named pitcher.
How much money would you bet the Yankees sign Tanaka?And then there were seven. After covering the bottom feeders, the middle of the pack, and those that defy any logical projection, NHL season preview week wraps up today with our final group of teams: the best of the best.
If you’ve been following along all week, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. Appearing on the list below all but guarantees that a team will go on to have a good season. By now you’re probably squirming with suspense, wondering whether your favorite team was fortunate enough to …
Wait, if you’ve been following all week, then by process of elimination you already know who’s on the list. Crap. I didn’t think this through very well.
Ah, well. Here are my picks, in no particular order, for the seven teams that enter the season as Stanley Cup favorites.
Los Angeles Kings
Last season: 46-28-8, 100 points, third place in the Pacific Division, won the Stanley Cup
Offseason report: Cap pressure prevented them from adding much, although they did manage to re-sign playoff hero Marian Gaborik as well as Matt Greene. Willie Mitchell and Colin Fraser were lost to free agency; both were solid contributors, but not critical pieces.
Minor tweaks aside, this year’s Kings will essentially be the same as last year’s version. That’s not good news for the rest of the league.
Outlook: The Kings finished last year ranked 25th in goals scored and first in goals allowed, so it’s not hard to see which end of the ice they’re best at. Team defense, from two-way force Anze Kopitar to blueline stud Drew Doughty, is excellent, and they implement Darryl Sutter’s system just about perfectly. Jonathan Quick is a divisive goalie; some view him as a sure-thing superstar, while others see merely a good goaltender on the league’s best defensive team, with a reputation inflated by a few playoff hot streaks. In either case, he’ll deliver strong numbers, and if he gets hurt, there’s always last year’s rookie breakout, Martin Jones.
That leaves the goal scoring, which has been the Kings’ weak spot for several years now. So far they’ve managed to flick the switch on the offense once the playoffs start, but that’s not something you want to count on every year. A full season of Gaborik will help if he can stay healthy all year, which he often doesn’t.
Key stat: 56.74 — the Kings’ Fenwick percentage at 5-on-5/close, the best in the league by a decent margin. In other words, no team has the puck more than L.A. This stat is also one of the best predictors we have of future success, which is why analytics guys get little hearts in their eyes whenever they talk about the Kings.
Best case: They continue to be impossible to score on, the offense finds a pulse, and they cruise through the year on the way to adding a Presidents’ Trophy to their hardware case.
Worst case: They once again struggle to score goals, and Quick and the defense lapse just enough that they take a small step back and into the mid-90s point range, which in the West means they have to sweat a little for their playoff spot.
Bold prediction: Coming off last year’s strong playoff run and a Conn Smythe near miss, Doughty rides that momentum and another strong season to his first career Norris.
New York Rangers
Last season: 45-31-6, 96 points, second in the Metro, lost to the Kings in the Stanley Cup Final
Offseason report: The Rangers turned over a big chunk of the bottom half of their roster, as cap pressure had them parting ways with useful contributors like Brad Richards, Benoit Pouliot, Brian Boyle, Derek Dorsett, and Anton Stralman. They restocked by adding a handful of players, most notable veteran blueliner Dan Boyle and winger Lee Stempniak.
Outlook: Despite the offseason shakeup, the Rangers are returning essentially the same core that made a run to the final last year. They’ll miss Derek Stepan for the season’s first month or two with a broken leg, but they’ll have a full season of Martin St. Louis, and the addition of Boyle should help. And of course, they have arguably the best goaltender on the planet in Henrik Lundqvist. They should at least match and probably exceed last year’s regular-season success. The deep playoff run is a longer shot, but certainly not out of the question.
Key stat: $81 million — the total amount of salary and buyouts on the books for the Rangers this season, the highest total in the league by almost $3 million. (They’re still under the $69 million salary cap, barely, because that’s based on the average annual value of each contract, not the total dollars paid out in a given year.)
Best case: They make it all the way back to the final, and this time they don’t suffer from awful puck luck once they get there.
Worst case: A long-term Lundqvist injury could drop them all the way out of playoff contention, although he’s been a workhorse his whole career, so that seems unlikely. More realistically, if aging veterans like St. Louis, Boyle, and/or Rick Nash start to slow down, it could spell trouble for a team that finished just 11th in the conference in goals scored last year. And remember, they’re coming off a short offseason, so fatigue could become a factor.
Bold prediction: We finally get an Islanders/Rangers playoff matchup for the first time in 20 years.
Anaheim Ducks
Last season: 54-20-8, 116 points, top seed in the Western Conference, lost in the second round
Offseason report: Despite a 116-point season, the Ducks went into the offseason feeling like they needed to play catchup with the Western Conference rivals. Their big move was trading for Vancouver’s Ryan Kesler; at 30 years old, he’s no sure thing, but he came relatively cheap and could combine with Ryan Getzlaf to give the Ducks the sort of one-two punch down the middle that can match up with the Kings or Blackhawks.
The Ducks also added Dany Heatley on a cheap deal and Clayton Stoner on a not-so-cheap one. They said good-bye to sometimes starter Jonas Hiller, as well as to retiring veterans Teemu Selanne and Saku Koivu.
Outlook: If all goes well, the Ducks should be one of the best half-dozen teams in the league. Unfortunately, they could achieve that and still not get home ice in their own division. That’s life in the Pacific these days. If the Ducks can’t finish first, they probably need to go through both L.A. and San Jose just to get to the conference finals.
They did finish first last year, and in theory, adding Kesler should make them even better. The team has plenty of good young talent behind their superstar pair of Getzlaf and Corey Perry, and Heatley is an intriguing gamble. The blueline doesn’t feature a Norris-type stud, but it’s solid, and Bruce Boudreau is one of the best coaches in the league.
As with so many other teams, goaltending will be the big question; the Ducks will rely on youngsters John Gibson and Frederik Andersen. Both have been very good in limited playing time, including during last year’s playoffs, but with Hiller out of the picture, the kids are on their own now. This could be one of the best combos in the league within a few years, but Ducks fans may be holding their breath until they see it for a full season.
Key stat: 10.2 — the Ducks’ team shooting percentage last season, the highest in the league. Shooting percentage has a talent component, but it can also swing significantly year to year and tends to regress toward the league average of roughly 9 percent. That could signal that the Ducks are in for an offensive drop this season.
Best case: The goalies are fine, Kesler fits right in, Heatley finds a bit of his old magic, and the Ducks roll to another division title. Could they beat a team like the Kings or Blackhawks (or both) to reach the final? That’s a tough task, but remember, the Ducks came close to knocking off L.A. last year.
Worst case: The goalies struggle, the percentages catch up to the shooters, and it turns out Selanne and Koivu were more important in the locker room than they were on the ice. Of all the teams in this section, the Ducks are the one that seems most vulnerable to taking a steep drop. That’s not to say it’s going to happen, but there are a few warning lights blinking on this dashboard.
Bold prediction: Another 100-plus point season, another playoff loss to the Kings, and a 2015 offseason spent wondering what they have to do to take the next step.
Pittsburgh Penguins
Last season: 51-24-7, 109 points, first place in the Metro, lost in the second round
Offseason report: The Penguins’ summer was … interesting. Yes, let’s go with interesting.
They fired GM Ray Shero, replacing him with Jim Rutherford. After an odd delay, they eventually fired coach Dan Bylsma, too, and embarked on a search for a replacement that saw them rejected by their first choice. They ended up hiring Mike Johnston, who seems like a fine coach, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that the whole process was a behind-the-scenes mess.
On the player side, they traded former 40-goal scorer James Neal to the Predators for Patric Hornqvist and Nick Spaling. They also lost two of their top defensemen in Matt Niskanen and Brooks Orpik, both of whom left for Washington, but signed blueliner Christian Ehrhoff to a very nice one-year deal.
Outlook: That’s a lot of change for a team coming off a 109-point season, and it speaks to the growing sense that the Penguins just haven’t been good enough lately. That sounds like an odd thing to say about a team with a relatively recent Stanley Cup and eight straight 99-plus-point seasons, but when you’re gifted with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in their primes, you’ve got a realistic shot at a dynasty. Instead, the Penguins haven’t won a playoff game past the second round since 2009, and the frustration is showing.
There’s still plenty of offensive talent, especially if Kris Letang is back to full health, and they’ve gone from being a top-heavy team with little depth to a more balanced look. Of course, all eyes will be on Marc-Andre Fleury, who enters the last year of his deal and is probably on his last chance to show that he’s a top goaltender, not just a mediocre one who wound up on a great team.
Key stat:.920/.922 — even-strength save percentage since 2007 of, respectively, Fleury and his primary backups. The backups have consistently matched or even outplayed him. That’s not what you want to see from any starter, especially a former first-overall pick you invested a $35 million deal in. If he doesn’t have a great season, he’s almost certainly done in Pittsburgh.
Best case: A team that had started to tune out Bylsma is revived by the roster shakeup and Johnston’s new voice, steamrolls through the Metro, then rides Crosby’s dominance to a Cup win. We all claim we saw it coming all along.
Worst case: Nothing quite clicks, Malkin or Crosby (or both) get hurt again, they struggle to secure a decent playoff seed, and then Fleury melts down again in the playoffs. We all claim we saw it coming all along.
Bold prediction: A slow start leads to an avalanche of mid-November “time to blow up the Penguins” hot takes. Then they win the division by 10 points.
St. Louis Blues
Last season: 52-23-7, 111 points, second in the Central, lost in the first round to Chicago
Offseason report: The big move was the signing of unrestricted free-agent center Paul Stastny, who got a four-year contract with a $7 million cap hit. That was the biggest deal of the UFA season in terms of average value, although the four-year term was less than most star free agents get, so it’s not as risky as it sounds. In other moves, Ryan Miller left in free agency as expected, Vladimir Sobotka bolted for the KHL, and they traded Roman Polak for fellow defenseman Carl Gunnarsson.
Outlook: Last year, the Blues won a franchise-record 52 games, and the addition of Stastny makes them even better this season. That signing sent a clear signal that the Blues are all-in on finally winning the franchise’s first Stanley Cup. On paper, there’s no reason to think they can’t do it.
Goaltending will be a question mark. Miller was a bust, and trading for him cost them the very solid Jaroslav Halak, so now they’re left with Brian Elliott and Jake Allen. That’s still an above-average combo, but not the kind of sure-thing pairing you’d like to have heading into this kind of make-or-break season.
Key stat: 0.47 — the swing in save percentage between Elliott’s best full season (a.940 in 2011-12) and his worst (.893 the year before). That’s a heck of a gap, and makes it hard to predict what level Elliott can be expected to play at. For what it’s worth, he wasn’t great in 2012-13, but put up a solid season last year.
Best case: The 2011-12 version of Elliott shows up, Stastny clicks immediately, they stay relatively healthy, and it all adds up to a championship.
Worst case: The 2010-11 version of Elliott shows up, Stastny has an off year, the Blues don’t even make the conference finals, Ken Hitchcock is fired, and they face the same sort of “now what the hell do we do?” type of offseason the Sharks just went through.
Bold prediction: Allen has taken over the starting role by the playoffs.
Boston Bruins
Last season: 54-19-9, league-leading 117 points, won the Presidents’ Trophy, lost in the second round of playoffs
Offseason report: The Bruins have been playing salary-cap roulette for years, and this summer it cost them a chance to re-sign Jarome Iginla. They also lost Shawn Thornton and Andrej Meszaros, while not really adding anything of consequence (although getting Dennis Seidenberg back to full health will give them a boost).
Outlook: The loss of Iginla hurts, but this is still the East’s best team, and maybe by a long way. No team is better at taking away the other team’s top threat, thanks to the Bruins’ holy trinity of center Patrice Bergeron, defenseman Zdeno Chara, and reigning Vezina winner Tuukka Rask. And unlike other strong defensive teams, Boston can actually put the puck in the net, too.
Their cap situation is still tight, and with some good young players emerging from rookie deals, they may not be able to keep the core together much longer. But for now, they’re a powerhouse … for one more year, at least.
Key stat: Plus-84 — the Bruins’ goal differential last year, a full 27 goals better than the next best teams’. They were the first team to top the plus-80 mark since 2010. They were good.
Best case: Pretty much exactly what we saw last year, without the whole “blowing a series to the hated Habs” thing.
Worst case: It’s honestly tough to come up with a scenario where the Bruins struggle that doesn’t involve a crush of injuries. In theory, they could have some sort of lingering hangover after the Montreal meltdown, Chara is old enough that his game could drop off significantly at some point, and maybe Rask is finally due for an off year. If all that happens and some other team surges, maybe the Bruins plummet down the Atlantic standings all the way to … second? That’s about the best I can do.
Bold prediction: The Bruins return to the Stanley Cup final, rolling through the Eastern Conference bracket in 15 games or fewer.
Chicago Blackhawks
Last season: 46-21-15, 107 points, third place in the Central, lost to the Kings in the best conference finals ever played.
Offseason report: Fairly quiet on the acquisition front, aside from signing Brad Richards to a nice little $2 million, one-year deal. They also signed Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane to massive $84 million extensions that carry a record-breaking $10.4 million cap hit, but those don’t kick in until next season.
Outlook: The Blackhawks are widely thought to be one of (if not the) very best teams in the league, which is why it’s a little odd to look back and recall that they finished only third in their division last year. That says more about the Central than it does about Chicago, and with everyone expecting the Avalanche to take a step back, that should leave the Blackhawks battling the Blues for the division crown.
There’s really not much to criticize on this team, which is why it’s almost universally considered a Cup favorite. If there’s any note of concern, it comes from looking at the Blackhawks’ cap situation. They’re over the cap right now and don’t have anyone to put on the long-term injury list, so they’ll need to make a move to get under by next week. And once those new deals for Toews and Kane kick in, things suddenly get very, very tight for a team that already has Marian Hossa locked up forever and a lot of money invested in goalie Corey Crawford, who still has his detractors.
Key stat: 35 — secondary assists by Norris winner Duncan Keith, the most by a defenseman by a wide margin and second-most overall in the league. Secondary assists tend to fluctuate much more than goals or primary assists do, which suggests Keith could play at a similar level to last year but see his point total drop significantly.
Best case: The best case for us would be a rematch of their conference finals matchup with the Kings. The best case for the Blackhawks would be to win that series, then go on to capture their third Stanley Cup in six years. Neither of those outcomes is especially difficult to see happening.
Worst case: The Blackhawks cruise to an easy playoff berth, but lose out early to one of the division’s other established powerhouses, or maybe even an up-and-coming team like the Stars. This is also not all that hard to see happening, because the Central Division is stacked and the margin for error is going to be tiny.
Bold prediction: The Blackhawks face the Bruins in a seven-game Stanley Cup final classic. And yes, I know, I basically saved the least “bold” prediction for last, since Chicago and Boston are two of the consensus best teams in the league, and picking them doesn’t take any guts at all. I wish I believed a little more in the Blues, or could talk myself into the Lightning, but I’m just not quite there. And I want the record to show that I was this close to going with the Sharks as my Cup pick, before wimping out and stopping just short yesterday.
But instead, we’re left with the Bruins and the Blackhawks. Your winner and 2014-15 Stanley Cup champion: the Chicago Blackhawks, who capture their third Cup in six years, and the last before the salary cap tears them apart.
Enjoy the season, everyone. And hey, if you have friends who didn’t read this preview, be nice and don’t spoil the ending for them.This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Feb. 16 Gambling Issue. Subscribe today!
ON A TUESDAY night nearly 10 years ago at a standard-issue Chicago Italian chophouse, Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen are sitting at the bar. And they're curious.
For an hour now, they've been hearing a steady stream of muffled voices coming from behind two large oak doors at the end of a long, dark hall. They can't see much, but as they listen closely, they make out words and phrases.
"Kansas."
"North Carolina."
"Michigan State."
"Thirty-eight thousand dollars."
It's a private party, the bartender explains. Something, he thinks, to do with the NCAA men's basketball tournament, which will kick off less than 48 hours later. They inquire: Might the host like two NBA legends -- and their significant bankrolls -- as guests at his party?
The restaurant manager returns from behind the oak doors.
"They said no."
THE NCAA TOURNAMENT is one of the most wagered-on events in sports. In Las Vegas, according to The New York Times, more than $200 million is legally bet on the tournament every March. That's more than twice what's legally bet on the Super Bowl but just a fraction of the overall total, a subject of great debate and a wide range of estimates. On the low end, the FBI estimated in 2013 that $2.6 billion was bet illegally on the tournament. On the high end, veteran bookmakers estimate the number to be anywhere from $12 billion to $26 billion. Friendly bracket pools are everywhere, with most everyone betting on the NCAA tournament in some form. But there are bets, and then there are bets. You don't get to $26 billion with $20-per-sheet office pools. More from ESPN.com For the latest gambling news, read David Purdum on ESPN Chalk, ESPN.com's gambling section. ESPN Chalk »
Higher-stakes gamblers have a different NCAA tourney tradition, one with a name coined by their British wagering forefathers. Expats in 19th-century India held open auctions to bet on sports with multiple entrants, like golf and backgammon. They called each auction a "Calcutta," after the then-capital where the auctions were held.
There's no official count and no way to even reasonably estimate how many Americans participate in an NCAA Calcutta. But I know anecdotally they are held across the country, and the gamblers tend to fall into two categories: jocks and quants. One reliant on gut and analysis, the other on spreadsheets and analytic models.
In March Madness Calcuttas, tourney entrants are auctioned off -- typically in person, Sotheby's-style (without the artistry or elegance, of course). Each team's price is driven by expected performance. The object is always the same: Buy low, win big. |
to each prescription drug plan it offers for review by the Secretary for the purpose of conducting negotiations concerning the terms and conditions of the proposed bid submitted and other terms and conditions of a proposed plan in order for the Secretary to approve or disapprove the plan. Provides that in order to promote competition under new Medicare part D and in carrying out such part, the Secretary may not interfere with the negotiations between drug manufacturers and pharmacies and PDP sponosors and may not require a particular formulary or institute a price structure for the reimbursement of covered part D drugs.
Establishes organizational requirements for PDP sponsors, such as licenses, and requires that they enter into a contract with the Secretary to be eligible to receive payments.
Provides for premium and cost-sharing subsidies for low-income subsidy-eligible individuals.
Provides: (1) for the establishment of risk corridors for each PDP that determines the amount of risk that the PDP shall be exposed to for drug spending, and the resultant adjustment in payment attributable to this risk; and (2) that a PDP sponsor and MA organization that offers a plan that provides supplemental prescription drug benefits shall be at full financial risk for the provision of such supplemental benefits. Prohibits adjustment in payments made by reason of this paragraph from affecting the monthly beneficiary premium or the MA monthly prescription drug beneficiary premium.
Creates within the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund the Medicare Prescription Drug Account for payments for low-income subsidy payments, subsidy payments, payments to qualified retiree prescription drug plans, and administrative expenses. Authorizes appropriations. Requires transfers to be made to the Medicaid account for increased administrative costs. Requires amounts withheld for late penalties to be deposited into the Fund. Requires States to make payments to the Account for dual eligibles as provided for under Medicaid.
Directs the Secretary to establish requirements for PDPs to ensure the effective coordination between a part D plan and a State Pharmaceutical Assistance Program with respect to payment of premiums and coverage and payment for supplemental prescription drug benefits for part D eligible individuals enrolled under both types of plans. Requires the Secretary to apply such coordination requirements to described Rx plans, which include Medicaid programs and group health plans and the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program (FEHBP), in the same manner as such requirements apply to a State Pharmaceutical Assistance Program.
Requires the prescription drug discount program and the transitional assistance program to be implemented by the Secretary so that interim prescription drug discount cards and transitional assistance are first available by not later than six months after the enactment of this Act in 2004 and 2005 until coverage under the new part D program becomes effective on January 1, 2006. Requires each prescription drug card sponsor that offers an endorsed discount card program to provide each discount card eligible individual entitled to benefits, or enrolled, under Medicare part A (Hospital Insurance) or part B (Supplementary Medical Insurance) with access to negotiated prices and savings on prescription drugs through enrollment in an endorsed discount card program.
Allows card sponsors to charge annual enrollment fees, not to exceed $30. Requires the fee to be uniform for all discount eligible individuals enrolled in the program. Requires a prescription drug card sponsor offering an endorsed discount card program to provide that each pharmacy that dispenses a covered discount card drug shall inform a discount card eligible individual enrolled in the program of any differential between the price of the drug to the enrollee and the price of the lowest priced generic covered discount card drug under the program that is therapeutically equivalent and bioequivalent and available at such pharmacy.
Provides that a discount card eligible individual is an individual whose income is not more than 135 percent of the poverty line and who is entitled to have payment made of any annual enrollment fee and to have payment made, up to $600 in 2004, under such endorsed program of 90 percent of the costs incurred for covered discount card drugs.
Creates within the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund the Transitional Assistance Account for payments for transitional assistance. Makes necessary appropriations.
(Sec. 103) Establishes certain requirements for States as a condition of receiving Federal Medicaid assistance, such as requiring States to provide the Secretary with Medicaid eligibility information necessary to carry out transitional prescription drug assistance verification.
Provides for: (1) Federal phase-in of the costs of premiums and cost-sharing and cost-sharing subsidies for dually eligible individuals; and (2) coordination of Medicaid with Medicare prescription drug benefits to provide that Medicare is the primary payer for covered drugs for dual eligibles.
Exempts prices negotiated from manufacturers for discount card drugs under an endorsement card program and prices negotiated by a PDP under part D, an MA-PD plan, or a qualified retiree prescription plan from the calculation of Medicaid "best price."
Extends the Qualifying-1 (Q-1) program through September 30, 2004, and expands outreach requirements for the Commissioner of Social Security to include outreach activities for transitional assistance and low-income subsidy individuals.
(Sec. 104) Prohibits, effective January 1, 2006, the selling, issuance, or renewal of Medigap Rx policies for part D enrollees, but permits the renewal of a Medigap Rx policy that was issued before January 1, 2006. Permits persons enrolling under part D during the initial enrollment period while covered under a Medigap Rx policy to enroll in a Medigap policy without prescription drug coverage or to continue the policy in effect as modified to exclude drugs. Provides that after the end of such period the individual may continue the policy in effect subject to such modification.
Guarantees issuance of a substitute Medigap policy for persons, enrolling in part D during the initial part D enrollment period, who at the time of such enrollment were enrolled in and terminated enrollment in a Medigap policy H, I, or J or a pre-standard policy that included drug coverage. Guarantees the enrollment for any policies A, B, C, and F within the same carrier of issue. Prevents the issuer from discriminating in the pricing of such policy on the basis of such individual's health status, claims experience, receipt of health care or medical condition. Prohibits the issuer from imposing an exclusion of benefits based on a pre-existing condition under such policy. Provides that the guarantee applies for enrollments occurring in the new Medigap plan within 63 days of termination of enrollment in a Medigap plan H, I, or J.
Directs the Secretary to request the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to review and revise standards for benefit packages taking into account the changes in benefits resulting from the enactment of this Act and to otherwise update standards to reflect other changes in law included in such Act.
(Sec. 105) Includes additional provisions related to Medicare prescription drug discount cards and transitional assistance program, such as the exclusion of program costs from the calculation of the part B premium. Applies Medicare confidentiality provisions to drug pricing data.
(Sec. 106) Establishes a State Pharmaceutical Assistance Transition Commission to develop a proposal for addressing the unique transitional issues facing State pharmaceutical assistance programs as a result of the enactment of this Act.
(Sec. 107) Requires the Secretary to study and report to Congress on variations in per capita spending for covered part D drugs among PDP regions to determine the amount of such variation that is attributable to price variations and the differences in per capita utilization that is not taken into account in the health status risk adjustment made to PDP bids.
Requires the Secretary to conduct a review of the current standards of practice, clinical services, and other service requirements generally used for pharmacy services in long-term care settings and evaluate the impact of those standards with respect to patient safety, reduction of medication errors and quality of care.
Directs the Secretary to enter into a contract with the Institutes of Medicine of the National Academy of Science to carry out a comprehensive study for a report to Congress on drug safety and quality issues in order to provide a blueprint for a system-wide change. Authorizes appropriations.
Directs the Secretary to provide for a study and report to Congress on the feasibility and advisability of providing for contracting with PDP sponsors and MA organizations under parts C and D of title XVIII on a multi-year basis.
Requires the Comptroller General to conduct a study for a report to the Congress on the extent to which drug utilization and access to covered part D drugs by subsidy eligible individuals differs from such utilization and access for individuals who would qualify as such subsidy eligible individuals except for application of the assets test.
Directs the Secretary to undertake a study for a report to Congress of how to make prescription pharmaceutical information, including drug labels and usage instructions, accessible to blind and visually impaired individuals.
(Sec. 108) Authorizes the Secretary to make grants to physicians for the purpose of assisting them to implement electronic prescription drug programs that comply with appropriate standards. Authorizes appropriations.
(Sec. 109) Expands the work of quality improvement organizations to include part C and part D. Requires such organizations to offer providers, practitioners, MA organizations, and PDP sponsors quality improvement assistance pertaining to prescription drug therapy.
Directs the Secretary to request the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an evaluation of the peer review program under SSA title XI.
(Sec. 110) Directs the Federal Trade Commission to conduct a study for a report to Congress on differences in payment amounts for pharmacy services provided to enrollees in group health plans that utilize pharmacy benefit managers.
(Sec. 111) Directs the Comptroller General of the United States to conduct an initial and final study for a report to Congress on trends in employment-based retiree health coverage, including coverage under FEHBP, and the options and incentives available under this Act which may have an effect on the voluntary provision of such coverage.
Title II: Medicare Advantage - Subtitle A: Implementation of Medicare Advantage Program - (Sec. 201) Amends SSA title XVIII part C (Medicare+Choice) to replace the current Medicare+Choice program with the Medicare Advantage (MA) program.
Subtitle B: Immediate Improvements - (Sec. 211) Revises the payment system, requiring all plans to be paid at a rate at least as high as the rate for traditional Medicare fee-for-service plans. Makes change in budget neutrality for blend. Increases minimum percentage increase to national growth rate. Includes costs of Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs military facility services to Medicare-eligible beneficiaries in calculation of payment rates.
Directs the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MEDPAC) to conduct a study that assesses the method used for determining the adjusted average per capita cost (AAPCC).
Requires the Secretary to submit to Congress a report that describes the impact of additional financing provided under this Act and other Acts on the availability on Medicare Advantage plans in different areas and its impact on lowering premiums and increasing benefits under such plans.
Requires a Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MEDPAC) study and report to Congress with respect to authority regarding disapproval of unreasonable beneficiary cost-sharing.
Subtitle C: Offering of Medicare Advantage (MA) Regional Plans; Medicare Advantage Competition - (Sec. 221) Directs the Secretary to establish regional plans to encourage private plans to serve Medicare beneficiaries in from ten to 50 regions, including in rural areas, within the 50 States and the District of Columbia beginning not later than January 1, 2005.
Prohibits the Secretary from offering a local preferred provider organization plan under Medicare part C during 2006 or 2007 in a service area unless such plan was offered under such part (including under a demonstration project under such part) in such area as of December 31, 2005. Includes risk corridors for plans during the first two years of the program in 2006 and 2007; a stabilization fund to encourage plan entry and limit plan withdrawals; a blended benchmark that will allow plan bids to influence the benchmark amount; and network adequacy stabilization payments to assist plans in forming adequate networks, particularly in rural areas.
(Sec. 222) Provides that beginning in 2006, each MA organization shall submit to the Secretary for each MA plan for the service area in which it intends to be offered in the following year the monthly aggregate bid amount for the provision of all items and services under the plan for the type of plan and year involved.
Requires this monthly bid amount, with respect to which the Secretary has authority to negotiate, to be compared against respective benchmark amounts for MA local and MA regional plans, with plans that submit bids below the benchmark to be paid their bids, plus 75 percent of the difference between the benchmark and the bid which must be returned to beneficiaries in the form of additional benefits or reduced premiums. Provides that for plans that bid above the benchmark the government will pay the benchmark amount, and the beneficiary will pay the difference between the benchmark and the bid amount as a premium.
Requires the MA plan to provide an enrollee a monthly rebate equal to 75 percent of any average per capita savings as applicable to the plan and year involved. Allows the beneficiary rebate to be credited toward the provision of supplemental health care benefits, the prescription drug premium, or the Medicare part B premium. Requires the plan to disclose to the Secretary information on the form and amount of the rebate or the actuarial value in the case of supplemental health care benefits. Provides that for MA plans providing rebates the MA monthly basic beneficiary premium will be zero.
Provides that: (1) for MA plans with bids above the applicable benchmark, the MA monthly basic beneficiary premium will equal the amount by which the bid exceeds the benchmark; (2) the MA monthly prescription drug beneficiary premium is the base beneficiary premium less the amount of rebate credited toward such amount; and (3) the MA monthly supplemental beneficiary premium means the portion of the aggregate monthly bid amount for the year that is attributable to the provision of supplemental health benefits, less the amount of rebate credited toward such portion.
Allows enrollees to have their MA premiums deducted directly from their social security benefits, through an electronic funds transfer, or such other means as specified by the Secretary. Requires all premium payments withheld to be credited to the appropriate Trust Fund (or Account therof), as specified by the Secretary, and paid to the MA organization involved.
Subtitle D: Additional Reforms - (Sec. 231) Allows specialized MA plans for special needs individuals to be any type of coordinated care plan. Designates two specific segments of the Medicare population as special needs beneficiaries, but also provides the Secretary the authority to designate other chronically ill or disabled beneficiaries as special needs beneficiaries. Permits certain restriction on enrollment for specialized MA plans for special needs individuals. Provides authority to designate other plans as specialized MA plans.
(Sec. 232) Establishes that the MA program is a Federal program operated under Federal rules. Provides that State laws do not apply except State licensing laws or State laws relating to plan solvency.
(Sec. 233) Makes the Medicare Medical Savings Account (MSA) demonstration program a permanent program option and eliminates the capacity limit and the deadline for enrollment. Provides that non-contract providers furnishing services to enrollees of MSAs will be subject to the same balanced billing limitations as non-contract providers furnishing services to enrolleees of coordinated care plans. Eliminates requirements for the Secretary to submit to Congress periodic reports on the numbers of individuals enrolled in such plans and on the evaluation being conducted.
(Sec. 234) Allows a reasonable cost reimbursement contract to operate indefinitely unless two other plans of the same type enter the cost contract's service area. Requires these two other plans to meet the following minimum enrollment requirements: (1) at least 5,000 enrollees for the portion of the area that is within a metropolitan statistical area having more than 250,000 people and counties contiguous to such an area; and (2) at least 1,500 enrollees for any other portion of such area.
(Sec. 235) Amends the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 to extend Municipal Health Services Demonstration projects through December 31, 2006, for beneficiaries who reside in the city in which the project is operated.
(Sec. 236) Amends SSA title XVIII to provide that protections against balance billing apply to PACE providers and beneficiaries enrolled with such PACE providers in the same manner as such protections apply to any individual enrolled with a Medicare +Choice organization under part C or with an eligible organization.
Provides that MA provisions relating to limitations on balance billing against MA organizations for noncontract physicians and other entities with respect to services covered under Medicare shall apply to PACE providers, PACE program eligible individuals enrolled with such PACE providers, and physicians and other entities that do not have a contract or other agreement establishing payment amounts for services furnished to such an individual in the same manner as provisions apply to MA organizations, individuals enrolled with such organizations, and physicians and other entities referred to under such provisions.
Amends SSA title XIX (Medicaid) to provide that, with respect to services covered under the State plan but not under Medicare that are furnished to a PACE program eligible individual enrolled with a PACE provider by a provider participating under the State plan that does not have a contract or other agreement with the PACE provider that establishes payment amounts for such services, such participating provider may not require the PACE provider to pay the participating provider an amount greater than the amount that would otherwise be payable for the service to the participating provider under the State plan.
(Sec. 237) Provides that Federally Qualified Heatlh Centers (FQHCs) will receive a wrap-around payment for the reasonable costs of care provided to Medicare managed care patients served at such centers. Raises reimbursements to FQHCs in order that when they are combined with MA payments and cost-sharing payments from beneficiaries they equal 100 percent of the reasonable costs of providing such services. Extends the safe harbor to include any remuneration between a FQHC (or entity controlled by an FQHC) and an MA organization.
(Sec. 238) Requires the Secretary to enter into an arrangement under which the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences shall conduct an evaluation (for the Secretary and Congress) of leading health care performance measures in the public and private sectors and options to implement policies that align performance with payment under the Medicare program.
Subtitle E: Comparative Cost Adjustment (CCA) Program - (Sec. 241) Directs the Secretary to establish a program for the application of comparative cost adjustment in CCA areas, to begin January 1, 2010, and last six years, and to test whether direct competition between private plans and the original Medicare fee-for-service program will enhance competition in Medicare.
Title III: Combatting Waste, Fraud, and Abuse - (Sec. 301) Amends SSA title XVIII to allow the Secretary to make a conditional Medicare payment if a primary plan has not made or cannot reasonably be expected to make prompt payment. Requires the payment to be contingent on reimbursement by the primary plan to the appropriate Medicare trust fund. Requires a primary plan as well as an entity that receives payment from a primary plan to reimburse the Medicare Trust Funds for any payment made by the Secretary if the primary plan was obligated to make payment. Makes other changes with regard to Medicare as a secondary payer to address the Secretary's authority to recover payment from any and all responsible entities and to bring action, including the collection of double damages, to recover payment under the Medicare secondary payer provisions.
(Sec. 302) Directs the Secretary to establish and implement quality standards for suppliers of items and services of durable medical equipment, prosthetics and orthotics, and certain other items and services. Requires the Secretary to establish standards for clinical conditions for payment for items of durable medical equipment.
Replaces the current demonstration projects for competitive acquisition of items and services with a permanent program requiring the Secretary to establish and implement programs under which competitive acquisition areas are established throughout the United States for contract award purposes for the furnishing of competitively priced described items and services (including durable medical equipment and medical supplies) for which payment is made under Medicare part B. Allows such areas to differ for different items and services.Allows the Secretary to exempt from such programs rural areas and areas with low population density within urban areas that are not competitive, unless there is a significant national market through mail order for a particular item or service and items and services for which the application of competitive acquisition is not likely to result in significant savings.Requires payment under Medicare part B for competitively priced items and services to be based on bids submitted and accepted for such items and services, and based on such bids the Secretary shall determine a single payment amount for each item or service in each competitive acquisition area. Requires Medicare payment to be equal to 80 percent of the payment amount determined, with beneficiaries paying the remaining 20 percent (after meeting the part B deductible).
Directs the Secretary to conduct a demonstration project on the application of competitive acquisition to clinical diagnostic laboratory tests.
Requires the Comptroller General to conduct a study for a report to Congress on the impact of competitive acquisition of durable medical equipment on suppliers and manufacturers of such equipment and on patients.
Provides that for durable medical equipment, prosthetic devices, prosthetics and orthotics, the update will be 0 points in 2004 through 2008, and that after 2008 for those items not included in competitive bidding the update will be the consumer price index.
Provides that for 2005 the payment amount for certain items, oxygen and oxygen equipment, standard wheelchairs, nebulizers, diabetic lancets and testing strips, hospital beds and air mattresses, will be reduced.
Provides that for prosthetic devices and orthotics and prosthetics in 2004, 2005, and 2006, the update will be 0 percentage points and for a subsequent year is equal to the percentage increase in the consumer price index for all urban customers for the 12-month period ending in June of the previous year.
Directs the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a study for a report to Congress to determine the extent to which (if any) suppliers of covered items of durable medical equipment that are subject to the competitive acquisition program under Medicare are soliciting physicians to prescribe certain brands or modes of delivery of covered items based on profitability.
(Sec. 303) Amends SSA title XVIII to: (1) require the Secretary, beginning in 2004, to make adjustments in practice expense relative value units for certain drug administration services when establishing the physician fee schedule; (2) require the Secretary to use the survey data submitted to the Secretary as of January 1, 2003, by a certain physician speciality organization; and (3) require the Secretary, beginning in 2005, to use supplemental survey data to adjust practice expense relative value units for certain drug administration services in the physician fee schedule if that supplemental survey data includes information on the expenses associated with administering drugs and biologicals the administration of drugs and biologicals, the survey meets criteria for acceptance, and the survey is submitted by March 1, 2004, for 2005, or March 1, 2005, for 2006. (States that this latter provision shall apply only to a speciality that receives 40 percent or more of its Medicare payments in 2002 from drugs and biologicals and shall not apply with respect to the survey submitted by a certain physician speciality organization.) Exempts the adjustments in practical expense relative value units for certain drug administration services from the budget neutrality requirements in 2004.
Requires the Secretary to: (1) promptly evaluate existing drug administration codes for physicians' services to ensure accurate reporting and billing for such services, taking into account levels of complexity of the administration and resource consumption; (2) make adjustments to the nonphysician work pool methodology for the determination of practice expense relative value units under the physician fee schedule so that practice expense relative value units for services determined under such methodology are not affected relative to the practice expense relative value units of services not determined under such methodology; and (3) review and appropriately modify Medicare's payment policy in effect on October 1, 2003, for the administration of more than one drug or biological to an individual on a single day through the push technique. Makes the increase in expenditures resulting from this provision exempt from the budget-neutrality requirement in 2004.
Requires a transitional adjustment or additional payment for services furnished from January 1, 2004, through December 31, 2005, to be made for drug administration services. Requires the part B payment to be made to the physician and equal a percentage of the payment otherwise made.
Directs the MEDPAC to review the payment changes made under this section insofar as they affect payments under Medicare part B for items and services furnished by oncologists and for drug administration services furnished by other specialists. Requires MEDPAC to submit a report to the Secretary and Congress and for the Secretary to make appropriate payment adjustments on the basis of such report.
Provides that the following drugs and biologicals are to be paid at 95 percent of the average wholesale price (AWP): (1) a drug or biological furnished before January 1, 2004; (2) blood clotting factors furnished during 2004; (3) a drug or biological furnished during 2004 that was not available for part B payment as of April 1, 2003; (3) pneumoccal influenza and hepatitis B vaccines furnished on or after January 1, 2004; and (4) a drug or biological furnished during 2004 in connection with the furnishing of renal dialysis services if separately billed by renal dialysis facilities. Provides in general that payments for other drugs furnished in 2004 will equal 85 percent of the AWP (determined as of April 1, 2003). Provides that, beginning in 2005, drugs or biologicals, except for pneumococcal, influenza, and hepatitis B vaccines and those associated with certain renal dialysis services, will be paid using either the average sales price methodology or through the competitive acquisition program. Provides that infusion drugs furnished through covered durable medical equipment starting January 1, 2004, will be paid at 95 percent of the AWP in effect on October 1, 2003, and that those infusion drugs which may be furnished in a competitive area starting January 1, 2007, will be paid at the competitive price. Provides that intravenous immune globulin will be paid at 95 percent of the AWP in 2004 and paid according to the average sales price method in 2005.
Authorizes the Secretary to substitute a different percent of the April 1, 2003 AWP, but not less than 80 percent.
Establishes the use of the average sales price methodology for payment for drugs and biologicals (except for pneumococcal, influenza, and hepatitis B vaccines and those associated with certain renal dialysis services) that are furnished on or after January 1, 2005. Creates an exception to this methodology in the case of a physician who elects to participate in the newly established competition acquisition program.
Directs the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct studies to determine the widely available market prices of drugs and biologicals.
Directs the Secretary to conduct a study for a report to Congress on sales of drugs and biologicals to large volume purchasers for purposes of determining whether the price at which such drugs and biologicals are sold to such purchasers does not represent the price such drugs and biologicals are made available for purchase to prudent investors.
Directs the Inspector General to conduct a study for a report to Congress on adequacy of reimbursement rate under average sales price methodology.
Directs the Secretary to establish and implement a competitive acquisition program to acquire and pay for competitively biddable drugs and biologicals through the establishment of competitive acquisition areas for the award of contracts. Gives each physician the opportunity annually to elect to obtain drugs and biologicals under the program, rather than the program above using average sales methodology. Directs the Secretary to begin to phase-in the program beginning in 2006.
(Sec. 304) Makes the amendments applicable above applicable to payments for drugs or biologicals and drug administration services furnished by physicians in specialties other than the specialties of hematology, hematology/oncology, and medical oncology.
(Sec. 305) Amends SSA title XVIII to provide that in the case of inhalation drugs or biologicals furnished through covered durable medical equipment that are furnished in 2004, the payment amount will be at 85 percent of AWP, and in 2005 and subsequent years, the payment amount will be the amount provided under the average sales price methodology.
Directs the Comptroller General to conduct a study to examine the adequacy of current reimbursements for inhalation therapy under the Medicare program for a report to Congress.
(Sec. 306) Requires the Secretary to conduct a demonstration project to demonstrate the use of recovery audit contractors under the Medicare Integrity Program in identifying underpayments and overpayments and recoupoing overpayments under the Medicare program for services for which payment is made under Medicare part A or part B. Requires a report to Congress on the demonstration program.
(Sec. 307) Directs the Secretary to establish a pilot program to identify efficient, effective, and economical procedures for long term care facilities or providers to conduct background checks on prospective direct patient access employees. Makes necessary appropriations.
Title IV: Rural Provisions - Subtitle A: Provisions Relating to Part A Only - (Sec. 401) Amends SSA title XVIII part A to require Medicare, for discharges during a fiscal year beginning with FY 2004, to direct the Secretary to compute a standardized amount for hospitals located in any area within the United States and within each region equal to the standardized amount computed for the previous fiscal year for hospitals located in a large urban area (or, beginning with FY 2005, for all hospitals in the previous year) increased by the applicable percentage increase. Directs the Secretary to compute, for discharges occuring in a fiscal year beginning with 2004, an average standardized amount for hospitals located in any area of Puerto Rico that is equal to the average standardized amount computed for FY 2003 for hospitals in a large urban area (or, beginning with FY 2005, for all hospitals in the previous fiscal year) increased by the applicable percentage increase for the year involved.
(Sec. 402) Provides that for discharges after April 1, 2004, a hospital that is not a large urban hospital that qualifies for a disproportionate share (DSH) adjustment will receive its DSH payments using the current DSH adjustment formula for large urban hospitals, subject to a limit. Caps the DSH adjustment formula at 12 percent for any of these hospitals except rural referral centers.
(Sec. 403) Provides that for discharges on or after October 1, 2004, the Secretary is required to decrease the labor-related share to 62 percent of the standardized amount when such change results in higher total payments to the hospital. Provides that for discharges occurring on or after October 1, 2004, the Secretary is also required to decrease the labor-related share to 62 percent of the standardized amount for hospitals in Puerto Rico when such change results in higher total payments to the hospital.
(Sec. 404) Directs the Secretary, after revising the market basket weights to reflect the most current data, to establish a frequency for revising such weights, including the labor share, in such market basket to reflect the most current data available more frequently than once every five years. Requires the Secretary to include in the publication of the final rule for payment for inpatient hospital services for FY 2006, an explanation of the reasons for, and options considered, in determining such frequency.
(Sec. 405) Reimburses inpatient, outpatient, and covered skilled nursing facility services provided by a critical access hospital (CAH) at 101 percent of reasonable costs of services furnished to Medicare beneficiaries.
Expands reimbursement of on-call emergency room providers to include physician's assistants, nurse practitioners, and clinical nurse specialists for the costs associated with covered Medicare services provided on or after January 1, 2005.
Allows an eligible CAH to be able to receive payments made on a periodic interim payment (PIP) basis for its inpatient services. Requires the Secretary to develop alternative methods for the timing of PIP payments to the CAHs.
Prohibits the Secretary from requiring that all physicians or practitioners providing services in a CAH assign their billing rights to the entity in order for the CAH to be paid on the basis of 115 percent of the fee schedule for any individual physician or practitioner who did not assign billing rights to the CAH. Prohibits a CAH from receiving payment based on 115 percent of the fee schedule for any individual physician or practitioner who did not assign billing rights to the CAH.
Allows a CAH to operate up to 25 beds while deleting the requirement that only 15 of the 25 beds be used for acute care at any time.
Establishes an authorization to award rural hospital flexibility grants at $35 million each year from FY 2005 through FY 2008 and in subsequent years requires a State to consult with the hospital association and rural hospitals in the State on the most appropriate way to use such funds. Prohibits a State from spending more than the lesser of 15 percent of the grant amount for administrative expenses or the State's federally negotiated indirect rate for administering the grant. Provides that in FY 2005 up to five percent of the total amount appropriated for grants will be available to the Health Resources and Services Administration for administering such grants.
Permits a CAH to establish a distinct part psychiatric or rehabilitation unit that meets the applicable requirements that would otherwise apply to the distinct part if the distinct part were established by a "subsection (d) hospital." Limits the total number of beds that may be established for a distinct part unit to no more than ten. Provides that if a distinct part unit does not meet the applicable requirements during a cost reporting period then no Medicare payment will be made to the CAH for services furnished in such unit during such period. Requires Medicare payments to resume only after the CAH demonstrates that the requirements have been met. Requires Medicare payments for services provided in the distinct part units to equal the amount of the payments that would otherwise be made on a prospective payment basis to distinct part units of a CAH.
Allows certain milage standards to be waived in the case of a facility that was designated as a CAH before January 1, 2006 and was certified by the State as being a necessary provider of health care services.
(Sec. 406) Requires the Secretary to provide for an additional payment amount to each low-volume hospital for discharges occurring during a fiscal year beginning with FY 2005.
(Sec. 407) Provides that in no case will a hospital be denied treatment as a sole community hospital or payment because data are unavailable for any cost reporting period due to changes in ownership, changes in fiscal intermediaries, or other extraordinary circumstances so long as data from at least one applicable base cost reporting period is available.
(Sec. 408) Expands the definition of attending physician in hospice to include a nurse practitioner.
(Sec. 409) Directs the Secretary to conduct a demonstration project for the delivery of hospice care to Medicare beneficiaries in rural areas. Provides that under the project Medicare beneficiaries who are unable to receive hospice care in the facility for lack of an appropriate caregiver are provided such care in a facility of 20 or fewer beds which offers, within its walls, the full range of services provided by hospice programs.
(Sec. 410) Excludes certain rural health clinic and Federally-qualified health center services from the prospective payment system for skilled nursing facilities.
(Sec. 410A) Directs the Secretary to establish a demonstration program to test the feasibility and advisability of the establishment of rural community hospitals to furnish covered inpatient hospital services to Medicare beneficiaries.
Subtitle B: Provisions Relating to Part B Only - (Sec. 411) Extends until January 1, 2006 the hold harmless provisions governing hospital outpatient department (OPD) reimbursement for small rural hospitals and sole community hospitals.
Requires the Secretary to conduct a study to determine if the costs incurred by hospitals located in rural areas by ambulatory payment classification groups exceed those costs incurred by hospitals located in urban areas. Provides that if appropriate the Secretary is required to provide for a payment adjustment to reflect the higher costs of rural providers by January 1, 2006.
(Sec. 412) Directs the Secretary to increase the work geographic index to 1.00 for any locality for which such work geographic index is less than 1.00 for services furnished on or after January 1, 2004, and before January 1, 2007.
(Sec. 413) Establishes a new five percent incentive payment program designed to reward both primary care and specialist care physicians for furnishing physicians' services on or after January 1, 2005, and before January 1, 2008 in physician scarity areas.
Directs the Secretary to pay the current law ten percent Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) incentive payment for services furnished in full county primary care geographic area HPSAs automatically rather than having the physician identify the health professional shortage area involved.
Directs the Comptroller General to conduct a study for a report to Congress on the differences in payment amounts under the Medicare physician fee schedule for physicians' services in different geographic areas.
(Sec. 414) Revises payment for ambulance services to provide for, when phasing in the application of the payment rates under the fee schedule, for each level of ground service furnished in a year, for the portion of the payment amount that is based on the fee schedule to be the greater of the amount determined under such national fee schedule or a blended rate of the national fee schedule and the regional fee schedule for the region involved, whichever resulted in a larger payment, with the blended rate to be based 100 percent on the national fee schedule.
Requires the Secretary to establish a regional fee schedule for each of the nine census divisions. Provides for adjustment in payment for certain long trips. Directs the Secretary to provide for a percentage increase in the base rate of the fee schedule for ground ambulance services furnished on or after July 1, 2004, and before January 1, 2010 that originate in a qualified rural area. Increases by two percent the payments for ground ambulance services orginating in a rural area or a rural census tract for services furnished on or after July 1, 2004, and before January 1, 2007. Provides that the fee schedule for ambulances in other areas will by increased by one percent. Provides that these increased payments will not affect Medicare payments for covered ambulance services after 2007.
Requires the Comptroller General to submit to Congress a report on how costs differ among the types of ambulance providers and on access, supply, and quality of ambulance services in those regions and States that have a reduction in payment under the Medicare ambulance fee schedule.
(Sec. 415) Provides that the regulations governing the use of ambulance services will provide that, to the extent that any ambulance service (whether ground or air) may be covered, that a rural air ambulance service will be reimbursed at the air ambulance rate if: (1) the air ambulance service is reasonable and necessary based on the health condition of the individual being transported at or immediately prior to the time of the transport; and (2) the air ambulance service complies with the equipment and crew requirements established by the Secretary.
(Sec. 416) Provides that hospitals with fewer than 50 beds in qualified rural areas will receive 100 percent reasonable cost reimbursement for clinical diagnostic laboratory tests covered under Medicare part B that are provided as outpatient hospital services during a cost reporting period beginning during the two year period beginning on July 1, 2004.
(Sec. 417) Amends the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 to extend the telemedicine demonstration project by 4 years |
The group has three over-arching aims: the development of advanced bio-environmentally based farming systems, the transformation of the food business and retailing sector and embedding environmental and health improvements in global food production and consumption.
Other University of Sheffield experts involved in the N8 AgriFood programme include: Professor Lenny Koh from University’s Management School, and Professor Duncan Cameron from the Department of Biology and the Plant Production and Protection (P3) Centre.
Professor Koh is the Director of the Centre for Energy, Environment and Sustainability (CEES) Director of Logistics and Supply Chain Management (LSCM) Research Centre at the University of Sheffield.
She said: “Sheffield plays a very important strategic leading role in this network by bringing and contributing our world leading research in science and technology, engineering and social science across the whole AgriFood chain to benefit users and society.
“We are already making a difference and leading transformational change in this area including: the role of a supply chain approach in science, technology and engineering and a critical resources nexus of materials, food energy, water, carbon supply chains by pioneering new and renewable materials, sustainable manufacturing supply chains and waste management.”
Additional information Plant Production and Protection
Find out about research at the University’s Plant Production and Protection (P3) SheFF
Learn more about Sheffield Sustainable Food Futures N8
The N8 Research Partnership (N8) is the collaboration body for the universities of Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield, and York, and aims to maximise the impact of this research base to enable business innovation and societal transformation. N8 universities undertake more than £650m of research income each year and employ more than 18,000 academic staff, forming the largest research-pooling partnership in the UK. N8 creates programmes involving a critical mass of world class academics which form networks of innovation excellence with partners in other sectors – to drive investment and economic growth. N8’s main areas of research are Urban and Community Transformation – including Policing Research, Urban Living and Arts and Culture; and Agri-Food – including Sustainable Food Production, Consumption & Health, and Resilient Supply Chains. N8’s strategy also focuses on areas of growth notably in Life Sciences, and in Digital Creativity. The University of Sheffield
With almost 27,000 of the brightest students from over 140 countries, learning alongside over 1,200 of the best academics from across the globe, the University of Sheffield is one of the world’s leading universities. A member of the UK’s prestigious Russell Group of leading research-led institutions, Sheffield offers world-class teaching and research excellence across a wide range of disciplines. Unified by the power of discovery and understanding, staff and students at the university are committed to finding new ways to transform the world we live in. Sheffield is the only university to feature in The Sunday Times 100 Best Not-For-Profit Organisations to Work For 2016 and was voted number one university in the UK for Student Satisfaction by Times Higher Education in 2014. In the last decade it has won four Queen’s Anniversary Prizes in recognition of the outstanding contribution to the United Kingdom’s intellectual, economic, cultural and social life. Sheffield has five Nobel Prize winners among former staff and students and its alumni go on to hold positions of great responsibility and influence all over the world, making significant contributions in their chosen fields. Global research partners and clients include Boeing, Rolls-Royce, Unilever, AstraZeneca, Glaxo SmithKline, Siemens and Airbus, as well as many UK and overseas government agencies and charitable foundations.
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SaveThe Denver Broncos released 12-time Pro Bowl cornerback Champ Bailey, who had a $1 million roster bonus due March 15, the team confirmed Thursday.
League sources told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter on Wednesday that the Broncos were on the verge of cutting Bailey.
The Broncos save $10 million in cap space with the move.
"This was a difficult decision for our team with everything that Champ Bailey has meant to the Denver Broncos and this community over the last 10 years," said John Elway, the team's executive vice president of football operations/general manager. "Without question, he's among the best cornerbacks to ever play the game and one of the finest players in the history of the Broncos. You couldn't ask for more in a player than what Champ brought to this team. His combination of elite talent, class, leadership and competitiveness made him one of the all-time greats.
"On behalf of everyone with the Broncos, I wish Champ all the best and thank him for everything he did for this franchise. Champ will always be a Bronco. We look forward to his Ring of Fame and Pro Football Hall of Fame election in the years ahead."Madison - Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett will serve as special prosecutor in the investigation of a physical altercation between two state Supreme Court justices.
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley has said Justice David Prosser put her in a "chokehold" during a June argument over a case in her chambers. Others have said Bradley came at Prosser with fists raised and he put up his hands to block her or push her back.
The incident occurred June 13, a day before the deeply divided court issued a 4-3 ruling upholding Republican Gov. Scott Walker's legislation curtailing collective bargaining for public employees. That case started when Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne brought a lawsuit claiming a legislative committee violated the state's open meetings law in March in forwarding the legislation to the state Senate. Ozanne sought to invalidate the law, and implementing it was delayed for months while the case was pending.
The high court ultimately ruled key parts of the meetings law do not apply to lawmakers.
Once news of the altercation between Prosser and Bradley surfaced, the Dane County sheriff's office launched an investigation. The office gave its findings to Ozanne this month but made no recommendations on whether anyone should be charged.
Ozanne, a Democrat, then asked Dane County Circuit Chief Judge William Foust to name a special prosecutor because Ozanne had brought the case the two justices were arguing about when the incident occurred.
Foust announced Monday that he had selected Barrett and she had agreed to take the case.
Barrett said she did not know how long her review of the case would take because she has not yet seen the Sheriff's Department reports. She said she was not concerned about any politics associated with the case.
"The judge asked me to perform a function that is part of my job duties," she said.
Barrett was elected as a Republican but said she has long advocated making district attorneys' positions nonpartisan.
"Politics should play no role in what we do," she said.
Barrett, 62, said she plans on retiring when her term is up in fall 2012.
Last week, the Sheriff's Department also provided its reports to the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, which oversees the state's ethics code for judges and is separately investigating the case. Jim Alexander, director of the commission, said there was no timeline for conducting its investigation.
If the commission found any wrongdoing, it would have to submit its findings to the Supreme Court to consider. Four of the other five justices were nearby when the incident occurred in Bradley's suite of offices in the Capitol, and the four all apparently saw or heard what happened.Dan Coats will be at the epicenter Tuesday of the bitter squabble between President Trump and the U.S. intelligence community, which the former senator from Indiana will lead if he is confirmed as director of national intelligence.
Coats is certain to be asked at his Senate confirmation hearing about Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential race, alleged contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russian authorities, and the president’s harsh criticism of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Coats, who stepped down from the Senate in January, is respected by members of both parties and is expected to win easy confirmation as head of the office of director of national intelligence. The position, created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, involves coordination of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.
Like several others in Trump’s Cabinet, the 73-year-old Coats may not see eye to eye with the president, however.
He has been a harsh critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and wanted the Obama administration to severely punish Moscow for annexing Crimea in 2014 and intervening in Ukraine. The Kremlin banned him from visiting the country several years ago.
Trump’s repeated praise for Putin has alarmed many in the intelligence community who see a resurgent Russia threatening U.S. interests in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe and in the Arctic.
Questions about Russia’s role in the U.S. presidential race have proved particularly awkward for the White House.
The FBI is investigating Russia’s effort to influence the 2016 election, and whether any Trump associates had improper contacts with Russian officials during the previous year.
James Clapper, then director of national intelligence, issued a declassified report on Jan. 6 that concluded Putin’s government had ordered “an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.”
The Russian operation included hacking Democratic National Committee computers and leaking thousands of emails to WikiLeaks and other websites. Some of the emails embarrassed senior Democrats and proved a distraction to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
The report concluded that Russian intelligence agencies sought to undermine Clinton’s campaign because senior Russian officials had developed a “clear preference” for Trump.
Trump and members of his administration have pushed back on the report and any suggestion that his campaign colluded with the Russians. Trump said Tuesday that he hadn’t “called Russia in 10 years.”
On Feb. 13, Trump’s national security advisor, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign after he acknowledging misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations in December with the Russian ambassador to Washington about sanctions on Russia.
del.wilber@latimes.com
Twitter: @delwilberAfter the ascension of the Lord, the holy Luke remained in Jerusalem for a time, with the other apostles; but later, as tradition bears witness, he went to Antioch, his native city, where there were already many Christians. Along the road to Antioch, he passed through the city of Sebaste, the principal city of Samaria. There he proclaimed the glad tidings of the coming of the Messiah. There also, he found the incorrupt relics of St. John the Forerunner. When it came time for him to leave Sebaste, the holy Luke wished to take them with him to his native land, but the Christians there, fervently honoring the Baptizer of the Lord, would not permit Luke to remove all his holy relics. Then, St. Luke detached from them the right arm, under which Christ had bowed His head when He had received baptism from John. With this priceless treasure, the holy Luke arrived in his homeland, to the great joy of the Christians of Antioch. And he left that city only when he became the traveling companion and fellow laborer of the holy Apostle Paul, who, in the words of several ancient writers, was even one of his kinsmen. This took place during the Apostle Paul’s second missionary journey. At that time, St. Luke and the Apostle Paul traveled to Greece to preach the Gospel, and the holy evangelist was left behind by the Apostle to the Gentiles to establish and organize the Church in the Macedonian city of Philippi. Then, for a period of several years, the holy Luke labored to spread Christianity throughout those parts.California Gov. Jerry Brown Monday signed into law Assembly Bill 472, the “911 Good Samaritan Bill,” aimed at reducing fatal drug overdoses by removing the threat of criminal prosecution for people who seek assistance for people suffering from them. California becomes the 10th state to enact such a law since New Mexico led the way back in 2007.
Sponsored by Rep. Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), the bill received bipartisan support in the legislature and was co-sponsored by the Drug Policy Alliance, the ACLU of California, and the Health Officers Association of California.
“This is a great victory for parents. None of us want our kids overdosing on drugs, but as I told the legislature, I’d rather have my kid around to yell at than attend a funeral,” said Ammiano. “The young friends of those who overdose shouldn’t hesitate to seek help because they fear arrest. With the Governor’s signature, they won’t have to.”
“This is an incredibly special day for the thousands of California family members who worked so hard and for so long to pass this life-saving bill,” said Meghan Ralston, harm reduction manager of the Drug Policy Alliance. “This is just a small first step in reducing the number of fatal overdoses in California, but it’s a deeply important one.”
Drug overdose deaths are the number one cause of accidental death in California, as in many other states. The new law encourages people to seek emergency health services when they witness an overdose by providing limited protections from charge and prosecution for low-level drug law violations, including possession of small amounts of drugs. Those who sell drugs are not protected under the new law.
“I never go a day without thinking of my son Jeff and I never will,” said Denise Cullen, co-founder of GRASP (Grief Recovery After a Substance Passing). “Losing a child to a drug overdose is a tragedy in ways I can’t explain, but fighting so hard for him and for all the parents just like me, to get this law passed is really the best possible way I can honor him.”
“After forty years of the war on drugs, California is finally righting its priorities by putting saving lives ahead of making petty arrests. The message is loud and clear: call for help in case of an overdose. This is an important step toward better drug and public health policies and it will save lives,” said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, senior policy advocate for the ACLU of California.
“The physician Health Officers who provide leadership for public health programs in every county are grateful to Governor Brown for partnering with us on this common sense, no-cost approach to saving lives,” said Bruce Pomer, executive director of Health Officers Association of California. “It’s urgently needed.”
Now the task is to get the word out to those populations where it will do the most good. Advocates from dozens of state and local organizations will be working to do just that, both before the new law goes into effect on January 1, and throughout the following year.
Article republished from Stop the Drug War under Creative Commons LicensingGuy Kawasaki even has publicly admitted that no matter how many times you read your book or how many editors review it, chances are there will be a few errors that you miss.
It’s one thing to have a few errors here and there; it’s a completely different one to have a book trifled with obvious grammatical errors.
One of the biggest challenges for people who are writing books and who didn’t go to writing or journalism school are words that sound alike, but have very different meaning.
The reality is that if you want to use a book as a way to boost your authority, credibility and influence, you’ll want to be careful of grammatical errors because they could turn off your audience.
Hiring an editor and a proofreader is essential if you want to publish a quality book as a self-published author. It’s true that if you get a book deal, your publisher will take care of getting your book professionally edited, but I still firmly believe that as authors, we need to master the basics of good written English.
As I was writing my books, I realized that there are words that sound alike but have different meanings and if you spend enough time on social media, you’ll notice that a lot of people aren’t aware they’re misusing or misspelling words.
In order to help more self-published authors become better at editing their own books, I’ve compiled a list of 37 common misspelled or misused English words and added the correct spelling and a short explanation so as to give you more control on the quality of your writing!
37 Common Misspelled Or Misused Words:
1. Accept and Except
To “accept” is a verb. It has several meanings:
a. To hold something as true. Here’s an example: “I accept she may have been tired, but that’s still no excuse.”
b. To receive something willingly. Here’s an example: “I accept this award on behalf of the whole cast.”
The word “except” is most commonly seen as a preposition. However, it can also be used a conjunction and very occasionally as a verb. Here’s a great quote that clearly shows how to properly use the word “except”: “I can resist everything except temptation. (Oscar Wilde)
2. Affect vs. Effect
Affect is a verb that means, “to influence”. A good example is: “your ability to deeply relate to your clients will affect your authority”
Effect has a completely different meaning. Effect is a noun and refers to “result” or “the result of.” A good example is: “the effect of junk foods on our youth is devastating”
Effect can also be a verb and in that case, it means “to bring about”, “to cause”, or “to achieve”. A good example is: “You will effect these changes on Monday.”
Here’s another example that puts both words in the same sentence: “A situation may AFFECT you, while someone might have a huge EFFECT on you”.
2. All Right vs. Alright
I’ll be honest and admit I didn’t realize people misspelled “all right” and used “alright” instead. As I was doing this research, I found out that people use “alright” in their day-to-day conversations like so many people write on email as if they were texting. Alright is incorrect.
Alright is the lazy man’s all right. You should do your best to refrain from using “alright” in your day-to-day life in terms of writing. It’s and not widely accepted in the grammar world (even though it isn’t even corrected anymore with spell check). However, say it aloud however you like. It doesn’t really make much difference in that regard.
Easy way to remember: “Alright” is not all right.
3. A Lot or Alot
It’s simple, if you’re writing “alot” in a text, then you’re automatically making a mistake. It’s pretty much black & white.
The phrase “a lot” (when used as a noun) means “a large extent, a large amount, or a large number.” Even as an adverb, it means “to a great extent.”
This is a simple rule to remember, a lot is ALWAYS spelled in two words!
4. Anyway vs. Anyways
This is an easy one, there isn’t a “s” at the end of “anyway”.
5. Assume vs. Presume
To “assume” something means that you suppose it to be true, especially without proof. When you “presume”, however, you are taking something for granted as being true because there is no evidence to the contrary.
Basically, you are smarter to “presume” than “assume”.
6. Appose vs. Oppose
These two spellings originally meant the same thing, but now they have different meanings:
a. “appose” means to place side by side or in close proximity
b. “oppose” means the following:
* be against; express opposition to
* fight against or resist strongly
* contrast with equal weight or force
* set into opposition or rivalry
7. Blond vs. Blonde
This word derives from French, which means it has masculine and feminine forms. Quite simply, “blond” refers to a man, and “blonde”refers to a woman.
8. Breath vs. Breathe
“Breath” is a noun referring to the air coming in or going out of the lungs.“Breathe” is a verb referring to “the act of inhaling and exhaling.” It’s not complicated, yet the two words are often confused with one another when written.
9. Capital vs. Capitol
“Capital” refers to money and “capitol” represents the buildings and monuments that represent the country.
10. Compliment vs. Complement
“Compliment” is something nice someone one says about you to which you’d normally respond “thanks”.
“Complement” is something that adds to or supplements something else. A good example is: “this scarf complements the colour of this dress”.
11. Could of vs.Could have
This is another tricky word combination because we usually pronounce “could of” as opposed to “could of” when we speak.
The problem is that when you’re writing, you need to use “could have” instead of “could of”, as the latter is grammatically incorrect.
The same applies to should have (NOT should of) and would have (NOT would of), which are the correct ways of writing.
That said, you can legitimately contract these words. You can use could’ve, would’ve or should’ve!
12. Disinterested vs. Uninterested
If someone is disinterested, it means that they are “impartial or unbiased about something”. However, if they are uninterested, it means that they simply “have no interest in it.”
Here’s a good example: “A judge need be disinterested, but never uninterested”.
13. Definitely or Definately
Definitely doesn’t have an “a”. You might pronounce it with an “a” when you speak, but when you write it there should be only two vowels: “e” and “i”!
14. e.g. vs. i.e.
Although neither of these are words, they are both used incorrectly quite often. “e.g.” stands for the Latin exempli gratia, or “for example”.“i.e.” is Latin for id est, meaning “that is.” Therefore, you only use it if you are giving the only example(s) to qualify your statement.
Here’s a good example: “The photo was signed by the last surviving ‘Golden Girl,’ i.e., Betty White”.
15. Elicit and Illicit
The verb “elicit” means to call forth or bring out. The adjective “illicit” means unlawful or not permitted.
Here’s a good example to understand the meaning of each word: “the song elicited deep emotions, but the illicit lyrics kept it from pop stardom.”
16. Farther vs. Further
The word farther refers to “a physical distance,” while further simply means “more”. You could also think of it as “an extension of time or degree”.
Here’s a good example:
“How much farther do we have to go?”
“It’s just a mile further.”
17. Fewer or Less
“Fewer” refers to quantities you can count, such as items in your shopping cart, while “less” refers to quantities you can’t count, such as a liquid.
Obviously, you can measure amounts of a liquid, but not if you are just drinking it out of a bottle.
For instance, you’d ask someone for “less” soda if they gave you too much, not “fewer” soda. On the flip side, you’d ask for “fewer” apples instead of “less” apples.
How to test? “10 items or less” should really be “10 items or fewer.” Don’t even get us started on “greater than or less than.”
18. Imply vs. Infer
To “imply” is to express something indirectly.
To “infer” is to surmise or conclude, especially from indirect evidence.
Here’s a good example to understand both:
Thus, what a writer may imply, a reader may infer.”
(Adrienne Robins, The Analytical Writer: A College Rhetoric, 2nd ed. Collegiate Press, 1996)
19. Insolate vs. Insulate
To “insulate” something means to enclose it in something that holds in heat, sound, or electricity. It can also mean to generally protect or isolate a person or thing.
To “insolate” something means to expose it to sunlight.
20. Irregardless
Please, stop using irregardless. Yes, it is technically in the dictionary, but it’s listed as non-standard, which means it’s in wide use, but not proper. You should be using “regardless of” instead.
21. Its vs. It’s
Its is possessive, much like “my” or “your.” It means “belonging to it.” A good example would be: “this course has its merit.”
It’s is a contraction for “it is” or “it has.” A good example would be: “it’s a chair”.
Here’s an easy way to remember the difference: If the word you are trying to say isn’t short for “it is” or “it has,” then the word is most likely “its” with no apostrophe.
22. Judgement or Judgment
Judgement is British spelling. Although, Brits were also using “judgment”, judgement has gained ground over the last couple of centuries and is now nearly as common as judgment.
Americans and Canadians tend to use judgment more.
23. Lay vs. Lie
The English verbs “lay” and “lie” are commonly confused by even native English speakers.
a. “Lay” is a transitive verb, which means that it must be used with a direct object. The past tense and the past participle of lay are both laid.
Here’s a good example: “Please lay the books on the table”.
b. “Lie” is an intransitive verb, which means it cannot have a direct object. The past tense of lie is lay and the past participle is lain.
Here’s a good example: “I just want to lie in bed all day”.
c. “Lie” (past tense lied) means to say something untrue.
Here’s a good example: “Don’t lie to me”.
24. Lose vs. Loose
This is another tricky combo.
“Lose”means the opposite of winning or it can mean misplacing something. Here is a good example: “Did you lose your glasses?”
“Loose” means not tight enough. Here is a good example: “these jeans are too loose”.
25. Literally or Figuratively
We’ve gotten a little annoying as a society with the word literally.
Most people use “literally” in sentences when they should be using figuratively.
“Literally” means EXACTLY what you say is true.
So the next time you’re hungry and say “I could literally eat a whole cow”, that means you actually would eat a cow.The word we are looking for most of the time is figuratively, which means metaphorically or as a figure of speech.
Perhaps using “figuratively” might be a better way of saying it – “I could figuratively eat a whole cow”.
26. Maybe vs. May be
This is a common mistake made by people learning English and sometimes native speakers too!
The simplest explanation is:
Maybe = perhaps
May be = is possibly
Here’s an example combining both: “Maybe” it will stop raining soon and we “may be” able to have our picnic on the deck.
27. Me, Myself and I
To check if you should use “me” or “I” when you need a pronoun to complete a group, ask yourself if it sounds correct when you remove the other noun or pronoun.
Here are a few examples:
Ex. #1 Justin and me saw dolphins in Bahamas. (Incorrect)
This example is incorrect. If you removed Justin from the sentence, it would read “me” saw dolphins.
The sentence should read: Justin and “I” saw dolphins in Bahamas. (Correct)
Ex. #2 The Parker twins splashed water on Tina and I. (Incorrect)
This example is incorrect; you would not say the Parker twins water on “I”. “I” should be replaced by “me”.
Ex. #2 The Parker twins splashed water on Tina and me. (Correct)
“Myself” is only proper two ways:
28. Non-fiction, non fiction, nonfiction
You’ll notice “non fiction” written in 3 different ways on the Internet. I referred to my literary mentor on this one and the proper spelling is “non fiction” – two words and no hyphen.
29. Principal vs. Principle
“Principal” means the highest in rank. As an adjective it means the most important on a set.
“Principle” is a noun meaning a fundamental truth, law or standard.
30. Prospective vs. Perspective
“Prospective” is an adjective meaning 1. likely to happen, or 2. likely to become.
Here’s a great example: “Some of the best preparation for the interview occurs when you research the prospective employer”.
“Perspective” is almost always a noun. It refers to 1. a view, 2. the angle from which something is viewed, and 3. the proper appearance of objects in relation to each other.
Here’s a great example: “From a fan’s perspective, it was a great game to watch”.
31. Than vs. Then
As a rule, “then” is an adverb signifying time.
How to test?Then and when rhyme, and both refer to time.
“Than”is used to compare two things. A good example is: Tom is older than James.
32.Their, There, They’re and There’re
This is one of those really tricky ones for people learning to speak English and even for people who have been speaking English since birth.
Let’s break it down:
a. “Their” is possessive and often related to an object belonging to others. A good example would be: “I went to their house in Rome.”
How to test? Replace “their” with “our”.
b. “There” is referring to a location. A good example would be: “I’ll be there this afternoon.”
How to test? Replace “there” with “here”.
c. “They’re”is a contraction for “they are”. A good example would be: “They’re coming to the party later on.”
How to test? Replace “they’re” with “they are”.
d.“There’re” is another contraction of there are.
Here’s an example:
Q: “Do you have any towels?”
A: “Yes, there are some in the closet.”
Contraction: “Yes, there’re some in the closet.”
Easy way to remember: We don’t think you’ll forget. These words, particularly their and there, are just easily mixed up if typing too quickly. Just make sure to slow down and double check.
33. Through vs. Threw
Threw is the past tense of the verb “throw”. Here’s a great example: “Gina threw the ball to her team-mate”.
Through is never used as a verb: Here’s a great example: “I can’t believe all that Dina has been through this year.”
34. To vs. Too
“Too” means also or a lot of something.Here’s an example: “the couch is too big to fit through the door.”
If you remember the meaning of “too,” then “to” becomes easier to distinguish.
35. Your vs. You’re
“Your” is possessive pronoun. You’d use it to express something belongs to you. A good example is: “your car”.
While You’re is a contraction for “you are.” A good example is: “you’re driving your car”.
36. Weather vs. Whether
“Weather” refers to the temperature. You turn on the television to determine the “weather”.
“Whether” introduces choices: I don’t know “whether” to laugh or cry.
37. Weird or “Wierd”
The best way to remember how to spell weird, is to remember the order of the alphabet –“e” come before “i”!
>>> Check out more book marketing & book promotion posts:
How to Becoming A Bestselling Author?
How to Use Google+ for Book Promotion
10 Things I Learned While Editing My Rough DraftNOVARA, Italy -- As he begins to tell ESPN FC about scoring the winning goal in his Manchester United debut, Federico 'Kiko' Macheda has a confession.
"I was supporting Aston Villa!" he says. "I wanted to get on that pitch so badly, and I knew I'd have a better chance if United were losing. My dream was to play just one game for Manchester United. That's why I left Lazio, the team I'd supported all my life."
Some eight years have passed since the then-17-year-old was named a substitute for a key Premier League game on April 5, 2009. Now playing in Serie B for Novara, a town with a population of 105,000 located between Milan and Turin, Macheda sits in a cafe and recalls his first competitive game in professional football.
European and English champions United had lost their two previous league games and slipped to second in the table behind a Liverpool side that had hammered them 4-1 at Old Trafford three weeks earlier. Sir Alex Ferguson's side had to beat Villa.
"United went 1-0 up; [Cristiano] Ronaldo, a free kick inside the box," Macheda says in a flat, precise tone, speaking of a goal that, he thought, pushed him further from his dream. "And then Villa started to play a bit and scored. I thought: 'Wow, they only need one more goal.' At half-time I stayed on the pitch to kick the ball around. I was happy there. After 13 minutes of the second half, Villa scored again."
Villa's counter-attacks against an under-strength United side were clinical, and the 3,000 travelling fans were delighted -- as was Macheda.
"I was secretly thinking: 'Yes!' I thought I could come on the pitch after 85 minutes and was dreaming about this."
His private thoughts were soon interrupted.
"'Kiko! Kiko!' shouted Fergie. 'Get ready!' I looked around. I thought he was shouting to someone else. Then he started again, only this time he was angrier. 'Kiko! Kiko! Get changed. You're going on.'"
United's No. 41 hurriedly took off his tracksuit.
"There was only 60 minutes gone, and I thought, 'I'm going to play 30 minutes for Man United. Then I calmed myself and said, 'Make it easy, work hard, play as easy as possible.'"
The Rome-born teenager crossed himself as he stepped off the bench and moved pitch-side, ready to replace Nani.
"I said to myself: 'Get on the ball as soon as you can' and went to the halfway line and shouted to Patrice Evra to receive the ball from him. I needed a first touch, and I got that. I knew then that I could play."
Macheda began to find his way into the game and appealed unsuccessfully for a penalty, following a challenge from Curtis Davies.
"My touches were good. I was pressing, defending and confident. Ronaldo scored. 2-2. I went to celebrate with Ronaldo. I wanted to hug him. I didn't have the confidence to smash his chest in celebration because I didn't know him that well, so I went to hug him because I thought it might never happen again. If my career ended in that moment, then I would have been on the pitch next to Ronaldo."
The intended hug turned into a slap.
"Ronaldo said, 'Let's go!' but I couldn't go, I was f---ed! There was 10 minutes left. The tension, the pressure of doing well in front of all these people. I'd been running like a dog when he's happy, and I couldn't breathe any more... but we needed to win."
Federico Macheda's superb goal boosted Man United's title hopes and made him an instant Old Trafford hero.
Macheda speaks with brutal honesty.
"These guys were not my usual teammates. My teammates were in the reserve team. Those were the guys I travelled with, shared a dressing room with and played with. When I was in the first team that afternoon, my priority was not winning but playing well, and I had played well."
The more experienced players around him saw a bigger picture, though, and drove forward for a winner in the game's closing stages.
"It was after 90 minutes when Patrice got the ball," Macheda says with his eyes lighting up at the memory. "He gave it to [Michael] Carrick, who switched the ball to Gary Neville. I was running forward, and I couldn't breathe. I was fitter than I'd ever been in my career because I'd been flying for the reserves, but I was so tired. Neville went forward and passed to me. I made the first touch and tried to turn around with the back heel, but I lost the ball in the first place, and the ball went back to [Ryan] Giggs. I was in a position where I couldn't do anything. My back was against the goal."
After taking a touch, Giggs passed the ball back to Macheda, who received it just inside the Villa penalty area.
"I was tired, but I tried to back heel again. I turned and shot. I wasn't even looking at the goal. It was instinct. At least I would have had one shot on goal."
Macheda's matter-of-fact description barely does justice to the drama of the moment: In the blink of an eye, he turned beyond Luke Young, then curled the ball into the far corner of the net at the Stretford End, beyond the dive of goalkeeper Brad Friedel.
"I looked up, and the ball was already inside the net," Macheda says with a smile. "The stadium was going crazy. I didn't know what to do. I started to run to my family, but everyone grabbed me. Darren Fletcher started to strangle me on the floor, and I was struggling to breathe. His arm was around my neck. I said to Danny Welbeck, who was hugging me: 'I can't breathe, man. Tell him to move.' Finally, they let go, and I ran to my father, who jumped over the fence and hugged me."
Macheda's ecstatic father was 34, five years younger than United goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar.
"[Dad] was crying," Macheda says. "We'd been in it together and moved to Manchester as a family. I finally walked back onto the pitch and walked around, dazed, for the final two minutes."
The goal sealed a 3-2 win and sent United back to the top of the league, where they finished the season to secure an 18th league title, equaling Liverpool's English record.
"I went back into the changing room, and the players were treating me like I was one of them," Macheda says. "I was man of the match. Gary Neville, the captain, presented me with a bottle, but I wasn't 18, so I couldn't drink it! Instead, I went back home and watched the goal 100 times!"
In the second part of our exclusive interview, to be published April 7, Mached |
the department was "working with other stakeholders to explore what more it could do to protect against that".
More than 34,000 young people have started unpaid job placements of up to eight weeks under the work experience programme. The scheme is voluntary, but anyone terminating their placement early can face sanctions, including a stop on their benefits for between two and 26 weeks.
The committee's chair, Paul Gray, ended the session by asking the DWP to take further action to prevent work experience roles taking over paid jobs: "He said that the committee had voiced some serious concerns around the potential for exploitation of the work experience scheme and considered it important for the department to look at how it can further strengthen the safeguards that had been put in place," the official minutes note.
The same committee had also, earlier in 2011, warned the government against proceeding with another scheme introducing compulsory work placements for some jobseekers. The government proceeded with the mandatory work activity programme regardless, saying it expected no more than around 10,000 jobseekers a year to be compelled to do work placements under the programme. The latest figures record 8,100 people were placed on to the scheme in November 2011 alone.
Poundland became the latest employer to pull out or amend its participation in the government's work schemes on Friday, when it issued a statement stating it was suspending "participation in the government's mandatory work programme" but continuing to take people on voluntary work experience.
It later clarified that it was pulling out of the work programme, a government scheme administered by private companies, owing to concerns about whether places were voluntary.
"Poundland have been taking part in two schemes, the work programme and the work experience scheme," it said in a statement. "Poundland has suspended its participation in the work programme, because of concerns about the compulsory nature of the programme but they are continuing with the work experience, which is voluntary."
Several other companies, including Waterstones, Sainsbury's and TK Maxx, have withdrawn from the work experience scheme, while Tesco now offers jobseekers the choice of sticking with the government programme or taking up paid work with a guarantee of a staff job at the end of a four-week placement if the trial was successful.
As Poundland withdraw from the Work Programme scheme citing compulsory placements as a cause for concern, the Guardian has uncovered more evidence about the behaviour of the companies administering scheme.
Earlier this week the Guardian reported that A4E, one of the biggest provider of the scheme, had compelled jobseekers to work unpaid in its own offices, as the police launched an official investigation into allegations of fraudulent business practices at the company. A4E's founder, Emma Harrison, has subsequently stepped down as David Cameron's "families tsar" and from the board of A4E.
The chair of the Social Security Advisory Committee declined to comment.
• This article was amended on 29 February 2012 because the original said: "Town and Country Cleaners confirmed it also used unpaid cleaners sent by Avanta, but could not provide further details." The company later contacted the Guardian and stated unequivocally that it had used no unpaid Avanta cleaners. (A director said that information initially given to the Guardian came from an employee who had no access to information about such work placements.)A new Gallup poll was released this morning showing public support for the Affordable Care Act inching higher, from 41% in August to 45% now. In isolation, that’s a pretty modest shift in a single poll, and hardly worth getting excited about. But it’s not the only poll showing improved support for “Obamacare.”
This week, four national polls have been released – Gallup, CBS News, CNN, and ABC/Washington Post – and all four show the health care law more popular now than the last time the pollsters asked.
To be sure, you can look at the chart I put together and see that in each instance, support for the law is below 50%, so it’s obviously far too soon to characterize the Affordable Care Act as “popular.” It’s not.
But the shift in public attitudes comes as a bit of a surprise. The only major news related to the law in recent weeks has been considerable coverage of technical problems with the system’s website. I largely expected the polls to show declining favorability in light of all the negative press coverage.
And yet, there are four independent, national polls showing the exact opposite.
There are experts in public opinion who can speak to why this has happened with greater authority than I can. Maybe this is partly the result of a partisan backlash over Republicans shutting down the government over their contempt for the law. Perhaps the American mainstream doesn’t much care about website glitches and is happy to have expanded opportunities to get affordable coverage.This week on The Sunday Edition Michael's Essay: Atheists should stop behaving like persecuted outsiders. Understanding pain Dr. Fernando Cervero is working to change the way we think about and treat pain. He's a professor of anesthesia and the director of the Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain at McGill University in Montreal. He's also president of the International Association for the Study of Pain. Documentary: Figures in Flight We meet a group of convicted murderers, drug dealers and sex offenders, who have spent many decades behind bars. Now... they are learning to dance. Tackling public pensions Demographics are threatening public pensions, and two provinces are tackling the problem head on. Michael talks with Alberta's finance minister, Doug Horner, and with the chair of New Brunswick's Pension Task Force, Sue Rowland. Rebecca Solnit Rebecca Solnit's new book is called The Faraway Nearby. She's wise and insightful, passionate and compassionate. Among other things, she talks to Michael about what her mother's descent into Alzheimer's taught her about letting go. Craig's Retreat What's it like to live like a monk? Craig Desson reports from his 10-day silent meditation retreat -- waking at 4 a.m. and not reading, writing, speaking or eating after noon.
The headlines are full of breakthroughs heralding new treatments and cures for a host of debilitating and lethal diseases and conditions.
But for the millions of Canadians who suffer from chronic pain, relief - let alone a cure - is still elusive.
According to the Canadian Pain Society, one in five Canadians suffers from chronic pain. Yet treatment has not been a priority in our health care system; instead, people who complain of chronic pain are all too often derided as whiners.
They say doctors are incredulous that their pain - which might have no apparent cause - could possibly be that bad. Or else they’re just counselled to grin and bear it.
That nonchalance reflects an attitude in western cultures, where pain is largely considered a sign of virtue and a test of character, says Dr. Fernando Cervero, director of the Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain at McGill University.
Attitudes slowly changing
But Dr. Cervero notes that social attitudes are changing. Patients and their advocates are demanding better and more timely treatment for chronic pain. But the medical establishment has not kept pace with those changes. For example, veterinary students receive much more training in pain management than medical students.
The societal change in attitudes toward pain “has not completely permeated all the way to the medical schools,” Dr. Cervero told The Sunday Edition’s Michael Enright. “In a curriculum that is getting more and more busy with more and more discoveries in medicine – and we all have to fight for time in the medical curriculum – pain is not a high priority.”
Dr. Cervero, who will be speaking at an international symposium on pain at McGill University on Oct. 3, says more must be done to make the relief of pain, especially for chronic pain sufferers, a top priority in Canadian health care.
“It’s not right for people to suffer unnecessarily,” he said.
You can hear Michael Enright’s full conversation with Dr. Fernando Cervero on CBC Radio's The Sunday Edition on Radio One this Sunday, just after the 9 a.m. news.In an effort to focus on its profitable divisions, Sony is planning to undergo a massive restructuring, as part of which it will abandon its money-losing businesses. The company has plans to throw in the towel on its smartphone and TV divisions. It will be shifting its attention to movies, music, games and image sensors sectors that have been returning profits, Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai said today, Reuters reports.
The Japanese technology conglomerate — which was once one of the most iconic players in the industry — has run into serious trouble in recent years. Its smartphone business as well flat-panel TV lineups have costed the company instead of returning positive results, the CEO chimed in on Wednesday. Sony had spun off its TV business last year.
AP and The Hollywood Reporter citing the CEO report that the company is planning to spin off its video-and-sound business into a separate company. The transition to make the video and sound unit more independent will be completed by October, Hirai said. The report further adds that Sony has plans to shrink its headquarters as part of a three-year turnaround plan. By shrinking together the headquarters, the company hopes that it will speed up the decision-making process.
Hirai said that the company aims to boost its operating profit by 25-fold within next three years by focusing on camera sensors and gaming and entertainment divisions. As part of the move, it will be abandoning smartphone lineup starting next financial year of the company. “The strategy starting from the next business year will be about generating profit and investing for growth,” Hirai said.
Hirai acknowledged the growing competition in the smartphone space from Asian players like Xiaomi, Micromax, and others that have slumped down its low-end and mid-range smartphone sales. In the upper tier, the company is struggling to compete with Apple and Samsung, leaving the company little to no incentive to continue. He noted that he won’t “rule out considering an exit strategy.”
Multiple reports claim that Sony won’t be launching the Xperia Z4 — the company’s supposed forthcoming flagship smartphone — at the Mobile World Congress event next month. The handset was originally expected to be launched at the CES last month. If it isn’t launched next month, the phone will exceed the six-month upgrade cycle the company had shifted to last year.
While it may come as a sudden surprising move, the company has had been hinting its growing struggle to maintain its money-losing lineups. Last year, the company sold off its PC business to an investment firm Japan Industrial Partners. The company had also axed thousands of employees as part of the process.
Sony’s image sensors, gaming, and entertainment businesses have been returning solid profits. “The Sony spirit is about doing what others didn’t dare to do,” Hirai said. Its share has risen more than 80 percent since Hirai appointed Kenichiro Yoshida as his chief strategy officer in late 2013.
Hirai pledged to post an operating profits of at least $4.2 billion for 2017-18 fiscal year. The company, however, anticipates a loss of $1.4 billion for the running fiscal year through March. As it moves forward with a new plan, it plans to invest in innovating areas and participate in more acquisitions and partnerships.Paperwork
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If you were looking for the Laravel-based version 1 of Paperwork, please check out this branch.
Background
The very first version of Paperwork was started in July 2014 as a pet-project by this guy, mainly out of frustration about the existing services (Evernote & others), fear ignited by the Snowden revelations and curiosity about whether the effort would lead to something people would be interested in. And apparently it did. :) Soon, more great people joined the project and contributed.
However, originally the tech that was used to build the very first version on top (mainly PHP 5, MySQL, Laravel 4, Angular & Bootstrap) was chosen to keep things simple and allow iterating quickly. The primary goal for the project was the actual result, rather than any sort of technological finesse.
Over the time, two observations concerning the chosen technology were made:
The percentage of code share between PHP (as in the Laravel back-end) and JavaScript (as in the Angular front-end) shifted from an initial 80:20-ratio to roughly 50:50 by today
Most of the time, the biggest pain-points during the implementation of new features were not within the front-end but rather on the back-end side
With us basically struggling to implement heavily requested features, not solely but also due to technical debt that was caused by poor technical decisions in first place, the project slowly became dormant.
With the effort to revamp Paperwork in its current form (e.g. clean the code on the front- and the back-end, upgrade to the latest Laravel version, upgrade to the latest PHP version, clean the database schema, refactor the API, …) being significant and a clear force on the JavaScript-side of the project being observable, it seems to make more sense to rebuild Paperwork from ground up, on top of an architecture that allows for more flexibility, quicker iteration, a better structure and ultimately a higher ease of use/contribute.
So, what now?
This branch contains a very first suggestion, of how the second iteration of Paperwork could look like. As you might notice, one major change is the clear separation of components, making this branch (and hopefully soon the whole repository) only one piece of the puzzle. Currently, it only contains of the back-end component — or better, one of them — and does not include front-end components whatsoever. The idea is to build the second iteration in a more modular and diversified manner, picking the right tool for the task rather than building a monolith that is harder to maintain the bigger it grows.
Everyone who is interested in getting their feet wet is highly welcome to join the discussion and planning around Paperwork 2.
Okay, cool. But what took you so long to get to this point?
Funding. Basically this point was planned and headed towards sometime in mid 2016. Since then, different attempts were made to get funding for this project, through individuals but also programs like Prototypefund. The general idea was to accelerate development by paying you, the contributors, using a bounty-source-like approach. Unfortunately none of the attempts led to an actual funding or investment whatsoever. At this point putting the effort into the actual development, instead of pursuing further discussions and applications for such programs seems to make more sense.
I would love to help!
Feel free to check out this branch and get involved with what’s there already to get an idea of where Paperwork is heading. Also check out the project board to see what needs to be done or suggest what and how should be done.
Feel free to actively participate in the chatroom or shoot an email to the Paperwork dev mailinglist.
Usage
This repository is structuring and unifying all required components for Paperwork.
$ git clone git@github.com:paperwork/paperwork.git
Docker Compose
The setup is split into separate compose files that can be run individually of each other. In order for the service compose-files to work, the infrastructure compose-file needs to be running, though.
The compose-setup depends on an encrypted overlay network to be created. For that, your docker environment needs to have swarm activated. You can do so by running:
$ docker swarm init
There is no need to join any more members to it. Only with swarm enabled the infrastructure can be launched:
$ docker-compose up --build
After the infrastructure is up and running all the services can be started individually.
Users Service
In order to start the users service ( service-users ), run the following command:
npm run dev
This requires service-kong (inside infrastructure ) reach out to the local development instance of service-users. In to do that the devproxy is being required.
devproxy Service
The devproxy automatically runs inside the infrastructure, exposes port 2222 on the host and provides a way to forward local development ports into the docker environment. In order to forward the local service-users port into the docker environment, an SSH port forward is required:
$ ssh -o "UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null" -o "StrictHostKeyChecking=no" -p 2222 -R 3000:127.0.0.1:3000 root@127.0.0.1
The root password is root. This forwards the local port 3000 into the devproxy, so that service-kong could reach service-users through devproxy:3000. In order to do so, the locally running service-users needs to have the SERVICE_USERS_URL environment variable set to http://devproxy:3000, as it uses this variable to set up the kong upstream for service-users.
Developing / contributing
Please refer to the components’ repositories in order to get more information on how to contribute.
List of componentsSeveral dozen combat-ready U.S. Marines stationed in southern Spain have been put on alert to potentially move into Libya and assist in the evacuation of American personnel if the unrest grows there in the coming days, a senior military official confirms to CNN.
The Marines have not yet moved from their base, but could be ordered to move closer to Libya so they could get there faster if a full evacuation is ordered.
A team of special operations forces also are on standby in Germany to assist, if needed.
The Marines in Spain are supposed to be ready to move within six hours of notification. By moving them closer, that time frame could be cut in half.
The Marines were sent to Spain in recent weeks as part of a new permanent contingency force capable of moving into North Africa very quickly after the deadly attack in Benghazi last year showed military forces were not close enough to assist.
The force in Spain totals about 500 Marines with six V-22 aircraft they can use to move quickly.
The United States has already withdrawn some embassy personnel, but with militants blocking some portions of the city, the military option would be used if personnel cannot get to the commercial airport, the official said.Writer Grant Morrison undertook a major magnum opus with Batman Incorporated. As the culmination of his seven-year-run on the character, working in collaboration with artists including Cameron Stewart, Frazer Irving, Yanick Paquette, and Chris Burnham, he offered up his definitive deconstruction of the character of Batman through the creation of a global Batman franchise.
Yet as series colorist Nathan Fairbairn tells us, Batman Incorporated experienced an unusual road bump in the form of a line-wide DC Comics reboot (the New 52) that potentially undermined a major thesis behind the whole series -- that every Batman story that had ever been told was still canon. Writing exclusively for ComicsAlliance, Fairbairn reveals how some pages were re-drawn for the book's Absolute collection, which arrived in stores this week.
By Nathan Fairbairn
When I started work on Batman Incorporated with Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette, it seemed to me that the concept driving it (and, by extension, all of Grant's Batman work) was that all of Batman's long, byzantine history was in continuity, and that if you just gave Grant a chance he'd show you how all of those pieces fit together.
Unfortunately, halfway through this series that was based on the idea that everything is in continuity, word came down that The New 52 would be happening, and that none of it would be in continuity anymore. Batman had never duelled Ra's al Ghul in the desert. He'd never had his back broken by Bane. He'd never been a prisoner of three worlds with Kathy Kane's Batwoman. Heck, there was no Kathy Kane anymore. No Stephanie Brown. None of that happened.
Damn.
Fortunately, Mike Marts, the excellent former group editor of the Batbooks at DC, knew that Grant had been working towards something special for a long time, and didn't want to cheat Grant or his readers out of the conclusion they deserved. So Batman Incorporated would become the only book to survive the sea change that was The New 52.
But it wouldn't survived wholly unscathed. The entire second volume was done with, at best, a sideways nod to New 52 continuity. It was a part of the New 52 continuity, for sure, but if you squinted your eyes just right, from a certain angle, in the right light... it really wasn't.
As far as creative/editorial tightrope walks go, it was pretty impressive. Grant basically had to tell the second volume of Batman Inc. in such a way that it seemed of a piece with the first, while simultaneously embracing the challenge of The New 52, which was to abandon the shackles/foundation of hundreds of issues of continuity and to invite new readers in with new (or at least rehashed) stories.
For the most part, I think Grant and Mike pulled off the balancing act between old and new, but there were certain things we just couldn't get around. Some of these things were minor, like the sudden de-aging of Jim Gordon. Others were more major, like Dick Grayson's sudden and unexplained (in our book, anyway) switch back to being Nightwing, or a flashback of Batman wearing his New 52 costume to rescue Talia from the League of Assassins.
Along with the new challenges presented by The New 52 came the same old challenges of getting a book out on a monthly schedule. Getting a comic book out on the stands on time month after month is an incredible achievement, and my hat is completely off to any team that can do it. Seriously, given how much thought and time and effort can go into just coloring a single page, I'm amazed that these things ever come out at all.
On Batman Incorporated, it became necessary towards the end for series artist Chris Burnham to regularly turn on the bat signal and call for help getting the thing out the door on time. Several artists, but primarily Jason Masters -- a great artist and friend of Burnham's -- were enlisted to help out with anywhere from 3-6 pages of interior art per issue. Jason and the other fill-in artists were working from Burnham's layouts and thumbnails and producing fantastic work, but, as good as Jason and the others are, they all simply draw differently from Chris, and the stylistic consistency of the book suffered. A lot of readers felt jarred out of the story by the shifting art styles (and let us know it).
And so it was with a good deal of excitement that the creative teamed learned that the series would be getting the Absolute treatment, and that there would be time and a budget to revisit the series, and for Burnham to redraw every single page that he'd needed help on.
Here now is a selection of some of Chris's redrawn pages, along with his original thumbnails and the originally published pages (all colored by me, natch):
Click to enlarge images.
Heck, even Yanick wanted a crack at drawing the two pages he'd needed help on!
I'm glad we were able to make up for some of our struggles and to offer fans of the series a reward for buying this story in yet another format. Like most of Grant's work, it's a book that is well served by multiple readings, and you just can't beat the Absolute series for quality and care of printing. This story will never again look as good as it does here.
Plus, now the flashbacks even make sense!
Absolute Batman Incorporated is available in stores now from DC Comics.Seattle, Washington (CNN) -- Over the last four months, Colton Harris-Moore has kept busy in solitary confinement by designing airplanes, his attorney said Thursday.
But it may be years before the so-called "Barefoot Bandit," accused of stealing and flying airplanes without a pilot's license, gets anywhere near aircraft again.
Harris-Moore, 19, pleaded not guilty in a Seattle courtroom Thursday to five federal charges, including transporting a stolen aircraft, transporting a stolen firearm and flying a plane without a license.
Four of the charges are punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Flying a plane without a license carries a possible three-year sentence.
A January 18, 2011, trial date was scheduled.
Harris-Moore, 19, earned the nickname "the Barefoot Bandit" for an alleged multistate crime spree that authorities say involved stealing and crashing as many as five small planes, sometimes while not wearing shoes. Federal prosecutors have said he could be behind as many as 100 crimes, ranging from stealing cars and boats to burglarizing homes and committing online identity thefts.
Harris-Moore had been on the run since 2008, when he disappeared from a Washington-state halfway house after pleading guilty to three counts of burglary.
He was arrested in the Bahamas in July after allegedly piloting and crashing a stolen plane there. The plane went missing in Indiana, more than 1,000 miles away. His dramatic arrival in the Bahamas garnered international headlines and set off an island-hopping manhunt. Bahamian police arrested him after shooting out the engine of a boat he allegedly stole.
Despite his notoriety and social media sites dedicated to his alleged exploits, Harris-Moore kept a low profile in court Thursday. Wearing a khaki uniform with a bright orange undershirt, Harris-Moore, who is 6 feet 5 inches tall, sat hunched in a chair behind his attorney.
His eyes were fixed on the ground and three U.S. marshals stood in a circle around him for most of the five-minute long hearing.
Harris-Moore looked up and spoke only when responding to Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler, who asked him to say his name and his year of birth for the record. Defense attorney John Henry Browne entered the plea of not guilty for his client.
After the hearing, Browne described Harris-Moore as "shy and naïve. He's never done drugs or had a sip of alcohol."
The captured teen fugitive, Browne said, spends his incarceration reading mail sent to him from around the world and studying airplane design.
Despite reports of book and movie projects underway, Harris-Moore had no interest in profiting from his story, Browne said, unless proceeds could be used to compensate his alleged victims.
Browne said he was engaged in "productive" discussions with the U.S. attorney's office in Seattle to consolidate the federal and state charges, which could include as many nine states and several Washington-state jurisdictions.
Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney, said Thursday that the office does not discuss plea negotiations.
Some of the jurisdictions where Harris-Moore faces charges have already agreed to waive prosecuting him, Browne said, for a possible deal that would involve his client serving jail time and paying restitution. Browne would not identify the prosecutors in favor of the deal, but said he hoped an agreement could mean Harris-Moore might serve as little time as four years in prison.
"If everyone doesn't agree to consolidate then it will mean quite a bit of trials," Browne told reporters. "Then I'll bankrupt them," he said referring to counties that choose to prosecute Harris-Moore individually.
"What a blowhard," Island County prosecutor Greg Banks responded when told of Browne's comments to the media. "We haven't heard from him, maybe he doesn't think we have telephones here."
Island County includes Camano Island, where Harris-Moore grew up and faces at least a dozen charges for alleged identity thefts, burglaries and driving a stolen car. Banks said he believed that forensic testing could lead to more charges being filed soon.
Banks said he did not expect a trial would be particularly complicated or costly for the county to hold.
The prosecutor also said he doubted that the proposed federal deal to consolidate charges could be applied to the state level and that a separate agreement would have to be struck among the Washington-state counties where Harris-Moore faces charges.
"But the justice system is more than just about counting up years," Banks said. "He has to be held accountable for what he did here."
CNN's Patrick Oppman contributed to this report.We’ve Already Tried Letting Our Rail System Fail
Tony Albert Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 7, 2016
Newcomers to the Bay Area are often surprised to learn that, well before Richard Nixon cut the ribbon on our space-age BART network, we had a web of light rail that linked the East Bay to downtown San Francisco. A trip on the Key System from University Avenue in Berkeley to 2nd and Mission in San Francisco took around 25 minutes — comparable to a trip today on BART. Service throughout Oakland and surrounding cities had superior coverage to today’s BART network, directly connecting neighborhoods to San Francisco that now lack a reliable connection to our region’s economic core.
Key System Rail Map — Commuter lines appear as thick black lines connecting the East Bay to San Francisco, with local trolleys offering coverage throughout the East Bay.
At the time, the top deck of the Bay Bridge carried two directions of private car traffic, while the lower deck was restricted to buses, trucks, and electric rail. Unlike BART, the privately-owned system used a conventional rail gauge, which meant it could share its tracks with the Sacramento Northern Railway. This enabled direct passenger service from Downtown San Francisco to Sacramento and destinations as far afield as Chico, in addition to freight transport.
In the postwar era, the nation’s nascent love affair with the automobile rang the death bell of Los Angeles’s expansive Red Car system. It also spelled doom for the streetcars in Brooklyn, Chicago, and countless other American cities. Auto companies purchased faltering private rail networks and “modernized” them by converting them to bus service. Our region was no exception. Even in San Francisco proper, a city defined in no small part by its historic transport system, any streetcar line that did not make use of a special right-of-way was replaced by rubber-tired buses. The five lines that remained (The J, K, L, M, and N) all make use at some stage of a trolley right-of-way incompatible with bus service, and so were retained as a product of necessity.
At the time this was seen as the steady march of progress. Streetcars were perceived as antiquated and inferior to bus lines, which were more adaptable and easy to roll out. In 1958, the Key System suspended rail service in favor of a bus system and the tracks were removed from the bridge. Two years later, the floundering bus system was purchased by Alameda County and made public, taking on the name Alameda County Transit (or AC Transit for short.)
It didn’t take long before the lack of trans-bay rail service raised cries for an alternative to bridge traffic. After another twelve years and almost 10 billion (2016) dollars, BART made its first trip under the Bay.
Had Alameda County simply purchased the Key System a few years earlier, we may have been able to preserve, upgrade, and modernize a rail network that was already present instead of starting from scratch, for a fraction of the cost.
Key System Transbay Rail Car
Today, we’re faced with a familiar dilemma. Voters will be asked to approve a $3.5 billion bond measure to ensure the continued vitality of our BART system. These improvements, primarily replacing extremely outdated and worn physical infrastructure, will ensure that the system remains reliable. They will allow BART to transport hundreds of thousands of new commuters through meaningful capacity increases. New train control technology will allow trains to run closer together, increasing headways and passenger throughput. Modernized computers will significantly reduce the likelihood of major delays due to software failure. Replacements for physical infrastructure will increase the useful life of the rails, some of which have not been replaced even once in the 44 years the system has been operating. Without these improvements, we are faced with an inevitable decline, and potentially even total failure, of the system that serves as the backbone of Bay Area transportation.
Housing and transportation are inherently intertwined. Our housing crisis exists because there are not enough places to live within commuting distance of good jobs. If we allow the backbone of our transit system to fall apart, we’ll make that problem even worse. BART carries hundreds of thousands of people across the Bay every day. We’ve seen what happens when it fails — the result is mayhem. If its failure were made permanent, the result would be an effective contraction of housing supply for San Francisco. Housing prices would skyrocket faster than they already have.
If not for the Key System and similar railways, the East Bay would not have become a viable home for San Francisco commuters in the first place. Letting it rot away was an insanely expensive mistake. In no small part because of BART, Oakland, Berkeley, and the greater East Bay have provided overflow for San Francisco’s constrained housing market. Their extra supply has facilitated tremendous job growth throughout the region, but only because of the transit that connects far flung jobs with the East Bay’s supply of housing.Amtrak is proposing a $7 billion transformation of Union Station, intended to triple passenger capacity and transform the overcrowded station into a high-speed rail hub for the Northeast.
The plan, to be unveiled Wednesday afternoon, calls for doubling the number of trains the station can accommodate and improving the passenger experience at what is the second-busiest Amtrak station in the country, with 100,000 passenger trips per day.
The building’s corridors, concourses and platforms — many dating to the station’s 1907 opening — are regularly jammed during rush hour and major tourist events. The station’s overcrowded tracks hinder Amtrak and regional train operators from adding new trains despite growing demand.
But what the proposal lacks is a vision for financing the plan, which even in stages probably would require huge government funding commitments.
Joseph H. Boardman, Amtrak president and chief executive, said in an interview that the rail line is reimagining what it will take to make rail a vital, viable part of the region’s transportation infrastructure.
Redevelopment plans for Union Station (Gene Thorp/Shalom Baranes Associates)
“The problem that we have is that we’ve got a lack of balance and investment in a mode that moves a lot of people, that is an environmentally responsible mode, and that changes the way that people are going to be able to travel in the future with the technology that is available today,” Boardman said.
Much of Union Station’s expansion would come below ground, where Amtrak plans to add new platforms, tracks and shopping, all of which would enjoy natural light from a 50-foot-wide, 100-foot-long glass-encased main concourse.
Six tracks dedicated to high-speed rail would be added. The high-speed lines could mean travel times as short as 94 minutes to New York City’s Penn Station by 2030 — that’s 66 minutes faster than today’s Acela trains.
District-based developer Akridge also plans a $1.5 billion complex of offices, residential towers and a hotel. The development, to be constructed on a deck built over the tracks behind Union Station, would link Capitol Hill to the NoMa neighborhood.
Dubbed Burnham Place after Union Station architect Daniel Burnham, the 3-million-square-foot project would include a rebuilt H Street bridge and an expanded street grid that would welcome pedestrians to a large new northern entrance to the station. Pedestrian access would be added on all sides of Union Station.
Akridge paid $10 million in 2006 for the right to build above the tracks. “We are now finally getting to see the potential for what Union Station should be,” said Matthew J. Klein, Akridge president.
The agency’s pitch for funding arrives during a period of sharp political disagreement over transportation investment, and Amtrak and its partners have said little about how to raise the $6.5 billion to $7.5 billion it estimates the upgrades would cost.
The federal budget for all surface transportation in recent years has been about $54 billion. As revenues from the long-time transportation funding source — the federal gas tax — have dwindled, some House Republicans have said the money should be devoted primarily to building and maintaining highways and bridges. A long-term transportation bill proposed in the House this year died after urban Republicans broke ranks in opposition to a plan to cut transit out of gas tax revenues.
Boardman said the plan’s intention was to set a course for the station, and that funding discussions would begin once stakeholders agree on its principles.
“If you don’t have a vision for the future, they’re not going to give you the dollars to develop that view of the future,” he said.
Art Guzzetti, vice president of policy and research at the American Public Transportation Association, said the station’s many users may be asked to help foot the cost.
“Certainly you have a lot of people using that station. The rail lines use that station, people use that station, people shop at that station, real estate is around that station. You have a private sector who uses that market there. So I would say you use all of those people. Union Station is an economic generator — how do you turn an economic generator into a revenue raiser?”
District Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), said she expects to be the plan’s biggest advocate on the Hill. “There’s nothing I can do without being able to say look at where they want to go and this amount of money will get them there efficiently,” she said.
In advance of Amtrak’s expected unveiling of its vision Wednesday, local leaders praised the plan for demonstrating how high-speed rail would come to Washington and for addressing some of passengers’ most frequent complaints about Union Station.
The first phase of the overhaul would take place between 2013 and 2017 and cost $200 million to $300 million. It would include replacement of Concourse A, where passengers are often left waiting in winding lines before entering the track, while shoppers and other travelers struggle to pass.
“It is a state-of-the-art design that they are bringing in,” said Victor Hoskins, D.C. deputy mayor for planning and economic development. “It’s going to allow for light and air and flow in the train station like never before.”
John Porcari, U.S. deputy secretary of transportation, said Amtrak had put forth “a strong, clearly articulated vision for the whole Northeast corridor and the Union Station part of it is an integral element of it.”
Former District mayor Anthony Williams, in his new role as chief executive of the Federal City Council, said, ”I’m very impressed with it. I think it’s the vision that the city needs for the next generation of transportation improvements.”Dmidecode is a long standing, effective tool for reading manufacturer info from the SMBIOS tables present on most modern x86 based systems. It’s been available for many years on most Unix like operating systems and has also been ported to Windows. Until now, it had never made the leap to OS X.
From the dmidecode website:
Dmidecode reports information about your system’s hardware as described in your system BIOS according to the SMBIOS/DMI standard. This information typically includes system manufacturer, model name, serial number, BIOS version, asset tag as well as a lot of other details of varying level of interest and |
. This is therefore an important and interesting finding for follow-up with multiple age groups and/or additional tasks to further clarify the nature of the FRN effects found in the present study.
Unlike the FRN, we observed that the PSW was larger for good prizes than bad prizes at the right central parietal scalp sites. Groen et al. [16] reported a similar late positivity in 10–12-year-olds, which was larger for negative than positive feedback. In many adult studies of affective pictures, a PSW in the 500–900 ms window has been found to be larger for affectively valenced (pleasant/unpleasant) than neutral pictures, suggesting it is related to emotional arousal [34]. More recently, Hajcak and Dennis [35] in their study of 5- to 8-year-old children also reported late positive potentials at occipital-parietal recording sites which increased following pleasant/unpleasant pictures compared to neutral pictures. Cuthbert et al. [36] further found that the PSW was enhanced for pictures that were more emotionally intense. In our study, the PSW was larger for good prizes than bad prizes, suggesting children may have experienced stronger emotions when the feedback was a good prize than the negative emotions they experienced when the feedback was a bad prize, since either way they are “gaining” rather than “losing” something even though they would not have been expected to like the bad prizes (Cole, 1986).
In addition, the PSW showed scalp asymmetries in our study, and this is in line with some adult studies with affectively valenced pictures [37]. These results would lead further support to the right-hemisphere hypothesis which proposes that the right hemisphere is specialized for the perception, expression, and experience of emotion [38]. However, further research with imaging technologies that afford more precise source localization capabilities such as functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) or fMRI would need to confirm the evidence for this hypothesis from a developmental point of view.
Finally, we found that the P1 amplitude over the occipital sites was larger and latency shorter for good prizes than bad prizes. The P1 is sensitive to physical stimulus parameters and reflects early visual processing and attentional manipulations [39]. We may have inadvertently caused this if the good prizes in our study were more attention-grabbing or perceptually salient, compared to bad prizes. In fact, the good prizes that the children usually selected (e.g., tambourines) were more colorful and visually complex than the bad prizes (e.g., a black bottle cap).
However, it is also possible that the P1 observed in our study is more relevant to affective responses elicited by the receipt of a “bad” vs. a “good” prize. In studies with affective pictures, the P1 has been found to be related to affective valence [34]. It thus may also be argued that the P1 in the present study might reflect early emotional processing of stimulus valence, since negative and positive emotions may be elicited when children see the feedback from having guessed a “bad” vs. a “good” prize, respectively. This interpretation is consistent with two recent studies in which pleasant pictures evoked a larger P1, compared to unpleasant or neutral pictures [40], [41]. However, other studies reported a larger P1 for unpleasant pictures than pleasant and neutral pictures [34]. These findings suggest that the P1 valence effect might be evoked by increased attention to salient image content, such as a threat (e.g., a spider) in most studies of affective pictures. In our study, the “good” prizes might have similarly evoked such a P1 response simply because of their bright and attractive colors. Nonetheless, as with the PSW findings, future studies will need to control both visual complexity and affective valence to disentangle these hypotheses.
Overall, our study suggests that preschoolers' brains appear to be more responsive to positive feedback than to negative feedback, as reflected in increased brain electrical activity (i.e., greater P1 and PSW) to positive feedback. Positive feedback has been found to increase intrinsic motivation [42], [43]. The intense focus on positive feedback that is often present in the preschool and early school years might enhance motivation for learning, which has adaptive significance for both cognitive and emotional development during this period [44], [45]. Our results are also consistent with a right-hemispheric dominance of emotion processing in young children [46], [47]. In addition, we created a child-friendly task appropriate for neuroimaging research in which a discrete and briefly experienced positive or negative emotion can be induced. Tasks have been designed to examine the neural basis of specific aspects of emotional processing such as viewing pictures of angry or happy faces [48]. However, these studies are more focused on children's recognition of emotional expressions. The task we designed in the present study allows us to investigate children's emotional experiences and their subsequent brain and behavioral regulation of these experiences. Further research on how the brain matures in its processing of emotional experiences is clearly needed and a clear limitation of the present study is that we had only one age group of children performing our task. Nonetheless, the present study offers both a method and a window of understanding for how preschoolers experience emotions and how their brains respond to both positive and negative feedback.40 CONDIVISIONI Condividi Tweet Whatsapp Telegram
Vincenzo Montella dice stop al turnover. Visto il deludente rendimento evidenziato dalle seconde linee e dai nuovi acquisti, a partire dalla gara di domenica, il tecnico rossonero, per lo meno fino alla gara contro la Roma, programmata per lunedì dodici dicembre, si affiderà in toto, cause di forza maggiore permettendo, agli uomini che gli hanno permesso di collezionare diciannove punti in dieci partite.
E’ questo quanto riportato dall’edizione odierna di Tuttosport, che sottolinea come, in questo avvio di campionato, quando Montella ha modificato più di due undicesimi della formazione titolare, il Milan sia andato in netta difficoltà e abbia collezionato risultati negativi.
Sempre secondo il quotidiano torinese, da qui alla sosta natalizia, l’unica gara in cui l’ex Aeroplanino possa sconvolgere lo schieramento di base è costituita dalla sfida di sabato diciassette dicembre, contro l’Atalanta. Il tutto per fare rifiatare i titolari in vista della finale di Supercoppa Italiana, di scena a Doha, contro la Juventus, venerdì ventitré dicembre.Church leaders risk potential jail time by offering sanctuary to asylum seekers
Updated
Church leaders offering sanctuary to asylum seekers who face being sent to offshore detention could be risking 10 years' jail, an academic working in migration law says.
Key points: Church leaders are offering sanctuary to asylum seekers facing offshore detention
Providing sanctuary is a historical concept for churches
Legal risks are involved for harbouring "an unlawful non-citizen, a removee or a deportee."
Penalty is imprisonment of 10 years, fine of $180,000, or both
Immigration Minister Dutton says churches are not above the law
Anglican Dean of Brisbane, the Reverend Dr Peter Catt, said he was opening up St John's Cathedral in Brisbane to some of the 267 asylum seekers who are in fear of being returned to Nauru or Manus Island.
The Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce said offers of help were coming from across Australia.
There were also questions about how much legal protection asylum seekers would have by sheltering in a church.
Marianne Dickie, a senior academic at ANU working in the migration law program, said that there was a section within the Migration Act that made it an offence to harbour a person deemed an unlawful non-citizen, a removee or a deportee.
"So [the penalty for] that offence is imprisonment of 10 years or fine of $180,000 or both," she said.
"But for us the problem arises with the term unlawful non-citizen, removee or deportee in determining what status the people that the church is saying that they'll look after, hold at that present time."
Misha Coleman, from the Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce, said the logistics of getting asylum seekers to the churches was difficult.
"To effectively provide sanctuary or to provide protection from harm you need to do that very quietly," Ms Coleman said.
"So it was a big decision for us to announce this publicly, but we wanted people to know that we are there for them."
Asylum seekers at risk of deportation'seeking desperate measures'
Ms Coleman said the number of refugees who were in a position to even access the churches' offer of help is small.
She said there were 15 families living in the community across the four states that they were aware of, and they would be the people who could most easily enter one of the churches offering sanctuary.
"Those families that we're talking to, we're counselling them to get some really very in-depth advice from their own legal representatives about what the implications for them and their case and their application for a protection visa ultimately would be," Ms Coleman said.
She said she was unable to elaborate on how well those 15 families had been coping.
"I can say that people knew that the High Court case wasn't going to be something that would protect them," she said.
"Seventy-two hours' notice will be given, hopefully, of deportation to an offshore facility.
"So now that that prospect is really live... people are absolutely in shock, devastated, and can I say, seeking desperate measures."
Providing sanctuary is a historical concept, but the legal risks involved for church members to offer it were real.
The Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce said they are hopeful the legal risks will not be put to the test.
However, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton told 2GB radio that churches were not above the law.
"Churches provide lots of assistance to refugees and they feel very strongly about this issue," he said.
"In the end, people have to abide by Australian law, regardless of who they are."
Topics: refugees, anglicans, federal-government, australia
First posted(Photo by telegraph.co.uk)
Wales kickoff what is a vital Autumn International schedule against Australia this weekend which also includes fixtures against Fiji, New Zealand and South Africa.
Wales’s recent record against the three Southern Hemisphere Giants has been lamentable, with 20 straight defeats since their last victory, a 21-18 win over Australia in 2008. This is astonishing considering Wales have been consistently successful in this time period with a Grand Slam, two Six Nations Championships and reaching a World Cup Semi-Final.
Their opponents on Saturday, Australia, have won the last 9 meetings between the two Nations with many being decided in the last minute and the last four victories being decided by a combined total of just 9 points, highlighting the competitiveness of the Welsh team. One then has to ask why aren’t Wales converting these close Test matches into victories?
In June this year Wales found themselves 30-17 to the good against South Africa, with a first ever win over the Springboks on South African soil well within their grasp. History was not to be made however as two late tries, with a score in the last minute, breaking Welsh hearts once more. An all too familiar occurrence for both fans and players alike.
This has led to many questioning the psyche of the Welsh team during these high pressure moments in the tight games. The squad and coaching staff play down these suggestions but it is highly likely that all these narrow defeats against Australia and others have left significant emotional scars; scars that can be quickly reopened in similar situations, sabotaging the mind when a clear mind is needed most.
Same Old Story as Kurtley Beale seals last minute win for Australia in 2012
(Photo by independent.co.uk)
That is why it is vital for Wales to get that elusive victory over their Aussie Nemesis to install a winning belief in the squad when they face the big three, gaining more importance considering Wales face Australia in their pool during next year’s World Cup.
Victories over France, England and Ireland have become more common in the Six Nations during the last 10 seasons as the Welsh team have developed a stronger mindset, trusting themselves more and fearing the opposition less. This has produced moments of breathtaking rugby which teams in the North have failed to cope with at times.
The 30-3 victory over England to win the 2013 Six Nations Championship and the 27-6 victory over France in this year’s Six Nations have arguably been Wales’s finest performances in the tournament and highlight what damage they can do when they put on a complete performance, both physically and mentally.
However, when Australia, New Zealand and South Africa come to town old anxieties seem to rise to the surface deflating confidence as Wales revert back to the small team, honourable loser type mentality they had for much of the 90s and early 2000s. This conscious and sub-conscious over-respect they have for the Southern Hemisphere becomes a vice around their necks, as during key moments you can sense Wales expect and accept the game to move away from them.
Without a win against the All Blacks since 1953, only one win in their history against the Springboks and 9 straight defeats against the Wallabies doesn’t exactly strike fear into the SANZAR Nations.
And that is the double-edged sword. Not only have Wales got to battle their own inner demons and mental scars, but they are facing the three best teams in the world who have absolutely no fear in facing them and who fully expect to win every time they meet.
With the World Cup now less than 12 months away, another Autumn Series without a win against the big three would be a huge blow to the Wales squad. A defeat to a dangerous Fiji outfit would be a disaster.
Wales’ Autumn fixtures:-
Saturday, 8 November
Wales v Australia (Millennium Stadium, 14:30 GMT)
Saturday, 15 November
Wales v Fiji (Millennium Stadium, 14:30 GMT)
Saturday, 22 November
Wales v New Zealand (Millennium Stadium, 17:30 GMT)
Saturday, 29 November
Wales v South Africa (Millennium Stadium, 14:30 GMT)OXFORD, Miss. -- Mississippi guard Marshall Henderson does not have the green light to take a 3-point shot. He has no light.
"I heard some guy behind me in the front row telling me to shoot it," said Henderson, who scored 29 points on eight 3-point shots in Saturday's 91-88 win over Missouri. "That's all I need to hear."
The Rebels (16-7, 7-3 Southeastern Conference) needed everything Henderson provided -- 10 of 18 from the field, 8 of 15 from 3-point range and five assists -- to record what Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy admitted, "a game we absolutely had to have. Marshall hits big shots."
Ole Miss enhanced their hopes for an NCAA Tournament bid with the win, with home dates remaining against Kentucky and Florida. The Rebels are 27-10 with a.729 winning percentage in SEC play since 2012, trailing only Florida for the league's best mark.
The Rebels remained alone in third place in the league standings and won for the third time in four meetings with Missouri (16-7, 4-6) over the past two seasons. The past two wins for the Rebels were turned on the game's final possession.
"Huge. Just huge. It's the only time we play them (Missouri) during the regular season," Henderson said. "They're a quality club with a high RPI and we needed it. I was able to get some good looks, but we had big games from everybody today."
Jarvis Summers and LaDarius White had 16 points apiece, while Anthony Perez added 11. The Rebels won the rebounding battle, 44-43, including game-high performances of 11 and 10 rebounds from Aaron Jones and Sebastian Saiz, respectively.
Despite trailing by as many as 17 points in the first half and 50-35 at halftime, Missouri put on a furious second half rally. Earnest Ross led the Tigers with 24 points, six rebounds and four assists and missed a 28-foot shot at the buzzer that could have forced overtime.
Ross was complemented by Jordan Clarkson with 23 points, Jabari Brown with 20 and Ryan Rossburg with 11, all in the second half.
"I thought the difference was our post players didn't compete well in the first half and their press bothered us," Missouri coach Frank Haith said.
"In the second half, we took better care of the basketball and our effort was there."
The Tigers pulled within two points on four occasions, but Henderson responded three times with a 3-point shot or an assist. Missouri's made another late surge to get within 79-78 on a 3-point shot by Brown with 3:18 left.
Ole Miss outscored Missouri 6-0 in the following minute, all by Summers, and built a seemingly insurmountable 91-83 lead with 19 seconds remaining. Missouri scrambled within 91-88 and forced a turnover with 0.9 remaining, setting up a final opportunity for Ross.
"There were times I felt like we were just blowing them out by the way we were shooting," Henderson said. "Then you'd look up and they were right there. Every game comes down to the wire for us. We embrace hard. We know it's going to be that way."
The loss was the third straight for the Tigers, who have lost consecutively to the top three SEC teams -- Kentucky, Florida and Ole Miss. Despite the loss, Missouri remains a factor in the title chase with five of the next seven games at home.
Ole Miss shot 50 percent (29 of 58) from the field and 48.3 percent (14 of 29) from 3-point range. Missouri shot 47.5 percent (28 of 59) from the field and hit 11 3-point shots, led by Ross with five.Do you sit down and practice your instrument, or do you just play it? Growing up, I don’t know if I knew that there was much of a difference. Practicing just meant that I was making music, or at least sound, on my instrument. Somehow I would get better. Right?
Both practicing and playing music have their place, but if you want to get better quickly, practicing is where you should spend most of your time.
What Does it Mean to Play?
Playing is fun. Playing is sitting down with your instrument and playing, often large sections of music, for fun. The piece doesn’t necessarily have to be learned very well, just the fact that you are playing from the beginning to the end, or in large sections, makes it playing and not practicing.
When you are making music, do you enjoy it? If you enjoy it, that’s a good indication that you are not actually practicing. I’m not saying that all practice is horrible. Some musicians love to practice. I don’t know that I’m really one of those. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it. I love to play. Most musicians that I’ve known are the same way. Practice is hard work. Playing is fun.
Testing vs Playing
An important distinction between testing and playing needs to be made. When you’re practicing a piece of music, it’s very important to know is where you need to practice. What measures, beats, movements, or sections are giving you the most trouble? Sometimes it’s important to play through certain parts of a piece, or the entire piece, to find where you’re having difficulties.
This is playing with a purpose. I call it “testing”. Testing will often include playing large sections of music as if you were performing. When a mistake is made, most musicians will make a mental note and move on.
After the testing phase, practicing musicians can go directly to the parts of the piece that need the most work and practice those specifically.
Mental notes are fine, but a better way to use testing to its full potential is to stop when a mistake is made. Keep reading, I’m not suggesting you always stop at a mistake. This can cause issues with performance. There are good ways to stop and bad ways. Hold that thought. I’ll come back to it.
During a long piece there may be many sections that need help. If you choose to only make a mental note of all of these sections, it’s very likely that you will forget which sections need the most work.
Stopping to Work on Mistakes Immediately
When you stop when you make a mistake you can work on the section that is causing you difficulties over and over again immediately. Once you feel the section is better, you can continue testing the rest of the piece.
Many musicians practice this way, but there are two problems to this approach.
The first problem is that you may end up stopping in a performance just like you did in practice every time you make a mistake. This isn’t an issue when you’re practicing, but stopping while performing is just about the worst thing you can do.
The second problem is the requirement to frequently test. Playing, testing included, is not the best way to improve. Testing is just a way to find mistakes. If you don’t write down where your trouble areas are, you’ll need to run an (unproductive) test every time you sit down at your instrument in order to find where you need to work for the day.
Marking the Mistakes
Don’t practice the mistake right when you stop. Mark it in your music instead. Be as specific as possible. Is it just a couple of notes that are giving you a problem? Make some mark on your music (with pencil) that you can recognize when you come back to the piece. You won’t need to test to find where the problem areas are the next day because you already marked them in your music. After a few days of practicing you can test just that specific area to see if it got any better.
If you played it correctly in the test, you can erase whatever mark you made on your music. This way you’ll only have this specific mark on sections that you know still need work. This will limit the need to constantly test large portions of music.
Performing vs Playing
Another important distinction that needs to be made is playing is not the same as performing. There is one key difference, an audience. Having an audience present makes performing inherently different than just playing for yourself. All students can learn a lot from performing.
Before a performance you should actually practice performing. Practicing performing doesn’t mean you can just play your piece over and over again. You want to create the actual performance situation as much as possible.
If you were just playing for fun, you could stop and pick up your phone or get up and get a drink in the middle of your playing. When you practice performing, you can’t stop. Recording yourself is also a good way to make your playing seem more like a performance.
Playing Helps You Improve at First
Playing is fun, so most people tend to only play when they start to learn an instrument. This isn’t the only reason most people avoid practicing though.
When you are just starting out, you can learn and get better by just playing. Eventually you’ll hit a plateau, though, and you’ll only get better by deliberate practice.
Everyday Comparisons
When is the last time you practiced your handwriting? Is your handwriting as fast and as neat as it could possibly be? Probably not. Is your handwriting steadily improving every time you write? Mine isn’t. Actually, mine might actually be getting worse. You can ask my wife. If I actually practiced it, I’m sure I could make it much better.
Now think about driving. How often do you go out driving? Probably every day right? Are you becoming an incredible driver? Could you go drive in a Nascar race? You may have quite a few hours under your belt.
Your driving isn’t getting any better, your handwriting isn’t getting any better, and they never will unless you actually practice them. Doing is not enough.
What Does it Mean to Practice?
You are practicing when you are actually working on improving a piece of music. Good playing isn’t possible without good practice.
Practicing your instrument is like a difficult workout for your mind. You should be mentally fatigued after practicing correctly.
Practice vs Deliberate Practice
You may think you’re practicing when you’re repeating the same section of music, or technical exercise over and over again. It doesn’t seem anything like playing, it’s not fun, and you’re working on just a specific part of music that you can’t currently play. Technically, yes you’re practicing. There is a big difference between practicing and deliberately practicing though.
Deliberate Practice
There has been a lot of research done recently that show that experts become experts because of deliberate practice, not because they have some innate “talent”. There are four main parts of deliberate practice.
1. Motivation
I have absolutely no motivation to improve my handwriting. Therefore, I will never improve it. If I suddenly got a job that made me write a lot (are there any of these anymore?) I may have some motivation to improve my handwriting.
If you just want to play music for the heck of it, and you don’t care about improving, then just play and have fun! There’s nothing wrong with that, you just won’t improve much.
2. Understand What You’re Practicing
If you’ve never read piano music before, and someone put Rachmaninoff’s 3rd piano concerto in front of you, there’s not much you can do with that. I’m not saying you can’t work on music that is beyond your level, that can actually be helpful. You have to understand it first though. If you were to practice a piece far above your level, you would need to work on making sense of it before any meaningful practice can be done.
3. Immediate Feedback
This is what separates the good practicers from those that just fiddle around. Ideally, you would have a teacher next to you correcting your mistakes and giving feedback every time you sit down with your instrument. This is not very practical, though, so you have to be your own teacher.
Every time you make any repetition, you need to analyze how it felt and sounded, and what you need to change about your next repetition to do it better. Playing through repetitions mindlessly doesn’t help, but it can also cause you to form bad habits because you are not constantly analyzing your performance for mistakes.
4. Repetition
The final piece of the deliberate practice recipe is repetition. You must repeat the small part that you are working on, a lot. It’s important to not over practice a section in one sitting though. Most of your progress will happen when you sleep on it. It’s better to practice many small sections each with a handful of repetitions, than it is to practice one section hundreds of times in one sitting.
Work on Difficult Sections
When you play music, you’re often working through music you already know. When you’re practicing, you’re only working on music that you do not know.
Most students will begin a “practice” session by playing. The student might then try to focus on working on a section that is difficult in the music only to get mentally exhausted and then they go right back to playing. The net result of all this playing is a lot of wasted time.
Whenever I put time aside to practice, I make a commitment with myself that I won’t play at all. If I do “play”, it’s just for testing.
Is It Bad to Play?
No! We practice so we can play. I play a lot. Some people watch a lot of TV, I like playing the piano (ok, ok I watch a little TV too). I realize, though, that I’m playing for enjoyment. If my only goal was to get better, I would only practice deliberately every time I sat at my instrument. I find this unreasonable, though, and I think if everybody only practiced, you would have a lot of burned out musicians.
A Word About Improvisation and Sight Reading
The line between practicing and playing is blurred a little when it comes to both improvisation and sight reading. There are many parts to learning how to improvise and sight read that you can sit down and practice in the same way as you would a classical piece of written music. In addition to this kind of practice, you also just need to do it often.
When it comes to improvising and sight reading, playing is a form of practice.
Conclusion
What do you spend most of your time doing? Is practicing your thing, or do you just play? Do you want to practice? I don’t want to practice, but I do it because I have a deep desire to be better than I am now.
Let us know about your experience with both in the comments.STOW, Ohio -- The suspended publisher of Crain's Cleveland Business was sentenced Tuesday to 30 days of house arrest for exposing himself to a newspaper deliverywoman.
John Campanelli, 46, blinked away tears before Stow Municipal Court Judge Kim Hoover sentenced him and ordered he pay a $250 fine.
"I apologize to the victim, the court, my colleagues," Campanelli said. "I'm sorry. I'm ashamed this happened. I've been working for the last three months with two of the best doctors in Northeast Ohio to make sure this doesn't happen again."
Campenelli pleaded guilty Jan. 12 to a fourth-degree misdemeanor charge of public indecency.
The case stems from a Nov. 7 incident outside Campanelli's Glen Echo Drive home. Campanelli exposed his genitals to an Akron Beacon Journal deliverywoman through his flannel pajama pants.
The woman reported the incident but did not want to pursue charges. The woman later changed her mind about pressing charges after accusations surfaced about another incident involving Campanelli at an Aurora hotel.
Campanelli on Nov. 16 exposed himself three times to a 23-year-old employee of the Aurora Inn Hotel and Event Center hotel. He pleaded guilty Jan. 25 to disorderly conduct and was fined $250 in that case.
Campanelli was the publisher of Crain's Cleveland Business since December 2013. Prior to that, he worked for The Plain Dealer for 13 years as an editor and reporter.
Campanelli was suspended from Crain's Cleveland Business after the allegations surfaced. He posted an apology to Twitter and Facebook the same morning.
"My hope is that I can someday turn this embarrassment into a positive and work to help others come out of the darkness of childhood trauma," he wrote.
Camanelli told the judge that he began seeing a therapist in August 2013 in order to deal with the issues related to his childhood abuse. However, he told the judge that he stopped going to therapy about a year ago because he thought he reached a point he no longer needed it.
He said that he never told his therapist about his urges to expose himself in public.
"I was ashamed," he said. "That is one of the long-term affects of being abused. I need to forgive myself and do better."
Hoover said he was bothered by two things: that Campanelli "couched" his statement to a probation officer that his shirt rose when he reached for the paper and that he was in a position of power over the deliverywoman.
"She can't take a leave from Crain's," Hoover said. "She still has to get up and go to work, probably for little pay. The difference in power is what concerns me."
Campanelli said that he never meant the statement to sound like it was an accident.
"It was no accident," Campanelli said. "I did it intentionally."
Defense attorney Erol Caan said Campanelli never hid from the charges in Aurora or Hudson. He admitted both incidents to police and pleaded guilty to the charges in court. Caan also pointed out that two psychologists found Campanelli had a low risk of recidivism.
Hoover said media coverage of the case caused Campenelli, his wife and children to suffer more than the average person convicted of a fourth-degree misdemeanor. Campanelli declined further comment after the hearing.
"It seems like you are a fine and decent man," Hoover said. "Hopefully this exposed your demons so it doesn't happen again."Photo by Elizabeth Earl/Peninsula Clarion Eric Derleth, a Soldotna lawyer and partner in Red Run Cannabis Company, emphasized Thursday night that the cannabis industry has to be incredibly responsible because there will be scrutiny.
Armored vans, private computer servers for security video, multiple accountants and dealing strictly in cash may be some maneuvers for marijuana businesses trying to operate legally.
Although the business has been legalized, the regulations finalized and license applications opened, many particulars of how businesses will operate day-to-day remain up in the air. The dissonance between federal and state laws on the legality of marijuana may force entrepreneurs to take some creative work-arounds to run a business.
For instance, marijuana business owners are subject to taxes, but they cannot pay them online. They will have to drive to Anchorage often to pay their taxes directly to the IRS in cash, but who wants to drive to Anchorage often with thousands of dollars in cash in their plain truck?
Thus, the idea for the armored van came forward. At a combined town hall meeting and cannabis “job fair” event held Thursday at Kenai’s Challenger Center, Red Run Cannabis Company co-founder Eric Derleth explained the idea to the 100-plus attendees.
“To make this a successful industry, we’re all going to have to work together,” Derleth said.
Derleth walked through the regulations with the crowd, repeatedly saying that he was both surprised and pleased with the turnout. Copies of the handouts were rare, and participants knotted around tables to peer over the packets and the “Employee Applications” that were available as a template for any marijuana business seeking employees.
License applications opened for marijuana businesses on Feb. 24. Several in the room said they have already applied or are planning to do so. Derleth walked through the basics of an application, saying it was not as hard to finish as some might expect, but the particulars may be difficult.
One obstacle may be the tax code. Marijuana businesses are weighed down by part of the tax code called Section 280E, which prohibits any business trafficking in an illegal substance from deducting its expenses, such as salaries and utilities.
On top of that, to sell any marijuana product, every cultivator has to have his or her product tested and approved by a state-licensed testing facility. Derleth said he had not yet heard any plans for a testing facility to come to the Kenai Peninsula, which would mean all cultivators would have to transport the product up to Anchorage or the Mat-Su Valley for testing.
Finding an accountant to process taxes and help with business financials could be tricky. Contracting an alarm company to set up the required security may not be possible yet because some companies may not want to take the risk of ensuring the security of a business that is selling a federally illegal product.
In addition to the alarms, all cannabis establishments have to keep high-definition security cameras running essentially all the time and store them for a minimum for 40 days, which would total a massive amount of computer storage space. With Internet service in Alaska being as limited as it is, Derleth suggested cannabis entrepreneurs purchase their own servers to store the required video footage.
“For those of you who think you’re just going to upload it to the cloud, you are not going to be able to upload ten cameras running in HD up into a cloud,” Derleth said. “You’re going to have to store it on-site, and then you’re going to have to lock all that down … it just goes on and on.”
Every employee and business owner will be required to have a marijuana handling license. The final requirements for the certification are expected to be complete by April 28, and then all interested parties will have to obtain a Marijuana Handler Certification from a state-accredited teacher.
Dollynda Phelps, a Nikiski resident who plans to operate a cultivating facility, said she has submitted curriculum material to the state and plans to teach classes for handler certification on the peninsula. The fee for the course has yet to be determined, but the fee for the card is $50.
Many of the attendees were simply “curious.” Others came to learn more about the particulars of a type of marijuana license, and still others came to hawk wares for an associated industry, such as glassware or fingerprinting for background checks.
Stonewall Dean, a glassblower in Kenai, handed out grab bags with his resume, business information and a hand-blown glass pipe to boot.
“Ideally, I’d like to see a glasswork revolution in Alaska,” Dean said. “Eugene, Oregon has kind of been the center of that.”
Sierra Glonek, a Kenai resident, said she was interested in working in the retail side of the business. Legitimizing the industry and making people more comfortable with the idea of cannabis, particularly its medical uses, is attractive to her, she said. The way cannabis entrepreneurs portray themselves will be important for the future of the industry, she said.
“People are expecting to see Cheech and Chong,” Glonek said. “How (the business) is presented definitely makes a difference.”
Throughout the presentation, Derleth repeated a hard-and-fast point: responsibility.
“You’ve got to be ultra-responsible and realize everybody’s watching us,” Derleth said to the crowd. “In 46 other states, they still put people in cages for this. We take that very seriously. We owe it to all of them to get it legalized in other parts of the U.S.”
Reach Elizabeth Earl at elizabeth.earl@peninsulaclarion.com.(Updated: 6:06 p.m.) For some fans at the Towson Center Arena on Saturday, the fact that there was a basketball game going on may not have been the first thing on their minds.
What the fans got in men's basketball home opener against Oregon State included many big names, including President Barack Obama and family, actor Bill Murray, Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, former Congressman Tom McMillen and San Antonio Spurs star (and former Tiger) Gary Neal.
The dignitaries were among a crowd of 3,119 who watched the Tigers (0-5) fall to the Oregon State Beavers (5-1), 66-46.
The Obamas were on hand to cheer on the Beavers and coach Craig Robinson, First Lady Michelle Obama's brother. The president and first lady sat courtside, while daughters Sasha and Malia sat nearby.
Murray was there to watch the home debut of his son, Luke, a Towson assistant coach. He occasionally posed for photos with fans in the stands.
At one point, Murray walked over to meet the president (The Baltimore Sun has video). Obama also posed for a photo with the Towson University football team following a halftime presentation of their
Security was tight at the Towson Center as fans were required to pass through metal detectors and Secret Service |
immigrants and refugees — differentiate Trump supporters from other Republicans. The numbers also show how linked those issues are for Republican voters this year and how they entwine with voters' preference for an outsider candidate who will bring change to Washington. (For polling wonks, see a note below on sample size and statistical significance).
Nearly half of GOP-leaning respondents in the poll — 47 percent — both support the deportation of undocumented immigrants and oppose accepting refugees from Syria and other Mideast conflicts. If a GOP-leaning voter supports deportation, there is a 79 percent chance she or he also opposes Syrian refugees, compared with 54 percent if they oppose deportation.
Trump has captured the support of 51 percent of those overlapping voters, compared with 16 percent among all other Republican voters. Put another way, pro-deportation/anti-refugee voters account for almost three-quarters of Trump's support. (He's polling at 32 percent overall in the Post-ABC poll.)
Perhaps as important for Trump, his two leading rivals from the so-called establishment wing of the party fare quite poorly with the anti-immigration/refugee group — which, again, appears to comprise nearly half the GOP electorate. Jeb Bush polls at 6 percent with that group. Marco Rubio polls at 5 percent. Ben Carson polls at 19 percent; if Trump could woo all those Carson voters his way, he'd be within shouting difference of an outright majority in the primary field.
Anti-immigrant/refugee voters cross traditional Republican constituencies — 32 percent identify as "very conservative," but 39 percent say they are moderate or liberal (similar to other Republicans). Just over one-third are white born-again Protestants, identical to the share other Republicans. They differ in their level of education — 48 percent have a high school degree or less, compared with 33 percent of other Republicans.
Establishment Republicans probably shouldn't count on voters from the immigrant/refugee group not showing up on Election Day. Members of the group are at least as likely to be following the election “very closely” as other primary voters (44 percent compared with 36 percent of others), and they’re about as likely to say they are certain to vote.
They also believe their man can win: 52 percent of voters who support deportation of immigrants say Trump has the best chance of getting elected in November 2016. That drops to 24 percent among those who oppose deportation or support allowing refugees from Syria and other countries into the United States.
Trump is also running well ahead of his rivals among voters who say the most important attribute in a presidential candidate is her or his likelihood of bringing needed change to Washington. Some of his opponents, such as Bush, have attempted to cast themselves as agents of change, though of a different sort than Trump. The poll offers some cautions on that strategy, for candidates (such as Bush) who break from Trump on the deportation and refugee issues.
Fifty-two percent of Republican-leaning adults say it’s most important for them to support the candidate who is likeliest to bring needed change to Washington, compared with 28 percent who prioritize honesty, 11 percent experience, 4 percent electability and 2 percent personality and temperament.
Of those who prioritize change, 67 percent support deportation and 74 percent oppose Middle Eastern refugees, both higher than among Republicans who prioritize other attributes (46 and 62 percent, respectively ).
More than half of these change-focused Republicans — 56 percent — both support deportation and oppose refugees.
Other Republicans still have several paths to beat out Trump for the nomination. A rival candidate could consolidate the support of GOP voters who oppose deportation and/or support refugees. Carson or, perhaps, Ted Cruz could find a way to steal Trump's voters from the deport/no refugee group. Looked at another way, the less politically troublesome opposition to refugees might serve as an opportunity for establishment Republicans to connect with these voters without staking out strong opposition to welcoming undocumented immigrants. Lastly, elite concerns about Trump's electability may could spread as primary season rolls around or if Trump wins Iowa, galvanizing opposition around another candidate.
Or any candidate could find another issue to overwhelm Trump among white Republicans without a college degree, the voters most likely to both support deportation and oppose refugees. That issue would have to be more important to those voters than immigration and migration concerns. Which almost certainly means it would need to speak directly to their economic anxiety which helped lift Trump's candidacy in the first place.
The Post-ABC poll was conducted Nov. 16-19 among a random national sample 1,004 adults reached on cellular and land line phones by live interviewers. Full question wording and methodological detail is available here.
Note on sample size and statistical significance: The breakdowns below are based subgroups of the 423 Republicans and GOP-leaning independent adults and 373 registered voters. The sample size for deportation/anti-refugee Republican voters is 163, while the sample size for all other GOP voters is 209, carrying margins of sampling error of nine and eight points, respectively. While sample sizes are small, all reports of differing attitudes between groups below have passed standard tests of statistical significance at the 95 percent confidence level.Ronald "Ronnie" Kray (24 October 1933 – 17 March 1995) and Reginald "Reggie" Kray (24 October 1933 – 1 October 2000), twin brothers, were English criminals, the foremost perpetrators of organised crime in the East End of London during the 1950s and 1960s. With their gang, known as "The Firm", the Krays were involved in murder, armed robbery, arson, protection rackets and assaults.
As West End nightclub owners, the Krays mixed with politicians and prominent entertainers such as Diana Dors, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. In the 1960s, they became celebrities, being photographed by David Bailey and interviewed on television.
The Krays were arrested on 8 May 1968 and convicted in 1969, as a result of the efforts of detectives led by Detective Superintendent Leonard "Nipper" Read. Each was sentenced to life imprisonment. Ronnie remained in Broadmoor Hospital until his death on 17 March 1995 from a heart attack; Reggie was released from prison on compassionate grounds in August 2000, eight and a half weeks before his death from bladder cancer.
Early life [ edit ]
Ronald "Ronnie" and Reginald "Reg" Kray were born on 24 October 1933 in Hoxton, East London, to Charles David Kray (10 March 1907 – 8 March 1983), a wardrobe dealer,[4] and Violet Annie Lee (5 August 1909 – 4 August 1982).[5] The brothers were twins, with Reggie born ten minutes before Ronnie.[6]Their parents already had a six-year-old son, Charles James (born 9 July 1927).[6] A sister, Violet (born 1929), died in infancy.[6] When the twins were three years old, they contracted diphtheria.
The twins first attended Wood Close School in Brick Lane, and then Daniel Street School.[7] In 1938, the Kray family moved from Stean Street in Hoxton to 178 Vallance Road in Bethnal Green. At the beginning of the Second World War, 32-year-old Charles Kray was conscripted into the army, but he refused to go and went into hiding.[citation needed]
The influence of their maternal grandfather, Jimmy "Cannonball" Lee,[8] caused the brothers to take up amateur boxing, then a popular pastime for working class boys in the East End. Sibling rivalry spurred them on, and both achieved some success. They are said to have never lost a match before turning professional at age 19.[citation needed]
National service [ edit ]
The Kray twins were notorious for their gang and its violence, and narrowly avoided being sent to prison many times. Young men were conscripted for national service at this time, and the twins were called up to serve with the Royal Fusiliers in 1952. They reported, but attempted to leave after only a few minutes. The corporal in charge tried to stop them, but Ronnie punched him on the chin, leaving him seriously injured; the Krays walked back to the East End.[citation needed] They were arrested the next morning and were turned over to the army.[citation needed]
While absent without leave, they assaulted a police constable who tried to arrest them. They were among the last prisoners held at the Tower of London before being transferred to Shepton Mallet military prison in Somerset for a month to await court-martial. They were convicted and sent to the Buffs' Home Counties Brigade Depot jail in Canterbury, Kent.[citation needed]
Their behaviour in prison was so bad that they both received dishonourable discharges from the army. They tried to dominate the exercise area outside their one-man cells during their few weeks in prison, when their conviction was certain. They threw tantrums, emptied their latrine bucket over a sergeant, dumped a dixie (a large food and liquid container)[9] full of hot tea on another guard, handcuffed a guard to their prison bars with a pair of stolen cuffs and set their bedding on fire.[10]
They were moved to a communal cell where they assaulted their guard with a china vase and escaped. They were quickly recaptured and awaited transfer to civilian authority for crimes committed while at large; they spent their last night in Canterbury drinking cider, eating crisps and smoking cigarillos courtesy of the young national servicemen acting as their guards.[citation needed]
Criminal careers [ edit ]
Nightclub owners [ edit ]
Their criminal records and dishonourable discharges ended their boxing careers, and the brothers turned to crime full-time. They bought a run-down snooker club in Mile End where they started several protection rackets. By the end of the 1950s, the Krays were working for Jay Murray from Liverpool and were involved in hijacking, armed robbery and arson, through which they acquired other clubs and properties. In 1960, Ronnie Kray was imprisoned for 18 months for running a protection racket and related threats. While Ronnie was in prison, Peter Rachman, head of a violent landlord operation, gave Reggie a nightclub called Esmeralda's Barn on the Knightsbridge end of Wilton Place next to a bistro called Joan's Kitchen. The location is where the Berkeley Hotel now stands.[11]
This increased the Krays' influence in the West End by making them celebrities as well as criminals. The Kray twins accept a norm according to which anyone who fails to show due respect would be severely punished.[12] They were assisted by a banker named Alan Cooper who wanted protection against the Krays' rivals, the Richardsons, based in South London.[13]
Celebrity status [ edit ]
In the 1960s, the Kray brothers were widely seen as prosperous and charming celebrity nightclub owners and were part of the Swinging London scene. A large part of their fame was due to their non-criminal activities as popular figures on the celebrity circuit, being photographed by David Bailey on more than one occasion and socialising with lords, MPs, socialites and show business characters, including actors George Raft, Judy Garland, Diana Dors and Barbara Windsor.
They were the best years of our lives. They called them the swinging sixties. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were rulers of pop music, Carnaby Street ruled the fashion world... and me and my brother ruled London. We were fucking untouchable... – Ronnie Kray, in his autobiography My Story[14]
Lord Boothby and Tom Driberg [ edit ]
The Krays also came to public attention in July 1964 when an exposé in the tabloid newspaper Sunday Mirror insinuated that Ronnie had conceived a sexual relationship with Robert, Lord Boothby, a Conservative politician,[15] at a time when being gay was still a criminal offence in the U.K. Although no names were printed in the piece, the twins threatened the journalists involved, and Boothby threatened to sue the newspaper with the help of Labour Party leader Harold Wilson's solicitor Arnold Goodman (Wilson wanted to protect the reputation of Labour MP Tom Driberg, a relatively open gay man known to associate with both Boothby and Ronnie Kray, just weeks ahead of a pending General Election which Labour was hoping to win). In the face of this, the newspaper backed down, sacking its editor, printing an apology and paying Boothby £40,000 in an out-of-court settlement.[16] Because of this, other newspapers were unwilling to expose the Krays' connections and criminal activities. Much later, Channel 4 established the truth of the allegations and released a documentary on the subject called The Gangster and the Pervert Peer (2009).[17]
The police investigated the Krays on several occasions, but the brothers' reputation for violence made witnesses afraid to testify. There was also a problem for both main political parties. The Conservative Party was unwilling to press the police to end the Krays' power for fear that the Boothby connection would again be publicised, and the Labour Party, in power from October 1964, but with a wafer-thin majority in the House of Commons and the prospect of another General Election needing to be called in the very near future, did not want Driberg's connections to Ronnie Kray (and his sexual predilections) to get into the public realm.[18][19]
George Cornell [ edit ]
Ronnie Kray shot and killed George Cornell, a member of the Richardson Gang (a rival South London gang), at the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel on 9 March 1966. The day before, there had been a shoot-out at Mr. Smith's, a nightclub in Catford, involving the Richardson gang and Richard Hart, an associate of the Krays, who was shot dead. This public shoot-out led to the arrest of nearly all the Richardson gang. Cornell, by chance, was not present at the club during the shoot-out and was not arrested. Whilst visiting the hospital to check up on his friends, he randomly chose to visit the Blind Beggar pub, only a mile away from where the Krays lived.
Ronnie was drinking in another pub when he learned of Cornell's location. He went there with his driver "Scotch Jack" John Dickson and his assistant Ian Barrie. Ronnie went into the pub with Barrie, walked straight to Cornell and shot him in the head in public view. Barrie, confused by what happened, fired five shots in the air warning the public not to report what had happened to the police. Just before he was shot, Cornell remarked, "Well, look who's here." He died at 3:00am in hospital.[citation needed]
Ronnie Kray was already suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the killing.[20]
According to some sources, Ronnie killed Cornell because Cornell referred to him as a "fat poof" (a derogatory term for gay men) during a confrontation between the Krays and the Richardson gang at the Astor Club on Christmas Day 1965.
Richardson gang member "Mad" Frankie Fraser was tried for the murder of Richard Hart at Mr. Smith's, but was found not guilty. Richardson gang member Ray "the Belgian" Cullinane testified that he saw Cornell kicking Hart. Witnesses would not co-operate with the police in the murder case due to intimidation, and the trial ended inconclusively without pointing to any suspect in particular.[13]
Frank Mitchell [ edit ]
On 12 December 1966, the Krays helped Frank Mitchell, "the Mad Axeman",[13] to escape from Dartmoor Prison. Ronnie had befriended Mitchell while they served time together in Wandsworth Prison. Mitchell felt that the authorities should review his case for parole, so Ronnie thought that he would be doing him a favour by getting him out of Dartmoor, highlighting his case in the media and forcing the authorities to act.[citation needed]
Once Mitchell was out of Dartmoor, the Krays held him at a friend's flat in Barking Road, East Ham. He was a large man with a mental disorder, and he was difficult to control. He disappeared, but the Krays were acquitted of his murder.[13] Freddie Foreman, a friend of the Krays, claimed in his autobiography Respect that he shot Mitchell dead as a favour to the twins and disposed of his body at sea.[citation needed]
Jack "the Hat" McVitie [ edit ]
The Krays' criminal activities remained hidden behind both their celebrity status and seemingly legitimate businesses. Reggie was allegedly encouraged by his brother in October 1967, four months after the suicide of his wife, Frances, to kill Jack "the Hat" McVitie, a minor member of the Kray gang who had failed to fulfil a £1000 contract, £500 of which had been paid to him in advance, to kill their financial advisor, Leslie Payne.[21][22] McVitie was lured to a basement flat in Evering Road, Stoke Newington on the pretence of a party. Upon entering the premises, he saw Ronnie Kray seated in the front room. As Ronnie approached him, he let loose a barrage of verbal abuse and cut him below his eye with a piece of broken glass. It is believed that an argument then broke out between the twins and McVitie. As the argument got more heated, Reggie Kray pointed a handgun at McVitie's head and pulled the trigger twice, but the gun failed to discharge.[23]
McVitie was then held in a bear hug by the twins' cousin, Ronnie Hart, and Reggie Kray was handed a carving knife. He then stabbed McVitie in the face and stomach, driving the blade into his neck while twisting the knife, not stopping even as McVitie lay on the floor dying. Reggie had committed a very public murder, against someone who many members of the Firm felt did not deserve to die. In an interview in 2000, shortly after Reggie's death, Freddie Foreman revealed that McVitie had a reputation for leaving carnage behind him due to his habitual consumption of drugs and heavy drinking, and his having in the past threatened to harm the twins and their family.[24]
Tony and Chris Lambrianou and Ronnie Bender helped clear up the evidence of this crime, and attempted to assist in the disposal of the body. With McVitie's body being too big to fit in the boot of the car, the body was wrapped in an eiderdown and put in the back seat of a car. Tony Lambrianou drove the car with the body and Chris Lambrianou and Bender followed behind. Crossing the Blackwall tunnel, Chris lost Tony's car, and spent up to fifteen minutes looking around Rotherhithe area. They eventually found Tony, outside St Mary's Church, where he had run out of fuel with McVitie's body still inside the car. With no alternative than to dump the corpse in the churchyard, and attempt to plant a gang south of the River Thames, the body was left in the car and the three gangsters returned home. Bender then went on to phone Charlie Kray informing them that it had been dealt with. However, upon finding out where they had left McVitie's corpse, the twins were livid and desperately phoned Foreman, who was then running a pub in Southwark, to see if he could dispose of the body. With dawn breaking, Foreman found the car, broke into it and drove the body to Newhaven where, with the help of a trawlerman, the body was bound with chicken wire and dumped in the English Channel.[25]
This event started turning many people against the Krays, and some were prepared to testify to Scotland Yard as to what had happened, fearing that what happened to McVitie could easily happen to them. Leonard "Nipper" Read reopened his case against them.[26]
Arrest and trial [ edit ]
(second from left) taken in the months leading up to his trial in 1968. The evidence from this file and others resulted in him and his brother Ronald being sentenced to life imprisonment. Photograph of London gangster Reginald Kraytaken in the months leading up to his trial in 1968. The evidence from this file and others resulted in him and his brother Ronald being sentenced to life imprisonment.
Inspector Leonard Read of Scotland Yard was promoted to the Murder Squad and his first assignment was to bring down the Kray twins. It was not his first involvement with them. During the first half of 1964, Read had been investigating their activities, but publicity and official denials of Ron's relationship with Boothby made the evidence that he collected useless. Read went after the twins with renewed activity in 1967, but frequently came up against the East End "wall of silence" which discouraged anyone from providing information to the police.[27]
Nevertheless, by the end of 1967 Read had built up enough evidence against the Krays. Witness statements incriminated them, as did other evidence, but none made a convincing case on any one charge.
Early in 1968, the Krays employed Alan Bruce Cooper who sent Paul Elvey to Glasgow to buy explosives for a car bomb. Elvey was the radio engineer who put Radio Sutch on the air in 1964, later renamed Radio City. After police detained him in Scotland, he confessed to being involved in three murder attempts. The evidence was weakened by Cooper, who claimed that he was an agent for the US Treasury Department investigating links between the American Mafia and the Kray gang. The botched murders[which?] were his attempt to put the blame on the Krays. Cooper was being employed as a source by one of Read's superior officers, and Read tried using him as a trap for the Krays, but they avoided him.
Conviction and imprisonment [ edit ]
Eventually, a Scotland Yard conference decided to arrest the Krays on the evidence already collected, in the hope that other witnesses would be forthcoming once the Krays were in custody. On 8 May 1968,[28] the Krays and 15 other members of the Firm were arrested. Exceptional circumstances were put in place so as to stop any possible co-operation against any of the accused. Nipper Read then secretly interviewed each of the defendants, and offered each member of the Firm one chance to come onto the side of law and order. Whilst in prison, the Krays had come up with a plan, which included Scotch Jack Dickson to confess to the murder of Cornell, Ronnie Hart to take the McVitie and Albert Donoghue to stand for Mitchell.
Donoghue told the twins directly that he wasn't prepared to be cajoled into pleading guilty, to the anger of the twins. He then informed Read via his mother, who set up another interview in secret and Donoghue was the first to tell the police everything that he knew.
Ronnie Hart had initially not been arrested, and was not a name initially sought after by the police. With Donoghue's testimony, Hart was hunted down, found and arrested. Offering the same terms as the others arrested, Hart then told Read everything that had happened during McVitie's murder, although he did not know anything about what happened to the body. This was the first time that the police knew exactly who was involved, and offered them a solid case to prosecute the twins for McVitie's murder.
Although Read knew for certain that Ronnie Kray had murdered George Cornell in the Blind Beggar pub no one had been prepared to testify against the twins out of fear. Upon finding out the twins intended to cajole him, 'Scotch Jack' Dickson also turned in everything he knew about Cornell's murder. Although not a witness to the actual murder he was an accessory, having driven Ronnie Kray and Ian Barrie to the pub. The police still needed an actual witness to the murder. They then managed to track down the barmaid who was working in the pub at the time, gave her a secret identity and she testified to seeing Ronnie kill Cornell.
Frank Mitchell's escape and disappearance was much harder to obtain evidence for, since the majority of those arrested were not involved with his planned escape and disappearance. Read decided to proceed with the case and have a separate trial for Mitchell once the twins had been convicted.
The twins' defence under their counsel John Platts-Mills, QC consisted of flat denials of all charges and discrediting witnesses by pointing out their criminal past. Justice Melford Stevenson said: "In my view, society has earned a rest from your activities."[29] It was the longest murder hearing in history of British criminal justice.[30], during which Justice Melford Stevenson stated of the sentences "which I recommend should not be less than thirty years."[31] In March 1969, both were sentenced to life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 30 years for the murders of Cornell and McVitie, the longest sentences ever passed at the Old Bailey (Central Criminal Court, London) for murder. Their brother Charlie was imprisoned for ten years for his part in the murders.[32]
Later years [ edit ]
Ronnie and Reggie Kray were allowed, under tight security, to attend the funeral of their mother Violet at Chingford Mount Cemetery in East London on 11 August 1982 after her death from cancer. They were not allowed to attend her burial in the Kray family plot. The funeral was attended by celebrities including Diana Dors and underworld figures known to the Krays, such as James Kemmery.[33] To avoid the publicity that had surrounded their mother's funeral, the twins did not ask to attend their father's funeral in March 1983.
In 1985, officials at Broadmoor Hospital discovered a business card of Ron's that led to evidence that the twins, from separate institutions, were operating Krayleigh Enterprises (a "lucrative bodyguard and 'protection' business for Hollywood stars") together with their older brother Charlie Kray and an accomplice at large. Among their clients was Frank Sinatra, who hired 18 bodyguards from Krayleigh Enterprises on his visit to the 1985 Wimbledon Championships. Documents released under Freedom of Information laws revealed that although officials were concerned about this operation, they believed that there was no legal basis to shut it down.[34]
Ronnie Kray was a Category A prisoner, denied almost all liberties and not allowed to mix with other prisoners. He was eventually certified insane, his paranoid schizophrenia being tempered with constant medication,[31] in 1979[35] he was committed and lived the remainder of his life in Broadmoor Hospital in Crowthorne, Berkshire.[36] Reggie Kray, constantly being refused parole,[31] was locked up in Maidstone Prison for 8 years (Category B). In 1997, he was transferred to the Category C Wayland Prison in Norfolk,[37] Category B HM Prison Blundeston, Suffolk and lastly Category C HM Prison Norwich, Norfolk.
Personal lives [ edit ]
Ronnie [ edit ]
In his book My Story and a comment to writer Robin McGibbon on The Kray Tapes, Ronnie states: "I'm bisexual, not gay. Bisexual." He also planned on marrying a woman named Monica in the 1960s whom he had dated for nearly three years. He called her "the most beautiful woman he had ever seen." This is mentioned in Reggie's book Born Fighter. Also, extracts are mentioned in Ron's own book My Story and Kate Kray's books Sorted; Murder, Madness and Marriage, and Free at Last.
Ronnie was arrested before he had the chance to marry Monica and, even though she married Ronnie's ex-boyfriend, 59 letters sent to her between May and December 1968 when he was imprisoned show Ronnie still had feelings for her, and his love for her was very clear. He referred to her as "my little angel" and "my little doll". She also still had feelings for Ronnie. These letters were auctioned in 2010.[38]
A letter, sent from prison in 1968, from Ronnie to his mother Violet also makes reference to Monica; "if they let me see Monica and put me with Reg, I could not ask for more." He went on to say, with spelling mistakes, "Monica is the only girl I have liked in my life. She is a luvely little person as you know. When you see her, tell her I am in luve with her more than ever."[39] Ronnie subsequently married twice, marrying Elaine Mildener in 1985 at Broadmoor chapel before the couple divorced in 1989, following which he married Kate Howard, whom he divorced in 1994.[20]
In an interview with author John Pearson, Ronnie indicated he identified with the 19th century soldier Gordon of Khartoum: "Gordon was like me, homosexual, and he met his death like a man. When it's time for me to go, I hope I do the same."[40]
Reggie [ edit ]
Reggie married Frances Shea in 1965; she committed suicide two years later. In 1997, Reggie married Roberta Jones[20] whom he met while still in prison. She was helping to publicise a film being made about Ronnie.[41]
Controversies [ edit ]
There was a long-running campaign, with some minor celebrity support, to have the twins released from prison, but successive Home Secretaries vetoed the idea, largely on the grounds that both Krays' prison records were marred by violence toward other inmates. The campaign gathered momentum after the release of a film based on their lives called The Krays (1990). Produced by Ray Burdis, it starred Spandau Ballet brothers Martin and Gary Kemp, who played the roles of Reggie and Ronnie respectively. Ronnie, Reggie and Charlie Kray received £255,000 for the film.[20]
Reggie wrote: "I seem to have walked a double path most of my life. Perhaps an extra step in one of those directions might have seen me celebrated rather than notorious."[42] Others point to Reggie's violent prison record when he was being detained separately from Ronnie and argue that in reality, the twins' temperaments were little different.
Reggie's marriage to Frances Shea (1943–67)[43] in 1965 lasted eight months when she left, although the marriage was never formally dissolved. An inquest came to the conclusion that she committed suicide,[44] but in 2002 an ex-lover of Reggie Kray's came forward to allege that Frances was murdered by a jealous Ronnie. Bradley Allardyce spent 3 years in Maidstone Prison with Reggie and explained, "I was sitting in my cell with Reg and it was one of those nights where we turned the lights down low and put some nice music on and sometimes he would reminisce. He would get really deep and open up to me. He suddenly broke down and said 'I'm going to tell you something I've only ever told two people and something I've carried around with me' – something that had been a black hole since the day he found out. He put his head on my shoulder and told me Ronnie killed Frances. He told Reggie what he had done two days after."[45]
A British television documentary, The Gangster and the Pervert Peer (2009), showed that Ronnie Kray was a rapist of men. The programme also detailed his relationship with Conservative peer Bob Boothby as well as an ongoing Daily Mirror investigation into Lord Boothby's dealings with the Kray brothers.[46][47][48]
Deaths [ edit ]
Ronnie died on 17 March 1995 at the age of 61 at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, Berkshire. He had suffered a heart attack at Broadmoor Hospital two days earlier.[49] Reggie was allowed out of prison in handcuffs to attend the funeral.[50]
During his incarceration, Reggie Kray became a born-again Christian.[51] He was freed from Wayland on 26 August 2000 on compassionate grounds, on the direction of Home Secretary Jack Straw, following the diagnosis of cancer.[52] He had been diagnosed with bladder cancer earlier that year, and the illness had been declared as terminal.[53] The final weeks of his life were spent with his wife of three years, Roberta,[54] in a suite at the Townhouse Hotel at Norwich,[55] having left the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital on 22 September 2000.[56] On 1 October 2000, Reggie died in his sleep.[57] Ten days later, he was buried beside his brother Ronnie in Chingford Mount Cemetery.[58] During the funeral, crowds of thousands lined up to applaud signs of relief from his threats, others weeping at the loss of a patron who protected them from police harassment and prevented social crimes like child abuse and rape. The Kray twins commanded both fear and admiration from the residents.[59]
Ronnie and Reggie's older brother Charlie Kray was released from prison in 1975 after serving seven years for his role in their gangland crimes,[60] but was sentenced again in 1997 for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine in an undercover drugs sting.[61] He died in prison of natural causes on 4 April 2000,[62] aged 73.[60]
Ronnie and Reggie Kray's grave, Chingford
Charlie Kray's grave, Chingford
The grave of Violet Kray, mother of Charlie and of the Kray twins, Chingford
The grave of Frances Kray, Reggie's wife, Chingford
In popular culture [ edit ]
The Kray twins have seeded an extensive bibliography leading to many autobiographical accounts, biographical reconstructions, commentaries, analysis, fiction and mere speculation. They have contributed a large influence in topic films, audio tapes, walking tours, and parody. Their nefarious careers successfully engaged the cultural outreach of public appreciation, the magnetism and public agitation of their reputation.[31]
Film [ edit ]
After the imprisonment of the Kray twins, the film culture developed a new breed of nattily attired businessmen taking over narcotics, pornography, prostitution, and real estate.[63] The Kray twins were a large influence on the depiction of the original gangster in American filmography.[64]
In addition to films explicitly about the twins, James Fox met Ronnie whilst the twins were held at HM Prison Brixton as part of his research for his role in the 1970 film Performance, and Richard Burton visited Ronnie at Broadmoor as part of his preparation for his role as a violent gangster in the 1971 film Villain.[20]
Literature [ edit ]
Music [ edit ]
Television [ edit ]
In the British soap opera Eastenders, Grant Mitchell describes local crime boss Johnny Allen as being "on Ronnie and Reggie mode".
Theatre [ edit ]
'Warped' by Martin Malcolm directed by Russell Lucas opened at VAULT Festival in 2019. The play tells the story of two young men who idolise the Krays.
Two plays were produced in the 1970s that were based on thinly-veiled versions of the Krays:
Art [ edit ]
Cornelia Parker at Fifth Street Gallery, London, photos depicting violent undertones of East End London during the Funeral of Reggie Kray. Demonstrating the fascination of newspaper photographers of his responsibility for his criminal actions.[67]
References [ edit ]Hello, my name is Lucifer, but I prefer Luc. I live in animal clinic in Perm, Russia. I don’t know what it means to walk because when my new owners found me I had a problem with my legs. They think that it’s because I once got squeezed by the door and now I have a damaged spine.
Now I am very happy because I have work and family. I like to help animals in my clinic, support them and explain that they need to live. After suffering myself, I can now really understand others. I often cuddle with patients to keep them warm. I still have difficulties walking but nothing can stop me from comforting other healing animals. Animals at the clinic enjoy my comforting presence. I am sometimes a donor for cats, and I’ve already saved some lives. I am very proud of this, and I take my job very seriously!
Also, I am a model and we make a lot of advertising in our department of marketing. One day I even gave an interview for one online site. No, I am not a star. I am a cat, but sometimes I feel more like a human. I want to say a big thanks to my clinic for this chance to live and help animals in need.
More info: Instagram
I’m an adopted cat Lucifer and I live in an animal clinic in Perm, Russia
I once got squeezed by the door and my legs got paralyzed because of a damaged spine
After the doctors helped me to recover, I devoted my life to give moral support to the other animals that are healing in an animal clinic
I still have difficulties walking but nothing can stop me from comforting others that are just like I was
I often cuddle with patients to keep them warm
Animals at the clinic seem to really enjoy my comforting presence
I am sometimes a donor for cats, and I’ve already saved some lives
Being a survivor myself, I really understand the pain of others
It is sometimes difficult when your instincts tell you to play and not to work
But ill animals come first!
I am very proud of what I do and I take my job very seriouslyBy blacking out the default Firefox start page and using social media, Mozilla reached 40 million people with its anti-SOPA/PIPA message. According to a stats wrap-up just posted to the Mozilla blog, 30 million people in the US saw the start page’s call to action, 1.8 million visited its mozilla.org/SOPA info page, and the effort generated 360,000 emails to Congress.
Additionally, Mozilla sent out messages to 9 million people via Facebook, Twitter, and its Firefox + You newsletter, over 20,000 retweeted or Liked these messages, and Mozilla drove 600,000 visits to the EFF’s Strike Against Censorship Page.
For comparison, here’s how Ars Technica and others tabulated the contributions of some big web properties:
Wikimedia Foundation – 162 million people reached, 8 million views of its Congress member contact page
Google – 13 million page views to its anti-SOPA page and 7 million signatures to its petitions.
Twitter – Rather than blacking out, it helped transmit 2.4 million SOPA-related tweets in 16 hours.
The White House – Drove 103,785 SOPA and PIPA petition signatures
Mozilla’s action didn’t have the scale of Wikipedia or Google’s effort, but it should still be commended for doing its part. Next week when the Senate votes, we’ll see if yesterday’s web-wide protest made a difference.
For more info on the protests and their impact, check out TechCrunch’s stream of online piracy legislation coverage
[Image Credit: SayNotes]A new study has found that male frogs exposed to the herbicide atrazine -- one of the most common man-made chemicals found in U.S. waters -- can make a startling developmental U-turn, becoming so completely female that they can mate and lay viable eggs.
The study, published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, seems likely to |
apparently never going to happen. I'll keep wearing my Pebbles but I can't see myself continuing to code for a platform whose end is visible.
And.
I, for one, am glad to hear that Fitbit is committed to maintaining the Pebble ecosystem for as long as possible. I do hope the keep the cloud-dependent services up. I think keeping the enthusiastic Pebbler community happy as Fitbit (hopefully) integrates the best of the Pebble experience into its product will engender good will and converts. Please keep us informed as to new and progress. We are eager to know as much as we can. Being in the dark, only breed frustration and fear.
And.
Great update for us worried Pebble owners. But, what might the future with Fitbit look like! I guess nobody knows exactly but does it seem at least positive for what Pebble/Fitbit could become?
Developers aren't fans of uncertainty and in the Fitbit-Pebble combination there is plenty of it.
Now it's clear Fitbit values the Pebble engineers more than the Pebble customer base or ecosystem, but the company would be remiss if it didn't at least try to win over the community attached to Pebble. If done well, Fitbit can win over developers, evangelists, and a few brand converts whose return will pay off over time.South Africa's captain needs to single out his players for attention and get them firing individually and as a team
AB de Villiers needs to sit his troops down pronto © Getty Images
Dear AB,
You might have picked up that pre-tournament my head predicted you boys to win this baby, while my heart, naturally, is dressed in black.
Don't be sad, AB. So far you've dropped a few backers, looked pretty ordinary at times, but I'm holding fast. And if I had a quiet moment with you, then this is what I would offer, for what it's worth.
Firstly, and most important of all, any success of the highest order is down to bold, courageous leadership. You guys should know; you had one of the best of all time - Nelson Mandela. So my first little tip is to acknowledge that bold leadership is your domain. This is your time to march them out, take them home. The skipper in black has already assumed that role and is mounting an assault, just as Edmund Hillary did. On your side, if I were you, AB, I'd reach out and feel the presence of Madiba.
Next, your key role is to find each person's button and press it firmly. Look them in the eye and implore that they reveal their individual expression to fit perfectly within the team endeavour. Press the button: it's green (with a yellow stripe).
Let me start with the critical aspect of leadership - tactics. Your bowling attack needs tweaking, so open your mind to a few ideas and see if AD agrees.
One of the roles you have to get right is the fourth seamer. Wayne Parnell is your man. Trouble is, he is a rogue and can go walkabout, but he's likeable and eager, and if his button is correctly pushed, he will be a massive positive for the rocky road ahead. So open with him, giving him a chance to swing the ball, to feel important. Remove his fear, free him to be the best he can be. Rest Vernon for ten days, freshen him up for the last four games of the Cup. But empower Wayne to be the man he can be, steer him down the path of fulfilment. He can bat at eight with purpose. His button is your main priority.
Get Dale to relax, get rid of the stunned mullet look, get him looser. His wrist-snap is missing, the venom of old lacking. His body looks tight, with the will spilling over, over-stretched, so give him a list of different roles for a few games: open one day, bowl from middle to death on another. Get him challenged on different fronts to keep him fresh, not thinking too much, just lots of doing and being the class act he is.
Same with Morne. Change when and where he bowls from one game to another. These guys are experienced, they need to enjoy the game for a period, get the right juices flowing. Let them have turns opening with Wayne, trying a combo or two to scene-set by attacking with vigour.
Oh, I love Imran. What a big heart. If only you had 11 of him. He has been through so much and still keeps fighting on. He's your go-to guy, your banker, so be grateful he is in fluent form.
JP has to drop this flat rubbish he's bowling. Get him back to flighting the ball sweetly, dipping to create bounce, as he can. Tell him to take wickets, to attack, to be flamboyant. Inspire him.
Hey, and when it feels right, bowl an over yourself. Get that smile back on your face. Roll the dice: six balls, one wicket. No one will dare to get out to your slow straight dobblies. Nothing to lose for an over, and if you play Rilee at seven for a game as you rest Vernon, then you become the sixth bowler.
You have the attack, now you need to manipulate it better.
Hashim is your right-hand man, a beautifully strong, resilient player, so don't be afraid to ask him to carry more of the load. Tell him to take his time, anchor and secure the innings. He must bat through in his well-grooved tempo, not in this frenetic mood he seems to be in at present.
When it feels right, bowl an over yourself. Get that smile back on your face. Roll the dice: six balls, one wicket. No one will dare to get out to your slow straight dobblies
Tell young Quinton to clear the mind a little, not premeditate so much, as it roots the feet to the spot. Tell him to breathe deep and let the feet find fluency, then the hitting and timing will return. He's a critical cog in the wheel. Breathe and believe.
I'm worried about Faf, your long-time sparring partner. He's got the weight of the world on his shoulders, plus a small chip that needs removing. You are the one that needs to pull it out, as I sense it's there because you have left him so far behind over this decade. Encourage him to drop the burden he appears to be carrying, let him know that he can have some of your runs this tournament. That you can bat side by side, brothers in arms. You need him to be free.
Have a shave, AB, you look ragged and rattled. Smarten up. A touch of polish is required. Since that 31-ball ton, you have got a bit sloppy. You need to be all things in all situations. You need to lead like never before. Take a leap of faith. Feel Mandela in your bones.
It's you and you only who can push the buttons of your comrades. Black buttons are being pushed over the ditch, and you need to match it.
Four matches left in the round robin, so try a few subtle changes and freshen up the senior men and empower some key young talents. Chill, mate. Whistle a tune as you start pressing buttons.
It's all good. Plenty of time to pick up the pace. But I wouldn't waste another moment, eh.
Respect,
A big fan
Martin Crowe, one of the leading batsmen of the late '80s and early '90s, played 77 Tests for New Zealand
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.It is very easy to fall asleep in space. When you're at your desk at home and you've been working for hours and you nod off, your chin bumps your chest and you wake up with a start. In space, your head doesn't fall—you simply fade into sleep, and then if you're unattached you begin to float away. This is the sort of thing you hear when you speak with Richard Garriott, a man you may know better as Lord British. He made millions of dollars creating and selling video games, and then spent most of that money trying to get into space.
He says that there is no ground on the International Space Station, nor is there a ceiling. There are instruments and items and all sorts of things connected to the walls, and you can tell the people who are new to space flight by how they bump into things, which sends them spinning in zero gravity. They zoom around, followed by a mess of items and benign, space-faring shrapnel. It collects by the air vents if no one picks it up. Sleeping bodies find their way there as well.
This is where Richard Garriott wants to take you, and he is much closer than you think.
Flying poets
It's hard not to romanticize a man like Richard Garriott. His father was an astronaut, and only poor eyesight stopped the son from following the father off the planet. He began working with computers, and created the games many of us grew up playing. In some circles the name "Avatar" has nothing to do with James Cameron, and everything to do with our adventures in Britannia. We remember when he was killed by his own people.
This is how Richard Garriott speaks when describing what it was like to fly into space on the Soyuz rocket: "You know, unlike television where it's always loud and has lots of vibration or you might imagine it feels like a dropping the clutch on the sports car as you take off at a green light, it's actually much more cerebral," he explains. "It's almost perfectly smooth. It's almost perfectly silent and feels much more like a confident ballet move, lifting you ever faster into the sky, than something scary or threatening."
This is in stark contrast to the vision of space flight we've been sold, the violent and overwhelming cacophony of the liftoff, as if man was by his very will pushing the Earth away from himself. The way Garriott explains liftoff, it's simply man taking his rightful place in the heavens.
Returning to Earth is also different than you'd imagine. There is almost perfect silence as you hit the atmosphere at 17,000 miles an hour. "That creates plasma around the vehicle that is hotter than the surface of the sun. Literally, my right shoulder was against that window," he told us. "And that window is, you know, about five panes of glass and quartz and a few other things. There is a gap in the window that's a vacuum, and that's why the material doesn't melt."
This is where Garriott sat as he fell back to Earth, intellectually aware that a few inches away was something that hot and that ferocious. If something were to go wrong, he would have to go to work. He knew the craft as well as the other astronauts next to him, as there is no such thing as a passenger seat in space; you have to work if you want to go up. He spent months in Russia learning how to do this, and he knows that until they touch down on land, not water, there is radio silence. The reason for this is disturbing: if you're speaking when you hit land, you're likely to bite through your own tongue.
The landing did not go smoothly, as debris was knocked loose and kept his seat from operating normally. Smoke began to pour into the capsule from under one of the instrument panels, a moment Garriott referred to as being "a little alarming."
"When you hit the ground, even under a big parachute like that, that's a six-ton boulder that hits the ground really, really hard," he said, talking about what it was like to literally crash back into our planet. "And it really is like a car crash into a brick wall." His father, the astronaut, was there to greet him, and Garriott learned that it was just as hard getting used to being back on land as it was getting used to being in space. "When I would lie in bed, since the inner ear fluid sloshed to the back, it makes you feel like you're accelerating forward so you feel like you've got the bed spins after a bad night of drinking," he said. This goes on for three days.
He and his father talked about what it was like to fly into space. Richard Garriott was the 483rd person to go into space, and to get there he had to spend the majority of this fortune, undergo corrective eye surgery, and fix his fused kidneys and liver hemangioma in order to pass the medical tests. His body is heavily scarred from the procedures. It cost tens of millions of dollars, made from selling over a hundred million games. This is not a man with a lack of will.CONTRARIO
Per contrastare il grave fenomeno dell'aborto clandestino e per tutelare l'integrità psicofisica della donna durante la gravidanza e la nuova vita che sta per nascere, lo Stato deve promuovere una riforma della società e delle condizioni di vita in tutti gli ambienti, che garantisca a ogni nascituro un'accoglienza degna. In questo senso, non è ammissibile che medici ed infermieri vengano obbligati a concorrere, prestando il loro servizio, a un aborto e a dover scegliere tra la legge di Dio e la loro posizione professionale. L'obiezione di coscienza è un diritto inalienabile. Inoltre, i medici e gli operatori dei servizi medico-sanitari devono sempre ricordarsi il loro ruolo di servitori della vita.
La donna incinta non si aiuta privandola del dono che le viene fatto, bensì dandole gli strumenti per accoglierlo. L'aborto è la vera via distruttiva per il bambino e per la madre, non la limitazione a tale pratica: è la via che permette di perdere sensibilità personale e sociale verso l’accoglienza di una nuova vita.Immersion Diuresis (Urge to Urinate)
>This underwater phenomenon can strike you even if you do not have a weak bladder.As an inexperienced diver, with less than 50 dives since being certified last year, I have an unrelenting dilemma. No matter how many times I void, I always end a dive having to desperately go to the bathroom. My stomach will be bloated and I can't get my tank and wetsuit off quickly enough. I purposely don't drink before a dive, except two cups of morning coffee, and it seems I should be properly hydrated. I go to the bathroom before I get in the water and immediately after the dive. (I refuse to urinate in my wetsuit.) How can I control this? I don't have a weak bladder or any form of incontinence.RECOMMENDED: Click here to fix Windows errors and optimize system performance
This type of problem occurs due to a corrupted Windows update file. It is usually caused by poorly configured system files that cause registry errors in your operating system. Registration errors usually occur when new programs are installed on old programs without completely uninstalling the old programs. This can cause stacks in the register and error messages.
Another possible cause of these error messages can be malicious software such as adware, spyware and viruses. Try scanning and repairing missing or damaged Windows registry files. Once registry problems are resolved, we recommend that you optimize your computer by removing spyware, adware and viruses.
Here are some solutions you can try to fix Windows error 0X8007054f:
Run Windows Update Troubleshooter
We recommend running Windows Update Troubleshooter to solve this problem. The Troubleshooter will automatically scan your PC for any update problems found and fix them. Please make sure to temporarily disable your security software before running Troubleshooting to avoid software conflicts.
Virus scanning in computers
Second, scanning the virus in secure mode because of the virus can block the module’s antivirus software. Run the SFC tool to repair system files.
You can also update your antivirus program or download and install the latest Windows update. A virus infection that causes a runtime error on your computer must be immediately prevented, quarantined or deleted. Be sure to update your antivirus program and run a thorough scan of your computer, or run a Windows update to get and fix the latest virus definition.
We recommend using this tool for your error. Additionally, this tool fixes common computer errors, protects you against file loss, malware, hardware failures and optimizes your PC for maximum performance. You can fix your PC problems quickly and prevent others from happening with this software: Download this PC Repair Tool. Click Start Scan to find any Windows problems. Click Repair All to fix all issues.
1) Start your computer and log in as administrator.
2) Click the Start button, select All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then click System Restore.
3) In the new window, select “Restore computer to previous date” and click Next.
4) Select the last system restore point from the “In this list, click a restore point” list, then click Next.
5) Click Next in the confirmation window.
6) Restarts the computer when recovery is complete.
Closing conflicting programs
If you receive a runtime error, remember that it is caused by programs that conflict with each other. The first thing you can do to solve the problem is to stop these contradictory programs.WASHINGTON STATE will vote next month on one of the most ambitious climate-change programs ever seriously considered in the United States. Yet major players in the environmental movement either oppose the ballot measure or are undermining its chances in less formal ways.
You might assume these environmental groups were making the perfect the enemy of the good. But they are not defending the perfect. Their approach would be worse than what is on Washington’s ballot. They are wrong on the politics and wrong on the substance.
The ballot initiative would impose a significant tax on carbon dioxide emissions, the main culprit in human-caused climate change, and set the tax level to rise annually. Because low-income people would be disproportionately harmed by the tax, the state would use the revenue to reduce the state sales tax and increase the earned-income tax credit for the working poor. This would protect the poor and make Washington’s tax structure, one of the nation’s most dysfunctional, more progressive. This win-win plan is optimized to fight climate change; economists have explained for years that pricing carbon, as with a carbon tax, is the most efficient way to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, because it impels consumers and businesses to change their behavior without bureaucratic micromanagment.
The activists want micromanagement. Because the plan would recycle the revenue it raised, none would be left over for “investments” that activists favor. Elements of the coalition that environmentalists have assembled want “green jobs” programs, initiatives aimed specifically at communities of color, infrastructure that labor unions favor, and so forth. In other words, softening the blow for the poor and middle class is not enough. The government must divert the revenue according to the wishes of specific interest groups.
To some, naked interest-group politics is a principle of sorts. In a detailed account of the environmentalist civil war over Washington’s ballot initiative, Vox’s David Roberts explained that many activists believe that building a big leftist coalition is the only way major action on climate will happen. Recycling carbon-tax revenue, rather than showering it on interest groups, “loses you the left coalition, and with it the big left funders, and doesn’t gain you any Republicans.” Maybe — just maybe — this reflects not just a failure on the part of Republican climate head-in-the-sanders, but also of “the big left funders” and their intellectual enablers. If the movement cannot accept economically sound policy that would help solve the fundamental problem, there is something deeply wrong with the movement.
As it happens, the activists’ self-justifying political analysis is wrong, too. In most of the country, a leftist coalition could not impose a dramatic climate plan premised on jacking up taxes and government spending. If it really wants to fight climate change, the movement should be able to take yes for an answer.Has the originally announced two-part Justice League movie event been demoted into one film? Or is that a bit of perception wrangling? We find out the answers on the set of Justice League, talking to director Zack Sndyer and producer Deborah Snyder.
When Warner Bros originally announced Justice League on October 15, 2014, the studio grandly revealed that the movie would be released in two parts, with Justice League: Part One releasing on November 17, 2017, and Justice League: Part Two on June 14, 2019. But DC creative executive Geoff Johns revealed on Twitter a couple weeks ago that the first film will just be called Justice League. So does that mean that Justice League is no longer planned as a two-part event a la Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Infinity War?
When asked about the two films, Deborah Snyder tells us:
We’re only ever planning and we are only doing Justice League, just Justice League. One movie.
Not two parts? “No.” Later in the day when we talked to director Zack Snyder, he seemed sure that a second Justice League movie was still happening. Here is an excerpt from that interview:
Is the second Justice League movie still tethered to this? Is that something that you still plan to direct? It was sort of announced early on in a shareholders meeting, but it sounds like they’re closing that off for now? I think we still have a release date. This isn’t “Part 1” though? You’re not looking at it as a part one? Oh, it is a complete movie. I mean, of course there’s — It’s not going to end on a big cliffhanger? You know, hopefully there’s some reason to go — the movie doesn’t end and you go, “Okay, well that’s the DC Universe!”
It appears to me that the studio is still planning to do two Justice League films, they just aren’t positioning it as “Part One” and “Part Two” anymore. And that makes sense. Even Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Infinity War films were originally announced as a two-film, two-part event, and it now seems like they will have different titles, forgoing the “Part One” and “Part Two.”
Hollywood has been avoiding numbered sequels for a while now, so it makes sense that marketing department studies probably tell them that they’d sell more tickets by avoiding the “Part One” and “Part Two” subtitles. And this comes from the studio that had the biggest two-film, two-part release of all time with the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows films.
I’m also guessing that they didn’t completely revamp this script and that we are essentially getting what was to be Justice League: Part One. Zack Snyder’s response to the cliffhanger question leads me to believe that the conclusion of this film will set up the next Justice League movie in a big way.Learning to read is a massive adventure in itself, but discovering the library—a magical place where the stories are plentiful and the books are free—is downright mind-blowing. In an effort to match the fun between the pages, the Mexican branding studio Anagrama transformed the interior of a local heritage site into Niños Conarte, a geometric mountain range of literature.
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The structure of the former steel foundry couldn't be altered, so the firm focused instead on creating an angular topography for the flooring—meant to mimic the terrain surrounding the library, in Monterrey.
The carpet-covered installation is part playground, part storage space, with enough nooks and crannies to make find a new read a unique kind of hide-and-seek. Toss in some bean bags and big comfy pillows, and hot damn—it looks like a nice place to spend an afternoon.
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Each of the library's industrial-style roof beams were given a fresh coat of neon pink and blue paint, which complements the day-glo yellow accents on the ground and wall shelves—a veritable reading rainbow!—while a light-filled theater completes the makeover. Not a bad backdrop for an afternoon of reading. [PSFK]Uga IX, aka Russ, was laid to rest at Sanford Stadium on Tuesday. Russ passed away on Monday, Dec. 21, one month after passing the collar to his grandson Que.
Que was in attendance at the private ceremony and wore a black Georgia Bulldogs jersey. Overall, 17 people attended the ceremony, including UGA president Jere Morehead, Director of Athletics Greg McGarity, members of the Seiler family, and others.
Russ roamed the sidelines from 2009 to 2012 as the interim mascot after the passing of Uga VII and Uga VIII. He was officially named Uga IX on Sept. 15, 2012 prior to the game against Florida Atlantic.
Overall, Russ had a record of 44-19. He did not attend any games during the 2015 season until he passed the collar to Que, now Uga X, on November 21 against Georgia Southern.
Russ now lies with the other eight former mascots of the Georgia Bulldogs. Each Uga lies in a mausoleum in the southwest corner of Sanford Stadium.The woman, however, an importer of tea from England and a DJ for a Chiang Mai radio station, was picking up a foreign friend who was visiting the city.
Chiang Mai land transport officials' crackdown on Uber drivers came to light on Wednesday when a video clip of the incident was posted on a popular Facebook page.
The clip was viewed over 291,000 times in 22 hours and was shared 1,926 times and received over 45,000 reactions.
Many Chiang Mai Facebook users cried foul over the aggressive actions of the taxi drivers and the apparent sanction by officials.
The clip said the officials apologised to the woman after they determined she was not an Uber driver.
Matichon Online identified the woman as Aristhapat Puethai. She told Matichon that she went to the airport on Tuesday to pick up a friend and when her friend got into the car, a group of taxi drivers surrounded her car and shouted and hit her car with their hands and took photos.
She said she was frightened and angry.
Earlier, a Chiang Mai woman who was at the airport to pick up a Chinese business client who had rented her condominium faced similar incident.EDMONTON - Press "enter," dealer — scientists have taught a computer how to play unbeatable poker.
While the news may sadden the hearts of rec-room card sharps everywhere, the winners in this game are programmers trying to do everything from improve public security to help doctors treat patients with diabetes.
"We should be able to use these algorithms in any well-defined problem," said Michael Bowling, the University of Alberta computer scientist who co-authored a paper in the journal Science that details how the program for two-handed, fixed-bet Texas Hold 'Em can't do worse than break even.
Scientists in the field of game theory long ago taught computers to play games such as checkers and chess. But poker has remained elusive because it's a so-called "imperfect information" game. A player has to make decisions without knowing all the data such as what the other player is holding.
"This game has been, historically, an important challenge problem," Bowling said. "Poker is one of the games that really motivated the whole founding of the field of game theory back in the '20s."
Bowling's team made its breakthrough by refining a previously developed technique called counterfactual regret minimization that allows a computer to look back at previous hands and learn from its mistakes. Although that sounds similar to how humans improve, the computer used here became a one-player Las Vegas.
"It spent two months playing billions and billions of hands of poker against itself to find the perfect strategy," said Bowling. "The strategy is 1,000 times larger than all the English-language Wikipedia."
It's unlikely to be of much use at anyone's Saturday night game.
"You have to memorize a 10-terabyte table of probabilities."
A terabyte is one byte followed by 12 zeros.
But the point was never to become an unbeatable online poker star. The same process that taught the computer when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em can be transferred to any problem with well-defined rules and outcomes, many options and imperfect information — terrorist security, for example.
"We run patrols, we do searches — we have these tools at our disposal, but how do we deploy them? We want to find a strategy that's unbeatable.
"What we've done is shown that we can do these game theoretic analyses at a scale that hasn't been done before — at a really enormous complexity. That means that we can start looking at problems in that security sphere."
Game theory is already being used to help schedule air marshals on commercial flights in the United States.
Bowling's team is also working with diabetes researchers to see if the computer poker work can help manage the disease.
Doctors and patients typically come up with a plan to adjust insulin intake to food consumption, exercise and other variables. But those variables can change. Nor do doctors have any guarantees how well the patient will follow the treatment plan.
"Building a policy that is robust to those uncertainties is not that different from building a poker policy that's robust to not knowing what cards the opponent has," Bowling said.
"If we could have a decision support system that could maybe help the patient tweak their formula on their own, or even assist the doctor to do it faster, then we could improve the effectiveness of these treatment policies."
Despite its larger ambitions, there are lessons in Bowling's paper for the casual player, although they will already be familiar to the experienced.
— Avoid simply calling bets. If you're in, you're probably best to raise.
— Don't make the maximum allowed bet in the first round.
— Hang in there. The computer routinely played weaker hands than most human players.
"What the poker programs have always suggested is that the human players are too conservative at this game."
ALSO ON HUFFPOST:A 24-year-old Maryland man is due in court Monday amid allegations that he sexually abused and killed his 10-week-old daughter. The child’s 22-year-old mother also is charged in a case that has shocked police.
“Very rare, tragic, unconscionable,” Capt. Paul Starks, a spokesman for the Montgomery County police, said Sunday.
The couple — Robert Alan Davidson and Lorena Thompson of Rockville — were booked into the Montgomery County jail on Saturday following a two-month investigation into the death of their daughter, Aleah Thompson. A medical examiner concluded that the infant died of “multiple blunt force injuries.”
Davidson, the girl’s father, is charged with sex abuse of a minor, child abuse resulting in death,
second-degree murder and other counts. Police say he has admitted that he dropped the infant several times and that he aggressively shook her at least once. He was being held Sunday on a $5 million bond, according to court records.
Starks said there is also evidence indicating that Aleah was struck.
Thompson, the girl’s mother, is charged with neglect and child-abuse counts. She was being held Sunday on an $800,000 bond. Police allege that she knew about the injuries, did not report them and didn’t take Aleah to her two-month health checkup.
Before being locked up, neither parent had claimed Aleah’s body, which was being held at the D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office as of Thursday, according to detectives.
Davidson and Thompson are scheduled to have the amounts of their bonds reviewed Monday by a judge. Their attorneys may present at least part of their sides of the case. Efforts to reach friends and family members of the couple for comment were unsuccessful.
According to Lorena Thompson’s Facebook profile, she had been working as a cook at Met Bethesda, a restaurant. Employees there declined to comment Saturday.
The profile image shows two photographs of an infant. On June 26, the day Aleah died, Lorena Thompson posted a tribute to her daughter in a one-minute video that shows about 20 photographs of a tiny child, including photos taken just after birth. There is a caption, which reads in part: “I love you Aleah. I will miss you so much. Feels like I’ve died again inside. 4/16/15 – 6/26/15. RIP. my lady bug my heart beat.”
The case had begun three days earlier, when Davidson called 911 at 7:18 p.m. to report that his daughter was not breathing, according to police allegations filed in court records. Paramedics found Aleah in “an unresponsive state” and took her to nearby Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center, where she then was flown to Medstar Georgetown University Hospital, according to the court records. The child was given a diagnosis of head trauma, according to court records.
Police spoke with Davidson, who said that just before calling 911 he had been playing video games and heard the sound of labored breathing in a bedroom. He said he tried to resuscitate Aleah but couldn’t. At the time, Thompson was at work.
Davidson also told investigators that at least twice he touched Aleah in private areas — in a manner that police would later say constituted sexual abuse, according to authorities.
“Robert Davidson also stated he had dropped Aleah Thompson several times, and on one occasion, she even rolled off the couch,” detectives wrote in court papers. “Robert Davidson later admitted to aggressively shaking Aleah Thompson on June 23, 2015.”
When police spoke with Aleah’s mother, she said she saw injuries on Aleah that had originated while she was at work, but she never took her daughter to the hospital, according to the records.
“A witness statement revealed that Lorena Thompson suspected Robert Davidson had inflicted the injuries to Aleah Thompson, but continued to leave the victim in his sole care and custody,” detectives wrote.
Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.LA PAZ (Reuters) - Emboldened by a new leftist constitution, Bolivia President Evo Morales on Saturday handed over ownership of farmland seized by the state from wealthy estate holders to poor indigenous people.
A Bolivian indigenous man participates in the celebrations marking the 228th anniversary of the siege of La Paz March 13, 2009. REUTERS/Gaston Brito
Morales handed out around 94,000 acres of lands recently confiscated from five big ranches in Bolivia’s wealthy eastern lowlands, a stronghold of his conservative political opponents. The ranchers have been accused of employing workers in conditions of semi-slavery.
“Private property will always be respected but we want people who are not interested in equality to change their thinking and focus more on country than currency,” said Morales, flanked by military and police personnel.
Among those who lost land was U.S. cattleman Ronald Larsen, who has emerged as a key opponent of the Morales government’s land reforms, which are designed to distribute more of the nation’s riches to poor indigenous peoples.
Larsen and other ranchers who had threatened to block the handover of their lands can still appeal the expropriations before agrarian courts.
An Aymara Indian and former leader of coca-leaf farmers, Morales is Bolivia’s first indigenous president. He has governed the resource-rich nation for three years.
He is especially popular among the poor and Aymara, Quechua, and Guarani indigenous groups that suffered centuries of discrimination in South America’s poorest country.
“Today, from here, we are beginning to put an end to the giant landholdings of Bolivia,” Morales said.
The land transfer came six weeks after Morales celebrated the approval of a new leftist constitution that aims to give Bolivia’s indigenous majority more power, lets him run for re-election and hands him tighter control over the economy.
The constitution also sets limits on single farm tracts to 12,400 acres and states that farms must meet certain economic and social conditions.
“It is not that these lands were not in production, but that they were the site of human rights violations against the Guarani, who will now be their new owners,” Morales said.Swansea boss Garry Monk has revealed that he was interested in retaining the services of Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Tom Carroll this season.
Carroll made 18 appearances during his loan spell at the Liberty Stadium last season, however he decided to instead push for the Spurs first team. He has played seven times for Tottenham this season.
Monk says that Carroll wanted to get regular football, which was not a promise that could be made tot him at Swansea. The Englishman described him as a ‘really good prospect’, however, a return to Wales was not the path that 23-year-old Carroll wanted to take.
Monk said to the South Wales Evening Post, “Tom did great, I really enjoyed working with him and he’s a really good prospect.”
“I spoke to him at the end of the season about coming here and of course we were interested.
“But I think it was a case that he really wanted to go back there and see if he could work his way into the first team.
“If it wasn’t working there he wanted to go out and get regular football. That was something I couldn’t guarantee him.”
Along with Swansea, Carroll has had loan spells with Leyton Orient, Derby County and QPR respectively since he signed a professional contract with Spurs in 2010. He has made a total of 13 appearances for his parent club.
He has played 17 times for England at U21 level, but is yet to be selected for the senior squad.Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. said a new parking ban that would prohibit parking from 7 to 9 a.m. weekdays on some West Loop streets could soon be approved by the City Council. View Full Caption DNAinfo/Stephanie Lulay; DNAinfo/Heather Cherone
WEST LOOP — A new morning parking ban that aims to solve the West Loop's parking woes could be implemented as soon as this summer, an influential West Loop alderman said Monday.
Aimed at discouraging suburban "day-trippers" from parking in the area and heading to work Downtown, 27th Ward Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. hopes a ban that would prohibit street parking from 7 to 9 a.m. weekdays — but make an exception for West Loop residents — can be approved by the City Council soon.
If all goes well, new parking signs could be installed by summer, Burnett told DNAinfo Monday.
Unlike a previous pilot program that banned parking from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. on weekdays, residents would be able to obtain a permit to park on streets from 7 to 9 a.m. weekdays. The proposed ordinance aims to improve parking in an area bound by West Van Buren Street on the south, West Washington Street on the north, Green Street on the east and Ashland Avenue on the west.
Under the draft ordinance, signs prohibiting parking from 7 to 9 a.m. on weekdays would be installed on more than 20 blocks, including:
Northeast area
• 1-150 N. Morgan St., two blocks on the east side of the street between Randolph and Madison
• 100 |
-based diesel turbochargers [ edit ]
A medium-sized six-cylinder marine diesel-engine, with turbocharger and exhaust in the foreground
Turbocharging, which is common on diesel engines in automobiles, trucks, tractors, and boats is also common in heavy machinery such as locomotives, ships, and auxiliary power generation.
Turbocharging can dramatically improve an engine's specific power and power-to-weight ratio, performance characteristics that are normally poor in non-turbocharged diesel engines.
diesel engines have no detonation because diesel fuel is injected at or towards the end of the compression stroke and is ignited solely by the heat of compression of the charge air. Because of this, diesel engines can use a much higher boost pressure than spark ignition engines, limited only by the engine's ability to withstand the additional heat and pressure.
Turbochargers are also employed in certain two-stroke cycle diesel engines, which would normally require a Roots blower for aspiration. In this specific application, mainly Electro-Motive diesel (EMD) 567, 645, and 710 Series engines, the turbocharger is initially driven by the engine's crankshaft through a gear train and an overrunning clutch, thereby providing aspiration for combustion. After combustion has been achieved, and after the exhaust gases have reached sufficient heat energy, the overrunning clutch is automatically disengaged, and the turbo-compressor is thereafter driven exclusively by the exhaust gases. In the EMD application, the turbocharger acts as a compressor for normal aspiration during starting and low power output settings and is used for true turbocharging during medium and high power output settings. This is particularly beneficial at high altitudes, as are often encountered on western U.S. railroads. It is possible for the turbocharger to revert to compressor mode momentarily during commands for large increases in engine power.
Business and adoption [ edit ]
Honeywell Turbo Technologies, Borg Warner and Mitsubishi Turbocharger are the largest manufacturers in Europe and the United States.[2][44][45] Several factors are expected to contribute to more widespread consumer adoption of turbochargers, especially in the US:[46][47]
New government fuel economy and emissions targets. [44] [45]
Increasing oil prices and a consumer focus on fuel efficiency.
Only 10 percent of light vehicles sold in the United States are equipped with turbochargers, making the United States an emerging market, compared with 50 percent of vehicles in Europe that are turbocharged diesel and 27 percent that are gasoline boosted. [48]
Higher temperature tolerances for gasoline engines, ball bearings in the turbine shaft and variable geometry have reduced driveability concerns.
In 2014, 21 percent of vehicles sold in North America were turbocharged, which is expected to grow to 38 percent by 2019. In Europe 67 percent of all vehicles were turbocharged in 2014, which is expected to grow to 69 percent by 2019.[49] Historically, more than 90 percent of turbochargers were diesel, however, adoption in gasoline engines is increasing.[47]
The U.S. Coalition for Advanced Diesel Cars is pushing for a technology neutral policy for government subsidies of environmentally friendly automotive technology. If successful, government subsidies would be based on the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards rather than supporting specific technologies like electric cars. Political shifts could drastically change adoption projections.[50] Turbocharger sales in the United States increased when the federal government boosted corporate average fuel economy targets to 35.5 mpg by 2016.[51]
Safety [ edit ]
Turbocharger failures and resultant high exhaust temperatures are among the causes of car fires.[52]
See also [ edit ]We test at in-game Ultra quality settings as perfect balance for mainstream, high-end and enthusiast class graphics cards. For PC gaming your goal always should be 60+ FPS. However, we say 40 FPS for any game should be your minimum threshold, while 60 FPS (frames per second) or higher can be considered optimal. The type of game is relevant though, an first person shooter game is nice at 60 fps, an online shooter on a 144Hz monitor feels better at 100 fps. And totally on the opposing side, for RTS gaming things are different, and there we are comfortable with an FPS ranging as low as 30~35 FPS. Gaming below 30 FPS is consider to be poor. At all times if your framerate is low, you can opt to change in-game image quality settings. For example the cheapest trick to gain performance is to lower your anti-aliasing mode (or even disable it). It's the small tweaks herein that will allow you to balance out performance versus image quality settings. Above the most popular and use monitor resolution at 1920x1080 pixels also known as Full HD.
For the more hardcore PC gamers a preferred resolution is WQHD which is short for Wide Quad HD, a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels. Let's just call this the more more sexy resolution opposed to the ever so popular Full HD. Again, these are the same quality settings. Starting at a GeForce GTX 970 or an AMD Radeon R9 290 you can already game in 2560x1440 if you wanted too with these terrific quality settings.
And above that colossal resolution we call Ultra HD. Ultra HD gaming is commonly addressed as Ultra HD, UHD or 4K, this resolution refers to the ultra-high resolutions with approximately 4000 horizontal pixels. Ultra HD resolution also has four times the number of pixels of a typical 1920x1080 resolution. We see that the Fury X now flexes muscle a better, but Nvidia has the stronger driver optimization alright.
Next stop, Multi-GPU numbers.Shyheim Myers told police that he “wanted to do something exhilarating.”
So that’s why, he says — according to a police report — he ran out of his apartment naked on April 17 and danced in the parking lot for several minutes, exposing his butt and — well, you know — to anyone who was watching.
Myers, 19, was charged with public indecency and released on a copy of charges.
A police report says an officer arrived at Myers’ apartment complex on Roswell Road at 12:30 a.m. There, the officer met with a witness who made the call and and another witness.
The officer then met with Myers and told him what the witnesses saw. Police said Myers initially stated his dog ran out of his apartment and he ran out with a towel around his waist.
But the officer didn’t believe Myers as there were no signs of an animal living in his unit. That’s when Myers fessed up, police said.
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MORE NORTH FULTON NEWS...You’ve seen the presentation. You’ve seen the motion graph tool. But up until now, the data exploration tool, Trendalyzer, has always been in the browser. Now you can download the desktop version, and keep everything on your own computer with Gapminder Desktop:
Gapminder Desktop is particularly useful for presentations as it allows you to prepare your graphs in advance and you won’t need an Internet connection at your lecture or presentation. In the “list of graphs” you will get at preset list of graphs on the left side, but you can also very easily create your own favorite examples. Simply arrange the graph the way you want it and click “bookmark this graph”. Your example will the appear in your own list of favorite graphs. Perfect when you want to prepare a lecture or presentation.
Basically, it’s the exact same thing as the online version as an Adobe Air application, which is handy for all you motion graph fans out there.
See the always excited Hans Rosling describe Gapminder Desktop in the video below:
[via infosthetics]Introduction
Social media is a radical new way for individuals to reach online content. It gives the user access to millions of sources, and gives non-traditional sources a level playing field with traditional sources. Understanding how readers digest these sources is important to content creators and special interests seeking to promote specific content. This paper looks into one site in particular, Reddit.com. Reddit users, referred to as “Redditors”, can give submissions either positive or negative votes. The sum of these votes is referred to as “Karma” and reflects the popularity of such posts. It is important to note that Karma begins at 1 and cannot drop below 0. The most popular posts make it to the front page, where they receive they receive the most attention. Submissions can take many forms, specifically: articles, blogs, self-posts, images, audio/visual and other. Most of these are self-explanatory but self-posts refer to simple text submissions by Redditors. They do not link outside of Reddit.com, and are similar to a blog post with Reddit.com as the blog host. These different types of content are likely to receive different levels of Karma since they are digested differently. Reddit also has a subReddit system. SubReddits are communities organized around ideologies, interests, or lifestyles. Users who identify with certain subReddits have an option to subscribe, and will have their personalized-front page contain submissions to that subReddit. SubReddits are also biased towards articles which reflect their idealogy, so a liberal article posted to /r/conservative can expect very little Karma. The size of the subReddit to which an item was submitted is a likely predictor of that submission’s Karma score for two reasons. Firstly, the numbers of readers in that subReddit reflect the level of interest in that subject matter. Secondly, the number of readers in a subReddit is an indicator of how much facetime a new submission will get before it is bumped off. In other words, there is a tradeoff between submitting to a large subReddit with a lot of interest but too many voices, and a small subReddit with little interest but each voice is well heard. In between these two extremes, there is likely a sweet spot which is most fertile for Karma. It is important to note an anomaly in the subReddit system: the main Reddit.com subReddit. This subReddit has over 33,000 readers but has no discernable special interest. It is a vestigial part of Reddit from before the subReddit system. I mark in my data submissions to this subReddit to see if it affects Karma. The most important predictor of Karma is immeasurable: engagement. Some posts are more popular simply because they better catch or hold the user’s attention. I use number of comments as an imperfect proxy for engagement. The rational for this is that commenting takes more effort than simply voting. Commenting on a post indicates that the reader has made enough of a connection to the submission to invest a response.So what happened with the Arcade Edition DLC characters proposal Ono-san?
Ono: I couldn't got approval from [upper level staff], but I'll continue [the] proposal!!
Good luck on getting your bosses to approve DLC.
Ono: Thanks. So, I got approval from my boss, Keiji Inafune, but I can't [get] it from [upper level staff]. ;(
My hype died! I give up on wishing for Arcade Edition DLC for SSF4 since you didn't got approval! =(
Ono: I'm not giving up yet. ;D
Ono: I'll [get] back to [my] desk and enter Meeting for New Proje... Oops!! See you later. ;D
I bet his next project is an educational game and not DarkStalkers. It makes me angry.
Ono: Yeah, everybody may be angry. ;P
I want to see another SNK vs. Capcom! Do you have plans for that?
Ono: Umm, above everything, [I'm concentrating on] making Street Fighter X Tekken.It seems the only soldiers who are safe from the coming budget axe are those that parade around Parliament Hill in the changing of the guard ceremony for tourists in the summer, according to a leaked report.
Defence spending will be in crosshairs when the federal budget is presented on Thursday as the Canadian army faces another barrage of major reductions over and above the Conservative government's established deficit-fighting strategy and program review.
An army planning document shows that land forces are bracing for a further 8 per cent hit on operating and maintenance in the coming fiscal plan, in addition to an existing 22 per cent budget reduction.
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The latest cuts, estimated in the range of $32-million, will slice into the army's ability to train for operations in the jungle, desert and mountains, and come on top of $226-million in cuts ordered in the government's strategic review and Deficit Reduction Action Plan, says a Jan. 31, 2013 document, written by Lieutentant-General Peter Devlin.
There's expected to be an $8-million clawback on contracted services, and the army will be required to absorb a further $10-million related to civilian wages.
The document says funding for full-time reservists will have to be further reduced, and unused cash in the budget for part-time soldiers may have to be raided in order to keep full-timers.
Yet, despite the budget ravages, the army is under pressure to maintain the pet projects and pageantry admired by the Conservatives, who once promised stable and predictable funding.
"Ceasing activities viewed as priorities by the government of Canada will invite scrutiny into those activities the Army chooses to do at the expense of those items that hold government interest," said the letter, which is meant to guide the army's business planning for the coming year.
"As an example, activities such as the Ceremonial Guard hold particular interest for the [government of Canada] and must be sustained; even at the expense of area programming. Any and all [government of Canada] directed activities will be fulfilled."
The Ceremonial Guard, comprised of mostly reserve members, conducts the changing of the guard ceremony on Parliament Hill during the tourist season.
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National Defence is the biggest discretionary line item in the federal budget and has long been the target for deficit-slashing governments, regardless of political stripe.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned Defence Minister Peter MacKay last June that initial budget-cut proposals did not go deep enough on the administrative side of the department, a message he reinforced at the swearing-in of new defence chief General Tom Lawson when he said he wanted a military with "more teeth and less tail."
When criticized about how spending cuts appear to have singled out the army, MacKay has pointed out that the army's baseline budget is $500-million higher than it was when the Conservatives took office in 2006.
"After years of unprecedented growth, and following the end of the combat mission in Afghanistan, it is necessary for the government to balance military needs with taxpayer interests," said MacKay spokesman Jay Paxton.
"Under our government, the military will always have the tools it needs to defend Canada and care for its people."
Defence sources say as much as $600-million will be cut out of military "readiness" in all branches in the coming year. Readiness refers to training and equipment maintenance that a military needs to do in order to deploy both overseas and at home.
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Indeed, Gen. Devlin's planning report says the army will have to limit the scope of its operations in the Arctic, which is "five to seven times" more expensive than missions conducted in southern Canada.
The average 1.5 per cent increase in the army's budget for fuel comes nowhere near covering the anticipated diesel costs, which rose by 24 per cent in 2011-12. As consequence, the army will have to "reduce the level of activity."
In a recent interview with Maclean's magazine, MacKay revealed that department intends to sell surplus property, some of which is either outdated or too costly to maintain.
Analyst Dave Perry from Carleton University in Ottawa has crunched the overall defence budget numbers and projected, in an updated analysis to be released this week, that the department will lose $2.4-billion — about 12.4 per cent — of its approximately $20-billion budget when compared against spending in 2011-12.
In his benchmark report, retired lieutenant-general Andrew Leslie called for deep cuts in the size of National Defence headquarters and for the savings to be plowed back into the field force.
But Perry's analysis shows that since the government will not cut the overall size of the regular or reserve forces, and is not expected to give up equipment capabilities, such as specific classes of planes, tanks and ships, there is nowhere else to cut except in readiness and training.
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"Since the size of the regular Forces is the largest driver of overall personnel spending, and major capital fleets account for the bulk of capital equipment fleets, this essentially protected the two single largest spending categories from the budget reduction," Perry wrote in his analysis, obtained in advance by The Canadian Press.
"As a result, the department has been tasked with finding the majority of its cuts from the funds spent on (operations and maintenance)."
Leslie's report has gone largely ignored, he said.
"DND has taken almost no action to enact his recommendations," Perry said. "As a result, the bulk of the budget cuts are falling on operational readiness and training."During Sen. Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing Tuesday for attorney general, fellow Sen. Al Franken pummeled him with a litany of accusations, essentially accusing him of having never actually prosecuted dozens of desegregation cases.
“Now, you originally said that you personally handled three of these cases, but these lawyers say that you had no substantive involvement,” Franken said, reportedly referencing a column in The Wall Street Journal by an attorney.
This line of questioning was not appreciated by Sen. Ted Cruz, who later slammed Franken for having even insinuated that Sessions had lied.
“It is unfortunate to see members of this body impugn the integrity of a fellow senator with whom we have served for years,” he said. “It is particularly unfortunate when that attempt is not backed up by fact.”
He went on to attack the veracity of Franken’s claim, noting that the aforementioned column had been penned by an attorney who later admitted to misstatements of fact during a testimony before a Senate committee.
Specifically, the column had been written by former Department of Justice attorney Gerry Hebert, who according to fellow former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams was indeed a liar.
“The reporters using Hebert as a source do not mention Hebert’s history of making up stories about purported racism, yet documentation of that history is easily located in the public record,” Adams wrote in a piece for PJ Media last year in defense of Sessions.
“The fact that this is controversial tells you all you need to know about the sorry intellectual state of our country’s elites, especially in the legal academy and federal bureaucracies,” Cruz continued Tuesday. “Sen. Sessions believes in the foundational idea that we are governed by objectively knowable, written rules, and that we should not be subject to the interpretive whims of unelected, power-hungry bureaucrats. Sessions will instill this belief at the Department of Justice.”
Listen to his retort below:
Franken later responded by claiming that he just had been trying to do his job by being tough on Sessions. That would be believable were it not already known that Franken is and has always been a hack.
Like us on Facebook – USA Liberty News Please share this story on Facebook and Twitter and let us know what you think about Sen. Ted Cruz’s brutal takedown of former comedian and hack Sen. Al Franken!
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Source: conservativetribune.com
H/T TheBlazeYoung people in France are poorer than their parents and are consumed by frustration. Only the Front National has recognized that resentment, says Louis Chauvel.
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ZEIT Campus ONLINE: Mr. Chauvel, almost a quarter of people under the age of 25 in France are unemployed. Are we looking at a lost generation?
Louis Chauvel: It's not lost, not yet. But it is a disillusioned and frustrated generation. First, though, let's take a look at the number: It's incorrect to say that every fourth person in France under 25 is unemployed, rather it is every fourth person of those who are in the labor market – which excludes people studying at university or who aren't working for other reasons. Nevertheless, it is a huge problem: Youth unemployment in France is more than three times as high as it is in Germany. In addition to the youth unemployment rate, it is also important to look at the number of those who still haven't found work one year after completing their university degree. That, too, is at 25 percent. In the 1970s, it was at just 5 percent. These young men and women are well-educated, but many of them can't find work. And if they do, the jobs are temporary or poorly paid. France is increasingly heading in the direction of southern European countries, where a university degree is necessary just to get a poorly paid job. These young people are the successors of the Baby Boomers. I call them Baby Losers.
ZEIT Campus ONLINE: How do these Baby Losers feel?
Chauvel: For these young people in France, unemployment is a constant threat. Through my work, I also meet many young German students, for whom unemployment is also a constant risk, but it isn't an intrinsic fear that weighs on their psyches as it does for French graduates. They are affected by a widespread societal slide, which I call the "spiral of decline."
Louis Chauvel 49, is a professor of sociology at the University of Luxembourg. His research focuses on generational inequality and social classes in Europe. His most recent book, The Spiral of Decline, appeared in November 2016.
ZEIT Campus ONLINE: What do you mean by that?
Chauvel: The spiral is comprised of four factors: Unemployment and, as I already mentioned, precarity. The other two are low wages and a lack of political representation. Baby Losers earn less than their parents did. To reach the same income level, they have to study two-and-a-half years longer and obtain a higher degree. There is a large survey in France that has been undertaken for decades. It includes simple questions like: Compared to your parents, do you see your situation as better or worse? And for years, the share of those saying they are worse off than their parents has been growing. The share used to be at 45 percent whereas today it is over 60 percent. And it's not only about their ability to afford a fast computer. It's about the existential values of civic life: an apartment, for example. Young people can't buy the kind of apartment that their parents could afford when they were the same age. Finally, a decreasing number of young French are active in unions or in politics. As such, their interests aren't represented and their problems are not solved. That leads to a division between them and the political establishment.
ZEIT Campus ONLINE: This division between politics and society is a topic of discussion across Europe and also in the United States. What is so special about France?
Chauvel: There hasn't been a renewal of the political establishment for around 30 years. Lawmakers spend decades in parliament. Take conservative presidential candidate François Fillon as an example: He entered the French National Assembly in 1981, when he was 27. He was a parliamentarian until 2007, with a couple of breaks due to other appointments. That is 26 years, and he isn't an exception. That means that the societal problems and tensions that young people in particular experience each day are not reflected in the political personnel and are not recognized by the elite. But it's not just in the political realm. The lives of young people hardly play a role in French culture and intellectual life either: in the media, in literature, in the public debate, it's just old people talking to old people about problems facing old people.
ZEIT Campus ONLINE: How do young people react to that?
Chauvel: They distance themselves from the political process. Participation in elections and in political parties is extremely low among those under 35 when compared to older generations, who are heavily involved in all civic society institutions, which are characterized by debate. They take part in events and in the political lives of their cities and towns. Younger French distance themselves and radicalize. You can find younger French in extremist left or environmental spectrums. There are many young people in the anti-fascist movement or in the extreme left wing of the Communist Party, represented by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. That is the one side of the coin. On the other side is the only party pledging political renewal: Front National. That attracts a lot of young people.
ZEIT Campus ONLINE: The founder of Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen, spent 39 years as head of the party. And young people find this party attractive?
Chauvel: His daughter, Marine Le Pen, has completely rejuvenated the party since she took over leadership in 2011. Front National used to consist of nostalgics, anti-Semites and radicals. But thanks to her grassroots renewal, recent years have seen the development of an extremely motivated group of young people who are involved in the party and extremely motivated young voters. There are very few people in Front National who are in the public eye on the national stage like Marine Le Pen, but behind them is a growing young generation in all regions of France that is extremely motivated. It is a group that can be identified by their first names.
ZEIT Campus ONLINE: Their first names?
Chauvel: Yes. They have names like "Steeve" and "Mylène." France has a long tradition of sociology of names. The cultural and political elite have certain names – and give them to their children – which make it clear that they belong to a certain class. Front National candidates don't have such names, they have relatively new names that are used by the lower middle class, like "Steeve." You won't find any university professors or senior officials in France with that name. First names are sufficient to recognize the vast cultural divide in French society.
ZEIT Campus ONLINE: What is it that the younger generation likes about Front National?
Chauvel: Especially in areas outside the large cities like Paris, Front National offers young people opportunities to advance in politics. One example is Hayange, an old industrial city that always had a strong union movement. The city's mayor, Fabien Engelmann, is from a leftist union family and, at 37, is quite young for French politics. People like him wouldn't otherwise have a chance to become mayor at that age, but Front National gives them such opportunities. Especially in areas that used to be centers of industry or mining, there are a lot of people whose children feel as though they are being shoved to the periphery because nobody caters to them. In French slang, you say "ras-le-bol:" People are fed up.
ZEIT Campus ONLINE: But why do they go to Front National instead of continuing to support the Communist Party like their parents did?
Chauvel: Because the French left is still strongly shaped by the 1968 generation and there hasn't been a political renewal there either. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for example, became a local political leader in May 1968 as a 17-year-old. It is the kind of career profile you often find among French leftists, even in the National Assembly, where there are lawmakers now in their 70s who were young activists 50 years ago. It was similar with the Nuit Debout movement. There were a lot of young people, but most of the movement consisted of older leftists who have dominated French politics for decades. At the same time, the economic policies being pursued by Front National aren't all that different from those supported by the extreme left: Frexit, leaving the eurozone, closing borders to imported goods and massive borrowing. Many in the declining generation grew up in leftist, extreme leftist or union households and have realized that they can no longer reach the level of prosperity their parents enjoy. Front National gives them the possibility to advance without having to take on aging Communist men. And the French political elite hasn't recognized the problems these people are facing.
ZEIT Campus ONLINE: Youth unemployment in France has been at over 20 percent for decades. Why hasn't the French government been able to do anything about it?
Chauvel: Because leading state officials and politicians have been denying the problem of social decline for decades. This inaccurate perception is draped like a veil over the people who govern France.
ZEIT Campus ONLINE: Where does the veil come from?
Chauvel: It isn't some conspiracy among the nation's leadership, it is more of a self-deception: The country's situation is appraised more positively than it actually is. That leads to self-affirmation. There is this saying in France: "Tout va très bien madame la marquise" (Eds. Note: "everything's just fine, Ms. Marquise"), which comes from a song of the same name. The song is about the downfall of the nobility. The castle is burning and the Marquise's husband has killed himself, but aside from that, Ms. Marquise is assured that everything is just fine. That's how it is in France. To avoid scaring the voters, politicians tell themselves and the people in the country that everything is just fine.
ZEIT Campus ONLINE: Front National doesn't see the situation in a particularly positive light.
Chauvel: And that is precisely the danger. The worldview of Marine Le Pen is extremely pessimistic, as is that of the radical leftist Communist Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Their message to voters is: Globalization took your jobs, you will lose everything – and the euro and Ms. Merkel are to blame. And many voters, particularly young people, feel as though they've been heard because that is exactly the view they have. They have the feeling that things are going downhill in this country. Because the other candidates don't talk about the problems, they leave the field to the pessimists. But the solutions proposed by Le Pen and Mélenchon are nonsense and wouldn't solve the problems. We have seen, though, with the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump, that people vote for those who recognize their problems, whether or not the solutions they propose will work.
ZEIT Campus ONLINE: What would have to be done to solve the problem?
Chauvel: The government must first recognize the problem. And then it would have to invest money in the university system and in the real economy. Many more people in France complete their Baccalauréat (Eds. Note: college prep high school degree) than in Germany. But aside from the elite universities, there are no restrictions on university entrance, which has led to a situation where there is an extremely high number of universities, but they teach at an extremely low level. Either you get a degree that is worth almost nothing or you win the lottery and are accepted to one of the elite universities. That has to change.
ZEIT Campus ONLINE: Do you think that Ms. Le Pen will be successful with her pessimism?
Chauvel: Last October, I said that Trump would never get elected. And last May I said the British would never vote for Brexit. That's why now all I'll say is: I don't know. But I am extremely worried. In the televised debate before last, Emmanuel Macron spoke optimistically about the country's economic situation for seven minutes. When he was done, Marine Le Pen told viewers: "You hear that? It's like pleasant music, it's nice to listen to. But what did Mr. Macron really say in the last seven minutes? Almost nothing." That is indeed a problem for Mr. Macron, that he is extremely ambiguous and optimistic and doesn't speak about the significant problems facing France. Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Macron will likely face off against each other in the second round of voting and Le Pen has a significant amount of ammunition to use against Mr. Macron. We cannot leave it to the pessimists to paint a realistic image of French society.
Translated by Charles Hawley
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. This is the English translation of the original German version.SAVAR, Bangladesh — Barely 20 miles from the national capital, this gritty suburb is now a dusty, chaotic industrial center littered with factories that produce clothes for leading Western brands. Building codes are often unenforced, regulatory oversight is flimsy and the men wielding power often travel with armed guards.
And perhaps no one wielded power more brazenly than Sohel Rana. He traveled by motorcycle, as untouchable as a mafia don, trailed by his own biker gang. Local officials and the Bangladeshi news media say he was involved in illegal drugs and guns, but he also had a building, Rana Plaza, that housed five factories.
Upstairs, workers earned as little as $40 a month making clothes for retailers like J. C. Penney. Downstairs, Mr. Rana hosted local politicians, playing pool, drinking and, the officials say, indulging in drugs.
Now Mr. Rana, 35, is under arrest, the most reviled man in Bangladesh after the horrific collapse of Rana Plaza last week left nearly 400 people dead, with many others still missing. On Tuesday, a top Bangladeshi court seized his assets, as the public bayed for his execution, especially as it appears that the tragedy could have been averted if the frantic warnings of an engineer who examined the building the day before had been heeded.Nauru open letter could send legal shockwaves
Posted
An open letter alleging abuse of detainees on Nauru and government inaction could have far reaching legal consequences, and strengthens the hand of any victim who wants to sue the Commonwealth, writes Greg Barns.
The significance of the open letter signed by 24 individuals who are, or have worked, at the Nauru detention centre, is not only political but legal.
Let us leave the political consequences to one side and focus on the latter because the letter appears to suggest that the Commonwealth, which has a non-delegable duty of care to asylum seekers in detention onshore and offshore, has knowingly breached that duty.
The open letter, whose signatories include a former head of mental health services, and workers from Save the Children, suggests that the Department of Immigration has had knowledge since late 2013, obtained through its officers participating in staff meetings and by way of written briefings, of sexual and physical assaults on women and children at the centre.
The letter also alleges that despite having this knowledge the Commonwealth Government did nothing, or certainly not enough, to prevent these assaults from continuing to occur.
On March 25 last year Dr Andrew Morrison SC, a leading barrister in the area of institutional duty of care, and myself explained on this site how the Commonwealth was liable for the wellbeing of asylum seekers even though it employs contractors. We noted:
The law in Australia is that the Commonwealth Government owes a non-delegable duty to detainees in immigration detention and the Commonwealth can be held liable "for the negligence of others who are engaged to perform the task of care for a third party - no matter whether the person engaged to provide the care is a servant or an independent contractor," as the High Court stated in a landmark 2003 decision called NSW v Lepore.
The legal position has not changed since then.
If the open letter signatories are correct and there is oral and written evidence pointing to the Commonwealth doing little or nothing to prevent physical and sexual assaults after it had such incidents brought to its attention, then it would seem clear the Commonwealth has breached that duty of care to all of those persons who have been psychologically and/or physically injured as a result of the assaults.
The open letter certainly strengthens the hand of any assault victim at the Nauru detention centre who wants to sue the Commonwealth.
It is notable that the open letter argues the Commonwealth has not only failed to exercise its duty of care to ensure detainees are not harmed but the signatories say it is "absolutely clear: The Government of Australia and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection have tolerated the physical and sexual assault of children, and the sexual harassment and assault of vulnerable women in the centre for more than 17 months."
If this statement is a reflection of the reality then the issue becomes what other legal sanctions are available to ensure justice for the victims of what appears to be the turning of a blind eye by the very people who should have been doing their best to care for vulnerable detainees.
For example, if Immigration Department officials or the Minister for Immigration deliberately refused to allow victims of sexual abuse, physical assaults or harassment to be moved from the Nauru detention centre (the open letter says that this was the case with some women) or if it turned a blind eye to abuse that was occurring this may be grounds for a legal action called misfeasance in public office.
Misfeasance in public office has been around since the 18th century but is emerging in common law countries like the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, as a way of obtaining compensation from government officials who either intentionally or through reckless indifference cause harm to others.
In the case of a failure by Immigration Department officials and or the Minister for Immigration to remove women detainees who had been assaulted and abused this might constitute a misfeasance in public office if it can be proved that the Departmental official or the Minister knew, or was recklessly indifferent to the likelihood that harm would occur to those women because of his or her failure to exercise his or her duty to keep them from harm in detention.
There is also the question of a Comcare investigation and possible criminal charges being brought against the Department of Immigration.
Max Costello, a former prosecutor in the area of workplace safety, says that the Nauru detention centre is a Commonwealth workplace and that the Department has a responsibility under workplace safety laws to ensure it is safe for employees and those who are forced to reside there. Non-compliance with workplace safety laws can result in fines of up to $3 million and jail for up to five years.
One would have thought that the open letter would have Comcare investigators hot footing it to Nauru to examine the evidence for bringing charges against the Department of Immigration.
The mistreatment of asylum seekers and the Commonwealth Government's blithe attitude to it is unconscionable and justice must be accorded to those who have suffered on Nauru. The open letter from the 24 former and current Nauru workers is damning and if its contents are correct (and there is nothing to suggest otherwise) then the road to justice will have become a little easier for those asylum seekers who have been wronged.
Greg Barns is a barrister and a spokesman for the Australian Lawyers Allliance. He is currently advising Independent Member for Denison Andrew Wilkie MP on a request to the International Criminal Court to investigate Australia's asylum seeker policies.
Topics: immigration, government-and-politics, law-crime-and-justiceNEW YORK – Netflix shares plunged Tuesday after the one-time Wall Street favorite revealed a massive departure of subscribers angered by price increases and other questionable changes at rental service that was created to make entertainment a snap.
Netflix revealed late Monday that it ended September with 23.8 million U.S. subscribers. That's down about 800,000 from June and far worse than anything |
employees detained and handcuffed a 65-year-old woman traveling from Qatar to visit her son, who is a U.S. citizen and serviceman stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C. The woman was held for more than 33 hours, according to the New York Times, and denied use of a wheelchair.
The men and women who work for the federal government completed these and other tasks and then returned to their families, where perhaps they had dinner and read stories to their children before bedtime.
When we worry and wonder about authoritarian regimes that inflict cruelty on civilians, we often imagine tyrannical despots unilaterally advancing their sinister agendas. But no would-be autocrat can act alone. As a practical matter, he needs subordinates willing to carry out orders. Of course, neither Donald Trump nor Steve Bannon personally detained any of the more than 100 people held at airports over the weekend pursuant to the administration's executive order on immigration, visitation and travel to the United States. They relied on assistance.
The men and women who reportedly handcuffed small children and the elderly, separated a child from his mother and held others without food for 20 hours, are undoubtedly "ordinary" people. What I mean by that, is that these are, in normal circumstances, people who likely treat their neighbors and co-workers with kindness and do not intentionally seek to harm others. That is chilling, as it is a reminder that authoritarians have no trouble finding the people they need to carry out their acts of cruelty. They do not need special monsters; they can issue orders to otherwise unexceptional people who will carry them out dutifully.
This should not be a surprise. The famous Milgram experiment and subsequent studies suggest that many people will obey instructions from an authority figure, even if it means harming another person. It is also perfectly understandable (which does not mean it is justifiable). How many of us would refuse to follow an instruction from a superior at work? It is natural to want to keep one's job, even if at the price of inflicting cruelty on another human being, even perhaps a child.
The question we need to ask ourselves is: What will we do? This is not a hypothetical question. Most of us will not face the stark choice employees at airports faced over the weekend. But we are all democratic citizens. Ultimately, our government can only act if we allow it to act. Under our Constitution, the people rule. Our elected officials, including the president, are accountable to us. We possess the power to reject actions we see as out of bounds. We are used to doing this in elections, but democratic tools go further. Even once an election is over, we can exercise our First Amendment rights to contact elected officials, speak, write and protest.
It is far easier to do nothing, to trust that, somehow, America's dangerous course will be set right. But this is a dangerous gamble, and in fact an abdication of our responsibility as Americans and indeed as human beings. If we do nothing, that is a choice. It means we accept a government that has demonstrated it is capable of inflicting cruelty on the innocent and defenseless.
What will we do?
Chris Edelson (edelson@american.edu) is an assistant professor of government in American University's School of Public Affairs. His latest book, "Power Without Constraint: The Post 9/11 Presidency and National Security," was published in May 2016 by the University of Wisconsin Press.Patrick Stewart in drag looks Just like Patrick Stewart in drag—and fugly to boot.
March 27 headline on Britain’s Daily Mail: ‘Patrick Stewart in drag looks JUST like Kellyanne Conway’.
Now that ‘someone’ has used Stewart’s self-posted, year-old photo in drag posing as Kellyanne, “many on social media are urging Saturday Night Live to have Sir Patrick Stewart Play Kellyanne Conway”.
Odd thing for any be-knighted ‘Sir’ to want to do.
In any case, Sir (shouldn’t that be ‘Dame’, HRM Queen Elizabeth II?) Stewart first appeared in drag at an event promoting his ill-fated Starz comedy ‘Blunt Talk’ last April to promote the show’s second season.
It didn’t do the show much good, but social media is now paving the way for Stewart’s comeback as the mainstream media-dubbed “controversial” President Donald Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway.
Worse, if you just Google image search Kellyanne Conway’s name you’ll find her as drag queen Paddy Stewart, and as we all know, “Google is forever!”To celebrate 25 years of The Simpsons, we present our latest themed week, Simpsons Week. Check out the outfit grids of some of Springfield’s finest above and stay tuned for more.
Illustrator Bryan Espiritu is back with another set of outfit grids featuring some of Springfield’s most beloved characters exclusively for Highsnobiety. Part of The Legends League, Bryan’s version of Homer keeps things simple with a trio of Duff beer and television remote counted among his trusty accessories. Krusty the Clown sheds his colorful hair for the shoot while Chief Wiggum even includes a stereotypical and fitting donut. Local drunk Barney Gumble unsurprisingly displays his daily garbs in artful disarrangement, while devout Christian Ned Flanders presents his outfit neatly in the form of a cross.
Enjoy the outfit grids above and see the rest of our Simpsons Week content.
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Words by Brock Cardiner Director of Content Strategy Brock Cardiner is Highsnobiety's Director of Content Strategy. He oversees Highsnobiety's editorial approach across platforms & mediums. Brock splits his time between Berlin, Los Angeles and New York.Description: 0 and 6.
We looked great in spring training and are completely healthy
We return nearly everyone
A full season of Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton
Assuming improvement from for Perkins, Hughes, and Nolasco
And added the KBL MVP, Byung-Ho Park
This should lead to more wins
and a Central Division championship
Sir
Mr. Pohlad
The team hasn't won a baseball game yet
and is off to the worst start in team history
Get out if you do not know OPS, Zone Rating, FIP, and WAR
ZERO WINS IN 6 GAMES
THE FUCKING PHILLIES HAVE WINS
You were going to address our weaknesses in the offseason!
The shitty outfield defense!
The bullpen still sucks!
More than 70 strikeouts in 6 games
with no offense to show for it
And our starters still pitch to contact!
Sir, Mauer is hitting.400 this year and looks recovered
MAUER IS BLOCKING SANO FROM PLAYING INFIELD
Sir, there is plenty of time...
You can't win the division in April but you can...
SURE AS HELL LOSE IT
We have to play.600 baseball to
have a chance to make the playoffs now
and somehow salvage this disaster.
This season was supposed to be our return to glory!
We have veteran leadership and brought up all of our best young players!
Yet Trevor Fucking Story
has outhomered our entire team after 6 games!
We bench Buxton, Sano, and Rosario
to try to teach them to not swing at every pitch.
Including ones over their heads.
Correa and Seager
don't have Big League adjustment problems!
How many times do I need to watch us flail away!
We did not suck for the past 10 years
to deal with a shit season and a
another #1 draft pick that won't develop.
Don't cry, you they have Grain Belt at Target Field.
I can bring up Berrios and Burdi
but then I'm burning service time... for nothing
and for what?
Patrick Reusse says this team has no guts.
I should just bring back Torii Hunter and Nick Punto.
They battle their tails off.
5 months until Vikings football.For the first time, scientists have detected grid cells in primates while performing a visual memory task.
Grid cells are a type of neurons that fire at multiple locations forming triangular patterns. Scientists had earlier identified grid cells in rats in 2005. But this is the first time that researchers have noticed grid cells in rhesus monkeys.
Researchers from the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, monitored the monkeys by recording the electrical activities of the grid cells using electrodes. The electrodes were introduced into the monkeys' entorhinal cortex, a region of the brain that is located in the medial temporal lobe, while the monkeys were looking at images on a computer screen.
Experts also used infrared eye-tracking method to track the movements of the monkeys' eyes and identify which part of the image they were focusing on. Whenever the eyes focused on multiple distinctive locations, the neurons fired forming a triangular pattern.
In earlier research work involving rats, researchers noticed that the grid cells fired when the rats crossed the lines on an invisible triangular grid. But the new study shows that the grid cells fired when the monkeys just moved their eyes.
This suggests that the monkeys don't have to visit a place to construct a mental map of the place. Vision plays a major role in sensing things for primates, but for rodents their touch and smell are important.
Researchers hope the study will help in understanding how humans form and remember mental maps of the world. It could also shed light on how neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's remove those abilities.
"The entorhinal cortex is one of the first brain regions to degenerate in Alzheimer's disease, so our results may help to explain why disorientation is one of the first behavioral signs of Alzheimer's," Senior author Elizabeth Buffalo, from the Emory University School of Medicine and Yerkes National Primate Research Center, said in a statement.
"We think these neurons help provide a context or structure for visual experiences to be stored in memory," she said.
"Our discovery of grid cells in primates is a big step toward understanding how our brains form memories of visual information," said first author Nathan Killian, a graduate student at Georgia Tech and Emory University.
"This is an exciting way of thinking about memory that may lead to novel treatments for neurodegenerative diseases."
Experts also noticed one more feature of the grid cells in primates. They noticed that the neurons' firing rate reduced when a monkey looked at the same image more than once. More neurons showed memory responses, moving from the posterior (rear) towards the anterior (front) of the entorhinal cortex. This suggests that the grid cells in monkeys not only map the visual field, but also aid in the memory function.
Researchers also noticed "theta-band" oscillations, where the grid cells fire in a way, from 3 to 12 times per second. They suggest that the theta oscillations play a significant role in generating grid cell networks in the brain and also to gather information from these cells.
While both rats and monkeys have theta oscillations, they were found occurring in short periods in monkeys. But it was observed they are not vital to the formation of the spatial representation, the way in which space is represented in the brain.
Grid cells were detected in both rodents and primates while performing various experiments. Although, there are some aspects of the grid cells in primates that are not seen previously in rodents, experts said it doesn't mean that the cells have a different nature in primates.
They are further planning to study how the monkeys move through virtual 3-D space and in real space, including changes in head or body positions to find how grid cells respond.
The findings of the study, "A map of visual space in the primate entorhinal cortex," are published in the journal Nature.Cyber Nazis – How to spot one and how to handle them
Since recent events, it has been evident that white supremacists, the KKK and a new wave of Nazis has swept through and overtaken the country. To understand this situation, we have to understand what a Nazi is.
It’s important to note that a Nazi is simply anyone whose political views lean anywhere to the right of Ashley Judd. Nazis don’t simply just roam the streets waiving their confederate flags and wearing Make America Great Again hats.
Cyber Nazis are Nazis that propagate their agenda through online mediums such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.
How to spot a Cyber Nazi:
Somewhere in their profile, you see a swastika or a confederate flag
At one point or another, they posted something either pro-Trump or in defense of Donald Trump
Someone who criticizes Black Lives Matter or Antifa online
If they post a picture of themselves waiving a confederate flag, a swastika, or are seen as too patriotic online
If they are a cis-gendered white male who does not check his privilege online every morning
If you see a Cyber Nazi, don’t panic. Even though they can wreak havoc on your feelings and can trigger you from thousands of miles away, you need to know how to handle them.
If you come across a Cyber Nazi, try to do the following things in order to cope with the situation:
Report them on Facebook or Twitter since the community guidelines do not allow for hate speech. Having a conservative political view is hate speech, propagates violence and should be censored.
Block the individuals and tell your friends and family to block the individuals as well. Your nerves and heart can only take so much. You should never let yourselves be in the presence of differing opinions.
Take the Cyber Nazis to the streets. Cyber Nazis are only Nazis behind a keyboard. The only appropriate way to handle someone with an opinion you don’t like is through physical violence (i.e. see Richard Spencer)
Cyber Nazis are on the rise and are growing faster by the day. Each day that Donald Trump is in office, the number of Cyber Nazis grows. Every day that we don’t protest, march in the street, burn down public buildings and tear down statues that could have easily been addressed during the Obama administration, the Cyber Nazis win.Just hours after Porsche posted its latest teaser video of the next-gen Panamera, three photos of the luxury sedan leaked on Instagram. The photos do well to highlight the changes made to the front and rear ends, and show off the Panamera's sleeker body.
At the front, we see the revised fascia gets a new grille design, headlights, and foglights, but the biggest changes happen in the rear. Gone is the hunchback look of the outgoing sedan. In its place is a much sleeker, more 911-like design. The proportions make it look much more like the four-door coupe it's supposed and less like an overgrown hatchback. The taillights feature a new design, and run the length of the rear. The lower bumper now features reflector strips just above the dual exhaust pipes on either side.
View 3 Photos
The next-gen Panamera was set to be revealed next week in Germany, and Porsche has released teasers leading up to the event. The N rburgring serves as the location for the most recent teaser video, where a team of professional drivers suits up and uncovers the new Panamera. We see the luxury sedan from above, but thanks to the lighting, we can't make anything out. Now that the car has been leaked, we don't need to. The track lights turn green and we're left with a slight engine growl, along with the date and time to watch the official unveiling of the Porsche Panamera.
View 3 Photos
Earlier this month, Porsche shared a teaser photo of the rear lights and a video that highlighted the "madness" of the brand. Before the first video was released, we caught spy shots of the next-gen Porsche Panamera nearly free of any camouflage, looking production-ready. The new four-door will ride on VW Group's MSB platform, and we expect it to offer an updated version of the current model's 3.0-liter twin-turbo V-6, a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8, and at least one hybrid variant.
Check out the latest teaser video below, along with the leaked photos, and stay tuned for the official reveal on June 28.
Source: Instagram, PorschePlease note that questions and answers which contain spoilers for the Puella Magi Madoka Magica anime series are clearly marked with "[SPOILER]".
AnimeNewsNetwork: Who is the audience for Puella Magi Madoka Magica? Visually it has a sort of "little girl" aesthetic, but of course it's darker and more sophisticated than magical girl shows aimed at children. Is it for hardcore otaku? For adults who grew up with magical girl shows?
Atsuhiro Iwakami: The main target we had in mind was the general anime fan. That's what the director [Akiyuki Shinbo] and I discussed; it's why we used the romaji font and brought in [character designer] Ume Aoki. But after the show was broadcast, it felt like the viewership turned out to be broader than we had initially anticipated.
ANN: Was the popularity of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha at all a factor in your decision to take the magical girl genre and twist it in this fashion?
AI: Certainly we had it in mind; I'd seen Nanoha and of course [Madoka] director Shinbo was in fact the director for season one of Nanoha. We had also seen shows like Pretty Cure and Minky Momo. But we didn't do Madoka as an antithesis to these shows; it was purely based on the idea of what would it be like to do a dark story on a magical girl stage.
ANN: When coming up with the show, did you ever draw upon your own childhood memories of shows you watched?
AI: Not directly, although I had been watching Minky Momo and I do have a fondness for having a main character whose hair is pink...but that's just a coincidence.
ANN: During the Madoka Q&A session at Otakon you mentioned that Madoka writer Gen Urobuchi had specific policies about what Madoka's family background should be like— did he have other policies along those lines?
[SPOILER]AI: Well, Urobuchi wanted to lay down the rules for the magical girl setting, and there is a story there...during production Shinbo became quite fond of Sayaka, so he asked Urobuchi if it would be possible to bring her back to life. Urobuchi said no, that's it wasn't possible according to the rules set for the magical girls. Also as I mentioned in the Q&A, [production designer Gekidan] Inu Curry was very detailed about the settings for the witches and determined what kind of magical girls they were before they became witches.
[SPOILER]ANN: Madoka is kind of a risky show, featuring such young characters in a dark and deadly setting; was it difficult to get any of the sponsors or staff on board for it?
[SPOILER] AI: No; the story of Madoka is serious but it's not entirely inappropriate for children. For example, there's nothing sexually explicit in it. There's some death, but it's not gratuitous; it can be explained within the context of the story.
ANN: There are currently several manga adaptations and spinoffs of Madoka, as well as a novel series. Do you foresee other spinoffs coming out based in the same world? Would you want to animate them?
AI: There aren't currently any plans for the spinoffs, no.
[SPOILER] ANN: Kyubey turns out to be a sort of sinister character, but he has an adorable appearance. Whose idea was that contrast?
[SPOILER] AI: Kyubey is Urobuchi's creation. The mash-up of cuteness and darkness is the central theme to Madoka, and Kyubey is an epitome of that theme.
ANN: At the Q&A you also mentioned that you had asked Urobuchi specifically to write something "heavy." How much guidance do you offer on the creation process?
AI: I was the one who said "let's do a show using these creative talents." But after that I don't matter much; it's up to those talents to do their work. If something comes to a stand-still I might intervene, but they did an excellent job and I was very happy seeing the results in episode one. When I saw the character designs that Aoki did, it was exactly what I was hoping for, so everything was in the hands of the creative team.
ANN: Do "stand-stills" happen often during production?
AI: There was almost none of that for Madoka. The opening song "Connect" was something that I did intervene in, to have it made into what it is now versus what it was originally.
ANN: Do you ever wish you had stepped in at a time when you didn't?
AI: Well, the script was actually done three years ago, and it was only because of scheduling issues at Shaft that delayed the production, and that was unplanned. Otherwise I think that the show came out on time and in a way I can be happy about.
ANN: The last two episodes were delayed due to the March 11 earthquake. Can you talk about that experience? What was it like in the studio at that time?
AI: The studio had been making each episode on an ongoing basis, exactly on schedule for broadcast, so there was never any room for disruptions. After the earthquake some staff members were very shaken. Even if the TV station had said that they would go ahead with the regular broadcast schedule we probably wouldn't have been ready.
But a week went by, and two weeks went by, and the staff started saying that they couldn't stay in shock forever, that they had to keep on going, and then production continued.
[SPOILER] ANN: The series ends by demonstrating that through selflessness, people can get through difficult situations. Does that idea hold a stronger meaning now, seeing everyone working together after the earthquake?
AI: That synchronicity with reality wasn't something that was planned, but I did feel that as a member of the viewership.
ANN: You mentioned earlier that you were pulling together a strong team to create a show, and that it's part of your job. You've worked with some people multiple times, such as Urobuchi and [music composer Yuki] Kajiura. Would you say that you're building your own 'dream team'?
AI: Madoka is an original story, so coming up with a high-quality piece of entertainment the major goal. I left it up to director Shinbo to employ the creative talents to do the actual production work. That would be different if a show were based on a preexisting story; then the task would be to enhance the existing story. As a producer the job is different depending on the title.
ANN: Is there anyone in the anime industry that you'd really like to work with but haven't had the opportunity yet?
AI: That's a vexing question because my favorite creator wouldn't necessarily be the kind of creator I want to work with. So that's a difficult question!
ANN: Over the last chunk of years you've worked on serious dramas like Kara no Kyoukai, Madoka, and Fate/Zero, as well as comedies like A Channel and Oreimo. Are you intentionally trying to balance these out?
AI: The end result does look like I've been doing shows with opposite tendencies, but the goal is always just to come up with good entertainment. I think it's a special privilege of the producer to be able to diversify, because creative talents don't always go in opposite directions like that.
ANN: But Shinbo directed Madoka despite being famous for his comedies like Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei. Is he an exception?
AI: Yes, Shinbo is very talented. Madoka goes back to older shows that Shinbo directed, such as The SoulTaker, that were much darker.
ANN: Would you say that which kind of show you're working on— drama or comedy —affects your mood at all?
AI: That doesn't happen very frequently.
ANN: Do you have a preference on which you like to work on or do you favor maintaining that balance?
AI: It's really looking at the results that it seems like I wind up choosing diversity. After I work on a comedy it might be that I rebound by working on something darker.
ANN: How do you feel about the response Madoka has gotten in the U.S. so far?
AI: I'm very glad to see the reaction it's getting. As an original title, not even anime fans knew about Madoka as recently as last November, but now it's become a commonly-known title. I'm very happy about the reception.
ANN: Would you say that the names involved, like Aoki, Urobuchi, and Shinbo, were instrumental to getting people in the door to watch the first episode?
AI: Exactly.Imagine what if buying petrol for your car or bike is easy as ordering a pizza at home without waiting for your turn at the queue?
The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas today announced that they are considering means to home deliver petroleum products on advance booking so that vehicle-owners do not have to waste time in queues at petrol pumps.
Options being explored where petro products may be door delivered to consumers on pre booking?? @dpradhanbjp (1/2) ; Petroleum Ministry (@PetroleumMin) April 21, 2017
This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations?? @dpradhanbjp (2/2) ; Petroleum Ministry (@PetroleumMin) April 21, 2017
It is estimated that about 3.5 crore people come to fuel stations every day to make about Rs 2500 crore worth of transactions every year.
Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan today held a meeting on promotion of cash less transactions using digital mode of payments at Srinagar after which the announcement came on Twitter.
They have come out with a three-pronged strategy - rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, awareness campaign and incentivising consumers.
Daily cashless transactions have increased from Rs 150 crore per day to Rs 400 crore per day. When the home delivery of petro products become a reality then it is expected that digital payments will increase further.
Also read:
Petrol pumps in 8 states to remain closed on Sundays from May 14
Beginning May 1, petrol, diesel prices to change every day in 5 citiesZiad speaks softly and articulately over Skype, even as he describes the atrocities he has experienced. It has been less than a year since he left his family behind in war-torn Syria, hoping for the chance at a better life.
Now living in Europe, he still fears for his family. As a result, he is unwilling to reveal both his real name and current whereabouts.
Ziad was an organizer in the Syrian uprising that led to the civil war. He endured arrest and torture, and witnessed his friends fall amidst shots fired by the government forces sent to quell the 2011 protests.
The conflict that erupted out of those protests would evolve into a complicated war that has cost more than 200,000 people their lives and empowered ISIS—the terrorist organization that most recently claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks—to increase its territory and influence.
But, in 2011 when the uprising began, ISIS was still just an Iraqi cell of al-Qaeda. It was before Syria splintered and became ground zero for a proxy-war between several different countries, including the United States and Russia who have offered support on opposite sides. It was also before the body of three-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi washed up on the shores of Turkey, sparking outcry around the world.
These are the things that now occupy both political focus and media attention. World leaders are grappling with how to solve the terrorist threats posed by ISIS and what to do with the 4 million refugees who have fled the violence and devastation.
The aftermath of the war is likely to be remembered; But, Ziad fears that the history of the uprising—and its causes—is being erased. That is why he has started collecting and archiving videos filmed during demonstrations in 2011 and 2012 to help historically preserve the protests—and make sure the world remembers what happened in Syria before the war.
In 2014, Ziad began the complicated endeavor of collecting the videos—scouring video sites like YouTube and LiveLeak—and cataloging the videos so they can be more easily archived. He posted his plans in a Reddit community dedicated to collecting, verifying, and organizing current information about the Syrian Civil War, and immediately, others chimed in with support and offered assistance.
Named “The Forgotten Revolution,” the collection spans over 200 videos. Next, Ziad says, the archive will be integrated into a searchable database that includes updated information about the uprising and what’s currently happening in Syria.
It is slow and complicated work, but Ziad and others from the community are dedicated. It’s worth it, he says, so that people will understand and know the full story behind the war.
“It saddens me that people don’t know why these things happened,” Ziad says. “They don’t know why the people went to the streets.
He pauses before solemnly adding, “And they don’t know what happened to them.”
* * * * *
Ziad was 16 when he first learned about the massacre.
In Syria, he says, it was rare to speak about the President or the atrocities committed by the ruling regime, in anything but hushed voices.
“Usually people would say, ‘ever since the incident,’ or, ‘since the events,’—something like that,” Ziad explains. “So finally I asked my father about the things that happened in the past.”
Pressed for information, his father let him in on what occurred in 1982 in the Syrian city of Hama.
Insurgents from the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic organization that was founded in Egypt in 1928, had risen up against the government. Under the orders of President Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian army leveled the city in response.
Over the course of three weeks, Hama was showered in gunfire. The city center was bombed to make way for tanks that rolled through in search of rebels. By the end, between 20,000 and 40,000 Syrian civilians had been slaughtered. In 2011, The Guardian called the 1982 Hama massacre “the single bloodiest assault by an Arab ruler against his own people in modern times.”
The massacre may have ended that uprising, but it also left a dark mark on history—and in the memories of the Syrian people. Ziad says hearing about what happened, even years later, sparked a fire.
“I started to build political awareness and form opinions,” Ziad recalls. “I wanted to know, why is Syria like this? But it became apparent—it was because of the state-sponsored corruption. That is how my political drive began.”
He pocketed that political drive for more than a decade. But on March 15, 2011, videos surfaced on YouTube showed more than 200 demonstrators in Damascus marching for the “Day of Rage” against the Syrian government—now run by al-Assad’s son, Bashar al-Assad.
Following in the footsteps of citizens from other Middle Eastern nations who rose up against their governments during the Arab Spring, it would be the start of something big in Syria. Within months, hundreds of thousands joined the movement in cities across the country.
Ziad contacted organizers and began coordinating protests in his town, fully aware of the risks he was taking. President Assad, like his father, had brutally suppressed protests in the past.
“I think in the beginning I was very very afraid,” he says. “We were all afraid.”
The fear was justified. With masses marching peacefully in the streets, Assad responded with gunfire. Tanks rolled through neighborhoods as security forces raided houses. Protesters who were detained were dragged away to Syria’s secret prisons to be tortured.
Many would never make it out of those prisons. As evidenced by 55,000 photographs smuggled out of the country by a Syrian military photographer known only as Caesar, 11,000 people were savagely killed in Assad’s jails during the uprising.
Soon after protests broke out in March 2011 Caesar, had been asked to photograph the bodies of civilian demonstrators who had been taken into custody. He was horrified by what he witnessed and decided to get the pictures out of the county.
“I had never seen anything like it,” Caesar told The Guardian in October. “Before the uprising, the regime tortured prisoners to get information; now they were torturing to kill.
“I saw marks left by burning candles, and once the round mark of a stove—the sort you use to heat tea—that had burned someone’s face and hair. Some people had deep cuts, some had their eyes gouged out, their teeth broken, you could see traces of lashes with those cables you use to start cars. There were wounds full of pus, as if they’d been left untreated for a long time and had got infected.
“Sometimes the bodies were covered with blood that looked fresh. It was clear they had died very recently.”
The photos have been verified by the FBI and international human rights advocates are using them to build a case against Assad for committing war crimes against his own people.
Ziad and his friends were among those arrested and tortured during that time. He was lucky to get out alive and says he believes it was a tactic to drive him away from participating in the movement. Torture did not derail his political determination, though. Instead, it strengthened his resolve.
“I have always heard about what happens in these secret prisons. But when I saw it first-hand, I had an even greater desire to try to change things with my own hands with something I can do. I can make myself heard. I can make my friends heard,” Ziad says. “At this point, I was not afraid anymore.”
Throughout the following year, the government would continue cracking down on its citizens. Protestors began to take up arms, forming the Free Syrian Army.
By March 2012, just one year following the first “Day of Rage,” an anti-Assad council began to officially organize rebel military resistance.
The uprising had officially turned into a war.
Ziad says he was critical of violent actions from the outset and was not part of the armed rebellion that resulted. But he hopes at least, his archive will help keep the story of the uprising alive and explain why people took to the streets.
Although the project hasn’t been completed yet, Dr. James Gelvin, a professor of history at UCLA and author of the book The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know, says the video collection is extremely important.
“March of 2011 was perhaps a culmination of the 30-year struggle that had been taking place in the Arab world,” Gelvin explains, emphasizing that the struggle for democracy and human rights in Syria goes back much further than most people in the West realize.
These videos, he says, could help make sure this uprising isn’t also forgotten.
“This is the only way that history will be preserved,” Gelvin says. “Syrians are so scattered at the present time that it is very easy to lose sight of how this thing began.”
Gelvin adds that the video record will be necessary to hold President Assad accountable for the atrocities committed in his name.
“We have gotten most of our information from citizen reporters, and understanding it is essential,” Gelvin explains.”But the documentation of what went on will be essential if there are ever prosecutions for war crimes.”
It’s uncertain when that will occur, but for now, geopolitical focus has been reframed around the threat posed by ISIS—and the United States and Russia are hoping to broker a ceasefire between Assad and the rebel fighters so that all parties can focus efforts against the terrorist organization.
An international committee of diplomats from 17 countries, plus the UN and the EU are also aiming to begin negotiations over how to officially end the four-and-a-half-year-old civil war.
Still, Ziad says he will only focus on preserving the past—Syria’s future remains uncertain.
“I am now in the process of building my life here,” Ziad explains. “I would still love to go back. I hope that things would change, but I also have the realistic thought—it is highly unlikely things would be like we were dreaming they would be in 2011. I think the dreams that we had back then, they are, unfortunately,” he waits a moment, then exhales loudly, “they are forever lost.”Buy Photo Aryan Brotherhood and related tattoos cover Thomas, which identify him as a member in prison. (Photo: Brian Albert Broom/The Clarion-Ledger, CL)Buy Photo
Federal authorities are investigating the Aryan Brotherhood, a prison gang whose violence is spilling onto the streets of Mississippi.
Behind bars, the gang has carried out drug trafficking, gambling, extortion, killings and other crimes. On the streets, members have been responsible for killings, arsons, armed robberies, meth manufacturing and other crimes.
Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell has blamed the gang for "murderous and racist ideology" in prisons that "unleashed a violent crime wave that jumped the prison walls and spread like a virus."
On Aug. 27, member Dennis Simpson pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for shooting Brodie Murphy in Iuka.
On July 12, a Jones County jury sentenced Justin Blakeney to death for the 2010 death of his former girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter, Victoria Viner. An informant testified Blakeney said he killed the mixed race child so he could join the Aryan Brotherhood.
Blakeney's mother said she believes her son is innocent.
On June 24, 2012, Aryan Brotherhood member Gerald John Wagner of Picayune was reportedly on the way to carry out a gang hit when a state trooper attempted to pull him over in Monroe County.
A high-speed chase ensued on U.S. 45. While fleeing troopers, Wagner ran over a spike strip and lost control of his GMC Suburban near the Green Street exit in Tupelo. He fired four times at officers before a trooper shot him dead, authorities said.
A recent Justice Department investigation into the neo-Nazi prison gang in Texas and Oklahoma led to 73 convictions there as well as 21 new arrests in connection with a meth ring.
Formed in 1964 in California, Aryan Brotherhood is the nation's oldest major neo-Nazi prison gang with an estimated 20,000 members on the streets or in prisons.
Although the gang makes up one tenth of 1 percent of the prison population, it is responsible for 18 percent of all prison killings, including fellow gang members and prison staff members, according to the Justice Department.
"The Aryan Brotherhood is without question one of the very largest and most frightening prison gangs in America," said Mark Potok, editor of Hatewatch, which tracks white supremacist groups.
Potential recruits into the violent gang are typically required to "'make their bones' by attacking or even murdering a rival gang member or attacking a guard," he said. "In the same way, members are told the only way they can quit the gang is via 'blood out,' which is to say, by dying."
Contact Jerry Mitchell at jmitchell@jackson.gannett.com or (601) 961-7064. Follow @jmitchellnews on Twitter.
Read or Share this story: http://on.thec-l.com/1vGag0BThe most |
told us. “It is in the center of the city. It is only for Daesh. It’s in the building that was previously the government palace–the governor’s compound. Daesh took it over. There they have the hisbah al khansaa. They [female morality police] are in charge of everything about the slaves” (Abu Nasir).
The female slaves, known as “sabiyya”, are allowed only to the IS cadres. “Only a fighter can buy a slave woman. He needs documents from the emir or the governor of IS in that region granting permission to him to buy a slave and only after getting this permission he can go to hisbah and the slave market to buy slaves. They are sold by dollars. The minimum price is one thousand USD and the maximum is three thousand dollars. The slave girls can be sold between fighters, but only to the mujahideen, and there are rules, like you cannot take a mother and daughter slaves sexually at once, as you can only be with one of them [following Islamic incest rules]” (Abu Nasir).
Slaves are also given to the IS cadres as rewards–especially to the Westerners who do not have local wives. They reside with the fighter like a wife until he discards her, giving or selling her to another fighter. There are many rules governing the slave trade and how slaves ought to conduct themselves. For instance, “If the man wants to marry the slave he can. She can come in the presence of other men to serve chai [tea], coffee. She does not require a marham [male chaperone]. And the slave women have different rules in terms of covering themselves… When you have one, it’s like your wife. Although unlike wives, there is no limitation on the number you can have. If you are with her and have a child with her, and she becomes a Muslim, she can become your wife” (Abu Nasir). “The sheik had two slave girls,” one informant noted, indicating how higher social status conferred more rewards (Abu Jamal).
The Long Arm of IS
All of our informants feared discovery by active IS cadres and feared that IS could reach them inside Turkey and kill them for defecting–a fear greatly heightened after the double murder in Urfa, mentioned earlier.
Many had experiences of IS knowing about them inside Turkey. For instance Jamal reports, “ISIS has strong intel in Turkey as well. They knew whom I befriended while I was here in Akçakale.”
One subject reports that he only goes out to work in the field early and returns home after dark so that nobody sees him out. In this way he tries to ensure that he is not going to be caught by IS, and thereby ensure his own and his family’s safety. He also does not allow his child to play outside alone, fearing kidnap.
Disillusionment with IS
While most of our informants bought into the IS ideology either before or during their Shariah training and while they first had hopes that IS would bring about good for them, they became disillusioned when witnessing the mismatch between the words and deeds of IS. “In 2014, I realized that Daesh were liars. For instance, there was an IS guy who raped a woman, but got away with it” (Abu Walid).
Many were confused about how IS could sell oil to enemies such as the Assad regime, or why battles seemed to end suddenly with IS probably having made a behind the scenes deal with the other side. One former IS cadre reported about the confusion and disillusionment of his friend, Abdullah. “Once he told me, ‘I captured the Mursitpinar Border Gate several times [between Syrian Kobani and Turkish Suruc]; however, each time I was ordered to withdraw.’ He started to question IS in his mind, but not openly, otherwise they would kill him. Before he tried to flee, however, he was killed in an F-16 raid” (Abu Jamal).
One informant stated, “what I don’t like if someone did something wrong they tried to water board him, that I didn’t like.” He went on to add, “What I don’t like is that if they don’t like someone they just behead him. Or if a woman is not wearing hijab they bring someone to flog her, or if someone doesn’t believe they cut his ear” (Abu Shujaa).
All of our informants were tired of hypocrisy in IS noting that some were rapists, others themselves smoked, while punishing ordinary citizens for smoking, etc. “I have seen IS members go to pray without ablution” (Abu Jamal). Our informants found the IS cadres practice of quickly remarrying widows rather than allowing them to observe the normal Islamic interval before being re-married [iddah] both disgusting and wrong.
All our informants also grew disgusted by the constant stream of executions and the cruel pleasure that some IS cadres appeared to have when beheading and killing others. “There is a well by the name of Hute. There they cover the eyes of the prisoners and tell them, ‘You are free now, just walk now, but don’t open your eyes.’ They walk and fall into the well. It smells horrible because of all the corpses inside the well. I know that over three hundred people were thrown into that well.”
Our informants hoped that they could get rid of the Assad regime but now see all the death and destruction that came with IS. One informant noted that, “when you go around the country, you do not see youth in the villages. They are either fighting for IS, dead, or fled so as not to have to fight for IS.”
According to our informants, it is not only the defectors, but also ordinary Syrians as well who are disillusioned with the false claims and unfulfilled promises of IS. “Everybody in Syria doesn’t like IS now. When a fighter goes out to battle they say they hope he doesn’t come back” (Abu Walid).
One informant told us about how people began to understand that IS would not serve their needs, “But after some time, in 2014, people feel that IS is not good, but bad. Why? Because what they promised to the people, they did not keep. Where is this freedom they promised us?” (Abu Walid).
Our informants felt that many locals joined IS partly out of a hope in the proclaimed IS Caliphate and out of respect for their fighting power – they hoped that IS would help them achieve real freedom, but that as time wore on most joined IS out of desperation and hunger. One of those we interviewed stated that “now people join only for food” and that most have grown disillusioned with IS. “The few people who join now do so only because they need to eat. They are the ones who don’t have work. The rest try to escape to Turkey or Lebanon, or go by sea” (Abu Walid).
Defecting from IS
“If someone is caught fleeing from IS, he is killed immediately”, Abu Jamal stated. He mentioned the case of a fifteen-year-old Turkish fighter who wanted to quit serving IS. “He met with his father at the border gate in Akçakale. His father did not want to let him return [to the fighters] but the boy said through tears to his father, ‘They will kill me here right now, if I do not return with them now.’ Suddenly there were fifteen fighters who emerged out of the shadows around the young man to ensure that he wasn’t going to return home with his father.”
Most of our informants escaped IS by paying smugglers to get them across the Turkish border. Choice of one’s smuggler is of paramount importance as “all the smugglers are forced and paid to inform about IS members who are fleeing. The only way to ensure safe passage is to bribe the smuggler in high amounts, or he will inform IS and you will be killed instantly. Also there are several checkpoints. If you are caught by IS at the checkpoints, you also are immediately killed” (Abu Jamal).
Various authors have written about the importance of distinguishing between deradicalization and disengagement.[21] In the case of the defectors who spoke to us, all of them deradicalized, in the sense that they became totally and completely disaffected with IS and its extremist ideology. However, this process was not always completed at the moment they decided to leave IS behind–disengaging from the group. Abu Shujaa, for instance, told us that he continued to be a “true believer” in the Islamic State and its apocalyptic vision for more than one year, despite having deciding to escape from the ruthless terrorist regime which had fed him with End Times visions
Scott Atran writes about the confused state of “true believers” and their difficulty of leaving a group once one has bought into their version of sacred values which are not open to negotiation.[22] Indeed all of our informants felt that IS had deepened their understanding of Islam and they were grateful for having learned how to pray properly and were given a chance to learn more about Islam. For them giving up IS did not mean giving up their newfound deeper understanding of Islam and its practices. In fact, those things were sacred and non-negotiable for them. However, the deep hypocrisy of the IS cadres and their violent and brutal treatment of women, civilians and of other IS members convinced them that while they would not abandon their newly learned Islamic beliefs, they could walk away from IS.
In a study of open source reports of fifty-eight IS defectors, Peter Neumann, director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) in London, teased out four themes among the reasons they gave for defecting.[23] One was the extent of fighting with other Sunni rebel groups and that “toppling the Assad regime didn’t seem to be a priority”. Our informants echoed the latter part of this concern. Neumann also referred to “the leadership’s obsession with ‘spies’ and ‘traitors’ as being a negative for them. This was true in our sample as well. A second theme was one of disillusionment and outrage with the group’s brutality, especially toward civilians. Our sample concurred on this as well, although our subjects–unlike Neumann’s media-based cases, showed compassion for the suffering of Yazidis and other minorities targeted by IS. The third narrative noted by Neumann was corruption in the group and special privileges granted to foreign fighters. Our sample also complained about corrupt and evil practices by IS members and noted that the foreign fighters were indeed privileged although the latter did not seem to cause them much concern. A fourth narrative identified by Neumann was that life under the Islamic State was harsh and disappointing. Our subjects were indeed disappointed that life in Syria did not improve and freedoms they had been willing to fight for did not materialize under IS.
Warnings to those Westerners Who Might be Attracted to IS
All of our informants felt very strongly that IS is an evil organization, one that others should not join. All of them were more than happy to make a strong statement to their own people–fellow Syrians–and to potential foreign fighters from the West, warning them about the evils of IS and telling them that under no circumstances should they join IS. They made statements such as “ISIS is not helping the Syrian people”, “Don’t come here, you won’t be able to leave,” “They are brutal, horrible rapists,” “This is not the true Islam and not the Islamic State,” “Don’t be fooled, they are liars.”
Referring to Islamic scriptures about a renegade tribe in the times of the Prophet that also practiced takfir [excommunication], Abu Walid stated, “They are the Khawarij tribe. I believed when they came to Raqqa that they are not good. They kill anybody from us, just like the Khawarij did. They existed during those times the same [in the times of the Prophet Mohammad]—with black clothes and black flags. Our scriptures warn us, ‘When you see them don’t follow them.’”
About the Authors: Anne Speckhard, Ph.D. is Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) and also serves as Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Georgetown University Medical School. She can be reached at at < [email protected] >.
Ahmet S. Yayla, Ph.D. is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology, Harran University, Osmanbey, Sanliurfa, Turkey. He is currently on leave as a Research Fellow at the ICSVE in Washington, D.C.and can be reached at < [email protected] >.
Acknowledgment: The first author thanks Visiting Assistant Professor Allison McDowell Smith for her work in support of the project.
NotesHe pulls a knife, you pull a shovel. He ruins your nap, you send him on his way with backside pain! That’s the Seattle way!
At about 5:20 pm Sunday, a man was taking a nap inside his home near Carleton Ave S. and S. Bailey St. when his brother woke him up and said there was an intoxicated man wandering around in their front yard.
When the man stepped outside and told the trespasser to leave, the suspect pulled a folding knife from his pocket.
The victim grabbed a shovel from outside his house and again ordered the suspect to get off his lawn.
Instead, the suspect stepped forward and pointed the blade of his knife at the victim, so the victim gave him a smack with the shovel, knocking the suspect to the ground. The victim then warned the knife-wielding man he’d do it again if he didn’t leave.
The suspect picked himself up, grabbed his bike and walked off down the street while the victim called police.
Officers spotted the suspect near Corson Ave and E. Marginal Way S., arrested him and recovered two knives.
The suspect seemed intoxicated and was a bit incoherent, and requested medical attention for a possible injury to his buttocks.
Officers later booked the suspect into the King County Jail for felony harassment.A frenzied George, who has promised to pick up Jerry from the airport, is anxiously checking the arrivals board at JFK. He asks a well-dressed businessman next to him for the time, in response to which the man mutters something about a clock over in the corner. Despite sporting a bold gold watch, which he waves in George’s face while pointing him towards the wall clock, the man refuses to check his wrist and tell George the time. The man eventually leaves angrily as George yells after him, “You know we’re living in a society!”
Seinfeld has been described as nihilistic, perhaps because whereas shows like The Honeymooners and Andy Griffith tended to end with neat and morally pedagogical denouements Seinfeld relies on the moral complacency and persistently disordered desires of its main characters in order to stumble from one episode to another. “No hugging, no learning,” was one of the principles of the show’s producers. Indeed, on the surface the show is little more than a running catalogue of the sexual and social misadventures of four materialistic and self-centered Manhattanites. Thus the New Republic ’s Leon Wieseltier humorlessly and nastily labeled the show “the worst, last gasp of Reaganite, grasping, materialistic, narcissistic, banal self-absorption.”
Such criticisms of Seinfeld miss its particular genius. George’s outburst at the airport motions towards something more interesting than “narcissistic, banal self-absorption.” Seinfeld is, above all, a latter day comedy of mannersan attempt for four moderately intelligent, outwardly normal, and well intentioned but morally compromised individuals to survive the various rituals, foibles, and idiosyncrasies of modern urban life. In exploring that narrow space between civilization and barbarism in which we make our daily lives, Seinfeld directs our attention to the importance of custom.
More than the others, however, George Costanza serves as the show’s best reminder of the importance of manners, of order. When George demands the stranger share the time with him, or, later on that same episode, when he adamantly declares that “you cannot abandon people in the middle of an airport pickupit’s a binding social contract,” he is invoking and insisting upon the many and often Byzantine non-legal rules that mark us as civilized creatures. Other characters and plotlines in the show play with this theme, of course, but with George it appears to be an obsession (one that apparently extends even to animals, as when he suspects that New York’s pigeons are purposefully refusing to get out of his way).
George grasps that in political lifei.e., life lived in communitythere are rules, he even prides himself on knowing or discerning those rules (as when he schools Jerry on what various types of greetings may mean romantically), but he seems to uphold these rules under constant duress, and dreams of slipping free of the bounds of politeness (“I would drape myself in velvet if it were socially acceptable,” he repeatedly tells Jerry).
Montaigne held that “Each man [holds] in inward veneration the opinions and the behavior approved and accepted around him,” but in George we see a man who holds custom in high esteem without a shred of inward veneration. In one instance, when George perceives his life to be in danger, he madly rushes out of a burning room, pushing children and elderly women out of the way, obviously abandoning all pretense of civility; he then weakly tries to defend his actions by saying he was clearing a way for them. Custom, then, is a delicate thing, useless without a robust moral grounding.
This is a great vice, but it also has its virtue. George, alone among the characters in Seinfeld, seems able to both acknowledge and resist custom, to see the ultimate artificiality of the social structures according to which he lives. Finally, George Costanza is a tragic character: He possesses enough awareness to realize his own position as the subject of a particular regime and set of customs, but not enough virtue to either accept those customs or successfully transcend the political. The reasons for this could be manyweak character, bad parenting, poor moral educationbut it seems clear, at least, that George is and will remain stuck where he is.
If we were to try to learn from George, we might recognize that to seek full human flourishing, we cannot look merely to the political nor the rational but must turn elsewhere, to the mystical or religious, for instance. In giving our allegiance to an otherworldly source of moral authority, we relativize and reembrace custom, finding a way out of George’s hellish life of aspiration and distress.
To varying degrees, we all face George’s challenge: making meaning in an often strange and vexing society. But his flight from duty and his morally deracinated machinations, and the failures they bring, can prove instructive. Precisely because George’s and his friends’ failures are presented as such, Seinfeld ought not to be written off as nihilistic fluff, for it ultimately makes all too clear to us the banality of egoism.
Travis LaCouter graduated from the College of the Holy Cross.
Become a fan of First Things on Facebook, subscribe to First Things via RSS, and follow First Things on Twitter.deterrent against China +
BrahMos +
Sukhoi-30MKI +
NEW DELHI: The NDA government has given the final go-ahead for the Army to induct and deploy an advanced version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, with “trajectory manoeuvre and steep-dive capabilities” for mountain warfare, in the northeast as a conventionalSources said the Cabinet Committee on Security, chaired by PM Narendra Modi, cleared this fourthregiment at a cost of over Rs 4,300 crore. The regiment consists of around 100 missiles, five mobile autonomous launchers on 12x12 heavy-duty trucks and a mobile command post, among other hardware and software.The 290-km range BrahMos is a tactical or non-nuclear missile with “nine times more kinetic energy than sub-sonic missiles” for greater destructive potential. Jointly developed with Russia, it has become the preferred precision-strike weapon for the Indian armed forces.From 2007 onwards, the Army has progressively inducted three regiments of BrahMos with largely Block-I and II missiles developed to hit a specific small target with a low radar cross-section in a cluttered environment, as earlier reported by TOI.The missile’s Block-III “steep-dive” version will now be deployed in Arunachal Pradesh to counter China’s huge build of military infrastructure all along the 4,057-km Line of Actual Control. Flying at a velocity almost three times the speed of sound at Mach 2.8, the missiles also have “a combined high-low trajectory” to evade enemy defence systems.“This BrahMos variant can take a steep dive up to 75 degrees. Defence scientists are already working on achieving a 90-degree steep-dive capability, which in the future can lead to acquiring an aircraft carrier-killing capability,” said a source.The latest Rs 4,300 crore contract takes the overall orders placed for the BrahMos missiles to over Rs 31,000 crore. The Navy has already installed the missile on 10 frontline warships, including the latest stealth destroyers and frigates.BrahMos chief Sudhir Mishra had earlier told TOI that the plan was to begin testing the missile fromfighter jets this year. The air-launched version of BrahMos, which at 2.5 tonnes is lighter than the 3-tonne land and sea variants, has already undergone “carriage trials” on a Sukhoi in June. The “missile separation trials” are likely to take place later this month.Hey Survivalists,
The team has been working hard to patch up many of worst of the bugs in alpha 14. Many have reported the crashes can be fixed by updating your video card drivers, cleaning out your files in your C:\Users
ame\AppData\Roaming\7DaysToDieAppData folder and reinstalling the game.
Note this is should be compatible with your A14 saved game. We apologize for any of you who are still having trouble running the game. We appreciate your patience and any information you can provide us in fixing the problems.
Alpha 14.1 Patch notes
Added: A new Steel Shovel.
Changed: Bellows take 20 hides to make because it’s a prettier number.
Changed: Corrected a few skill icons on the skill screen.
Changed: Brightened mining helmet light.
Changed; Updated female face rig for better facial animation support.
Changed: Gave Clint archetype a default facial expression AKA the stinkeye.
Changed: Gunpowder uses the Gun Smithing crafting skill.
Changed: Leather Tanning is now a perk, not a book.
Changed: Gave Emma and Clint facial expression tweaks.
Changed: Optimized Female body textures are now two separate textures which reduces texture memory a lot when multiple players are on the screen wearing various clothing configurations.
Changed: Updated female tank top to work with new upper body.
Changed: Character customization window now reads it’s base slot data from archetypes.
Changed: Made mine particles consistent and matching with their terrain damage. Also slight light source optimization.
Fixed: Console error causing creative menu to be displayed.
Fixed: NRE when more than 13 players on a server.
Fixed: Minor XML cleanup; redundant tags or missing weights.
Fixed: Cotton farming works now.
Fixed: Trees growing a little less optimized but a lot more working.
Fixed: Z Fighting POI Prefab (Chris)
Fixed: Removed non-functional parameter from concrete mix. Can now be crafted in the player backpack.
Fixed: Removed reading quest note from Loot container to fix console error.
Fixed: Removed legacy properties from items.
Fixed: Inconsistent hit points / yield on some trees.
Fixed: Projectiles (arrows, rockets) can pass through iron bars and shot-out windows that look like it should work.
Fixed: Athletics is not increased by traveling by foot and the description is accurate.
Fixed: Quests.xml is now pushed to all clients from the server.
Fixed: Some towns and prefabs submerged in water.
Fixed: Central hub city not showing in some RWG maps.
Fixed: If the closest riverbank is behind player’s back the bottle cannot be filled with water.
Fixed: Blood Draw Kit is consumed by using GUI.
Fixed: Toilets again drop metal pipes on destruction.
Fixed: Clipping player through blocks, allowing shooting through terrain using ladders.
Fixed: Null ref creating a game after being a client in an MP game.
Fixed: Light in Mining Helmet is not functional after restarting game.
Fixed: NRE spam for client after bedroll was destroyed while offline.
Fixed: Removed deprecated properties from progression.xml.
Fixed: Atlas Resolution Is Too Small, Textures Will Be Reduced.
Fixed: Skill search did not reset back to page 1.
Fixed: solidWoodFrames can not be picked up.
Fixed: Recipe does not get consumed by reading it.
Fixed: Overbright skies.
Fixed: NR
Known Issues
Folks were working on the issues for Mac and Linux stay tuned.Sitting here at my desk at work, its 07.58am it’s a Thursday morning and I am balling my eyes out. I had to go to the bathroom to have a good cry then find someone with a calming tablet to help me gather myself so I can get on with my day. I work in a high paced sales environment, so I don’t have the luxury of feeling sad, my salary and my livelihood depends on it. All this because I just saw a post on Facebook, of a Dad telling his 8-year son that his mom died of a heroin overdose. I didn’t even watch the video I just saw the headline and the picture and that was me… done.
I am an extremely sensitive person, ask anyone I know and they will tell you. I have no control over my emotions. When I am happy I am HAPPY, when I am sad, I am SAD and when I am angry believe me you will know it. Take your pick, I feel them all intensely.
Many people don’t understand and can become very frustrated with me because they do not know how to respond or they cannot understand why I can get so upset about something that has no impact on my life? But I CAN’T HELP IT, believe me I have tried. This is who I am; I have come to accept that, because I am too tired of trying to change it. And trying to keep it in only makes things worse; I have to let it out. It’s now about acceptance and finding the best way to manage it so that it doesn’t consume me and suck me into this deep dark hole.
With all that is going on in the world it is hard not to feel despondent or heartbroken on a daily basis for those around me and around the world. I can’t drive down the road without seeing how hard life is, not just the beggars with their babies on the street corner, standing there day in day out, Monday to Sunday, heat, cold and rain. Not just them, but the domestic workers who have to wake up at 3 am to leave home to take 3 different modes of transport just to get to work on time. Then do it all over again just to get home by 8/9 in the evening, working for a salary that is actually laughable. I see the workers standing, waiting, hoping, praying for someone to stop and offer them some work for the day, just to feed their kids. That’s all in the space of a few kilometres.
Then you listen to the news, read social media and all I hear and see are the absolute tragedies around me, children being raped while their mom looks on, kids being abducted and sold as sex slaves, war zones torn apart by religious and political conflict, people’s homes being destroyed, families leaving their country to find a safer place only to be turned away with no place in the world to go to. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Sometimes it gets so bad I feel that I physically cannot take the pain that I feel inside. Not the pain for me but the pain for others, it hits my inner core, every cell in my body. I wonder how I am going to go through the rest of my life feeling like this. I just want to climb in bed close the curtains and sleep until things change or the great feeling of sadness in my chest subsides. Sometimes I pray to God to end the world so that all the suffering can just stop, but clearly I am still here so he must have better plans.
I don’t know how to stop myself from caring or feeling these intense emotions for others.
I am often judged by people because they all think “ah look Sam’s crying again, what could it be this time?” “She is so weak”, “Why does she care, she doesn’t even know them, why can’t she just suck it up?” these are things I hear a lot.
It not only affects me, but it effects my work life, people start to take you less and less seriously, it effects friendships, because let’s be honest, you don’t want to be around someone who is always crying. Luckily I don’t think it has affected my marriage because my husband knows me inside out and he sees first-hand what I go through and he loves me for it, so I am lucky in that regard. We usually have a good laugh about it, even while I am crying because there was a sad song in the radio or something ridiculous. I mean who can cry and laugh at the same time?? I always say I have a crying disorder that has not yet been discovered, and sometimes it gets so bad I think it must be true; there must be something wrong with me that makes me cry so much. It’s a roller coaster that I can’t seem to get off.
But with everything in life I try and see the silver lining, as much as being so emotional is a curse, it can also be a blessing.
Not only do I hurt for others but I also feel intense joy for others too. When I see my friends and family happy, getting married, having babies, reaching goals I feel like I am right there with them and that’s fills me up with immense happiness and joy. When I see people lending a helpful hand to someone in need, I feel like I am going to explode with happiness
I see how there are so many other people trying to make a difference in the word and I begin to feel less alone. It feels like this big task of saving the world gets a little smaller and maybe one day we will be able to save everyone. Miracles have happened before J and that’s what I have to lean on.
HOPE.
Hope to get me through the day when I feel like I can’t do it anymore. Hope in my God that he will work all these heart breaking things out for good. Hope that one day the world will change and hope that I will be able to help people and be a servant.
I have come to the realization that this might be my cross to bear.
I KNOW for a fact that Gods purpose for me is to help and be a blessing to others. He never said it would be easy and he never said it would happen overnight, so I try to live with the faith in my God that he will eventually give me the strength I need to be able to help others without letting it break me. That I will eventually be able to do this full time. This is how God made me, wonderfully in his image. If this is my cross to bear in life I will carry it will pride. We are not all made to be the same, we are made differently for different purposes, God made me super-duper emotional and compassionate for other. This has led me to do my best to make people feel love and appreciated and make them understand that they are not invisible. I don’t have the money to be able to help everyone that I would like to, but I have the heart.
I hope that in being this way I cannot push others away but that I can influence them to do the same in a way that is unique and comfortable for them. If that means just donating money to a charity, or giving a beggar the bottle of water that’s lying in their car then that’s good enough for me. It doesn’t matter what it is, how big or small let’s just strive to be more understanding and compassionate, and accept our unique differences.
Just like I cry a lot, there are also people who struggle to cry at all, and I am sure they have people in their lives who can’t understand why they don’t show emotion or cry, or get over joyed or jump up and down like a crazy person.
‘What’s wrong with them don’t they care?’ ‘Why are they so stuck up?” “They must think they are better than everyone else.”
I am convinced that they do care and that is just how God made them. Maybe God turned the emotional tap a little down so that they are able to go into the places and help people that I would never be able to?
So are you seeing the point I am trying to make here?
We are all built differently in Gods image, so next time you want to jump to your own conclusions about how YOU feel others should or shouldn’t be just STOP. Remember there is a reason why people are the way they are. Try to understand that person a little bit better, before writing them off completely or making your own judgements, this will only stop you from learning, growing and experiences the awesomeness and the uniqueness of others.
Believe me, I don’t want to be surrounded by people who are exactly like me, no thanks, I like a little variety in my life.
A little love and compassion goes along way in this world.
Philippians 4:6-7 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
P.S After writing this blog my Aunt told me that in actual fact I am an empath, after reading up about it, I have managed to find some peace in knowing that I am not alone, I am not crazy and that there are so many of us in the world going through the same thing. If you relate to some of the things I said do some research on being an empath, there are some link below to help you get started. You are not alone.
Follow my blog for more:
https://sammisaysblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/17/its-not-me-its-you-the-life-of-an-empath/
http://themindunleashed.com/2013/10/30-traits-of-empath.html
http://boforbes.com/yoga-practice-lab/blog/feel-pain-empaths-guide-staying-balanced/
TIPS FOR AN EMPATH:The Mailinator FAQ Contact Us: support@manybrain.com
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First of all - know that you don't need to. You can access any email in any public inbox without signing up. Just type in the inbox name and go! If you choose to sign-up, you'll get your own Personal Inbox where you can save emails for later (remember, they otherwise auto-delete). You can also save your favorite Mailinator inboxes in a list so when you come back later they're just a click away.
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What is Mailinator's official privacy policy? For the public site - there really is no privacy. Don't expect any. For private domains, all email and credentials are stored privately and secured. Please see our Official Privacy Policy for more details.No alcoholic drink may be more recognizable than the Moscow mule, and often it has nothing to do with the actual drink.
It's the shiny copper mug in which the cocktail is typically served.
But now, the trendy metal mug's days may be numbered due to newly released health concerns.
According to an advisory bulletin published late last month from the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division, copper mugs may be poisoning drinkers.
In the advisory, health officials note that, in abiding by FDA guidelines, copper should not come into contact with acidic foods that have a pH below 6.
The traditional Moscow mule consists of vodka, ginger beer and lime juice, which, according to officials, comes in "well below 6.0." Examples of foods with a pH below 6 also include vinegar, fruit juice and wine, according to the notice.
"High concentrations of copper are poisonous and have caused food borne illness," the bulletin said. "When copper and copper alloy surfaces contact acidic foods, copper may be leached into the food."
Symptoms of copper poisoning include abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea and jaundice, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
The notice, however, provides something of a silver lining.
It says copper mugs with an inner lining of another metal, such as nickel or stainless steel, are safe to use and are widely available.
So not all hope is lost.
Contact Samantha Putterman at [email protected] Follow her on Twitter @samputterman.After more than three years on the Martian surface, the car-sized Curiosity Mars rover is giving us a close-up glimpse of terrain unlike anything we've seen before: tall, rippled sand dunes like this one:
NASA/JPL-Caltech Satellites orbiting Mars, like the Mars |
most importantly: Include examples of templates. It may be obvious to the Django developers that you don’t have to post anything except the csrf_token to confirm a delete, but that’s not obvious to anyone else. With code examples it becomes immediately obvious.
The silence of the lambs failures.
One problem I had many times is that I wouldn’t understand why something didn’t show up in my templates. No errors, no nothing, even though I’m running in debug mode, and yes, TEMPLATE_DEBUG is also True. Yet, nothing.
This turns out to be intentional, and a decision taken early in Django’s design. That decision was incorrect. I understand that it is now to late to change it, bit nonetheless that was the wrong decision. What could be done now is to change it so that it will fail when TEMPLATE_DEBUG is true, and I can see that it was discussed in depth at least in 2008. And this wasn’t done then either. Which again, and let me mince no words about that, was the wrong decision.
A workaround for this exists, and it’s called TEMPLATE_STRING_IF_INVALID. You should in all your projects add this to settings.py:
TEMPLATE_STRING_IF_INVALID = 'INVALID EXPRESSION: %s' if DEBUG else''
This at least makes the error non-silent. If actually failing with a traceback is better or not is perhaps a matter of opinion, I think it would be better to fail, otherwise you might have the invalid error in some HTML that is being hidden with CSS, and you start debugging your Javascript when things doesn’t work, instead of directly get the error that you spelled an attribute wrong.
So why is this not the default in Django already? Well, the documentation offers a hint:
Many templates, including those in the Admin site, rely upon the silence of the template system when a non-existent variable is encountered.
Ugh. Don’t do that! Seriously.
Executable settings
There is one thing haven’t made up my mind about, and that’s the executable settings. It is certainly convenient. You can, like above set settings dependent on other settings easily. It doesn’t require you to learn a configuration syntax. You’ll have no bugs in the configuration parsers. So it makes sense. And Daniel J Bernstein says that parsing is bad because it causes bugs. On the other hand, he says to reduce code, so… I can’t come up with any arguments about it, but it feels icky. Arguments one way or another are welcome.
Summary
There are some flaws with Django, but they are compensated by Django’s general leaning towards convenience. This overall makes Django a good web framework to start with, and a nice rapid development environment for anyone that wants to do web.
If you have decided to use Django, the decision was definitely not wrong.
AdvertisementsHow do parents put up with year after year of the same Halloween costume ideas?
Just the thought of a rack of princess-in-a-bag ensembles makes me want to gouge my brain out. Sure, Szaba will probably come to me one day (as soon as next year?) wanting to look like everyone else, but until then, I’m making the costumes I want. Selfish? Maybe. Fun? Definitely.
This year we’re rounding out a trio of inspiring women in history costumes.
Sue started it. It was October, she was coming out to visit, and Szaba was only four months old. Knowing this might be their only Halloween together (it was), I suggested that Sue come up with Szaba’s first costume. “I only have one rule,” I told her. “Nothing traditional ‘girly.’ I want it to be … aspirational.”
And boy did Sue run with it. Come to think of it, when did Sue not run with something?
Costume #1: Amelia Earhart
Cream or brown hat
Clear swimmer’s goggles (tacked on to the hat with needle and thread)
Bomber jacket
Khaki pants
Brown boots
Cream scarf
Then last year I had to come up with an idea on my own—something that would live up to the high bar Sue had set. So I chose another inspiring woman in history, someone who was instrumental in fighting cancer, which seemed appropriate.
Costume #2: Marie Curie
Brown no-sew wig with bun
Old-time-y dress (a frilly adult shirt belted with a ribbon)
Kids’ white lab coat (like this one for $8)
Pocket test tubes
Nobel Prize (printed and glued to coat)
For this year, continuing in the vein of influential women in history, I’m going with the obvious (at least to a geek like me) election year choice. You can’t have women and voting without the women’s suffragists. Most know Susan B. Anthony, but I’m a fan of…
Costume #3: Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Old-time-y dress (frilly adult shirt with ribbon belt)
Lace shawl
Lace head drape
Curly white no-sew wig with bun
“Women VOTE thanks to Elizabeth Cady Stanton” picket sign (paper, foam board, glue, wooden stick)
Szaba may want to be a princess next year, but at least I’ll fit in my trio of she-greats beforehand. And I figure, I have an ace in the hole with the princess thing:
Wonder Woman, aka Princess Diana of Themyscira
(There’s a really awesome kids’ book about her, by the way.)
Happy Creative Halloween!
Have your own creative ideas? Please share them! Help save us all from the zombie hordes of mass-market polyester. Mmmm. Braaaains…
Follow me on Google+
AdvertisementsTo let viewers see you interacting with the game, you're going to need a green screen and at least an 8x12 foot space. To film with a couch, as shown above, you'll need a larger free area around 15x12 feet. Equipment-wise, you'll need a greenscreen, 1080p/60fps camera (preferably not a webcam), some lights, and a microphone (the instructions include a complete list).
After your studio is ready, you'll need to set up the game, install and configure the OBS (open broadcasting software), sync the real-world to the game camera and program the director controls. With the latter functions, you'll be able to switch between the player's POV, a free camera to view levels and contraptions, and the mixed-reality camera. A lot of work? Sure, but if you like tinkering with cameras and computers to do some very cool Hololens-style mixed-reality streaming (as shown above), you'll have a lot of fun, too.You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.
Here it is a Door to Nothingness deck. The goal is to get boundless realms played as fast as possible while defending yourself with fog effects. At that point Door can be played and activated in one turn. Through using the play tester I've found that the door can be activated on turn 8-10 on average.
Obviously this is a very casual jokey deck but I like the flavor nonetheless. Any advice on how it can be improved is much appreciated.The creator of the world wide web has hit out at US and UK spy agencies, condemning their online encryption cracking as "appalling and foolish".
Sir Tim Berners-Lee argued cracking online encryption, which protects millions of users' data, would weaken online security and benefit criminal gangs and hostile states.
The computer scientist said the checks and balances implemented to oversee the agencies had failed, and accused the security agencies of weakening online security.
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.
Sir Tim, who founded the web on Christmas Day 1990, argued publishing leaks by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was in the public interest as it "uncovered many important issues" and called for a "full and frank public debate" about the scale and scope of state surveillance.
He said whistleblowing and responsible reporting can "step in" to protect society's interests.
"Whistleblowers, and responsible media outlets that work with them, play an important role", he told The Guardian.
"We need powerful agencies to combat criminal activity online - but any powerful agency needs checks and balances, and based on recent revelations it seems the current system of checks and balances has failed."
His comments come as intelligence chiefs from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ prepare to face MPs later this afternoon in Westminister for a grilling on their practices and conduct from Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, led by Sir Malcolm Rifkind.
The 90-minute session is scheduled to begin at 2pm GMT and will be broadcast with a time delay to allow the removal of anything that could threaten national security or safety of those employed by the agencies.
Sir Malcolm told Sky's Murnaghan Show that the committee would not ask questions that would force intelligence chiefs into revealing secret information.
He said: “We do ask them that in private but, what has become already evident, is you can have an intelligent and mature debate on intelligence issues, including the intelligence chiefs themselves, without having to reveal specific secrets.”
The hearing will be the first time intelligence bosses are quizzed in public by a committee.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe now.Monday, 03 October 2016 09:54
Details Category: Press on Bilateral Relations Written by Site Editor Hits: 2945
New Delhi: Backing India’s surgical strikes against terror camps in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK) the Russian ambassador to India, Alexander M Kadakin, said that Russian Federation was the only country to say in plain words that terrorists came from Pakistan.
In an exclusive interview with CNN News18 he called upon Pakistan to stop trans- border terror.
He said that his country had always been with India in fighting cross-border terrorism.
“Greatest Human Rights violations take place when terrorists attack military installations and attack peaceful civilians in India. We welcome the surgical strike. Every country has right to defend itself,” said the Russian Ambassador.
Assuring India that it does not need to worry about Russia-Pakistan joint military exercise, he said the exercises didn't take place in "Pakistan-Occupied Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir".
The usage of the word/term “Pakistan Occupied Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir” assumes a lot of importance.
“India should not be concerned about military exercises between Russia and Pakistan because the theme of the exercise is anti-terror fighting. That's in India’s interests that we teach Pakistani army not to use itself for terror attacks against India. And the exercise was not held in any sensitive or problematic territories like Pakistan-occupied Indian state of Jammu", said the Russian Ambassador.
http://www.news18.com/England last lost a match against Uruguay at the 2014 World Cup
England suffered their first defeat in 16 games as they were beaten by European champions Spain.
Manchester United midfielder Michael Carrick had a night to forget, as did a few more of Roy Hodgson's side.
So how did England's players fare overall? Chief football writer Phil McNulty runs the rule over the players on duty.
Joe Hart (goalkeeper) 7
England's captain for the night was a reassuring presence, commanding his area and he could do nothing about either goal.
Kyle Walker (right-back) 5
No major errors in defence but not really able to influence affairs further forward with his pace. Still very much Nathaniel Clyne's understudy. Not international class.
Ryan Bertrand (left-back) 7
Good night for Bertrand and was one of England's few attacking threats in the first half with a couple of surging runs and good crosses. Did his case no harm.
Phil Jones (centre-back) 6
Battled gamely against Diego Costa, who was eventually substituted, but still carries an air of panic and surely not a Euro 2016 starter.
Man of the match: Chris Smalling (centre-back) 7
Improving all the time and looked the part again here. Slowly but surely stepping up his claims to start in central defence in France next summer.
Michael Carrick (central midfielder) 4
Utterly anonymous and posed further questions about his ability to influence games at this level. So important for Manchester United but his England career has been a missed opportunity and was carried off on a stretcher late on.
Fabian Delph (central midfielder) 6
Busy night for a player who has been sidelined with hamstring injuries since his move to Manchester City. Industrious but largely ineffective.
Adam Lallana (attacking midfielder) 5
Undistinguished night for the Liverpool midfield man. Gave the ball away too often and occasionally lightweight in the physical exchanges.
Ross Barkley (attacking midfielder) 6
Not as impressive as against Estonia and Lithuania as this was a real step up in class - but showed some first-half flashes that hint at his genuine quality.
Raheem Sterling (attacking midfielder) 5
Busy but his control often let him down at key moments. Still a work in progress at this level and England will hope for more ahead of next summer
Harry Kane (striker) 6
Fed off scraps all night but never stopped working and almost got on target with a rasping shot just wide. Kane is a real contender to start up front for England at the Euros.
Substitutes
Dele Alli (for Delph, 63 minutes) 5
Came on as Spain exerted their dominance so little opportunity to impress.
Eric Dier (for Lallana, 63 minutes) 5
Same applies to Dier as it does to his Spurs team-mate Alli - almost an easing-in debut and time for judgement will be in the future.
Wayne Rooney (for Barkley, 73 minutes) 5
Thrown on with the game going away from England. Peripheral.
Gary Cahill (for Smalling, 84 minutes) No rating
Not on the pitch long enough to warrant a rating.
Jonjo Shelvey (for Carrick, 90 minutes) No rating
Neither was Shelvey.Greetings and Salutations I hope your all having a great start to April, this April fools I'm releasing a small project I've been working on with friends for the last two weeks, the video below covers a few points on design decisions I made and a very brief overview of the whole project.
(If Video is not visible it can be viewed here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lZuu0LU7zI)
Click here for Word document.
Carefinder V0.1
Updated 01/04/2016
Contents
Foreword How to use this supplement. Origins of the Care Bears and the Kingdom of Caring Creating a Care Bear and Care Bear Cousin Belly Badges, Feats and Class Archetypes Items Foes of the Care Bears
1. Foreword
Simply it began with a bet.
For some years now myself and my other half have been making friendly bets while playing pool, often these bets were who would buy the next drink, do chores and other similar silly little things. One of our favourite bets was the winner would pick the movie for our bad movie night where we would delve through the depths of NetFlixs, pick a movie and take it apart like an amateur MST3K.
This particular night on my birthday while browsing together we saw that the original Care Bears movie was available, initially creating a small drinking game as we watched the film my girlfriend uttered the words that would spur the creation of this document "I wonder what the damage on a Care Bear stare is?"
For the next week we found ourselves constantly going back and discussing how to stat and balance Care Bears for a short adventure in Pathfinder while making them thematically fit within the D20 settings.
I hope you all enjoy this and we would love to see some feedback and your own adventures.
Jason Silverain of The Sword and Torch Inn
1a. How to use this supplement
Carefinder is a supplement designed to be used in conjunction with the Pathfinder Core Rule Book and Bestiary in order to play, in addition it makes references to Spells available upon the Pathfinder SRD and provides hyperlinks were available.
2. Origins of the Care Bears and the Kingdom of Caring
There is not much known about the origins of the Care Bears and Care Bear Cousins, the current Care Bears and Cousin inhabitants of the Kingdom of Caring are descendants of refugees who brought no historical records of their homeland and were reluctant to speak of the disaster that drove them from it. This combined with the Care Bears tendency towards oral lore rather than creating written records has resulted in their history falling into folklore and legend, leaving much to speculation but there are certain details that remain the same in all accounts.
The original home of the Care Bears and Care Bear Cousins was a bountiful paradise without predators both natural and banditry, the Care Bears sustaining themselves as peaceful farmers within small villages and the Cousins living off the land. This small kingdom grew overtime as the villages expanded eventually joined together into a single thriving metropolis centred around a spectacular castle that sat upon a nearby mountain, its many spires towering into the sky. The relationship between the Care Bears and their Cousins at this time was somewhat strained, several Cousins becoming upset as the growing villages covered fields and forests were cut down to create them while the Care Bears were growing wary of the Cousins who lived solidarity lives within the wilds and did not understand the nuances of city life often causing disturbances in their rare visits.
It is perhaps this which made the original refugees reluctant to speak of their homeland fearing similar distrust would begin to appear in their new home, regardless of the reasons it is this distrust which caused the early warnings that something was wrong to be ignored.
It started slowly with various Care Bear Cousins going missing for weeks in advance, their Care Bear neighbours often not noticing or simply relieved that they were no longer visiting the town. Tensions rose amongst the Cousins some seeking friends suspecting the Care Bears knowing where their friends were while others simply retreated deeper into the wild areas of the land. Those Cousins who continued to visit began to mention strange sightings and animals leaving the area as if frightened with growing concern and while some Care Bears now began to pay attention and offer aid many others just didn't know how to respond. Their kingdom had never faced a real threat or emergency in their lifetimes and the large forum where the Care Bears held council was paralysed with indecision.
Then suddenly over a period of hours dozens of Cousins arrived at the city tired, scared and injured telling tales of horrible spiked and horned creatures, living evil shadows and a sorcerer of dark power slaying and destroying all in their path, hunting them down through the forests and wilds driving them towards the city. This warning was too late however as the shape-shifting sorcerer No Heart and his demonic allies fell upon the the kingdom that very night, the Care Bears and Cousins having no magic of their own and no weapons or army to speak of were thrown into a nightmare of chaos and carnage which very few escaped.
Two such survivors risked everything to rescue as many children as they could onto one of the few boats of the Kingdom, these two would later be known as True Heart Bear and Noble Heart Horse. Having stolen back the children from Dark Heart one of No Hearts lieutenants and another malefic shape-shifter who had wished to corrupt them they fled the enraged the powerful entity across the stormy ocean. However as the storm grew worse the ships mast was destroyed allowing Dark Heart to catch up with the escapees, it seemed that all hope was lost until the intervention of a powerful being (often speculated by scholars to be a Archon) known only to the Care Bears as the Great Wishing Star drove Dark Heart back. The Great Wishing Stars powerful magic lifted the damaged boat into the sky transforming it into the first Cloud Clipper as a rainbow beam plane shifted them all into what is known as the Kingdom of Caring.
It is the Great Wishing Star that granted these first Care Bears and Cousins the powers of the belly badge explaining to them that it was their immense love, caring and self sacrifice that drew his attention and that the Care Bears should spread that caring to the people of the material plane. In addition to ensure that the Care Bears and Cousins remembered this task a great Care Meter would stand in the Kingdom of Caring measuring the positive energy and emotions of the world within the material plane, should it ever drop too low the kingdom of Caring would begin to break down starting at its centre the Care Bears new home of Care-a-Lot and fracture until the plane itself would vanish.
True Heart Bear and Noble Heart Horse fulfilled their duties as best they could as they took care of the young children but the events of the past fresh in their minds and with the threat of Dark Heart still threatening them Noble Heart Horse eventually took the remaining Cousins from Care-a-Lot deeper into the Kingdom of Caring settling them in a land now known as the Forest of Feelings. It wouldn't be until several years later when the children had grown and eventually reunited that Dark Heart would re-emerge and be defeated and in the process redeemed.
However the malefic energy that once inhabited Dark Heart was not so easily destroyed, driven from its host it sought another and in the process was drawn back to No Heart and his forces. The years had not been kind to No Heart and his demonic allies, their presence having attracted the attention of powerful enemies and the very land itself reduced to desert by their actions they had found themselves forced back trapped in the ruined former castle of the Care Bears in siege. The dark energies whispered their secrets to No Heart informing him of the failure of his lieutenant and the Kingdom of Caring on which the Care Bears resided.
Surrounded by foes and untrustworthy minions No Heart decided on a plan, sending his forces out leading them to believe that they were to break the siege as he cast a great spell to destroy the enemy leaders he began a great incantation drawing upon his reserves of power. As his forces neared destruction and the castle about to be overrun the ritual was completed and the entire castle and most of the mountain was planeshifted into the Kingdom of Caring. This was at a great cost to himself however draining his powers to a fraction of their former strength and the very properties of the plane seemed to weaken and pain No Heart who became reliant on a magical amulet to ward of its effects. No Heart has since tried to destroy the remaining Care Bears and Cousins but with their new magic and purpose they driven him back time and time again forcing him to remain with the ruins of the castle.
3. Creating a Care Bear and Care Bear Cousin
Care Bears:
Physical Description: Care Bears are small humanoids which resemble small bears covered in soft fur, both males and females stand about 3 feet tall and are stocky which due to their fur appears to resemble a fat rather than muscular build. They can be any colour from pastel shades to brighter colours all over except for a while stomach and pale muzzle. There may occasionally be Care Bears with similar markings to a Panda but they still retain the white stomach. On the stomach a symbol (known as a belly badge) unique to each bear can be found.
Society: From the outside the care bear society may seem focused upon solely fun and games however each bear or cousin spends considerable time each day training physical or mental skills through their daily tasks. Most activities are training wrapped up in a layer of whimsy including competitive sports, cross country races and talent contests though the bears often have parties and games in order to keep morale high amongst themselves.
Due to the nature of the training many young Bears may not realise they are training at all but the purpose of this training is to ensure that a Care Bear is in peak condition to respond to an emergency at anytime. Unless a task is vital to Care-a-Lot a Care Bear is willing to cease it at a moments notice if required to part in a mission to help others.
Relations: Care Bears try to spread a message of friendship and joy, however this can occasionally come across as preachy and naive. While some can find them annoying others can respect the amount of courage which these small creatures can exhibit. Care Bears are more likely to be friends with good or neutral aligned creatures though may try to make friends with evil aligned creatures to help them.
On the very rare occasion a care bear lives outside of the Kingdom of Caring they will feel most at home in stationary, small settlements as they are not used to city life. Some farming settlements may try to encourage a care bear to stay with them as rumour has it that a care bear brings good luck and increases the bounty of harvest in locations where they live.
Alignment and Religion: Care Bears do not worship a deity instead they follow concepts and try to embody a concept ideal at all times. Care Bears strive to instil their concept into others as well as use the concept to drive their own actions. Concepts include but are not limited to: love, hope, cheer, friendship.
Sometimes a bear may stray from one of these concepts but this is seen as a learning experience for all involved, if a bear or cousin becomes greedy or overly prideful they are expected to learn from it. Care Bears can fight and argue amongst themselves or with others, the act of fighting is not condoned as an evil action in itself but repeating such behaviour time and time again is against the Care Bears way of life.
Importantly Care Bears believe that many evil creatures can be redeemed, often giving someone a chance to learn or to surrender but once that offer is spurned all bets are off and foes often find themselves on the end of a mighty care bear stare.
A care bear who is exposed to the culture of other races may adopt good aligned gods which they share ideals with. Yolanda the Halfling God of home and family is very appealing to Care Bears.
Adventurers: In the beginning Care Bears and Cousins came from a completely peaceful society, adventurers were rare because there was no need to leave their idyllic homeland though wanderlust and desire for exploration drove these exceptional individuals.
However in recent times with the growing danger to what is left of their society and their new responsibilities some bears try to take a more pro active approach to defending themselves and others. Seeking to redeem or extinguish sources of evil while spreading Care Bears message of love and hope far and wide without waiting to be called.
However these Care Bears or cousins who become true adventurers are seldom understood within their wider society as some cannot abide by any violence even with the most pure of intentions. To some however becoming an adventurer is a natural extension to the Care Bears calling to help others but attitudes differ in how a care bear seeks to fulfil the calling.
Names: Care Bears and cousins tend to be named after an aspect of their personality or physical trait. This can sometimes be followed with heart such as with Tenderheart or the name of their species such as Grumpy bear. In some cases both heart and species may be used such as Swift Heart Rabbit or Brave heart Lion.
Names for Care Bears and care bear cousins are unisex and may be applied equally to either gender.
Standard Racial Traits
Ability Score Racial Traits: Care Bears are physically weaker than other races but surprisingly hardy and have strong personalities. They gain +2 Constitution, +2 Charisma, and –2 Strength.
Size: Care Bears are Small creatures and gain a +1 size bonus to their AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, a –1 penalty to their CMB and CMD, and a +4 size bonus on Stealth checks.
Base Speed (Slow Speed): Care Bears have a base speed of 20 feet.
Type: Care Bears have the Outsider (native) type. Care Bears do not have Darkvision as standard ability.
Languages: Care Bears begin play speaking Common and Celestial. Care Bears with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following: Dwarven, Elven, Halfling, Gnome, and Goblin.
Defensive Racial Traits
Eternal Hope: Care Bears rarely lose hope and are always confident that even hopeless situations will work out. Care Bears with this racial trait receive a +2 racial bonus on saving throws against fear and despair effects. Once per day, after rolling a 1 on a d20, the Care Bears may re-roll and use the second result.
Magical Racial Traits
Belly Badge: Care Bears gain an Cantrip or Orison which can be cast at will as a spell-like ability. In addition Care Bears with Charisma scores of 11 or higher also gain the following spell-like abilities: 1/Day 2x First Level Spell, 1x Second Level spell.
These spell-like abilities are chosen at 1st level and cannot be changed, they may be chosen from both the Arcane or Divine spell lists but they must be linked thematically (See Belly Badges for examples.) The DC for these spells is equal to 10 + the spell's level + the Care Bears's Charisma modifier.
These spell-like abilities emanates from the image of the Belly Badge and cannot be used through armour and clothing unless the Belly Badge is exposed or the power is channelled through a Belly Badge Symbol.
Special Attacks
Care Bear Stare: A Care Bear has a once per day supernatural ability called a Care Bear Stare which is a rainbow beam that emanates from the Belly Badge and travels in a 40ft line striking all in the effect, the Care Bear Stare deals 2d6 hit points of damage plus Charisma modifier (Will Save half; DC 10 + 1/2 creature's HD + creature's Cha modifier, creatures that fail this save are also treated as been affected by the Colour Spray Spell.) This damage classes as magical and good aligned for damage reduction purposes and may be declared to be lethal or non lethal damage (before the dice are rolled), Care Bears are unaffected by the Care Bear Stare and take no damage.
The damage of a Care Bear Stare increases by 1 dice step per 4 Hit Dice so 2d8 at 4 th level, 3d6 at 8 th level, 3d8 at 12 th level, 4d6 at 16 th level and 4d8 at 20 th level respectively.
As a Full Round Concentration Check a Care Bear can maintain the Stare safely for rounds up to 1 + Cha modifier after which the Care Bear must make Fort Saves (DC15 + additional rounds maintained) each round or become Exhausted and the Stare ends.
Finally the most powerful ability of the Care Bear Stare is its ability to be performed as a joint action, for this to occur two or more (to a maximum of 10) Care Bears or Care Bear Cousins must be within 5ft of another Bear taking part in the Stare, the target must be with their range and each member must ready their actions to perform a Care Bear Stare at the same time. Of the group a leader of the Stare is selected and are the basis upon the stares abilities are based, once selected this cannot be changed during the Stare.
The Group Stare is handled similar to a normal stare with the following changes:
Area of Effect: Each Care Bear in the Stare projects a 40ft Line towards their target, additional targets may be hit if caught in the line.
Damage: The attack only damages on the Leaders turn with the damage calculation now been Leaders Stare Damage + Total HD of Bears in Group + Leaders Charisma modifier and the save DC is increased to Will Save half; DC 10 + 1/2 Leader's HD + number of Bears in Stare + Leader's Cha modifier.
Maintaining a Stare: All of the group roll Concentration Checks separately if they wish to maintain the stare, however if the leader fails the Concentration or Fortitude Check at any point the entire stare ends. Members of the group may chose to end their Stare at any time during their turn as a free action and the Stares effects are recalculated on the leader turn.
Example: Armoured Heart leads his 4 bear party in a Care Bear Stare against a troll which is threatening the villagers they are defending. Armoured Heart is 8 th level with a Charisma of 18 but his fellow adventures are only 4 th level so the possible damage would be: 3d6 + 20 + 4 unless the troll passed a Will Save DC 22 to half the damage.
While Armoured Heart can safely maintain the stare for 5 rounds if not interrupted his fighter companion Quickpaw Wolf can only do so for 2 so on his third turn rather than risking becoming exhausted Quickpaw Wolf decides to cease aiding the stare and charge the stunned troll.
Care Bear Cousins :
Physical Description: The cousins are related to Care Bears however each cousin resembles a humanoid animal with features of the animal it is based upon. Like Care Bears the cousins are covered in soft fur (or feathers in some cases) which varies in colour and they share the White belly with belly badge.
Like Care Bears the Cousins stand about 3 feet tall though the physical traits of a Care Bear Cousin depend highly on the animal it resembles and there little consistency within the species as a whole. While there are several Cousins that have resemblance to flightless birds such as penguins there are no Cousins which can fly, likewise there are also no completely aquatic animal Care Bear Cousins.
Society: Care Bear Cousins living with Care Bears have nearly the same social structure and day to day life as their close kin, Care Bear Cousins living in the Forest of Feelings however have nearly no society to speak of, living independently and grouping together only for companionship and games. This lifetime of foraging and exploring does make them physically stronger and robust if usually less educated than the Care Bears.
Relations: Many races simply treat the Care Bear Cousins the same as they would treat Care Bears though the Cousins own views differ slightly from their kin though this is partially dependant on their animal resemblance with Cousins that resemble carnivores more likely to act aggressively if threatened and even responding with violence if needed.
Alignment and Religion: Whilst sharing many beliefs with Care Bears, Cousins tend to focus towards physical concepts with a beneficiary goal or self improvement, it is not uncommon to find a Cousin focusing on trying to be the strongest or fastest with a desire to protect others or trying to instil self confidence in others.
True to their nature and upbringing Cousins tend to act impulsively on their gut feelings, often dashing forward to help or defend others before assessing a situation. They are also less reluctant about using force to achieve these aims when face with obviously unnatural foes such as Undead or Demons with Cousins that resemble carnivores more likely to lead a charge with the nearest weapon to hand.
Adventurers: Cousins are more likely to become adventurers than their Care Bear Kin either through their own actions or joining a fellow adventuring Care Bear or Cousin. More often than not they tend to fall into the more physical roles of such groups such as Fighters but this is no means definite each cousins traits are unquie.
Standard Racial Traits
Ability Score Racial Traits: Care Bear Cousins are varied and versatile and may have any number of physical traits depending on their animal form. They gain a +2 bonus to any two characteristics.
Size: Care Bear Cousins are Small creatures and gain a +1 size bonus to their AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, a –1 penalty to their CMB and CMD, and a +4 size bonus on Stealth checks.
Base Speed (Slow Speed): Care Bear Cousins have a base speed of 20 feet.
Type: Care Bear Cousins have the Outsider (native) type. Care Bears Cousins do not have Darkvision as standard ability.
Languages: Care Bear Cousins begin play speaking Common and Celestial. Care Bear Cousins with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following: Dwarven, Elven, Halfling, Gnome, and Goblin.
Magical Racial Traits
Lesser Belly Badge: Care Bear Cousins gain an Cantrip or Orison which can be cast at will as a spell-like ability.
The DC for these spells is equal to 10 + the spell's level + the Care Bear Cousin's Charisma modifier.
These spell-like abilities emanates from the image of the Belly Badge and cannot be used through armour and clothing unless the Belly Badge is exposed or the power is channelled through a Belly Badge Symbol.
Special Attacks
Care Bear Stare: See Above, Cousins often refer to this as the Cousin Call.
Other Traits
Due to their unusual variation Care Bear Cousin may select up to two of the following abilities based upon the animal they resemble:
Movement Traits Climb: gain a 20ft climb speed and +8 to Climb skill. Swim: gain a 20 ft swim speed and +8 to swim skill. Fast: gain + 10 ft to all movement types. Sense Traits Low light vision Dark vision 60ft Body and other Traits Natural armour +1 (cannot be taken twice).
Energy resistance: 5 Cold (For animals who live in cold environments).
Energy resistance: 5 Fire (For animals who live in very hot environments).
Terrifying Cry/Roar: Members of this race gain the following supernatural ability: Once per hour as a standard action, a member of this race can emit a thunderous croak. Any creature not of its subtype (if humanoid) or type (if another race type) must make a successful Will saving throw (DC 10 + 1/2 the user's character level + the user's Charisma modifier) or become shaken for 1d4 rounds. A target that successfully saves cannot be affected by the user's terrifying croak for 24 hours. Creatures that are already shaken become frightened for 1d4 rounds instead. This is a sonic, mind-affecting effect.
Natural attack: Additional suitable types can be additionally selected.
Natural Attack Type Damage Damage Type Attack type Bite 1d4 B, P, and S Primary Claw 1d3 B and S Primary Gore 1d4 P Primary Hoof, Tentacle, Wing 1d3 B Secondary Pincers, Tail Slap 1d4 B Secondary Slam 1d3 B Primary Sting 1d3 P Primary Talons 1d3 S Primary Other 1d3 B, P, or S Secondary
Prehensile Tail:
This Cousin
has a long, flexible tail that she can use to carry objects. She cannot wield weapons with her tail, but the tail allows her to retrieve a small, stowed object carried on her person as a swift action.
Lucky:
+1 to all saving throws.
Existing cousins examples of these abilities: Brave Heart Lion: Terrifying Roar and Claws. Cozy Heart Penguin: Swim Speed and Energy Resistance: 5 Cold. Bright Heart Raccoon: Dark Vision and Natural Armour +1 Lotsa Heart Elephant: Terrifying Roar and Prehensile Tail (applied to trunk). Swift Heart Rabbit: Fast and Lucky
Table: Random Starting Ages for |
of Fame. The giant was more than 7 ft tall, and weighed more than 500 pounds. Even though his size is the result of a real condition, he also helped things along with a great deal of eating and drinking. Tony Stewart: Anthony Wayne Stewart is one of the premier auto racing drivers in the U.S. He has won titles in Indy and stock cars. He also drives in NASCAR. Stewart is known for his large size, as well as his driving ability. In addition to driving, he is also an owner. He only drives part time now. Stewart is rather large, though, and some have disparagingly joked about his ability to get into a race car. But that doesn’t change the fact that he has been a great driver, and one that has won plenty of awards. Dusty Rhodes: This professional wrestler won several National Wrestling Alliance titles. He also did well in the WCW and with WWE. Dusty is known for his polka-dot wrestling outfit, and for his expanding size. Born Virgil Riley Runnels, Jr., Dusty Rhodes was known for his over the top performances, and also worked hard to be seen as a working class hero. He was known for the Bionic Elbow, a signature finishing move. Right now, Dusty still wrestles sometimes, but mainly does work as a booker and producer in Florida.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration on Friday extended the length of permits that allow wind farms and other operations to accidentally kill protected eagles to 30 years, drawing fire from wildlife conservationists.
Wind turbines operate at a wind farm near Milford, Utah May 21, 2012. REUTERS/George Frey
The move to offer permits of up to three decades, from a previous maximum of five years, had been urged by the wind energy industry but was attacked by a leading wildlife group as a “stunningly bad move.”
The Interior Department said the change in policy would help protect eagles, which can be killed when they collide with wind turbines and other structures, and allow the development of renewable energy and other projects designed to operate for decades.
“Renewable energy development is vitally important to our nation’s future, but it has to be done in the right way,” said Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell.
Wildlife conservationists, however, disputed the claims that eagles would be protected by the permit extensions.
The change will provide legal protection for the likely lifespan of wind farms that obtain permits and undertake “advanced conservation practices” to avoid killing bald eagles, the bird depicted on the national seal of the United States, and gold eagles.
Companies must also commit to take additional measures if they exceed their permit limits or if new information suggests eagle populations are being affected.
The National Audobon Society, a bird-focused conservation group, said Interior’s move was misguided and that the group was keeping “all options” open to challenge the rule.
‘OUTRAGEOUS’
“Instead of balancing the need for conservation and renewable energy, Interior wrote the wind industry a blank check,” Audubon President and CEO David Yarnold said in a statement. “It’s outrageous that the government is sanctioning the killing of America’s symbol, the bald eagle.”
In a blog posting, John Anderson, director of siting policy for the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), said the permit program would protect more eagles, not fewer. The group said its industry does more to address its impacts on eagles than other, greater causes of eagle fatalities known to wildlife experts.
The AWEA pointed out that the eagle “take” permit “was not developed for, nor is it specific to, the wind industry”.
The permits can be sought by “all sources of human-caused eagle mortality,” including oil and gas exploration and production, mining, military bases, airports, cell towers and utility lines, AWEA said.
Thousands of birds of various species - not just eagles - are known to die in the United States each year in collisions with giant wind turbines, power lines and other structures.
Fatalities of golden eagles at modern wind facilities represent less than 2 percent of documented sources of human-caused eagle deaths, and “only a few” bald eagles have died in collisions in the history of the industry, AWEA said.
The move is part of the Obama administration’s push to promote wind and other forms of so-called green energy.
But the objections by conservationists point to a deepening divide with the Obama administration over its drive to develop alternative energy despite hazards to eagles and other protected species.
It is not known many eagles are killed each year at wind farms, which are not required to report eagle deaths. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates wind facilities have caused the deaths of 85 bald and golden eagles nationwide since 1997.
That compares to the 50 to 70 golden eagles that are known to be killed each year by the wind turbine arrays at Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area in northern California, according to Doug Bell, wildlife program manager with the East Bay Regional Park District.The hearing into the extradition of founder of popular file sharing site Megaupload in New Zealand has been postponed until March next year because of questions over evidence disclosure. Kim Dotcom faces charges of fraud and copyright violations.
Dotcom’s lawyers say the hearing has been moved to March 25 because the defense team is still waiting for the US to produce two judicial reviews in relations to search warrants and evidence disclosure.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation claims that Dotcom has inflicted over $500 million in damages to the entertainment industry and personally profited $175 million by distributing copyrighted material without proper authorization.
Dotcom's defense argues that Megaupload only offered online storage and did not violate any of the copyright laws.
The delay in the case follows the New Zealand High Court's judgment in June that stated that warrants used by police to search Dotcom's residence copying the evidence by the FBI and sending it to the United States were illegal.
Dotcom and three others were arrested in February after the New Zealand police stormed into Megaupload founder’s home to confiscate his personal hardware on behalf of the FBI.
Following the raid, US authorities shut down Megaupload and related file-sharing sites which were responsible for about 4 per cent of all internet traffic.
Earlier this week, 38-year-old German national Dotcom hinted Megaupload will be brought back to life as he awaits his fate in his mansion near Auckland, New Zealand.Written by Dan Linke
Today marks the 118th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birth and 101 years since he entered Princeton University, the place he dubbed “the pleasantest country club in America.” That phrase, a great irritant to then University President John Grier Hibben, is found in his first novel, This Side of Paradise, which chronicles Amory Blaine’s time as an undergraduate and his fascination with eating clubs, sports, social life, and Fitzgerald’s true Princeton obsession, the Triangle Club.
Fitzgerald is the sole author of all the song lyrics for three consecutive Triangle Club shows (Fie! Fie! Fi-Fi!, 1914-1915; The Evil Eye, 1915-1916; and Safety First, 1916-1917), a prolific record unmatched in the Club’s nearly 125 year history. When asked “what was your major?,” it is not uncommon for Club alumni to respond with “Triangle, with a minor in Chemistry” [or English, or any other subject that they ostensibly studied]. For Fitzgerald, the answer appears to be the same, as evidenced by his grade card and his failure to graduate.
Admitted on trial, as his card notes, Fitzgerald struggled with most of his classes and was placed in the fifth (the lowest) class throughout his three years. This should encourage aspiring writers everywhere, however, given that one of the greatest 20th century American authors never received higher than a B+ (a 3, on a 1-7 scale) in his English classes, but went on to write works still read avidly almost 75 years after his death.
Images taken from Office of the Registrar Records, Box 103. Click to enlarge:
N.B. Access to undergraduate alumni records is governed by this policy.
Like this: Like Loading...Though sex serves a pretty obvious functional purpose—it gets sperm cells closer to their end goal—it also serves some interesting psychological ones. A central effect of sex is that it enhances pair-bonding, the connection between the individuals having sex. And though it probably evolved for a different purpose, the “afterglow” sensation that lingers after sex seems to contribute to that bonding, a new study reports. The research, out this week in Psychological Science, finds that newlyweds who report an afterglow counted in days, rather than hours, also report more marital satisfaction months later. How this plays out years later isn’t totally clear, but it may be that afterglow is at least as important later in life as it is earlier on.
The new study tracked 215 newly wedded couples, and had them report daily for a period of two weeks whether they’d had sex that day. They also reported on how satisfied they were with their marriage in general, with their partner and with their sex life on that particular day. The team also followed up with them four to six months later to see how the were faring.
Sex was linked to sexual satisfaction on that day, and importantly, also in the 24 and 48 hours later, even if those hours didn’t contain any sex. In other words, the afterglow from one sexual experience lasted for up to two days—and the stronger their afterglow, the more likely a couple was to report being satisfied with their marriage over the next several months. As expected, marital satisfaction generally dropped a bit over the course of the study, but for those who reported stronger afterglow after sex, it dropped much less.
"Our research shows that sexual satisfaction remains elevated 48 hours after sex," said lead author Andrea Meltzer. "And people with a stronger sexual afterglow—that is, people who report a higher level of sexual satisfaction 48 hours after sex—report higher levels of relationship satisfaction several months later…. This research is important because it joins other research suggesting that sex functions to keep couples pair bonded."
Afterglow also serves a less romantic and more basic evolutionary purpose: It makes conception more likely to occur. The odds of conception actually rise in the two days after sex—but repeated sex in those days can actually backfire, thwarting sperms’ ascent to the cervix. So not having sex—which might be more likely if you’re still feeling afterglow from your last sexual encounter days earlier—would actually be beneficial, evolutionarily speaking.
But it’s funner for most people to enjoy the interpersonal benefits of afterglow. And interestingly, while lots of other studies have looked at how other types of interactions affect a relationship—like fighting and praise—none have looked at how the length of their aftermath affects a relationship over the long-term until now.
How the phenomenon works over time also isn’t so clear—it may change somewhat, and even expand, as couples have been together for longer. “For example, older individuals in more established relationships for whom reproduction is less important may experience a longer afterglow,” the authors write. The team's future work will look at how afterglow is linked to other things, like infidelity and whether relationships become long-term or turn into marriage.
So can you increase the length of your afterglow? It’s certainly possible, but where it comes from isn’t so clear. Afterglow may not be solely the product anything that happens in the bedroom—it may come at least as much from interactions that happen outside it.
“I would suspect that it's a little of both,” says clinical psychologist Shannon Kolakowski. “Meaning that what creates the afterglow is in part due to the positive circumstances that led to having sex, such as feelings of love and connection, having a good time together, having desire for your partner and feeling desired. And what sustains the afterglow is the sex act itself, the release of bonding chemicals in the body as well as having a shared experience to remember and enjoy, which fortifies these good feelings.”
So may be a bit of a chicken-or-egg situation. While the research is still being done, you and your partner can play around with it, and see if you can make afterglow last longer. “Do what you would do with any emotion you wish to foster,” says Kolakowski. “Notice the afterglow, and embrace it. Replay in your mind scenes that made you feel particularly bonded, or close to your partner. And try to create more opportunities in your relationship for those times to happen.”Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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For a brief time in the fall of 2011, Pennsylvania GOP Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi unveiled a plan to deliver the bulk of his state’s electoral votes to Mitt Romney. Pileggi wanted Pennsylvania to award its electoral votes not via the winner-take-all system in place in forty-eight states but instead based on the winner of each Congressional district. Republicans, by virtue of controlling the redistricting process, held thirteen of eighteen congressional seats in Pennsylvania following the 2012 election. If Pileggi’s plan would have been in place on November 6, 2012, Romney would’ve captured thirteen of Pennsylvania’s twenty Electoral College votes, even though Obama carried the state with 52 percent of the vote. Ad Policy
In the wake of Romney’s defeat and the backfiring of GOP voter suppression efforts, Pileggi is resurrecting his plan (albeit in a slightly different form) and the idea of gerrymandering the Electoral College to boost the 2016 GOP presidential candidate is spreading to other GOP-controlled battleground states that Obama carried, like Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. Thanks to big gains at the state legislative level in 2010, Republicans controlled the redistricting process in twenty states compared to seven for Democrats, drawing legislative and Congressional maps that will benefit their party for the next decade. (The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that Republicans picked up six additional House seats in 2012 due to redistricting.) Republicans now want to extend their redistricting advantage to the presidential realm.
Pileggi’s plan, if implemented in all of the battleground states where Republicans held a majority of House seats, would’ve handed the White House to Romney. According to Think Progress:
According to Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, Republicans currently hold the majority of House seats in thirty states, compared to seventeen for Democrats, giving them a big advantage in any bid to rig the Electoral College.
Take a look at Virginia, where State Senator Charles “Bill” Carrico Sr. introduced legislation to award his state’s electoral votes based on the winner of each Congressional district. Here’s what that would mean, reports ThinkProgress:
With a Republican-controlled redistricting passed earlier this year, Virginia Democrats were heavily packed into three districts. Under these maps, Obama won Virginia by almost a 4 point margin, yet he carried just four Virginia Congressional Districts. Were Carrico’s scheme in place, Mitt Romney would have received seven of Virginia’s 11 electoral votes despite receiving just 47.28% of the vote statewide.
Or take a look at Ohio, where controversial Secretary of State Jon Husted briefly voiced support for a similar plan following the 2012 election. Obama won Ohio by three points, but Republicans control twelve of eighteen congressional seats there, meaning that Romney would’ve netted more electoral votes than Obama if Husted had his way.
The GOP supported voter suppression efforts in 2012 as a way to make the electorate older, whiter and more conservative. But that push backfired when opponents of voter suppression turned out in large numbers for Obama, cementing an electorate that was younger and more diverse than in 2008. The shifting demographics of the country indicate that Obama’s “coalition of the ascendant” will only grow in size in future elections. So Republicans are searching for new ways to dilute the influence of Democratic voters.
Will the GOP’s bid to gerrymander the Electoral College be more successful now than it was last election cycle? Let’s hope not. Pileggi’s plan divided Pennsylvania Republicans and ultimately went nowhere. Husted had to quickly backtrack from his statements due to the national uproar. Here’s an idea for Republicans: instead of diluting the votes of your opposition, how about supporting policies—like immigration reform and a more equitable distribution of taxes—that will win you more votes from a growing chunk of the electorate?
And here’s another idea for both parties: instead of gerrymandering the Electoral College, how about abolishing it altogether?
The election is over, but the fight to protect voting rights isn't. Check out our coverage of the challenge to the Voting Rights Act.Bernie Sanders is a political quagmire to me. He has ideas, some of them really good, that I agree with. It’s like, what actual Democrat/liberal is against expanding access to health care through the Medicare system? No one that’s honest. What Democrat is actually against making college affordable? If you again answered no one, you’re right again. The problem with all of these ideas is two fold- costs and politics. You simply can’t spend on into forever without any regard for actually ever paying those bills. You have to have a plan to finance these big ideas, and it has to be a plan that can pass Congress. This is where politics are hard, because you see, the public doesn’t want to pay higher taxes, so they are naturally skeptical when you either come out and tell them they need to pay higher taxes, or propose lots of new government spending and claim that taxes won’t go up. A skeptical public votes out Congress, and Congress people don’t want to be voted out of office. As a result, it’s not that easy to get Congress to vote for big government plans, there are real limits to a President’s power of persuasion here. Frankly, you shouldn’t want to see your members voted out of Congress for the purpose of just passing a bill or two, as we see the repercussions of losing elections now in the era of Trump’s Republican Congress.
Anyone who just throws out big proposals, big ideas without all the details and nuance to back them up, shouldn’t be taken seriously. This goes for Paul Ryan and his magic math on the tax cuts. It went for George W. Bush’s magic war theory, that we could pay for his Middle Eastern nation building all on the credit card. It’s true now with some of the ideas that Bernie Sanders is throwing around as his agenda. It is not a sufficient answer to say “tax the rich, cut defense spending,” when talking about how you’re going to finance big plans, because we all know those things are really tough to do- if they were easy to get past Congress, Democrats would have done them long ago. Even modest tax increases on the rich and modest cuts to Defense Department spending would be met with fierce opposition, and would be very difficult to pass- let alone creating $3.2 trillion annually to give everyone Medicare. Obviously higher taxes for the rich and a re-assignment of budget priorities is needed to make these policy goals happen, and it’s worth fighting for, but don’t pretend that this can be done easily, and that it’s a very simple solution. It’s not.
I have trouble taking Senator Sanders seriously though. He called the middle-class tax cuts portion of the GOP’s tax bill good on CNN the other day. In fact, he said Congress should have made them permanent. Is that position without merit? No, not at all. At the same time as he’s saying that, and then trying to claw back his statement, one of his financing ideas for single-payer health care (Medicare for All) is a 4% premium on every household in the country- a middle-class tax increase, even if it is a good idea. These positions don’t square. Sure, households might save money on health insurance premiums that exceeds their tax increase, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean we’re not raising taxes- and that’s assuming the 4% premium on every household would cover the costs- a subject of great debate. Not everyone is going to want to pay higher taxes to finance a national health care system, even if it will make costs cheaper for them or others. That’s just political reality.
My chief beef with Bernie Sanders is not the ideas he espouses, but the lack of reality he attaches to them, while criticizing Democrats for making tough decisions to try and pass things. I think back to his disaster interview with the New York Daily News in April of 2016, during the Presidential Primaries, where he was clearly unprepared to discuss the details of his plans for the nation. What happens to the employees of the “big banks” when you break them up? Who breaks them up, and under what authority? How exactly do we finance single-payer health care and free college education? If defense cuts are part of that plan, what happens to the people who work in manufacturing defense weaponry? Here he is again, after correctly admitting that his health care plan would require a tax increase, saying a middle-class tax cut is a good idea- it’s as though no actual facts or plans matter at all here. Now, Bernie is not the first political leader in this country to propose a bunch of stuff and not have the details down, so I could give it a chance- he’d clearly have to compromise, make deals, and come to a concrete plan once in office. The problem with Bernie is that he’s also built his political brand on not being compromising, of being entirely values driven, and spending literally his entire political career in Congress being a critic of the Democratic Party that he chooses to not join- for compromising, making deals, and getting to concrete plans in the end that are not always perfectly progressive. I either have to believe that he’s not serious, and won’t get things he proposes done (on purpose) to play politics, or that he’ll fail because he has no clue how to actually govern, or in the best case scenario, that he’ll be totally hypocritical in his process arguments, and will make deals and play politics with the best of them.
So no, if you’re proposing any form of expanding access to health care through government action, this tax bill is not helpful. The temporary and small middle-class tax cuts in it are not worth the damage they’ll do, especially because having less tax brackets now will make it harder to change tax law in the future. There, I said it for him, just in case you didn’t think he was playing politics like everyone else.
AdvertisementsDownload Full Report (4.3 MB) » Click Here for More Downloads, Data & Media Resources Primary Findings From 1948 through 2008 India lost a total of $213 billion in illicit financial flows (or illegal capital flight). These illicit financial flows were generally the product of: corruption, bribery and kickbacks, criminal activities, and efforts to shelter wealth from a country's tax authorities. (51)
Adjusted Estimates: The present value of India's total illicit financial flows (IFFs) is at least $462 billion. This is based on the short-term U.S. Treasury bill rate as a proxy for the rate of return on assets. (51)
IFF Breakdowns: Total capital flight represents approximately 16.6 percent of India's GDP as of year-end 2008; (51)
Illicit financial flows out of India grew at a rate of 11.5 percent per year while in real terms they grew by 6.4 percent per year; ( 51)
India lost $16 billion per year from 2002-2006. (1) IFF Drivers: High Net-Worth Individuals (HNWIs) and private companies were found to be the primary drivers of illicit flows out of India's private sector. (ix). India's underground economy is also a significant driver of illicit financial flows. (53)
IFF Trends: From 1948 through 2008 the Indian private sector shifted away from deposits into developed country banks and towards increased deposits in offshore financial centers (OFCs). The share of OFC deposits increased from 36.4 percent in 1995 to 54.2 percent in 2009. (x). About the Author Dev Kar, formerly a Senior Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is Lead Economist at Global Financial Integrity (GFI) at the Center for International Policy. The author would like to thank Karly Curcio, Junior Economist at GFI, for excellent research assistance and for guiding staff interns on data sources and collection. He would also like to thank Raymond Baker and other staff at GFI for helpful comments. Finally, thanks are due to the staff of the IMF's Statistics Department, the Reserve Bank of India, and Mr. Swapan Pradhan of the Bank for International Settlements for their assistance with data. Any errors that remain are the author's responsibility. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of GFI or the Center for International Policy. Read more about Dr. Kar...
Analysis India's underground economy is closely tied to illicit financial outflows. The total present value of India's illicit assets held abroad ($462 billion) accounts for approximately 72 percent of India's underground economy. This means that almost three-quarters of the illicit assets comprising India's underground economy—which has been estimated to account for 50 percent of India's GDP (approximately $640 billion at the end of 2008)—ends up outside of the country. (vii, 19) The finding that only 27.8 percent of India's illicit assets are held domestically support arguments that the desire to amass wealth illegally without attracting government attention is one of the primary motivations behind the cross-border transfer of illicit capital. (vii, 19) In the post-reform period of 1991-2008, deregulation and trade liberalization accelerated the outflow of illicit money from the Indian economy. Opportunities for trade mispricing grew and expansion of the global shadow financial system—particularly island tax havens—accommodated the increased outflow of India's illicit capital flight. (Introduction) There is a statistical correlation between larger volumes of illicit flows and deteriorating income distribution. (35) Recommendations Tax evasion is a major component of the underground economy, which in turn is a primary driver of India's illicit outflows. Expanding India's tax base and improving tax collection has high potential to curtail illicit flows. Illicit financial flows cannot be curtailed without the collaborative effort of both developing and developed countries. Economic reforms key to stemming the outflow of illicit money from India and the developing world in general include: curtail trade mispricing (a widely utilized tax avoidance technique of international businesses);
require country-by-country reporting of sales, profits and taxes paid by multinational corporations;
require confirmation of beneficial ownership in all banking and securities accounts;
require automatic cross-border exchange of tax information on personal and business accounts; and
harmonize predicate offenses under anti-money laundering laws across all countries that cooperate on the Financial Action Task Force. Methodology Dev Kar, the author of the report, utilized the World Bank Residual Model (CED) and a trade Mispricing Model based on IMF Direction of Trade statistics. The World Bank Residual Model tracks illicit outflows by measuring differences in a country's recorded source of funds relative to its use of funds. According to this method, illicit outflows exist when a country's recorded source of funds exceeds its recorded use of funds. The Trade Mispricing Model compares a country's recorded imports to what the world says it exported to that country; similarly, the country's recorded exports are compared against world imports from that country. Import values are adjusted for the cost of freight and insurance before they are compared to exports. GFI's estimates of trade mispricing are based on the gross excluding reversals (GER) method which tracks illicit outflows as a result of export under-invoicing and import over-invoicing. The author identified the drivers of illicit flows from India using a block-recursive dynamic simulation model which incorporated macroeconomic factors (government deficits, inflation, and inflationary expectations) structural factors (increasing trade openness, faster rates of economic growth and impact of these on income distribution), and overall governance as captured by a measure of the underground economy. (14)This week on DineSafe there are fortunately no restaurant closures to report. But popular seafood chain The Captain's Boil landed in some hot water when its York Mills location got 11 infractions, 10 of which were significant.
Find out who else got in trouble with city health inspectors this week.
RaviSoups (2535 Dundas St. West)
Inspected on: January 9, 2017
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 1 (Significant: 1)
Crucial infractions include: N/A
Alleycatz (2409 Yonge St.)
Inspected on: January 10, 2017
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 1 (Significant: 1)
Crucial infractions include: N/A
Grasshopper (3080 Dundas St. West)
Inspected on: January 10, 2017
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 3 (Significant: 2, Crucial: 1)
Crucial infractions include: Operator failed to maintain hazardous foods.
Richtree Natural Market (14 Queen St. West)
Inspected on: January 10, 2017
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 8 (Minor: 2, Significant: 5, Crucial: 1)
Crucial infractions include: Operator failed to maintain hazardous foods.
Jaipur Grille (208 Queens Quay West)
Inspected on: January 11, 2017
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 5 (Minor: 2,Significant: 3)
Crucial infractions include: N/A
Off the Hook (749 Broadview Ave.)
Inspected on: January 11, 2017
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 3 (Significant: 2, Crucial: 1)
Crucial infractions include: Operator failed to maintain hazardous foods.
The Captain's Boil (865 York Mills Rd.)
Inspected on: January 11, 2017
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 11 (Minor: 1, Significant: 10)
Crucial infractions include: N/A
Amaya Express (1 Dundas St. West)
Inspected on: January 12, 2017
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 7 (Minor: 2, Significant: 4, Crucial: 1)
Crucial infractions include: Operator failed to maintain hazardous foods.
Magic Oven (127 Jefferson Ave.)
Inspected on: January 12, 2017
Inspection finding: Yellow (Conditional)
Number of infractions: 3 (Minor: 1, Significant: 2)
Crucial infractions include: N/A
Qin Tang Taste (1883 McNicoll Ave.)LGBT students are attempting to defund Love Saxa, a Georgetown University student group that supports traditional marriage.
Love Saxa’s mission statement says the group “exists to promote healthy relationships on campus through cultivating a proper understanding of sex, gender, marriage, and family among Georgetown students.”
"They deny certain individuals who are queer access to this ideal standard of a relationship."
The group also aims to “increase awareness of the benefits of sexual integrity, healthy dating relationships, and the primacy of marriage (understood as a monogamous and permanent union between a man and a woman) as a central pillar of society.”
[RELATED: Students 'fear' Chick-fil-A will jeopardize'safe place']
Jasmin Ouseph submitted a formal notice to the university on September 25, on the grounds that Love Saxa’s definition of marriage fosters hatred and intolerance which would violate Georgetown’s Student Organization Standards.
“Marriage is a conjugal union on every level—emotional, spiritual, physical and mental—directed toward caring for biological children,” Irvine told The Hoya. “To us, marriage is much more than commitment of love between two consenting adults.”
The official rule states that “groups will not be eligible for access to benefits if their purpose or activities…foster hatred or intolerance of others because of their race, nationality, gender, religion, or sexual preferences.”
[RELATED: LGBTQ+ students demand special treatment from Clemson]
Another rule in the Student Organization Standards, however, says that “interfering with another group’s freedom of expression” is prohibited.
In 2013, then-GU Pride President Thomas Lloyd led protests against Love Saxa. Now the current GU Pride President, Chad Gasman, joins Ouseph in her complaint, arguing that “when they deny certain individuals who are queer access to this ideal standard of a relationship, they immediately say that all queer relationships are not as valid as heterosexual relationships.”
Love Saxa’s mission statement, conversely, asserts that “many Georgetown students lack a space to discuss their experiences of the harmful effects of a distorted view of human sexuality and the human person.”
[RELATED: LGBT-only dorms could 'backfire,' prof warns]
“We have never advocated for violence toward any individual or group, not have we ever targeted any individual or group,” Love Saxa President Amelia Irvine wrote in an email to The Hoya.
Nonetheless, Georgetown’s Student Activities Commission will conduct a hearing next Monday to decide whether or not the organization has violated Student Organization Standards.
“I have no idea what the commission is going to decide but there is a full range of options available from nothing to suspension of access to benefits,” SAC Chair Ricardo Mondolfi told The Hoya.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @KylePerisicNo longer content with making set-top boxes, tablets, and smartphones, Amazon is investing heavily in developing even more consumer electronics hardware. Rumor has it that Amazon’s secretive Lab126 is currently prototyping wearables and smart-home devices with a focus on improving the Amazon shopping experience. Want to order more bacon? Sign into your fridge to turn on 1-Click ordering.
A document summarizing recent California tax credits surfaced today, and it shows that Amazon is investing $55 million into A2Z Development Centers in Sunnyvale and Cupertino in exchange for $1.2 million in tax breaks from the state. Since A2Z Development Centers are home to Amazon’s hardware research and development division, internet speculation is running absolutely wild. On top of that, Reuters has two unnamed sources claiming to have inside knowledge of what Amazon is currently developing.
Supposedly, Amazon is prototyping a WiFi-connected button designed to be left about the house. When pressed, this button will signal Amazon’s servers, and order more of any pre-configured item. It’s not nearly as elegant as a smart fridge that automatically orders more cheese when you’re running low, but a solution like this or the Amazon Dash is much more affordable for the average Amazon customer.
Even more intriguing, Amazon is also reportedly hard at work on wearable computers to compete with the likes of Google Glass and the Apple Watch. It’s certainly possible that nothing will come of this research, but don’t be surprised if we see wearable tech coming out of Amazon in the next year or two. Considering the company’s huge focus on hardware recently, it’s clear that Bezos wants to bring Amazon’s offerings in line with that of Google and Apple. He’s not content with dominating retail: he wants to dominate the consumer electronics market as well — and the huge amount of retail that is carried out on consumer electronics.
Of course, not everything Amazon has released has been a success. Sure, the Kindle and Kindle Fire are generally well-liked, but the Fire Phone and FireTV have, at best, received a tepid response. There’s no guarantee that Amazon will be able to compete head-to-head with the Silicon Valley titans that are already toiling away at developing similar devices.
I’m rather content ordering my Amazon goods through my browser, but what do you think? Do you want a 1-Click button in your pantry? Maybe an Amazon smartwatch that lets you order more Cheetos with your voice? Sound off in the comment section with what outlandish and futuristic devices you’d like to see Amazon’s Lab126 develop next. As for me, I’m still hoping for same-day delivery drones.
Now read: Dyson 360 Eye: Dyson’s ‘truly intelligent’ robotic vacuum cleaner is finally here
Image credit: Eric KilbyReducing the Risk of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI)
There is a common misconception that office workers are safe within their working environment as they are not exposed to harmful chemicals or heavy machinery. But there are hidden dangers that can impact heavily on a person’s health over time and can cause some great discomfort resulting in lengthy treatment and time off work. Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) effects a huge amount of people throughout the UK, many of whom could have prevented the injury with proper equipment and education on the subject.
What is Repetitive Strain Injury?
Before we go into how to help prevent developing RSI, it is important to know and understand what RSI actually is.
RSI is a painful condition which is generally associated with office and manual work that involves repeatedly performing a specific task for long periods of time. Although RSI is often connected with working with computers and manual work, you must be aware that you can also develop it if you don’t regularly carry out these sorts of activities too.
RSI can affect a number of parts such as your hands, arms and upper body and has been categorised into type 1 and type 2. Type 1 means the condition is recognised by medical professionals, such as:
· Writer’s Cramp
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franchise video game?' Being an avid gamer my whole life, I said, 'Yeah, I would be interested in that.'
Coming off of doing two films in a row, I wasn't looking to really dive into a super big project, so the idea of scoring the theme song for this came up and it sounded interesting to me so I pursued it.
How is doing music for a game similar or different from composing film soundtracks?
Here's a similarity. When David Fincher called me up a few years ago and said, 'Hey, I'd like you to score this film The Social Network.' I said, 'I'm flattered but I really don't have any real experience scoring films and I'd rather not screw it up on a high-profile project. And I like you and I don't want to compromise our friendship.'
He talked me into it, which I'm glad he did. My strategy going into that was the one I used since then on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and certainly on Call of Duty, which was really to sit and listen and realize that my role in this is a supporting role. He had lived with project, and I'm talking about The Social Network right now, and thought about it a lot more than I have. Let me try to find out exactly what it is he is wanting and why he reached out to me. I found that strategy, although it may seem obvious, really worked.
In Nine Inch Nails, I've been the guy calling the shots since inception. I'd gotten used to that. I was interesting to be in a situation where I was working under somebody I respect and playing a supporting role. When I sat down with the Treyarch guys, I wanted right off the bat to say, 'Guys, first of all, I am working for you on this thing. What are the moods you are looking for, because the role of this piece is greeting the gamer into the game. Let's really talk about themes and as I start throwing iterations at you, please feel free to say, That's not right.'
How did you arrive at a sound?
When I sat down with these guys. I kind of wanted to extract 'If you are looking for a big orchestral, Hollywood-y feeling, traditional-type patriotic score, I can do something like that, but I'm not excited about doing it,and it's not my strength. There's a lot of other people who can do that better than I can.
I was intrigued by the idea that they were willing to get out of the zone with something a little bit different. What I did was present them with the concept of 'Let's have it arranged semi-orchestrally, but let's have the voice be an instrument. Let's veer it more toward guitar, bass, drum rock band aggression. And I don't mean in a corny rock-and-roll way, but let's have a more modern foundation in terms of how it sounds. But let's have the way the voices are arranged mimic an orchestral range.' If that makes sense. The first thing I sent back to them was what really wound up being the foundation of the core of the end result.
What I learned in listening to the full story and the amount of effort that has gone into the back story and the characters and the full preparation (is) there is a lot of reservation and angst and sense of loss and regret and anger bubbling under the surface. So it didn't make sense to have a gung ho, patriotic feeling theme song. It has to feel weighty. There is a lot of remorse and apprehension here. So choosing to arrange it a bit more with guitars and drums and aggressively sounding, that struck a tone with them.
If it was set purely in World War II, for example, I wouldn't have chosen the instruments that I did. The fact that it is set slightly in the future made me feel like maybe it is OK to get away from an orchestra. So we did it the way we did.
Have you completed work on that?
The phone hasn't rang for a few weeks. I'm on call, but we'll see how it goes. I'm assuming that is a good sign but maybe I'm being naive here.
How big of a 'Call of Duty' fan are you?
I think I have played them all with the exception of one or two that may have come out when I was on long touring jaunts. But for the most part, I have played them all.
What do you enjoy about the games?
I've watched with a kind of wary eye how gaming has progressed. I was there at the beginning with Pong in the arcade, and a lot of my great childhood memories were around a Tempest machine. I really looked at gaming as a real art form that is able to take a machine and turn it into something that is a challenging, human interaction puzzle game strategy. I have been wildly enthused about gaming since I was younger, and a career path I chose not to go down but did really consider was getting into programming and game design. When I first played Wolfenstein 3D, it blew my mind. It had a big impact on me.
And when I say 'wary,' I have seen big companies and publishers get involved, and I have seen a similar to Hollywood hierarchy set up where, often, innovation gets bulldozed by franchises and familiarity and let's milk sequels out. What I have appreciated about the Call of Duty games is the scale of production. It's not an indie game. It's not trying to be an indie game. But I've genuinely been pretty consistently blown away by, wow, what an effort has gone into this. I get what they are going for.... As a player, I've generally focused on multiplayer.
What game systems do you have, and what other recent games have you enjoyed?
Pretty much all systems are here in the house, in some room of the house, the studio or otherwise. I've spent some time with Diablo III. I'm pretty blown away by the scale of Skyrim. I thought Heavy Rain was engrossing. I just bought a piece of obscure musical gear from that company (Quantic Dream) over there. My wife and I spent quite a few evenings kind of scared making our way through that game. That achieved its mark and really felt like an accomplishment in terms of expanding what games can be.
It's interesting to see gaming go from one guy in the Robotron era to when I worked on Quake with the 'Mom-and-Pop shop' of id Software fresh off the success of Doom, but it still was a core of a handful of guys that could work autonomously and churn out interesting cool stuff. And jumping back to id a few years later when it's Doom 3 and now that handful of guys has a zero at the end of how many there are and the scale of, wow, there's a hell of a lot more resources need to go into the game.
And then tuning out of that world for a while and popping in at Treyarch and the scale of it and, most impressively, the coordination of it all. I was in there a month ago or so, and there's everybody in their cubicles working on minutiae that fits into this whole in some way. And I start thinking, 'Man, this is coming out in a few months. Somebody has planned out that all these pieces fit together.' I know how hard it is to get three other guys and the lights to come on for a tour. It is mind-blowing to see that coordination and effort and the handshaking part. It's very impressive.
Can you update us on the How To Destroy Angels album (the band includes Reznor's wife Mariqueen Maandig and Tattoo and Social Network soundtrack co-composer Atticus Ross)?
We have a finished album. It's been finished for a little while. We're doing a little bit of tweaks on it. The record will be out soon. We are doing a different type of distribution this time so it's taking a little bit longer to coordinate stuff. There's a lot of music about to be unleashed, videos, etcetera. I'm working on some new Nine Inch Nails stuff.
Did you say also working on new Nine Inch Nails music? That's good to hear.
Dot dot dot. Hopefully, it will be good to hear. Right now, it's in its gestation period.Image copyright PA
The NHS in England is to offer pregnant women their own "personal budgets", worth at least £3,000, so they can pick and choose the care they receive.
Women will be able to use it to pay for anything from one-to-one midwifery care to home births in pilots due to start later this year.
The move is part of a shake-up in maternity care unveiled by NHS England to increase the choices women have.
The overhaul is also aimed at improving safety in maternity services.
It has been agreed to on the basis of recommendations from an independent review of services.
This was set up by NHS England in the aftermath of the inquiry published last year into the failures that led to the deaths of babies at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust.
The review - chaired by Conservative peer Baroness Julia Cumberlege - said it had never been safer to give birth in England, but improvements still needed to be made to ensure care was "world class".
Births and safety
The numbers of stillbirths and deaths soon after birth have fallen by over a fifth in the past decade to 4.3 and 1.8 per 1,000 births respectively
In half of all stillbirths, there are elements of care that if improved could have made a difference
Nearly half of all inspections of maternity services resulted in safety assessments that were classed as either "inadequate" or "requires improvement"
In about one in 17 births, there are incidents that result in some level of harm to either the baby or the mother
Is a birth budget a good idea?
It also highlighted the £560m spent each year by the NHS on clinical negligence cases relating to maternity care.
The review took evidence from thousands of families about their experience of maternity care and found they "did not always have confidence" that complications would be picked up or problems investigated properly.
To improve care, the review has called for:
better data collection
speedier referral when problems arise
a nationally-agreed way of investigating care that goes wrong
Women also complained about the lack of choice they were given, despite existing policy stating they should be able to choose where they give birth.
Nearly nine in 10 women give birth in hospital, but just one in four says this is where she would want to have a baby.
The review concluded there should no longer be an automatic assumption that a woman would give birth in hospital.
Baroness Cumberledge told the BBC personal budgets would give women "more clout and more opportunity to exercise the choices that they want".
"Women are telling us that one of the things they really want is continuity of the person looking after them... who looks after them through the pregnancy, through the birth and through the aftercare, and we know that's going to make a huge different to safety," she said.
Royal College of Midwives chief executive Cathy Warwick said she was "delighted" with the plans, but warned more midwives would be needed to make these ambitions become reality.
There are currently 21,500 working in the NHS, but the college believes another 2,600 are needed.
Births and choice
664,543 births in England in 2014
87% of births took place in hospital
11% in midwife-led units
2% at home
Personal budgets are already used by the elderly, disabled and those with long-term conditions such as heart disease.
The system for maternity care, to be piloted later this year before a national rollout in 2017, would give women a notional budget they could then use on whichever NHS-accredited services they liked.
These could include:
private midwifery services providing one-to-one support during pregnancy and labour
a home birth
the use of a birthing pool
hypnotherapy to relieve anxiety and pain
extra breastfeeding support after birth
The details have yet to be fully ironed out. But the review authors said low-risk, standard births cost the NHS about £3,000, so women could expect that sum at the very least although more may be given if circumstances demand it and anyone needing urgent care because of complications would get it regardless of whether their personal budget had been spent.
NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens said the review had set out a five-year strategy which the health service could now work towards, while Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said it was a "significant moment" and would give women more choice and make services safer.
But James Titcombe, who became an NHS safety adviser following the death of his son Joshua at Morecambe Bay Hospital in 2008, urged caution.
"Community births and home births are cheaper and my concern is that a push to expand that needs to be done very, very carefully because the evidence about safety is questionable," he told the BBC.
Read more from Nick
Follow Nick on TwitterAs maverick outsiders, Royal Trux proved too eclectic for mainstream tastes. Now, 15 years after breaking up, they’re ready to admit that some journeys never end.
Royal Trux struck gold when a major label offered them a million dollars and full creative control. But as maverick outsiders, the band proved too eclectic for mainstream tastes. Now, 15 years after breaking up, they’re ready to admit that some journeys never end.
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In a sweaty club in Hackney, East London, an unlikely mix of people look like they couldn’t possibly be waiting for the same thing. Goths, jocks, punks and many more besides have all gathered to see Neil Michael Hagerty, formerly one half of the band Royal Trux.
It’s just his second visit to the UK since they broke up in 2001. Despite being too weird for the mainstream, too unpredictable for the underground and too stylish for the avant-garde – their stature as a one-off has only solidified.
At the bar out front, a scruffy teenager in a trench coat taps the shoulder of a portly man in his fifties.
“Is this gonna sound like Royal Trux?” he asks hopefully, an amphetamine edge to his demeanour. The older guy turns around with a smile, glad to be asked but caught off-guard. “Ummm… well, kind of. Maybe. It’s hard to say.”
The correct answer would be no. Royal Trux never cared for a set sound let alone a fixed following. Blazing through nine albums in 13 years, the husband-and-wife duo’s scuzzed-out style of rock had a way of piling unconventional ideas on top of each other. But then it all collapsed.
“People were like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’” says Jennifer Herrema, the other half of Royal Trux, from her practice space in Los Angeles. “‘You have a great band, you have an awesome studio and a home; your husband is amazing and he’s your best friend.’
“But I was just in an alternate universe. My dad was dying. I started doing drugs again. I knew the cycle would continue unless I completely went off by myself and dealt with my shit alone. Neil didn’t see it coming, he didn’t get it, but I knew I absolutely had to do what I did.”
Herrema remembers being mesmerised by Hagerty from the moment she first saw him. She was 15 and had been living in homeless shelters in Washington DC. He was the 17-year-old guitarist for punk garage band Pussy Galore, having been raised by a military family who moved around the country.
Their chemistry together, formed over a spell hanging out in an abandoned warehouse, led them to move to New York and start a band. Herrema would be coolness personified: turning up at gigs at CBGB’s with an amp strapped to her skateboard, her eyes shielded by blonde bangs and aviator shades.
Hagerty could be hard-headed and antisocial, but he knew how to execute ideas with dazzling attention-to-detail.
That combination proved irresistible to Dan Koretzky and Dan Osborn, the founders of indie label Drag City – future home to Pavement, Stereolab and Joanna Newsom.
They launched the business just so they could give Royal Trux a platform. Koretzky remembers hearing 1990’s Twin Infinitives – the imprint’s first LP – and thinking it would change the world. Two thousand copies were printed and although it would take years to sell them, it became the standard by which every other Drag City release is judged.
“If everyone who listened to the Velvet Underground started their own band, then everyone who listened to Royal Trux started reaching beyond their grasp, musical or otherwise,” says Koretzky.
By the mid-1990s, major labels searching for the next Nirvana started gambling on bands that might make a leap from the underground. As idiosyncratic as Royal Trux were – all growling vocals, deconstructed arrangements and mercurial production – some saw crossover potential, or at least an opportunity to bolster their label’s credibility.
“The position I’ve always been in is that there’s no point in doing music where you’re trying to move the masses,” Hagerty says softly, speaking over Skype from his home in Denver.
Royal Trux knew they were unlikely to make money from record sales, he adds. But if executives could be seduced by the band’s uniqueness, they were going to get everything they could out of it.
“I had no idea how recording contracts worked,” says Herrema, now 44.
“That’s the beauty of it: I just wrote down what I expected. When I faxed it over to the lawyer, he called me and was like, ‘Um, Jennifer, you know this is a Whitney Houston deal we’re talking about here? This is crazy… but you know what? I’m going to ask for it.’
“And he did. And they said yes.”
Virgin offered a three-album deal with a million-dollar advance, giving the band full creative control. The label envisioned high-profile marketing – faux-trashy music videos and Larry Clark photoshoots – but the couple weren’t interested.
Their vision, by contrast, was one of complete independence. They decided to retreat to rural Virginia and kick their heroin habit, buying a five-storey house with a studio and 10 acres of land.
“I’ve always lived in inner cities, which was hard even at a young age, struggling with drugs and other distractions,” says Herrema. “So when we got money, I wanted to put ourselves into a remote place where we could have our own world.
“Sometimes I wonder how the hell we got stuff done [before that] but the music was always more important than being high. We kept pushing through.”
The band got to work on a trilogy intended to revise the sounds of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s through their own prism, free of outside influence. But two albums in, following 1997’s Thank You, Royal Trux felt the label didn’t get their music or even know what to do with it.
Their solution was to talk Virgin into paying them to go away – funding the band to release the third instalment of their contract (1998’s Accelerator) through their old label, Drag City.
Just three years later, Herrema relapsed mid-tour under the strain of her father’s ill health, forcing the couple to split. In the years since then, the band’s eclectic catalogue has continued to draw devotional followers – the sort who rarely agree on which album represents their masterpiece.
“They don’t have casual fans,” says filmmaker Amanda Milius. “People who like this band tend to be obsessive, smart, troubled and sometimes unemployed – so there’s lots of time to hang out and discuss the nooks and crannies of what they may have been thinking on this or that record.”
Milius, who plans to make a documentary about Royal Trux, sees them as the last great band – a beacon of inspiration in a desolate cultural landscape.
Hagerty continues to record as the Howling Hex while Herrema, after rediscovering her will to make music, rebranded herself as RTX and later Black Bananas.
Both embody the same pioneering spirit, and both still record for Drag City, but there’s a lingering sense among fans that their greatness has gone unrecognised.
“It taught me that when you make something very, very good only a small few will appreciate it – like only very few can even hear the frequency you’re making,” says Milius.
“I don’t say that in an elitist way where I’m pleased that that’s how it is, but that’s how it is. It [takes] a real kind of bravery and integrity to stick to what you know is right and good, when you know that success means you will be ignored, rejected and stolen from.”
Last year, after turning down countless offers to reform, Royal Trux surprised everyone by announcing a one-off show together in California. A date in New York was announced not long after. Then another one in Chicago, followed by another in Austin.
“It could’ve been a huge disaster – embarrassing too – like, ‘I should’ve left it,’” says Hagerty.
“I really got over that question completely this past year. I thought I had a chip on my shoulder… but it was like, ‘Wow, I really have nothing to prove.’ It was coming completely from the audience [as opposed to trying to win them over]. They were shaping it. It was wild.”
For Herrema, it felt inevitable. While Hagerty thinks they might have had a breakthrough if they kept going, their legacy never felt like a missed opportunity to her. “[Breaking up] was so weird because we were the same person,” she says.
“We were inseparable for 15 years, experiencing everything together. Then when we split, that was it – 100 per cent [over]. I never spoke to him again.
“He emailed occasionally about our cats but I knew that he was pissed. And although we never discussed it, I always had his back. I never stopped supporting him.”
In preparation for the first reunion show, they both picked two songs from every album – using the overlapping choices to form a setlist. Herrema normally doesn’t revisit old material but she felt blown away by the inspiration behind it all. There was no need for air-clearing meetings or thorough rehearsals. They basically just turned up.
“When I finally saw him again, it was exactly the same – his manner, the way he looked. Everything fell back into place naturally. After the show he was like, ‘So we’re all good now?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve always felt that way.’ He just looked at me and said, ‘Well, I’m all good now too.’”
For all the cynicism that greets band reunions, it feels like pop culture might be finally catching up to Royal Trux. Herrema has been appearing in everything from the Avalanches’ comeback album to Judd Apatow’s new comedy series Love.
Hagerty, meanwhile, is working with Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, both of whom place Royal Trux in the pantheon of musical masterminds.
Herrema says writing new material isn’t completely out of the question but, if they did do that, it wouldn’t be like other bands trying to revisit a bygone time. Royal Trux has never relied on a guiding muse, she adds. It’s always been about their chemistry.
“This is a lifelong thing,” she says. “Even when we separated, we both went about that same way of living, but separately. I always knew that I was working with Neil even during all the years we didn’t talk. I knew it would come back around.
“It’s all part of a big picture. I don’t even know what this fucking thing is going to look like when I die, but I do know that it’s still being painted.”
This article appears in Huck 56 – The Independence Issue. Buy it in the Huck Shop now or subscribe today to make sure you never miss another issue.
Find out more about Jennifer Herrema, Neil Michael Hagerty and Royal Trux. Hagerty’s new album Denver is out on Drag City.
Enjoyed this article? Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.Interacting with the local mapping community using OpenStreetMap Notes
Mapbox Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 1, 2016
By Jinal Foflia
We regularly use Notes on OpenStreetMap to share and solve problems on the map. With Notes, anyone can quickly point out errors or omissions in the map and ask for verification from local contributors.
Whether you are a new user or a power mapper, here are tips to leverage the power of Notes on OpenStreetMap.
Help resolve Notes
To get started, take a look at open Notes in an area familiar to you. Go to OpenStreetMap.org and enable the Map Notes overlay, and you will see unresolved Notes in your area.
Finding notes on OpenStreetMap.
Red markers are currently unresolved Notes. Click a marker to display the details of the Note on the left panel. If you can fix the problem, edit the data using your favorite OpenStreetMap editor. Once you resolve a Note, add a comment and mark Comment & Resolve. The marker will turn green to show that it has resolved.
Resolve notes in your local area.
Add a Note
When you are unable to reliably verify a problem based on Bing or Mapbox Satellite imagery or other sources, or are unsure how to fully map the feature, add a Note to discuss the feature in question with the community. Mappers with local knowledge in the area can review your Note, and make sure that OpenStreetMap data matches the on-the-ground reality.
Add a note on OpenStreetMap — you can also do this using the JOSM editor.
Click the Add a note to the map icon. Move the marker precisely to the location of concern, and type up a relevant comment or question that explains the issue. Give other mappers a clear understanding of the problem, so they can take action and provide the best possible update to the map.
Now that you are familiar with Notes, try it out, and help improve the data on OpenStreetMap. If you are new to the OpenStreetMap project, take a look at our OpenStreetMap 101 series to learn how to get started.
Hit me up on Twitter for any questions or for sharing interesting stories related to your Notes.1.One way to get audiences to unambiguously support Kyle�s actions in the film is to believe he�s there to avenge the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The movie cuts from Kyle watching footage of the attacks to him serving in Iraq, implying there is some link between the two.2.Kyle�s primary antagonist in the film is a sniper named Mustafa. Mustafa is mentioned in a single paragraph in Kyle�s book, but the movie blows him up into an ever-present figure and Syrian Olympic medal winner who fights for both Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and the Shia Madhi army.3.Multiple scenes in the movie portray Kyle as haunted by his service. One of the film�s earliest reviews praised it for showing the �emotional torment of so many military men and women.� But that torment is completely absent from the book the film is based on. In the book, Kyle refers to everyone he fought as �savage, despicable� evil. He writes, �I only wish I had killed more.� He also writes, �I loved what I did. I still do. If circumstances were different � if my family didn�t need me � I�d be back in a heartbeat. I�m not lying or exaggerating to say it was fun. I had the time of my life being a SEAL.� On an appearance on Conan O�Brien�s show he laughs about accidentally shooting an Iraqi insurgent. He once told a military investigator that he doesn�t �shoot people with Korans. I�d like to, but I don�t.�4.Kyle claimed that he killed 30 people in the chaos of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, a story Louisiana writer Jarvis DeBerry calls �preposterous.� It shows the sort of mentality post-war Kyle had, but the claim doesn�t appear in the film.5.Kyle told numerous people a story about killing two alleged carjackers in Texas. Reporters tried repeatedly to verify this claim, but no evidence of it exists.6.Kyle alleged that former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura defamed Navy SEALs and got into a fight with him at a local bar. Ventura successfully sued Kyle for the passage in his book, and a jury awarded him $1.845 million.7.The National Review debunks the claim that all proceeds of his book went to veterans� charities. Around 2 percent � $52,000 � went to the charities while the Kyles pocketed $3 million.Although the movie is an initial box office hit, there is a growing backlashagainst its simplistic portrayal of the war and misleading take on Kyle�s character. This backlash has reportedly spread among members of the Academy of Motion Picture of Arts and Sciences, which could threaten the film�s shot at racking up Oscars.Buy Photo A panel of legislative leaders met Thursday at a luncheon hosted by the Greater Des Moines Partnership at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden. From left are Senate President Jack Whitver, Senate Democratic Leader Janet Petersen, House Majority Leader Chris Hagenow and House Democratic Leader Mark Smith. (Photo: William Petroski/Des Moines Register)Buy Photo
State tax reform will be a top priority for majority Republicans who will control the Iowa Legislature in the 2018 session, which convenes in early January, GOP legislative leaders said Thursday.
House Majority Leader Chris Hagenow, R-Windsor Heights, and Senate President Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny, said some other key issues will include state spending to improve water quality, upgrading Iowa's mental health services, and providing quality education and a skilled state workforce while spending tax dollars wisely.
"We would like to take a look at making sure that Iowa's tax system is flatter and fairer, and that everyone gets a break," Hagenow said. He and other legislative leaders spoke to a luncheon sponsored by the Greater Des Moines Partnership attended by about 150 people at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden.
Chris Hagenow (Photo: Charlie Neibergall)
Hagenow said later he wants to make changes to both personal and corporate income taxes. But he wants to see the outcome of federal tax legislation pending in Congress before drafting the details of a state tax reform bill.
Whitver said creating jobs, spurring economic development and reforming government were key targets of the Legislature's last session. He added that he remains optimistic as the 2018 session approaches and he is committed to addressing the "big issues and a vision for Iowa" for the next three decades.
"In the Senate, our top priority is going to be tax reform and how we can reform our system to encourage more growth in the state of Iowa," Whitver said. Economic growth is also the best way to generate additional state revenues for government programs, while closely examining state spending, he added.
Jack Whitver (Photo: Special To The Register)
Hagenow emphasized that state government has to live within its means. "We have budgeted well... We only have so much resources. We have to continue to set priorities and when we have growth we will be in a position to do other things."
Both Republican and Democratic leaders expressed support for the concept of water quality funding legislation, which is expected to be considered early in the session. The House and Senate approved separate bills on the topic last session, but neither won final approval.
Senate Minority Leader Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines, said she favors pursuing the latest House version of the water quality measure, commenting that a watershed approach is needed to address the issue.
Sen. Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines (Photo: Associated Press)
"We should be going after those areas that are poisoning our waters. We should go after those first," Petersen remarked. She added, "Iowans don't want to be Flint, Michigan," which has suffered from a tainted supply of drinking water.
Hagenow pledged that even if lawmakers approve water quality legislation during the upcoming session it won't mark the end of work on the issue. "We will resolve this particular bill, but then we can keep working on this and make sure that the resources get to the projects we need."
House Minority Leader Mark Smith, D-Marshalltown, said education is a critical issue for the state's leaders, and he complained it has been underfunded. He also called for a focus on job creation that benefits both business and industry and the state's workers. In addition, he criticized the state's shift to having private firms manage the state's Medicaid health care program for low-income Iowans, calling it a "cruel prank." He also said he is "very concerned" about inadequacies in Iowa's mental health services.
(Photo: Special to the Register)
"Mental health is like everything else. The earlier that we identify it; the earlier we target it, the more likely we are to have a productive citizen," Smith said.
Petersen said the state never should have shut down state institutions that treated mentally ill persons without having services available to replace them. She called for more assertive community treatment teams and efforts to work on the stigma associated with mental health issues. Iowa also needs to respond to an increase in persons diagnosed with Alzheimer's and dementia, she added.
Whitver said he is proud that lawmakers worked to address mental health funding in Polk County last session and that they have worked on mental health reform in past years. Mental health is the "No. 1 priority" for some Senate Republicans, he added, remarking that efforts are still needed to ensure the consistency of mental health services, and to provide sufficient psychiatric beds.
Hagenow said children's mental health is something he cares a great deal about and he expressed a willingness to consider creative options to address the issue. Petersen responded by remarking, "If you believe in it, you have to back it up" by spending state dollars. She warned that some children's mental health services appear to be "on the chopping block."
Petersen was critical of the 2017 session, saying that Republicans "did a lot of bad things to good people." This includes action to roll back minimum wage increases authorized by local governments and legislation that dramatically reduces the ability of public employees to engage in collective bargaining.
Many public employees are now worried about their retirement security, their benefits, and their abiilty to have a voice in their jobs without a fear of reprisal, Petersen said.
"I don't think anyone in this state believes that we should have an unchecked dictatorship in state government," Petersen added. "So these are issues we need to address."
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But Whitver praised the achievements of the 2017 session, saying it improved the state's job climate, helped to revitalize rural Iowa, and provided flexibility for local school boards, while creating a smaller and smarter state government that can be more efficient and more effective with the state's tax dollars.
"I think it will have an impact for years to come. We didn't accomplish everything we set out to do last year, but we got a lot of it done," Whitver said. "We are going to come back and just continue on that agenda that we had last year and hopefully we can knock out a few more of those things that we were not able to do last year."
Greater Des Moines Partnership’s 2018 Legislative Priorities
Corporate and personal income taxes: The Partnership would like lawmakers to simplify Iowa’s tax code and reduce income tax rates. Specifically, the organization promotes allowing Iowans to continue deducting their federal income taxes from their state taxes or allowing them to forego that option in exchange for lower state income tax rates.
Economic development: Lawmakers during the 2017 legislative session considered the idea of eliminating or scaling back a number of state tax credits. The Partnership opposes those efforts, saying credits tied to research, innovation and investment are critical economic development tools.
Future Ready Iowa: Gov. Kim Reynolds has championed the Future Ready Iowa program, which seeks to ensure 70 percent of Iowans have education or training beyond high school by 2025. The Partnership said it will support those efforts to align education with workforce needs.
Water quality: The Partnership has said it will support efforts to address water quality across the state, particularly an approach targeted at the watershed level and which includes “annual accountability” for the state’s investment.
Read or Share this story: http://dmreg.co/2zCCWhABEIJING — A senior North Korean military official’s visit here Wednesday appears to have been organized on short notice, and was probably prompted by North Korea’s concerns about a planned meeting between President Xi Jinping of China and President Obama, analysts said.
Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae, a member of the inner circle of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, arrived in Beijing two days after the United States and China announced that Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi would meet in California early next month.
Vice Marshal Choe, 63, who is the political overseer of the North Korean military, met with Wang Jiarui, the head of the international department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The vice marshal, sent by Mr. Kim as a special envoy, received only modest coverage in the Chinese state news media.
The Chinese government has shown irritation with Mr. Kim, who is regarded as a far less reliable ally than his father, Kim Jong-il, particularly after he defied Beijing to order a nuclear test in February and the launching of a three-stage rocket in December.A CBSSports.com report that the Miami Dolphins had decided to move on from Ndamukong Suh after this season set the team into a tizzy on Sunday.
It provoked tense calls between the team and reporters -- some getting yelled at, some asking for confirmation on the controversial report. Ultimately that led to a strong and rare on-the-record rebuke of the report directly from the team.
So, no, the Dolphins have definitely not decided to move on from Suh after this season. No, owner Stephen Ross is not demanding that the player he referred to in 2015 as being “like a son” be released next offseason.
The report was wrong.
Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald
Juicy, but wrong.
That is the black and white of things.
But as with many NFL things, there’s gray. There’s nuance that definitely is interesting -- at least to me.
First, let’s address the fact the erroneous report reached Suh’s ear. No, he didn’t read it because CBSSports.com is not The Miami Herald and Suh only reads The Miami Herald, and actually only reads Armando Salguero |
woman standing in front of it.”
She is chided as “deliberately barren” — “[As a female politician] If you do not have children then you are characterised as out of touch with ‘mainstream lives’. If you do have children, then, heavens, who is looking after them?” Gillard, “a childless, atheist woman living in a de facto relationship”, always seemed an unlikely candidate for the top job in Australian politics. But the book doesn’t do enough to flesh out who she really is beyond a potted biography.
For a non-Australian audience, this is a book to skim rather than scrutinise. But there are interesting reflections and amusing anecdotes too: on the perils of minority government, the treatment of indigenous Australians and how schools probably picked out their red-headed pupils to greet the country’s most famous “ranga”. Gillard is either a naturally engaging writer or blessed with a good editor — intense media commentary she faces is “like when [a] chicken in the coop gets pecked so hard she bleeds and then all the others turn to peck her to death”. Is there enough here to sustain anyone but the Aussies? Not quite. But I hope Gillard is contemplating book number two: a version of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In for women in politics.
Go to standard.co.uk/booksdirect to buy this book for £20, or phone 0843 060 0029, free UK p&p
Click here for more book reviewsLicensing Act Other legislation Relates to Licensing Acts 1828 to 1886 Status: Amended Text of the Licensing Act 1872 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk
The Licensing Act 1872 (35 & 36 Vict c. 94) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is one of the Licensing Acts 1828 to 1886 and was one of the Licensing (Ireland) Acts 1833 to 1886.[1] It enacted various regulations and offences relating to alcohol, particularly licensing of premises. Most parts of the Act have been superseded by more recent Licensing Acts, but some parts remain in force. In particular, the Act creates an offence of being drunk in public with a maximum fine of level 1 on the standard scale (currently[when?] £200); and of being drunk in a public place while in charge of a horse, a cow (or other cattle), a steam engine, or a carriage, or in possession of a loaded firearm, with a possible penalty of a fine of up to level 1 on the standard scale (again currently £200) or 51 weeks in prison. "Carriage" has been interpreted as including mobility scooters, though exemptions apply under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970;[2] bicycles are covered by their own offence in the Road Traffic Act 1988.
This act:
restricted the closing times in public houses to midnight in towns and 11 o'clock in country areas.
regulated the content of beer. One of the most common practices was to add salt to the beer, which increased the thirst and therefore sales as well.
said that licensing hours were to be determined by local authorities.
gave boroughs the option of becoming completely 'dry' i.e. banning all alcohol.
These policies were enforced by the police.
It was an unpopular Act for the working classes and there were a number of near riots when police tried to enforce closing hours. Brewers resented what they saw as an attack on their independence and profits; others disliked the Act because it interfered with personal liberty.
Further reading [ edit ]
Lowe, Norman, Mastering Modern British History, Macmillan Press LTD, 1998
References [ edit ]
UK Legislation [ edit ]
Text of the Licensing Act 1872 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.ukInterior Minister Carmen Dan on Friday met Austrian ambassador in Bucharest Gerhard Reiweger, who reasserted Austria’s support for Romania joining the border-free Schengen Area of the EU.
“At the meeting, the excellent cooperation between the two interior ministries, particularly in policing, border and migration control, was emphasised, along with the ensuing significant results in the fight against crime,” Romania’s Interior Ministry (MAI) reported on Friday.
Dan pointed to joint operative cooperation conducted by Romanian and Austrian police officers with support from the attaches of internal affairs accredited in Bucharest and Vienna.
The minister and the ambassador also discussed priorities of European affairs, voicing openness to deepening cooperation in the first half of 2018, when Austria holds the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, and the first half of 2019, when Romania holds it.
“About the Salzburg Forum, the officials praised the usefulness and importance of debates at the level of this platform for consultations and political dialogue that work out joint stands that are later on advanced at the European Union’s level,” said MAI.As countries around the world have started to relax their laws on medical marijuana, cannabis is still completely outlawed in Serbia. While studies show that the drug—specifically in the form of cannabis oil—can have positive health effects for people suffering from terminal illnesses, doctors in the country remain skeptical.
Serbians looking for an alternative way to treat terminal illnesses like cancer and multiple sclerosis are forced to illegally obtain the highlyexpensive cannabis oil or attempt to make it themselves, despite the threat of jail time.
For this episode of VICE INTL, VICE Serbia speaks with some families who swear by the controversial treatment and spend exorbitant sums of money just to keep their loved ones alive and comfortable at the risk of getting arrested. They also meet a Ministry of Health official who is strongly against legalization, as well as a dealer who explains the cannabis oil extraction process.Writing code feels so much easier than writing tests for it, and does that one-line method really need to be tested, anyway? It’s so trivial! Any tests you add would just double or triple development time, and the next time you change the code, you’ll have to change the test, too. It seems like such a waste, especially when you only have a little bit of time left on your estimate.
But soon, your code is only 20% covered by tests, and any change you make to your code feels like trying to replace the middle layer of a house of cards without knocking the whole thing over. Somewhere, something went wrong and even though the decisions you made seemed right at the time, you still ended up with a totally unmaintainable codebase.
How did you get here? You wanted your tests to provide a safety net and allow you to confidently refactor. They should have helped make your code better! Instead, you came back to low test coverage on code you don’t understand anymore, and the tests you have somehow make it harder to change the code.
This isn’t a skill failure. It happens to the best developers. It’s a process failure. With a few changes in how you write new features, you can protect your code without your tests slowing you down. Your tests can make your code more understandable and more flexible. You’ll be able to change your code with confidence, knowing every path through it is tested.
You shouldn’t have to make a decision
If you’re sitting at your keyboard trying to decide whether a bit of code needs to be tested, you’re already going down the wrong path. You should always default to “Test it!” Even if it seems too trivial to need tests, write the test.
If the code is trivial to write, it should be easy to test. And complicated code will never seem as trivial as it does right after you wrote it. How do you know it’ll still seem as trivial six months from now?
But you don’t want to overtest
A gigantic test suite can be its own problem. Tests that take 20 minutes to run are as good as no tests at all, since you won’t run them all the time. (You say you will, but I know you won’t). Even worse, if you have too many brittle tests, it makes refactoring even more of a pain than it was before, so you won’t do it. You’ll end up with methods longer than most novels.
Does this contradict my earlier point? Not necessarily. Your tests should always focus on your code’s interface, not its implementation. For example:
class Cart def initialize ( item_params ) @line_items = Array ( item_params ). map { | item | LineItem. new ( item [ :name ], item [ :price ] )} end def total @line_items. sum ( & :price ) end end
It really feels like the code here needs to test both the Cart class and the LineItem class. But is the LineItem class used by anything else? If it’s just an implementation detail of Cart, and isn’t exposed to the outside world, how many tests does it really need? Can’t it just be tested through your Cart class?
Classes that are extracted by refactoring often don’t need their own test suite. They’re just an implementation detail. It’s only when they’re used on their own that they need those extra tests.
With a great test suite against a public interface, you have the flexibility to change your implementation without rewriting all your tests. You can do this with a lot less effort than writing even an average test suite against your object’s implementation.
Amortize your test costs with Test-Driven Development
In the first section, you learned that you should test everything. In the second section, you learned that you should only test public interfaces. It’s Test-Driven Development that brings these two opposing goals together.
With Test-Driven Development, your tests drive the design and implementation of your code by following this process:
Write a failing test that assumes that the code you need is already there. Write the simplest implementation of the code that passes the test. Refactor to remove duplication (or make the code more expressive). Run the tests again (to make sure they still pass). Return to step 1.
By following these steps, you’ll test everything (since no code should be written without a failing test), while only testing public interfaces (since you don’t write new tests right after refactoring).
It’s never exactly that easy. But there are still ways to test-drive even the most complicated code.
TDD has some side benefits:
You’ll find yourself with a more flexible, tested object model (this is arguably the main benefit).
Your system is by definition testable, making future tests less expensive to write.
You amortize your testing costs across the development process, making your estimates more accurate.
It keeps you in flow, because you never have to decide what to do next.
So how do I get started?
Starting is the hard part! Once you get in the rhythm of writing test-driven code, it’s hard to stop.
The next time you work on a new feature, try following the TDD steps above. You’ll find yourself with close to 100% code coverage with the least amount of work possible, you’ll have a solid foundation to build on, and you’ll have total confidence that your test suite will protect you when you have to change the code next year. Or later today, when your requirements change again.
When you’re done, send me an email and let me know how it went.
By following a straightforward testing process, you can spend less time making simple decisions and chasing down bugs, and more time writing code that solves your customers’ and business’ needs.FORMER NRL bad boy Anthony Watts has been sentenced to 12 months jail after assaulting an elderly man in northern NSW last year.
However, he will walk free from jail today.
The former Cronulla player will be allowed to serve his sentence in the community after Tweed Local Court Magistrate John Linden ordered Watts to be on an intensive corrections order.
media_camera Former NRL player Anthony Watts (right) with Campbell MacCallum, a member of his legal team. Photo: Regi Varghese
The order will require Watts to live in NSW, be supervised by police and undertake courses.
He will also be required to undertake some community service.
Watts has been in custody since November last year after being charged with common assault and dangerous driving.
The offences involved waving a gun and assaulting a 73-year-old man outside a Murwillumbah business.
The assault took place because Watts believed the man had said something about his father but later conceded it was a misunderstanding.
Watts then drove away from the scene and failed to stop when he pursued by police.
media_camera Watts was jailed for 12 months but will be free today. Photo: Regi Varghese
The 30-year-old man pleaded guilty to the offences earlier this year.
In January, a court heard Watts was mentally ill and had been unwell at the time of the offences.
He appeared via video link from a Cessnock jail this morning and the court heard he was now medicated and his mental health had stabilised.
Mr Linden said he was a suitable candidate for an intensive corrections order because of his improved mental state.
media_camera Watts was previously jailed last year. Photo: Regi Varghese
Watts was also disqualified from driving for two years for the driving offences described by magistrate Linden as “unfortunate”.
Outside court, lawyer for Watts, Andrew Moloney of Moloney MacCallum Lawyers said his client was happy to be being released from jail today.
Originally published as Anthony Watts jailed but walks freeFBI Evidence Proves Innocence of Accused Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Paul Craig Roberts
I have been contacted by attorney John Remington Graham, a member in good standing of the bar of the Minnesota Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court. He informs me that acting in behalf of Maret Tsanaeva, the aunt of the accused Tsamaev brothers and a citizen of the Kyrgyz Republic where she is qualified to practice law, he has assisted her in filing with the US District Court in Boston a pro se motion, including an argument of amicus curiae, and an affidavit of Maret Tsarnaeva. The presiding judge has ordered that these documents be included in the formal record of the case so they will be publicly accessible. The documents are reproduced below.
The documents argue that on the basis of the evidence provided by the FBI, there is no basis for the indictment of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The FBI’s evidence clearly concludes that the bomb was in a black knapsack, but the photographs used to establish Dzhokhar’s presence at the marathon show him with a white knapsack. Moreover, the knapsack lacks the heavy bulging appearance that a knapsack containing a bomb would have.
As readers know, I have been suspicious of the Boston Marathon Bombing from the beginning. It seems obvious that both Tsamaev brothers were intended to be killed in the alleged firefight with police, like the alleged perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo affair in Paris. Convenient deaths in firefights are accepted as indications of guilt and solve the problem of trying innocent patsies.
In Dzhokhar’s case, his guilt was established not by evidence but by accusations, by the betrayal of his government-appointed public defender Judy Clarke who declared Dzhokhar’s guilt in her opening statement of her “defense,” by an alleged confession, evidence of which was never provided, written by Dzhokhar on a boat under which the badly wounded youth lay dying until discovered by the boat owner and hospitalized in critical condition. Following his conviction by his defense attorney, Dzhokhar allegedly confessed again in jihadist terms. As legal scholars have known for centuries, confessions are worthless as indicators of guilt.
Dzhokhar was not convicted on the basis of evidence.
In my questioning of John Remington Graham, I concluded that despite 48 years of active experience with criminal justice, both as a prosecuting attorney and defense attorney, he was shocked to his core by the legal malfeasance of the Tsarnaev case. As Graham is nearing the end of his career, he is willing to speak out, but he could not find a single attorney in the state of Massachusetts who would sponsor his appearance before the Federal District Court in Boston.
This tells me that fear of retribution has now extended its reach into the justice (sic) system and that the America that we knew where law was a shield of the people no longer exists.
Here is the Affidavit of Maret Tsarnaeva:
AFFIDAVIT OF MARET TSARNAEVA CONCERNING THE PROSECUTION OF DZHOKHAR TSARNAEV Mindful that this affidavit may be filed or displayed as an offer of proof with her authorization in public proceedings contemplated by the laws of the United States of America, and in reliance upon Title 28 of the United States Code, Section 1746, Maret Tsarnaeva deposes and says: I am the paternal aunt of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who has been prosecuted before the United States District Court for Massachusetts upon indictment of a federal grand jury returned on June 27, 2013, for causing one of two explosions on Boylston Street in Boston on April 15, 2013. In the count for conspiracy, certain other overt acts of wrongdoing are mentioned. As I understand the indictment, if Dzhokhar did not carry and detonate an improvised explosive device or pressure-cooker bomb as alleged, all thirty counts fail, although perhaps some lingering questions, about which I offer no comment here, might remain for resolution, subject to guarantees of due process of law, within the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I am currently living in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya which is a republic within the Russian Federation. My academic training included full-time studies in a five-year program of the Law Faculty at the Kyrgyz State University, and I also hold the degree of master of laws (LL. M.), with focus on securities laws, granted by the University of Manitoba while I lived in Canada. I am qualified to practice law in Kyrgyzstan. I am fluent in Russian, Chechen, and English, and am familiar with other languages. I am prepared to testify under oath in public proceedings in the United States, if my expenses are paid, and if my personal safety and right of return to my home in Chechnya are adequately assured in advance. Aside from other anomalies and other aspects of the case on which I make no comment here, I am aware of several photo exhibits, upon which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) relied, or of evidence which their crime laboratory has produced, and certain other reports or material. Together, these plainly show that Dzhokhar was not carrying a large, nylon, black backpack, including a white-rectangle marking at the top, and containing a heavy pressure- cooker bomb, shortly before explosions in Boston on April 15, 2013, as claimed by the FBI and as alleged in the indictment for both explosions. On the contrary, these photo exhibits show unmistakably that Dzhokhar was carrying over his right shoulder a primarily white backpack which was light in weight, and was not bulging or sagging as would have been evident if it contained a heavy pressure-cooker bomb. The only reasonable conclusion is that Dzhokhar was not responsible for either of the explosions in question. On or about June 20-21, 2013, during their first trip to Russia, which lasted about ten days more or less, Judy Clarke and William Fick, lawyers from the federal public defender’s office in Boston, visited my brother Anzor Tsarnaev, and his wife Zubeidat, respectively the father and mother of Dzhokhar. The meeting was at the home of Dzhokhar’s parents in Makhachka which is in the republic of Dagestan adjacent to the republic of Chechnya, and about three hours’ drive from Grozny. My mother, my sister Malkan, and I were present at this meeting. Zubeidat speaks acceptable English. Mr. Fick is fluent in Russian. Laying aside other details of the conversation on June 20-21, 2013, I wish to note the following: — The lawyers from Boston strongly advised that Anzor and Zubeidat refrain from saying in public that Dzhokhar and his brother Tamerlan were not guilty. They warned that, if their advice were not followed, Dzhokhar’s life in custody near Boston would be more difficult; — Mme Clarke and Mr. Fick also requested of Anzor and Zubeidat that they assist in influencing Dzhokhar to accept the legal representation of the federal public defender’s office in Boston. Mr. Fick revealed that Dzhokhar was refusing the services of the federal public defender’s office in Boston, and sending lawyers and staff away when they visited him in custody. In reaction to the suggestion of Mr. Fick, lively discussion followed; — As Dzhokhar’s family, we expressed our concern that the federal public defender’s office in Boston was untrustworthy, and might not defend Dzhokhar properly, since they were paid by the government of the United States which was prosecuting him, as many believe for political reasons. Dzhokhar’s parents expressed willingness to engage independent counsel, since Dzhokhar did not trust his government-appointed lawyers. Mr. Fick reacted by saying that the government agents and lawyers would obstruct independent counsel; — I proposed that Dzhokhar’s family hire independent counsel to work with the federal public defender’s office in order to assure proper and effective representation of Dzhokhar. Mr. Fick replied that, if independent counsel were hired by the family, the federal public defender’s office in Boston would withdraw; — Mr. Fick then assured Anzor and Zubeidat that the United States Department of Justice had allotted $5 million to Dzhokhar’s defense, and that the federal public defender’s office in Boston intended to defend Dzhokhar properly. Zubeidat then and there said little concerning assurances of Mr. Fick. But for my part, I never believed that the federal public defender’s office in Boston ever intended to defend Dzhokhar as promised. And my impressions from what happened during the trial lead me to believe that the federal public defender’s office in Boston did not defend Dzhokhar competently and ethically. In any event, I am aware that, following the meeting on June 20-21, 2013, Mme Clarke and Mr. Fick continued to spend time with Anzor and Zubeidat, and eventually persuaded Zubeidat to sign a typed letter in Russian to Dzhokhar, urging him to cooperate wholeheartedly with the federal public defender’s office in Boston. I am informed by my sister Malkan, that Zubeidat gave the letter to the public defenders, shortly before their departure from Russia on or about June 29, 2013, for delivery to Dzhokhar. During subsequent trips Mme Clarke and Mr. Fick to see Dzhokhar’s parents in Makhachkala, the strategy for defending Dzhokhar was explained, as I learned from my sister Malkan. The public defender’s office in Boston intended to contend at trial, as actually has happened since, that Tamerlan, now deceased, was the mastermind of the crime, and that Dzhokhar was merely following his big brother. I was firmly opposed to this strategy as morally and legally wrong, because Dzhokhar is not guilty, as FBI-generated evidence shows. Some ill- feeling has since developed between myself and Dzhokhar’s parents over their acquiescence. On or about June 19, 2014, during their visit to Grozny over nearly two weeks, three staff members from the public defender’s office in Boston visited my mother and sisters in Grozny. I am told that they also visited Dzhokhar’s parents in Makhachkala. The personnel visiting my mother and sisters in Grozny on or about June 19, 2014, included one Charlene, who introduced herself as an independent investigator, working in and with the federal public defender’s office in Boston; another by the name of Jane, a social worker who claimed to have spoken with Dzhokhar; and a third, by the name of Olga, who was a Russian- English interpreter from New Jersey. They did not leave business cards, but stayed at the main hotel in Grozny, hence I presume that their surnames can be ascertained. I was not present at the meeting in Grozny on or about June 19, 2014, but my sister Malkan, who was present, called me by telephone immediately after the meeting concluded. She revealed to me then the details of the conversation at the meeting. Malkan and I have since spoken about the visit on several occasions. Malkan speaks Russian and Chechen and is willing to testify under oath in public proceedings in the United States through an interpreter in Russian, if her expenses are paid, and if her personal safety and right of return to her home in Chechnya are adequately assured in advance. She relates, and has authorized me to state for her that, during the conversation on June 19, 2014, in Grozny, Charlene the independent investigator stated flatly that the federal public defender’s office in Boston knew that Dzhokhar was not guilty as charged, and that their office was under enormous pressure from law enforcement agencies and high levels of the government of the United States not to resist conviction. [Remember what happened to Lynne Stewart, the federally appointed public defender who actually served her client. She was sentenced to prison.] This affidavit is executed outside of the United States, but the foregoing account is true to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief, and subject to the pains and penalties of perjury under the laws of the United States of America. Given on this 17th day of April 2015. /s/ Maret Tsarnaeva
Here is the Argument of Amicus Curiae:
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS ARGUMENT OF AMICUS CURIAE No. 13-CR-10200-GAO MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT: 1. Federal jurisdiction: The constitutional authority of the United States cannot be extended to the prosecution of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in light of the opinion of the court in United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549 (1995), and views of Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist, Ns. 17, 22, and 34 [Clinton Rossiter (ed.), Mentor edition by New American Library, New York, 1961, pp. 118, 143-144, and 209]. Congress has broad power to regulate commerce, including trade and the incidents of trade, but domestic crimes and use of weapons are generally reserved to the States. If there is sufficient evidence to prosecute Dzhokhar for murder and mayhem, he should and can be prosecuted exclusively by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Accordingly, amicus urges that the indictment now pending should be dismissed, and the conviction of her nephew Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of charges under several acts of Congress should be vacated. 2. The actual innocence of the accused: Laying aside misgivings of amicus and many others about of the “official” scenario concerning this case, as broadcast to the world by the government and mainstream news media of the United States, evidence generated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), confirmed on the judicial record of this cause, and clarified by the indictment, or suitable for judicial notice under Rule 201(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence, conclusively proves that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev cannot be guilty of the crimes charged in this prosecution. The formal indictment against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was returned on June 27, 2013. The document is 74 pages long, and accuses Mr. Tsarnaev (hereinafter called Dzhokhar) of heinous crimes, including many counts punishable by death. The central event for which Dzhokhar is alleged to have been responsible, according to the indictment, took place, on Boylston Street, in front of the Forum Restaurant, near the finish line of the Boston marathon on April 15, 2013. The most important paragraphs of the indictment are numbered 6, 7, and 24 (including several other paragraphs repeating expressly or by implication the substance thereof). Paragraphs 6-7, read in themselves and in context, state that, acting in concert withhis (now deceased) brother, Dzhokhar set down on the sidewalk and detonated one of two “black backpacks” which contained “improvised explosive devices,” these “constructed from pressure cookers, low explosive power, shrapnel, adhesive, and other materials.” Paragraph 24 clarifies that the black backpack carried, and containing the pressure-cooker bomb allegedly detonated by Dzhokhar, was placed in front of the Forum Restaurant and was associated with the second explosion. The indictment says in paragraph 6 that both bombs exploded at about 2:49 in the afternoon (Eastern time), and that the bombs Dzhokhar and his brother placed and detonated each killed at least one person, and wounded scores of others. On the morning after the explosions, i. e., on April 16, 2013, Richard DesLauriers, special agent in charge of the FBI in Boston, made a public statement at a press conference, which is published in printed form on the FBI website and in the news media concerning the facts later set forth in the indictment. Mr. DesLauriers said, as paragraphs 6-7 of the indictment substantially confirm, “... this morning, it was determined that both of the explosives were placed in a dark-colored nylon bag or backpack. The bag would have been heavy, because of the components believed to be in it. “... we are asking that the public remain alert, and to alert us to the following activity... someone who appeared to be carrying an unusually heavy bag yesterday around the time of the blasts and in the vicinity of the blasts.” The FBI also published on April 16, 2013, a crime lab photo of a bomb fragment found after the explosions This photo is reproduced as Tsarnaeva exhibit 1 in the appendix hereof, and is believed proper for judicial notice. From this bomb fragment, the FBI crime lab was able to reconstruct the size, shape, and type of pressure cookers, as was reported on information published by the FBI to the nation on ABC News Nightline on April 16, 2013. A still-frame, taken from (about 01:39-01:54) of this ABC television report, is reproduced as Tsarnaeva exhibit 2 in the appendix hereof, and is offered for judicial notice. A larger segment of this ABC Nightline News report (at about 01:31-02:14) elaborates facts set forth in paragraphs 6-7 of the indictment, including reference to three of the four exhibits reproduced in the appendix hereof. Each of the pressure cookers in question was a Fagor, 6-quart model, marketed in or near Boston and elsewhere in the United States by Macey’s. Its external dimensions are probably about 81⁄2 inches in height, including cover, and about 9 inches in diameter. Stripped of hard plastic handles and filled with nails, bee bees, and other such metal, then prepared as a bomb, it would cause a bag carrying it to be, as observed by the FBI chief in Boston during his press conference on April 16, 2013, “unusually heavy.” Again on April 16, 2013, the FBI published a crime lab photo, here reproduced as Tsarnaeva exhibit 3 in the appendix hereof, and showing a blown- out backpack which is said to have contained one of the bombs, — a black nylon bag with a characteristic white rectangle marking about 3 by 11⁄2 inches more or less as it appeared following the explosions the day before. This photo pictures the “dark colored nylon bag or backpack” which Mr. DesLauriers described in his press conference on the day after the explosions when he described what was carried by the guilty parties. It was one of the “black backpacks” referenced in paragraph 7 of the indictment. It is pictured in prosecution exhibit 26 which was introduced on the second day of the trial in this cause (day 28 on the transcript, March 5, 2015), showing that the bag or backpack in question was found on the street near the post box in front of the Forum Restaurant on Boylston Street, and, as previously noted, was associated with the second explosion on April 15, 2013, which, in paragraph 24 of the indictment, Dzhokhar is alleged to have detonated. This general impression is confirmed by defense exhibit 3090, showing a backpack with black exterior or covering, and introduced on the sixteenth day of the trial (day 42 on the transcript, March 31, 2015). Tsarnaeva exhibit 3 is also suitable for judicial notice. On April 18, 2013, the FBI published a 29-second street video claimed to have been taken from Whiskey’s Steak House on Boylston Street at about 02:37- 38 o’clock in the afternoon (Eastern time), only minutes before the explosions on April 15, 2013. It definitively settles the principal question raised by the indictment and the plea of not guilty interposed against it. Part of this video is tucked into prosecution exhibit 22 introduced on the third day of the trial in this cause (day 29 on the transcript, March 9, 2015). From this street video, three still-frame photos have been extracted. Two of these still-frame photos were published by the FBI on April 18, 2013, on posters which were used to identify suspects. All three photos were published by CNN and the Associated Press on April 19, 2013. The third still-frame photo from this video is most telling, and is reproduced as Tsarnaeva exhibit 4 in the appendix hereof. As already noted, the FBI and the indictment have together affirmed that the culprits who detonated these explosions were carrying large, unusually heavy, black backpacks concealing pressure-cooker bombs; but, the third still-frame photo from the Whiskey’s Steak House video reproduced as Tsarnaeva exhibit 4, and drawn from a street video already used by the FBI to identify the suspects and acknowledged by the government in this prosecution, shows unmistakably that, shortly before the explosions, Dzhokhar was carrying a small-size, white* backpack over his right shoulder the same light in weight, not heavy laden, and displaying no sagging or bulging as would normally be evident if the bag identified contained a pressure-cooker bomb of the size and weight which the FBI has described. (*For all practical purposes and to the naked eye, the color is white, although technical computer analysis suggests a very whitish shade of gray.) Dzhokhar is not guilty of carrying and detonating a pressure-cooker bomb, as charged in the indictment, as is literally as obvious as the difference between black and white. There were and remain other suspects whose identities have been credibly suggested. See, e. g., Toni Cartalucci, Land Destroyer Report, April 19, 2013 (illustrated commentary entitled “‘Contractors’ Stood Near Bomb, Left Before Detonation.”). But here it is enough to reflect on the comment of Lord Acton that “historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility.” — J. Rufus Fears, Selected Writings of Lord Acton, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 1985, Vol. 2, p. 383 (Letter to Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887). Whatever is done in judicial proceedings, history will judge this case, as surely as history has judged other significant cases. 3. The grievance of amicus: It is impossible that federal prosecutors and counsel for the accused did not know of the exculpatory evidence which has just been identified and illustrated. Yet federal prosecutors went head without probable cause, as if decisive evidence of actual innocence, impossible to ignore in a diligent study of this case, did not exist, as is wholly unacceptable in light of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 at 86-87 (1963). Moreover, in her opening statement at trial on March 4, 2015, as reflected in the fourth paragraph of the transcript of her comments, court-appointed counsel for the accused forcefully insisted that Dzhokhar was guilty of capital felonies, as is positively disproved by evidence generated by the FBI, reinforced by the indictment itself. She said, “The government and the defense will agree about many things that happened during the week of April 15th, 2013. On Marathon Monday, Tamerlan Tsarnaev walked down Boylston Street with a backpack on his back, carrying a pressure cooker bomb, and put it down in front of Marathon Sports near the finish line of the Marathon. Jahar [i. e., Dzhokhar] Tsarnaev walked down Boylston Street with a backpack on his back carrying a pressure cooker bomb and placed it next to a tree in front of the Forum Restaurant. The explosions extinguished three lives.” And in her summation to the jury on April 6, 2015, as the transcript shows, court-appointed counsel for the accused said nothing of the exculpatory evidence in this case. She did not even ask for a verdict of not guilty. She could hardly have done more to promote a conviction and the severest sentence possible, even though the third still-frame photo from the video at Whiskey’s Steak House, reproduced as Tsarnaeva exhibit 4, showed Dzhokhar carrying a white backpack, as alone was enough to defeat the indictment insofar as paragraph 7 thereof averred that the accused and his brother committed the principal acts of wrongdoing by carrying and setting down black backpacks. Such misconduct is altogether unacceptable in light of Strickland v. Washington, 446 U. S. 668 at 687- 688 (1984). The misconduct of which amicus complains served to conceal decisive exculpatory evidence by legerdemain. Amicus urges not only that the death penalty may not be imposed in this case, for all three opinions in Herrera v. Collins, 506 U. S. 390 (1993), allow that the death penalty may not be constitutionally imposed where the accused is demonstrably innocent, but that sua sponte this court order a new trial with directions that new counsel for the accused be appointed, motivated to provide an authentic defense for Dzhokhar. 4. The corpus delicti: Paragraph 10 of the indictment recites a statement in the nature of a confession by Dzhokhar written on the inner walls of a boat in Watertown. But with respect to any and all evidence offered or treated as suggesting an extrajudicial admission of guilt in this case, amicus |
. Why was Wal-Mart fighting a paltry fine so hard? To the extent that the citation could strengthen the Damour family’s civil case, two million dollars could be seen as a worthwhile gamble. Moreover, no retailer welcomed OSHA jurisdiction over how it managed its customers. Casey Chroust, an executive vice-president of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, told me, “The impact of this case is potentially huge. Does it mean I have to hire an event-management staff next time I hold a doorbuster sale? Does this mean every time you have a hot product—a video game, a Harry Potter book, an iPhone—much less a Black Friday sale, you’ll be liable for potential action if you don’t hire crowd management?” Willis Goldsmith, a partner at the New York firm of Jones Day, who has a long history of representing employers on OSHA issues, told me that, along with the problem of defining crowd surges and crushes as recognized hazards, there was the practical matter of defining a crowd. “Ten people could have caused the injuries you saw at Wal-Mart. So is that a crowd?” OSHA’s burden was to prove that crowd surge and crowd crush are well-known phenomena, and that crowd-management techniques could have prevented them at the Green Acres Mall. To do that, it needed to find an expert who would testify against Wal-Mart. Most experts in the field consult for private industry—event planners and promoters, venue owners and operators, and, to a lesser extent, large retailers. Even if they agreed with OSHA, testifying against the world’s largest retailer wasn’t likely to be good for business, and many experts wouldn’t do it. But one would: Paul Wertheimer, the sixty-two-year-old self-employed owner of Crowd Management Strategies, who has been called “the marshal of the mosh pit.”
One of the best-documented crowd disasters in the U.S. occurred before a concert by The Who, outside Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, on December 3, 1979. Until then, crowd planning had largely been the purview of fire-safety engineers, who focussed on how to get people out of buildings, in the event of an emergency—not into them. The concert’s promoter, the Electric Factory of Philadelphia, had offered unreserved “festival seating”—people in the front of the line get to be nearest the stage (and, in most cases, no one on the floor has a seat at all, allowing the promoter to sell more tickets but giving the venue far less control over the audience). Hard-core fans began lining up in the early afternoon, and by six o’clock a crowd of eight thousand mostly young people had collected on the plaza outside the entrance, on a bitterly cold night. The band began its sound check at around six-thirty, and played for half an hour. People toward the back of the line, mistakenly believing that the concert was beginning, pushed forward. Some of the people in front pushed back, and shock waves began to ripple through the tightly packed mass. The coliseum staff, thinking that the crowd was attempting to rush the doors and enter without paying, kept most of the doors shut, even after the sound check ended and the opening time had passed. Later, in a letter sent to the task force assembled to investigate the incident, in which eleven people died, a man in the crowd described what it was like near the doors: “The pounding of the waves was endless.... If a wave came and you were being stood upon with your feet pinned to the ground, you would very likely lose your shoes or your balance and fall.” Some people near the doors did go down. “They began to fall, unnoticed by all but those immediately surrounding them. People in the crowd 10 feet back from them didn’t know it was happening. Their cries were impossible to hear above the roar of the crowd.... There was a pile of people forming, and all of the people around them were being crushed into the pile, for there was no resistance. If the person in front of you went down, then you would follow for there was no one to lean against.” Then the waves began to carry him toward the pile. “With this realization I began to add to the screaming, ‘They’re going down, they’re going down!’ I yelled repeatedly.... A wave swept me to the left and when I regained a stance I felt I was standing on someone. The helplessness and frustration of the moment sent a wave of panic through me. I screamed with all my strength that I was standing on someone. I couldn’t move. I could only scream.” The media blamed the crowd. The Lexington, Kentucky, Herald-Leader, describing the “surging, primitive mob,” quoted a security guard who said, “Those kids were animals.” Mike Royko wrote a column for the Chicago Sun-Times, entitled, “Cincinnati Barbarism: A Rockwork Orange,” blaming the “barbarians” who “stomped 11 persons to death [after] having numbed their brains on weeds, chemicals, and Southern Comfort.” The promoter, Larry Magid, told Rolling Stone, “After all, we didn’t trample anyone to death, we didn’t step on anyone, and we didn’t push anyone.” Pete Townshend, the band’s leader, said, “It’s rock. It’s not The Who. It’s rock and roll. Everybody—all of us—we’re all bloody responsible.” In the end, no one was held accountable for the deaths. At the time, Paul Wertheimer was a twenty-nine-year-old public-information officer for the city of Cincinnati. He became chief of staff of the task force that Mayor Kenneth Blackwell appointed to investigate the incident. Wertheimer and some of his staff members spent months travelling around the country, talking to venue operators and promoters and public-safety officials. Among the task force’s recommendations were a ban on festival seating for large indoor events, and a requirement that organizers file a “crowd management” plan, similar to a fire-safety plan, but focussing on ingress as well as egress. The report pointed out that doors and turnstiles in buildings of public assembly were tested only for normal conditions, and failed to take crowded conditions into account. It also called for national standards to better protect crowds. But national standards weren’t created and festival seating wasn’t universally banned. Injuries and fatalities at concerts continued.
As Wertheimer worked at various jobs in event management and public relations, “the Who tragedy kept following me around,” he recalled. “Every now and then, another incident would happen at a concert, someone would get killed, and the reaction was always the same. The industry would say, ‘How could we have predicted this? This has never happened before!’ And of course I would say, ‘That’s not true—it did happen, and here’s a report about it!’ But the industry chose to ignore that. And I thought, Somebody has to step up and do something, because there are ways to prevent these people from dying. And I guess that guy is going to be me. I am going to be the ghost of that Who concert. Those eleven people died so that these lessons could be learned, and I’m going to see they aren’t forgotten.” Wertheimer began carefully documenting crowd-related incidents in the U.S. and around the world, making the information available to the public. He ventured into potentially dangerous crowds, wherever he could find them, and noted what he saw. In the early nineties, with the popularity of grunge music, mosh pits became common at rock concerts—fans in the front would hurl themselves at one another, and the force would carry them into other fans. Mosh pits are good places to study crowd dynamics, because they reproduce in miniature the shock waves of large-scale crowd disasters. Wertheimer, in his early forties, became a familiar figure at grunge and heavy-metal shows: “the old man in the pit,” in the words of one young fan. “I learned how to stand in the center spot,” he told me proudly, “right in front of the lead singer, three yards from the stage, and to go with the surge, and I developed my ways of getting out of tight spots, which I published in my mosh-survival guide. I worked on my peripheral vision, and learned to recognize when people are in trouble, and to understand what draws them to moshing, and how the band relates to it, and what security does in certain situations—all that stuff.” He established a Web site, Crowd Safe, where he published his reports on crowds, which eventually numbered in the thousands. “He’s away attending to a personal matter, but he did leave a number where he can’t be reached.” As predicted, none of this helped Wertheimer’s career as a crowd-management consultant; his pugnacious personality didn’t help, either. “The industry didn’t want anything to do with me,” Wertheimer told me. In Chicago, where Wertheimer was born, on the South Side, he ran afoul of a concert promoter, Jam Productions, for helping to publicize safety issues at rock concerts. (Wertheimer brought a local news reporter, with a concealed camera, into the mosh pit at a show put on by Jam, and pointed out the unsafe conditions. Jam contends that the footage was misleading.) Jam posted his photograph around Soldier Field, and during a Pearl Jam concert Wertheimer was picked up in a mosh pit by security for apparently shoving a young fan. “Obviously, if I wanted to develop a consulting business, this wasn’t the way to do it,” he told me. After the deaths of the nine festival-goers during the 2000 Pearl Jam set in Roskilde, Wertheimer was interviewed by a committee set up by the Danish government, and recommendations he made became a part of the committee’s official report, “Rock Festival Safety.” He was delighted when OSHA asked him to testify in the Wal-Mart case. “This is the most important thing I’ve ever been involved with,” he said. “For the first time, you’ve got someone powerful—the U.S. federal government—alleging that this death was preventable, if the crowd had been handled the right way.” Was he anxious about the trial? “I know you can pay a price if you take on a large corporation like Wal-Mart. You have to be willing to suffer the consequences. I don’t have kids to support, or a family; this is the role I take. I’m the only one who would do this. And, hey, I learned to fight on the South Side.”
During the years that Wertheimer was recording his experiences at rock concerts, researchers in academia were trying to figure out models for crowd behavior. In the early nineties, Dirk Helbing, a graduate student in physics at the University of Göttingen, Germany, was looking for a suitable topic for a diploma thesis, when he was inspired by footprints left in the snow after a large event. He saw a pattern in the tracks that suggested the flow of streams, and he came up with a model based on fluid dynamics to simulate crowd movement. By comparing computer-driven simulations with empirical observations of crowd movement, Helbing and his colleagues were able to identify several patterns of collective behavior that emerged from the interactions of individuals in the crowd. These included lanes of uniform walking directions, oscillations of the pedestrian flow at bottlenecks, and “stripes” of intersecting flows. “Such self-organized patterns of motion demonstrate that efficient, ‘intelligent’ collective dynamics can be based on simple, local interactions,” Helbing wrote in a 2010 paper, “Pedestrian, Crowd, and Evacuation Dynamics,” published in the “Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science.” But Helbing also observed that at certain critical densities, such as occur in a crowd crush, all forms of collective behavior vanish. Shock waves are the result not of collective behavior but of the failure of it. Individuals at the back of a crowd, unable to tell what is happening up ahead, push forward, not realizing that they are injuring the people in the front. Unlike ants and fish and birds, humans haven’t evolved the capability to transmit information about the physical dynamics of the crowd across the entire swarm. Ants, for example, are able to communicate within a swarm using pheromones. Iain Couzin, a behavioral biologist at Princeton University, told me, “With ants, as with human crowds, you see emergent behavior. By using a simple set of local interactions, ants form complex patterns. The difference is that we are selfish individuals, whereas ants are profoundly social creatures. We want to reduce our travel time, even when it is at the expense of others, whereas ants work for the whole colony. In this respect, we are at our most primitive in crowds. We have never evolved a collective intelligence to function in large crowds—we have no way of getting beyond the purely local rules of interaction, as ants can.” So is there no possibility that a crowd of bodies can be “smart,” in the sense that a crowd of minds can be? Couzin pointed to the role that “leaders” play in the sudden movements of schools of fish, or in migratory herds of animals: only a few of the animals possess the necessary information about where to go, but the others spontaneously follow them. In 2005, he helped design an experiment at Leeds University, led by Jens Krause, in which two hundred people were told to walk randomly around a large hall, while a few people were given specific instructions about what route to take. The researchers found that the “naïve” group followed the informed “leaders,” even though they had no idea, in most cases, that they were following leaders at all. “Leadership does not require verbal communication,” Couzin told me. Studies of disaster evacuations, including the 2001 World Trade Center bombing, have shown that people who follow well-informed leaders might stand a better chance of escape than people who delay or seek their own way out, but in a crowd crush that isn’t going to help much. The leaders will be hemmed in, too.
The Wal-Mart trial took place during six very hot days in July, 2010, in a courtroom in the Jacob Javits Federal Building, in lower Manhattan. Four Wal-Mart employees, who had been at the entrance of the vestibule with Jdimytai Damour, testified. Justin Rice, who had been promoted to department manager before Black Friday, 2008, and who was still working at the store, said that the doors had broken on Blitz Day in 2007, and he had been nicked by broken glass. (Another employee said that the doors came off the hinges in 2005 and 2006, as well.) All the men said that they had never had any training in crowd management before being placed in the vestibule on November 28, 2008, except for “slip, trip, and fall” guidelines—if a customer slips, you help him up—and the “ten-foot rule,” which is if a customer gets within ten feet you are supposed to greet her with “Welcome to Wal-Mart.” One particularly damning bit of evidence was a video that students from the New York Institute of Technology had chanced to make of a management meeting two days before the Blitz Day event. Rice can be heard raising the matter of the 2007 melee with Steve Sooknanan, the Wal-Mart manager, and saying that people had to be kept away from the doors this year. He says, “Last year was crazy, a lot of people fell, little babies out there and it was cold, I just don’t want that this year.” Sooknanan tells him that this year “we’re going to do it a little differently.” He explains that he had arranged for construction barriers to be placed farther from the entrance and to have additional staff at the door. Jason Schwartz, the lead trial attorney for Wal-Mart, wasted no time in attacking Paul Wertheimer’s qualifications as a crowd expert—“the dubiously monikered ‘marshal of the mosh pit’ ”: J.S.: What do you do when you’re in a crowd, Mr. Wertheimer, in order to enhance your expertise? P.W.: I observe the crowd, the crowd dynamics, the crowd behavior, and people in the crowd and talk to people in the crowd to see how they’re feeling, see what’s going on. J.S.: If I did that, would I have the same level of experience in crowds as you do? P.W.: No. J.S.: Why not? P.W.: You’re not an expert in the area of crowd management. J.S.: I see.... Your Honor, I would submit that this expert’s qualifications are the same qualifications that everyone standing in this courtroom has. Judge Rooney responded, “But he has more experience in crowds than I do. I don’t take subways, so I have no idea what it’s like to be in a crowd. Well, I could say, back in my days of college, I took the subway here in New York, and I was very claustrophobic. So I do believe that there is some assistance that, or some value that, is going to be elicited from this case.” Wertheimer was allowed to continue, and during two days of testimony detailed many crowd measures that Wal-Mart could have taken. He was particularly effective in showing why the construction barriers wouldn’t control the crowd: they were too low to keep people out, and they were flared at the bottom, so that people who got pushed up against the sides fell in. At the end of six days, Judge Rooney had twelve hundred pages of testimony to deliberate over, which she has done, at a stately pace, for the past six months. Both sides eagerly await the verdict, which is expected soon. If OSHA wins, Wal-Mart will almost certainly appeal—all the way to the U.S. Court of Appeals, if necessary. Still, a decision for OSHA will have enormous symbolic value, because it would be a victory for the crowd.
In the past thirty years, safety officials and designers have learned a lot about crowd management. After the Hillsborough disaster, Britain banned standing terraces in its top two soccer divisions, and introduced “all-seater” stadiums. Some people argued that this changed the atmosphere of the games profoundly, but it also made them safer. An international team of experts, including Keith Still, a professor of crowd dynamics, made recommendations for the redesign of the Jamarat Bridge, in Mecca, and for directing the movement and flow of people. The structure has been altered to provide pilgrims with multiple entrance and exit points, to ease congestion. In Times Square on New Year’s Eve, the police use lightweight metal container pens so that people revel inside a series of small enclaves, rather than as one big mass. Crowd managers use elevated viewing platforms, to see over the crowd, and, if necessary, to communicate with people in the back. Paul Wertheimer has written a booklet, “You and the Festival Crowd,” which has been widely distributed. (Among his recommendations: Keep your elbows akimbo, to protect your chest and give yourself enough breathing room. Don’t fight against the flow of the crowd if you’re trying to get out of it; rather, go with it, and during lulls try to work your way diagonally through the crowd to the perimeter. If you feel faint, grab on to someone, and, if you do fall, try to protect your head.) And yet, almost anywhere, you can be trapped in a crowd: on a subway platform, at the lighting of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, on the ramps leading down from the upper tiers at Yankee Stadium, in the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village. One reason last summer’s Love Parade disaster in Germany was so shocking is that it occurred in a country known for efficient crowd management, and yet the early evidence suggests that the organizers and the police made a series of elementary mistakes, including underestimating the number of attendees, using the railway tunnel as both the main entrance to and the main exit from the event, and blocking the flow of concertgoers at pinch points, which allowed the crowd force to build. A full-scale investigation is under way.GRAFFITI CRACKDOWN: Police seize artwork from gallery opening
The owner of an Edmonton arts supplies store and gallery where police seized dozens of pieces of graffiti art this week says the raid will likely discourage illegal artists from going legitimate.
Kim Fjordbotten, owner of The Paint Spot on Whyte Avenue, says six officers showed up at her business on June 14 shortly before an opening reception for an exhibit that included many pieces by an artist identified only as “DP.” The officers had a warrant that stated they were there to collect artwork and documents relating to graffiti vandals, in particular those relating to a graffiti artist known as “Daft Punk.”
“They told my staff to step away from the computers,” Fjordbotten says. “They’re trying to link our artist DP with the graffiti artist Daft Punk. To be honest, I don’t know if the person is the artist.”
Fjordbotten says she tried to argue that the officers shouldn’t seize anything, but since they had the warrant, she said it was little use. The space on the gallery walls is now empty except for a copy of the warrant. She says the officers also took a written contract between her and the artist.
A police spokesperson said Friday that charges are pending in the case, likely mischief causing damage to property under $5,000. The spokesperson said the art will eventually be returned to the artist. Fjordbotten says she tried to keep her dealings with DP as anonymous as possible but she says some records were necessary for tax purposes. She said Friday that she hadn’t spoken with a lawyer, and that she had only talked briefly since the raid with the person who she said dropped off DP’s pieces at her shop.
A handwritten note, though not in the artist’s handwriting, was to accompany the exhibit: “I do what I do with love as my intention. That is all I have to say about myself and my work. I believe that the war on graffiti cannot be won and the more the city resists, the more it will persist,” the note states. “I believe in free walls and I’m not for grey or beige. Plain and simple. I am not in a gang and I am not a bad person. I would never paint anything
in public that I wouldn’t want my own children to see. When my children see my art in the street they smile and are engaged!”
An anti-graffiti symposium hosted by Capital City Cleanup in Edmonton last October included a session called “Penmanship of a Vandal,” which offered techniques for using graffiti style comparisons as evidence for obtaining convictions. Several experts as well as some graffiti artists who spoke at the conference, which was attended by police officers from across North America, also noted that artists who do legal graffiti-style work typically begin as illegal artists or taggers.
Fjordbotten says she has attempted to organize graffiti zones in her neighbourhood where the art would be legal. But she says it’s hard to get artists to meet with her, and she suspects it’s because they fear that going on record with one of their pieces could end up being used to link them with their illegal work.
“This is just further proof that if they come out, they will be prosecuted,” Fjordbotten says about this week‘s raid.
Last month, a 22-year-old named Kyle Duffield was fined more than $5,000, received 18 months probation and was ordered to perform 250 hours of community service after pleading guilty to 17 counts of mischief related to spray-painting his nickname throughout the city.
Kristy Trinier of the Edmonton Arts Council told delegates at the symposium last year that there is a difference between “graffiti vandalism” and “graffiti art.“ Trinier also pointed out that in New York and London, once-illegal pieces of graffiti art have been embraced by neighbourhoods and are now protected. She was challenged, however, by a delegate who said that while it may be art, people aren’t particularly thrilled when it shows up on their property.
When reached on Friday, Trinier said it’s very rare for police to seize art from a gallery in order to link it to graffiti, although she recalled it happening once in Los Angeles. She said the Arts Council encourages street artists to use the city’s free wall, which requires no fee or registration, and that the council also helps property owners set up their own free walls. The Arts Council helps facilitate commissions for street artists, too, but Trinier said she wasn’t sure what effect the seizure at The Paint Spot would have on that program.
“We’ll certainly be watching to see how the case plays out,” Trinier said. “It will be up to a judge whether the evidence is admissible.”
Fjordbotten says seven of the DP pieces that were seized had already been purchased. She says police have told her they will eventually be returned to their owners. She also noted that the fact they were seized by police will likely increase their value.
“The officers were not disrespectful. Many of them admired the work and they packed it up carefully,” she said.
Fjordbotten said she didn’t think the officers intended the raid to happen just before the official opening that evening. She said she thought it was simply a coincidence. She added, “They looked surprised to see we had coffee and tea out.”New York City Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce has said that a 2010 rape allegation against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein is "credible."
Paz de la Huerta, an actress best known for her role in HBO's "Boardwalk Empire," was interviewed by detectives who corroborated parts of her allegations, Boyce said Friday, WABC reported.
NYPD detectives are reportedly putting evidence together for a criminal case.
Read more
De la Huerta has accused disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein of two rapes, one in October 2010 and another two months later, in December 2010.
Boyce said that her "ability to articulate each and every minute of the crime, where she was, where they met, where this happened and what he did," made her case believable, the Associated Press reported.
Boyce told reporters Friday that because this impending case dates back seven years, an arrest of Weinstein couldn't be made immediately.
"If this person was still in new York, and it was recent, we'd go right away and make the arrest. No doubt," he said, according to AP.
Evidence against Weinstein may be delivered to a judge, for police to obtain an arrest warrant, or the evidence could go to a grand jury, if police decide to pursue an indictment.
READ MORE: Sexual harassment scandals likely to boost US insurance liability industry
Read more
The Manhattan district attorney's office has a senior prosecutor assigned to investigate de la Huerta's rape claims, AP reported.
Weinstein has been in Arizona for several weeks receiving sexual rehabilitation treatment, following a New York Times story last month that uncovered three decades of sexual misconduct, harassment and assault allegations against him.
Thursday night, Weinstein was reportedly dining out in disguise at Chestnut Fine Food & Provisions restaurant in Phoenix, according to TMZ. Photos allegedly depicted Weinstein wearing a blond wig and sitting at a private table.
Weinstein has been fired from the production company he co-founded, and he has been removed from multiple guilds and associations in the entertainment industry. His scandal has led to other celebrities and media figures also being accused of sexual harassment or assault, as more alleged victims feel emboldened to speak out.Party lines drawn? Not all Cubs eager to visit Trump White House
WASHINGTON – Cubs players and coaches are anything but unified in their desires and efforts to visit the Trump White House on Wednesday, just five months after almost all of the team attended a more formal championship ceremony at the Obama White House.
The afternoon schedule of Wednesday’s event, which makes it too late for some early scheduled work, played a role in some of the decisions not to attend. But personal feelings also seemed to play a role in several cases when it came to one of the most polarizing presidents of the past century.
“I’m going because it’s the United States of America, and I’d rather not live anywhere else except this country,” said first baseman Anthony Rizzo, who was the player rep who addressed the media in January after the Obama visit. “It’s an honor. No political ties. It’s the White House.”
Of the 22 players surveyed before the game, 10 planned to skip Wednesday’s event.
The Cubs had their formal White House championship ceremony in President Obama's final days in office in January. Some players and staff plan a brief, less formal visit Wednesday with President Trump.
Only four current players who were on the World Series roster missed the trip in January: Jake Arrieta, John Lackey, Jon Lester and Hector Rondon. And at least five other 2016 players who were not on the Series roster attended.
Arrieta, who pitched Tuesday night, and Rondon aren’t going this time, either.
“I prefer to stay in my room, get rest and get prepared for the game,” Rondon said.
Lackey said he plans to go Wednesday but declined to discuss it further. “I’m not saying anything political for a quote,” he said.
Said Jason Heyward, who won’t be there Wednesday after going in January: “Some guys didn’t go last time. Some guys aren’t going this time.”
He declined to elaborate.
“I just don’t feel like I want to go,” said reliever Pedro Strop, who went in January.
But Albert Almora Jr. isn’t missing the chance for a second trip: “I just look at it as it’s not every day you get to meet the President of the United States. And in a year I get to meet two.”
Justin Grimm said he would go if he didn’t have family in town.
Mike Montgomery called it “maybe a little disrespectful to turn it down.”
Addison Russell said he’s not going. Why? “We already went this year,” he said.
And reliever Carl Edwards Jr. opted to see other sights around the city, instead. “I’m trying to go see like the dinosaur museums,” he said.
Manager Joe Maddon said he has no problems with any player’s individual decision. “I don’t have any rules to begin with,” he said. “I just want you to run hard to first base. As long as you run hard to first base, they can make up their own mind whether they want to go to the White House or not.”
Maddon said if a team such as the NBA-champion Warriors decline an invitation it would “absolutely” be a political statement but dismissed the Cubs’ visit as a political endorsement.
“To go [Wednesday] is out of respect to the Ricketts family and to the office and the building itself,” he said. “Listen, I like the United States a lot. I like living here a lot. I like everything that it that it represents a lot. When you get a chance as a citizen to get to go to the White House, you go.
“And whether you like that person that’s running the country or not, out of respect to the office itself you go. I don’t agree with all the other banter that’s going on right now because I have a different perspective. I would much prefer living here than some of the other places that adopt different methods of government.
“I think sometimes that gets confused when people want to take a stand [without] realizing actually what we have here, which is a lot better than most everyplace else.”
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Jake Arrieta struggles in 6-1 loss.
Montero blames Arrieta for seven stolen bases.Potential NHL owner David Bonderman spent the day in Seattle, and -- in particular -- at Seattle City Hall, meeting with Seattle City Council members about the potential renovation of KeyArena.
Bonderman was spotted in the Seattle City Hall lobby late Monday morning, with Oak View Group CEO Tim Leiweke, and OVG's Director of Special Projects Lance Lopes, talking with Seattle City councilmember Debora Juarez and was later seen leaving with Seattle City Council President Bruce Harrell.
The UW grad is in town, as OVG begins negotiations with the city on a proposed $564 million remodel of KeyArena at Seattle Center. Bonderman's background and wealth gives the project instant credibility.
He's worth $2.5 billion, according to Forbes. He has long had an interest in owning a NHL franchise and has talked of teaming with movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Bonderman, 74, is currently a minority owner of the NBA's Boston Celtics. The Bonderman Travel Fellowship at the University of Washington includes a $10 million endowment. His private equity firm also owns Cirque du Soleil and a stake in the Creative Artists Agency.
Bonderman was also on the Uber board until he resigned last month after making what was widely perceived as a sexist remark. He apologized, and Leiweke issued a statement saying he was sticking with him.
It's unclear what exactly he discussed during the meetings with council members, but in the very least it's a physical sign of his level of interest in bringing hockey to Seattle.
The council's Select Committee on Civic Arenas is scheduled to meet next Monday at 10:30 a.m. to talk about the status of the negotiations.
Copyright 2017 KINGSource: U.S. Energy Information Administration, based on World Steel Association, U.S. Energy Information Administration, based on World Steel Association, World Steel In Figures 2017
India is the third-largest steel producer in the world after China and Japan, having surpassed other large steel-making countries such as the United States, Russia, and South Korea over the previous decade, according to the World Steel Association. In 2016, about 57% of India’s steel was produced using electric-based methods, which is the second-highest proportion of electric-based steel production among major steel producers, behind only the United States. Most other large producers use basic oxygen steelmaking processes.
Two unique features of the steel industry in India are the large-scale use of electric induction furnaces for electric-based steelmaking and the reliance on coal, rather than natural gas, to produce direct reduced iron (an intermediate input in the steelmaking process).
About half of India’s electric-based process steel is made using electric induction furnaces rather than the internationally more common electric arc furnaces. Electric induction furnaces use induction to convert materials such as scrap, direct reduced iron, or pig iron into steel. These furnaces use alternating magnetic fields to induce an electric current, which then heats up because of electric resistance.
Electric induction furnaces tend to operate at much smaller scales compared with other more common basic oxygen furnaces or electric arc furnaces. Electric induction furnaces typically produce less than 20 tons per batch; basic oxygen furnaces can produce approximately 250 tons per batch; and electric arc furnaces produce approximately 170 tons per batch.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, based on India Ministry of Steel, Annual Report 2016–2017
Note: India’s fiscal years run April 1 through March 31.
Although China and Japan produce more steel, India is the largest producer of direct reduced iron (DRI) in the world. Direct reduced iron can be used in all major types of steel furnaces. Unlike direct reduced iron-making facilities in other countries, which largely use natural gas, most of the direct reduced iron produced in India is powered by coal. For this reason, DRI produced in India is much more carbon intensive than DRI produced in facilities in other parts of the world.
According to EIA’s International Energy Outlook 2017, India’s coal consumption is projected to grow by nearly 3% per year between 2015 and 2040 as a result of iron and steel industry growth and relatively intensive coal use in DRI.
Principal contributor: Kelly PerlLiberals have been spouting the line that “love trumps hate” during anti-Trump protests, but their actions would seem to tell a different story. In a disturbing video posted to YouTube on Friday, anti-Trump liberals are seen setting a girl’s hair on fire shortly after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, even as the crowd mindlessly chanted “love trumps hate.”
Here’s the video:
The fire appears to have been put out quickly and it doesn’t appear that anyone was severely injured. The situation could have been a lot worse, however.
According to the video, no one knew who set the fire at the time the incident took place, but when the video is slowed down, one can clearly see a lighter being deployed.
Trending: Video of the Day: UCLA Students Sign Petition to put Conservatives in Concentration Camps
One YouTube user said: “Thank you for posting this. This is my daughter and this was an attack on her. I hope the person responsible is caught.”
“We are working on getting the word spread! So sorry for you and your daughter. I hope she is okay! Thankfully this is evidence and you can see the girl who did it. I hope she gets in trouble!!” another person said in response.
The YouTube description adds: “Everything had been fine up until this moment, and it just comes to show that “Peaceful” Protests aren’t always what they see to be.”
At its core, liberalism, as I first noted in February 2011, is an ideology of rage and hate. Sadly, liberals prove that assertion correct on jsut about any given day.
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And if you’re as concerned about Facebook censorship as we are, go here and order this new book:News 12 at 11 / Friday, May 15, 2015
WILLISTON, S.C. (WRDW) -- A Williston family comes home from a camping trip to find everything in their home gone.
The landlord says he thought they left. The family has proof they were only on a trip.
So, when is it OK to go inside someone's house and move stuff out? It's a question Tamela Wadford wants to know. She's starting from scratch.
"It was hard because everything we had was on that trailer. Everything we owned was gone," tenant Tamela Wadford said through tears. "We still don't have anything. We don't have a bed to sleep in. We don't have a pot to cook with."
Receipts show her family left April 30th to do some camping in Barnwell County. She says they left with the understanding they'd papy this month's rent when they got back when their Social Security check came in the mail.
Instead, they came home to find their trailer had been ransacked. All their belongings were thrown in a trailer outside of their home.
"Profiting off of our misery. They're taking things out of our house. They're walking around wearing my t-shirts," son Travis Wadford said.
Tamela says some of their stuff even ended up in neighbors' trailers.
"This trailer here had our curtains hanging in it," she said pointing.
Inside the trailer is unlivable, so now they're living in a one room camper in their backyard.
"My son has to sleep |
to be found.
We can get hold of that missing baby by using the id route parameter when loading the component. The Angular router offers a service called ActivatedRoute that let’s you get access to the current route parameters in an asynchronous fashion.
Let’s update the BabyComponent class to use ActivatedRoute. Within baby.component.ts we write the following:
import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core' ; import { ActivatedRoute } from '@angular/router' ; import { Baby } from 'app/baby' ; @ Component ( { selector : 'app-baby', templateUrl : './baby.component.html', styleUrls : [ './baby.component.css' ] } ) export class BabyComponent implements OnInit { constructor ( private activatedRoute : ActivatedRoute ) { } ngOnInit ( ) { this. activatedRoute. params. subscribe ( p => { const key = p [ 'id' ] ; } ) ; } }
So using the params observable property of the ActivatedRoute service we can get hold of the :id route parameter that is the baby’s key in Firebase Realtime database.
Now that we have that key in our hand we can use it to retrieve our baby and expose it through the public interface of our component class.
What is that subscribe? So far we've only consumed observables within our templates by taking advantage of the async pipe. So what's this subscribe that we're using here? The subscribe method is the most common way to consume observables. Using subscribe you can provide a callback to subscribe to new bits of data that are made available over time via the observable. In the example above, you subscribe to receiving the router parameters of the route when it is loaded. The async pipe also subscribes itself to the observable but it does so behind the scenes. If you want to learn more about observables and rx.js I suggest that you take a look at the Gentle Introduction to Rx.js.
The next step is to update our baby component class to take that key and retrieve our baby from Firebase. Again on baby.component.ts write:
import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core' ; import { ActivatedRoute } from '@angular/router' ; import { AngularFireDatabase, FirebaseObjectObservable } from 'angularfire2/database' ; import { Baby } from 'app/baby' ; @ Component ( { selector : 'app-baby', templateUrl : './baby.component.html', styleUrls : [ './baby.component.css' ] } ) export class BabyComponent implements OnInit { baby : FirebaseObjectObservable < Baby > ; constructor ( private activatedRoute : ActivatedRoute, private db : AngularFireDatabase ) { } ngOnInit ( ) { this. activatedRoute. params. subscribe ( p => { const key = p [ 'id' ] ; this. baby = this. db. object ( `/babies/ ${ key } ` ) ; } ) ; } }
In this case we’ll use the FirebaseObjectObservable type and the db.object method because we have a single object that we want to retrieve: our Baby. Since we expose a baby property in our component class the template can now bind to that property and show the baby status in the screen.
If you take a look at your app using ng serve -o you should see this beautiful masterpiece:
Now We can Take Care of The Baby
So we’ve got ourselves the baby status where we can see how well our baby and parenting is faring. The next thing that we want to do is add some controls so as a dad I can take care of my baby. Since this feels like a complete separate concern from displaying the baby status we create a new component:
PS > ng g c baby - care
This creates a brand new and shiny BabyCareComponent. But before we dive into implementing the component there’s one detail that we still need to contend with: How are we going to load this component inside the BabyComponent template?
Since I had some foresight in my initial prototyping I know that I want to have very similar views for my baby caring and my baby controlling. When going to this route baby/key/care I want to get a view like this one:
And when going to this other route baby/key/control I want to get a view like this other one:
These two views are very similar and a perfect use case for nested routes. In this scenario we can take advantage of the Angular router and define a new <router-outlet> inside the BabyComponent where we can inject either the BabyCareComponent or the future BabyControlRoomComponent based on the url selected.
So if we update our BabyComponent template as follows:
< section fxLayout = " column " fxLayoutAlign = " start center " fxLayoutGap = " 12px " > < md-card *ngIf = " baby | async; let baby; else loading " > < md-card-title > Baby Status </ md-card-title > < md-card-content > < app-baby-status [baby] = " baby " > </ app-baby-status > </ md-card-content > </ md-card > < ng-template #loading > Loading Baby Data... </ ng-template > < router-outlet > </ router-outlet > </ section >
And our routing configuration in app-routing.module.ts :
import { NgModule } from '@angular/core' import { Routes, RouterModule } from '@angular/router' import { BabiesComponent } from 'app/babies/babies.component' import { BabyComponent } from 'app/baby/baby.component' import { BabyControlRoomComponent } from 'app/baby-control-room/baby-control-room.component' import { BabyCareComponent } from 'app/baby-care/baby-care.component' const routes : Routes = [ { path : 'babies', children : [ { path : '', component : BabiesComponent, }, { path : ':id', component : BabyComponent, children : [ { path : 'care', component : BabyCareComponent, }, ], }, ], }, { path : '', pathMatch : 'full', redirectTo : 'babies', }, { path : '**', redirectTo : 'babies', }, ] @ NgModule ( { imports : [ RouterModule. forRoot ( routes ) ], exports : [ RouterModule ], } ) export class AppRoutingModule { }
Now when we click on the Take care button in the BabiesComponent view we will be magically transported to a view where we can see the status of our baby and below, the magical words: baby care works!.
Implementing the Baby Care Component
Let’s add some caring into our app. The dad will be able to use the following techniques to improve the stats of the baby:
Feed : To remove hunger. Effect: reduce Hunger indicator
: To remove hunger. Clean : To clean the baby’s outputs. Effect: reduce Shittiness indicator
: To clean the baby’s outputs. Sleep : To put the baby to sleep and give him the rest he or she needs. Effect: reduce sleepiness indicator
: To put the baby to sleep and give him the rest he or she needs. Cuddle: The secret weapon in every parent arsenal that will not only affect all stats but will also increase a baby’s life indicator. Effect: reduce all indicators and increase life.
These actions will be represented by buttons in the BabyCareComponent template within baby-care.component.html :
< md-card > < md-card-content > < button md-raised-button color = " primary " (click) = " feedBaby() " > Feed </ button > < button md-raised-button color = " primary " (click) = " cleanBaby() " > Clean </ button > < button md-raised-button color = " primary " (click) = " sleepBaby() " > Sleep </ button > < button md-raised-button color = " accent " (click) = " cuddleBaby() " > Cuddle </ button > </ md-card-content > </ md-card >
These buttons are bound to different methods in the underlying component class baby-care.component.ts. We now need to implement them to update the baby’s stats. Let’s focus on one single of these methods for the sake of simplicity:
import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core' ; import { FirebaseApp } from 'angularfire2' ; import { ActivatedRoute } from '@angular/router' ; @ Component ( { selector : 'app-baby-care', templateUrl : './baby-care.component.html', styleUrls : [ './baby-care.component.scss' ] } ) export class BabyCareComponent implements OnInit { babyId ; constructor ( private activatedRoute : ActivatedRoute, private firebaseApp : FirebaseApp ) { } ngOnInit ( ) { this. activatedRoute. parent. params. subscribe ( p => this. babyId = p [ 'id' ] ) ; } feedBaby ( ) { const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } /hunger` ) ; statRef. transaction ( stat => stat - 10 < 0? 0 : stat - 10 ) ; } }
In the code above we do a couple of things:
On component initialization we get a hold of the baby’s id by using the ActivatedRoute service. Since this is a nested route we use the activantedRoute.parent property to access the parent route parameters. We take a direct reference to the babies hunger property within Firebase realtime database and we execute a transaction to update it so that the effect of a caring action decreases hunger in the baby by a factor of 10. We need to do a transaction because we plan to have several clients increasing and decreasing that hunger value at the same time.
We now can extend the same logic to all of our caring methods:
import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core' ; import { FirebaseApp } from 'angularfire2' ; import { ActivatedRoute } from '@angular/router' ; @ Component ( { selector : 'app-baby-care', templateUrl : './baby-care.component.html', styleUrls : [ './baby-care.component.scss' ] } ) export class BabyCareComponent implements OnInit { babyId ; constructor ( private activatedRoute : ActivatedRoute, private firebaseApp : FirebaseApp ) { } ngOnInit ( ) { this. activatedRoute. parent. params. subscribe ( p => this. babyId = p [ 'id' ] ) ; } feedBaby ( ) { const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } /hunger` ) ; statRef. transaction ( stat => stat - 10 < 0? 0 : stat - 10 ) ; } cleanBaby ( ) { const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } /shittiness` ) ; statRef. transaction ( stat => stat - 10 < 0? 0 : stat - 10 ) ; } sleepBaby ( ) { const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } /sleepiness` ) ; statRef. transaction ( stat => stat - 10 < 0? 0 : stat - 10 ) ; } cuddleBaby ( ) { const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } ` ) ; statRef. transaction ( baby => { if ( baby ) { baby. hunger = this. getDecreasedStat ( { statGetter : ( ) => baby. hunger, modifier : 10 } ) ; baby. shittiness = this. getDecreasedStat ( { statGetter : ( ) => baby. shittiness, modifier : 10 } ) ; baby. sleepiness = this. getDecreasedStat ( { statGetter : ( ) => baby. sleepiness, modifier : 10 } ) ; baby. life = this. getIncreasedStat ( { statGetter : ( ) => baby. life, modifier : 1 } ) ; } return baby ; } ) ; } getDecreasedStat ( { statGetter, modifier } ) { return statGetter ( ) > modifier? statGetter ( ) - modifier : 0 ; } getIncreasedStat ( { statGetter, modifier } ) { return statGetter ( ) + modifier > 100? 100 : statGetter ( ) + modifier ; } }
If you go back to the browser you’ll now be able to see the following:
In order to do some testing, you can go into your Firebase Realtime Database Dashboard, modify the stats of the baby and then interact with the baby caring buttons to verify that indeed they are working. Yay! Victory!
Controlling Your Baby
The other side of things, the baby control room, will let you affect the needs, wants and desires of the baby and make him or her be hungry or sleepy.
Implementing the baby control room will be very similar to what we have just done in the previous section. We start by creating a new component:
PS > ng g c baby - control - room
We update the BabyControlRoomComponent template within baby-control-room.component.html to display a bunch of buttons:
< md-card > < md-card-title > Baby Secret Control Room </ md-card-title > < md-card-content > < button md-raised-button (click) = " babyHungry() " > I'm Hungry!! </ button > < button md-raised-button (click) = " babyShitty() " > I'm Dirty!! </ button > < button md-raised-button (click) = " babySleepy() " > I'm Sleepy!! </ button > </ md-card-content > </ md-card >
And we implement these babyHungry, babyShitty and babySleepy methods in the component class baby-control-room.component.ts :
import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core' ; import { ActivatedRoute } from '@angular/router' ; import { FirebaseApp } from 'angularfire2' ; @ Component ( { selector : 'app-baby-control-room', templateUrl : './baby-control-room.component.html', styleUrls : [ './baby-control-room.component.scss' ] } ) export class BabyControlRoomComponent implements OnInit { babyId : string ; constructor ( private activatedRoute : ActivatedRoute, private firebaseApp : FirebaseApp ) { } ngOnInit ( ) { this. activatedRoute. parent. params. subscribe ( p => this. babyId = p [ 'id' ] ) ; } babyHungry ( ) { const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } /hunger` ) ; statRef. transaction ( stat => stat + 10 ) ; } babyShitty ( ) { const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } /shittiness` ) ; statRef. transaction ( stat => stat + 10 ) ; } babySleepy ( ) { const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } /sleepiness` ) ; statRef. transaction ( stat => stat + 10 ) ; } }
And that’s it. Remember to uncomment the small section that referred to this component in your routing configuration in app-routing.module.ts and now you should be able to take care, and control your baby.
Now you can do some proper old school manual testing by opening a couple of browser windows, one with the caring, the other with the controlling and seeing how interacting with the buttons in either window affects the other. Awesome!
Adding More User Feedback With Snack Bars
Before we wrap up this part, we’re going do to a couple of things more.
First we’ll add some more feedback for our dads to give them some encouragement when they take care of the baby. Luckily for us, Angular Material provides a service that allows us to display messages to our users: the MdSnackBar.
The MdSnackBar is very simple to use. You just need to inject the MdSnackBar service into your component and then use the following method to display a message:
this. mdSnackBar. open ( 'Hi you!' )
Let’s update our BabyCareComponent class to show a message to the dad every time they do a caring action:
import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core' ; import { FirebaseApp } from 'angularfire2' ; import { ActivatedRoute } from '@angular/router' ; import { MdSnackBar } from '@angular/material' ; import { RandomPickerService } from "app/random-picker.service" ; const messages = [ 'Awesome Dad!', 'You rock Buddy!', 'Hell yeah!', 'Good job!!', 'Saaaavyyy', 'Dad of the Year!', 'Go get a beer, you deserve it!', 'Sweeeet!' ] ; @ Component ( { selector : 'app-baby-care', templateUrl : './baby-care.component.html', styleUrls : [ './baby-care.component.scss' ] } ) export class BabyCareComponent implements OnInit { babyId ; constructor ( private activatedRoute : ActivatedRoute, private firebaseApp : FirebaseApp, private mdSnackBar : MdSnackBar, private randomPicker : RandomPickerService ) { } ngOnInit ( ) { this. activatedRoute. parent. params. subscribe ( p => this. babyId = p [ 'id' ] ) ; } feedBaby ( ) { this. showMessage ( ) ; const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } /hunger` ) ; statRef. transaction ( stat => stat - 10 < 0? 0 : stat - 10 ) ; } cleanBaby ( ) { this. showMessage ( ) ; const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } /shittiness` ) ; statRef. transaction ( stat => stat - 10 < 0? 0 : stat - 10 ) ; } sleepBaby ( ) { this. showMessage ( ) ; const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } /sleepiness` ) ; statRef. transaction ( stat => stat - 10 < 0? 0 : stat - 10 ) ; } cuddleBaby ( ) { this. showMessage ( ) ; const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } ` ) ; statRef. transaction ( baby => { if ( baby ) { baby. hunger = this. getDecreasedStat ( { statGetter : ( ) => baby. hunger, modifier : 10 } ) ; baby. shittiness = this. getDecreasedStat ( { statGetter : ( ) => baby. shittiness, modifier : 10 } ) ; baby. sleepiness = this. getDecreasedStat ( { statGetter : ( ) => baby. sleepiness, modifier : 10 } ) ; baby. life = this. getIncreasedStat ( { statGetter : ( ) => baby. life, modifier : 1 } ) ; } return baby ; } ) ; } getDecreasedStat ( { statGetter, modifier } ) { return statGetter ( ) > modifier? statGetter ( ) - modifier : 0 ; } getIncreasedStat ( { statGetter, modifier } ) { return statGetter ( ) + modifier > 100? 100 : statGetter ( ) + modifier ; } showMessage ( ) { this. mdSnackBar. open ( this. randomPicker. pickAtRandom ( messages ), null, { duration : 3000 } ) ; } }
Good! Now everytime the dad clicks on a care button he’ll get some nice encouragement like “You rock Buddy!” or “Sweeeet!”.
We can extend the same functionality to our BabyControlRoomComponent :
import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core' ; import { ActivatedRoute } from '@angular/router' ; import { AngularFireDatabase } from 'angularfire2/database' ; import { FirebaseApp } from 'angularfire2' ; import { MdSnackBar } from "@angular/material" ; import { RandomPickerService } from "app/random-picker.service" ; const messages = [ 'You are evil!', 'I bow before you Dr Evil!', 'Satanaaaas!!', "Keepin' it real!", "Wow that was mean!", "You have no shame!", "OMG reaaaallllly?" ] ; @ Component ( { selector : 'app-baby-control-room', templateUrl : './baby-control-room.component.html', styleUrls : [ './baby-control-room.component.scss' ] } ) export class BabyControlRoomComponent implements OnInit { babyId : string ; constructor ( private activatedRoute : ActivatedRoute, private firebaseApp : FirebaseApp, private mdSnackBar : MdSnackBar, private randomPicker : RandomPickerService ) { } ngOnInit ( ) { this. activatedRoute. parent. params. subscribe ( p => this. babyId = p [ 'id' ] ) ; } babyHungry ( ) { this. showMessage ( ) ; const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } /hunger` ) ; statRef. transaction ( stat => stat + 10 ) ; } babyShitty ( ) { this. showMessage ( ) ; const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } /shittiness` ) ; statRef. transaction ( stat => stat + 10 ) ; } babySleepy ( ) { this. showMessage ( ) ; const statRef = this. firebaseApp. database ( ). ref ( `/babies/ ${ this. babyId } /sleepiness` ) ; statRef. transaction ( stat => stat + 10 ) ; } showMessage ( ) { this. mdSnackBar. open ( this. randomPicker. pickAtRandom ( messages ), null, { duration : 3000 } ) ; } }
The final step is to deploy the first version of our app to the internets and make it available to the world with the aid of the Angular cli and Firebase Hosting.
Deploying Your App With the Angular CLI and Firebase Hosting
In addition to offering a helping hand during development and testing, the Angular cli also allows you to create a production optimized build with a single command:
PS > ng build - prod - aot
The -prod flag will tell angular to create a production build and the -aot flag will enable Ahead of Time compilation which will result in a smaller package and faster Angular loading times. The process will take a short while and at the end you’ll have a production-ready version of your application under the dist folder in your application root directory.
What is Ahead Of Time (AOT) compilation? The easiest way to explain AOT compilation is to start by explaining its opposite: JIT or Just-In-Time compilation. Any Angular application can be seen as a tree of components. For an Angular application to run in the browser we need to compile these components using the Angular compiler. By default, Angular uses Just-In-Time compilation and compiles your entire application (unless you use lazy loading for some of your modules) before loading it and before the user can start interacting with it. An important optimization when going into production is to do this compilation ahead of time. That is, instead of compiling your application each time the user loads it, we compile it as a build step and serve the user an already compiled version of your app. This is great for two reasons: The user doesn't need to wait for the Angular compiler to compile your application before he or she can start using it We don't even need to send the Angular Compiler to the user If you want to learn more about the Angular Compiler and the role of Compilation in Angular take a look at this great article by Victor Savkin.
So now that we have a production-ready version of our app sitting cozy inside the dist folder, the next thing is to use Firebase hosting to bring the baby-gotchi goodness to the world.
The best way to learn how to deploy your app to Firebase is to go to the Firebase Console, select your project, then go to Hosting and click on the Get Started button.
A beautifully looking dialog will open and prompt you to install the firebase-tools command line interface via npm. You install it globally:
PS > npm install - g firebase - tools
And after that you can use it through the firebase command.
First, we’ll need to sign up:
PS > firebase login
And setup your app as a Firebase project using the init command:
PS > firebase init
The init command will trigger a super duper awesome (look at those flames) step-by-step menu that will guide you through the setup process:
You basically need to enable Firebase Hosting and select the dist folder as the one that will hold your application files. As a result, the setup process will create a Firebase config file firebase.json that should look like this:
{ "hosting": { "public": "dist", "rewrites": [ { "source": "**", "destination": "/index.html" } ] } }
Where the rewrites section redirects any url to the source of your app which ensures that the Angular router will take care of every possible route.
The next step is to use this configuration to deploy your site. Type the following command:
PS > firebase deploy
And magic! Your site is now deployed on Firebase. When the deployment finishes take a look at your site by following the URL that the Firebase tools cli displays on your console.
Congratulations! You have deployed your baby-gotchi app into Firebase! Rejoice!!
Up Next! Cloud Functions and PWAs
Let’s make a quick summary of what you have achieved. In this part of the series you continued developing the baby-gotchi baby simulator and created new components to see the baby status, take care and control the baby.
Along the way you learnt a lot of new concepts like:
Using Angular route parameters and ActivatedRoute to load a baby detail view and get hold of the baby id
to load a baby detail view and get hold of the baby id How to use the AngularFireDatabase and FirebaseObjectObservable to get a single baby object and make it available to the template
and to get a single baby object and make it available to the template How to refactor your Angular application to create smaller components with a single responsibility
How to use lots of Angular Material components
How to setup and use nested routes
How to do transactional updates in Firebase to take care or control your baby
Building a production ready Angular application with the help of the Angular cli
The Benefits of Ahead of Time compilation
Deploying your app to Firebase Hosting using the firebase-tools
That was an awful lot of things! Congrats! Pat yourself in the back.
For our next feature, we will develop a baby heartbeat or baby lifecycle that updates the baby status over time using Firebase Cloud Functions. And in the last part of the series, we will give the baby-gotchi an awesome mobile experience by turning it into a Progressive Web App.
Until next time, take care and be awesome and kind!
The next part in the series is ready!Forget about defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk and his long-term, big-money deal. I want the ageless Jaromir Jagr in blue and gold next season.
Signing the 45-year-old Czech wouldn’t be a public relations move akin to the Buffalo Bills’ signing high-maintenance Terrell Owens to a one-year deal back in 2009 — there are real benefits to it. Jagr is a living legend that is not only still productive on the ice, but could add some attitude adjustment to the locker room. If he could be signed to a reasonable two-year deal, perhaps for $2 million per year, I’m all over it.
Still Going Strong
The durable veteran winger played in all 82 games for the Florida Panthers last season, posting 16 goals and 46 points. That total would’ve ranked him fourth on the Sabres’ scoring chart last year.
Jagr averaged seventeen minutes of ice time with the Panthers last year, playing mostly with Jonathan Huberdeau and Vincent Trocheck.
His careers numbers are staggering. He ranks second on the NHL all-time list in points (1,914), third in goals (765), fifth in assists (1,149) and fourth in games played (1,711). There’s no wonder his legend increases every year.
A two-time Stanley Cup champion with the Penguins, Jagr has seen it all in his 22-year career. He’s suited up for the Panthers, Penguins, Washington Capitals, New York Rangers, New Jersey Devils, Boston Bruins, Dallas Stars and Philadelphia Flyers.
Feasting on the Sabres
No one in the NHL is more experienced than Jagr. And no player has more of a field day against the Sabres than the 1990 fifth overall draft pick. In 91 career games against the Sabres, Jagr has 46 goals and 63 assists.
On October 19, 1990, Jagr played his first game in Buffalo at Memorial Auditorium as a rookie with Pittsburgh Penguins. He scored a goal and two points that game and he’s better than a point-per-game player since. “I remember the old rink,” Jagr said. “I hated that noise when they scored a goal.”
That quote, referring to Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium, puts into perspective how long the mulleted wonder has been playing.
His Strength and Butt
Jagr is talented, but his parents also gifted him a prized asset–his butt. He uses it to his advantage more than J.Lo.
http://gty.im/688689228
“I’ve never seen a player use (his butt) to the degree of success that he does,” said Tom Renney, a former coach of Jagr when he played for the New York Rangers. “He’s such a big, strong, imposing man. Other guys sort of do that tactic, but they don’t have the same strength, they don’t have the same size, and they don’t have the puck skills that go along with that combination. He’s really big through the glutes and quads, he’s really massive.”
In fact, he’s often double-teamed, with one person taking his body while the other goes for the puck.
“If you try to play him one-on-one, he’ll eat you up,” added Renney.
The affable winger is still in incredible shape and is obsessed with working out. He claims this dedication is what enables him to compete against men barely half his age in today’s NHL.
Florida is Trying to Keep Him
Florida general manager Dale Tallon has been in touch with Jagr’s agent, Petr Svoboda, and is still trying to lure the him back to the Panthers. If not signed by Saturday, July 1, Jagr will become an unrestricted free agent. That looks to be the path he’s heading down.
The jokester recently posted on social media, complaining that no team wants him.
FA 1994- all GMs called, FA 2017- 0 calls?? pic.twitter.com/7uLJm95CAB — Jaromir Jagr (@68Jagr) June 29, 2017
“I don’t want to talk about anything,” said Jagr when asked if he’s returning to the Panthers back in April. “Just wait and see and whatever happens, happens. Of course, there’s going to be some kind of changes. That’s what the owners want and it’s already starting.”
Just Imagine
The Sabres have already added some depth to their defense, having signed Viktor Antipin from Russia’s Metallurg Magnitogorsk and Nathan Beaulieu from the Montreal Canadiens.
Now, they need to add some help on offense. Last year, they ranked 26th in the league, netting only 201 goals. If they can bring in Jagr at the right price for two years, I say go for it.
Just imagining a player of Jagr’s caliber alongside Jack Eichel is enough to bring the team and the KeyBank Center back to life.Digital content is now consumed more via mobile devices than on PCs (see Mary Meeker’s latest report), a trend that will continue growing throughout this decade.
Inexplicably, however, traditional corporations have still not adjusted to that reality. Visit the homepage of just about any financial service, airline, insurance company, grocery chain, real estate service, etc., and you will usually find a robust set of Web services — and somewhere to the side, almost as an embarrassed afterthought, a couple links to download the company’s app (an app which rarely reaches the same level of usefulness as the website). Most companies outside the tech world (and a surprising number within tech) seem set on continuing an Internet strategy established in the ’90s.
Meanwhile, whole industries are being eaten alive by apps. The dominance of Airbnb over hotels and Uber over taxis is not just attributable to the “collaborative economy.” I’d argue that their success is based just as much on their beautifully designed, easy-to-use apps and their ground-up, mobile-first business models. I’d go further and say this: Any legacy business which does not successfully transition to an app-centric strategy over the next few years will likely lose to a competitor which beats them to it.
Let me explain why, and add some important qualifiers:
Apps Are Personalized Storefronts for 21st Century Businesses
In the consumer Internet’s first two decades, a company’s website effectively acted as its virtual storefront — and consequently, was hobbled by the limitations of the browser, resulting in simplistic, one-to-many services disconnected from the needs of the individual consumer, with a bad user experience and terrible (if any at all) integrated payment mechanisms. PayPal, Google and even Facebook have tried to address these inherent shortcomings of the Web, to mixed results, with Amazon among the few companies to fully bridge the Web/mobile chasm.
Contrast the Web with what an app can offer as a virtual storefront: Apps remember your identity, with no login required after initial install, and can maintain a sustained connection between end user and company that persists whenever the phone is on (that is, almost always). Apps can send push notifications, extending active engagement over time. Not a one-to-many interface like websites, apps are effectively one-to-one. Typically covering a smaller set of use cases, apps are able to tailor their user experience to fit them — “book an appointment,” “order groceries,” etc. And unlike the browser on your computer, apps are integrated into a device we literally carry with us throughout our entire day and are thus more likely to build habitual behavior around.
For these reasons and more, apps are better for business than websites — and by that same token, a poorly designed app directly hurts the overall brand of a business. Banks don’t greet their customers with sticky counters, unresponsive tellers or a confusing floor plan. It’s strange, then, that so many banks have apps that force customers into the user experience equivalent of all that.
These realizations suggest a new Internet strategy which may seem radical, but I believe will soon become common practice:
Turning Web Services Into App Features
With the Web becoming less and less crucial to their customers, traditional businesses must now begin to move their customers (first gently, then firmly) away from their websites and toward their apps. I’m not suggesting that companies should squeeze their entire website into an app, but rather, to rethink their mobile strategy from the ground up, optimizing key Web services for consumption through apps. The next step should be to gradually replace the original Web service with a link to download an app that offers the same service, only on mobile. I’m convinced that those who either make this transition first, or create the best user experience for their apps, will be the leading businesses of this era.
None of this is to suggest that the Web will entirely go away for business, but rather that it should adapt to how we actually consume digital services today. As Peter-Paul Koch writes: “Do people want to put your icon on their home screen? If the answer is Yes, go native. If No, go web. But, I add, not web disguised as native.”
I’d also say that any Web service that requires quite a bit of content creation and/or excessive multitasking between multiple applications will probably require a mouse and keyboard for the foreseeable future. And to be sure, a small but stubborn minority will likely refuse to abandon their Web services, even when the mobile app analog is clearly superior.
At the same time, I’m painfully aware that app-based services have their own set of problems and limitations: Not only are they ill-suited for numerous use cases, they require iOS and Android versions of the same app, and are much harder and far more time-consuming to build and maintain. Which takes me to my final point:
How Search Engines Can Better Serve Our Move to Mobile
Ironically, the transition from Web to mobile is being slowed most by one of the companies that stands to gain from a predominantly mobile Internet: Google. Using your browser to search for a company or service on Google, you’re more likely to first see its homepage or Yelp listing than its app. Google recently added iOS/Android app discovery to its search results, but as a separate tab far less likely to be seen, let alone accessed, and even without deep linking.
Why not include apps related to a given search among the main top-level results? So, for instance, if you Googled “buy San Francisco movie tickets,” instead of just getting an assortment of Web links, you’d also get direct links to download apps best suited to complete your request with a deep link into the app that would keep the context of your search. (Apple could probably integrate this functionality with searches conducted through its Safari browser.)
Imagine an Internet remade for mobile, and the businesses we depend on every day built around that paradigm. It would be an Internet capable of creating direct relationships with each individual user, an Internet best prepared for our future of pervasively connected devices — and an Internet no longer defined by our computers, but instead, at last, by our daily lives.
Anders Lassen is the founder and CEO of Fuse, a UX tool suite for mobile app designers and developers. Reach him @mr60fps.When the major labels descended upon Chicago in hope of landing the Next Big Thing during 2012’s great drill uprising, Lil Durk was among the most promising prospects: a melody-driven, phrase-warping dynamo who turned a trio of mixtapes into a deal with Def Jam and a sizeable national buzz. His breakthrough project, 2013’s Signed to the Streets, produced a catchy street hit ("Dis Ain’t What U Want") and spotlighted his particular brand of Auto-Tuned warbling, equal parts soothing and seething.
After a rough 2014 marked by spotty appearances on the Coke Boys 4 mixtape, a lukewarm Signed to the Streets sequel, and the murder of his cousin, OTF Nunu, things continued to nosedive for Durk in the months leading up to and immediately following his Def Jam debut, Remember My Name. His manager, OTF Chino, was killed last March and his debut, which arrived shortly thereafter, grappled with the same gun violence that took his friend and colleague, only with minimal affect and an uneven, often shoddy, delivery.
Lil Durk, however, soldiered on and earned back some musical capital with the rap ballad "My Beyoncé" featuring Detroit rapper and long-rumored girlfriend Dej Loaf, which perfectly married their similarly cleansing uses of Auto-Tune—for Durk, it purges impurities; for Dej, it makes her vocals smooth and |
70 of us in sending a letter to the President saying, “Keep that out of this discussion about the debt ceiling.” And there was so much pushback from us and from the American public that, indeed, those conversations were pulled out of this debt deal, although obviously we can see not permanently, when you get to this secondary process that’s been outlined here. And I think that we have to rev it up even more, because I think, as Dean said, these are programs that the American public really cares about. They’re programs that really benefit the middle class. And, you know, Dean and I have had this discussion. If we’re going to have any conversation about Social Security, it needs to be about how you raise the income threshold, instead of raising retirement age and cutting back on benefits.
And my fear is that this joint committee that is chosen, Republicans and Democrats, that you will have the Democratic leadership saying, you know, we need to choose a group of people who are going to consider everything, as has been outlined, and the Republicans will choose the hard-liners, and that sounds like a deal, to me, that we cannot win. And so—and the other thing is, I don’t know that I put that much stake in a process of six Republicans and six Democrats on a joint super committee, that—you know, really, when you have people who want to tear down government, they would love nothing better than to go to that sequestration process, because that’s exactly what will happen.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, what about this? What kind of power do you have with this little Super Congress in place? Will it be open? Will we hear, watch these hearings, their reports? And Dean Baker, you just said that it’s been agreed that both the Democrats and the Republicans, none of them will be for increasing taxes on any sector? Is that what you just said?
DEAN BAKER: Well, the Republican leadership has said that it’s going to be a condition. That’s what they’re promising their right wing, that a condition of being appointed to the committee is that you will not—you will not support any tax increase. The Democrats haven’t said that. I’m just saying the precedent has been that the Democratic leadership tends to appoint the most conservative or moderate members, I should say. I’d love to see Donna there. I don’t think she will be, you know.
One other thing I just wanted to point out. We were talking before about the media. The Progressive Caucus, of course, had its own budget. And that—I didn’t see that covered once in the Washington Post, New York Times, National Public Radio. So here you had a budget that was endorsed, 70-80 members of Congress—that’s a lot of members of Congress—never even gets mentioned. I mean, maybe you don’t like it; that’s fine. But, you know, it at least should be on the table, something that people could hear about. And, you know, I know members of the Progressive Caucus; that’s how I know about it. But you didn’t get it from the news media.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there. I want to thank you both very much for being with us, Dean Baker, economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and Donna Edwards, Democratic Congress member from Maryland, one of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Progressive Caucus who voted against the deficit deal.Share
CES 2017 brought a number of new and updated notebooks, with Intel’s seventh-generation CPUs and Nvidia’s Pascal graphics architecture making their way into the mainstream. One of the most anticipated machines is the update to Dell’s XPS 15 workstation, which was officially announced after a brief unintentional outing on Dell’s website.
The new Dell XPS 15 features up to Intel’s quad-core Core i7-7700HQ CPU, Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1050 GPU, and up to 32GB RAM, making it a powerful mobile workstation. There’s been some confusion, however, as to whether Dell was jumping on the Windows Hello password-less login bandwagon, and that’s now been clarified, as Windows Central reports.
Many new notebooks feature Windows Hello, which allows users to securely log into their Windows 10 PCs with one form of biometric sensor or another. One of the more popular options is facial-recognition scanners, which use infrared scanners to make sure the person who’s looking at the screen is an authorized user. Another is the time-tested fingerprint scanner, which allows a user to swipe a finger and log in via Windows Hello.
When news of Dell’s updated XPS 15 first broke, it appeared that it would include a fingerprint scanner supporting Windows Hello. Looking at the initial product listings on Dell’s website, however, which showed models shipping in early February 2017, a fingerprint scanner couldn’t be found anywhere.
Apparently, the reason is relatively simple: A fingerprint scanner option was coming but wasn’t made available on the earliest configurable systems. According to Dell, “Folks should see configurations for XPS 15 on Dell.com get updated to include the fingerprint reader option during the first week of February.”
As Windows Central reports, the fingerprint scanner option is now available for the new XPS 15 at Dell.com. There’s even more good news: the newest XPS 13 notebook also now offers the same fingerprint option, which for all applicable models is selectable as the “Backlit keyboard, with fingerprint scanner” option for the reasonable additional cost of $24.50.
If you want an XPS 13 or 15 with Windows Hello support, then you’ll want to make sure to select the appropriate configuration. If you’ve already pre-ordered a new XPS 15 without the fingerprint scanner, then you’ll want to contact Dell and switch out your order.
Story originally published in January 2017. Updated on 2-2-2017 by Mark Coppock: Added information that the fingerprint scanner option is now available for purchase.(For the next few posts, I’m going to introduce readers to the different feature teams in the Managed Languages org. Today, I’m starting this with a focus on the performance team.)
Back in 2000, I found myself assigned to be the performance lead of the Visual Basic team, and my first assigned goal was to drive the performance marks of the (then) forthcoming Visual Basic.NET to be in line with the numbers for Visual Basic 6.0. The primary focus was on the VB runtime APIs at first. That was a relatively simple task; APIs are nicely discrete bits of code, easy to measure and easy to evaluate and so, within a couple of months, I’d worked with the team to get the APIs at parity (or better). “Ah,” said I, “this performance work is so simple that I wonder why everyone is challenged by it. I must have a special gift for performance or something!”
This peculiar form of self-delusion lasted about a week, until the next challenge arose, which involved improving the shutdown speed of Visual Basic.NET itself, which was taking over a minute for large solutions. That functionality was not in code that was nicely constrained like APIs, and so it took me a long time (probably longer than it should have, in retrospect) to realize that the process was blocking on background compilation even when shutting down, instead of just abandoning the compilation altogether. And, having fixed that, I then moved on to tuning F5 build times, which involved several threads all needing to get their tasks done quickly and yet in a semi-serial fashion. None of them were operating incorrectly with respect to themselves; it was the combination of them that were causing slowdowns. That took days and days of investigation (and a lot of collaboration among several teams) to lock down. In that investigation, I encountered the blunt truths about performance: there is no perfect solution to a general performance problem, and also that you are never truly done tuning your product, because other dependent code can and will change around you.
Which brings us to 2014…
Now, in the intervening 14 years, the tools to evaluate performance have of course become more powerful, and we can find and address issues far faster than in days of yore, when code inspection & stopwatch timing was roughly 75% of the job. At the same time, however, the applications themselves have become so complex (either internally or with respect to the environment in which they run) that solving problems after the fact still creates a big challenge. In fact, it’s become even more imperative to design for performance up front, because there are more ways than ever to get whammied. During my recent stint in XBOX, for example, my team over there worked hard to generate performant code for the back end of SmartGlass, only to discover near the end that we hadn’t accounted for the inherent latency of using SSL between us and the data store – it was not a code issue per se, but a limitation of the environment that we hadn’t properly designed for. (Fortunately, our design was modular enough that we were able to put in some caching at relatively low cost to the project and still meet our performance goals on schedule!)
As we all know and as I allude to above, you’ll save a lot of time and effort if you design for performance in the first place. That’s always been a Microsoft tenet (indeed, our interview questions often touch upon generating performant code), and we take it very seriously on the Managed Languages team. But, since some performance issues will slip through just due to human nature, and since designs which seemed good at first may prove to be problematic afterwards, ongoing vigilance is paramount – constant monitoring is the key to success.
Performance and Roslyn
With Roslyn, therefore, we treat performance exactly as if it was a feature area which plans for specific work and which has progress presented to the team at each end-of-sprint showcase. It was designed for performance up-front, and during development we’ve constantly re-assessed & re-tuned the architecture to make it adhere to the goals that we’ve set for it. We have a performance lead (Paul) who runs a performance “v-team” (virtual team) drawn from the ranks of Managed Languages engineers as needed, and who works with a “performance champ” (Murad), telemetry champ (Kevin), and perf PM (Alex) to oversee the state of our performance on a daily basis.
This performance v-team has goals that it needs to meet and/or maintain, and these goals are drawn from the metrics of the most recently shipped product. This v-team is directly accountable to me, Manish, and Devindra (the latter two are our test manager and group program manager, respectively), and the three of us meet with the v-team every week to assess the previous week’s performance efforts and to create goals for the upcoming week. (We then are furthermore accountable to our upper management for meeting goals – and believe me, they are very serious about it!) The v-team also work with other teams in Visual Studio to find “wins” that improve both sides, and have been very successful at this.
As with any other product, performance is assessed with respect to two main categories: speed of operation and usage of memory. Trading off between the two is sometimes a tough challenge (I have to admit that more than once we’ve all thought “Hmm, can’t we just ship some RAM with our product?” :-)), and so we have track a number of key scenarios to help us fine-tune our deliverables. These include (but are not limited to):
Build timing of small, medium, and (very) large solutions
Typing speed when working in the above solutions, including “goldilocks” tests where we slow the typing entry to the speed of a human being
IDE feature speed (navigation, rename, formatting, pasting, find all references, etc…)
Peak memory usage for the above solutions
All of the above for multiple configurations of CPU cores and available memory
These are all assessed & reported daily, so that we can identify & repair any check-in that introduced a regression as soon as possible, before it becomes entrenched. Additionally, we don’t just check for the average time elapsed on a given metric; we also assess the 98th & 99.9th percentiles, because we want good performance all of the time, not just some of the time.
We also use real-world telemetry to check our performance, both from internal Microsoft users as well as from customers. While automated metrics are all well and good, and very necessary for getting a day-to-day check on the performance of the project, “real world use” data is very useful for understanding how the product is actually running for folks. When the metric values conflict (for example, on typing), this leads us to improve the automated tests, which in turn makes it easier for us to reliably reproduce any problems and fix them. So, whenever you check that box that allows Visual Studio to send data to us, you are directly helping us to improve the product!
So, hopefully this gives you a bit of an insight into the performance aspects of our work. In the next post in a couple of weeks, I’ll talk a bit about how language planning works.
‘Til next time,
–Matt–*Perez Hilton has offered to join the Celebrity Big Brother 2017 line up after Ray J left.
It was confirmed last night that Ray J had quit the house after one week, with'medical reasons' supposedly behind his exit.
Rylan Clark-Neal confirmed Ray J's departure on Bit On The Side yesterday but didn't give any more details.
Former CBB housemate Perez was quick to offer his services via Twitter, although only "if the price is right".
He took aim at the current Celebrity Big Brother 2017 cast, describing the all stars show as a "Boring season."
Before this year's CBB kicked off, Perez claimed he had been invited to return but show bosses hadn't offered him enough money.
He said: "The price was not right, okay! It was way off.
“I wanted to get paid double and I think I’m worth it."
It's not clear if Ray J will be replaced yet but Perez isn't the only celeb putting themselves forward.
Charlotte Crosby has also revealed hopes of returning to Celebrity Big Brother.
And she wants last year's winner and rumoured boyfriend Stephen Bear to join her.
The pair, who are currently working together on new MTV show Just Tattoo Of Us, apparently weren't asked back for the All Star series.
Speaking to The Sun newspaper, Charlotte claimed it wasn't an All Stars series with no winners of the show on the line up.
"I don’t think [the producers] even called me about it!" Charlotte told the tabloid. “Watching it now I’m feeling nostalgic and I’m missing it…imagine if me, Scotty T and Stephen Bear were in, it would be hilarious.
“Stephen won the series last year so it would make sense to have him in there. It’s not really All Stars when none of the past winners are in!"
Celebrity Big Brother 2017 continues nightly on Channel 5.
Despite Ray J's exit, this week's eviction will still go ahead on Friday night.Joey Chestnut continues to bestride the world of competitive eating like the magnificent hot dog consuming colossus he is.
On Tuesday, the 33-year-old won the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest for the 10th time, breaking his own record by snarfing down 72 frankfurters and buns like they were mere cocktail sausages. “There’s no secret, I love to eat, and I love doing it, I love to win, so I had to figure out my body and push it to the limit,” Chestnut said after his victory.
The women’s competition was won by an equally fierce competitor: Miki Sudo’s immaculate consumption of 41 hot dogs was good enough to deliver her a fourth title.
ESPN (@espn) Among the greats. pic.twitter.com/WH3oMY6ktB
Thousands of spectators flocked to New York’s Coney Island to see the elite of the competitive eating world do battle in the annual Fourth of July contest. Five arrests were made after protestors attempted to unfurl a banner during the men’s competition. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals had been handing our vegan hot dogs outside the event but said the arrests were not part of their campaign.
Chestnut’s victory was made all the more impressive by the fact that he saw off last year’s champion, and his fierce rival, Matt “The Megatoad” Stonie, who could only manage 48 franks and buns over the allotted 10 minutes.
Chestnut prepares for competition by fasting for 48 hours. “I slowly eat less and less and make sure I’m empty the day of,” he told the MLB Network last week. “Today [Friday] I’ll have a pretty big salad and tomorrow will be less. And Sunday and Monday, nothing.”
During the competition, the eaters are allowed to dip the dogs and buns in liquid to ease the food down their throats. After a competition, Chestnut needs even more liquids. “I’m thirsty,” he said. “It’s a lot of sodium. I’m drinking water that day, that night. I’m craving in the morning – or when I wake up later – I’m craving dairy.”A pack of modafinil. Photo by Hannah Ewens
Chances are you've heard of the drug modafinil. You know the one: the "smart drug," sometimes called the Limitless pill, that turns sleep-deprived college students and young professionals into energetic work horses.
It turns out modafinil can do even more: It's a promising treatment for stimulant drug abuse, as well as neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. It's also been shown to normalize cognitive function in sleep-deprived populations (which is basically everyone these days) and is the drug of choice for astronauts on the International Space Station and members of the armed forces on long duration missions. And since modafinil is non-addictive, it's only about as risky as drinking a few cups of coffee.
But unlike the UK, Australia, India, Germany, Canada, Mexico, and other countries that have approved modafinil as a non-controlled prescription drug, the United States still classifies modafinil as a Schedule IV controlled substance, putting it alongside drugs like Xanax and Valium. Given America's ongoing amphetamine crisis and generalized sleep deprivation, legalizing a safer alternative like modafinil makes a lot of sense. So why don't we?
Modafinil was developed in the 1970s by a French professor of experimental medicine to treat narcolepsy and other sleep disorders. After decades of clinical trials in France, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) okayed modafinil as a treatment for narcolepsy in 1998. In 1999, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) classified modafinil as a Schedule IV substance.
At the time, there wasn't enough research to clearly show modafinil's mechanism of action. Modafinil didn't appear to directly affect specific neurotransmitters, the chemicals released by nerve cells to communicate with other nerve cells. Instead, it seemed to act indirectly on several different neurotransmitters (namely serotonin, dopamine, and GABA) unlike other stimulants such as Adderall, which work more directly on the dopamine system.
The DEA noted in its ruling that the behavioral effects brought on by modafinil were similar to other stimulants, like cocaine, which do directly affect the dopamine system. Dopamine acts as a sort of natural reward system in the brain and is largely associated with addictive drugs, which gave the DEA reasonable concern.
Yet not all dopaminergic drugs are made equal. Some drugs, like MDMA, work by increasing the release of dopamine in the brain. Others, like cocaine, function as dopamine reuptake inhibitors. That means when the dopamine released by one nerve cell is not entirely absorbed by the receiving nerve cell, the leftover dopamine is blocked from reentering the original nerve cell and stays in the gap between the two nerve cells. It's this extracellular dopamine that gets you feeling the way you do when you do a line. Modafinil is also a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, but it's not nearly as effective as taking something like cocaine.
"It doesn't matter how much modafinil you take—you can never shut off the dopamine transporter as well as a little bit of cocaine or amphetamine would," Peter Morgan, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University, told me. "That's part of the reason why people don't really feel high when taking modafinil."
For that reason, research has shown that modafinil is actually an effective way of treating cocaine and amphetamine addiction. If you're chronically using strong dopamine blockers like cocaine, your brain essentially adjusts to the presence of this extracellular dopamine as the new normal. If you then suddenly take the cocaine out of the equation, the brain has a much harder time functioning. Modafinil can function as a safe alternative to coke—it's still a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, but its effects are way milder and there's virtually no addictive potential.
Although modafinil has been successfully used to treat cocaine addiction in certain populations, this isn't one of its FDA-approved uses—so insurance companies won't pay for it as a treatment. This means that those who need it most are forced to pay out of pocket for access, which generally isn't an option for someone recovering from a serious coke habit. When I called a pharmacy to inquire about pricing, I was told 30 100mg pills would cost $870.
Some who use modafinil off-label order it illegally from producers in countries like India for far cheaper (about $2 per 200mg pill), but also risk getting a diluted product. Others turn to "approved" prescriptions for drugs like Adderall, which may accomplish the same results but come with far more risk (namely, that Adderall itself can be addictive).
"There is no question in my mind that modafinil is much, much safer to use than any of the amphetamines or amphetamine-like drugs, like Adderall or Methylphenidate [Ritalin]," said Morgan. "It's not clear to me that it's substantially worse than caffeine, but it's definitely much better than the amphetamines."
Part of the issue is that pharmaceutical companies aren't too keen on re-introducing modafinil as an addiction treatment. "There isn't a lot of [corporate] support for pushing modafinil as a treatment for cocaine dependence," Morgan added. "It's hard to get any drug company interested in a treatment for cocaine dependence because no brand wants their brand associated with cocaine dependence."
But plenty of people are using modafinil for other things as well—most popularly, as a cognitive enhancer.
Barbara Sahakian, a neuroscientist at Cambridge, conducted a survey on off-label modafinil use after she realized a number of her perfectly healthy colleagues were using it at work. Her 2007 report in Nature surveyed 1,400 people from 60 countries who had used drugs like modafinil or Ritalin. The majority of them used them to increase concentration rather than for medical reasons, and a full one third of the respondents acquired their drugs over the internet, rather than with a prescription.
"The big issue is that there are no long-term safety studies in healthy people with drugs such as modafinil," Sahakian told me. Even though the drug seems to be wholly beneficial, there just aren't enough people researching it to change the FDA classification.
Like any drug, modafinil is not for everyone. Some people experience stomach pains or headaches, and, ultimately, there is no substitute for natural cognitive enhancers like getting more sleep or exercise.
But for those who need it for addiction treatment, to make up for cognitive deficits induced by overwork, or are unable to adjust their lifestyles to accommodate more sleep and exercise, making modafinil accessible could be a godsend. And as of now, the United States is one of the only countries to regulate modafinil as a controlled substance, approving its use only for a handful of sleeping disorders.
The first step toward legalizing modafinil is promoting it as a safe alternative to the widely available stimulants used today and encouraging more research to be done on long-term use. De-scheduling a drug in the United States is a long and arduous process, but given the benefits of legalizing modafinil, the struggle could be worth it.
Follow Daniel Oberhaus on Twitter.by Keith Stroup, NORML Legal Counsel
Since 1996, when California voters approved the medical use of marijuana, most of the high-profile political progress that has been made towards legalizing marijuana has been made in the United States. And starting with Colorado and Washington, all of the full legalization experiments have been homegrown.
But that does not mean we should not be looking to other countries for successful experiments and policies. Drug use and abuse is worldwide, so the solution to the destructive war on drug users must also be worldwide.
The Portugal Experiment
In 2001, the Portugal legislature bravely enacted a comprehensive form of drug decriminalization, in which all criminal penalties were removed for personal drug possession and use offenses — reclassifying them as administrative violations. Instead of arresting individuals in possession of personal-use amounts of any drug, defined as less than a ten-day supply of any drug — a gram of heroin, ecstasy, or amphetamine; two-grams of cocaine; or 25 grams of marijuana — they are now given a violation and ordered to appear before a rather ominous sounding “dissuasion commission.”
The possession of larger amounts of drugs and drug sales continue to be criminal matters for which an offender is subject to arrest and prosecution.
The “dissuasion commission,” which is comprised of one local legal official and two health and social service professionals, first determines whether the individual is addicted, and if so to what degree. It then determines whether the individual is referred to a voluntary treatment program, given a fine, or receives other administrative sanctions. The majority of cases are simply suspended, and the violator receives no sanction. According to Nuno Capaz, a sociologist who serves on the Lisbon “dissuasion panel,” between 80 and 85 percent of the people who are referred to the panels today are caught with hashish or cannabis.
For persistent offenders, or those identified as addicts, these panels can order sanctions or treatment, and recreational users may face fines or community service. If an addict refuses treatment, they are required to check in regularly with their family doctor (Portugal has a free national healthcare program), and if they fail, the local police remind them of their obligation. And those running the Portuguese system attribute this close working relationship between the police and the public health officials as crucial to their success. “This small change actually makes a huge change in terms of police officers’ work,” says Capaz. “Of course, every policy officer knows where people hang out to smoke joints. If they wanted to they would just go there and pick up the same guy over and over. That doesn’t happen.”
Flying in the face of the more prevalent “lock-em-up and throw-away-the-key” anti-drug policies popular at the time in most countries, especially the United States, there were initially fears that Portugal would become overrun with heroin addicts from all over Europe, and the government received a lot of criticism for their experimental policy from such staid groups as the International Narcotics Control Board – part of the UN drug convention system.
What Decriminalization Really Means
Decriminalization was a half-way measure originally recommended for marijuana policy in the U.S. by the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse in 1972. It says consumers, who generally comprise up to 90 percent of the marijuana arrests, should be removed from the criminal justice system, but that commercial sales of marijuana should remain illegal. While that is obviously an improvement over total prohibition, where users are also subject to arrest and jail, it generally is thought to lead to an increase in demand without any legal supply — a boon to the illegal black market and those willing to take the risk to sell to the newly legal consumers.
Seventeen states in the U.S. have enacted a version of marijuana decriminalization (some have eliminated all penalties for minor possession offenses; others have reduced the penalty to a fine-only). But more recently states that wish to end prohibition have looked toward full legalization, where the commercial market is regulated and taxed. Nonetheless, decriminalization remains an option for those states that no longer wish to treat smokers as criminals, but do not yet feel politically comfortable with full legalization.
Not The Results In Portugal That Were Expected
But the results from Portugal seem to dispel those initial fears that decriminalizing drugs would result in an increase in dangerous drug use, especially among addicts.
First, and most importantly, decriminalization in Portugal for a decade and a half has not led to any major increases in the rate of drug use. There were minor increases in drug use during the initial year (2001), but the rates of drug use after that have not changed significantly, or, in some cases, have actually declined since 2001, and remain below the average rates in both Europe and the United States. And importantly, adolescent use, and use by people who are deemed “dependent” or who inject drugs, has decreased in Portugal since 2003.
So decriminalization may yet prove to be an attractive alternative to prohibition for the more dangerous drugs in the United States. No one wants to see a cocaine store on the corner, but neither do most people want to ruin an individual’s life with a long prison sentence for the use of cocaine. If it is a problem, it is a medical one, not a criminal justice problem.
And Portugal has experienced more than a 60 percent decrease in the number of people arrested and prosecuted for drug offenses. More than 80 percent of the cases coming before the “dissuasion commissions” are perceived to have no problems and receive no sanction.
The percentage of prisoners in Portuguese prisons for drug offenses has been reduced from a high of 44 percent to the current rate of 13 percent. And drug overdose deaths have decreased from 80 in 2001 to 16 in 2012. In the U.S., for comparison, more than 14,000 people died from prescription opioid overdoses alone each year.
“There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal,” Portugal’s Drug Czar Dr. Joao Goulão explained, according to Drug Policy Alliance. He attributed this shift to “a set of policies that target reduction of both supply and demand, including measures of prevention, treatment, harm reduction and social reinsertion.” Adding that, “[t]he biggest effect has been to allow the stigma of drug addiction to fall, to let people speak clearly and to pursue professional help without fear.”
And he strongly favors a policy of harm reduction. “I think harm reduction is not giving up on people,” Dr. Goulão said, according to Vice, “…assuming that even if someone is still using drugs, that person deserves the investment of the state in order to have a better and longer life.”
And even the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has concluded that “Portugal’s policy has reportedly not led to an increase in drug tourism. It also appears that a number of drug-related problems has decreased.” And some leading independent researchers investigating the Portugal experiment wrote in the British Journal of Criminology in 2010 that “contrary to predictions, the Portuguese decriminalization did not lead to major increases in drug use. Indeed, evidence indicates reductions in problematic use drug-related harms and criminal justice overcrowding.”
So What Can We Learn From Portugal
First, we can begin to stop treating so harshly illicit drug users, who use something other than marijuana. Sure heroin and cocaine and methamphetamine are more potentially dangerous than marijuana; but that does not mean those drug users should be treated like criminals. If, like Portugal, we can minimize abuse, greatly reduce the number of people arrested on drug charges, reduce overdose deaths, reduce adolescent drug use and problematic drug abuse, greatly reduce our prison population, and still maintain a safe, free and open society, then why would we not want to begin to move in that direction?
Also, we can learn from Portugal the importance of adopting a policy of harm reduction that recognizes the value of all lives, including those who may, for a time, use dangerous drugs, and to provide needed mental health services to those whom we can identify as problem drug abusers. Portugal seems to make it clear that their success simply could not have been possible without making health care professionals available to those who will avail themselves of that help.
And third, we can and should learn that the stigma of drug use or abuse — regardless of the drug involved — needs to be eliminated, to create an environment in which individuals feel free to seek help without fear of being labeled a bad person. It’s time to treat drug abuse as a medical issue, not primarily a criminal justice issue.An absolutely astonishing story was quietly reported recently without much fanfare. The story was unquestionably viral, it made the rounds on the internet, but it never got the major boost of coverage from the major media to propel it into the national debate.
Why was this the case?
One can only guess, but perhaps it was because the story was one of the greatest examples of the nature of government and the people who populate it.
That story was of a rather innocuous headline, 'yellow lights are being shortened' all over the United States.
Seems insignificant?
Hardly.
When yellow lights are shortened from 5 seconds to 3, a dramatic increase in accidents occurs. Yet, something else occurs besides more people dying...
Red light camera revenue is increased.
The government is here to help is it not? Their whole purpose is to keep us safe? We're endlessly harangued about how we need to give up our liberties for safety... Surely they will choose keeping people safe instead of netting more revenue at the cost of actively causing more people to die?
Unfortunately, while you or I would choose without question to keep people safe, that's not the nature of the people who populate the reigns of government. They chose more deaths and more revenue.
The government would rather you die if it means they get more revenue. That is a "trade off" they're more than willing to make.
Think about that next time someone tells you the government is "here to help."
___
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com. He doesn't want to be ruled by people who care more about revenue than helping the people they claim to protect. You can read more of his commentary here.Action:"On June 7 1942, the Germans launched another assault on Sevastopol. The company of scouts, in which Maria Baida fought, held positions on the Mekenzievy mountains. Despite the superiority in numbers, the Nazis could not break the desperate resistance of the Soviet soldiers.Maria was in the very epicenter of the "battle of hell", but showed that she was a brave, sometimes even super-desperate fighter - when ammunition ended in the machine gun, the girl fearlessly ranthrough the parapet, returning with captured automatic weapons. During one of these sorties, a German grenade exploded nearby, hitting the contused and wounded girl in the head and fainted.Baida came to herself in the evening and it was getting dark. As it later turned out, the Germans broke through the defenses to the right of the scouts' positions and moved into the rear. Of the whole company, only one officer and a dozen fighters remained alive - they were captured by the Germans.Quickly assessing the situation (in the trenches of the scouts there were no more than 20 Nazis and they were all in one place and not far from the prisoners), Maria decided to attack. Due to the suddenness and quick reaction of the captured scouts, who in turn attacked the Germans as soon as Maria opened fire on the enemy. In this skirmish, 15 soldiers and one officer were killed, four soldiers killed with a butt, while the German commander and eight soldiers were forced to run. Our soldiers captured a machine gun and assault rifles.Knowing well the scheme of the minefields, Maria Baida led the wounded soldiers to their own safety under the cover of darkness."Details:No. 6183Please enable Javascript to watch this video
RICHMOND, Va. -- Yes, Richmond's floodwall has worked like a charm - a lucky charm.
It's 21 years old, cost $140-plus million and is still a virgin. It's never had to close all of its gates and hold back the mighty James River in a major flood.
It's a kind of version of Murphy's Law. You know we would've had a big flood by now without it. It's like getting a flat tire the one time you don't have your jack or your spare.
Richmond has always been a town that has had a hard time keeping its bottom dry. Shockoe Bottom has seen so many floods, one of its premiere music venues was called the Flood Zone.
Check out the historic pictures of some of the floods since the 1870s in the video portion of this story.
President Ronald Reagan signed off on the floodwall in 1986 after Hurricane Juan pushed the river up almost 31 feet, which is just under the record set by Agnes in 1972.
Thus began one of the most ambitious floodwall projects in the United States.
For much of the last century, the floods came regularly, sometimes every few years. But not since the floodwall was built, save for a some partial flooding in 1996 that tested part of the wall, but not its keystone components.
Talk about a mile-long rabbit's foot. (Here's the floodwall bio from the city)
No, you can't count the flood from uphill caused by Tropical Storm Gaston, even though the floodwall made it worse. (Ok, that's not so lucky.)
Walkers and joggers and wildlife photographers have found the great walls to be a great companions and platforms.
But you can bet there is a small army of engineering types and government bean counters just waiting to see if our floodwall will stand up to the task.
So is it ready? It's tested regularly, most recently in June. So it should be good to go if Joaquin comes calling and stalling.
Was the $140 million worth it, along with the blocked views and the heavy masonry curtain between us and the river? (It certainly is an ugly slab of concrete. Efforts to beautify it with hanging murals eventually stalled because of, in part, bickering over the images.)
Certainly, the floodwall led to massive redevelopment of Shockoe Bottom and parts of Shockoe Slip.
Thousands more people live there now than before the it was built.
And one big storm will have us really feeling lucky about our grand floodwall.
But the peeps just downriver, look out... We built a great, big, smooth concrete chute pointed right at you!I love that the PC covers so much ground. It can match and outdo the very highest-end console gaming, while just as easily |
signs like he ones Soros uses at his planned protests Donate here: https://www.crowdrise.com/need-money-for-cost-of-signs-for-the-arrestsoros-protest/fundraiser/halftheskyswfl Signs will be given out by leaders at the protests! Thousands of Americans will come together at hundreds of peaceful gatherings in cities and towns across the nation, including outside the White House, to protest and call for the arrest of George Soros following the revelation Soros-Funded Orgs are behind violent anti-trump protests across America.WARNING AMERICANS! #PurpleRevolution #TrumpProtests is how #Soros destroyed Ukraine, Syria, Egypt etc. Now it is us! Hillary said it so mild concession speech. One does not really lose. Just goes in different direction. Hired #thugs for #PurpleRevolution. We are Witnessing Their Back-up Plan #purplerevolution! The Riots, Destruction and Attempted Take-over! Clintons are the strings, the liberals are the puppets, soros is the puppet master. About George Soros: Soros is a tactician for the banks and the military industrial complex. He's supported war and made people suffer in too many places in this world. He is a multi-billionaire who despises America and all of our traditions and values. He was born August 12, 1930 in Hungary, as Gyorgy Schwartz. During World War Two he collaborated with the Nazis while 70% of his fellow Jews were killed. When asked about this, in an interview with reporter Steve Kroft, Soros showed no feelings of remorse or guilt and stated that he enjoyed it. He relishes the take down of governments and has started a western spring in America to take down Donald Trump.He is a fanatic who believes in open borders and one world foreign policy.His philanthropy of nearly five Billion dollars funds anything adverse to our traditional American values, such as atheism, drug legalization, gun control, mass immigration, and many others. He recently gave six million dollars to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Some of his organizations include MoveOn.org, The Apollo Alliance, Media Matters for America, The Tides Foundation, ACLU, Acorn, Project on Death In America, La Raza, and many more. The orgs are also promoting the Anti Trump protests. To add insult to injury, one of Soros’ groups is masquerading as conservative and launched an online advertising campaign in defense of bringing Obama’s Syrian refugees here to the US. The name of this group is The Foundation To Promote Open Society. Watch out for this deceitful site, which leads to a micro-site at AmericaisBetter.org, where you find quotes from conservatives which they have distorted in order to bring their progressive message. The site also quotes “unnamed security experts” who supposedly support the screening process. The battle for the sovereignty of America is now between President-elect Donald Trump and open borders globalist George Soros. Move On.org, a liberal activist group that has exploded all across the nation, is funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations. It is now well known that Move On.org was responsible for many of the riots and protests at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies,... some of which became violent and dangerous. We will gather on the following dates below in cities across the nation to urge our government to indict and arrest George Soros so that he may be brought to justice for perpetuating violence, terrorism, and illicit drug trade and related violence on American. Local leaders are now being sought to coordinate these protests. See below for the list of locations where protests are scheudled to be held on November 26, 2016. We want him arrested and held responsible for his actions! George Soros video they tried to bury https://twitter.com/jpm05880/status/798283623963250688 Soros/Clinton Color revolution https://twitter.com/realVivaEuropa/status/797824780036689920 Soros orchestrating color revolution against Trump: Analyst http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/11/13/493455/Trump-Soros-US-Clinton-protest-Jones Breaking Evidence: Same people before election are same ones organizing the Trump Protests for Soros DNC https://twitter.com/ChatRevolve/status/797599326604328960 George Soros starter pack https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/53xdu9/george_soros_knowledge_starter_pack/ Top Ten reasons George Soros is dangerous http://humanevents.com/2011/04/02/top-10-reasons-george-soros-is-dangerous/ Soros-Funded Orgs Behind Violent Anti-Trump Protests Across America http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/11/soros-funded-orgs-behind-violent-anti-trump-protests-across-america/ The Clintons and Soros launch purple revolution http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-11/clintons-and-soros-launch-americas-purple-revolution ARREST GEORGE SOROS Use existing criminal and civil laws to shut down his anti-American juggernaut. http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/262364/arrest-george-soros-matthew-vadum Guide to George Soros Network: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977 LEAKED LIST SHOWS FERGUSON PROTESTERS PAID BY SOROS FRONT GROUP http://www.infowars.com/leaked-list-shows-ferguson-protesters-paid-by-soros-front-group/ Deport George Soros: https://www.change.org/p/donald-trump-deport-george-soros?recruiter=632082050&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=share_twitter_responsive Violence Being Arranged for Trump Inauguration: Group Openly Recruiting for "No Peaceful Transition" #disruptJ20 http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines-2016/violence-being-arranged-for-trump-inauguration-group-openly-recruiting-for-no-peaceful-transition-disruptj20?mc_cid=42bec4c65a&mc_eid=2d623cfd7d USA 1. Chicago, Illinois – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Daley Plaza Downtown, 50 W Washington St, Chicago, IL 60602 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/343424982698716/ 2. Atlanta, Georgia – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: 1000 Robert E. Lee Blvd., Stone Mountain, GA Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/170273646770044/ 3. Wilke, Barr PA – 2:00 PM 11/26/2016 Location: Public Square Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1181251135301886/ 4. Detroit, Michigan – 2:00 PM 11/26/2016 Location: Hart Plaza, 1 Nelson Mandela Dr, Detroit, MI 48226 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/942271272584451/ 5. Hollywood, Florida – 9:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Young Circle, Hollywood, FL Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/372926123039746/ 6. Houston, Texas – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: MacGregor Park, Houston, TX Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/535217083354081/ 7. Los Angeles, California – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Federal Building West, 11000 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles 90024 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/231370507283546/ 8. New York, NY – 11:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location:New York Civil Liberties Union - NYCLU 125 Broad St, Fl 19th, New York, New York 10004 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/189307648195389/ 9. Phoenix, Arizona – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Cesar Chavez Plaza, 201 W. Washington St, Phoenix, AZ 85003 Event: 10. Little, Rock Arkansas - 10 am 11/26/2016 Location: Aransas State Capitol 5th and Woodlane Sts, Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 11. Peachtree City, Georgia - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location 216 Peachtree Street NE - Outside Marta Station, Atlanta, GA 30303 12. Fort Worth Texas – 9:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: 420 Main St, Fort Worth, Texas 76102 **************************************************************************** 13.New York, New York 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 250 W. 55th St New York, NY Office of Soros Fund Management **************************************************************************** 14. Washington DC - 11 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Trump International Hotel 1100 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20004 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1838525149755867/ 15. Miami Florida - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Bayfront Park, Miami, Florida Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1796303357252810/ 16. Washington, DC 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 1730 Pennsylvania Ave NW #700, Washington, DC 20006 **************************************************************************** 17. New York, New York -11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Open Society Foundation, Office of George Soros 224 W 57th St, New York, NY 10019 **************************************************************************** 18. Baltimore, MD -11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 201 North Charles Street, Suite 1300 Baltimore MD 21201 Open Society Institute–Baltimore, office of George Soros **************************************************************************** 19. Minneapolis, Minnesota 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 75 Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard., St Paul, MN 55155 20. Worcester, Massachusettes - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Worcester Common Park, Central Business District Worcester, MA 01608 21. Taunton, Massachusettes - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: TBD 22. Pottsville, Pennslyania - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Schuylkill County Courthouse, 401 N 2nd St, Pottsville, PA 17901 23. Albany, New York - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: NY State Capital Building 198 State St, Albany, New York 12207 24. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Market Square, Pittsburgh 210 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222 25. Baton, Rouge, LA - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Mall of Louisianna (outside Bebe) 6401 Bluebonnet Blvd, Baton Rouge, LA 70836 26.Bangor, Maine -11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 1 Railroad St, Bangor, Maine 04401 27. Naples, Florida -11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Corner of 5th avenue and Tamiami Trail **************************************************************************** 28. New York, NY - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Outside Sitaras Fitness 150 E 58th St, New York, NY 10155 Where George Soros works out **************************************************************************** 29. Virginia, Beach VA - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: TBA 30. Wilmington, North Carolina - 11 am 11/26/ 2016 Location: TBA 31. Charleston, South Carolina - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: TBA 32. LindenHurst, Long Island - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location TBA DISCLAIMER The information contained in this paste is for general information purposes only. In no event will we be liable for any loss or damage including without limitation, indirect or consequential loss or damage, or any loss or damage whatsoever arising from, arising out of, or in connection with, this protest! This is a peaceful protest.
RAW Paste Data
Call For Action: Event Name: Nationwide Trump Parade And Protest Calling For The arrest Of George Soros Please use hashtag #ArrestSoros #NationalTrumpParade This document is a work in progress and new locations will constantly be added On November 26, 2016, peaceful protests will be held at locations throughout the United States to protest for the arrest of George Soros. Please make signs calling for his arrrest and bring anything PRO-TRUMP Please help us to buy signs for the nationwide protest. Little donations are appreciated. We want to have professional signs like he ones Soros uses at his planned protests Donate here: https://www.crowdrise.com/need-money-for-cost-of-signs-for-the-arrestsoros-protest/fundraiser/halftheskyswfl Signs will be given out by leaders at the protests! Thousands of Americans will come together at hundreds of peaceful gatherings in cities and towns across the nation, including outside the White House, to protest and call for the arrest of George Soros following the revelation Soros-Funded Orgs are behind violent anti-trump protests across America.WARNING AMERICANS! #PurpleRevolution #TrumpProtests is how #Soros destroyed Ukraine, Syria, Egypt etc. Now it is us! Hillary said it so mild concession speech. One does not really lose. Just goes in different direction. Hired #thugs for #PurpleRevolution. We are Witnessing Their Back-up Plan #purplerevolution! The Riots, Destruction and Attempted Take-over! Clintons are the strings, the liberals are the puppets, soros is the puppet master. About George Soros: Soros is a tactician for the banks and the military industrial complex. He's supported war and made people suffer in too many places in this world. He is a multi-billionaire who despises America and all of our traditions and values. He was born August 12, 1930 in Hungary, as Gyorgy Schwartz. During World War Two he collaborated with the Nazis while 70% of his fellow Jews were killed. When asked about this, in an interview with reporter Steve Kroft, Soros showed no feelings of remorse or guilt and stated that he enjoyed it. He relishes the take down of governments and has started a western spring in America to take down Donald Trump.He is a fanatic who believes in open borders and one world foreign policy.His philanthropy of nearly five Billion dollars funds anything adverse to our traditional American values, such as atheism, drug legalization, gun control, mass immigration, and many others. He recently gave six million dollars to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Some of his organizations include MoveOn.org, The Apollo Alliance, Media Matters for America, The Tides Foundation, ACLU, Acorn, Project on Death In America, La Raza, and many more. The orgs are also promoting the Anti Trump protests. To add insult to injury, one of Soros’ groups is masquerading as conservative and launched an online advertising campaign in defense of bringing Obama’s Syrian refugees here to the US. The name of this group is The Foundation To Promote Open Society. Watch out for this deceitful site, which leads to a micro-site at AmericaisBetter.org, where you find quotes from conservatives which they have distorted in order to bring their progressive message. The site also quotes “unnamed security experts” who supposedly support the screening process. The battle for the sovereignty of America is now between President-elect Donald Trump and open borders globalist George Soros. Move On.org, a liberal activist group that has exploded all across the nation, is funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations. It is now well known that Move On.org was responsible for many of the riots and protests at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies,... some of which became violent and dangerous. We will gather on the following dates below in cities across the nation to urge our government to indict and arrest George Soros so that he may be brought to justice for perpetuating violence, terrorism, and illicit drug trade and related violence on American. Local leaders are now being sought to coordinate these protests. See below for the list of locations where protests are scheudled to be held on November 26, 2016. We want him arrested and held responsible for his actions! George Soros video they tried to bury https://twitter.com/jpm05880/status/798283623963250688 Soros/Clinton Color revolution https://twitter.com/realVivaEuropa/status/797824780036689920 Soros orchestrating color revolution against Trump: Analyst http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/11/13/493455/Trump-Soros-US-Clinton-protest-Jones Breaking Evidence: Same people before election are same ones organizing the Trump Protests for Soros DNC https://twitter.com/ChatRevolve/status/797599326604328960 George Soros starter pack https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/53xdu9/george_soros_knowledge_starter_pack/ Top Ten reasons George Soros is dangerous http://humanevents.com/2011/04/02/top-10-reasons-george-soros-is-dangerous/ Soros-Funded Orgs Behind Violent Anti-Trump Protests Across America http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/11/soros-funded-orgs-behind-violent-anti-trump-protests-across-america/ The Clintons and Soros launch purple revolution http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-11/clintons-and-soros-launch-americas-purple-revolution ARREST GEORGE SOROS Use existing criminal and civil laws to shut down his anti-American juggernaut. http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/262364/arrest-george-soros-matthew-vadum Guide to George Soros Network: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977 LEAKED LIST SHOWS FERGUSON PROTESTERS PAID BY SOROS FRONT GROUP http://www.infowars.com/leaked-list-shows-ferguson-protesters-paid-by-soros-front-group/ Deport George Soros: https://www.change.org/p/donald-trump-deport-george-soros?recruiter=632082050&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=share_twitter_responsive Violence Being Arranged for Trump Inauguration: Group Openly Recruiting for "No Peaceful Transition" #disruptJ20 http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines-2016/violence-being-arranged-for-trump-inauguration-group-openly-recruiting-for-no-peaceful-transition-disruptj20?mc_cid=42bec4c65a&mc_eid=2d623cfd7d USA 1. Chicago, Illinois – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Daley Plaza Downtown, 50 W Washington St, Chicago, IL 60602 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/343424982698716/ 2. Atlanta, Georgia – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: 1000 Robert E. Lee Blvd., Stone Mountain, GA Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/170273646770044/ 3. Wilke, Barr PA – 2:00 PM 11/26/2016 Location: Public Square Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1181251135301886/ 4. Detroit, Michigan – 2:00 PM 11/26/2016 Location: Hart Plaza, 1 Nelson Mandela Dr, Detroit, MI 48226 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/942271272584451/ 5. Hollywood, Florida – 9:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Young Circle, Hollywood, FL Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/372926123039746/ 6. Houston, Texas – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: MacGregor Park, Houston, TX Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/535217083354081/ 7. Los Angeles, California – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Federal Building West, 11000 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles 90024 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/231370507283546/ 8. New York, NY – 11:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location:New York Civil Liberties Union - NYCLU 125 Broad St, Fl 19th, New York, New York 10004 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/189307648195389/ 9. Phoenix, Arizona – 10:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Cesar Chavez Plaza, 201 W. Washington St, Phoenix, AZ 85003 Event: 10. Little, Rock Arkansas - 10 am 11/26/2016 Location: Aransas State Capitol 5th and Woodlane Sts, Little Rock, Arkansas 72201 11. Peachtree City, Georgia - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location 216 Peachtree Street NE - Outside Marta Station, Atlanta, GA 30303 12. Fort Worth Texas – 9:00 AM 11/26/2016 Location: 420 Main St, Fort Worth, Texas 76102 **************************************************************************** 13.New York, New York 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 250 W. 55th St New York, NY Office of Soros Fund Management **************************************************************************** 14. Washington DC - 11 AM 11/26/2016 Location: Trump International Hotel 1100 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20004 Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1838525149755867/ 15. Miami Florida - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Bayfront Park, Miami, Florida Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1796303357252810/ 16. Washington, DC 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 1730 Pennsylvania Ave NW #700, Washington, DC 20006 **************************************************************************** 17. New York, New York -11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Open Society Foundation, Office of George Soros 224 W 57th St, New York, NY 10019 **************************************************************************** 18. Baltimore, MD -11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 201 North Charles Street, Suite 1300 Baltimore MD 21201 Open Society Institute–Baltimore, office of George Soros **************************************************************************** 19. Minneapolis, Minnesota 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 75 Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard., St Paul, MN 55155 20. Worcester, Massachusettes - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Worcester Common Park, Central Business District Worcester, MA 01608 21. Taunton, Massachusettes - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: TBD 22. Pottsville, Pennslyania - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Schuylkill County Courthouse, 401 N 2nd St, Pottsville, PA 17901 23. Albany, New York - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: NY State Capital Building 198 State St, Albany, New York 12207 24. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Market Square, Pittsburgh 210 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222 25. Baton, Rouge, LA - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Mall of Louisianna (outside Bebe) 6401 Bluebonnet Blvd, Baton Rouge, LA 70836 26.Bangor, Maine -11 am 11/26/2016 Location: 1 Railroad St, Bangor, Maine 04401 27. Naples, Florida -11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Corner of 5th avenue and Tamiami Trail **************************************************************************** 28. New York, NY - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: Outside Sitaras Fitness 150 E 58th St, New York, NY 10155 Where George Soros works out **************************************************************************** 29. Virginia, Beach VA - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: TBA 30. Wilmington, North Carolina - 11 am 11/26/ 2016 Location: TBA 31. Charleston, South Carolina - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location: TBA 32. LindenHurst, Long Island - 11 am 11/26/2016 Location TBA DISCLAIMER The information contained in this paste is for general information purposes only. In no event will we be liable for any loss or damage including without limitation, indirect or consequential loss or damage, or any loss or damage whatsoever arising from, arising out of, or in connection with, this protest! This is a peaceful protest.Cthulhu Saves iDevices, Android and Mac June 28 By Ryan Winslett Random Article Blend Cthulu Saves the World, which has now been given a release date of June 28.
That’s right, boys and girls. As is being reported by
No matter what version of the classic style, turn-based RPG you happen to pick up, you’ll only be set back $1.99. That’s a savings of a buck over the currently available PC version.
As for gameplay, imagine if a Nintendo-era Final Fantasy game was inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, then injected with a dose of modern-day awesomeness. Lacking his true power, Cthulhu must travel around the world, meet bizarre townspeople and quest through eight or so hours of storyline in order to become the ultimate hero.
I think I just heard D&D nerds the world over squeal in united excitement. Don’t take offense if you fall into that camp, because I’m right there with you. Pretty much every popular monster on the planet (zombies, vampires, werewolves) has had a year or two in the spotlight as of late, and its high time Cthulhu get his due.
For additional details, trailers and screenshots, check out the Anyone who knows anything about Cthulu knows that any interaction dealing with the ancient being results in either death or insanity. But what if the squiggily-faced wonder was fighting to protect the human race rather than destroy it? Well then you might have an adventure that looks something like, which has now been given a release date of June 28.That’s right, boys and girls. As is being reported by Touch Arcade, Cthulu’s quest to serve as humanity’s savior is just a handful of days away, hitting the digital market for the iPad and iPhone, Android and Mac early next week.No matter what version of the classic style, turn-based RPG you happen to pick up, you’ll only be set back $1.99. That’s a savings of a buck over the currently available PC version.As for gameplay, imagine if a Nintendo-eragame was inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, then injected with a dose of modern-day awesomeness. Lacking his true power, Cthulhu must travel around the world, meet bizarre townspeople and quest through eight or so hours of storyline in order to become the ultimate hero.I think I just heard D&D nerds the world over squeal in united excitement. Don’t take offense if you fall into that camp, because I’m right there with you. Pretty much every popular monster on the planet (zombies, vampires, werewolves) has had a year or two in the spotlight as of late, and its high time Cthulhu get his due.For additional details, trailers and screenshots, check out the Steam listing Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topRussell Street Report Street Talk Ravens Encouraged by Play of Young D-Linemen
OWINGS MILLS — Arthur Jones leaving as a free agent created a void along the Baltimore Ravens’ defensive line.
It also created an opportunity for young players like Brandon Williams, Timmy Jernigan, DeAngelo Tyson and Kapron Lewis-Moore, and the Ravens have had positive things to say about all four through their first two organized team activities.
“The young defensive line looks good right now,” Baltimore coach John Harbaugh said.
Williams, Jernigan and Tyson and Lewis-Moore are all competing for playing time at defensive tackle — Jones’ old spot — as well as other spots along the defensive line.
Training camp and the preseason will serve as a better means for evaluation, but the Ravens have been encouraged with how those four have looked during the two OTAs.
Lewis-Moore, a sixth-round pick last year, is participating and apparently doing well after missing his entire rookie season while recovering from knee surgery. Tyson continues to improve, according to the team, and is very much in the mix for playing time. And teammates and coaches say Williams has made noticeable progress after not playing much of a role as a rookie last season.
Williams was Baltimore’s third-round pick last year, but he dealt with a toe injury early in the season and was then inactive for six of the final eight games.
The Ravens think Williams is more ready to contribute this year, though.
“Brandon has looked really good,” Harbaugh said.“He continues to get in great shape. The way he’s built – you’re not going to see that body-type too much. The amount of muscle he has packed on that frame of his is pretty incredible. He’s explosive. He’s quick. But he’s playing [good] fundamentals.”
Williams feels better, too.
“Everything’s familiar now,” Williams said. “I know what to expect now. I know what to expect. I know what to do, and the playbook’s a lot easier … and just the mental aspect of everything.”
Like Tyson, Williams is in the mix at defensive tackle. He can also play nose tackle and could end up starting there in Baltimore’s base defense with Haloti Ngata moving out to play defensive tackle.
“That versatility — and Haloti can do the same thing — that gives you guys that can move around a little bit,” Harbaugh said.
The Ravens expect Jernigan to factor into that defensive line rotation, too.
For more on the young defensive linemen, click over to The Carroll County Times…how much dog food and people food seem to resemble each other these days?
DOG FOOD
PEOPLE FOOD
Sitting in my local coffee shop, I began flipping through the savings coupon section of the Sunday newspaper. I noticed several coupons for dog food and dog treats mixed in with the typical junk food offerings for humans: Hungry Man, Toaster Strudels, Lunchables, and Campbell's Chunky Soup....shudder.
DOG TREATS
PEOPLE TREATS
Really, it all becomes a blur if you start taking notice of it. I bet you could give the cashier a coupon for Cesar Canine Cuisine and they'd take 50 cents off your Van De Kamp's Fish Sticks without even batting an eye.
Observe how disconcerting these ads become when a dog is added to the image.
I think the point has been made. Medium: Scanned Sunday coupons, doggy models General Otis and Abigail Bunny Rocket.Obsessed w/ #GameOfThrones? 🙋🏻 Bay Area husky rescue group says show has led to an increase in dog surrenders. 🐕 #abc7now pic.twitter.com/yVwSwP5XGD — Katie Utehs (@KatieUtehs) July 27, 2017
A Bay Area dog rescue club says the popular show, 'Game of Thrones' is leading to more dog surrenders, especially ones that look like the show's popular Direwolves."They'd be like, 'Oh wow, Direwolves.'" Patty LaCava could barely make it around a San Francisco block with her two huskies when "Game of Thrones" debuted."One time, I counted 12 photo ops on a Friday evening walking around the block," LaCava told ABC7 News.The breed is seeing a boom in popularity. The Bay Area Siberian Husky Club believes it's due to the popular HBO series.The House of Stark is known for their connection to Direwolves."'Game Of Thrones' uses Inuit dogs," LaCava added. "Which are a type of sled dog-- and a lot of Hollywood uses sled dogs as a stand-in for wolves.""I already wanted a Husky because of Balto when I was a kid, but I wanted to name her Stark," said Angelica Ingaunzo.She adopted a Pomsky, part Pomeranian, part Husky as a compromise because she knew she couldn't handle a Husky. Others haven't done the research.The Martinez shelter has seen a jump of 300 percent in Huskies since "Game of Thrones" started.Tired dogs are good dogs-- two Huskies ABC7 News encountered had just gone on a five-mile hike and that's the kind of effort it takes to own a Husky.When people realize they don't have the strength or the time, they surrender the high energy dogs to shelters.The Husky club has meet-ups and resources so you can make sure it's the right dog for your before adoption.“You’re going to have more than just what happened last night, you’re going to have, I think, many other cases where they want to take their borders back," Donald Trump says. | AP Photo Trump shrugs: 'Looks like' EU breakup is on its way
The European Union is likely to break up as result of Britain's vote to leave, Donald Trump said Friday morning in Scotland, casting the stunning overnight referendum results as just the start of a larger movement across the continent and around the world.
“Well, it looks like it’s on its way and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said when asked if he saw Great Britain's vote as a precursor to a European Union breakup. “So I could see it happening. I have no opinion, really, but I could certainly see it happening. I saw this happening. I could read what was happening here and I could see things happening in Germany.
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"I hope they straighten out the situation because you know it can really be very nasty. What’s going on can be really really nasty," he said.
“People want to take their country back. They want to have independence, in a sense. You see it with Europe, all over Europe,” Trump said. “You’re going to have more than just what happened last night, you’re going to have, I think, many other cases where they want to take their borders back, they want to take their monetary back, they want to take a lot of things back. They want to be able to have a country again. So I think you’re going to have this happen more and more, I really believe that.”
Trump’s visit to Scotland was largely a business trip to his newly renovated Turnberry golf course, though he cast it as an effort to support his family. He spent the bulk of his opening remarks at a press conference on the course’s 9th tee talking up renovations to the property and thanking his family and business associates. He was accompanied on the trip by his adult children.
“I really do see a parallel between what's happening in the United States and what's happening here,” Trump said, connecting his own America first message to Britain’s “leave” vote. “People want to see borders. They don't necessarily want people pouring into their country that they don't know who they are and where they come from.”SINGAPORE: Singapore on Friday started deporting 52 Indian nationals for their role in the December 8 riot, the city state's worst street violence in 40 years.Sixteen of the men were interviewed by the state-appointed Committee of Enquiry (COI) into the riot in the Little India area, a report Straits Times said.The riot was sparked by a fatal accident involving an Indian national.The 53 had allegedly obstructed the police or failed to obey police order to disperse during the riot, in which 39 Home Team officers, including policemen were injured and 25 police and Singapore Civil Defence Force vehicles damaged.They were deemed to have posed a threat to the safety and security of Singapore, conditions that allows the authorities to deport them from entering the country again under the laws such as Immigration Act.Twenty-eight Indian nationals were arraigned on riot charges and would have their cases heard in court on Monday.Meanwhile, police have warned 200 other South Asian workers who were at the scene of riot. Police have issued advisories to the 200 to obey the law and would be allowed to remain in Singapore and work.Foreign minister K Shanmugam has stressed that the repatriation of the 53 became judicial rather than administrative matter.Under the Immigration Act, the government could ask an individual to leave once it has been determined that he acted contrary to Singapore's interests or acted in a manner prejudicial to public security or safety, stressed Shanmugam.Earlier this week, a civil group had questioned the "arbitrary deportation" of these people, citing the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants.The repatriation is done in groups.A Bangladesh national was also being deported.Some 400 South Asian workers rioted when the 33-year old Indian National, Sakthivel Kumaravalu, was killed in the accident with a bus on the night of December 8.Silicon Valley news blog TechCrunch just launched a beta version of CrunchGov, a policy information hub that will reflect the interests of the technology industry, specifically internet and consumer electronics companies. The mini-site was inspired in part by the coordinated online protest to the Stop Online Piracy Act at the beginning of the year, founding writer Greg Ferenstein said.
"First and foremost, this is a media experiment," he told The Verge. "We're not getting into advocacy, but we think the government process should be more interactive, and we're trying to be helpful. Ultimately we're a media company, and we represent our readers as constituents."
"We're a media company, and we represent our readers as constituents."
A news publication partnering with industry groups raises questions about journalistic independence. However, TechCrunch has always positioned itself as pro-Silicon Valley. (It’s a tough sort of love, though. The overarching bias hasn’t stopped its editors from running negative coverage about individual companies including Zynga, Facebook, and even Valley darling Square.)
TechCrunch caters to an affluent, male, tech-obsessed readership. "First read |
Index (CPVI), congressional districts the Bay Area tends to favor Democratic candidates by roughly 40 to 50 percentage points, considerably above the mean for California and the nation overall.[262]
In U.S. Presidential elections since 1960, the nine-county Bay Area voted for Republican candidates only three times, in all three cases voting for a Californian: in 1972 for Richard Nixon and again in 1980 and 1984 for Ronald Reagan. The last county to vote for a Republican Presidential candidate was Napa county in 1988 for George H. W. Bush. Since then, all nine Bay Area counties have voted consistently for the Democratic candidate.[265] Currently, both of California's U.S. Senators are Democrats, and all twelve U.S. congressional districts located wholly or partially in the Bay Area are represented by a Democratic representative. Additionally, every Bay Area member of the California State Senate and the California State Assembly is a registered Democrat.
The association between the Bay Area and progressive politics has led the term "San Francisco values" being used by conservative commentators in a pejorative sense to describe the secular progressive culture in the area.[266]
Transportation [ edit ]
Amtrak, BART, Caltrain, Muni Metro, The Bay Area is served by a variety of rail transit systems, with services provided by ACE SMART, and VTA displayed here.
Transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area is reliant on a complex multimodal infrastructure consisting of roads, bridges, highways, rail, tunnels, airports, ferries, and bike and pedestrian paths. The development, maintenance, and operation of these different modes of transportation are overseen by various agencies, including the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.[267] These and other organizations collectively manage several interstate highways and state routes, two subway networks, two commuter rail agencies, eight trans-bay bridges, transbay ferry service, local bus service,[268] three international airports (San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland),[269] and an extensive network of roads, tunnels, and paths such as the San Francisco Bay Trail.[270]
The Bay Area hosts an extensive freeway and highway system that is particularly prone to traffic congestion, with one study by Inrix concluding that the Bay Area's traffic was the fourth worst in the world.[271] There are some city streets in San Francisco where gaps occur in the freeway system, partly the result of the Freeway Revolt, which prevented a freeway-only thoroughfare through San Francisco between the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, the western terminus of Interstate 80, and the southern terminus of the Golden Gate Bridge (U.S. Route 101).[272] Additional damage that occurred in the wake of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake resulted in freeway segments being removed instead of being reinforced or rebuilt, leading to the revitalization of neighborhoods such as San Francisco's Embarcadero and Hayes Valley.[273] The greater Bay Area contains the three principal north-south highways in California: Interstate 5, U.S. Route 101, and California State Route 1. U.S. 101 and State Route 1 directly serve the traditional nine-county region, while Interstate 5 bypasses to the east in San Joaquin County to provide a more direct Los Angeles–Sacramento route. Additional local highways connect the various subregions of the Bay Area together.[274]
There are over two dozen public transit agencies in the Bay Area with overlapping service areas that utilize different modes, with designated connection points between the various operators. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a heavy rail/metro system, operates in four counties and connects San Francisco and Oakland via an underwater tube. Other commuter rail systems link San Francisco with the Peninsula and San Jose (Caltrain), San Jose with the Tri-Valley Area and San Joaquin County (ACE), and Sonoma with Marin County (SMART).[268] In addition, Amtrak provides frequent commuter service between San Jose and the East Bay with Sacramento, and long distance service to other parts of the United States.[275] Muni Metro operates a hybrid streetcar/subway system within the city of San Francisco, and VTA operates a light rail system in Santa Clara County. These rail systems are supplemented by numerous bus agencies and transbay ferries such as Golden Gate Ferry and the San Francisco Bay Ferry. Most of these agencies accept the Clipper Card, a reloadable contactless smart card, as a universal electronic payment system.[268]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Discover the Bay Area website run by Discover California
Bay Area Tourism Guide by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce
Coordinates:Why Do European Zoos Kill Healthy Animals?
Enlarge this image toggle caption Marcus Trappaud Bjoern/AP Marcus Trappaud Bjoern/AP
On Thursday, the Odense Zoo in Denmark is scheduled to dissect a lion for the educational benefit of children on school holidays.
The 9-month-old female lion was considered "surplus." Officials at Odense said they had too many female lions. They also were concerned about inbreeding, according to reports. The lion was offered to other zoos, but when no takers were found she was killed earlier this year and stored in a freezer.
The zoo has been dissecting animals in front of guests for 20 years. The zoo's killing and dissection of this lion has outraged some, especially in the U.S. It's cumulative anger, because last year the Copenhagen Zoo carried out a similar double play — killing a healthy animal, Marius the giraffe, with a bolt gun and then dissecting the body in front of schoolchildren and feeding the remains to its lions. At that time, Copenhagen Zoo Scientific Director Bengt Holst came under widespread fire outside Denmark; petitions called for his resignation.
But it's not just Denmark. The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) issued a statement on Tuesday supporting the Odense Zoo's plan. The statement notes that "culling of animals is one of a range of scientifically valid solutions to the long term genetic and demographic sustainability of animal populations in human care." It goes on to say that the dissection "for educational purposes is a valid choice of the zoo."
According to the BBC, between 3,000 and 5,000 healthy zoo animals are killed in Europe every year.
In the U.S., the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) says flatly that incidents of killing healthy surplus animals "do not happen at AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums." The whole thrust of captive management in this country centers around birth control.
Certainly, I can't picture elementary school children gathered at the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park or the San Diego Zoo to observe as an animal, once put on display to delight them, is taken apart joint-by-joint for their anatomical enlightenment.
A yawning cultural gap clearly exists in the European and American visions for the role of zoos in captive management of animals.
Earlier this week, I contacted the Copenhagen Zoo to ask Bengt Holst for his views on the Odense Zoo controversy. Told that Holst is traveling for business, I was directed to a page from the zoo's website that he wrote. Key passages, which I excerpt here, explain that European zoos focus on the health of populations rather than of individual animals:
"When an animal's genes are well represented in the breeding programme and there is no place for the animal in another zoo, the European Breeding Programme has agreed that the animal is to be euthanized. We see this as a positive sign and as insurance that we in the future will have a healthy animal population in European zoos. The most important factor must be that the animals are healthy physically and behaviourally and that they have a good life whilst they are living whether this life is long or short. This is something Copenhagen Zoo believes strongly in."
Why not administer birth control in order to achieve this same end, healthy animal populations? Holst continues:
"In Copenhagen Zoo we let the animals breed naturally. With naturally we mean that they will get young within the same intervals as they would in the wild. That means that the animals get to carry out their natural behaviours."
I'm struck by the terrible irony represented here: Zoos like this enclose animals in captivity, allow them to practice "natural behavior" of mating and reproduction, then slaughter them when they are no longer viewed as helpful to the project of coaxing visitors through the gates.
In a televised interview from last year, Holst talks about the killing and dissection of Marius the giraffe, defending the "natural" act of feeding Marius' body to lions. "Why protect schoolchildren from real life?" he asks.
But listen to the very first answer Holst offers to the interviewer. It is revealing: Children weren't invited to attend the slaughter of Marius because "when looked upon, the killing can be pretty cruel."
Zoos are entrusted to care for animals. There is no place in zoos — there should be no place, despite differences in cultural attitudes — for cruelty.
Barbara J. King, an anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary, often writes about human evolution, primate behavior and the cognition and emotion of animals. Barbara's most recent book on animals is titled How Animals Grieve. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingapeIn India, Skin-Whitening Creams Reflect Old Biases
Enlarge this image toggle caption Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images
For decades, the cosmetics industry in India has made millions selling skin-whitening products to women. Now, it's making more money by convincing Indian men that they should be lighter.
Industry analysts say skin-lightening creams for men, first introduced a few years back, are selling well, and that the Indian market is growing as India's economy improves.
The TV advertisements tend to send the same message: Light skin makes you attractive to women and successful at work. Dark skin, by implication, does not.
'White Is Hot'
"Obviously what you don't have is what you want. The Western world, they go in for tans. They want to get a little brown touch to themselves. They think that's hot," says Darshan Gokani, 27, a model for TV and print commercials. "So, what we think over here, since we are brown-skinned people, white is hot."
Gokani, who works in Mumbai, capital of India's entertainment industry, says modeling is a tough business.
"Oh, my God, it's really, really competitive," he says. "I got in easily, but even if I go for an audition now, the audition goes on for three days, and there are at least 500 boys coming in for an audition each day."
Gokani says he is lucky to be, as he puts it, "nice and fair." He also has naturally curly hair. He says advertisers like his "look" because it is unusual. But Gokani says he believes most of the young Indian men who show up for those auditions are using skin-lightening creams.
"Out of 500, I think at least 300 of them, definitely," he says. "Earlier, it was all hidden. But now it's all open. They want to be fair; they want to be nice. Anyone who's fair gets on Indian television."
N. Radhakrishnan, founding editor of Man's World — one of a half-dozen men's lifestyle magazines that have cropped up in India in recent years targeting the country's new class of affluent fashion-conscious males — says that in India, skin color is an issue from birth.
"Well, Indians like white skin, that's it," he says.
He adds: "Indian women also want their kids to be, you know, fair-skinned. That's one of the first things that they ask: Is he fair-skinned? And it's right across, it cuts across the country."
Reinforcing Stereotypes
Cosmetics manufacturers claim their skin-whitening creams produce results within weeks or even days, though there are many skeptics. The creams generally contain sunscreen and moisturizer, plus a formula that the companies claim affects skin's melanin, which determines its color.
This is a sensitive subject in India. The cosmetics industry and its ads have been accused of reinforcing stereotypes about race, caste and gender.
"We believe that beauty is beyond color, and that every woman or child born, male or female, has the right to believe that they are of value," says Kavitha Emmanuel of the women's rights group Women of Worth.
Emmanuel says some Indian women are so concerned about pigmentation that during pregnancy they will eat saffron and powdered gold in the belief that this will make their babies lighter.
The scale of the pressure on Indian women to have paler skin can be seen in the matrimonial columns of India's newspapers. Advertisements, taken out by parents seeking brides for their sons, frequently specify that they are seeking "fair" or "very fair-skinnned" girls.
Roots Of Desire
The desire for pale skin has roots that run deep in India's history. It's entwined with Hinduism's complex social hierarchy, or caste system. Those higher up the scale generally tend to have paler skins than people on the bottom rung.
Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, a young writer who blogs about Mumbai's social scene, says that's one reason some Indians seek to become whiter.
"It indicates to someone who's meeting you for the first time that you are born into a family where you haven't had to do any outdoor work, and that your status is higher because you never had to be in the fields or do any of that," Madhavan says.
Madhavan says the prejudice in favor of lighter skin is stronger among India's older generations. Those skin-whitening ads aimed at young people don't seem to have worked on her.
"I like being brown! It's nice that I can wear a lot of clothes that contrast with my skin color, and I have lots of fun with the brownness," she says. "In fact, I go out of my way to get even browner."
Prahlad Kakkar, a well-known director of television ads in Mumbai and a social commentator, says some Indian men have been using indigenous natural remedies to lighten themselves for centuries. He has an unusual theory about why: He says throughout history, India has repeatedly been invaded. These invaders — Persians, Moghuls, the British — tended to have lighter skin than Indians, so paler skin has become associated with power.
"It's something that is a part of the legacy and the burden that the dark man has to bear for the pillaging and the raping and the conquering of the white man," Kakkar says.
Kakkar, who is nearly 60 and has a successful career behind him, has a word of advice for young Indian men who hope having paler skin will put them on the road to social or sexual conquest.
"It's always a waste of time to try to look different from what you are," he says. "What are the most attractive things about a man? When he's younger, it's his belief in himself and his articulation, and his imagination. And when he's older: his bank balance!"FDA Probes Link Between Food Dyes, Kids' Behavior
Enlarge this image toggle caption Josh Roulston/Flickr Josh Roulston/Flickr
Food Dyes Under Scrutiny See a list of the food dyes that the FDA is considering banning — and the foods they are commonly found in.
The Food and Drug Administration is meeting Wednesday and Thursday to examine whether artificial food dyes cause hyperactivity in children. Artificial food dyes are made from petroleum and approved for use by the FDA to enhance the color of processed foods.
They've been around for decades and are found in everything from pudding to potato chips to soft drinks.
But recent studies linking food coloring to hyperactivity in kids is causing some experts to call on the FDA to ban foods containing them — or at least require a warning label.
No More Little Red Dinosaurs
Christine Woodman of Fairfax, Va., first noticed her children were having trouble focusing on school projects and were acting way too reckless at home when they were in elementary school. She suspected they might have ADHD.
Woodman's daughter, Dawnielle, is 19 now, but she remembers a particular incident: the time she thought it would be fun to take some blankets from her bed and slide down the basement stairs on them.
"It was really fun and funny until I got my head stuck in the wall," Dawnielle says.
Christine was reluctant at first to take her kids to the doctor for their hyperactive behavior. She lived in the Pacific Northwest at the time, and the family embraced a theme common among their friends and neighbors.
"What is natural is good; what isn't natural was bad," she remembers.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jonathan Makiri/NPR Jonathan Makiri/NPR
On the advice of friends, Christine decided to start by cutting out foods with artificial coloring, but Dawnielle didn't really go for it. She missed her favorite oatmeal with little red-colored dinosaurs in it. Christine tried a substitute. "You know, I made the oatmeal with blueberries and soymilk and thought you would be happy with it," she says to Dawnielle.
"I was not. That was not a good replacement," Dawnielle says, laughing.
But it was tough back then. After a year of trying various diets — from eliminating food dyes to eliminating dairy — her children's behavior never really changed, Christine says.
She finally took them to a pediatrician, who diagnosed them with ADHD and prescribed medication. The difference was stunning, Christine says.
"Suddenly, my world came back together and I could do stuff," Dawnielle says. She went from being the class clown to being the class example.
Diets A Popular First Step
A lot of people try "elimination diets" to address their kids' behavior, and many say they work. The diet idea dates back to the1970s, when pediatrician Benjamin Feingold first claimed that there was a link between behavior and food dyes.
The diet he prescribed eliminated food dyes and other food additives, like the common preservatives BHT and BHA.
Artificial food dyes might be an easy target for elimination because they aren't essential to food.
"Food dyes are added simply for their color to make foods fun. They serve no health purpose whatsoever," says Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
CSPI wants the FDA to ban eight artificial food dyes. Jacobson is particularly concerned with Red No. 40, Yellow No. 5 and Yellow No. 6, which make up 90 percent of the food dyes on the market.
Some of the studies are difficult or imperfect.... But there is this body of literature that does suggest that food colorings are not as benign as people have been led to believe.
Their use has gone up fivefold in the past 50 years. "That's a good indication of how much junk food we're consuming," he says.
Jacobson says there is substantial evidence showing that food dyes trigger hyperactivity in kids. But other experts question that conclusion.
Before Wednesday's meeting, the FDA released its analysis of 35 years of scientific studies. It finds no conclusive proof that food dyes cause hyperactivity in most kids, although it suggests that some kids with ADHD may be particularly sensitive to them.
Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York, says more studies are needed and that the current studies leave a lot of room for doubt.
"Some of the studies are difficult or imperfect in that they don't always tease out specific chemicals in isolation," he says. "But there is this body of literature that does suggest that food colorings are not as benign as people have been led to believe."
European Action On Food Dyes
A 2007 British study known as the Southampton study has become something of a flashpoint in the current debate. In it, 3- and 8-year-olds were given two kinds of drinks that contained a mix of dyes. Afterward, parents reported a significant increase in hyperactivity. But teachers and independent observers didn't, critics say. Also, because the dyes were mixed together, it's hard to tell which might be causing a problem.
"It gives you pause, but it's certainly not convincing evidence that there's a problem," says Julie Miller Jones, professor emeritus of nutrition at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minn.
But Adesman, the pediatrician, says if parents are concerned, there is no harm in cutting out food dyes if they can manage it.
"We're not putting food coloring into broccoli or other fresh fruits and vegetables. It's going into processed foods, concentrated sweets, things like that," Adesman says.
Despite concerns with the British study, European lawmakers now require a warning label on foods that contain artificial dyes. It lets parents know their kids might become hyperactive if they consume the product.
Manufacturers overseas, instead of adding a warning label, have turned to natural dyes made from beets and turmeric. Some U.S.-based manufacturers are considering switching to natural dyes, but as the food industry points out, natural dyes are more expensive and less stable.
Joseph Borzelleca, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the Virginia Commonwealth University medical school, will be testifying at the FDA meeting on the safety and functionality of food dyes. He says food dyes are rigorously tested and have a long and safe history.Student Activists Keep Pressure On Campus Sexual Assault
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jennifer Ludden/NPR Jennifer Ludden/NPR
For Georgetown University freshmen, orientation this week included a new activity: mandatory small-group discussions on sexual assault.
"For a lot of the kids, this might be the first time they ever actually talk about sexual assault or what consent means in an environment with their peers," says Chandini Jha, a junior who helped lead several discussions and who's been pushing administrators to do this for two years.
Georgetown is not among the more than 70 colleges being investigated for how they've handled sexual assault cases; in fact, it's ahead of many others on the issue. But Jha says the problem is a national epidemic. About 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted in college, as are some men, and Jha has become active beyond her own campus. Last winter Jha joined a group that uses social media to spread the word that schools are bound to try to protect students from sexual assault under a federal law called Title IX.
"Our goal is to get this critical mass of students educated about it," she says, "almost as a check against universities violating Title IX but also to help empower students who've been in those situations [about] things they can ask for their universities to do."
It's just the kind of information Dana Bolger wishes she had back in 2011, when she says she was raped during her sophomore year at Amherst College.
"My dean encouraged me to take time off, go home, essentially wait for my rapist to graduate and then come back to campus when it was safe to do so," Bolger says.
She did drop out for a bit. Then she returned, joined a support group and discovered she wasn't the only one who felt mistreated by her college. Bolger and others demanded meetings with Amherst officials, a list of reforms in hand. They got nowhere.
"But for a survivor who has to study in the same library as her assailant," she says, "or a survivor that has to eat in the same dining hall as his rapist, urgency is real."
So in 2012, they went public. The student paper posted one woman's searing account of her rape, and the response was electric.
"Angie Epifano was able to tell her story in the Amherst Student, and the next day there were thousands and thousands of views," Bolger says. "I don't know what that possibly could have looked like in the 1970s."
The college president reached out to Epifano and announced reforms. Suddenly, sexual assault victims across the country were seeking each other out online.
After finishing her degree, Bolger co-founded Know Your IX with Alexandra Brodsky of Yale University, to educate students about their rights. The group has a growing network of campus activists, including Jha at Georgetown. It connects assault survivors to pro bono attorneys. It staged protests at the Department of Education. That led to meetings with White House officials and members of Congress.
Such high-profile events have put these activists in the spotlight. But outside that, other students continue to act, sometimes on their own.
"I created a website that maps the data from the daily crime log," says Guillermo Rojas, who's in his last semester at Dartmouth, one of the schools under investigation for its handling of sexual assault. By law, schools are required to keep a public tally of campus crimes, including sexual assault. But, unlike many, Dartmouth College doesn't put it online. A few weeks ago, Rojas decided to do it himself.
"The college refuses to provide emailed spreadsheets," he says, "and refuses to let us take pictures."
So Rojas goes over to the Department of Safety and Security and types the data into his laptop. "I always feel like a nuisance," he says. "I get the sense that not a lot of people ask for it."
"It's just morally reprehensible that administrators are putting the burden of fixing the problems onto students like that," says Susy Struble, a Dartmouth alumna, class of '93. Struble was raped on campus, and she's thrilled with activists like Rojas, though she worries it won't be enough. Students, she says, graduate.
"College administrators know this," she says. "They know that if they can just hunker down and weather a crisis, that group of students is going to graduate sooner or later. But alumni are always around. We have a lot of influence, we have a lot of money, we still have a lot of say on what kind of culture we have on our campuses."
Struble has helped found two alumni groups to keep up the pressure.
Bolger agrees this is key. Not yet a year out of college, she's quit a job to devote herself full time to Know Your IX. Yes, she says, it's great that the federal government has tightened the rules on how schools should handle sexual assault. "But at the end of the day, what we need is enforcement," she says. "Schools are operating today knowing that the department has never once sanctioned a school for these violations."
Bolger can imagine a career holding them to account. Among the other ambitious items on her to-do list: law school.Pin 86 Shares
(ANTIMEDIA) Have you stopped to wonder what the most awkward thing in the world was this week? Look no further. It was hands down a scared Steve Bannon surrounded by Sunni Muslims in Saudi Arabia.
It really makes you wonder what’s going through his head. Breitbart Bannon — who has his finger on the pulse on the alt-right movement, which propelled Trump to his stunning electoral upset last year — seems to be worried about something.
His boss, Donald Trump, previously accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the 9/11 attacks. He called on Hillary Clinton to return the millions of dollars the Saudis gave to the Clinton Foundation, but an Ivanka Trump-inspired women’s fund just hypocritically accepted $100 million from Saudi Arabia and its allies.
Now Bannon, Trump, and company were just in the Arab state literally dancing and holding hands with Saudi princes.
One of the alt-right’s rallying cries is against “radical Islamic terrorism,” a term Trump refused to say while bowing to Saudi royalty. Anyone who has been paying attention knows Saudi Arabia is the main state-sponsor of ISIS. Yet Trump and Bannon were over there selling them a record amount of military arms that will likely wind up in ISIS’ hands and contribute to killing innocent people. It’s even possible they will eventually be used for terror attacks against Westerners. Was Bannon feeling bad about arming Wahhabi terrorists?
Maybe Bannon’s awkwardness comes from the realization that the Trump administration just betrayed its base by curtsying to the Saudi head-choppers. Or maybe he was just constipated, or high on opiates, or had severe social anxiety. Or maybe he’s just never seen a Muslim IRL before. Either way, it was awkward AF — and the three-second clip made for hours of entertainment on Twitter.
Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo
Pin 86 SharesA two-year-old girl abducted in a stolen vehicle is reunited with a family friend after police found her on Ocean Pde.
A two-year-old girl abducted in a stolen vehicle is reunited with a family friend after police found her on Ocean Pde. Robin Wright
UPDATE by Jessica Grewal at 1.00pm: An abducted toddler is back in the arms of her family after the stolen car she was trapped in was dumped at Coffs Harbour on Monday morning.
The two-and a half-year old's father phoned 000 when his black Honda Odyssey station wagon was snatched from a shopping centre car-park with the girl still in the back seat about 10.45am.
For a frantic 90 minutes police searched local streets and patrolled the Pacific Hwy while the father and his six-year-old daughter, who was also in the car but managed to escape, were comforted by family.
The car was discovered dumped on Ocean Pde by the owner of a Park Beach motel about 12.20pm.
Police rushed to the scene and found the girl shaken but safe.
Friends who had been helping with the search hugged the girl until family arrived from the police station.
On Monday night the hunt was still on for the driver who was described as a young male of aboriginal/Torres Strait appearance.
12.15PM: The car has been recovered at Park Beach at 12.10pm.
Police say the young girl was found in the car a little upset but safe and well.
An ambulance has been tasked to the location and the parents have been informed.
11.40AM: Police have asked urgent public assistance to help locate a two-year-old girl.
A 2012 black Honda Odyssey station wagon with a NSW registration of MEG080 was taken from next to Coffs Central Shopping Centre in Castle Street at 10.45.
2012 black Honda Odyssey station wagon.
Police are asking the public to be on alert and report any sightings of this vehicle.
Ring Triple Zero (000) to provide any information about this abduction.
UPDATE 11.15am: It's understood but yet to be confirmed an older child was able to get out of the vehicle.
The car was last seen in Vernon St where it turned right and drove past the Coffs Harbour War Memorial Swimming Pool.
Police ask for information from the little girl's father and other witnesses at the scene of the crime on Castle St. Photo: Jessica Grewal / APN Newsdesk
BREAKING 11.00am: Police are desperately searching for a car that's been stolen with a young toddler on board in Coffs Harbour this morning.
The black Honda Odyssey was reported stolen from the Gordon St car park just before 11am.
It is understood a young girl, aged two-a-half, was inside the car when it was taken.
The offender is described as being a young male of Aboriginal appearance.
Police are currently calling all resources to scour local streets and the Pacific Hwy in search of the car.
Anyone who sights the vehicle should call 000 immediately.pokesmen for the Port of New York Authority charged yesterday that protection of the Empire State Building's prestige as the world's tallest building was a basic motivation behind an attack made this week by a group of realty men on the proposed World Trade Center.
The authority plans to build the $350 million project on a 16-acre site on the Lower West Side. The world's tallest buildings have been designed for the center � twin towers, 1,350 feet high. The towers will be eight stories, or about 100 feet, higher than the Empire State Building, which has 102 stories, and a 222-foot television antenna mast.
The center's architects, in a statement yesterday, denied that the towers would be unsafe in the event of an explosion or an airplane crash. The realty men had questioned the safety of the project's construction.
Wien Among Opponents
Among the opposing realty group is Lawrence A. Wien, who heads the syndicate that owns the Empire State Building. Mr. Wien also heads syndicate-owners of other large office buildings here � all pre-World War II skyscrapers � at 60 East 42d Street, 200 Fifth Avenue, and four major structures in the garment center.
The Empire State and the other buildings controlled by the Wien interests are typical of the older office buildings that have had to compete with the new glass-fronted skyscrapers built since the war.
The Trade Center, with 10 million square feet of office space, is a new threat to the old buildings. The owners of these buildings fear that the tenants they have tried hard to keep with costly modernization programs will be lured by the glamorous 110-story towers downtown.
Officials of some of the city's largest realty concerns have joined in opposing the center, including Robert V. Tishman, president of the Tishman Realty and Construction Company, Wylie F.L._Tuttle, head of Collins Tuttle & Co., and Walter P. Helmsley, senior vice president and treasurer of Helmsley-Spear, Inc., managing agent of the Empire State Building.
Principal Objections
The group maintains that the project would place 10 million square feet of office space on the market, which, they say, is already glutted with vacant space. The realty men also contend that the Port Authority would gain a tax advantage over private realty interests.
Richard Roth of the architectural firm of Emery Roth & Sons issued the statement defending the safety of the twin towers, which the firm, in association with Minoru Yamasaki, designed for the center.
Mr. Roth said that a structural analysis by the firm of Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson had found that if a tower were hit by an airliner at 600 miles an hour, the damage to the tower would be only local and its occupants outside the immediate area of impact would not be endangered.
The realty group contended that the Port Authority would pay only $3 million in lieu of taxes. A private builder undertaking the project, the realty men said, would be obligated to the extent of $15 million in taxes.
The Port Authority rebutted this charge yesterday, noting that [the?] city had agreed to accept an annual payment of $1.5 million in lieu of taxes. This is the amount the site now yields the city.
The realty group said it would seek to mobilize its campaign against the center with the support of influential organizations like the Commerce and Industry Association, the Citizens Budget Commission, and the Real Estate Board of New York.
Only a spokesman for the Commerce and Industry Association was reached yesterday for comment. He said the association would not take a stand on the campaign, but he noted that some time ago it had made known its approval of the "idea'' of the center.
The project's opponents have the strong support of other respected realty interests.
Robert J. Byrne, head of the Cross & Brown Company, said yesterday that the center would be a catastrophe for the real estate business because of the competition it would bring to the city's old buildings.
A spokesman for the Uris Buildings Corporation, which has built 11.3 million square feet of office space here since the war, said the company supported the opposing realty group.
He said that "building for commerce in New York City is a good thing, no matter who does it, but preferential tax advantages for the proposed Trade Center seem way out of line.''
However, the president of one large concern, Louis Smadbeck of William A. White & Sons, disagrees with the opposition. He said the concept of the Trade Center "is a bit too large,'' but that it was a very forward-looking move.FANCY getting stranded in Dismal Swamp, or making a stopover in Tittybong? How about spending a night in Pussycat Flat, or straining to reach Bust-Me-Gall Hill?
Well the good news is you won't have to travel far to visit any of these places. These are just some of the quirky, unique and downright unusual towns in Australia.
There's the notoriously dangerous Hell's Gates on the West Coast of Tasmania, and Xantippe in Western Australia, the only town in the country starting with an X.
For an action-packed escape you might want to stop by Diehard in New South Wales - you may even bump into Bruce Willis while you're there.
If you're hungry, amble down to the Territory's Tortilla Flats, Tasmania's Egg and Bacon Bay or Milkshake Hills.
Repetition is also a regular feature in town titles, with Wagga Wagga, Bong Bong, Grong Grong, Walla Walla and Goonoo Goonoo all in NSW, Bubble Bubble Springs in the Northern Territory, and the likes of Vite Vite in Victoria.
You can't go past some of the tongue-twisting delights like Jimcumbilly in NSW, D'Entrecasteaux Channel in Tassie, Ubobo in Queensland and Victoria's Manangatang and Upotipotpon.
Read Next
Tourism New South Wale's Lauren O'Neil says: "Woolloomooloo seems to catch everyone, and you'll find plenty of British backpackers looking for 'Cooh-gee', instead of 'Cudg-gee'.
If symbolism is your thing, why not check out Uki in NSW, which means 'fern with edible roots' in the Aboriginal dialect of the area, Ozenkadnook in South Australia, which means'very fat kangaroo', or NSW's Binnaway, which is derived from a word meaning 'peppermint tree wollybutt'.
Or you could just resort to toilet humour with the likes of Dunnedoo, Diapur, Mount Buggery, Burrumbuttock, Poowong and Fannie Bay.
According to Tourism Tasmania's Marianne Miles, Break-Me-Neck Hill "was named after an exclamation uttered by a wagoner during his first experience of the hill.”
The origin of the name of the Northern Territory's Humpty Doo is unknown, but Tourism Northern Territory's Liz McCouaig has three theories: that it's from an Aboriginal term 'Umdidu', which meant a popular resting place; from "a colloquialism to describe everything done wrong or upside down"; or that it's derived from the term "umpty", which was "the Army slang term used for the dash when reading Morse Code".
YOUR SAY: Tell us your quirkiest place name below
Read NextIntroduction
Stuart Halloway recently posted a series of articles collectively entitled Java.next, discussing some of the newer languages that compile to Java Virtual Machine bytecode |
who clearly also wanted to find Ramin. However, one of the hostiles, Frank Newhouse, escaped. Jack later received word that Newhouse was a spy within the cell for the Attorney General, James Quincy. Using Ramin, Ibrahim and Nazila, Jack discovered an upcoming assassination attempt on President Barnes. He called a meeting with the heads of the NSA, FBI, CIA and Secret Service, but was rebuked by Ryan Chappelle after one person commented that the assassination attempt cannot be true because the President would not be in Los Angeles on the given day, which is where the attempt was stipulated to happen.
After being humiliated once more by causing an F-18 pilot to lose his life whilst chasing a non-existent EMP in a weather balloon above Kansas, Jack later realized that the President's airplane, Air Force One would be over Los Angeles at the specified time. Discovering that his original assessment was correct, he set off to Century City, the tallest tower in Los Angeles, and discovered that the top floor had an office under the name of William Binns, an alias of Frank Newhouse. From there, it would be possible to set off an EMP that would affect Air Force One, causing it to crash to the ground, killing the President.
Jack successfully managed to stop Frank Newhouse and his associate Brett Marks from shooting down Air Force One.
Trojan Horse Edit
Jack has to help prevent a televised massacre - at which his wife is present.
Cat's Claw Edit
As the world leaders convene at the G8 Summit, Jack must prevent two separate threats from occurring on the same day.
Vanishing Point Edit
Jack has to lead an impossible assault on Area 51 to stole a mole who is leaking high class intelligence to radicals.
Chaos Theory Edit
Disgraced agent Jack Bauer is the only man that can prevent an oncoming nightmare, but police have orders to shoot and kill upon sight of him.
Collateral Damage Edit
Whilst supervising the activation of CTU New York, Jack Bauer encounters another terrible threat.
Day Zero Edit
At some point before Day 1, during Day Zero, Jack was watching a man named Laszlo who had been putting classified files on the market. After their surveillance of him went dark, Jack and Devin went to his apartment to see what happened. Laszlo had been killed and the apartment had been rigged. Jack managed to get the data from Laszlo's computer before the apartment was blown up.
Back at CTU, Nina covertly deleted the files from Laszlo's computer and told Jack that the files must have had a self deletion program. Taking Mason's advice, Jack decided to go home. As he was in the CTU parking lot, he was attacked by Devin, who, after Jack knocked him down, admitted to working for Laszlo for the money. Just as he was about to tell Jack his co-conspirators, he was shot dead, supposedly by his partner.
George Mason advised Jack not to launch investigations into all of his co-workers, or none will want to work with him. Nina said she would, and Mason sarcastically wished them good luck. He left, and, after Jack admitted that he had moved out from living with Teri, she offered to buy him a drink and they left together.
Other missions Edit
A mission was detailed in Cold Warriors in which Jack, while part of Delta Force, led Amy Seelaki and Buchanan into Afghanistan. While there, Oleg Malenov tortured and beheaded Buchanan, which Jack sought vengeance for during Cold Warriors.
Personal history Edit
Jack's personal life isn't very detailed, but from what is known it appears that Jack lived a very different life to that of his family. While Jack's brother Graem worked closely with his father in Defense contracting, Jack was once known as an English Major as well as a surfer and a racer of motorcycles.
While he has had many loves in his life, his major relationships have been his only wife, Teri Bauer, tragically taken from him because of his job, Audrey Raines, who was captured by the Chinese in an exchange attempt for his own life, and Renee Walker, who was killed shortly after they admitted their feelings for one another.
Other women, such as Nina Myers, Kate Warner, Claudia Salazar, Diane Huxley, and Marilyn Bauer have played significant roles in Jack's life as well.
According to Marilyn Bauer, alongside their own personal past, Jack apparently first entered the military as an act of defiance from his father and brother, who had recently offered him a job at BXJ Technologies. This was later emphasized and clarified by Jack himself when talking to his father, saying how he never intended on turning his back on the family and that he merely wanted to do things for himself.
At some point prior to the events of Day 1, Jack built a case against three federal agents (including Seth Campbell and Christopher Henderson) who were accepting bribes, and had them arrested and charged. After turning in the guilty agents, only his closest associates would trust him.× Want to work at Miller Park? Delaware North Sportservice hosting job fairs to fill variety of positions
MILWAUKEE (WITI) – Delaware North Sportservice, the exclusive food and beverage service provider for the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park, is set to hold the first of several job fairs to recruit for immediate positions for the current 2015 season.
The job fairs will be held from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 14th and Tuesday, May 19th at the Miller Park Club Level, enter at Fridays Hot Corner.
Sportservice is seeking employees to fill a variety of part-time seasonal and game-day positions in general concessions, retail, premium dining and catering operations. Positions include supervisors, cooks, kitchen preparation staff, dishwashers, bartenders, servers, runners, porters, beer and food vendors, retail sales associates, concession stand attendants and cashiers.
Interested individuals will be asked to fill out an application and interview for positions during the job fair. Anyone interested in applying should be highly motivated and customer-service oriented. Sportservice is an equal opportunity employer.
All qualified applicants, including minorities and women, are encouraged to apply.After World War II, Lindbergh served as a consultant to the US Air Force and to Pan American World Airways. He continued to travel frequently.
In 1957, Lindbergh, then 55, met and fell in love with Brigitte Hesshaimer, a 31-year-old hat maker living in Munich, Germany. They began a long-term affair that only ended with his death in 1974. They kept their relationship a secret, even from their children, Dyrk, Astrid, and David. Lindbergh would visit Brigitte two or three times a year, introducing himself to the children as Mr. Careu Kent.
At the same time, Lindbergh was also involved in secret long-term relationships with Hesshaimer’s sister, Marietta, and a third woman, Valeska, Lindbergh’s German translator and private secretary. Lindbergh had two children with each of these women and again kept the identity of his fatherhood a secret.
Ten days before his death in 1974, Lindbergh wrote letters to his three mistresses, asking them to continue “utmost secrecy,” which they did until Astrid confronted her mother in the 1990s. Even upon learning the truth of her father’s identity, Astrid was sworn to secrecy until her mother’s death in 2001. The other two families have continued their silence and have not given any interviews.
In the summer of 2003, the three Hesshaimer children broke their silence. While they made no claim to Lindbergh’s estate, they went public because they wanted to verify their family relationship before publishing a book about their mother’s long-term secret relationship with Lindbergh. Their book, Das Doppelleben des Charles A. Lindbergh (The Double Life of Charles A. Lindbergh), was published in Germany in 2005.
Reeve Lindbergh, the youngest of Charles and Anne’s children, wrote about these revelations of her father's infidelities and about her connecting with her European brothers and sisters in an essay published in 2009 in her book Forward from Here: Leaving Middle Age and Other Unexpected Adventures.
“I have the feeling that he was the only person involved with all these families who knew the full truth, and I keep thinking that by the time he died in 1974, my father had made his life so complicated that he had to keep each part separate from the other parts... I don’t know why he lived this way, and I don’t think I ever will know, but what it means to me is that every intimate human connection my father had during his later years was fractured by secrecy.”
Lindbergh's children
Children with Anne Morrow Lindbergh:
Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. (1930–1932)
Jon Lindbergh (b. 1932)
Land Morrow Lindbergh (b. 1937)
Anne Spencer Lindbergh (Perrin) (1940–1993)
Scott Lindbergh (b. 1942)
Reeve Lindbergh (b. 1945)
Children with Brigitte Hesshaimer:
Dyrk Hesshaimer
Astrid Hesshaimer Bouteuil
David Hesshaimer
Children with Marietta Hesshaimer:
Vago Hesshaimer
Christoph Hesshaimer
Children with Valeska (surname unknown):I’ve lived in Japan for about 3 years. During returns home to the United States, I always find myself doing or wanting to do certain things that, while commonplace in Japan, just aren’t done where I’m from. I usually catch myself in time, but they have led to some rather humorous (and awkward) moments. The following are 4 of the biggest.
1. Bowing
This is done so often that it has become second nature to me. Sometimes I think I do it more often than Japanese people. It is a great nonverbal tool to communicate politeness, something which is always useful in bridging language barriers. When I’m back in the States, instead of a typical hand wave, I find myself bowing to people as I cross the street, when someone presents me with something, or even when I run across an acquaintance. I have heard the same thing happen with other friends who have returned to their home countries from Japan, and I don’t think it`s a habit I will ever fully break.
2. Saying “un un” while listening to someone speak
This is usually accompanied by a head nod for each “un” (うん). Saying this in Japan is a way of acknowledging what the other person is saying, kind of like “uh-huh” in English. It’s a bit strange for some of my relatives to catch me doing it at home, however, but they usually understand why. If what the person says happens to be really interesting or surprising, I might even add a “sou?!” (そう?!) for “really?!”
3. Wanting to bag your own groceries
In grocery stores in Japan, there are no baggers. Instead, purchased items are placed in a basket, along with a bag or bags if needed, and the customer goes to a designated area to bag their purchased items. It makes for a rather efficient system and lines are rarely long. In the US, I have to resist the urge to take my purchases and put them in bags myself, as I`m afraid it might be considered rude. It’s interesting how small cultural differences such as this can make a person sometimes feel out of place.
4. Clapping your hands and saying “itadakimasu!” before a meal
“Itadakimasu” (いただきます) can roughly be translated to “I humbly receive,” and it is a way to show your appreciation for a meal, not only to those involved in preparing and serving the meal, but to the plants and, if applicable, animals, who gave up their lives for the meal. Putting your hands into a kind of praying position is also a polite gesture. When in the States, I still almost always put up my hands before digging in, and some of my friends and family members have gotten used to me saying “itadakimasu.” It’s only among strangers that I will consciously make myself say something else, such as “let`s eat!”
This is just a small list of some Japanese mannerisms that have stuck with me. If you find yourself living in Japan, what kind of mannerisms do you think you’ll pick up? Or if you already do live in Japan, what habits have been hard for you to break when you visit home?You can find the full story on this article from the New Yorker Magazine.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1949/12/24/christmas-is-a-sad-season-for-the-poor
It is also found in the New York Times Best Seller “The Stories of John Cheever.”
(Pages 128-136.)
Some of my classmates at my community college may not share my interest in reading more of the works by the authors I have read about in American Literature class. In this class, I was required to read works by authors dating from the Age of Realism through to the Post Modern era. Most people my age are not entirely familiar with short stories written by the late John Cheever. “The Swimmer” remains to be his most notable short story. A wealthy suburbanite male decides to take an unconventional method of transportation home via swimming pools owned by residents throughout his classy New Jersey county. He thinks this journey is going to change all of his previous failings and win the approval of people who already dislike him.
Cheever’s stories are known for their portrayals of affluence and how pretentious it can make those who are fortunate enough to live with it. However, one particular story “Christmas Is A Sad Season For The Poor” introduces a man named Charlie. He works minimum wage as an elevator operator in a swanky New York City apartment building. Of course, this means he has to get up and go to work on Christmas morning. He exhibits an expression of self-pity by claiming he is “the only one” who is expected to do so. The fourth paragraph provides some insight into why Cheever chose such a title for this story. Charlie utters many variations of the following refrain when he talks with the apartment residents.
“I think Christmas is a very sad season of the year. It isn’t that people around here aint generous – I mean, I got plenty of tips—but, you see, I live alone in a furnished room and I don’t have any family or anything and Christmas isn’t much of a holiday for me.
Naturally, most people would emphasize with someone who is in a similar situation to that of Charlie’s. Christmas is a very lonely time for many people. Finding coping mechanisms for such loneliness is essential for survival in a season that is ultimately supposed to be full of good cheer. Sometimes, we deal with such loneliness by unjustifiable actions such as lying to gain sympathy from others. He does just that when he speaks to Mr. and Mrs. Fuller. He lies about having two dead children and four who are still living. All of the apartment residents who interact with Charlie are sympathetic and empathetic towards him. His feelings of loneliness and sadness do not change.
The “woe is me” feeling is all too familiar for those of us who have gone through situations where it seems like complaining is the only way to cope. It seemed to work for Charlie. Residents shower him with all kinds of gifts as acts of kindness. The above takes place all the while being totally oblivious to the reality of his children being a pigment of his imagination. Just some of the gifts include eggnog, martinis, cocktails, a dressing gown, goose, turkey, pheasant, chicken, grouse, and pigeon. He drinks some of the drinks while he is on the job. Hilarity ensues after he begins to take Mrs. Gadshill down from the twelfth floor.
“Strap on your safety belt, Mrs. Gadshill! We’re going to make a loopty loop!” Mrs. Gadshill shrieked. Then, for some reason, she sat down on the floor of the elevator. Why was her face so pale; he wondered; why was she sitting on the floor? She shrieked again. He grounded the car gently, and cleverly, he thought, and opened the door. “I’m sorry if I scared you, Mrs. Gadshill,” he said meekly. “I was only fooling.” She shrieked again. Then she ran out into the lobby, screaming for the superintendent.
Drunken Charlie is now fired from his minimum wage job. This certainly does nothing for his sadness and loneliness.
The excess of food and presents around him began to make him feel guilty and unworthy. He regretted bitterly the lie he had told about his children. He was a single man with simple needs. He had abused the goodness of the people upstairs. He was unworthy.
The final events of the story begin when he flashes back to the landlady in his apartment building. She is eating dinner with her family when Charlie knocks on the door. He offers presents to her children. He also gives her the dressing gown that was previously given to him. She accepts the offer. But, says to her children that they have received enough gifts. She encourages her children to bring the presents to the poor kids on Hudson Street. She says this as Christmas day is nearing its end.
“Now, you kids help me get all this stuff together. Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she said, for it was benevolence for only a single day, and that day was nearly over. She was tired, but she couldn’t rest, she couldn’t rest.”
This story can be interpreted in a few ways. The title reminds us how sad Christmas can be for people who lack the money to buy presents for their loved ones. I especially began to notice it’s portrayal of clashes between rich and poor. Charlie works a minimum wage job. Mind you, it is inside the elevator of a luxurious New York City apartment building. He has no choice but to interact with people who can afford luxuries which he can only dream of. Cheever enlightens readers about the impact it can have on one’s psyche. It made Charlie a perpetual victim who expected everyone to know about his misfortunes. Thus, it caused him to lie in a successful attempt to win the sympathy of the wealthy apartment tenants. It only provides temporary relief for his unhealthy perpetual victim complex.
His face was blazing. He loved the world, and the world loved him. When he thought back over his life, it appeared to him in a rich and wonderful light, full of astonishing experiences and unusual friends. He thought of his job as an elevator operator – cruising up and down through hundreds of feet of perilous space – demanded the nerve and intellect of a birdman. All the contraints of his life – the green walls of his room and months of unemployment – dissolved. No one was ringing, but he got into the elevator and shot it at full speed up to the penthouse and down again, up and down, to test his wonderful mastery of space.
Finally and most importantly, those last few sentences remind me about the irony often associated with people who spend all of their time and energy to make Christmas more enjoyable for those who cannot afford it. This season only comes once a year. Like decorations, benevolence is placed in boxes and stored in the basement until next December comes around. I have tried to come up with a way, to sum up my writing about this story. All in all, I can say that reading it and interpreting it was time well spent. Charlie is a complex character. He is a con man who takes advantage of people’s kindness. Karma does come up to him. However, he looks back on his feelings of loneliness and tries to take a step in the right direction by performing an act of kindness.
At the very least, he teaches us the right and wrong approach towards coping with the holiday blues.
AdvertisementsAs Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders fielded questions during today’s press briefing, ABC’s Jon Karl pressed her to explain why President Trump is threatening a government shutdown over his border wall.
During his rally this week in Arizona, Trump said he would allow the government to shut down if that’s what it took to secure funding for the wall’s construction. Karl repeatedly asked Sanders why Trump was doing this when the president told his supporters throughout the 2016 election Mexico will pay for the wall to be built.
Sanders declined to answer the question directly, saying:
“The president’s committed to making sure this gets done. We know that the wall and other security measures at the border work, we’ve seen that take place over the last decade, and we’re committed to making sure the American people are protected and we’re going to continue to push forward and make sure that the wall gets built.”
As the presser went on, Sanders faced more questions about whether Trump’s declaration meant he was conceding that American taxpayers will end up footing the bill for the wall.
Watch above, via CNN.
[Image via screengrab]
— —
>> Follow Ken Meyer (@KenMeyer91) on Twitter
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comSikhio, Thailand - In Thailand's prison system, some inmates participate in fighting matches where the reward is their freedom.
In a story that dates to 1774, Thai fighter Nai Khanomtom found himself in a Burmese prison where he was forced to fight nine Burmese champions in a row for King Mangra. Khanomotom defeated every opponent and the Burmese king was so impressed that he granted his freedom along with two wives - giving birth to a tradition of pardoning outstanding fighters.
Most of today's fighting prisoners are neither famous nor legendary. They are commoners, unknown and widely disregarded by the outside world. They fight in tournaments called "Prison Fight", put on by a Thai and Estonian partnership in conjunction with Thailand's Department of Corrections.
Inmates battle foreign fighters in organised matches put on by Prison Fight, and those who win will receive money and have the opportunity to meet with the warden and have their sentence reduced. The more fights they win, the more time is taken off. An inmate is also expected to display good behaviour and personal development in addition to his fighting prowess.
Many inmates are eager for the opportunity as each fight card is fully booked by the prisoners. The Thai prisoners win the majority of fights.History Edit
Symbolism Edit
An interpretation version for the tricolour as being a representation of Estonia's natural scenery A symbolism-interpretation made popular by the poetry of Martin Lipp says the blue is for the vaulted blue sky above the native land, the black for attachment to the soil of the homeland as well as the fate of Estonians — for centuries black with worries, and white for purity, hard work, and commitment.[5]
Other current flags Edit
Flag of the President (on land)
Flag of the President (at sea)
Naval jack
Historical flags Edit
Colors Edit
The shade of blue is defined in the Estonian flag law as follows: PANTONE color 285 C. [1]
CMYK equivalents: C=91, M=43, Y=0, K=0 [1]
RGB equivalents: R=0, G=114, B=206[1] (HEX conversion: #0072CE: )
Selections from the Estonian Flag Act Edit
Early morning fog in the Põhja-Kõrvemaa Nature Reserve The most recent Estonian Flag Act was passed 23 March 2005 and came into force on 14 June 2014. The Act specifies the colors in Pantone and CMYK formats, as well as specifying when it can be hoisted and how it can be used and by whom. The Act specifies that the flag is "the ethnic and the national flag".[6] More specifically, the Flag Act specifies that the flag be hoisted on the Pikk Hermann tower in Tallinn every day at sunrise, but not earlier than 7.00 a.m., and is lowered at sunset".[6] The lawful flag days are as follows: 3 January – Commemoration Day of Combatants of the Estonian War of Independence
2 February – Anniversary of Tartu Peace Treaty
24 February – Independence Day
14 March – Mother Tongue Day
23 April – Veterans’ Day
The second Sunday of May – Mothers’ Day
9 May – Europe Day
4 June – Flag Day
14 June – Day of Mourning
23 June – Victory Day
24 June – Midsummer Day
20 August – Day of Restoration of Independence
1 September – Day of Knowledge
The third Saturday of October – Finno-Ugric Day
The second Sunday of November – Fathers’ Day
The day of election of the Riigikogu[6]
Nordic flag proposals Edit
Gallery Edit
Photo gallery The current flag above the Tall Hermann tower, Toompea castle, Tallinn
Flag of Estonia on top of Suur Munamagi watch tower, the highest point in Estonia and Baltic states, at 318 metres (1,043 ft) above sea level
See also EditAlberta’s Tory leader has announced money for faster treatment in emergency rooms, but the Grit leader — an ER physician — says the program is already in place.
Tory Leader Alison Redford Thursday said patients with "easily identifiable, treatable injuries" – like a broken arm, kitchen burn, cold or flu – would be funnelled off to a "fast track."
That’s a separately staffed area in the ER where the patients are treated.
Such patients, suffering "less-serious, and serious but non-life-threatening injuries" are currently often pushed back in favour of more serious, sometimes life-threatening cases. That can lead to longer wait times as some patients are pushed back again and again.
"Through this initiative, these patients will be appropriately directed through a quicker screening process that will result in faster treatment and a faster return home for all patients," said Redford.
"Fantastic idea," Alberta Liberal Leader and ER doc Raj Sherman shot back in a news release titled "Alison Redford Invents Triage."
"Why didn’t we think of it earlier? We need to come up with a name for this. Why don’t we call it triage?" Sherman quipped.
Triage is a regular practice in emergency rooms and is simply the sorting and treatment of patients according to how urgently they need care.
In other words, people with broken limbs and bad burns receive treatment before patients showing up with apparent colds or general aches and pains.
Redford will earmark about $2.5 million for every health care facility that decides to incorporate the "quicker screening process" into their system.
But Sherman says "fast track emergency rooms already exist in every major hospital in the province."
His plan would instead double money for home care to $808 million a year, increase funding and standards for non-profit long term care and train more medical professionals.
Meanwhile, the Wildrose Party is promising a hospital wait-time guarantee.
Speaking in Calgary, leader Danielle Smith said their plan would include reimbursement for operations done outside of Alberta’s public system. Patients would see reimbursements paid out equivalent to what the same procedure would cost in Alberta.
The party is also looking to bolster both public and private healthcare delivery.
“It means our public health system will be strengthened by introducing choice and competition, empowering local hospitals to make decisions, and putting an end to the queue jumping and bureaucratic paralysis that have been shameful hallmarks of healthcare under the PCs," says Smith.
Smith says hospitals will need to publish wait times under her plan.
The party says their latest promise will cost $180 million a year.LIVERMORE, Calif., March 16 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they have, for the first time, changed high frequency sounds into light by reversing a process that converts electrical signals to sound.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers said their new tool enhances the way computer chips, LEDs and transistors are build.
Commonly used piezo-electric speakers, such as those found in a cell phone, operate at low frequencies that human ears can hear, the scientists from LLNL and the Nitronex Corp. said. But by reversing that process, lead researchers Michael Armstrong, Evan Reed and Mike Howard used a very high frequency sound wave -- about 100 million times higher frequency than what humans can hear -- to generate light.
"This process allows us to very accurately'see' the highest frequency sound waves by translating them into light," Armstrong said.
The complex research appears in the journal Nature Physics.Beginning at 8 PM EST, citizens of six predominantly Muslim nations—Libya, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Yemen, and Somalia—will be barred entry to the United States unless they can provide evidence of what the Supreme Court deemed “bona fide relationships” to the United States. While the White House appears to be optimistic about the revised ban’s rollout, it carries many of the same issues that stalled Trump’s initial order months earlier.
For one, the order sets harsh criteria for what relationships are protected as “family ties.” While children-in-law and stepsiblings of American citizens are free to enter, the State Department explicitly refuses to cover cousins, fiancés, and even grandparents. Setting aside the ethical problems of such a delineation, the State Department’s definition of “close family” raises significant legal concerns. Because the Supreme Court was murky on what exactly constitutes a “bona fide relationship” to the United States, American citizens will have grounds to file lawsuits against the administration’s exclusion of certain family members and loved ones.
The State Department has also confusingly assured that all visa applicants from banned nations will be reviewed “case-by-case.” A visa can theoretically be given to someone who cannot prove that they have “bona fide relationships”—a grandparent or uncle, for instance—if it is determined that denying them entry would cause “undue hardship.” At the same time, a visa can be denied to an individual who can prove legitimate business ties to an American entity if officials determine that the relationship was forged simply to side-step the ban.
This reveals the most troubling element of the upcoming travel ban: It leaves a massive discretionary vacuum that will be filled by consular officers and CBP agents. The window for inconsistent enforcement and bureaucratic bungling by officials appears to be substantial. When Trump rolled out his initial attempt at a travel ban months earlier, it failed precisely because it gave undue influence to the whims of individual officials. There’s no reason to believe that won’t happen again.On Saturday night, Asheville City Soccer Club traveled to Memphis, Tennessee to play their first away game of the 2017 regular season. The team played well on the road, drawing 2–2 (more on that below), and back home, we still gathered to support, albeit with some hiccups.
First, we’re not dumb people. But…… for some reason, no one made the connection that Memphis is in the Central Time Zone. 7:00pm was the listed game time for our South Slope Blues page, as well as Hi-Wire Brewery, and the team’s page too. We organized an event on the proper social media channels, and we all showed up for a 7:30pm kickoff.
Whoops.
An extra hour of drinking: rookie mistake. We’ll have to remember this when we travel to Nashville. However, upon realizing it, we were at least somewhat productive in creating new chants for our upcoming matches this week, the first of which is Wednesday night against Tri-Cities FC out of Johnson City, TN. Being only an hour away, a rivalry has been born before we’ve even met one another. And in my interview with head coach Gary Hamel, he referred to this match as a “traveling trophy game”. Sounds fun.
Anyway, kickoff finally rolled around at 8:30pm ET, and at this point, Hi-Wire was all filled up. With around 100 people, we may have outnumbered the fans at Christian Brothers High School Stadium in Memphis that evening. (Probably not, but it sure seemed that way.) The entire first half consisted of a stream from Memphis City with a score line showing “Ashville City.” Another whoops.
Follies behind us, on to the play on the field…
In the 13th minute, Memphis opened up the scoring on a laser of a free kick from about 25 yards out from Mario Highmann. The free kick came after a questionable foul was called, which resulted in an even more questionable yellow card. Highmann’s ball could not have been more perfectly placed though, as it sailed over the wall and into the left corner of the net.
The Memphis lead wouldn’t last long, though, as Asheville’s Jack Miller found Tom Deeley in the 17th minute to tie things up. Scoring chances were aplenty in the first half for both sides but for the second straight match, ACSC found themselves at a halftime score of 1–1.
Not from this game, but seriously, no photos of Memphis City/CBU Stadium exist.
And the second half played out much like the first. Good physical play was a theme for the game, and Memphis took a 2–1 lead in the 51st minute on a penalty kick.
Once again, their lead would not hold. Second goal, same as the first! Again, Tom Deeley found the back of the net, and again, it was on another beautiful pass from Jack Miller. 2–2 in the 64th minute.
As expected, with time winding down physicality increased, leading to a few more opportunities from both squads. Nothing would prove productive though, and late stellar play from goalkeeper Parker Siegfried and the defense once again would preserve a hard-fought point in Asheville’s first away game.
Again, ACSC hosts the Tri-City Otters on Wednesday night, and then the Knoxville Force on Friday. Both matches have promise of developing into fierce rivalries based on proximity alone.
Kickoff for tomorrow has been bumped up to 6:30pm, and if possible you should try to arrive early, because the word is out. Another sellout is expected. And if you happen to be able to join the South Slope Blues for a pint before the game, please join us at Burial Brewing, as we support one of our own in a fundraising event for Twin Leaf brewer Brett Schweigert and his wife Beth. The event will get rolling around 4:00. I’ll see you guys there!
(Photo courtesy of ACSC)
In more news, the South Slope Blues are now officially recognized as a nonprofit. This is a great step as the supporters group will look to become actively involved in our community in the near future.
Also in good news, if all goes according to plan, I will be attending the remaining five away games so more visuals and a more personal theme to the recaps should be on the way. Hoorah!
As for the team, Asheville City remains in second in the Eastern division of the NPSL Southeast standings behind the Silverbacks heading into our two home matches this week.
The great start to the season continues, and here’s to hoping the momentum keeps building. Thanks for reading: let’s paint the city blue (again) tomorrow night.Jaffe explained that one of the first things Netflix did away with was the old, movie-poster shaped title cards - they just weren't a good fit for today's widescreen HDTVs. Seeing the new interface boot up, we're inclined to agree: the queue is now displayed with shorter (but wider) tiles that span across the lower third of the 10-foot display. The selected title headlines the horizontal scroll with a brief description of the program and three splash images, rotating every few seconds to foster a more dynamic experience.
"What you see is an experience that's much more visually rich," explained Jaffe, pointing to an area just below the title summary. "We broke out this new area that has something interesting about each title personalized for you." Here, Netflix will tell you if any of your friends watched the title, or if it might be a good fit for you based on your viewing history (recommending Doctor Who because you watched Lost, for instance). Diving into a TV series populates episodes on the left, showing a screenshot, a viewing progress bar and an episode synopsis at a glance. Even search makes better use of real estate, offering a graphical list of title results on the right side of the screen while simultaneously listing actor results in the lower left. Oh, and search is predictive too, which saves a ton of time when using a hunt and peck on-screen keyboard.
The new interface is certainly an improvement, but it's probably more notable that it serves as a fresh start for Netflix and its apps. "If we came out with a great new feature" Jaffe explained, "we'd have to write it for PS3. We'd have to write it for Xbox -- we have to write it for all these platforms." Bringing Netflix Max or voice control to multiple platforms meant rewriting the code over and over again. The latest update introduces apps built on the same foundation, a new platform Netflix created to streamline its development processes. Now, Jaffe told us, they can code the feature once and distribute it to all platforms.
All if this backend innovation will have one casualty though: Jaffe told us that Xbox 360 users who update to the new interface won't be able to use Kinect gesture control anymore -- the update uses a Netflix-sourced voice protocol that doesn't leave room for the floating hand trick. On the plus side, the new voice technology will allow the company to implement deeper voice control in Smart TVs. All in all, it seems like a solid, forward thinking update to Netflix's TV apps, and it's available now for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 (at launch), Xbox 360, Roku 3 and an assortment of recent Smart TVs and Blu-ray players, and older Roku boxes and other devices will be updated in the coming months. The only device guaranteed not to be on the docket? The Xbox One: Netflix says it's been working with Microsoft to create an experience that matches the existing Xbox paradigm. It might leave the console out of uniform, but the company promises us it'll look sharp, all the same.Army troops foiled an infiltration bid by armed terrorists from across the Line of Control (LoC) in Pallanwala sector of Jammu Kashmir on Friday evening.
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Giving details, a Defence Ministry spokesman Lt Colonel Manish Mehta said that a group of terrorists taking advantage of bad weather tried to sneak into the Indian territory from Pakistan side. The infiltrators opened fire on being challenged by alert troops.
However, in the ensuing fire fight, a jawan sustained injuries. His condition was stable, spokesman said, adding the area was immediately cordoned and combing operations were in progress till reports last came in.
Meanwhile, Rashtriya Rifles along with state police busted a terrorist hideout in Chaurangal forests of Ramban District and seized arms and ammunition from there. The seizures included two pistols along with magazines, two |
in place to help put the paintings in a context.
"Since the incident yesterday, we're also handing out a text sheet which looks at some of the insights behind the themes of the exhibition, so from the artist's perspective in regards to what the artist is actually saying," he said.
"And before they [gallery visitors] go in they can actually have a look at it and read it, so that they can put the exhibition into some context, so that the images aren't just being read on their own I suppose, and that people have a better understanding about where the artist is coming from."
Despite calls to close the exhibition, it is scheduled to remain at the Wollongong City Gallery until late November.
Topics: painting, arts-and-entertainment, library-museum-and-gallery, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, wollongong-2500, australia, nsw
First postedEDEN, on the state's south coast, is set to be the first Australian town to be powered by a wood-fired electricity plant, despite concerns that burning trees could generate more greenhouse gas emissions than burning coal.
The woodchip company behind the plant, which is being considered by the NSW government, describes it as a renewable energy project that will make practical use of offcuts and sawdust from its existing mill.
Climate change activists display black balloons (representing pollution) outside the offices of the NSW government in Sydney to protest at its approval of a new woodchip fired power station in Eden. Credit:AFP
But it faces fierce opposition from sections of the local community which believe the plan will entrench logging in native forests and promote demand for woodchips.
Although the plant's developer, South East Fibre Exports, plans to phase in plantation wood, the majority of the 51,000 tonnes of fuel will still come from logging in native forests. When the role of the living trees as carbon sinks is factored in, emissions from the plant soar to up to four times that of a coal plant, campaigners argue.A man claiming to be the person who delivered a gift-wrapped package of horse manure at the Los Angeles home of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Monday he did it to protest the federal tax overhaul signed into law last week by President Donald Trump.
Robert Strong, 45, a psychologist for the Los Angeles County Public Health Department, said by telephone he left the poop-filled parcel addressed to Mnuchin and Trump in the driveway outside Mnuchin's home in the posh Bel Air community.
KNBC-TV, an NBC television affiliate in Los Angeles, reported Mnuchin was not home at the time. The package delivered Sunday was found by Mnuchin's neighbour.
"Protest really should be funny," Strong told Reuters. "People's eyes glaze over when they just see angry people in the streets." He believes the new tax law will hurt poor people.
Package may not have broken law
Neither the U.S. Secret Service nor the Los Angeles Police Department, both of which investigated the incident, would confirm Strong was responsible. The Secret Service interviewed an individual who admitted delivering the package, but no charges had been filed against him as of Monday afternoon.
LAPD Lt. Rob Weise said it was possible whoever left the package did not break any criminal laws. While he is not assigned to investigate the incident, Weise said if the box did not present any danger, it would not be illegal. The LAPD bomb squad X-rayed the box before opening it on Saturday.
All in a days work. If the GOP can fleece the American people in such a brazen fashion, we must call it out in such a brazen fashion. Like Hunter S. Thompson once said, "when the going gets weird, the weird turns pro."<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/handdeliveredhorseshit?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#handdeliveredhorseshit</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ghostofchristmaspresent?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ghostofchristmaspresent</a> <a href="https://t.co/HPnj4iQsQC">pic.twitter.com/HPnj4iQsQC</a> —@RobertStrong13
In a photo of the card Strong posted on Twitter, he wrote, "Misters Mnuchin & Trump, We're returning the 'gift' of the Christmas tax bill" and signed it, "Warmest wishes, The American people."
Strong said a Secret Service agent, accompanied by six police officers, showed up at his house to question him on Sunday night, and the agent chided him, asking, "'Are you ashamed of your behaviour?'"
The White House declined to comment on Monday and officials with the Treasury Department could not be reached.Michael Slager (right) is seen shooting Walter Scott in the back in North Charleston, South Carolina, on April 4, 2015. Screenshot via New York Times
This past Saturday morning in North Charleston, South Carolina, Officer Michael Slager shot and killed Walter Scott, a 50-year-old resident of the city, after a traffic stop turned into an altercation. In its report, the North Charleston Police Department says Scott, who is black, took control of Slager’s Taser and tried to use it against him. Fearing for his life, Slager “resorted to his service weapon” and shot Scott.
On Tuesday, however, the Charleston Post and Courier released video footage that challenged the official narrative. Taken by an anonymous bystander, the clip shows a brief scuffle in which Slager uses his Taser. But then Scott runs away—his family said he didn’t want to go to jail for owing child support—at which point Slager raises his gun and fires eight times, killing Scott. Slager cuffs him and later picks up a small black object and drops it near the body.
This footage, which completely contradicts Slager’s account, has led the city to take legal action, charging him with murder, and it fired him from the police force. It’s a swift reaction that likely wouldn’t have happened without the documentation. It would have been “swept under the rug,” says Scott’s father. Instead, both the police chief and the South Carolina police union have condemned the shooting. “It is a sad day for us all when a police officer makes what appears to be a very bad decision that resulted in an unnecessary death,” said the South Carolina Law Enforcement Officers’ Association in a statement to BuzzFeed, endorsing the murder charge and declaring that the “swift decision to charge the officer demonstrates that law enforcement will not tolerate the tarnishing of the badge and oaths we all take so seriously.” For accountability, the video was crucial.
There’s not much more to say about the shooting itself, beyond remarking on how shocking it was. When it comes to police abuse, it’s as close to an open-and-shut case as you’ll ever see. But it’s worth looking closely at the events that led to the shooting. Not the struggle or altercation, but the traffic stop itself.
Simply put, Slager’s stop of Scott—on an ordinary road in a sprawling Southern city—seems to fit a pattern identified by sociologists Charles R. Epp, Steven Maynard-Moody, and Donald Haider-Markel in their massive study of traffic stops in the Kansas City metropolitan area, Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship. The authors identify two kinds of stops: traffic safety and investigatory. In the former, drivers are stopped for clearly breaking traffic laws, from speeding to driving under the influence. These stops are straightforward. Officers explain the offense, follow a procedure, and issue a ticket. The process is quick and unremarkable. This is true for whites and blacks. “In traffic-safety stops,” write Epp, Maynard-Moody, and Haider-Markel, “gender and age matter hardly at all and has race has no significant influence.”* Or, as they say a little later in the book, “In stops for excessive speeding … the driver’s race (and gender) has no relevance to the likelihood of being stopped. It is driving behavior, pure and simple, that determines whether a driver is stopped to enforce the traffic-safety laws.”
There are racial disparities in police stops—blacks are stopped twice as often as whites—but they aren’t related to traffic safety offenses, in which cops exercise a little less discretion and violations are equal within groups. Where we see a difference—even after we adjust for driving time (on average, blacks drive more and longer than whites)—is in investigatory stops. In these, drivers are stopped for exceedingly minor violations—driving too slowly, malfunctioning lights, failure to signal—which are used as pretext for investigations of the driver and the vehicle. Sanctioned by courts and institutionalized in most police departments, investigatory stops are aimed at “suspicious” drivers and meant to stop crime, not traffic offenses. And as the authors note, “virtually all of the wide racial disparity in the likelihood of being stopped is concentrated in one category of stops: discretionary stops for minor violations of the law.”
The difference between the two kinds of stops is dramatic. Where traffic safety stops are mostly painless (other than tickets), investigatory stops involve searches, impromptu interrogations, and occasionally handcuffs and weapons. Here’s how one black man described his experience:
I was driving a ’79 Cadillac Seville, white, that I was fixing up. You know, I’d been working on restoring it, you know, it was looking pretty good. I had really taken it down to test it out. So he pulled me over and he said, you know, regular procedure “driver’s license and registration” and whatever. And he said that I was going 67 in a 65 mile-per-hour zone, or something like a couple miles over the speed limit, that is the reason why stopped me. And I said, “Well, my speedometer said 65.” He said, “Well, because you got bigger tires and stuff like that on the car, the car is traveling a lot … it travels a lot faster.” I think he said then that whatever the speedometer is saying, you are going faster. And he stopped me for that and while he stopped me he was talking to me and he looked in there and I had a cell phone, I had a car phone sitting in there. And then he said, “Do you have any kind of drugs or guns in the car?” And I said, “No.” He said, “Do you mind if I search the car?” and I told him, “No, I don’t mind.” …
So he told me to go on the front of the car and put your hands on the front of the car … [H]e looked around and everything, and when he got through he came back and he didn’t find anything, and he came back and said, “The reason why we checked your car is we’ve been having problems with people trafficking drugs up and down the highway.” So that was that.
In the study, 60 percent of all stops for whites were for traffic safety, versus 35 percent for blacks. By contrast, 52 percent of all stops for blacks (versus 34 percent for whites) were for events in which the reasons were minor (“You didn’t signal at the stop sign”). For 18 percent of black drivers, the reasons for the stops were nonexistent, while only 8 percent of white drivers weren’t given reasons for their stops.
But even this doesn’t capture the full picture. For that you need to look at the likelihood of stops as it relates to a host of demographic and vehicle information. And there, the pattern holds. Again, the authors say, for traffic safety stops, “the most important influences … are how people drive and not how they look.” The more you break traffic laws, the more likely it is you’ll get stopped. This isn’t true for investigatory stops. For white men, the odds of being stopped in this manner peak when they’re between 16 to 25 years old—when there’s a 15 percent chance—and decline so that by middle age, a given white man will have a smaller than 10 percent chance of being in an investigatory stop. (For white women, it’s less than 10 percent in youth and less than 5 percent in middle age.)
Black men aren’t so lucky. For them, the odds of being stopped this way start at 30 percent and don’t reach the 10 percent mark until they’re in their 50s. (For black women, it starts at roughly 20 percent and declines to under 10 percent by age 40.) Indeed, a black man at 70 is more likely to be stopped for a minor offense and investigated than a white man in his 30s, despite a much lower chance of criminal activity. The same pattern holds for your odds of being stopped more than once in a year; for young black men it’s upward of 35 percent, while for young white men it’s around 15 percent. Black men don’t reach 15 percent until their 40s, while the odds for white men dip to less than 10 percent by that time.
Race, age, and gender aren’t the only factors that affect your chances of being ensnared in an investigatory stop. It varies depending on location—black drivers in inner suburbs are most likely to be stopped, followed by those in outer suburbs and then those in urban cores—and on the type of car you’re driving. “Over the course of a year, an African American man under age 40 has a 21 percent chance of being stopped in an investigatory stop if his car is some make or model other than a domestic luxury car; his chance of being stopped jumps to 36 percent if he drives a domestic luxury car,” write the authors. And if you’re young, black, male, and drive an older domestic luxury car, your odds of an investigatory stop jump to 44 percent in a given year.
Which brings us back to the stop that preceded the encounter between Slager and Scott. Scott was driving an older-model Mercedes-Benz with a broken taillight through North Charleston, which is the second largest city in the area and has one of the highest violent crime rates in the state. Police didn’t explain why Scott was pulled over, but investigatory stops are a regular practice for most law enforcement agencies, and it’s likely Scott was flagged for his taillight. We don’t know what happened between the stop and the video; Scott may have struggled when the officer came to his door, or—fearing an interrogation or arrest—he may have ran as soon as the encounter happened. Those are questions we still need to answer.
What we can say, however, is that the shooting of Walter Scott happened in an institutional environment where police officers are encouraged to make intrusive stops against people they deem suspicious. Overwhelmingly, those people are black American men. And as we’ve seen with stop-and-frisk tactics in New York City and with the behavior of the Ferguson Police Department, these stops aren’t effective; they yield fewer suspects and less contraband than what you get from more targeted investigations. Instead, they poison the relationship between departments and communities, creating mistrust and entrenching the view—among the police, the policed, and everyone else—that blacks are lesser citizens than their peers. Whether Slager, who is white, was racially biased—there’s no evidence he was—is irrelevant. What matters is that this universal suspicion is baked into the culture of police departments across the country, such that all kinds of officers—black as well as white—engage in profiling.
So we need to ask: Is this worth it? Does what we gain in crime control from investigatory stops justify the costs to individuals, families, and civic cohesion? Is it worth the extent to which these stops erode trust in police, discourage political participation, and create feelings of racial subordination? If it is, then we should carry on. But if we want to control crime without harming our society, then we need to rethink our approach. And although we don’t know how often violence happens in these stops, it’s a fact of numbers that when you expose huge quantities of people to regular, invasive police contact, this kind of tragedy is inevitable. If it wasn’t Walter Scott in North Charleston—or Eric Garner in New York—it would have been someone, somewhere.
Correction, April 9, 2015: Due to transcription errors, this article originally misquoted the book Pulled Over. It should have read that in traffic safety stops, “gender and age matter hardly at all,” not that they hardly matter at all. And in stops for excessive speeding, “the driver’s race (and gender) has no relevance to the likelihood of being stopped,” not just the driver’s race.
Read more of Slate’s coverage of the Walter Scott shooting.Child sexual assaults charges have been laid against a St. Albert father of two following a two-month investigation by Alberta’s integrated law enforcement agency’s child exploitation unit, say police.
Sparked by a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding a social media user uploading child pornography, the Edmonton-based Internet Child Exploitation unit launched an investigation in March.
Investigators identified a suspect and executed a search warrant at the family home where a number of computer and electronic devices were seized, police said at a Friday news conference.
Police allege the 35-year-old man had “committed sexual offences against his two school-age children and that the mother was aware the abuse had taken place but failed to contact police.”
Investigators believe the father committed sexual abuse over a period of at least three years. The mother, 32, is facing charges for not contacting police.
ICE unit Staff Sgt. Stephen Camp labelled the case as “egregious” and “sickening.”
“These children were allegedly sexually assaulted by their own father in their own home in an otherwise quiet community,” he said.
“These children were deprived of a sense of safety and security that most of us take for granted … sadly, their own mother allegedly knew of the abuse of the two children and failed to take appropriate action.
“It’s a very sad case. These two wonderful children had their innocence stripped away for some sick sexual depravity by the people that they are close to and that they should be trusting.
“These children will have to live with that trauma for the rest of their lives.”
Charges were laid on May 2 and Camp said more charges could be laid against the father.
The father is charged with two counts of sexual assault, two counts of sexual interference, two counts of invitation to sexual touching and one count each of making child pornography available and possession of child pornography.
The mother is charged with causing a youth to need intervention under the province’s Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act.
The parent’s names are not being released in order to protect the identity of the children. The children have been removed from the family home.
The accused are scheduled to make a first appearance in St. Albert provincial court on May 8 at 9:30 a.m.
jgraney@postmedia.com
twitter.com/jurisgraneyManitoba's Progressive Conservative Party has ousted its youth party president over derogatory comments he made on Facebook about aboriginal people.
Braydon Mazurkiewich, the president of the party's youth wing, was asked to resign on Friday after he posted the comment, in which he was reacting to a Federal Court ruling on the sale of the former Kapyong Barracks site in Winnipeg.
Braydon Mazurkiewich, seen in a Facebook profile picture, resigned as president of the PC Party's youth wing over racist comments he posted on the social media website on Friday. (Facebook)
"The comments Braydon made are isolated, they are terribly inappropriate, and they're detrimental to the party. And so with all that, we just can't accept it," party president Ryan Matthews told CBC News on Friday.
Matthews said he asked Mazurkiewich for his resignation and received it.
First Nations leaders have been celebrating the Federal Court decision, which ruled that Ottawa failed to four First Nations, or even communicate properly with them, on the sale of the former Canadian Forces base.
"Listen carefully to the news today. Looks like they might be announcing that they're building a freaking reserve in the middle of Winnipeg. This city is quickly becoming the laughing stock of the entire country," Mazurkiewich wrote on his Facebook page.
After some people commented on his post, Mazurkiewich then wrote, "That was built for hardworking men and women of the military, not freeloading Indians."
'I want to live the Canadian dream'
Mazurkiewich told CBC News he feels terrible about the Facebook post, and he's sorry if his comments offended anyone.
At the same time, he said he does have strong feelings about aboriginal people.
"I do know hard-working aboriginal people, and I commend them for the work they do and the taxes that they pay. But a lot of them don't," he said.
"I do know that they live pretty much tax-free, and it pains me to see that I work very hard and I pay so much in taxes…. One day I want to move out of my parents' place buy a house and start a family. I want to live the Canadian dream."
When asked what he thinks an urban reserve would look like, Mazurkiewich replied, "Up north there's housing, and when I look at the news it's not the greatest sight.
"I don't think people paying high property taxes in that neighbourhood should have to deal with that next door," he said.
Winnipeg aboriginal activist Michael Champagne responded to Mazurkiewich's comments with a message on Twitter, aimed at the Progressive Conservative Party as a whole.
"Please do not simply kick out your youth president, please make a point of educating him and the other PC members why this type of attitude is wrong," he tweeted.After spending the better part of last night dragging Sunil Tripathi's name through the mud and negligently inflicting emotional distress on his friends and family, Reddit now wants to play a part in helping find the missing Brown student.
Late yesterday, Reddit began to speculate about the possibility that Sunil Tripathi — who was on leave from Brown when he was last seen in Providence, RI, on March 15th — might be one of the two Boston Marathon bomber.
It's unclear how or why this rumor came to pass, but it ended up being furthered after the claim made a leap onto Twitter when someone claimed that the Boston Police scanner had named Tripathi as a suspect in the case.
That Tripathi's name was ever said on the scanner is being disputed.
Whatever the timeline, by the early morning hours, Tripathi's name was trending worldwide, and many had taken to his family's Facebook page to leave abhorrent messages.
A few hours later, this post was published on the same page:
A tremendous and painful amount of attention has been cast on our beloved Sunil Tripathi in the past twelve hours. We have known unequivocally all along that neither individual suspected as responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings was Sunil. We are grateful to all of you who have followed us on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit-supporting us over the recent hours. Now more than ever our greatest strength comes from your enduring support. We thank all of you who have reached out to our family and ask that you continue to raise awareness and to help us find our gentle, loving, and thoughtful Sunil.
After the thorough debunking of Tripathi's connection to the bombing finally made its way back to Reddit, the mod of the now-infamous FindBostonBombers subreddit released this statement:
I'd like to extend the deepest apologies to the family of Sunil Tripathi for any part we may have had in relaying what has turned out to be faulty information. We cannot begin to know what you're going through and for that we are truly sorry. Several users, twitter users, and other sources had heard him identified as the suspect and believed it to be confirmed. We were mistaken. This event shows exactly why the no personal information until confirmation rule is in place. Out of respect for Tripathi and his family, I ask that users here please remove any and all links about him. Thank you.
In the aftermath of the trouble they caused Tripathi's family, Reddit users are now hoping their smearing of Sunil will at least improve the chances of finding him.
"Hopefully his wrongful accusation increases his profile enough that he is found and returned to his family," wrote Reddit TerriblePigs.
A new subreddit has even been set up — HelpFindSunilTripathi — though so far only a single comment has been posted there: "I hope in the future people don't jump to conclusion anymore."
[image via Reddit]Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Ahmed Mohamed, center, and father Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, left, look on as their lawyer Susan E. Hutchison speaks holding the school pencil box holding the clock Ahmed built during a news conference in Dallas, Monday, Aug. 8, 2016. The family of...
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Ahmed Mohamed, center, and father Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, left, look on as their lawyer Susan E. Hutchison speaks holding the school pencil box holding the clock Ahmed built during a news conference in Dallas, Monday, Aug. 8, 2016. The family of...
Associated Press - DALLAS (AP) -- A judge has dismissed conservative commentator Glenn Beck as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by the father of a Muslim boy arrested after taking a homemade clock to his Dallas-area school.
The Dallas Morning News reports state District Judge Maricela Moore on Monday dismissed claims against Beck, his network, and against a conservative think tank.
Beck's attorney, Michael Grygiel, said Beck was pleased with the ruling.
In September, Mohamed Mohamed filed the defamation lawsuit on behalf of himself and his 14-year-old son, Ahmed, who was arrested in 2015 after his clock was mistaken for a hoax bomb.
Mohamed had argued comments made by Beck and others led the public to believe his family members were terrorists.
Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne remains a defendant in the lawsuit.Hurray, we’ve just released PyCharm 4.5!
PyCharm 4.5 is available as a full-fledged Professional Edition for Python and Web development, or as a free and open-source Community Edition for pure Python development.
Download PyCharm 4.5 for your platform today!
One of the key additions in v4.5 is Python Profiler Integration. You can easily discover captured snapshots and detailed statistics of your running application with a colored function call graph, as well as navigate to source code right from the graph. In addition, the profiler works with remote interpreters the same way as with local ones. The yappi and cProfile profilers are supported:
The PyCharm debugger has grown more powerful, too. Now it includes an Inline Debugger for easy inspection of variables, function parameters and objects right inside the editor. The matplotlib interactive mode now works in both Python and Debugger consoles. The debugger supports two new options, Ignore library files and Step into my code, letting you stay more focused on your own code. You can now also navigate from variables view.
More improvements worth mentioning:
New and re-worked manage.py tool for Django projects
for Django projects Improved Django 1.8 code insight
code insight Bulk move refactoring
refactoring New refactorings: Convert to module & Convert to package
& Significantly improved IPython Notebook integration with the new IPython Notebook console
integration with the new IPython Notebook console Temporary Python Scratch Files
Initial support for Python 3.5
Distraction-free mode
And even more
Please see the what’s new page for more details or, for a quick visual overview, watch this short What’s New in PyCharm 4.5 video:
Download PyCharm 4.5 for your platform here!
PyCharm 4.5 Professional Edition is a free update for everyone who purchased their license after May 15, 2014. As usual, a 30-day trial is available if you want to try PyCharm as your new Python/Django IDE.
Develop with pleasure!
The JetBrains PyCharm TeamThe first of EA's adjustments to the loot box ecosystem in Star Wars Battlefront 2 have gone live but they're insignificant and skirt the bigger issue. In other words, the loot box system remains the same.
What's changed is the speed at which you can earn things.
End-of-round credit pay-outs have been upped across the board, "specifically bumping the top players on each team by even more". This means skilled players will earn credits more quickly.
The Arcade mode daily credit cap has been increased to 1500, and you will receive more crafting parts from daily loot boxes to go towards upgrading your Star Card abilities.
Obviously these changes aren't going to fix Star Wars Battlefront 2 but, as EA DICE was at pains to point out, they're only a start. "These are only some initial steps toward making much larger changes," said the SWBF2 credit changes blog post.
"It's been a busy few weeks for Star Wars Battlefront 2," the post added. "We're excited to have launched the game to the world but recognise that there have been some challenges along the way. We have learned a lot and are making adjustments to the game to ensure the best experience possible."
Meanwhile, here's a Star Wars Battlefront 2 game without any loot boxes.
Tomorrow EA DICE will also begin rolling out The Last Jedi-themed content in Battlefront 2, with a factional meta-game where you get to pledge allegiance to The First Order or The Resistance and complete challenges to increase your faction's standing.
But the main dollop of Last Jedi content comes 13th December, more or less alongside the movie release, when new heroes Finn and Phasma will be unlockable - if you have enough credits - as well as: new planetary map Crait, new Starfighter Assault map D'Qar, Tallie Lintra's new A-wing Hero ship, and an upgrade for Poe's X-wing.
"Thank you again for your passion around this game," the post closed. "Star Wars is special to all of us, and we all want to experience that world in fun, exciting ways. If you're already playing the game and are loving it, we want to thank you for taking the time to do so. We have a lot planned, and are excited to show you what's to come."Plastic needs a new slogan, LOLcat–style: Im in ur facewash, hurting teh fishes.
Slate, YahooGreen, and now EarthFirst are reporting that the tiny exfoliating beads in many facial scrubs are made of polyethylene, and once the beads get washed down the drain and make their way to the ocean, it’s time for Nemo and friends to get ill. (Of course, polyethylene’s also a suspected carcinogen, and as a plastic, its production is fossil fuel-intensive.)
From Slate:
[L]aboratory experiments have shown that a range of bottom-of-the-food-chain critters — including mussels, barnacles, lugworms, and tiny crustaceans called amphipods — will ingest the particles, which may then remain in their digestive tracts or migrate to other body tissue. New research also suggests that polyethylene is an excellent transporter of phenanthrene, a byproduct of fossil fuel burning that’s a dangerous ocean pollutant.
A Procter & Gamble spokesperson told Slate that the beads get filtered out during sewage treatment, but the process isn’t designed to keep out particles that small (under a millimeter). YahooGreen advises avoiding scrubs by Olay, Neutrogena, Dove, and Aveeno, to name a few, and lists some alternatives, including making your own.Grubauer, 21, made his NHL debut on Feb. 27 in Philadelphia, stopping all 14 shots he faced in 25:05 of ice time, and made his first career NHL start on March 9 at the New York Islanders, making 40 saves. He has posted a record of 8-4-1 with a 1.99 goals-against average, a.930 save percentage and one shutout (he also combined for second shutout with Dany Sabourin on Jan. 13) in 14 games during his rookie season with Hershey. He spent the first half of the season with Reading of the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) and was named a starter in the ECHL All-Star game after compiling a record of 19-5-1 with a 2.30 goals-against average and a.912 save percentage in 26 games played with the Royals.
The 6’1”, 185-pound goaltender has collected a 42-18-5-1 record in two seasons in the ECHL with South Carolina and Reading. In addition to being named a starter for the 2013 ECHL All-Star Game, Grubauer was named to the 2012 ECHL All-Rookie team last season with South Carolina. The Rosenheim, Germany native represented Germany in the World Junior Championships in 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008, winning the 2010 U-20 D1 gold medal while compiling the best goals-against average and best save percentage in the tournament. He led the Windsor Spitfires to the 2010 Memorial Cup Championship, winning all four games in the Memorial Cup round after helping Windsor win the OHL Championship.
Grubauer was originally drafted in the fourth round, 112th overall, in the 2010 NHL Entry Draft.By now it’s an article of faith that the Beatles are great, the Beatles were the best band that ever was, the Beatles changed the world, and the Beatles wrote and recorded the best ten thousand songs that ever were. Naturally the scale of the Beatles’ success, especially in the first 2-3 years after they broke, is a big part of the story. The near-universal love for the Beatles on the part of teenage listeners everywhere caused a massive disruption to the entertainment market—in the mythology of the Beatles, it was what World War I was to modernism.
The Beatles remain as big as ever, but the weird detritus that accompanied their rise, well, that tends to fade. So we kind of... forget that for a time there, dozens and dozens of acts copied, mimicked, “were inspired by” the Beatles, and not all of them were especially scrupulous about the consumer understanding whether their LPs were really from the Beatles or really from... BJ Brock and the Sultans, or the Manchesters or The Original or the Blue Beats or on and on. Actually I think these albums were mostly directed at the teens’ parents who wouldn’t have the ability to remember just what moptop band young Gidget kept babbling about at the breakfast table this morning. You can just envision the heated conversation a day later: “Daaaaaaaaaaad, this isn’t the right one! I wanted the Beatles!!” “How was I supposed to know!? It says ‘Beatlemania’ right there!”
I ran across this video several years ago, and it never fails to amuse and inform. In keeping with the mock-academic trappings of the informal “Adult Education” lecture series held at Park Slope’s Union Hall, its title is “Yeah Yeah... Uh, No: Exploring the Audiovisual Phenomenon of Beatles-Lookalike Long-Playing Albums,” but it’s really a vastly entertaining slide show, a comprehensive look at the year or two in which the marketplace saw a glut of albums masquerading as Beatles product. Few people know this terrain better than WFMU DJ Gaylord Fields, and it’s a pleasure to behold his geeky wonder (and corny jokes) at the naked greed and deception on display here. Misleading text and pictures, outright lies, all in the name of conning people into thinking that some band’s bassist just might be George Harrison if you squinted just so. It’s a parable for our times, a parable... of America.
Really this is a lesson about capitalism first and foremost. You can’t have a mass phenomenon without a mass market, and, as Fields rightly emphasizes, the real start of the story isn’t so much the Beatles themselves but rather the reaction of countless record executives waking up the morning after the Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show determined to sell a Beatles album come hell or high water, whether the Beatles were involved or not. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and popularity inspires copycats.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Beatlemaniac hell-bent on generating army of John Lennons from tooth DNA
Two hours of Beatlemania: ‘The Compleat Beatles’When you turn on your tap, you don’t expect to see pink water — or water of any colour, for that matter.
But residents of the small Alberta town of Onoway were left puzzled and a little bit alarmed to discover bright pink water running from their taps Monday night.
“My water is broken. Thanks Town of Onoway,” Trevor Winfield wrote on Facebook when posting a video of the fuchsia-coloured H2O.
Vicki Veldheyzen Van Zanten said her daughter was in the washroom Monday afternoon when all of a sudden she yelled, “mom, come in here?” She ran to the bathroom to find the water was unusually pink.
While she admits she doesn’t normally drink the tap water in Onoway because she doesn’t like the taste, Van Zanten said she will not use the water for anything until it is clear.
“I’m not going to drink this. I’m not going to cook with it,” she said. “I’m not going to risk it.”
“I’m just waiting until it runs clear for a couple of days and then when I know it’s clear, I’ll get out all the cleaners and clean up.”
Fellow Onoway resident Lisa Schulte wasn’t quite as concerned. When she noticed the pink water Wednesday morning, she immediately phoned the town office to see what was going on.
“They assured me that everything was very good. It was healthy, it was fine. It wasn’t going to turn me into Spider-Man, which maybe some days I would like to be,” she laughed. “I was OK with it.”
Schulte still made her morning coffee as usual, despite the pink-coloured water.
“I kind of took a little bit of a taste of it this morning and it didn’t seem any different, except that it was pink,” she said. “It tastes fine. It tastes really good.”
On Tuesday, the town said the strange colour was due to a chemical used during a routine line flushing and filter back washing.
Onoway Mayor Dale Krasnow said a valve didn’t close properly, allowing potassium permanganate to get into the water supply.
Potassium permanganate is a salt-based chemical that has a wide range of uses, including water treatment. It is used to remove iron, manganese and hydrogen |
P60, so I didn’t know how easy this was to do, but it was still 2 weeks out from FI so there was plenty of time to find out.
Since the frame was designed around and cut out for a P80, I actually had to make a P60 to P80 adapter plate. This attaches to the front of the motor using its existing tie rods in counterbored holes, so the front face is flush. The tapped holes are at the P80 bolt circle locations.
A week later, a pile of BaneBots equipment appears. I took the opportunity to also investigate their new BB series gearboxes – Building Block, so named because they feature stackable designs similar to the Vexboxen. I got a BB150 thinking it was similar to a P60.
I was wrong. It’s like a P70 or something, literally almost the middle in dimensions between the P60 and P80. Their BB220 gearbox is the same square size as the P80, however. Internally, it’s quite massive and a huge improvement over the P60 architecturally, with widely spaced bearings and a double-thick output carrier plate. I will keep the BB150 around for other applications – it’s too big for this one. Banebots have come a long way from their early brass gear days, but I feel like people never quite let them live that down. The six P80s in Overhaul 2 speak to that well.
THIS IS WHAT ROBOTIC FRUSTRATION LOOKS LIKE.
Mabuchi 700 series motor bolt circle: 2x M4 on 29mm
AXi 4120 bolt circle: 4x M4 on….
30mm.
Look at us, we’re so brushless we need to be just different enough to piss everyone off.
Luckily, “drill out the mounting holes 0.5mm larger each” was enough and the M4 cap screws just barely slipped into the existing counterbores.
To mount the pinion, I borrowed a 0.2357″ (6mm minus 0.0005″, because what are units?) reamer from Jamison and expanded the 5mm bore with it, then pressed the pinion on. This fit is backed up with green Loctite 609 retaining compound. It mildly makes me worry, bu Jamison swears it works… alright, we’ll find out. I’d personally have gone -0.001″.
Here are the two completed P60 & Axi sandwiches ready to mount in the bot. This setup weighed 19oz each, down from 34oz of the P80 combos, putting the bot at still a half pound overweight.
With the motors now secure, I returned to the parts of the bot I stopped caring about before Dragon Con – namely, the electronics mounting. I first cooked up this DLUX 160 bracket in Atlanta and tried 3D printing a version. It worked fine, except there was not really a way to retain the top one since the gap now crossed by the N shape was open. I closed the gap using the diagonal brace that acts a little bit like a flexure spring.
Now the DLUX controllers take some effort to push in, which is great, since they won’t easily slide around.
The bracket attaches to the bottom of the bot with four #4-40 screws.
Next up? Battery tray. Clocker 3 just cinched the battery to the baseplate but I wanted something more constraining for the full contact 30lb class. Now the battery will sit in a 4-sided tray so it can’t move, and secured using nylon Velcro straps to that. The 4.4ah 7S lithium pack I had been using in Clocker was downsized to a 3.3Ah 6S pack to save more weight.
Clocker is known to work for exactly 1 match on a 2.3Ah battery thanks to FI 2015, and I originally used the 4.4Ah lipo packs because I had them and because Dragon Con matches tended to run back-to-back with minimal repair time.
The reason the tray looks oversized for that 3.3Ah battery is because it’s actually designed to house a row of A123 cells. The Franklin museum does not permit conventional Lithium batteries in anything above the 3lb class, since it’s entirely indoors in a museum and magic lithium smoke & fire cannot be tolerated. So, A123s it is. This means most bots run on reduced power for FI since you can’t fit as much battery into the same location using round cells as prismatic ones.
Pictured is 8 A123 cells. I plan on fitting as many cells in series as I have weight for at the end.
The final 3d printed bracket of convenience is the receiver and other electronics housing. This is taken care of by using the RageBridge lift & clamp controller as a cap! It’s a hollow case secured to the baseplate with more #4-40 screws, then the Rage comes in upside-down and is retained the same way.
After the New York Makre Faire, it’s time to perform the final fitting-out of the bot. Here’s everything being installed in place…
Another experiment I wanted to try in the interest of #season3 Overhaul was tilting the rubber shock mount wubbies to dig the front of the wedge into the ground. Since these wubbies were in a regular pattern, it was easy to put an equally regularly increasing spacer height under them progressively. For weight and lack of steel fender washer purposes, I made quick 3D-printed (this word….. I swear) spacers to test a few orientations. I think they’ll make it into the final assembly because nylon is still far more rigid than rubber – there’s actually no need for steel washers.
It’s coming down to the last three days before Franklin now, and I’ve started mass producing wheels and…………… set screws. I promised to bring a bag of them to the event to sprinkle into the arena. They’re 1.5″ diameter and 2″ tall, made of genuine organic Miku Blue PLA (get yours today!).
Wiring completion was fast, as more than half of was done in Atlanta. I just had to make a few more extensions and replace the 3mm bullet connectors on the AXi motors with 4mm ones. I decided to not make a switch panel for now, opting to just do it like most of my other smaller bots and just plug & unplug the battery cable.
Checking out the weight I had left over, I decided to run a 7S A123 pack instead. I weighed the bot with the FI-illegal lithium polymer battery to establish an upper limit, and then just added as many A123 cells as I could under that limit.
Now, look at that battery and tell me that you’d rather have that bullshit than a professionally made lithium cobalt battery!
And here it is! The finished Clocker 4, alongside a toy Overhaul for even more scaling fun.
But the story doesn’t stop there. At this point, the bot was still around 6 ounces overweight (with the FI-illegal battery, which is 2 ounces heavier than the 7S A123 pack). So I at minimum still had to cut off 4 ounces, preferably more.
I decided the best way to do this was to trim off the inside corners of the pontoons. They’re actually now shaped more like Overhaul’s. The flange on the interior only reaches back about 3/4″, which should be enough to still hide the edges from intruding weaponry. This actually removed about 3 ounces per side, putting me a healthy amount underweight.
Another funny robot exercise: Trimming the pontoon bottoms to be level and also riding flush with the ground. Just throw the whole thing on a belt grinder and have at it!
Just barely under now, with the 3.3Ah LiPo pack and all remaining hardware I could think of added, so I actually have a healthy margin for FI with the 7S A123 battery.
Here’s a test video of Clocker 4 playing with the (still working, just sans actuator) carcass of Clocker 3.
As I point out in the video, it’s way more stable when lifting than I anticipated. Clocker 3 is huge for a 30lber, and it just gets picked up and whammed around almost effortlessly. I was super happy with the speed of the lifter. While the clamp could be faster, the priority was on holding force for this edition with speed only coming from severely overvolting the clamp motor. Recall that the clamp motor is the same as what 12 O’Clocker used for drive this year – I just made sure to order a bunch of spare motors.
Time to pack it up. To come is the event report!
RecentlyPhoto via Twitter
Hey, look over here—it's the Downtown Eastside, "widely considered the worst neighbourhood in Canada" if you read the Toronto Star.
It turns out there is a poor person or two living here capable of reading and speaking and walking—not just dancing and watching a reflection in a window, humming music nobody else can hear. Which, again, is what you may think poor people are totally like, if you read the Star's review of a Downtown Eastside walking tour.
It seems that a few of them weren't impressed by the newspaper's cute invitation to tourists: "look an invisible person in the eye" for the totally reasonable price of $185. (This bit of poetry comes from a reporter "hosted by Tourism Vancouver and its partners" by the way.)
Photo via Twitter
In response, a group of local drug users staged their own little walking tour yesterday afternoon, getting a real close look at one of the neighbourhood's most notorious invasive species: rich pricks.
This wasn't like the "socially responsible" tour featured in the Star, where a guide warns of shocking alcoholism and sadness. Nor did the drug users give away "meal tokens" to their wealthy neighbours, as if feeding ducks in a pond (though good idea maybe next time).
Photo via Twitter
The tour circled around a few blocks until some guy on a condo balcony gave them the finger and told them to fuck off. They chanted "Downtown Eastside is not a safari, drive away in your Ferrari."
There's no happy ending here, only a hot-faced response to shitty poverty tourism. We should know that gawking at poor people is a bad look; apparently some of us needed a reminder that, yes, poor people can look back.
Follow Sarah on Twitter.Infighting is fun.
Especially when it involves Ken Ham, who’s disappointed that a WorldNetDaily article quoted Intelligent Design believer Casey Luskin.
Ham writes:
I did find it sad, however, that the intelligent design (ID) spokesperson who was quoted dismissed the importance of the question of the age of the earth. But it’s really not surprising, as the ID movement is not a Christian movement. And while many ID proponents are Christians, they are not interested in biblical authority — they are just against naturalism.
AiG, though, stands on biblical authority and proclaims the gospel. We are unashamedly evangelistic. The old earth is such a key issue today in fighting for the full accuracy and authority of the Bible. AiG does not only present the arguments against evolution. You see, it is just as important to offer arguments against an old age for the earth and universe. When it comes to biblical authority, the question of the age of the earth is just as vital as the question of whether evolution is true or not. The chronologies in the Bible and the length of the days of the Creation Week (they were 24 hours each) show that the earth is young. Why try to reinterpret the very clear teaching of Scripture to accommodate the fallible ideas of man that say the earth is old? Such reinterpretations undermine the authority of the Word of God.What do The Flintstones, Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Brady Bunch and Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band all have in common? And for that matter horror classic Nightmare on Elm Street, Dr Strangelove, physical theatre troupe Blue Man Group and 1960s spy spoof Get Smart?
You'd have to have been paying very close attention to The Simpsons over the past 25 years to have noticed the link. All of them have appeared in the traditional opening couch sequence in each episode. And that attention to detail is one of the main reasons the show has worked (and, partly, built its massive audience).
"Matt Groening’s iconic animated series turned hyper-referentiality into an art form, regularly packing in throwaway references to high and low culture right from the start," wrote Darren Franich in Entertainment Weekly. The Simpsons began as a kind of updated version of The Flintstones, the 1960s primetime cartoon caper that stuck a pretty standard sitcom formula in a Stone Age setting; even Groening's concept was a reference to something the audience would have recognised from their childhoods.
In those early Simpsons seasons – the animations more crudely drawn, the voices not quite as realised, the writers still fleshing out the family's personalities – there were flashes of this pop culture mining. But it's around the third season (1991-92) that it starts achieving the high notes that, arguably, made the comedy the decade's best.
That's perfectly encapsulated by the opening of the episode Bart's Friend Falls in Love, where Bart Simpson steals a jar of pennies from his dozing father. The entire scene is a glorious pastiche of the opening of Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (itself a knowing tribute to those rough-and-tumble Saturday morning matinees Spielberg loved as a child), complete with Homer resembling a giant boulder in an epic chase down the stairs. It remains, more than 20 years later, one of the show's great, laugh-out-loud moments.
Cartoon collage
Every Simpsons fan will have their own favourite – for me, it's pretty much all of the season six cliffhanger and season seven opener split episode, Who Shot Mr Burns? It’s a Dallas homage that also packs in references to the Mambo Kings, Hitchcock's Vertigo and in Homer's cellmate Dr Colossus, every B-movie mad scientist ever. But The Simpsons’ enduring appeal – even if long-time fans might sniff that its best days are long behind it – is that it's much, much more than a collection of pop culture jokes.
"The Simpsons took [that referential humour] mainstream through just being a good show," says Christopher Irving, a pop culture historian and writer. "It's that simple: the pastiche, parody and inclusion of pop culture isn't what the show is built around – the show is built around relationships, which is what makes the Simpsons themselves believable enough to love."
Irving believes the show also celebrates some of the arcane geek culture that the programme’s writers are clearly fans of – while most people are likely to spot the references to Star Wars, Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, there are many references that appeal to a much more selective audience.
"Oh, God, yes. Look at comic book guy; sure, he pokes fun at the stereotype of the obsessive comic book fan, but that works because people like him really do exist," Irving says. "The 'geek culture' aspect of the show might not have worked without the production getting the real people on board for guest voice spots."
British cultural historian Christopher Cook believes The Simpsons has some strong links to the past – and not just TV. "You could argue that this is already a strategy developed by Pop artists – Richard Hamilton, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, to name three. However, it does seem to me that The Simpsons is the television series that really embraces the idea," says Cook. "It may be significant that The Simpsons were created by Matt Groening who began his career as a cartoonist, so that he would clearly be across the work of, say, Lichtenstein.”
"But I would suggest that you also need to see The Simpsons as one the very first postmodern TV shows developed for mainstream US TV,” Cook says. “Someone once defined postmodernism as an 'aesthetic of quotations’, in other words it collages material from pre-existing works in unlikely ways. And the ‘glue’ that holds the assemblage together is irony, knowing where the references come from and how they have been replaced. I see a lot of that on The Simpsons.”
For all ages? / Generation gap
The show perhaps betrays some of its interests and influences, which definitely seem to stray into the geekier spectrum, says TV writer David Stubbs. "Matt Groening once boasted, ‘The Simpsons is the counterculture.’ I think that’s maybe truer of earlier [seasons] than more recent ones," he says. "And I think they only go so far. Groening’s favourite ever album is Trout Mask Replica [by Captain Beefheart] but I don’t think he’d feel able to get away with Captain Beefheart references on the show. Sonic Youth, yes…"
But is there an inherent problem with all these knowing pop culture references? Perhaps. Allusions to childhood adverts, arcade computer games and pop songs played on the radio long ago are powerful because they evoke such rich memories. And yes, if you're a 21-year-old watching those early Simpsons episodes now, all those references are a Google search away. But that doesn’t equal emotional resonance.
Stubbs agrees, citing a long-running Simpsons character based on Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross that perhaps resonates best with those who have been exposed to this kind of material and not had to actively seek it out. "What concerns me slightly is that this current generation isn’t so inevitably steeped in old movies, wouldn’t necessarily get a Hitchcock reference because they didn’t grow up with this stuff on mainstream channels growing up. Now it’s farmed off to DVDs or film channels."
And while current viewers may adore the show for its knowing references, that could possibly be a problem for people coming to it in later years. "I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Cheers and other pre-’90s sitcoms didn’t start to seem dated or irrelevant for decades," Matt Zoller Seitz wrote on Salon, "probably because they kept the pop culture references to a bare minimum. The more recent hit comedies are starting to exude that expired fish stench while they’re still on the air. Can a show still call itself a comedy if you have to explain why it’s funny?"
But Cook doesn’t believe The Simpsons’ jokes will wear thin anytime soon. “There’ll be PhDs and ‘guides’ galore to help people through The Simpsons. More seriously since it seems almost certain that The Simpsons will achieve cult status, that future generations will want to unravel the programmes and understand their referencing.”
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.On the day Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was launching in Hollywood, he woke up in San Diego, about 100 miles away. Jimmy was producing a Super Bowl show there for MTV, so we drove down on that weekend in January 2003 in a party bus normally reserved for wild bachelor parties. You could practically smell the stale champagne and DNA on the seat cushions. I remember cars honking at us as they passed, assuming something crazy was happening behind the tinted windows. Nope. Unless you count Jimmy’s cousin Sal waiting for people to fall asleep, then farting on their heads.
Only Jimmy’s inner circle was invited: his girlfriend, Sal, two executive producers and two buddies, along with two other writers and me. We spent two straight days eating, drinking, cracking wise and attending Super Bowl parties, with the shadow of the show’s premiere hanging over everything. Jimmy seemed especially calm, his confidence buoyed by recent successes with The Man Show and Crank Yankers. Because of that, nobody else seemed overly concerned, overwhelmed or however else launching a heavily promoted show on live television should make you feel. Me? I was a nervous wreck. I wanted to throw up. But I wasn’t going to tell anyone else that.
We left San Diego four hours before the game kicked off, heading back for that night’s live telecast. Going live was one of the brainstorms that, hopefully, would differentiate us from the other shows. We wanted a festive atmosphere, so we treated our audience to an open bar before every show. We wanted a different guest host every week, a celebrity foil who would hopefully lend unpredictability to every show (a little like the old Mike Douglas shows, when two or three guests would be yammering at all times). We wanted Jimmy starting every show behind his desk, without a tie, delivering off-the-cuff remarks instead of a traditional monologue (for the first few shows, he didn’t even have a script). Different. That’s what we wanted. Jimmy was younger than every other late-night host at the time. We wanted his show to feel that way.
We thought we were reinventing the late-night format, actually. The test shows said otherwise — one was bad, one was a train wreck, two were fine — but when you’re that close, you ignore red flags and concentrate on the positives. You have no other choice. Halfway through the ride back to Hollywood, we stopped at a Carl’s Jr. to scarf down lunch and use the restrooms. Jimmy and I found ourselves waiting outside the restaurant afterward, with the sun shining and the tension mounting. I found it really hard to believe he wasn’t freaking out.
“How you feeling?” I asked.
At that specific point in time, every member of his staff was chugging the Jimmy Kool-Aid. That’s the only way these things can work. Dozens of people had placed their careers in his hands, including me: I had (effectively) given up my ESPN column, left Boston, left my family and dragged my fiancée to Los Angeles, simply because I had grown up idolizing Letterman’s NBC show — like Jimmy, actually — and always wanted to write for something similarly inventive. Jimmy and I spent the summer of 2002 talking on the phone and trading e-mails, and at some point, I made the decision, “I believe in this guy.” So on the biggest professional day of his life, with that shadow hanging over both of us, I needed a really good answer for the question, “How you feeling?”
Eight and a half years have passed. I can’t remember how Jimmy answered, just what his face looked like. You wouldn’t call it nervous, you wouldn’t call it overwhelmed, you wouldn’t call it anything he didn’t fucking know.
Life will deliver a few moments when something substantial is about to happen, when you know it’s substantial, when you’ve done everything you could to prepare for the moment, but still, you just don’t know. And it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. I felt that way when I was getting married, when both of my kids were being born, when I graduated college, and incredibly, when I was standing in front of that stupid Carl’s Jr. Oh my God. There is no stopping this now. Please tell me this will turn out all right. You take a leap of faith with life. You inhale and exhale. You hope.
We made it back to Hollywood an hour later, with Jimmy becoming more and more quiet during the ride. They had shut down Hollywood Boulevard so Coldplay could play on the street, right between our stage and the famous Mann Theatre. As we neared the congestion, it was like someone tossed 500 pounds of tension into the bus. Holy shit, that’s for us? I ended up in Jimmy’s office with Sal, who had quickly become my closest friend on the show. We were assigned to watch the Super Bowl, jot down possible jokes and find possible cuts for clips. (I know, some job.) The office hugged Hollywood Boulevard, with Coldplay’s crew working on their stage almost directly underneath us.
At the time, Coldplay was threatening to become the biggest band in the world. Even if our guest list for that first show included George Clooney, Snoop Dogg and the Super Bowl MVP flying in by helicopter, shutting down Hollywood Boulevard for Coldplay would be that night’s haymaker. No late-night show had ever done anything like that. We were catching them at the perfect moment of their career: right after their second album had flown off the shelves, right as people were wondering if they were the next U2, right before Chris Martin started boasting a little too much and the inevitable backlash kicked in.
The fifth song on that album is “Clocks,” the one that starts with those pounding piano chords (the defining hook of any song they’ve written). Sal and I were engrossed in the Raiders-Bucs game when suddenly “Clocks” started cranking six floors below us. It was Coldplay. Rehearsing. Really, really loudly. The song went for about a minute (no vocals), then it stopped. There was a long pause. Then the pounding piano chords started again. It went like that for about 25 minutes: the world’s hottest band rehearsing its music, the Super Bowl winding to a close, our lives just a few hours away from being changed, that shadow looming and nobody knowing what would happen next.
Every time I hear “Clocks,” I think of staring out that window and wondering how I got there. That’s still my most vivid memory from a frenzied first night. Even before we started the show, a drunk girl in the audience threw up right in front of two Disney suits. (So much for the open bar; by Monday, it was gone. Although it did end up being funny fodder for the first show.) Jimmy’s monologue ended up being too loose; compared to other shows, it felt like he had wandered into the building and just starting winging it. We somehow gave Clooney four minutes and Warren Sapp two segments, which made no sense even as it was happening. At the same time, there was something refreshing about how we discarded the traditional late-night format and did our own thing, sloppy producing and bad luck aside. Coldplay’s two songs stood out more than anything, not just the music, but the sheer spectacle of it all. When Jimmy screamed, “Ladies and gentlemen, Coldplay!” to a throng of people, he could barely contain his joy. This was everything he ever wanted.
We were all delighted by that first show; you can’t maintain any semblance of objectivity when you’re that close. We packed into a deliriously happy greenroom afterward, a place that became our legacy for the first year within Hollywood circles — maybe the show wasn’t catching on, but it was a helluva place to hang out. Somebody had made a party mix CD that played the same sequence of songs after every show, with the first one being “Beautiful” by Snoop Dogg, one of the happier hip-hop efforts of that era. The right combination of beautiful girls, sleazy agents, hangers-on, executives and C-list celebrities were in place — like an Entourage scene before we even knew what Entourage was — and within a few days, once we started worrying about the show’s future, I always looked forward to hearing “Beautiful” because it brought me back to that night when free drinks were flying and we weren’t worried about anything. Some people crammed into Jimmy’s office; others crammed into Snoop’s dressing room; everyone else imbibed, mingled, and waited for an invite to one room or the other. We had successfully launched a late-night talk show without going down in flames. Everything would be fine.
Or so we thought.
Over the next 12 months, we realized that we needed to discard some of our edgier ideas; not because we didn’t like them, but because there was a reason nobody else was doing them. People like continuity with late-night shows. They don’t want to see new ground broken. They don’t want reckless chances and unpredictability. They want to see a friendly-looking guy stroll out wearing a suit and tie, stand in front of the camera, tell some jokes, throw it to commercial, sit behind a desk, and talk to guests. They want this because they’re lying in bed, half-asleep, with their brain slowly shutting off. And so our big ideas started disappearing one by one: the live taping, the guest co-host, the untraditional monologue, the guest announcers, Jimmy starting the show behind the desk, Jimmy not wearing a tie as if a network sniper was painstakingly picking them off.
Jimmy adjusted on the fly because he’s talented and that’s what talented people do. Act One slowly developed an identity, built around funny clips found on various shows. We figured out a creative structure for the day and weeded out every shaky hire. Jimmy realized he couldn’t be so abrasive with guests; only a few PR people control most of the real celebrities and D-list celebrities, so when you tick them off, they freeze you out. He realized it didn’t make sense to take potshots at Jay Leno and play the “up-and-coming guy taking a shot at the established guy who can’t fight back” card, because, actually, Leno could fight back: His staff told every PR person that if they did Jimmy’s show, they weren’t allowed on Leno’s show (which had a much higher rating). He even realized that Act One required him to deliver a standing monologue while wearing a tie. It took Jimmy four or five years to reach his potential as a host, then another two before anyone noticed. Now he’s entrenched. Unlike just about everyone else, his ratings are climbing instead of dropping; he just enjoyed his highest May Sweeps ever. As Jimmy says now, “the show evolved as naturally as a network TV show possibly can — it was a trial by fire.” And it was.
I spent the first 18 months working for Jimmy and the next seven years rooting for him. In April of 2004, I left his show and returned to ESPN — a move that had been brewing for 11 months, ever since we filmed a feature with Mike Tyson on an decrepit rooftop in Harlem. The plan was for Tyson to show off his pigeon collection for Jimmy’s Uncle Frank, a retired policeman and recurring character on our show. As a die-hard Tyson fan, it was shocking to see him this way: his career in shambles, his inner circle dwindling to just a select few, his formerly lavish lifestyle long gone. He spent his days getting high on medical marijuana (harder to get back then) and being generally strange. For whatever reason, he wanted to co-host our show for a week. Now he was showing Frank how to fly pigeons, only Frank was (and is) such a sweet man that it disarmed Tyson and unleashed a softer side.
We expected the piece to be funny; this was something else. A moment, if you will. And I was processing it as a writer instead of a TV writer. I didn’t want to be there with cameras, I wanted to be there with my notebook. That’s when I knew I had to leave, only I loved working for the show enough that it took another 11 months before I did. Jimmy and I remained friends; my wife and I remained in Los Angeles. Jimmy teases me that I left because I wanted to watch more TV. Deep down, he gets it. People should do what they’re meant to do. I was meant to write columns. Over the past seven years, that’s what I did. But there was always something nagging inside me
this little thing that I had always wanted to do
this website that wouldn’t stop forming in my head
Fast-forward to 2011: On Friday night, we were hanging out at the Hotel Figueroa, which has a sneaky little pool bar about two blocks from our Grantland offices. One of my coworkers asked if I was getting nervous. I think I said no. What did my face say? I couldn’t tell you. Everything comes around, I guess.
I would love to tell you that this website will work, that we’ll entertain you five days a week and blend sports and pop culture successfully. The truth is, I don’t know for sure. This site will keep changing over the next few months just like Jimmy’s show kept changing in 2003, hopefully for the right reasons and not the wrong ones. We are still hiring people. We are still finding writers. We will eventually have a sports blog and a pop culture blog (launching next month), user comments (later this summer), a podcast network (ditto), a quarterly publication we’re doing with McSweeney’s (four a year, starting this winter), and who knows what else. You figure out what works, you figure out what doesn’t work, you keep moving. That’s the next nine months for us. Eventually, we will evolve into what we are. Whatever the hell that is.
We had four goals for this site. The first was to find writers we liked and let them do their thing. The second was to find sponsors we liked and integrate them within the site — so readers didn’t have to pay for content, and also, so we didn’t have to gravitate toward quantity over quality just to chase page views. The third was to take advantage of a little extra creative leeway for the right reasons and not the wrong ones. And the fourth was to hire the right blend of people — mostly young, mostly up-and-comers, all good people with good ideas who aren’t afraid to share them.
In the months leading up to this launch, which became something of an administrative abyss for me, my favorite times were always taking the staff out to get food, then brainstorming ideas and making fun of each other. Those are the memories you end up taking with you, the little stuff, like the time I logged into my e-mail during a staff meeting, the AOL guy screamed “You’ve got mail!” and everyone broke up laughing as if I had been shot out of a time machine. Or a month of comedy mileage (and counting) that we’ve gotten from one of our writers confessing that he wanted a cat. We have made 10,256 jokes about this cat. We’ve named it 247 times. I will always remember this stupid cat that doesn’t exist.
We haven’t had a Coldplay/Hollywood Boulevard-type moment yet, and honestly, I’m not holding my breath. But our staff has bonded much like Jimmy’s staff bonded eight years ago, and regardless of how this plays out, nobody can take that away. Writing is a fundamentally lonely thing. It’s just you and a blank Microsoft Word document. The process can drive people crazy. (And has.) It’s much more fun to create something with other people. It just is.
I have done it twice before: with Kimmel’s show and “30 for 30.” This is the third. With every launch, there comes a point when you grab everyone else’s hand, you hold on tight, and you jump. You’re never really ready. That’s what Jimmy’s face was saying in front of that Carl’s Jr., and that’s what my face is saying now. Even if you can’t see it.
Enjoy the site. We worked hard on it. We believe in it. And that’s all I know.
Bill Simmons is the Editor in Chief of Grantland and the author of the recent New York Times No. 1 best-seller The Book of Basketball, now out in paperback with new material and a revised Hall of Fame Pyramid. For every Simmons column and podcast, log on to Grantland. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sportsguy33 and check out his new home on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/billsimmons.'I think we ought to do it right away,' Sen. John McCain said. Some in GOP antsy for budget talks
Several Senate Republicans are at odds with their leadership about the decision to delay sending the budget to conference with the House.
“I’m very much in favor of it, and I think we ought to do it right away,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told POLITICO. “And I think for us to after four years of complaining about Harry Reid’s failure to bring up a budget and then we do one and block conference is something that’s incomprehensible.”
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Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), the former director of the Office of Management and Budget, said he thinks Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) should simply force a vote on sending the budget to conference. If he did so, Portman said he would vote in favor of starting the conference process.
For weeks now Democrats have been publicly beating up on Republicans for refusing to agree to a conference after the Senate and House both passed budgets in April. Democrats feel they have a winning hand and can convince voters this is another example of the Republicans obstructing progress.
But the partisan back and forth rose — or fell — to new levels this week, when Reid called Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) a “schoolyard bully” for objecting to a motion to go to conference.
On Tuesday, Republicans — led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — accused Democrats of trying to sneak in a hike to the debt ceiling in the reconciliation bill. The debt ceiling is set to expire late this summer. McConnell, Cruz and others want to set the parameters of any conference before one starts.
“There has been some open discussion among members about pre-conference negotiations with Democrats, but so far, Democrats haven’t shown an interest in finding common ground,” said McConnell spokesman John Ashbrook. “Ironically, it’s Democrats who are trying to short-circuit regular order here.”
( PHOTOS: What’s in Obama’s 2014 budget)
The blocking in the Senate is largely an effort to protect House Republicans from being forced into taking uncomfortable votes from Democrats.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) acknowledged that is an issue for the GOP. After as many as 20 days into the conference process, House Democrats would be able to force votes on controversial issues known as motions to instruct.
McCain and Portman aren’t the only GOP senators ready to go to conference.
“I’m OK with it going now,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said. “I think [leadership is] coordinating with the House about what they’re going to do. It’s not a good position to be in.”
“I’ve always been in favor of regular order,” said Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.).
“There is value to regular order,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said, acknowledging he would like to see a conference now.ARU chief executive Bill Pulver is standing firm on the national contracting rules that prohibit overseas-based players being picked for the Wallabies.
While the glut of stars who have left Australian rugby for rich European and Japanese contracts in the last two years led to suggestions the ARU would overhaul it’s policy and allow foreign-based players to return to play for the Wallabies, Pulver believes that would irreparably damage the domestic scene.
“I still retain the view that if you open that up, you risk having a Super Rugby competition with no profile players |
players that we can't be giving up."
The Caps are obviously going to play themselves out of this funk, whether that starts Wednesday night against the Ducks or not. But the elephant in the room isn't going anywhere until spring time. No team in this league has more pressure to deliver the goods in the playoffs this year.
"I think there's a lot more scrutiny from the media," allowed Laich. "I think we're under a microscope in your guys' world [media]. For us, last spring was a crushing blow because we had had so much success. That's why we were so mad when we lost. It's about the expectations from our own group.... People can say what they want, you guys are entitled to say what you want. We don't care. We're in control of how we play. We don't mind what's being said on the outside. Ultimately we have the power to change it on the ice."Chinese electric car maker NextEV has debuted its NIO brand, along with the first car from that electric car line, called the EP9. The first vehicle it revealed is already a world-record holder: it has the fastest lap time for an EV at the Nürbhurgring Nordschliefe test track in Germany, one of the most famous proving grounds for supercars.
The EP9 also beat the EV record at France’s Circuit Paul Ricard by around 50 seconds. EP9’s specs include a 0-124mph speed of 7.1 seconds, and a top speed of around 200mph. It also has a 0-60mph time of 2.7 seconds – which, astute EV fans will note, is actually 0.2 seconds slower than the current production model of the Tesla P100D with the Ludicrous Mode option (and soon to be 0.3 seconds slower, thanks to a speed-boosting easter egg update going out to Teslas in December).
Tesla has called its P100D the “fastest production car in the world,” so the EP9’s claim of being the “world’s fastest electric car” will definitely need direct head-to-head testing to prove the validity of one or the other. The EP9 isn’t quite a product vehicle yet, however – today’s unveiling isn’t a sales announcement.
[gallery ids="1419115,1419114,1419113,1419112,1419111,1419110,1419109,1419108"]
The performance is impressive, however, and the car also has a charging system designed to provide a full “tank” in just 45 minutes, with a max range of around 265 miles. The EP9 is probably a stage-setter for NIO overall, as the company says it’s intended to be a “best-in-class” and “showcase” product in a release announcing the car.
NextEV’s U.S. CEO Padmasree Warrior explained in an interview with TechCrunch last December that she was looking for an opportunity to “build something from the ground up and make it big” in taking on the role at NextEV, and this debut car from the company definitely looks to fit that bill.Coming at the height of public opposition to Wal-Mart's labor practices and expansion into urban markets, the founding in 2005 of Working Families for Wal-Mart appeared to reflect a spontaneous groundswell of public support for the retail giant.
In fact, it was no conventional grassroots campaign. A newspaper reporter later discovered that the group's lone founder was Wal-Mart and the campaign originated with a consultant hired by the company.
The ruse was an example of a striking trend in American politics and commerce, explains a UCLA sociologist in an alarming new book.
"Grassroots political action, typically understood as the exclusive purview of citizen organizers, has been adapted as a commercial practice deployed by consultants on behalf of corporations, trade associations, and the wealthiest and most professionalized advocacy organizations," writes Edward T. Walker in "Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy " (Cambridge University Press).
The book pulls back the curtain on a lucrative industry of consultants who mobilize public activism as a marketable service and who at times resort to covert "astroturf" strategies — a term for fake grassroots efforts, inspired, of course, by the AstroTurf brand of fake grass — that give the false impression of a mass movement.
These consultants employ state-of-the-art marketing tools and tactics to identify constituents whose interests appear to dovetail with those of their clients, explains Walker, an associate professor of sociology in UCLA's College of Letters and Science. The consultants often partner with existing advocacy groups, but at times they also create false fronts, enabling corporations to masquerade as citizens' movements. In addition to providing overall strategy, consultants orchestrate letter-writing campaigns and protests, and even ghostwrite op-eds and blog items. They link activists they have recruited with the media to be portrayed as citizens with independent interests that just happen to align with those of their clients. They also have set up Facebook pages and social media campaigns to grow their ranks and spread their message.
Over the past four decades, the practice has grown into a billion-dollar industry; nearly 40 percent of Fortune 500 firms have worked with at least one grassroots lobbying consultant, according to "Grassroots for Hire." Business advocacy comprises the single largest source of the consultants' clients and revenues, outpacing electoral campaigns, even though many firms started out as conventional political strategists.
Grassroots advocacy traditionally has been a "weapon of the weak," giving citizens a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. But corporations and trade groups tend to use the approach to fight unwelcome legislation or regulation, respond to the challenges of a controversy, or counter public opposition to their practices or products.
An example is a campaign funded by the Career College Association, a trade group that represents for-profit colleges and universities. In 2010, the industry was troubled by numerous controversies and the prospect of new regulations that would restrict student loans at certain institutions. In response, consultants helped the industry establish groups like Students for Academic Choice, which challenged the proposed regulations — which were an attempt to curb exploitation of students — as an issue of student access to loans and education.
Similar efforts have been made on behalf of companies in health care, food and beverages, tobacco, telecommunications and many other industries.
Indeed, public affairs consultants have become so entrenched in advocacy that traditional grassroots associations now often hire them, Walker found. "In an ironic twist, the trend has now come full circle. In many policy battles, consultants are hired by interests on both sides of an issue."
Walker traces the rise of grassroots lobbying to the 1970s, when a wave of new interest groups formed in the wake of 1960s protests. Spurred by opposition to new business regulations and inspired by victories scored by advocates in the era of Ralph Nader, businesses began to hire these consultants, who borrowed tactics from successful citizen-driven campaigns. Now, with an electorate that has become more partisan in the decades since, the mass public is a welcoming target for these consultants' appeals, he writes.
More recently, the rise of social media has expanded consultants' reach by enabling "clicktivism" — the ability to quickly circulate appeals to policymakers over the Internet.
Of course, the involvement of consultants doesn't necessarily make professionalized advocacy harmful. Consultants hired by the Canadian National Railway received accolades for orchestrating a grassroots campaign in 2008 that mobilized primarily poor and disenfranchised Chicago citizens behind the company's plans to reroute trains from the city's south side to more affluent suburbs, whose residents opposed the efforts.
"Successful campaigns identify constituencies with their own genuine interests in the cause and who enjoy enough independence from the sponsor to be authentic," Walker said. "That's the sweet spot."
Bad apples, on the other hand, are characterized by one of three features, Walker found. Supporters might be paid to participate, the source of a campaign's support is hidden or miscommunicated, or, worst of all, fraud is perpetrated through deception or forgery. Walker cites recent cases involving Verizon and Intuit, in which journalists contacted people who supposedly had participated in letter-writing campaigns only to find that either they didn't write the letters at all or their points of view were entirely misrepresented.
Those unscrupulous tactics increase people's disenchantment with politics in general and citizen advocacy in particular. "Engaging the public in traditional citizen advocacy is already hard enough," he said. "Legitimate grassroots campaigns don't need the additional burden of fighting suspicion resulting from astroturfing."
But even when paid advocacy doesn't cross those lines, its rise is worrisome, Walker maintains. Consultants' recruitment practices tend to amplify the voices of those from higher socio-economic strata who are already over-represented in today's political discourse, Walker writes.
Astroturfing may be effective in some instances. But it's generally risky because these tactics are so often uncovered, a process that leaves participants with black eyes, Walker has found.
"Mobilizing potential allies requires a level of transparency, honesty and creativity that is hard to come by," Walker said. "But creating a false front very often backfires, and then the campaign's sponsors end up in an even worse position than when they started."Texture compression types :
The following table shows the compression ratio for the available ASTC block sizes in Unity for an RGBA 8 bits per channel texture with a 1024x1024 pixel resolution at 4 MB in size.
ASTC block size Size Compression ratio 4x4 1 MB 4.00 5x5 655 KB 6.25 6x6 455 KB 9.00 8x8 256 KB 16.00 10x10 164 KB 24.97 12x12 144 KB 35.93
Hey again,Last time we talked alittle about what advanced texture type is in Unity. This time I will go deeper into the types of texture compression. But before we jump in xD I just want to say that this post is meant as a basic entry guide to the big world of texture compression, which I'm still beginner at and I'm exploring it with you. So let me know your feedback and what you think! And again this isn't meant to be detailed explanation of every thing. - if you want more details, I will add references below. All the textures compression discussed here you will find them in Unity "advanced texture type", with more detailed names. In order to make it easy for you to understand these names, I will add a little section at the end for that :).Let's start with what the need for texture compression is for. For example, you can open any png image on your pcyou will find it aroundthat's not bad, right?Well, the truth is most of these compression formats "png, jpg" aren't directly supported on the graphic cards, and once they are loaded into the game, they are decompressed into their full size - which is the RGB or RGBA format.So truth is RGB and RGBA aren't a compression at all. They are the decompression which will take around 4mb with alpha channel if it's 1024x1024 size.You enter a png image into your game with the size of 1mb. The user runs your game and this 1mb image decompresses in his graphic card to, this isxDThis is where other texture compression techniques come in place :When considering texture compression, there are a few things that come in play:This one is obvious. It depends on the compression type and your target quality that defines how far you decrease in size. This is also important because it decreases the memory bandwidth needed as less data has to get accessed while reading the texture during rendering and that's why in most cases it increases the performance.Also this is an understandable point as the textures need to be decompressed on the fly.Well, imagine a single mesh (car model for example) covered with one texture. Only one side of this texture will be seen (UV mapping) so the texels - or the part of the image that will be drawn - needs to be accessed fast.The most used texture compression for pc and one of the oldest.There are several types of DXT. The most notable (and used by unity) are DXT5 - which have alpha channel and provide around 75% less in size - and the DXT1 - with no alpha (as the one in unity). There is DXT1 with 1 bit alpha channel which mean that it's either fully transparent or fully opaque.So what is the catch?DXT can seriously decrease the image size and sometimes the effect of this won't be noticeable unless you zoom deeply in the images. But sometimes this compression can be really bad.In order to explain when it's good, we will talk about how DXT works so bare with me xDDXT splits your texture into segments each segment is 4 x 4 pixel which is 16 pixels for each segment let's imagine that this image is on the segments in our textureThen what DXT do is it chooses the two extreme colors, which is the red (Top left corner) and black ( bottom right corner). Then it interpolates to get 2 colors in between, which means now we have 4 colors - the 2 extremes and another 2 that DXT interpolated ( the interpolated colors are something between the red and black). With this, 4 colors - which are called palette - are generated and all the 16 pixel will be linked to only one of these 4 colors. So all of these 16 pixels - which all have different colors or values - will be only 4 colors. Moreover, each pixel won't store the exact color value and it will just have an index in this palette and will save lots of size. This will turn the above image into this :But the problem will arise when there are more varieties in colors in one segment for example:Check this comparison image below and you will notice that outlines are the most damaged parts. So if your work has lots of outlines, it will be damaged severely.One way to easy solve this is to increase the resolution. (Actually you will find this trick to work with most texture compression, and you will find a good decrease in size with very unnoticeable quality loss)Ericsson Texture Compression is a texture compression format that operates on 4x4 blocks of pixels.It's well known for being used for android devices and it's worth saying here that it's not supported on IOS. There is ETC 1 (no alpha channel ) and ETC 2 (either fully transparent or full opaque) and both take 4 bits per pixel.There is ETC 2 RGBA 8 bits per pixel that has transparent channel.ETC 1 : Supported on all Android devices with OpenGL ES 2.0 and above. Does not support alpha channel.ETC 2 : Requires OpenGL ES 3.0 and above.This texture compression won't be great at gradients and color contrasts areas in your images.The most common (or for my knowledge the only) texture compression used for IOS. It's worth saying that you can use it for android or PC. It has great compression results. The artefacts come in the form of a slight blurriness. It's worth saying too that IOS demands the power of two images, and unity for example will always resize your image for the nearest power of two.For a nice comparison with images between the above types check this blog :http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com.eg/2015/12/texture-formats-for-2d-games-part-4.htmlA powerful new comer powered by Nvidia. Remember DXT, where it splits the images into segments 4x4 each? Well, ASTC is kind of similar but gives you the power to choose the size of blocks. So you can choose 4 x 4 or 10 x 10. The idea here is that you have more control of how large the size you want VS the quality you want.It ranges from 8 bits per pixel(bpp) to less than 1bpp. This enables you to fine-tune the trade-off of space against quality.There are a number of block size options available in the ASTC settings window. You can choose among these options and select the block size that best fits the assets. The larger the block sizes the higher the compression. Select large block sizes for textures that are not shown in great detail. For example, objects far away from the camera. And select smaller block sizes for textures that show more detail, like those closer to the camera.(This is an optional part and is kinda a reminder for lazy people like me xD)- In most types, you will find "RGB" at the beginning, meaning it has 3 color channels- RGBA, meaning it also has an alpha channel- Using the word compressed meaning yes xD compressed other than that it's not xD- The number at then 2 bit, 4 bit or 8 bit.. etc. is the number of bits per pixel. The more they are the larger the size of the image is.- Automatic: you leave texture compression selection to Unity.- Crunched: newly introduced by Unity and it's amazing! It provides even less size with good quality but not supported for IOS.Well, I hope you found some new information in this little post. There is still a lot to talk about and many things that I didn't get a chance to mention since I didn't want to complicate or lengthen the post. But please let me know your feedback or questions or anything in particular you are interested in.http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/01/dxtc-texture-compression/http://renderingpipeline.com/2012/07/texture-compression/https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/android-texture-compression-a-comparison-study-with-code-samplehttps://developer.nvidia.com/astc-texture-compression-for-game-assetshttp://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=DXT_compression_explainedAgain this awesome blog, I used many images for him so credits goes to him:http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com.eg/2015/11/texture-formats-for-2d-games-part-3-dxt.htmlWritten by :Ahmed MohiRevisited by :Ahmed NajeebIntroduction
The Java language specification mandates some form of automatic garbage collection to reclaim unused storage, and forbids manual memory deallocation. Automatic garbage collection frees the programmer from much of the worry about releasing objects that are no longer needed, which can otherwise consume substantial design effort. It also prevents some kinds of common bugs occurring, including certain kinds of memory leaks, dangling pointer bugs (which occur when a piece of memory is freed while there are still pointers to it and one of those pointers is then used) and double free bugs (which occur when the program tries to free a region of memory that has already been freed and perhaps already been allocated again).
Whilst garbage collection clearly has a number of advantages, it does also have some problems. The most significant is that thus far, practical implementations of garbage collection in commercial Java runtimes have generally involved an unpredictable "pause" during collection. As Java programs have expanded in size and complexity, so the garbage collection pause has become an increasingly significant problem for Java software architects.
A widely used technique in enterprise Java to work around this is to distribute programs. This can both keep the heap size smaller, making the pauses shorter, and also allow some requests to continue whilst others are paused. Increasingly though, this means that Garbage Collector (GC) managed workloads are unable to take full advantage of the capabilities of the hardware on which they run. We spoke to Gil Tene, Vice President of Technology, CTO, and Co-Founder of Azul Systems, who suggested that garbage collection hasn’t been able to keep pace with changes in hardware. Whilst 10 years ago a 512MB-1GB heap size would have been considered substantial, and a high-end commodity server might have shipped with 1GB-2GB RAM and a 2-core CPU, a modern commodity hardware server typically has around 96GB-256GB memory running on a system with 24-48 virtual or physical cores. Over a period of time during which commodity hardware memory capacities have increased a hundred fold, commonly used garbage collected heap sizes have only doubled. Tene argues that garbage collectors have lagged significantly behind both the hardware and software demands of many larger enterprise applications.
Collector Mechanisms
Common Tasks
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While implementations of garbage collectors in Java runtimes vary, there are common and unavoidable tasks that are performed by all commercial JVMs and garbage collection modes. These common tasks include:
Identifying the live objects in the memory heap
Reclaiming the resources used by those objects that are not live (aka “dead” objects)
Periodically relocating live objects to create some amount of contiguous free space in order to accommodate the allocation of new objects of varying sizes – this process is referred to as either relocation or compaction
Depending on the collector’s specific algorithm, these tasks may be performed in separate phases, or as part of a single combined pass. For example, commonly used Tracing Collectors (popular for old generation collection in commercial JVMs) often use separate Mark, Sweep, and Compact phases to perform the identification, reclaiming, and relocation tasks. On the other hand, commonly used Copying Collectors (popular for young generation collection in commercial JVMs) will typically perform all three tasks in a single copying pass (all live objects are copied to a new location as they are identified).
Parallelism and Concurrency
Garbage collectors can be either single-threaded or parallel:
A single threaded collector uses at most one CPU core to perform garbage collection.
A parallel collector uses multiple threads that can perform collection work at the same time, and can therefore make simultaneous use of more than one CPU core
They are also either Stop-the-world or Concurrent:
A Stop the world collector performs garbage collection work with the application code stopped.
A concurrent collector performs garbage collection work concurrently with program execution, allowing program execution to proceed while collection is done (potentially using separate CPU cores).A Collector is termed “partly concurrent” or “mostly concurrent” when some of the garbage collection work is done concurrently with application execution, but some part of the collection work is performed with application execution stopped.
Responsiveness and Sensitivity
Traditional "stop-the-world" collector implementations clearly affect an application's responsiveness. What is less commonly understood is that “somewhat concurrent” and “mostly concurrent” collectors will also exhibit application response time issues, depending on exactly what processing requires a pause. Application responsiveness and scalability limitations are generally sensitive to the type of processing that occurs during stop-the world pauses, and to the type or rate of operations that induce such pauses to occur more often. Examples of metrics that applications may be sensitive to include:
Live set size: The amount of live data in the heap will generally determine the amount of work a collector must do in a given cycle. When a collector performs operations that depend on the amount of live data in the heap during stop-the-world pauses, the application’s responsiveness becomes sensitive to the live set size. Operations that tend to depend on live set size are marking (in Mark-Sweep, Mark-Sweep-Compact, or Mark-Compact collectors), copying (in copying collectors), and the remapping of references during heap compaction (in any compacting collector). Heap size: Depending on the algorithm and mechanisms used, the total size of the heap may determine the amount of work a collector must do in a given cycle. When a collector performs operations that depend on the amount of memory in the heap (regardless of whether the contents is alive or dead), and those operations are performed during a stop-the-world event, the application’s responsiveness becomes sensitive to the heap size. Operations that tend to depend on heap size are sweeping (in Mark-Sweep and Mark-Sweep-Compact) collectors. Fragmentation and compaction: Fragmentation is inevitable, and as a result so is compaction. As you allocate objects and some of them die, the heap develops “holes” in it that are large enough for some objects but not for others. As time goes by you get more, smaller holes. Eventually, you get to a point where there is plenty of room in the heap, but no place for some object that is larger than the largest available hole, and a compaction is required in order to keep the application operating. Compaction will relocate at least some live objects in the heap in order to free up some contiguous space for further allocation. When live objects are relocated to new locations during compaction, all references to the relocated objects must be tracked down and remapped to point to the new locations. All commercial JVMs contain code to compact the heap, without which the heap will become useless with time. All the collector modes (concurrent or not) of the JRockit, HotSpot, and J9 JVMs will perform compaction only during stop-the-world pauses. A compaction pause is generally the longest pause an application will experience during normal operation, and these collectors are therefore sensitive to heap fragmentation and heap size. Mutation rate: Defined as how quickly a program updates references in memory, that is how fast the heap, and specifically the pointers between objects in the heap, are changing. Mutation rate is generally linear to application load; the more operations per second you do, the more you will mutate references in the heap. Thus if a collector can only mark mutated references in a pause, or if a concurrent collector has to repeatedly revisit mutated references before a scanning phase is completed, the collector is sensitive to load, and a high mutation rate can result in significant application pauses. Number of weak or soft references: Some collectors, including the popular CMS and ParallelGC collectors in Hotspot, process weak or soft reference only in a stop-the-world pause. As such, pause time is sensitive to the number of weak or soft references that the application uses. Object lifetime: Most allocated objects die young so collectors often make a generation distinction between young and old objects. A generational collector collects recently allocated objects separately from long lived objects. Many collectors use different algorithms for handling the young and old generations - for example they may be able to compact the entire young generation in a single pass, but need longer to deal with the older generation. Many applications have long lived datasets however, and large parts of those datasets are not static (for example caching is a very common pattern in enterprise systems). The generational assumption is an effective filter, but if collecting old objects is more time-consuming then your collector becomes sensitive to object lifetime.
Given the importance of application response times, a need clearly exists for concurrent collectors that exhibit fewer sensitivities to application behaviour metrics. The most widely used collectors in production systems however are often unable to achieve these goals.
According to Tene, the Azul GPGC collector included in the Zing platform is designed to be insensitive to many of these metrics, and remain robust across a wide operating range. Through the use of a guaranteed single-pass marker, the collector is completely insensitive to mutation rates. By performing concurrent compaction of the entire heap, the collector is insensitive to fragmentation. By performing weak, soft, and final reference processing concurrently, the collector has been made insensitive to the use of such features by applications. By using quick-release, and through the nature of the loaded value barrier’s self-healing properties, the collector avoids the sensitivity of “being in a hurry” to complete a phase of its operation for fear that its efficiency might drop, or that it may not be able to complete a phase or make forward progress without falling back to a stop-the-world pause. In the sections that follow we will explore how this is achieved, comparing Azul’s approach with other commonly used collector algorithms.
The Azul Garbage Collector
Azul's GPGC[1] collector (which stands for Generational Pauseless Garbage Collector), included in its HotSpot-based JVM, is both parallel and concurrent. GPGC has been widely used in a number of production systems for several years now, and has been successful at removing or significantly reducing sensitivity to the factors that typically cause other concurrent collectors to pause. Factors that the Azul GPGC collector was specifically designed to be insensitive to include fragmentation, allocation rates, mutation rates, use of soft or weak references, and heap topology. Tene explained that whilst GPGC is a generational collector, this was mostly an efficiency measure; GPGC uses the same GC mechanism for both the new and old generations, working concurrently and compacting in both cases. Most importantly, GPGC has no stop-the-world fall back. All compaction is performed concurrently with the running application.
According to Tene a central theme of the algorithms design was the idea that there is no “rush” to finish any given phase. No phase places a substantial burden on the mutators that needs to be relieved by ending the phase quickly. There is no “race” to finish some phase before collection can begin again – relocation runs continuously and can immediately free memory at any point. Moreover since all phases are parallel, the GC can keep up with any number of mutator threads simply by adding more GC threads.
The Loaded Value Barrier
Core to GPGC’s design, the collector uses what Tene calls a “loaded value barrier”, a type of read barrier which tests the values of object references as they are loaded from memory, and enforces key collector invariants. The loaded value barrier (LVB) effectively ensures that all references are “sane” before the mutator ever sees them, and this strong guarantee is responsible for the algorithms relative simplicity.
The loaded value barrier enforces two critical qualities for all application-visible references:
The reference state indicates that it has been “marked through” if a mark phase is in progress. (See Mark Phase description below). The reference is not pointing to an object that has been relocated.
If either of the above conditions is not met, the loaded value barrier will trigger a “trap condition”, and the collector will correct the reference to adhere to the required invariants before it becomes visible to application code. The use of the loaded value barrier test in combination with self healing trapping (see below) ensures safe single pass marking, eliminating the possibility that the application threads would cause live references to escape the collector’s reach. The same barrier and trapping mechanism combination is also responsible for supporting lazy, on-demand, concurrent compaction (both object relocation and reference remapping), ensuring that application threads will always see the proper values for object references, without ever needing to wait for the collector to complete either compaction or remapping.
“Self Healing”
Key to GPGC’s concurrent collection is the self-healing nature of handling barrier “trap” conditions. When a loaded value barrier test indicates that a loaded reference value must be changed before the application code proceeds, the value of the loaded reference AND the value of the memory location it was loaded from will both be modified to adhere to the collectors current invariant requirements (e.g. to indicate that the reference has already been marked through, or to remap the reference to a new object location). By correcting the cause of the trap in the source memory location (possible only with a read barrier, such as the loaded value barrier, that intercepts the source address), the GC trap has a “self healing” effect: the same object references will not re-trigger additional GC traps for this or other application threads. This ensures a finite and predictable amount of work in a mark phase, as well as the relocate and remap phases. Azul coined the term “Self healing” in their first publication of the pauseless GC algorithm in 2005, and Tene believes this "self-healing" aspect is still unique to the Azul collector.
Azul implements the same logical LVB tests on modern x86 processors as it first did with it’s custom Vega processors. On Azul’s Vega hardware, LVB tests include bit field checking in reference metadata as well as special virtual memory protection for GC-compacted pages. In addition, Azul’s hardware supports a number of fast user-mode trap handlers to handle “slow path” trap conditions triggered when values that would contradict the collector’s current invariants are loaded from memory and tested. These “slow path” trap handlers can be entered and left in a handful of clock cycles (4-10, depending) and are used by the GC algorithm to handle such conditions - these are the “Self Healing traps”. On modern x86-64 hardware, the same LVB effects are achieved using a combination of instructions in the execution stream and proper manipulation of virtual memory mapping (see “Appendix A” for more details).
How the Azul Algorithm Works
The Azul algorithm is implemented in three logical phases as illustrated below.
Mark: responsible for periodically refreshing the mark bits. Relocate: uses the most recently available mark bits to find pages with little live data, to relocate and compact those pages and to free the backing physical memory. Remap: updates (forwards) every relocated pointer in the heap.
The Mark Phase
The Azul GC mark phase has been characterised by David Bacon et al (PDF document) as a "precise wavefront" marker, not SATB, augmented with a read barrier. The mark phase introduces and tracks a “not marked through” (NMT) state on object references. The NMT state is tracked as a metadata bit in each reference, and the loaded value barrier verifies each reference’s state matches the current GC cycle’s expected NMT state. The invariant imposed on the NMT state by the loaded value barrier eliminates the possibility that the application threads would cause live references to escape the collector’s reach, allowing the collector to guarantee robust and efficient single pass marking.
At the start of the mark phase, the marker’s work list is “primed” with a root-set which includes all object references in application threads. As is common to all markers, the root-set generally includes all refs in CPU registers and on the threads' stacks. Running threads collaborate by marking their own root-set, while blocked (or stalled) threads get marked in parallel by the collector’s mark-phase threads.
Rather than use a global, stop-the-world safepoint (where all application threads are stopped at the same time), the marker algorithm uses a “checkpoint” mechanism. As the Azul 2005 VEE "Pauseless GC Algorithm" paper explained:
Each thread can immediately proceed after its root set has been marked (and expected-NMT flipped) but the mark phase cannot proceed until all threads have crossed the Checkpoint.
(Note: this paper is no longer available on Azul's website).
After the root-sets are all marked the algorithm continues with a parallel and concurrent marking phase. Live refs are pulled from the worklists, their target objects marked live and their internal refs are recursively worked on.
In addition to references discovered by the marker’s own threads during the normal course of following the marking work lists, freely running mutator threads can discover and queue up references they may encounter that do not have their NMT bit set to the expected “marked through” value when they are loaded from memory. Such reference loads trigger the loaded value barrier’s trapping condition, at which point the offending reference will be queued to ensure that it would be traversed and properly marked through by the collector. It’s NMT value will therefore be immediately fixed and healed (in the original memory location) to indicate that it can be considered to be properly marked through, avoiding further LVB condition triggers.
The mark phase continues until all objects in the marker work list are exhausted, at which point all live objects have been traversed. At the end of the mark phase, only objects that are known to be dead are not marked as “live”, and all valid references have their NMT bit set to “marked through”.
It is worth noting that the GPGC mark phase also performs concurrent processing of soft, weak, and phantom references. This quality makes the collector relatively insensitive to the amount of Soft or Weak references used by the application.
The Relocate and Remap Phases
Relocation
The relocate phase is where objects are relocated and pages are reclaimed. During this phase, pages with some dead objects are made wholly unused by concurrently relocating their remaining live objects to other pages. References to these relocated objects are not immediately remapped to point to the new object locations. Instead, by relying on the loaded value barrier’s imposed invariants, reference remapping can proceed lazily and concurrently after relocation, until the completion of the collector’s next remap phase assures the collector that no references that require remapping exist.
During relocation, sets of pages (starting with the sparsest pages) are selected for relocation and compaction. Each page in the set is protected from mutator access, and all live objects in the page are copied out and relocated into contiguous, compacted pages. Forwarding information tracking the location of relocated objects is maintained outside the original page, and is used by concurrent remapping.
During and after relocation, any attempts by the mutator to use references to relocated objects are intercepted and corrected. Attempts by the mutator to load such references will trigger the loaded value barrier’s trapping condition, at which point the stale reference will be corrected to point to the object’s proper location, and the original memory location that the reference was loaded from will be healed to avoid future triggering of the LVB condition.
“Quick Release”
Using a feature that Tene calls “Quick Release”, the GPGC collector immediately recycles memory page resources without waiting for remapping to complete. By keeping all forwarding information outside of the original page, the collector is able to safely release physical memory immediately after the page contents have been relocated (and before remapping has been completed). A compacted page’s virtual memory space cannot be freed until no more stale references to that page remain in the heap (which will only be reliably true at the end of the next remap phase), but the physical memory resources backing that page are immediately released by the relocate phase, and recycled at new virtual memory locations as needed. The quick-released physical resources are used to satisfy new object allocations, as well as the collector’s own compaction pipeline. By using “hand over hand” compaction along with the quick release feature, page resources released by the compaction of one page are used as compaction destinations for compacting additional pages, and the collector is able to compact the entire heap in a single pass without requiring empty target memory to compact into.
Remap
During the remap phase, which follows the relocate phase, GC threads complete reference remapping by traversing the object graph and executing a loaded value barrier test on every live reference found in the heap. If a reference is found to be pointing to a relocated object, it is connected to point to the object’s proper location. Once the remap phase completes, no live heap reference can exist that would refer to pages protected by the previous relocate phase, and at that point the virtual memory for those pages is freed.
Since the remap phase traverses the same live object graph as a mark phase would, and because the collector is in no hurry to complete the remap phase, the two logical phases are rolled into one in actual implementation, known as the Combined Mark and Remap phase. In each combined Mark-Remap phase, the collector will complete the remapping of references affected by the previous relocate phase, and at the same time perform the marking and discovery of live objects used by the next relocate phase.
Comparison with existing Garbage Collectors
HotSpot’s Concurrent Mark Sweep (CMS) is a mostly concurrent collector. It performs some garbage collection operations concurrently with program execution, but leaves some operations to |
its "digital back lot."
Shifting around the terabytes of data generated during the course of production is enough to stress any network. To improve performance, Pixar initially considered placing each SPARCstation on its own Ethernet segment, and other more exotic high speed technologies, but economic considerations ruled those choices out.
Ching said the company is now looking to go to 100BaseT connections throughout. "HIPPI and FibreChannel are too expensive -- we really didn't want to look at having to pay for more than 100 high-speed interfaces," Ching said. "Of course, if we had had gobs of money, we would have done fiber or 100BaseT, but back in January, that wasn't economical."
Pixar has two large disk farms, an SGI Challenge with 144 gigabytes, and a Sun array of 108 gigabytes. Both together aren't enough to hold an entire movie, so images that have been "finalled" (received final approval from the director) are recorded onto film and backed up to an 8mm Exabyte tape drive.
But because the rendered data is essentially generated on the Suns, working data is not backed up. "We only back up important data that can't be replaced; the rest can always be re-rendered," Ching said. "We had one power outage that cost us some data, but the truth is the data was replaced within a day."
For the future, Pixar is planning a number of improvements. "We're looking at automated cartridge back-up systems that can handle 100 gigs of data very quickly," Ching said. "We'd also like to know more about ATM, we'd like to have switching hubs and maybe a video server."
ATM and the switching hubs will be used to improve network performance, while the video server will speed movie production more directly by letting animators do their work more interactively and efficiently. Rather than having to wait and view their work in a special light room, the video server will allow them to view clips right at their desks.
Plot line and subject matter aside, "Toy Story" marks a departure into a brand new world of movie making. With the computer industry eager for new business, the studios desire to cut costs (and those annoying percentages out of the gross now going to top actors), and with Steve Jobs' arrival on the Hollywood scene, graphics geeks can rest assured that world domination is only a matter of time.
Also this month in SunWorld Features: News & Views: Tech Expertise:
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Pixar's home page
http://www.pixar.com/
http://www.pixar.com/ Disney's "Toy Story" home page
http://www.toystory.com/
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The "Toy Story" story
Positioned as Disney's Christmas mega-movie, "Toy Story" is a comedy/adventure in which toys take on a life of their own when no one is watching.
"Toy Story" features the voices of Tom Hanks as Woody, a pull-string talking cowboy doll, and Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear, a superhero space action figure. The two learn to put aside their rivalry and work together when they become separated from their owner, a boy named Andy.
These and other characters will be reincarnated in an interactive CD being produced by Pixar, in numerous licensing deals for toys, and a joint marketing campaign with Burger King arranged by Disney. Other well known toys, from Mr. Potato Head (with the voice of Don Rickles) to Slinky Dog (with the voice of Jim Varney), also make appearances.
Four years in the making, "Toy Story" is directed by John Lasseter, who also directed Pixar's "Tin Toy," a seminal computer animation short made in 1988 about living toys. "Tin Toy" was the first computer animated film to win an Academy Award, and "Toy Story" is very much a descendent of that film, many doublings of computer power later.
Pixar's RenderMan and Typestry
Editor's note: In October 1996, the editors received the following message from Joy Gipson (joy@pixar.com), marketing communications manager at Pixar: We no longer sell or support Pixar Typestry as referenced in your Web site.
In addition to movies, Pixar also sells two software packages, RenderMan and Typestry.
RenderMan runs on Sun, Silicon Graphics, Macintosh, and other computers, and produces photo-realistic 3-D images in TIFF, PICT, EPS or TGA formats from mathematical models for shapes, shading, texture, and lighting. Like a digital camera that controls focus, exposure, viewing angle, level of detail, RenderMan computes the final image.
Partly because it has been on the market since the late 1980s, and partly because it runs on so many platforms, a raft of third-party RenderMan-compatible programs are available. In fact, for any real production, third-party products are necessary, because RenderMan doesn't do modeling or animation.
Among RenderMan's credits are the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, the cyborg in Terminator 2, the water creatures in The Abyss, and images in Tin Toy, Free Willy, Cliffhanger, and Casper.
Pixar's Typestry lets users create three-dimensional type, and manipulate it in a variety of ways, wrapping text around a sphere or tube, or onto a rubber sheet. It also supports animation, changes the appearance of type surfaces, and even handles particle emissions from type surfaces.Thousands of naked beach-goers. Dozens of clothed, beer-drinking boaters and Jet Skiers determined to party nearby. Harried bureaucrats trying to keep the peace.
That drama will be playing out again this summer at Vancouver's legendary Wreck Beach, on the western tip of the city's peninsula, but with new efforts by regional bureaucrats to keep the boaters and nude swimmers apart.
After hours of presentations, negotiations, petition-signing and feasibility assessments by beach advocates and Metro Vancouver over the past several months, staff have recommended that the district spend up to $20,000 this summer to pay for extra RCMP marine patrols and new signage at the popular nude beach.
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"When we looked at all the options available, this was the best," said Mitch Sokalski, Metro's division manager for its western parks.
But, in a move sure to provoke renewed skirmishing, the district is also considering whether to create a special access lane to allow boaters to get to the beach.
That has the long-time defenders of Wreck Beach outraged.
"There are places that Jet Skis don't belong," said Judy Williams. Wreck Beach is one of them.
Ms. Williams has been advocating for Wreck Beach for more than 30 years, largely through the Wreck Beach Preservation Society founded in 1977.
In that time, she has battled everything from UBC building projects that would have looked out over the beach to a younger generation using the beach for public sex, along with jet-fuel pipelines and occasional talk of taking away the clothing-optional status of the beach.
Ms. Williams thinks there should be no accommodation for the boaters – she calls them "Wreck Beach wannabes."
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"They don't have any intention of taking their clothes off, they jack up their music and it bounces off the cliffs, they drink."
Both she and Mr. Sokalski, the overseer since Metro Vancouver took over the park in 1989 from the Vancouver park board, agree there is a definite safety problem.
Boaters typically come out to the tip of the peninsula, where Wreck Beach extends for six kilometres from Jericho Beach on the north side to the Musqueam land on the south.
They end up clustered at what is called the Wreck Beach Trail 6 beach, manoeuvring among the buoys that designate the swimmers-only area.
"There is not a significant number of boats or jet skis but all it takes is one or two incidents," said Mr. Sokalski.
The Metro Vancouver board is going to vote Friday on his recommendation that the RCMP be asked to do more marine patrols in the area. Only the RCMP, under the Canada Shipping Act, have the authority to control the boaters, he said.
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While police might occasionally patrol as part of their shifts, the district may need to pay for a few excursions on busy days
Some of the money from the district will go to pay for extra signage – on land to warn swimmers about the boats, and on the buoys in the water to warn boaters about swimmers.
Mr. Sokalski said the beach can get up to 5,000 visitors on sunny summer days. Ms. Williams put the number at 14,000.
The tension between the two groups has been present for more than a decade.
At one point, Metro staff, Transport Canada and the society spent two years doing surveys and documenting altercations between swimmers and boaters.
Last fall, the society presented a 2,500-name petition to Metro Vancouver, asking for boats and jet skis to be banned from the area.
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But Mr. Sokalski's report noted that Transport Canada doesn't look favourably on banning boats unless there is demonstrated risk, which the agency didn't find in the earlier survey.
So Metro won't apply for a ban, saying that would likely take years and the outcome would be uncertain.
Ms. Williams isn't accepting that recommendation without a fight, however. She plans to be at Friday's meeting, making her case yet again.This article is about the play by William Shakespeare. For the type of settlement, see Hamlet (place). For other uses, see Hamlet (disambiguation)
tragedy by William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an uncertain date between 1599 and 1602. Set in Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlet's father, King Hamlet. Claudius had murdered his own brother and seized the throne, also marrying his deceased brother's widow.
Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play, and is considered among the most powerful and influential works of world literature, with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others". It was one of Shakespeare's most popular works during his lifetime, and still ranks among his most performed, topping the performance list of the Royal Shakespeare Company and its predecessors in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1879. It has inspired many other writers—from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Charles Dickens to James Joyce and Iris Murdoch—and has been described as "the world's most filmed story after Cinderella".
The story of Shakespeare's Hamlet was derived from the legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum, as subsequently retold by the 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest. Shakespeare may also have drawn on an earlier Elizabethan play known today as the Ur-Hamlet, though some scholars believe he himself wrote the Ur-Hamlet, later revising it to create the version of Hamlet we now have. He almost certainly wrote his version of the title role for his fellow actor, Richard Burbage, the leading tragedian of Shakespeare's time. In the 400 years since its inception, the role has been performed by numerous highly acclaimed actors in each successive century.
Three different early versions of the play are extant: the First Quarto (Q1, 1603); the Second Quarto (Q2, 1604); and the First Folio (F1, 1623). Each version includes lines and entire scenes missing from the others. The play's structure and depth of characterisation have inspired much critical scrutiny. One such example is the centuries-old debate about Hamlet's hesitation to kill his uncle, which some see as merely a plot device to prolong the action, but which others argue is a dramatisation of the complex philosophical and ethical issues that surround cold-blooded murder, calculated revenge, and thwarted desire. More recently, psychoanalytic critics have examined Hamlet's unconscious desires, while feminist critics have re-evaluated and attempted to rehabilitate the often maligned characters of Ophelia and Gertrude.
Characters
Plot
Act I
The protagonist of Hamlet is Prince Hamlet of Denmark, son of the recently deceased King Hamlet, and nephew of King Claudius, his father's brother and successor. Claudius hastily married King Hamlet's widow, Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, and took the throne for himself. Denmark has a long-standing feud with neighbouring Norway, in which King Hamlet slew King Fortinbras of Norway in a battle some years ago. Although Denmark defeated Norway, and the Norwegian throne fell to King Fortinbras's infirm brother, Denmark fears that an invasion led by the dead Norwegian king's son, Prince Fortinbras, is imminent.
On a cold night on the ramparts of Elsinore, the Danish royal castle, the sentries Bernardo and Marcellus discuss a ghost resembling the late King Hamlet which they have recently seen, and bring Prince Hamlet's friend Horatio as a witness. After the ghost appears again, the three vow to tell Prince Hamlet what they have witnessed.
As the court gathers the next day, while King Claudius and Queen Gertrude discuss affairs of state with their elderly adviser Polonius, Hamlet looks on glumly. During the court, Claudius grants permission for Polonius's son Laertes to return to school in France, and sends envoys to inform the King of Norway about Fortinbras. Claudius also scolds Hamlet for continuing to grieve over his father, and forbids him to return to his schooling in Wittenberg. After the court exits, Hamlet despairs of his father's death and his mother's hasty remarriage. Learning of the ghost from Horatio, Hamlet resolves to see it himself.
As Polonius's son Laertes prepares to depart for a visit to France, Polonius gives him contradictory advice that culminates in the ironic maxim "to thine own self be true." Polonius's daughter, Ophelia, admits her interest in Hamlet, but Laertes warns her against seeking the prince's attention, and Polonius orders her to reject his advances. That night on the rampart, the ghost appears to Hamlet, telling the prince that he was murdered by Claudius and demanding that Hamlet avenge him. Hamlet agrees and the ghost vanishes. The prince confides to Horatio and the sentries that from now on he plans to "put an antic disposition on", or act as though he has gone mad, and forces them to swear to keep his plans for revenge secret. Privately, however, he remains uncertain of the ghost's reliability.
Act II
Soon thereafter, Ophelia rushes to her father, telling him that Hamlet arrived at her door the prior night half-undressed and behaving erratically. Polonius blames love for Hamlet's madness and resolves to inform Claudius and Gertrude. As he enters to do so, the king and queen finish welcoming Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two student acquaintances of Hamlet, to Elsinore. The royal couple has requested that the students investigate the cause of Hamlet's mood and behaviour. Additional news requires that Polonius wait to be heard: messengers from Norway inform Claudius that the King of Norway has rebuked Prince Fortinbras for attempting to re-fight his father's battles. The forces that Fortinbras had conscripted to march against Denmark will instead be sent against Poland, though they will pass through Danish territory to get there.
Polonius tells Claudius and Gertrude his theory regarding Hamlet's behaviour, and speaks to Hamlet in a hall of the castle to try to uncover more information. Hamlet feigns madness but subtly insults Polonius all the while. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive, Hamlet greets his "friends" warmly, but quickly discerns that they are spies. Hamlet becomes bitter, admitting that he is upset at his situation but refusing to give the true reason why, instead commenting on "what a piece of work" humanity is. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet that they have brought along a troupe of actors that they met while traveling to Elsinore. Hamlet, after welcoming the actors and dismissing his friends-turned-spies, asks them to deliver a soliloquy about the death of King Priam and Queen Hecuba at the climax of the Trojan War. Impressed by their delivery of the speech, he plots to stage The Murder of Gonzago, a play featuring a death in the style of his father's murder, and to determine the truth of the ghost's story, as well as Claudius's guilt or innocence, by studying Claudius's reaction.
Act III
Polonius forces Ophelia to return Hamlet's love letters and tokens of affection to the prince while he and Claudius watch from afar to evaluate Hamlet's reaction. Hamlet is walking alone in the hall as the King and Polonius await Ophelia's entrance, musing whether "to be or not to be". When Ophelia enters and tries to return Hamlet's things, Hamlet accuses her of immodesty and cries "get thee to a nunnery", though it is unclear whether this, too, is a show of madness or genuine distress. His reaction convinces Claudius that Hamlet is not mad for love. Shortly thereafter, the court assembles to watch the play Hamlet has commissioned. After seeing the Player King murdered by his rival pouring poison in his ear, Claudius abruptly rises and runs from the room: for Hamlet, proof positive of his uncle's guilt.
Hamlet mistakenly stabs Polonius (Artist: Coke Smyth, 19th century).
Gertrude summons Hamlet to her room to demand an explanation. Meanwhile, Claudius talks to himself about the impossibility of repenting, since he still has possession of his ill-gotten goods: his brother's crown and wife. He sinks to his knees. Hamlet, on his way to visit his mother, sneaks up behind him, but does not kill him, reasoning that killing Claudius while he is praying will send him straight to heaven while his father's ghost is stuck in purgatory. In the queen's bedchamber, Hamlet and Gertrude fight bitterly. Polonius, spying on the conversation from behind a tapestry, calls for help as Gertrude, believing Hamlet wants to kill her, calls out for help herself.
Hamlet, believing it is Claudius, stabs wildly, killing Polonius, but pulls aside the curtain and sees his mistake. In a rage, Hamlet brutally insults his mother for her apparent ignorance of Claudius's villainy, but the ghost enters and reprimands Hamlet for his inaction and harsh words. Unable to see or hear the ghost herself, Gertrude takes Hamlet's conversation with it as further evidence of madness. After begging the queen to stop sleeping with Claudius, Hamlet leaves, dragging Polonius's corpse away.
Act IV
Hamlet jokes with Claudius about where he has hidden Polonius's body, and the king, fearing for his life, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to accompany Hamlet to England with a sealed letter to the English king requesting that Hamlet be executed immediately.
Demented by grief at Polonius's death, Ophelia wanders Elsinore. Laertes arrives back from France, enraged by his father's death and his sister's madness. Claudius convinces Laertes that Hamlet is solely responsible, but a letter soon arrives indicating that Hamlet has returned to Denmark, foiling Claudius' plan. Claudius switches tactics, proposing a fencing match between Laertes and Hamlet to settle their differences. Laertes will be given a poison-tipped foil, and Claudius will offer Hamlet poisoned wine as a congratulation if that fails. Gertrude interrupts to report that Ophelia has drowned, though it is unclear whether it was suicide or an accident exacerbated by her madness.
Act V
Horatio has received a letter from Hamlet, explaining that the prince escaped by negotiating with pirates who attempted to attack his England-bound ship, and the friends reunite offstage. Two gravediggers discuss Ophelia's apparent suicide while digging her grave. Hamlet arrives with Horatio and banters with one of the gravediggers, who unearths the skull of a jester from Hamlet's childhood, Yorick. Hamlet picks up the skull, saying "alas, poor Yorick" as he contemplates mortality. Ophelia's funeral procession approaches, led by Laertes. Hamlet and Horatio initially hide, but when Hamlet realizes that Ophelia is the one being buried, he reveals himself, proclaiming his love for her. Laertes and Hamlet fight by Ophelia's graveside, but the brawl is broken up.
Back at Elsinore, Hamlet explains to Horatio that he had discovered Claudius's letter with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's belongings and replaced it with a forged copy indicating that his former friends should be killed instead. A foppish courtier, Osric, interrupts the conversation to deliver the fencing challenge to Hamlet. Hamlet, despite Horatio's pleas, accepts it. Hamlet does well at first, leading the match by two hits to none, and Gertrude raises a toast to him using the poisoned glass of wine Claudius had set aside for Hamlet. Claudius tries to stop her, but is too late: she drinks, and Laertes realizes the plot will be revealed. Laertes slashes Hamlet with his poisoned blade. In the ensuing scuffle, they switch weapons and Hamlet wounds Laertes with his own poisoned sword. Gertrude collapses and, claiming she has been poisoned, dies. In his dying moments, Laertes reconciles with Hamlet and reveals Claudius's plan. Hamlet rushes at Claudius and kills him. As the poison takes effect, Hamlet, hearing that Fortinbras is marching through the area, names the Norwegian prince as his successor. Horatio, distraught at the thought of being the last survivor and living whilst Hamlet does not, says he will commit suicide by drinking the dregs of Gertrude's poisoned wine, but Hamlet begs him to live on and tell his story. Hamlet dies in Horatio's arms, proclaiming "the rest is silence". Fortinbras, who was ostensibly marching towards Poland with his army, arrives at the palace, along with an English ambassador bringing news of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's deaths. Horatio promises to recount the full story of what happened, and Fortinbras, seeing the entire Danish royal family dead, takes the crown for himself, and orders a military funeral to honour Hamlet.
Sources
Hamlet-like legends are so widely found (for example in Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Byzantium, and Arabia) that the core "hero-as-fool" theme is possibly Indo-European in origin. Several ancient written precursors to Hamlet can be identified. The first is the anonymous Scandinavian Saga of Hrolf Kraki. In this, the murdered king has two sons—Hroar and Helgi—who spend most of the story in disguise, under false names, rather than feigning madness, in a sequence of events that differs from Shakespeare's. The second is the Roman legend of Brutus, recorded in two separate Latin works. Its hero, Lucius ("shining, light"), changes his name and persona to Brutus ("dull, stupid"), playing the role of a fool to avoid the fate of his father and brothers, and eventually slaying his family's killer, King Tarquinius. A 17th-century Nordic scholar, Torfaeus, compared the Icelandic hero Amlodi and the Spanish hero Prince Ambales (from the Ambales Saga) to Shakespeare's Hamlet. Similarities include the prince's feigned madness, his accidental killing of the king's counsellor in his mother's bedroom, and the eventual slaying of his uncle.
Many of the earlier legendary elements are interwoven in the 13th-century "Life of Amleth" (Latin: Vita Amlethi) by Saxo Grammaticus, part of Gesta Danorum. Written in Latin, it reflects classical Roman concepts of virtue and heroism, and was widely available in Shakespeare's day. Significant parallels include the prince feigning madness, his mother's hasty marriage to the usurper, the prince killing a hidden spy, and the prince substituting the execution of two retainers for his own. A reasonably faithful version of Saxo's story was translated into French in 1570 by François de Belleforest, in his Histoires tragiques. Belleforest embellished Saxo's text substantially, almost doubling its length, and introduced the hero's melancholy.
The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd Title page ofby Thomas Kyd
According to one theory, Shakespeare's main source is an earlier play—now lost—known today as the Ur-Hamlet. Possibly written by Thomas Kyd or even William Shakespeare, the Ur-Hamlet would have existed by 1589, and would have incorporated a ghost. Shakespeare's company, the Chamberlain's Men, may have purchased that play and performed a version for some time, which Shakespeare reworked. However, since no copy of the Ur-Hamlet has survived, it is impossible to compare its language and style with the known works of any of its putative authors. Consequently, there is no direct evidence that Kyd wrote it, nor any evidence that the play was not an early version of Hamlet by Shakespeare himself. This latter idea—placing Hamlet far earlier than the generally accepted date, with a much longer period of development—has attracted some support.[b]
The upshot is that scholars cannot assert with any confidence how much material Shakespeare took from the Ur-Hamlet (if it even existed), how much from Belleforest or Saxo, and how much from other contemporary sources (such as Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy). No clear evidence exists that Shakespeare made any direct references to Saxo's version. However, elements of Belleforest's version which are not in Saxo's story do appear in Shakespeare's play. Whether Shakespeare took these from Belleforest directly or from the hypothetical Ur-Hamlet remains unclear.
Most scholars reject the idea that Hamlet is in any way connected with Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet Shakespeare, who died in 1596 at age eleven. Conventional wisdom holds that Hamlet is too obviously connected to legend, and the name Hamnet was quite popular at the time. However, Stephen Greenblatt has argued that the coincidence of the names and Shakespeare's grief for the loss of his son may lie at the heart of the tragedy. He notes that the name of Hamnet Sadler, the Stratford neighbour after whom Hamnet was named, was often written as Hamlet Sadler and that, in the loose orthography of the time, the names were virtually interchangeable.
Scholars have often speculated that Hamlet's Polonius might have been inspired by William Cecil (Lord Burghley)—Lord High Treasurer and chief counsellor to Queen Elizabeth I. E. K. Chambers suggested Polonius's advice to Laertes may have echoed Burghley's to his son Robert Cecil. John Dover Wilson thought it almost certain that the figure of Polonius caricatured Burghley. A. L. Rowse speculated that Polonius's tedious verbosity might have resembled Burghley's. Lilian Winstanley thought the name Corambis (in the First Quarto) did suggest Cecil and Burghley. Harold Jenkins considers the idea that Polonius might be a caricature of Burghley is a conjecture, and may be based on the similar role they each played at court, and also on the fact that Burghley addressed his Ten Precepts to his son, as in the play Polonius offers "precepts" to Laertes, his son. Jenkins suggests that any personal satire may be found in the name "Polonius", which might point to a Polish or Polonian connection. G. R. Hibbard hypothesised that differences in names (Corambis/Polonius:Montano/Raynoldo) between the First Quarto and other editions might reflect a desire not to offend scholars at Oxford University.[c]
"Any dating of Hamlet must be tentative", cautions the New Cambridge editor, Phillip Edwards.[d] The earliest date estimate relies on Hamlet's frequent allusions to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, itself dated to mid-1599. The latest date estimate is based on an entry, of 26 July 1602, in the Register of the Stationers' Company, indicating that Hamlet was "latelie Acted by the Lo: Chamberleyne his servantes".
In 1598, Francis Meres published his Palladis Tamia, a survey of English literature from Chaucer to its present day, within which twelve of Shakespeare's plays are named. Hamlet is not among them, suggesting that it had not yet been written. As Hamlet was very popular, Bernard Lott, the series editor of New Swan, believes it "unlikely that he [Meres] would have overlooked... so significant a piece".
The phrase "little eyases"[42] in the First Folio (F1) may allude to the Children of the Chapel, whose popularity in London forced the Globe company into provincial touring.[e] This became known as the War of the Theatres, and supports a 1601 dating. Katherine Duncan-Jones accepts a 1600–1 attribution for the date Hamlet was written, but notes that the Lord Chamberlain's Men, playing Hamlet in the 3000-capacity Globe, were unlikely to be put to any disadvantage by an audience of "barely one hundred" for the Children of the Chapel's equivalent play, Antonio's Revenge; she believes that Shakespeare, confident in the superiority of his own work, was making a playful and charitable allusion to his friend John Marston's very similar piece.
A contemporary of Shakespeare's, Gabriel Harvey, wrote a marginal note in his copy of the 1598 edition of Chaucer's works, which some scholars use as dating evidence. Harvey's note says that "the wiser sort" enjoy Hamlet, and implies that the Earl of Essex—executed in February 1601 for rebellion—was still alive. Other scholars consider this inconclusive. Edwards, for example, concludes that the "sense of time is so confused in Harvey's note that it is really of little use in trying to date Hamlet". This is because the same note also refers to Spenser and Watson as if they were still alive ("our flourishing metricians"), but also mentions "Owen's new epigrams", published in 1607.
Texts
Three early editions of the text have survived, making attempts to establish a single "authentic" text problematic and inconclusive. Each surviving edition differs from the others:
Other folios and quartos were subsequently published—including John Smethwick's Q3, Q4, and Q5 (1611–37)—but these are regarded as derivatives of the first three editions.
Hamlet, 1623 The first page of the First Folio printing of, 1623
Early editors of Shakespeare's works, beginning with Nicholas Rowe (1709) and Lewis Theobald (1733), combined material from the two earliest sources of Hamlet available at the time, Q2 and F1. Each text contains material that the other lacks, with many minor differences in wording: scarcely 200 lines are identical in the two. Editors have combined them in an effort to create one "inclusive" text that reflects an imagined "ideal" of Shakespeare's original. Theobald's version became standard for a long time, and his "full text" approach continues to influence editorial practice to the present day. Some contemporary scholarship, however, discounts this approach, instead considering "an authentic Hamlet an unrealisable ideal.... there are texts of this play but no text". The 2006 publication by Arden Shakespeare of different Hamlet texts in different volumes is perhaps evidence of this shifting focus and emphasis.[f] Other editors have continued to argue the need for well-edited editions taking material from all versions of the play. Colin Burrow has argued that "most of us should read a text that is made up by conflating all three versions... it's about as likely that Shakespeare wrote: "To be or not to be, ay, there's the point" [in Q1], as that he wrote the works of Francis Bacon. I suspect most people just won't want to read a three-text play... [multi-text editions are] a version of the play that is out of touch with the needs of a wider public."
Traditionally, editors of Shakespeare's plays have divided them into five acts. None of the early texts of Hamlet, however, were arranged this way, and the play's division into acts and scenes derives from a 1676 quarto. Modern editors generally follow this traditional division, but consider it unsatisfactory; for example, after Hamlet drags Polonius's body out of Gertrude's bedchamber, there is an act-break[59] after which the action appears to continue uninterrupted.
Comparison of the 'To be, or not to be' soliloquy in the first three editions of Hamlet, showing the varying quality of the text in the Bad Quarto, the Good Quarto and the First Folio
The discovery in 1823 of Q1—whose existence had been quite unsuspected—caused considerable interest and excitement, raising many questions of editorial practice and interpretation. Scholars immediately identified apparent deficiencies in Q1, which was instrumental in the development of the concept of a Shakespearean "bad quarto". Yet Q1 has value: it contains stage directions (such as Ophelia entering with a lute and her hair down) that reveal actual stage practices in a way that Q2 and F1 do not; it contains an entire scene (usually labelled 4.6)[62] that does not appear in either Q2 or F1; and it is useful for comparison with the later editions. The major deficiency of Q1 is in the language: particularly noticeable in the opening lines of the famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy: "To be, or not to be, aye there's the point. / To die, to sleep, is that all? Aye all: / No, to sleep, to dream, aye marry there it goes." However, the scene order is more coherent, without the problems of Q2 and F1 of Hamlet seeming to resolve something in one scene and enter the next drowning in indecision. New Cambridge editor Kathleen Irace has noted that "Q1's more linear plot design is certainly easier [...] to follow [...] but the simplicity of the Q1 plot arrangement eliminates the alternating plot elements that correspond to Hamlet's shifts in mood."
Q1 is considerably shorter than Q2 or F1 and may be a memorial reconstruction of the play as Shakespeare's company performed it, by an actor who played a minor role (most likely Marcellus). Scholars disagree whether the reconstruction was pirated or authorised. It is suggested by Irace that Q1 is an abridged version intended especially for travelling productions, thus the question of length may be considered as separate from issues of poor textual quality. Editing Q1 thus poses problems in whether or not to "correct" differences from Q2 and F. Irace, in her introduction to Q1, wrote that "I have avoided as many other alterations as possible, because the differences...are especially intriguing...I have recorded a selection of Q2/F readings in the collation." The idea that Q1 is not riddled with error but is instead eminently fit for the stage has led to at least 28 different Q1 productions since 1881. Other productions have used the probably superior Q2 and Folio texts, but used Q1's running order, in particular moving the to be or not to be soliloquy earlier. Developing this, some editors such as Jonathan Bate have argued that Q2 may represent "a'reading' text as opposed to a 'performance' one" of Hamlet, analogous to how modern films released on disc may include deleted scenes: an edition containing all of Shakespeare's material for the play for the pleasure of readers, so not representing the play as it would have been staged.
Analysis and criticism
Critical history
From the early 17th century, the play was famous for its ghost and vivid dramatisation of melancholy and insanity, leading to a procession of mad courtiers and ladies in Jacobean and Caroline drama. Though it remained popular with mass audiences, late 17th-century Restoration critics saw Hamlet as primitive and disapproved of its lack of unity and decorum. This view changed drastically in the 18th century, when critics regarded Hamlet as a hero—a pure, brilliant young man thrust into unfortunate circumstances. By the mid-18th century, however, the advent of Gothic literature brought psychological and mystical readings, returning madness and the ghost to the forefront. Not until the late 18th century did critics and performers begin to view Hamlet as confusing and inconsistent. Before then, he was either mad, or not; either a hero, or not; with no in-betweens. These developments represented a fundamental change in literary criticism, which came to focus more on character and less on plot. By the 19th century, Romantic critics valued Hamlet for its internal, individual conflict reflecting the strong contemporary emphasis on internal struggles and inner character in general. Then too, critics started to focus on Hamlet's delay as a character trait, rather than a plot device. This focus on character and internal struggle continued into the 20th century, when criticism branched in several directions, discussed in context and interpretation below.
Dramatic structure
Hamlet departed from contemporary dramatic convention in several ways. For example, in Shakespeare's day, plays were usually expected to follow the advice of Aristotle in his Poetics: that a drama should focus on action, not character. In Hamlet, Shakespeare reverses this so that it is through the soliloquies, not the action, that the audience learns Hamlet's motives and thoughts |
enjoyed taking lighthearted jabs at the local media.
Responding to a tweet Monday that showed FAU (3-3, 2-0 in C-USA play) had the best odds of winning Conference USA, Kiffin managed to simultaneously poke fun at media and his former boss, Alabama head coach Nick Saban, at the same time.
"Please stop media," Kiffin tweeted to his over 253,000+ followers. "This is rat poison to our players!!"
The "rat poison" term refers to comments made by Saban following the No. 1 ranked Crimson Tide’s 27-19 win over Texas A&M on Saturday night.
"I’m trying to get our players to listen to me instead of you guys," Saban said in comments directed to reporters. "All that stuff you write about how good we are? All that stuff they hear on ESPN? It’s like poison. Like rat poison."
Kiffin served as Alabama’s offensive coordinator under Saban from 2014-16, making the College Football Playoff all three years and winning a national title in 2015. But his departure from Alabama, on the lead up to the national championship game last season, was awkward as Saban abruptly annouced that Kiffin was leaving to focus on his new job as FAU’s coach.
Asked on Tuesday about the tweet and the significance of "rat poison", Kiffin grinned and turned the question back onto the gathered reporters.
"(Rat poison) is like what you guys were just doing when I walked in here telling (FAU center Antonyo Woods) how great he is and how great he’s gonna keep breaking records," Kiffin said. "I’m trying to not do that and you guys do that."
Kiffin added, "I think it’s OK to have a sense of humor in this profession, the old people think you’re not supposed to, so whatever. I thought it was funny."
As of Tuesday afternoon, the tweet had been retweeted over 1,600 times.
Kiffin then explained it wasn’t his idea to post the tweet, but FAU feature producer Frank Forte, who hosts Inside the Owls Burrow with Kiffin weekly on Fox Sports Florida, was instead to blame.
"We were filming the TV show last night, he came up with that idea, and I thought it was funny so I wrote it," Kiffin joked. "I asked him first to make sure I was spelling everything right. There were some hashtags I couldn’t process."
With the Owls on a bye week, Kiffin will have plenty of opportunities to tweet his heart away. FAU’s next game is against North Texas on Oct 21., a day that will also feature a ceremony honoring the 2007 Sun Belt champion team.Shannon and JJ Wilson, wife and son of Lululemon Athletica founder Chip Wilson, are including Detroit in the expansion of their clothing line. (Photo: Alan Chan / Special to The Detroit News)
This summer, Midtown will become home to one of the U.S.’s first Kit and Ace shops, a rapidly expanding cashmere blend T-shirt franchise, poised to add more than 50 stores worldwide by year’s end.
The clothing brand is the creation of Shannon and JJ Wilson, the wife and son of Lululemon Athletica founder Chip Wilson.
Slated to open June 18, the shop will occupy about 750 square feet in Suite 106-4240 on Cass Avenue and sell mostly T-shirts. But JJ Wilson says he and his stepmom have bigger plans.
“Eventually I see it going into the suburbs, but I wanted to start in the city. Detroit is evolving and there’s so much excitement around it,” he said. “You can feel it. There’s something in the air about the people coming together to reinvent Detroit.”
Reinvention is a big part of what the Wilsons are doing with their clothing line.
Founded in 1998, Lululemon Athletica has gained an almost cult-like following among celebrities and everyday folks alike. Michigan has stores in Ann Arbor, Troy, Birmingham, Novi and Grand Rapids.
And while the Kit and Ace stores start with Wilson family money, JJ and Shannon Wilson have been clear about separating the brand on its own.
“It comes with its benefits and it comes with its costs. I don’t think I could build Kit and Ace with Shannon without the interest in Chip’s involvement,” said JJ Wilson. “The cost to that, you spend a lot of time managing it. The conversation can quickly become about Lululemon and Chip.”
To be sure, Wilson says, his father’s influence and gaining industry experience growing up with the Lululemon brand has been vital to his company.
“If I could look at the big picture of Kit and Ace, I’m seeing it as a new addition or evolving the Wilsons being a prominent family in retail,” he said. “When I look at what we did with Lululemon, we defined athleisure. With Kit and Ace, we’ve figured out how to add technical luxury.”
Wilson said the shop will start by selling their signature cashmere blend T-shirts for $65-$130. If things go well, he said, they would seek a bigger space for a full store and leave the T-shirt shop as is. The full line includes products for men and women: tops, bottoms and outerwear, with most of the items coming in black, white, dark blue or gray.
The fabric is Shannon Wilson’s creation and called “Qemir” — pronounced “come-here.” Unlike cashmere alone, it’s stretchy and durable and can be machine-washed instead of requiring dry-cleaning.
‘The stars aligned’
“When we talk about technical cashmere, we designed it for our West Coast active lifestyle,” said JJ Wilson. “We wanted to be able to wear luxury fabrications like cashmere without having to have it taken care of to the same degree.”
Founded in Vancouver, British Columbia, Kit and Ace has seven North American stores, including a T-shirt shop in San Francisco and a full shop in New York City. Detroit will be one of 13 cities to get a Kit and Ace this summer.
Wilson said “the stars aligned” for the Detroit location: It was the right place on the right street with the right shop director to grow the business. But beyond that, Detroit’s bustling art scene fits perfectly with the Kit and Ace philosophy.
The shops feature wooden tables and light fixtures from local craftspeople. Each one has a wall featuring art from local artists that is changed every three months. And community events and supper club-style parties are often held there featuring local food and drink.
“One of my biggest fears for Kit and Ace was that I never wanted each shop to feel the same,” said Wilson. “I wanted it to feel specific to that area.”
Plans for quick expansion
JJ and Shannon Wilson are pushing for quick expansion, aiming for 30 new stores in North America by the end of the year. But JJ Wilson says he has spent his entire life preparing for the challenge of building his own brand.
“The biggest asset was probably just growing up and watching Lululemon. I was 15 when it started and by the time I was 20 it was at hundreds of stores around the world,” he said. “I don’t like saying I was built for this, but in a way there’s nothing I know better at 26 than building something like this.”
lrazzaq@detroitnews.com
(313) 222-2127
Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/1GKGNqNImage copyright AP Image caption Neil Gorsuch had failed to answer "question after question", the top Senate Democrat said
The leading Democrat in the US Senate says he will lead an attempt to block President Donald Trump's nomination for the Supreme Court.
Chuck Schumer said Judge Neil Gorsuch favoured the "powerful over the weak" and failed to answer "question after question" in his confirmation hearing.
Senate Democrats are in a 48-52 minority but can insist that Mr Gorsuch wins 60 votes, a so-called filibuster.
Republicans could then revert to a simple majority in a "nuclear option".
That would require them voting in a change of rules.
Mr Schumer's announcement is sure to set up a bruising battle.
More on this story
He said he did not think Judge Gorsuch would be a mainstream judge.
"After careful deliberation, I have concluded that I cannot support Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court," Mr Schumer said.
"He will have to earn 60 votes for confirmation. My vote will be 'no', and I urge my colleagues to do the same," he added.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Supreme Court fight: What's the "nuclear option'"?
If Mr Gorsuch did not get 60 votes, "the answer isn't to change the rules, it's to change the nominee," Mr Schumer said.
Judge Gorsuch is on the fourth and final day of his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judicial Committee, where outside parties comment for or against his nomination.
Thursday's first witness, the American Bar Association, gave Judge Gorsuch its highest rating of "well qualified".
The committee will vote, probably next week, on the nomination. It simply records a favourable, unfavourable or "without recommendation" comment and passes the final decision to the full Senate.
Senate Republicans say they will seek a full vote on the chamber floor before Congress leaves for recess on 7 April.
It is unclear how many, if any, Senate Democrats would support Mr Gorsuch's nomination. He would need eight to beat the filibuster.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The Supreme Court has been without a full bench for almost a full year
The so-called nuclear option would require Republicans to change Senate rules to allow Mr Gorsuch's nomination to be approved with a simple majority.
President Trump has called on them to do so if necessary.
During the confirmation hearing, Democrats on the committee regularly expressed their anger that President Barack Obama's nomination for a post that was vacated 13 months ago was refused a hearing by Republicans.
Republicans blocked Merrick Garland's nomination, arguing it should not go ahead in an election year.
Mr Gorsuch, 49, would restore a 5-4 conservative majority on the Supreme Court that lapsed with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
As a lifetime appointee, Judge Gorsuch would join the other justices in having the final legal word on many of the most sensitive US issues.
Judge Gorsuch's qualifications have not been called into question at his hearing, but Democrats have been frustrated at his refusal to signal any stance on such emotive areas as gun control, abortion and employee rights.
He has simply said it is his duty to apply the law as it stands.Effect of wound size and immune infiltrate on tumorigenesis
To test whether wound size, wound closure rate or inflammatory response to wounding influenced tumour incidence, full-thickness skin wounds of different sizes (2, 4, 5, 6 and 8 mm2) were made on back skin of WT and InvEE (Inv) mice, and papilloma formation at the wound site was monitored. Wounds in InvEE and WT littermates healed at the same rate but only InvEE mice developed tumours (Supplementary Fig. 1a,b). Although onset of tumour formation was independent of wound size, there was a linear correlation between wound size and tumour incidence (R2=0.91381; Fig. 1a,b). Wound size and total immune cell infiltrate (CD45+ cells) were correlated in both WT and InvEE skin, but CD45+ cells were significantly more abundant in InvEE skin both before wounding9 and at the time of wound closure (Fig. 1c and Supplementary Fig. 1c,d). There were even more CD45+ cells in the tumour stroma than in newly closed 8 mm2 InvEE wounds (Fig. 1c). These results indicate that the degree of inflammation remaining once the acute response to injury has resolved correlates with the extent of the primary insult and subsequent tumour incidence.
Figure 1: Pro-inflammatory signalling and wound-induced tumour formation in InvEE mice. (a) Correlation between wound diameter and papilloma incidence at wound site in InvEE mice 30 days post wounding (n>20 mice per condition). (b) Incidence of tumours in InvEE mice in 2 mm2 (n=28 mice), 5 mm2 (n=27 mice) or 8 mm2 (n=33 mice) wounds (*0.01<P<0.05; ****P<0.0001; one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA)). (c) Quantification of CD45+ leukocytes in different sized wounds at time of wound closure (n≥4 mice per condition, at least three microscopic fields were quantified per mouse; *0.01<P<0.05, **0.01<P<0.001, ***0.0001<P<0.001, ****P<0.0001; two-way ANOVA). (d) Quantitative PCR normalized to glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase of NF-κB target gene mRNAs in 8-week-old InvEE epidermis relative to transgene negative littermates (log 2-fold upregulation relative to WT; n=3 mice per condition). Data are means±s.d. of biological and technical triplicates (P<0.0001 for each individual gene product; unpaired t-test). (e–g) Serum levels of TSLP (e), TNF-α (f) and IL-6 (g) in control, tumour-free and tumour-bearing InvEE mice, assessed by ELISA (n=4 mice per condition; *0.01<P<0.05, **0.01<P<0.001, ***0.0001<P<0.001; unpaired t-test). Data are means±s.e.m.; pap: papilloma. Full size image
As nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) is an important mediator of inflammation-associated cancer10, we analysed expression of NF-κB target genes in InvEE and control epidermis. All 16 of the genes examined were significantly upregulated in InvEE epidermis relative to WT epidermis (P<0.0001 for each individual gene product; Fig. 1d). The effects were systemic, as levels of thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP), tumour-necrosis factor (TNF)-α and interleukin (IL)-6 were elevated in serum of tumour-free InvEE mice and increased further in tumour-bearing animals (Fig. 1e–g).
Tumour formation requires haematopoietic TNFR signalling
TNF-α is well known for its context-dependent pro- and anti-tumorigenic roles11 and downstream TNF-α signalling is mediated by TNFR-1 and TNFR-2. Mice deficient in both receptors are resistant to skin cancer induced by chemical carcinogens12. To examine whether wound-induced tumorigenesis was dependent on TNFR signalling specifically in leukocytes, sub-lethally irradiated InvEE mice were reconstituted with TNFR-1/-2−/− (TNFR−/−) bone marrow (BM) and subsequently wounded. Successful engraftment was verified by Y chromosome-fluorescence in situ hybridization (Y-FISH) in spleens of reconstituted mice as previously described8 (Supplementary Fig. 2a).
TNFR−/− chimeric mice were highly resistant to wound-induced tumour formation (Fig. 2a). Only 8.3% of TNFR−/− chimeric mice developed papillomas, compared with 50% of control chimeras, and time of tumour onset was delayed in TNFR−/− chimeric mice (Fig. 2a). Although wounds closed more rapidly in TNFR−/− chimeras (Supplementary Fig. 2b), in agreement with observations on TNFR-1−/− mice13, the epidermis remained thickened and hyperproliferative, consistent with the ability of MEK1 to stimulate keratinocyte proliferation in the absence of other cell types7 (Fig. 2b). Serum levels of TNF-α were markedly reduced in tumour-free but not tumour-bearing TNFR−/− chimeras (Supplementary Fig. 2c), consistent with MEK1 activation in epidermal tumour cells driving NF-κB activation14.
Figure 2: Role of TNFR signalling in wound-induced tumours. (a) Incidence of papillomas in TNFR-1/-2−/− (TNFR−/−/Inv; n=12) and control (Inv/Inv; n=12) BM chimeras (****P<0.0001; Fisher’s exact test). (b) Epidermal thickness in healed and unwounded skin, defined as the distance from basal to upper granular layer and measured at ten sites per mouse (wound Inv/Inv: n=4; wound TNFR−/−/Inv: n=8; skin Inv/Inv: n=8; skin TNFR−/−/Inv: n=10). (c–g) Infiltration of different immune cell populations in wound beds and tumour stroma of post-wounded InvEE and TNFR−/− chimeric skin (*0.01<P<0.05; unpaired t-test). (d,f) Histological sections were stained with antibodies to CD3 (red in d) and CD4 (green in d) or CD11b (red in f) and F4/80 (green in f) and double positive cells were quantified (c,e). Magnified views are represented on the right. (g) Mast cells were quantified following toluidine blue staining. (c,e,g) n≥3 mice per condition and ≥3 fields were quantified per section. Means±s.e.m. are shown. (d,f) Nuclei were stained with 4,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (blue); dotted lines indicate basement membrane. Scale bars, 300 μm. Full size image
The tumour-protective effect of TNFR ablation in radiosensitive leukocytes correlated with changes in the skin immune cell infiltrate. CD4+ T cells were markedly reduced in wounds and papillomas of TNFR−/− BM chimeras (Fig. 2c,d). When irradiated InvEE mice were reconstituted with BM from mice expressing enhanced green fluorescent protein under the control of the β-actin cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter and subsequently wounded, both the wounds and wound-induced tumours were heavily infiltrated with F4/80+ macrophages (Supplementary Fig. 2d). Macrophage (F4/80+ CD11b+) and mast cell numbers were similar in healed wounds of TNFR−/− and control chimeras but significantly reduced in tumour stroma of TNFR−/− chimeras (Fig. 2e–g).
Epidermal γδ T cells infiltrated wounds of both TNFR−/− and control chimeras to the same extent. They were never present within the tumour epithelium, but did accumulate in adjacent epidermis (Supplementary Fig. 2e), suggesting that the previously observed reduction in tumours on γδ T-cell ablation is an indirect effect of reduced macrophage recruitment8. TNFR ablation in the BM did not affect numbers of dendritic cells (CD207+ CD11c+), NK or NKT cells infiltrating wounds or tumours (Supplementary Fig. 2f–h). B cells (CD19+) were not detectable in unwounded skin or healed wound beds15 and there was no difference in the stromal B-cell content of TNFR−/− and control chimeric tumours (Supplementary Fig. 2i).
We conclude that TNFR ablation in leukocytes protected mice from developing tumours. It also led to a selective reduction in CD4+ T cells in wounded skin and a reduction in several immune cell subsets in tumour stroma.
MyD88 and TLR-5 signalling mediate tumour formation
MyD88 (Myeloid Differentiation primary response gene 88) is a master regulator of innate signalling events as it is the key adaptor for most TLRs, IL-1R1 and IL-18R16,17,18. Loss of MyD88 prevents tumour formation in various tissues19,20,21,22. Given that MyD88 controls TNF-α production, we analysed the effect of reconstituting InvEE mice with MyD88−/− radiosensitive leukocytes. BM chimeras lacking MyD88 in the haematopoietic compartment exhibited a striking protection against wound-induced tumour formation (Fig. 3a).
Figure 3: MyD88 and TLR-5 signalling on radiosensitive leukocytes is required for tumour formation. (a–e) Incidence of papillomas at wound site. (a) MyD88−/− (MyD88−/−/Inv; n=20) and control BM chimeras (Inv/Inv; n=20; ****P<0.0001; Fisher’s exact test). (b) IL-1R1−/− (IL-1R1−/−/Inv; n=28) and control BM chimeras (Inv/Inv; n=16; P=0.4312; Fisher’s exact test). (c) TLR-2/−4−/− (TLR-2/-4−/−/Inv; n=29), TLR-9−/− (TLR-9−/−/Inv; n=10) and control BM chimeras (Inv/Inv; n=30; P>0.05; one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA)). (d) TLR-7/-8−/− (TLR-7/−8−/−/Inv; n=9), TLR-5−/− (TLR5−/−/Inv; n=13; ***0.0001<P<0.001; one-way ANOVA) and control BM chimeras (Inv/Inv; n=20). (e) TRIF−/− (TRIF−/−/Inv; n=12) and control BM chimeras (Inv/Inv; n=14; P>0.05; Fisher’s exact test). (f) Rate of wound healing in TLR5−/− and control BM chimeras (n=12 per condition; P>0.05; unpaired t-test). Full size image
Although InvEE keratinocytes express elevated levels of IL-1α and administration of the IL-1 receptor antagonist Kineret decreases tumour formation8,9, no differences in wound-induced tumour formation were observed between IL-1R1−/− BM and control chimeras (Fig. 3b). We therefore examined the effects of deleting TLRs. Replacement of the radiosensitive haematopoietic compartment with TLR-2/-4−/− or TLR-9−/− cells did not affect tumour formation (Fig. 3c), in contrast to the role of TLR-4 on haematopoietic and non-haematopoietic cells in chemically induced skin carcinogenesis23. InvEE mice reconstituted with TLR-7/-8−/− BM exhibited accelerated wound closure (Supplementary Fig. 3a) but no difference in tumour incidence was observed (Fig. 3d). TLR-3 and TLR-4 can signal via TIR-domain-containing adapter-inducing interferon-β (TRIF), instead of MyD88. However, reconstitution with TRIF−/− BM cells had no effect on papilloma formation (Fig. 3e).
Ablation of TLR-5 in radiosensitive leukocytes markedly reduced the number of tumours that developed on wounding (Fig. 3d). Wound closure rates were similar in TLR-5−/− and control BM chimeras, suggesting that the dynamics of wound closure does not affect wound-induced tumour formation (Fig. 3f).
These findings reveal the significance of an innate MyD88-TLR-5-sensing axis specifically in BM-derived leukocytes that drives wound-induced tumour initiation.
Bacterial products mediate tumour initiation in InvEE mice
As flagellin (Fla), the sole known TLR-5 ligand24, is the main protein constituent of bacterial flagella, we analysed whether lowering the microbial content of the skin would affect wound-induced tumour incidence. When mice were treated with the broad-spectrum antibiotic enrofloxacin (enr), either by administration in drinking water or topical application, the skin bacterial load was decreased (Supplementary Fig. 3c, d) and wound-induced tumour formation was greatly reduced (Fig. 4a,c). Tumour size in antibiotic-treated mice was greatly reduced (Fig. 4b), an effect that was previously observed in intestinal tumours25. No reduction in tumour initiation was observed when mice were topically treated with methicillin (met; Fig. 4c), a narrow-spectrum antibiotic that targets Gram-positive bacteria that are highly abundant on the skin, including the non-flagellated species Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis.
Figure 4: Microbial products promote tumour formation in InvEE mice. (a,c,d,f,g) Incidence of papilloma formation following wounding (a,c,d,g) or intradermal injection (f,g). (a) Mice were untreated (n=13) or treated with orally administered enrofloxacin (Enr) antibiotic (n=15) starting 8 days before wounding (P<0.0001; Fisher’s exact test). (b) Tumour growth in untreated (n=8) and oral antibiotic-treated (n=4) mice (*0.01<P<0.05; unpaired t-test). Data are means±s.e.m. (c) Mice were treated topically with vehicle (Veh; acetone; n=12), Enr (n=21) or methicillin (Met; n=12; ***0.0001<P<0.001; one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA)). (d) PBS (n=10), 1 μg flagellin (Fla; n=8) or 4 μg Fla (n=10) was applied in wound at time of wounding (****P<0.0001; one-way ANOVA). (e) Wounds treated with flagellin or PBS were photographed 7 days after wounding. (f) Papilloma incidence in mice that received intradermal injections of PBS (n=19), 1 μg Fla (n=8) or 4 μg Fla (n=10; ***0.0001<P<0.001; one-way ANOVA). (g) Papilloma incidence in TLR-5−/− BM chimeras (n=8) and control (n=10) chimeras that were wounded or injected (n=10) with 4 μg Fla (***0.0001<P<0.001; one-way ANOVA). (h) Immunofluorescence labelling of InvEE skin with antibody to flagellated E. coli K12 strain. Wounded skin was collected 17 days after wounding. Unwounded skin was either untreated or treated (+Abx) for 8 days with oral Enr. Dotted line represents epidermal–dermal boundary. Scale bars, 300 μm. Full size image
In mice topically treated with antibiotics, there was no significant reduction in faecal bacterial load, excluding involvement of the gut microbiome in wound-induced skin carcinogenesis (Supplementary Fig. 3e). Broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment resulted in a transient increase in wound closure in WT but not InvEE mice (Supplementary Fig. 3f).
In contrast to the tumour-suppressive effects of TLR-5 ablation and antibiotic treatment, topical application of flagellin to InvEE wounds increased tumour incidence in a dose-dependent manner (Fig. 4d) and delayed wound closure (Fig. 4e and Supplementary Fig. 3b). Strikingly, intradermal injection of flagellin was sufficient to induce small tumours in InvEE mice in the absence of wounding (Fig. 4f). WT mice never developed tumours after administration of flagellin to wounds or intradermal injection (data not shown). Flagellin did not induce tumours when injected into TLR-5−/− BM chimeras. When flagellin was administered to wounds of TLR-5−/− BM chimeras, tumour formation was greatly diminished compared with control chimeras treated with flagellin (Fig. 4g).
Flagellated bacterial strains are commensals on murine skin26. When we labelled unwounded InvEE skin with an antibody to the flagellated Escherichia coli (E. coli) strain K12, we observed strong immunoreactivity in hair follicles, sebaceous glands and cornified skin layers (Fig. 4h), in agreement with a previous report26. As expected, E. coli labelling was markedly reduced in antibiotic-treated skin. All epidermal layers stained positive for K12 E. coli in InvEE healed wound beds and papillomas (Fig. 4h).
Taken together, these data demonstrate that exposure to bacterial flagellin sensed by TLR-5 on radiosensitive leukocytes promotes tumour formation in InvEE mice.
Role of TLR-5 signalling in carcinogen-induced tumours
To validate our observations in a second experimental setting, we induced tumours in WT mice via the classic two-stage DMBA/TPA (7,12-dimethylbenz(a)anthracene and 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate) chemical carcinogenesis protocol in which DMBA induces H-Ras mutations and TPA causes chronic inflammation, promoting tumour development27. Irradiated WT mice were reconstituted with WT (control) or TLR-5−/− BM and topically treated with DMBA. Mice subsequently received repeated applications of TPA with or without prior wounding (Fig. 5a). Wound closure was accelerated in TLR-5−/− BM chimeras treated with TPA (Supplementary Fig. 4a).
Figure 5: TLR-5 signalling in leukocytes promotes DMBA/TPA wound-induced tumorigenesis. (a) Schematic of DMBA/TPA wound-induced tumorigenesis protocol. (b,c) Incidence of papilloma formation in WT mice reconstituted with TLR-5−/− (WT/TLR5−/−) or control (WT/WT) BM and treated with DMBA and TPA with (b) or without (c) wounding. (b) n=10 WT/WT mice; n=9 TLR5−/−/WT mice; ****P<0.0001; unpaired t-test. (c) n=10 WT/WT mice; n=9 TLR5−/−/WT chimeras; **0.01<P<0.001; unpaired t-test. (d) Back skin of representative wounded WT/WT and WT/TLR5−/− mice, 4, 14 and 18 weeks after start of TPA treatment. (e) Average total number of tumours and tumour size measured weekly after first TPA treatment. n>8 mice per condition. Full size image
Mice treated with DMBA, but not TPA, and subsequently wounded, did not develop tumours (data not shown). Control chimeras that were wounded before TPA treatment developed tumours after 2 weeks of promotion, which is significantly faster than mice treated with TPA only (Fig. 5). There was a substantial delay in the development of DMBA/TPA-induced tumours in wounded TLR-5−/− BM chimeras relative to wounded WT chimeras (Fig. 5b). The tumour-protective effect of TLR-5−/− BM was also apparent in non-wounded DMBA/TPA-treated mice, albeit less marked (Fig. 5c). TLR-5−/− BM reconstitution did not reduce the final number of papillomas that formed (Supplementary Fig. 4b,c) but decreased tumour size considerably (Fig. 5d,e).
We conclude that TLR-5-mediated signalling is involved in tumour initiation in two different skin cancer models.
Upregulation of HMGB1 in wound-induced tumours
To investigate the relevance of mouse wound-induced tumour formation to human skin cancer, we analysed SCCs from RDEB patients. RDEB is a rare skin blistering condition in which repetitive cycles of wounding and repair predispose the skin to the development of SCCs6.
HMGB1 is a nuclear danger-associated molecular pattern that is passively released from necrotic cells and actively secreted by inflammatory cells28,29. HMGB1 is upregulated in RDEB patients30,31 and HMGB1 serum levels correlate with RDEB disease severity30. HMGB1 is also upregulated in a mouse RDEB model and mediates recruitment of BM-derived cells in injured tissue31. Furthermore, HMGB1 is induced in epithelial cells upon exposure to flagellin32. We therefore investigated HMGB1 as a candidate biomarker linking human and mouse wound-associated skin cancer.
In lesional skin from RDEB patients, HMGB1 was highly upregulated compared with normal human skin and there was strong immunoreactivity for HMGB1 in epidermis and dermis (Fig. 6a; n=6 patients per group). There was an even greater increase in HMGB1 immunoreactivity in RDEB SCCs (Fig. 6a; n=6 patients). Although HMGB1 was mainly nuclear in normal human skin, we observed cytoplasmic HMGB1 in lesional skin and SCCs from RDEB patients (Fig. 6a), which is indicative of HMGB1 secretion in these inflammatory conditions29. Consistent with these findings, HMGB1 was elevated in unwounded InvEE skin relative to WT (Fig. 6b,c) and further increased on wounding and in wound-induced papillomas (n=8; Fig. 6b,c). HMGB1 expression was significantly downregulated in skin of unwounded TLR-5−/−/Inv relative to Inv/Inv BM chimeras and the absence of TLR-5 prevented HMGB1 upregulation on wounding (Fig. 6c). The reduced immunolabelling in skin correlated with a reduction in serum HMGB1 levels in wounded mice (Fig. 6d).
Figure 6: HMGB1 expression in RDEB and InvEE tumours (a–c) Paraffin sections were labelled with anti-HMGB1 (red) and counterstained with 4,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (blue). Dotted line denotes basement membrane. Arrows denote wound edge. Scale bars, 200 μm. (a) Normal human skin, lesional RDEB skin and RDEB SCCs. (b) WT skin, InvEE healed wound bed (26 days post wounding) and wound-induced papilloma. (c) Unwounded and wounded InvEE/InvEE and InvEE/TLR5−/− BM chimeras. (d) Serum levels of HMGB1 in non-tumour-bearing InvEE/InvEE and InvEE/TLR5−/− BM chimeras at day 26 post wounding, assessed by ELISA (n=9 mice per condition; *0.01<P<0.05; Mann–Whitney U-test). Data are means±s.e.m. Full size image
We conclude that HMGB1 is upregulated in wound-associated mouse and human skin tumours and that HMGB1 levels are regulated by leukocytic TLR-5 signalling.PINELLAS PARK — After collecting their chicken sandwiches and waffle fries, customers at the Chick-Fil-A at the Shoppes at Park Place on Tuesday found themselves navigating past protesters wearing animal masks, covered in fake blood and clutching butcher knives.
"Animal killers," screamed more than a dozen protesters on a video posted to Facebook. In the background, children started crying and screaming.
"I got kids here," one woman said as she begged the protesters to stop. "You're scaring kids."
Who are they? Knives, flying tilapia and Chic-fil-A, these are the activists causing a stir
Flying Fish: Activists take fisherman's catch, throw it back at St. Pete park
Some protestors wearing chicken and horse masks laid on the tile floors, while others pretended to stab them with bloody knives. Others lofted signs and repeatedly chanted:
"It's not food. It's violence."
The video showed bewildered restaurant employees trying to calm the customers and asking the protesters to leave.
Pinellas Park police were called at 11:50 a.m, but by the time they arrived all the protesters had fled, said Sgt. Mike Lynch. It was not clear which group was responsible for the protest.
"Get out! Get out," customers screeched in the videos as a parade of masked and bloody protesters filed out the door.
More Video: Protesters' own video shows chaotic scene at Pinellas Chick-fil-Aby Greg Heller, The Holy Cause
Does the “liberal” Obama respect the Constitution more than the “conservative” Bush? From the Contra Costa Times:
After months of battling with the Bush administration, California may be close to getting permission from the federal government to set its own standards for tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks. President-elect Barack Obama is expected to grant the state a waiver to impose the tough new standards after he takes office in January, reversing a decision by the Bush administration that infuriated environmentalists. “Obama has said very clearly he would permit California to move forward and enforce its greenhouse gas standards for cars, so we expect that the Bush administration’s policies will be reversed in short order,” said Frank O’Donnell, executive director of the environmental group Clean Air Watch |
, and those are purchased with our joint account. However, some people like buying 10 pairs of shoes every year, and at some level you might need to consider those as NEI purchases.
Let’s talk specifics
You already have a joint bank account, so you will need to add 2 new accounts that will be linked to your joint, one for you and one for your wife. Banks usually have a free ‘echecking’ account or something along those lines that will be perfect for this application. Our bank is a national brand, and they do this without any fees. We don’t have any checks, but we both have a card that is linked to our account. You may have to add a $100-$300 dollars right from the start to open the account. My wife and I actually call these our fun money accounts because calling them NEI accounts all the time gets boring.
Now set up a scheduled transfer from your joint to each fun money account for every Friday. The amount you transfer weekly is highly dependent on your situation. We started with $10 every week because we were poor and had 55k in student loans. Ten dollars every week doesn’t seem like a lot, but it starts to add up fast; that is $520 a year. We actually still do $10 a week because it has been plenty to keep us satisfied with our extra purchases.
On top of the weekly transfers, you should be rewarded for any raises or bonuses you receive because this is beneficial for the entire family. For raises, transfer a one-time payment from your joint to your fun money account of 10% of the annual value of the pre-tax raise. For example, if you get an annual raise of $2,000 then transfer $200 dollars to your fun money account. Apply the same rule to any bonuses you may receive, but feel free to tweak the percentages as needed. On bonuses, we apply the payout percentage to the post-tax bonus amount since they are taxed so heavily.
Proceeds from selling any of your personal items will also go to your fun money account. So if you sell that nice guitar you have had since college, that money will go to your account. Similarly, any money that is given to you during the holidays or birthday is also yours and you can deposit that money into your fun money account.
Overall, the amount of money you transfer each week and the percentages aren’t important. If you can afford to transfer $100 per week, then that’s great! Go for it! What really matters is that you work with your wife and make a plan that you are both excited about.
What about stay at home parents?
What if my wife is a stay at home mom and doesn’t get raises or bonuses? Great question, we had to tackle this very issue. The fixed transfer per week is the same for both of you, so you are good there. If your wife is a stay at home mom, then she gets the same percentage of your bonus and raise that you do. She plays a huge part in your success at work because she is handling the home/personal work load so you can concentrate on your professional work load. My wife is a stay at home mom right now, and we have been doing 10% for each of us; so if I get a raise of $2,000 then we both get $200 for a total of $400.
My raises are much bigger than my wife’s raises
The odds of you and your wife having the same potential for raises and bonuses is low. My wife and I overcame this same obstacle by increasing her payout percentages. The payout percentage needs to be biased to equalize the payout potential based on earnings potential. My wife is currently a stay at home mom, but was previously a school teacher at 35k, and I was an engineer at 60k a year. Obviously, I had a larger opportunity for raises and bonuses than she did. We decided to increase her pay out to 25% and leave mine at 10%.
Ultimately... it’s about saving money
At the core, setting up a fun money account is all about creating a way for you to save money. If all you have is a joint account and no other plan or segregation of funds, then there is no avenue for you to save money for a big purchase. Let’s say you wanted to make a large purchase so you were really frugal for 6 months and didn’t buy any NEIs for yourself--what would you have to show for it? You can’t then say to your wife, I’ve been good for 6 months so I can buy that $1,000 rifle that I want. Well sure you can say that, but why 6 months? And why $1,000? Does 6 months of being frugal equate to a $1,000 reward? Now you are making unbudgeted and uncalculated decisions. Purchases like this will cost you more money in the long run.
Is there no other way?
Sure there are other ways to achieve the same concept! You could do this plan with 2 jars of cash in your bedroom. You could do this plan by adding the money to your savings account, and keeping track of how much money is yours/hers with an excel sheet. Many ways to do this right? I chose the 2 small extra banking accounts for a few reasons:
Scheduled weekly transfers that require no work on my part.
Having a fun money card in my wallet is convenient.
I buy most things online so the cash option seemed like a hassle.
Account balance is easily viewable on my banking app.
Transferring money between joint and fun money is easy and free.
6 years later... how has it worked for us?
Great! I recommend this to friends (especially newlyweds) all the time, and believe it has saved us from many arguments. After 6 years of doing this, I have just over $2,000 in my fun money account, and my wife has around $2,600. We certainly aren’t excessively rich, and have never combined a salary of over $100,000, but there is a certain amount of comfort and freedom in knowing I can go out and buy most anything I would want right now.
There have been times where co-workers poke fun at the idea of a weekly ‘allowance’ (as they call it), but I’ve later heard that same person wish they could buy a $300-$1000 item; however, he didn’t think his wife would allow it. As I think about it, I might be the only husband I know that can go out right now and spend $1000 without any notice to my wife or any issue thereafter. There is certainly some power and freedom just in knowing I have that option available.
Conclusion
Even as the best dad in the world, you are allowed to buy things for yourself, and try to enjoy some of the money you have earned. Instead of governing this spending with the occasional cost check or some general rule of thumb, invest the time and make a deliberate decision on how you want to handle your own fun money.
Benefits of a Fun Money AccountTwo people have been charged in connection with the brutal murder of a 51-year-old woman in the North Shore.
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Two people have been charged in connection with the brutal murder of a 51-year-old woman in the North Shore.
Stephen Brown, 23, and his girlfriend, Hailey Dandurand, 20, were charged Saturday evening with second-degree murder in the death of Telma Boinville. Bail has been set at $1 million and $500,000, respectively.
Brown was also charged with first-degree burglary, kidnapping, and two outstanding warrants. Dandurand was also charged with first-degree burglary, kidnapping, and unauthorized possession of confidential personal information.
Police arrested the two near the Mililani Walmart Thursday night in connection with Boinville’s death.
Her body was found inside a vacation rental in Pupukea Thursday afternoon. Police said her 8-year-old daughter was found bound with her mouth duct-taped upstairs.
Police said the couple fled in Boinville’s Toyota Tacoma pickup truck. The child’s uncle, Brian Emery, posted an emotional video on social media seeking the public’s help to locate the suspects.
Kevin Emery’s daughter identified Brown and Dandurand after Emery showed her a Facebook photo of the couple when the child confirmed the two tied her up.
Within five hours, community members spotted the Toyota Tacoma truck at the Mililani Walmart. Police responded and arrested Brown and Dandurand.
Family and friends gathered at Log Cabins beach in Pupukea on Friday for a celebration of life and vigil in memory of Boinville.
Born in Brazil, Boinville worked as a substitute teacher at Sunset Elementary School. Loved ones said she had worked with the Department of Education for decades at various schools.
To supplement her income, she was helping a friend clean houses. “This put her in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Kevin Emery in a written statement.
Family members requested privacy at this time as police continue the investigation.
Court records show Brown was charged with abuse of a family or household member in June after he punched his then-girlfriend multiple times.
On the night of June 27, police said the woman arrived at their Waikiki apartment and observed Brown drunk and asleep. When she woke him up, police said Brown punched her multiple times in her face.
She sustained bruising and swelling to her left cheek. Police said she also sustained bruising and swelling to her right hand when she tried to shield herself from Brown’s punches.
Court records indicate the abuse case was dismissed without prejudice in August.
The ex-girlfriend who requested her name not be published in the Star-Advertiser, said the two were dating for a year and ended their relationship in September when she moved to Hilo.
According to his ex-girlfriend, Brown, born in Ohio, moved to Hawaii to be with his father. Court records also show he lived in Florida at some point.
Brown has worked several jobs that include a dishwasher and bartender at restaurants.
When she saw Brown’s photo posted on Facebook in connection with the North Shore murder, the Hilo resident said, “I was shaking. I just felt sick.”
“I was just praying to God it wasn’t him,” she said. “It breaks my heart to see him go down this path.”Kevin Bacon was a guest on Conan earlier this week, hopefully to discuss whether or not the writing on The Following will get better than “And it turns out this guy’s in the cult, too!” next season. But he also shared a story about how when he goes to weddings, he often has to declare a preemptive strike on any Danny Mastersons in the DJ booth thinking they can put him on the spot by playing the theme song to his classic film, Footloose.
“I go to the disc jockey and hand him $20 and say, ‘Please don’t play that song’,” Bacon told Conan O’Brien. ”Because, first off, a wedding is really not about me. It’s about the bride and groom.” And then he mouthed the bass line from the Kenny Loggins song because he’s Kevin Bacon and one of the coolest guys in the world like that.
But here’s my question – Are all of the people at the weddings that Kevin Bacon attends such cheapskates that they can’t go back up to the DJ and throw him $40 to make sure he does play “Footloose”? I mean, if I’m at a wedding and Bacon is there, I’m going to throw in a few bucks to make the famous guy dance, dammit.
And for some much-needed perspective…
The 1980s – when high schoolers in movies looked like they were our parents.A policeman who allegedly placed a rope across a pathway, causing two teenage boys on a motorcycle to fall off and suffer injuries, has faced a Perth court on assault charges.
Matthew Gerard Owen Pow, 38, was off duty on November 27 when he allegedly placed the rope across a pathway at a park in Karawara in Perth's south.
Two boys, aged 15 and 16, struck the rope with the motorcycle and were injured when they fell off their bike.
Pow appeared in the Perth Magistrates Court today, charged with two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm and one count of an act or omission causing grievous bodily harm or danger.
He is a senior constable from the Specialist Enforcement and Operation Portfolio but was stood down after the charges were laid.
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Pow will reappear in court on March 31.
AAPLast week, I introduced a new novelty statistic called Star Power as part of an objective framework for the MLB All-Star vote that accounts for empirical, often-illogical contrarianism (surely there are people out there who think Daric Barton is better than Adrian Gonzalez) but not hometown biases or systematic over- or underratedness. As a reminder, the formula for Star Power is (numbers taken at the All-Star Break):
and a player's "expected Vote Share" is his Star Power divided by the sum of each candidate's SP's in his category. So, for example, the xVoteShare for a non-outfield AL player (Player n) would be:
With this in our toolbox, we can compare the actual 2011 All-Star vote totals with the expected results to find the impact of each team's fans' biases on the balloting. To do this, I invented another tchotchke statistic called "BIAS In All-Star voting," or "BIAS" for short (the acronym is part of the name, like a guy looking at a picture of himself looking at a picture). Essentially, it's the number of votes a team's players received (using my estimates for players whose totals were not released) divided by the number of votes my Star Power-based model projected, then scaled like OPS+ so a 100 BIAS indicates a normal amount of homerism, while a 110 BIAS means the team's fans are 10 percent more biased than the league average. A 90 BIAS doesn't mean fans are unbiased, just that their biases are 10 percent weaker than average.
Is your curiosity sufficiently piqued? Here are the numbers for each fanbase's BIASes: (click to embiggen)
Anything surprise you here? Red Sox fans, notorious for their fervor, are relatively objective with their All-Star ballots according to BIAS. Cubs faithful, famed for their loyalty, are among the least blindly supportive of their players. Even the Yankees—the kings of media domination around whom the TV world revolves—fall well short of having the most biased fanbase. Meanwhile, Braves and Mariners players got more twice as many votes as they should have? Sure, the Phillies are a big-market club and the Giants and Rangers just made the World Series, but when did Brewers and Reds fans become so passionate?
If you look at some the individual players and how many votes my framework projected for them, it starts to make some sense. Sure, J.D. Drew (1.86 million votes over his projection) and Carl Crawford (3.13 million over) got too many votes, but at the same time Adrian Gonzalez (4.02 million under his projection) and Jacoby Ellsbury (4.61 million under) didn't run away with starting spots like they were projected to. Cubbies fans didn't exactly stuff the ballot boxes for Starlin Castro (estimated.78 million votes too low) or Aramis Ramirez (2.11 million under)—they weren't necessarily deserving of votes, but given Castro's popularity and the dearth of good NL third basemen this year it's safe to say fans underperformed with them—and in the Bronx Alex Rodriguez (2.48 million under) wasn't supported like the clear best third baseman in the league that he was.
Meanwhile, Atlanta fans helped to give all eight Brave players more votes than they were projected to receive, including, most egregiously, Chipper Jones (2.00 million over) and Jason Heyward (1.44 million over). Ichiro (2.44 million over) was the only Top 8 finisher for the Mariners, but his overratedness combined with the rest of his teammates' poor play was enough to give Seattle fans a high BIAS. Casey McGehee (1.77 million over) and Yuniesky Betancourt (1.65 million over) can tell you all you need to know about Milwaukee fans' passions, while Jay Bruce (2.20 million over) and Paul Janish (1.11 million over) were the biggest beneficiaries of Cincinnatians' fervor.
Another interesting thing to note: the three teams whose bars appear in black above (the Marlins, Padres, and Athletics) have BIAS scores based solely on my replacement-level estimations because none of their players cracked the Top 8 vote-getters at their respective positions. No Fish or Friar or A even made the list for outfielders, where the Top 24 candidates are revealed. But that's not the saddest part—based on my meager 457,546-vote minimum estimate for bottom-finishing candidates, Oakland players still got 28 percent too many votes. It's a rough time to be an A's fan.
So where do these biases come from? Local demographics don't seem to have much to do with it. BIAS scores and the populations of teams' cities and surrounding metropolitan areas actually had very slight negative correlations (R2=.011 and.002, respectively)—right around the significance of alphabetical order (R2=.005 for team names,.010 for team locations). Interestingly (or maybe not), teams' BIAS scores and the vote percentages Barack Obama received in their states in 2008 had an inverse correlation with R2=.021.
It seems that partisanship comes not from external factors but from the teams themselves. The age of a franchise correlated with BIAS scores for an R2 of.103. Payroll (R2=.088) appeared to have some small impact, while this year's attendance (R2=.120) didn't do as well as I would have thought. Preseason expectations might have something to do with it: The correlations between BIAS and 2010 wins (.080) and PECOTA's February projections (.082) were at least enough to be interesting.
Overall, though, the clear most important factor is current team performance. BIAS and wins at the All-Star Break correlated at R=.466 for an R2 of.217 (some of the above relationships are probably just functions of this). That's still not enough to explain the bias, though—there is a large intangible je ne sais quoi in play here that I cannot quantify (though given that I think most would put Boston and Chicago fans near the top if they compiled a gut-feeling list like this, I'm not sure whether anecdotal observations would really help much here).
It may be that, like UZR and BABIP, BIAS scores need more than one season's worth of data before they stabilize. This year's totals correlated with the results of the (much more simplistic) study I did last year at R=.370, so the leaderboards aren't a model of stability. Then again, if current-season performance is the biggest factor getting fans to the All-Star polls, perhaps the inconsistency is not a failing of the statistic but a reflection of changing real-world conditions. Interestingly, some of this year's surprises placed similarly last year, too—the Braves were near the top, while Red Sox (90) and Cubs (56) fans got almost exactly the same scores.
It's worth noting that some teams' scores are artificially inflated by having overrated, popular players on their rosters who other teams' fans voted for too: the Mariners wouldn't be at the top if not for Ichiro, and Twins fans would be below-average without Joe Mauer. I considered dropping each team's biggest outlier in each direction to balance it out, but that seemed unfair to the teams who don't have a Mauer or Ichiro. Especially since much of their popularity is tied up in their team—even outside of Minnesota, Mauer probably wouldn't have gotten as many votes if he had left as a free agent last winter.
One final thing to keep in mind: having a biased fanbase isn't necessarily good or bad. If you care about preserving the integrity of the All-Star Game then no, you really shouldn't be voting for Derek Jeter or Jarrod Saltalamacchia. At the same time, I don't think this speaks well for the fans on the lower end—how depressed does a fanbase have to be to not get a single player on a Top 8 list? A little BIAS is healthy. Just take it in moderation.Adult performer Jessica Drake is one of the actors launching the campaign. Twitter/Jessica Drake Adult performers have launched a campaign to encourage fans to pay for the porn they watch, rather than pirating videos on the internet.
The Pay For Your Porn campaign, backed by publishers Adult Empire, argues that piracy is hurting the industry, and that porn fans need to take responsibility for that if they want the industry to remain sustainable.
"Purchasing content ensures it's better produced, delivered in higher quality formats, more secure, and fosters the creation of new adult content," the campaign argues. "Porn piracy hurts everyone, from the creators behind the scenes to the porn stars fans love to watch.
"Everybody needs to make a living - theft only helps take away the ability of the tens of thousands of people in the adult industry," it adds.
The campaign was launched just as the actor Samuel L Jackson sparked outrage among porn performers by naming porn sharing site RedTube as one of the best pop culture achievements of the past 50 years. Jackson's comments led the adult star Catalina Cruz to call for a boycott of his movies, telling the Avengers actor that "these sites are stealing whole members' areas and have to potential to kill an industry."
The adult performer and sex educator Jessica Drake is one of the actors launching the campaign. "I can speak first hand about the very real effects of piracy on the entertainment industry and the economy. Piracy is a very serious criminal activity," she says. "Theft is also a violation of personal consent and ethics."
Megan Wozniak, who works for Adult Empire, argues that porn is in a trickier position than most media industries. "Unfortunately, porn still has a stigma attached to it, so we know that we won't ever receive help or support from legislatures, that's why we decided to rally together this grassroots campaign on our own and spread the word."
But some "tube"-style sites, which mimic YouTube's model of user uploads and free streaming, are attempting to build their own sustainable business model. Porn.com's David Kay, who says he is "100% behind the campaign", argues that his site's pay-per-view scheme "keeps a lot of content owners in business," by offering a cut of the ad revenue to studios which upload their own videos and clips to the site's system.
Just as the movie and music industries were forced to adapt in the face of piracy, becoming more user-friendly to win back customers who were used to getting what they wanted for free, Kay says the porn industry needs to change as well. "The industry needs to adopt "Netflix" pricing," he says, "of $7-$10 per month as opposed to the standard $39.95 monthly that you commonly see. We switched to this pricing years ago and are one of the few companies still flourishing."
• Will buying porn turn out to be bitcoin's killer app?
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.ukImage caption The injured party was not who the police expected
A man in the Californian city of Sacramento has been accused of biting a pet snake, leaving the python seriously hurt, police say.
Police were called to the northern part of the city on Thursday evening expecting to respond to an assault.
While officers were speaking to David Senk, 54, found lying at the scene, a witness accused him of taking two bites out of the snake.
The python is recovering after being given emergency surgery.
It was turned over to the city's Animal Care Services after losing a few ribs.
"She's doing well," Gina Knepp, acting animal care services manager, told the Sacramento Bee. "We did surgery on her last night and I think we saved her life."
Mr Senk was arrested on suspicion of unlawfully maiming or mutilating a reptile.
While in jail, Mr Senk told local media that he had no memory of the incident and that he had a drinking problem.
"I did what?" Mr Senk said. "If you find the owner, tell him I'm real sorry.... I'm willing to help pay for medical expenses."
No owner has come forward to claim the python from Sacramento's Animal Care Services.
Ms Knepp said before the surgery that the bites on the three-foot snake were large enough to expose the animal's liver.PROVIDENCE, R.I. (CBSNewYork/AP) — Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s lecture at Brown University didn’t go quite as planned.
Kelly was shouted down by protesters during a talk at Brown Tuesday, and his planned lecture called “Proactive Policing in America’s Biggest City” was canceled.
Dozens of students and social justice activists protested before the afternoon lecture because of the department’s stop-and-frisk policy and its surveillance of Muslims. Many protesters then went inside the hall and began shouting about stop and frisk and racism during the talk.
The Brown Daily Herald said the protesters “shouted chants in unison, and individuals stood and shouted about personal experiences with racism and racial profiling.”
Brown officials asked the protesters to reserve their comments until a question-and-answer session with Kelly. When the shouts continued, the hall was cleared.
“After about half an hour, Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services Margaret Klawunn and Vice President for Public Affairs and University Relations Marisa Quinn told audience members the event was canceled and had the room cleared,” the Brown Daily Herald said.
Students opposed to Kelly’s visit first petitioned the university to cancel the lecture, according to Jenny Li, a Brown student who helped organize the protest.
When the university did not cancel the event, “we decided to cancel it for them,” Li said. She called the protest “a powerful demonstration of free speech.”
Brown University President Christina Paxson said the protest “deprived the campus and the Providence community of an opportunity to hear and discuss important social issues.”
“The conduct of disruptive members of the audience is indefensible and an affront both to civil democratic society and to the university’s core values of dialogue and the free exchange of views,” Paxson said in a statement.
The department is fighting off lawsuits alleging it has engaged in racial profiling while fighting crime. Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have denied the accusations.
(Video Credit: WPRO/Steve Klamkin)
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(TM and © Copyright 2013 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)Transcript
PJ VOGT: Um, wait, so, Matt Lieber. I have to interview you about show content this week.
MATT LIEBER: What?
PJ: I have to interview you about show content this week... um, we need to figure out if we need to put a language advisory on the episode.
MATT: I don't even need to ask. Yes you should do it.
PJ: (laughs) Thank you.
Show Theme
PJ: From Gimlet, this is Reply All, a show about the internet. I'm PJ Vogt.
ALEX: And I'm Alex Goldman.
PJ: This week we have part two of our story about Shulem Deen. If you didn't hear part one, you should go back now and listen.
ALEX: Our producer, Sruthi Pinnamaneni, reported this story. Ah, Sruthi will take it from here.
SRUTHI PINNAMANENI: So, here's a quick recap. Shulem Deen used to live in an ultra-orthodox Hasidic community called New Square. He spent all his time there praying, studying the Talmud. He had an arranged marriage when he was 18, five kids by the time he was 27, and somewhere in all of that, he got a computer.
SHULEM DEEN: One of the things that came with the computer was a 3.5 floppy disc, a free AOL trial. So I put in this floppy disc, and it says, you know, "welcome, you've got mail." And there's this whole world. There's news. There's shopping. There's chatrooms.
SRUTHI: This AOL account started him down a long path out of his orthodox life and into a secular world. He lost his faith, was banished from his community and in last week's episode, we learned that it had been seven years since he'd seen his kids. They're not on Facebook. There's no local newspaper. In all this time, the only communication he's gotten from them is a single piece of mail, a note from one of his daughters. We'll call her Friday.
SHULEM: And so I ripped it open and inside was just a Hanukkah card. It said, "Happy Hanukkah." Nothing that was personal and her signature. So, she signed her name "Freidy D," putting her last initial, and I'm like, like, which other Freidy would it be? As if she's writing, sending this to someone who she knows, but not a really close family member.
SRUTHI: Still, he was thrilled. One of his kids was reaching out. So, he sat down and wrote a three page letter and sent it certified mail, signature required.
SHULEM: And then, uh, you know, I'm sitting at the computer a day or two later, with the tracking number and I'm, you know, hitting refresh and it's up in Jersey and it's in North Jersey and now it's in Rockland and then it's out for delivery and I'm waiting, and I'm you know, sitting there waiting for it to say like, you know, delivered.
SRUTHI: But then it just stopped. There were no updates. Everyday he would check but there was nothing.
SHULEM: And six weeks later, it gets updated, saying "being returned to sender." And two days later, I get it back in the mail.
SRUTHI: That was it. New Square had closed up again. But recently, Shulem discovered an opening, another way to reconnect. It takes a couple steps to explain. But to start, you have to look at Shulem's story through the eyes of the Hasidim, because to them, there have been a lot of Shulems lately, people who not only left but were also airing the community's dirty laundry to the secular world. So in 2012, the Hasidic leadership decided the time had come to reckon with the internet.
(singing)
SRUTHI: They held this thing called the Asifa, Hebrew for gathering.
(Hebrew talking)
SRUTHI: And it was a big gathering. Historic big. Citi field, a giant baseball stadium in New York, was filled with thousands of Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish men, a sea of black hats and binoculars. The spill-over crowd actually filled a neighboring stadium, where they watched a video feed of the Asifa. All in all, 60 thousand people, all united to save their way of life from the internet.
MAN TALKING TO CROWD: What is the best way to protect myself and my home and business in the pocket against a [Hebrew word] The trials that our generation, as we all know, all of us gathered here is plagued with. The pitfalls that technology, modern technology, poses for a servant of HaShem.
SRUTHI: The Hasidim have been resisting the temptations of modernity for a long time. Since the 1800s, when an Austrian rabbi, Chasam Sofer, said all that is new is forbidden by the Torah. Every time a new technology has come along since then, the Hasidim have taken what they like and left the rest behind. Take the radio. Radios are frowned upon in the Hasidic community, but say you want a cassette player to play religious music. It comes with a radio, as almost all cassette players do, so you do what every good Hasidic person does: you break off the antenna. Simple. But that's just step one. What if you want to hear a kosher version of the things you'd hear on the radio? Well, you just dial this number: 212-444-1100.
(Phone rings, music)
SRUTHI: It's called Kol Mevaser, a Hasidic hotline. There are ads at the top, then you press one for news, the weather. There's eight for the Torah, and lots of other options for talk shows or interviews. One person I spoke to said these are our podcasts. The hotline is genius, really. Everything you need from the radio, minus the chance you'd come upon a Miley Cyrus song or a Viagra ad. So that's how they fixed the radio problem. But how do you take on a foe like the internet?
(background talking)
SRUTHI: I talked to this guy, one of the people trying to solve that problem. Let's call him Ari, we spoke in the backseat of my car in my parking lot. His voice is obviously masked. I suggested a cafe but he didn't want people to see us. The Hasidic community is wary of the press.
ARI: I was thinking, we would meet there, and somebody's going to snap a picture of us. And it's going to be all over.
SRUTHI: Yeah.
ARI: And we're not doing anything bad. But that's...
SRUTHI: You never know.
ARI: You never know.
SRUTHI: After the Asifa, the Hasidic elders decided, hey, if we can turn parts of Brooklyn into a shtetl, maybe we can do the same thing online: make a Hasidic internet. And Ari had a part to play in this plan. He worked for a company that sold Hasidic internet filters.
ARI: I went out to business and I tried to get the technician, or the...
SRUTHI: He would walk through the neighborhood, knock on people's doors, go into Hasidic businesses and they would ask, "Do you use the internet? Yes? Okay, we can make it Kosher. We can install a filter on your computer, one that lets you use the internet, but minus all the bad stuff."
ARI: And many were interested in what I had to sell.
SRUTHI: And you can decide how much bad stuff you want filtered out. Ari told me some clients filter out everything except for their own company website. And if you need a little bit more access...
ARI: If you need more open, you call them in and they unblock it a little more, like Amazon, you need for your business.
SRUTHI: Okay, so you have Amazon now. Obviously there's stuff there you don't want to see. The Hasidic filter can still protect you.
ARI: Faces. Faces...
SRUTHI: I don't understand.
ARI: The technology that sees the skin color and it's getting all colored up. Let's say they feel that skin is too much exposed. They can block it.
SRUTHI: So let me imagine this. So if I were to go to say, Amazon.com and there's some scantily clad model selling, I don't know, a toaster, then what I would see if I had the right filter on, is that model's face and body would be black?
ARI: Black. The whole picture is black, even the toaster.
SRUTHI: I wanted to try one of these filters out for myself, so I went to a Hasidic internet cafe.
SRUTHI: Hi.
JOSEPH: I'm sorry that...
SRUTHI: It's in the heart of Hasidic Williamsburg.
SRUTHI: You keep late working hours.
JOSEPH: I just popped in before you called me...
SRUTHI: This is Joseph, the owner. He asked me not to use his last name, and he also asked me to come late at night, after 11 pm so I wouldn't freak out any of his customers with my giant microphone.
SRUTHI: So it's usually full over here, like where do people sit?
JOSEPH: Over here and over here.
SRUTHI: It's a nice big room, with Salmon colored walls. Some computers are in booths so you can step right in and close the door. The cafe is a safe space. All the computers here serve up filtered internet.
JOSEPH: I'll leave it to you. Type away...
SRUTHI: I'll just type in anything? I don't know.
JOSEPH: Yeah.
SRUTHI: Ah...
SRUTHI: So we sat down at the computer and I tried to go to YouTube.
JOSEPH: So this says that this category of streaming video is blocked.
SRUTHI: A gray window popped up on the screen that said this site is not allowed. I tried a bunch of other sites: Facebook, Twitter, New York Times. They're all blocked. And then I tried the New York Post.
SRUTHI: Oh, so I see New York Post. I see, kind of, the headline... not even the headlines, just the header and some headlines but no pictures...
SRUTHI: It's the New York Post, but with all the pictures of violence and celebrities gone.
SRUTHI: Just a lot of gray. I like this version of the New York Post.
(laughs)
SRUTHI: Joseph does too. In fact, that's how he likes all his news sites. From his perspective, it's crazy that we want completely unfiltered internet, since it means seeing stuff like videos of ISIS killing civilians.
JOSEPH: Before you go to bed, you want to read the news and you see, actually like lately, you see every two days, they behead this, they burned up men to life, and people saw this video actually, I did see it. I can hardly see such kind of stuff and I forced myself to see it because it was so, so much discussion about it and it disturbed my mind for probably a few days.
SRUTHI: You wish you hadn't seen it?
JOSEPH: Of course I wish I hadn't seen it. You don't need to be a jew, or Hasidic religion, to dislike this stuff.
SRUTHI: So take that feeling of wishing you could unsee something and just apply it to a big chunk of the internet. In fact, to almost all of it. Joseph tells me he's happy where he is. He loves his neighborhood. He has a big family. On Sabbath, he turns off his phone and plays with his kids. He |
highly-advanced ancient civilization capable of atomic warfare remains essentially a controversial case rather than a clean-cut one.
Was there really an ancient nuclear war thousands of years ago? And if so, did an advanced human civilization exist on planet Earth around that time, or were their supposed high technology alien in nature? For now, the truth remains uncertain. While all the evidence presented referring to an ancient atomic warfare have somehow been debunked one way or another, it is also difficult to definitively dismiss that a highly-advanced ancient civilization didn’t exist on this planet at all without presenting tangible proof as well.
Nevertheless, mankind, in general, must keep in mind that the important thing is for us to not pass judgment on this subject matter so rashly, and to keep an open and objective mind as new evidence gets discovered in the years to come. Maybe by then, the validity of the facts and evidence presented will be compelling and sufficient enough to either affirm the theory that an ancient nuclear war did happen or definitively conclude that such an event had never happened at all.
—
Sources:Once upon a time, American military might was symbolized by the heavy boots of the Marine Corps, stomping ashore to reestablish order in unruly parts of the world. Today, increasingly, it is symbolized by unmanned drone aircraft, controlled from thousands of miles away, dropping bombs on accused terrorists. And to judge by the Obama Administration’s new defense plan, released earlier this month, this shift will be strongly reinforced in the years to come. The plan aims to cut troops, ships and planes while concentrating our military energies more than ever on drones, spy technology, cyber warfare, jammers, and special operations forces.
With its explicit embrace of advanced technology over traditional methods of combat, the strategy seems designed to provoke the increasingly vocal critics who doubt the morality, effectiveness, and political implications of “remote control warfare.” Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell, making the inevitable comparison to video games, has argued that “to accept killing far from the situation of battlefields where there is an understanding of necessity is really ethically troubling.” The Economist, hardly a bastion of radicalism, has similarly asked: “if war can be waged by one side without any risk to the life and limb of its combatants, has a vital form of restraint been removed?” And just last week in The New York Times, Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution called unmanned systems “a technology that removes the last political barriers to war”—and thereby undermines democracy—because it allows politicians to take aggressive military action without having to face the electoral consequences of young Americans coming home in coffins.
Singer and the other critics tend to present this new frontier of warfare as something largely novel—a sinister science fiction fantasy come to life, and one that has the power to radically change the political dynamics of warfare. But if our current technology is new, the desire to take out one’s enemies from a safe distance is anything but. There is nothing new about military leaders exploiting technology for this purpose. And, for that matter, there is nothing new about criticizing such technology as potentially immoral or dishonorable. In fact, both remote control warfare, and the queasy feelings it arouses in many observers, are best seen as parts of a classic, and very old history. Drone technology certainly opens up a new, and in some ways extreme chapter. But it far from certain that the arc of the story points in the dangerous directions feared by the critics.
IT IS A COMMONPLACE that, from the very beginnings of warfare, combatants have sought technological advantages that allow them to kill their enemies with minimum risk to themselves. And for a very long time, these advances have provoked criticism. We don’t know if anyone excoriated the inventor of the bow and arrow as a dishonorable coward who refused to risk death in a hand to hand fight. But we certainly have evidence of the scorn some late medieval critics reserved for the crossbow—a weapon that supposedly allowed poorly skilled archers to kill honorable knights from safe cover. Under medieval codes of chivalry, the most honorable conflicts were those where the combatants fought as equals, relying on individual strength and skill to prevail, rather than superior weapons or numbers. Not surprisingly, then, when the first gunpowder weapons appeared, critics unloosed a torrent of chivalric outrage. As late as the early sixteenth century, the Italian poet Ariosto was still raging at this “wicked and terrible discovery” which had “destroyed martial glory, left the profession of arms without honor, and reduced valor and virtue to nought.”representatives of French companies like Suez, Total, EDF, Sanofi, Orpea, Bpifrance, Engie." Emmanuel Macron arrived yesterday in Greece accompanied with the elite of the French neo-colonialism, that is, "
If you are still not convinced that Greece has become a debt colony inside a grotesque union of supposedly equal members, check the case of Suez, for example. As reported by the Germany has been criticised for pushing Greece to sell off its water utilities when many of Europe's largest cities, including Berlin, are buying back theirs". Guardian in 2015, "".
Specifically:
Under the terms of the bailout agreement approved by the Greek parliament, Greece has pledged to support an existing programme of privatisation, which includes large chunks of the water utilities of Greece’s two largest cities – Athens and Thessaloniki.
France’s Suez and Veolia, the world’s two largest water companies, will be among those interested in Greece’s utilities if the government’s shares are sold off. Yet in France – another of Greece’s creditors – as many as 49 cities have bought back their water since 2000.
“ It’s a financial colonisation,” said George Argovtopoulos [President of the Thessaloniki water company trade union]. “It’s an attempt for companies in the north of Europe, the rich countries, to own monopolies like water systems, electricity and gas, in the poor southern countries in Europe. It’s a game of power and money.”
In other words, when the multinational corporate neo-colonialists find significant resistance inside the developed countries, they turn to colonies like Greece which are being destroyed by the neoliberal policies. They become a paradise for these 'investors' who come to buy ridiculously cheap and get away with huge profits, through tax-breaks, devastated labor rights, significant rise on water prices.
The case of Total inside the team of the corporate neo-colonialists is equally impressive. A letter from Clintons' top advisor Sidney Blumenthal to Hillary Clinton in mid-September 2011 (through WikiLeaks), provides details about the progress of the race of the Western allies over the devastated Libya, in order to secure a privileged position on country's resources for their companies.
France is carrying out a concerted program of private and public diplomacy to press the new/transitional government of Libya to reserve as much as 35% of Libya's oil related industry for French firms, particularly the major French energy company TOTAL.” As more players were entering the game "looting of Libya", the French mobilized to secure a minimum percentage of Libya's oil related industry for French firms. As described in the letter: “
Another interesting fact revealed in the letter, is that the then French president and the British PM were acting like a kind of commercial travelers in Libya, on behalf of the corporate giants.
Well, that's exactly the role of Emmanuel Macron during his visit in Greece at this moment. The only difference is that Greece has been destroyed and captured through an economic war, unlike Libya which still experiences an absolutely chaotic situation. Obviously, Total "smelled" plenty of oil in the waters of the broader Aegean Sea.
But perhaps the most impressive of all is the enormous hypocrisy of the French officials. All this time since the beginning of the Greek crisis, the neoliberal vultures of the French political establishment had to pretend that they support Greece against the German cruel behavior. From François Hollande to Pierre Moscovici and Emmanuel Macron today, they did absolutely nothing to prevent Troika (IMF, ECB, European Commission) catastrophe that left the Greek economy in ruins.
They let the Germans, Schauble and IMF to play the bad guys and do all the dirty work. First, when Merkel sacrificed Greece to save the Franco-German banks. Then, when the suitable conditions were implemented according to the Greek experiment, so that the French corporate neo-colonialists could come and grab whatever they could.
Recall that, when the Greek crisis erupted, some of the biggest French corporations 'flew' from the country to escape the chaos and uncertainty, as there were fears that even eurozone could fall apart. Now that Greece has been totally surrendered under Tsipras administration, they returned under the most favorable conditions in the Greek debt colony.Mass.Gov will display an alert notification in the following situations:
The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) works with local emergency managers, other state agencies, private organizations, and the federal government to identify the extent of a disaster, respond as much as possible to calls for threats to personal safety and health, and maintain order. MEMA is also responsible for authorizing many statewide alerts.
When authorized, alerts appear on the Mass.Gov homepage and on all executive department agency web pages. Non-executive department agencies may opt in to the Alert system if they wish.
At the local level, your fire department, police department, emergency medical services (EMS) provider, public health department, and other local government representatives work together with MEMA to identify the extent of a disaster, respond as much as possible to calls for threats to personal safety and health, and maintain order.WASHINGTON The number of ethics cases launched in Congress has jumped dramatically in the past year, putting a focus on allegations of misconduct by lawmakers heading into November's elections.
Despite the specter of public ethics trials for veteran Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters of California, lawmakers have escaped serious punishment.
"Just because there is a brouhaha about the Rangel and Waters cases doesn't mean the ethics committee is doing a good job," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "It's great that they are handling Rangel and Waters, but it doesn't excuse them for what they haven't taken up."
In the first six months of this year, an independent congressional watchdog began 44 ethics investigations, up from 24 during the same period in 2009. The Office of Congressional Ethics has recommended that the House ethics committee take action against 13 lawmakers.
Only one, Rangel, has been admonished by the committee to date — for accepting corporate-funded trips to the Caribbean. Separately, he awaits an ethics hearing on 13 other charges.
The congressional ethics office can investigate lawmakers, but the power to take disciplinary action rests with the House ethics committee.
Rangel and Waters have launched rare public battles that will drag into the fall and offer a high-profile test of Congress' ability to police its members. The last public ethics trial in the House came in 2002 when a defiant Jim Traficant was expelled from Congress after the Ohio Democrat's conviction for bribery and tax evasion.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has maintained that the increased activity demonstrates that ethics rules, implemented when Democrats took control of Congress in 2007, are working.
"The bipartisan, independent process is moving forward so that we ensure that the highest ethical standards are upheld in the House," Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said.
Three months away from midterm elections, "the prospect of two ethics trials in the fall is terrible news for Democrats," said Nathan Gonzales of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report. "Voters are already prepared to believe the worst about Washington, and this only feeds voters' perceptions that people in Washington are only looking out for themselves."
Among the 13 charges against Rangel are allegations that he improperly solicited donations from companies with business before his tax-writing committee to help fund a public center bearing his name. Waters, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, faces allegations that she intervened with federal officials on behalf of a bank in which her husband owns stock.
Each has denied wrongdoing. In a lengthy speech Tuesday, Rangel acknowledged that his case might prove thorny for Democrats in November, but he said, "You're not going to tell me to resign to make you feel comfortable."
At a news conference Friday, Waters declared her innocence and said "I won't cut a deal" with the ethics committee.
Waters has questioned whether race has played a role in her case.
Rangel and Waters are black, and records show that eight of the 13 cases in which the Office of Congressional Ethics urged the House ethics committee to act involved African-American lawmakers.
"African Americans are the only ones who they move further with investigation on," Waters said last week on The Tom Joyner Morning Show, a syndicated radio program.
Pedro Ribeiro, a spokesman for Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who chairs the House ethics panel, declined to comment.
Jon Steinman of the Office of Congressional Ethics denied any racial bias.
"Our investigations are exclusively evidence-based," he said. "Party, race, gender and seniority never play any role."
The ethics office's board, which must vote to move forward on any investigation, is made up of Republicans and Democrats. One, former congresswoman Yvonne Burke, is a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation watchdog group called the new ethics activity a good sign. "Calling these two very powerful members of Congress to task," she said, "is a warning shot across the bow for other members."As the University of Florida dominated college football for the better half of a decade under Coach Urban Meyer, the Gators accumulated numbers — of victories and accolades and championships — at dizzying rates. In six seasons, they won 65 games, two Southeastern Conference championships and two national titles.
In recent years, though, another number has been affixed to the Meyer era. That number is 31, as in, at least 31 arrests of Florida’s football players from 2005 to 2010.
Many of the charges were typical of college campuses: under-age drinking, disorderly conduct, violations of open-container laws. But other, more serious charges included aggravated stalking, domestic violence by strangulation, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and fraudulent use of credit cards, according to criminal record databases. Most of the cases never went to trial, the charges having been dropped or pleaded down.
The unsavory underbelly of the Gators’ football dominance was recently highlighted when Aaron Hernandez, a starting tight end on the 2008 national championship team who later played for the New England Patriots, was accused by authorities of committing an execution-style murder in Massachusetts. While at Florida, Hernandez had run-ins with the police in Gainesville, who questioned him and three teammates after a 2007 shooting and recommended a felony battery charge against him after a fight at a restaurant (the case was not pursued).By Gorny & Mosch….
As part of Auction 231 comprising “Ancient Art”, Gorny & Mosch presents an object that is a splendid illustration of the history of Roman law. A Terra Sigillata bowl from the 2nd to the 3rd centuries CE depicts a damnatio ad bestias. This type of execution was likewise applied to Roman counterfeiters of coins.
A naked man is standing there, his head lowered, the legs slightly bent, his hands bound at his back. He looks in the jaw of a lion which is jumping at him, about to tear him to pieces. The artist has embedded this depiction, shown in detail on a Roman Terra Sigillata bowl made in the 2nd to the 3rd centuries CE, in a circus scene with fighting gladiators and wild animals.
This poignant depiction refers to a type of Roman execution that is called damnatio ad bestias, hence the condemnation to the beasts [for being torn to pieces]. This penalty was applied to those who had committed the most serious offences to society: deserters, poisoners, sorcerers and their customers, kidnappers of children, leaders of rebellions and – last but not least – counterfeiters of coins (at least in some cases).
This punishment is laid down in the lex Iulia peculatus, a law dating from the times of [Julius] Caesar or Augustus dealing with the embezzlement of public property. Counterfeiting of coins was classified as such:
“If they [the counterfeiters] are free, they shall be given to the beasts; if slaves, they shall pay the ultimate penalty.”
By the wording alone, the modern reader cannot tell the subtle underlying difference in respect to the punishment. Both terms are describing the death penalty.
And this was the sentence for counterfeiting coins already in the first Roman law that dealt with this kind of offense. If we follow legal texts dating to later times, the lex Cornelia testamentaria nummaria, enacted around 81. BCE, stipulated the following:
“Those who counterfeit gold or silver money, adulterate, wash, cast, cut, corrupt or intrude a vice into gold or silver coins, or refuse a money stamped with the face of the emperor unless it is a fake one: if they are of the elite they shall be exiled to an island, if they are of low class they shall be condemned to the mines or the cross. Slaves shall be punished capitally after the deed… Anyone who gilds or silvers base metal, anyone who mixes gold with silver, who plates coins using non-ferrous metal or tin, shall pay the penalty for counterfeiting.”
Again, the type of punishment depends on the status of the criminal. The members of the elite were merely sentenced to deportation while the rest of the free population were sent to working in the mines or were crucified. Working in the mines was no harsher kind of deportation but resulted in death–not within hours but within months. Slaves were sentenced to death, as in the other text, without the type of death being specified.
It does not seem likely that our bound delinquent in the bowl’s depiction has actually been found guilty of counterfeiting coins. His offence remains open. He might well be a Christian, one of the many that were being executed in the arena. That happened particularly often after Marcus Aurelius had limited the sum allowed to spend on gladiators at public games to 2,000 sestertii in 177 CE. It was impossible to fund games with such low a sum. This situation further worsened when, as compensation, the philosopher king permitted state officials to sell captives for a symbolic sum of money to the hosts of games. It served as an incentive to sentence as many people as possible to death in order to organize more or less decent games after all. In contrast to kidnappers and counterfeiters of coins who were rather difficult to catch, the Christians were easy to come by, due to the fact that they quite willingly declared themselves guilty of the “crime”. The inconsiderate legislation of Marcus Aurelius therefore led to the great persecution of Christians at Lyons in 177.
That would fit our bowl perfectly, both chronologically and geographically. After all, it was produced in Roman Condatomagus, modern La Graufesenque, a village not far from Millau in Southern France. In Roman times, Condatomagus had been known wide and far, and is thus mentioned in the Peutinger Map. Its pottery manufacturers were highly important and exported their products to every corner of the Roman world. Our bowl comes from the factory of Lupus, as a workshop’s stamp reveals: Lupus fe(cit) – “Lupus made [it]”.
His creations surely were to the masses’ taste, because the execution of convicted criminals – whether counterfeiters of coins or Christians – attracted a thrilled audience to the arena. Taking delight in other people’s misery is by no means a modern invention although we moviegoers can find some comfort in the fact that we see no real blood being shed.
Did you know that you can buy direct from Gorny & Mosch? Check out their live store at MA-Shops.com531 Shares
These coconut mojitos are lightly sweet and perfectly refreshing.
Guys, it’s hot in Durham. Very hot. Very sweaty. Weather like this necessitates refreshing beverages.
I’ve recently begun a love affair with La Croix sparkling water. Though I really like many of the flavors, coconut has emerged as my favorite. Since first trying it, I’ve suspected that it would be fantastic as part of a cocktail.
I saw these coconut mojitos on 5 O’Clock Fashionistas, and thought that they looked pretty great. I took mine in a bit of a different direction, though.
Print Coconut Mojitos Prep Time 5 mins Course: Beverage, Cocktail Cuisine: American, Cuban Servings : 1 cocktail Author : laurenpacek Ingredients 2 tsp simple syrup, see notes
5-8 fresh mint leaves, crushed between your fingers, plus a few more for garnish (not crushed)
1.5 oz coconut rum
juice from 1/2 lime
Coconut La Croix sparkling water Instructions Add the simple syrup, mint leaves, rum, and lime juice to the bottom of a tall glass. Add ice and top with Coconut La Croix. Garnish with more mint leaves. Recipe Notes Note: Instructions for making the simple syrup can be found here
Still thirsty? Give The Palace Cafe Cocktail, Blood Orange Bourbon Sour, or Blackberry Lime Vodka Fizz a try!The beauty of recruiting without scruples is that the age of our players is incredibly young. We have recruited a lot of lower skill point players. We have picked up a few talented people from Faction Warfare as well. One in particular (who remains nameless) has been helping revolutionize our concepts and tactics; by revolutionize I mean simplify.
A lot of us older players have forgotten the feeling of what is like to fly small, or T1. I have to say, over the last couple of weeks I have fallen in love with the concept of T1 all over again. I believe there is some major value to having our guys push their T2 and expensive toys to the back of their hangar for a few months and moving everyone into the most basic of ships. By doing this we can re-invent ourselves in ways, both tactical and ship choice. Who knows we may find ourselves enjoying races and ship types we never thought we would by exploring T1 variants and theorizing and crafting plans and concepts with their T2 counter parts in the future.
But this is not central theme of this entry, but rather the bemusement I am getting from our corp being statistically terrible. How does a corp become terrible and what defines it as terrible? In the modern eve (last few years), especially among low sec and NPC null sec pvp corps the core defining point of a corporation and alliance begins and ends at the killboard. You are inexorably linked and identified by the numbers and stats you can provide on eve-kill and to a lesser extent battle clinic.
Using this archaic methods of measure we are not very effective: (certainly not elite)
With one of our young players deciding he needed to move PLEX in an Ibis and not fully reading up on the item or how to use it, and subsequently losing them near Jita; it was already written on the wall we were in for our 3rd bad killboard month. (-950mil or so)
http://nyan.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=14202098
This was just the beginning following that we had a series of unsuccessful combat ops and missteps. A small 4 man battle cruiser was greeted by 30 members + of Rote Kapelle after we foolishly wanted to die to their bait Machariel whom for some reason I assumed was solo, silly me.
(This was the previous month actually) http://nyan.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=14202109
Another mishap in Delve resulted in a 5 man frigate/bomber gang engaging a bait Apoc for fun and subsequently getting squashed by a titan bridged Razor gang. (there is a pattern here)
(Then a moderately successful Eagle Roam, though getting attacked by a superior EXE roam including a Falcon)
http://nyan.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=14202881
The next big hit was a small roam of T1 cruisers and BCs that was chased by Russians in the GaNg bAnG tEaM. Thinking we might stand a slight chance at a kill having a Blackbird and having nothing to lose after our Hurricane was caught on a gate we turned to engage them. The results were they bumped local with a Tempest, Loki, several other BCs, and 2 Falcons. Another loss.
http://nyan.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=14221225 (incomplete but yeah)
Each loss was not a total loss, a few ships and an escape of the remainder. Our “cowarding” out of fights, or tactical withdraws in some circles, have been getting pretty solid.
A few other mishaps was a newer player bringing his own supplies down in a hauler, making it all the way to the constellation we live in, foolishly warping to a moon and losing 540mil isk or so to a POS.
Results: Efficiency of about 13% this month.
The last few months have been one failure statistically after another, but the experience that is priceless. We’re shifting our tactics and taking everyone back to the drawing board, all vets and newbies alike will re-visit the T1 ships, and all fleets and doctrines will be revolving around T1. Believe it or not, we have a few talented FCs. We can overcome our hardship, but at the same time it cannot be considered hardship at all. We can get better at the game, but not at the cost of enjoying it. We are at the bottom statistically and still having fun, we’re enjoying the struggle, no one is getting yelled at for their losses, no one is worrying about the next engagement. Simply, we’ll go out and whelp another round of whatever for fun.
The measure of a corp is not its combat statistics. If you look historically at our corp and our overall stats we are still 80% up. I ran the corp in a tighter way before, this is the new Nyan Cat Pirates, we’re not going to be elite, we’re going to focus on fun.
See you all on the battlefield, and I also invite anyone interested to come join us. We will keep working hard and we will make our mark through fun.
NYAN!
AdvertisementsSince 1982, Nite Owl Print and Copy has provided 24/7 service to Iowa State students and the Campustown area, but due to a new apartment complex set to begin construction this year, Nite Owl and several other businesses at that location are being forced to either relocate or close up shop.
Since 1982, Nite Owl Print and Copy has provided 24/7 service to Iowa State students and the Campustown area, but due to a new apartment complex set to begin construction this year, Nite Owl and several other businesses at that location are being forced to either relocate or close up shop.
According to Ames City Planner Ray Anderson, the new six-story, 45-unit apartment complex, will consist of 145 bedrooms, a two-level parking ramp in the rear, and a ground level for commercial space. The complex is supposed to be built at 118 and 120 Hayward Ave., and because of this, Scallion Korean Restaurant, Domino’s Pizza and India Palace all must either wait for construction to finish so they can move into a new space, or relocate like Nite Owl.
"We were hoping to just stay here until we were ready to retire," Nite Owl Owner and Manager Steve Erb said on Wednesday.
Erb and his wife and co-owner, Sherry, already have plans to move into their new location downtown at 526 Main St., Suite 101, which he said brings twice the space and parking availability of the old location. And considering they were only notified on Dec. 22 to either shut down or completely move their business of 34 years, Erb considers himself very fortunate.
"I’m one of the lucky ones here. We were able to find something," Erb said. "The Scallion and India Palace, they’re just plain out of business. "
Erb said he understood what was bound to happen when the buildings were purchased roughly 15 years ago, but it was just a "matter of when." Though he was notified in December, he admits that two months notice is not exactly a sufficient amount of time to decide the future of one’s business.
"If you’re a restaurant, that doesn’t give you a whole of time, and if you’re a print shop, that doesn’t give you very much time, either," Erb said. "I’m just glad God provided us with a place to move to."
India Palace Owner and Head Cook Gurdeep Banwait said he still does not know exactly what he plans to do with his business, which has been at the same location since it opened in 2005. Banwait said that his last day will be Feb. 29, which he said has been met with sadness from the community.
"I love my customers, and my customers love me," Banwait said. "They have been asking, ‘Why are you closing?’ But it’s out of my control."
Anderson said that plans for the complex were submitted on Jan. 29, and prior to that, he said the city received an application for a plat of survey, which combines the two parcels into one. The plat of survey still needs to be approved by the City Council, then recorded at the county recorder’s office.
According to Banwait, he was told that construction is supposed to begin in late March (which Anderson said is possible), and from there, the complex would take about 1 1/2 years to complete. Though he said he would like to stay in Campustown, he is not opposed to moving, either. He said he has looked at several different locations around Ames, but is unsure whether he will move, or just put his business on hiatus and come back to the same location.
"I am still looking for other places, but other places are very expensive, so I don’t know what I’ll do," Banwait said. "If I find a good location, maybe I’ll open again, or maybe I’ll wait and my landlord will have a new place for me."
According to the property tax records, 118 and 120 Hayward Ave. are owned by Campus Plaza LC. Repeated calls to representatives from Campus Plaza LC were not returned.
Banwait said he has always had a good relationship with his landlord, which is why he was surprised that he was given such short notice about the new complex.
"Two months notice is very short for a restaurant," Banwait said. "If he gave me one year before, then I could have set up a (new) restaurant. Restaurant setup takes six months to one year minimum."
Much like Erb, Banwait is proud of his years serving the ISU and Ames communities. Regardless of the route he chooses to take, Banwait said he is truly appreciative for the support that the area has shown him.
"I’m going to miss everything," Banwait said.Alice Ollstein contributed reporting.
The top Justice Department official who penned the memo that the White House used as justification to fire FBI Director James Comey answered some — but not all — questions from the Senate in a closed door briefing Thursday, senators told reporters afterward.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein confirmed that he wrote the May 9 memo after President Trump had declared that he was firing Comey, multiple senators said, but left some of their questions unanswered.
“He did acknowledge that he learned that Comey would be removed prior to him writing his memo,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) told reporters.
According to Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ), Rosenstein would not say who told him at to write the memo.
“He would not completely answer that question,” Booker said. “He definitely talked about the contents of the memo, what his feelings were that made him write the memo, he clarified that the memo was not a legal brief, that it was not a political opinion.”
The White House released the memo, as well as a letter Trump wrote terminating Comey, soon after announcing the shocking decision he would be removed. The Rosenstein memo criticized Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation — and particularly the press conference to announce the recommendation that no charges would be brought — but his memo stopped short of explicitly recommending Comey’s termination.
It has since been reported that Trump had floated the idea of firing Comey before the memo was written, a timeline Rosenstein to a certain degree confirmed, according to the senators in Thursday’s briefing.
“He wouldn’t go into detail about the President’s May 8 declaration that he was going to fire Comey – he didn’t give us any detail on that. On May 9, he wrote his memo,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) told reporters.
On Wednesday evening, the Department of Justice announced that Rosenstein had appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to serve as special counsel on the Russia-Trump investigation, a decision many Democrats praised coming out of the briefing with Rosenstein Thursday.
Senators said that they got the signal that Mueller has been given wide-breadth in his investigation and that is why Rosenstein was unable to answer many of their questions, including those about the Comey firing.
“He was prepared to talk about the reasons he gave in his memo, but he was not prepared to talk about any of the other circumstances surrounding the firing of James Comey out of his belief that it could come under the purview Mueller’s investigation,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said. That included details about conversations Rosenstein had with Trump and reasons Trump may have gave in his decision to remove Comey.
Yet Democrats were also still frustrated with the Rosenstein’s explanation, or lack thereof, for why he wrote the memo.
“It’s a curious explanation,” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) said, of the timeline for the memo. “It certainly leaves unanswered questions.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) told reporters that Rosenstein had “no understanding that his memo was used as a coverup.”
“Or he doesn’t want to take any accountability for it,” Merkley told reporters. “Maybe somebody else found something useful in that. But I didn’t.”
Durbin, however, stressed that the general lack of answers from Rosenstein was reflective of the space he was giving Mueller.
“There’s obviously questions related to the investigation and he doesn’t want to jeopardize the investigation. He painted with a pretty broad brush in terms of possibilities, but he left it to Director Mueller to decide the scope of the investigation,” Durbin told reporters.
Later on in the scrum, he was asked again whether Rosenstein left a lot unanswered questions.
“He did and I am trying to tell you why. He believes the scope of Mueller’s investigation is so broad, with so many questions, so many areas that may or may not lead to criminal prosecution, that there were many things that he didn’t want to comment on,” Durbin said.William Bratton. | AP Photo/Seth Wenig The continuity commissioner
Michael Bloomberg's police commissioner, Ray Kelly, waited 63 days before sending police officers in riot gear to clear Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park back in 2011.
Bill Bratton, according to a former New York City official who talked to him afterward, said that if he were commissioner he would have "cleared them out right away."
Story Continued Below
(A spokesperson for Bill de Blasio, who yesterday announced that Bratton would be the new commissioner, did not confirm or deny the quote.)
Bratton, who was NYPD commissioner under Rudy Giuliani, has now been given a mandate to implement the more community-friendly police strategies that de Blasio promised during his spectacularly successful mayoral campaign. And he was presented by de Blasio on Thursday as a kindred spirit on policing theory.
But de Blasio supporters looking for the clean break from the Bloomberg administration the mayor-elect promised in the campaign, during which he also pledged to “end the stop-and-frisk era” in New York, may find Bratton's substantive views about police work to be remarkably similar to the current administration's.
Kelly enjoyed great success in keeping crime rates low. And for most of his term as Bloomberg's police commissioner was unusually good at the diplomatic and community-outreach aspects of his job, finally found himself on the defensive during the mayor's race over the department's aggressive use of stop-and-frisk in targeting mostly black and Latino males. Even as the department reined in its use of the tactic in the last year, Kelly remained defiant about the usefulness of the tactic, and of proactive policing in general.
Bratton's record in achieving low crime rates, like Kelly's, is well known. And in a series of speeches earlier this year which largely went unnoticed, he staked out unflinching support for the kind of aggressive, proactive policing he first used when he served as Rudy Giuliani’s first police commissioner from 1994-1996, and when he was the Los Angeles Police Commissioner from 2002 to 2009.
In June, at an event hosted by the Manhattan Institute, Bratton called stop-question-and-frisk “the most basic, fundamental and necessary tool of American policing. We cannot function effectively without it.”
Bratton has suggested that the department has gotten into trouble with its stop-and-frisk program because it's gotten "too small." The smaller NYPD can't assign cops to permanent beats where they could develop relationships with local residents and collaboratively work to reduce crime, Bratton said.
Instead, the NYPD flooded high-crime areas with rookie cops, who probably didn’t have proper supervision, leading to “huge numbers of stop-and-frisk” incidents. In Bratton’s view, the stop-and-frisk controversy “was created by a political decision to cut the size of the police force to try and meet budgetary needs with the justification that crime was down so dramatically.”
Frank Zimring, a UCLA professor who has written extensively about the NYPD and is one of the country's foremost experts on stop-and-frisk, took issue with part of that analysis.
He said, "It’s a management problem and a training problem,' I would highly concur with that.”
But saying “it’s a manpower problem," Zimring said, "that just makes no sense at all.”
“Nobody has ever accused New York of having a small police force," he added. "And there are still 20 percent more cops than there were in 1990.”
(The department currently has approximately 35,000 officers, down from a peak of around 40,000.)
Also, while in Los Angeles, Bratton sought to implement anti-terrorism efforts that drew criticisms from civil rights activists who said it mirrored the controversial “spying” tactics employed by the NYPD, which are the target of three federal lawsuits in New York and New Jersey.
Days before the Sept. 10 mayoral primary, de Blasio said the NYPD should scale back its anti-terrorism surveillance program. In response to the latest in a series of investigative stories from |
might, it’s a thorn in the side of the Audi R8 Ferrari 488 and McLaren 570S It’s fair to say the NSX has had a troubled gestation. In 2007, two years after the Ayrton Senna-developed first-gen model ceased production, Honda announced it would be developing a replacement powered by a naturally-aspirated V10. A year later the project was cancelled with Honda citing challenging economic conditions. In 2011, following signs of the beginning of a recovery, Honda announced the NSX was back on the cards and backed it up with a concept car at the 2012 Detroit show. Since then it’s fair to say the NSX has been something of a unicorn: we’ve seen endless testing pictures, and speculation has kept online communities buzzing. It’s been the most tantalising tease in supercar history. And then there’s the back story…Having decided to ditch the V10 in favour of a V6 hybrid the team initially developed the car with a transverse-mounted normally aspirated motor. After extensive development the decision was made to add twin turbos and rotate the powerplant though 90 degrees for better packaging, weight distribution and heat management. That’s a colossal change to make mid-way through development. But it’s this deep-rooted obsession to get it right that defines the NSX.Under the nose. Only joking. The NSX now has a 3.5-litre V6 twin-turbo generating 500bhp. Wedged between it and the nine-speed twin-clutch ‘box lies a brushless electric motor, which fills in power as the turbos spool up. It also serves as the starter motor, which in turn saves weight. At the front two further motors, sharing a single clutch, are mounted inboard, driving a front wheel each and allowing the NSX to indulge in the black art of torque vectoring, while at the rear a limited slip differential divvies up the torque. All three motors are powered by a lithium-ion battery pack running down the centre of the car and across behind the seats, forming a ‘T’. The battery is charged by the V6 and regen braking. All told we have an AWD supercar with a combined output of 573bhp and enough computer processing power to make NASA blush.Yes, complexity adds weight. The NSX tips the scales at 1,725kg, which is chunky compared to the Audi R8 and Ferrari 488, at 1625kg and 1475kg respectively.Styling is always a fiercely personal thing, but the NSX has remained relatively true to the original concept’s design, which was first created in Japan, then further refined in Honda’s LA studio. It’s Manga meets Tony Stark with a sharp origami precision. The final bodywork is predominantly aluminium stretched over the structure to manipulate the airflow and cool the battery cells and complex hybrid drivetrain. Not that it helped my laptop, which was mildly boiled having spent the afternoon in the trunk. Incidentally, the trunk is large enough to accommodate the ubiquitous automotive unit of space measurement, the golf bag. As long as you like your seven-iron lightly baked.Nope, US influence doesn’t end in the styling. The whole development of the NSX has been lead by a hugely enthusiastic team in the US (the decision presumably taken as it will be the car’s biggest market). The nine speed ‘box, rear motor and other hybrid systems will be manufactured in Japan, then shipped to Honda’s Performance Manufacturing Centre in Columbus, Ohio, where they meet the locally-built V6 and are hand-assembled by a team of 100. To give you some idea of the detail and time that goes into making one, at full production capacity the team will produce eight units a day. In Honda’s factory next door they will create 850 Accords in the same time.Wrong, actually. The chassis is constructed using “mixed materials”, predominantly aluminium, with carbon fibre for the floor. While Honda won’t get drawn on specific numbers they say this method delivers a chassis stiffer than anything the opposition has, sighting the Audi R8, Porsche 911 Turbo S and Ferrari 458 as reference points (which talks to the length of the car’s gestation). The other area they won’t be drawn on is aerodynamic efficiency or downforce. All they will say is that the NSX uses a number of clever aerodynamic channels to ‘attach’ air to the bodywork and develop ‘significant’ downforce without the need for complex deployable spoilers. This keeps the car looking uncluttered, although you can option a carbon fibre rear wing and more aggressive front splitter. I’d be tempted, as the matte carbon weave adds an additional layer of intent.Hang on, interior first. As you approach the NSX the door handles come to life and project outwards. There’s no swan, gullwing or other avian trickery here, just standard doors, and the seats are plush, comfortable and designed to hold you tightly when the NSX starts upping its game. It all looks suitably modern and stylish, but my biggest issue is with some of the materials used – what looks metal is often plastic, removing a layer of authenticity from some of the key touch points, most notably the door handles, dynamic mode selector and paddle shifts. Honda says some of this may get addressed before final production begins.Despite the complexity of the drive train, or perhaps because of it, the NSX has only four drive modes: Quiet, Sport, Sport+ and Track, all controlled through the dynamic mode wheel in the centre of the dash. You can configure which of these settings the car starts in so you can make a stealthy exit in the morning or let the neighbours know you’re off. Quiet mode allows you to leave in silence using pure EV drive, a nice party tricky for a supercar. It’s good for about 2 miles before the V6 kicks in to help things along and act as a generator for the batteries. Sport turns the NSX into a hybrid with the V6 and E-motors working together to optimise efficiency. Flick it to Sport+ and the car comes alive, the third-gen magnetorheological dampers stiffen and the steering and throttle response become more eager, the whole car becomes more focused and purposeful. Lower down the rev range the V6 doesn’t make the most satisfying noise, but push the NSX harder and above 4000rpm it starts to sing.The combined thrust is mighty - think Audi R8 with a more instant shove at the bottom end and you won’t be far off. The gearshifts are instantaneous and with nine to play with there are plenty of opportunities to flick around and push to the 7500rpm redline. We threaded the NSX along the famous Palms to Pines highway. A road as open and inviting as this is perfect for settling into fast flow, piling into corners and then jumping on the throttle earlier than you’d dare in many competitors. That allows the torque vectoring to work its magic and pull you out of the corner, delivering impossible exit speeds and firing you down the next straight. It’s effortless and addictive and delivers on the brief to create an accessible supercar, or as Honda would have it “a New Sportscar Experience.” There’s a suppleness to the ride which is reminiscent of the McLaren Super Series and testament to the effectiveness of the adaptive dampers and the hours spent optimising them. Even more pleasing is that the NSX does an impressive job of hiding its mass. There’s initial understeer as a safety warning system, but push further and the NSX deploys its giant processing power to swallow tarmac at an alarming rate.Yep. And in full-attack Track mode and wearing Pirelli Trofeo R tyres. To spice things up a bit Indycar legend (and NSX development driver) Dario Franchitti set the pace. After a few laps following his lead I start to dig deeper into the NSX’s capabilities.You can brake impossibly late (our test car was on the optional carbon ceramics), turn in and after initial understeer the car begins to rotate. Even with the traction on it will allow a decent amount of angle before the nannies kick in. Most of the time it does a staggeringly good job of hiding its extra mass, although it’s most obvious mid-corner. The trick is to lay off the throttle, allow the car to settle, then jump back on it letting the torque vectoring weave its magic. It’s brutally effective. In track mode the NSX opens a valve in the intake manifold, which directs sound into the cockpit and increases the noise by 25db, so even with a helmet on you can hear the V6 charging to 7,500rpm and blipping beautifully on downshifts.Yep. The NSX has one of the most undramatic but effective launch control systems I’ve experienced. In Track mode and with your left foot on the brake turn the Dynamic dial to the right until it beeps and notifies you in the dash that LC is enabled. Push the throttle and the revs rise to 2,500rpm, step off the brake and all three electric motors fire you off the line, the V6 joins the party once the turbos have spooled up and the combined effect is violently effective. No wheel spin, no violent dumping of the clutch, just dramatic, effective thrust.In a word yes, more than I had expected to be if I’m honest. The scale of achievement in making this immensely complex car feel so immersive is what sticks in the mind. The braking, steering and integration between the V6 and three motors could have been a recipe for a car that constantly interrupted your enjoyment. In the NSX you learn to drive with the systems not against them, and in return it delivers a fascinatingly engaging experience. In many ways it would be wrong to compare the NSX to an R8 or 488 although those are the benchmark competitors. In fact it feels more directly related to a Porsche 918. Both took years to get right, both hide their additional mass with trick electronics and both represent a new kind of performance car that’s hard not to admire. Supercars used to be one trick ponies, but the NSX represents a new generation. For some, Quiet mode will be anathema, but for others that, and the breadth of the NSX’s capabilities, represent a new and attractive proposition. Honda describe the NSX as an articulation of the brand as a whole and more importantly “not the finish line, just the start point”. Having been so long in the making it would have been painfully easy for the NSX to disappoint, but for my money, it was well worth the wait.Henry Hill, the infamous mob informant whose life of crime was chronicled in the film classic “GoodFellas,” was the first to admit that he did “a lot of bad things back then.”
“I shot at people. I busted a lot of heads, and I buried a lot of bodies,” he told the London Telegraph in 2010. “You can try to justify it by saying they deserved it, that they had it coming, but some just got whacked for absolutely no reason at all.”
Hill, 69, who spent more than a decade in the federal witness protection program and later made various attempts to cash in on his notoriety as an ex-gangster, died Tuesday at a Los Angeles hospital after a long illness, his girlfriend told the Associated Press.
PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012
Hill’s story of how he worked for the Lucchese mafia family in New York was told by author Nicholas Pileggi in the book “Wiseguy.” That became the basis for director Martin Scorsese’s 1990 film “GoodFellas.”
In 2004, long after he had left the witness protection program, Hill told The Times, “I have no idea why people are so interested in gangsters. Come on, people are bored.” Nonetheless, he wrote his own account of his life published that year called “Gangsters and Goodfellas: The Mob, Witness Protection, and Life on the Run.”
A full obituary will follow at latimes.com/obits.
RELATED:
Henry Hill, a real wiseguy
'GoodFellas' movie review, 1990
Martin Scorsese on being reviewed: 'You can't be bothered'
--Dennis McLellan and Claire Noland
Photo: Henry Hill in 2004. Credit: Los Angeles TimesImage caption Kim Jong-il is believed to be securing succession for his youngest son Kim Jong-un
The North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is visiting China to better understand the country's economic development, the South Korean government has said.
A spokesman for South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak said the Chinese prime minster had briefed Mr Lee on the trip over the weekend.
Kim Jong-il reportedly arrived in China on Friday morning and is believed to be still touring the country.
This kind of openness about a visit by the North Korean leader is rare.
Neither North Korea nor China usually confirms Mr Kim's trips until he's returned to Pyongyang.
There has been a great deal of speculation about why Kim Jong-il might be touring his giant neighbour - his third visit there in a year.
According to a spokesman from the South Korean president's office, it is an educational trip - the result of an invitation from Beijing to "understand the development of China, and be able to use it" for their own development back home.
North Korea's economy relies on aid and the country says its facing severe food shortages this year.
The World Food Programme has already launched an emergency operation there, and the US special envoy for North Korea Human Rights is due to arrive in Pyongyang on Tuesday to assess its food security needs.
There is confusion over whether Kim Jong-il's youngest son Kim Jong-un is also visiting China.Every 11 years or so, the sun gets a little pissy. It breaks out in a rash of planet-sized sunspots that spew superhot gas, hurling clouds of electrons, protons, and heavier ions toward Earth at nearly the speed of light. These solar windstorms have been known to knock out power grids and TV broadcasts, and our growing reliance on space-based technology makes us more vulnerable than ever to their effects. On January 3, scientists discovered a reverse-polarity sunspot, signaling the start of a new cycle — and some are predicting that at its peak (in about four years) things are gonna get nasty. Here's a forecast for 2012.
This article has been reproduced in a new format and may be missing content or contain faulty links. Contact wiredlabs@wired.com to report an issue.
For more, visit wired.com/video Clip 1: An X Class Flare Region on the Sun, courtesy TRACE Project, NASA Clip 2: The Active Sun, courtesy Solar Optical Telescope, Hinode satellite, JAXA
Detours Clumps of ions in the atmosphere could interfere with GPS. Satellite signals are slowed by bumping into particles, meaning your trusty navigator may lose its way. Remember those colorful paper things called maps?
Falling Satellites Increased solar energy heats Earth's atmosphere, causing it to expand. That's a drag on low-flying satellites and can even knock them out of orbit. A solar storm in 1979 deposited Skylab on Australia.
Layovers in Alaska Particles are drawn to Earth's magnetic poles, right through popular flight paths. Electrons absorb the energy in shortwave signals, causing radio blackouts — and unscheduled stops in Anchorage.
Light Shows Auroras occur when waves of charged particles light up gases in the upper atmosphere. As more particles stream in, the so-called aurora oval grows, bringing the "northern lights" as far south as Key West.Jason Smith/Getty Images
In an exclusive breaking news report, both Ric Flair and Alex Shelley have decided to quit TNA wrestling.
Ric Flair—in one of the greatest sendoffs in Wrestlemania history—lost a retirement match to Shawn Michaels in 2008. Ric Flair stayed true to his retirement for the duration of his WWE tenure, never competing in an official match.
When his contract expired in June of 2009, Ric Flair began to wrestle again, coming out of retirement during Hulk Hogan's Hulkamania Tour, losing a series of four matches to Hogan.
Flair began to wrestle more frequently in TNA, most notably feuding with Jay Lethal and Fourtune.
With the recent reports of the WWE signing his daughter Ashley to a developmental contract, many felt that his jump to the WWE was inevitable.
Shelley was well-known for his tandem with Chris Sabin known as the "Motor City Machine Guns." With Chris Sabin injured for the greater part of 2011 Shelley was mostly placed as a spot-filler in the X Division, failing to reach the level popularity that he shared with Sabin.
With the so-to-be advent of the WWE Network, it seems that Ric Flair will most likely sign a Legends contract with the WWE.
Alex Shelley will most likely be used in the supposed resurgence of the Cruiserweight division that is set to run also on the network.
It seems like this is a good move for the both of them. With Flair appearing on WWE television, being inducted in the 2012 Hall of Fame with the Four Horsemen, it seemed quite odd and minor league to see him a week later on TNA programming.
As far as Alex Shelley, you really can't blame him either. The Motor City Machine Guns aren't nearly as popular as they were when the tag division was red hot and a move to the WWE will be a great notch in his career.
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Call in live on the Pancakes and Powerslams Wrestling Talk Show this Tuesday at 11pm est.TORONTO -- The president of the Toronto Maple Leafs has found himself in meetings with his organization's alumni, realizing he isn't one of them.
When the Maple Leafs play the Red Wings in the 2017 Rogers NHL Centennial Classic Alumni Game at Exhibition Stadium on Dec. 31, Shanahan won't skate with Wendel Clark, Doug Gilmour, Lanny McDonald, Borje Salming, Darryl Sittler or Mats Sundin. He won't wear blue and white.
He'll wear red and white with Chris Chelios, Kris Draper, Sergei Fedorov, Tomas Holmstrom, Nicklas Lidstrom, Darren McCarty, Kirk Maltby and Larry Murphy, before resuming his role with the Maple Leafs against the Red Wings for the 2017 Scotiabank NHL Centennial Classic on Jan. 1 (3 p.m. ET; NBC, SN, TVA Sports).
"It's weirder to talk about it," Shanahan said. "I think once you get around your old teammates, they're your old teammates."
This event is a celebration of the history of the NHL and the Maple Leafs in particular, and this part of it is a reminder of the influence the Red Wings have had on two men who are trying to build the Maple Leafs' future: Shanahan and coach Mike Babcock.
Each has many influences. Each faces far different challenges in Toronto. Neither wants to make the Maple Leafs an exact replica of the Red Wings.
But Shanahan spent nine seasons in Detroit as a player and won the Stanley Cup three times. Babcock spent 10 seasons there as a coach, won the Cup once and came within one victory of back-to-back championships.
They brought that with them to Toronto and have applied it in broad ways, direct ways and subtle ways most might not notice.
"What did I learn in Detroit the most?" Babcock said, leaning back in his chair in his office at the Maple Leafs' practice facility. "If you treat people right and you push them hard and you surround yourself with real good people and players, you have a chance to be happy every single day. That's what we've got to do. Now, we've got a long way to go."
The Maple Leafs are commemorating 100 years in the NHL. They have won the Stanley Cup 13 times, more than any other team but the Montreal Canadiens. But they haven't won it since 1967, the longest drought in the League, and have made the Stanley Cup Playoffs once in the past 11 seasons. They hit bottom last season when they finished last in the League standings. They won the draft lottery and used the No. 1 pick on center Auston Matthews.
It might be hard to remember now, but the Red Wings once made the playoffs once in 13 seasons from 1970-71 to 1982-83. Then they selected center Steve Yzerman No. 4 in the 1983 draft and started to rise again. They had become contenders by the time they acquired Shanahan from the Hartford Whalers on Oct. 6, 1996, but they still had not won the Stanley Cup since 1955. At that time, they had won the Cup seven times but had the longest drought in the League.
Well, they won the Cup in 1997 and '98, the last team to win it back to back, and again in 2002. They turned Detroit into "Hockeytown." So Shanahan is unafraid of droughts and doesn't care for defeatist attitudes based on them. He knows the opportunity he has in Toronto, perhaps the biggest hockey town in the world.
"Sometimes when a team hasn't won in a long time, you hear different stories -- supernatural stories -- as to why," Shanahan said. "I remember hearing them in Detroit as well, whether it's curses or bad luck or this or that. I'm a superstitious person, but I believe that if you deserve to win, no one's going to deny you.
"It's a story until you do everything you can to make it not a story."
The Red Wings won not only because they were stacked with talent but also because they were competitive, had chemistry and had the greatest coach in the history of hockey, Scotty Bowman.
Not everyone loved Bowman. But everyone knew who he was and what he had done, and they bought in or at least went along when he did things like order Yzerman to sacrifice offense, put Fedorov on defense or give others lesser roles than they were used to.
Shanahan hired the closest thing he could to Bowman on May 20, 2015: Babcock, who coached him in 2005-06, his last season in Detroit.
Babcock had learned from Bowman while Bowman was in Detroit's front office, and he had earned a reputation as the best coach in hockey not just for his work in Detroit, but for his work with Canada, including two Olympic gold medals.
Players might not like what Babcock has to say all the time, but everyone knows who he is and what he has done.
"There's a credibility that goes with that with players, because a lot of times you have to ask players to do things," Shanahan said. "You need trust. Scotty had that with us. Everything he asked you to do didn't necessarily line up with everyone's individual wants. … But we trusted him.
"I think Mike has that among his players, and you need that. When you go out and have to compete and the players put themselves on the line in front of the public and the fans every night, it's a good feeling to know you can trust the guy that's behind the bench, that he's steering you the right way."
The Red Wings were an established power when Babcock arrived in 2005. They had veterans like Yzerman, Shanahan, Lidstrom, Draper and Maltby, and younger players like Pavel Datsyuk, Niklas Kronwall, and Henrik Zetterberg.
The veterans mentored the younger players, and the younger players eventually took over. The Red Wings won the Stanley Cup again in 2008 and went to Game 7 of the Final in 2009. They continued to make the playoffs every season under Babcock, and they extended their streak to 25 last season under his replacement, Jeff Blashill.
"What do you take from that?" Babcock said. "There was a standard that you expect for your teams and yourself. There's a level set by Lidstrom and Yzerman and Zetterberg and Datsyuk and Kronwall of what a good pro looks like and how hard they work. And so when you see a guy's a good player, you still know whether he's a good pro or not."
The Maple Leafs were anything but an established power when Babcock arrived. They did not have anyone like Yzerman, Shanahan or Lidstrom. How does Babcock set the standard like that when he doesn't have mentors like that for Matthews, Mitchell Marner, Morgan Rielly and the other young players?
"That's a great, great, great question," Babcock said.
Well, remember that Yzerman, Shanahan and Lidstrom were young once and hadn't won anything either, and they didn't have Cup winners as mentors.
"There's a whole bunch of teams that don't have it, and then they win a Cup, and then they have it," Babcock said. "So now we've got to push our people to be better."
Babcock runs training camp, practices and systems like he used to in Detroit. Especially early in his tenure, he showed the Maple Leafs video of the Red Wings to show what he wanted.
He doesn't do it as often now, forward James van Riemsdyk said, but he still does it on an individual basis. When he wanted to show Matthews how to play without the puck, he showed him video of Zetterberg and Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, who has played for Babcock in international competition.
Then there are subtle things. Babcock speaks to the media like he used to in Detroit -- in the dressing room after practices for a reason, to be open, accountable, the same for everyone. When there's an empty locker, the name plate doesn't go empty. It is filled with the name of a great alumnus like Clark, Gilmour, Salming, Sittler, Sundin, Johnny Bower or Turk Broda.
"Well, that's what we did in Detroit, so that's what I'm doing here," Babcock said.
The message is obvious.
"You're playing for everybody," Babcock said. "You're tied into something that's bigger than you are."
But Babcock wants it to be more than symbolic. When he arrived in Detroit, he knew of Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay and Alex Delvecchio, but he didn't know them as men. Over time, he got to know them, and he became particularly close with Lindsay. To the players, "Terrible Ted" became more than a black and white photo in a frame, a plaque on the wall and a name plate over an empty locker.
"He'd come in with our guys," Babcock said. "At playoff time, at the start of every series, he'd come to every meeting. He'd sit in the meeting. Oh, yeah, he was unbelievable. He'd go see the players at the morning skates. He's a really good man."
Bower, Clark and Sittler have been around the Maple Leafs. Dave Keon came in when the Maple Leafs retired his No. 14. Babcock said the Maple Leafs were trying to get Hall of Famer Red Kelly to come in.
"It would kind of be like my first couple years in Detroit," Babcock said. "You're just getting to know these people. But you're trying to get it established so they know they have a place to come and the people know who they are."
Babcock said the Maple Leafs are on "mile 10 of a 100-mile journey." They're just getting started. But he can envision the ending because he has seen it before.
"Ideally, someone will look at this franchise and say, 'Jeez, they've just made the playoffs 10 years in a row and they've got a chance to win the Cup all the time,'" Babcock said.
"This is no knock on Detroit, [but] the people in this city are crazy for hockey. Like, it's unbelievable. It's like nothing you've ever seen in your life. And so it's important that we build a franchise that is worthy of our logo and our city and what it represents.
"The Red Wings, let's be honest: Twenty-five years in a row in the playoffs, the only team since the lockout to make the playoffs every single year, that's a special, special thing. It's a hard thing to do, and they've managed to do it. And what they've done is, they've had lots of good people come and go through their organization, and they develop players and people and have been a fantastic thing, and so we'd like to do the same thing.
"We're going to become like Detroit was, and that's our goal."One of the most celebrated players in the world could be headed to Major League Soccer, with Spanish outlet AS reporting on Wednesday that longtime Italy and Juventus star Andrea Pirlo has accepted an offer to join New York City FC this summer.
Pirlo, 36, will play in the UEFA Champions League final on Saturday, when Juventus take on Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and FC Barcelona in Berlin.
Now in his fourth season with Juve, Pirlo said recently in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport that he intends to keep playing beyond this season, even if his time in Turin comes to an end.
"I won't stop playing; I'll go on as long as I have the same great desire to keep training every day," Pirlo said at the time. "Juventus will be my last Serie A team, whatever happens. MLS could be an idea, but for the moment I don't have anything; Juve are the only thing on my mind.”
Pirlo’s decorated career includes three World Cups, the 2006 World Cup title, three European Championship appearances, six Serie A titles, two Champions League crowns and two appearances at the Olympics. He was called into the Italian national team squad as recently as last October and has five goals in 30 appearances for Juventus across all competitions this season.
New York City FC currently have two Designated Players on the books in David Villa and Frank Lampard; the latter will join the team later this month after completing the English Premier League season with sister club Manchester City. NYCFC have repeatedly stated their intention to add a third DP this summer.Stephen Cavanaugh is a prisoner currently being held in the Nebraska State Penitentiary. As a prisoner, he has the right to practice his religion and get special perks associated with being part of an organized belief system — as he says, “the ability to order and wear religious clothing and pendants, the right to meet for weekly worship services and classes and the right to receive communion.”
But Cavanaugh filed a lawsuit recently saying the prison was denying him these opportunities… all because he was a Pastafarian. (Seriously.)
If you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster instead of Yahweh, do government officials have to give you the same perks that followers of traditional religions receive? That’s what Cavanaugh wanted to find out.
And yesterday, U.S. District Judge John M. Gerrard ruled that Pastafarianism wasn’t a real religion and its followers are therefore not entitled to the same protections. Gerrard also said that Cavanaugh never really explained “how the exercise of his ‘religion’ has been substantially burdened.”
If you want to get into the details, there is a law (known as RLUIPA) that says prisoners have religious rights, too. Last July, in a lawsuit filed by the American Humanist Association, courts found that Humanism (i.e. a non-theistic religion) also qualifies under that umbrella. So explicitly godless “religions” must be treated as other religions under the law.
But Pastafarianism? It doesn’t count, says Gerrard. Because to take its Holy Book seriously would be downright hypocritical on its own terms:
It is not clear from Cavanaugh’s complaint whether his professed adherence to FSMism is grounded in that [Humanistic] argument, or in a literal reading of the FSM Gospel. But to read the FSM Gospel literally would be to misrepresent it — and, indeed, to do it a disservice in the process. That would present the FSM Gospel as precisely the sort of Fundamentalist dogma that it was meant to rebut.
… aside from identifying the FSM Gospel, Cavanaugh has not alleged anything about what it is that he actually believes — leaving the Court to read the book. And it is no more tenable to read the FSM Gospel as proselytizing for supernatural spaghetti than to read Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal” as advocating cannibalism.
That’s not to question whether Cavanaugh is right or wrong about God — that’s not for the Court to decide — only that it doesn’t even seem like Cavanaugh has any serious beliefs that could be considered part of a religion:
I can’t believe I’m reading this.
In short, Judge Gerrard says that Pastafarianism isn’t a religion just because Cavanaugh says it is, and he has no leg to stand on when he claims his religious rights are being violated.
The Judge goes on to state that Cavanaugh also doesn’t explain how his religious practice is burdened by government officials: What exactly can’t he do because the government won’t let him?
Cavanaugh’s contention seems to be that denying him a pirate outfit prevents him from evangelizing about FSMism. But it is not clear to the Court how such a limitation significantly burdens Cavanaugh‘s practice of his “religion,” as opposed to constraining his ability to preach to others. Cavanaugh does not specifically identify the other “religious” practices he seeks; they would presumably include such things as grog, a parrot, a seaworthy vessel, a “Colander of Goodness,” and to take off every Friday as a “religious holiday.”… But even if denying those accommodations would make it more difficult for Cavanaugh to practice FSMism, it would not make him effectively unable to do so, or coerce him into acting contrary to his beliefs.
This is the greatest legal document ever.
Ultimately, Cavanaugh’s claims were dismissed. I’m not sure how he’ll go on, though it looks like he’ll be free on parole this summer, so at least he won’t suffer too long.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster shed a single tear. Which I assume contained olive oil. Which was then mixed with the spaghetti and fed to us by His Noodly Appendage. rAmen.
(via Religion Clause. Image via Shutterstock)By Gabriella Hoffman
No matter how many times anti-gun lies and correspondent misinformation are debunked, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and his gun grabbing organizations are adamant about disarming Americans.
Everytown for Gun Safety is hosting a training for aspiring journalists in Phoenix, AZ from April 17-18, 2015. The training is being put on by the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, which is a project of Columbia University’s Journalism School.
Apply by Feb 27 for two-day workshop for journalists on covering gun violence in Phoenix w/@Everytown http://t.co/geaOeEegMW — Dart Center (@DartCenter) January 13, 2015
Here’s more information about the journalism workshop:
The workshop, funded by Everytown for Gun Safety, will offer independent expert briefings and specialized reporting skills training to enhance the practical ability of journalists to report on guns and gun violence knowledgeably, ethically and effectively. The workshop will cover such topics as state and federal gun laws; patterns of gun sales and gun trafficking; national trends and polling; education and prevention initiatives; social, economic and public health impacts; and special populations (e.g. children and youth, women and returning veterans.)
Campus Reform Campus Correspondent Yvonne Dean-Bailey dug up some more information about the biased trained:
On the workshop’s website, The Dart Center cites a generous grant from the group that made the workshop possible. According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Everytown gave the center $48,000 for the workshop. The center is also offering a $350 travel stipend to students.
This should come as no surprise. Institutions of higher learning are hostile to the Second Amendment. However, it’s disconcerting to see Michael Bloomberg extend his anti-gun tentacles.The second stabbing at a Boston-area college in as many days sent a Boston College senior to the hospital yesterday with injuries described as not life-threatening, as four men were arrested by police and a fifth fled, according to a school spokesman.
The victim, Jeremiah Hegarty, was stabbed in the abdomen shortly after midnight outside a cluster of apartment-style dormitories.
He was reported in good condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center last night after undergoing surgery, said Jack Dunn, the BC spokesman.
Boston College police arrested and charged four men in connection with the stabbing.
The suspects have no connection to the college or Hegarty, Dunn said. One is charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon for allegedly kicking Hegarty, and the other three for being accessories to the assault, which occurred be tween midnight and 2 a.m. in Lower Campus in Brighton.
A fifth man, the alleged stabber, fled afterward and State and Boston police were searching for him, Dunn said.
The assault came a day after the fatal stabbing of 18-year-old Elhaji Malick Ndiaye at Regis College in Weston, and raised further questions about how universities can better exclude from their grounds people who pose a threat to students.
Ndiaye was stabbed in a parking lot at the college at 4:30 a.m. Friday. Neither Ndiaye nor a second stabbing victim, a 22-year-old friend of his who survived, were students at Regis.
Several students on the Boston College campus yesterday afternoon said they heard the perpetrators in yesterday’s stabbing were students from another college, but Dunn said that was likely not true.
“That may’ve been the guise that they used to get in, but the indication is they aren’t college students,’’ he said.
Dunn said Boston College students had asked the five men to leave and they refused before the attack occurred.
Details of a possible motive were not available. Drugs and alcohol were not a factor and the investigation is ongoing, Dunn said.
Hegarty is a student at BC’s Carroll School of Management, Dunn said. A posting on the college website said he is from Osterville.
“Boston College is an exceptionally safe campus, and we view this as an anomalous issue,’’ Dunn said.
Late afternoon yesterday, after Boston College’s football team lost to Virginia Tech 19-0, fans and students of Boston College poured from Alumni Stadium, tossing footballs, commiserating about the shutout defeat, and propping up tables and grills for postgame tailgating.
Most interviewed were unaware of the violence that had taken place just a few feet away, a few hours earlier.
Mario, a student who lives in a dorm and asked that his last name not be used, said he was surprised to hear about the violence.
“I feel safe here. A lot of people feel safe here,’’ the accounting major said |
before leaving.
13. Opt for drink tickets or tokens
Instead of a free-for-all bar (paid or open) using drink tickets helps you to limit and/or monitor how much everyone is drinking.
14. Coordinate safe transportation
Coordinate designated drivers, taxis, public transit, Ubers and drive-you-home programs.
15. Speak up, intervene if you need to
The company is responsible for intoxicated employees andfor their behavior after they’ve left the premises. Avoid risks by coordinating designated drivers, taxis, public transit, Ubers and drive-you-home programs.
Recruit volunteers who can keep an eye on things and are willing to intervene if necessary.George Washington Owned Slaves
Depending upon the source, history records that President George Washington brought seven to nine of his family’s several hundred slaves to New York City in 1789 to work in the first presidential household. One of the presidential slaves was a biracial young lady named Oney Judge – the daughter of Betty, a “negress” slave without a last name, and Andrew Judge, a white English indentured servant at Washington’s Mount Vernon plantation.
When the presidential household moved to Pennsylvania in 1790, Washington illegally had his slaves rotated out of state every so often so they would not be freed under the Gradual Abolition Act – that prohibited non-residents from keeping slaves in Pennsylvania for periods longer than six months and freed slaves after this time.
In summer of 1796, the slave Oney Judge learned that she was to be given away as a present by First Lady Washington to her granddaughter, Eliza Custis. Oney then made up her mind to escape and she did so through the underground railroad and ended up in New Hampshire. You can read about her life and times at Wikipedia’s article on Oney Judge.
Which is all to remind us that when George Washington visited Barbados in 1751, and until he died in 1799, he owned other human beings as his property. Again, depending upon the source, history records that George and Martha Washington owned several hundred slaves between them. Although he had the power to free his slaves, George Washington did not do so. Even upon his death he only freed one slave, William Lee. The rest were given to his wife for further use.
How Much History Is Too Much? How Little Is Not Enough?
We were intrigued by an article and lively discussion taking place at Ian Bourne’s The Bajan Reporter blog. It seems that when Ian and his wife visited George Washington House in Barbados, they thought the slavery exhibit at the home was a bit overdone and at the same time incomplete in that it did not document the plight of non-African slaves and indentured servants.
See Ian’s thought-provoking piece: George Washington House by Garrison Racetrack: Are all Historical Reminders necessary? Time to let wounds heal – Yankee Bajan’s USA Independence
For our part, we think that Mr. and Mrs. Bourne are right and wrong about the slavery presentation at George Washington House. We think that the home is quite a proper place for a display about slavery – African, white, transported and indentured. But we also agree that for too long historians and Bajans have focused primarily upon the African slave trade to the exclusion of other areas of our slave history.
As an aside, we saw back in May that Planet Barbados published an excellent little piece on the Scots who were “Barbado’ed” as supposedly indentured workers – meaning slaves with a time to serve – but ended up being slaves who were never released. See Planet Barbados: Giving Voice to the Sad History of the “Redlegs” of Barbados.
AdvertisementsWhat is Adultery In The Bible?
Written by Al Maxey
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The seventh of the Ten Commandments God gave Moses to give unto the people of Israel was — “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14).
What is adultery?
In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ directed our attention to the fact that adultery involved far more than merely an illicit sexual encounter, but was more importantly a heart matter. He quotes a biblical reference and explains it further. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery;’ but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28). It is obvious that the Lord does not regard with any degree of favor those who are guilty of adultery, whether that term involves only the inner man or the outer man (or woman), or both (more about this later). Indeed, Paul lists “adulterers” right along with drunkards, swindlers and fornicators as being those who “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). Adultery is a very serious matter, and, unless repented of, a deadly matter.
But, what is adultery? And just how are we to understand this concept from a biblical point of view? “That would seem to be about as obvious a question as a person could ask. Whether he has done extensive studies or not, virtually everyone knows that adultery is sexual activity between a married person and someone other than his (or her) lawful spouse. … It unquestionably has to do with the illicit sexual conduct of a married person” (Wayne Jackson, “What Is Adultery?” — an article that appeared in The Christian Polemic, May, 2001). Our English dictionaries generally agree with this assessment by Bro. Jackson, defining the word adultery as “sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than their spouse.” Thus, by this definition, adultery is “cheating on one’s lawful mate; sexual misconduct with another.” There is no denying that such a view of the concept of adultery is found within the pages of the inspired Scriptures. Consider the following examples:
John 8:3-11 — This particular episode occurred early one morning in the temple courts after Jesus had returned from a long night on the Mount of Olives where He often went to be alone and to pray to the Father. A crowd had gathered to hear Him teach. Some of the religious leaders, apparently aware of where He would be at that time of day, appeared and presented Him with an adulterous woman who had been caught in the act. Interrupting His message to the crowd, they placed this woman before Him and declared for all to hear, “We caught her committing adultery … we caught her in the very act. The Law of Moses says she should die. What do you say?”
Jesus was faced with quite a dilemma! Before Him that morning was a woman unquestionably guilty of a serious offense. There was no way Jesus could question the validity of the accusation, and there is no evidence He did. She was caught in the act; there were witnesses; the woman herself was not denying the charge. Her guilt was indisputable! Under the Law of Moses the penalty for adultery was DEATH. Leviticus 20:10 declares that when an adulterous situation occurs, both “the adulterer and the adulteress (i.e., both the man and the woman) shall surely be put to death.” Deuteronomy 22:22-24 clearly states the same severe penalty! God views this as a serious matter, even though many of His people seemingly do not.
Hebrews 13:4 — The writer of Hebrews declares, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.” The Expositor’s Bible Commentary explains that the biblical phrase “marriage bed” is simply “a euphemism for sexual intercourse” (volume 12, p. 146). “The marriage union is divinely ordained, and its sacred precincts must not be polluted by the intrusion of a third party, of either sex” (Dr. F.F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 392).
Ezekiel 23 — In this chapter we find a Parable of Two Sisters, both of whom chose to become prostitutes. “They played the harlot in Egypt. They played the harlot in their youth; there their breasts were pressed, and there their virgin bosom was handled … and they bore sons and daughters” (vs. 3-4). The chapter goes on to speak of these two sisters, Oholah and Oholibah, going after other lovers while being married. Thus, it was said with regard to each, her lovers “laid with her … and poured out their lust on her” (vs. 8), and she was “worn out by adulteries” (vs. 43). It should be pointed out that these two sisters, in this Old Testament parable, represent Samaria and Jerusalem. It should also be noted, for those who might be easily offended, that this chapter is very graphic; very sexually explicit.
I sincerely doubt whether many persons would try to argue that the above accounts, in which adultery is clearly said to have occurred, are not speaking of physical, sexual sins. They depict illicit, intimate acts committed by those who are married with partners who are not their lawful mates. Thus, the familiar definition of “adultery” is certainly a biblical one. However, and this is a very important question, is this the only accepted definition of the term “adultery” to be found in the Bible? Is it possible this term may have other meanings and applications when we ask, “what is adultery?”
I believe the answer to this question is YES, and our acceptance of this fact will have quite an impact on some areas of traditional theology, especially with respect to some of the matters concerning divorce and remarriage. Although I will not be examining all the many ramifications of this broader definition of adultery in this current issue of Reflections, nevertheless I do develop that body of theology in quite some depth in my new book “Down, But Not Out,” which is now published and available for purchase.
The Greek word in question here is “Moicheia.” It is a word that appears, in its various forms, just under 30 times in the NT documents. It is used roughly the same number of times, in its various forms, in the OT writings. What many biblical interpreters fail to appreciate about this word, and other Greek & Hebrew words as well, is its rather significant semantic range. Like a great many English words, it can have several meanings and applications, and these should not be lightly discounted in anyone’s interpretation of those passages in which the term moicheia appears. Notice some of the additional usages of this term:
Asexual Aspects of Adultery
In His Sermon on the Mount Jesus stated the following truth — “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matt. 5:27-28). This raises some interesting questions! Is it possible for one to “commit adultery” alone? Obviously, the answer is yes! Adultery, therefore, is just as much an attitude as an act. Indeed, it may be the former without ever being the latter. In the Haggadic sections of the Jewish Talmud and Midrash, one will find numerous warnings against “adultery,” many of which are clearly strong warnings against one’s inappropriate thoughts, and which do not even involve another person in an act of literal, physical intimacy. One statement reads, “We find that even he who commits adultery with the eyes is called an adulterer,” and a reference to Job 24:15 then follows. “He who regards a woman with lustful intention is as one who cohabits with her.” “He who touches the little finger of a woman is as one who touches a certain spot.” Perhaps the following insightful quote from a classic Greek reference work makes the point best: “From the religious standpoint, adultery does not consist merely in physical intercourse with a strange woman; it is present already in the desire which negates fidelity” (Dr. Gerhard Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 4, p. 733-734). Yes, adultery can occur only, and entirely, within one’s heart, with no other person actually, physically involved.
Adultery may also, based on the same statement by Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount, be entirely asexual (or non-sexual) in nature. He said, “everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Thus, Jesus indicates the lustful look may result in the committing of adultery. What is this lustful look? Those who suggest “lust” and “adultery” can ONLY be understood as sexual in nature, would regard the lustful look to be a sexual desire on the part of the man for the woman. But, is that always true? Is it possible to “look upon a woman and earnestly desire her” in a way other than sexually? Is the only desire men have for women SEXUAL in nature? I suppose that will depend to a large extent upon which men one interviews. However, is it even remotely possible that perhaps one or two men out of the billions upon this planet just might have a non-sexual thought now and then when looking upon a woman? Is it just possible that some rare bird out there might look upon a woman and earnestly desire her for some reason other than what sexual gratification he might gain from her body? (Note: this applies to women lusting after men as well). The answer, of course, is YES. Therefore, we must acknowledge that one can indeed look desirously and longingly upon a woman, and “commit adultery in his heart,” and have that “adultery” be entirely NON-sexual in nature. Thus, those who declare that adultery is always and only an illicit sexual act are proclaiming far more than Jesus did, and far more than the usage of the word in the Bible allows.
It is a fact that one can “commit adultery” in his heart and never actually physically lay a hand upon the woman he has looked upon with earnest desire. Indeed, the woman in question may not even be aware she has generated adulterous feelings within this man. The Contemporary English Version has done an excellent job of capturing the meaning of Jesus’ words in the Matthew 5:27-28 passage — “You know the commandment which says, ‘Be faithful in marriage.’ But I tell you that if you look at another woman and want her, you are already unfaithful in your thoughts.” There are many ways to “want” a woman other than sexually, and there are many ways to be “unfaithful in marriage” besides committing some illicit sexual act with one other than one’s spouse. The notion of SEX literally has to be read into Matthew 5:27-28. Those who “earnestly desire” (the actual meaning of the Greek word we often translate “lust”) another woman (for whatever reason), who have “set their heart upon” one other than their covenantal spouse, are guilty of an inner breach of their covenantal vows. They have broken covenant in their hearts; they have committed moicheia (“adultery”). Thus, “adultery” may be committed alone in one’s heart, and it may be entirely asexual. “Adultery” is the breaking of covenant, and it may be brought about by any number of attitudes or actions, sexual and/or non-sexual. To limit moicheia to merely one of many possible manifestations is to completely fail to perceive the meaning of the biblical term.
Consider the following case history — Dan and Sally had been married for 43 years when they were in a terrible automobile accident. Sally only received minor injuries, but Dan was left paralyzed and impotent. Indeed, because of the extensive nature of his injuries, his sexual organs had to be removed. Sally did her best to care for Dan, but she was ill-equipped emotionally to handle the stresses of his daily care. Feeling the accident was due to his carelessness, she even came to resent him for the turn her life had taken. Still, she sought to be a good wife even though she found it increasingly difficult to show the love she had once felt for Dan. To assist her in his care she had hired the services of a retired nurse who came over daily to help her out. This woman, who was named Cathy, came to be devoted to the care of Dan, and demonstrated a depth of concern that Dan had found lacking in Sally. In time, Dan found himself earnestly longing for the companionship of Cathy over that of his wife Sally. Although he never expressed his feelings to either woman, yet in his heart he desired to spend the rest of his life with Cathy, and secretly hoped perhaps his wife would leave. He didn’t long for Cathy sexually; those feelings never entered the picture. Instead, he desperately desired the warmth of her companionship and the depth of her caring. What he “knew” is that he would be happier with her, and the more he was with Cathy the more he longed for her, and the more he resented the aloofness of Sally.
Jesus informs us that if we look upon another woman and earnestly desire her above our own spouse, then we have already, in our hearts, committed adultery (breached our covenant). Dan’s deep longing for Cathy had led him to the point where he had “broken covenant” with Sally in his heart. He had replaced her with another woman as the focus of his affections and desire. Although entirely non-sexual in nature, and although never actually acted upon physically (Cathy never suspected his feelings), yet “adultery” had been committed by Dan. Yes, both “lust” (earnest desire) and “adultery” (breaking covenant — more about this meaning below) can indeed be asexual, and they can indeed occur only in the heart without actually physically involving another person (the object of one’s longing). The reality is that these two Greek words have a very wide and varied “semantic range.” This fact must be considered when seeking to interpret any passage in which they appear.
Breach of Covenant
As we further look to answer the question, “What is adultery?” We must mention W. E. Vine. In his heralded classic work An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, informs us that the Greek word moicheia has a broader sense than the sexual. For example, he wrote, “In Israel the breach of their relationship with God, through their idolatry, was described as adultery.” I think it is interesting, and highly instructive, to note that Vine does not really characterize the idolatry as constituting “adultery,” rather it was the “breach of their relationship” with their God which was viewed as “adultery.” Vine has captured the true concept behind this biblical term — “adultery” is far more a “breach of relationship” (the breaking of a covenantal union) than any specific action or attitude which may have contributed to that breach. Vine goes on to say, “… so believers who cultivate friendship with the world, thus breaking their spiritual union with Christ, are spiritual adulteresses.” Again, this Greek scholar has characterized “adultery” as “breaking union” with one to whom one is joined in some special covenant relationship.
Matt. 12:39 and 16:4, as well as Mark 8:38, speak of a “wicked and adulterous generation.” What causes these people to be characterized as “adulterous” by our Lord? Were they all out cheating on their spouses? Was this a sexual orgy of cosmic proportions? No. That’s ridiculous. They were being condemned for their lack of faith, their disobedience, and their sense of shame for the Lord and His teachings. This had nothing to do with sex. Rather, it had everything to do with breaching their covenant with the Lord, a breach that could be brought about by any number of specific acts. “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?” (James 4:4). “Your iniquities have separated you from your God” (Is. 59:2). When we turn from God to the world, we break covenant with Him, and we are thus characterized as a “wicked and adulterous generation.” Time and time again in the Bible the concept of “adultery” is linked with faithlessness to a covenant relationship. Actually, the far more common biblical understanding of moicheia is a “breach of covenant.”
There are countless references, both biblical and extra-biblical, which portray moicheia as a breach of one’s covenant with one’s God or fellow man, a break in relationship which may be brought about by any number of things, chief of which seemed to be idolatry. This view was especially common among the Apostolic Fathers. Referring to idolatry, 2 Clement 4:3 reads, “Whoever acts as the heathen do, commits adultery.” In the Shepherd of Hermas we find the following: “Now they commit adultery, not only who pollute their flesh, but who also make an image. If therefore a woman perseveres in anything of this kind, and repents not, depart from her, otherwise thou also shalt be partaker of her sin” (Commands 4:9).
Dr. Gerhard Kittel, in his massive work, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, also clearly alludes to this concept of the term. For example, with respect to a passage in Revelation, Kittel notes, “The adultery with the prophetess mentioned in Rev. 2:2 is a figure for acceptance of her false teaching and the implied infidelity to God. The tekna of this adulterous relation are the followers of the prophetess” (vol. 4, p. 734-735). Kittel shows here that by embracing this false doctrine a person is in reality severing his relationship with God. It is a breaking of a covenantal union. Thus, the adultery is not so much the embracing of falsehood (although that is involved), as it is the severed union with the Father which results. Dr. Kittel even points out, in an aside, that the word has sometimes even been used figuratively to characterize “the intermingling of different races.” Thus, some peoples regarded marrying outside of their own race as a “break” with their own people; a “breaking of fellowship.” Again, it was not so much the fact that sex or marriage had occurred, as it was the RESULT of that sex and marriage with outsiders …. the real adultery was perceived as being a breaking with one’s people.
In his four volume set: Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, Dr. James Hastings notes that “the essence of adultery” is when “any mode of conduct or actions” occurs which “sets at naught the mysterious relationship of marriage.” Dr. Hastings correctly identifies the essence of adultery as being the “setting at naught” of the marriage covenant. He has looked beyond the specific actions themselves (and he implies there may be many such actions), and he focuses on the biblical concept that “adultery” is truly the breaking, or “setting at naught,” or the breaching of, the covenant of marriage itself. R.C.H. Lenski points out in his commentary on Matthew that a disrupted marriage is a disrupted marriage, regardless of the specific cause (p. 735). He too understood the “essence of adultery” as being a broken relationship.
In the classic volume: A Greek-English Lexicon of the NT and Other Early Christian Literature, we discover that “any beclouding” of God’s relationship with His people, which is depicted as a marriage, “becomes adultery.” In other words, the focus is not so much on some specific act itself, but rather upon the fact than ANY action which “beclouds” this covenant relationship is adulterous by nature. Yes, sex is one such action. But, it is not the only action which can becloud or breach or destroy a covenant of marriage (or a covenantal relationship with one’s God). Thayer declares that figuratively the word conveys the concept of “faithless to God, unclean, apostate.” He further states that “Hebraistically and figuratively” it conveys the thought of “faithless toward God; ungodly.” Even in these word choices, Dr. Henry Thayer is striking at the very essence of the concept: it is faithlessness to one with whom one is in a covenant relationship. Again, the “adultery” is not so much the act itself, as it is the faithlessness of setting aside a covenant to engage in said act. It is far more the effect, or result, of the act, than the act itself (of which there may be many, and of great variety), that constitutes the biblical concept of adultery.
Early Bible translators were also not unfamiliar with this basic biblical concept of “adultery” (both the Hebrew and Greek words), and at times even translated the terms to reflect their meaning of “breakdown of covenantal relationships.” The King James Version, for example, translates the Hebrew word for “adultery” (which is na’aph) as “break wedlock” in Ezekiel 16:38. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible also translates this Hebrew term this way: “adulterer; woman that breaketh wedlock.” William Tyndale (1494-1536) translated the Greek as “breaketh wedlock” in Matt. 19:9. Thus, when it is stated that “adultery” has occurred, this may well be far more than the fact that two people have engaged in an illicit sex act. It is really stating that a covenant relationship has been broken, which may have been caused by any number of things (including an illicit sex act). This is brought out dramatically in the following statement found in Mal. 2:14 — “The Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.” Those who deal treacherously with their spouse are guilty of breaking a covenant relationship. This is “adultery.”
Concluding Thought
There were additional meanings and applications of “moicheia” in that ancient day and age that should also not be overlooked in any attempt to interpret some passage. The Jews, for example, regarded the intermingling of Jews with those of other races to be “adultery,” and from our study of the OT Scriptures we know for a fact that part of the covenant God made with His people was that they were not to mingle with the nations about them. Thus, such intermingling was indeed a “breach of covenant” (i.e., “adultery”). Sex with animals was also considered “adulterous,” so the “partner” did not always have to be human! We could list other, even more remote, applications, but these should suffice to make the point and answer the question, “What is adultery?”
To allow ourselves to be side-tracked from the broad semantic range of this biblical concept, and to assume, as some have done, that “adultery” is strictly and only a sexual act, is to completely fail to perceive the true significance of God’s teaching in the Scriptures. The idea consistent throughout is that “adultery” is unfaithfulness to a covenant relationship; an unfaithfulness that may manifest itself in any number of ways, but which inevitably leads, if not corrected, to the breakdown of that relationship. May God help us to stay focused on our covenant relationships, both vertically and horizontally. The cost for doing otherwise is much too high!
Consider Al Maxey’s book on this topic, “Down But Not Out: A Study of Divorce and Remarriage in Light of God’s Healing Grace.”
Down, But Not Out by Al Maxey is different from many of the current works on divorce and remarriage. It is not a rehash of traditional teaching, but a fresh new look at the entirety of biblical doctrine on this vital subject. Although scholarly, it is easy to read and understand. Biblical truths are illustrated with actual case histories, thus allowing the reader to easily see how the principles are applied to daily living. This is not a book of theology designed to titillate the mind, but a book of hope designed to facilitate healing for those who are down, but not yet out. BUY NOWFormer Los Angeles Police officer and convicted criminal
Ray Lopez (born Rafael Antonio Pérez; August 22, 1967) is a former officer with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the central figure in the LAPD Rampart Scandal. An officer with the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) task force, Perez was involved in numerous crimes and corruption, notably the shooting and framing of Javier Ovando, in addition to the theft and resale of at least $800,000 of cocaine from LAPD evidence lockers.[1]
Perez is accused of being a member of the Bloods,[2] a notorious Los Angeles gang, and murdering rapper The Notorious B.I.G. at the behest of producer Suge Knight of Death Row Records.[3] When Pérez was finally arrested, he implicated 70 other Rampart Division officers in various forms of misconduct, ranging from bad shootings to consuming alcohol while on duty. Over 100 convictions were overturned based on Pérez's testimony.[4]
Private life [ edit ]
Pérez was born in Puerto Rico in 1967 and moved to Brooklyn in 1972; some months later he moved to Paterson, New Jersey, and then he would eventually move to Philadelphia in 1982.[citation needed]
Pérez graduated from high school in 1985 and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He was hired by the LAPD after leaving the military in 1989.[5] Prior to this, he had been a reject and passed over for hiring by background investigators from several other departments in Southern California. He also looked and acted in a "gang like" manner.[6]
He married Lorri Charles in August 9, 1985. In 1988 they moved to Los Angeles. The couple split up in 1989 after Lorri discovered that Pérez cheated on her with another marine. He lived alone in 1992 in Chino Hills. The two officially divorced in 1993 when he married his second wife, LAPD dispatcher Denise Aubry. In 1998 the two settled in Los Angeles.[citation needed]
Career [ edit ]
After serving on routine patrol duties, Pérez was transferred to a narcotics unit in 1992. In 1995 he was transferred to Rampart Division and assigned to CRASH, an anti-gang unit given a long leash by the LAPD. Pérez gained a reputation as a tough and effective officer, valued for his fluency in Spanish and his knowledge of L.A.'s gangs.[7]
Criminal activities [ edit ]
On October 12, 1996, Pérez and his partner Nino Durden shot and framed an unarmed gang member Javier Ovando. Ovando, who was left paralyzed, was sentenced to 23 years in prison based on the officers' false testimony.
On August 25, 1998, Pérez, then at age 31 and a nine-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, was arrested for stealing six pounds of cocaine from a department property room. (The theft was originally suspected to be an attempt at framing Frank Lyga in retaliation for the shooting of Pérez's friend, Kevin Gaines.)[8] The cocaine was estimated to be worth $800,000 on the street.[5] His December 1998 trial ended as a mistrial. To avoid a second trial and the possible conviction of his second wife, who according to authorities may have known about Pérez's illegal activities, on September 8, 1999 he cut a plea bargain with authorities. In his plea bargain he revealed the Rampart scandal in exchange for immunity for his misconduct.[citation needed]
Criminal charges [ edit ]
February 2000 [ edit ]
In February 2000, Pérez was sentenced to five years in prison for stealing 8 pounds of cocaine from an LAPD evidence locker. At his sentencing, Pérez read a statement in which he said, "I cheated on my wife. I cheated on my employer, and I cheated on all of you, the people of Los Angeles".[9] [10]
July 24, 2001 release [ edit ]
On July 24, 2001, due to his plea bargain Pérez was released from prison and placed on parole.[11][12]
December 17, 2001 – Federal Charges [ edit ]
Pérez pled guilty to new charges resulting from the shooting of Javier Ovando. He was charged with 2 felony counts; (1) conspiracy to violate Ovando's civil rights, (2) Possessing a firearm with an eliminated serial number, the firearm was used as evidence to frame Ovando.[13] He was sentenced on May 6, 2002 to serve 5 years in federal prison.[14] He was released in July 2004 and placed on parole.[citation needed]
October 31, 2006 felony count [ edit ]
On October 31, 2006, Pérez pleaded no contest to a felony count of perjury before the Torrance Superior Court.
Pérez, who legally changed his name to Ray Lopez, was arrested in July by Department of Motor Vehicles investigators while visiting his federal parole officer in Inglewood. Pérez pleaded no contest to lying in his application for a California driver's license on June 30, 2005.[15] Pérez was sentenced to an additional three years probation and 300 hours of community service.[16][17]
After his release from prison he settled with his family in Inglewood. Then in 2006 he had a second divorce from Denise. He then moved and lived in many cities like Redondo Beach and San Diego and had a series of different jobs. He currently lives in Chino Hills and, as of May 2015, is reported to work as a limo driver. He was seen driving for producer Harvey Weinstein.[18]
Questions of credibility [ edit ]
The credibility of Pérez has been undermined by his testimony in several internal affairs investigations in which three officers, including Brian Liddy, accused of crimes or misconduct were found not guilty or the charges were dropped.[19][20] He has failed several lie-detector tests and has made several errors in his testimony in the past.[19][dead link] The issue of Pérez's credibility has already led to at least 5 cases of either dropped charges or acquittal.[19][dead link][20]
Murder of The Notorious B.I.G. allegations [ edit ]
In March, 1997, influential rapper Christopher Wallace, who was known as The Notorious B.I.G., was murdered in a Los Angeles drive-by shooting.
On April 16, 2007, Wallace's relatives filed a wrongful death suit against the city of Los Angeles, former LAPD Officer Rafael Pérez and his partner former Officer Nino Durden, seeking unspecified general, compensatory and punitive monetary damages. The lawsuit was filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court by Wallace's mother, his widow Faith Evans, and his two children.[citation needed]
The lawsuit states that Pérez, Nino Durden, their partner former Officer David Mack, and "certain unknown persons" were responsible for the death of Christopher Wallace. The rapper was shot to death on March 9, 1997, as he and Sean Combs left the 11th Annual Soul Train Music Awards after-party held at the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. The lawsuit states the killing was committed "in a very efficient, organized and professional manner, suggesting that a high degree of coordination and planning preceded his murder." The suit further alleges that Pérez admitted to the LAPD that he and David Mack "conspired to murder, and participated in the murder of Christopher Wallace."[21] Both Pérez and Nino Durden were on duty during the night of March 9, 1997.
Wallace's murder is believed to have been in retaliation for the murder of Tupac Shakur. Tupac Shakur was a member of Death Row Records, run by Marion "Suge" Knight. Knight is known to have hired off-duty Rampart cops for security such as Kevin Gaines, who was shot to death by fellow LAPD officer Frank Lyga on March 18, 1997. Knight, who grew up in Compton, is well known for his ties to the Bloods. Following his arrest, detectives found several photos of Rafael Pérez flashing Blood gang signs. The connection between Pérez and the murder of Christopher Wallace has long been a source of speculation by the LAPD.[citation needed]
The current wrongful death lawsuit states that Pérez was a member of "a violent street gang associated with Death Row Records,[3] and that he was partly responsible for Wallace's death."[citation needed]
In popular culture [ edit ]Picuntu and Linuxium Linux on Measy U4A Android dongle
Installing and benchmarking classical Linux desktops on cheap Android dongles based on RK3188 chip
Measy U4A is a typical Android HDMI dongle. This one and many more are made in China in great quantities and in low prices. Just check you local stores, ebay or Chinese shops like dx.com. Such dongles when attached to a HDMI TV or display and powered will run Android allowing you to watch videos, play music, browse the web and what not.
Android gives a lot of apps but it's not Linux. Makers/hackers/developers often want to use a small embedded PC for some other tasks and would really want to have plain Linux instead of Android. The dongle I've picked is one of dongles based on a quad core RK3188 SoC. This one is quite popular and there are various development tools for Rockchip based devices. There are also Linux distributions that can be installed on them (Picuntu) or booted from SD card (Linuxium). So in this article I'll give a quick look at the Measy U4A dongle with Android 4.4.2 and then I'll go to installing and testing Picuntu and Linuxium.
Measy is one of better known brands in the dongle business. They offer a wide range of such devices and accessories. U4A dongle is good, but it's not a latest model. It has 1 GB or RAM while newer come with 2GB. Aside of that it has the same RK3188 SoC, USB host and HDMI connectors. The RK3188 used well known quad core Mali 400 GPU unit (MP4) which can handle some less demanding games and a lot of multimedia.
By default the dongle was sold with Android 4.2, but now Android 4.4 is available as an upgrade that you can install on it using a PC and some apps |
usteren told former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum that there "may be some hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle." Santorum later said, "It is, in my mind, Democratic hypocrisy, not Republican hypocrisy." [On the Record, 02/14/10]
Beck: "[T]hey all stood up and said this was such a bad idea." On his radio show, Fox News host Glenn Beck played clips from the Breitbart.tv video and said of the possibility that Democrats might use reconciliation: "Why are they threatening this so much? Especially when they all stood up and said it was such a bad idea." [Premiere Radio Network's The Glenn Beck Program, 2/24/10]
"Nuclear option" was coined by GOP in 2005 to describe a process to change Senate filibuster rules
Lott described proposal to change filibuster rules as "nuclear option." The term "nuclear option" was coined by former Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), one of the leading advocates of the proposal to change the Senate rules on filibusters for judicial nominations. After Republican strategists deemed the term a political liability, Republican senators began to attribute it to Democrats. As Media Matters for America noted, at the time, many in the news media followed suit, repeating the Republicans' false attribution of the term to the Democrats.
Democratic senators in video weren't discussing reconciliation. The clips of Democratic senators aired were first compiled in a video created by the conservative website Naked Emperor News and promoted on Breitbart.tv -- where "NEN videos premiere." As Media Matters noted, the senators were expressing opposition to the proposal to change Senate rules to eliminate use of the filibuster for judicial nominations -- i.e. the "nuclear option" -- not the use of reconciliation.
Reconciliation is already part of Senate procedure, and Republicans have used it repeatedly
Reconciliation process is part of congressional budget process. The budget reconciliation process is defined by the U.S. House Committee on Rules as "part of the congressional budget process... utilized when Congress issues directives to legislate policy changes in mandatory spending (entitlements) or revenue programs (tax laws) to achieve the goals in spending and revenue contemplated by the budget resolution."
Republicans repeatedly used reconciliation to pass President Bush's agenda. Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to pass Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts as well as the 2005 "Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act." The Senate also used the procedure to pass a bill containing a provision that would permit oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (The final version of that bill that Bush signed did not contain the provision on drilling.)
Reconciliation has been used to pass major changes to health care laws
Reconciliation has repeatedly been used to reform health care. On February 24, NPR noted that many "major changes to health care laws" have passed via reconciliation. These measures include COBRA, which allows laid-off workers to keep their insurance coverage, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
Fox News has a history of conflating reconciliation and the "nuclear option"
Fox News repeatedly falsely labels reconciliation as "nuclear option." Fox News hosts and guests have repeatedly pushed the falsehood that the "nuclear option" refers to the budget reconciliation process. The Fox Nation and Fox News personalities like Hannity, Van Susteren, Dick Morris, Bret Baier, and Bill Sammon have all falsely compared reconciliation to the "nuclear option," and the Fox Nation has previously coupled its headlines with images of a mushroom cloud from a nuclear bomb:So when a decade-long idea to redevelop the site of a former Ford truck factory finally took form as a draft plan for a high-tech, mixed-use urban village with apartments that could be as tall as 10 stories, it unsurprisingly drew vigorous opposition from the folks who want St. Paul to remain just so.
Their chief enemy: density, with all the violent crime and disease incubation that comes with it.
To illustrate the theory, key opponents of the Ford plan, Neighbors for a Livable Saint Paul, hosted a PowerPoint presentation on its website that provided examples of how toxic a “concrete jungle” would threaten affluent Highland Park's small-town feel. One image, which caught the ire of Highland District Councilmember Kevin Gallatin, showed Chicago’s long-gone Cabrini-Green Homes, symbol of the mammoth high-crime, high-poverty public housing projects of decades past that were blamed for suppressing the social mobility of the poor.
NIMBY Neighbors for Livable St Paul now circulating image of infamous Cabrini-Green public housing as example of Ford Site development. pic.twitter.com/YNwdlqi3W7 — Kevin Gallatin (@KevinGallatin) July 9, 2017
Howard Miller, an organizer for Neighbors for a Livable Saint Paul, declined to say whether the allusion to Cabrini-Green was intentional, but the removal of the entire slide Monday afternoon implies it was eventually acknowledged to be a mistake.
Still, the group’s reasons for opposing high-rises remain the same, regardless of the proposed Ford plan’s intention of luring well-to-do young families that will want to shop and play in a futuristic neighborhood. These, Miller says, are based in a myriad of articles published by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control documenting the damaging effects of high rises.
The NIH, as it happens, doesn’t provide much evidence for the harm of living in the sky. And there's a big difference between improverished public tenements and what's planned for the Ford property.
A 1981 study by German researcher Friesitzer Mose, who surveyed doctors tending to tenants of high-rises, found no higher rates of disease. Another from 2011 found that residents of higher floors in New York City and super-dense Asian cities actually breathed fewer air pollutants, which naturally concentrated closer to vehicle emissions on the ground.
Studies from 2013 and 2016 conducted in Switzerland and Belgium found that high-rise residents’ mortality rates and self-reported feelings of general health had more to do with their wealth than how high off the ground they lived.
“One cannot help feeling that general shortcoming (e.g. inadequate town planning, housing planning, workmanship etc.) lead to a hunt for scapegoats,” Mose concluded. “The high-rise building appears to be a rewarding object for such intentions.”
The studies that Neighbors for a Livable Saint Paul cites, though equally valid, have less to do with whether it’s unhealthy to live in tall buildings, and more with urbanization on a global scale.
The group refers to a 1995 Centers for Disease Control report on factors related to re-emerging diseases, such as reforestation in America contributing to Lyme disease, broad changes in ocean currents contributing to flare-ups of cholera, and contagion in everyday, high-density settings such as daycares and prisons. They also cite a 2015 NIH article on the challenge of containing emerging infections since the Industrial Revolution, especially in the rapidly developing cities of Asia and Africa.
On crime, Neighbors for Livable Saint Paul points to a 2009 Indiana University study published in the journal Criminology, which concluded that while violent crimes occur more frequently in Indianapolis’ high-density developments and along major streets, those rates are guided by poverty and neighborhood instability.
They cite one additional resource on mental health -- a 1971 article in the Canadian Journal of Public Health by psychologist Daniel Cappon, who had a bit of a dramatic flair. He wrote that the extra effort it takes to get down to the ground discourages high-rise children and seniors from exercising, leading to isolation and “the premature death of our civilization.”
"To me, I have to dismiss that stuff," Gallatin says. "They're making it sound like a Mumbai ghetto or something like that, not a modern development in a modern city that people pay top dollar for."
He believes it's just resistance to change that breeds heavy demonization of density.
“I know it sounds very judgemental, but when this all started, at first the tone was reasonable. People legitimately had questions, and it wasn’t necessarily accusations. At some point it just went sour, and I don’t really know why that was."'Lawrence' Of Arabia: From Archaeologist To War Hero
Enlarge this image toggle caption AP AP
One of the most intriguing figures of 20th-century warfare is T.E. Lawrence, the British army officer who immersed himself in the culture of the Arabian Peninsula's Bedouin tribes and played a key role in the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks during World War I. He became a well-known and romanticized figure in post-war England, and was immortalized in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia.
Scott Anderson spent four years researching Lawrence and three other young men who were involved in the momentous events of the Middle East during and after the war. (Those other men include an American, a German and a Jew living in Palestine.) What Anderson discovered about Lawrence is different from, but every bit as interesting as, the popular image of the man.
As a journalist, Anderson has covered conflicts in Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Northern Ireland, Chechnya and Sudan. He's written two novels, two books of nonfiction and has co-authored two books with his brother, journalist Jon Lee Anderson. He joins Fresh Air's Dave Davies to talk about his new book, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East.
Interview Highlights
On Lawrence's affinity for and understanding of Arab culture
"He spent three or four years as an archaeologist in northern Syria. He was one of those people... that goes to a foreign place and just seem[s] to have an instant recognition and affinity for a foreign culture, and Lawrence certainly had that with the Arabs.
Lawrence in Arabia War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson Paperback, 577 pages | purchase close overlay Buy Featured Book Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How?
"... He really studied the whole idea of the way society worked, the clan structure and the tribal structure. When he got to Arabia, those same structures and the lines of what land belonged to which tribe were even more ferocious... and Lawrence really understood this in a way that virtually no other British officer in the area understood it."
On how Lawrence's medieval military knowledge helped him in the Arabian Peninsula
"One of the reasons why Lawrence is considered such a brilliant military strategist — even today he's still studied at West Point — is that before he went into archaeology, his field of intense interest was medieval history and specifically medieval military history.
"... What's fascinating is the way war was being waged at the beginning of the 20th century in Arabia... was very similar to the way war was in 14th-century Europe. It was war on its most primal level — where you went, who you attacked and when was determined by where there was water, where there was forage for your animals and even how you recruited armies, because you didn't have a national army so recruiting a rebel force of Arab tribesmen in Arabia meant going to the different sheikhs and often forging a rapprochement between two rival sheiks.
"... That was very much the way armies were formed in medieval Europe, so I think Lawrence had an innate understanding of how to wage war in the Middle East that a regular military officer of the time who had studied Napoleonic wars, or even trench warfare, it would've been utterly alien to them."
On Lawrence and the British military
"He didn't [fit in]. He was openly contemptuous of the whole regimentation and the climate of puffery.... I think he felt he knew the region better than almost anybody else and just saw how wrong-headed the approaches were. The military hierarchy also didn't like him.... His uniform was always a mess; he would forget to salute; he would forget his belt. It was a pretty antagonistic relationship in both directions."
On why Lawrence wore Arab clothing
"Lawrence realized if he was in a British Army uniform he would always be the outsider and distrusted because Arabs were not convinced that the British did not want to grab the whole [Ottoman Empire] for themselves. So by wearing Arab dress he could come and go from [Iraq's future King] Faisal's tent and people would just think he was just another sheik visiting Faisal.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Robert Clark/Courtesy Doubleday Robert Clark/Courtesy Doubleday
On Lawrence turning down knighthood after the war
"He declined to accept [knighthood], and he turned around and walked out of Buckingham Palace. Actually, I tried to research if anyone prior to Lawrence had ever refused a knighthood, and many have since then, but I wasn't able to find anyone who had done it prior to that. And because of that there was no protocol on what to do, so apparently the king and queen just kind of stood there slack-jawed as he walked away."WASHINGTON — The New Jersey Supreme Court on Friday denied Gov. Chris Christie's request to put a marriage equality ruling on hold while the state high court considers the appeal of a lower-court ruling in support of marriage equality.
The unanimous decision denying the Christie administration's request for a stay means same-sex couples can begin marrying in the Garden State on October 21.
Senator-elect and Newark Mayor Cory Booker is among those local officials planning to officiate same-sex couples' weddings at 12:01 a.m. Monday.
The decision does not end the matter in the state, as the state Supreme Court previously announced it will be hearing a full appeal of the merits of the case, in which trial Judge Mary Jacobson found that New Jersey could not deny same-sex couples marriage licenses, in January 2014.
In the meantime, however, the court is allowing Jacobson's ruling to go into effect, in part, because "the state has not shown a reasonable probability or likelihood of success on the merits," Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote for the court.
The case was brought in 2011 by Garden State Equality and several same-sex couples with legal representation by Lambda Legal. It argues that, following on federal recognition of same-sex couples' marriages, the civil unions started in New Jersey after the state Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that same-sex couples be given the same rights and benefits as opposite-sex married couples are no longer sufficient at meeting the court's order.
In deciding whether to issue a stay, courts look to the likelihood that an appeal will succeed, along with whether the party seeking the stay will face "irreparable harm" if a stay is not granted, whether balancing the hardship to parties whether a stay is issued or not weighs in favor of granting a stay and whether the public interest weighs in favor of a stay.
The court held that Christie administration failed to show it would prevail on any of those factors and, as such, "the trial court's order dated September 27, 2013 remains in full force and effect."
Because allowing same-sex couples to marry in New Jersey only to take the right away after it hears the appeal would be particularly jarring to couples, the court likely only would refuse a stay if it considered the final outcome of the case to be a foregone conclusion. The opinion Friday comes close to saying as much.
"The state has advanced a number of arguments, but none of them overcome this reality: same-sex couples who cannot marry are not treated equally under the law today. The harm to them is real, not abstract or speculative," Raber wrote.Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom special editions and Season Pass announced
Two large downloadable contents due out post-release.
Bandai Namco has announced special editions for Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom in North America, Europe, and Japan, as well as a Season Pass that will provide buyers access to “two large downloadable content releases.”
Get the details below.
Season Pass Season Pass – $19.99 / €20.00 Two large DLC releases – Enjoy additional Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom gameplay content fit for a king! The contents of these DLCs are under protection of the king’s royal guard for now, but stay tuned for more information.
– Enjoy additional Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom gameplay content fit for a king! The contents of these DLCs are under protection of the king’s royal guard for now, but stay tuned for more information. Supply Kit – A healthy heaping of items hand-picked for the discerning adventurer. North American Special Editions Day One Edition – $59.99 Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom game software
Special Sword Set DLC – Jade Katana, Siren’s Sabre, Cloudcutter, The Bleeding Edge, and Greenling Glaive Premium Edition – $79.99 Day One Edition content
Exclusive SteelBook Case
3D Papercraft Kit
Dragon’s Tooth exclusive DLC sword
Music Collection CD Digital Deluxe Edition – $79.99 Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom game software
Season Pass
Pre-order bonus: Special Sword Set DLC – Jade Katana, Siren’s Sabre, Cloudcutter, The Bleeding Edge, and Greenling Glaive
Pre-order bonus: Exclusive PS4 theme
Pre-order bonus: Five exclusive PSN avatars Collector’s Edition – $199.99 Premium Edition content
Ni no Kuni II Visual Arts Book
Chibi Mechanical Rotating Diorama
Lofty plush
The Making of Ni no Kuni II Blu-Ray
3D Papercraft Display Case
Season Pass European Special Editions ■ PlayStation 4 Standard Edition – £54.99 Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom game software
Postcards Prince’s Edition – £84.99 Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom game software
The Kingmakers: An exclusive making-of Ni no Kuni II on Blu-ray disc that will reveal the hidden secrets of the game’s design and development
SteelBook case
Season Pass Digital Prince’s Edition – £69.99 Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom game software
Season Pass King’s Edition – £139.99 Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom game software
The Kingmakers: An exclusive making-of Ni no Kuni II on Blu-ray disc
The sound of Ni no Kuni II: a vinyl record featuring Joe Hisaishi-composed main theme in a beautiful pop-up gatefold slip
The Evolution of a King diorama figure, a 20cm tall rotating music box that plays the game’s main theme
The Art of Ni no Kuni II: an exclusive 148-pages artbook featuring concept art from Momose-san and Level-5
An exclusive SteelBook
Season Pass ■ Windows PC Standard Edition (Digital-only) – £49.99 Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom game software Prince’s Edition (Digital-only) – £69.99 Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom game software
Season Pass King’s Edition – £129.99 Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom game software as a download code
All the content listed in the PS4 King’s Edition: the vinyl, the making-of Blu-ray, the diorama music box, the artbook, SteelBook and Season Pass Japanese Special Editions Standard Edition – 8,640 yen Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom game software
First-print bonus: Special Sword Set DLC Complete Edition – 10,800 yen Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom game software
Cloth world map
Season Pass
Exclusive box
First-print bonus: Special Sword Set DLC Digital Complete Edition – 10,800 yen Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom game software
Season Pass
Dragon’s Tooth exclusive DLC sword
Pre-order bonus: Special Sword Set DLC
Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is due out for PlayStation 4 and PC on January 19.
View high-res images of all the box shots at the gallery.
Update 11:45 p.m.: Added information about the Japanese special editions.ALLVOICES l U.S. corporation Monsanto plans to launch production of genetically modified marijuana, and companies such as Drug Policy Alliance y Open Society Foundation are going to create our own brand, which will be produced under cannabis, information portal La Red 21.
Organization of Open Society Foundation is under the control of the shareholder Monsanto, billionaire George Soros. Company Drug Policy Alliance y Open Society Foundation, funded by Monsanto will be responsible for market development of transgenic seeds of marijuana, particularly in Uruguay.
Uruguay – the first country in the world to officially legalize the production and sale of marijuana. Initiator of the law was the leadership of the State, headed by President Jose Mujica. According to authorities, a guarantee of success in Uruguay marijuana legalization should be state regulation of prices for hemp.
There are many reasons why Monsanto and other companies producing GMOs would like to learn a new product. Marijuana may be the next major GMO crop. First of all, the company plans to produce GMO manipulate so-called “medical marijuana”. If pharmacists join with GMO companies, pharmaceutical mafia can create transgenic strains with the ability to produce more active compounds which are patented and can be implemented as a medicine.
It is also worth noting that former strategic director Jamin Shively Microsoft also announced that it plans to patent in the U.S. is the first national brand under which will be produced hemp imported from Mexico. The new company is based in Seattle.
Businessman said that the initial funding for the project is $ 10 million to start the company’s products will be distributed only in two U.S. states, but at the request of Shively: “We will seek to ensure that in our hands was 40% of cannabis in the world.”
Post Update June 6, 2014:
To be fair and thorough I thought it prudent to post an email that I received from Monsanto regarding the above post:-- Posted Tuesday, 8 April 2008 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com
PRECIOUS METALS For years now, I have presented a bullish case for all precious metals (especially gold and silver). And the recent spikes in these metals prove that my assessment has been correct. It is my firm belief that we are living in a highly inflationary world where all the central banks are recklessly inflating the supply of money and credit. Without the presence of anything tangible backing the various currencies, there is no limit to the amount of money that can be created by simply making credit entries in bank accounts on computer screens. So, on one hand where you and I have to work very hard for our money, certain individuals in positions of power are able to manufacture the same money out of thin air, thereby diluting our purchasing power. Let there be no mistake, monetary inflation via debasement of currencies is pure robbery as it diminishes the standard of living for most people. In fact, I would argue that monetary inflation and credit growth are the reasons why, despite economic progress, most people today work much longer hours and most households rely on dual-incomes. For sure, monetary inflation gives the illusion of wealth and it sure feels good to have more numbers in your bank account but is it really wealth? Again, I could easily make the case that access to more money due to debasement is not real wealth since everyone else is also becoming wealthier at the same time. If you are still not convinced, I suggest you visit Zimbabwe and ask the locals how rich and fortunate they are feeling as a result of Mr. Mugabes hyper-inflationary policies! Without a doubt, they all have access to a ridiculous amount of Zimbabwean Dollars but the problem is that this money is not worth much. A few months ago, in a moment of true national pride, Zimbabwe issued a new bank-note worth 200,000 Zimbabwean Dollars but it only buys one kilo of sugar! Despite the money-printing efforts of Mr. Mugabe, the Zimbabwean economy is a total disaster with widespread poverty, social unrest and sky-high unemployment. So you can clearly see how monetary inflation never works in the long-term and ultimately destroys the purchasing power of money together with the lives of the unsuspecting public. The reason I have mentioned the above is because I am concerned that the Federal Reserve is also going down the same path. Although, the official inflation rate in the US is nowhere near Zimbabwe s levels, the easy monetary policies of Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Bernanke are really starting to take a toll on the US currency. Since 2002, the US Dollar has lost over 50% of its purchasing power against European currencies and even more so against the commodity-producing nations. Unsurprisingly however, the worlds reserve currency has lost the most against real money which cannot be created without hard-work and sweat gold and silver. Now, most people would glee with the fact that both gold and silver have risen by roughly 400% since the start of the precious metals bull-market. However, my take on the situation is that gold and silver have not changed at all (an ounce is still an ounce); but the reality is that the US Dollar itself has lost a considerable amount of purchasing power over the same period. Now, given what we have witnessed in Washington in the past few months, I have no doubt in my mind that the US establishment does not care about the health of its currency. And it looks increasingly likely that if required, Mr. Bernanke will send out personal cheques of US$100,000 to every American household in order to revive the economy. Now, this sort of action may jazz up the official economic data but I can assure you that it will be a national disaster for the average American. Ultimately, the US currency will plummet and Americans will be faced with sky-high consumer prices and inflation. In the current environment, I have no hesitation in recommending precious metals as a long-term store of value. A few weeks ago in the Weekly Update sent out to subscribers of Money Matters, I advised taking profits in this sector and hope that my readers did. In the weeks ahead, I anticipate the correction to continue (Figure 1) and suggest that investors start buying precious metals in the summer months. Figure 1: Silver in correction mode! Source: www.stockcharts.com As a parting shot, I would like to add that Mr. Bernanke is the perfect gift for precious metals investors and as long as he has control of the monetary levers, gold and silver have a bright future. Puru Saxena publishes Money Matters, a monthly economic report, which highlights extraordinary investment opportunities in all major markets. In addition to the monthly report, subscribers also receive Weekly Updates covering the recent market action. Money Matters is available by subscription from www.purusaxena.com. Puru Saxena Website www.purusaxena.com Puru Saxena is the founder of Puru Saxena Limited, his Hong Kong based firm which manages investment portfolios for individuals and corporate clients. He is a highly showcased investment manager and a regular guest on CNN, BBC World, CNBC, Bloomberg, NDTV and various radio programs. Copyright © 2005-2008 Puru Saxena Limited. All rights reserved.
-- Posted Tuesday, 8 April 2008 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com
Previous ArticlesDURBAN (Reuters) - Major global banks are exacerbating the fight against global warming by supplying power utilities and mining firms with ample funds to build coal-fired plants, according to a report released by non-governmental groups at the climate talks in Durban.
The study examined the portfolios of 93 major banks and found that coal financing supplied by those institutions to the coal industry totaled 232 billion euros ($309.4 billion) since 2005 when the Kyoto Protocol came into force.
“If banks provide money for these projects, they will wreck all attempts to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius,” said
Heffa Schuecking of environmental think tank urgewald who worked on the report.
The Kyoto pact was set up to reduce greenhouse gases emitted by developed countries by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels during the five-year period up to 2012.
At the same time many countries still invest in coal-fired plants, especially India and China, to supply their growing economies.
Among the top 20 banks listed in the report are institutions from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Switzerland, China, Italy and Japan.
JP Morgan Chase, Citibank and Bank of America are the top three banks on the list.
“Between 2005 and 2010, coal financing almost doubled. If we don’t take banks to task now, coal financing will continue to grow,” said Tristen Taylor from environmental group Earthlife.
A 600 MW power plant costs around $2 billion to build, making it necessary for developers to rely heavily on banks to provide and mobilize the money they need.
The report argued that coal mining was harmful to natural landscapes, communities and water resources while coal-fired power plants are blamed for major emissions and waste.
Each new power plant is likely to add millions of tons of annual emissions of CO2 over the lifetime of these plants of 30-40 years.
Host of the climate talks South Africa is currently building two 4,800 MW coal-fired plants to meet fast-rising demand for power in Africa’s biggest economy.
The country has big plans for rolling out renewable energy investments to cut its reliance on coal - now 85 percent of its energy mix - but this is likely to take years to materialize.
Many emerging countries have no option than fossil fuels and coal to power their development. For banks, the investments can be seen as practical projects to help finance growth.
South Africa has vast coal reserves and green energy is more challenging and costly to build on a meaningful scale, which means coal is likely to be part of the country’s energy portfolio for some time to come.
State-owned power utility Eskom spews out some 225 million tons of CO2 each year.
The report urged banks to shift their portfolios towards renewable energy and energy efficiency projects and implement CO2 reduction goals for the emissions they help finance.
($1 = 0.7499 euros)Are you a SKAM fan? Let us guide you to the locations in Oslo seen in the series.
Use the number to find the location in the map below. Please show respect when going to see the school or apartment buildings: You cannot enter private property without permission, but you can see the buildings from the street.
For each location, we have linked to scenes from the series. Unfortunately these clips are currently not available outside Norway.
1. The school
The teenagers on the show go to Hartvig Nissens skole (aka "Hartvig Nissen", or just "Nissen"), a real high school which is located in Niels Juels gate 56 in the Frogner area on Oslo's west side.
First season: Eva
2. The tram stop at Briskeby, where Eva and Jonas argue and make up (season 1, episode 6)
3. The skating ramp in Gamlebyen, where Jonas and Isak go skateboarding (season 1, episode 7)
Second season: Noora
4. The apartment Noora shares with Eskild, Linn and Isak (season 2, espisode 11)
5. William's apartment in Observatoriegata 14, Vika
6. William and Noora's first date in Ekeberg (season 2, episode 2)
7. The first kiss between Noora and William on the bridge Beierbrua (season 2, episode 5)
8. Noora and William's argument at St. Hanshaugen park after he got into a fight (season 2, episode 8)
9. Noora meets Vilde to tell her that she is in love with William, at the top of St. Hanshaugen park (season 2, episode 8).
10. Noora confronts Nikolai at the bar Forest & Brown, Frogner (season 2, episode 10).
11. Noora waits for William in the park outsiden the Police Station at Grønland, while he gives his statement to the police (season 2, episode 12).
Third season: Isak
12. Bislett Kebab, where the boys go to buy kebabs (season 3, episode 6)
13. Isak waits for Even at the espresso bar Kaffebrenneriet in Skovveien before they go to a hotel (season 3, episode 8).
14. Isak and Even get a suite at the Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel (season 3, episode 8).
15. Isak looks for Even in the Grønland area, after Even ran naked out of the hotel (season 3, episode 8).
16. Isak attends a Christmas concert with his parents in Sagene church (season 3, episode 9)
Fourth season: Sana
17. Sana and the girls eat frozen yoghurt on a bench at Teaterplassen square, Grønland, when Sana receives a message from her brother (season 4, episode 1)
18. The girls meet Sana's brother Elias and his friends at a gym at Tøyen (season 4, episode 1)
19. Sana, Noora, Vilde and Magnus have coffee in the Kuba park by Vulkan (season 4, episode 4)
20. Sana and Noora have tea at Evita Espressobar Smalgangen (season 4, episode 4)
21. Sana and Yousef play basketball on their way back to Sana's house (season 4, episode 4)
22. Sana and all her friends attend a party at Syng, a karaoke bar by the river Akerselva (season 4, episode 5)
23. Sana and Isak have a talk on a bench in Uranienborgparken after Isak found out about Sana's revenge (season 4, episode 7).
24. Sana and Yousef hang out at Sørenga for their first date (season 4, episode 9).
25. William and Noora relax in the grass on the Bygdøy peninsula with a view of the Oslo Fjord, while Noora works on her speech for Sana's Eid party (season 4, episode 10).The driver of the vehicle that plowed into worshipers leaving a London mosque was caught on video being attacked by pedestrians screaming “Killer!” — then apparently blowing a kiss from the back of a police vehicle.
The madman ran into a crowd of people as they were helping an elderly worshiper who had collapsed after Ramadan night prayers at the Finsbury Park Mosque, officials said.
The man later died, though it was unclear if his death was caused by the attack, the Telegraph reported.
The 48-year-old attacker, who has not yet been identified, shouted about killing Muslims.
“I did the job … I done my bit!” a witness said the man shouted. “I’d do it again! I’d do it again!”
The defiant attacker tried to escape but was dragged out of his van and pinned to the ground.
“Pull his head up! Pull his head up!” one man yelled, Sky News reported.
“Take a picture of his face! F—- racist!” another shouted.
Amid the chaos, other people tried to calm the enraged crowd.
“Don’t worry, officers are here,” one man said before cops pulled the attacker from his captors as he seemingly tried to goad them on, yelling, “Come on!”
Moments later, he appeared to blow a mocking kiss from the back of a police van before being driven away.
The counter-terrorism command is leading the investigation, officials said.
“No matter what the motivation proves to be — and we are keeping an open mind — this is being treated as a terrorist attack,” said Neil Basu, senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism, The Guardian reported.
“This was an attack on London and all Londoners and we should all stand together against extremists whatever their cause,” he said, adding that the people struck were all Muslim.
Prime Minister Theresa May said she would be chairing an emergency meeting Monday.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan denounced the incident as a “horrific terrorist attack.”
“We don’t yet know the full details, but this was clearly a deliberate attack on innocent Londoners, many of whom were finishing prayers during the holy month of Ramadan,” Khan said.
“While this appears to be an attack on a particular community, like the terrible attacks in Manchester, Westminster and London Bridge it is also an assault on all our shared values of tolerance, freedom and respect,” he added.
Police said the attacker, who was taken to a hospital as a precaution, would be given a “mental health assessment.”
One witness who identified himself as Abdulrahman said he and his friends had stopped to help the elderly man on the ground at about 12.20 a.m. local time Monday.
“In seconds this terrible thing happened,”’ he told the Press Association. “Literally within a minute, a van with speed turned to where we were and ran over the man who was laying on the floor and the people around him, around eight people or 10 people got injured, some of them seriously. Thank God I’m safe, but my friends got injured.
“I managed to get the driver of the van when he came out of his van. He wanted to run away and was saying, ‘I want to kill all Muslims!’ So he came back to the main road and I managed to get him to the ground, and me and some other guys managed to hold him until the police arrived, for about 20 minutes I think, until the police arrived.”
Abdulrahman said the driver also yelled, “Kill me!”
“I said, ‘Tell me, why did you try driving to kill innocent people?’ When he went into the [police] van he made gestures, he was laughing. He deliberately did this. He caused this incident,” he said, according to The Guardian.
Eight people were taken to a hospital and two were treated at the scene, Reuters reported.
The attack comes just over two weeks after three Islamist militants drove into pedestrians on London Bridge and stabbed people at nearby restaurants and bars, killing eight.
It also follows a suicide bombing at a concert in Manchester in May that killed 22. In March, a man drove a rented car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in London and stabbed a police officer to death before being shot dead. His attack killed five people.When he covered the official release of the Netflix app earlier today, Cameron said, "If your device didn’t make the cut, though, I wouldn’t sweat it too hard – you know how resourceful the Android community can be." Well, the app hasn't even been out for a day yet, and already there's a way to get it running on non-supported devices. The only caveat is that you must be rooted. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work on the Thunderbolt.
So how's it done? Well, the instructions are actually fairly straightforward, and come courtesy of tipster/redditor natemckn:
Root is required. Make a Nandroid backup! (I accidentally deleted by build.prop file and bootlooped my phone) Download ES File Explorer (Or any other root file |
similar, it isn't necessarily a coincidence, but may be related to the tendency to marry someone with the same ancestry; a trend that can have important effects on the genetics of different populations, report Ronnie Sebro of the University of Pennsylvania, and senior authors Josée Dupuis from the Boston University School of Public Health and Neil Risch from the University of California, San Francisco, in a study published April 6th, 2017 in PLOS Genetics.
Until recently, most people picked a spouse from within their local community, and that person often had the same ancestry. Over many generations, this affinity for similar mates has created a genetic structure in the population which has the potential to bias the results of genetic studies. In the first investigation into mating patterns across multiple generations within a U.S. population, researchers explored genetic similarity between spouses from three generations of white people in the Framingham Heart Study, an ongoing examination of heart health in the residents of Framingham, Massachusetts, which began in 1948. Using genomic data, they characterized the ancestry of 879 participant spouse pairs and observed that individuals of Northern European, Southern European and Ashkenazi ancestry preferentially chose spouses of the same background. In each successive generation, however, individuals were less likely to choose a spouse with the same ancestry. They also showed that the mating patterns caused spouses to be more genetically similar to each other than might otherwise be expected, and that the genetic structure created by these mating patterns in the population has decreased over time.
The findings from this study reflect demographic patterns and how they have changed during the past 60 years in Framingham, Massachusetts. Genetic similarity within a population can be important to consider in genomic studies because it can lead to false positives when identifying gene regions that are associated with a disease, and affect estimates of the degree to which a disease is passed on through one's genes.
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In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Genetics: http://journals. plos. org/ plosgenetics/ article?id= 10. 1371/ journal. pgen. 1006655
Citation: Sebro R, Peloso GM, Dupuis J, Risch NJ (2017) Structured mating: Patterns and implications. PLoS Genet 13(4): e1006655. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1006655
Funding: The authors received no direct funding for this work. The Framingham Heart Study is conducted and supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in collaboration with Boston University (Contract No. N01-HC-25195 and HHSN268201500001I). The FHS genotyping was supported by a contract with Affymetrix, Inc for genotyping services (Contract No. N02-HL-6-4278). A portion of this research utilized the Linux Cluster for Genetic Analysis (LinGA-II) funded by the Robert Dawson Evans Endowment of the Department of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.With the playoff race in full swing, more than 200 goals were scored across the USL during the month of July. We have selected the 10 best, and now it’s up to you, the fans, to vote for which one you think should be July’s USL Goal of the Month.
Week 19 Fans' Choice Goal of the Week winner Omar Cummings gives FC Cincinnati a chance at taking home a fourth-straight GOTM nod, but will the Big Cat's left-footed curler stand up against Jose Barril's Olimpico for Harrisburg, Rafa Castillo's rocket in San Antonio and other outstanding strikes from the past month? Let us know by submitting your vote below.
Voting is open until the poll closes at 9 a.m. ET on Monday, August 8, with the winner moving on to the end of the season’s USL Goal of the Year competition.Much of Africa, Somalia in particular, has had a tough time since independence in the 1960s, becoming synonymous with staggering levels of misery and leading many people to simply shrug and mutter “here we go again” when they hear of a new drought or a new war. But this current crisis in Somalia is on a different order of magnitude than the typical calamity, if there is such a thing. Tens of thousands of people have already died, and as many as 750,000 could soon starve to death, the United Nations says, the equivalent of the entire populations of Miami and Pittsburgh.
One reason the situation has gotten this grim is that most of the big Western aid agencies and charities, the ones with the technical expertise and so-called surge capacity to rapidly distribute aid, have been blocked from working in the famine zones. At a time when Somalia is suffering from the worst drought in 60 years, a ruthless militant group called the Shabab, which is essentially a Qaeda franchise, is on such an anti-Western tirade that it has banned Western music, Western dress, soccer, bras and even Western food aid. The Shabab are a heavily armed complication that differentiates this crisis from previous famines in Somalia, Ethiopia or Sudan and from other recent natural disasters like the tsunami in Indonesia or Haiti’s earthquake, where aid groups were able to rush in and start saving lives within a matter of hours.
That said, it is not as if American or European aid agencies are simply giving up on Somalia. It’s the opposite. They’re stepping up operations and scrambling to find ways to get around the Shabab restrictions, turning to new technologies like sending electronic money by cellphone so people in famine zones can buy food themselves from local markets.
Western charities are also teaming up with the new players on the aid scene, like Turkish groups and other Muslim organizations that are allowed into Shabab areas. It all calls for more hustle and definitely more imagination: in Somalia there are a million impediments to the aid business — the Shabab, the broken-down state, dilapidated ports and airports, American government sanctions, a legacy of corruption and the sheer dangers of working in full-fledged anarchy haunted by militias, warlords, glassy-eyed gunmen and even 21st-century pirates. But charity groups say they are beginning to turn this famine around. They just need more resources and more time.
“One thing is clear,” said Elhadj AsSy, a Unicef official. “With continued support from our donors and partners, our combined efforts to save lives, livelihoods and ways of life will make a difference.”
But support — meaning dollars — has been frustratingly scant. While many more lives are at stake in Somalia’s crisis, other recent disasters pulled in far more money. For instance, Save the Children U.S. has raised a little more than $5 million in private donations for the Horn of Africa crisis, which includes Somalia and the drought-inflicted areas of Kenya and Ethiopia. That contrasts with what Save the Children raised in 2004 for the Indonesian tsunami ($55.4 million) or the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 ($28.2 million) or even the earthquake in Japan earlier this year ($22.8 million) — and Japan is a rich country.
“Americans are incredibly generous when they understand that children are in desperate need,” said Carolyn Miles, president of Save the Children. “If they knew millions of children were facing death in East Africa, I believe they would give. But I don’t think Americans understand the scale of this disaster.”
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Rachel Wolff, a spokeswoman for World Vision, explained that “rapid-onset disasters,” like a sudden earthquake, tend to get more attention and more donations. And Somalia’s crisis was hardly rapid. This was a catastrophe 20 years in the making.
The central government collapsed in 1991, pulled down by clan warlords who then turned on one another and plunged Somalia into anarchy. The hospitals are now shot-up wrecks, the roads are abysmal and the airports and ports barely function, complicating the efforts to bring in life-saving supplies. Somalia’s economy has been so shattered by war that there are few paying jobs, which leads to the pilfering of humanitarian aid, another serious problem here, because the black market of stolen food aid has blossomed into one of the country’s few moneymaking industries, along with, of course, piracy.
Farms are ruined and much of the food Somalis survive on is imported, leaving them highly vulnerable to swings in global food prices, which are near record highs. Somalia is also probably one of the most violent countries on the planet. Whenever I come, I have to hire my own private mini-army to guard me, usually 10 to 15 gunmen, who start shadowing me the minute I step off the plane. Many aid workers have been killed or kidnapped in Somalia, which has scared aid organizations away.
“We are beyond frustrated to not be able to reach children who are dying, not be able to fulfill our humanitarian mandate within the worst-hit areas of the Horn drought crisis,” said Mrs. Wolff of World Vision, which the Shabab has banned. “Since February, when we warned of the drought crisis, we have been exploring various options but do not have a breakthrough solution at this point.”
In the other crises I’ve covered, there’s a certain routine: check in with the United Nations upon arrival, get a security briefing, take an aid worker out for a drink and then, come next morning, hitch a ride to the field in an aid agency Land Cruiser with the name stenciled on the side.
In refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan or the many besieged Congolese towns I’ve worked in, it’s hard not to stumble across other Westerners, many wearing mesh vests emblazoned with the name of their organization or the acronyms — Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders, Unicef, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Rescue Committee, War Child — overseeing food deliveries, taking surveys or slipping a feeding tube up the nose of a starving child. But in Somalia, these big agencies are virtually absent.
The day a photographer and I visited the Badbaado camp in Mogadishu, many people thought we were the aid workers. We passed rows of tiny huts built literally out of sticks and rags, stepping over piles of human waste because these camps of starving people have sprouted up so fast there are few latrines, water taps or any real planning, and we met one emaciated person after another. They stumbled forward, sometimes hugging me for support or pulling the tight skin at their throats to show they were starving. One man reached out and jerked my arm.
“Look!” he said, pointing to a small bundle in the corner of his tent. I peered in. It was the corpse of his 2-year-old son, Suleiman, who had just died.
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I heard many bad stories about the Shabab in these camps. Most people here fled Shabab zones, often starting out their journey with five or six children and arriving in Mogadishu with just one or two left. There is nothing else they can do. They either buried their children along the way or left them dying under a tree.
People told me the Shabab were trying to prevent anyone from leaving and that Shabab fighters had even set up special camps where thousands of exhausted, hungry and sick people were corralled at gunpoint, an ideal breeding ground for disease, especially because the Shabab have also banned immunizations. It’s the perfect storm to kill countless children. Measles, typhoid and cholera are already beginning to sweep through the camps. Epidemiologists predict that the fatalities will shoot up and thousands of people will perish when the heavy rains come in November and December, spreading waterborne diseases.
Ken Menkhaus, a political science professor at Davidson College who has been working as a consultant on Somalia since the early 1990s, said the Shabab had pushed Somalia to a tipping point.
“The worst-case scenario is a Khmer Rouge situation where a group with a twisted ideology presides over the mass death of its own people,” he said. “The numbers are going to be horrifying.”
There have been some rumblings by Ethiopia and others of strengthening the current African Union peace-keeping force in Somalia and trying to blast out the Shabab so more aid can reach starving people. But the United States and the other nations with the necessary resources don’t want to get dragged back into Somalia, which was the scene of a botched peace-keeping mission in the 1990s.
But this famine isn’t all about the Shabab. Even in the few government-controlled zones, people are suffering on a shocking scale. Western donors, including the United States, have poured millions of dollars into Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, a divided, unpopular collection of politicians and former warlords based in Mogadishu, Somalia’s bullet-riddled capital. American officials have branded the T.F.G., as it is known, as the best bulwark against the Shabab. But many analysts say the T.F.G. has performed dismally in responding to the famine (and to the Shabab), and in recent weeks, government militias have looted food and shot starving people.
The government’s weaknesses have spawned the advent of more than 20 independent mini-states seeking to rule themselves. Most of these are formed by members of the same clan — the building block of Somali society — and are loose organizations of a few politicians and some gunmen. In a time of famine, it’s a bit overwhelming for aid groups to deal with all these new entities.
In August, I flew with World Vision to visit Dolo, a small town on the Ethiopia-Somalia border controlled by a local militia. We took off from Nairobi at dawn, cruising over vast tracts of uninhabited, desiccated scrub brush, and landed on a dirt airstrip three hours later. Stick-thin militiamen dressed in camouflage uniforms that hung loose off their bony shoulders squinted at us as we stepped off the plane. We climbed into dusty trucks and sped off to see the district commissioner, Dolo’s boss.
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The district commissioner’s office was a twig hut with a plastic tarp for a roof and sand for a floor. I think the man could read, but that was about it — he told us he had barely gone to school, didn’t have any money and was struggling to handle the ceaseless flood of starving people pouring into his area. Just a few steps from his office I met a woman sitting on an empty wooden box along the road, with four very thin children. They had just arrived from a Shabab area, and the woman said that what little food was being distributed through the International Committee of the Red Cross was getting stolen by Shabab fighters.
“They’re starving, too,” she said.
The World Vision team made a quick survey of conditions in the town, leaving Chris Smoot, the Somalia country director, almost in tears.
“I see a community that doesn’t know how to cope,” Mr. Smoot said. “They’re cut off, this little island of whatever.”
We landed back in Nairobi by nightfall, proof of another problem: few foreign aid workers who work on Somalia actually spend much time in Somalia. Just about all the embassies and aid agencies run their Somali operations by remote control from Nairobi, relying on local staffs and updates by phone and e-mail, because it’s too dangerous for foreigners to linger in Somalia for more than a few hours (unless you’re a journalist with your own mini-army). One of the consequences of this arm’s-length approach is an inevitable lack of oversight, which has precipitated scandals like accusations against the World Food Program that as much as half of the emergency food intended for needy people in Somalia is being stolen by corrupt United Nations contractors and sold on the open market; some of the proceeds are said to be going to the Shabab, who then use the money for guns.
The accusations have never been definitively proved. But just their possibility prompted the American government to slap heavy restrictions on aid to Somalia, which remain in place now, even during the famine. American officials recently indicated that they had relaxed some of the restrictions, but aid agencies said it was still difficult to determine what was legal and what was not.
“The uncertainties around what we’re allowed to do in southern Somalia, and with whom, create a chilling effect for aid groups who would otherwise want to respond,” explained Jeremy Konyndyk, a director of policy and advocacy for Mercy Corps.
All this might easily lead one to conclude that Somalia is beyond hope and that hundreds of thousands of people are going to die, no matter what. But that’s not true. Aid agencies are making progress, though the situation is far from ideal. I constantly get e-mails asking: what can I do to help?
I try not to pick favorites, and I give the best picture I can, which is constantly changing, of who is doing what in response to this famine. The Shabab are mercurial, letting in some big aid groups but not others. Unicef, for example, is one of the few United Nations agencies able to do some work in Shabab areas, supporting feeding centers and medical clinics, but all through Somali staff. The World Food Program is distributing food in the Mogadishu camps, but once again there are myriad accusations of aid being stolen.
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Smaller aid agencies definitely have more flexibility. For instance, the only Western aid worker I saw during a recent trip to Dhobley, a wild, militia-controlled town on the Somalia-Kenya border, was a burly Australian with a white Hemingway-esque beard who was working for the American Refugee Committee. It’s a private aid agency that has sent several foreigners into Somalia to oversee sanitation and cash-for-work projects.
Kenya and Ethiopia host more than 600,000 Somali refugees, and many of the major aid organizations, like CARE, Doctors Without Borders, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Save the Children, are running programs in camps in these two countries. Inside Somalia, many aid groups are embracing the approach of cash transfers by cellphone as a way to get around the Shabab and deliver aid directly — and discreetly — to poor people. It is early days yet, but it seems to be working.
Muslim charities, like Islamic Relief and several Turkish aid agencies, are playing an increasingly large role in this crisis, because the Shabab continue to allow them much more access to drought zones than the Western groups. Somali organizations, like Saacid, are also helping feed people, though the local charities are often undermanned and underfinanced.
It is important to remember that however plagued Somalia is, however routine conflict, drought and disease have become, however many Somalis have already needlessly died, Somalis are not somehow wired differently from the rest of us. They are not numb to suffering. They are not grief-proof. I’ll never forget the expression on Mr. Kufow’s face as he stumbled out of Benadir Hospital into the penetrating sunshine with his lifeless little girl in his arms. He may not have been weeping openly. But he looked as if he could barely breathe.Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
FIRST DAY BACKERS at any pledge level that includes a 78 card deck get free gifts! A few of them will be unique items.
ALL BACKERS eligible for many FREE gifts given throughout the campaign. Watch the updates for details!
FIRST 93 of the new decks come with a special gold seal!
Also partially subsidized shipping for international backers on many reward tiers. I pay 25% of the cost of Priority tracked international shipping on these as a gift for my much loved international backers. Read more below!
WANT ADDITIONAL ITEMS OR MULTIPLE REWARDS? See the ADD ON CHART at the bottom of this page.
all Art Tabula Mundi Tarot copyright 2016
As foretold for 2016 e.v., the full color 78 card edition of Tabula Mundi Tarot is complete! Last year, after four years of intense concentrated effort, the pen and ink drawings for Tabula Mundi tarot deck were completed and the black and white edition, called Tabula Mundi Nox et Lux was successfully funded through Kickstarter. The Tabula Mundi Nox et Lux decks are now at the end of their print run and almost sold out, as they were a very small edition of 418. Now it is time for the color edition, right on schedule.
The Eight of Wands, Swiftness, combines elements from the trump of Sagittarius, Art, and that of Mercury, the Magus
I’ve spent the last year immersed in completing the remaining color paintings. So as promised for this year Anno V ii (2016), here is the full color edition, called Tabula Mundi Tarot Colores Arcus edition, the covenant fulfilled. The art is complete, the boxes are ready, the books are done and the printing company is standing by ready to make the full color 78 card decks a reality.
The Nine of Wands, Strength, combines elements from the trump of Sagittarius, Art, and that of the Moon, the Priestess
Tabula Mundi means “a picture of the world” and Colores Arcus is Latin for “colors of the rainbow”. Painting the cards in colored inks involved immersion in the Golden Dawn color scales, a system of assigning color to the Tree of Life. The color system, like the rest of the structure of Golden Dawn tarot, breaks down fourfold, each path and each sephira having a color from each of the four worlds or the four suits, corresponding to the letters of the Tetragrammaton YHVH.
The Ten of Wands, Oppression, combines elements from the Art card for Sagittarius, with those of the Universe for Saturn
The term Colores Arcus also is meant to refer to the trump card Art (aka Temperance). This edition was named after this card for the artistic and alchemical process of the work and the colors of the rainbow. The Art card is attributed to Sagittarius the Archer on the Tree of Life, its path leading from the station of the Moon to that of the Sun.
Tabula Mundi Tarot: the path that leads from the Moon to the Sun
This path is often associated with the formula of the “Veil of QeSheTh”, the Bow of the Archer that leads the arrow of the aspirant up the middle pillar on the path of Samekh. QeSheth in Hebrew means Bow, and refers to the three paths Qoph/Shin/Tau that lead from Malkuth and form the bow that propels the arrow. Regardie, and Crowley, refer to it as the “Bow of Promise” by which the Adept as arrow aims straight and true, “turning aside neither to the right hand nor the left”. Set the controls for the heart of the Sun and aim high!
The Six of Cups, Pleasure, combines the trump of Scorpio, Death, with the trump of the Sun
Tabula Mundi is an esoteric deck based on Golden Dawn teachings as outlined in Book T. These illustrations are not clones of any other deck, but they follow the occult archetypes. I hope you will agree that the images are unique and non-traditional yet recognizably correct to tradition of the Golden Dawn based tarot structure.
The Six of Wands, Victory, combines the trump of Lust for Leo with the trump of Fortune for Jupiter
Golden Dawn Color Scales for the Six of Wands:
The Six of Wands combines the color of the sephira (Tiphareth of Atziluth for the Six of Wands) with those of the related Majors
the color of Tiphareth of Atziluth: Clear Pink Rose
the colors of Leo: Greenish Yellow; Deep Purple; Grey; Reddish Yellow
the colors of Jupiter: Violet; Purple Tinged Blue; Bright Purple; Blue, Rayed Yellow
The Minor cards are fully illustrated. The titles and attributions are from the Thoth system and the deck has Thelemic underpinnings but the pictures of the world are their own. They are not like the minors of the Thoth, and not scenic in the RWS sense of a person engaged in a single activity, which broadens their range of interpretation yet still is evocative of meaning.
The Six of Swords, Science, combines the trump of Aquarius, the Star, with the trump of Mercury, the Magus
The 8 of Cups, Indolence, in progress. This card combines the Moon card for Pisces with the Universe card for Saturn.Only one color of the scale for the card left to add at this point.
The artworks are hand drawn and painted and not digitally manipulated. They are drawn on frosted acetate with permanent marker and then painted with colored acrylic inks in the appropriate colors per the Golden Dawn color scales. The color decks will have cards approximately 3.25x5 inches (same size as the black and white Tabula Mundi Nox et Lux edition) and will have rounded corners. The cards have minimal thin borders with the card title and the attribution symbols subtly placed under the image.
The finished card of the Nox et Lux edition next to Colores Arcus: water, water, every where and all the boards did shrink; water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink
The Memory Palace of the Tabula Mundi Tarot Court cards:
Knight of Wands: Swiftness & Strength; Debauch as the shadow
Many tarot enthusiasts know that the Major Arcana form the basis of the Minor Arcana. Each of the "decanic" cards, or the cards numbered Two through Ten, are aligned with a decan, which is ten degrees of a zodiac sign. Each ten degree segment of a sign is influenced by a certain planet. Therefore each of the decanic minors is associated with a sign, and a planet, and thus with the two related trumps or Major Arcana of that sign and planet.
Queen of Disks: Change & Work; Oppression as the shadow
Similarly, the Knights, Queens, and Princes are assigned over three decans, and so have three related Minor cards. The Courts are within a Memory Palace, as their minors are encoded into the images.
The Wands Courts: Palace of Fire
Woe unto whomsoever shall make war upon her, when thus firmly established!
The Princesses each have dominion over an entire quarter of the zodiac centered on the Kerubic sign of their element and are considered the “throne” of full flowering of the “root” first shown in the Aces, now fully unfolded and manifest. What I've done with Tabula Mundi is to code these relationships into the images.
Queen of Disks court crest
Every court card bears a crest as described in the Golden Dawn's Book T. In Book M every court card has an explanation of the symbolism of the crest.
Court crest of the Princess of Swords
Court crest description from Book M:
The Princess of the Rushing Winds, Lotus of the Palace of Air, has as a crest the head of Medusa with serpent hair. The name Medusa comes from the Greek word for "guardian, protectress". She was a Gorgon, from ancient Greek word gorgós, meaning terrible or dreadful, that comes from the Sanskrit word "garğ" which is a guttural sound similar to the growling of a beast. The Gorgons were three sisters with hair of venomous snakes. Looking at their flashing eyes was said to turn one to stone. In ancient Greece, the Gorgoneion was a stone carving of Medusa's head placed above doorways and used as an apotropaic amulet to ward against evil. The Medusa head design also was used by Athena as an aegis on an animal skin mantle, and sometimes on a shield. The Aegis implied divine birth or protection; doing something "under someone's aegis" means doing something under the protection of a powerful, knowledgeable, and benevolent source. The Princess of Swords is the earthy part of Air, smoke, and she represents the wrath of the gods and the influence of Heaven upon Earth. She has the power of settling controversies, and is stern and avenging. Hers is the grounded action taken in response to Idea. Her battle is on the astral level; she is the warrior of the mind. She battles to liberate herself from delusion.
The 2 of Cups, Love, combines Chariot and Empress
Liber Theta (the Thelemic version of Book T by James Eshelman) describes a process of meditation on cards that are related, for example by laying out the decanic Minor alongside its two related Majors. In order to obtain the ideas for the images of Tabula Mundi's Minors, I've reverse engineered this meditation by holding the images of the related Majors in mind along with the card's formal title and meaning, “surfing the aethers” until the image for the Minor presented.
Launch of the Tabula Mundi Colores Arcus falls within the middle decan of Cancer
I hope I have shown you enough cards so you can understand the deck and decide if you like it, but not show all of them so that you can have some fun exploring when it arrives. Some more of the cards will be shown in the updates!
TRUE METALLIC FOIL ACCENTED COLOR CARD BACKS? HOLOGRAMS?
The Colores Arcus edition will have new card backs in all the colors of the rainbow. Should we meet one of the stretch goals, they will also have metallic foil accents or rainbow flashing holographics. This differs from the Nox et Lux edition which had black and white card backs with subtle matte silver ink. While the softness of the silver ink was perfect for the Nox et Lux, the Colores Arcus with its jewel like color would look even more amazing with the flash of real metallic accents or with rainbow prisms! The new card backs are not shown so they can be a surprise, but they are based on the card backs of the Nox et Lux, just with color and possibly bling!
STRETCH GOALS:
Wow! All decks get holographic backs! Thank you!
What does the money go? About 60% of the funds collected go to production of the rewards. About 30% goes towards shipping - both shipping the decks to me from the printer but mainly, shipping the decks to you all around the world. The shipping out money needs to be in the goal as what you pay for shipping goes towards the goal per Kickstarter policy. It also covers the international subsidized shipping that I pay to reduce the burden on international backers. The rest covers the Kickstarter and credit card processing fees.There is no money in the goal to pay for the time and work over the years. The card art has already been completed for all 78 and most of the work is done except for box making (and making some new not yet seen cards and extras!) This was a 5 year mission, to boldly go where nemo has gone before. It is hoped that the extra inventory of decks not rewarded through Kickstarter eventually can be sold and will provide something. But it was a labor of love, love under will.
The Tabula Mundi Colores Arcus box:
Colores Arcus box with satin ribbon lift and ribbon bound booklet: the first 93, plus a few special numbers, will have an embossed gold seal
There is a 32 page “little white book”, beautifully presented on gloss paper with an embossed cover and a ribbon binding, that comes with the limited edition decks. The first 93 and a few select numbers will have a special embossed gold seal. The rest will have a different embossed cover.
This is the NOX et LVX. The black and white version of Tabula Mundi.
The small booklet has a paragraph and quote for the Majors and brief oracular statements for each card including the minors. But the text is minimal in comparison with the 240 page softcover full guidebook. The book called Book M: Liber Mundi, is replete with unique takes on the symbolism, inspirations for the artistic process, and card meanings. On the way it touches upon various mythologies, poetry, folklore, alchemy, and just enough astrology and Qabalah to explain the concepts. The book truly adds to the full appreciation the facets of these Minors - you won't be disappointed in the writing as it is unlike anything else out there. It offers the singular point of view of the artist and describes another picture of the world.
Table of Contents Book M: Liber Mundi
Book M: Liber Mundi also has a section for each minor card that compares the symbolic images in the cards to those of the Thoth, the Rider Waite-Smith, and my first deck, the Rosetta. The sections on the Minors and Courts are as rich as those on the Majors. What I've posted below is only a portion of the text in each chapter.
And now, some words excerpted from Book M: Liber Mundi
First, a small bit of the text from the chapter on the Fool:
The Fool says “I will be”. He stands suspended in mid air, poised at the brink of an intra-universe wormhole in space and time, seemingly oblivious to the step he is about to take which will propel him within and through. The Physics of Stargates defines a wormhole as “a region of space-time containing a “world tube” (the time evolution of a closed surface) that cannot be continuously deformed (shrunk) to a “world line” (the time evolution of a point). This is the Fool’s Journey; the beginning of a passage ending, or re-beginning, in the tube torus of The Universe.
The wormhole of the Fool and the tube torus at the end of the wormhole in the Universe
A wormhole is a hypothetical topological feature of space-time, like a tunnel connecting two universes. Traversable wormholes allow for travel in both directions from one part of the universe to another, or from one universe to another. Since they connect two points in space-time, theoretically they also allow for travel in time. Meditation on this in relation to The Fool will shed insight on its position and significance in the Tarot. The Fool can take you anywhere, to any point on the Fool’s Journey or all the way to the end. When you enter, there is no telling where you may end up. Or is there? Though the two ends of the wormhole may be in different areas of space and/or time, the inside, as a single piece of space-time, stays the same.
Since the Magus rules communication, here are a few more words selected from the chapter on the Magus:
The DJ's equipment includes headphones, or earphones. These are used to listen to one recording while the other recording is being played to the audience, or to listen to both recordings simultaneously. But misunderstanding is inherent in the act of confining a concept to words. When moving from the realm of the divine to the mundane, things can get lost in translation, modulation with distortion. The same things come with mixing music. Sometimes the distortion is noise and sometimes it is intentional. The key to harmonic ratios is hidden in the famous Pythagorean tetractys, made up of the first four numbers--1, 2, 3, and 4--which in their proportions reveal the intervals. Music, with all its passion and emotion, is based upon mathematical relationships. Such musical notions as octaves, chords, scales, and keys can be understood logically using mathematics. The most harmonic and magically effective music was said to use the golden ratio. The golden ratio is the most irrational of irrational numbers, an infinite series of ever diminishing fractions. This “divine proportion” was said to transmit the incomprehensibility of God. Thoth is the god associated with Mercury and was said to be the inventor of music, as well as mathematics, geometry, astronomy, astrology, oratory, writing, botany, medicine, theology – he pretty much is credited with every branch of knowledge, human and divine.
Wormholes are everywhere; watch out!
The golden ratio is also evident in the physics of black holes...Black holes and wormholes are similar and show the connection between the Fool and the Magus. But only wormholes are traversable. Black holes are tricksters, and unless you can travel faster than light, you just encounter a singularity.
The Magus wears the belt of the ouroboros portal from the Fool. The Magus is the first masculine emanation, as the androgynous Fool is separated into Magus and Priestess. The Fool has fallen through the wormhole and landed in the spiral galaxy in the Magus' hand. Where the Fool was silence, the indrawn breath before speech, the Magus is sound, the Logos. As breath activates words, the Fool activates Magus. The glyph of the planet Mercury has antennae, or horns. Mercury the figure wears the winged helm with a similar shape. With his antennae, Mercury transmits and receives transmission through the airwaves.
It would only be prudent to add some text from a Minor card
An excerpt from the chapter on the Eight of Disks:
The sun warming the Earth is a passive receipt; earth in its stability needs to do nothing at all in order to benefit from the warmth of the sun. Thus the card is one of prudence, of sowing the seed and waiting, of saving for a rainy day and accumulating interest, and of guarding one’s resources. With the Eight, one has learned from the errors of the Seven that things take time and care and cannot be rushed. With this care and labor comes fruitfulness. All in all it is a positive card, though there is some possibility of hoarding and being overly careful in regard to small matters, a trait of the sign of Virgo.
The related trump for this card is the Hermit, for Virgo. The Hermit’s staff is topped by an egg. Virgo is Yod, the secret seed of life, and here we see a nest with eight eggs that have been fertilized and are now being warmed by the Hermit’s lantern. Symbolically the lantern is that which lights ones path, and also the spark of life. It also has to do with diligence and intelligence, appropriate for the combination of Hod (Mercury), and the Sun. The card speaks of wise discernment and aptitude in material matters. In India, the lantern is associated with the festival of Divali and symbolizes knowledge. Divali honors Lakshmi, for wealth and prosperity, Ganesha for ethical beginnings, Saraswati for learning, and Kubera who symbolizes treasury, book keeping, and wealth management.
The combination of the Sun and Virgo suggests husbandry both of crops and of animals, as well as engineering. If one has ever raised birds from eggs, one knows that they need to be carefully tended, |
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Air conditioning systems release waste heat into the atmosphere such that their widespread use can inadvertently elevate city air temperatures. This graph shows the result of a model that calculated the likely magnitude of the effect during the 2003 heat wave in Paris. Credit: Météo France/Cécile de Munck
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Surface temperatures vary more than air temperatures during the day, but they both are fairly similar at night. Credit: EPA
› Larger image Development produces heat islands by replacing vegetation, particularly forests, with pavement and other urban infrastructure. This limits plant transpiration, an evaporative process that helps cool plant leaves and also cools air temperatures, explained Robert Wolfe of Goddard, one of the scientists who developed the method.
Dark city infrastructure, such as black roofs, also makes urban areas more apt to absorb and retain heat. Heat generated by motor vehicles, factories, and homes also contributes to the development of urban heat islands.
A New View
The new method for comparing cities, which the team of scientists has honed for about two years, involves the use of maps of impervious surface area produced by a United States Geological Survey-operated Landsat satellite, and land surface temperature data from the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), an instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites.
Impervious surfaces are surfaces that don’t absorb water easily, such as roads, roofs, parking lots, and sidewalks. Land surface temperatures tend to be higher and more variable than air temperatures, but the two generally vary in sync with each other.
By analyzing data from thousands of settlements around the world, the Goddard team has pinpointed key characteristics of cities that drive the development of heat islands. The largest cities, their analysis shows, usually have the strongest heat islands. Cities located in forested regions, such as the northeastern United States, also have stronger heat islands than cities situated in grassy or desert environments.
Most recently, the Goddard group has shown that a city’s development patterns — whether a city is sprawling or compact — can also affect the strength of its heat island.
By comparing 42 cities in the Northeast, they found that densely-developed cities with compact urban cores are more apt to produce strong urban heat islands than more sprawling, less intensely-developed cities.
The compact city of Providence, R.I., for example, has surface temperatures that are about 12.2 °C (21.9 °F) warmer than the surrounding countryside, while similarly-sized but spread-out Buffalo, N.Y., produces a heat island of only about 7.2 °C (12.9 °F), according to satellite data. Since the background ecosystems and sizes of both cities are about the same, Zhang’s analysis suggests development patterns are the critical difference.
She found that land cover maps show that about 83 percent of Providence is very or moderately densely-developed. Buffalo, in contrast, has dense development patterns across just 46 percent of the city. Providence also has dense forested areas ringing the city, while Buffalo has a higher percentage of farmland. “This exacerbates the effect around Providence because forests tend to cool areas more than crops do,” explained Wolfe.
Cities in desert regions, such as Las Vegas, in contrast, often have weak heat islands or are actually cooler than the surrounding rural area. Providence, R.I.; Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia, Pa.; Baltimore, Md.; Boston, Ma.; and Pittsburgh, Pa.; had some of the strongest heat islands of the 42 northeastern cities analyzed.
“The urban heat island is a relative measure comparing the temperature of the urban core to the surrounding area,” said Marc Imhoff, the leader of the Goddard research group. “As a result, the condition of the rural land around the city matters a great deal.”
Heat Island Impacts
Ratcheting up temperatures can have significant — and deadly — consequences for cities. Heat islands not only cause air conditioner and electricity usage to surge, but they also increase the mortality of elderly people and those with pre-existing respiratory and cardiovascular illness.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that, between 1979 and 2003, heat exposure has caused more than the number of mortalities resulting from hurricanes, lightning, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes combined.
“It is the lack of cooling at nighttime, rather than high daytime temperatures, that poses a health risk,” said Benedicte Dousset, a scientist from the University of Hawaii who also presented data about heat islands at the AGU meeting.
Dousset recently analyzed surface temperature images of Paris and showed the spatial distribution of heat-related deaths during a sweltering heat wave in 2003. Some 4,800 premature deaths occurred in Paris during the event, and excess mortality across Europe is thought to be about 70,000.
The risk of death was highest at night in areas where land surface temperatures were highest, she found. Buildings and other infrastructure absorb sensible heat during the day and reradiate it throughout the night, but the cooling effect of evaporation is absent in cities. The lack of relief, particularly among the elderly population, can be deadly, she explained.
Ramped up air conditioning usage may have even exacerbated the problem, other data presented at the meeting suggests. Cecile de Munck, of the French Centre for Meteorological Research of Meteo-France, conducted a series of modeling experiments that show excess heat expelled onto the streets because of increased air conditioner usage during heat waves can elevate outside street temperatures significantly.
“The finding raises the question: what can we do to design our cities in ways that will blunt the worst effects of heat islands?” said de Munck, who notes also that her research shows that some types of air conditioning exacerbate heat islands more than others.
Making sure cities have trees and parks interspersed throughout the compact urban cores can also help defend against heat islands. And studies shows that painting the surfaces of roads and buildings white instead of black and creating “green” roofs that include vegetation can soften urban heat islands.
“There’s no one solution, and it’s going to be different for every city,” said Dousset. “Heat islands are complex phenomena.”
Related Links:
Beating the Heat in the World’s Big Cities
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GreenRoof/
EPA Heat Island Resources
www.epa.gov/heatisld
Ecosystem, Vegetation Affect Intensity of Urban Heat Island Effect
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/terra/news/heat-islands.html
Urban Heat Island: Baltimore
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36227
Scientific Visualization Studio: Related Materials
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010600/a010699/index.html
Briefing Materials: Slideshows
Lead Author Ping Zhang; Goddard Space Flight Center
› Download pdf
Benedicte Dousset, University of Hawaii
› Download pdf
Cecile de Munck; French Centre for Meteorological Research of Meteo-France
› Download pdf Adam Voiland
NASA’s Earth Science News Team
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RedditEVERYBODY KNEW: Matt Lauer’s Disgusting Behavior Lauded At 2008 Roast
Fox News has revealed and exposed lewd and promiscuous jokes – the subject matter pushing the limits of sexist, racist, homophobic, and obscene ‘humor’.
The 2008 Friars Club roast took place in New York City and was attended by many notable figures – from Donald Trump, Norman Lear, Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer, and Howard Stern. Numerous executives from across the entertainment and news business were also in attendance for the roast.
A 2008 article from the Village Voice – showcased in the Fox News’ article – minces no words, detailing Meredith Viera’s jokes for the roast:
Look at Katie Couric. She juggled Matt’s balls for six years. That’s three years per ball.
Martha Stewart jokingly claimed…
I hear NBC executives call Matt the ‘Cock of the Rock’
…and who could overlook the comments from Lauer himself…
What’s with all the small-dick jokes? It was fun to look over and see Ann Curry laughing… like she doesn’t know how big my dick really is.
The Village Voice, which obtained these jokes in secrecy by having their reporter write “down the dirtiest jokes on a notepad under the table”, shines a spotlight on claims that various NBC executives didn’t know about Lauer’s disturbing behavior. A media executive in attendance of the roast said:
This was a comedic roast, but there was clearly a vein of truth running through all those jokes. You had Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira and Jeff Zucker all standing up there joking about his sex in the office, his kinkiness. They all knew.
Notably, when NBC News fired Lauer last week for inappropriate behavior, the top bosses of the network claimed they had no prior knowledge of Lauer’s actions.
Dating as far back as 2008, there were comments and jokes surrounding Lauer’s disgusting and abusive behavior.
With the Village Voice covering and detailing the Friars Club roast obscene jokes, it’s plain as day that NBC’s claims of not knowing about Lauer’s abhorrent behavior were made in an effort to cover their bases – but now, they’ve been exposed as lying in an attempt to insulate themselves – which makes them an enabler of Lauer’s abuse.When you think open source, chances are you think software. You may not know that there are open-source fonts as well. Today, Google and Ubuntu have released a new free, open font to the Web: the Ubuntu Font Family.
Web developers will be able to use Google Font API to select the Ubuntu fonts from the Google Font Directory. With these fonts embedded on the page, Web visitors will always see the text and fonts as intended. It doesn't matter what Web browser or operating system visitors are using, or even if the font is not installed on their PC, smartphone, or tablet, they'll see the fonts you've selected for them. The new Ubuntu Font Family debuted in Ubuntu 10.10 release and is also available for download from the Ubuntu Font Family site.
These fonts really are open. They were developed by Dalton Maag font foundry and are free to be shared, sold, bundled and built upon. This release includes Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek support, and future versions will include support for Hebrew and Arabic.
In a statement, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, said: "Our focus on design and usability in Ubuntu led us to create a font which is at once beautiful and readable. We're delighted to share the Ubuntu Font Family with web designers around the world who want their websites to be stylish and readable in as many languages and browsers as possible. The publication of the Ubuntu font on the global Google Font Directory is an appropriate treat for the festive season, and we wish all those who contribute to, and enjoy the benefits of, free software and open content a very happy and healthy solstice and New Year."
To add the Ubuntu Font Family to your pages go to the Google Font Directory Select "Ubuntu" and insert the two lines of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) code provided as instructed into your page The full font source code can be downloaded from the Ubuntu font page.
As neat as this is for Ubuntu and font fans, I should note that Red Hat also has a set of open-source fonts: Liberation Fonts. These Red Hat fonts are meant more for desktop use and are usually used in place of common Windows fonts. There are three sets of Liberation Fonts: Sans (a substitute for Arial, Albany, Helvetica, Nimbus Sans L, and Bitstream Vera Sans), Serif (a substitute for Times New Roman, Thorndale, Nimbus Roman, and Bitstream Vera Serif) and Mono (a substitute for Courier New, Cumberland, Courier, Nimbus Mono L, and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono). I use Liberation Serif myself all the time on OpenOffice and LibreOffice.
In addition, the Google Font Directory also includes numerous other open-source fonts. If you're the kind of person who likes to play with fonts, support open-source, and have absolute control over how your Web pages look, the Google Font Directory is a great resource. Just, please, please, don't use Comic Sans.So here are some new screenshots with some improved graphics. I also thought it would be a good opportunity to show the combat interface of Chaos Reborn. It is remarkably simple - on the surface. When you select a creature, every space you can move to is highlighted, and every enemy you can attack is highlighted. For each enemy there is a percentage number which tells you the chance of killing that enemy in combat. This number is derived from the ratio of the attacker's Combat Rating to the defenders defence rating. Combat always has two possible outcomes - either you kill the enemy or you don't. It may be obvious from this system that it is always possible to kill an enemy, no matter how unlikely. This is a major part of the Chaos experience - the uncertainty, the hope, the desperation. Everything matters and everything can change.
There are subtleties, of course. Creature abilities can affect combat in various ways. The Undead, for example, may only be attacked by other undead, magic spells or magic weapons. The Giant Spider launches a web attack to pin down an enemy instead of a conventional attack. You also have to consider, in your turn, what the enemy could do to you in his turn. To be a good Chaos Reborn player you have to be a good judge of risk and identify your threats and opportunities. You have to read your opponent, and use bluff where necessary. it is a bit like Poker with monsters and magic.Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has called universal basic income (UBI) “an idea whose time may well have come”. It means a fixed regular payment to each citizen, irrespective of income or behaviour. It is seen by both socialists and Silicon Valley as a panacea for the post-industrial world, addressing unrestrained inequality, economic insecurity, and automation-generated unemployment in the modern economy.
Guy Standing, a professor at Soas and founding member of Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), says a “perfect storm of factors have suddenly pushed us into being a mainstream policy question” in recent years. “A lot of people who were sitting on their hands, as it were, have started to come out in favour... I'm inundated with requests to speak and involvement in conferences, and it's indicative of the sudden realisation that if the growing inequality and growing economic insecurities persist, then the drift to fascist populism will continue.
“Of course, in the background, a lot of these techies including prominent names in Silicon Valley have come out in favour because they see robots displacing us all. I don't buy that argument, but it's added to a growing chorus of people saying that we should take it more seriously.”
Standing's recent book charts the long history of thinking about UBI (through ancient Greece, Thomas More, and Martin Luther King). But the idea's rise to prominence is the result of a interlinked developments in the economy and the nature of work. As Labour MP Jonathan Reynolds argues, changes such as the rise of self-employment and the gig economy challenge the appropriateness of the traditional welfare state. It's “based around the principle of compulsion, and broadly believing there's two binary states – people in work, and people out of work. We know it's becoming a much more complicated picture than that... The state can't keep up with the complexity of people's lives.”
For Standing, the prospects of UBI being implemented successfully depend largely on how it is framed. He is wary of libertarians who see it as an opportunity to dismantle the welfare state, and believes it needs to be placed within the context of chronic economic insecurity for a growing number within the post-industrial economy.
“The argument that I think is going to prove really important for the left is linked to the growth of the 'precariat',” he says, meaning those living without predictability or security. “People in the precariat are experiencing chronic insecurity that will not be overcome by any existing policy.”
Even so, support from business could be key. Peter Swenson's work on the history of the welfare state finds that reforms and expansions of social policy have only succeeded when key sections of the capitalist class are in support. He, and other academics, resist the idea that the welfare state is simply the focal point for the battle between left and right over Robin-Hood style redistribution. If UBI is to make its way into policy, support from business may be more important than the strengthening of the left.
Reynolds claims UBI may solve not just policy problems, but political ones. "You have to say that Labour's situation, in terms of how we've struggled on all of these issues (the party's polling is significantly behind on running the welfare state) over the last few years, means that we should definitely be open to new thinking in this area.” Both he and Standing are part of the working group that was brought together by McDonnell in February to produce a publication on the issue before the next general election, which would then be discussed across the country. Understandably, the group didn't quite meet its deadline. But Standing says “the general thrust of the plans hasn't changed”.
Standing is hopeful that important sections of the Labour Party are either in support, or can be won over. Clearly, the leadership is generally supportive of the idea – both McDonnell and Corbyn have expressed as much in public statements. Standing says many MPs are “rethinking their position... many of them have not taken up a position because they thought that this was not an issue to be considered. I think we're seeing a real opening for a much more constructive discussion.”
Reynolds says that “there's people on the right and the left of the party who are in favour, there's people on the right and the left who are against”.
Nevertheless, discussion is winning over important Labour constituencies. It's not just radical activist groups, but also trade unions, who are coming round to the idea. According to Standing: “Unite now supports it, as well as a lot of unions in Europe. It used to be the case that the unions were among the most fierce critics of a basic income, on the spurious grounds (in my view) that if people had a basic income they wouldn't push for higher wages and employers wouldn't give higher wages.
“We found in our pilots and in our psychological research that people who have basic security have a stronger bargaining position and are therefore more likely to stand up for their rights, and can lead to improvement in wages and working conditions. So I think that all of those objections are gradually being exposed by theoretical arguments against them, or empirical evidence, from pilots.”
Reynolds agrees that “there's a lot of support coming from the wider labour movement”, but warns that people must not be too optimistic about anything happening quickly. “Clearly it's going to need a radical change to how the tax and benefits system would work, and you'd obviously be completely recasting how personal allowances work, and all of that,” he says. “I think this is sort of the cutting edge of thinking about the future and what our economy will look like in 50-100 years' time, that is the frame that we're looking at.”This particular one is mostly just rough sex, but it starts getting into my special kinks towards the very end. Don’t read this particular chapter if you aren’t willing to read actions that are biologically and physically impossible on several levels.
—–
Far away, a stone castle sat on black earth, underneath a blood red sky. Inside of the castle, a figure walked confidently down a hallway, curvy hips swaying. This figure’s skin was an unnatural white, the same color as her hair, with black traceries visible on the sides of her face. Her clothes only brought attention to the odd color, a black tunic that left her arms, legs, and most of her midriff completely bare, with a long piece of cloth hanging loose over her waist to conceal a little of her modesty, though flashes of an enormous, bitch-breaking cock could be seen when the cloth shifted just right. Her eyes were perhaps what was oddest about her, black sclera with glowing red irises.
Still, the most unnerving thing was the cocky, feral grin. Her teeth were normal, except for the slightly larger than average canines, but then again the teeth weren’t the unnerving thing.
No, the unnerving thing was what the smile meant. Salem, Mistress of the Grimm, was in a good mood. And that never boded well.
She shouldered open the door to her throne room. It never failed to fill her with satisfaction, seeing all of the former Huntresses arranged in a circle around her seat of power, restrained by powerful tendrils that Salem had bred specifically for this purpose. Three of the Huntresses were already unconscious, thick seed oozing from every hole. Salem had been busy managing her forces for the last little bit, but she’d made certain to thoroughly work off some of the pressure beforehand in order to focus.
Now, though, she’d had to go without a good fuck for a couple of hours, and her absurdly potent balls were already full again, almost painfully so. Salem relished the slight ache, though. It always felt better when she had to really work one of her sluts over to blow off some steam.
Usually, when she got to feeling like this, she’d pick two or three. Not today, though. Today, she treated herself to her favorite.
Most of her pets were completely naked, but not this one. Salem had let this one keep the tattered remnants of a white cloak around her shoulders. When Salem reached her, the woman’s silver eyes glared up at her, still defiant. Salem chuckled. “Hey, Summer, I’ve got good news for you! Let’s-”
Salem stopped, noticing something wrong. She bent down, examining Summer’s restraints. Teeth marks. The Huntress had been chewing through the absurdly tough Grimm keeping her attached to the ground. And even the stone floor was chipped, near where it was attached!
Salem laughed outright, amazed. “I can’t believe it! Twelve years in, and you’re still trying to escape! Most of these other whores didn’t last a tenth of that time before I broke them down, but you’re still going!” She reached down and slung Summer over her shoulder. The pale Huntress struggled, but against Salem she might as well have been trying to push away the ground beneath her feet. “That’s why you’re my favorite. You’ve still got fight in you.”
She turns and starts the walk back to her private quarters, reaching a hand up and squeezing Summer’s ass. “I can’t wait until you break around my cock. You’ll be an amazing servant.”
—–
Salem sets Summer down on her knees, tearing the cloth concealing her waist away. She could always make another outfit, and she was not in the mood for waiting. Salem’s cock sprang out, slapping Summer across the face and splattering her with Salem’s pre.
Salem’s dick was intimidating, and despite twelve years of experience Summer still swallowed nervously when it was laid across her face. The whole thing was as long as her forearm, and wider around than her fist. The thick, veiny length darkened from Salem’s usual pale white color to an angry purple towards the tip, and clear fluid flowed in rivulets. Salem’s balls were enormous as well, the smooth pale sack holding two apple-sized orbs.
Salem abruptly grabbed Summer’s hair, pulled her away, then hilted herself in the Huntress’s throat, stretching her jaw wide. “Mmph! I thought I’d give you the chance to make things easier on yourself, but I guess you wanted to do things the hard way!”
Salem’s throatfucking is thorough, and brutal. Summer’s saliva coats her mistress’s shaft, helping it glide down towards her stomach. Of course, it’s not nearly enough to make the passage easy, and the crushingly tight confines of her neck squeeze down on Salem’s cock, leaving no room for air.
After what feels like an eternity, Salem pulls out enough for Summer to gasp for air around the cockhead still in her mouth. She can’t do more than feebly struggle as Salem lifts her up and sets her down on the bed, letting Summer’s head hang backwards over the edge. Salem pushes the first few inches of her length back into the Huntress’s mouth, lightly moving back and forth over her tongue. “Hey, let’s make things interesting, alright? I’m gonna choke you with my dick, and I’m not going to pull out until you make me cum. It would be a shame to lose you over something like this, so I hope you’re ready!”
Summer’s eyes widen, and she barely has enough time to take a deep breath before Salem grabs the sides of her head and thrusts in down to her base, going so deep that Summer swears she can feel the cock inside of her stomach.
She starts swallowing, shifting her head up and down, anything she can do to increase the stimulation. She tries to lap at Salem’s balls with her tongue, but the weird position she’s in just leaves her licking the top of the shaft. Summer reaches back, fondling the heavy orbs with her hands, trying her best to make the Grimm Mistress climax.
It’s not working. Summer’s body cries out for air, but Salem just does her best to thrust a little bit deeper. “Fuck, you’re good at this. Better hurry up, though~”
Summer’s vision starts to fade, and she tries her last resort. She starts swallowing heavily around Salem’s cock, and one of the hands fondling her falls reaches back further to slip a finger into Salem’s ass.
The unnaturally pale woman stiffens, her cock swelling as she starts to pour shot after shot of her seed directly into Summer’s stomach. She stops unusually quickly and pulls out, but Summer is too grateful for the air to second guess the source.
At least until Salem hilts herself down her throat again. “Ballsy move, bitch.” She growls. “You’re lucky I like you so much, or else you’d be getting way worse than this.” Salem wraps her hands around Summer’s throat, squeezing the Huntress around her cock. She starts thrusting at a frenzied pace, the rampant abuse of her throat making Summer’s eyes flutter shut as fresh juices run down the inside of her thigh.
In moments, Salem bursts again, flooding Summer’s body with cum. “That’s more like it, drink it all!”
When Salem pulled out, the taste of her seed on Summer’s tongue made the near-insensate girl moan. She might have retained her independence and free will across the years of captivity, and her mind was as sharp as ever, but there was only so much a body could take before it was overwhelmed with the pleasure.
The Huntress vaguely registered being turned over, before the sensation of an intrusion punching all the way up through her cunt and smashing into the back walls of her womb made her jolt back to wakefulness with an agonizingly blissful scream.
Salem pulls Summer up until she’s on all fours, then immediately starts a fast, rutting pace. The pale woman leans down until her breath is tickling Summer’s ear, making sure that her prisoner can hear her over the moans, and the loud noises of their bodies smacking together. “That’s right, Summer, didn’t I say I had good news for you? It’s about your daughter!”
Summer’s eyes fly open, before an extremely rough thrust from Salem makes them roll back in her head. The Huntress fights to stay conscious, trying to focus on the witch’s next words.
Salem chuckles. “You know, I hadn’t thought much of her, until some of my pets ran into…what was her name again? Ruby? She looks just like you! The hair, the body, the cloak…the eyes.”
Summer gasps and whimpers as she feels pressure against her back door, Salem rubbing a finger that had been lubed up with the fluids coating her shaft over the tight ring. She pushes it inside, then quickly follows with a second. And then a third. “And that’s not all she shares. Did you know that she decided to become a Huntress? Got into Beacon early, as a matter of fact! And she’s already been taken by some of my little beauties, too. Sure, she got free, but she was a Minotaur’s cocksleeve for at least an hour. Then the Charybdis trapped her, and egged her over and over.”
Salem’s whole hand worked its way into Summer’s tight ass, making the girl squeal as she desperately fought to stay coherent. Salem started to feel around, testing the limits of her toy, delighting at how far she could push Summer when her Aura was helping to shield her from damage and pain. A wicked idea occurred to her, and she started pushing her hand further into Summer’s body, stretching both sets of her internal walls to their limits until she managed to feel what she was looking for. “The girl’s a natural, just like you are. Do you want to see what she’s up against right now?”
Translucent Grimm coated the walls of Salem’s chamber, to help her control her forces. At her command, the one that Summer was facing flashed to life, showing a Grimm’s-eye view of a battered and weakened Team RWBY, their Auras depleted. “You know, Summer, I think you had a run in with this particular Patriarch. I’m certain it’ll be more than happy to work out any frustrations it has with you on dear little Ruby.”
The hand abusing Summer’s insides reached its target, stretching her back passage enough to let Salem grab her womb. The dominant woman hilts herself inside of Summer again, massaging the head of her cock through Summer’s body, jerking herself off with Summer’s innermost chamber. Summer howls at the sensation, her her whole body twitching and shuddering in sensory overload. Salem just smirks, and starts to force her second hand into Summer’s body. “You know, I bet the poor little girl misses her mommy. It must have been hard for her, growing up alone, probably thinking that you’re dead.”
Summer just barely holds onto consciousness, the multiple massive intrusions in her body threatening to crush her under a wave of pleasure. Salem doesn’t press the advantage, easing her crushing grip on Summer’s womb, instead just gently rubbing her reproductive system through her body, an action that by itself is causing mind-bending sensations. “I should bring her here. After all, what sort of monster separates a mother from her child?”
Summer freezes, but Salem just laughs. “That’s a project for later, then. For now…watch!” Salem’s hands push deeper inside of her, until she can grab hold of Summer’s ovaries. “I’m going to make you cum your fucking brains out while you watch your daughter get bred! I’m going to fill you up with the Grimm that are going to bring her here!”
Salem’s thrusts resume their frantic pace, burying her cock inside of Summer with enough force to break the bones of a non-Huntress. She squeezes Summer’s ovaries, the sensitive little sacs being milked for their eggs, the valuable little cells tumbling into Summer’s womb at the height of Salem’s breeding frenzy.
Summer’s body can’t make a proper noise. She can’t even close her eyes, with her brain so utterly scrambled from Salem’s hideously pleasurable abuses. All she can do is experience the torturous bliss of her body being brutalized, and watch her daughter fight a desperate battle against a monster. Salem climaxes with a yell, nearly crushing Summer’s ovaries in her grip as she pumps the Huntress’s womb full to bursting with her fluids. The last thing Summer sees before she’s overcome by a wall of pleasure is Ruby, her daughter, crying out in ecstasy as a Grimm fills her with its seed.Incoming Trump administration officials need to make sure the news they promote on social media is legitimate and truthful, an Illinois congressman said Tuesday.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., said on CNN Tuesday that tweets from retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President-elect Trump's incoming national security adviser, and his son Michael G. Flynn, are troublesome because they promoted debunked conspiracy theories. The younger Flynn, who is his father's chief of staff, in particular has promoted the "Pizzagate" story.
That story purports the Clintons and top Democrats ran a child sex ring out of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria. A man was arrested after bringing multiple guns to that restaurant on Sunday and firing a shot.
"When you get a government position — whether it's a U.S. congressman, whether it's national security adviser or anything — you now have a different level of commitment to the truth that you have to hold onto because people are going to take your words and take them literally," Kinzinger said.
The Republican lawmaker added that news consumers have to do a little bit more work to determine the credibility of the stories they read.
"That's really incumbent on the end user, and the person using Facebook, to find out if that story that sounds pretty outrageous actually is," Kinzinger said. "Nine times out of 10, if that story sounds crazy, it usually is."
Kinzinger said Flynn's appointment as national security adviser is one of the few selections President-elect Trump has made to his Cabinet that he's troubled by. The congressman said Flynn's sympathetic statements about Russia give him pause, though he is enthused by the former intelligence official's tough talk on terror.
"There's no doubt that he's very good talking about the fact of terror and destroying ISIS and destroying that organization," Kinzinger said. "But, the Russia thing concerns me a little bit."
Later on Tuesday, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said he was worried about Flynn's judgment.
"I have grave concerns about the judgment of Lt. General Michael Flynn," Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. "He has regularly engaged in the reckless public promotion of conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact, with disregard for the risks that giving credence to those theories could pose to the public.
"The National Security Adviser is responsible for filtering and assessing crucial information pertaining to the national defense. Someone who is so oblivious to the facts, or intentionally ignorant of them, should not be entrusted with policy decisions that affect the safety of the American people."AUGUSTA, Maine (Reuters) - A Maine man who claims to have spent 27 years living in the woods as a hermit pleaded guilty on Monday to burglary and theft in a deal in which he will receive mental health counseling to re-enter society.
Judge Nancy Mills, of Maine Superior Court, ordered Christopher Knight, 47, to check in weekly with the court to confirm that he is either working full time, attend schooling or volunteering, and undergoing mental health counseling for a year to ensure a “successful” return to the community.
“This is someone who has had no involvement with anybody for 27 years,” Knight’s lawyer, Walter McKee, said. “It’s a very unique case, a very unique sentence for a very unique person.”
Knight said he walked into the woods in 1986 shortly after he heard about the Chernobyl nuclear accident and claims to have had little human contact since.
He pleaded guilty on Monday to 13 counts of burglary and theft, and was returned to jail to await his release when terms of the agreement are finalized.
Knight was arrested in April after police said they caught him stealing food and supplies he needed to survive from a summer camp for the disabled along North Pond about 20 miles west of Maine’s capital of Augusta.
Gaunt and pale with a full beard, Knight listened quietly as Mills asked if he understood he would be required to tell his court-appointed case manager “the truth” in order to receive the best rehabilitation treatment possible.
“Who will decide what is the truth?” Knight replied.
McKee said Knight poses no threat to society, but it was still unclear where he would reside upon release.
“That’s been the big issue since day one, where is he going to go?,” said McKee, who said no one knew how Knight might respond to the everyday pressures of society.
District Attorney Maeghan Maloney said the agreement hinged on the nature of Knight’s crimes.
“He was stealing peanut butter. He was not stealing jewelry. And he did not at any point attack a human being. Those were top considerations,” she said.
Knight initially pleaded not guilty when indicted in August, but changed his plea on Monday after lawyers and the judge agreed to the alternative sentence and rehabilitation.
Knight’s case has been romanticized by many, but police say that he committed as many as 1,000 burglaries in order to survive.
Knight’s camp, well-appointed with a tent, sleeping bags and cook stove, was just a few hundred yards from the nearest house. It was hidden among boulders and crevices on a hillside of evergreens, leaving neighbors uneasy for decades.Here are some of Sai Baba’s views about what is essential to women
“How To Celebrate Ladies’ Day? The Ladies’ Day should not be observed only by making speeches or holding Bhajans. They should endeavour to help the poor and the destitute. Helpless women who have no means of livelihood should be taught some occupations like tailoring to enable them to earn an income. Slum dwellers should be helped to keep their huts clean. The environment also should be cleaned to help the children grow in a pure atmosphere. Proper housekeeping should also be taught to those people.” ( Baba, SS. 6/96, p. 160)
But Sai Baba himself help speeches and conducted bhajans (or accepted worship during darsans) and did no other real work in serving others, which he constantly pressed others to do in his name. All the hard service was done for his personal existence or to extol his name! Once he got his own ashram, he never went near anything like slum dwellers or gave them a helping hand, even symbolically.
“Bhagavan then delivered His discourse, in the course of which. He extolled the role of mother as the moulder of the family and the first teacher for children. In the evening, there was a cultural programme entitled ‘Naari Shakti’ (The power of women), which highlighted the glory of Indian womanhood as revealed in the story of Savitri, who brought back her husband from the Lord of death. ” (Editor Sanathana Sarathi 12/96. pp. 328 & 329).
The above shows how Sai Baba uses absurdly impossible myths to instil outworn and discredited Hindu ideas about women. His heroic holy women are, in the society he encouraged, are still to be mainly tied to the cooker and the kitchen sink, as reflected in his praise of what Russian women do (with the reward: a bit of ‘free time’ one day in the year):-
“Women should realise that, irrespective of their education or position, their foremost obligation is |
use problem" is the name we give to the persecution of people who use certain drugs.[11]:64
Szasz cites former U.S. Representative James M. Hanley's reference to drug users as "vermin", using "the same metaphor for condemning persons who use or sell illegal drugs that the Nazis used to justify murdering Jews by poison gas – namely, that the persecuted persons are not human beings, but'vermin.'"[18]
Therapeutic State [ edit ]
The "Therapeutic State" is a phrase coined by Szasz in 1963.[19] The collaboration between psychiatry and government leads to what Szasz calls the therapeutic state, a system in which disapproved actions, thoughts, and emotions are repressed ("cured") through pseudomedical interventions.[20][21]:17 Thus suicide, unconventional religious beliefs, racial bigotry, unhappiness, anxiety, shyness, sexual promiscuity, shoplifting, gambling, overeating, smoking, and illegal drug use are all considered symptoms or illnesses that need to be cured.[21]:17 When faced with demands for measures to curtail smoking in public, binge-drinking, gambling or obesity, ministers say that "we must guard against charges of nanny statism."[22] The "nanny state" has turned into the "therapeutic state" where nanny has given way to counselor.[22] Nanny just told people what to do; counselors also tell them what to think and what to feel.[22] The "nanny state" was punitive, austere, and authoritarian, the therapeutic state is touchy-feely, supportive – and even more authoritarian.[22]
According to Szasz, "the therapeutic state swallows up everything human on the seemingly rational ground that nothing falls outside the province of health and medicine, just as the theological state had swallowed up everything human on the perfectly rational ground that nothing falls outside the province of God and religion."[23]:515 Faced with the problem of "madness", Western individualism proved to be ill-prepared to defend the rights of the individual: modern man has no more right to be a madman than medieval man had a right to be a heretic because if once people agree that they have identified the one true God, or Good, it brings about that they have to guard members and nonmembers of the group from the temptation to worship false gods or goods.[23]:496 A secularization of God and the medicalization of good resulted in the post-Enlightenment version of this view: once people agree that they have identified the one true reason, it brings about that they have to guard against the temptation to worship unreason – that is, madness.[23]:496
Civil libertarians warn that the marriage of the state with psychiatry could have catastrophic consequences for civilization.[24] In the same vein as the separation of church and state, Szasz believes that a solid wall must exist between psychiatry and the state.[23]
American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization [ edit ]
Believing that psychiatric hospitals are like prisons not hospitals and that psychiatrists who subject others to coercion function as judges and jailers not physicians,[25] Szasz made efforts to abolish involuntary psychiatric hospitalization for over two decades, and in 1970 took a part in founding the American Association for the Abolition of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization (AAAIMH).[26] Its founding was announced by Szasz in 1971 in the American Journal of Psychiatry[27] and American Journal of Public Health.[28] The association provided legal help to psychiatric patients and published a journal, The Abolitionist.[29]
Relationship to Citizens Commission on Human Rights [ edit ]
In 1969, Szasz and the Church of Scientology co-founded the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) to oppose involuntary psychiatric treatments. Szasz served on CCHR's Board of Advisors as Founding Commissioner.[30] In the keynote address at the 25th anniversary of CCHR, Szasz stated, "We should all honor CCHR because it is really the organization that for the first time in human history has organized a politically, socially, internationally significant voice to combat psychiatry. This has never been done in human history before."[31]
Distancing from any type of religion [ edit ]
In a 2009 interview aired by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Szasz explained his reason for collaborating with CCHR and lack of involvement with Scientology:
Well I got affiliated with an organisation long after I was established as a critic of psychiatry, called Citizens Commission for Human Rights, because they were then the only organisation and they still are the only organisation who had money and had some access to lawyers and were active in trying to free mental patients who were incarcerated in mental hospitals with whom there was nothing wrong, who had committed no crimes, who wanted to get out of the hospital. And that to me was a very worthwhile cause; it's still a very worthwhile cause. I no more believe in their religion or their beliefs than I believe in the beliefs of any other religion. I am an atheist, I don't believe in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, in Buddhism and I don't believe in Scientology. I have nothing to do with Scientology.[32]
Reception [ edit ]
Szasz was a strong critic of institutional psychiatry and his publications were very widely read. He argued that so-called mental illnesses had no underlying physiological basis, but were unwanted and unpleasant behaviors. Mental illness, he said was only a metaphor that described problems that people faced in their daily lives, labeled as if they were medical diseases. Szasz's ideas had little influence on mainstream psychiatry but were supported by some behavioral and social scientists. Sociologist Erving Goffman, who wrote Asylums, was skeptical about psychiatric practices. He was concerned that the stigma and social rejection associated with psychiatric treatment might harm people. Thomas Scheff, also a sociologist, had similar reservations.[33]
Russell Tribunal [ edit ]
In the summer of 2001, Szasz took a part in a Russell Tribunal on Human rights in Psychiatry held in Berlin between June 30 and July 2, 2001.[34] The tribunal brought in the two following verdicts: the majority verdict claimed that there was "serious abuse of human rights in psychiatry" and that psychiatry was "guilty of the combination of force and unaccountability"; the minority verdict, signed by the Israeli Law Professor Alon Harel and Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho, called for "public critical examination of the role of psychiatry".[34]
Awards [ edit ]
Szasz was honored with over fifty awards including:[3]
Kendell's views [ edit ]
Robert Evan Kendell presents (in Schaler, 2005[37]) a critique of Szasz's conception of disease and the contention that mental illness is "mythical" as presented in The Myth of Mental Illness. Kendell's arguments include the following:
Shorter's views [ edit ]
Shorter[38] replied to Szasz's essay "The myth of mental illness: 50 years later",[39] which was published in journal The Psychiatrist (and delivered as a plenary address at the International Congress of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Edinburgh on 24 June 2010) – in recognition of the 50th anniversary of The Myth of Mental Illness – with the following principal criticisms:
Szasz's critique is implicitly premised on a conception of mind drawn from the psychiatry of the early-mid 20th century – namely psychoanalytic psychiatry – and Szasz has not updated his critique in light of later developments in psychiatry. The referent of Szasz's critique – Freud's mind – is to be found only in the historical record and some isolated islands of psychoanalytic practice. To this extent, Szasz's critique does not address contemporary biologically-oriented psychiatry and is irrelevant. Certainly the phrase mental illness occurs in the contemporary psychiatric lexicon but that is merely a legacy of the earlier psychoanalytic influence upon psychiatry; the term does not reflect a real belief that psychiatric disease – Shorter's preferred term – originates in the mind, an abstraction as Szasz rightly explains. Szasz concedes that some so-called mental illnesses may have a neurological basis – but adds that were such a biological basis discovered for these so-called mental illnesses, they would have to be reclassified from mental illnesses to brain diseases, which would vindicate his position. Shorter explains that the problem with Szasz's argument here is that it is the contention of biological psychiatry that so-called mental illnesses are actually brain diseases. Modern psychiatry has de facto dispensed with the idea of mental illness, i.e. the notion that psychiatric disease is mainly or entirely psychogenic is not a part of biological psychiatry. There exists at least prima facie evidence that psychiatric illness has a biological basis and Szasz either ignores this evidence or attempts to insulate his argument from such evidence by effectively claiming that "no true mental illness has a biological basis." Shorter cites hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA) dysregulation, a positive dexamethasone suppression test result, and shortened rapid eye movement sleep latency in those with melancholic depression as examples of this evidence. Further examples cited by Shorter include the responsiveness of catatonia to barbiturates and benzodiazepines.
Writings [ edit ]
Books [ edit ]
Selected scholarly papers [ edit ]
Source:[40]
References [ edit ]Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
Hundreds of thousands are expected to turn out today in Paris to protest against the recently signed law, which allows equal marriage and adoption for same-sex couples.
Organisers of today’s protests claimed that over a million French citizens would take to the streets, however the Interior Ministry has estimated the numbers at closer to 200,000.
Police sources have expressed that a much smaller number, 300-500 members of radical far-right factions, may attempt to disrupt the rally, and cause violence.
Thousands of police took to the streets of Paris in preparation for the rally, which takes place ahead of the first same-sex wedding, which is to take place in Montpellier, known as the “French San Francisco”, because of its large gay community, on 29 May.
On Saturday evening, 50 people were arrested, and a van carrying masks, banners and smoke bombs was seized by French police. Those arrested had chained themselves to a barrier in the middle of the Champs Elysees.
One of the leaders of the anti-equal marriage movement in France ‘Manif Pour Tous’, Frigide Barjot, said on Friday that she would not attend the rally, for fear that it may turn violent.
Frigide Barjot – real name Virginie Tellene – a born-again Catholic and reactionary comedian, brought together various Christian, conservative, and far-right groups together to rally against marriage equality earlier this year under the name Manif pour Tous (Demo for All).
Barjot has asserted that the Government should replace the equal marriage bill, which allows adoption for same-sex couples, with civil unions legislation, omitting the right to adopt.
She also recently lashed out at the French government’s decision to accelerate the progress of the equal marriage bill, implying that protests may become violent.
Following months of, sometimes violent, protests, and a substantial rise in homophobic attacks, last Friday French President Hollande signed the law, making France the fourteenth country in the world to allow equal marriage.
Marriage equality opponents had hoped that challenging the bill before the Constitutional Council would scupper the bill after months of debate and protest.
However the Council declared: “The law allowing same-sex marriage conforms with the constitution.”
Earlier this week, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was evacuated, after a former far-right activist committed suicide by shooting himself in the head, after writing a blog post slamming France’s recently passed equal marriage bill.By Radio Rahim
Newly crowned WBC lightweight champion Mikey Garcia (36-0, 30 KOs) is ready for the biggest challenges available.
This past Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Garcia became a three division world champion with a vicious third round knockout of previously undefeated Dejan Zlaticanin (22-1, 15 KOs).
Remarkably, the big victory was only Garcia's second fight after snapping a two and a half year layoff last July in Brooklyn. Garcia had been out of the ring while waging a legal battle to break his promotional agreement with Top Rank. The two sides reached a settlement in early 2016.
One fight in particular that Garcia would embrace with open arms - is a showdown with two-time Olympic gold medal winner Vasyl Lomachenko (7-1, 5 KOs).
With only eight pro fights under his belt, Lomacheko is already a two-division world champion. He captured the WBO super featherweight title last year with a crushing knockout of Roman Martinez, and then retained the belt in November with a dominating stoppage of Nicholas Walters.
Lomachenko is slated to return in April in a possible unification with WBA champion Jezreel Corrales. Beyond that, Lomacheko's handlers have already been discussing the possibility of a move to the lightweight division by year's end.
While Garcia's open to fight Lomachemko, he's not sure if the Ukrainian's handlers are willing to make the fight. Lomachenko is promoted by Top Rank and managed by Egis Klimas.
"We hear about Lomachenko from all of the media and reporters and the fans, but I have yet to hear anything from Top Rank or his manager mentioning my name. I would definitely take on a challenge like that if he comes up to 135," Garcia told BoxingScene.com.
"He's still at 130, I'm at 135 now. If he decides to move up, and they present me with that opportunity - we'll take it. But it's not up to me, it's up to him to move up. I'm not coming down. If anything he needs me at 135. I'm not coming down to 130 and I haven't heard anything from his promoter or his camp mentioning my name.
"But if he decides to move up, it would definitely be a great fight. He's got a lot of skills, tremendous skills. I have a lot of skills that people haven't even seen yet, so that would be a great opportunity to show [them]."2020 East 23rd Street
Directions To | Directions From 35.018319, -85.281583
Megabus moved around to five different bus stops in Chattanooga since it first came here in 2011, dogged by complaints its loitering passengers were a nuisance.
Today, the low-cost carrier started using its sixth bus stop — which it says is permanent — on leased property at 2020 E. 23rd St. between the Waffle House and The Chatt Inn.
"We have a permanent location in Chattanooga," said Sean Hughes, director of corporate affairs for North America for Megabus.
Along with the new bus stop, Megabus next week will expand its service here, Hughes said, and add a route from Atlanta through Chattanooga, Knoxville and Christiansburg, Va., to Washington, D.C.
"We're really excited — not only having a new place, but adding onto our route," he said.
Megabus will keep its current route here that runs through Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville, Louisville, Ky., Indianapolis, Ind., and Chicago.
The low-cost carrier is known for its double-decker buses, fares that start at $1 and curbside stops, because it has no bus terminals.
The curbside stops caused problems in Chattanooga.
In May, Megabus said it would leave its fourth bus stop at West Main and Chestnut streets near Finley Stadium, after the city asked it to leave because loitering Megabus passengers drew complaints, including from the owners of nearby T-Bone's Sports Cafe.
Similar complaints caused Megabus to move earlier from its third stop, at the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority's Shuttle Park South next to the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel. Before that, Megabus had stopped at the Eastgate Town Center in Brainerd. Its first stop in 2011 was at South Terrace Plaza along Interstate 24 in East Ridge.
However, there was an effort to keep Megabus here, including by those who felt it provided a needed service for low-income residents.
Megabus was offered a temporary bus stop in June at 709 S. Beech St. near the century-old, 40,000-square-foot St. Andrews Center.
The effort was led by Brian Merritt, the executive director of Mercy Junction Justice and Peace Center, a ministry of the Presbytery of East Tennessee that's housed in the St. Andrews Center and says it is devoted to social justice work.
"He reached out to Megabus multiple times, facilitated most of the city requirements and really spearheaded the campaign," said Emerson Burch, president of the Highland Park Neighborhood Association.
Burch used a survey to gather neighbor feedback on the temporary stop.
"The vast majority of respondents were really positive and supportive of our neighborhood hosting the temporary stop, though there were a couple of concerns," Burch said.
Hughes thanked Megabus supporters here, which he said included Mercy Junction, the Highland Park Neighborhood Association, Highland Park Commons and Redemption Point Church.
"We had our struggles in Chattanooga," he said, "These four groups... welcomed us."
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu @timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/MeetsForBusiness or twitter.com/meetfor business or 423-757-6651.Potential 2016 presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal caused a stir across the pond with a Monday speech in London about the rise of radical Islam and "no-go" zones for non-Muslims in Birmingham.
"How many Muslims in this world agree with these radicals? I have no idea, I hope it is a small minority," the Louisiana governor told the Henry Jackson Society, according to prepared remarks. "But it is clear that far too many do, and it is clear that they must be stopped."
"In the West, non-assimilationist Muslims establish enclaves and carry out as much of Sharia law as they can without regard for the laws of the democratic countries which provided them a new home," Jindal continued. "It is startling to think that any country would allow, even unofficially, for a so called 'no-go zone.' The idea that a free country would allow for specific areas of its country to operate in an autonomous way that is not free and is in direct opposition to its laws is hard to fathom."
The director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia, Corey Saylor, said in a statement that "it is sad that competition for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination is kicking off with Muslim bashing."
"Governor Jindal's decision to repeat the already discredited no-go zone allegation is embarrassing to our nation and to his potential presidential campaign," Saylor said.
Jindal told CNN last night that "speaking the truth, we're going to make people upset."
"Here is the biggest point. Radical Islamists hate our values. They threaten our way of life. They don't appreciate, they don't condone, they don't allow freedom of expression, self determination. Anybody that thinks you should be killed for drawing a cartoon is a terrorist, is somebody that we need to hunt down, that we need to get rid of in our societies," he said.
"The huge issue, the big issue with non-assimilation, the fact that you have people who want to come to our country but not adopt our value, in some cases, not adopt our language, in some cases, want to set apart their own enclaves and continue to hold onto their own values. I think that's dangerous. It's dangerous in America and in Europe."
Jindal said his comments referred to reports in British media that "there are neighborhoods where the police say they don't go as frequently; there are neighborhoods where women do not comfortable walking without veils."
"We don't see that in America. We wouldn't tolerate that in America. But in America, if we continue to allow people coming in without insisting on assimilation, on integration, this is what lies in our future," he said. "What I worry about, in America, it's become politically correct to say that that is a religious difference. This is not a religious difference. We need Muslim leaders to denounce these radical Islamists and say -- not only condemning the violence, but condemning the individuals and saying they're not martyrs, they will not be rewarded in the afterlife, rather they're going straight to hell."
Louisiana has passed a ban on sharia law. Jindal said he fears "political correctness is driving us to pretend like these differences don't matter and it's equally acceptable to adopt sharia law, it's equally acceptable to reject these notions what -- our Judeo-Christian heritage that has made us so unique, so successful, and continues to allow us to make our own decisions about how to lead our lives."
"...Assimilation, that integration is so important if we want to prevent those lone wolves and to protect our society against this threat."
On running for president, Jindal said, "I'll continue to think and pray about it and we'll make the decision in the next few months."PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rep. Anastasia P. Williams has understated the amount of money in her campaign fund by a combined $260,000 since 2012, according to a review of filings made with the Board of Elections.
The Providence Democrat filed amendments on all but 10 of her 32 campaign filings since April 30, 2012. Changes to the “beginning cash balance” on those documents totaled $268,703.70 over that period.
One change to her third quarterly report in 2013 upped the beginning cash balance by $19,456.68. And in the fourth quarter of that year, she amended to increase the balance by $17,200.
Earlier this week the Rhode Island Board of Elections asked the attorney general’s office to investigate possible campaign finance violations by the longtime legislator. Williams has declined to comment. Robert Rapoza, the acting executive director of the Board of Elections, confirmed the investigation Thursday but declined to elaborate. He could not be reached on Friday.
John Harwood, Williams’ lawyer and former speaker of the House, said his team is working to “reconcile the differences.”
As for the amended numbers, Harwood said: “Well, what’s wrong with that? If today I had a fundraiser I may not get that recorded until six months down the road.”
Of the 22 amendments, The Providence Journal examined, 16 were filed on June 15, 2015 — in some cases more than three years after the original campaign finance documents were submitted.
The remaining amendments were filed on Feb. 17 this year — three of which showed increases for the same exact amount: $3,519.90. Her latest filing indicates her campaign fund had a $10,779.90 balance at the end of the first quarter this year.
When Williams began work as a state representative in 1992 she filed the paperwork by herself, with the help of Board of Elections officials. In April 2016 Williams began working with Vanessa Dailey, the operations finance manager of the John Hope Settlement House Inc.
Williams was previously the longtime chairwoman of the John Hope Settlement House until the state auditor general announced it found significant financial problems. She stepped down shortly afterward, and a new chairwoman was appointed in April.
Harwood said the violations are “obviously not serious” or the Board of Elections would have filed a complaint against Williams.
“They’ve never filed a complaint against her,” he said.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Williams began work as a state representative in 2002. She was first elected in 1992.
—jtempera@providencejournal.com
(401) 277-7121
On Twitter: @jacktempTOKYO (Reuters) - Japan will likely avoid U.S. sanctions against Iran as it is continuing to reduce imports of Iranian oil, Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba said on Wednesday.
The sanctions, aimed at pressuring Tehran to prevent its nuclear program being used to make weapons, will punish financial institutions that deal with Iran’s central bank, the channel for oil transactions.
A breach of the sanctions could result in companies being shut out of the U.S. market, which could prevent Japan’s biggest banks from operating in the world’s largest economy.
Japan has been in talks with Washington to obtain a waiver, which can be granted if there is a significant cut in trade with Iran. Tokyo had already cut its oil imports from Iran by 40 percent over the past five years, and is offering to make further cuts.
“We are in the final stages of talks concerning targets of the sanctions, and mutual understanding has considerably deepened,” Gemba told a news conference.
“I don’t think we are in a situation where we need to be concerned about becoming a target of the sanctions.”
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged Japanese efforts on Tuesday, telling a Senate panel: “They have been reducing their imports from Iran in the range of 15-20 percent since last year because we have been working with them and talking to them.”
A waiver would protect Japan’s big banks — Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Mizuho Financial Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group — from being punished for handling payments to Iran.
Gemba did not mention specific reduction targets, citing a potential market impact, but the government has said it intends to keep cutting oil purchases from Iran.
Clinton said some countries could not stop Iranian oil imports “cold turkey” and pointed to “unique situations” Japan faces, noting the impact of last year’s earthquake and the ensuing nuclear crisis.
Japan, the world’s third-biggest oil importer, last year bought almost 9 percent of its crude from Iran and its dependence on fuel imports has increased because almost all its power-generating nuclear reactors are idled due to public safety fears over the Fukushima radiation crisis triggered by last year’s disaster.
Japanese buyers of Iranian oil, such as refiners and trading houses, have delayed annual contract talks until the outcome of government negotiations on a waiver.
Figures released by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) on Wednesday showed Japan’s imports of crude oil from Iran fell 22.5 percent in January from a year earlier.
That was deeper than a drop of 12.2 percent shown by customs-cleared data from the ministry of Finance on Tuesday. [ID:nL4E8DR0A5] The oil industry pays more attention to the METI data because it tracks the actual import status of oil tankers.The reports of negligent or plain lazy parents are mounting. Every day, we hear about someone leaving their infant or infants behind, mostly in a car, for some self-gratification. However, is it right when a mother leaves her kids alone for merely 20 minutes and is then hounded by Child Protection Services (CPS) for the alleged unforgivable negligence?
As reported by Mashable, Lilia Gonzalez is currently embroiled in a legal spat with CPS, whose personnel have been hounding her for leaving her kids alone during a work day. They are penalizing her because she left two of her three kids alone at home for 20 minutes while she drove her son to school.
Her misfortune began on a June morning when Gonzalez, then 36, awoke at 7:30 a.m. She had overslept because her 16-month-old son was sick. Her husband had left earlier to start the first of his two jobs. Like any ordinary parent, her mind started whirring about the day’s chores, and she quickly realized that her four-year-old’s school bus may have left without him.
She usually takes all her kids along to the boy’s school, but on that fateful day, she left her eight-year-old daughter alone with the infant while she dropped her elder son off at school. When she returned home after a 20-minute absence, Gonzalez found her toddler son watching television in bed and her daughter ready to attend school. She regretted impulsively leaving them alone, but felt grateful nothing tragic had happened.
The next day, Gonzalez narrated the incident to her therapist, a clinic student who helped treat her for depression. “I did something probably stupid,” Gonzalez recalls saying. Although her therapist initially remained silent, a few hours later Gonzalez received a call.
“I talked to my supervisor and I explained to her what you just told me, and we have to call [Department of Children and Family Services].”
Apparently CPS Can Be Very Subjective When It Comes To Parenting
Though Gonzalez was hereto unaware of CPS, she realized something had gone terribly wrong. Recalling the conversation, Gonzalez said, “She started telling me that they were probably going to come and interview and probably they would take the children away.”
Needless to say, a mom’s 20-minute absence from home has become an obsession of a Child Protective Services officer. Now, legally speaking, she should have taken all the kids with her, but aren’t they at far greater risk in a moving vehicle than they are at home? The number one way children die in the U.S. is as car passengers, not as kids at home getting ready for the day, reported Reason.
Was Gonzalez right in leaving her kids at home?
[Image Credit | Tyler Anderson/National Post, David Pollack / Corbis]CHICAGO -- Cook County prosecutors said Friday they will not file criminal sexual assault charges against Chicago Cubs shortstop Starlin Castro.
"We're pleased for Starlin that this issue is resolved and glad that he can continue to keep his focus on baseball activities," Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer said.
The state's attorney's office and Chicago police reviewed the case and found insufficient evidence to charge the 21-year-old player, state's attorney spokeswoman Sally Daly said.
Chicago police said in January that they were investigating an allegation of sexual assault against Castro, who said he cooperated with authorities. His attorneys have said the allegations are baseless.
"I'm happy, happy that we got to resolve it," Castro said before Saturday's game against the Cincinnati Reds. "But you know, I stay focused on the field, stay focused on the game. It's kind of a tough thing to think about that. (But I) take that out of my mind and concentrate on baseball."
Castro declined to get into specifics, but said he's learned a lot from the experience and says he now knows to be more careful.
Castro was chosen to the All-Star team last year in his first full major league season, when he batted.307 and led the National League with 207 hits.
Castro is hitting.352 with seven RBIs and seven steals in 14 games this season.
The young star made his major league debut in May 2010. Chicago signed him as an undrafted free agent in 2006.
Information from ESPNChicago.com's Sahadev Sharma and The Associated Press contributed to this report.This page is about the archaeological site of Herxheim in Germany. For other uses, see Herxheim (disambiguation)
Skull found in the archaeological site of Herxheim, exhibited in the museum of Heidelberg University
The archaeological site of Herxheim, located in the municipality of Herxheim in southwest Germany, was a ritual center and a mass grave formed by people of the Linear Pottery culture (LBK) culture in Neolithic Europe. The site is often compared to that of the Talheim Death Pit and Schletz-Asparn, but is quite different in nature. The site dates from between 5300 and 4950 BC.[1]
Discovery [ edit ]
Herxheim was discovered in 1996 on the site of a construction project when locals reported finds of bones, including human skulls. The excavation was considered a salvage or rescue dig, as parts of the site were destroyed by the construction.[1][2][3]
Culture [ edit ]
The people at Herxheim were part of the LBK culture. Styles of LBK pottery, some of a high quality, were discovered at the site from local populations as well as from distant lands from the north and east, even as far as 500 kilometres (310 mi) away. Local flint as well as flints from distant sources were also found.[2]
Settlement [ edit ]
The structures at Herxheim suggested that of a large village spanning up to 6 hectares (15 acres) surrounded by a sequence of ovoid pits dug over a duration of several centuries. These pits eventually cut into one another, forming a triple, semi-circular enclosure ditch split into three sections. The way the pits were dug over such a length of time, in addition to their use, suggests a pre-determined layout.[1] The structures within the enclosure eroded over time, and "yielded only a small number of settlement pits and a few graves".[1] These pits were either trapezoidal or triangular in nature.[3]
Mass grave [ edit ]
The enclosure ditches around the settlement comprise at least 80 ovoid pits containing the remains of humans and animals, and material goods such as pottery (some rare and high-quality), bone and stone tools, and "rare decorative artifacts".[1] The remains of dogs, often found intact, were also recovered.[1][2]
The human remains were primarily shattered and dispersed within the pits, rarely intact or in anatomical position. Using a quantification process known as "minimum number of individuals" (MNI), researchers concluded that the site contained at least 500 individual humans ranging from newborns to the elderly.[1] However, "since the area excavated corresponds to barely half the enclosure, we can assume that in fact more than 1000 individuals were involved".[1] The deposition of the human remains occurred only within the final 50 years of occupation at the site.[1]
Mortuary practices [ edit ]
The people at Herxheim practiced a type of burial known as secondary burial, which consists of the removal of the corpse or partial corpse and subsequent placement elsewhere. This is evident due to the lack of complete, articulated skeletons in the majority of the burials. Another possibility is that of sky burial, in which the corpse is exposed to the elements and many bones are carried off by scavengers.[1][2]
A 2006[2] study revealed the intentional breakage and cutting of various human elements, particularly skulls. Bones were broken with stone tools in a peri-mortem state, as is evident by the fragmentation patterns on the bones, which differ between fresh and dry (old) conditions.[4] The conclusion reached from this study was that the site of Herxheim was a ritual mortuary center - a necropolis - where the remains of the dead were not just buried, but for reasons unknown, destroyed.
A 2009[1] study confirmed many findings from the 2006 study, but added new information. In just one pit deposit, this study found 1906 bones and bone fragments from at least 10 individuals ranging from newborns to adults. At least 359 individual skeletal elements were identified. This in-depth study revealed many more cut, impact, and bite marks made upon the skulls and post-cranial skeletal elements.[1] It was apparent that parts of the humans' bodies were singled out for their marrow content, suggesting cannibalization (see Hypotheses).
Note that due to the fractures present on the bones being peri-mortem, the blows to the bones could have been made immediately prior (including as cause of) or soon after death. However, because of their precision placement, a peri-mortem "Cause of Death" is not likely, and rather the impacts were placed after the bone was defleshed.[1]
Skull cult practices [ edit ]
Of particular note from both studies[1][2] was the peculiar treatment of the humans' skulls. Many skulls were treated in a similar manner: skulls were struck on "the sagittal line, splitting faces, mandibles, and skull caps into symmetrical halves".[2] A few skulls were clearly skinned prior to being struck, again, all in the same manner: "horizontal cuts above the orbits, vertical cuts along the sagittal suture, and oblique cuts in the parietals".[2]
The vault of the skull was preserved and shaped into what is referred to as a calotte (calvarium). During this process the brain, which is a source of dietary fat, may have been extracted. Additionally, a later study revealed that the tongues of humans were removed.[1]
Hypotheses [ edit ]
Necropolis [ edit ]
Due to the transportation of distant pottery and flint, it was the conclusion of the 2006[2] study that Herxheim served as a necropolis for the LBK people of the area. "The projection of the number of individuals present (...) to a probable total of 1,300 to 1,500 rules out the possibility of a local graveyard — and points a regional centre at Herxheim to which human remains were transported for the purpose of reburial. (...) To organise the transport not only of stone tools and pottery but also of human bones and partial or maybe even complete corpses implies an efficient organisational and communication system."[2]
Ritual cannibalism [ edit ]
Whether for religious purpose or war, it is apparent from the 2009 study that the humans at the site of Herxheim were butchered and eaten.[1] Not only were cut marks found on locations of the skeleton that are made during the dismemberment and filleting process, bones were also crushed for the purposes of marrow extraction, and chewed. Besides the fresh-bone fractures present on many bones, "[processing] for marrow is also documented by the presence of scrape marks in the marrow cavity on two fragments."[1]
Skeletal representation analysis revealed that many of the "spongy bone" elements - such as the spinal column, patella, ilium, and sternum - were underrepresented compared to what would be expected in a mass grave. "All these observations are similar to those observed in animal butchery."[1] Additionally, preferential chewing of the metapodials and hand phalanges "speak strongly in favour of human choice rather than more or less random action by carnivores".[1]
"The number of people concerned at Herxheim obviously suggests that cannibalism for the simple purpose of survival is highly improbable, all the more so as the characteristics of the deposits show a standard, repetitive, and strongly ritualised practice".[1]
Although a concrete conclusion has yet to be made, the archaeology does not rule out the possibility of deliberate travel to the complex with pottery, flint, and dead bodies (or partial bodies), with the intent to have the dead cannibalized and/or ritually destroyed. It also does not rule out the idea of human sacrifice.[1]
Other archeologists reject the cannibalism hypothesis however, maintaining the evidence better fits a scenario in which the dead were reburied following dismemberment and removal of flesh from bones. "Evidence of ceremonial reburial practices has been reported for many ancient societies."[5]
References [ edit ] |
next time I suggest to start him and he busts for nine yards. With six teams on bye, these lineup decisions are as crucial as ever. Let’s aim for more success with a microscope on key players for the Week 8 slate.
Starts Record: 66/102 (64.7%)
Sits Record: 66/89 (74.2%)
Sleeper Record: 18/36 (50%)
*Note: These statistics do not include injured players or players who are essentially a wash and did not really help you or hurt you if you started them.
**Assume.5 PPR scoring for any reference to a player’s season-long ranking or in-week ranking
Quarterback
Start: Russell Wilson vs. Houston
Don’t be scared of Russ due to Houston’s brand name. The Texans rank in the middle of the pack in fantasy points allowed to passers and are still dealing with the losses of difference-makers JJ Watt and Whitney Mercilus. It’s never a good idea to bet against Wilson at home, especially when you consider he’s been a top-five fantasy quarterback in three of his last four starts. We’ve seen Seattle’s offense perennially start slow only to explode right around October, and this year appears no different. Russ is averaging five carries per game to help boost his floor and ceiling, and he’s throwing it a ton given Seattle’s inability to run the ball well. As Evan Silva noted on Twitter, sharp bettors have already begun to bet up the implied point total of this game (has moved from 42-46), implying they think a potential shootout is coming.
Start: Philip Rivers @ New England
I’m doing my best not to fall into the Matt Ryan trap from last week, but New England is still allowing the most points to quarterbacks and it should be noted Ryan actually finished with his second-highest fantasy total last week. Let’s also not pretend that the fog didn’t impact the passing numbers in that game. Los Angeles lost its first four games by a combined 21 points and has now rattled off three straight impressive wins (@NYG, @OAK, DEN) with Rivers at the helm. I’m buying the Chargers as a sneaky solid team and with everyone healthy, it’s important to remember this is Rivers’ strongest supporting cast in a long time. It’s probably not a coincidence the team is 3-0 since committing to Hunter Henry as its starting tight end. The matchup is fantastic and Rivers will likely have to air it out in the game with the second-highest over/under of the week (48.5). He’s a sneaky DFS pivot off Dak Prescott and Carson Wentz, both of whom figure to have higher ownership.
Other Recommended Starts:
-Andy Dalton vs. Indianapolis: Dalton is averaging 18 fantasy points per game since Bill Lazor took over as OC and gets to play Indy at home. The Colts have allowed the sixth-most points to quarterbacks and the most points in the league, and they’re somewhat of a pass-funnel defense having contained rushing offenses better than passing offenses. Per Evan Silva of Rotoworld, Indy has allowed easily the most completions of 20+ yards this season and just lost OLB John Simon and FS Malik Hooker to injury.
-Tyrod Taylor vs. Oakland: Tyrod looked great at home last week despite throwing to the league’s worst pass-catching corps, and he’s established a super nice rushing floor. Alex Smith torched Oakland last week and now they must fly across the country for a noon game in one of the toughest road atmospheres in the league. Per Evan Silva, Tyrod has a 17:4 touchdown to interception ratio at home as the Bills starter, compared to 7:4 on the road.
Sit: Jacoby Brissett @ Cincinnati
This isn’t a knock on Brissett as I’m a fan of the player, but he has a really tough draw on the road at Cincinnati. Cincy has allowed the 10th-fewest points to opposing quarterbacks and will likely devote resources to slowing down TY Hilton. Brissett has a weak arsenal if Hilton is shut down, and it also makes sense for the Bengals to spy Brissett and take away his running ability. Brissett is barely a 2QB-league option this week.
Sit: Matthew Stafford vs. Pittsburgh
Stafford has shown a safe floor considering he’s scored between 13 and 18 points in each of his last five games, but his floor and ceiling take a hit with his trusty sidekick Golden Tate likely to sit out. Pittsburgh has faced an easy slate of quarterbacks, but it’s still mind-blowing that they’re only allowing 9.9 fantasy points per game to passers. I worry Stafford will struggle on third downs without Tate considering Marvin Jones struggles to separate, and Eric Ebron is Eric Ebron. I much prefer streaming options like Tyrod or Dalton over Stafford this week.
Other Recommended Sits:
-Joe Flacco vs. Miami: Even in a good matchup at home in a bye-heavy week, Flacco is not a recommended streaming option considering he’s averaging fewer points per game than Brian Hoyer, Mike Glennon and Kevin Hogan. Nearly his entire receiving corps is dealing with an injury.
-Deshone Kizer vs. Minnesota (London game): Even in 2QB leagues Kizer is unplayable as the league leader in turnovers going against a Minnesota defense that’s top-five in fewest points allowed to quarterbacks.
Sleepers/Streamers:
-CJ Beathard @ Philadelphia: Beathard didn’t look great last week but still delivered 235 passing yards and 1 rushing touchdown and has now scored 14 points in both of his professional games. Philly has allowed the ninth-most points to quarterbacks. He’s in play as a mid-level QB2.
-Josh McCown vs. Atlanta: Don’t stop Josh McCown! The savvy vet has scored 22 points or more over the past two weeks and seems to have established a solid rapport with several of his pass catchers. Atlanta is not a stay away matchup at home and this game has a decent point total (46.5).
Wide Receiver
Start: Nelson Agholor vs. San Francisco
Truly one of the more impressive early-career turnarounds in recent memory, Agholor checks in as the WR20 by per-game scoring. This might feel a bit point-chasey considering he’s scored a touchdown in three straight weeks and hasn’t surpassed four catches in a game since Week 1, but he’s simply too hot to fade right now. Agholor looks legitimately explosive with the ball in his hands, runs crisp routes and seems to have gotten over the drops that plagued his first two years in the league. He’s a solid DFS stack with Carson Wentz for those trying to avoid Zach Ertz’s likely high ownership.
Nelson Agholor week again? QBs targeting slot WRs vs. San Francisco: 37 tgts, 26 rec, 390 yds, 4 TDs, 0 INTs (142.9 passer rating) — Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) October 24, 2017
Start: Adam Thielen @ Cleveland (London game)
While London games have their quirks, Thielen is in a solid spot as a target hog playing against the Browns. While Thielen owners may be frustrated, he’s due for some serious positive scoring regression. As numberFire’s JJ Zachariason points out, Thielen boasts a top-ten market share in terms of targets and air yards, both of which are predictive for touchdown scoring. Thielen stands six-foot-three and scored five touchdowns despite only starting in ten games last season, so it’s not like he’s allergic to the end zone. Zachariason also notes Thielen should have about three touchdowns on the year based on his yardage numbers (he’s fourth in receiving yards!), and also that the return of Stefon Diggs would mean more slot routes for Thielen. Diggs traveled with the team to London and practiced on a limited basis Wednesday. Having caught at least five passes in every game this season and averaging 12.5 targets in games Diggs misses, Thielen has established a rock-solid floor. But a ceiling game is coming soon and I think it’s this week.
Other Recommended Starts:
-Demaryius Thomas @ Kansas City: DT’s down game last week would’ve looked better had an 81-yard touchdown not been called back on his own OPI penalty. Amari Cooper reminded us that KC is not a stay-away matchup for wide receivers and DT’s target outlook will be boosted if Emmanuel Sanders (ankle) is forced to sit. It’s fluky he’s yet to score this year given his yardage total. Like Keenan below, he may have low DFS ownership after last week’s dud.
-Keenan Allen @ New England: Allen owners may be frustrated given his recent string of floor games, but you have to stay the course with the kind of volume he’s getting. He gets the perfect get-right matchup against a Pats defense allowing the second-most points to slot receivers on the year, per Scott Barrett of Pro Football Focus. He’ll likely go underowned in DFS after burning people over the last few weeks.
-Devin Funchess @ Tampa Bay: Funchess’ impressive target totals (8.8 per game sans Greg Olsen) looked the exact same over the last two weeks despite the poor box score numbers. No team is allowing more points to receivers than Tampa Bay.
Sit: TY Hilton @ Cincinnati
No, I don’t hate Hilton or your fantasy team. I’m actually supportive of both. But I nailed Hilton as a sit last week and feel similarly anxious about him having a good game against Cincinnati’s stingy pass defense that’s consistently stymied elite options. Hilton’s home/road splits are well documented as he struggles to play away from the fast turf in Indy’s dome. It will make sense for Cincinnati to shade coverage Hilton’s way and force the rest of the offense to beat them. When written as a sit last week, a lot of people responded by saying most Hilton owners couldn’t possibly have the depth to bench him. Well if you can’t, then you can’t. But it’s alarming someone with his target share has failed to surpass 7 fantasy points in five separate games this season. Hilton’s floor is dangerously low.
Sit: Will Fuller @ Seattle
Just three games into his season, Fuller has been sensational having scored a touchdown in every game and multiple in two of them. There are, however, peripheral stats that should make us question Fuller’s sustainability. He’s only averaging 4.67 targets per game and has caught five touchdowns despite only recording eight receptions on the year. He’s played all three games at home. You shouldn’t need me to tell you those numbers are screaming regression, even for a speedy deep threat like Fuller. Seattle has allowed the third-fewest receiving yards to wide receivers and is effectively stopping deep passes with all-world safety Earl Thomas back in tow. Fuller will run more routes at Richard Sherman than any other Houston pass-catcher. Fuller should continue to be useful, but he has to stop scoring at some point and I’m betting it starts this week against a scary pass defense in his first road game of the season.
Sleepers/Streamers:
-Josh Doctson vs. Dallas: Played 24 more snaps than Terrelle Pryor last week and then his head coach came out and admitted they “drafted him to be the No. 1 guy.” He gets a great matchup at home against a Dallas defense allowing the sixth-most points to fantasy receivers. He’s an ideal cheap DFS tournament play at his low cost.
-JuJu Smith-Schuster @ Detroit: With Darius Slay likely to shadow Antonio Brown, Smith-Schuster should have the best matchup against Detroit’s defense. His snaps have been rising every week and he found the end zone again last week. I wrote all of that before finding out Martavis Bryant will be inactive this week. Juju should be a highly owned DFS option.
Running Back
Start: Joe Mixon vs. Indianapolis
Similar to fantasy defenses, it’s great to target running backs that are playing as home favorites. Mixon checks both boxes and is somewhat of a ‘squeaky wheel’ after questioning why the team stopped running the ball last week. Mixon had been averaging 19 touches per game with Bill Lazor as OC and did run for 6.86 YPC in last week’s loss. Indy has allowed a league-high ten rushing touchdowns this year and Mixon should have plenty of opportunities to salt away the clock as 10-point favorites. He’s an easy RB2.
Start: Chris Thompson vs. Dallas
Thompson continues to defy all odds and criticisms and will enter Week 8 as the per-game RB7 on the year (.5 PPR). Dallas grades out in the middle of the pack in terms of fantasy points allowed to running backs, but the team does rank 31st in rush defense DVOA. Regardless, the ‘Skins appear to have smartly made a bigger commitment to Thompson since the team’s bye, feeding him an average of 16 touches per game over the last two weeks. Thompson’s role appears game-script independent and this is a game to attack for fantasy purposes given the highest over/under of the week (50).
Other Recommended Starts:
-Alvin Kamara vs. Chicago: Averaging 13.5 touches per game since AP was shipped out of town, Kamara has entered legitimate RB2 territory. Chicago is about average at limiting fantasy points, but Kamara is becoming game-script independent as a player the team actively schemes the ball for. He’s sneakily the RB17 on the season thus far.
-Dion Lewis vs. Los Angeles Chargers: Per Andy Behrens of Yahoo, Lewis got the start last week and led the backfield in snaps (26), touches (14), yards from scrimmage (82) and yards per carry (5.8). The Pats are 7.5-point favorites, the projected point total is high and the Chargers rank 27th in run defense DVOA. Per Ray Summerlin of Rotoworld, Lewis has three touches inside the 10 over the last three games, one of which he plunged in for a score. I think Mike Gillislee will be a healthy scratch at some point soon if Lewis continues to run this well.
Sit: CJ Anderson @ Kansas City
It might be time to hit the panic button for CJA. Anderson has played just 52.4% of the Broncos’ snaps since the return of Devontae Booker, which pales in comparison to his pre-Booker 70% snap rate. You simply won’t score as many fantasy points if you’re not on the field, and Anderson’s efficiency has dipped as the entire Denver offense is stuck in a rut. Anderson doesn’t really catch passes, lowering his floor. Kansas City has allowed the 10th-fewest points to running backs and enter the game as big favorites which doesn’t bode well for Anderson considering his lack of receiving work. He’s really just a flex option this week.
Sit: DeAndre Washington @ Buffalo
I understand chasing the potential volume here especially given all the weekly options on bye (Gurley, Jones, Fournette, etc.), but this feels like a trap game for Oakland coming off an emotional win and flying literally across the country for a noon game. It’s still muddy as to what the snap and touch splits will be for Washington and Jalen Richard (and don’t forget full back Jamize Olawale); after Lynch was ejected Washington led backs with a meager 35.3% snap rate. He did get the red zone work, which is significant, but Richard still saw 13 touches and more of the passing game work. This feels like pretty much a 50/50 split, which renders Washington and Richard mere flex options in a bad matchup on the road. Buffalo ranks top-7 in both points allowed and receptions allowed to running backs.
Other Recommended Sits:
-Alex Collins vs. Miami: Even as a home favorite Collins is just not the player to chase given his lack of receiving and red zone usage. Miami ranks third in rush defense DVOA and Thursday games are often wonky.
-Duke Johnson vs. Minnesota (London game): We’ve seen Johnson’s true floor without scoring touchdowns the last two weeks and Minnesota enters allowing the fifth-fewest receiving yards to running backs in addition to ranking fourth in run defense DVOA. The Browns offense is just so dysfunctional that you ideally aren’t starting anyone in it.
Sleepers/Streamers:
-Marlon Mack @ Cincinnati: Mack outsnapped Frank Gore last week as the Colts were playing from behind and he absorbed some of Robert Turbin’s snaps (elbow). Despite his limited touches, Mack has put together three RB2/flex performances already this year. He had six targets last week and Cincy has allowed the ninth-most receptions to running backs. Per Evan Silva, Gore’s touch totals have declined in three straight games.
-Matt Forte vs. Atlanta: While not a sexy play, Forte has posted double-digit points in his two weeks since returning from a toe injury and led the Jets running backs in snaps (28) and touches (12) last week. Now he gets an Atlanta defense that, per Adam Levitan, is allowing 6.5 running back receptions per game after allowing a league-high 6.8 last season. This is another sneaky shootout game with both defenses ranking bottom-ten in pass defense DVOA.
Tight End
Start: Tyler Kroft vs. Indianapolis
Kroft is the streamer of the week going against an Indianapolis defense that’s allowed the 12th-most points to tight ends and is allowing more points than any team in the NFL. Tight ends are fickle by nature, but we usually want to target the ones who are at home and see red zone usage. Not only does Kroft check both boxes having seen a red zone target in three straight weeks, but he actually checks in as the per-game TE11 on the season despite only starting four of the team’s six games. It’s not like Kroft is some random UDFA making a splash – he was a third-round pick out of Rutgers and seems to be growing into a solid tight end in this third professional season. He has seen at least four targets in every game he’s started this season. His outlook is also improved by the loss of rookie FS Malik Hooker.
Start: Kyle Rudolph @ Cleveland (London game)
We’re trying to target Cleveland’s tight end defense wherever we can in fantasy. Last week Tennessee tight ends hung 9/85 on Cleveland, and that’s not including Marcus Mariota underthrowing an open Delanie Walker in the end zone. Rudolph isn’t lighting it up this year but he’s averaging over eight targets per game since Dalvin Cook’s ACL injury, and Cleveland is as good as it gets for tight ends. Keep in mind Cleveland impressively boasts a top-five run defense this year and subsequently funnels production to passing games.
Other Recommended Starts:
-Hunter Henry: Has entered every-week TE1 territory and gets a plum matchup against a New England defense allowing the seventh-most points to tight ends. Per Rich Hribar, Henry is fifth in tight end receiving yards since becoming the starter and has a really solid 19% target share over that span. This game is dripping with fantasy potential.
-Jason Witten @ Washington: Washington is slated to get stud corner Josh Norman back, which hurts Dez Bryant’s outlook. While Washington has been excellent at limiting perimeter options, they’ve also allowed the fourth-most points to tight ends. This game has the highest implied point total of the week.
Sit: OJ Howard vs. Carolina
In the words of TLC, don’t go chasing fluky points. Howard has been left wide open on his two big touchdowns this season, and while that’s the result of good offensive scheming, it’s obviously unsustainable. Even after last week’s six target “outburst,” Howard is averaging just three targets per game on the season. Opportunity is king in fantasy football and he’s simply not getting enough of it to be anything more than a dart throw. Carolina has allowed the ninth-fewest points to the tight end position.
Sit: Zach Miller @ New Orleans
People seem to like streaming Miller, and yet there’s a reason he’s always available on your waiver wire. Miller has scored two touchdowns since rookie Mitchell Trubisky took over, but one was a tipped pass that fell into his hands and another was thrown by running back Tarik Cohen. Miller is averaging less than four targets per game in the Trubisky era and New Orleans has actually defended tight ends pretty well this season.
Sleepers/Streamers:
-Ben Watson vs. Miami: In a terrible week for streaming, Watson stands out at home against a Miami defense that’s struggled to defend tight ends this season and allowed Austin Sefarian-Jenkins to find the end zone last week. Mike Wallace is in the concussion protocol and Jeremy Maclin hasn’t played in two weeks so Watson should see 5-8 targets. Note: Watson hasn’t practiced yet this week and appears truly questionable, so he’s only a desperation option now.
Defense
Start: Cincinnati Defense vs. Indianapolis
Cincy checks both boxes playing at home as a massive ten-point favorite, while Indy has allowed the most points to opposing defenses. Cincinnati ranks 11th in sacks and sixth in points allowed so it’s clearly a defense with talent. If they’re able to take a big lead like the spread suggests, there should be extra opportunities for sacks and turnovers.
Start: Philadelphia Defense vs. San Francisco
Similar to Cincinnati above, Philly is at home as a huge favorite (12.5 points). Philadelphia enters the week as the 12th-best fantasy defense, also ranking in the top 12 in sacks, turnovers and fumbles recovered per game. San Francisco is starting a rookie quarterback who didn’t look great in a much better matchup at home last week. Philly will deservedly be a very chalky DFS play this weekend.
Other Recommended Starts:
-Minnesota Defense @ Cleveland (London Game): At this point Hue Jackson might want to bring Brock Osweiler in to start. What’s Brady Quinn up to these days anyway?
-Baltimore Ravens vs. Miami: I think Matt Moore is an upgrade to Jay Cutler, but that’s not saying much. He’ll have to prepare for his first start of the season on a short week, while Baltimore’s defense is averaging 13.3 fantasy points per game at home this season. Per Rich Hribar of Rotoworld, Miami is averaging the fewest yards from scrimmage in the NFL.
Sit: Houston Defense @ Seattle
It’s maybe not wise to suggest sitting a defense that’s scored at least 19 points in two of its last three games, but both of those were at home. Keep in mind they allowed 42 points at home in the other game of the three, and they’re still reeling from the losses of JJ Watt and Whitney Mercilus on the defensive line. Seattle hasn’t been an offense to attack for fantasy defenses, especially at home where Russ is really starting to heat up. This is another situation where I’d like a ‘prove-it’ game from this defense without two of its studs in a tough matchup.
Other Recommended Sits:
-Denver Defense @ Kansas City: Before you get out your pitchforks, let me remind you that Denver ranks merely 14th in per-game scoring among fantasy defenses. This not only serves as a great reminder never to jump on a defense in your fantasy draft but also shows Denver is not the set-and-forget fantasy commodity it once was. Now they’re on the road against Kansas City, who’ve allowed the fewest points to fantasy defenses.
Sleepers/Streamers:
-Detroit Defense vs. Pittsburgh: Feels hard to call the second-best fantasy defense a sleeper, but they’re only owned in 41% of Yahoo leagues. Fresh off the bye, Detroit should be laser-focused now that the NFC North is up for grabs in the wake of Aaron Rodgers’ injury. I’m still betting against Big Ben on the road until proven otherwise.
Hate me for ruining your fantasy week? Love me for winning it? Tell me on Twitter @eweiner_bball
Statistics courtesy of nfl.com, rotoworld.com, Yahoo!, fantasylabs.com, footballguys.com, footballoutsiders.com, arizonasports.com, profootballfocus.com and pro-football-reference.comAs a general rule I try to join regular rookie mock drafts and mock start-up drafts routinely. While no trading is allowed there is still a lot of lessons to be learned from how other people are drafting, where to get your back-up plans and to be comfortable with the next guy on your board. In this Rookie Mock Draft, we have gotten the DynastyNerds staff together for a four round rookie mock draft. This draft, as opposed to a normal mock, will put nerd against nerd and hopefully give you a good idea of what the rookie boards are shaping up like before the NFL Draft.
Round 1
1. @TimNFL – Ezekiel Elliott – RB – Ohio State University
2. @SportsDebateTom – Laquon Treadwell – WR – Ole Miss
3. @ChrisWhitman11 – Derrick Henry – RB – Alabama
4. @DynastyCory – Josh Doctson – WR – TCU
5. @DynastyBrett – Corey Coleman – WR – Baylor
6. @BranDon_Juan – Sterling Shepard – WR – Oklahoma
7. @DynastyGunth – Tyler Boyd – WR – Pitt
8. @DynastyRich – Michael Thomas – WR – Ohio State University
9. @DynastyNerdMike – Will Fuller – WR – Notre Dame
10. @DynastyADPKyle – Leonte Carroo – WR – Rutgers
11. @dynastyMatt – Devontae Booker – RB – Utah
12. @RookieADP – Kenneth Dixon – RB – LA Tech
Round One Reaction:
The curve ball came early in this round. In most drafts you will not see Derrick Henry go inside the top-3 picks. With that said the draft picked right back up with Josh Doctson going to @DynastyCory at 4 overall. It is hard to go to go wrong in the first round of a rookie draft, but the best values in this round are Leontae Carroo and Kenneth Dixon.
Round 2
13. @TimNFL – Jordan Howard – RB – Indiana
14. @SportsDebateTom – C.J. Prosise – RB – Notre Dame
15. @ChrisWhitman11 – Alex Collins – RB – Arkansas
16. @DynastyCory – Pharoh Cooper – WR – South Carolina
17. @DynastyBrett – Braxton Miller – WR – Ohio State University
18. @BranDon_Juan – Mike Thomas – WR – Southern Miss
19. @DynastyGunth – Paul Perkins – RB – UCLA
20. @DynastyRich – Hunter Henry – TE – Arkansas
21. @DynastyNerdMike – Tajae Sharpe – WR – UMass
22. @DynastyADPKyle – Kenyan Drake – RB – Alabama
23. @dynastyMatt – Jared Goff – QB – California
24. @RookieADP – Jonathan Williams – RB – Arkansas
Round Two Reaction:
I am going to call my own pick the most confusing pick of this round. Jordan Howard is a player who has went as high as 1.05 and as low as the mid-second round. Landing spot will be key with Howard. The best value of this round is Paul Perkins by a landslide. Perkins is a talented back with good receiving skills. I am confident no matter what team he ends up with he will make an instant impact.
Round 3
25. @TimNFL – Rashard Higgins – WR – Colorado State Rams
26. @SportsDebateTom – Carson Wentz – QB – North Dakota State
27. @ChrisWhitman11 – Keith Marshall – RB – Georgia
28. @DynastyCory – Malcolm Mitchell – WR – Georgia
29. @DynastyBrett – De’Runnya Wilson – WR – Mississippi State
30. @BranDon_Juan – Keyarris Garrett – WR – Tulsa
31. @DynastyGunth – Tyler Ervin – RB – San Jose State
32. @DynastyRich – Daniel Braverman – WR – Western Michigan
33. @DynastyNerdMike – Kenny Lawler – WR – California
34. @DynastyADPKyle – D’haquille Williams – WR – Auburn
35. @dynastyMatt – Austin Hooper – TE – Stanford
36. @RookieADP – Charone Peake – WR – Clemson
Round Three Reaction:
It was the last pick of the round and it was nailed! Charone Peake is one of the few later round flyer picks with the athletic profile to be a true WR1 in this class. Also, if Clemson has proven anything over the last few years it’s that they know their wide receivers. Austin Hooper was a great pick over a full round after Hunter Henry went. De’Runnya Wilson is the name in bright red lights here. Running a 4.9 40-yard dash at the combine and a 4.78 at his pro-day. Wilson is firmly on my DO NOT DRAFT list.
Round 4
37. @TimNFL – Peyton Barber – RB – Auburn
38. @SportsDebateTom – Payton Jordan – WR – UCLA
39. @ChrisWhitman11 – Paxton Lynch – QB – Memphis
40. @DynastyCory – Josh Ferguson – RB – Illinois
41. @DynastyBrett – Roger Lewis – WR – Bowling Green
42. @BranDon_Juan – Wendell Smallwood – West Virginia
43. @DynastyGunth – Tre Madden – RB – USC
44. @DynastyRich – Cardale Jones – QB – Ohio State University
45. @DynastyNerdMike – Connor Cook – QB – Michigan State
46. @DynastyADPKyle – Aaron Burbridge – Michigan State
47. @dynastyMatt – Jerell Adams – TE – South Carolina
48. @RookieADP – Devon Cajuste – WR – Stanford
Round Four Reaction:
@DynastyGunth had two of my favorite picks in this draft (Paul Perkins in the second and Tre Madden in the fourth). Getting Tre Madden, a receiving back from USC who compares favorably to Buck Allen, was a steal in the fourth round and @dynastyMatt may have gotten the next steal in the draft with a very physically gifted tight end in Jerell Adams. At this point in the draft every will be taking “their guys” and in the fourth round it would be impossible to say someone was a bad value.
It was amazing doing this draft with such an amazing crew. This was by far one of the deeper drafts I have done and with a very knowledgeable group of people. I only hope they got as much out of it as I did.
Follow me at @TimNFL and everyone else at @DynastyNerdsCHICAGO, IL - APRIL 08: Denver Pioneers defenseman Will Butcher (4) celebrates with teammates a victory against the Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs by raising the championship trophy after the 2017 NCAA Division I Men's Hockey Frozen Four Championship final at the United Center on April 8, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. The Pioneers won the national championship 3-2. (Photo by Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Colorado Avalanche Got Exactly What They Need With Cale Makar
Colorado Avalanche Got Exactly What They Need With Cale Makar by Anthony Noga
The Colorado Avalanche are losing out on defenseman Will Butcher, who may add insult to injury by signing with a Central Division rival.
The Colorado Avalanche aren’t going to sign defenseman Will Butcher. The Denver University graduate is waiting until the August 15 deadline when he can become an unrestricted free agent and sign with any team he chooses.
I’ve been pretty annoyed with Butcher since he refused to commit to the Avalanche back in June. Recently Avs insider Adrian Dater reported that Butcher definitely would be going into free agency. That made me hot under the collar.
When I heard the oh-so-already-stacked Chicago Blackhawks, a Central Division rival no less, might be in on the Butcher hunt, my blood pressure went up. Then I saw this:
Hearing likely FA, NCAA D-man Will Butcher’s choices down to Chicago and MN. Hawk Ass’t. Don Granato leading recruiting charge. — John Jaeckel (@jaeckel) July 27, 2017
It’s just a whisper of a rumor, but the thought that Will Butcher might eschew the Colorado Avalanche in favor of the (hated) Minnesota Wild made my head explode.
And that leads to this: Will Butcher is an ingrate.
Will Butcher and the Colorado Avalanche
The Colorado Avalanche selected Will Butcher in the fifth round in 2013. Since then he’s played right here in Colorado at the University of Denver for the Pioneers. He just graduated.
As a prospect for the Avalanche, Butcher attended three prospect development camps. He got to benefit from working with some of the best trainers in the world. He also got to have fun with fellow prospects.
Butcher is small for a defenseman, Tyson Barrie-size. And though he’s offensively talented, he’s not as gifted as Barrie. He’s a good skater, but he does get overpowered in the defensive zone.
Last summer, the Colorado Avalanche were in flux about what direction they were going in. The team had been wanting to get bigger and stronger for three years, and they still acted like that was a priority. (As we saw a couple months later, they changed to a speed-first mentality.)
In any case, last June the Denver Post reported that the Colorado Avalanche had informed Butcher that they didn’t intend to sign him to a professional contract. No one ever fully explained it, but my guess is the team saw him as a small offensive defenseman who could be a liability in the d-zone, and they already had one of those in Tyson Barrie.
And though Butcher has since won the Hobey Baker Award, no one is calling him the second coming of Erik Karlsson, much less Bobby Orr. And that’s why I call him ungrateful. But then, let’s get to why the Colorado Avalanche are even in this pickle.
The CBA and College Players
Under the Collective Bargaining Agreement that was instituted in 2013, college players have a special loophole. If they play four years of NCAA hockey, their eligibility for NCAA play ends. The team has until August 15 to sign said player.
Here’s the loophole: After that August 15 deadline, the player becomes an unrestricted free agent.
Players have used this loophole in the past. Mike Reilly snuck in on an old version of that rule and became a Minnesota Wild player after three years at the University of Minnesota. The Columbus Blue Jackets had selected him in the fourth round in 2011.
Kevin Hayes exploited that rule in full in 2014. The Chicago Blackhawks chose him in the first round in 2010. He skittered away from the Blackhawks in favor of the New York Rangers after graduating from Boston College. (He also skittered away from Stanley Cup victory since Chicago won it in 2015. There is a hockey god.)
Here’s the thing — it shouldn’t be up to the player. If a team drafted you, a team should have first rights to you. You shouldn’t just get to wait it out after accepting that team’s hospitality — and, in the case of Butcher, almost certainly cheers from that team’s fanbase — and sign with any team.
You don’t agree with me? Think about this: Cale Makar, the Colorado Avalanche’s fourth-overall this year, is playing for UMass this year. He was adamant that he was sticking to that plan. He’s utterly excited to play for UMass.
What if that excitement lasts four years? What if he comes out in 2021 and declares he has no intention of playing for his draft team? Where’s the fairness in that?
My Hopes for Will Butcher
I just can’t get over the change in Will Butcher. Last season, he was humble. He was excited to get to come to prospect development camp for the Colorado Avalanche.
This year he’s all rock star. Here’s the official statement from his agent:
“We appreciate what Colorado has done, and we’re not ruling out the Avalanche as a potential destination. But we just feel there will be other opportunities that should be explored too, and therefore we’re going (to the 15th). He’s in a unique position, so he has the opportunity to take advantage of it. Those things don’t come around too often.”
Fine, Will Butcher is going to be master of his own destiny. I hope Will Butcher is a bust. I hope he signs with the Chicago Blackhawks and they find no space for him on their stacked roster. I hope he bounces back and forth between the NHL and AHL.
And if he signs with the Minnesota Wild? The above plus the following: My hope is the undersized little ingrate gets a good taste of Dustin Byfuglien (or some other behemoth) à la Tyson Barrie:
Barrie can take a hit. Butcher? Well, I guess we’ll see. Maybe Big Z the Destroyer, Nikita Zadorov, can do the honors:
No, really, if Will Butcher signs with the Wild, I hope he gets lost in the frozen tundra of Minnesota and his soft parts freeze off. That’s one kid who puts the flake in “snowflake.”
I mean, seriously, if the worst hockey thing that ever happens to you is a team changes its mind about not wanting you, then Will Butcher will be the luckiest NHLer ever. Ask Marian Hossa. Ask Jesse Winchester. Hell, ask Steve Moore.What Can You Buy With $1 In Different Countries Around The World?
What can you buy with $1 in different countries around the world? This is a question we don’t ask ourselves as often as we should and it’s about time we got an accurate answer for it.
Depending on how far east or south you are willing to travel, you will see that your dollar would fluctuate in value. If in the US or in Europe, a dollar will get you pretty much the same thing, in Africa, South America or in Asia, your dollar will be worth a whole lot more.
There is truth behind the old saying that “a dollar doesn’t have the same value as it used to”, but that only applies in the US and Europe. In other developing countries, you’d be surprised about how far one single dollar can get you.
What Can You Buy With $1 In Different Countries Around The World?
By looking at these numbers and after seeing what you can do with just 1 US Dollar in different places on Earth, how do you look at life? Wealth is not equally divided around the world and unless we do something about this subject, we just have to get used to the unfairness of the modern-day society.
This huge |
ensuring justice for Kashmiri Pandits and the case is being looked at afresh after India Today's expose in #HurriyatTruthTapes.
Government sources say they will also explore the possibility of filing a review petition in the Supreme Court.
The Kashmiri separatist leader was exposed in India Today's special investigative report 'Operation Villains of the Valley' where he was caught on camera confessing to receiving funds from Pakistan.
NIA ALSO PROBING
Acting on India Today's expose #HurriyatTruthTapes, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is probing the transfer of funds to some separatist leaders in Kashmir and have questioned Karate.
India Today had also dug out an archival video of Karate where he made a shocking admission of having killed 20 Kashmiri Pandits.
While giving bail to Bitta Karate in 2006, Justice Wani of the TADA Court had remarked that the charges against the accused were serious to warrant death sentence or life imprisonment but the prosecution showed total disinterest in the case.
Now, 10 years later the Karate files are being reopened as the chorus of justice is getting louder by the day.
Also read:
When JKLF leader Bitta Karate admitted to killing 20 Kashmiri Pandits
Caught on Camera: How Pakistan funds Kashmiri separatists to burn the Valley - India Today Exclusive
Also watch:
Bitta Karate case will be reopened and no culprit spared: Junior Home Minister Ahir tells India TodaySue Lowden, a former Nevada GOP chair currently seeking the Republican nomination in the June 8 primary to run against Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, has detailed some of her alternative recommendations for health care policy: Encourage people to save as much money as they can in tax-free health savings accounts — the number she mentioned was $20,000 — and to barter with their doctors.
At a candidate forum this past Tuesday in Mesquite, Nevada, Lowden was asked what she would have done instead of the Democrats’ health care bill. Lowden’s message was generally deregulatory in nature, pointing to the ideas of interstate insurance policies and the legalization of stripped-down “mandate-free” policies. “I would have also allowed for us to have savings plans increase instead of being decreased like in this bill,” said Lowden. “I would have said to all of you, if you have a health savings account, I don’t really care how much you save, good for you. pre-tax, go ahead and save as much as you want. It’s your — it’s for your health. And if you want to save $20,000, good for you. Save it pre-tax.”Lowden continued: “And I would have suggested, and I think that bartering is really good. Those doctors who you pay cash, you can barter, and that would get prices down in a hurry. And I would say go out, go ahead out and pay cash for whatever your medical needs are, and go ahead and barter with your doctor.”
Here is the video, from a Nevada Democratic Party tracker:
Late Update: The Lowden campaign sent us a comment statement from the candidate. From the look of her explanation, it appears that she may have confused her vocabulary, using the word “barter” when she should have said “haggle,” judging from her discussion here about doctors accepting a lower payment if offered in cash. Key quote:Trying to predict the future can be a maddening task, and that is especially the case when Clay Buchholz is involved. The right-hander has been anything but consistent throughout his career with the Red Sox, and it remains something of a mystery as to why he can flash elite stuff one start and hardly resemble a major-league pitcher the next.
We've already seen the full Buchholz experience just two weeks into this season. He looked nearly unhittable in Boston's Opening Day victory against the Phillies before falling flat on his face against the Yankees in his second start, one of the worst outings from any pitcher in MLB so far this year. Buchholz showed more mettle last time out against the Orioles, fighting through some misfortune to allow just one walk and two runs over six innings.
Even still, the end result is more questions than answers with Buchholz, and that remains the case nine seasons into his Red Sox career.
Yet even if we accept that Buchholz is a near-impossible nut to crack, there are some reasons for optimism from his early-season performances. Sure, his 6.06 ERA would make anyone cringe, but just a glance at his early season -- emphasis on early -- FIP (3.02) and xFIP (2.67) suggests the righty has pitched better than his results show.
Most encouraging has been Buchholz's ability to generate strikeouts in his first three outings. For a pitcher who has long depended on the play of his fielders behind him, garnering extra whiffs is of vital importance. Through 16-1/3 innings pitched in 2015, Buchholz has compiled a 25 percent strikeout rate and 11 percent swinging-strike rate, both of which would stand as career-best marks. Expecting Buchholz to post these numbers over a full season is likely wishful thinking, but they do speak to the quality of his stuff in the early going.
Photo credit: Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports
After struggling with the feel for his changeup in recent seasons, Buchholz has found great success with the offering again in 2015. According to Brooks Baseball, opposing hitters swung through Buchholz's changeup nearly 24 percent of the time in his first three starts, and he has yet to allow a hit on the pitch (though again, we're dealing with a small sample size here). Long his best offering, Buchholz needs an effective changeup to help him generate whiffs and weak contact.
Even more intriguing has been the subtle change in Buchholz's pitch usage. In years past, Buchholz has preferred throwing his four-seamer with regularity while mixing in a sinker and cutter to give hitters a different look on his fastball. That's changed this season, with Buchholz turning to his sinker almost 40 percent of the time through his first three outings, making it his most used offering. The pitch has helped Buchholz produce more groundballs, and his current 55 percent groundball rate is notably higher than it's been over the past three seasons.
Considering the Red Sox bulked up on groundball pitchers this offseason, Buchholz's altered approach is one worth monitoring. He's never been a groundball pitcher per se, but given his issues with home runs in the past, keeping the ball in the infield more frequently could pay big dividends.
That there are positive signs regarding Buchholz's early-season performances is a good reminder that Boston's rotation as a whole still needs more time to be judged fully. With the offseason narrative surrounding the club condemning Ben Cherington's supposed inability to add an ace, it's easy to let a poor outing or two stoke panic over the team's starting rotation.
In a way, Buchholz exemplifies all the question marks and worry surrounding the Red Sox's starters. He has all the talent and ability in the world, sure, but his inconsistency makes him tough to depend on at times, especially with Boston needing bounce-back campaigns from a few of their other pitchers.
Still, Red Sox fans should take some comfort in how Buchholz has fared this April. His underlying statistics (and that.404 batting average on balls in play) point to a pitcher who has performed better than his ERA indicates. He is compiling more strikeouts and fewer walks than his previous career-best numbers. He is churning out more ground balls than ever before and getting hitters to chase outside the strike zone with a higher frequency. Overall, he's allowing less contact, while his fastball velocity is holding steady when compared with years past.
In short, the Red Sox have plenty of reasons to be positive about Buchholz's outlook for the rest of 2015. If he can continue to garner ground balls and weak contact with regularity, the club's infield defense should help his performance improve. If he can keep his strikeout and walk totals near their current rate, positive results will follow.
Projecting Buchholz's performance with any kind of certainty remains a tough task, of course. He is an enigma, and probably always will be. But there is little doubt that he looks far better than he did at this time last season. The Red Sox have built an armada of quality hitters on offense to help balance the uncertainty within their rotation. Assuming Buchholz is doomed for mediocrity in 2015 would be an overreaction at this point. His numbers suggest patience on Boston's part will likely be rewarded.Turkey has been holding a NASA scientist in prison for nearly a year on accusations he is a U.S. spy, according to a journalist who was imprisoned with him.
NASA physicist Serkan Golge, a dual citizen of Turkey and the U.S., was in Turkey visiting family during the July 2016 coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkish authorities arrested Golge and accused him of being a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The evidence against him? His NASA ID card and a single dollar bill authorities found at his family’s home.
Journalist Lindsey Snell was locked up in the cell directly above Golge’s in the wake of the failed coup and also accused of being a CIA agent. But Snell was eventually released from prison while Golge was not.
Golge told Snell his experience “felt like death” when he was in solitary confinement and subject to almost daily interrogations.
Golge worked at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va. His research involved using polarized beams to study how subatomic particles interact, as well as measuring antimatter. Golge’s wife and their two children are currently trapped in Turkey by a travel ban.
Golge is just one of many Turkish-American dual citizens who have been arrested and accused of being CIA agents. The U.S. has said little about this, but the latest Department of State travel warning says “Delays or denial of consular access to U.S. citizens detained or arrested by security forces, some of whom also possess Turkish citizenship, have become more common.”
In July 2016, the Turkish army tried to seize power in the coup and even flew warplanes over the Turkish capital of Ankara and blockaded roads in Istanbul with tanks, but the coup failed. The military cited increased autocratic rule by Erdoğan and increased terrorism for the coup.
The Turkish government attributed the coup to Fethullah Gülen, a powerful Islamic cleric who fled to Pennsylvania in 1999. However, international intelligence agencies aren’t buying it.
Since the coup attempt, the government arrested more than 45,000 for alleged links to Gülen. Erdogan and state-run Turkish meida has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. government is both harboring Gülen and was involved in the coup attempt. The dollar bill is allegedly a membership card marking Golge as one of Gülen’s loyal followers.
Many Turkish lawyers were arrested after the coup attempt, and as a result Golge has had problems securing legal representation.
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The deal, which will bring to ailing Sharp funds for investment in newer technologies like OLED, will be done through the issue of new shares to Hon Hai and partner companies for 489 billion yen (US$4.4 billion). Hon Hai will also acquire shares held by lenders to Sharp for around 200 billion yen.
A maker of Apple’s iPhone and other key consumer electronics products, Hon Hai, which goes by the trade name Foxconn, has long eyed Sharp for its display business and manufacturing know-how. The Japanese company is also a supplier to Apple.
Sharp said it had received a commitment from Foxconn and related companies that its brand would be retained as well as its existing employees.
The Japanese company, which has businesses in consumer electronics, components like camera modules, solar cells and LCDs, was earlier negotiating a deal with Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, which is backed by the Japanese government.
The deal was seen to be attractive as it would keep the company in Japanese hands, but Sharp said Thursday that the arrangement would involve the company splitting out its display business, which would be then integrated into Japan Display, which combines the small and medium display businesses of Japanese companies like Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi. INCJ would in turn invest 300 billion yen into Sharp.
Sharp said it was looking for an investor that would support the company’s investments in technologies such as robotics and the Internet of Things to address opportunities in the area of “new connections between people and house appliances.”
The company has been a household name in Japan and is still associated in the public mind with devices such as propelling pencils, which are still referred to as “Sharp pens.” One of the company’s early creations was the “Hayakawa mechanical pencil,” named after the company’s founder and developer of the device, Tokuji Hayakawa.
Sharp had earlier this month confirmed discussions with Foxconn and said the Taiwanese company had extended its offer to Feb. 29.
The company also said this month that its board of directors had agreed on a capital investment to increase production capacity and focus on small- and medium-size high-value added LCD panels at its Kameyama Plant No. 2. It said it aimed to counter over-supply and falling prices in the TV and smartphone display segment by focusing its production capacity on high-value added panels for the small- and medium-size market that are high-definition, narrow-framed and offer low power consumption.
Describing the business conditions facing the company as “still harsh,” Sharp also announced this month an extension to March 2017 of salary and allowance cuts for workers and managers that were introduced in August last year. It said the reductions would reduce costs by 3.6 billion yen for the year ending March 2017.
Foxconn has previously shown interest in investing in a 10 percent stake in Sharp.
On Thursday, shortly after Sharp’s announcement of its approval of the deal, Foxconn appeared to throw doubts on the pact, saying it would postpone signing on the agreement until it had reviewed some “new material information” from Sharp, reports said.Buy Photo Fans were able to enjoy a brew during the Eastern Michigan-Ball State game. (Photo: Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo
An Eastern Michigan official called the one-game test of beer sales at Rynearson Stadium a success, even though it lost about $3,000.
"Yes, the pilot was a success in the fact that it did everything we could have hoped for," Greg Steiner, assistant athletics director for media relations, told the school's Eastern Echo.
The paper reported selling 559 cups of beer in the beer patio at last Saturday's football game against Ball State, grossing about $4,000.
Steiner said the school paid just $878 for the beer but incurred costs of about $7,000 for things such as extra security. There were no known disturbances due to the alcohol consumption.
• Related: Follow Schrader's sports oddities in the Ticker
"Because it was a pilot program, profit is difficult to calculate, as we had to rent a lot of the items that were required (to) set up the area," Steiner told the Echo. "If we move forward with it in the future, the cost associated with it would be different, as some of the items would be looked at for purchase rather than rental."
But now EMU will assess the test program before deciding whether there will be more rounds of beer sales at football games.
"We will not be selling for Army this weekend, and we are not anticipating selling at any other games this season," Steiner said.
Contact Steve Schrader: sschrader@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @schradz.No, Mitt, that's not it at all. Some people who favor special treatment for corporate DIVIDENDS argue that dividends are distributions of profits and that profits are what is left over after the corporation has paid its taxes.
But capital gains are the profit the INDIVIDUAL makes as an investor when selling an asset like shares of stock. That profit has never been taxed at the corporate level because it never belonged to the corporation. The investor typically does not buy his stock from the corporation, and doesn't sell it back to the corporation.
Rather, the argument for taxing capital gains at a lower rate is basically that you need to use tax policy to encourage people (like venture capitalists and startup business owners) to invest in new companies, just as you encourage them to invest in houses by allowing them to deduct mortgage interest and taxes. Nothing to do with so-called "double taxation."
So Mitt evidently does not know the difference between dividends and capital gains, despite having an MBA and a JD and having run numerous companies. Or else he just says anything in the hope that most voters will be confused and shut up.
By the way, the venture-capitalist argument for lower capital gain rates is entirely phony. Most capital gains are not generated by a company's founders or venture capitalists -- rather, they are from sales of stock of long-established companies by investors who bought on the stock exchange from other investors. That capital is not "put at risk" in the same way a startup company's capital is, and it does not enable the company to hire any additional workers, because it doesn't go into the corporate treasury. When the stock goes up, it may make the corporate directors happy (because they also own shares) but that still does not benefit the corporation, its employees, its suppliers, its customers, or anyone other than the investor who sold the stock. (Caveat: some corporations buy back their shares, and to that extent a rise in stock prices helps them, but they still do not get the benefit of -- and have never been taxed on -- the capital gain received by a stranger who happened to buy their stock on the NYSE.)
And let me get this straight. If you were a venture capitalist and the capital gains rate were to go up from 15% to 28%, you would stop investing in new companies and... do what, exactly? Get a job at the post office because now there's no tax advantage to being an investor?
(The "double taxation" argument regarding dividends has a little more going for it, but not much. Yes, corporations pay income taxes (or should). And those taxes reduce the amount of dividends they pay to stockholders, so the stockholders feel the dividends have "already been taxed." Of course, if the stockholders didn't pay income taxes, they would have more money to pay their gardeners with -- so why don't gardeners whine about their income having "already been taxed"?
Because they're gardeners, of course, and who listens to them?Much of my weekend was spent playing Neverwinter Online as part of their closed beta. I have been looking forward to getting a deeper hands on experience with this game since playing the demo at PAX Prime back in August. Personally, I was not disappointed by what I found. It is not, in its current state, a complete game by any means, but what is there really put a smile on my face. So, my friends, gather around the camp fire and I shall share with you the tale of a tricky rogue known as Quinn Fallcrest. His was a brief, but entertaining life.
So many dungeons, so little time
I decided that if I only had a few days to play, I was darn well going to go nuts and roll a striker. I have played in several 4th Edition D&D games and I am a fan of doing all the damage. Things looked great right up until I got to the stats. Rolling for stats? I’m pretty sure we’ve had something to say on that very subject here on Dorkadia. So I was less than thrilled about that part, but I did enjoy the amount of optional background information that could be put into character creation. Of course it is worth mentioning that this isn’t an exact emulation of a 4th Edition experience. For that, you would most likely want a tactics game of some sort. Neverwinter is, however, very much in the spirit of that most action and oriented edition of D&D.
Once you’re in game, you start to see exactly how this whole translation comes together. You receive two at-will abilities that you will spam endlessly when other options aren’t available. Your three encounter powers will have small cooldowns as you would expect from powers in most MMORPGs. Your two daily powers will be tied to action points that you generate in combat and which are visibly represented by a filling D20. When that puppy is full, it’s time to unleash some crazy shit. I found the keyboard and mouse layout to be quite user friendly. Using WASD to move is pretty standard, so your enounters are conveniently bound to QER and at-wills are on the mouse buttons. That little touch made the game feel like it flowed perfectly to me without having to make any UI changes on my end.
Mechanically, I would like to see a slightly more responsive or intuitive use of defensive powers. I don’t necessarily want to double tap a direction or hold shift while pressing a direction to tumble out of harm during a heavy fight. I would much prefer to just hit shift and automagically dodge backward. That may be a bit of a nitpick, but I think it would make combat feel more reflexive.
Shouldn’t I be rolling dice?
Neverwinter managed to push my D&D adventure buttons consistently as I made my way up to level 15 over the course of the weekend. My boat was sacked by a dracolich which left me stranded on the shores of Neverwinter? Cool. Go perforate some undead and make my way to a castle? Yes please. Now proceed to fight thieves trying to steal the crown of Neverwinter, take out a warren of kobolds, track wererats through a sewer, and then go fight bands of orcs? Clearly someone has been peeking at the DM notes for every campaign I’ve been in. What I’m saying here is that I absolutely dig the flavor of this game and I can’t wait until it’s ready for public release.
Questing and leveling were as smooth as I could have asked for. The thing that I have been encountering lately in the free to play world is the lack of continual questing to level up. Perhaps I was spoiled by subscription games that didn’t make me engage in grinding specifically toward the end of gaining a level to get my next set of quests. There are a couple absolutely fantastic things about Neverwinter to help alleviate that whole grinding problem. Firstly, the game has a screen that pops up to suggest various activities when you log in such as a level appropriate skirmish or dungeon. Skirmishes are short instances focused on combat where a party will face down waves of enemies and try to remain standing. It’s a welcome change of pace from standard dungeons as far as I’m concerned. Sadly, I did not dive into any full multiplayer dungeons this weekend and so can’t describe their potential excellence.
Even if you don’t want to skirmish or go dungeon crawling with others, the Foundry system of user created content should be sufficient to keep players entertained between story quests. The only complaint I will mention about that system was that the first quest I picked up was quite painfully obviously made by a user and not a game designer. The quest story made absolutely no sense and much of the text was riddled with spelling and grammar issues. However, there is a rating system for Foundry quests that should help sort the good from the bad as more players participate in the system.
You know that dream where you’re raiding a crypt and forgot your pants
Certain things were not present in beta weekend three; things like pants. Yeah, no leg items were sold by vendors, looted from chests, or awarded from quests. An odd choice to omit from a beta test to be sure. Let me reiterate – amazing system that allows for users to create, and share their own content; no pants. Seriously. Also missing were professions, though the interface for them is present and I look forward to seeing it implemented in the future.
Yes, there were bugs and not everything was available in the game (pants), but it’s a closed beta so that’s to be expected. Overall, it was a great experience that leaves me wanting to delve deeper into the dungeons and caverns of Neverwinter. I am, quite certainly, a very biased person to have chime in on the virtues of this game by my own admission. I bring my love of past D&D experiences with me and they definitely enter into my final judgment. That said, I will be sitting here at my PC and stabbing away at demonic hordes when Neverwinter becomes available for public consumption and I hope to see you all in there with me.
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PinterestHow We Did It: Stable Tuition Four Years in a Row and Now a $1,000 Decrease
As the head of an “out of town” Modern Orthodox Jewish day school (although many consider Boca Raton, Florida, to be only “sort of” out of town) very similar to so many in the NY/NJ area, I closely follow the trends, successes and challenges of these fine institutions. Our school, the Katz Hillel Day School of Boca Raton, has learned so much from your local schools and this learning is bolstered by the fact that many of your administrators and teachers are my close, personal friends. So it is in the spirit of that partnership and ongoing collaboration that I would like to share about our recent accomplishment in the area of day-school affordability so that, perhaps, others can benefit.
It was at our annual school dinner this past January where we not only added the “Katz” name to our school in recognition of the long-time service and generosity of Daniel and Caroline Katz, but we announced that the full cost of tuition for grades K-8 would be dropping by $1,000 per child beginning with the 2017-18 school year, following four years without a tuition increase.
A strategic, multifaceted approach helped us achieve this milestone that should, ultimately, allow for more families to afford our Modern Orthodox education now and well into the future.
This would not have been possible without the following contributing factors:
Outstanding education is always the priority. We have developed a reputation for educational excellence in both Judaic and general studies that has brought new families to our school from throughout south Florida and from around the country. This provided a boost in enrollment well beyond the numbers we budgeted for, and this happened for several years in a row (our current numbers are above 500 students). Even with impressive increases in our numbers, we made sure to improve teacher/student ratios and added programs and services that directly benefited children. With discipline, we used the financial surplus to build up a significant reserve. Our program for students with special learning needs also helped boost enrollment by bringing in children from outside of our traditional catchment area.
Paid off the mortgage. Using some of the reserve we built up and with the help of a donor, we initiated a creative “burn the mortgage” campaign that incentivized parents to contribute, given the savings they would realize in the years to come. Getting rid of the payments on the $1.5 million mortgage allowed us to “give” that money back to our families by lowering tuition.
Improved overall business operations and adjusted financial aid policies. Through personnel enhancements in the business office and careful oversight by the school president and treasurer, we have kept expenses in check (below national averages), dramatically improved tuition collections (virtually eliminating bad debt) and adjusted financial aid policies that included tuition minimums for all families (barring extenuating circumstances). It is important to mention that our concern for keeping expenses as low as possible did not come on the backs of our devoted teachers and staff. They have received a raise every year and have even benefited from two separate “bonuses,” along with an increase in our pension contribution this past year that is still in effect for the current school year. We recognize that a great school cannot exist without great teachers and administrators who feel appreciated and supported.
Increased revenue streams outside of tuition. We have made good use of our 15-acre campus (with gym and fields) by opening our own, professional summer camp four years ago. Profits go directly toward scholarship assistance and some new families have enrolled in the school as a result of their camp experience. We rent part of our facility to a synagogue on the weekends and people rent our fields and gym for birthday parties and other events as do some of the local community organizations. We have professionalized our development department and have met or exceeded our ambitious fundraising goals without an increase in event-based fundraisers. Additionally, thanks to a tax credit scholarship program in the state of Florida, we are receiving significant funds for children from lower-income families. Not only does this make it possible for these children to attend our school, it alleviates some of the financial burden that has traditionally been borne by families paying full tuition.
The list of all that went into our recent success would be incomplete without acknowledging the incredible revealed blessings we have received from Hashem. We are so grateful and pray that these blessings continue.
Obviously, some of the above-mentioned initiatives are not replicable at other schools. Every institution and every community is unique when it comes to its own challenges and opportunities. But every school can and should recognize that by examining all aspects of their operation and highlighting areas of potential improvement in each one, a multi-year plan can be developed and meaningful results can be realized.
For more information, please contact Rabbi Englander at [email protected]
By Rabbi Adam Englander
Rabbi Adam Englander is Head of School at Katz Hillel Day School of Boca Raton.Illustration: Matt Golding The campaign involved thousands of adsrunning across television, radio, online, billboards and in more than 60 local, regional and foreign language newspapers. But many of the projects being advertised, including the now dumped East West Link, were years from completion. Among the ads was one promoting a proposed airport rail line with services every 10 minutes. The rail link was not scheduled to open until 2026. "Governments shouldn't be splurging public money on ads like this because it just doesn't work - we now have empirical evidence from two elections it doesn't," said Public Transport Users Association president Tony Morton.
"Governments like to spin their way out of trouble, in transport more than any other area, and people are just sick of it." Under questioning throughout 2014, former premier Denis Napthine repeatedly refused to detail the cost of the transport ad campaign, saying only that his government's ad spending was less than his Labor predecessors. But the released documents show spending on the ads was at a rate far above the Brumby government's $6.8 million campaign to promote its "Victorian Transport Plan". The Andrews government on Monday also gave fresh detail on the extent of the Moving Victoria ad campaign, launched in 2013 after Dr Napthine replaced Ted Baillieu as leader. The campaign was seen as a bid to lift the government's electoral fortunes and change the perception of the government as mired in inertia.
It was a marked departure from promises made by Mr Baillieu in opposition to abandon such highly-politicised, publicly-funded advertising. In the 2014/15 financial year, the Napthine government spent $5.5 million on the Moving Victoria campaign. This was on top of $9.8 million spent in the previous financial year, bringing the total cost to $15.3 million. At the height of the campaign, tens of thousands of dollars were being paid each month to marketing, digital strategy and research companies. Tens of thousands of dollars were also paid to translation companies so that ads could be run in multiple languages. The documents also include details of more than $2 million paid in the final two months of 2013 to Mitchell and Partners ad agency.
This money was to pay television, radio, newspaper and web companies – including Fairfax Media, owner of The Age – for thousands of ads aired in late 2013. The freedom-of-information request submitted by Fairfax Media last February covered only the ad campaign to that date, but the campaign continued to run for much of 2014. Labor MP Gavin Jennings said the former government had wasted more than $15 million "advertising projects that aren't a priority for our state". But Coalition MP John Pesutto said the former government had delivered transport projects that improved punctuality, increased services and enhanced community safety. He said the campaign had been undertaken "to inform Victorians about details that were personally relevant to transport users" about large planned infrastructure investments.
By contrast, he said, "Daniel Andrews will have no major road or rail projects to inform Victorians about".Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, "I just got back from the big debate on is free law like free beer that has been brewing for months at the American Bar Association over the question of who gets to read public safety codes and on what terms."
I was granted what is known as the "privilege of the floor" to speak before the House of Delegates at their Annual Meeting. The ABA Journal has a summary of the floor debate.
With a couple dozen resolutions on the table and some really inspirational speeches by all sorts of pretty amazing folks (the presidents of the ABA are pretty inspirational!), this was the only resolution that had any significant debate. We went at it for over 30 minutes. In my remarks I made the point that this resolution was perhaps well-intentioned, but bought into a really dangerous idea that somehow DRM-based access to the law from an exclusive private provider is "good enough." I was actually joined by the standards establishment in arguing strenuously that "read only access" simply doesn't exist and DRM is futile. A law is either public or it isn't. (And if a law isn't public, it isn't a law!)
The other side argued that DRM-based access is good enough for ordinary people, and felt that setting that as a minimum floor for access was a good thing. Today, many public safety standards have no access at all for the general public (although I'm proud to have 980 of the laws in question on my web site for access with no restriction and with significant transformation in your ability to use them), so Resolution 112 is sort of a step forward. For that I'm pleased. In a 146-210 vote, we lost our motion to take a deep breath and ask ourselves if maybe the current "split the baby" solution wasn't settling for something pretty bad and maybe we could do better. Although there were 6 ABA Sections that were the sponsors of the resolution (including, believe it or not, Civil Rights and Social Justice!), I suspect that very few of the task force members that did this thing has ever looked at a "read only access" standard, let alone our transformed version.
The lobbying for this resolution was intense. On Monday morning, I did 5 breakfasts with state delegations at Moscone while my colleague Cathy Gellis covered 4 breakfasts at the Marriott. At each one, we would give a pitch for a few minutes, there would be questions and answers, maybe a little banter about the state, maybe the other side was giving a pitch, then I'd walk around the table and hand out postcards). I ended up sending 480 snailmail packages and at the meeting giving out hundreds more postcards. It was gratifying when so many people said "I've been reading about this! I got a bunch of postcards in the mail!"
What struck me the most was the continual mention by the American Bar Association speakers of two things: "rule of law" and "we must embrace technology." I think the question of who gets to read the law is at the very heart of those two important themes, and I got to make my case before 550 of the top lawyers in the country, most of whom had not heard of this issue before. It was worth it.
Next up: Oral arguments in our big standards case is on September 12 in Washington, D.C. Our team of lawyers from EFF and Fenwick & West are going to argue for your right to read the law in any way you want to read it. All 6 plaintiffs and Public Resource have submitted Motions for Summary Judgment, a boatload of Amicus briefs were submitted, this will be the first time the substance of the case will be presented before the judge. Wish us luck.I've had this game circled on my calendar since the day the schedule was released. Winning against the New England Patriots in the regular season doesn't (and at least for me, will never) make up for what happened in Super Bowl XLIX, but damn it sure feels great to see the Seahawks go to Foxboro and get a 4th quarter come-from-behind win against the almighty Patriots in front of a huge national television audience. The Seahawks have now gone 2-for-2 in regular season matchups against New England in the PC/JS/RW era, with Russell Wilson throwing 6 touchdowns to 0 interceptions, 4 of them going to Doug Baldwin.
Certain games call for Enemy Reaction to go up on Monday instead of Tuesday. This is one of those occasions. It was a highly competitive, heartstopping, back-and-forth thriller in which neither team led by more than 7 points, and this time, it was the Seahawks who won the game with a defensive stand at the 1 yard line. That means plenty of screenshots from the game threads of Field Gulls and Pats Pulpit. Let's get this rolling!
Kam Chancellor interferes with Rob Gronkowski, LaGarrette Blount punches it in on the next play (7-0 NE)
Jermaine Kearse drops a pass near the goal line, Seattle settles for 3 (7-3 NE)
Seahawks have their drive extended on defensive pass interference, kick another field goal (7-6 NE)
Doug Baldwin beats Malcolm Butler for a touchdown, Hauschka has his XP blocked (12-7 SEA)
After Gronk fumble is correctly overturned, Tom Brady throws up a duck and DeShawn Shead easily picks it off (12-7 SEA)
Richard Sherman gets called for a phantom facemask on Julian Edelman (12-7 SEA)
Earl Thomas legally and brutally drills Rob Gronkowski (12-7 SEA)
Cliff Avril holds Gronk, LaGarrette Blount scores his 2nd touchdown of the game (14-12 NE)
Patriots drop 8 into coverage, forget Doug Baldwin exists, Seahawks take the lead heading into halftime (19-14 SEA)
LaGarrette Blount scores his 3rd touchdown of the game (21-19 NE)
Paul Richardson gets free for 39 yard gain, setting up another Hauschka FG (22-21 SEA |
. You can call the shelter at (812) 829-6247.
Our Lil Bit of Heaven is assisting with 16 of the dogs, which is also straining their resources. They're also accepting donations via PayPal to ownedbycaninesandloveit@yahoo.com.
The shelter does not need dog food, saying it has received enough through generous donations to last for two months, which is their storage capacity.If and when you marry a Golden Domer, be prepared to watch plenty of Notre Dame football. Let’s just hope you have a coping mechanism.
Drinking while semi-rooting for a team called the Fighting Irish is a requisite. The Guinness and Jameson just go down smoother, however, when it’s an NBC telecast.
Notre Dame has its biggest home game of the season when Stanford travels to South Bend for Saturday’s kickoff (3:30 p.m. ET). Here are several reasons to make sure you have the appropriate well-stocked bar before you tune in:
MORE: Heisman Watch: Does Golson have a chance? | VanGorder makes difference for ND
The fight song. Let’s start with an easy, frequent event. “Here come the Irish” says Dan Hicks, and cue up the tune from the closing credits of “Airplane!” Such sweet memories of “The Gipper” and Rudy. A tear and a sip of beer to start.
Any other song played at any other stadium. “Sandstorm”? Really? Stop piping in that music that every non-Notre Dame-like program uses. Protest non-drink.
“It’s the 220th consecutive sellout at Notre Dame stadium.” It doesn’t get harder to believe every time Hicks adds a number to this. Also see, globally popular local team fills 81,000-seat venue a few times a year. Just one warmup shot.
Did you know that Kyle Brindza is their kicker and their punter? Yes, he kicks field goals, and he punts. Get this: he even is their kickoff guy! Slainte! He’s still just a kicker and punter, so only a small sip of O’Douls. Let’s pace ourselves.
Brian Kelly looks up disappointed at a player much bigger than him. Brian Kelly is a motivator and a great teacher of young men, so we love it when he has a motivational teaching moment with a young man. Two sips of beer, but you shotgun a whole can when Kelly adds some yelling and hand gestures.
MORE: Notre Dame Top 10 players | Stanford top 10 players
Everett Golson praised for staying in the pocket and throwing a strike. Just in case you forget Mayock is a fine draft evaluator for the NFL Network, he gets geeked up to analyze Golson’s mechanics and delivery on every single throw. It’s so beautiful when Golson stands in the face of pressure in the shotgun and drops a dime. Another tear and a sip of beer.
Everett Golson praised for getting out of the pocket and making a big play with his feet. Sometimes we don’t just want the pro-style quarterback. We want the bar raised with some mad scrambling magic. Just as St. Patrick drove out the snakes from Ireland, Golson keeps the drive alive. It’s Irish Car Bomb time, lads and lassies.
Everett Golson connects with his tight end. ND is the new TE U. John Carlson, Kyle Rudolph, Tyler Eifert, Troy Nicklas and this year's model, Ben Koyack. When Koyack gets involved to "take advantage of a mismatch", Mayock gets giddy. You get to toast them all with five good sips of beer.
Obligatory crowd shot of David Robinson. Corey Robinson, the son of the former NBA great and “Dream Team” center, is a talented wide receiver for the Irish. By now, you should know that dad never misses one of his Notre Dame games. Salute “The Admiral” with a couple of shots, one for each of his championships with the San Antonio Spurs. (Bonus shot when you see a helmet-less post-touchdown Corey showing off his Mario Balotelli-inspired blonde locks).
Obligatory sideline shot of Brian VanGorder. VanGorder has done a great job replacing Bob Diaco as defensive coordinator. Unlike Diaco, we love it that he’s doing his coaching from the sidelines. VanGorder, who looks like the long lost older brother of Matt and Kevin Dillon, also is made for the camera. He does the emotional fist pump, and you down a shot.
Doug Flutie and Mike Mayock get BC united. Just in case you forgot, Flutie and Mayock both played football at Boston College, the Notre Dame of Massachusetts. We love it when they go East Coast on us and talk football back and forth like Hicks is off calling a Ryan Lochte race somewhere else. One shot for Doug, one shot for Mike.
MORE: Does an undefeated BYU team deserve playoff chance?
Black and white highlight. This is for the younger but of legal drinking age viewers who forgot that Notre Dame was literally the best thing ever before color television. Look at that ridiculous and insane run and or catch in a leather helmet! That’s so awesome. That also deserves a whole pint of Guinness, because that’s what the kids are drinking, right?
Hey didn’t you used to be Alex Flanagan? A few drinks in, you’re reminded that the perfect name for an Irish sideline reporter no longer does Irish sideline reports. But then again, Kathryn Tappen still kind of rhymes with cask and flagon. That’s good enough for another shot.
Hines Ward says something obvious about the Notre Dame game. The Irish need to keep doing what they’re doing well, and need to get better at what they’re not doing well. Bathroom break.
Hines Ward says something obvious about the Sunday Night Football game. If you liked this Notre Dame college game on NBC, tune in tomorrow night when NFL Team A tries to score more points than NFL Team B. Snack break.
“We are the Fighting Irish”. Just in case I didn’t read my wife’s alumni magazine, I get to find out all the great things that Notre Dame, that fine institution of higher learning, is doing around the world to make humanity better. This also reminds me she’s really smarter than me and it was me who had the luck of the Irish. Awww. Champagne toast.
The AFLAC Trivia Question. Just because. One shot for the question, one shot for the duck sound and two bonus shots if you get it right. That’s impressive, based on how much you’ve already had to drink.
Time to trust Cam McDaniel, that reliable senior running back with good hands. It’s the second half, and Notre Dame has the lead. Guess who’s about to carry them home to victory? It’s the kid with Knute Rockne All-American looks, married with his own kid on the way. OK, it’s hard not to love McDaniel. A shot, and make it two if he does something McDaniel-like with his helmet off again.
Notre Dame schedule screen shot to remind us they have three more home games. And scene. Better save some of this heavy drinking for when the Irish host North Carolina, Northwestern and Louisville. But still worth one last shot, assuming you can still stand.Five shows have already closed on Broadway in January, but three others are opening this month, the beginning of what looks to be an exciting season.
The Week in New York Theater
Monday, December 30, 2013
Broadway veterans we lost in 2013:
Eileen Brennan
Joan Fontaine
James Gandolfini
Julie Harris
Peter O’Toole
Jean Stapleton
#RIP
What kind of arts patron will Mayor Bill de Blasio be? His wife is a poet, they frequent “upstart museums”
What IS a playwright in residence? Nine reply, offer definitions and opinions. (“I don’t find they work very well”
I will never ever forget the love and beautiful sadness that we felt last night at the final performance of @BigFishBroadway. — Bobby Steggert (@bsteggert) December 30, 2013
December 2013 Quiz
Lady Gaga as Gogo?
Now that Carly Rae Jepsen is going to make her Broadway debut as the title character in Cinderella, what other pop singer would you like to see on the Rialto?
@NewYorkTheater @ladygaga she went to Tisch and would be the perfect choice for a revival of Guys and Dolls or Louise in Gypsy. — Alexia Patterson (@Life_as_Lexi) December 30, 2013
@NewYorkTheater also Lady Gaga has a real background in musical theatre pre pop-stardom. I’d say her on Broadway is just a matter of time. — Daniel Bourque (@Danfrmbourque) December 30, 2013
@NewYorkTheater @ladygaga as Sally Bowles in Cabaret. I think she’d be perfect actually in such a burlesque type role. #popstarsonbway — Lisa Vigna (@Lavesq) December 30, 2013
@NewYorkTheater All of them in Glengarry Glen Ross. — Raymond McNeel (@RaymondMcNeel) December 30, 2013
31
Wednesday, January 1, 2014: New Year’s Day
#HappyNewYear. For a billion people, the new year begins in NYC’s theater district! You think that’s a coincidence? No-siree-bob!
Like it or not, life in 2014 MT @vineapp Happy New Year! Wishing you a memorable 2014 from Times Square https://t.co/WxEBn2U4l7 — Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) January 1, 2014
However this may look to you, dogs are NOT happy wearing hats of any kind, not even on New Year’s Day. pic.twitter.com/VJJsw27KjK — Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) January 1, 2014
First baby born in 2014 in NYC: Shannon-Lee Willis, now 10 hours, 7 minute old pic.twitter.com/AUJitJsCPk — Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) January 1, 2014
Ring in the New Year – and Keep the Old: My review of What’s It All About? Burt Bacharach Reimagined
2
Tony n Tina’s Wedding, 1988 “immersive” comedy, returns to NYC in March, performed in Jacqueline Onassis High School for the Performing Arts on 46th Street,then Shubert Alley,then at Guy Pierce’s Restaurant
David Brooks on Marijuana vs. The Arts
Laws profoundly mold culture, so what sort of community do we want our laws to nurture? What sort of individuals and behaviors do our governments want to encourage? I’d say that in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale to favor temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship. In those societies, government subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or being in nature, and discourages lesser pleasures, like being stoned.
3
Broadway and the Blizzard of 2014
Bullets Over Broadway first look
God is my producer, my doctors are the directors. I am the star of the show – Valisia LeKae on her cancer.
“First off, make sure people can get into your fucking theater”~actor/director/disabled activist Michael P. Thornton. Everyone’s story is worth telling, but reducing the marginalized to an Issue is an exercise in empathetic tourism
What To Say BackStage*
“I LOVED your hair!”
“You were working so hard up there!”
“That was so brave!”
“YOU!”
“That was really different!
You’ll never know what you did up there tonight!”
“Always so great to see you on stage.”
I am looking for the words–there are none!”
It’s everything I hoped it would be!
I loved that moment you had.
“The typeface in the program made it really easy to read!”
“I can’t tell you what I think of your performance!”
4
Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark ends.
5
“Whoever told you that “if you just follow your bliss, the money will follow” was full of shit…. I netted about $2,000, after expenses, from playwriting in 2013. The money probably isn’t coming. The sooner you accept that, the happier you’ll be and maybe you can get on with your work. –Patrick Gabridge.
The sun will not come out tomorrow for Annie, and First Date is having its last date. Both end their runs on Broadway today.
Betrayal also ends its run.
And the year is young.
* The sources of the nice things to say backstage, in order:
Peter Marks @petermarksdrama
SeekingTheExit @blackoutpete
Peter Marks
Blackout Peter
klange@klange
that was really different!
Stuart Elliott @stuartenyt
Pippin Parker @PippinParker
Peter Marks
Rachel Manteuffel @RachelMan2
Warren Leight @warrenleightTV
Peter Marks quoting Tina Fey
Charles McNulty @CharlesMcNulty
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Like this: Like Loading...Shelby Rogers advanced out of the fourth round at Roland Garros with a win against 25th-seeded Irina-Camelia Begu, and she was overcome with emotion. (Jacky Naegelen/Reuters)
Overcome with emotion on Sunday, Shelby Rogers erupted in tears. Again.
Turns out, Rogers’s lachrymal moments are nothing special. But the American’s run at Roland Garros certainly is.
Ranked 108th and the last initial direct entrant into Roland Garros, Rogers advanced to her first Grand Slam quarterfinal by defeating 25th-seeded Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania 6-3, 6-4 on Sunday.
“One hundred percent tears all the time,” said Rogers, a South Carolina native who cried after upsetting two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova a round earlier. “Sad, happy, hungry, reading a book, watching a movie. They flow very easily.”
Adopt-a-puppy commercials?
Shelby Rogers was ranked 108th coming into the French Open, largely because of a rough stretch of play during an injury-affected 2015, but she’s through to the final eight of a Grand Slam event. (Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images)
“Can’t do it,” she laughed.
Rogers, 23, reached a career high of No. 70 in September 2014, but struggled through a disappointing, injury-plagued 2015. During one stretch, she lost in the first round in nine of 10 WTA tournaments.
Rogers injured her medial collateral ligament on grass during the summer, returning in time to reach the third round at the U.S. Open — her best result at a major before this week.
In the fall, she re-aggravated a back injury and shut down her season. She also skipped January’s Australian Open to make sure her body was healed.
Ranked outside the top 140 at the start of 2016, Rogers aim was simply to gain direct entry into the four Grand Slams.
“Made my goal, but just barely,” beamed Rogers, known as one of the friendliest players on tour.
“I think goals are very important, and anyone that’s in the draw has an even chance, I think,” she added. “So you’re in, you’re in.”
A flat hitter with a live arm and dangerous forehand, Rogers grew up playing on green clay in her home of Mount Pleasant, S.C., but has adapted to the slower red clay of Europe with alacrity.
Rogers said she had won her first junior tournament on the surface in both singles and doubles.
“I want to add that,” she instructed reporters.
She can mix up her shots with slice and height, which are valuable assets on the slower surface.
“She has a lot of looks she can present to an opponent,” said her coach, Marc Lucero.
Against Begu, Rogers didn’t deviate from her aggressive style when she fell behind 0-2 in the second set. She kept the pressure on her Romanian opponent when Begu later came back from 2-4 deficit to level the set at 4-all.
After beating Kvitova two days ago, Rogers cupped her hand to her face and cried.
When on-court interviewer Marion Bartoli asked Rogers whether she could have imagined being in the last eight of a major when she was a ball girl at her hometown tournament in Charleston, Rogers lost it a second time.
“I always dreamed it could happen, but I’m not sure I thought it could,” she said, choking on her words before the floodgates opened.
At least 2013 Wimbledon winner Bartoli came prepared. She handed Rogers a tissue as the crowd on Court Suzanne Lenglen erupted in extended applause.
Rogers is the last American woman outside of Serena and Venus Williams to reach the quarterfinals in Paris since Lindsay Davenport in 2005. She is the sixth-lowest-ranked player to go this far in Paris in the past three decades.
Lucero, who began coaching Rogers in December 2014, is not surprised by her Cinderella run.
The coach said he sensed she might be on the cusp of a big result following two tight losses this month at Strasbourg, one in qualifying and one in the main draw as lucky loser.
“I knew she was playing well,” said Lucero, who is based in Los Angeles, where Rogers relocated two years ago to train at the USTA training facility in nearby Carson, Calif.
“It’s nothing she’s not capable of,” he added of Rogers, who is competing in only her 10th Grand Slam event. “It’s been a matter of keeping her body in one piece.”
Rogers, who is here with her parents, boyfriend, and agent, said they were helping to keep her feet on the ground and her mind focused.
“You know, they are very excited obviously, but every time I go to hug them they’re like, ‘You’re not done, you’re not done,’ ” she said.
Her road to the last eight has been no cakewalk.
Besides No. 10 seed Kvitova and No. 25 Begu, Rogers earlier eliminated No. 17 seed Karolina Pliskova and veteran Elena Vesnina.
Begu, who had a strong clay-court season, including a semifinal loss to Serena Williams at Rome this month, gave her credit for reaching the second week.
“She played only good players in this event,” Begu said.
Rogers has never met her her quarterfinal opponent, Garbine Muguruza, a Wimbledon finalist last year. The Spaniard is seeded No. 4.
“Yeah, of course it gets harder every round,” said Rogers. “I’m definitely outside of my comfort zone already, and I keep telling myself, ‘You belong here, you belong here.’ ”
With their trip unexpectedly extended, Lucero said that Rogers was forced to move out of her rented apartment to a hotel before her match on Sunday.
He didn’t say if that also prompted tears.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Karolina Pliskova.There are very good chances of crescent visibility in most part of the world today, 26th May 2017. We will publish sighting reports as soon as we get them. Ramadan starts tomorrow, 27th May 2017 in all countries of the world. Ramadan Mubarak to all!
Crescent Sighting Reports - 26th May 2017
Australia:
1. Mr Abbas Aly from Imam Hasan Centre, Annangrove NSW - Not Seen
Mr Abbas Aly from Imam Hasan Centre, Annangrove NSW reported: On 26th May 2017 (Friday), the moon was not sighted. 1st day of Ramadhan will be Sunday 28th May 2017 Ramadhan Mubarak Source: Moonsighting
2. Engr Manzoor A Mian from Melbourne, VIC - Not Seen
Engr Manzoor A Mian from Melbourne, VIC reported: Crescent is not sighted today 26/5/17, Friday anywhere in Australia. It is announced that 1st of Ramadan will start on Sunday 28/5/17. Source: Moonsighting
3. Imam Abul Qasim Rizvi, Imam Juma Melbourne - Not Seen
Imam Abul Qasim Rizvi, Imam Juma Melbourne reported: Moon was not sighted anywhere in Australia (Melbourne,Sydney,Brisbane and Canberra) Therefore tomorrow Saturday 27th May will be the 30th of Shaban inshallah Sunday 28th May will be the 1st Ramadhan Ul Mubarak 1438. Source: Moonsighting
4. Dr Shabbir Ahmed, President of Qubaa association of Western Sydney, NSW - Not Seen
Dr Shabbir Ahmed, President of Qubaa association of Western Sydney, NSW reported: Today is Friday 26th of May. The Hilaal of RAMADAAN 1438 has NOT been sighted anywhere in Australia. Therefore, the month of RAMADAAN will commence from Sunday 28th of May 2017. Source: Moonsighting
5. Mr Moussa Khalife from Sydney, NSW - Not Seen
Mr Moussa Khalife from Sydney, NSW reported: We didn't sight the moon today even with the binoculars. We kept looking for more than half an hour but unfortunately the moon was not sighted. So tomorrow Saturday 27th of May will be 30th of Shaaban 1438H. Source: Moonsighting
6. Mr. Taymour Nabulsi from Sydney City in New South Wales State - Not Seen
Mr. Taymour Nabulsi from Sydney City in New South Wales State mentioned that the sky was partly cloudy, the atmospheric condition was clear, the crescent was not seen by naked eye, the crescent was not sought by binocular, the crescent was not sought by telescope, the crescent was not sought by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
Algeria
1. Mr. from باب الظهراوي قمار City in وادي سوف State - Seen
Mr. from باب الظهراوي قمار City in وادي سوف State mentioned that the sky was clear, the atmospheric condition was clear, the crescent was not seen by naked eye, the crescent was seen by binocular, the crescent was seen by telescope, the crescent was seen by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
2. Mr. Ahmad Reda Mami from سطيف City in سطيف State - Not Seen
Mr. Ahmad Reda Mami from سطيف City in سطيف State mentioned that the sky was partly cloudy, the atmospheric condition was hazy, the crescent was not seen by naked eye, the crescent was not sought by binocular, the crescent was not sought by telescope, the crescent was not sought by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
Brunei Darussalam
1. Mr. Hazarry Haji Ali Ahmad from Bandar Seri Begawan City in Tutong State - Seen
Mr. Hazarry Haji Ali Ahmad from Bandar Seri Begawan City in Tutong State mentioned that the sky was partly cloudy, the atmospheric condition was clear, the crescent was not seen by naked eye, the crescent was not sought by binocular, the crescent was seen by telescope, the crescent was seen by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
Barbados:
1. Mr Mohammed Patel from Jama Masjid in Bridgetown - Seen
Mr Mohammed Patel from Jama Masjid in Bridgetown reported: Today, Friday 26th May, 2017, the crescent was clearly SEEN (approx. at 6:48 p.m.). We had 29 days of Sha'ban. Insha'Allah, the 1st of Ramadan will be on Saturday 27th May, 2017. Here is the photograph. Source: Moonsighting
Canada:
1. Mr Shahid Rashid from Mississauga, Ontario - Not Seen, but seen in Eastern locations:
Mr Shahid Rashid from Mississauga, Ontario reported: Now on May 26, it is few minutes to Maghrib time in Mississauga, ON. Our skies are completely covered by the clouds and there is no chance for sighting the moon. Based on confirmed sighting reports from multiple eastern locations, our local Masjid has announced 1st of of Ramadan tomorrow. May 27 (Saturday). Source: Moonsighting
Chile:
1. Mr Muhammad Sohail from Iquique - Seen
Mr Muhammad Sohail from Iquique reported: The moon has been seen at 18:35 on May 26 (Friday). First of Ramadan in chile is tomorrow, May 27 (Saturday). Source: Moonsighting
Egypt:
1. Dr Hisham M. Hamed from Cairo - Not Seen
Dr Hisham M. Hamed from Cairo reported: On Friday, May 26th, From 6th October City, 29.989922N,30.977140E, some 0.22° of Longitude west of Giza, Egypt, at ~200m above sea level. The masjid was just next to the observation point. This area has much better visibility than the Nile valley, in general. Apparent sunset was at 18:49. There was no sign of the Crescent at that time. The Sun reached a solar depression of 5° at ~19:10, by which time my colleague and I had returned from Maghrib prayer. I then began my observation, knowing that the subsolar limb of the Crescent, i.e it's brightest point was already lower than 3.6°. Despite excellent visibility, and low humidity(~16%), there was NO sign of the Crescent. Temperature was ~34°C, pressure was 1010mb. I ended the attempt at ~19:20. Source: Moonsighting
Ghana:
1. Mr Baba Abdulai from Tamale - Seen
Mr Baba Abdulai from Tamale reported: Date of sighting is Friday May 26, 2017. The crescent was seen by other people in other places. Confirmed reports came from Zabzugu, Saboba and Bawku. I was speaking on phone to my friend Musah Inusah (a voluntary staff of the Bawku Agric. Office) around 18:42 local time when suddenly he sighted the moon over there in Bawku. He started calling other people to come and see the crescent. Just before completing the report, my uncle Abdul Karim also called me at 18:54 from Yemo-Karaga Yapala, confirming that he too had seen it. Source: Moonsighting
2. Mr Baba Abdulai from Tamale - Seen
Mr Malik Salifu Shaban from Garu Bawku reported: The crescent for Ramadan was seen today at Kugrago a suburb of Garu in the Upper East Region of Ghana at 6:30 local time. I was phoned in by Malam Ilyasu, Imam of Kugrago, in Garu. He said all members of the community saw the crescent. Sighting was also confirmed at Sabon Gari, a sector of Garu. The chief Imam of Ghana, Shaikh Nuhu Sharubtu had earlier announced Saturday 27th May 2017 to be the commencement of Ramadan. So Ghana observes fasting on Saturday inshaaAllah. Source: Moonsighting
Guyana:
1. Mr Fazal Mahmood from Corriverton, Berbice - Seen
Mr Fazal Mahmood from Corriverton, Berbice reported: The Central Moon Sighting Committee of Guyana (CMSCG) has declared the 1st of Ramadhaan 1438 AH to be on Saturday, 27th May, 2017 The new crescent for the Islamic lunar month of Ramadhaan 1438 AH was sighted on the evening of Friday, 27th May, 2017/ 29th Shabaan 1438 AH. Ramadhaan Mubarak! Source: Moonsighting
2. Dr Muhammad Hafiz from Rose Hall Town, Berbice - Seen
Dr Muhammad Hafiz from Rose Hall Town, Berbice reported: The members of Rose Hall Town Masjid, Guyana easily observe the Hilaal on Friday, 26th May 2017 for Ramadan 1438 AH after sunset (6:22 PM Guyana Time). The moon was also observed in several Muslim Communities throughout Guyana, hence the first day of fasting will commence on Saturday, 27th May 2017. Source: Moonsighting
Germany:
1. Eng. Gerhard Ahmad Kaufmann from Moerlenbach City in Hessen State - Seen
Eng. Gerhard Ahmad Kaufmann from Moerlenbach City in Hessen State mentioned that the sky was clear, the atmospheric condition was superb, the crescent was not seen by naked eye, the crescent was not seen by binocular, the crescent was not sought by telescope, the crescent was not sought by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
2. Eng. Martin Elsaesser from Munich City in Bavaria State - Seen
Eng. Martin Elsaesser from Munich City in Bavaria State mentioned that the sky was clear, the atmospheric condition was clear, the crescent was not seen by naked eye, the crescent was seen by binocular, the crescent was not sought by telescope, the crescent was seen by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
India:
1. Mr Abdunnafi' Qasimi (Aalim) from Chennai - Not Seen
Mr Abdunnafi' Qasimi (Aalim) from Chennai reported: On May 26, 2017, Friday, in Tamil Nadu, the moon was not sighted. Qazi of Tamil Nadu Salahuddin Ayyubi announced that Ramadan begins on Sunday, May 28, 2017 Source: Moonsighting
2. Mr Yusuf Idara from New Delhi - Not Seen
Mr Yusuf Idara from New Delhi reported: Today Friday 26-May-2017 = 29-Shaabaan-1438 Hijri, the moon of Ramadan-1438 hijri was not sighted. I tried to see the moon at my home from 07:00 pm to 07:30 pm but the moon was not sighted because horizon was too cloudy. Kanpur Rooyat Hilal Committee officially declared that moon was not sighted, therefore, Ramadan will start on Sunday, May 28. Source: Moonsighting
3. Mr Siddik Nadvi (Nida-e-Haram), from Ahmedabad, Gujrat - Not Seen
Mr Siddik Nadvi (Nida-e-Haram), from Ahmedabad, Gujrat reported: Today Friday 26th May, 2017 = 29 Shaban 1438 Hijri, we tried to see the crescent of Ramdan 1438 Hijri at our Institute JAMIA KANZUL ULOOM at 6.25 pm to 7.00. The crescent was not seen. Source: Moonsighting
4. Mr Molvi Iqbalhusen Bokda from Godhra, Gujrat, Gujrat - Not Seen
Mr Molvi Iqbalhusen Bokda from Godhra, Gujrat reported: Moon for Ramadan was not seen today on 26th May 2017 (29th Sha'ababn) here at Godhra. Sky was clear. Friends from different places gave negative sighting report. All Hilal committees including Imarate Shariya Bihar, Delhi, Bhopal, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad declared that it will be 30th Sha'aban tomorrow on 27th May. Ramadan will start on 28th May all over India. Source: Moonsighting
Indonesia:
1. Mr AR Sugeng Riyadi from Rowasiya Observatory at Bendo Ketitang Juwiring Klaten Central Java - Not Seen, but seen by CCD Imaging:
Mr AR Sugeng Riyadi from Rowasiya Observatory at Bendo Ketitang Juwiring Klaten Central Java reported: The New (Waxing) Crescent of Ramadhan 1437AH was NOT SEEN on Friday, 26 May 2017 from Rowasiya Observatory at Bendo Ketitang Juwiring Klaten Central Java Indonesia. This event was attend by Team of Rowasiya and Kaukaba, and members of Solo Astro Club. However, the new crescent of Ramadhan 1438 AH was seen by CCD from Banten West Java by Team of LAPAN. The Ministry of Religious Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia in the Sidang Isbath decided that Ramadhan 1st, 1438 A.H starts on Saturday, May 27th, 2017. Source: Moonsighting
2. Mr. AR Sugeng Riyadi from Surakarta City in Central Java State - Seen by others
Mr. AR Sugeng Riyadi from Surakarta City in Central Java State mentioned that the sky was partly cloudy, the atmospheric condition was very hazy, the crescent was not seen by naked eye, the crescent was not seen by binocular, the crescent was not seen by telescope, the crescent was not seen by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
3. Mr. Muhammad Yusuf from Kupang City in Nusa Tenggara Timur State - Seen
Mr. Muhammad Yusuf from Kupang City in Nusa Tenggara Timur State mentioned that the sky was partly cloudy, the atmospheric condition was hazy, the crescent was not seen by naked eye, the crescent was not sought by binocular, the crescent was not sought by telescope, the crescent was seen by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
4. Mr. AR Sugeng Riyadi from Surakarta City in Central Java State - Seen by others
Mr. AR Sugeng Riyadi from Surakarta City in Central Java State mentioned that the sky was clear, the atmospheric condition was clear, the crescent was not sought by naked eye, the crescent was not sought by binocular, the crescent was not sought by telescope, the crescent was seen by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
Iran:
1. Mr. Hossein Janghorbani from Shahreza City in Isfahan State - Seen
Mr. Hossein Janghorbani from Shahreza City in Isfahan State mentioned that the sky was partly cloudy, the atmospheric condition was hazy, the crescent was seen by naked eye, the crescent was seen by binocular, the crescent was not sought by telescope, the crescent was not sought by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
2. Mr. Hossein Janghorbani from Tabriz City in East Azerbaijan State - Not Seen
Mr. Hossein Janghorbani from Tabriz City in East Azerbaijan State mentioned that the sky was partly cloudy, the atmospheric condition was hazy, the crescent was not seen by naked eye, the crescent was not seen by binocular, the crescent was not sought by telescope, the crescent was not sought by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
Kenya:
1. Mr Hussein A Hussein from Mombasa - Seen
Mr Hussein A Hussein from Mombasa reported: Alhamdulillah the moon has been sighted in Mombasa, Lamu, and almost all parts of Kenya today, May 26 (Friday). Tommorrow its first of Ramadhan and the cheif kadhi has declared so. Source: Moonsighting
2. Mr Mahmood Essa from Mombasa - Seen
Mr Mahmood Essa from Mombasa reported: I am happy to let you know that we were able to sight the crescent this evening, Friday 26/05/2017 and thus In sha Allaah, tomorrow, Saturday 27/05/2017 will be our first day of Ramadhan. I take this opportunity in wishing all Muslims, a Blessed, Healthy and Happy Ramadhan. Source: Moonsighting
Lebanon:
1. Dr Hadi Jaafar - Seen w/Binoculars
Dr Hadi Jaafar reported: I have just seen the moon with a pair of 7*50 binoculars this evening May 26th 2017 in Beirut, Lebanon. First sighting was at 8:00 PM at around 295 degrees from magnetic north. Moon horns between 1 and 6, extremely thin. Despite many attempts, I could not see it with the naked eye. Little haze on the western horizon. Watched it using the binoculars for around 15 minutes, trying to take some photos of it using Nikon SLR, before it faded away behind the red haze. Camera sensor could not capture it. So beautiful. Ramadan Kareem. Source: Moonsighting
Libya:
1. Eng. Mohamed Mogerby from طرابس City in المدينة State - Seen
Eng. Mohamed Mogerby from طرابس City in المدينة State mentioned that the sky was partly cloudy, the atmospheric condition was hazy, the crescent was not seen by naked eye, the crescent was not seen by binocular, the crescent was not seen by telescope, the crescent was seen by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
Malaysia:
1. Mr. Kassim Bahali from Tanjung Bidara City in Melaka State - Not Seen
Mr. Kassim Bahali from Tanjung Bidara City in Melaka State mentioned that the sky was totally cloudy, the atmospheric condition was clear, the crescent was not seen by naked eye, the crescent was not seen by binocular, the crescent was not seen by telescope, the crescent was not sought by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
2. Mr. Agku Bolkhizan Ahmad Thani from Labuan City in Labuan FT State - Seen
Mr. Agku Bolkhizan Ahmad Thani from Labuan City in Labuan FT State mentioned that the sky was partly cloudy, the atmospheric condition was hazy, the crescent was not seen by naked eye, the crescent was not sought by binocular, the crescent was seen by telescope, the crescent was not sought by CCD Imaging Source: ICOP
Mauritius:
1. Mr Nissar Ahmad Ramtoola from Port Louis - Seen
Mr Nissar Ahmad Ramtoola from Port Louis reported: Moon has been sighted in Mauritius tonight Friday |
000 gil from 180,000. This is further reduced to 1,000 gil with the "Rhapsody in Azure" key item from RoV missions. Furthermore that key item allows you to re-enter every 1 hour. Couple this with the joint reduction of assault tags to 10 minutes from the Azure KI and you may farm your own mythic at your own pace. Granted this is still no easy task newer upgrades to them have added to the work.
Overall, just about all of the items from the revamps are useless now as the revamps occurred before SoA was released. The relevance of the events come from the fact that Einherjar will always be needed for Mythic Weapons. As for Limbus the Brutal Earring and Loquacious Earring still hold value and there is a discount for AF+1 Reforged Armor upgrades compared to the NQ.
Incursion
Incursion was rather short lived in its direct usefulness. Originally it was the only way to get some pretty good items, and augmented JSE Capes. There are a series of NMs spread across Cirdas Caverns which is essentially a giant maze of a zone and you are not allowed a map. Various unnaturally far range aggro and linking Velkk are in between you and these NMs.
Every NM provides you with its key item so you can either warp to it directly after for farming runs or use all of the key items to level the content up a level. Increasing the content a level provides extra drops. Nifty system huh? Well, elite players prided themselves on beating the mega boss on level 143 (cap level) and shortly after that SE added the ability to get the same augments on the capes from Detrovio. Some time passed and then the gear (some mediocre at launch) was almost all replaced. There are still a couple of accuracy pieces from it though which have not been usurped.
Now, the main use of Incursion is for special Capacity Points +% capes and farming for Reisenjima T2 NM pops. SE wanted to keep it semi-relevant.
Legion
Legion was once a difficult event for the likes of 18 to 36 people. There was a short lived time where the abjurations were the best for players in the game and the content the hardest.
Now the event serves little use aside from a few important synthesis materials for 119 abjuration armor.
Master Trials
Master Trials are a new sort of endgame challenge to a party of six accomplished and seasoned players. Currently, it only provides three pretty wing shaped lightsaber trophy items in the form of Sword, Hand-to-Hand, and Greatsword varieties. This event requires participating jobs have capped 2100 Capacity Points, and the entry item costs a mere 250 merits per group attempt. There are three different battlefields, including Alexander/Odin, the Shadow Lord with the three Beastmen leaders, and Arch-Ultima with Arch-Omega. More battles are announced and expected in future version updates.
Mog Garden
The Mog Garden, while not technically an event is an activity of interest to some players. Ultimately it served no purpose at launch aside from from little quests and being a nifty thing to skill up and collect some mostly junk items from. That changed when the Fire Nation attacked.
With the addition of Monster Rearing to the gardens. Now you can name and raise your own monsters. This requires rank 4 or higher in your gardens. These monsters provide actual benefits aside from just being cute names you can make up like “Butts” or “SandM”. They provide momento KIs which do everything from give a minor increase to craft skillups to provide extra XP and CP points and minor stats boosts. Every monster also adds its own item to the mog garden for purchase. Items that were hard to come by such as Imperial Tea Leaves are now accessible if you put the work in.
On top of this players now have access to a Porter Moogle, Ephemeral Moogle, and a warp to the start nations or mog house exit from them to Adoulin from the garden. Making it a useful zone for players to use or relax in.
Omen
Omen is the newest battle content in the game. It takes place in a unique part of Reisenjima at the very end of Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, and as such the Phoenix Feather is required to participate. Omen is a 1-18 person endgame event in which you face off against three floors of enemies to face a midboss, and then choose the last two floors based on which boss wing is chosen after the third floor. Some very powerful items are dropped from these bosses, but in general you will face random and quickly timed objectives against average foes on three of the floors. Completing these objectives such as a powerful magic burst, curing a certain amount within the time limit, a certain number of critical hits, etc. Will reward you with an extra amount of the other main reason to do this event. Paragon Cards. The main reward from this content is Reforged Artifact Armor +2 and, naturally, Reforged Artifact Armor +3.
Eventually, we anticipate that +2 and +3 Relic as well as Empyrean will come from this event.
Salvage
Salvage has been expanded and now includes a series of zones that target level 99 characters. They are soloable by characters with decent iLvl gear. These zones now require only one person above level 96 to enter.
If fully cleared, these zones tend to yield more Alexandrite per run than the original Salvage zones, so they are the prefered source of Alexandrite if you are interested in farming or gil. This massive influx of Alexandrite has had a side-effect of making Mythics far more obtainable than ever before. They my also be sold on the auction house under misc 3.
These newer Salvage zones are more enjoyable than the original ones. SE has accomplished this by abolishing the clunky "cell" system. Though you are still locked at the start of each zone, now there is a starting pole that you can touch and unlock 10 random slots (analogous to the starting chest in level 75 salvage zones) and further unlocks are awarded as you defeat monsters. Each monster awards a specific set of unlocks automatically.
Additionally, killing unlocking monsters garners you credit for a pole on the next floor that will have credit for a few chosen unlocks on it. So say that you kill a Moblin Armsman on floor 1 of Bhaflau Remnants II and it fails to unlock the Body slot. Well, on the next floor there would be a lamp that gives you unlock credits for every kill you had on the previous floor. Then you unlock body and move on.
Combining the easier unlock system with the many sources of MP restoral that mages feature makes the event substantially easier overall than in the past. For more exact information and strategies, please visit the following pages:
The original Salvage zones remain largely untouched, although their drop rates on level 35 armors has been substantially increased. The complete level 75 armors are a necessary component in the creation of some level 99 armors. Furthermore, SE raised drop rates for 35s further (making 25s the sticking point most of the time) and increase Bhaflau Remnants NM pop rates. This should help you power through the Tier 1 gear when going for Tier 2. Unfortunately, all of this armor has fallen to the wayside. Ambuscade has essentially reintroduced the Salvage tier 3 (iLevel 119) armor. The tier 2 (Level 99) armor fell out of favor with the introduction of iLvl gear during SoA.
Sinister Reign
Sinister Reign is a fun little event for those who have completed the Seekers of Adoulin Missions where you enter an area for three round against the heroes of Adoulin. It is an enjoyable event, that provides random augments for equipment that drops depending on one of three possible enemies in each of the three rounds. The bad part is that if you actually want some of the still valuable items from the event you will be spamming it a lot and hoping for capped augments, let alone the correct item.
Skirmish
Skirmish and Alluvion Skirmish are newer events that have you either scouring the map for monsters, defeating NMs, playing pokemon (summon monsters to fight monsters), or defending a tent. Admittedly it is a nice tent. Overall, the event is rather fun.
Armor and weapons in this event are augmentable, and make good pieces until they are ultimately replaced by armor and weapons from Escha with the proper augments.
Sky and Kings
Various changes have been made to Sky Gods and Ground NMs. First and foremost, Tatter and Scrap Synergy was introduced, annn~nd then forgotten. Fortunately the scraps are used now to pop the re-released sky gods in Escha - Ru'Aun.
In order to accomodate this system, SE increased the number of pop items and seals that drop when killing Sky monsters (1 guaranteed, 1 additional depending on TH). The items are still marked Rare, so only one can be held at a time.
Kings have also been affected by the Synergy augment system, but to a lesser extent. All King NQs are now force popped using items that drop from their respective KS99s (and also obtained through various events) and no longer 21-24 free spawn at all. These NQs have a chance to drop (10-15%) the HQ King pop item. This is shown below:
Additionally, Adamantoise Egg, Wyrm Beard, and Behemoth Tongue have been removed from the respective NQs and now are only obtainable from the HQ Kings or KSNM99s. Fortunately black belt is just a relic of the past..
Don't worry though as Defending Ring is still the best. That being said, it is not hard to get your hands on these pop items. They have been available through the monthly Login Campaigns every month. They can be found in bazaars for a few hundred thousand gil.
Synergy
Synergy is not an event, but a newer crafting system that was introduced and briefly updated properly, but has now been mostly abandoned in favor of higher crafting caps. It relied on bringing together various crafters in a party to undertake a more difficult synth and then having your party members with Synergy skill play a minigame to obtain the proper elemental balance for the group's synth.
I'll admit that it sounds like a great idea, but in practice it isn't nearly as successful or fun as it sounds. Profit sharing is not something crafters like and none of the synths are really hard enough to really require two players, so it generally devolved into a single crafter in a party with his level 100 crafting mules.
There are some items that can be made both through their native craft and through synergy, like Lucky Broth and other BST jugs or ranged ammunition. If you want to synergize and item you generally need about the same craft levels as normal but the yields may be different and your HQ rate may be higher. Synergy typically has a higher HQ rate (even just the cap) than normal synths and does not follow the classic T0/1/2/3 structure.
I would not recommend spending any time on this as a fresh player regardless how much you like crafting. Leveling this skill is neither difficult nor mentally taxing (choose a high level recipe, keep making it, and never hit complete), but it takes a lot of time and has pretty limited rewards. There are some things that it's essential for such as the Fotia Gorget/Hachirin-no-Obi and the Incanter's Torque/Combatant's Torque. However, you can shout and find a synergist if you offer gil.
Trial of the Magians
Trial of the Magians was a lovely (well..) system that SE introduced that allowed players to upgraded equipment from the ground up through several trials and tribulations (including kills during weather..). Fortunately and unfortunately SE completely moved away from this system. The only reason it has any relevance is because Relic, Empyreans, Mythics, and Walk of Echoes weapons are still upgraded through their old trials (not the new ones).
Aside from that, C’est La Vie.
Unity
Unity is essentially Voidwatch 2.0 in the fact players pop monsters at fluxes located around various older zones in Vana’diel. That is where the similarities end however as there is no procing that is required, although useful, and players simply must defeat the monster. Every participating player receives a coffer item reward which they use to receive spoils. This is tied into RoE in the fact players must spend Accolades, the Unity currency, to pop these fights which are directly awarded from completing eminence objectives.
Every monster is an upgraded version of a previous NM players are familiar with. In essence you now will fight endgame (and even challenging) versions of everything from Behemoth to Hakutaku to Cerberus. There is an NQ and a +1 version of 1 or 2-3 items from each monster. Either the NQ or the +1 can come from the reward coffer, but the +1 is rare. There is a trophy item that may be commonly dispensed from the coffer. Several of these trophies are required to upgrade the NQ item to the +1 version as well as an accolade charge.
Many Escha NMs also require the trophy items of several Unity NMs traded to force pop. Overall, this is a balanced and rewarding event. Despite all of the gear that has been released since Unity additions have concluded, many pieces are still extremely relevant and used to this day.
Vagary
Vagary is the antithesis of Sinister Reign in the fact that instead of fighting the heros of Seekers of Adoulin in a small closed area, you are fighting the villains of SoA in a zone with lesser mobs and NMs also standing in your path.
There are five bosses and three zones of Vagary. Each boss unlocks the ability to upgrade a specific slot of Reforged Empyrean Armor +1 as you can not upgrade past the Item Level 109 (NQ) version without defeating each of these NMs. Two of the NMs require specific actions be done in order to pop in the zone of another NM. This includes requirements such as no player being KOed and a certain number of steps to a skill chain and magic burst several times before they will spawn. Some of the armor from it is still of use from it (this content was released before Escha) including the ultra rare Tartarus Platemail which is a unique looking body of Kraken Club drop rate proportions. Which is unusual because SE has all but done away with NMs that have ultrarare drops.
Overall, this event will always be important for unlocking 119 empyrean armor. The additional materials that drop are used in conjunction to upgrade them, as well as craft many other highly desirable pieces of armor. SE shows no sign of slowing down on adding new recipes that require Vagary synthesis materials.
Voidwatch
Slycer wrote an old Voidwatch Guide in 2012 that might still be of use; maybe.
Voidwatch was the start of the post abyssea era. The first time people started strongly shifting towards an event outside of Abyssea. Some forgot what the light of a sky outside of a maw looked like. Others were simply wondering what a cat has anything to do with the limited story they were skipping over. Overall, VW was a good event, but very frustrating system that was far from perfect. In fact the X tag was made specifically because of Voidwatch. To give you an idea on how many hundreds of runs some people spammed to get an item.
Overall, Voidwatch will always remain relevant. The armor may be bunk now, but Empyrean Weapons are especially powerful when you go through upgrade process. Serica Cloth primarily comes almost exclusively from Provenance and is used to create vaious pieces of cursed gear for 119 abjurations.
There have been a couple of changes to Voidwatch that make it much more bearable. First, you can set voidstones to stock. So instead of running back and forth every 3-6 fights for more stones from the NPC, you can simply spawn as many times as you have stones. For some odd reason you must be holding at least one voidstone though in your key items in order to do this or else you get to the flux like me and wonder why it won't spawn. Then your party waits on you going "typical Spicy" and other obscenities. Another important change is that cells are three times as potent now. Meaning one rubicund cell maxes out light gains. This is nice for the fact you have to carry three times less, but also you can macro a cell and be done now.
The "Rhapsody in Mauve" KI reduces the cost of Phase Displacers (weakening items) to 1,000 gil each. Outside of that KI you may buy as many as you wish now and not 5 per conquest tally like when they were introduced. Displacers also stack to 99.
Walk of Echoes
Walk of Echoes has faded from the limelight. Many of the Walk of Echoes Battlefield Rewards no longer hold their use since they were added before ilvl gear, but some are still the best available. The event will always hold relevance since the adjustment allowing players to learn the Empy WSs.
Almost no matter when you quit, Walk of Echoes has possibly been adjusted. It might be worth a look if you're up doing JP primetime some night and have Summoner or a lot of patience. Some of the drops are worth a lot of gil. Adjustments since 75 at various different updates include:
Normal monsters no longer drop coins or other Magian Trial upgrade items and all drops are obtained through the chests. There are no longer bonus rewards to the top 5 players. There are Frayed Pouches of upgrade items that can be obtained. Coins and all other upgrade items can be Bazaared now.
Additional Fluxes Surged walks for level 99 players
You're automatically raised after ~30 seconds of death (hence the Summoner paradise)
You can skill up in Walk of Echoes battlefields now.
You receive 5 random temporary items whenever you enter the battlefield, potentially including the ever-powerful Primeval Brew.
Players no loner have to rezone to purchase a KI to enter one of the battlefields now. Speak with the flux at the entrance.
Wildskeeper Reives
Wildskeeper Reives are some enjoyable content that pit adventurers against the Naakuals. The fearsome beasts of the SoA expansion. These monsters are weaker than the Delve equivalents of the same creatures, and thus their rewards are as well. The combat takes place in a Walk of Echoes style that any can participate in once they unlock access after completeing Life on the Frontier. The weapons here are of use either for trading in for bayld (currency of Adoulin) with Runje Desaali or for new players to use and augment with Prah Janimhar. The event is also the primary source of H-P Bayld for creating Ergon Weapons.
ZNM
ZNMs were hit with two major patches. First of all, Tier 4 trophies (to pop Pandemonium Warden or complete Forging a New Myth) are now a 100% drop off the respective Tier 4 NMs (Sarameya, Tinnin, and Tyger). Secondly, Sanraku now gives approximately 15x the Zeni per picture that he used to and people have found NQ monsters (Nauls inAbyssea - Tahrongi) that give ~1500 points per picture at low HP. This means that you can crank out a PW worth of Zeni in two trips. Almost a Tier 4 pop worth of Zeni per hour.
The "Rhapsody in Azure" KI from RoV missions removes the cap on accepted pictures from Sanraku.
Other Changes
Porter Moogles will hold your old equipment (and new equipment), as long as it isn't augmented. This is a huge inventory boon for those of us that couldn't bear to toss the Byakko's Haidate they slaved in sky for a year to obtain. See their page for details.
Ephemeral Moogles similarly hold your excess crystals.
Besieged's rewards were substantially increased, and the lack of level correction makes it a very easy way to get some XP and Imperial Standing for your low level jobs.
Sagheera now takes one game day to upgrade armor now instead of a full conquest update.
You can now turn off your head armor (I think JPs wanted it) and look at maps to zones you aren't in (same story).
They've added some new emotes. Specifically, Job Emotes (obtained upon hitting level 30), /sitchair, and dances you can do (/dance1, /dance2, /dance3, /dance4).
Content Tiers/Progression
For a complete walkthrough from level 1 to endgame, see the Quickstart 1-119 Guide.
Tier 1
Abyssea / Reives / Sparks
and any older content
E.g.Limbus / Dynamis / Nyzul Isle Uncharted etc
I already just mentioned spark armor, but you can also mix and match bayld armor +1 from Vesca.
You will want to eventually pick up some pieces of armor +2 from Abyssea as well as your AF quests and Dynamis. All of this armor from level 50s, 70s, and 90s are able to be reforged to 99 ilvl 109 and 119. The 109s are much cheaper and easier to obtain than the 119s. Which means they are your new friends. You just need to get some cheap synthesis materials and some Rem’s Chapters from Macrocosmic Orb fights. You may also gain some freebee upgrade items to help you along the process from simply leveling your job to 99 and flagging the Job Levels RoE objective under “Achievements”.
XI now is all about progression. It exists in a nice way now compared to the eras of old.
Ilvl 109 armor is one of the best and easiest way to start improving your gear outside of having friends get you better stuff. However, there are quick ways of gaining stronger starter weapons. Bayld homestead weapons from Craggy Bluff, and Sparks. If you have obtained 50 Job Points (to unlock SU1 or superior 1 equipment) you can also purchase quick 119 weapons for 100k from Antonia.
If you don’t know what to do or wear then you can always try the BG XI Forums or FFXIAH.com. We also house every notable job guide from around the web on our Job Guides page. Don’t be afraid to make some judgement calls either. Afterall, it is your character.
Tier 2
Ambuscade / Alluvion Skirmish / Delve
High-Tier Mission Battlefields / Incursion / JSE Capes
JSE Weapons / intermediate RoE objectives / Wildskeeper Reives
Wildskeeper Reives (WKR) are a good collaborative way to start getting and augmenting some better items from your tier 1 days. See Prah Janimhar for that. You may have to shout for some like the lion or tree, but they are popular enough during certain extra WKR drop events SE occasionally does. Don’t forget to flag those RoE objectives for them either.
Delve requires three people to enter and you are allowed to use trusts for the last three spots if you feel confident enough. Here you will nab more upgrades to your equipment and accessories. You will notice the content is starting to get more difficult now. Especially until you continue to improve your equipment, and then it becomes easier.
Alluvion Skirmish Armor is better than and replaces most pieces (including Delve) of gear you have IF you augment them. That is the issue as stones are not in mass supply (players moved on) and are expensive for the high quality augmenting stones. The Alluvion Skirmish Weapons can also be a great improvement for you, and the best you have come by so far, but they can also be a real dog to augment to that strength. It is your choice how long you want to stay at the alluvion phase as this equipment is what will allow you to transition into the next levels of content.
Don’t be discouraged though as you can still burn the cheap crappy stones on the gear for lower quality augments. E.g. Triple Attack +1 on each piece of Taeon instead of TA+2. That still makes a big difference as a set.
Ambuscade is the newest to the list, and you can start picking up some easy improvements in the form of the the NQ gear for that month as a weaker player. However, these are rather watered down compared to the HQ pieces. You can however obtain a whole NQ set in 11 runs on normal difficulty compared to the 145 it would take for the HQ set on that difficulty. This is why I only find it worthwhile to spam on harder difficulties as doing the frequently done “very difficult” setting primer two runs rewards three times as many points. While those runs are not hard (especially compared to primer one) it does require some decent gear for tanks and DDs to be proficient in their roles.
JSE Weapons provide you with some great potential too once you gain access to them from Oboro. Some like the Dunna (GEO) or Aettir (RUN) are just about the best you can use. Others like the Mimesis (BLU) are very “meh” and are too costly to really be worth your time and the millions of gil.
Meanwhile, JSE Capes come from reives and Incursion. You are likely to see them in the WKRs too.
Incursion once again drops the JSE capes which can be augmented with some nice perks either from getting them as a reward from the NM coffers in the event or trading Refractive Crystal to Detrovio in Western Adoulin. The crystals come from Unity coffers, Accolades, or the auction house.
There is also a piece or two from here that is still good, but otherwise this event is for farming Mecisto. Mantles (back that grant 10-50% extra Capacity Points) and the pop items for tier 2 Reisenjima NMs.
As for High-Tier Mission Battlefields, all of your favorite nostalgia is back. Every big fight from Ouryu to Promathia to Fenrir has pretty much been re-released for higher levels with various new rewards. These fights also drop Rem’s Ch. 6-10 which are used for all of your Reforged Armor ilvl119. Not to mention being the best farmable source of JSE or Relic, Empyrean, Ergon, and Mythic weapon items for Oboro.
A word on Intermediate RoE objectives
This is an amazing thing SE added for newer players, and it is entirely possible for people to miss it. It does not show in your RoE log until you complete all of the very simple Basics RoE objectives I mentioned earlier. It is also under the tier 2 category because more than half of it is tier 2 content. I take it as a safe bet you didn’t stop reading this at T1 and figured you come back at the same time next week.
Completing the Intermediate RoE objectives will grant you the following items (in order of reward) to redeem at a Dealer Moogle:
Thats a lot of stuff!
“That is the whole meaning of life, isn’t it? Trying to find a place for your stuff.” - George Carlin.
As for the objectives you will have to do various things from Skirmish to a Wildskeeper Reive to Ambuscade to some Alluvion Skirmish. I would recommend doing the Ambuscade objective on very easy so you can run in with trusts and complete the objective easily. As for the other objectives later on that require you to kill monsters in Skirmish. You can just kill the requisite number and warp out. You don’t need to complete them and you can find your simulacrum segments on the AH under misc.
For completing the last of the objectives which occurs in Alluvion Skirmish Yorcia. You may speak to one of the RoE NPCs and trade them a copper voucher for 1,000 obsidian fragments. Then you can trade the Alluvion Skirmish Yorcia book the fragments and either summon five colibri and crabs or if you entered with a sash Eudaemon Item then you may summon Kirin who can solo the first floor by himself. Just swoop in for the kill on the stronghold since the pets take it to 1hp.
The wiki pages have the rest of the information on the events for you.
For a detailed Intermediate RoE guide see this.
Once you are done with the older bayld armor from the Kupons, Runje Desaali will exchange them for bayld.
Tier 3
Sinister Reign / Unity / Vagary / Escha / Omen
Sinister Reign is the easiest and shortest lived endgame of the bunch, but you will certainly find it very fun for awhile. A chunk of the gear was knocked down the totem pole when Escha came out, but certain pieces like fully augmented Samnuha Tights are still the best thing certain jobs can wear. Other pieces still hold value for the situations they apply to in your sets. Aside from that this is the easiest of the tier three content in the list. You can easily start here with a group and pick up some upgrades. Especially if you are still in alluvion skirmish equipment.
If you don’t seek equipment then the Cipher: August trust comes from this event too. He is probably one of the most important trusts to have as he tanks most content the best. To the point where you can even use him for lowman setups on level 129 or 135 content.
Unity is a mixed bag of rewards. It is rather fun to do, and certain monsters are even required as their trophies pop more important tier 2 monsters in Escha - Ru'Aun. More important pieces like Loricate Torque +1 generally come from harder content like the 135 Sovereign Behemoth which requires a good party. That is not to say most of the weaker monsters that fall firmly into tier 2 territory are garbage. Just that the rewards people go after most of the time are from the harder monsters. The 135s firmly fall into the endgame territory of difficulty (especially for pick up groups) and thus is why I list it here. Check the weaker Unity monsters though for good Unity Rewards for your character.
You may or may not have noticed Vagary by now, but if you haven’t you soon will. Clearing the five bosses of Vagary is more than just a fun achievement or a hunt for a piece of ridiculously rare armor. Defeating each is required for being able to upgrade Empy Armor +1. Otherwise, you are stuck at 109. You also get some upgrade materials for having the one time Vagary RoE objectives set for the first three bosses.
Escha and it’s rewards is certainly one of the events you will eventually find yourself in the most. From RoV missions to most of the best equipment and Aeonic Weapons with their level 4 skillchains. Yes, that is not a typo. Even if you managed to obtain all the amazing equipment from Escha then you still would have Aeonic Weapons to unlock. These are the fourth wheel in the rank of Ultimate Weapons and require some work, but at least there are no trials to upgrade them afterwards.
Finally, Omen is the newest event, and it is located separately within Escha inside Reisenjima. It is a 6 person endgame event in which you face off against three floors of enemies to face a midboss, and then choose the last two floors based on which boss wing is chosen after the third floor. Some very powerful items are dropped from these bosses, but in general you will face random and quickly timed objectives against average foes on three of the floors. Completing these objectives such as a powerful magic burst, curing a certain amount within the time limit, a certain number of critical hits, etc. Will reward you with an extra amount of the other main reason to do this event. Paragon Cards, which are used to upgrade your Reforged Artifact Armor to +2 and +3 versions.
Tier 4
Ultimate Weapons
Please, don’t be ‘that guy’ with unchecked ambition who starts or comes back. Then goes balls deep farming up a Relic, Empyrean, Ergon, Aeonic, or Mythic weapon before getting better equipment to first wear. Once you are situated well this should be your step. It is not hard to get geared up a bit first.
It takes a lot of time and resources to develop one of these weapons. You are also fairly useless and missing out on the fun if you come back only to burn out from engrossing yourself in the process of doing this. The gain you receive pales in comparison to the power of your armor for just about all of the weapons. For additional perspective, there are 13 to 15 other equipment slots for newer players to improve compared to one of these weapons so just pace yourself.
You can of course, do whatever you wish since Vana’diel is your oyster, but don’t turn around when the guy with normal weapons ends up being the better performer if you didn’t properly gear first and they did. That being said most of the final stage Ultimate Weapons are superior to anything out there, and give certain jobs a wide advantage over normal weapons.
Despite player perceptions with the exception of perhaps Aegis for Paladin (Ochain is no longer as valuable on high level content or required, see Priwen), and Bard with its several ultimate instruments, no Ultimate Weapon is required for anyone to play their job.
Bards for example now receive 3 songs without an empyrean through JSE Weapons and a lesser (75% strength) Gjallarhorn effect is possible through Linos. So, anything you do should be because you really like the job or want to benefit your linkshell.
Event List of Shame
These events haven't been successful or no longer have a real use.
ANNM - This briefly-implemented BCNM-style fight was popular for a month or two and has not been done since. It offers no unique gear but some unique augments on old equipment.
Chocobo Raising / Chocobo Racing - We can tell that entirely too much effort went into creating these events. Nobody does them anymore except for a couple good pieces of gear and for a Vorseal from the Racing.
Campaign / Campaign Ops - Though this system always had motivation issues (for instance, encouraging people to spam bard songs on themselves instead of actually fighting), it now has the ultimate motivation issue because there's effectively no reason to do it. It used to be a minorly acceptable source of XP for low level jobs, but now there are better ways to get the same XP. It has precisely two desireable drops, Rose Strap (can be soloed by increasing your campaign rank) and Roundel Earring (requires effort of many players to open the BCNM and campaign rank too). This is still an okay place to get Voiddust as well, if you need it for some reason.
Evolith System - Really, this was almost unarguably the single worst thought out system that was ever implemented in FFXI. I refuse to explain it further because it would be too painful for you to hear of the intricacies and obvious extreme amounts of planning that went into making such a totally useless system.
Equipment Augment System - This system allowed players to augment non-Rare gear that was level 75 or less with random (often useless) augments. People briefly blew ungodly amounts of gil getting Dex+4 on their Dusk Gloves +1, and then the system totally folded with the release of Abyssea and Trial of the Magians.
Meeble Burrows This was a great and fun event at the time it was released. Unfortunately it has fallen to the wayside with no updates to it since around mid 2013.
Moblin Maze Mongers - This was briefly a way to get comparable XP to a Lolibri party, but it took a substantial time investment to get the runes to really make the system work, and they nerfed the major way to obtain runes. Now it has one or two pieces (Antica Ring) that people find useful and is empty 99% of the time. Its current usage is primarily relegated to restoring 2-hour abilities by obtaining a Revitalizer temp item in a MMM Revitalization Team type maze.
Monstrosity - The greatest let down that ever was. This event was one of the most highly praised ever. It allows you to play as a monster. Many different monsters were added to the event and it is really fun. SE went as far as to start adding unique items to it and a system of belligerency which allowed players to fight the monsters. It was was one of the most fun things ever, and then SE just dropped the ball. SoA took priority, and then they just never came back to this. It had the makings of a long lasting and great event. We were getting updates to it every month or so, and then poof.
Sure, players can still have a lot of fun in it for a bit, but the fun stops eventually when the highest level players fighting you can go is 90, not 99, and when all there is to really do is level various monsters. On top of that it it is impossible for you and your friend to just go at each other in this event because the monsters are powered to the point players need multiple members to fight one, at level 90. However, if you wanted to be a behemoth or a cerberus then you can still realize that dream and then never really touch monstrosity again. It is a solo grind event for no reward the way SE left it.
Pankration - This event has not been updated and is done even less frequently now that Zeni exchange rates were increased.
Stronghold Invasion - There is still a single piece of useful equipment from this system of 27 NMs with pretty unique AIs (for the time), and that is Stone Mufflers. Enhancing your Stoneskin potency by 30 is probably not a very high priority for a recent returnee given the wealth of other equipment out there.
Succor to the Sidhe - A briefly tolerated set of BCNM-like fights used to augment level 75 weapons. The fights were fairly difficult at the time and often offered only minor improvements over other dramatically easier to obtain options.
Voidwalker Notorious Monsters outside Abyssea - This was always an annoying system, which required many kills of a previous tier to advance to the next tier (upgrading |
GSoC please visit http://www.google-melange.com – pay special attention to the timeline.
If you are a mentor your next steps are: 1) subscribe to kde-soc-mentor@kde.org 2) sign up on http://www.google-melange.com and apply as a mentor for KDE 3) contact one of the admins to approve your requests. For questions you can reach the admin team in #kde-soc or email them at kde-soc-mentor-owner@kde.org. And of course you’ll have students approach you with questions about their proposals 😉 Below you can find a flowchart with the most important steps of the program. Please check the timeline of the program.Twenty one. It’s a good number. Three times seven. Less occult than 23, but more interesting than boring old 20. Right next to handsome 22. (They’re getting married.) It is the perfect number, therefore, to introduce our twenty first game of Christmas. Can you guess what it is?
It’s… Bastion!
Jim: I first played this at the IGF in March. I sat with headphones on in the thronging main hall, at the crowded indie stand, and was swept away. SuperGiant knew, of course, to provide a big pair of noise-cancelling headphones that they insisted anyone who sat down at the booth put on. If you’ve played Bastion then you know why they had to do that, too. But it’s not actually a one-trick pony. The game is a tightly woven set of epic game design garments. When playing it you are subject to bonuses to aesthetic appreciation, skill-based game mastery, and to appreciating exploration of a fictional world. Despite being based roughly on the Diablo “kill and loot everything” template, Bastion is a game that possesses every aspect of its own design from the combat through to the meticulously crafted levels. The painterly isometric world, the enemies who are cute but still despicable enough to despatch in their hundreds, the weird fiction of the disintegrated, collapsing, floating archipelago-city that you find yourself in: it all feels like healthy craftsmanship. Not original, perhaps, not an invention, but something that has been carved from the existing materials of game in the most satisfying shape and texture. It is a mystery, and yet immediately at hand. You know what to do from the first moments: the hammer smashes through the barricade, smashes through your enemies. You get it, right from the start, and the careful guidance you receive as you progress and begin to piece the hub of the game back together, is so gentle as to let you feel like you already know what you were doing.
Bastion was not quite like anything that had gone before it, while at the same time being enough like lots of other things to sit in a sort of tea and biscuits cosy area of comfort and familiarity. It was rich and just about deep enough to keep on going to the end. And I am glad it did. And I am glad it exists.
Alec: One of three games that I’ll most fondly remember from 2011 (another being The Binding of Isaac, and the third TBC ooh exciting etc blah), Bastion was something I wandered into an idle moment, looking for a laptop-friendly distraction, and then played through in just two unblinking sittings. Given how esoteric Bastion is in so many ways, it’s an incredibly immediate game: one of those designs that seems like it’s always existed, even though it was the first to do it quite like this.
It’s a game made up of an immense understanding of games and the people who play them: from the JRPG-tinged graphics to the more, more, better and more upgrade and collection sub-game to the pretty-voiced, geek-heartbreaking sad song to the overtly digital pixel-rebuilding of the world, Bastion is oh-so-knowing. But, crucially, it’s never smug with it. It sidesteps any arch post-modernism in favour of creating an atmosphere all its own, built from staple dramatic memes artfully deployed.
The silent, tortured hero; the pure of heart and resolute of purpose heroine; the gravel-voiced narrator with a secret; the magic doohickey that can solve everything, the twin journeys of adventure and understanding. All familiar elements, but combined with the help of music and mystery and hope in the face of ruin to create a tale that feels absolutely yours. I felt sorrow, I felt wonder, I felt the constant low hum of desire for a better weapon and I felt still-ongoing obsession with the soundtrack.
Sure, I do feel a little like I’m being gamed, that the writer (and especially the musicians) know exactly how to push my buttons of compulsion and fascination and heartache, but you know what? I don’t mind that Bastion might be exploiting me, and others like me. I am not a beautiful and unique snowflake and as such I can be very easily categorised, but I will take a game that aims for that category specifically over a game that aims at the most generic concept of player – i.e. guns and ranking systems and cutscenes – any day.
John: Everything [guitar strum] gone.
Kid plays the game for a really long time to review it, but doesn’t reach the end. He has an amazing time, loving every moment. Then he wants his wife to see the beginning of the game, to play it from the start. But the kid’s stupid, thinks if he saves he’ll be able to return to that position within the same profile. Doesn’t even notice the option for other profiles, figures it’s the only option he has.
Whole world falls apart.
Kid only discovers the profile options after. Find his whole progress gone. The calamity.
He finds himself unable to return straight away, too many other things happening to replay so many hours. Time goes by, and the game’s still unplayed.
Kid just rages for a while.
Christmas is coming. [beaty music] There’s time off. Kid plans to play it to the end then, hoping to get his wife to join in, to finally play a computer game. He isn’t optimistic, but there’s always hope.
[haunting steel guitar]With spring ball now a month away, we’re ranking position groups in the Big 12 over the next two weeks. These evaluations will be based on past performance, future potential and quality depth of the entire group. Our outlooks will look different after the spring, but this is how we see them for the moment.
We continue the series with defensive backs:
1. Kansas State: D.J. Reed, the reigning Big 12 defensive newcomer of the year, also is one of the top one-on-one cover corners in the league. Duke Shelley will be a three-year starter opposite him. Free safety Kendall Adams came on strong during the second half of the season, and the Wildcats signed the No. 1 juco safety in the country in Elijah Walker to take over for Dante Barnett at strong safety. This has the look of a complete group.
Kansas State's D.J. Reed is one of the conference's best one-on-one cover cornerbacks. Tom Pennington/Getty Images
2. TCU: After getting lit up early on in the year, the TCU secondary settled down and played well down the stretch, holding opponents to less than 200 yards passing over its final four games. Niko Small had a solid all-around season at free safety. Versatile safety Nick Orr was a second-team All-Big 12 pick. And Ranthony Texada bounced back from knee surgery to give TCU a No. 1 corner. Getting corner Julius Lewis for a healthy full season after he suffered an Achilles injury last offseason should be big as well.
3. Oklahoma: The Sooners have the pieces to boast the top secondary in the league, but inconsistency, such as when they surrendered 734 passing yards to Texas Tech, knocks them down a couple of notches. Steven Parker is as experienced as any safety in the league, while Jordan Thomas is a lock-down corner when he's locked in. Oklahoma still needs better play from its other corners, but incoming ESPN 300 signee Justin Broiles could help in that endeavor.
4. Texas: The Longhorns feature four corners with starting experience in Davante Davis, Holton Hill, John Bonney and Kris Boyd. If all four play up to their potential, Texas will have the deepest corner contingent in the league. It's time for Brandon Jones and DeShon Elliott, both former elite recruits, to take over at safety, though Jason Hall has the most experience of that bunch. Considering P.J. Locke's prowess at nickel, there's no reason this shouldn't be a dominant group.
5. West Virginia: The Mountaineers lose ESPN.com Big 12 defensive player of the year Rasul Douglas, but they get back Dravon Askew-Henry, who himself is an All-Big 12 caliber safety. Askew-Henry, a starter as a true freshman, missed all of last season due to a preseason knee injury. He and Kyzir White have the potential to form the league's best safety duo.
6. Oklahoma State: Like outgoing All-Big 12 safety Jordan Sterns, Tre Flowers can be an enforcer and is terrific helping up against the run. The Cowboys need more out of their cornerbacks though, and outside of Ramon Richards, there isn't much experience there.
7. Iowa State: The Cyclones had a stingy pass defense last season, especially when second-team All-Big 12 safety Kamari Cotton-Moya was on the field. Brian Peavy has been solid at corner in two seasons, and Tennessee transfer D'Andre Payne was a strong addition at the nickel.
8. Baylor: Travon Blanchard is one of the top returning defensive players in the conference. But the Bears also must replace longtime starters Orion Stewart and Ryan Reid. As a result, the Bears really need a big jump out of somebody like corner Grayland Arnold, who chipped in as a true freshman last season.
9. Kansas: Mike Lee was a huge pickup for the Jayhawks last season, winning a starting job as a true freshman. But Kansas must replace outgoing tackling machine Fish Smithson in its secondary, which will be a difficult task. Getting immediate impacts from juco transfers Shakial Taylor, Hasan Defense and Antonio Cole will be critical.
10. Texas Tech: The Red Raiders graduated three starters off a secondary that gave up more passing yards than any other defense in the Big 12. Jah'Shawn Johnson will be a three-year starter. After him, the Red Raiders desperately need their incoming juco class to produce, notably cornerbacks Octavious Morgan and Jaylon Lane.APARTMENT prices are falling in Australia’s CBDs and it is a major cause for alarm.
Prices in our major city centres dropped by an average of 6.3 per cent in the 12 months to July, according to CoreLogic figures.
Every capital city CBD posted a decline in growth but where the largest declines are coming from is even more telling. It is being driven by our two highest performing capital cities.
Sydney CBD apartment prices tumbled 9.1 per cent over the 12-month period while Melbourne CBD units dropped in price by 8.4 per cent.
A column in The Australian published on Wednesday cited a one-bedroom apartment in Melbourne recently selling for $161,000. The asking price for that $161,000 apartment in the general market would have been in the order of $550,000, the column claimed.
“Clearly, one seller was sick of the fact that their apartment was not selling and simply put it on the market for sale to the highest bidder,” the column read.
This is because we are seeing more and more large apartment developments coming into the market, prompting fears of an apartment oversupply.
The concern is amplified by the fact Chinese investors are largely the buyers of these new developments — regulation states offshore buyers can only purchase new real estate — leaving a “secondary apartment market” of property that sells way below the values investors are paying for off the plan.
“In the next six months many tens of thousands of apartments in Melbourne and around Australia that have been bought off the plan by Chinese and other Asian investors will come up for settlement,” the column stated.
But more stock keeps coming. REA Group Chief Economist, Nerida Conisbee, said the amount of development in some of our capitals is “eye watering”.
In Melbourne alone, there are over 18,000 apartments under construction that are scheduled for completion within the next 18 months, according to a REA Group analysis. Historically, Melbourne CBD has added 1500 apartments every 18 months for more than a decade.
Struggling first home buyers reading this may be rejoicing — and yes, it is good news for affordability — but it isn’t good news for the economy.
THREE STAGES OF RISK
There are three main risks facing the slumping CBD apartment market, Ms Conisbee told news.com.au.
The first one is settlement risk. This occurs when a buyer puts down a deposit for an off-the-plan apartment but when development is completed the bank won’t fund the loan because the value of the apartment has fallen, causing the buyer to default.
“Banks see it as risky or a bad investment [when prices drop],” Ms Conisbee said.
“Banks are now being restricted on the amount that they are lending, particularly to investors. They are being capped on the growth in their lending so they may see that particular apartment development as not being worthy of their lending. People have put down deposits two years ago... but the banks can change their approach to risk quite significantly.”
This will leave an abundance of CBD apartments just sitting empty.
We are not seeing widescale defaults just yet, Ms Conisbee said, but there is “certainly a lot to be concerned about”, particularly in Melbourne and Brisbane given the amount of development taking place.
The second major risk is an occupational risk. A buyer may be approved funding when the complex is completed but they may not find anyone to live in the apartment.
“Such high levels of development will put pressure on rents and this is already happening in Brisbane and Perth CBDs,” Ms Conisbee said,
“While declines in rents are not great for investors, a large increase in the vacancy rate is even worse. No tenant equals zero rent, and therefore no return on investment.”
This could lead to the third risk: a secondary market risk. This is where you have a lot of offshore buyers snapping up these apartment developments because they can only buy new. But if they aren’t getting a good return on their investment what happens when they decide to sell?
“The likelihood of Australians buying the 18,000 apartments [in Melbourne] coming to market in the next 18 months; it is a far smaller pool. There is just potentially not enough people to buy those apartments,” Ms Conisbee said.
‘VERY WORRYING’
Widespread defaults and an oversupply of empty apartments will cause prices to plunge. And falling house prices leave our banks, who are highly leveraged in housing, hugely exposed — a “very worrying” outlook for the economy.
“It is seen as very worrying that a pretty small proportion of the economy, and a geographically small part of the economy, could have such a huge impact on Australian banks,” Ms Conisbee told news.com.au.
In its latest Financial Stability Review, the Reserve Bank said bank losses remain “very low” until price falls in inner-city areas reach over 25 per cent, which Ms Conisbee said is very unlikely. However, it does show that the banks “could lose billions” because of one small sector of the economy.
“If something really bad was to occur it could affect the stability of the banks and that is disastrous,” she told news.com.au.
But on the plus side, there is no denying first home buyers could finally catch a break.
“It is fantastic for affordability. People talk about an oversupply and in the same breath an affordability problem, but you kind of have to have an oversupply to lead to affordability. In terms of affordability it has been pretty amazing, so that is the flip side,” Ms Conisbee told news.com.au.
But increasing supply to increase affordability is only truly effective when we are building the right type of supply. And according to REA Group’s demand index, maybe we are not.
“In Melbourne, demand for houses is through the roof but demand for apartments is sitting on the Australian average,” Ms Conisbee said.Jerusalem (CNN) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was interrogated Monday night on suspicion of corruption in a criminal investigation authorized by the nation's attorney general.
Netanyahu is suspected of having received benefits from businessmen, according to Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld and Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit.
Netanyahu was questioned "under caution on the suspicions of receiving benefits," said Rosenfeld.
The term "under caution" refers to the questioning of someone suspected of having committed a crime, with the warning that anything they say or decline to talk about could be used against them in court proceedings.
Police and Mandelblit declined to release any further details of the three-hour questioning.
JUST WATCHED Fallout from UN resolution on Israel continues Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Fallout from UN resolution on Israel continues 02:47
'There is nothing'
Netanyahu has repeatedly denied the allegations against him, saying they are politically motivated.
On New Year's Day, the Prime Minister posted on his Facebook page, "Unfortunately you'll have to be disappointed this time as well, like you were disappointed in previous affairs. As usual, there will not be anything because there is nothing. Try replacing the Prime Minister at the ballot box -- as is customary in a democracy."
Netanyahu was investigated by police amid allegations of fraud and breach of trust in the late 1990s during his first term. He was never indicted.
Netanyahu is in his fourth term. He has often had a combative relationship with the media, which have speculated for days about when the criminal investigation would officially begin and what it would entail.
At a holiday event in late December, Netanyahu quipped that "It's fun" to spar with Israeli journalists on social media.
Yair Lapid, a Knesset member who is one of the main political threats to Netanyahu, urged caution and a quick investigation.
"If two Prime Ministers in a row fall for corruption, it will be very difficult to rehabilitate the public's trust in government," Lapid said on Facebook, referencing Ehud Olmert, who served before Netanyahu and is now in prison for corruption. "At the same time, for the benefit of the State of Israel and the people of Israel, [the investigation] must be fast."
JUST WATCHED Netanyahu: Israel blamed for lack of peace Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Netanyahu: Israel blamed for lack of peace 01:23
Investigation ongoing
Until now, the inquiry was an examination. It did not reach the level of a criminal investigation, and Netanyahu was not suspected of having committed a crime. That changed as a police car pulled into his residence on Monday night, marking the beginning of the criminal investigation.
The inquiry into Netanyahu began in mid-July, the attorney general said. But the specific accusation that led to the criminal investigation surfaced three months ago. Police investigators searched for the evidence to support the suspicion, and last month, found the evidence to warrant an investigation.
Mandelblit would not elaborate on what the suspected crime was, instead ruling out any link to investigations that have since been dismissed. Those include two issues related to the 2009 elections and primaries, and two issues related to receiving flights and benefits overseas.
Netanyahu does not have to step down if he is suspected of committing a crime. He is only required to step down if he is convicted and that conviction is upheld by Israel's high court. However, if he is indicted, he could face enormous public and political pressure to step down.
Other Israeli prime ministers have been investigated, including Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak and Olmert.As we’re new to Saas, we run into many questions that we are first timers at answering. We’ve solved some of this with good mentors and advisors, on the founding process in general and on Saas stuff in particular. Folks like Michael Wolfe and Russ Fradin who’ve successfully started B2B companies before have been pivotal.
Along the way I’ve found myself returning regularly to a couple of blogs that, for different reasons, provide really good, tactical advice on things that Saas founders face every day. They don’t always agree, but I find that they are often able to articulate arguments for/against different options we’re considering, better than I am.
Inside Intercom - by the Intercom.io team - Intercom is an analytics/messaging tool. The team writes good, long form, well thought out pieces, usually backed by data, and a lot of stuff on product design and strategy. I think they do a really good job coming up with a philosophical approach to something, and finding data or customer stories to back it up. Favorite Post: The Dribbblisation Of Design
The Groove Blog - by GrooveHQ - The Groove team makes a helpdesk, and they’ve taken to telling their story on their blog; as a way to market their company and product and to share their lessons with the startup community. Their posts are typically rich in tactics and results - really useful if you’re a startup founder or Saas business using content marketing as a growth strategy. Favorite Post: Results Of The 2013 Saas Small Business Survey
Open - by Buffer - The Buffer team makes a social media automation tool. On their main blog, they write a lot about social media strategy (it’s worth checking out). On Open, they take transparency to an extreme - with great success. As you can imagine there’s always great thirst for the goings-on inside a company (which are typically secret), and Joel/Leo and the rest of the team openly share metrics, revenues, and even employee salaries. Favorite Post: Introducing Open Salaries At Buffer
Saas Strategy - by Jason Lemkin, founder @ EchoSign - Jason writes frequently with very good high level/strategic thoughts about Saas. If you ever have questions about selling products to large enterprises, scaling a Saas product, sales cycles, or fundraising, Jason brings the perspective of a founder with 2 exits, whose still in the mix day-to-day. One added benefit - he’s relatively quick to answer if you post Saas related questions on Quora. Favorite Post: Your Mini-Brand Will Come To The Rescue
Kalzumeus - by Patrick MacKenzie or patio11 - Patrick Mackenzie (or patio11 as he’s known on HN) writes long form posts on lifecycle/email marketing, using his own experience build webapps/Saas apps as examples. Often discusses really unglamorous topics - for example, he’s where I learned about writing Dunning emails (how to deal with customers whose credit cards bounce or otherwise don’t pay), and he had already thought through a LOT of the nuance; when to send things, how to word emails, how to demonstrate empathy and so on. It’s like a massive A/B test of your business and he helps you jump straight to the results. Favorite Post: Rainy Day Ideas For Things You Can Build To Grow Your Business
These are just some of the ones I return to regularly - hope they help. If you have some that you really enjoy - please share. (ayo@hipmob.com)Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) is calling on all her constituents to fight a Federal Communications Commission action that would roll back internet protections known as net neutrality.
Cantwell made her case at a town hall in Seattle on Friday, claiming small businesses were particularly vulnerable to the policy shift because it would allow internet providers to sell different broadband speeds to different customers.
“You’re talking about a very slippery slope,” she told a Washington business owner who asked how he might be impacted by the change. “That’s why we don’t want to start. That’s why we want to have this basic protection. In my mind, you should just say to every customer that you have in your business now, ‘This is just going to make it more expensive.’ Why should we allow that when we think this is a basic service that should be available to the American people? Just get that word out to the customer base and ask people to comment.”
Cantwell is asking the public to comment on the proposal, which would roll back Obama-era protections that forbid internet service providers from slowing or prioritizing internet traffic for money or other compensation. The existing regulations make it illegal for Verizon to speed up its own streaming video site while slowing down competitors like Netflix, for example. They also forbid internet providers from selling faster service to some companies at a premium.
TechCrunch has a good explainer on how to comment on the proposal; the process is quite convoluted.
Time is of the essence, Cantwell said Friday, because the deadline to comment is Aug. 16.
“I believe that internet service should be like your telephone line,” she said. “The notion that if you have a startup and you … all of the sudden would have a fast lane or a slow lane, you’d have to pay more to be in the fast lane. It’s going to restrict capital. It’s going to slow everything down. So we definitely don’t want to see that.”
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, the only Democrat currently on the commission, echoed Cantwell’s concerns during the town hall event, which was moderated by Washington Technology Industry Association CEO Michael Schutzler.
“Net neutrality is the first amendment for the internet,” Clyburn said.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has been a vocal critic of net neutrality throughout his career, arguing that “the more heavily you regulate something, the less of it you’re likely to get.”
Tech titans, including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Netflix are planning an online “Day of Action” July 12 to protest cutting net neutrality protections.Interview by Richard Marshall.
Penelope Maddy is the candy-store kid of metaphilosophical logic and maths. She’s stocked up with groovy thoughts about the axioms of mathematics, about what might count as a good reason to adopt one, about mathematical realism, about Gödel’s intuitions, naturalism, second philosophy, Hume and Quine, world-word connections, about where mathematical objectivity comes from, about the limitations of drawing analogies, about depth, about Wittgenstein and the logical must, about the Kantianism of the Tractatus and about the relationship between science and philosophy. Suck it and see, this one has a fizz …
3:AM: What made you become a philosopher? Are you a lone brooder or prefer to think and argue aloud with others?
Penelope Maddy: I started out in mathematics and was moved from there to philosophy by others, oddly enough, without really understanding what was going on. Foundational questions captured my interest early on: one of my most cherished memories is the sudden realization that the number 1 could be defined in naive set theory! Poking around in my great high school math teacher’s secret book closet, I soon came to understand that 2+2=4 and the rest of classical mathematics could be proved from the standard assumptions of axiomatic set theory, but that one of the first and most natural questions about infinite sets, the Continuum Hypothesis (CH), couldn’t be settled one way or the other on the basis of those same axioms. What could a solution to such an open question even look like?!
At the time, UC Berkeley was the place to go to study set theory: forcing was new, and larger and larger large cardinal axioms were being proposed in turn. Another vivid memory is watching in awe as one of my professors showed us the proof that if there’s a measurable cardinal, then one of the open questions (not CH, alas) has an answer (there are sets outside Gödel’s minimal universe). This was just the answer one would want and expect, but why in the world would one think that this candidate for a new axiom — ‘there are measurable cardinals’ — is true?! Perhaps there could be new axioms even to settle CH, but what counts as a proper argument for or against a proposed axiom?
Without realizing it, I’d slipped into philosophy. When I applied to the Princeton math department for graduate school, they admitted me instead into the program in history and philosophy of science on the basis of my statement of interests. Being from Berkeley, I figured this must be a program like their Logic and Methodology, but when I arrived, it turned out I was pretty much just in the philosophy department. The transition took some fierce adjustments and teetered on disaster at times, but I eventually came to see the wisdom of those admissions officers.
Given your two choices, I guess I have to go with ‘lone brooder’, though ‘brooder’ doesn’t quite fit — often these days I feel more like that kid in the well-stocked candy store.
3:AM: You’re interested in metaphilosophical issues of logic and maths. So let’s start with the status of mathematical proof. It was once thought that maths rested on logic – ‘the stuff of proof’ as you put it, and axioms of proof – but now we don’t think there are such axioms. Is that the issue, and what happened that meant the desired axioms went missing? Was it Godel?
PM: I think what happened was the rise of pure mathematics in the 19th century. Before that, mathematics was done in tandem with science; often enough the two weren’t even distinguished. But when mathematicians gradually started thinking about mathematical structures with no apparent connection to applications, for their purely mathematical interest, a need arose for a precise way of specifying those structures and making sure they were coherent. The eventual solution was to specify them by precise ‘axioms’ — definitions, really — and to establish their coherence by showing that they could modeled by sets, that is, that the existence of a set with the desired structure could be proved from the axioms of set theory. So the axioms of set theory became the fundamental assumptions of mathematics.
As you say, this wouldn’t have been unsettling if the set-theoretic axioms could have been thought of as purely logical; it wouldn’t be a big deal to assume them if they were really just obvious or intuitive or self-evident or whatever (these are often termed ‘intrinsic’ considerations). But that hope collapsed with Russell’s discovery of a paradox in Frege’s system. Some of the standard axioms of contemporary set might be ‘obvious’ — ‘two sets are the same if they have the same elements’ might even be taken for a definition — but many observers don’t think this can be said of all the standard axioms, and the new axiom candidates that we need to be evaluating in hopes of settling the open questions leave this sort of justification far behind. So there’s that question again: what could count as a good reason to adopt an axiom if it’s not obvious or intuitive or self-evident?
3:AM: Now your idea of ‘mathematical realism’ was thought to be an account that answered the problem – can you say what this position claims about the status of maths?
PM: The main problem my early realism was intended to solve arises before you even start to worry about justifying axioms. When faced with the sad fact that CH can’t be settled from the standard axioms, some reacted by denying that there’s any further question to be raised: the only question that makes sense, this line of thought goes, is whether CH or not-CH follows from the axioms; once that’s settled, as it has been, there’s nothing more to ask — case closed.
Gödel thought CH was still in some sense a real mathematical question, and he espoused a strong sort of realism about sets to defend that view: there is an objective world of sets where CH is either true or false; the axioms we now have aren’t enough to fully describe that world; we need new axioms to settle the question. CH also seemed to me to be a real question that I wanted answered, and as a novice philosopher, I figured I could do worse than following Gödel’s lead. Unfortunately, Gödel’s realism apparently relies on a kind of ‘mathematical intuition’ that strikes most observers, including me, as disconnected from anything we know about human cognition; one of Benacerraf’s seminal challenges is aimed at just this point. So I tried to replace Gödel’s intuition with something based on ordinary perception, with appeals to experimental psychology and neuroscience.
Not everyone was convinced, to put it mildly. But the resulting account, if it worked, would not only certify CH as a real question, but also provide a framework for approaching the problem of justifying axioms: as Gödel suggested, we would think of set theory and theoretical natural science as roughly analogous; perception is to science as intuition is to set theory; and theoretical confirmation is to science as a corresponding sort of argument (often termed ‘extrinsic’ considerations) is to set theory. I hoped this set-theoretic counterpart to scientific theorizing would be the necessary key to assessing axiom candidates by something other than their ‘obviousness’, etc.
3:AM: You find it unsatisfactory don’t you? What’s the problem with it?
PM: Alas there were three problems with this hopeful position. Much as I’d helped myself to Gödel’s view as a starting point, I’d also taken the Quine/Putman indispensability argument off the shelf: the view, widely accepted at the time, that the existence of mathematical abstracta is confirmed along with the scientific theories in which it plays an indispensable role. When I got down to thinking about these matters more carefully, it didn’t seem to me that science and mathematics are interrelated in the way it describes. So that was one problem.
Another came when I got serious about trying to understand extrinsic justifications as analogous to theory confirmation in natural science. On closer inspection, arguments that seemed to me to present a good mathematical case for or against some axiom candidate looked like just so much wishful thinking when compared with scientific reasoning. To put the point roughly, the fact that the existence of measurable cardinals deliver a desired conclusion (mentioned in (1)) would count as extrinsic evidence in its favor, but if we’re really out to describe an objectively existing world of sets, why should we expect it to conform to our desires? Faced with this extrinsic evidence, my realist could reasonably respond: yes, I see that the axiom of measurable cardinals would lead to lots of welcome mathematical results, would generate a lot of deep and important mathematics, but what if — sadly, sadly! — there just aren’t any measurables?! This seemed like a bad response to me — the mathematical virtues should carry the day — but if welcome theoretical structure were a criterion for acceptance in physics, we’d never have ended up with quantum mechanics. So the strong analogy between theoretical natural science and higher set theory began to lose its charm.
The third reason is the one that moved me into philosophical methodology. If you’re a ‘naturalist’, you think that science shouldn’t be held to extra-scientific standards, that it doesn’t require extra-scientific ratification. I thought I was a naturalist because I was out to make Gödel’s intuition scientifically respectable, and because I didn’t subject mathematics to extra-mathematical criticism, but I was still trying to base a mathematical decision — is CH a question worth pursuing? — on extra-mathematical grounds. In a slogan: if extra-mathematical considerations can’t count against mathematical moves, they can’t count for them, either. Realizing this made me slap my forehead for having missed the obvious for so many years.
3:AM: Your response to rejecting mathematical realism is to turn away from metaphysics and towards mathematics and you call this ‘naturalism.’ What is this position and why is it better than realism?
PM: By ‘naturalism’ in this context, I mean the idea that mathematical decisions — is CH worth pursuing?, is the axiom of measurable cardinals a good axiom? — should be taken on mathematical grounds, without interference one way or the other from extra-mathematical considerations of metaphysics or epistemology. This may sound like a truism, but it actually has bite: it not only rules out my realist’s complaints about extrinsic justifications, but also rejects metaphysical arguments against the Axiom of Choice, arguments from philosophical semantics over classical logic, and so on.
3:AM: Is this an example of what you mean by ‘second philosophy’? I think you root its rather austere approach to the Wittgenstein of the ‘Tractatus’ where he says that the right philosophy would be to say nothing except what can be said and that what can be said is exhausted by propositions of natural science. This seems odd in that isn’t mathematics not a proposition of natural science so presumably you’re not drawing the same conclusion from Wittgenstein’s idea that he drew but are looking to extend his suggested methodology?
PM: Yes, a broader version of this ‘naturalism’ is what I came to call ‘Second Philosophy’. Early on, I’d assumed that everyone knew what it was to be a naturalist, that all I had to do was explain how to extend this to mathematics, but over the years — when the first question at so many of my talks began ‘but that can’t be naturalism, because naturalism says … ‘ — I came to understand that a bewildering array of views are called ‘naturalism’. So I set out to elaborate what I meant by ‘naturalism’ and coined a new term for it to avoid squabbles over the word. My goal was to lay out this metaphilosophical backdrop and to take a position on the ground of logical truth, so that I could then swing back and address the metaphysical and epistemological questions about set theory. Though I’d argued that these considerations are irrelevant to methodological decisions in mathematics, I certainly didn’t conclude that they were unimportant or pseudo-questions (though I was interpreted to have said that more than once).
As to the roots to Second Philosophy, it’s true that I do use that remark from the Tractatus as a rhetorical device in the introduction to the book, but the real forebears are Hume and Quine, and as I now understand matters, Thomas Reid. Wittgenstein actually had a decided anti-scientific bent, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
3:AM: Guys that seem obvious naturalists – like Quine and Hume say – don’t really make it as second philosophers do they? Why not?
PM: Hume takes a huge step forward in ‘introducing the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects’, but pioneer that he is, he understandably trips up in the execution. One oddity that I’ve so far been unable to fathom is his assertion that since mathematics and natural science ‘lie under the cognizance of men, and are judg’d by their powers and faculties’, it follows that they are ‘in some sense dependent on the science of Man’ (Hume’s investigation), that ‘the science of man is the only |
a window table while BA and M. scraped goops of paint off the more heavily used stencils. They also did some surgery: Too much use had turned “I Want to Ride My Bike With You” into “I Want to Ride My Bike Vith You.” On this evening, BA began with a ceremonial reading of the relevant legal statute—and then the request that, should the fuzz intrude, everyone bike away so that BA alone will take the heat. And there are rules: Since many street cameras erase their footage about every 10 days, BA asks her accomplices not to mention the tagging in email, on Facebook, or on Twitter for a week and a half. “And that just gets more into the fun secrecy of it all,” she says. One of the most exciting LayNSprays took place on the National Mall, she says. “We put hearts on all of the bike signals. It was really sweet. And that was to say these are symbolic of human beings. It’s a person. We are living, breathing beings. Give us respect.” ***
Fifteenth and Massachusetts. “More Bike Lanes.” Barely legible. “Newsflash,” says M. “Orange is crap.” BA, annoyed by the spray job, bikes on. Then she smiles. “Orange you glad we have more colors?” ***
BA may be new to street art, but she understands where bombing—the writing of one’s name on a public surface—comes from: An art form of the voiceless, it’s about proclaiming your existence to a world that has failed to notice you. In her case, “failed to notice” might mean something closer to “didn’t see you before my SUV right-hooked you on your bike.” But while BA has cannily adopted an art form that’s historically belonged to marginalized people and placed it in the streets’ margins, for the most part she’s not proclaiming her existence to the right-hookers. She’s talking to the right-hookees. If BA is caught, the punishments are real. According to the D.C. Code, BA could face as many as 10 years in prison and fines up to $5,000 if she’s found guilty of damages totalling more than $1,000. But anyone who can tag frequently well-lit streets for months without consequence must enjoy some kind of privilege. BA knows it. “People look over with curiosity,” she says of the times she is spotted. “Either people are so complacent they’re not even observant of what’s going on, or they could care less because I’m a young white girl.” Sometimes other bikers double-take when they see BA tagging, but the reaction is receptive. Once, a rider biked by her while she was spraying at 14th and V. “He, like, circled back, looked at the ground, got closer, looked up and said, ‘Whoa, you’re the one. You’re the one!’ He started screaming it in the intersection, and I was like, ‘Dude, keep it quiet.’ And he was like, ‘You’re the one.’ It made me feel like Batman or something.” Several D.C. government officials interviewed for this story say the Metropolitan Police Department rarely pursues street artists who aren’t generating numerous complaints—like Borf, the teenage tagger whose works briefly captivated Washingtonians until his arrest in 2005—or spraying gang-related messages or names. Likewise, the Department of Public Works, which “doesn’t necessarily tolerate” street art on public property like the bases of lamp posts, prioritizes cleaning up material that’s gang-related, offensive, or has inspired a complaint, according to spokeswoman Linda Grant. To Grant’s knowledge, no one has complained to DPW about the bike-lane stencils. “I’d say that the messages are positive and pretty unobtrusive. They don’t distract from people using the street safely,” emails Sam Zimbabwe, DDOT’s director of policy, planning, and sustainability administration, when asked about the bike-lane stencils. “We generally don’t want people to do things like this, because if we did have to remove the stencils it’s a cost to the agency and taxpayers, which means other needed work may not get done. But this isn’t really the same as defacing a sign or creating a large mural in the street because of the size and the fact that the messages are positive.” BA says she’s worried about being caught—mostly because of what it could cost her financially—but believes she could gather support among bike enthusiasts and galvanize momentum for better biking infrastructure and bicyclist behavior. Maybe she shouldn’t worry. On the night I watched BA and her friends tag 15th Street, M. wondered out loud if I was going to portray the crew as reckless, entitled white kids. They certainly have tagging down to something like a science, but over time, they got remarkably looser. At several points, they left three or four stencils next to one another, spending several traffic-light cycles at a single intersection. They greeted passersby, spraycans in hand. And why not be reckless, when the odds of being caught appear to be so low? The most remarkable thing about writing on a well-lit street while being white, 20-something, and bike-bound is how little suspicion you arouse—from cops cruising by, from security guards, from anyone. I had to wonder if the kids who once made the above-ground stretch of the Red Line heading toward Silver Spring a graffiti destination ever had it so easy. BA and her compatriots may borrow graffiti’s customs, but they don’t live in its world. Even Borf’s sentence was light compared to the maximum punishment—while he was ordered to pay $12,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to tagging a Howard University building, he served only a month in jail. BA is hardly Borf on a bike, at least in terms of any damage she’s doing; if city officials say they’re barely bothered by her stencils, would a judge really treat her as a menace? That she’s tagging public property with well-meaning messages, not painting private buildings with pseudo-anarchic axioms, seems to have helped her cause, at least among local officials. From a street artist’s perspective, there’s another advantage to BA’s method. Because streets are public property, tags there tend to last much longer than tags on walls, which are often removed quickly, says Cory Stowers, an amateur graffiti historian who runs Art Under Pressure, a skate and paint shop in Petworth. And while street-bound street art isn’t a common approach, it does have a long tradition: Kids have been painting their names on the pavement as long as they’ve been painting them on the side of subway cars. BA’s stencils aren’t alone on D.C.’s streets. There are the Toynbee Tiles, with their esoteric messages, that can be found on city streets across the Western Hemisphere, plus the Stikman robots that inhabit crosswalks across the United States. Fine artists like Steed Taylor have created sanctioned, gallery-supported “road tattoos.” There’s an artist in Bowie who creates Pac-Man figures, some which are placed so that they appear to be eating lines on the road. That guy uses a heavy-duty adhesive that reacts to heat in order to become permanent, Stowers says. Corporate viral marketers will sometimes stamp hashtags on D.C. roads and sidewalks using materials that fade to nothing in four or five months. Creating street art that’s actually on the street is a bit more technically difficult than using a wall, Stowers says—you have to hold the can a different way, for starters—but it has the appeal of being less competitive. “Not too many people do it, and it’s a great way to attract attention,” he says. “Going onto the ground is an excellent canvas for folks putting their message out.” ***
Fifteenth and K streets. BA says it’s my turn to tag. I stammer and agree, but decide to wait for I Street, a block from my office. I botch a gold-colored “Jesus Loves Bicycles”—wrong hand position—and mess up another stencil inside a white bike arrow. Shrugs. They paint the whole arrow pink. ***
The Bike Artist isn’t nearly done. She wants to tag more lanes in high-traffic bicycling areas and move away from her more humorous messages to focus on promoting responsibility and etiquette. And she’s even seen at least one imitator: A friend has begun spraying stencils in Columbia Heights, using his own designs. Similar-looking stencils aimed at pedestrians can be found on 11th Street NW in the same neighborhood, though BA didn’t notice them until after her project began. In many ways, the tone of her street art—chipper, encouraging, mischievous but hardly subversive—reflects a change in D.C.’s bike culture. Between 2000 and 2011, only New York City saw a sharper drop in car commuting than D.C., according to a recent Public Interest Research Group study. Bikeshare reports about 250,000 rides a month. According to the League of American Bicyclists, bike commuting in D.C. grew 445 percent between 1990 and 2012, and as many as 4.1 percent of D.C. workers commute on bike. The typical D.C. biker is a lot like the Bike Artist—pretty normal. “Bicyclists now aren’t your middle-aged men in Lycra, they aren’t the young white hipster bike-messenger lookalikes,” BA says. “Everyone bikes.” Bike culture in D.C. is “night and day” from about a decade ago, says BicycleSpace co-owner Erik Kugler, whose 7th Street NW bike shop sits in front of a rare sidewalk stencil made by BA. “It used to be exemplified by the courier culture...that was a turnoff to many people. Now it’s just everyday people who are out. What separates the culture now is it feels like you’re in on a secret that brings happiness to your life.” That’s exactly the distinction BA is trying to draw—between bicyclists’ reputation, semirooted in an outdated notion of who bikes, and the way she feels every bicyclist ought to behave. Where most of us fall is probably somewhere in between. “Bicyclists have a reputation of being serious assholes, and this is confronting that perception,” BA says of her project. As an example, she points to a recent article on Greater Greater Washington, a first-person account by a bike-accident victim who was ticketed by police after a driver turned into his path, causing a collision, and was later allegedly told by a police officer that of course he was at fault—he’s a biker. In that case, the bicyclist did everything right. But in the heated discourse of urban transit policy, BA is frustrated that bicyclists are often stereotyped as aggressive lawbreakers. That perception, she says, is unfair, but is nevertheless framed “by the portion of people that run through red lights, don’t yield at stop signs, bike on sidewalks, bike the wrong way up streets—those people frame other road users’ perceptions that all bicyclists are wrong and disrespectful. I’m so polite. I’m overly polite to get over that perception. I, like, stop and wave and smile at people.” Bikers, of course, have plenty of reasons to remain aggressive—they still get killed on the road, after all, and must navigate laws that often force them to think like motorists and pedestrians at the same time. And so the notion that more bicyclists ought to set a better example, Kugler says, is “a little tough to swallow with all these cars doing illegal U-turns” and violating traffic laws in ways that can hurt bikers. “We’re supposed to be the ones who set a good example?” As American cities have knocked down the barriers to everyday biking by building more bike lanes, adding Bikeshare systems, and improving signage—as they’ve given more of the road to bicyclists—those policies have become politicized. (See the conservative think tank founder who recently berated a bicyclist for reporting a truck blocking the L Street cycletrack, or Christopher Caldwell’s recent Weekly Standard screed against the bicycling lobby.) But in D.C., the temperature of the bicycle debate is beginning to drop. Public discourse still centers on the toll of gentrification—on the widening gulf between the city’s wealthier, whiter population and its poorer, blacker one—but three years removed from the Fenty administration, bicycling is less of a signifier of a societal rift. (Biking advocates, of course, might point out that the pace of bicycle-infrastructure expansion has slowed, too, although DDOT wants to build 140 more miles of cycletracks and bike lanes.) And as the population of daily, nonideological bicyclists has grown, BA’s instinct—that they need an angel on their shoulder—more or less feels right. That, anyway, is why Kugler says he gives the bike stencils a “99 out of 100.” “It’s a message for the modern biking culture,” Kugler says. “It’s not a renegade culture anymore.” ***Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters and they will type the works of Shakespeare. Give 100,000 monkeys a single Game Boy running Pokemon Red and what you have is a brilliant social experiment.
Twitch Plays Pokemon " uses Twitch.tv to live stream an emulated version of Pokemon Red that is played by translating messages sent in Twitch's chat system to commands on the virtual Game Boy. Post "left" to the chat, and 20 to 40 seconds later (due to the lag) the player moves left. Likewise with other commands. What's incredible is that after tens of thousands of players have sent thousands of messages every minute to the game, they have made significant headway: battles won, gym badges awarded, and Pokemon trained. Even in this seemingly chaotic frenzy, progress is made, albeit slowly.
The game is riddled with complex mazes and puzzles the player must overcome. These areas are being conquered, but at an infuriatingly inefficient pace. Hours are spent walking into walls, using incorrect tools, and even throwing away useful items. One step forward, a hundred steps back.
A more decisive way of sending commands was necessary to make gameplay more meaningful, so five days into this experiment a new mode was added: anarchy and democracy. Twitch viewers can vote for their preferred mode by posting "anarchy" or "democracy" to the chat. In anarchy mode the game proceeds as usual by accepting every command, but when players vote in democracy mode, the rules change. The system tallies up the requests, and after a 20-second interval, the command with the most votes gets executed. In this mode, players can also stack moves into a single command, such as "left2down3." Gameplay slows to a crawl when the player only moves every 20 seconds, but meaningful progress can be made.
The pattern of these modes being voted in is predictable. During normal gameplay, anarchy is the top choice because of the fast-paced, entertaining gameplay. But during complex puzzle sequences and important battles, the chat calls for "democracy! democracy! democracy!" Interestingly, without a central figurehead dictating decisions like this, a majority of the players agree to collaborate to reach a certain goal.
Not everyone is keen on Twitch Plays Pokemon being a democratic system, though. Pro-"anarchy" players submit "start9" to the messaging system to protest this new mode. Start9, if executed, calls the start menu nine times, effectively bringing the game to a halt in a beautifully simple, passive, and powerful protest.
Twitch Plays Pokemon is built on an unsophisticated mechanism. Players submit a move that is then executed on screen. Zoom out, however, and we can observe some interesting things. Playing in "anarchy" mode makes for a fast-paced and fun experience, though players make very little progress. Democracy mode is dull and predictable, and while progress is made, it’s slow coming. There is a deep trade-off here. As I watched, it was truly astounding when players made progress in anarchy mode. Players celebrated every achievement because the odds were so out of favor. When voting took place, I lost interest because my suggestions felt irrelevant. If I thought we should move up and not left, I was out of luck if outvoted. The game slowed to a crawl and I suddenly had less say. No one gave up in anarchy mode. There was always a beacon of hope that even though we were walking into walls, we would prevail. And eventually, we did. Everyone acting in their own interests, even if that interest was derailing the game, worked.
While Twitch Plays Pokemon is a fascinating social experiment, players have no skin in the game. Other than some wasted time watching the stream (and inevitably explaining it to friends and coworkers), voting at the control is costless. But what if five moves cost a dollar? Would anarchy mode be more structured and deliberate, with less throwing of random moves in place? Perhaps, but 70,000 people wouldn’t tune in to take part. The trolls, for example, might not be as willing to spend their hard-earned bones to derail the game. Save for needing a free Twitch account, any viewer can contribute without system-imposed alienation. Still, this experiment can be better. The 30-second delay between submitting a move and its execution is due to technological limitations, meaning, consequently, your appropriate “left” may not be useful 30 seconds from now. Without that delay, moving through the game may be more effective. Players have already self-started communities to discuss strategy and gameplay. These communities are free and open, sans figurehead.Finally getting the chance to read (and translate) Hiroshi Kanno’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles manga, Mutant Turtles Gaiden, was something of a dream come true for me. Though the feature is now defunct, back when ninjaturtles.com was still owned and operated by Mirage, it had a page dedicated strictly to the various TMNT manga that graced Japan’s shelves… albeit the page was full of incomplete information, vague credits and only a handful of low quality scans.
But, for all those who also felt intrigued by the mystery, and lunacy, of the vintage ’90s Ninja Turtles comics, the whole run has been translated for your pleasure. You can find a directory of links to complete volume.cbr downloads at TMNT Entity on the off chance you’d like to follow along with this review. This stuff can get pretty weird.
On to Chapter 2!
Beat the Phony Turtles!
As this chapter begins, the Ninja Turtles have apparently gone rogue; looting jewelry stores and assaulting police officers. April O’Neil even reports the strange thefts on the Channel 6 news program, though what she should really be investigating are the strange bubbles that never cease hovering around her head for no discernible reason. The Turtles, now no longer wearing speedos, naturally feel betrayed, but April informs them that the news is the news. If they want to prove their innocence… then they gotta prove it!
Elsewhere, Shredder plots to steal a gem known as the Jewel of the Nile from the clutches of Michael Douglas. Actually, it’s being held at a facility operated by “High Pressure Curbon”. Presumably Kanno was going for “Carbon”, but you know. Engrish. Shredder orders Bebop and Rocksteady (who suddenly exists, now) to take the robotic False Turtles to the surface and steal the Jewel of the Nile.
If you haven’t guessed yet, “Beat the Phony Turtles!” is Kanno’s loose adaptation of the cartoon episode “Return of the Shredder”. That story had Shredder forming a group of imposters called the Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang to frame the TMNT for various crimes.
While the cartoon portrayed the Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang as a group of juveniles wearing paper bags over their heads:
Kanno reinvents them as lumbering robots alternately called the Mecha Turtles because, duh, he’s Japanese:
At least they sort of get Bebop’s “accent” right.
Anyway, the real Turtles are staking out High Pressure Engrish based on a hunch from April and they’re cornered by the police, who mistake them for the False Turtles. Things look bad until Bebop and Rocksteady show up with the False Turtles, who scare the police off and promptly attack the Ninja Turtles. The TMNT find they can’t make a dent in the False Turtles, as their armored hides bust all their weapons. Bowing their heads in shame, the Turtles admit defeat.
And when the odds are against them and all hope seems lost, there’s only one force the Japanese know of that can turn the tide:
BURNING JUSTICE!
Well, that’s just Japan’s answer for *everything*, now isn’t it?
So by utilizing the justice inside them, the Turtles trash the robots and win the day. Except they don’t win the day. The False Turtles were all a diversion orchestrated by the Shredder to keep them busy whilst he stole the Jewel of the Nile.
The Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady escape with the jewel and the Turtles lose. On the bright side, though, April clears their name by attributing the robberies to the robots and so all are rewarded with the most delicious pizza Michelangelo has ever made. All except Michelangelo, who has his slice eaten by Donatello, resulting in a corny comedy beat ending. Because not even the Japanese are immune to such lazy, eye-rolling conclusions.
While I can’t deny that juvenile delinquents with grocery bags on their faces are pretty hilarious, the False Turtles may have an edge over the Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang just by virtue of being some pretty awesome robots. Sadly, they have one fatal design flaw: A vulnerability to complete bullshit.T hroughout his movie career, Colin Farrell has played many things: an amnesiac secret agent, a hitman with a death wish, even a time traveler. But in The Lobster, the actor takes on what may very well be his most offbeat role, playing a man who has 45 days to find a mate, otherwise he'll be turned into a lobster.
Yes, the movie is every bit as weird as its premise makes it sound. But somehow co-writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos — in his English-language feature debut — makes it work. Set in a bizarre kind of alternate reality where human coupling is mandatory and where those who choose to remain single must live as fugitive outcasts in the woods, The Lobster is the story of a man named David (Farrell), a recent divorcee who takes up residence at a hotel specializing in two things: partnering up eligible bachelors and bachelorettes, and turning those who "don't make it" into animals. It's only when David flees the hotel and falls in with a band of loners, however, that he meets his true soulmate (Rachel Weisz).
Will the couple be able to find happiness together? Or will the upside-down rules of their dystopian society defeat them in the end? The Lobster is both a love story and an absurdist fairy tale, but one thing it definitely isn't is conventional. Driven by deadpan performances, a classical music score and a dark sense of humor, it's a difficult movie to pin down. But if you absolutely had to put a label on it, it's hard to think of one more appropriate than Logan's Run meets Terry Gilliam.
The Lobster is receiving its North American premiere as part of TIFF 2015's Special Presentations programme. Its runtime is 1 Hr. 59 Min.Frank Lampard is almost certainly out of Euro 2012 because of the thigh injury that has put Jordan Henderson on the brink of a late call-up and left England looking increasingly depleted with only 11 days to their opening game of the tournament, against France.
Lampard was hurt chasing a ball into a corner during England's training session and the initial prognosis is that there is virtually no chance of him being fit. The seriousness of the issue was immediately obvious to his team-mates as he was treated at the scene and a dismayed Roy Hodgson quickly put in place contingency plans by contacting Liverpool to inform them that Henderson might be needed.
That would leave England operating from anything but a position of strength when it comes to back-up players for Hodgson's first-choice central-midfield pairing of Steven Gerrard and Scott Parker. Hodgson's options are so depleted that Phil Jones, used mostly as a defender at Manchester United, is next in line, followed by Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and now Henderson.
Lampard turns 34 during the tournament and, if his worst fears are confirmed, he will have to acknowledge that it also puts his international career at serious risk. The Chelsea midfielder had spoken on Tuesday about reaching 100 England caps but he is currently 10 short and has started only one of the past five internationals. He is, however, still regarded as a key member of the squad, especially at a time when Gareth Barry and Jack Wilshere have already been ruled out and there are lingering concerns about the ability of Gerrard and Parker to play the entire tournament.
Gerrard was restricted to only 45 minutes of the 1-0 friendly win against Norway on Saturday and missed Liverpool's last two games of the season because of his recurrent back issues. To put it into context, England's players had a golf afternoon at their hotel in Hertfordshire and Gerrard played only nine holes because he did not want to overextend himself.
As for Parker, he lasted almost an hour in Oslo but has been treated with injections because of a persistent achilles problem that meant he barely played in the previous month.
Hodgson's options are limited by Michael Carrick's withdrawal from contention and the FA has indicated there will be no attempt to try to ascertain his availability. If Lampard's scan reveals a tear, the FA will have to prove to Uefa's medical committee that it is a new injury before being allowed a replacement. Lampard missed three and a half months two seasons ago with a thigh injury, although it not clear at this early stage whether the latest problem is in the same area. Either way, the ruling body does not anticipate a problem bringing in Henderson.The Annual Pauhana Surf Contest
Playa Encuntro, Cabarete, Dominican Republic
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Photos by Chameleon Creative Arts
Fall is an exciting time for Cabarete as surf season and local competitions begin. The annual Pauhana Surf contest is the first weekend of October and we’re excited to cover the details.
With community in mind, Pauhana has made the same entrance fee across the board for all categories: 500rd. The fees are used to create the atmosphere for the event and put together some kind of cash prize for the winners of the Open Men and Open Women category.
Female Equality in Surf Contests
What makes the Pauhana contest unique is their commitment to award the Open Men and Open Women winners the same cash prize. Most surf competitions in the world have huge cash prizes and sponsorships awarded to the men, while women get less than half that. What this means is ladies, you better go out there and represent!
Cabarete Tourism
Pauhana considered cancelling their contest due to lack of funds from supporters of the event in Cabarete. We spoke with Chepe Gomez, co-owner and operator of the school. He said, “Even though things seem slow at the moment, we want to have a fun Pauhana party for the community and things are going to change for the better really soon.”
Despite the decline in tourism that economically sustains the Cabarete community, the DR is expecting more tourism than usual starting in November. High season for visitors to the Caribbean is in the winter months and most of our Caribbean neighbors were destroyed by September storms. You can read more about that here.
Surf Competition Categories
The Categories for the Pauhana contest are what make it a really fun event for the community. Unlike other surf competitions that are focused on determining the best athletes in an area, the Pauhana event is pure surfing fun – with prizes! Our favorites to watch are the Doggy Surfers and the Surf Family heats, it’s all smiles and a really heartwarming experience.
Here are the Categories for the competition:
Juniors Boys (12-18 years old)
Juniors Girls (12-18 years old)
Mini Juniors (9-12 years old)
Peewees (6-9 years old)
Surf Family (Parent and kid together, no rules)
Bodyboard Open (men and women no age limits)
Longboard Men (no age limits)
Longboard Women (no age limits)
Open Men (any age, on shortboard) cash prize
Open Women (any age, on shortboard) cash prize
Doggy Surfers (no rules)
As you can see some of the categories have no rules and are just for fun. Cash prizes are only given to two of the categories but other prizes like gear, apparel, and gift certificates can be expected by winners of the other categories too.
Hippie Market on the Beach
There will also be a Hippie Market on the beach during the contest. Cabarete has many jewelry makers, clothes designers, and savvy shoppers who sell their item in local markets. There is no charge to participate in the market, just bring your own setup and merchandise.
Sign up for the weekend event begins Thursday Oct. 5 at Gorditos Fresh Mex in Ocean Dream Plaza.
The contest is Saturday and Sunday the 7th and 8th.Awards and prizes will be given at the El Encuentro Surf Lodge Sunday night the 8th starting at 5pm.YAYLADAGI, Turkey (Reuters) - When nine-year old Ilaf Hassun drew a picture of her home she scrawled a simple house, trees and clouds with smiling faces. Then in thick red pen, she added the figure of a woman clutching her dead child walking towards a cemetery.
Syrian refugee Islem Halife, 11, shows a drawing of her home in Syria, as she sits in a classroom where she learns the Quran in Nizip refugee camp in Gaziantep province, Turkey, December 13, 2015. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Syria’s conflict has left hundreds of thousands dead, pushed millions more into exile, and had a profound effect on children who lost their homes or became caught up in the bloodletting.
Hassun and her family are living with nearly 3,000 other people - 1,000 of them under 12 years old - in Yayladagi Refugee Camp, a former tobacco factory converted by the government just across the border from Syria in eastern Turkey. Her father works illegally in Turkey and rarely visits.
She plays with the other children, but her artwork points to the mental scars borne by her and many of the 2.3 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey, more than half of them children. Providing mental security as well as physical shelter is one of the challenges facing Turkish authorities.
A Reuters photo story from various camps in the region shows the children at play and displaying their drawings. It all appears very normal - a girl skips rope, another poses in front of her tent, others weave, teenage boys play football.
To see the photo story, click: reut.rs/1N99tK9
“We have to find a way to let these children forget the war and what they experienced,” Ahmet Lutfi Akar, president of the Turkish Red Crescent, told Reuters.
“These (children) grow up in camps. We have to teach this generation that problems can be solved without fighting, and we have to erase the scars of war.”
The Turkish government, aided by the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, has set up 27 “Kid-Friendly Fields” across the country, used by an estimated 100,000 children between the ages of four to 18 who receive support and education, and a chance to be children.
The centers are the latest effort by authorities to ramp up their humanitarian response and provide long-term care for refugee communities unlikely to be able to return for years. From the age of 9, the Arabic-speaking children are taught Turkish to help them integrate.
“When they arrive in a different country they have difficulties living in a different culture, in a world speaking a different language,” said Meryem Dolgun, a youth worker. “They have self-confidence problems, fear. Some think they are worthless.”
PICTURES OF TANKS, CRYING MOTHERS
The most severely traumatized are sent to specialist hospitals, but the rest are given support within the camps.
“They draw tanks, war planes, dead people, wounded children, crying mothers. Drawings are the evidence of their trauma, the reflection of their inner worlds,” Dolgun said.
The need to provide schooling and a future for Syrian children in Turkey - and prevent what Dolgun called a “lost generation” - has become a high priority.
The work has taken on greater political significance since Turkey agreed last year to try to stem the flow of migrants to Europe, in return for 3 billion euros ($3.23 billion) in European Union aid and moves towards visa-free travel for Turks.
Turkish officials say they have spent more than $8 billion responding to the Syrian crisis. But if migrant numbers are to drop, Turkey’s refugee response needs to be scaled up.
With just 330,000 places available in camps, and many refugees preferring to take their chances begging or working illegally in Turkey’s major cities, only a fraction of children are receiving help. Yet the system is already creaking.
In November, Turkey’s disaster management agency urged displaced Syrians to stay in camps in their own country, rather than crossing to Turkey.
Many Syrian children in Turkish camps dream not of Europe, or even staying in Turkey, but of returning to their homes.
“If they go back home they will catch happiness. This is their motto,” Dolgun said.
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One such is six-year old Gays Cardak. He is already planning to use what he learns at school in Yayladagi to help his country, shattered by nearly five years of war.
“I’m going to be a doctor and an engineer. We the engineers will rebuild Syria, and I’ll take the (soldiers) to hospital,” he said, wrapped in a small winter jacket in the bitter cold.
(This story has been refiled to fix link to photo story)Most VR games on Steam Greenlight are usually some sort of shovelware scam that are thrown together with little to no effort put in them. To my surprise though, developer Nordic Trolls put some time into their VR game Karnage Chronicles and posted the project to Greenlight. The upcoming VR game set for Q1 2017 is currently seeking votes on Steam Greenlight.
The video for the game Karnage Chronicles is little more than a teaser trailer, but it’s all in-game footage. This means that the game is actually playable in the state that it’s currently in (despite that the devs are still fixing some things), and the video also tells us that the co-op mode is actually functional instead of the devs just saying that it’s in the game — as seen in the image below.
The game is said by the devs to be a linear adventure game, but at the same time they did note that they want some aspects of exploration and secrets to be in the game. In other words, the indie devs don’t want to bite off more than they can chew and want to make a game that can be completed, but provide some substance (secrets and exploration) for VR goers to enjoy.
The description for Karnage Chronicles can be read below.
“What path would you choose when your world is threatened by horrors unseen and forces so strong they can manipulate Magic itself? Wield blade, bow, or the primal elements and journey through snowy mountains, enchanted caverns, and abandoned fortresses to defeat the growing army of the Shroud.“
Furthermore, Karnage Chronicles is said to be an action-heavy, co-op RPG title for VR fans. Although the devs claim that there are more enemies and weapons that will cross your path, the devs at least had the audacity to whip up some concept art to show curious gamers what other stuff is currently in the works for the game, which is visible for you to look over.
You can check out the new teaser trailer for Karnage Chronicles, courtesy of Nordic Trolls channel.
For Greenlight VR standards, this game blows a lot of other entries on the platform out of the water.
Lastly, the game will feature 1-4 player co-op, online multiplayer, and four classes to pick from. For more information regarding Karnage Chronicles and Nordic Trolls you can visit Steam Greenlight or karnagechronicles.com.In the dark din of Sony's Gamescom booth, I was waiting patiently. Conditions were perfect. With only an occasional flicker of the spectres wandering through Until Dawn's creaking halls, my gaze was fixed on an unsuspecting person playing right next to me. This punter, headphones cranked up loud and deep in the throes of Supermassive Games' choose-your-own-Cabin-in-the-Woods adventure, was going down the very same road I had taken. Excellent.
It's a setup that takes no time at all to grasp. Especially so if you enjoyed Quantic Dreams' cinematic Heavy Rain, from which, even down to the title screen's focus on a beautifully mo-capped Hayden Panettiere, it clearly takes a few pointers. And much like that divisive 2010 release, narrative and decision-making form the bread and butter of Until Dawn's appeal, where no single adventure is set to be quite the same.
In turn, you command one of eight American teens during a mountain lodge getaway, which - would you believe it - takes a turn for the grim and gruesome. With dialogue trees, hidden clues and item pickups to be found, the story's course promises to adapt to your actions, often in some pretty bizarre ways. But crucially, once a character from this starting octet is gone, they're gone for good. Hundreds of possible endings are promised, whether they all survive, face a grisly end, or their fates fall somewhere in-between.
How seamlessly each character's path ties up with the next is a mystery. That said, I did get to experience one strand of the tale, taking charge of the hysterical Ashley several hours in, having just lost her friend Samantha. Unlocking a dollhouse roof, I yank out a diary and rotate its cover using the DualShock 4's gyro controls, then flick its pages for clues with track-pad swipes. "I can't read this, it's so sad, Chris!" she wails to a nearby friend - the archetypal snob of the group, still in denial that something very nasty's afoot. From here, I'm set loose to pave my own way.
With a knowing |
yourself, or did you hire people to do this,” Holden asked. “I’m doing it all myself except the granite,” Fister said. “I’ve got a good friend of mine that’s helping me, so he came over to help me out, and other than that, I’m pretty much doing it by myself.”
He’s an upstanding citizen.
“You know, I’ve always wanted to play baseball but you always have to have a backup plan, going to school and everything else,” he said. “I went to school to be a schoolteacher, but I would always love to do the police side of things. My uncle was a police officer who just retired a couple years ago, my aunt, my grandfather, there’s a long line of law enforcement in my family, so it’s something that I would definitely look into.”
He’s an intelligent pitcher.
“My goal is to go out there, first three pitches, get bat contact,” Fister said. “It doesn’t matter where, it doesn’t matter who fields it, it’s something that – I want to conserve as many pitches as I can so I’m going out there to induce contact. That’s my biggest goal. When I get over there and start talking to catchers, that’s what we’re gonna focus on, and so, that’s the number one goal from day one.”
He stays in-shape in the offseason while being generous to his girlfriend with his time, all at the same time.
“She’s actually coaching water polo and swimming, so she’s a high school teacher and she teaches there,” Fister informed. “Water polo? Have you ever tried playing water polo,” Holden asked. “I have,” Fister laughed. “In the offseason, it is exhausting, when I come home, she’s still in-season so I get to jump in with the girls and be able to play goalie for them. So I don’t have to swim a ton, but I’m sitting there drowning myself, so, it’s a good workout for me, and it’s kind of fun to get in the pool and try something different.”
He’s even a hopeless romantic.
“Where’d you meet your girlfriend, Doug,” Fister was asked. “Back in the sixth grade, so we’ve known each other for a long time,” he answered.
And if Doug Fister wasn’t already perfect enough, he’s an animal lover, to boot.
“I also went through your Twitter,” Holden said. “You’re a dog guy, is this correct? You got some dogs?” “I’m an animal guy,” Fister said. “I love cats, dogs, whatever, and so I’ve got two Great Danes, a couple cats, pretty much an animal rescue here.”
Good luck topping that, anyone.Facing option of water rate hike, board OKs refinancing for Lake Mead pipeline
Sam Morris / Las Vegas Sun
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Putting off another more immediate water rate increase, a county board unanimously agreed to refinance payment of some $300 million in bonds that are funding the third intake pipeline from Lake Mead, which is still under construction.
Refinancing will add some $25 million in interest payments on the $300 million, but it will prevent an increase of some 20 cents per 1,000 gallons of water.
The Las Vegas Valley Water District Board, whose members are the seven members of the Clark County Board of Commissioners, approved the refinancing with a bit of warning.
Steve Sisolak, president of the board, said the move is yet another example of failing to do what is necessary — in this case, increase water rates — to pay for a project that is needed to maintain water reliability.
“This has nothing to do with growth,” he said of the third intake pipeline, which was described as a project needed simply to keep residents in Southern Nevada supplied with a reliable water source.
Water users already paid for rate increases of 10 cents per 1,000 in January of this year and January 2010.
Pat Mulroy, who oversees the Water District’s operations, said that without the refinancing, she would have to dip into her agency’s $311 million in reserves. The biggest reason for that is because planning in the past relied so heavily upon connection fees. But connection fee revenues have fallen from some $180 million each year to virtually nothing, Mulroy said, because growth in the Las Vegas Valley is virtually at a standstill.
Failing to refinance, she added, would endanger the Water District’s bond rating, which has already fallen to double A-minus. The lower the bond rating falls, the more expensive it is to borrow money.
And the district is going to have to borrow another $400 million later this year to finish the third intake, she noted. Economist Guy Hobbs, consulting for the Water District, said a rate increase would likely also be needed to help pay off the third intake.
“My concern … is we’re pushing so much debt so far out there, at some point we’ve got to start paying for this stuff … We wouldn’t be in this position if the folks ahead of us hadn’t pushed the debt out so far. I don’t think it’s fair to the next group that comes after us,” Sisolak said.
“We need to pay now or pay later,” added board member Chris Giunchigliani.
Mulroy noted that if the economy improves and revenues increase, nothing prevents the Water District from paying off their debt earlier, which would decrease some of the interest payments.15 of the best small towns in Texas to road trip to this summer
Keep clicking to see some of the best small towns in Texas to visit on a road trip.
1. Gruene
When visiting Gruene, a town established by German farmers in the 1840s, the #1 thing on your to-do list should be seeing a show at the famous Gruene Hall, which is Texas' oldest operating dance hall, built in 1878. less Keep clicking to see some of the best small towns in Texas to visit on a road trip.
1. Gruene
When visiting Gruene, a town established by German farmers in the 1840s, the #1 thing on your to-do list should be... more Photo: Stephen Saks, Getty Images Photo: Stephen Saks, Getty Images Image 1 of / 19 Caption Close 15 of the best small towns in Texas to road trip to this summer 1 / 19 Back to Gallery
Welcome to Texas: one of the best states for road tripping, where the highways stretch for miles and the summer heat is sweltering.
While Texas is home to some of the biggest cities in the U.S., there are some hidden gems along the backroads that you won't want to miss.
So put on your boots, and get ready to say "Howdy, y'all" to these small Texas towns!Pick a number x between 0 and 1. Then repeatedly replace x with 4x(1-x). For almost all starting values of x, the result exhibits chaos. Two people could play this game with starting values very close together, and eventually their sequences will diverge.
It’s somewhat surprising that the iterative process described above can be written down in closed form. Starting from a value x 0, the value after n iterations is
sin( 2n arcsin( √ x 0 ) )2.
Now suppose two people start with the same initial value. One repeatedly applies 4x(1-x) and the other uses the formula above. If both carried out their calculations exactly, both would produce the same output at every step. But what if both used a computer?
The two approaches correspond to the Python functions f and g below. Because both functions are executed in finite precision arithmetic, both have errors, but they have different errors. Suppose we want to look at the difference between the two functions as we increase n.
from scipy import arcsin, sin, sqrt, linspace from matplotlib import pyplot as plt def f(x0, n): x = x0 for _ in range(n): x = 4*x*(1-x) return x def g(x0, n): return sin(2.0**n * arcsin(sqrt(x0)))**2 n = 40 x = linspace(0, 1, 100) plt.plot(x, f(x, n) - g(x, n)) plt.ylim(-1, 1) plt.show()
When we run the code, nothing exciting happens. The difference is a flat line.
Next we increase n to 45 and we start to see the methods diverge.
The divergence is large when n is 50.
And the two functions are nearly completely uncorrelated when n is 55.
Update
So which function is more accurate, f or g? As noted in the comments, the two functions have different kinds of numerical errors. The former accumulates arithmetic precision error at each iteration. The latter shifts noisy bits into significance by multiplying by 2^ n. Apparently both about the same overall error, though they have different distributions of error.
I recomputed g using 100-digit precision with mpmath and used the results as the standard to evaluate the output of f and g in ordinary precision. Here’s a plot of the errors when n = 45, first with f
and then with g.Developer: Ninja Theory
Publisher: Ninja Theory
Year: 2017
Platform: Steam, PS4
MSRP: $29.99
Prelude
Senua’s lover was brutally killed by the Northmen and she sets off on a quest to Helheim, the Norse land of the dead, to retrieve his soul and set him to rest. Developed by Ninja Theory with help from world-leading neuroscientists and the Wellcome Trust, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a story driven, psychological horror game following Senua’s descent into madness. Ninja Theory combines fluid combat with a deep, human story and beautiful visuals to provide an “independent AAA” title that will bring you to Hel and the depths of Psychosis.
Play
In Hellblade players take a 3rd-Person over-the-shoulder view of a woman named Senua, a Pict warrior, as she battles her way through Hel. On her journey, she’ll discover stones that provide fragments from various Norse tales, solve various types of puzzles, and fight in brutally intense combat with the various entities of the realm, all the while dealing with the various symptoms of her Psychosis. The game is best played with headphones and a correctly calibrated brightness.
As far as controls go, Senua can walk and run, climb ladders and short ledges, and focus, a mechanism for interacting with certain parts of her environment. While in combat she can roll in any direction, block, quick attack, heavy attack, and charge forward, throwing a shoulder into enemies. In battle Senua’s Focus can also be used to slow the action down, but only a limited amount of time before it needs to recharge. In both combat and non-combat the right stick (or mouse if playing on the PC) can be used to look around in typical 3rd-person fashion.
Puzzles in Hellblade come in a few different flavors, are mostly visual, and have to do with perspective. The first you’ll encounter is unlocking Rune locked doors where you’ll have to backtrack a bit to find objects in the world that line up with fit the shape of the runes required to open the door. There are also puzzles where Senua will have to look through stone portals to make objects appear or disappear to be able to progress through certain areas. There are specific perspective puzzles where parts of Senua’s world appear shattered until focused upon from the right angle, materializing whatever aspect of the world was missing.
Combat sequences place Senua in immediate danger, often times triggering without warning and allowing enemies to get a first, often powerful, hit in before Senua can respond. Successful combat revolves around quick dodges, blocking, and parries that open an enemy up to be struck. Larger foes are often unblockable, and sometimes can’t even be hit without performing a successful parry or using Focus to slow down the battle and strike. If Senua takes a strong enough blow she’ll be knocked to the ground, forcing you to mash buttons until she gets back up. Take too many of these and you’ll be granted witness to a blankly staring, dead, Senua.
That’s when the rot advances.
At the beginning of the game, you’ll be given a taste of what the rot can do, and the game will provide a warning. Every time Senua dies the rot will crawl up her right arm. If the rot reaches her head, her adventure ends. It’s a very cool mechanic that I won’t go into much since I don’t want to spoil the game.
Pixels
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is dark, moody, and varied based on Senua’s Psychosis. Sometimes lights are too bright. Sometimes inanimate objects seem to shift, or outright move. There are times when you’ll see things that aren’t really there, or times we there’s something there that can’t be seen. The game contains scenes of beauty, and one of disturbing, grotesque horror. Everything Ninja Theory has placed in the game feel like it has been with the utmost care, and Senua, herself, looks and feels more human than any character from any other game I’ve seen.
Then there’s the audio.
Hellblade features an amazing, perfectly paired soundtrack that always seems to keep the perfect pace with what’s going on with the game. The real gem here, though, are the voices.
The ones in Senua’s head.
Ninja Theory advises that the game is best played with headphones, and I would go as far as to say you shouldn’t play the game any other way. All the audio effects in the game are recorded uses binaural audio, a method that uses 2 microphones to record sounds as if the player were hearing them with their own ears. Not only do you get left and right, but you get the distance of the sounds. It’s a fully 3D immersive experience in Senua’s world when you’ve got headphones on, which also means the voices in her head can dance around you, allowing you to experience them as someone with Voice Hearing does.
Perspective
Hellblade is the single best narrative experience I’ve ever had the pleasure of partaking. It’s not just one of the best games of the year, but may be one of my favorite games of all time. Such care has been taken with every aspect of the game, and it’s obvious from the moment you pick it up until the breathtaking final moments of the game as it takes you through Senua’s journey every step, and every emotion, along the way. Senua’s Psychosis isn’t just a gimmick tied into the game, but one of many facets of a complicated character with more depth than I’ve ever seen in a game.
I’ve spent a bit of time since finishing the game thinking of how to do it justice in a review without providing any spoilers. All I can really say is you need to experience it yourself in its entirety without any guides or reading any spoilers on the net. It’s a game best played with all its surprises, design choices, and intricacies discovered by a player as they play.
While the play time is short, around 8-10 hours, it’s time spent on the edge of your seat, heart pounding in your chest as your anxiety levels shoot through the roof. It’s time where you’ll cherish all of Senua’s victories, and fall into bouts of despair with her defeats. The game puts you through a rollercoaster of emotion using every one of your senses it can to fully immerse you in the traumatic and horrifying world its heroine has to endure.
You can snag Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice for $30 on the PC or PS4, and it’s easily worth twice that.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice was purchased for the PS4 this review and gladly played to completion
SaveSaveSaveSave
Media personality Rob Kalajian has been a staple in the board game world for many years. As a former writer for Purple Pawn and the owner of A Pawn’s Perspective, Rob focuses on board game reviews, events, and news. A self-proclaimed geek, Rob loves all things toys and games and even helps raise his four kids in his spare time. Buy me a TeaESPN Columnist Slams Cops Singing National Anthem Before Sporting Events
Veteran and Family Open Up About Their Struggle Dealing With PTSD
VA Blocked Disabled Vet’s Kidney Transplant Because Donor Son Wasn't a Vet
A Kentucky man was arrested after driving a car through a Memorial Day display and damaging 160 crosses Saturday.
The cross display in Henderson's Central Park honors the names of more than 5,000 soldiers who served in conflicts dating back to the Revolutionary War.
According to the Henderson Police Department, Anthony Burrus, 27, has been arrested on charges of criminal mischief in the first degree and leaving the scene of an accident.
The car Burrus was driving, a 1979 Ford Thunderbird, was found abandoned at a nearby McDonald's with pieces of the crosses embedded in the tires.
He was found later by authorities at his sister's apartment and taken to the Henderson County Detention Center.
WFIE reported that volunteers were able to get about 140 of the crosses back into the ground, but some were completely destroyed.
In a Facebook post, police thanked everyone who shared the earlier posts about the vandalism, saying they were grateful for all of the tips that helped them make an arrest.
They also thanked soldiers and veterans, inviting everyone to visit the cross display and celebrate Memorial Day.
"Thank you to our soldiers at Ft. Campbell who have reached out to help us in any way we may need," the department wrote. "Please join us at Central Park for the Memorial Service Monday at 10am. God Bless America.
Watch more on this outrageous story above.
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VA Blocked Disabled Vet’s Kidney Transplant Because Donor Son Wasn't a VetOn today's episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin, Adam gives a simplified explanation of TheDAO ether drain exploit, explores the idea that the attacker might not be doing anything wrong. TheDAO's Griff Green joins The Filter to discuss what's happened and what's next.
Content by Adam, The Filter Show and Griff Green.
Music by Jared Rubens and Editing by Adam B. Levine.
Transcript of Simplified Explanation:
So what happened at TheDAO, what was the mistake that turned an even bigger launch event than Ethereum's wildly successful crowdsale into a state of halt and catch fire - Without getting into the technical details, the problem seems to have been as simple as getting the order of actions wrong when supporters of TheDAO decide to go their separate ways. Like the mighty Amoeba, TheDAO is designed to let the organization split into smaller more specialized or at least divergent groups, basically at will. When allowing someone with DAO tokens to take their portion of the Ether owned by the DAO and create their own smaller version that they and potentially their supporters or friends can control as they wish, accepting the increased personal risk, greater control and lesser pool of assets that comes from breaking away from the main group.
The splitting process works in three sequential steps.
Step 1 - Verify that the user owns the tokens they wish to split
Step 2 - Transfer ether from theDAO to the new split equal to the amount of tokens the user is splitting
Step 3 - Burn the tokens the user is splitting
The process itself is sound, the order in which the actions are performed proved it's undoing. This is simplified but let's imagine I'm going to split 1 ETHEREUM away from the Dao. Step 1 - The system validates that I actually have enough tokens to convert. I do, so no problem there. Then Step 2, theDAO sends ether from the main pool to the group I control. At this moment, after step 2 has completed but before step 3 has completed, I start the split process over which takes me back to step 1. Since step 3 never happened, the tokens I redeemed were never burned which means that Step 1 finds that i do in fact own enough tokens to redeem 1 ETHEREUM, which takes us to step 2 where my reward is sent a second time. Before step 3 has burned my redeemed tokens, I start the process over and you can see the problem.
If the process involved burning the tokens first and then sent the split on proof of that burn, this attack would be impossible. This is not lazy or bad design, it's early design. Nobody knows what the right way to build smart contracts and while this weakness might have gone unexploited, Smart Contracts are the ultimate pinatas - The bigger the value locked up in one, the greater the incentive to bust it open to get at the good stuff inside.Quotes that sum up the essence of Ron Paul
10 quotes
Ron Paul has been making news for four decades with his blunt pronouncements on the Constitution, the Federal Reserve, U.S. interventionism, freedom and liberty. Here is a representative sampling of quotations from speeches, books and newsletters that sum up the essence of the Texas lawmaker and three-time presidential candidate:
"There is only one kind of freedom and that's individual liberty. Our lives come from our creator and our liberty comes from our creator. It has nothing to do with government granting it."
"One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government."
"When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads."
"As long as we live beyond our means, we are destined to live beneath our means."
"I'm convinced that you never have to give up liberties to be safe. I think you're less safe when you give up your liberties."
"The value of our dollar and the level of our interest rates are not supposed to be manipulated by a few members of the power elite meeting secretly in a secret palace."
"Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense."
"You wanna get rid of drug crime in this country? Fine, let's just get rid of all the drug laws."
"Well, I don't think we should go to the moon. I think we maybe should send some politicians up there."
"Believe me, the intellectual revolution is going on, and that has to come first before you see the political changes. That's where I'm very optimistic."
Richard DunhamThe hit television series “American Pickers” is searching the state of Illinois for rare antiques and collectibles this summer.
“American Pickers” stars Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz have been antique picking across the county since 2010 on the History Channel.
Producer Jodie Friedman says Mike and Frank will hunt for just about anything.
“They like cars, motorcycles, toys, unusual radios, advertising, taxidermy, Civil War memorabilia, World War I and II memorabilia and gas pumps. They love anything that is old, in the original condition and has American history attached to it.”
Friedman says “American Pickers” is asking for leads to locations that would be a great fit for the show. Friedman hopes Illinois will produce some interesting characters with unique items for the world to see.
Friedman says the crew has a few rules about where they will hunt for collectibles.
“Mike and Frank don’t pick anything that is open to the public. They won’t visit stores,antique shops, businesses, museums, estate sales or flea markets. They only go to private collections that are not open to the public,” says Friedman.
“If people have one or two items, then Mike and Frank won’t go there. They are looking for large collections that they can spend a whole day digging around and finding treasures. They really love the thrill of the hunt.”
If you have a large collection or want to refer someone to the show, call 1-855-OLD-RUST or email americanpickers@cineflix.com.Mass shooting in Mesa: Horrible is the new normal
Scene Wednesday near a shooting in Mesa. (Photo: Matt Casey / The Republic)
It shocks us. It always shocks us. Particularly when it happens in the state where we live, the county where we live, the city where we live. We can't help but be shocked.
But it no longer surprises us.
We knows these things will happen. Sooner or later. Even here.
MORE: Follow the story as it unfolds
We tell one another how horrible it is. Because that's true, but we're not surprised. One of the worst things about news like this is that horrible is the new normal.
When news broke that a gunman had shot six people and killed at least one Wednesday morning in Mesa, the Internet and social media world kicked into high gear.
We all know the routine. We've had plenty of practice from incidents all over the country. We check Twitter. We have phone alerts. We sign on to the nearest computer for instant updates from sites like azcentral.com and other local news operations. From television stations. From radio.
Word got out quickly Wednesday morning that the shooter was a White man in his 40s, bald head with a large tattoo on his neck. That some of the victims were connected to the East Valley Institute of Technology and a small restaurant operated by students. That the nearby community college campus was locked down.
Police SWAT teams and others were searching for the gunman.
Photos from the scene:
There's little that most of us could do. Local residents were told to stay inside, try not to get in the way of police and keep an eye out. The rest of us were told to stay away.
And so, for us, news of a mass shooting becomes a waiting game. Not the old-fashioned kind in which we would check the television news later in the day or read the next morning's newspaper.
It's the new way, the way we've learned in the past couple of years, where every scrap of information is posted online instantaneously and becomes fact, even when it isn't.
In this case we knew early on that at least one person was killed in Mesa and several others were injured. But we didn't know who and we don't know why. That would come later.
We simply knew that something like this was bound to happen somewhere. Soon. Harvard University researchers last year said that mass shootings since 2011 occur on average every 64 days.
NEWSLETTERS Get the Opinions Newsletter newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Our best and latest in commentary in daily digest form. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Mon-Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Opinions Newsletter Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
That's the new normal, statistically defined. An army of news professionals reports on each one of these events, trying as best we can to do some good. To gather information. To explain the unexplainable.
The same will be true of this event, beginning early Wednesday afternoon when a suspect was caught.
Following the mass shooting near Tucson, President Barack Obama invoked the name of the youngest victim, 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green.
"I want us to live up to her expectations," Obama said. "All of us — we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations."
We haven't yet.
And even with all this new technology and instantaneous information the only useful action available to most of us is something very old-fashioned.
We pray for the dead and the injured.
We hope for the best.
Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/1bfEdykMajor Gen. Margaret Woodward, heads the Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention Program
As Congress debates whether to remove sexual assault cases from the chain of command to an independent group, top officers from all five branches said Wednesday the military is trying to prosecute more assailants, prevent retaliation against victims and offer them better counseling.
The Pentagon estimates there were 26,000 incidents of unwanted sexual contact last year alone, from groping to rape. And while most attention has focused on servicemen assaulting servicewomen, the majority of cases involved male-on-male assaults.
In what may have been the only news flash from this forum, Adm. James Winnefeld Jr., vice chair of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, said that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will soon announce several initiatives meant to crack down on “this insider threat” to all service members, in order to produce “a culture of total intolerance.”
Hagel will mandate the involvement of a general staff or senior flag officer “on any kind of a sexual assault that occurs,” Winnefeld said in a teaser at Washington’s Naval Heritage Center. The panel discussion, part of The Year of Military Women, drew about 200 attendees, ranging from U.S. Naval Academy students to retired generals and civilian counselors.
The Hagel proposal is not meant as another layer of bureaucracy, Winnefeld added in an on-the-fly interview as he was leaving. “It is over-watching,” which translates to, “Something happened in this unit and I will monitor it.”
During prepared remarks, Winnefeld disagreed with the “story line” that commanders are unable and unwilling to prosecute sexual assault cases. “In the last two years, Army commands exercised jurisdiction that civil authorities declined to prosecute,” many of which resulted in confinement and discharges for perpetrators, he said.
Hagel and several key senators oppose removing assault cases from the chain of command, but it is unclear whether his new initiatives will satisfy other lawmakers – including 44 senators – who are strongly pushing for it on the grounds that problems of retaliation and double-victimization have only worsened over the years as the military has sought to police its own. President Obama has taken no position on the issue.
The panel’s only woman, Major Gen. Margaret Woodward, who recently took over the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office at Air Force headquarters in Washington, said she has learned much about dealing with long-term effects of sexual assault from a female victim who works in her office. “Supervisors are not aware of the trauma,” she said, and holding victims to conventional military standards “can look like reprisals for survivors.”
Woodward, who is about to launch a worldwide tour of 10 Air Force bases, said that sexual assault requires the same long-term understanding and treatment as other forms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
On a chilling note, she also observed that “there are more serial rapists out there than we think. It’s hard for us to believe that [fellow service members] are a serial rapist or a predator.”
Woodward noted it is more difficult to prosecute a one-on-one, he said/she said case “but if you can find additional victims, if you can go back and show them the grooming behavior of a predator,” it is often easier to get a conviction.
Rear Admiral Sean Buck, who has headed the Twenty-first Century Sailor Office only since June, said the Navy is now putting trained civilian counselors on aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships to care for victims who have deployed. The Navy is also cutting the number of outlets and selling hours for alcohol since liquor is often an element in sexual assaults.
Rear Adm. Daniel Neptun, of the Coast Guard Personnel Service Center, said that sexual assault does not simply involve victims and assailants. “If you are a bystander and do not take action, you become part of the problem.”
Indeed, Brigadier Gen. Russell Sanborn, who has headed Marine and Family Programs at headquarters here for a whopping eight days, noted the paradox that “we will defend each other in battle, we will leave our cover and concealment under fire,” to save a comrade but won’t do the same in “bystander intervention.” Sanborn cited increased officer training and victim care, and the use of nurse-examiners and sexual assault response teams as part of the Marines’ “holistic” approach to the problem.
Army Major Gen. Thomas Seamands, director of military personnel management, declared that “sexual assault is a crime anywhere but in the Army, it’s fratricide.”
Or sororicide.2 years ago
This is going to be a long one, so stay with me.
Almost a year and a half ago, Patrick (@Podrick), Mariel (@Mariel), and I began talking about doing a ladies’ show. We had meeting after meeting, talking about who would be on it, what it would be about, and what it should ultimately be. I wanted to make sure we were doing this for a purpose, and filling a hole we were missing in our current slate of content. After quite a long time, we've finally developed something that we're super excited to premiere.
Introducing...
ALWAYS OPEN!
WHAT IS THIS SHOW?
Always Open will focus on stories about life, love, sex, personal experiences, and everything in between. It's going to be a very real, open, and candid chat – we want you to feel like you're sitting down with friends at a diner after a night of drinking, where we talk about anything and everything. Plus, this show will tend to be more female-cast than our other similar shows.
We also have a component of audience involvement, which you can read about in the SEGMENTS section below.
WHO WILL BE ON IT?
We were all in agreement during the planning process – this is not "the ladies’ show" or a "show for girls." You guys are fans of Rooster Teeth because we make content you enjoy and find funny, regardless of whether men or women are involved. A big reason why I want to do this show is because we're going to get to talk about things we like talking about, with people I like talking to – and yes, a lot of them happen to be women.
You should expect to see a lot of awesome ladies (and dudes... but mostly ladies) on the show, including some you may not know from Rooster Teeth. What I've learned from working here is that there is an abundance of talented, smart, funny people whom the audience doesn't know, and I'm hoping you guys will love them as much as I do. The cast will rotate, but I will be hosting every episode (eep! how does adult!?). We also plan to have familiar guests on, such as some of our awesome voice actors, friends from LA, and so on.
WHEN AND HOW DOES IT GET RELEASED?
Much like Off Topic, we're going to start things off with four episodes (one a week) for FIRST members only on RoosterTeeth.com. After we get some feedback and are officially green-lit, the show will premiere Wednesday nights at 10:30 p.m. CT for FIRST members, followed by public release 24 hours later.
Some more details:
- Not livestreamed – we will film and edit each episode, and it will release at 10:30 p.m. CT.
- The length of the show will be between 45-60 minutes
We'll announce closer to the date on when our first pilot episode will premiere, so stay tuned. Just know it's not very far away!
SEGMENTS & YOUR INVOLVEMENT!
Always Open will have a few different segments, and we want you guys to be involved! In no particular order, here they are:
SHOT OUT
Submit a type of alcoholic shot for us to do, e.g., Vodka and Cranberry, named "The Rose" (name optional). We'll mix this up and do a shot at the opening of the show, and give you a SHOT OUT. (hehehe)
MY FIRST TIME
The cast will tell stories about our first time doing _____. This could be anything from our first time performing on stage, to our first time watching porn.
ASK US ANYTHING
Imagine a game of truth or dare, but without the dare. No question is too bold. Well, maybe... we'll see.
SEXPERTISE
Love, sex, relationships – we are here to answer your questions about them, or give advice. You can submit a question, which we'll read and answer (you can ask to be anonymous).
You can send your email, or anonymous email (as well as topics/questions for any of the other segments) to alwaysopen@roosterteeth.com.
I am so pumped – and scared and anxious and excited – to be doing this show, and to finally be sharing the news with you all. I hope you'll check it out once we get going, and that you'll have as much fun watching it as we do filming it.
I'd love to hear your thoughts leading up to and during the airing of the show, so use #AlwaysOpen on Twitter, comment on this journal, and let's get this thing started!
Love you all!
Bthroughout 25 year.
You may thing ""It's normally Kirby fan art" but it's not! You know well that i like to put meaning to my art! Let's see what i put in The flower that Kirby hold was (somewhat) Aster. Aster is derived from the Greek word for "Star" which is symbol of this game.Sakura in the background is from "Masahiro Sakurai" Who invented Kirby and one of Kirby's father. Cut "I" from "Sakurai" is Sakura right Sakura is mean success and strong heart! Like Kirby who always have strong heart to fight with usAnd last, the rainbow. It's mean someone that we love. He is the greatest man in Nintendo that i ever know. He started his road from HAL. He said in his heart he was a gamer. He is Kirby's second father. He give Kirby life.Satoru IwataIf you didn't know, Iwata was one of creator of Kirby's Dreamland. Without him there would been no opportunity for Sakurai to draw Kirby in the first place. I think Iwata still watch his child grow up somewhere in the sky. Thank you Sakurai and Iwata for give life to this little puffball and made us adventure inDreamland.Happy birthday Kirby and Thank you HAL!WASHINGTON — Under pressure all weekend, President Donald Trump on Monday named and condemned hate groups as “repugnant” and declared “racism is evil” in an updated, more forceful statement on the deadly, race-fueled clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Watch President Trump’s remarks live in the player above.
Trump had been under increasing pressure to call out the groups by name after his previous remarks bemoaning violence on “many sides” prompted criticism from fellow Republicans as well as Democrats. The president described members of the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who take part in violence as “criminals and thugs” in a prepared statement from the White House.
In his remarks he also called for unity.
“We must love each other, show affection for each other and unite together in condemnation of |
.S. population could nullify any and all federal laws for all the rest of us. In fact, since it only requires a 50 percent +1 majority of any legislature, the actual percentage of Americans represented by them could be as low as 12 percent — or even significantly lower, given how few people tend to vote for state legislators.
Thus, the idea of enshrining minority rule is absolutely central to Kacprowicz's vision — it's a feature, not a bug.
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“I think the most interesting part of this is not whether they can get all the way to Kacprowicz's crackpot sovereignty/countermand amendment, but whether some kind of Article V convention can get off the ground,” Clarkson said. “Clearly elements of the right have given a lot of thought to this, just off of our radar screens. And frankly, it seems not impossible. But at the very least, it has the potential to be a force in the national political conversation.”You knew this was coming. With the Academy Awards now in the books, why not look ahead to next year’s potential slate? The Oscars had their say, but now we’re up and running again with pure speculation. Last year I had three of the ultimate nine Best Picture nominees in my initial lineup, as well as Emma Stone in Best Actress for La La Land and actually picking Casey Affleck to win it all in Best Actor for Manchester by the Sea from the start. We’ll see how things go this year, but I have a few guesses to make today. Remember, it’s early. The 90th ceremony is still almost exactly 12 months away. Still, we press on.
It’s all a complete crapshoot at this point, but without anything to go on, there’s no reason not to assume that Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk won’t be a player with the Academy. Odds are, it ultimately won’t be the Best Picture winner, but something has to be a frontrunner now, right? Another safe pick is Darkest Hour, which seems right up Oscar’s alley. Two projects I’m pretty bullish on are Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!, as well as Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut Molly’s Game. It’ll be months until anything begins to emerge, so for now, your guess is as good as mine. Still, these are mine and should be taken with a grain of salt…
Here now is a first crack at year in advance Academy Award predictions:
BEST PICTURE
1. Dunkirk
2. Mother!
3. Darkest Hour
4. Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Detroit Riots Movie
5. Molly’s Game
6. Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project
7. The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
8. Downsizing
9. Battle of the Sexes
10. The Current War
Next in line: 11. Triple Frontier 12. Call Me By Your Name 13. The Greatest Showman 14. Mudbound 15. Star Wars: The Last Jedi 16. Mary Madelene 17. Untitled Dick Cheney Biopic 18. Stronger 19. Tully 20. Wind River 21. Thank You For Your Service 22. Wonderstruck 23. Chappaquiddick 24. Wonder Wheel 25. Logan
BEST DIRECTOR
1. Christopher Nolan – Dunkirk
2. Darren Aronofsky – Mother!
3. Kathryn Bigelow – Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Detroit Riots Movie
4. Joe Wright – Darkest Hour
5. Paul Thomas Anderson – Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project
Next in line: 6. Aaron Sorkin – Molly’s Game 7. Alexander Payne – Downsizing 8. Steven Spielberg – The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara 9. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon – The Current War 10. J.C. Chandor – Triple Frontier
BEST ACTOR
1. Gary Oldman – Darkest Hour
2. Daniel Day-Lewis – Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project
3. Matt Damon – Downsizing
4. Oscar Isaac – The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
5. Jake Gyllenhaal – Stronger
Next in line: 6. Hugh Jackman – The Greatest Showman (or Logan) 7. Benedict Cumberbatch – The Current War 8. Jason Clarke – Chappaquiddick 9. Liam Neeson – Felt 10. Jeremy Renner – Wind River
BEST ACTRESS
1. Jessica Chastain – Molly’s Game
2. Jennifer Lawrence – Mother!
3. Rooney Mara – Mary Madelene
4. Charlize Theron – Tully
5. Emma Stone – Battle of the Sexes
Next in line: 6. Kate Winslet – Wonder Wheel 7. Tatiana Maslany – Stronger 8. Kristen Wiig – Downsizing 9. Emma Watson – The Circle 10. Elizabeth Olsen – Wind River
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
1. Bruce Dern – Chappaquiddick
2. Kevin Costner – Molly’s Game
3. Mark Rylance – The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
4. Idris Elba – Molly’s Game
5. Jason Clarke – Mudbound
Next in line: 6. Joaquin Phoenix – Mary Madelene 7. Michael Shannon – The Current War 8. Tom Hanks – The Circle 9. Patrick Stewart – Logan 10. Tom Hardy – Dunkirk
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
1. Michelle Pfeiffer – Mother!
2. Lily James – Darkest Hour
3. Kate Mara – Chappaquiddick
4. Juno Temple – Wonder Wheel
5. Katherine Waterston – The Current War
Next in line: 6. Rebecca Ferguson – The Greatest Showman 7. Kirsten Dunst – The Beguiled 8. Mary J. Blige – Mudbound 9. Lesley Manville – Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project 10. Dafne Keen – Logan
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
1. Mother!
2. Downsizing
3. Darkest Hour
4. Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Detroit Riots Movie
5. Dunkirk
Next in line: 6. Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project 7. Triple Frontier 8. Wonder Wheel 9. Wind River 10. Battle of the Sexes
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
1. Molly’s Game
2. The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
3. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
4. Thank You For Your Service
5. Stronger
Next in line: 6. Mudbound 7. The Beguiled 8. Wonderstruck 9. The Lost City of Z 10. Logan
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
1. Coco
2. The LEGO Batman Movie
3. Cars 3
4. Ferdinand
5. Despicable Me 3
Next in line: 6. The LEGO Ninjago Movie 7. Blazing Samurai 8. Captain Underpants 9. Leap! 10. The Boss Baby
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
1. Dunkirk
2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
3. Beauty and the Beast
4. Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project
5. Darkest Hour
Next in line: 6. The Lost City of Z 7. The Beguiled 8. Battle of the Sexes 9. The Current War 10. Blade Runner 2046
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
1. Dunkirk
2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
3. Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project
4. Mother!
5. Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Detroit Riots Movie
Next in line: 6. Blade Runner 2049 7. Downsizing 8. The Beguiled 9. Triple Frontier 10. Darkest Hour
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
1. Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project
2. Dunkirk
3. The Beguiled
4. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
5. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
Next in line: 6. Mudbound 7. The Beguiled 8. The Lost City of Z 9. Blade Runner 2046 10. The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
BEST FILM EDITING
1. Dunkirk
2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
3. Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Detroit Riots Movie
4. Mother!
5. Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project
Next in line: 6. Darkest Hour 7. Blade Runner 2046 8. Molly’s Game 9. The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara 10. Downsizing
BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING
1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
2. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
3. Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project
Next in line: 4. Logan 5. The Lost City of Z 6. Spider-Man: Homecoming 7. Justice League 8. Thor: Ragnorak
BEST SOUND MIXING
1. Dunkirk
2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
3. Spider-Man: Homecoming
4. Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Detroit Riots Movie
5. Blade Runner 2046
Next in line: 6. Justice League 7. Kong: Skull Island 8. Thor: Ragnorak 9. War for the Planet of the Apes 10. Alien: Covenant
BEST SOUND EDITING
1. Dunkirk
2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
3. Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Detroit Riots Movie
4. Spider-Man: Homecoming
5. Blade Runner 2046
Next in line: 6. Justice League 7. Kong: Skull Island 8. Thor: Ragnorak 9. War for the Planet of the Apes 10. Alien: Covenant
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
2. Dunkirk
3. War for the Planet of the Apes
4. Downsizing
5. Thor: Ragnorak
Next in line: 6. Blade Runner 2046 7. Kong: Skull Island 8. Justice League 9. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets 10. Alien: Covenant
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
1. Dunkirk
2. Mother!
3. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
4. Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Project
5. The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
Next in line: 6. Blade Runner 2046 7. The Current War 8. Downsizing 9. Darkest Hour 10. The Lost City of Z
BEST ORIGINAL SONG
?
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
?
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FEATURE
?
BEST ANIMATED SHORT
?
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
?
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
?
Stay tuned for an update to these way too early predictions most likely at the beginning of next month!Story highlights Papadopoulos earlier was told Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Clinton
Trump's allies have dismissed the former adviser's influence
Washington (CNN) George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat that Russia had "political dirt" on Hillary Clinton in May of last year, a conversation that might have played a role in the FBI's decision to open an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, according to a report published Saturday.
The New York Times reported that Papadopoulos, then a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump's campaign, was drinking at an upscale London bar when he told Australia's top diplomat in Britain, Alexander Downer, that Russia had political information on Clinton.
A few weeks before their meeting, Papadopoulos was told Moscow had thousands of emails relating to Clinton, CNN has reported.
About two months after the meeting with Downer, after WikiLeaks posted hacked Democratic National Committee emails online, Australian officials passed Papadopoulos' information along to their US counterparts, the Times reported, citing four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians' role.
Lawyers for Papadopoulos and Australian officials did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment Saturday. White House special counsel Ty Cobb declined to comment on the Times' report.The NCAA has selected seven new sites for championships relocated from North Carolina last month. The championships will now take place in these cities:
• 2016 Division I Women’s Soccer Championship, College Cup, Dec. 2 and 4: San Jose, California (Avaya Stadium; West Coast Conference, host).
• 2016 Division III Men’s and Women’s Soccer Championships, Dec. 2 and 3: Salem, Virginia (Kerr Stadium; Old Dominion Athletic Conference, host).
• 2017 Division I Men’s Basketball Championship, first/second-rounds, March 17 and 19: Greenville, South Carolina (Bon Secours Wellness Arena; Southern Conference and Furman University, hosts).
• 2017 Division I Women’s Golf Championships, regional, May 8-10: Athens, Georgia (University of Georgia Golf Course; University of Georgia, host).
• 2017 Division III Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships, May 22-27: Chattanooga, Tennessee (Champions Tennis Club; University of the South, host).
• 2017 Division I Women’s Lacrosse Championship, May 26 and 28: Boston (Gillette Stadium; University of Massachusetts, Amherst, host).
• 2017 Division II Baseball Championship, May 27-June 3, Grand Prairie, Texas (The Ballpark in Grand Prairie; Angelo State University, host).
The NCAA opened the bid process for the championships following an August decision by its Board of Governors to relocate events originally awarded to cities in North Carolina. The board made the decision because of the cumulative actions taken by the state concerning civil rights protections.
NCAA sport committees received the prospective bids for the championships in September. They then reviewed the qualifying bids and submitted recommendations to the committees responsible for the final decisions: the Division I Competition Oversight Committee, the Men’s Basketball Oversight Committee and the Division II and III Championships Committees. Bids were reviewed based on various criteria, including a site’s capacity to host championships on the dates specified and the ability to ensure a quality student-athlete experience. Host cities were also required to complete a questionnaire outlining how they will protect participants and spectators from discrimination.
“We appreciate our member institutions and the many cities across the country who were involved in the bid process for these championship sites,” said Joni Comstock, NCAA interim executive vice president of championships and alliances. “The sports committees were pleased with the quantity and quality of the bids received and are confident the selected sites will host championships that provide an outstanding experience for student-athletes, membership and fans.”
The bid process for NCAA championships for the 2018-19 through 2021-22 seasons closed in August. The involved sport committees and Division I oversight committees will also evaluate those bid proposals to determine which sites will be awarded those championships in the future. An announcement on the 2018-19 through 2021-22 championships is projected for spring 2017. Cities submitting bids for those championships also had to complete an antidiscrimination questionnaire.
The decision to select Greenville, South Carolina, marks the third time a round of the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship will be played in South Carolina. Previously, Columbia hosted the East Regional in 1970, while Greenville hosted the first and second rounds in 2002. Fans who purchased tickets to the first- and second-round games originally scheduled to be played in Greensboro, North Carolina, will have first opportunity to purchase tickets to the games in Greenville.
While Grand Prairie, Texas, is hosting the state’s first Division II Baseball Championship, the other selected sites have a long history of staging NCAA championships. San Jose, California, will host the Women’s College Cup for the third time, having previously hosted in 1999 and 2000. This will be the fifth time the event has come to the state; Santa Clara, California, hosted in 1996, and San Diego hosted in 2012. The University of Georgia is no stranger to hosting the best women’s golfers; Athens, Georgia, has previously served as the final site for that championship four times.
Boston will be the center of the lacrosse universe on Memorial Day Weekend. Already set to host the national semifinals and final of the Division I Men’s Lacrosse Championship, as well as the Divisions II and III Men’s Lacrosse Championships, Gillette Stadium will now host the semifinals and final of the Division I Women’s Lacrosse Championship on the same weekend. Boston also hosted the Division I Women’s Lacrosse Championship in 1984 and 2006, in addition to having hosted the three divisions’ men’s lacrosse championships in 2008, 2009 and 2012.
Two cities synonymous with hosting NCAA football championships will host the Division III Men’s and Women’s Soccer and Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships. Salem, Virginia, which has hosted the Division III Football Championship game every year since 1993, will host the Division III Men’s and Women’s Soccer Championships for the first time, while Chattanooga, Tennessee, which hosted the FCS title game from 1997-2009, will serve as the host for Division III Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships for the first time.Washington (CNN) A Justice Department investigation into Deutsche Bank's role in a $10 billion Russian money laundering scheme has gone dormant months after the bank settled with regulators, according to people with direct knowledge of the investigation.
DOJ's money laundering division along with the US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York have been investigating the German lender over allegations it missed red flags that allowed Russians to launder billions of dollars out of Moscow using an elaborate trading scheme.
The bank has paid over $670 million in civil penalties to US and UK regulators this year relating to the Russian trades and disclosed in regulatory filings as recently as last month that it set aside an undisclosed amount to cover a potential settlement with DOJ. It is common for regulators and DOJ to move to settle cases at the same time, which companies often advocate for so they can put the matter behind them.
The DOJ investigation has been closely watched by Democrats on Capitol Hill who have tried and failed to get Deutsche Bank to turn over its internal investigation into the Russian trades and a separate internal review into whether bank accounts of President Donald Trump and his family have any ties to Russia. The Deutsche Bank civil settlement has no connection to bank accounts held by the President or Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and White House senior adviser
Criminal investigations like the one facing Deutsche Bank can span months or years before resolutions are reached or DOJ determines there is not a case. Prosecutors have not made requests for information or witness testimony in several months leaving some people familiar with the investigation wondering about the status. There have also been no settlement talks between the sides despite the bank indicating it is prepared to pay a fine to settle the investigation. While the investigation appears to have slowed down, it could be revived at any time.
Representatives from the US attorney's office in Manhattan and DOJ declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the bank declined to comment.
Multiple investigations by congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller are looking broadly into Russia's possible interference with the US election including money transfers. It is not clear whether Mueller has taken an interest in the Russia trades.
It is not clear why the DOJ investigation appears to have slowed, but it comes as senior positions within DOJ have not been filled with permanent appointees and as top agency officials have signaled they are rethinking department policy toward corporate prosecutions.
Under the Obama administration, financial institutions paid hundreds of billions of dollars in fines in the decade since the 2008 financial crisis. The DOJ had reversed decades of tradition by requiring banks to plead guilty to criminal charges ranging from market manipulation to sanctions violations.
In September, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said during a question-and-answer session after a speech at the Heritage Foundation that DOJ is reviewing its stance toward corporate prosecutions.
"Corporations of course don't go to prison. They do pay a fine. And so the issue is: Can you effectively deter corporate crime by prosecuting corporations or do you in some circumstances need to prosecute individuals? I think you do," according to a transcript posted on C-SPAN
He added, "I do anticipate we may in the near future make an announcement about what changes we're going to make to the corporate fraud principles."
Democrats have focused on the bank since the election. "Deutsche Bank's pattern of involvement in money laundering schemes with primarily Russian participation, its unconventional relationship with the President, and its repeated violations of US banking laws, all raise serious questions about whether the Bank's reported reviews of the trading scheme and Trump's financial ties to Russia were completely thorough," according to a letter sent in May by California Rep. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, and four other Democrats.
Deutsche Bank has been a key lender to Trump businesses when other major banks have balked. Trump businesses have borrowed over $300 million for a Florida golf course and hotels in Chicago and Washington DC, according to financial disclosures and public filings from 2012 to 2015. Kushner disclosed an unsecured line of credit from the bank ranging between $5 million to $25 million that he shares jointly with his mother since 2015.
The White House did not comment. A spokesman for Kushner declined comment.
A March letter by the same Democrats asking Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the Financial Services Committee's Republican chairman, to subpoena the bank said, "We are concerned about the integrity of this criminal probe and whether senior bank officials will be held accountable given the President's ongoing conflicts of interest with Deutsche Bank." In July, Waters used a procedural move to try to force Hensarling to subpoena the bank but the motion was voted down.
Deutsche Bank has declined to provide the Democrats information citing privacy laws. In a June letter, lawyers for the bank wrote, "We respectfully disagree with the suggestion that Deutsche Bank freely may reveal confidential financial information in response to requests from individual Members of Congress."
In September, when Deutsche Bank Chief Executive John Cryan was asked by CNBC whether the bank has heard from Mueller he said, "We think we said we wouldn't comment any further on that investigation."
Asked generally about US inquiries into possible Russian interference and loans extended to the Trump family, Cryan said, "I think we have agreed we wouldn't comment on that matter other than to say if we do receive a request potentially in the form of a subpoena, but there are other forms of formal request by which we're bound, then of course we will cooperate fully with any official investigation."
Deutsche Bank disclosed the Russian trading scheme in July 2015 when it said it was conducting an internal investigation into trades through the bank's Moscow desk that passed through New York and London. The bank said it brought the issue to the attention of regulators and law enforcement in the US, Germany, Russia and the UK.
In late January, Deutsche Bank paid $630 million to settle civil claims by New York's Department of Financial Services and the UK's Financial Conduct Authority over the alleged conduct that spanned from 2011 until early 2015. In May, it paid $41 million to the Federal Reserve.
The New York state regulators alleged in the consent order that they found "serious compliance deficiencies" that "spanned Deutsche Bank's global enterprise. These flaws allowed a corrupt group of bank traders and offshore entities to improperly and covertly transfer more than $10 billion out of Russia, by conscripting Deutsche Bank operations in Moscow, London and New York to their improper purpose." The regulator added, "Deutsche Bank has represented that it has been unable to identify the actual purpose behind this scheme. It is obvious, though, that the scheme could have facilitated capital flight, tax evasion, or other potentially illegal objectives."
The bank said in its October filing that it "continues to cooperate with regulators and law enforcement authorities, including the DOJ, which has its own ongoing investigation into these securities trades."
The investigation is one of the last remaining major liabilities hanging over the bank, which has moved under Cryan to resolve open investigations and shift the bank's focus toward growing its business.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
After Senate Republicans blocked a third Obama judicial nomination this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has reached his breaking point and is ready to go nuclear.
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent spoke to senior Senate Democratic leadership aide who told him,
“Reid has become personally invested in the idea that Dems have no choice other than to change the rules if the Senate is going to remain a viable and functioning institution,” the aide says. That’s a long journey from where Reid was only 10 months ago, when he agreed to a toothless filibuster reform deal out of a real reluctance to change the rules by simple majority. Asked to explain the evolution, the aide said: “It’s been a long process. But this is the only thing we can do to keep the Senate performing its basic duties.” Asked if Reid would drop the threat to go nuclear if Republicans green-lighted one or two of Obama’s judicial nominations, the aide said: “I don’t think that’s going to fly.”
Reid could change the rules to a simple majority requirement to break the filibuster on judicial nominees as soon as this week. The reaction among Democrats should be that it’s about time. This has been a progression for Sen. Reid. He has given Republican numerous warnings as he has advanced towards his current position, but every time they refused to listen.
Senate Republicans brought Harry Reid to the point of going nuclear. There will be lots of talk about the history of the Senate and respecting the minority, but Mitch McConnell has left Reid no choice. Majority Leader Reid either had to change the rules, or watch President Obama’s constitutional power to appoint judges evaporate due to Senate Republican filibusters.
Republicans are going to stomp their feet, whine, and howl, but they brought this on themselves by deciding that they would rather obstruct than govern.
The time has come.
Welcome to the reality of how Republicans have broken your beloved Senate, Sen. Reid.
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:Resurrection alum Matt Craven has been cast opposite Amy Adams in HBO’s eight-episode drama series Sharp Objects, from Entertainment One and Blumhouse Television.
Written by Marti Noxon based on the book by Gillian Flynn and directed by Jean Marc Vallée, Sharp Objects centers on crime reporter Camille Preaker (Adams), who lives an isolated life as she attempts to numb the pain of her past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psychiatric hospital, she’s sent on assignment to her quaint Missouri hometown to cover the gruesome murder of a preteen girl. The toxic Southern hospitality amplifies her self-destructive tendencies and triggers a series of events that lead to a terrifying reckoning.
Craven will play Vickery, police chief of the small Missouri town of Wind Gap. Attractive in a quiet way and “broken in” like a nice old pair of jeans, he is essentially mellow in temperament but is put out by the arrival of a St. Louis reporter and a Kansas City detective, there to investigate a series of murders in his seemingly quaint town.
Craven is best known for his roles as Sheriff Fred Langston on ABC’s Resurrection and Clayton Jarvis on NCIS. He also recurred on Justified and next will be seen in feature Awakening the Zodiac. He’s repped by Frontline and Innovative.
Related2017 HBO PilotsThis post was authored by Curbed contributor by MJ Galbraith.
Photo credit: Zachary and Associates, Inc.
Corktown can't stop with the good news lately and it's looking like things will only get better. The owners of PJ's Lager House, the Sugar House, and seemingly every other business in Corktown gathered last night to learn how to get their hands on $950K of $3.8 million in federal grant money awarded to the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy (OTSC). Originally scheduled at Slow's, the meeting had to be moved to the Gaelic League's banquet room in order to hold everyone. There's something about the phrase free money that tends to get people's attention. Thanks to a 2009 Sen. Carl Levin earmark and the OTSC's willingness to spread the love, Corktown businesses, limited to the boundaries above, now have the chance to be awarded up to 50K or 25% of total costs toward "economically sound and sustainable developments."
The details:
The funds are available to property owners and business owners. Lessees of commercial properties are also eligible to receive the grant but they must have a five year lease so as to show that they have long term interest in the neighborhood. There are three categories for which the funds are available: pre-development costs, construction costs, and capital improvements. The grant program defines pre-development costs as architectural services, legal services, financial services, building stabilization, and environmental studies. Examples of capital improvements given were roof replacement, improved energy efficiency, HVAC work, security system installation, facade improvements, fixed equipment purchases, and "other activities upon explanation." Residential only projects are not covered under the grant program. Business owners will submit their proposal applications to Zachary and Associates who will then pitch the planned improvements to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the government agency responsible for approving the grants.
It was clear from the meeting that the OTSC is pretty eager to start doling out the cash. As one of the Zachary and Associates people put it: "The grant money is waiting for us. It's sitting in this little well, waiting for us to dip into it." Way, way back in 2009, Sen. Carl Levin earmarked $3.8 million for the OTSC's Tiger Stadium redevelopment efforts. Despite the OTSC's repeated attempts to redevelop the site, the city has shown little to no interest in doing so. With the money set to expire October 1st of 2014, the OTSC has set up the OTSC Grant Program, ensuring that Corktown businesses benefit from the grant. They continue to push the city for action on the ballpark.
· Corner Chatter [Preserve Tiger Stadium]
· OTSC Grant Program [Zachary & Associates]
· No Rental Vacancy Whatsoever in Corktown: People Turned Away Daily [Curbed Detroit]Much Ado About Nothing has a Polynesian flavour at the Pop-Up Globe. Melbourne is the second city in the world to host the Pop-Up Globe, after two seasons in Auckland, the first of which coincided with the 400th anniversary of the great writer's death. So why does his work fascinate more than four centuries on? His rendering of those core traits and his insight into the human condition is clearly a factor, but the main reason is the writing. Shakespeare's language, his extraordinary ability to coin a phrase, elevates his work to some of the finest in the English language. Writer of 37 plays and 154 sonnets, Shakespeare is credited with inventing 1700-odd words. Our lexicon is peppered with phrases he invented. But when they were written, his plays were designed first and foremost to be performed. Gregory argues the way Shakespeare is often taught is inherently wrong. "It's like telling children that Mozart is a genius and someone would hand out the scores and say 'You be the piccolo, you be the violin, and now we're going to hum it together'. Let's go and see an amateur performance of people who don't really play Mozart very often…"
The Pop-Up Globe, seen during its successful run in Auckland, is coming to Melbourne in September. Through performance, the characters come alive, the humour is readily apparent, the drama is more intense. Most importantly, the language when spoken is far more accessible and meaningful. One of the roadblocks for many when it comes to these great works is the language, which can seem dense and impenetrable. According to Gregory, in truth it is quite the contrary. "Shakespeare's language is mostly mono-syllabic: 'To be or not to be…'" As You Like It at the Pop-Up Globe, which is designed so the audience can get up close to the action on the stage. Even so, he says, in a performance it doesn't matter if you don't understand every word – the show keeps moving and the meaning becomes clear. "We do children a disservice by making them read Shakespeare as though it's a literary test. We should take them to see Shakespeare done by professionals."
So that's precisely what he set about doing. Gregory had long been fascinated by Shakespeare: as a child, his father had quoted the works to him, he studied and performed some of the plays at school and later he studied a doctorate in Shakespeare in Performance at Bristol University. A career in theatre followed – at 23, he staged Hamlet and Twelfth Night on the West End, worked with the British Touring Shakespeare Company and then at the Maltings Theatre in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Workers build the modern version of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, a three-storey, 200-tonne building that houses 900 people. In 2012, he came back to his hometown, Auckland, and it was there that the idea for the Pop-Up Globe crystallised. Working with his business partner, Tobias Grant, and a core team, the idea was fleshed out. What he envisaged was a theatre based on the second of Shakespeare's Globes – the first having burnt down – built in 1614, in which the plays would be staged as they were in the 16th and 17th centuries. An open air theatre with a roof covering the stage, the Globe was designed so that attendees could get close to the action on stage. In contrast to the hushed audiences of today, the crowds at Jacobean and Elizabethan theatres were rowdy and social; they interacted with the performers, were served food and drink and attended for a rollicking evening out. That emphasis on having fun is inherent in the Pop-Up's philosophy. So too is the focus on accessibility. In Shakespeare's day, "groundlings" – named after fish that travel along the seabed with their mouths open, just as audiences would stand open-mouthed at moments of high drama – could pay a penny for standing room access. Tickets for Melbourne's "groundlings" will cost about $20. A bloody encounter from Pop-up Globe's Othello.
Exactly what the Globe looked like inside is a matter of some conjecture, although clues are provided through the plays. There was a balcony, several doors, columns and an onion dome in the roof, to allow light in and smoke from pyrotechnics out. Two inscriptions accompanied drawings of the sun and another of angels. One read: "All the world's a stage", the other '"Tis easier to rule the people than entertain them". Built to the exact exterior dimensions as the second Globe, the Pop-Up uses scaffolding technology devised by NZ company CamelSpace. In Melbourne, it will be located in King's Domain behind the Myer Music Bowl, in what will be temporarily known as Shakespeare's Gardens. More than 150 people are involved in the build, which takes about six weeks. Cast-wise, there are two companies of 15 people; the King's company is all male, because Shakespeare wrote for an all-male cast. About a quarter of the cast is from around the world, the rest are New Zealanders. A fight scene from Pop-up Globe's Henry V. Many aspects of the theatre, from the scenery through to the costumes, were hand-painted or hand-crafted in New Zealand. Jacobean effects are used wherever possible, such as a thunder machine made from several heavy sheets of metal. All productions feature live music and original compositions by the Pop-Up's music director, Paul McLaney, with no amplified sound. Four plays will be performed in Melbourne: As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing – which has a rom-com feel according to its director – Henry V and Othello.
Pop-Up Globe founder Miles Gregory. The first two seasons of the Pop-Up Globe in Auckland attracted about 200,000 visitors. Gregory was thrilled to see so many young people come along. School groups were a significant part of the mix, but many came back again in their own time. The popularity of the shows in Auckland vindicated his idea that done properly, the works are as enticing to a modern audience as they were 400-odd years ago. He hopes "we can create a renaissance… in the way Shakespeare is popularised". He is particularly keen to appeal to "young people who perhaps come from difficult backgrounds, expecting not to understand anything, thinking Shakespeare is hard and he's pale and male and dead". "When they come here and they understand and they laugh and they join in … that confidence that comes with understanding Shakespeare is huge. What can't you do? What's harder [in their minds] than understanding Shakespeare?" What would the man himself have made of a temporary theatre built to emulate his Globe in a city – indeed a country – unknown in his day? That audiences continue to appreciate and enjoy his work is testimony to the brilliance of his writing, the universality of his themes and the strength of his characters.
Gregory says that as well as reflecting something of the world as it was then, the Pop-Up Globe serves a similar purpose to the original. "For us the shock of the old is equally surprising. It plays to the strength of the theatre. Theatre is about the connections between people. In a world where people seem to be retreating, to fluorescent lit boxes watching their own personalised TV channel, I think it's an amazing thing to bring people together." Kerrie O'Brien visited The Pop-Up Globe in Auckland courtesy of Live Nation. popupglobe.com.au FIGHT CLUB
As fight director, Alex Holloway is responsible for turning the Pop-up Globe's fight scenes into epic spectacles. His role encompasses everything from body language through to armies in combat – "any moment in any of the plays that have any aggression, even if it's a look or the way someone is standing, through to battle scenes or someone flying". Working in a confined space with the audience just metres away makes for a challenging brief. When he studied for his degree in Stage Combat, he was taught you can do almost anything, as long as it's safe. He went on to work in theatre in London for two years and moved to Auckland to work on the Globe in 2014. He also set up the New Zealand Stage Combat School, which runs workshops for schools, universities and industry professionals. "Even as a kid I would pick up a stick and it would become a sword. As a grown-up I'm still playing with swords, but I can justify it because I'm getting paid," he says. Preparing actors for anything physical falls into his domain – people going through trapdoors, getting hit, climbing, banging into things. Not surprisingly, Henry V is the biggest proposition in terms of straight fight scenes. Choreographing scenes with 16 or 17 actors wielding heavy swords with the audience metres away is no mean feat. |
the vibe of the game toward his team.
To paraphrase one of Garnett’s ex-teammates, this is why you pay him — to dictate the mood on the court and fiddle with the fragile minds of opposing players. This is a team that needs a guy like KG. The “education of the next generation,” as Sports Illustrated put it, will be dictated by the veterans on the Lakers and Timberwolves. Whether it’s an inherent personality trait or a learned behavior, Towns looks at home, or at least more so than Russell. He was a part of the offense rather than a weird third nipple doing everything he could in an attempt to be noticed. Towns’s mentor was highly visible. Russell’s only seemed to want to talk to Roy Hibbert, Metta World Peace, and the adoring throng of Angelenos that paid to see him indulge himself.
♦♦♦
Enjoying the privilege of seeing a notable player’s debut game means getting to ferret away the answer to the trivia question, “What was Player X’s first basket of his career?” Towns’s first field goal came on a defensive rebounding miscue between Hibbert and Randle. They both went up for the ball, it squirted out from between them, and Towns pounced for an easy dunk.
Russell hit a midrange jumper coming off a Randle screen, the kind of play those two should be able to execute for years to come.
In neither case was it a highlight or a reason to stand up and cheer. Those moments were, of course, reserved for Bryant. After the late-game timeout, Kobe inbounded the ball. He never touched it again, as it went not to him or to Russell but to reigning Sixth Man of the Year Lou Williams. His layup clanked off the rim and the Timberwolves escaped with a surprising 112-111 victory. The Lakers faithful somberly filed out of the arena — no free tacos, no “I Love L.A.” to serenade them. Everyone made it through the evening, but the anxiety remains.Video game composer Wilbert Roget II's big break came just a few years after graduating from Yale University, where he graduated with a BA in music theory and composition.
He'd taken a job with LucasArts before the game development wing of George Lucas's Star Wars empire was shut down after Disney acquired LucasFilm in 2012. He was hired as a music editor there in 2008, but it wasn't until a couple years later that he finally got the chance to shine.
"One day at work I accidentally overheard that they were looking for an additional composer for Star Wars: The Old Republic," Roget tells me, "so I quickly wrote a demo piece, showed it to the music supervisor, and eventually was asked to write about an hour of music for the game."
Roget was promoted to composer and associate music supervisor at LucasArts in 2010, just before the launch of BioWare's Star Wars MMO. Two years later, LucasArts was shut down by Disney, with all future video game development going to third party studios like EA.
Since then Roget has worked as a freelance composer on projects like Lara Croft: Temple of Osiris, Dead Island 2, and the recent Guild Wars 2 expansion Path of Fire.
Call Of Duty may be Roget's biggest project to-date. The franchise has topped video game sales charts for years, and this year's entry, developed by Sledgehammer Games, returns the franchise to a historical setting after nearly a decade of modern and futuristic shooters.
"Call of Duty: World War II was a unique challenge in that while we went back to the series’ roots in the World War II setting, the pacing and presentation has a modern feel," Roget tells me. "For every element of the score, we had to consider where we fell on the dichotomy between 'contemporary orchestral score' and 'period score.' So I needed to establish a music direction that conveyed the setting respectfully, while also having the dark grit of a modern score so that our setting would be as relatable as possible."
Roget's process to scoring a video game isn't quite what you'd expect.
"My approach to scoring is slightly unusual," he says. "Instead of the typical method, where a composer scores to the story and the characters’ emotions as a sort of musical-narrator, I always try to 'write in the 1st person' and imagine myself in the scene. I’ll take inspiration from things like the art direction and color palette, and make decisions about instrumentation and arrangement from those specific elements."
Roget says both video game and film scores influence his work as a composer.
"I’m a huge film and game music fan," he says, listing off John Williams, Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy) and Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop) as major influences. "But much of my harmonic language actually comes from Bulgarian folk music and even Seattle grunge rock."
Perhaps fittingly, Roget says it was "Michael Giacchino’s phenomenal score to the original Call of Duty" which inspired him to write orchestral game music to begin with. You can listen to a track from that game here.
As for his own crack at a Call of Duty title, Roget says he's impressed with the humanity in the game.
"It’s not a game about super-soldiers," he tells me. "The characters are real people placed in a horrific situation. So I felt particularly lucky to have the opportunity to write some more contemplative and emotional pieces for the game, tracks like “Home” and “Berga” which examine the human side of war, its complicated effect on the characters as individuals, and the inconceivable horrors of this setting."
Alas, those tracks won't be released upon the world until Call of Duty: World War II launches on November 3rd. Fortunately, we do have a few of Roget's original pieces in the below playlist for you to check out. Let me know what you think, and check out Roget's website here.
I'm an instant fan. "A Brotherhood Of Heroes" and "Welcome To The Bloody First" are especially lovely. Then again, I'm a sucker for cello and French horn, both of which have some lovely threads in each track, mournful cello bleeding into triumphant horns and back again in a call and response that bookend the track list (below.) "Marigny" is darker and moodier than the first two, and I imagine sets the tone quite well for a dark and violent game about a terrible and tragic war.
Hopefully the game's campaign can live up to the quality of its original score. We'll know soon enough.
Here's the full track list:
1. A Brotherhood of Heroes
2. Welcome to the Bloody First
3. Marigny
4. No Mission Too Difficult
5. The Wolves' Den
6. Ardennes
7. Sever The Lifeline
8. Paris
9. Cobra in the Hedgerow
10. Tiger Hunt
11. No Sacrifice Too Great
12. Home
13. Hurtgen
14. Hill 493
15. A Long Way from Texas
16. Birds of Prey
17. Duty First
18. Remagen
19. Berga
20. The Shadow Under the Mountain
21. Untoten RequiemBeing a liberal used to offer some sort of protection against charges of racism, sexism... you name it.
Not anymore.
Just ask Tina Fey, who was savaged by Social Justice Warriors for a Native American storyline on her Netflix show "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt." Did it matter that the Comanche actor on the series was fully on board with the gag, and found the finished product "damn funny"?
No.
Will Ferrell, who forged his brand by mocking President George W. Bush and created the far-left FunnyOrDie.com site, got hammered for his hit comedy "Get Hard." The charge? The jokes were flat-out racist, even though comedy superstar Kevin Hart, who is black, was Ferrell's co-star.
Or consider how Amy Schumer was attacked last year for her "racist" comedy routine. Comedians don't get any more progressive than Schumer. That didn't protect her.
Being progressive didn't help those stars.
Now, Ellen DeGeneres is under SJW assault. The affable host of "Ellen" recently tweeted out a picture.
This is how I’m running errands from now on. #Rio2016 pic.twitter.com/gYPtG9T1ao — Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) August 15, 2016
The comedienne clearly got caught up in Olympic fever and tried to share a funny meme in the process. Wrong move in 2016.
The response, like most of what occurs on Twitter, was instantaneous. A woman who has no direct connection to any racist activities was suddenly accused of a hate tweet. DeGeneres responded as swiftly as possible to the allegations.
I am highly aware of the racism that exists in our country. It is the furthest thing from who I am. — Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) August 16, 2016
Of course, apologies typically don't work in this arena. SJWs want more, more, more.Boston Police and the mayor's office today announced the seizure of crack kits and other illegal material from 14 convenience stores in Grove Hall and along Dudley Street and lower Blue Hill Avenue:
These paraphernalia "kits" which were being sold in local markets for approximately $2.00 consisted of a singular glass tube, and a cut piece of Chore Boy (copper scrubbers) placed in a paper bag.
But wait, there's more:
Officers located and seized two illegal poker machines being operated out of local store, Villa Sombrero (Dudley Street). Officers also seized a large inventory of individually packaged Viagra pills being illegally sold from numerous targeted stores. Lastly, officers recovered more than 70 EBT cards complete with PIN numbers from the La Borinquena Market (Dudley Street).
Officials say the push is part of the city's overall effort to crack down on problem properties. In a statement, Thomas Menino said:
Today's action was based on work done in collaboration with the Problem Property Task Force and the area’s Neighborhood Response Team efforts to crack down on properties that have been a plague on the neighborhood and keeping the neighborhood a clean, well maintained community that everyone can feel safe and proud to live.
Stores issued summonses out of Roxbury District Court:Cubs Player Gets Tattoo of Wrong World Series Logo
Hey not everyone can say they helped end a 108-year old title drought, but Chicago Cubs infielder Javy Baez can and to celebrate that unforgettable moment Baez got a tattoo to commemorate it on his left arm as you can see in the photo above Tweeted out earlier today by @BaseballInFocus.
Problem is that’s not the Cubs 2016 World Series Champions logo on there, it’s actually just the Kansas City Royals 2015 World Champs logo:
Whoops. No big deal, not like it’s permanent or anything.
If only Javy spoke with us first we could have avoided this whole mixup.
(Yes, it’s entirely possible, probable even, that Baez intentionally chose this logo as he may have simply preferred the 2015 template, it’s got the WS Trophy afterall, but that doesn’t change the fact it’s the wrong logo for that particular season)
For the record the Cubs have been promoting two different World Championship logos, we’re still not entirely sure which of these will be worn on their jersey this season.
Option A:
Option B:
“The Tattoo Curse” has a nice ring to it.
(h/t to @AdAstraKC for pointing this out to us)North Korea’s Kyonghung Toy Factory is producing Sesame Street merchandise for the international market, NK NEWS can exclusively reveal.
The toy manufacturer’s Sesame Street line was found among a series of otherwise non-branded children’s products in a full-page advert in the latest edition of North Korea’s quarterly Foreign Trade magazine.
Alongside a range of generic stuffed animals, a close inspection of the pictures reveals Sesame Street characters including Elmo, Cookie Monster and Big Bird. A comparison of images reveals striking similarities between one official line of products and the North Korean range.
PBS Television and producers Sesame Street Workshop both refused to offer any comment on the pictures when contacted by NK NEWS last week. In addition, further inquiries about the possibility of official Sesame Street lines being manufactured in North Korea were left unanswered by Sesame Street Workshop’s Beatrice Chow.
In America, Sesame Street’s soft toy manufacturing is led by New Jersey based Gund LLC, however, production is offshore and based in China. But with labor prices increasing to unprecedented levels in recent years, it has become increasingly common for Chinese companies to outsource production and other commercial services to North Korea. Could this now be the case for Sesame Street’s official toy line?
Offering a diligent, productive, and cost-effective workforce, North Korea’s laborers make an attractive resource for Chinese companies looking to save money when manufacturing. However, subcontracting to North Korea remains tricky. The UK Based “Edinburgh Woolen Mill” company was left embarrassed last year when exposed for connections to North Korea. Despite “Designed in Scotland” tags, a BBC Newsnight investigation showed that its woolen ranges had in fact been manufactured by North Korean laborers in Mongolia.
On the topic of North Korea producing goods for the international market, Felix Abt, who spent seven years managing a business in Pyongyang and is author of A Capitalist In North Korea, explained the problems North Korean factories face trying to deal with the outside world:
I have previously warned two different North Korean garment factories not to produce the branded products they were about to manufacture on behalf of Chinese businesses, as the Chinese were not authorized by the brand owners to produce them in North Korea. The factory bosses were surprised, they are still quite naive due to their lack of exposure. I also invited a specialist in Corporate Social Responsibility to hold seminars telling companies not to hire kids, to take precautions for workers’ safety and to protect the environment or otherwise they would never be eligible as suppliers for multinational groups. That was another topic new to North Korean factory bosses.
But while companies risk facing negative attention for outsourcing to a country widely regarded in the West to be a “Pariah State”, the consequences for subcontracting in the DPRK are a lot more serious in the home of Sesame Street – the United States. Due to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and an unresolved state of war, it remains illegal for companies selling products on U.S. soil to outsource production to North Korea. According to the Treasury Department,
Pursuant to E.O. 13570, goods, services, and technology from North Korea may not be imported into the United States, directly or indirectly, without a license from OFAC. This broad prohibition applies to goods, services, and technology from North Korea that are used as components of finished products of, or substantially transformed in, a third country.
If Sesame Street toys were even unwittingly being produced in North Korea for U.S. consumption, there could be significant consequences for both manufacturer Gund LLC and TV producers Sesame Street Studio. But while this scenario remains a very real possibility, it remains more likely that unintended North Korean bootlegging of an American brand is what is taking place in this case.
Indeed, North Korea’s Kyonghung Toy Factory could be producing cheap, unlicensed knock-offs of a brand synonymous with New York City and the United States, without realizing the linkage to its “enemy state”.
Although North Korea comes no where near China when it comes to the production of knock-off goods, rumors have long circulated about individual cases related to state-endorsed tobacco counterfeiting, brand name pharmaceutical copycat manufacturing, and of course, $100 dollar “superbill” production.
NK NEWS attempted to contact the Korea Kyonghung Trading Corporation for comment, but all email correspondence bounced and calls were left unanswered.New Delhi: Superstar Shah Rukh Khan has said he does not believe there is intolerance in the country, clarifying that his earlier comments on the issue were misconstrued.The actor, who faced a strong backlash from rightwing groups for his remarks on intolerance in November, said he was asked to speak about future generations and his advice to them was taken out of context.“I do not think there is intolerance or not... the question that was asked, for which people pounced on me, was `what would you say to the future generation?' because I now fall under the seniority zone...50% of our population is 25 now. If I can give any advice to them, then it would be to not differentiate in the name of region, religion, caste, colour, creed, sex or gender,“ Shah Rukh said during a television show.The 50-year-old actor said, “I never meant that it is happening now. I don't think. I will be very clear... Everything is very nice in our country... God bless India, long live us, long live us Indians. There is no problem and nobody has been intolerant towards me except when I smoke“. He added that his stand had nothing to do with the release of his film.Calling himself a patriot and a nationalist, the actor said he was sorry if anyone misunderstood him.“I think we are on the cusp of modernisation and at the best of places a country can be in... We will, we can and we should be a superpower. There are only small issues for the young generation....Every time I speak, things are misunderstood,“ he said, joking that from now on he should only be asked questions about his trivialities and films.After SRK, Aamir had also landed in trouble for speaking out against the growing atmosphere of intolerance in the country.Michael Coughlin's blindness hasn't stopped him from living life independently—but it has stopped him from getting a cab ride from a Lansdale taxi company.
The 19-year-old Towamencin Township man recently moved back to Pennsylvania from Utah, where he attended University of Utah for his first year. Now, he is a computer science major at Montgomery County Community College.
Michael has already traveled the world, playing sports for the visually impaired like Beep Baseball and Goalball.
He uses a cane to get around and does not require aid of another person or a guide dog.
Up until June, the Coughlins lived in Philadelphia, where Michael had SEPTA for public transit.
Yet, since moving to the North Penn area, Michael has faced a new problem in transportation.
At 1 p.m. on Friday, Michael was denied a ride by Homestead Taxi in Lansdale, from a stop at Green and Main streets to his home because, he claims, he was blind.
He was told that Homestead Taxi has a policy not to transport blind people without an extra helper.
Michael called Homestead Taxi and told the dispatcher to have the driver call him so he knows the taxi is here and the driver can look for him.
"She said, 'How come?' and I said, 'I'm blind.' She said, 'We can't drive you anywhere,' and that's where the whole thing went down," Michael said.
He said that's when the dispatcher told him of Homestead Taxi's policy not to transport blind persons without a helper.
"At first, I was shocked, like, 'Really? This is happening now?' I had a 10 minute conversation with the dispatcher to figure out why this actually is," he said. "They don't cover blind people because of insurance. They were saying I need extra help getting into the car, getting out of the car, getting the seatbelt on—it's not true. I never did need that."
Coughlin and his mother, Christy Coughlin, claim Homestead Taxi's policy violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. The act states those with disabilities can legally get into a taxi, he said.
Title III of the act prohibits discrimination to individuals with disabilities by private entities. Public accommodations such as transportation services and transit operated by private companies are required to comply with the ADA law.
"Their insurance claim is not true," Michael said. "They probably figured the driver doesn't have the experience dealing with people with disabilities. I understand if a person is in a wheelchair or walker, or has mental disabilities, but something as simple as being blind doesn't require any extra insurance or help. There is training out there for those who are visually impaired to be independent."
Christy Coughlin said the ADA law is the same one that everybody else has to follow, public or private. She said Homestead Taxi cannot pick and choose who it wants in its cab.
"It's totally illegal," she said. "I asked for a copy of the insurance and she said it's not her job to give it to me."
Christy said Monday night she had not received a callback from Homestead Taxi owner Nick Chermela.
Patch contacted Homestead Taxi on Monday to Chermela. The gentleman that answered the phone rudely told Patch the owner was "not available" and immediately hung up the phone.
Fox 29's Bruce Gordon spoke to Chermela Monday, who told him that he will not be changing his company's policy.
Gordon reported at the 6 p.m. Monday newscast that Chermela said they would not pick up Michael without an extra helper. Chermela told Fox 29 that his drivers are not qualified to deal with a blind passenger.
"We're not a para-transit company," Chermela told Gordon.
Funny thing is, last Wednesday, Michael was given a ride by Homestead Taxi and he did not divulge his disability to the dispatcher.
"On Wednesday, I got a taxi from them. They picked me up from school and I was driven home without problems," he said. "The dispatcher didn't know I was blind. The driver did and didn't say anything."
Christy said the dispatcher told Michael that the cab driver should not have put Michael in the car on Wednesday.
Michael said he's been out there on his own for years and traveled all over places by himself.
"I've never had this happen," he said. "I've never had an instance where a taxi wouldn't help me. I've taken city cabs and Yellow Cabs, and never had a problem before."
Michael said a lawsuit could be on the horizon against Homestead Taxi.
"If it comes to that," he said. "However, I want to be able to take the taxi, and take it without any problems."
Michael said he wants to prevent other blind people in the area from encountering the same problem.
"The dispatcher did mention that they have the same problem with a lady in Quakertown, but she didn't do anything about it," he said. "I'm hoping to do something about it."
He hopes one day Homestead Taxi will change its policy, so whomever else wants to take a taxi can without restriction.
Christy said she has filed complaints with the Montgomery County Association for the Blind, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Utilities Commission.
"It sounds ridiculous, but nobody can go and say you can't ride in a taxi because you are blind. Think about it. That's like a cab not picking you up because you're black," she said. "You can't pick and choose."Are the Devils ready to ramp up their emotional level against the Los Angeles Kings after an opening game in which both teams showed a lot of respect for the other?
Devils coach Pete DeBoer said he doesn’t anticipate the level of hatred that prevailed in the Eastern Conference finals against the Rangers.
“I don’t think so. You’re playing for the Stanley Cup,” DeBoer said today. “If the compete level isn’t at the highest point it’s ever been during your career or during the season, then there’s a problem. I don’t think that’s an issue.
“I would doubt you’re going to see any fighting. I think both teams’ discipline is at a premium. We’re both good five-on-five teams. I don’t think either of us wants to get into a specialty team game. You’re not going to see any of that stuff.
“But that doesn’t mean that it’s not a war at ice level for ice and puck battles and space. As you saw by the head count the other night, it was 70-something huts, which is a high, high number.”
Devils winger David Clarkson doesn’t expect to fight.
“Everybody has that same goal you always dreamed of as a kid,” Clarkson said. “There’s always that—I don’t like to use the word hatred—but you don’t want to let that person take anything away from you. We definitely have that in here.”
DeBoer said his players’ intensity has been high for weeks.
“I think we’ve had to red line our game really from Game 7 against Florida through the Philadelphia series and through the Rangers series,” DeBoer said. “I’m not sure there’s another level of emotion or compete in our group. It’s just consistently bringing that to the rink every night.
“If we hadn’t red lined our compete level through those other series, we wouldn’t have survived them.”
Clarkson spoke about what to expect in Game 2.
“I’m sure you’ll see a bit of a different game. I don’t know about scrums. Nobody wants to take penalties, but we’re going to come out and hopefully play a little better game,” he said. “We’re going to get on the forecheck more and get around the net, do the things that got us here today.”
Rich Chere: rchere@starledger.com; twitter.com/Ledger_NJDevilsThe U.S. Navy is pursuing a massive, fleet-wide upgrade of its shipboard defensive weapon designed to intercept and destroy approaching or nearby threats, the Phalanx Close in Weapons System, service officials said.
The Phalanx, or CIWS, is an area weapon engineered to use a high rate of fire and ammunition to blanket a given area, thus destroying or knocking threats out of the sky before they reach a ship. The Phalanx CIWS, which can fire up to 4,500 rounds per minute, has been protecting ship platforms for decades.
The weapon is currently on Navy cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, among other vessels. The upgrades are designed to substantially increase capability and ensure that the system remains viable in the face of a fast-changing and increasingly complex threat environment, Navy officials said.
The overhaul includes numerous upgrades to the weapon itself, converting the existing systems into what’s called the Phalanx 1B configuration. At the same time, the CIWS overhaul includes the development and integration of a new, next-generation radar for the system called the CIWS Phalanx Block IB Baseline 2, Navy officials explained.
The Navy is currently installing both Phalanx CIWS upgrades on ships. The plan is to have an all CIWS Phalanx Block IB fleet by fiscal year 2015 and an all CIWS Phalanx Block IB Baseline 2 fleet by fiscal year 2019, said Navy spokesman Lt. Kurt Larson.
An upgrade and conversion of an older CIWS Phalanx configuration to Phalanx Block IB averages around $4.5 million per unit and a Block IB Baseline 2 radar upgrade kit averages $931,000 per unit, Larson said.
The Phalanx Block IB configuration incorporates a stabilized Forward-Looking Infra-Red (FLIR) sensor, an automatic acquisition video tracker, optimized gun barrels (OGB) and the Enhanced Lethality Cartridges (ELC), Larson said.
“Block IB provides ships the additional capability for defense against asymmetric threats such as small, high speed, maneuvering surface craft, slow-flying fixed and rotary-winged aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles,” Larson said. “The [forward-looking infrared sensor] also improves performance against anti-ship cruise missiles by providing more accurate angle tracking information to the fire control computer.”
The OGB/ELC combine to provide tighter dispersion and increased first hit range, he added.
“The Phalanx 1B fires Mk 244 ammunition, the Enhanced Lethality Cartridge specifically designed to penetrate anti-ship cruise missiles,” said Al Steichen, Business Development, Raytheon Naval and Area Mission Defense.
The Mk 244 ammunition is engineered with a 48 percent heavier tungsten penetrator and an aluminum nose piece, according to information from General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems.
The Phalanx Block IB Baseline 2 radar upgrade is a new digital radar that provides improved detection performance, increased reliability and reduction in sailor man-hours for system maintenance, Larson said.
“It mitigates obsolete components inherent in the existing analog radar by introducing COTS-based signal processing coupled with a new signal source and mixer,” he said.
The Baseline 2 radar also provides the Phalanx CIWS with “surface mode,” meaning it adds the ability to track, detect and then destroy threats closer to the surface of the water compared with previous models of the weapon, Steichen explained.
“It now gives the warfighter the ability to address surface threats which we have not had before,” he said.
In practice, this means the Phalanx equipped with Baseline 2 radar will have an increased ability to defend against fast-attack boats and low-flying missiles, projectiles and aircraft.Babies as young as eight months old prefer it when people who commit or condone antisocial acts are mistreated, a new study led by a University of British Columbia psychologist finds.
While previous research shows that babies uniformly prefer kind acts, the new study published Nov. 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that eight month-old infants support negative behavior if it is directed at those who act antisocially -- and dislike those who are nice to bad guys.
"We find that, by eight months, babies have developed nuanced views of reciprocity and can conduct these complex social evaluations much earlier than previously thought," says lead author Prof. Kiley Hamlin, UBC Dept of Psychology, who co-authored the study with colleagues from Yale University and Temple University.
"This study helps to answer questions that have puzzled evolutionary psychologists for decades," says Hamlin. "Namely, how have we survived as intensely social creatures if our sociability makes us vulnerable to being cheated and exploited? These findings suggest that, from as early as eight months, we are watching for people who might put us in danger and prefer to see antisocial behavior regulated."
For the study, researchers presented four scenarios to 100 babies using animal hand puppets. After watching puppets act negatively or positively towards other characters, the babies were shown puppets either giving or taking toys from these "good" or "bad" puppets. When prompted to choose their favorite characters, babies preferred puppets that mistreated the bad characters from the original scene, compared to those that treated them nicely.
The researchers also examined how older infants would themselves treat good and bad puppets. They tested 64 babies aged 21 months, who were asked to give a treat to, or take a treat away from one of two puppets -- one who had previously helped another puppet, and another who had harmed the other puppet. These older babies physically took treats away from the "bad" puppets, and gave treats to the "good" ones.
Hamlin, who conducted the research with Karen Wynn and Paul Bloom of Yale University's Dept. of Psychology, and Neha Mahajan of Temple University, says the findings provide new insights into the protective mechanisms humans use to choose social alliances, which she says are rooted in self-preservation.
Hamlin says the infant responses may be early forms of the complex behaviors and emotions that get expressed later in life, such as when school children tattle on kids who break the rules, the rush people feel when movie villains get their due, and the phenomenon of people cheering at public executions.
Hamlin says while such tendencies surely have many learned components, the fact that they are present so early in life suggests that they may be based in part on an innate foundation of liking those who give others their "just desserts."French midfielder Yoan Gouffran could still have a Newcastle United future despite becoming a free agent last week when his contract ran out on June 30.
The former Bordeaux forward has featured over 140 times for Newcastle over the last four years and he could extend his stay at St. James' Park, despite not accepting the club's initial one-year contract offer.
The 31-year-old forward played in 45 games for the Magpies last season, scoring seven goals and assisting another five across all competitions.
Gouffran's part in Newcastle's Championship-winning campaign last year could see him earn a new contract, however, the player has attracted interest from a number of Turkish Süper Lig teams, according to Chronicle Live reports.
Newcastle! Here I go! Ready to begin the season @NUFC ⚫⚪⚽ pic.twitter.com/4lHhIru2oO — Ayoze Perez (@AyozePG) July 2, 2017
Gouffran is seeking a longer contract due to his age and this will likely be the last chance he has at signing a long-term deal. Manager Rafa Benítez had said back in May:
" Yoan Gouffran has been an equally committed and dedicated team-player for this club, as well as a hugely popular member of the squad.
“I can confirm we are in early stage discussions now with Yoan’s agent to see if there might be a solution that could work for both the player and the club which may see Yoan extend his service to Newcastle United, but we will know more in the coming days.”
Gouffran will likely seek a contact at Newcastle over a move to Turkey if the club offers him a longer contract than what has already been tabled.
The Frenchman played a big part in Newcastle's season last year and was used as a striker on three occasions for the Magpies during their campaign.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Rapper Jay-Z will perform at a get-out-the-vote concert in Cleveland for Hillary Clinton before Election Day, a Clinton aide said Monday.
The campaign confirmed that the event is scheduled for Friday, Nov. 4. But additional details, including exact time and location, are yet to be announced.
More information on how to obtain free tickets, which will be distributed outside the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and at Clinton campaign offices, can be found here.
BuzzFeed first reported that the concert was planned. Democrats see it as a huge opportunity to turn out black voters before Election Day.
Jay-Z often campaigns for Democrats. Four years ago, he and Bruce Springsteen co-headlined a Columbus concert with President Barack Obama the night before Election Day. More than 15,000 turned out for that event at Nationwide Arena.
The event was memorable, in part, for Jay-Z's edited version of his hit "99 Problems," which he used to take a swipe at that year's GOP nominee for president, Mitt Romney. "I got 99 problems, but Mitt ain't one," Jay-Z rapped that night, substituting Romney's first name for a profane term for women.
Clinton faces Republican nominee Donald Trump. Polls in Ohio show a close race.
The Clinton campaign has relied heavily on celebrity surrogates this year. Actors ranging from Jeff Goldblum to the cast of "The West Wing" have crisscrossed the Buckeye State in recent weeks. The National, a rock band with Cincinnati roots, will perform a similar get-out-the-vote concert Nov. 2 in the city of its birth.Russian technology companies will lose out on state orders unless they switch to using home-grown software, Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying on Friday.
Putin said that, in some spheres, state institutions could not work with companies running foreign software because that represented a risk for national cyber-security.
"In terms of security, there are things that are critically important for the state, for sustaining life in certain sectors and regions," Interfax news agency quoted Putin as telling a meeting with Russian technology producers.
"And if you are going to bring in hardware and software in such quantities, then in certain areas the state will inevitably say to you: 'You know, we cannot buy that, because somewhere a button will be pressed and here everything will go down'," the agency quoted him as saying.
"So bear that in mind."
Russian state institutions have been gradually switching to using domestic technology as part of a Kremlin drive to cut imports. That drive accelerated after Western states imposed sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014.Posted April 2, 2016 at 07:32 pm
PROLOGUE
My journey to Boston began with a simple desire - to attend PAX East in Boston. Pretty much all of my favorite internet celebrities would be there, and I simply wanted to get my photo taken with them. Simple enough reason to go!
Unfortunately, I was unaware that badges sold out almost instantly, and I was out of luck – that is, until I made a whiny tweet. Enter Patrick, my friend and Penny Arcade forum manager (I forget his official title!). He could hook me up with a 3-day badge. I never like to accept preferential treatment, but I allowed myself this one bit of selfishness, and I'm glad Patrick did, too.
With that, I booked my flight and AirBnB room, ready to go to Boston!
I will gloss over some details to avoid a novella, but I hope I can properly express the intense gamut of physical and emotional rollercoasters that lasted four eternal days.
DAY 0
My flight would leave at 6:05AM Friday Morning. It would get me to the convention at around 11AM. I figured it would save money on an extra night of lodging, but I would soon wish I'd popped for another night at the remarkably affordable $60/night room.
After a lot of back-and-forth and overly complicated math, I asked my mother to drive me to the airport at 8PM and I would try to sleep there to keep her from having to drive an hour back to her home at 4AM.
Before she and I parted ways, she gave me a small box of home-baked brownies. The box was styrofoam, the kind you get for restaurant leftovers.
As soon as I got to the security check, I had a mild panic. What if they think these are... special brownies? So with that, I decided to try and eat the brownies before going through security. Of course, I wasn't sure of the food policy outside the actual terminal gate area, so here was a big hairy guy shoulder deep in his backpack, attempting to conceal his messy consumption of a mysterious food. Let's call it Brownie Bagging.
Once I'd finished my brownies, I had a new conundrum. I had to throw away the box! In my constantly fearful mind, I had decided that the box was the perfect size/shape of an incendiary device, and if they saw me throw it in the trash, they'd have me tackled to the ground and fished around in my butt looking for the detonator.
I finally worked up the nerve to throw away the box when no one was looking.
I found no sleep that night in the airport |
, Johnson owns a 2.86 ERA in AAA with 8.5 K/9 and a flossy 1.062 WHIP. Johnson joined the Balitmore system in 2009 in the trade that sent reliever George Sherrill to the Dodgers.
In 28 starts in AA in 2010, Johnson struggled to a 5.09 in 28 starts over 145 IP. Johnson improved in 2011, with a 4.20 ERA in both AA and AAA. An astute O’s fan might recall Johnson’s July 15 relief appearance against Detroit when he allowed 1 ER over 2 IP.
The 6’1″, 220 pound Baltimore native will take the start in place of Tommy Hunter, who was scratched after warming up in Tuesday’s 14-inning win over the Mariners.
Seattle will start veteran right-hander Kevin Millwood, 4-9 with a 4.01 ERA. A win would tie Baltimore’s season record at five straight wins. Now is the time for Balitmore to get hot, as they will host the Kansas City Royals and Boston Red Sox over the next seven games. The Big Guy is on record saying the Orioles will make it to the playoffs.
The game is scheduled for a 7:05 EST start.
The Big Guy
AdvertisementsJames Harden and Dwight Howard's relationship is complex, yet perception reeks of something far worse than what the reality is.
The two Houston Rockets stars support each other and are friends, yet they can't do anything about what outsiders say about their partnership.
"I don't know what the perception is; the reality is we get along and we want to win," Harden told ESPN.
Editor's Picks Pelton: Lillard, Blazers making NBA history Down four starters, Portland wasn't expected to contend. So how are Damian Lillard & Co. sitting at No. 6 in the West? Kevin Pelton explains why we've never seen a team like these Blazers.
"People are always going to say what they want to say," Howard said. "But there's no need for me and him to worry about that. Our job is to grow and get better as a team and get better as individuals."
The duo will attempt to save Houston's sinking season from falling further apart. The Rockets (28-29) have 25 games and 49 days in which to do so.
Their relationship was borne from general manager Daryl Morey's dream of bringing two superstars together with a strong supporting cast was supposed to bring a title to Houston. It still might do so.
But Howard, 30, becomes a free agent this summer, so this could be his final trip with Harden, 26, wearing Rockets colors in the trek for a title together.
"It's important for us," Harden said. "It's a great opportunity for us to turn this season around, and we're going to do it and it's going to get done."
Too often this season, James Harden and Dwight Howard have left a game dejected after a loss. Russ Isabella/USA TODAY Sports
Opposites attract
One reason there's a perception that Howard and Harden don't get along is because of their personalities.
The pair can be so different. Take their music preferences, for instance. Howard loves playing Al Green, while Harden blasts Meek Mill.
Harden rarely engages in small talk with reporters and won't get too personal. Of course, he values family, as evident by his mother attending a road game in Phoenix and his brother going to games in Salt Lake City and Portland.
He walks into his home arena at the Toyota Center wearing Beats headphones singing loudly with the latest hip-hop blasting as his coach, J.B. Bickerstaff, talks with reporters outside the locker room.
Harden gives the impression that he's a loner, but he's sociable and likable. He jokes with reporters from time-to-time and in TV commercials displays a joyful presence. In pregame warm-ups, Harden attempts a series of shots from various places on the floor at near game speed. His fundamentals are near flawless, Rockets coaches say.
Howard is different. He's effusive. During a recent homestand, Howard's son was bouncing around the locker room, prompting one player to say, "He gets it from his daddy."
Howard is playful with everyone, even getting Harden and rookie Sam Dekker into the act. He listens to hip-hop and old-school R&B. His smile and positive outlook, regardless of the team situation, comes across like a motivational speaker. His pregame routine consists of free throw attempts, jump hooks, spins to the basket and playful banter with fans and teammates.
Yes Harden is fan-friendly in the sense that his trademark beard has given him marketability with devoted fans who wear fake beards to home and away games. But Howard seems more accessible to fans. For instance, Howard engages with them -- especially on the road -- giving his jersey and sneakers to a fan after nearly every game.
The early season losses wore on Howard. He expressed unhappiness with the level of play from his team, but he maintained a commitment to the group as a whole. As trade talk increased at the deadline, his mood was quiet, reserved. He was not traded, and Howard's mood is better.
Howard is open, trusting. Harden is guarded, needs to know who you are, what you are, before revealing his thoughts. "Yeah, I guess two opposites attract," Harden said. "I think its comfort level. You're around someone for a long periods of time you start to open up, you start to communicate in general."
Last week, after a victory in Phoenix, the two bonded over a song by Future playing from Howard's locker as Harden did a little dance.
Prior to that game, Howard and Harden had dinner in Phoenix, a meeting of the minds, to solve what troubles the Rockets. After the Friday night victory, Harden and Howard hung out together and took Trevor Ariza's cell phone and posed for a picture, posting it on Ariza's Instagram account.
"They do that all the time," Ariza said. "They're always taking my phone."
Each wears stylish clothes. Howard's T-shirts are playful, one time he wore a shirt from the movie "Step Brothers," which he said of the picture of the two actors on the front, "Me and James."
From the haircuts - both sport fauxhawks -- to their bodyguards, yeah, there are similarities.
"We do have similar tastes," Howard said. "When things don't go well, it's easy to point to the two guys that are the leaders of the team, and that's perfectly understandable. We got to take the good with the bad and we got to come together and lead this team. We got 25 games left, and we want to make the best of it, and we have to do what we can to get to the top."
GM Daryl Morey says neither Harden nor Howard ever came to him asking for the other to be traded. Bill Baptist/NBAE/Getty Images
Basketball issues
On the floor, however, is where issues arise. NBA.com reported recently that two seasons ago, after a first-round playoff loss to Portland, the pair texted Morey they wanted the other one traded. Morey said it wasn't true.
The next season, the Rockets reached the Western Conference Finals on the shoulders of Harden's MVP-caliber season, and Howard dominated in the postseason.
Morey kept the team basically together and has found failures around it now. He fired Kevin McHale as coach 11 games into the season, and rumors surfaced that Harden and Howard wanted the coach out. Multiple sources said Howard and Harden did not go to management asking for a coaching change.
"When things don't go well, it's easy to point to the two guys that are the leaders of the team and that's perfectly understandable. We we got to come together and lead this team." Dwight Howard
What is clear is if the Rockets are going to fix what ails them, they need more leadership from Howard and Harden.
"James and I had a really good talk before the break and I think we're more on the same page than we've ever been," Howard said. To be sure, the super duo of Harden and Howard has had its share of growing pains. In the loss to Utah on Tuesday, Harden sent a lob pass to Howard when Howard clearly was figuring on a shot attempt. that The ball hit the side of the rim and Harden jumped up upset at the missed play.
"They are brothers," Ariza said. "You're going to fight with your brothers, it happens."
"[Chemistry] is huge. If you don't have chemistry, a team won't succeed," said Suns center Tyson Chandler, a 14-year NBA veteran who has had high-profile teammates such as Carmelo Anthony and Dirk Nowitzki. "You don't have to like each other, you don't have to hang out with each other, but on the court you have to have chemistry."
If the Rockets are going to make the playoffs, it's time for Harden and Howard to step up. Bill Baptist/NBAE/Getty Images
Needing each other
Going into Thursday night's game, the Rockets are in ninth place, just a half game out of the last playoff spot in the Western Conference. The Rockets are dueling the Jazz and the Mavericks for the last two slots. To get there, they'll need Harden and Howard to produce. Quickly.
Harden said the dinner in Phoenix, regardless if it leads to victories or not, was vital.
"Very important," Harden said. "Communication is very important. Any friendship, relationship in life, it's hard to read minds. When you communicate and express yourself with how you feel, everything is on the table."
Hall of Fame wide receiver Michael Irvin once said players at his position are very needy. First, you need a quarterback to throw you the ball, you need a coach to call a play for you.... you need the defense to open up for you to make a play.
Likewise, Howard needs Harden, who commands the ball so much. Howard is averaging fewer than nine shot attempts per game, the lowest since his rookie season. When Harden defers to Howard, the Rockets are pretty good. The duo plays off each other so well, in wins and losses.
In Tuesday's loss at Utah, the Rockets were attempting a last second shot in overtime when Harden was double-teamed. He sent a pass to Ariza who missed his shot. But there was Howard, tipping the ball away to the corner for Jason Terry who missed the buzzer-beating jumper.
"It doesn't matter what people say, I'm always going to have his back and I'm sure he's going to have my back," Howard said. "People are always going to talk, but the biggest thing, which is always true, with every team you have to put your ego and pride to the side and do what's best for the team."
Indeed. But time is running out.film fraternity
illustrious film career
So sad. Lost one of the most iconic Actors, RIP Om Puri ji https://t.co/03r494WG8E — Salman Khan (@BeingSalmanKhan) 1483709226000
Solid actor....Solid filmography....immense talent.... #RIPOmPuri....cinema has truly lost a brilliant artist.... — Karan Johar (@karanjohar) 1483674570000
RIP Om Puri. We have lost one of our finest. A talent, A Voice, A Spirit. Will miss you Puri Saab. — Boman Irani (@bomanirani) 1483675128000
Shocked to know that the immensely talented actor #OmPuri passed away. Big loss to our film industry. RIP — Madhur Bhandarkar (@imbhandarkar) 1483674826000
Seeing him lying on his bed looking so calm can't believe that one of our greatest actors #OmPuri is no more. Deeply saddened & shocked. — Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) 1483674592000
RIP Om puri.. interactions with you were always full of life.. you were one of the finest artist we are proud of.. — Shoojit Sircar (@ShoojitSircar) 1483674461000
Goodbye Om! A part of me goes with you today. How can I ever forget those passionate nights we spent together talking about cinema & life? — Mahesh Bhatt (@MaheshNBhatt) 1483675185000
It's a sad day for cinema... we just lost one of our greats... gone but will never be forgotten... #RIPOmPuri Saab... — Neha Dhupia (@NehaDhupia) 1483675267000
Omji... I will miss that warm tight hug that you gave me every morning on set. Khudahafiz sir... you were the best!
' Kabir Khan (@kabirkhankk) January 6, 2017
Sad to hear about the passing away of the very talented Om Puri, my co-actor in many films...heartfelt condolences to the family. #RIP
' Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) January 6, 2017
So long Omji. Prided myself on being his friend peer & admirer. Who dare say my Om Puri is no more? He lives through his work.
' Kamal Haasan (@ikamalhaasan) January 6, 2017
Really sad to hear #Ompuri sir is no more,a genius performer! My thoughts n prayers are with his family — Sidharth Malhotra (@S1dharthM) 1483682065000
Deeply saddened to hear about #OmPuri sir! He was such a huge part of the core of Indian cinema..RIP! Truly and end of an era.. — Alia Bhatt (@aliaa08) 1483680784000
Om Puri saab,you put a small town like Ambala on the map.Will never forget the amazing conversations with you.Your legacy will live forever. — Parineeti Chopra (@ParineetiChopra) 1483681698000
It's sad to hear about the sudden demise of a great actor n friend Om puri sahib.. may his soul Rest In Peace. — KAPIL (@KapilSharmaK9) 1483681650000
#OmPuri's talent and versatility has brought so many characters to life. An inspiration to many actors. May his soul rest in peace. — Anushka Sharma (@AnushkaSharma) 1483686040000
An actor, a teacher, a friend & a great soul #OmPuri ji. Filled with passion for his craft & innocence in his heart' https://t.co/omjtFYoVaj — Anil Kapoor (@AnilKapoor) 1483681411000
One of the most iconic actors of our country has left us #OmPuri.May his soul RIP. — Ashwin Ravichandran (@ashwinravi99) 1483774554000
Truth is #OmPuri and @NaseerudinShah were truly the greatest actors of their generation and we never gave them that recognition. — Pritish Nandy (@PritishNandy) 1483767930000
#OmPuri spent the best years of his life disappointed, waiting for roles he deserved but never got. Today you see long obits on his genius. — Pritish Nandy (@PritishNandy) 1483768165000
Saddened to hear about the demise of #OmPuri, an actor par excellence n inspiration to all..#RIP — Paoli Dam (@paoli_d) 1483689352000
#OmPuri the legendary actor and friend will always remain within us, may his soul rest in peace. — Rakesh Roshan (@RakeshRoshan_N) 1483687844000
RIP #OmPuri saab. You've given us acting goals. You'll always be immortal with such a fine filmography. Tamas, jaane bhi do yaaro, chachi420 — Ayushmann Khurrana (@ayushmannk) 1483686578000
The industry has lost a gem today a man who gave life to so many characters beyond imagination RIP #OmPuri ji — Rithvik Dhanjani (@rithvik_RD) 1483686226000
A great actor & human being, Omji was my friend and neighbour. Sabse miljulkar rehne wala insaan, has left us...May his soul R.I.P. #OmPuri — Johny Lever (@iamjohnylever) 1483686171000
T 2495 - Shocked to learn of OM PURI Ji's passing just now.. a dear friend a lovable colleague and an exceptional talent.. in grief! — Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) 1483685062000
The Best Actor in World, An inspiration 2 me & many, he was suppose 2 work with me in Manto.Deeply saddened by da news, RIP #OmPuri Saab — Nawazuddin Siddiqui (@Nawazuddin_S) 1483683961000
Really sad to hear abt the demise of great veteran actor, Mr. Om Puri. Your exemplary work will keep u alive in the heart of film lovers! — Dr.GURMEET RAM RAHIM (@Gurmeetramrahim) 1483677847000
Sad to hear about the passing away of the very talented Om Puri, my co-actor in many films...heartfelt condolences to the family. #RIP — Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) 1483677271000
RIP Om uncle :( we will miss your talent warmth and laughter always #ompuri #gem #talent #greatsoul — shruti haasan (@shrutihaasan) 1483695558000
That unforgettable moment in film 'Gandhi' where #OmPuri appears for the briefest moment, you knew of the brilliance of this young new actor — Shekhar Kapur (@shekharkapur) 1483694704000
Very sad to hear that the legend &a great actor #OmPuri ji is no more may Godbless & everyone in the industry & otherwise will feel his loss — King Mika Singh (@MikaSingh) 1483694489000
Unmatched talent, inspiring persona, excellent actor & above all a legendary being. You will be missed! Rest in peace #OmPuri Sir — Divya Khosla Kumar (@iamDivyaKhosla) 1483692188000
We lost a legend today. Your contribution to Indian cinema won't be forgotten #OmPuri — Jacqueline Fernandez (@Asli_Jacqueline) 1483680435000
RIP #OmPuri sir! You will always be remembered as the promoter of peace and Love between the two countries & for so much more... — MAWRA HOCANE (@MawraHocane) 1483679839000
You were one of the finest we had. RIP Ompuri — Sushant Singh Rajput (@itsSSR) 1483678589000
I am very sad to hear about the death of the legendary #OmPuri ji. May God rest his soul in peace! — Krushna Abhishek (@Krushna_KAS) 1483703846000
The end of an era... An inspiration to me & many. Your contribution to cinema will forever be remembered. RIP #OmPuri Sir. — Salman Yusuff Khan (@SalmanYKhan) 1483696959000
Om Puri sahab was a benchmark of great acting. You will always be remembered. RIP. — Sunil Grover (@WhoSunilGrover) 1483732912000
#OmPuri sir what a legacy he left behind. Enthralled audiences with his captivating performances.Will be missed by film & theatre lovers. — Urvashi Rautela (@URautelaForever) 1483729381000
We've lost an iconic artist. Gone too too soon #OmPuri RIP sir Ur performances will live in our hearts forever — Jayam Ravi (@actor_jayamravi) 1483713282000
The mind replays what the heart just can't erase. #OmPuri,Samina Peerzada & Me at the Bite the Mango Film Frstival https://t.co/g5coKqyibR — Mahesh Bhatt (@MaheshNBhatt) 1483698581000
Veteran actor Om Puri has passed away, he was found dead at his Mumbai house on Friday morning. He was 66. As confirmed by his friends from thethe actor succumbed to a major heart attack.Reportedly, Puri returned home on Thursday evening after a shoot. The door bell to his house at Lokhandwala's Oakland Park residence went unanswered on Friday morning, following which his driver raised an alarm.Actor Shabana Azmi shared on twitter, 'OM Puri undergoing postmortem at Cooper Hospital. Will be taken to Trishul around 3pm Funeral at Oshiwara electric crematorium around 6pm.'The recipient of two National awards and two Filmfare Awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award, Om Puri had an, spanning over four decades. The actor had posted a tweet, looking back at his career in December 2016. He said, 'I have no regrets at all. I have done quite well for myself. I didn't have a conventional face, but I have done well, and I am proud of it.'The Padma Shri awardee, studied at the Film and Television Institute of India and at the National School of Drama, where Naseeruddin Shah was his classmate. Born on October 18, 1950, hailing from Ambala in Haryana, Om Puri made his film debut in 1976 with the Marathi film 'Ghashiram Kotwal'.A critically acclaimed actor, Puri featured in films like 'Ardh Satya', 'Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro', 'Aakrosh', 'Mirch Masala' and many others. More recently, he was seen in the movies, 'Dabangg', 'Bajrangi Bhaijaan' and 'Ghayal Once Again'.Puri also had a meaty and memorable role opposite Helen Mirren in Steven Spielberg's 2014 American comedy drama 'The Hundred-Foot Journey'.The acclaimed actor delivered some stellar performances in mainstream commercial Pakistani, Indian and British cinema apart from making a dent in Hollywood with his roles in 'east is East', 'City of Joy', 'Gandhi' and 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist'. He was nominated for the Best Actor BAFTA for 'East is East' in 2000.The actor also received an honorary OBE in 2004 for his contribution to British cinema.On the personal front, Om Puri's first marriage to Seema Kapoor, the sister of actor Annu Kapoor, in 1991, did not last long.After they broke their 8-month long marriage, Puri tied the knot with journalist Nandita Puri in 1993. The actor had a son named Ishaan with Nandita. In 2009, Nandita wrote Puri's biography titled 'Unlikely Hero: The Story Of Om Puri.' The actor was furious at the inclusion of explicit details of his previous relationships in the book.SOUTH Korean officials have demanded the White House confirm that remarks made by US President Donald Trump are accurate, after they sparked fury among political leaders in the country.
On Thursday the South Korean foreign ministry said it was working to find out whether Chinese President Xi Jinping told Mr Trump that the country “used to be part of China”.
The comments were quoted in a Wall Street Journal interview with the President where he was recounting what the Chinese leader had told him in a recent meeting.
While the comment was not used in the initial article, it was later posted in a transcript online with Trump saying about Xi: “He then went into the history of China and Korea. Not North Korea, Korea. And you know, you’re talking about thousands of years... and many wars. And Korea actually used to be a part of China.”
A Quartz article later drew attention to it, calling the comment a “glaring historical inaccuracy that has, somehow, not yet enraged South Korea which is usually extremely defensive about suggestions that it is lesser than China or has ever been dependent on it.”
Since then, South Korean media has picked up the comment despite it being dismissed by the foreign ministry as “not worthy of a response” according to news agency Yonhap.
Candidates in the May 9 presidential elections have also demanded answers. Liberty Korea Party candidate Hong Joon-pyo called it a “distortion of history” and an “invasion” of sovereignty.
Democratic Party candidate Moon Jae-in and People’s Party leader Ahn Cheol-soo said it was regrettable in an international setting.
“Whether that is true or not, Korea hasn’t been a part of China for thousands of years and it is an historical fact that the international community acknowledges and no one can deny it,” a foreign ministry official said.
History Professor Kyung Moon Hwang told Quartz despite attempts to place Korea as part of Chinese territory historically this is not technically correct.
The claims are complicated by the fact it’s unclear whether President Trump was quoting the Chinese president verbatim, quoting his interpreter or simply paraphrasing.
However it comes in the wake of confusion over who really speaks for the Trump administration given at times glaring discrepancies between statements from the White House, State Department and the president himself.
That was highlighted by the recent example over the US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson which was reportedly part of an “armada” heading to North Korean waters but was actually found to be near the Indian Ocean days later.
It has also underscored the lack of geopolitical policy experience in the upper echelons of Trump’s team, many of whom come from business backgrounds including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said: “There is nothing for South Koreans to worry about.”
“The heads of the U.S. and China exchanged their views deeply and sufficiently on the issues facing the Korean Peninsula during their summit in Florida and related things have already been disclosed in time.”
The US and South Korea are currently conducting war games on the Korean Peninsula amid escalating tension with North Korea over recent missile tests.What makes people want to be lied to?
The presidential election is an obvious example. The candidate ahead in most of the polls is a woman most of the same people polled regard as a liar.
It happens in everyday life too. People get mad if you tell them the truth about how they look, or how they did. They don’t want the truth, in many cases. They’d rather feel good. The faulty premise here? If I tell you that you did well, then it means you did well. It’s the opposite of the true idea that talk is cheap, and facts override talk every time. To a lot of people, happy talk is all they want, and once they get it, they’re satisfied. Facts be damned.
To understand why so many people want to be lied to, consider what the lie accomplishes — subjectively. It’s important to add “subjectively,” because the motivation is not usually rational. Just because something feels good does not make it right, good or even self-interested, but it doesn’t stop people from feeling good, just the same.
You’ve heard the expression “follow the money.” And money is one reason people want to lie or be lied to, when they believe it will pay them something. But there are many other forms of payment, too. One is flattery. Another is approval from peers, family or community. Another is an irrational expectation that one should be perfect at all times. Approval reassures the nervous person that all is well.
Politicians provide a great illustration of why people want to be lied to. Notice that the lying politicians are the same ones who promise to keep increasing spending on various and sundry goods and services. For a while, it was health care. Now it’s college tuition. Once that’s nationalized, it will be something else.
Imagine if a politician ran for office saying, “You’re all a bunch of fools. If I’m elected, I’m pulling the plug on everything the government does, other than police and military. Social Security and Medicare will be phased out and privatized for the younger generations, while the private economy will be permitted to profit and soar so they can find jobs and opportunity today.” How many votes would that politician get? Probably close to zero. Yet the politicians we all know as liars promise us the moon to the tune of $20 trillion dollars ($65 trillion in debt in ten years, some say), and as much as we complain, we keep electing them.
There’s a parallel track in the psychology and therapy fields. A lot of people go to therapists asking, “Can you motivate me to do such-and-such”? My response usually goes, “How badly do you want such-and-such?” For example, let’s say somebody drops out of medical or law school. “I know I could do it, but I just didn’t have the motivation. How can I get motivation?” People talk about motivation as if it’s something you can acquire without effort. But motivation is not magic. It just refers to wanting something badly enough to work for it. When someone tells me they weren’t motivated I usually correct them by saying, “So you didn’t really want it all that much, did you?” This, of course, makes a lot of people mad. They don’t like the implication that it’s their own choices that led to their disappointments. They’d rather think it was something or someone else. “Motivation” seems like a reasonable enough excuse. It’s a rare person who appreciates the kind of candor or honesty I give them when I say, “So you didn’t want it badly enough.” Gratitude for candor is rare, because, as I’m contending, most people would rather be lied to, and lie to themselves all the time.
In politics, as elsewhere, people want to believe they can have something for nothing. Many have a chip on their shoulder and feel entitled to a break, even if means harming others and ultimately themselves. That’s OK. They’d rather hold on to the fantasy.
It often starts in childhood. I cringe whenever I hear a daddy or mommy say to their child, “There, there. Everything will work out. I promise.” Even most kids probably sense the BS or lying in such a statement. And if they don’t, they learn soon enough. Adults should not be promising kids something they’re unable or unwilling to deliver. It’s better to say the truth, even if the truth consists of, “I’m worried too. But I’m also confident it might turn out ok.” Kids are listening really hard, and we have to make sure we really mean what we say!
And then there’s the myth of Santa Claus. I’m all for holiday celebration. But to lie to your kids and tell them that there’s a selfless man, who has tireless elves working for him 24/7, to provide endless gifts to children at Christmas … it’s just not right. Children should be taught to enjoy the giving and receiving of gifts, but also to develop a comprehension of where material plenty comes from; and it sure isn’t Santa Claus!
Lies are, sadly, like drugs. While not everyone succumbs, a lot of people do. Life is admittedly hard, and for some life can be very hard, even through no fault of their own, in many cases. But that still doesn’t make the case for lying. We are all vulnerable and, let’s face it, none of us are getting out alive. To me, that’s all the more reason to be honest with others and, most of all, with yourself. It’s only with 20/20 “mental vision” that you can expect to enjoy all the great potential life has to offer.The charitable fund Krishtop Foundation provides financial assistance and consulting support to talented people in the scientific and creative environment (scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, and others) who are in a difficult situation, regardless of their place of residence.
In one of many interviews, the founder of the fund, Vladislav Krishtop, said: "Entrepreneurs must first believe in themselves and appreciate their abilities, believe that they can do wonders." This belief in themselves and the ability not to give up even in the most difficult situations is the basic strategy of personal success and belief in the correctness of the chosen path.
Consulting support by the Funds community of experts will address the issues of business development and legal assistance, affecting the infringement of intellectual rights, overcoming the artificially created bureaucratic obstacles, etc.
The Fund will also award annually young talents and unconventional-thinking people up to 21 years of age, from any country, who have reached high results in their field. In September 2016, first awards are planned in the following categories:
Entrepreneur Scientist/ Inventor
Krishtop Foundation fund was founded by a billionaire Vladislav Krishtop — creator of an investment fund Second Working District and a company Konstruktor.
To learn more about the fund, email at help@krishtop.org or visit the website at www.krishtop.org.
About the Founder
Vladislav Krishtop is the founder of an investment company Second Working District, a charity fund Krishtop Foundation, and a creator of the Creative Environment www.konstruktor.com. According to experts, Vladislav Krishtop's capital is worth more than $2 billion, making him one of the youngest billionaires in the world and #1 in Russia among successful businessmen-billionaires up to 40 years of age. Vladislav Krishtop was born in Uralsk, Kazakhstan. In 2005, he received an MBA from ANE. In 2014, he studied at Stanford University (business program).
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Show MoreIn the stay application filed with the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Noel Francisco said the other girl "is only about 10 weeks pregnant" and efforts to find a sponsor who could take her out of federal custody could be completed within two weeks. | Getty Images Trump administration asks Supreme Court to block abortion for immigrant teen
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to block an abortion for a teenage girl in immigration custody, even as federal officials gave up their fight to prevent another undocumented immigrant teen from terminating her pregnancy.
The moves came just hours after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to permit abortions as soon as Tuesday evening for both pregnant 17-year-old girls being held in federally funded shelters in different states.
Story Continued Below
The Justice Department did not provide a detailed explanation of its decision to acquiesce in one girl's decision while continuing to seek to block the other teen from getting an abortion, but simply cited "differing circumstances."
The teen whom officials are no longer trying to stop from terminating her pregnancy is believed to be about 22 weeks pregnant, nearing the time many states ban elective abortion. On Tuesday morning, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan granted a request from that girl's lawyers to allow her to receive her abortion immediately.
In the stay application the Trump administration filed with the Supreme Court on Monday night, Solicitor General Noel Francisco said the other girl "is only about 10 weeks pregnant" and efforts to find a sponsor who could take her out of federal custody could be completed within two weeks.
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"A stay here would preserve the status quo pending further adjudication...and would ensure that this Court need not choose 'between justice on the fly' and 'participation in what may be an idle ceremony,'" Francisco added.
The restraining order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan reignited a legal battle over the rights of undocumented minors in federal custody to have abortions, first sparked in October when another 17-year-old immigration detainee petitioned to end her pregnancy.
Chutkan did not provide a lengthy explanation for the order she issued Monday evening, but concluded there was a "need to preserve [the teens'] constitutional right to decide whether to carry their pregnancies to term."
Chutkan, an appointee of President Barack Obama, also said the legal principles at stake were essentially the same as those she and appellate judges ruled on in October. The teen at the center of that case, ultimately received an abortion after the full bench of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals split, 6-3, upholding Chutkan's decision.
Since the start of the legal battle, government lawyers have also argued that the teens are free to return to their home countries or to seek to be released to the custody of a sponsor, but federal officials should not have to take any action to "facilitate" an abortion.
Justice Department attorneys have stopped short of saying whether they believe foreigners who recently entered the U.S. illegally have a constitutional right to abortion. |
. The Pro-Life movement needs to be strong in its support of all issues of justice, and to make political choices on the basis of a candidate’s overall credibility and rectitude of will.
– Do Not Compromise Yourself Morally. Morally dubious schemes in pursuit of just ends only end up reducing the the Pro-Life movement to the same cynical instrumentalism of those it opposes. We must not stoop to the level of our opponents.
Above all else:
– Raise your Children to have respect for every human life. Remember that change starts small and, generally, against the mainstream culture.
– PRAY. Do not ever underestimate the power of prayer. Prayer does more than any number of acts a group of people will do. Choose a concrete time to pray specifically for the end to Abortion. Commit to a day and time to pray outside your local abortion clinic. Maintain a prayerful attitude in any protests, walks, or demonstrations.
Like this: Like Loading...Well, at least they are the best in my opinion, but that is always subject to change! This is currently my favorite app combo for hitting the slopes. With these iPhone apps you can check resort conditions, get lift ticket deals, review trail maps, track your routes and record your speeds. Read on for the details!
In no particular order…
#1: Liftopia
Liftopia is nearly a one stop info panel for everything regarding your favorite ski resort. I use this app days before I even arrive at the mountain. Liftopia offers a slick interface to navigate to your favorite resorts, find cheap lift tickets and work out the details. You can start by searching where, when and how many days you want to hit the slopes, or simply go to your Favorites if you already have some chosen. From the main resort profile you can get driving directions, view the trail map, trail difficulty levels, resort description, list of amenities, and reviews under the “about” tab. The best feature is under the “Deals” tab which lists any current sales for lift tickets, rentals or classes. The next page is “Conditions” which offers details about weather, snow conditions, number of lifts and trails open, hours of operation, elevation etc. Having all this info so easily accessible is just awesome. You can quickly compare between resorts or check up on them without having to struggle through their often abysmal mobile formatted websites. Liftopia is a free app for iPhone and you can get it at the iTunes store here!
#2: iTrailMap
This app’s functionality is much more simple and straightforward compared to the previous, but that’s what appeals to me. iTrailMap simply downloads and displays trail maps for your mountain of choice. You can use Liftopia for the same function, and there’s honestly not much difference. I do think iTrailMap might be using a slightly higher resolution pdf’s, and sometime you can see that one app might be using a newer, more updated map than the other. I just like to use this when I’m on the hill and geared up, gloves off and don’t want to waste time with a complicated app. This gets you to the trails map, you pinch and zoom to check out routes and you’re done. If you ever find yourself on a new mountain without the classic folded up paper trails map, this may come in handy. You can get it for free on your iPhone form the iTunes store here.
#3: Ski Pursuit
Ok, so I may have saved my favorite for last. This app uses GPS to track your runs, and if you’re a speed junky like me you’re gonna love it too. It has a super slick interface, its simple to use and it gets you all the stats you need. After you record a run you can view your max speed, avg speed, duration, distance, altitude changes and more. Each run is stored in your history for bragging rights and epic Facebook statuses. The app is made by the winter sports company Rossignol and I applaud them for doing such a great job. I have used a few other apps that will record your speed but none have given such focus to us snow-loving mountain folk. (Check out Runtastic for comparison. I used that for a season but there were just so many other features it got annoying.) There are some handy features in Ski Pursuit’s settings that really tailor it perfectly to skiers and snowboarders. You can adjust a countdown to give yourself time to put the phone away and get prepared, and you can also adjust a speed threshold if you would like it to stop automatically. This really helps with any sort of battery drain.
I have been skiing and snowboarding my whole life. I may not be the most adept in the terrain park, but I love cruising at high speeds until my legs start burning up. This app is awesome for letting you know just how fast you really are, plus, it has a big red button. Can’t go wrong there. Check out Ski Pursuit for your iPhone on the app store, it’s free!
If you enjoy these articles about outdoor apps, let me know! I have plenty more on the way, but if there is something specific you are looking for just mention it in a comment and I will be happy to give a recommendation.As the year draws to a close, China's blocking of overseas websites — including Facebook, Twitter, and thousands of other websites including my blog — is more extensive and technically more sophisticated than ever. Controls over domestic content have also been tightening. People who work for Chinese Internet companies continue to complain that they remain under heavy pressure to be more thorough about the way in which they police and censor blogging platforms, social networking sites, discussion forums, and any form of user-generated content. As feared, the censorship arms race, which began in the run-up to the anniversary of the June 4th crackdown, intensified after the Xinjiang riots, and ramped up further in the run-up to the October 1st 60th Anniversary of the People's Republic of China passed uneventfully.
The past few weeks have seen four new moves which are not officially or overtly aimed at political content, but which have implications for the way in which the government controls all conveyors of all kinds of speech. First, late November saw the launch of a mobile porn crackdown. The draconian way in which this crackdown is being implemented, however, involves a great deal of collateral damage for non-pornographic content. For example, the crackdown has caused China Mobile and other wireless carriers to suspend all billing of all WAP and G+ mobile services, including those by legitimate companies in good standing who are not involved with porn. As this article in Chinese on DoNews points out, the mobile content market in China is growing fast and getting quite lucrative.
Second, Chinese the state-run media is going after the search engines again for — horror of horrors, turning up smutty results when users search for smutty information. In early December, China Central Television (CCTV) ran a report which accused Google, Baidu, and Sohu of irresponsibility. According to the research firm JLM Pacific Epoch:
"The report said Google "persisted in its old ways" and "explored every avenue to avoid China's 'anti-low-brow' campaign" after previous reports on the subject by the state broadcaster but noted that Google's English version contains content far more obscene than its Chinese language site. None of the three parties has made any official response, the report said."
I would not want to be running Google China these days. No fun.
Third, last week the government shut down more than 500 file-sharing websites as part of an anti-porn and anti-piracy crackdown, on the grounds that these websites don't have proper licenses. For a sampling of Chinese netizen reaction, see Global Voices Online and People's Daily Online. ReadWriteWeb points out that given China's strict government controls on what movies can legally be shown, these sites are the only way for many Chinese to access a lot of content. Much political jockeying by the more established services is now underway, and Xinhua indicates that the largest file-sharing site, VeryCD is fighting for survival.
Fourth, CNNIC, the organization which runs the.cn top-level domain has announced that it is no longer accepting domain name applications from individuals. The stated reason in news reports is to control abuse of the.cn domain name space by criminals. Under the new rules, if you want to buy any domain name ending in.cn you have to provide ID and proof of company or organizational registration. As the Internet Governance Project's Milton Mueller puts it, "China's government is using its control of domain names to impose more strict controls over the Internet." Chinese Internet users have an interesting take on this latest development. Some like William Long say that this is actually a good thing, because anybody who isn't in lockstep with the Chinese government is better off staying away from.cn to begin with. Since January he has been urging Chinese Internet users not to use.cn domains, even posting instructions for how to buy domains on GoDaddy, arguing that.cn domains are too risky because the government could take the domain away from you at any time on vague grounds that you are violating some Chinese law, regulation, or whatever.
It's also worth noting that CNNIC is now applying to ICANN to run.中国 — and plans to apply for.网络 and.公司 whenever ICANN opens up the application process for generic top-level domains. As the Internet's domain name system becomes multilingual, will the Chinese language domain space be hospitable to anybody who is not in total synch with the PRC government? The answer is pretty clear by now: only if non-PRC entities can run Chinese-language top-level domains outside of China. Will ICANN ensure that this will indeed be possible? We don't know yet. ICANN is still formulating the application process for new generic top-level domains, which includes the details of a process by which governments can object to — and potentially block — applications.A new report has found that U.S. land for organic farming reached 4.1 million acres in 2016, a new record and an 11 percent increase compared to 2014.
As of June 2016, the number of certified organic farms in the U.S. reached 14,979, a 6.2 percent increase of 1,000 farms compared to 2014 survey data.
A recent report on organic acreage from Mercaris found that the top five states in organic cropland are California, Montana, Wisconsin, New York, and North Dakota. California leads the U.S. with 688,000 acres. However, Montana has seen a 30 percent increase in organic farmland, reaching 417,000 acres in 2016, an increase of 100,000 acres since 2014 and adding 50 new organic farms.
The report also estimates that North Dakota, Colorado, and New York all increased their organic farming acres by more than 40,000 since 2014. North Dakota has surpassed Oregon as the fifth leading state in organic acreage. Oregon is sixth followed by Colorado and Texas.
Scott Shander, an economist at Mercaris, attributes the increase in organic acres to farm economics and consumer demand for organic foods.
“The organic industry is growing and with lower commodity grain prices, and farmers are looking to add value and meet consumer demands,” he says.
According to Alex Heilman, a sales associate at Mercaris, the number of organic acres is likely to continue increasing, especially with larger companies such as General Mills and Ardent Mills launching programs to increase organic acres.
“I think we will see more of an impact of those programs in the next few years as more farmers start the transition process (to organic),” he says.
Organic alfalfa/hay was the leading organic crop grown with more than 800,000 acres in 2016. This was followed by organic wheat, corn, and soybeans with 482,000, 292,000, and 150,000 acres respectively. Organic oats reached a record level of 109,000 acres in 2016. Organic wheat showed the greatest increase with nearly 150,000 more acres since 2014 and a 44 percent increase since 2011. Plantings of organic corn increased by 58,000 acres since 2014.
The percentage of acres planted to organic crops such as wheat, corn, soybeans, and oats remains small compared to conventional crops in the U.S. Organic corn accounts for only 0.31 percent of total corn acres; organic wheat was 0.9 percent of total wheat acres; organic soybeans were 0.2 percent of total soybean acres. Organic oats account for the highest percentage of an organic crop with 3.6 percent of total oat acres.
Acreage of both organic corn and soybeans has seen small increases as a percentage of total acres for both crops in the past few years, according to the report. This may be due to the fact that the U.S. is importing large amounts of organic corn and soybeans, which is depressing the U.S. market and prices for both crops. According Shander, 25 percent of organic corn and 75 percent of organic soybeans used in the U.S. are imported.
“It’s a global market that is dictating U.S. prices,” he says. “Demand for organic corn and soybeans is still growing strongly, but production in the U.S. is not growing as fast so more of the production will be international.”Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/4/2014 (1764 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The province introduced legislative changes today aimed at taking more drug-impaired drivers off the road.
"These changes will ensure all drug-impaired drivers will face immediate consequences, including roadside licence suspensions, regardless of the type of test police use to assess them,” Justice Minister Andrew Swan said in a statement.
The province says if police believe a driver is under the influence of drugs, the Criminal Code of Canada allows an officer to demand a physical co-ordination test. Police can also demand a more comprehensive drug recognition evaluation test, which can lead to criminal impaired driving charges.
Under the province’s Highway Traffic Act, a driver who fails the physical co-ordination test has their licence suspended immediately. There are also penalties for drivers who refuse to participate in the test or fail to follow officers' instructions.Hillary Clinton’s judgement is even more suspect after her campaign spokesman told Andrea Mitchell today that Hillary “chased” her granddaughter around Chelsea Clinton’s apartment on Sunday — despite knowing she was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday.
Brian Fallon appeared on MSNBC and in defending Clinton’s health status, effectively admitted Hillary exposed her granddaughter to the contagious illness.
“As soon as she got into the vehicle, she was alert the whole time, she was telling staff that she was fine. She was actually making calls to aides from the car.
“And she ended up going to her daughter Chelsea’s apartment, which was pretty close by in Manhattan, and for the aides that were there with her, they can tell you she was seen chasing her granddaughter around her apartment, at Chelsea’s apartment just a few moments after leaving that ceremony site,” Fallon said.
The campaign revealed on Sunday that she was diagnosed with pneumonia — which is contagious — on Friday.
WedbMD reports:
“Walking pneumonia” sounds like it could be a character in a sci-fi horror flick. Although this form of infectious pneumonia can make you miserable, it’s actually the least scary kind of pneumonia. That’s because it’s a mild pneumonia and does not generally require hospitalization. You could have walking pneumonia and not even know it. …
And, even though the disease is contagious, it spreads slowly. The contagious period in most cases lasts less than 10 days. Researchers also think it takes prolonged close contact with an infected person for someone else to develop walking pneumonia; still, there are widespread outbreaks every four to eight years.
If Hillary Clinton knowingly has a contagious illness, why is she potentially exposing her grandchild to it?
Is that the judgement she would bring to the White House?Did you know the Steelers have won a Super Bowl every time a new Pope has been elected by the Vatican in Rome?
It's true, back in 1978, John Paul II was elected the 264th Pope, and the Steelers won Super Bowl XIII later that year. Almost three decades later, in April of 2005, Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI, and just nine months later, Pittsburgh won Super Bowl XL. On Wednesday, 115 Cardinals from around the world gathered to elect Benedict's replacement, so I'm predicting Super Bowl success for Pittsburgh this year.
That might seem like a silly prediction, but that's the kind of intangible faith (and superstition) we Steelers fans are known for.
Unfortunately, things are looking rather bleak for the Black and Gold these days--James Harrison was released on Saturday, Mike Wallace just signed a lucrative deal with the Dolphins on Tuesday, Willie Colon was released, while Rashard Mendenhall signed with Cardinals on Wednesday, and it's just a matter of time before Keenan Lewis signs a rich contract with another team.
It appears that nothing short of Immaculate Intervention will make Pittsburgh competitive in the near future.
It's disappointing to see so many players go--including three fairly productive recent draft choices--but it's the price a team usually must pay for trying to keep a championship team together. Multiple Super Bowl appearances in a very short period doesn't happen to every team, and when it does it's only natural to want to ride that out until the very end.
Steelers fans resigned themselves long ago to the fact that their favorite team rarely makes a splash in the free agent market. But why bother looking outside your very own locker room when you have players the caliber of Hines Ward, James Harrison, Troy Polamalu, Brett Keisel, Ben Roethlisberger, Ike Taylor, Aaron Smith, Casey Hampton and LaMarr Woodley to try and re-sign? Any one of those players could have been highly-touted free-agents signed by another team, but Pittsburgh made sure they played their prime years right here, and the result was a second Super Bowl dynasty.
You really can't blame the Steelers for doing what they did. It's not very pleasant now that the blood-letting has begun--it's a real shame that a young corner like Lewis has to get caught up in the current--but wasn't it a fun ride? Would you trade the memories that 2005, 2008 and even 2010 produced?
I know I wouldn't.
And nothing about recent Steelers' history suggests more great memories won't be made in the near future.
The other day, I wrote a tribute piece, chronicling the many awesome linebackers that have come through Pittsburgh (I can't believe I forgot about Robin Cole, Kevin Greene and Chad Brown), but the rich history of talent hasn't been confined to linebackers.
Back in the late 90's, when Hall of Fame center Dermontti Dawson was close to calling it a career, the Steelers selected guard Alan Faneca in the first round of the 1998 NFL Draft. Dawson, who made seven Pro Bowls with Pittsburgh, was out of football after the 2000 season; a year later, Faneca would make his first of nine-straight Pro Bowls (six with Pittsburgh).
The 2000 season also happened to be the last one in a Steelers uniform for inside linebacker Levon Kirkland, who was waived by the team due to salary cap problems (sound familiar?) As I stated earlier, Pittsburgh NEVER makes a splash in free agency, but that doesn't mean the organization hasn't been successful in that regard. Within two seasons of Dawson's retirement and Kirkland's dismissal, the Steelers signed center Jeff Hartings from Detroit and linebacker James Farrior from the Jets, and both would play key roles in the team's Super Bowl resurgence.
Speaking of free agent signings who weren't considered sexy, what about Ryan Clark? Polamalu often talked about how in-tune he was with free safety Chris Hope when he played in Pittsburgh. Hope was a solid contributor to the Super Bowl XL team whose free agent price tag proved to be too much the following off-season, as he signed a six year deal with the Titans. The Steelers responded by signing Clark. Clark was far from a heralded free agent--Washington chose not to re-sign him following the '05 season--but by 2008, he was a key cog in a legendary defense that led the way to the team's record sixth Lombardi trophy.
And would Pittsburgh have even made it to Super Bowl XLV two years later if it wasn't for Clark's turnover-inducing heroics in the third quarter of the comeback victory over the Ravens in the divisional round of the playoffs?
Clark has made himself into one of the most indispensable members of the Steelers' defense, and Polamalu now talks about the special bond the two share, both on and off the field.
If there's one thing the Steelers have shown in recent years, it's the ability to move on and rebound after productive players leave the team--just three seasons after Faneca left via free agency, the team drafted future Pro Bowl center Maurkice Pouncey.
Another example is Pittsburgh's receiver "tree" over the past decade.
Following the 2004 season, receiver Plaxico Burress became a much sought-after free agent who signed with the Giants. Pittsburgh responded by signing Cedrick Wilson from the 49ers, who would actually become the team's third receiver behind Ward and Anwaan Randle El. Ward, Randle El and Wilson weren't the best receivers in the NFL in 2005, but they helped lead the team to Super Bowl XL, where Randle El became the first and only receiver to throw a touchdown pass in the Steelers, 21-10, triumph over Seattle.
Much like Hope, Randle El's free agent price was too high, as the Redskins signed him to a lucrative deal. However, in the 2006 NFL Draft, Pittsburgh traded up in the first round to take Santonio Holmes, and three seasons later, his contributions to the team's Super Bowl XLIII Championship are now a thing of legend.
Nate Washington was the Steelers' designated deep threat during the '08 season, but like Hope a few years earlier, he moved on to Tennessee as a free agent in the off-season.
Pittsburgh selected Wallace in the third round in 2009, and he assumed Washington's role as the 3rd receiver, catching 39 passes and averaging nearly 20 yards per reception.
Unfortunately for Holmes, he proved to be more trouble than he was worth and was shipped off to the Jets prior to the 2010 season. Wallace stepped in and quickly became one of the best deep threats in the NFL, racking up over 1200 receiving yards as the Steelers advanced all the way to the Super Bowl.
It's hard to say how Pittsburgh will respond to the departure of players such as Wallace, and it's almost taboo to even suggest a rebuilding phase, but in today's NFL, rebuilding doesn't necessarily mean a long absence from the playoffs. Parity being what it is in 2013, new teams make the playoffs each season--the Colts and Vikings both made the playoffs a year ago after finishing a combined 5-27 in 2011--so why can't Pittsburgh, a team with a top-tier quarterback in Roethlisberger, rebound and make the postseason with the help of the third place schedule it will inherit in 2013?
The Steelers have made the postseason at least four teams in each decade, dating back to the 1970's. Even in the 1980's, a rather mediocre era that was the consequence of the franchise's initial Super Bowl dynasty, Pittsburgh still managed to make the playoffs four times and even made a couple of improbable Super Bowl runs in the process.
The Steelers have already made the playoffs two times so far in the 10's, and there's no reason to believe a decade long drought is on the horizon.
We have lots of tangible reasons to have faith in the Steelers' ability to get through this transition phase and bring us more playoff magic in the very near future--and none of those reasons have anything to do with a new Pope.Anna Hamblaouris when she turned herself in to police to face a charge of reckless driving causing death in June 2015.(Bangkok Post file photo)
An actress and model involved in a crash that killed a policeman two years ago has been arrested on a drink-driving charge after her sedan hit another car in a pub parking lot in Bangkok’s Huay Kwang district, police said.
Anna Hamblaouris, 30, was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and later released on police bail.
After making a scene at a pub, she drove her BMW sedan into another vehicle in the car park while she was attempting to leave, according to Thai media reports.
Huai Khwang police were informed of the incident about 2am on Monday by the pub staff.
When police arrived, they found her yelling and apparently intoxicated. She was taken to the police station but could not give a statement. She was asked to blow into a breathalyser and found to have an excessive blood alcohol content, police said.
According to police, no other charge was pressed against her. She was expected to be arraigned at the District Court of Northern Bangkok on Monday morning.
Pol Col Arkhom Chantaraj, acting superintendent of Huay Kwang police station, said later the court hearing was postponed.
The actress was released on police bail pending further investigation. She would also be taken to the Police General Hospital for a drug test.
The investigation would be wrapped up within 30 days, he said.
The Thai-English actress, whose stage name is Anna Reese, was involved in a fatal crash in Bangkok’s Prawet district in June 2015. Her Mercedes Benz rear-ended a parked police car and killed Pol Sub Lt Napadol Wongbunndit, who was taking a rest in the backseat.
No alcohol or drug tests were conducted and she was allowed to leave the scene without being arrested because she was reportedly "too traumatised" and "not ready".
She later turned herself in to police, was charged with reckless driving causing death and released on bail.
In August 2015 she reached a settlement with the dead officer's family in a civil case, reportedly agreeing to pay 6.2 million baht in compensation, 1.2 million of which would be covered by her insurance company.
She also briefly ordained as a nun - for a week.Chapter 62: https://flowerbridgetoo.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/xian-ni-chapter-62-calamity/
ObligatoryTLNote: I liked this chapter, this chapter didn’t give me any headaches and the dialogue was simple yet exciting. Btw regarding the Situ Nan’s cultivation method, I did find some good names in the comments like Abyssal Ascension Method, Devil Rising Method. And my personal idea, Hell Piercing Ascension Technique/Secrets/Arts. [A method that shall drill through the heavens….cough…..wrong story].
Anyways, if you like any of these names or found some interesting name yourself or want to keep the name Hell Hole Ascension Method.
“Break for me! Break! Break!” Pu NanZi wearing a grim expression, flung his big hands crazily, unceasingly pounding down on the great peak, the loud banging sound spread throughout the sky.
People of the surrounding villages, towns, counties were all hiding in their rooms and scared to go out, some courageous, peeked out of their windows, only to see a great peak floating in mid-air, unceasingly smashing downward.
Again a white jade broke, and a Foundation building phase stage Elder fell down, spraying blood from his mouth along the way.
Pu NanZi threw a purple gourd, muttering words with his hands interlaced, the gourd immediately trembled and out of it came a dark red liquid, this liquid after coming out, flickered into flames immediately, enveloping the great peak.
“Break!” Pu NanZi’s voice boomed, the flaming great peak pounded down, cracks appeared in the barrier letting out light, close and numerous they spread around like lightning.
Once again two white jades broke as two Elders collapsed in quick succession.
At this time, out of the eight white jades, only four were left, besides the two JieDan stage Elders, the other two were Foundation building stage Elders, their faces had turned ashen, sweat was pouring off their body, no longer able to control their own body as it trembled, it was clear that they had already reached their limit.
At this time, Huang Long Zhenren had brought all the true disciples to this place, all the disciples were stunned and wore a surprised look. Wang Hao was also shocked, although his face was still pale but he was better than earlier, after he saw Wang Lin, he had immediately come to his side, looking at the scene, was speechless.
Pu NanZi hovering in the sky above, looked grim, this formless huge barrier was indeed tenacious, more than he had anticipated, he was clearly aware that this huge formation in front of him, if controlled by yuan ying, then can certainly be even more powerful.
Amongst other things, it is only able to barely defend, unable to attack, but if the person controlling is Yuan Ying then it would definitely be able to display horrifying strength.
At this moment, the White haired old man, seeing Foundation building youths collapsing one after the other, his heart dripped blood, he yelled out in a loud voice: “Ancestor Pu Nanzi, Xuan Dao Sect has always been on friendly terms with my Heng Yue Sect, don’t tell me that you really want to exterminate the entire sect!”
Pu Nanzi snorted and coldly said: “Liu WenJu, haven’t seen you for 500 years, you were a merely a Junior at that time, unexpectedly you have become the spine which Heng Yue Sect relies upon, having reached JieDan stage, but in the end you will have to die, in order to destroy this formation that you are protecting, but if you voluntarily open the formation yourselves, then things might not turn out so badly.”
The JieDan ancestor Liu WenJu’s face showed hesitation, the Old lady at his side, shouted angrily: “Ancestor Pu Nanzi, Forgive us for being unable to comply!”
Pu Nanzi laughed loudly, then looking grim shouted: “Nevermind, this Mountain protector formation, break for me!” With that he waved his right hand, the great peak rose slowly, then taking a deep breath, with a reddish complexion, he suddenly opened his mouth and spewed out a mouthful of Yuan Ying Qi, immediately the great peak swelled up several fold.
“Fall!”Pu Nanzi using a double hand technique mudra, pointed at the great peak, as it slowly pushed down.
The great peak letting out a humming sound, slowly pressed down one inch!
The Mountain protector formation let out a cracking sound, as the network of cracks increased, a white jade collapsed and a Foundation building stage elder fell down.
The great peak pressed down an inch again, another foundation building stage elder vomitted blood, and wearily fell down.
“Break!” Shouted Pu Nanzi, the great peak pressing down, went a further three inches, the blue pine peak could be seen shaking, rocks tumbling down made a rumbling sound, dust flew upwards, the great peak unexpectedly pressed down a dozen metres.
The stone bridge connecting the Heng Yue mountain to other auxilliary mountains, broke and fell down the mountain.
Meanwhile, Heng Yue Sect’s Mountain protector formation formless barrier no longer able to withstand, letting out a sound similar to a mirror breaking, the entire barrier fragmented and dispersed in an instant.
The remaining two white jades crack open, Liu Wenju and the Old lady fell down, their faces bearing bitter expressions, remaining speechless
Pu Nanzi snorted coldly, his body slowly floating down from the sky, the great peak continues to float mid-air, slowly letting out pressure.
“Who is the one called Wang Lin?” Pu Nanzi after coming down, looking cold said casually.
Wang Lin had retreated into the crowd of disciples, didn’t expect that the first thing this Yuan Ying expert would do is to find him.
As all the disciples stared at him, Pu Nanzi’s eyes swept away, stared at Wang Lin, pricking his eyebrows, thought inwardly, this youth should be Wang Lin, which he had heard about from his junior Ouyang repeatedly before, in the exchange, everybody had lost against him, he had quite intended to win him over.
Pu Nanzi was salivating over Heng Yue Sect, during the exchange he had originally thought that with Zhou Peng, would have certainly able to win in the tournament, and Heng Yue Sect would have been seized without the need for losing face.
But the emergence of Wang Lin, had disrupted his plans, thus he was forced to use his own great strength to forcibly capture.
“Are you Wang Lin?” Pu Nanzi asked coldly.
Wang Lin took a deep breath, bowing respectfully, said: “Disciple Wang Lin greets, Xuan Dao Sect Pu Nanzi Ancestor.”
Pu Nanzi nodded, turning to Liu WenJu and the Old Lady, opening his mouth said: “Your Heng Yue Sect’s Yuan Ying ancestors, have all been killed in their struggle to become XiuZhen star in foreign battlefields, this Heng Yue Gate, you cannot preserve, rather than let others snatch it away, give it to us Xuan Dao Sect.”
Liu Wenju together with the Old lady agonizedly looked at his face and said in a low voice: “Senior, please look at how the two sect had been on good terms, not…….”
Not allowing Liu Wenju to finish, Pu Nanzi interrupted and said impatiently: “Go! Besides the humans, you can’t take away anything, if you talk too much, I wouldn’t mind exterminating your whole Heng Yue Sect!”
The Old lady was angry and was about to speak, when Liu Wenju quickly grabbed her, taking a deep breath, said respectfully: “The Junior obeys, but this Heng Yue Mountain, Heng Yue Sect Millenium Gate, this Junior has no right to give away to Senior, can only agree to lend, if in the future……..”
Pu Nanzi sneered, interrupting him again, then said arrogantly: “Lend? Ok, this is borrowed by my Xuan Dao Sect, for a hundred thousand years now.”
Disciples are all silent hesitant to speak, their faces bearing sad expressions, as there was a moment of silence. Some disciples’ eyes flashed as they were beginning to think for themselves.
Pu Nanzi’s eyes swept away, to the fallen Huang Long’s body, he said: “You, leave behind the Zi Yue Immortal sword, this sword, my junior Ouyang has taken a fancy to.
Huang Long humiliated clenched his fist, looking at how the Old lady and Liu Wenju not speaking, sighed helplessly, took the Zi Yue Immortal Sword and threw it aside.
Pu Nanzi grasped with his right hand, the Zi Yue Immortal sword, as it dropped into his hands, suddenly it shed its sword shape and turned into a Purple dragon. [TLNote: Like I said Zi = Purple, Yue = Peak/Mountain so go figure.]
AdvertisementsJust in time for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Mike Huckabee is hawking a new "history" DVD on the terror attacks as part of his "Learn Our History" series.
"Join the TimeCycle Academy as they travel to one of the darkest days in our history...but also a day of incredible bravery and a triumph of the American spirit," the preview video teases, as the attacks are quickly followed by President Bush promising retribution and the U.S. "breaking apart Al Qaeda."
In an interview yesterday on the 700 Club, Huckabee said the video would teach kids, "what really happened that day."
More highlights:
He said his series "really bring[s] attention to the spiritual foundings of this country."
Agreeing with host Pat Robertson, who suggested that education is failing American children, he said, "If you look at a typical text book today, you'd think that America is an imperialistic, war-mongering country that's gone around pushing people around for the last 250 years," Huckabee said.
And he had some statistics: 98% of the children who watch the series love it, and — wait for it — 89% of liberals who watch like it, too!Three months after its schoolgirls vanished into the clutches of Boko Haram militants, Chibok has become the town that never sleeps. For the mothers of those missing from this dusty northern Nigerian town, nightfall is a time when rest proves impossible, when three hours of fitful dozing is the most one can hope for. And for the fathers, it is a time for round the-clock-vigils, patrolling the edges of town in case of yet more attacks.
With Nigerian security forces now belatedly stationed around Chibok, there should be no need for neighbourhood watch duty. Yet two weeks ago, in a sign of how thin the government's writ still runs, Boko Haram attacked two villages just six miles away, killing more than 30 people and razing four churches to the ground.
"We have no idea when they might suddenly attack again," said Henry Wasi*, 46, whose 16-year-old daughter is among the 223 girls still missing."My wife is praying every day at the church, because she knows it is now only God who will bring back our girls."
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Until recently, it was not the Almighty that Chibok's residents were pinning their hopes on, but a social media campaign called #bringbackourgirls, which aimed to galvanise the Nigerian government into action by highlighting the plight of the girls around the world.
Backed by everyone from Angelina Jolie to William Hague and Michelle Obama, it sparked demonstrations across Nigeria and the wider world, and pledges of assistance both Britain, France and America - all desperate to stop Boko Haram's cackling leader, Abubakar Shekau, making good on his videotaped promise to sell the girls off as bush wives.
For the past two months, British and US hostage negotiators and intelligence teams have been assisting their Nigerian counterparts on the ground. And in the air, US drone planes have been scouring northern Nigeria's vast expanses of scrubland, forests and mountains, mapping every road, track and bush trail to garner clues as to where the girls might be.
Abubakar Shekau has threatened to sell the girls off as bush wives
So far, though, the girls are yet to be brought back. SAS-style rescues have been ruled out as too risky. Plans to swap the hostages for jailed Boko Haram prisoners - first revealed by The Telegraph two months ago - have come to nothing amid pressure from Western governments not to deal with terrorists. Claims by senior Nigerian military chiefs to have located the kidnappers' hideout last month turned out to be nonsense. And a subsequent news blackout imposed on the case by President Goodluck Jonathan, who has argued that it is |
, for sure. But after that I thought it was pretty good. I played more consistent that my previous years. I’m happy with that, and just the fact that we were fighting ‘til the end for first place was fun.It would have been nice and a great honor. But it’s not such a big deal. I wish we could have kept winning instead and went far in the playoffs. That’s what’s more disappointing.Yes, I did. I just have a good opportunity to have a longer summer. The past couple years have been a lot of hockey with short summers. So I think it will be nice to relax, do something else and clear my head to get ready for next season.It’s definitely a nice feeling, but I’m still going home empty-handed. That’s a tough spot. Everybody here wants to win. When we lose in the first round, second round, it doesn’t matter how you lose. It’s always disappointing when you don’t get to the end.I think both guys were eager to come back. They did everything they could. Geno was rehabbing. Both guys wanted to play. There’s not much else they could have done.I think we had some good experiences here. I think a lot of guys stepped it up and had a great season. I think we’ll count on these same guys next season, and plus we’ll have Sid and Geno. That’s always our goal coming to camp, trying to win the Cup at the end.Those are just what ifs. Everybody here gave all they had and everything they got, but it just didn’t go the right way.Here is Sidney Crosby's full transcript from his talk with the media Friday afternoon...I don’t really have a concrete plan, but I’ve got to wait until I feel a bit better before I can really start doing anything. So they want to keep a pretty close eye on things. Hopefully, it’s not too long, but as long as it takes to feel better and hopefully start training for next year.Yeah, I started to get some symptoms, probably a week and a half ago, whenever I stopped skating. I started trying to ramp things up a bit as far as working out and skating, and I got a little bit of symptoms. So I had a setback, (headaches) and all the stuff that goes along with it. The progression had gone pretty well, but at the same time I still wasn’t ready.Frustrating. My expectation was that I wouldn’t play, but I was trying to make sure that if there was any chance and it was possible to comeback, that I was ready and did everything I could to be ready for that. It’s frustrating and disappointing. You can’t really control any of that. All I can control is what I was doing off the ice and trying to rehab. Unfortunately it didn’t work out.I don’t know if I’m cautious. Having gone through that, you don’t want to go through that again. I don’t want to sit here for a few weeks and pushing to workout and get back too quick. That won’t happen. I just want to make sure that when I do start working out again I won’t have to deal with symptoms. I’d rather wait that extra bit of time and make sure when I come back it’s alright.At that point we thought it was neck related. There wasn’t anything really to recover from. It was thought to be my neck.Yeah, I had an evaluation. That’s four months ago. I’m worried about getting better. That’s in the past.It’s possible, but it’s not the easiest thing to diagnose and I think if you ask any guy who’s been through it before, it’s not something you know right away. It could be the case, but it wasn’t because of lack of care or anyone not being diligent as possible. It was just the way the circumstances were. I don’t think anything would have changed.There is no timeframe. Basically I was in that progression phase of working out. I honestly couldn’t tell you. The doctor didn’t really talk as far as what was ahead. It was just getting through each step. I felt good there. It’s not a matter of waking up one day and getting cleared to do the next thing. You have to go through that stuff at least a week before you’re ready to move forward. Who knows as far as time wise. If I felt symptoms when I did, I wasn’t close.Not a specific exercise. Exertion-wise I was almost going (full speed), pretty close. When you do that I think you get an idea of where you’re at. Obviously I wasn’t quite there yet. The fact that I was able to do some things, even though that didn’t allow me to get back, in my mind that was a small victory to get on the ice a bit and feel like an athlete again. That was nice.I don’t think anyone’s psyche changed based on when I stopped skating. What we went through this year, the adversity we faced, was a lot. The way guys responded was pretty amazing. I don’t think when you go through all that, me not skating for a couple of days isn’t going to change anything. Guys were mentally tough to deal with everything we dealt with. For me to be able to skate and be around the guys was important for me. I think that had a lot to do with me being able to recover as fast as possible too, being around the guys and seeing how well they’re playing. I think that made things easier. Hopefully, looking back that was something that helped me.I was watching games a lot when I hurt my ankle. It was pretty neat just to be part of that, especially in the playoffs when you’re constantly making so many adjustments. Teams know each other so well. It was fun sitting with (Tom Fitzgerald). He was more of a defensive forward and checker. It was fun to see his outlook. He probably tended to look at defensive plays. When I watch a game, naturally I look at more offensive stuff. It was kind of neat to get his point of view and learn that way. It’s not something I want to make a habit of. Hopefully that’s the last time I’m up there in the playoffs.No, it’s been really slow, but I’m not worried about that. I feel like, from where I was a couple months ago, things were a lot better. Just being able to skate was encouraging. Hopefully, the next step doesn’t have any hurdles and I can get ready for next season as usual.No, I think that’s something you have to get used to. The first couple games back it might be a little weird to play in a game and get hit and go through that. Anyone who’s gone through this will tell you, you need to get those first couple hits in. I can’t play different. I only know one way to play. I’m not going to change my game or anything like that. I have to play the same way. The reason you make sure you’re recovered is so you can do that. If not, you put yourself in a pretty bad situation. I’m going to do everything I can to get better and play the same way I need to next year. I don’t expect it to change anything.No. Nothing. My neck was hurting there for a bit, but nothing major, just general soreness and that kind of thing.I’ve had a lot of guys reach out, not directly to me, but through other players or friends. I think the biggest thing is just to make sure you don’t mess with it and if you get a symptom you know things are wrong and you don’t try to push through it. That’s when you really get in trouble. So I think that was the same advice I got from everyone. But everyone is so different with the symptoms. I don’t think that people realize when you look at a knee or a shoulder you think about how many different things can happen. And there are so many different concussions. You’re talking about your brain. So there’s a lot of different symptoms and a lot of different things that can go on. It’s a pretty complicated injury, but at the same time everyone says the same thing. You have to make sure you take your time and listen to your body. That’s what I try to do.I think our expectations should be the same as it is every year. We want to win. I don’t see why that should change. I think if anything, what we went through this year should make our team even better, to be honest. What we were able to do – I think half of Wilkes-Barre was here at one point – I think that’s pretty incredible what we were able to do. What was it, 49 wins? We didn’t break stride with what we were trying to do. I think that’s going to help everyone, including me and Geno and all the guys that were out. We’re going to do everything we can to make sure our game is where it needs to be when we start next year. So I see it being something that hopefully helps.Yeah. You play hockey every day. You think about it, you train and all that stuff. When you lose that or you’re not able to do that, I think you realize how much you miss it. He was out skating in a track suit, and the whole time after, he was smiling ear to ear. And I knew exactly what that felt like because a few weeks before that I was going through the same thing. It’s amazing what just putting your gear on and being out there around the guys does. So I think we help each other, but I think just being around the guys and seeing the way they handled everything and seeing their attitude. I think that helped us. Geno’s rehab has gone pretty well, and I think that has something to do with it. Everyone was really helpful for us, too.Pens captain Sidney Crosby said that he had to tone down his on ice workload the past few days after experiencing a setback on his recovery from a concussion:"I was working out and skating, but had a little bit of symptoms so I had to take a step back," Crosby said. "All the stuff that comes with it. Up to that point the progression had gone pretty well, but at the same time I still wasn’t ready."(It's) frustrating. My expectation was that I wouldn’t play, but I was trying to make sure that if there was any chance and it was possible to come back, that I was ready and did everything I could to be ready for that. It’s frustrating and disappointing. You can’t really control any of that. All I can control is what I was doing off the ice and trying to rehab. Unfortunately it didn’t work out."Some more news. Pens winger James Neal is going to Slovakia to represent Team Canada at the World Championships. Details here The NHL announced its three candidates for the Jack Adams Award - Coach of the Year. And Pens coach Dan Bylsma has been officially named as a nominee. Bylsma was honored by the news The Pens equipment staff has packed up all the players' gear and sticks, and it awaits them in the locker room.Super Duper (left); the Captain - Crosby (right)Fleury's stall and sticks - a.k.a. Flower or MVPWell, the Penguins’ resilient season came to a close Wednesday night in a 1-0 Game 7 setback to the Tampa Bay Lightning.It’s always disappointing when your season ends, but it was still an incredibly successful year for the Penguins. What the team was able to accomplish during the season, despite 350 man-games lost to injury, is phenomenal. Here’s a quick look back:Today marks the official ending of the 2010-11 season for the Penguins. The players, coaches and staff will gather together at CONSOL Energy Center for exit physicals, locker clean out and player-coach individual meetings.Every player will meet with the coaching staff and receive season and postseason evaluations of his play, advice on how to improve and an offseason program with workouts and skills drills to work on during the summer ahead.“Get Away Day” is also one final chance for this group to get together and say goodbye. Due to free agency, trades and other dynamics, next season’s squad will consist of a different group of players. Today the players with shake hands, bid farewell and part ways one last time.In today’s final Penguins Report of the season we will bring you comments from GM Ray Shero, Head coach Dan Bylsma, Sidney Crosby Evgeni Malkin and other players, as well as pictures from the day.For today’s music selection, we’ll keep the tradition alive of starting Get Away Day with “Closing Time” by Semisonic. It’s somber, yet appropriate.Minor non-violent crimes shouldn't be destroying minority families.
A protest in New York City on Wednesday. (Photo11: Andrew Burton, Getty Images)
A friend of mine's brother was convicted of a felony for growing marijuana plants in his college dorm. Thirty years later he still can't vote and his felony record prevents him from getting a good job.
Because of his story and others like it, I introduced bipartisan legislation to restore federal voting rights for non-violent offenders upon release from prison.
This week, I introduced another piece of legislation with Senator Cory Booker to make some reforms to the criminal justice system that will help non-violent individuals reintegrate into society and secure employment.
Both of these bills will reform existing federal law to allow low-level offenders a second chance. These ideas will both allow the restoration of the right to vote and the opportunity to remove a permanent blot preventing employment for those released after non-violent punishment.
First, we should restore voting rights to non-violent ex-offenders upon release, so they can vote in federal elections. This is an issue that I feel strongly about.
This past February, I testified before the Kentucky Senate to urge a Kentucky constitutional amendment to restore voting rights to many ex-offenders upon release.
The war on drugs has disproportionately affected men and women of color; minorities are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for certain nonviolent drug offenses, like drug possession, even though surveys show that white Americans use drugs at the similar rate. This is a travesty.
I think that drugs are a scourge and are bad for young people, but a lifetime in prison as punishment is not the answer.
The war on drugs has not lessened drug use. It has simply transformed a health problem into a prison problem, and ultimately an employment and voting rights problem.
While drug use is a problem, I also think it is a mistake to lock people up for 10, 20 or 40 years for youthful mistakes.
If you look at the war on drugs, most of the people locked up are minorities. Yet, drugs are being used by kids of all colors and from all socio-economic backgrounds. So, why is it then that prisons are loaded up with minorities who were prosecuted for drug crimes?
The answer is because it is easier to arrest kids who gather in the city rather than in the suburbs. There are more patrols in the city. We give federal grants based on conviction rates, and frankly, kids who live in impoverished areas have less access to a good attorney.
If you go to the African-American community and ask them if the war on drugs is fair, they will say no. The restoration of voting rights is part of the answer, but we should also reclassify many of these crimes as misdemeanors so youthful mistakes do not prevent voting or employment.
I think non-violent criminals should be treated differently than violent criminals. Long sentences for non-violent crimes should be shortened and efforts should be made to reintegrate these folk into the workforce.
Republicans are the party of family values, yet the war on drugs has led to an increasing number of fatherless families due to drug crimes. According to the Pew Charitable Trust, 2.7 million kids now have a parent behind bars and for African American children one out of every nine have a parent in jail. These numbers have risen dramatically since 1980.
I believe in redemption and forgiveness for the 19-year-old kid who made a mistake by purchasing drugs. I think that young people deserve a second chance.
That is why I have worked with Senator Booker to introduce the REDEEM Act to provide kids who get into trouble a second chance at a job and a meaningful life. This legislation would reform federal law to provide a way for adults to seal non-violent criminal records. This will help them to get a job and break the cycle that lands many released individuals back in jail.
I am not condoning bad behavior and drug use — I think it is unhealthy — but I do believe that once you have served your time, you should get your right to vote back and your record should not preclude you from meaningful employment.
I am not done. I am working on two more pieces of legislation to reform the federal criminal code and the way the federal government treats accused individuals by seizing property, then never allowing the assets to get back in the hands of the accused, even if the accused is acquitted.
I have said numerous times that the Republican Party needs to evolve, adapt or die. If the Republican Party wishes to survive, we must go into a variety of communities and listen and understand issues — such as criminal justice reform — and then propose meaningful reforms.
Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., has been a member of the U.S. Senate since 2010.
In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns like this, go to the opinion front page or follow us on twitter @USATopinion or Facebook.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1movkopPlanes stand on the tarmac during a pilots strike of German airline Lufthansa at Frankfurt airport, Germany, November 23, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) is cancelling around 1,700 flights over the next two days due to a fresh strike by pilots in a long-running dispute about pay.
Last week, the German carrier canceled nearly 2,800 flights during a four-day walkout from Wednesday that affected more than 350,000 passengers, the 14th walkout in a dispute that since early 2014 has cost the carrier hundreds of millions of euros.
Lufthansa has offered to increase the pilots’ pay by 4.4 percent in two installments and make a one-off payment worth 1.8 months’ pay over a six year period.
Union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) wants an average annual pay rise of 3.7 percent for 5,400 pilots over a five-year period backdated to 2012.
VC rejected the latest pay offer from Lufthansa late on Friday.
The pilots announced on Sunday plans to strike on short-haul routes on Tuesday and both short- and long-haul flights on Wednesday. Lufthansa said it was cancelling 816 and 890 flights on those days, respectively, affecting a total of around 180,000 passengers.
The carrier has asked a labor court in Munich to issue a temporary injunction to avert the strike, with a ruling likely due later on Monday. Last week, a labor court in Frankfurt rejected a similar request for an injunction.Most people in America…claim to love America. Ask them why, you’re likely to hear about “freedom,” and “free market,” and “opportunity,” and most of all “democracy.“ These aspects of the American ideal are not only important….they are intertwined. For example: without free speech and free press…democracy, cannot function for the benefit of the people. As Thomas Jefferson once said “An informed citizenry is the bulwark of democracy.“ Imagine a country where all the people are not informed, because the press is stifled (or just ineffective) and public information/education is restricted (or again, ineffective). Now imagine that the people in that country can’t even discuss the issues that are facing them. They not only don’t have any information…they can’t discuss the issues at all, because their speech is prohibited.
What good would DEMOCRACY do those people? People who cannot even vote for what is in their best interests…because they cannot DETERMINE what is in their best interests…because they are so easily manipulated and confused and have no way to tell LIE from TRUTH.
Welcome to the America of today…courtesy of the far-right movement, who claim so often to care for “country first.”
That’s right: since the start of the Bush administration, conservatives in America have done their level best to ensure that this country does not have an “informed citizenry.“ Their own media apparatus sells Republican Party press releases as “news“…and any legitimate news organization that publishes any facts that reflect poorly on conservatives, are denounced as “liberally biased,” regardless of what the truth is.
Any plan or action instituted by Democrats (or any liberal or moderate organization) is summarily rejected regardless of what good it might do for the people of this country. Massive propaganda campaigns are set up to utilize fear and disinformation so that the people of this country will actually do the “dirty work” for the conservatives. I repeat: the people are convinced and coerced to act against their OWN BEST INTERESTS.
You’ve Seen These Strategies: ONE) label your opponents as strange/scary/un-Christian/un-American/weak/elitist/communist. TWO) Fill the airwaves with “news” and pundits reporting to have “facts“…and present your deceptions to the people (you wouldn’t believe how many will accept lies without questioning).
And there is a THIRD, no so much new as “newly-perfected” strategy: organize mobs of people, staged to appear as a “natural populist uprising“…using paid members of your organization and whatever extremist wing-nuts you can scrounge up. Train these people to disrupt anyone who even attempts to communicate facts…to shout over anyone who they disagree with…to interrupt anyone trying to become an “informed citizen.”
Current examples:
Harold Meyerson details this “policy of disruption” and cites an amazingly fitting quote from the poet William Butler Yeats: “ The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. “ The people lacking conviction… are the local constituency. The citizens in the areas where these town halls have taken place are largely liberal. Why aren’t THEY at the meetings? Some of the disrupted town halls are in predominantly African-American districts…similarly, why aren’t THEY at the meetings? Because they are not attending and becoming more informed…the meetings are largely attended by local seniors…and the hooligans bused in by lobbyists and conservative-action groups, many of whom often DON’T EVEN LIVE IN THE DISTRICT.
“ The people lacking conviction…. The citizens in the areas where these town halls have taken place are largely liberal. Why aren’t at the meetings? Some of the disrupted town halls are in predominantly African-American districts…similarly, why aren’t at the meetings? Because they are not attending and becoming more informed…the meetings are largely attended by local seniors…and the hooligans bused in by lobbyists and conservative-action groups, many of whom often. The “protesters” you see in the clips making the rounds? A lot of them were wrangled by the group Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, a group led by controversial former hospital CEO Rick Scott…and using the services of CRC Public Relations. Remember CRC? They’re the ones who brought you the series of shameful lies that have come to be known as the “swiftboat” attacks…where an honored war veteran was disgracefully made out to be a coward by this amoral, unethical, and shameless PR firm.
They’re the ones who brought you the series of shameful lies that have come to be known as the “swiftboat” attacks…where an honored war veteran was disgracefully made out to be a coward by this amoral, unethical, and shameless PR firm. Other mobs were coordinated, bused, and “trained” by a group called FreedomWorks led by former Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey. The “training memo” they released told their members to “ stand up and shout out and sit right back down ” and even though they would not be the majority in the meetings (the vast majority of people in America SUPPORT the reform plan AND the public option), they should spread out so the presenter is “ made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington. “ They were told to interrupt the presenter and ANY CITIZEN who tried to ask questions or make comments…especially comments supporting the plan. It is worth noting that one of the FreedomWorks Board members…is the founder of the “ Cancer Centers of America…he was also the president of International Capital & Management Co., an organization specializing in making hospitals more efficient and cost-effective. “ That’s right – another health care/insurance executive trying to get US to vote against OUR interests…and in favor of preserving the industry’s bad practices and high profit margins.
” and even though they would not be the majority in the meetings (the vast majority of people in America the reform plan the public option), they should spread out so the presenter is “ “ They were told to interrupt the presenter and who tried to ask questions or make comments…especially comments supporting the plan. It is worth noting that one of the FreedomWorks Board members…is the founder of the “ “ That’s right – another health care/insurance executive trying to get to vote against interests…and in favor of preserving the industry’s bad practices and high profit margins. You can forget about the major networks and media helping you out. CBS reported on the disturbances…but neglected to mention that these protests were sponsored by corporate lobbyists, PR firms, and conservative action groups (that are in bed with corporate lobbyists). Of course, if their goal was an “informed citizenry” then they should have mentioned it, but they are either afraid of being called “liberally-biased,” or the corporate executives who OWN their news organizations didn’t want you to know the whole story. Strangely, the major news networks also didn’t focus on the LARGE demonstrations of SUPPORT for the reform plan…mentioned in this newspaper…and in this article…and here’s another rare mention of the OVERWHELMING public support for the public option.
afraid of being called “liberally-biased,” or the corporate executives who their news organizations didn’t want you to know the whole story. Strangely, the major news networks also didn’t focus on the demonstrations of for the reform plan…mentioned in this newspaper…and in this article…and here’s another rare mention of the public support for the public option. White House Press Secretary Gibbs…and others who have been paying attention…realize that this is not the first time this tactic has been employed. In Florida in 2000, it was decided that the recount of the thousands of remaining ballots would be performed to determine the outcome of the Presidential election. This resulted in what is known as the “Brooks Brothers Brigade:” it was intended to look as if a group of “concerned citizens” stormed the building where the recount was being held because they were “defending their democracy.” In reality…almost all the “protesters” were RNC employees and insiders who did nothing more than to shut down a LEGAL RECOUNT by making public officials afraid for their safety. AND THAT…is NOT democracy. Here, Rachel Maddow recounts the event and even shows a picture of the “protesters” and identifies each on by name and their relationship to the Republican Party.
There’s a fly in the conservatives’ ointment, though…and they have become so entrenched within their own ideals and their own supporters…that they don’t even see it. People may be fooled by the name-calling and labeling tactics…people may well be deceived into thinking their right-wing newscasts are real and that their pundits’ information is reliable…but when people see an angry mob shutting down a town hall meeting and preventing others from speaking: they see extremists. See, if there is one thing Americans are sensitive to…it is being allowed to speak. Everyone in this country believes, right or wrong, that they deserve to be heard. And so, if they want to lose the support of EVEN MORE of conservatives, and EVEN MORE of the independents…they should just keep busing their angry, fake “mobs” to disrupt civil discourse. They should just keep right on showing us that, for them, it is anything but “country first.” Read here, here, and here…and see how easy they’ve made it for Obama, the DNC, and other Democrats to paint their people as ignorant, crazed, fringe lunatics who are dangerous to our democracy…all they have to do…is show the clips. Need a visual aid? Watch House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer in Utica, New York…and watch for the senior, an older woman, attempting to participate in her country’s future…and watch her face as she is rudely interrupted…the Republicans should try to imagine how angry THE REST OF US get when we see this taking place:
NOTE: If you look for this clip on YouTube, you will find it titled “Outraged Average Citizen Confronts House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Says Hoyer’s Lying” by some group called ConservativeNewMedia, “Your Lying to Me” posted by FoxNewsElectionHQ, and “Dem Protester Confronts Steny Hoyer Over Health Care @ Town Hall” posted by Story Balloon. “Average Citizen” and “Dem?” I don’t think so…that Don Jeror, head of the local Tea Party group of anti-government extremists, white supremacists, and goofballs who’ve forgotten to take their meds…so let’s not make it out like he’s “just some average democrat.” It’s appropriate that he put “patriots” in quotation marks on his sign…because there is nothing patriotic about what he is doing.The Georgetown University Master's in Cybersecurity Risk Management prepares you to navigate todays complex cyber threats. Take classes online, on campus, or through a combination of both -- so you dont have to interrupt your career. Learn more.
Microsoft on Thursday began rolling out the New Xbox One Experience, delivering backward compatibility for Xbox 360 games and updating the user interface to a Windows 10 foundation.
Support for legacy Xbox games is the headliner for the NXOE, but the roughly 1.15-GB update also includes new social elements baked into a reworked interface. The refreshed Xbox One interface is faster and more social, the company said.
Microsoft could have coordinated the recent launch of a more robust version of the Xbox One, including a new eSports controller and a larger hard drive, with the delivery of the NXOE to sell the package as a new console bundle.
Instead, the company released the NXOE for free. It did so for the fans, according to a statement from Microsoft provided by Xbox spokesperson Mimi Donnelly.
"Inspired by fan feedback, we are making some big changes, transforming Xbox One with a fully redesigned user experience that makes it faster to get to your content and complete must-have tasks," the company said. "We value feedback from our fans and will continue to bring new updates to the platform based on a combination of fan feedback and new innovation."
All of this is consistent with Microsoft's larger strategy to focus on engagement, said Joost van Dreunen, CEO of SuperData Research.
"Improving the social layer directly benefits the stickiness of any platform," he told TechNewsWorld. "So from a strategic perspective, this is a really smart move, especially since Xbox has stepped up its effort on free-to-play console games."
Unwrapping the NXOE
Microsoft already was heading into the holiday season with more near-term exclusives than Sony. Now its video games division is boasting that its latest console is the only one to natively support backward compatibility for free.
Backward compatibility is a mixed bag for now, UberStrategist Principal Mario R. Kroll concluded after spending an afternoon with the NXOE.
"I had limited 360 games from the list of early titles available, but the ones I had, like Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, would not play or install off disk and told me it wasn't compatible," he told TechNewsWorld.
Kroll was able to install Fallout 3, but he'll have to wait for Microsoft to expand support for backward compatibility, which it indicated would happen in stages.
"Since I have a fairly big collection of nondigital Xbox 360 titles that I'd love to play on the Xbox One, plus quite a few digital titles as well, I guess I'll just have to wait for those to be supported," he said.
Ultimately, his time with the NXOE was "underwhelming," Kroll said, although he found the navigation to be cleaner, and he even discovered some old messages he'd missed.
"It seems to focus more on making other forms of media more central, putting as much emphasis on video content and music as on games," he said.
That was a common gripe about the Xbox One when Microsoft brought the console to E3. Fans counted the many instances Microsoft mentioned "TV" as it promoted its games console, so much so that the company took note and pledged to focus more on video games in future presentations.
"I have smart TVs that allow me to run most of the entertainment apps I want, [and] voice-directed and wireless speakers that allow me to play my music just about anywhere," Kroll said. "I don't need the Xbox One to act like a central living room device to control TV or music -- especially since DirecTV still isn't supported for full-on satellite television entertainment."
The Baited Hook
It's doubtful the NXOE will sway consumers looking to buy a new console, SuperData's van Dreunen said.
"Improving engagement is not a user acquisition tactic but rather one focused on user retention," he said. "It shows dedication toward improving the overall user experience, but vis-à-vis the PS4, it won't affect sales in a meaningful way."
The various Xbox One bundles and exclusive games available and on their way are more likely to sell systems than the console's new user experience, said Kroll. Cross-platform play between Xbox 360 and Xbox One appears to be "too little, too late," especially considering that many of the "more interesting titles" are not yet supported.
"Let's see what it looks like when the dust settles in January and also when a few more iterations of fan favorite titles are available on the Xbox One," he said. "Until then, I'm sure quite a few are keeping their Xbox 360 handy."
Quinten Plummer is a longtime technology reporter and an avid PC gamer who explored local news for a few years, covering law enforcement and government beats, before returning to writing about things run by ones and zeros and the people who make them. If it pushes pixels or improves lives, he wants to learn all he can about it.There are a few times during the year where it’s socially acceptable to drink heavily: St. Patrick’s Day, Superbowl Sunday, Cinco de Mayo, the 4th of July, Halloween, Mardi Gras, and then virtually the entire time between the Wednesday before Thanksgiving through New Year’s.
Now that we’re into December, the holidays are in full effect, and ‘tis the season to be drunk. Over the next few weeks—between family parties, company parties, and party parties—you’ll no doubt encounter some people who religiously go above and beyond with the holiday spirits.
To help you out, we thought we’d put together a list of some of the worst kind, and share some tips on what to do if you encounter them.
1. The Forever Aloner
Favorite quote: “I hope there’s cyanide in these gingerbread cookies”
Contrast to the Happy Fucking Holidays-er, the Forever Aloner hates all holidays. After a few apple martinis, reality starts to sink in for these drunks and their misery can ruin an entire party.
How to handle them: Pat them on the shoulder and remind them a whole new year is right around the corner. Don’t hug, though. That will just make it worse.
2. The Happy-Fucking-Holidays-er
Favorite quote: "Whoa, whoa, I was told there would be booze at this party"
Usually wearing an ugly sweater in an effort to justify the fact that they’re acting like a total ass, these are a special breed of drunks who thrive off the energy from Christmas tree lights.
How to handle them: Duck out of their headlock and replace your body with another glass of spiked eggnog. They won’t even notice you gave them the slip.
3. The Caroler
Favorite quote: “Hey, pull up the instrumental to Frosty the Snowman”
Lots of people sing songs like “Don’t Stop Believing” when they get plastered. Although that’s enough to make your ears explode, it’s nothing compared to the drunks who wait the entire year to sing “Joy to the World.”
How to handle them: If this drunk approaches you in song, treat them like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. They might get very close to you, but if you stand perfectly still they’ll move on.
4. The Giver
Favorite quote: "I found these old trinkets in my basement”
No, not like the book. While an enterprising individual might wait for Spring to have a yard sale, this drunk just thrusts their newspaper-wrapped crap upon you mid-party.
How to handle them: Find a place to stash their refuse in the host’s house (unless you’re the host)—under the kitchen sink works well.
5. The Handsy Harry
Favorite quote: “Who wants to sit on Santa’s Lap?”
These drunks put their hands on you like you’re a chunk of meat in desperate need of some dry rub. If you’re not careful, you could easily find yourself taking the naughty or nice quiz from their lap.
How to handle them: Whether you like it or not, they’re coming for you. If you haven’t already, start practicing your jukes, spins, and swim moves as soon as you’re done reading this.
6. The Lazy Susan
Favorite quote: “Umm, I can’t tell you the recipe, it’s a family secret”
These drunks are certain nobody will catch them in the act of trying to pass grocery-store-bought cookies for “homemade” ones. They were planning on baking…but they got drunk.
How to handle them: Screw it. Who ever said no to free cookies?
7. The Toasted Toaster
Favorite quote: “Here’s to Mrs. Claus’ sweet rack”
Despite mysteriously not getting an invite, these flask-wielding drunks seem to always show up. They take the reindeer by the horns, raising their glass to just about everyone and everything in sight—even your boss’s wife.
How to handle them: During their next toast, make sure to clink their glass just hard enough to break it. A spilled glass of champagne is a small price to pay for becoming a holiday hero.
8. Mr./Mrs. Mistletoe
Favorite quote: "Interesting seeing you here, under this twig I'm holding over your head"
These drunks can’t wait until Thanksgiving’s over, so they can break out the old mistleto |
rank boards and shorts.
Upper Body Selection Colors Category Uniform - Bare Chest Rank Terran - Ensign I2, A3, I5 Badge Terran Empire A14 Hands Intel I2, B2, I2 Arm Attach Left Terran - Dagger Armband I1, C13, I4 Undershirt (Male, optional) Chest Hair Varies Lower Body Selection Colors Category Uniform - Pants Tucked High Belt (Female) Terran - Odyssey I5, I3, C13, I6 Lower Tucked High - Panels and Pockets Q1, I1, I1, I1 Feet (Female) Boot Low Heel I1, I1 Feet (Male) Boot Leather Padded I1, I1, I1, I1
Tactical Upper Body Selection Colors Upper Terran - Sierra 2 Open 1 I2, A8, A3, I2 Material Glossy Color Configuration 01 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband A8, C12, I1, A6 Lower Body Selection Colors Hips Attach Left (optional) Kit - Sci Doctor 1 P18, P18
Science Upper Body Selection Colors Upper Terran - Sierra 2 Open 1 I2, F12, F10, I2 Material Glossy Color Configuration 01 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband F12, C12, I1, A6 Wrist Attach Right (optional) Kit - Sci Scientist 1 P18, P18 Wrist Attach R Accessory Kit - Sci Scientist A8 Wrist Attach Right (optional) Kit - Sci Doctor 3 P18, P18, A7 Wrist Attach R Accessory Kit - Sci Scientist A8
Engineering Upper Body Selection Colors Upper Terran - Sierra 2 Open 1 I2, C11, C8, I2 Material Glossy Color Configuration 01 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband C10, C12, I1, A6 Wrist Attach Left (optional) Kit - Eng Combat 3 P18, P18 Lower Body Selection Colors Hips Attach Left (optional) Kit - Eng Technician 1 P18, P18, A9, A9
Captain Leeta Upper Body Selection Colors Upper Terran - Sierra 2 Open 1 I2, A8, A3, I2 Material Glossy Color Configuration 01 Rank Terran - Captain I2, A3, I5 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband A8, C12, I1, A6 Lower Body Selection Colors Category Uniform - Pants Tight Belt None Lower Shorts - Terran 2 I2, A8, I2, A6 Feet Boot Thigh High I1, I1, I1 Hips Attach Left Terran - Dagger I3, C13, I4
Upper Body Selection Colors Category Uniform - Bare Chest Rank Terran - Lieutenant I2, A3, I5 Badge Terran Empire A14 Hands Intel I2, B2, I2 Arm Attach Left Terran - Dagger Armband I1, C13, I4 Undershirt (Male, optional) Chest Hair Varies Lower Body Selection Colors Category Uniform - Pants Tucked High Belt Terran - Utility 1 I5, I5, H20, A2 Feet (Female) Boot Low Heel I1, I1 Feet (Male) Boot Leather Padded I1, I1, I1, I1
Tactical Upper Body Selection Colors Upper Terran - Sierra 4 Open 1 I2, A8, A5, I2 Material Glossy Color Configuration 01 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband A8, C12, I1, A6 Lower Body Selection Colors Lower (Female) Tucked High - Panels and Pockets N23, I1, I1, I1 Lower (Male) Tucked High - Panels and Pockets A16, I1, I1, I1
Science Upper Body Selection Colors Upper Terran - Sierra 4 Open 1 I2, F12, F9, I2 Material Glossy Color Configuration 01 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband F12, C12, I1, A6 Wrist Attach Left (optional) Kit - Sci Doctor 2 P18, P18, A7, P18 Wrist Attach Right (optional) Kit - Sci Doctor 2 P18, P18, A4 Lower Body Selection Colors Lower (Female) Tucked High - Panels and Pockets H4, I1, I1, I1 Lower (Male) Tucked High - Panels and Pockets E12, I1, I1, I1 Hips Attach Left (optional) Kit - Sci Doctor 2 P18, P18 Hips Attach Right (optional) Kit - Sci Scientist 1 P18, P18 Hips Attach Right (optional) Kit - Tac Soldier 2 P18
Engineering Upper Body Selection Colors Upper Terran - Sierra 4 Open 1 I2, C9, C6, I2 Material Glossy Color Configuration 01 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband C10, C12, I1, A6 Wrist Attach Left (optional) Kit - Eng Technician 2 P18, A9 Wrist Attach Right (optional) Kit - Eng Combat 3 P18 Lower Body Selection Colors Lower (Female) Tucked High - Panels and Pockets A3, I1, I1, I1 Lower (Male) Tucked High - Panels and Pockets C10, I1, I1, I1 Hips Attach Left (optional) Kit - Eng Technician 2 P18, P18, A9, A9
Note: The color of the pants for female characters can be matched to males by using Panels and Pockets in the Tucked Low category.
Upper Body Selection Colors Category Uniform - Bare Chest Rank Terran - Commander I2, A3, I5 Badge Terran Empire A14 Hands Gloves Padded I2, I2, I2 Arm Attach Left (optional) Terran - Dagger Armband I1, C13, I4 Chest Gear Terran - Utility Pack 1 P19, P19, O23, P19 Undershirt (Male, optional) Chest Hair Varies Lower Body Selection Colors Category (Female) Uniform - Skirts Category (Male) Uniform - Pants Tucked High Belt Terran - Utility 2 I5, I5, H20, A2 Hips Attach Left (optional) Terran - Dagger I1, C13, I4, I4 Feet (Female) Boot Low Heel I1, I1 Feet (Male) Boot Jupiter I1, I1, I1
Tactical Upper Body Selection Colors Upper Terran - Antares 4 Open 1 I2, A8, I1, I2 Material Glossy Color Configuration 02 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband A8, C12, I1, A6 Lower Body Selection Colors Lower (Female) Skirt - Antares A8, I2, I2 Material Glossy Bare Legs Skin Lower (Male) Tucked - Jupiter 2 A8, I2, I2
Science Upper Body Selection Colors Upper Terran - Antares 4 Open 1 I2, E12, I1, I2 Material Glossy Color Configuration 02 Arm Attach Left (optional) Terran - Dagger Armband I1, C13, I5 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband F12, C12, I1, A6 Wrist Attach Left (optional) Kit - Sci Doctor 2 P18, P18, A7, P18 Wrist Attach Right (optional) Kit - Sci Doctor 2 P18, P18, A4 Wrist Attach Right (optional) Kit - Sci Scientist 2 P18, P18 Wrist Attach R Accessory Kit - Sci Scientist A8 Lower Body Selection Colors Lower (Female) Skirt - Antares F12, I2, I2 Material Glossy Bare Legs Skin Lower (Male) Tucked - Jupiter 2 F12, I2, I2 Hips Attach Left (optional) Kit - Sci Doctor 2 P18, P18
Engineering Upper Body Selection Colors Upper Terran - Antares 4 Open 1 I2, C9, I1, I2 Material Glossy Color Configuration 02 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband C10, C12, I1, A6 Wrist Attach Left (optional) Kit - Eng Technician 1 P18 Wrist Attach Left (optional) Kit - Sci Doctor 2 P18, P18, A9, P18 Wrist Attach Right (optional) Kit - Eng Combat 3 P18 Lower Body Selection Colors Lower (Female) Skirt - Antares C9, I2, I2 Material Glossy Bare Legs Skin Lower (Male) Tucked - Jupiter 2 C9, I2, I2 Hips Attach Left (optional) Kit - Eng Combat 1 P18
Chief is the highest rank of Terran mob, replacing Captain in Federation mob groups. Admiral Leeta wears a variation of the Tactical uniform with Captain rank boards.
Upper Body Selection Colors Category Uniform - Bare Chest Rank (Female) Terran - Fleet Admiral I2, A3, I5, A15 Rank (Male) Terran - Fleet Admiral I2, A15, I5, A3 Badge Terran Empire A14 Hands Gloves Padded I2, I2, I2 Arm Attach Left (optional) Terran - Dagger Armband I1, C13, I4 Chest Gear Terran - Utility Pack 2 P19, P19, O23, P19 Lower Body Selection Colors Category (Female) Uniform - Pants Tight Category (Male) Uniform - Pants Tucked High Belt Terran - Utility 2 I5, I5, H20, A2 Feet (Female) Boot Thigh High I1, I1, I1 Feet (Male) Boot Jupiter I1, I1, I1
Tactical Upper Body Selection Colors Upper (Female) Terran - Jupiter 1 Open 2 I1, A8, A16 Upper (Male) Terran - Jupiter 1 I1, A16, A16 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband A8, C12, I1, A6 Shoulder Pad Right Kit - Tac Soldier 1 P18 Wrist Attach Left (Female) Kit - Sci Doctor 2 P18, P18, A9, P18 Wrist Attach Left (Male) Kit - Eng Technician 2 P18 Lower Body Selection Colors Lower (Female) Shorts - Terran 2 I2, A8, I2, A16 Lower (Male) Tucked - Jupiter 5 A17, I2, I2 Hips Attach Left (Male) Kit - Eng Combat 1 P18
Science Upper Body Selection Colors Upper (Female) Terran - Jupiter 1 Open 2 I1, F10, F12 Upper (Male) Terran - Jupiter 1 I1, F9, F12 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband F12, C12, I1, A6 Shoulder Pad Right Kit - Eng Technician 1 P18, G6 Wrist Attach Left (Female) Kit - Sci Doctor 2 P18, P18, A7, P18 Wrist Attach Right (optional) Kit - Sci Doctor 3 P18, P18, A7 Wrist Attach R Accessory Kit - Sci Doctor A8 Lower Body Selection Colors Lower (Female) Shorts - Terran 2 I2, F12, I2, F10 Lower (Male) Tucked - Jupiter 5 F12, I2, I2 Hips Attach Left (Male) Kit - Sci Doctor 2 P18, P18
Engineering Upper Body Selection Colors Upper (Female) Terran - Jupiter 1 Open 2 I1, C11, C10 Upper (Male) Terran - Jupiter 1 I1, C11, C10 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband C10, C12, I1, A6 Shoulder Pad Right (Female) Kit - Eng Combat 1 P18 Shoulder Pad Right (Male) Kit - Eng Combat 1 P24 Wrist Attach Left (Female) Kit - Sci Doctor 2 P18, P18, A9, P18 Wrist Attach Left (Male) Kit - Eng Technician 1 P18 Lower Body Selection Colors Lower (Female) Shorts - Terran 2 I2, C10, I2, C4 Lower (Male) Tucked - Jupiter 5 C10, I2, I2 Hips Attach Left (Male) Kit - Eng Combat 1 P18
Admiral Leeta Upper Body Selection Colors Upper Terran - Jupiter 1 Open 2 I1, A8, A16 Rank Terran - Captain I2, A3, I5, A15 Hands Gloves Padded I1, A13, A8 Arm Attach Right Terran - Armband A8, C12, I1, A6 Wrist Attach Right Kit - Security 2 P18, P18 Lower Body Selection Colors Lower Shorts - Terran 2 I2, A8, I2, A16 Hips Attach Left Kit - Eng Technician 3 P18, P18, A9, A9
Note: The Jupiter 1 jacket is missing a swatch to recolor portions of it, preventing a good match of the NPCs.Image copyright Met Police Image caption The W19 bus crashed at about noon while travelling on the Staffa Road to Hainault Street route
Two passengers had to be freed from a bus which crashed in east London, injuring 12 people.
The W19 service single-decker bus hit a tree on Forest Drive near Manor Park station at about noon.
London Ambulance Service (LAS) said 10 passengers had been taken to hospital.
It said a man in his forties with a head injury and a woman in her sixties with a hip injury had been taken to Royal London Hospital as a priority.
Image copyright Chris Hawkswell Image caption The A117 Forest Drive has been close while the recovery continues
Image copyright Chris Hawkswell Image caption Emergency services including the police, ambulance and fire brigade are on site
The emergency services, including London Fire Brigade and LAS's hazardous area response team, remain at the scene.
The A117 Forest Drive has been closed while the incident is on-going, the Metropolitan Police said.With fall coming quickly (and winter not far behind), I’d like to do something to help http://www.atlantamission.org/. I know with temperatures as they currently are, it’s hard to think about being cold– but that won’t be the case in just a few months.
So here’s what I’d like to do. I’ve set the price of Perception to $0.99 this week, and I’ll be giving 50% of the sales to Atlanta Mission. If you were already interested in buying the book, now’s a good time because of the discount; however, if you weren’t, then I encourage you to go to http://www.atlantamission.org/ or your local shelter and donate directly. Either way, please keep these organizations in your thoughts and prayers as they prepare for the months ahead.
Thanks,
–Matt
**Note: You do not need a Kindle to read Perception. The Kindle Reading App is available for any laptop, smartphone, or tablet.
Advertisements“ We do not seek a regime change,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on August 1, speaking of North Korea. “We do not seek the collapse of the regime... We’re trying to convey to the North Koreans: We are not your enemy. We are not your threat. But you are presenting an unacceptable threat to us, and we have to respond.” This differs sharply from comments made by CIA director Mike Pompeo at the Aspen Security Forum a few days before. Pompeo remarked on the administration’s aim to “separate” those who control the regime from its nuclear capacity. Excuse us for thinking this sounds a lot like regime change.
Whether these contrasting messages have arisen from strategy or from perplexity—a little of both?—we don’t know. But perplexity would be entirely defensible. There is no obvious course in dealing with North Korea. Decades of intermittent negotiations have not stopped Pyongyang from developing a nuclear capacity, exporting ballistic missile technology to other anti-Western governments, and threatening its neighbors. Nor have U.S. economic sanctions. These last are necessary and ought to be intensified, but they haven’t arrested the Kim regime’s progress towards its goal: the capacity to land a nuclear warhead wherever it chooses.
North Korea has performed at least five nuclear weapons tests over the last decade—all of which violated past agreements. Already this year it’s tested 14 ballistic missiles. The latest tests grabbed international attention. The first, fired for symbolic reasons on July 4, flew nearly 600 miles before dropping into the Sea of Japan. Many analysts think that missile, the Hwasong-14, could fly more than 4,000 miles—enough to reach Alaska. The second, a more advanced, unnamed ICBM fired on July 28, likely has a range of 6,200 miles. This is enough to reach the American mainland.
At this point the United States has no options that don’t involve the risk of war. There’s an argument to be made for preemptively striking North Korean missile launch sites, but preemptive strikes, barring a coup and the implosion of the Kim regime, would provoke a war. Worse than that, however, is doing nothing and dealing with a North Korea capable—and probably willing—to put a nuclear warhead in Anchorage or Los Angeles.
One option suggests itself as a way of militarily confronting the regime without touching its territory and necessarily provoking war. The U.S. military could shoot down a North Korean test missile. There are risks, but the potential advantages are considerable.
The first risk, of course, is technical: There’s no guarantee we would intercept the target. A lot would depend on the trajectory of the North Korean weapon. An Aegis warship stationed in the Sea of Japan and equipped with the SM-3 anti-missile system might be able to intercept a North Korean test missile in its ascendency. That capability is untested, but surely the U.S. produces and maintains these muti-billion-dollar anti-missile systems precisely for a circumstance like this one.
Alternatively, ground-based interceptors (the THAAD defense systems) located in South Korea could intercept a North Korean test missile mid-course. These interceptors (they’re also located in Alaska and California, among other places) have an impressive track record. In late July, the THAAD interceptors in Kodiak, Alaska, destroyed a missile launched from an Air Force jet over the Pacific, marking the 15th successful hit in 15 tests.
There is every chance that Pyongyang would interpret our shooting down one of its missiles as an act of war, and the United States and South Korea would need to be prepared for that outcome. But what are the North’s “tests” intended to do, if not threaten? We can state plausibly—and announce our policy ahead of time—that intercepting North Korean test missiles is not an act of aggression but one of defense. Our South Korean and Japanese allies would surely applaud such a policy shift.
An interception would give North Korean scientists valuable information about our anti-missile capabilities, but this is outweighed by the psychological damage a successful hit would do to the regime. The United States and South Korea are already running joint exercises that are partly designed to force the North to spend its scarce resources just to keep up. Rendering its missile system obsolete could persuade some North Korean generals that Kim Jong-Un has led them into humiliation and disaster.
The risks are real, to be sure. Knocking down a North Korean test missile would be “going kinetic,” in military jargon. But after 30 years of failed diplomacy, and with Pyongyang actively assisting Iran and other dangerous states in developing nuclear technology and delivery systems, military confrontation in some form looks more and more likely. Better a confrontation over a test missile today than full-on war over a real one tomorrow.THE INTERNET was supposed to facilitate better exchange between the public and news media. But vile and hateful comments changed all that.
In the face of rising vitriol — attacks, bigotry and general nastiness — some websites are increasingly throwing in the towel on online comments.
Last month, Vice Media’s Motherboard news site turned off reader comments, saying “the scorched earth nature of comments sections just stifles real conversation.” It instead began taking “letters to the editor” to be screened by staff. Vox Media’s online news site The Verge said in July it was “turning off comments for a bit,” noting that the tone was “getting a little too aggressive and negative.”
Blogging platform Medium this past week allowed its users to hide reader comments, acknowledging that “sometimes you may not want to get in a discussion.”
The Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Beast, news website Re/code, the millennial-focused news site Mic and Popular Science also have shut off comments.
And Vox.com launched last year without them, saying that “flame wars” turned readers off.
“Newsrooms are really struggling with this,” said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor of information studies at Syracuse University.
“They like the idea of the comments because it brings readers back, it creates a community of people who are dedicated and that’s good for advertising,” she told AFP.
“But the downside is that when people see lots of vitriol and attack, even if they are not using bad language, it turns people off. The worry is that instead of fostering communication, you lose readers.”
Research this year by University of Houston professor Arthur Santana found anonymous comments on online news sites could often bring out the vilest of views, particularly on hot topics such as immigration.
‘LOCUSTS, VERMIN’
“Often the targets of the incivility are marginalised groups, including racial minorities,” Santana said in the Newspaper Research Journal.
Santana found readers referred to immigrants as “cockroaches, locusts, scumbags, rats, bums, buzzards, blood-sucking leeches, vermin, slime, dogs, brown invaders, wetbacks,” among others.
Santana said that newspapers “have expressed frustration with rampant incivility and ad hominem attacks in their commenting forums,” but may also be hurting their own reputations by becoming a place for mud-slinging.
The problem is not limited to US news sites: “flame wars” have forced the shutdown of comments on South Africa’s largest online news publisher 24.com and Independent Online has done the same.
Controlling online forums can be especially tricky in countries where news organisations may be held liable for defaming content from readers.
Some news organisations have sought to clamp down on incivility by requiring registration and banning anonymity.
FACEBOOK AS A TOOL?
One tool is from Facebook, whose plug-in verifies the identity of those who post comments, requiring people to use their real names.
Some evidence indicates the Facebook platform and other tools have helped the tone.
A 2013 University of Kent study found that by making users “accountable,” the Facebook system makes them “less likely to engage in uncivil discussion.” But when The Huffington Post ended anonymous comments and began using the Facebook plug-in, it sparked anger.
By creating obstacles to posting, “you lose a lot of commenters,” said David Wolfgang, a doctoral researcher in journalism at the University of Missouri.
Wolfgang, who has been researching the state of online news comments, said many newsrooms were unprepared for the deluge of acrimony but should not give up.
“If your local news organisation isn’t going to provide a space for this conversation, who will? It doesn’t always work out the way we want, but that doesn’t mean we should throw it out,” he said.
TECH SOLUTIONS
Large news organisation employ teams of moderators, sometimes with help from outside contractors, to weed out inappropriate comments. But that’s not feasible for many budget-stretched newsrooms.
Some are looking to technology, to filter out nastiness and highlight constructive conversations from readers. Several private vendors offer software for this.
The Washington Post and New York Times have joined forces on a project funded by the Knight Foundation to create open-source software that can be adapted for news websites to get a better handle on online discussions.
Greg Barber, director of digital news projects at the Post and a member of the “Coral Project” team working with the Mozilla Foundation, said the competing dailies realised that “we had the same problems and it made sense for us to work together.” “Civility is a challenge for everyone,” Barber said, adding that the Post gets some eight million comments a year and struggles to keep a positive tone with its own moderators and an outside contractor.
“When users come in and see a pie fight, they are likely to pick up a pie and throw it,” he said.
“If they see a reasoned discussion, they will want to contribute in a reasoned way.” Project members have spoken with publishers in 25 countries interested in trying the software, which will be offered free.
News sites may use their own criteria to keep the dialogue on course, according to Barber.
Barber said the software, set to be released for testing in January, aims not only to filter out the ugliness but to identify the “trusted” readers and display constructive comments more prominently.
“It’s not just to scrape the mud off our boots, but to find and highlight the valuable contributions,” he said.How much of India is actually urban? That is the question the economic survey by the finance ministry has raised this year.
The honest answer to that question is: it depends. It depends on the criteria we use to define urban settlements. Under the rather stringent definition of the Census, about a third of India is urban, with urbanized states concentrated in relatively richer southern and western India. But if you believe in what images from satellites tell us about built-up areas, a whopping 63% of India is urban, with urban settlements concentrated in the relatively poorer northern belt.
India’s three-tiered census definition of ‘urban’—at least 5,000 inhabitants, density of 400 people per sq. km or more, and at least 75% of male working population engaged in non-farm activities—was first framed in 1961 by then census commissioner Asok Mitra.
“The problem he was trying to solve was that the Gangetic plain is a particularly high-density belt," says Chinmay Tumbe, an economic historian at the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad. Using just a population or density parameter would have inflated the urban rate, skewing funding priorities away from rural schemes.
However, more than five decades later, questions are being raised on whether that definition underestimates the urban population although there is no agreement among urban experts on what the new definition should be.
Under the census definition, 31% of the Indian population lived in urban areas in 2011. But the share of urban population which lives in towns and cities, actually classified as urban, and governed by urban local bodies is even lower at 26%. Even if one were to discount the satellite data, just relaxing the census definition, and considering settlements with more than 5,000 inhabitants as urban will raise the share of the urban population to 47%.
One way to check whether a definition of urban is appropriate is to evaluate the correlation between the share of urban population and per-capita incomes. The built-up area criterion (as measured by satellite images) fails that check. But both the existing definition and the more relaxed (5,000+ inhabitants) criteria seem to meet that test.
Regardless of the definition being used, there is an element of discretion involved in any definition that attempts to strictly delineate rural from urban areas. While experts may disagree on the precise definition of ‘urban’, they all agree that it makes sense to view the entire spectrum of settlements—from small villages to large urban agglomerations—as a continuum rather than in terms of the rural/urban binary. Even Census definitions reflect this continuum as they account for different types of settlements.
Much of India’s population currently resides in the middle space, away from the big cities as well as the hamlets. Many large settlements that are deemed by the Census and state governments as rural may require urban services such as spatial planning, fire services, and building regulations. But the rigid rural-urban division means that they are denied such services.
Also as Tumbe points out, the definition we use will only affect the level of urbanization. It will not affect the pace of urbanization much, which in his view has been low historically because India’s rural-urban migration has been driven mostly by male migrants, who go back to their villages instead of settling in cities with their families.
The slow pace of rural-urban migration could be because of political incentives, argued India’s former chief statistician Pronab Sen in Mint sometime ago.
“In a country where political success is driven by managing the 3Cs of Indian society—caste, community and class—no incumbent political leader would like to see any uncontrolled change in the social configuration of the constituency and, therefore, of the winning coalition," wrote Sen. “Migration causes this both in the originating villages and destination towns. Initially these effects may be relatively small, but they can snowball over time since much of the migration is driven by social networks."
It is perhaps because of these reasons that much of urban growth in India is because of purely ‘organic’ reasons: natural growth and reclassification of towns and villages. Migration accounts for barely a fifth of the urban population growth in India.
As in 1961, how much of India is urban, and how much of it is rural is as much a question of politics as it is of economics.I used to run outreach and public education for the Affordable Care Act marketplaces. So I have a very good sense of what the Trump administration’s decision to cut funding for advertising and in-person assistance will do to enrollment.
The Trump administration announced a couple of weeks ago that the advertising budget for this year’s open enrollment period for the ACA marketplace would be cut by 90 percent (from $100 million to $10 million), and that it was cutting in-person assistance through its “navigator” grants by 40 percent (from $63 million to $37 million).
This is nothing less than sabotage. “The best thing we can do politically speaking is let Obamacare explode,” Trump has said. “It is exploding right now.” In fact, it is not “exploding.” But few things make this more likely than skimping on efforts to encourage people to sign up for coverage at Healthcare.gov, and to make it harder for them to get their questions about the program answered.
One source at Health and Human Services dismissed news of the outreach cuts by saying (courageously, on background), “most Americans are aware of the program at this point in time.” But anyone who has worked on health care enrollment knows that’s a complete joke.
Vague awareness that the ACA exists is a lot different from knowing how to enroll
The truth is that most people don’t know the open enrollment dates, and they don’t know that the deadline this year is December 15 — not January 31, like last year. They don’t know that by shopping on Healthcare.gov they are likely to find a plan that costs less than a $100 a month. I know this, because my office produced reams of data that proved the overall effectiveness of outreach advertising.
Signing up for health care is a big decision, especially for those who have never had health insurance. People think it’s out of reach, that they can’t afford it, that it’s just too difficult — or they’re young and healthy, so why bother? And the ongoing public debate about repeal has only added to the confusion. So it’s no surprise some people will throw up their hands and roll the dice, betting they won’t getting too sick or too injured.
Advertising, backed up by an informative website and in-person assistance, can help people grasp that health coverage under the ACA may be more affordable than they think, leading them to sign up.
Those of us who promoted the ACA were committed to getting the most out of every dollar. We had a lot of channels we could use: TV, radio, digital advertising, outdoor advertising, plus more-direct communications such as email, text messaging and phone calls. We set up randomized control trials and econometric modeling to test all of these paid outreach options against each other.
TV ads, we learned, were the most cost-effective way to encourage enrollment
I started in my position right before the second open enrollment period for the ACA, and our study of outreach outcomes was in full swing by the third enrollment period, in 2015. Despite our preconceived notion that digital media might deliver the biggest bang for our buck, we found that TV still was the number one driver of enrollment. Not only that, but TV ads acted as a sort of multiplier — magnifying the effects of every dollar spent on digital, email, and everything else. Taken together, we found, paid outreach was directly responsible for about 40 percent of all enrollments.
That’s why the decision to cut the outreach and advertising budget by 90 percent, including zeroing out spending on TV advertising, is so dumbfounding (unless the goal is to undermine the program). Look at what happened in Kentucky when the state completely cut its TV advertising. An academic study found that the state’s enrollment site, Kynect, got 450,000 fewer page views and 20,000 fewer unique visitors each week. The fewer the people who are shopping and looking for coverage, the fewer the people who end up enrolling.
Unsurprisingly, in Kentucky enrollment in the ACA marketplaces dropped from 106,300 in 2015 to 81,200 in 2017.
So when you hear an unnamed administration spokesperson try to spin their decision to cut advertising as a way of improving efficiency, or as unnecessary because everyone knows about Obamacare, know this: They are lying. They have the evidence from the previous open enrollments. They have the consumer research and the data from all of the testing. And they tossed it out the window.
With the new open enrollment season imminent, Trump has thrown community-based health care “navigators” into chaos
We also know that the in-person navigator programs — also gutted by Trump — are effective. Under the navigator programs, local community-oriented organizations help people sign up for health care by holding enrollment events where people can drop by to find out more. (Or they can schedule appointments.)
The plans of community-based “navigators” have been thrown into chaos, hurting people who need their advice.
When we chose the recipients of the first of the three-year grants to support navigator work, in 2015, a priority was to fund groups working in underserved communities or with more vulnerable populations. Think rural areas or people with disabilities or people with very specific health needs or immigrant communities. Those nonprofits that received a navigator grant are long-standing organizations entrenched in their communities. They’re not new or political; they’re just trying to help their neighbors get the care they need.
Back in 2016, the funding was set at $67 million; the following year it was $63 million. Many navigators were assured by the current administration that they didn’t need to worry about funding for this year — that it would be on par with previous years. Plans were made, staff hired. But instead of using the criteria used to judge grant levels in the past, the administration changed the rules at the end of the game. The new rules cut the funding if navigators are falling short of the goal they had set for themselves.
Here’s the problem with that approach: Since people didn’t know this would happen, they may have set very high aspirational goals. Now people who set ambitious plans are punished.
It’s still unclear how the cuts will play out: With open enrollment less than two months away (it starts November 1), navigators know only that they will have to cut expenses and lay off staff.
Who will pay the price for the administration’s last-minute decision to cut navigator funding by 40 percent? The people who need that help the most. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that about 80 percent of people sought in-person assistance because they “lacked the confidence to apply on their own.” About a third lacked access to the internet, while some 18 percent needed translation help.
An analysis by Enroll America after the first open enrollment found that African Americans and Latinos were 43 percent more likely to seek help through in-person assistance than white people.
There is no question: If people don’t get the help they need to enroll, if there is any sort of barrier put in front of them, if they don’t have the information they need, they won’t enroll. This is not conjecture. These are facts.
Advertising is key to attracting the healthy people the system needs
And it’s not only that fewer people sign up from underserved communities. Advertising, especially, is crucial to getting healthier and younger people to sign up for health care. And these young and healthy people are crucial for strong and stable exchanges. Because of the decisions made by the Trump administration, there will be fewer healthy people in the markets, and that means premiums will go up.
We should not be surprised by the administration’s actions, appalling as they are. On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order demanding federal agencies to do the maximum allowed under law to dismantle the ACA. Then, ahead of the final week of open enrollment for coverage in 2017 — right after Trump became president — the administration slashed the television budget, which probably meant about 500,000 fewer people ended up signing up for health care. (That cut was separate from the TV cuts this year.)
And then, as mentioned above, the administration cut in half the number of days people have to sign up for coverage, from 90 days to only 45.
The Trump administration’s recent decisions show just how far they are willing to go to undermine a program they hate but can’t find the political support for repealing. If Congress won’t do away with the ACA, Trump officials will do what they can to make it fail themselves, damn the consequences to people’s lives. And never mind that HHS Secretary Tom Price is legally obliged to support the law as it stands.
Price likes to say that Obamacare is in a “death spiral.” The problem is that now it’s in his power to make his wishes come true, by keeping people from getting the health care information they so badly need.
Lori Lodes is the former director of the office of communications for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Find her on Twitter @loril.
The Big Idea is Vox’s home for smart discussion of the most important issues and ideas in politics, science, and culture — typically by outside contributors. If you have an idea for a piece, pitch us at thebigidea@vox.com.For the jet-powered race car, see Wingfoot Express
The Wingfoot Air Express was a dirigible that crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in Chicago on Monday July 21, 1919. The Type FD dirigible, owned by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, was transporting people from Grant Park to the White City amusement park.[1] One crew member, two passengers, and ten bank employees were killed in what was, up to that point, the |
that is the film’s back half. I’m not going to say no to Baby Driver 2/Baby Driver Strikes Again/The Return of Baby Driver, but I also want to see Wright have the freedom to cut loose and make whatever the hell he wants next. He’s earned it, especially now that he’s proven that regular people will go see his movies alongside the devoted fans.
In the meantime, I wonder what this means for Wright’s planned adaptation of Grasshopper Jungle…Image copyright Wired Image caption Father (middle) and son (left) took to the stage at the Wired conference
Prof Gabor Forgacs and his son Andras founded two rather unusual businesses.
While other fathers and sons team up as butchers, builders or solicitors, this pair have decided to use their shared expertise to get to grips with more weighty problems.
Organovo grows human tissue and has its sights set on carving a path towards immortality, while Modern Meadow is trying to solve the world food crisis by growing meat and leather in the lab.
Father and son took to the stage at the recent Wired conference in London to speak about their cutting-edge companies, their own relationship and why they may have to rein in their ambitions.
Image copyright Organovo Image caption The process of bioprinting organs is painstaking and slow
Organovo was set up by Hungarian-born Dr Forgacs, after he made the decision to quit his career as a theoretical physicist and retrain as a biologist - taking classes with undergraduates.
Those classes left him with a pretty lofty ambition - to grow organs that could mimic or even improve on existing ones.
He set about developing a process to print multi-cellular tissues - dubbed bio-printing - in 2005, and two years later founded Organovo with colleagues Keith Murphy and Dr Eric Michael David.
Its ultimate aim is to mass produce organs that could create a future in which humans, like cars, have regular services that keep them living indefinitely.
"If we could replace organs, we could live forever, and then it is up to us whether we want that," he told the audience at the recent Wired conference in London.
He admits there is currently a lot of hype around bio-printing, particularly the idea of "growing" full organs.
"Bio-printing does not result in a viable biological structure. We cannot yet make big structures like livers or hearts," he said.
"If it is possible, it will take a long time, so don't smoke or drink too much."
Image copyright Organovo Image caption The bio-printing process can create a range of tissues
Organovo uses a process in which bio-ink - made up of human tissue - is dispensed from a bio-printer layer by layer to build up tissues.
The process can be tailored to produce tissues in a variety of formats.
It can currently make a range of products, including a vascular graft, liver tissue fragments and cardiac patches.
"If a person had terminal liver disease, what we could do is temporarily keep that person alive until a donor can be found," said Dr Forgacs.
And that is pretty useful in a world where people on transplant waiting lists outnumbers the amount of donor organs by a huge margin.
Dr Alan Faulkner-Jones, from the biomedical microengineering group at Heriot-Watt University, thinks it will take some time before scientists can make organs on demand.
"There is no technology that exists now that is capable of printing an organ," he told the BBC..
"The task of getting enough cells to print would be very expensive and nearly impossible, and keeping those cells happy and not starved of nutrients would be very difficult."
It would require a rethink in the printing process to allow the design of larger structures, he said.
"Another way to do it would be to mimic nature and start off with a small structure and allow it to grow," he said.
This technique has had some success - in 2013 researchers at the Yokohama City University in Japan were able to generate human liver cell buds in mice, and Organovo has also created tiny livers.
Dr Forgacs remains hopeful that, once the obstacles have been overcome, it may be possible to create organs that function better than the ones we were born with.
"Our organs have developed over millions of years, but are they the best? We could create a structure that is even better than your heart, made from your own cells, and then there is a chance we could live forever," he told the Wired 2015 audience.
Like all fathers, he would probably love to offer his son the gift of immortality - but, for now, he is just happy to be working with him.
"I couldn't see the wood for the trees in what I was doing. It is a good thing to have a son who is a businessman," he said.
Son Andras explained to the Wired audience how the pair worked.
"I am the business brain and he is the mad scientist," he said.
Image copyright Organovo Image caption In June, Organovo printed tiny livers and other tissues that could be used to help test drugs
Like his father, he started off in science but soon switched his focus.
"I was geeking out on biology, and I studied pre-med but fell in with the wrong crowd and ended up on Wall Street," he said.
He set up Modern Meadow after a stint abroad.
"I was living in China, and saw that some of the products that we were developing at Organovo could help with supply problems," Mr Forgcas said.
"If you can grow muscle, can you grow meat? And that made me think - what if you could make meat and leather without harming animals or the environment?"
An EU study predicts lab-grown meat will use 99.7% less land, 94% less water and contribute 98.8% less greenhouse gases.
And it is a lucrative market, with the meat industry worth an estimated $1 trillion annually and the leather industry $63bn.
At the Wired conference, Mr Forgacs had samples of a product dubbed steak chips - to share with the audience. Described as "a crunchy form of beef jerky", it seemed to go down OK with those that ate it or at least everyone was too polite to say if they did not like it.
While the Wired guinea-pigs might be a more discerning bunch, the idea of synthetic meat has not gone down so well with the public. A Pew Research survey conducted in 2014 suggested only 20% of Americans would be happy to eat meat grown in a lab.
Delightful products
Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Synthetic burgers had mixed reviews, with some saying they would not eat lab-grown meat
A test-tube burger developed by scientist Mark Post at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and served up to two volunteers a few years ago also received lukewarm reviews.
Ironically, the product might have been just too meaty, according to Dr Faulkner-Jones.
"I understand that they made them from 100% lab-grown meat," he said.
"People are so used to having all the extra stuff that we put in burgers that they don't know what real meat tastes like."
Modern Meadow told the BBC its focus would be on "products that delight".
"A hamburger is ground-up scrap meat - we don't aspire to that," a spokeswoman said.
The Brooklyn-based start-up uses a technique known as tissue engineering - also called bio-fabrication - to create meat products and leather directly from the cells of animals.
Once the cells are taken, they are grown into sheets, which are layered and fused together to form a hide.
The process is not without controversy.
The handful of companies experimenting with lab-grown meat, including Modern Meadow, have used fetal bovine serum (FBS) to harvest the cells.
Given this is taken from the foetuses of slaughtered cows, there have been huge ethical questions about its use.
"In the early stages, FBS was one of the ingredients, but it has been completely phased out. There are moral issues, and you can't use it at scale," said Suzanne Lee, Modern Meadow's chief creative officer.
She said the company was currently concentrating on growing leather rather than meat and was working with several fashion brands.
She declined to give details of the process being used but said it would be several years before they had a finished product.
The Forgacs family may be finding the path to meat-free immortality more difficult than they had hoped - but if they can make a success of Organovo and Modern Meadow, they should be in business for many generations to come.The footballer returned one of the highest scores ever seen by experts who tested the intelligence of the entire Chelsea squad.
The former public schoolboy, 30, is now referred to as The Professor by Stamford Bridge team-mates, according to the Daily Star.
The tests were conducted by Brian English, the Chelsea club doctor, as part of research into how head injuries can affect footballers' neurological development.
"John Terry was in the top three, but Frank Lampard scored one of the highest set of marks ever recorded by the company doing the tests, and higher than me," Dr English said.
He declined to released the England midfielder's precise score, but the newspaper quoted sources claiming it was more than 150 on the IQ scale, putting him in the most intelligent 0.1 per cent of the population.
Vorderman, the former Countdown presenter famed for her mathematical prowess, has an IQ of 154, while the national average is 100.
Lampard was educated at the fee-paying Brentwood School in Essex where he obtained 12 GCSEs – including an A in Latin – before turning professional at his first club West Ham.Wokou engaging in rape and pillage, from 'Tai Ping Kang Wo Tu (《太平抗倭圖》)'.
Refugees trying to escape Wokou, from 'Kang Wo Tu Juan (《抗倭圖卷》)'.
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Wokou (right) engaging in pike fencing with Ming troops (left) atop boats, from 'Wakō-zukan (《倭寇図巻》)'.
Japanese arquebusiers during the Battle of Nagashino, from 'Nagashino kassenzu byōbu (《長篠合戦図屏風》)'.
Minamoto no Tametomo (源為朝), a legendary Japanese archer, said to be able to pull a gonin-bari. From'Honcho buyu kagami (《本朝武優鏡》)' by famous ukiyo-e (浮世絵) painter Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳).
Ukiyo-e painting depicting a tōshiya contest. The contester (lower right) at the southern end of the veranda shoots at a curtain erected at the northern end of the veranda. Note that he must shoot from sitting position and cannot shoot in arc, otherwise the arrow will hit the ceiling before it reaches its target. From 'Uki-e Wakoku Keiseki Kyōto Sanjūsangen-dō no Zu (《浮繪和國景跡京都三拾三軒堂之図》)' by Toyoharu Utagawa (哥川豊春).
A 50 kg (or 110 lbs, Japanese prefer to use kilograms) pull Japanese bow made by none other than master bowmaker Shibata Kanjuro (柴田勘十郎). (Source: 御弓師 柴田勘十郎のブログ)
Three men trying to string a Japanese bow, from 'Obusuma Saburō Emaki (《男衾三郎絵巻》)'.
Demonstration of four-person method of stringing a Japanese bow. (Source: ドイツに暮らす)
What an actual Lang Xian ought to be: a long bamboo with bush so thick that it completely blocks the vision of anyone standing at the wrong end of the weapon. (Source: 黃帝设局)
Many of the enemies of Ming Dynasty are equally as misunderstood as the Chinese themselves. Wokou (倭寇), or Japanese pirates, were a particularly misunderstood bunch.『倡海市以息亂者，全無後慮，且不知致亂之原蓋在於法弛，而非有嚴法以致之。吾恐市一開，而全浙危矣。』— Wan Biao (萬表), protesting the ridiculous notion of opening trade to pacify Wokou, in his book Hai Kou Yi (《海寇議》).Hai Jin was a REACTION to the exacerbating Wokou problem, not the cause of it. Quite the contrary, the lax enforcement of Hai Jin turned China's coasts into a breeding ground for smugglers and pirates. When Zhu Wan (朱紈) stepped in and set things straight, he actually succeeded in curbing the piracy. Unfortunately, Zhu Wan was imprisoned for his effort, and later committed suicide in prison. The abolishment of Hai Jin after his death caused the Wokou problem to drastically turn for the worse.In short, lawlessness breeds crime and more lawlessness, while strict law, as well as effective enforcement of the law, deter it.Even during the period when Hai Jin policy was rigorously enforced, Ming court did not attempt to prevent fishermen from going out to the seanot until Wokou disguised as fishermen started to show up anyway, nor did they ban coastal trade. As such, the livelihoods of poorer coastal inhabitants were little affected by the policy. While many Chinese coastal inhabitants did end up joining the Wokou, they did not actively trying to do so. Instead they were either captured and forced to join at sword point, or deprived of all choices as their livelihoods were caught up in the conflict and destroyed.In other word, what forced the poorer coastal inhabitans into piracy was not Hai Jin, but the turmoils caused by Wokou and Chinese pirates alike.On the other hand, Chinese that collaborated with Wokou were powerful sea traders that accumulated their wealth and influence through illegal means such as smuggling, piracy and slavery (it should be pointed out that they already conspired with Wokou well before Zhu Wan showed up). Consequently, they were most affected by Hai Jin and thus actively sought to undermine it. These outlaws were so powerful and influential that even after their profit plummeted following the Hai Jin, they were still able to conspire with corrupt officials within Ming court to imprison Zhu Wan and forcibly lift the prohibition.『官兵所用皆長牌短刀，而倭寇則以長槍重矢。』— Qi Ji Guang (戚繼光), in his military treatise Lian Bing Shi Ji (《練兵實紀》).While many Wokou were undoubtedly terrifying swordsmen, they, like their counterpart in Japan, relied on spears and bows as their primary weapons. As mass production of matchlock gun in Japan just began to take off, Wokou only had limited access to this advanced firearm.This estimate (courtesy of late Noel Perrin's) is way overblown and disregards just how expensive, labour intensive and time consuming to manufacture even a single gun barrel. Even during the famousin 1575, THIRTY-TWO YEARS after the introduction of matchlock firearm to Japan, the combined force of Oda Nobunaga (織田信長) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康), both fervent adopters of matchlock firearm, could amass no more than three thousand arquebusiers (in fact, it could be as few as one thousand). At best, Japan had more matchlock guns than a single European nation, not entire Europe.(As a side note, Oda Nobunaga did not actually invent the three step volley fire tactic, nor did he use it in Battle of Nagashino. The myth stem from Edo period historical fictions and romances, and should not be taken as fact.)Gunmaking was actually the least of Japan's concern. Japan did not produce saltpetre (a major ingredient of black powder) domestically, and had to rely on Portuguese traders, China (through illicit trade), Siam, India, and Philippines for imports. As high demand drove the price up, they even resorted to slave trading (selling women captured from rival daimyō to the Europeans) in order to cover the expense. Besides, Japan could not produce enough lead to meet the demand of their firearms, so they also had to import lead from Portuguese traders to cast bullets. The enormous cost of both gunpowder and ammunition imposed a severe constraint on Japan's ability to field arquebusier in large numbers, total number of guns produced, as well as the calibre of their guns. It was also one of the factors that prevented Japanese from adopting heavy artillery on a large scale.In fact, Japan actually produced much less matchlock guns than Ming China, which had a, much larger manufacturing base, procured all raw materials domestically, and produced the same gun many times cheaper.『弓長七八尺，矢長四五尺，鏃之鐵者如飛尾，鏃之竹者如長槍；城外隔河而射，中城內屋，釘瓦入椽，而沒鏃矢。』— Cai Jiu De (採九德), in his book Wo Bian Shi Lue (《倭變事略》).『大端倭、虜矢皆重，弓皆勁，發皆不遠，不輕發，發必中人，中者必斃，故人畏之。』— Qi Ji Guang (戚繼光), in second edition Ji Xiao Xin Shu (《紀效新書》).A warbow can be made as strong as it needs to be, limited only by the strength and training of its wielder. Given similar draw weight, a Japanese bow will outperform a yew bow handily due to its laminated construction, recurve design and significantly longer draw length (which can be as long as!).It is evidently clear that Japanese bow, with its large size and heavy limbs, is optimised towards launching heavy, armour piercing arrows with devastating power, but with slower arrow speed and relatively short range. True to this regard, Japanese arrows are some of the longest and heaviest in the world. These heavy arrows in turn require bows of very high draw weight in order to achieve optimum performance.Nevertheless, one should be reminded that Japanese bow is only considered short ranged in relative to range-optimised bows of neighbouring cultures such as Korean bow. It can still propel an arrow to a range of, as was done in historicalarchery contest (modern version of the contest halves the range). With proper flight arrow, Japanese bow had been demonstrated to be able to shoot as far as(which is impressive for such a large bow, but still no match for the likes of Turkish bow). Such extreme range was never considered practical on the battlefield, however.Contrary to popular misconception, Japanese warbow was primarily used as foot bow like its European counterpart. Japanese were never good horsemen to begin with, while early samurai were horse archers, they only comprised a relatively tiny portion of their army. After the, even samurai abandoned horse archery in favour of foot archery and close combat.Thus, compared to English longbowmen that consisted of mostly peasants, yeomen and some noble's household retainers, samurai foot archers had access to equipment of higher quality, livelong rigorous training in archery, frequent recreational bowhunting to hone their skill, and most probably better nutrition and standard of living. Since samurai had to prepare their own equipment, it stands to no reason that samurai archers were unable to, or intentionally chose to not, use the best warbows with the highest practical draw weight they could afford.Ming period Chinese records frequently mention the terrifying power of Japanese bows and arrows, having experienced its effectiveness first-hand through the Wokou. Japanese sources in turn mention exceptionally powerful warbows such as(三人張り),(四人張り) and(五人張り), bows that require three, four and five person just to string it, respectively (note that due to the massive size and asymmetrical shape of Japanese bow, its stringing method is different from most other bows). Modern estimates put the draw weight of sannin-bari in the range between 80 pounds and 140 pounds.As a side note, proper name for Japanese bow is(わきゅう or 和弓, Japanese bow).(ゆみ or 弓) just means bow in general.『夫狼筅旁枝一十有三層，可以禦矢、可以禦馬、可以禦滾刀、可以禦長槍，器之至善者也；但笨重不能殺人，是其所短。』— Wu Shu (吴殳), in his martial arts treatise Shou Bi Lu (《手臂錄》).The successful employment of Lang Xian in Qi Ji Guang's famoushas led many to believe that Qi Ji Guang invented/improvised the weapon for poorly-trained militiamen in order to counter the deadly Japanese sword (also see Myth 3 above). This cannot be further from the truth, as Lang Xian was already in use for almost a century before Wokou became a serious threat. Moreover, despite its unassuming appearance, Lang Xian is not an improvised weapon, but a purpose-made one.While Lang Xian is certainly an effective counter to Japanese sword, it wasn't specifically designed for this role. In fact, it is effective against pretty much every cold weapon by virtue of being a defensive weapon.Show full PR text
Global Reach Technology Selects Ruckus to Bring Smarter, High Capacity Wi-Fi to Users on Land and Water within the UK
Smart Wi-Fi Enables High-Speed Wi-Fi Access for Millions of Passengers Along 27 Miles of the Thames River and Reliable Public Wi-Fi Access in Leeds and Bradford
LONDON, ENGLAND (UK) and SUNNYVALE, CA - January 28, 2013 - Ruckus Wireless, Inc. (NYSE: RKUS) today announced that Global Reach Technology Ltd., an innovative supplier of Wi-Fi, cloud- and IP-based policy management services, has selected its ZoneFlex™ Smart Wi-Fi system for a number of high profile Wi-Fi projects in the UK that address the explosive demand for reliable, high-speed data access in densely trafficked areas around the city.
Global Reach has deployed carrier-grade Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi indoor and outdoor ZoneFlex products for its public hotspot infrastructure along 44km (27 miles) of the River Thames and onboard Thames Clippers London River Ferries to support more than 30 million people accessing the river each year. In addition to providing public Wi-Fi access through its own Thames Wi-Fi hot zone branded service, planned for Q1 2013, Global Reach is leveraging its high capacity infrastructure to offer wholesale and international roaming services across the 27 miles of river coverage.
British Telecommunications plc (BT) gives public Wi-Fi access free of charge to all its BT Broadband subscribers via the white-labeled Global Reach service to the Thames River network, while the Transport for London (TFL) authority is using the Wi-Fi infrastructure for private services such as real-time location-based information, tracking boats, network monitoring, timetables, CCTV surveillance and other services.
In addition, Global Reach has selected Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi as the standard underlying technology for the City Wi-Fi services it provides for Virgin Media Business in both Leeds and Bradford.
Carrier-Grade Wi-Fi Solutions with a difference
Global Reach has established a unique position in the market, offering a total managed infrastructure solution coupled with a complete portfolio of value-added network services such as key data on network monitoring, management information systems and customer usage behavior; architecture planning; security; content portal capabilities and gateway functions, and sophisticated policy management.
For mobile network operators and service providers, Global Reach provides bespoke wireless infrastructure and services. Additionally, its policy engine provides seamless and secure 3/4G off load to manage customer's traffic and eCRM, including content filtering, lawful intercept, bandwidth shaping, port and website blocking. Intuitive dashboards allow operators to manage their infrastructure as well as the end user customer experience with complete visibility and precision.
"To effectively deal with the demands and capacity required to deliver service on this scale, we needed a carrier-grade Wi-Fi network in which our customers could have complete confidence," said Nigel Wesley, Chief Executive Officer for Global Reach Technology. "At the end of the day, customers don't really care about how the infrastructure works - they simply want a fast, reliable and affordable Wi-Fi experience that's easy to access and use. That's precisely what we're delivering with Ruckus."
Wesley noted that while providing a reliable Wi-Fi experience in the UK is no easy task, operators are looking for value beyond vanilla connectivity. "Global Reach has developed a different model that not only delivers a carrier-grade Wi-Fi infrastructure at a much lower cost, we are also reducing the time to market for service providers and enterprise customers, allowing them to focus on monetization and bringing value to the subscriber experience."
Smarter Wi-Fi on the Water
Global Reach's Smart Wi-Fi network is one of the world's largest outdoor mesh deployments along a key transport artery weaving through the UK's capital. Four million people travel on the Thames Clippers river ferries every year, with millions more living and working along the riverbank, offices, hotels, cafes and tourist locations.
Global Reach has used new Ruckus ZoneFlex 7782-N, carrier-class 2.4/5 GHz 802.11n outdoor access points (APs) to deploy at main piers crisscrossing the Thames River. 24 Thames Clippers London river ferries are being equipped with ZoneFlex 7363 802.11n indoor dual-band Smart Wi-Fi access points, along with 3G backhaul and ZoneDirector controllers at the Global Reach network operation centers, to provide centralized administration and remote management.
"While we are fundamentally hardware agnostic, we are building carrier-quality Wi-Fi networks that mandate carrier-quality equipment," said Chris Spencer, Chief Technology Officer for Global Reach.
"With its adaptive antenna structure and high-capacity designs, Ruckus has clearly differentiated itself by delivering among the most reliable systems on the market that are distinctly designed for carriers. With the kit we've seen a significant increase in the signal strength as well as the number of concurrent users and sessions we are able to support at any one given time."
City Wi-Fi in Leeds and Bradford for Virgin Media Business
In Leeds and Bradford, Ruckus ZoneFlex 7762 outdoor dual-band 802.11n APs are being deployed on street furniture by Global Reach to provide a completely free City Wi-Fi service that is open to everyone. Global Reach manages and operates the network for Virgin Media Business, building on a partnership that was originally formed for the rollout of the acclaimed London Underground Wi-Fi service.
"There is a massive wireless land grab taking place all over the UK," concludes Wesley. "The super-connected city initiative means a great deal for places like Leeds and Bradford as they focus on growth and regeneration for local businesses, visitors and residents. The Wi-Fi networks we are building are great examples of projects that are making the vision of super-connected cities a reality and enabling future prosperity and innovation."This didn't just happen over night. It didn't even happen during the shameless campaign. It began afterwards, with the Fox TV interview that Bristol Palin gave with her baby, as Sarah Palin hovered behind. It grew when the unwed mother claimed to be a spokesperson for abstinence. (A message her son will no doubt love to hear one day). But even that wasn't perverse enough to provoke a reaction.
No, it was finally when visiting a friend's home the other day that I gaped, unbelieving, at a recent copy of People magazine with Bristol Palin on the cover, in a fire engine red graduation cap-and-gown, so you couldn't possibly miss her - holding her baby in her arms.
At long last, I was disgustipated.
Yes, I know that's not a real word. But an expression from Popeye cartoons is more appropriate than anything I can possibly think of.
I don't care what Bristol Palin has to say. I wish her an exceedingly happy life, but it's her life. Beyond that, she's a teenage girl whose entire claim to fame is that her mother is a failed vice-presidential candidate, and she got knocked up in high school. When Bristol Palin asked America to accept her as a spokesperson for abstinence, can you name one other thing you ever heard her say - let alone say that would make you think she was qualified to be the spokesperson for anything?
Is this unfair and mean of me? No. She and her mother have shoved themselves in our national face. They have said, "Here we are world! Bristol wants to be a role model. Listen to her. Look at her. It's Bristol!!"
Sarah and Bristol Palin have chosen to pummel America by lecturing on abstinence. Except for that part about how cool it is to be a high school graduate with your baby.
If someone is shoved in your face, you react. Just like if you got smashed in the head with a baseball bat. The difference is there the perpetrator would be arrested after the first attack. This just won't stop.
But that isn't what has me disgustipated.
Just imagine if this had happened to a Democrat. Can you even comprehend the mountain of non-stop venom that would have spewed forth against that candidate - and also against the libertine, pregnant, teenage daughter? Rush Limbaugh would have ranted about little else. Glenn Beck would have been in tears over what this said about his America. Sean Hannity would questioned how a candidate so unfit to lead his own family could think about leading the nation. Ann Coulter would have screeched how this proves what is wrong with all permissive liberals. Newt Gingrich would have made his "Americans are surrounded by paganism" speech months earlier than he did.
It would all have been malarkey, but you know they would have all done it.
But Sarah Palin, the flaming hypocrite who preached against this very sort of thing like a demagogue zealot, she got a pass from them all.
But that's not what disgustipated me either.
What finally disgustipated me is that throughout the campaign, Sarah Palin whined regularly that her family was off-limits (which they should have been) - yet used them as circus props more than Barnum and Bailey. At every appearance, her new baby was hanging on her shoulder like it was an epaulet. To promote being a hockey "mom," she dragged her youngest daughter to center ice. She hauled the pregnant Bristol with her all over, even making sure that the fake-fiancé was there for every disingenuous photo op. (If ever there was a new meaning for the term "forced labor," this was it.) The only people surprised when the couple broke off their faux-engagement were those who thought Sarah Palin was actually a foreign policy expert because she could see Russia from the beach.
And then, after declaring her family off-limits (which they should be), there was Sarah Palin skulking behind her daughter during her Fox TV interview. There was Bristol Palin wanting to be a spokesperson. And here is Bristol Palin now posing for the cover of People magazine in red cap-and-gown-and-baby. A photo carefully planned and executed, because Sarah Palin was happy to again use her family as campaign billboard.
The pathetic irony, of course, is that an unwed pregnant daughter is everything Sarah Palin rails against. Only last week she told an audience, "I'm concerned about my kids' future." It's their past, though, that's the problem here. If you're really concerned about their future, you don't keep sticking them in front of TV cameras and national magazines for public scrutiny to serve your selfish political needs. Because that scrutiny can only lead to ridicule.
Spokesperson for abstinence? Bristol Palin has made herself the poster child for getting famous by getting pregnant. She couldn't have provided teenage girls a better roadmap to "how to become a star" if she was cover girl for the Auto Club.
Is all this unfair and mean of me? If Bristol Palin wants to be a role model, like all parents she should raise her child in private grace and loving dignity, for - I can only assume - the child's sake. That would be a role model to admire. But if she, as an adult, chooses to stick herself and her child in the public spotlight and professes to be a spokesperson for anything, she is fair to be looked at, just as she wishes.WEST MIFFLIN, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry outlined plans on Friday to dramatically increase energy production and create 1.2 million jobs, taking aim at federal regulations he said are strangling the economy.
Republican presidential candidate Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) takes the stage to address the Family Research Council's Values Voters Summit in Washington October 7, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Perry’s announcement at a U.S. Steel plant in a suburb near Pittsburgh came as the Texas governor seeks to shore up his campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination after a series of shaky debate performances and distractions knocked him out of the front-runner position.
Perry said if elected in November 2012 he would sign a series of executive orders in the first 100 days of his administration to roll back federal regulations and open up more areas for oil and gas exploration.
“We are standing atop the next American economic boom — energy,” Perry said. “The quickest way to give our economy a shot in the arm is to deploy American ingenuity to tap American energy. But we can only do that if environmental bureaucrats are told to stand down.”
Perry would repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority over greenhouse gases blamed for global warming and eliminate all current and planned EPA programs to restrict carbon dioxide emissions. Many Republicans in Congress would support that but it would be hard to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2007 the EPA has the authority to regulate those gases.
Perry sprinkled his remarks with a harsh denunciation of Democratic President Barack Obama, who he said is responsible for “activist regulations” that have made it more difficult to extract energy resources. Obama has favored green technologies that are not producing as many jobs as promised, he said.
“His energy policies are driven by the concerns of activists in his party, my policies are driven by the concerns of American workers without jobs,” Perry said.
The Obama re-election campaign reacted quickly.
“Governor Perry’s energy policy isn’t the way to win the future, it’s straight out of the past - doubling down on finite resources with no plan to promote innovation or to transition the nation to a clean energy economy,” said campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.
It was the first of two speeches Perry is delivering to outline proposals to bring down the 9.1 percent U.S. unemployment rate, the main issue in the 2012 campaign. His second speech, expected around October 25, is to focus on tax reform, reducing the U.S. debt burden and reforming entitlement programs.
Perry has fallen behind former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and businessman Herman Cain in polls of Republican voters.
However, he has strong backing from many conservatives and raised $17 million in the third quarter of this year, more than Romney’s $14 million. This will ensure a well-funded campaign to wage battles in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
ALASKA, KEYSTONE
Perry would open up several American oil and gas fields for exploration that are currently off limits, including parts of the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska and the mid-Atlantic.
Obama has announced plans to expand oil output in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. But so far the most progress he has made in the problem of U.S. foreign oil dependency has been in issuing tougher standards on vehicle fuel efficiency.
Perry said he would open for energy production Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, long a battleground between environmentalists and energy companies, and said doing so could create 120,000 jobs.
He also promised to start off-shore exploration in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off the northern and western coasts of Alaska, saying it would create 55,000 jobs.
Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to carry Canadian crude to coastal refineries, would create 20,000 American jobs, Perry said. The pipeline is caught up in U.S. red tape and opposed by many on various environmental grounds. The U.S. State Department has said the pipeline would add only about 7,000 jobs.
Perry pledged to tap the full potential of the Marcellus Shale natural gas field in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. He would open up federal and private lands for exploration in states like Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Colorado and Utah.Alamy
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ONE of the biggest paradoxes in human biology is that as societies grow richer, people have fewer children. In most species, such an increase in available resources leads in the opposite reproductive direction. What makes the demographic transition, as this phenomenon is known, even more paradoxical is that in less developed times and places, the rich do not have smaller families than the poor.
Most explanations of the demographic transition are social. One school of thought emphasises reduced child mortality, suggesting this means that fewer “spares” need be generated to be sure that some children reach adulthood. Another points out that elderly people in rich countries do not depend on their children to look after them. A third suggests that as people are presented with more choices about how to spend their resources, they more often choose to consume things and experiences other than the joys and tribulations of parenthood. A fourth, somewhat more biological, posits that lavishing time and money on a few children, rather than spreading it around amongst many, produces adults who do better in the next-generation reproductive stakes. None of these ideas, though, is really satisfactory.
Now yet another explanation has been added to the pot. This is that the mixing-up of people caused by the urbanisation which normally accompanies development is, itself, partly responsible. That is because it breaks up optimal mating patterns. The demographic transition is thus, in part, a pure accident.
Love thy neighbour?
This suggestion is the corollary of a paper published in this week's Science by Agnar Helgason and his colleagues at deCODE Genetics, a firm based in Reykjavik. DeCODE's business depends on a unique resource—the entire population of Iceland, living and dead. The country's records since its founding by a few, intrepid Vikings are so good that the antecedents of today's inhabitants (apart from a handful of recent immigrants) are known with precision. On top of this, its medical records are also good, and most Icelanders have willingly given genetic samples to an endeavour which is seen to be beneficial to the country's economy as whole.
DeCODE hopes to translate this knowledge into money by understanding the genetic underpinning of diseases and hence developing diagnostic tools and drugs. On the way, however, it is generating a lot of additional scientific knowledge—of which this study is one example.
The study's principal finding is that the most fecund marriages are between distant cousins. Using Iceland's genealogical records, which allow the degree of |
to this company’s threats.”Did you know Ireland has the highest concentration of men with the R1b DNA marker? No fewer than 84 per cent of all Irish men carry this on their Y chromosome.
While this marker is also high on male Y chromosomes in parts of Britain, particularly Wales, according to commercial ancestry testing company IrelandsDNA, the high prevalence here may indicate the arrival of a lot of people at a broadly similar time who weren’t prepared to peacefully co exist with the settlers here.
“The high prevalence rates have always perplexed Irish geneticists and historians,” says Alastair Moffat of IrelandsDNA. The firm’s research proposes a new hypothesis. There is already established evidence suggesting that the first farmers, (carrying the Y chromosome lineage of ‘G’, which can be found across Europe) arrived in Kerry about 4,350BC.
According to IrelandsDNA, the so called ‘G-Men’ may have established farming in Ireland “but their successful culture was almost obliterated by what amounted to an invasion, even a genocide, some time around 2,500BC” (the frequency of G in Ireland is now only 1.5 per cent). “There’s a cemetery in Treille [France], where ancient DNA testing has been carried out and almost all men carry the ‘G’ marker but the women don’t,” says Moffat. They carry native/indigenous markers. This strongly suggests incoming groups of men. Because the R1b marker is still so prevalent in Ireland and is also frequently found in places like France and northern Spain we believed that around 2,500 BC, the R1b marker arrived in Ireland from the south.”
Moffat admits it is just a hypothesis but cites connections which lead to this theory. “The first signs of farming in Ireland were found on the Dingle peninsula in Kerry, which suggests people coming from the south,” he says. “If you look at Lebor Gabála Érenn or The Book of the Taking of Ireland [a Middle Irish collection recounting mythical origins of life in Ireland dating from the 11th century] most of the invasions come from the south.”
The southern migrants referred to by Moffat were the Beaker people, originating from Iberia. It has also been suggested that it was they who may have brought Celtic languages up the Atlantic coast.
Moffat cites archaeological evidence, from the Copper Age, to suggest this movement. “Evidence for the beginning of the Copper Age in Ireland is also found in the south, particularly Ross Island in Killarney, where a tremendous complex system of prehistoric mines exists. It’s clear that the copper was exported.
“How did these new people impose themselves in such a big way,” he asks. “It has to have been through conflict. The early people were farmers so they invested generations of effort in improving the land. When these new people show up they must have used violence to shift the ‘G-Men’. The frequency of ‘G-Men’ is tiny in Ireland. Compare the statistics: 1 per cent versus 84 percent.”
Not everyone is convinced, however. “What they [IrelandsDNA] are suggesting is based on a very strong interpretation of a small piece of a genetic pattern,” says Prof Dan Bradley from the Smurfit Institute of Genetics. “There’s no real scientific evidence to warrant the use of terms like ‘genocide’. You can’t link modern genetic variation securely through archaeological strata without ancient DNA testing also. You can certainly have conjecture and there are indeed ways of looking at the time and depth of these things. But they have very wide margins for error. The reality is I don’t think we can securely place any of these DNA marker patterns in time without ancient DNA testing.”
Ancient DNA testing has been ongoing in Ireland for the last two years by Bradley in Trinity and Prof Ron Pinhasi in the UCD School of Archaeology, who is involved with a large project of ancient DNA testing throughout Europe.
“I don’t know of any time in history where a culture came in and completely wiped out another,” says Pinhasi. “You don’t see total wipeouts, unless there is reason for a population to become extinct, like massive climate change. But we have no reason to believe Bronze Age farmers became extinct this way.
“Sure there were a lot of population movements and mixing going on at this time. That’s why modern people don’t look like neolithic people, genetically speaking, but it would have had minimal impact on the gene pool” he says. “You’re not going to have hundreds of thousands of people suddenly coming from Spain but you would definitely have had smaller groups coming in boats. Plus there’s no archeological proof of any massive warfare or battles here at that time.”
The mapping out of ancient genetics of populations from 45,000BC to the Bronze Age, now under way, may very possibly reveal many misconceptions about our past.The Oroville Dam is a good example of having to get out and get out in a hurry. It is also an example of how prepping should be more than just stockpiling.
On Reddit, there is a thread asking, “I’m near the Oroville dam….. What do I need to get right now?” A lot of preppers are so focused on stockpiling beans, bullets, and band-aids, they do not have evacuation plans.
Bug Out Bag
Keep a bag ready with stuff like clothing, copies of titles, deeds, insurance papers, phone numbers, maps, birth certificates, freeze dried meals, bottles of water… etc.
Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, my employer was coordinating relief efforts for families who had evacuated to a rural community in Southeast Texas. The people arriving to the community had been put on a bus and shipped out of New Orleans with no idea where they were going.
A good number of families only had the clothes on their backs. Others may have had a suitcase, but no important paperwork. A lot of the families who evacuated for Katrina did not have documents for their children to enroll in the local school. However, the schools made an exception to the required paperwork.
Worse case situation, the people below the Oroville Dam may be away from home for awhile. When evacuating it is important to bring spare clothes, medicine, pets, and paperwork.
Have a Place to Go
One of the big issues with a natural disaster is having a place to go. Hotels and motels will be full. Roads will be jammed and gas will be sold out.
Rather than driving and hoping to find a place to stay, have a friend or family member out of the affected zone. When Southeast Texas evacuated for Hurricane Rita, a buddy of mine ended up 400 miles away in a hotel.
In a lot of cases, people stay in hotels until their credit cards are maxed out, then they have no other option but to look for a community shelter. Maybe a church, school, somewhere the family can stay and get a hot meal.
Heed the Warnings
If the authorities say to get out, get your stuff and leave.
When Hurricane Ike made landfall in Galveston Texas, a lot of people did not heed the evacuation warnings. Communities of beach front homes along the Gulf Coast were leveled. The people who decided to stay paid the ultimate price.
There is nothing worth your life. When the flood waters get high enough that you realize you made a mistake, emergency crews will not be able to help you.
Oroville Dam
As of February 13, 2017 the Oroville Dam situation is still developing. The water level of the lake is supposed to be receding but more rain is expected.
Regardless of what happens, use the Oroville Dam situation to review your personal emergency plans.Ells228 3rd Party Developer
Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: London, UK Posts: 7,357
February 2016 Update (Hawk)
I know we're only a little way into February but I've read a lot of negative comments on forums and Facebook that we're not working on Hawk anymore, the project is abandoned, blah blah blah.
Obviously people either don't read the updates we post on our Facebook page and forums, or they just want to stir shiz up and be negative.
I do however, understand peoples frustrations and the delays we have had over the past year are no concern to you, but if we can't get a product working for technical reasons then there's not much we can do but bug hunt and fix it, sometimes this is not an overnight process, especially with two new versions of DCS being released which also seemed to brake a few things along the way. Such is development.
Let me clarify; you are purchasing or have purchased an early access product during Beta development stage. Some features may not be complete and features may change during development and in the final version. If you are not excited to fly this product in its current state, then you should wait to see how the product progresses further in development and purchase when it is released in it’s final version or accept that is it in Beta development and work in progress.
So, here is the list of what we are working on in February, and have been for the past 8 days of the month and before that:
Feedback from the Hawk pilots is being updated on our current EFM flight model. It has been thoroughly tested and verified to be authentic and realistic to flying a Hawk.
With the change to EFM comes additional features like differential toe brakes, parking brake and much more. We hope you enjoy flying it as much as we have testing it over the past few months.
By the end of this month the EFM will be released to ED for testing and verification and we will discuss with ED when the next patch for 1.5 and 2.0 can be put out with the update.
The main cockpit textures are now implemented in the model. Our texture artist has done an excellent job making the cockpit look more realistic.
Screenshots do not do his work justice as much as rolling around with the sun reflecting off of every surface showing the level of detail.
He is carrying on with the remainder of the cockpit like switches, dials, gauges, etc.
What is shown below are current WIP screenshots. I'm sure most will like them and some will not...
Here is the remaining list of fixes and issues being worked on during February:
Weapons selector not working since 1.5.2 update.
Air start option - start with weapons system live including sidewinder cooling down time.
Sidewinder tone added.
Radio UHF and AM coms working (ground crew currently works ok).
When part of an aircraft wing is destroyed, the weps and lights still show (this will be done as part of EFM/ASM integration).
Airbrake test switch not working.
Realistic sounds to be added to external and cockpit.
Kneeboard joystick assignments not working for mark map and next/prev pages.
Det cord showing inside of canopy when looking back.
Controls indicator (Ctrl+Enter) working.
Auto start/stop commands working.
Altimeters 10,000 number rolling over too soon indicating 1950ft when it's 950ft.
Custom weapons added.
Damage model showing on some AI / multiplayer aircraft when air-brake deployed.
Add AHRS to start-up training mission.
Add remaining navigation training missions.
Safety pins removed from the model.
Other bugs reported by testers and public.
So, as you can see Hawk has not been abandoned and is very much on our focus.
Should anyone wish to challenge this then feel free to discuss it with me personally!!!
Thanks,
Chris. Hey guys,I know we're only a little way into February but I've read a lot of negative comments on forums and Facebook that we're not working on Hawk anymore, the project is abandoned, blah blah blah.Obviously people either don't read the updates we post on our Facebook page and forums, or they just want to stir shiz up and be negative.I do however, understand peoples frustrations and the delays we have had over the past year are no concern to you, but if we can't get a product working for technical reasons then there's not much we can do but bug hunt and fix it, sometimes this is not an overnight process, especially with two new versions of DCS being released which also seemed to brake a few things along the way. Such is development.Let me clarify; you are purchasing or have purchased an early access product during Beta development stage. Some features may not be complete and features may change during development and in the final version. If you are not excited to fly this product in its current state, then you should wait to see how the product progresses further in development and purchase when it is released in it’s final version or accept that is it in Beta development and work in progress.So, here is the list of what we are working on in February, and have been for the past 8 days of the month and before that:Feedback from the Hawk pilots is being updated on our currentflight model. It has been thoroughly tested and verified to be authentic and realistic to flying a Hawk.With the change to EFM comes additional features like differential toe brakes, parking brake and much more. We hope you enjoy flying it as much as we have testing it over the past few months.By the end of this month the EFM will be released to ED for testing and verification and we will discuss with ED when the next patch for 1.5 and 2.0 can be put out with the update.The mainare now implemented in the model. Our texture artist has done an excellent job making the cockpit look more realistic.Screenshots do not do his work justice as much as rolling around with the sun reflecting off of every surface showing the level of detail.He is carrying on with the remainder of the cockpit like switches, dials, gauges, etc.What is shown below are current WIP screenshots. I'm sure most will like them and some will not...Here is the remaining list of fixes and issues being worked on during February:Weapons selector not working since 1.5.2 update.Air start option - start with weapons system live including sidewinder cooling down time.Sidewinder tone added.Radio UHF and AM coms working (ground crew currently works ok).When part of an aircraft wing is destroyed, the weps and lights still show (this will be done as part of EFM/ASM integration).Airbrake test switch not working.Realistic sounds to be added to external and cockpit.Kneeboard joystick assignments not working for mark map and next/prev pages.Det cord showing inside of canopy when looking back.Controls indicator (Ctrl+Enter) working.Auto start/stop commands working.Altimeters 10,000 number rolling over too soon indicating 1950ft when it's 950ft.Custom weapons added.Damage model showing on some AI / multiplayer aircraft when air-brake deployed.Add AHRS to start-up training mission.Add remaining navigation training missions.Safety pins removed from the model.Other bugs reported by testers and public.So, as you can see Hawk has not been abandoned and is very much on our focus.Should anyone wish to challenge this then feel free to discuss it with me personally!!!Thanks,Chris.Service labour market: The engine of growth and inequality
Alexandra L. Cermeño
Economic historians tend to explain US geographical development gaps in terms of industrialisation. But by the end of the 20th century, the richest counties had become specialised in services, rather than in manufacturing. This column evaluates how the service economy triggered this evident contrast between the urban and rural US. Market size causes localisation of non-agricultural activity, with the effect being stronger for services, especially knowledge services. Local policymakers can thus foster growth by attracting high-skilled workers to a region, with the multiplier effect eventually increasing the local market.
A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large – Henry Ford.
In the early decades of the 20th century, the frontrunners of American capitalism already envisioned the potential of the service economy. Yet, economic historians tend to explain development gaps in terms of industrialisation. Evidence from US Housing and Population Censuses challenges this classical view by revealing that the richest counties have become specialised in services rather than in manufacturing. Considering the service economy in the debate of spatial localisation suggests that market size is crucial not only for services, but for any non-agricultural activity (Desmet and Fafchamps 2005). In this column, I evaluate how the service economy triggered the evident contrast between the urban service economy and the rural US in the last century.
Specialisation, growth and inequality
The economic leadership held by the US during the 20th century increased average living standards at the cost of rising inequality across counties. US Census estimations show that average yearly wages range from $26,559 in Hancock (Georgia) to $109,405 in New York in 2010. The most prosperous hotspots are located in highly urbanised areas like New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Florida and California, where incomes have progressively grown with population.
Figure 1. Mean income level distribution by county
Source: Own calculations from American Community Survey 2010 (five-year estimations).
The relocation of production and people away from traditional manufacturing regions to these counties has been paired with a structural change in favour of services. According to the ILO and the Historical Statistics of the United States (2006), the US (along with other developed economies) has progressively specialised in services, increasing its share of service labour from 30 to 80% since 1890, but this trend has not been generalised across counties. The spatial match of economic activity and service employment in these hotspots suggests that the tertiary sector has not only become the motor of the US economy, but also the cause of the decay of formerly successful manufacturing regions.
Inequality within the service economy
The tertiary sector includes diverse professions such as trucking, nursing or marketing. These can be classified as:
Local services: – distributional and personal non-tradable services provided to individual consumers at the same time and place of production; and
Tradable market business services – knowledge intensive activities whose demand comes from businesses (Ciarli et al 2012).
Today, around 70% of the US labour force is devoted to local service production. Essential as they are, these services are nothing but a consequence of prosperity, while the engine of growth lies within the tradable service sector. In a recent study, Moretti (2010) estimates that an extra skilled service job generates five new positions in the local market. Part of this multiplier effect can be explained through their skill premium, which intensifies the demand of local services required by these high-salaried workers. Market size benefits local entrepreneurs in many other ways: cost and time reduction of spreading know-how, a bigger and cheaper labour market, lower prices from providers, and a larger local demand originally shaped by the multiplier effect. These forces explain the drain of workers from small and middle-size cities to highly urbanised areas.
Figure 2. Long-term locational Gini coefficients by industries across counties
Source: own calculations from US Census decennial records.
Figure 2 shows that the tertiary sector has been geographically spread during the 20th century, while manufacturing and agriculture have been more prone to agglomeration as argued by mainstream literature (Kim 1995, Krugman 1991). The study of smaller geographical units and finer industrial scales reveals this pattern is only true until the 1980s, when skilled service employees start to agglomerate more than manufacturing. The effect may seem modest because knowledge-service clusters are spread across the big cities; these are distributed across the nation and the multiplier effect mitigates agglomeration of knowledge intensive services with aggregate services, but the contrast between metropolis and rural areas is high and snowballing. As Moretti puts it, “[m]ore than traditional industries, the knowledge economy has an inherent tendency toward geographical agglomeration” (2010).
The dual economy, revisited
“We are used to thinking of the United States in dichotomous terms: red versus blue, black versus white, haves versus have-nots”, Moretti (2010) states. In this sense, the sectorial distribution of employment across the US geography illustrates the contrast and evolution between the few megalopolises that drive the total economy, and that of the rural US. Hoover’s indexes measure how disproportional the allocation of employees is in reference to the nation's distribution.
Figure 3. County Hoover’s index of primary sector employees, 1930 and 1980
Source: Own calculations from US Census records.
Figure 3 shows that most counties have a ratio of employment to agriculture higher than that of the nation. In other words, this sizeable red area represents a relatively big share of employees devoted to agriculture in low populated counties, where the land-labour relation is very high because land is abundant. Moreover, wherever the relative share of agriculture was above the national average in 1930, this specialisation was exacerbated by 1980.
Figure 4. County Hoover’s index of knowledge-intensive service employees, 1930 and 1980
Source: Own calculations from US Census records.
On the other hand, the share of high-skilled jobs seems an improbable event across the US geography according to Figure 4, where most of the counties perform below the national average. Only a few county-clusters close to big cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco exceed the national proportion and produce enough services to cover the national needs, and even trade. Counties with a high share of skilled service employment attracted many more skilled jobs by 1980 as well.
Conveniently, the localisation of agricultural employees seems to overlap with the negative imbalance of high-skilled service jobs. Most red-shaded regions in Figure 3 are blue or white in Figure 4 because the localisation of skilled service workers is related to the presence of big local markets, which can only happen when the land-labour ratio is very low (in crowded areas). The local nature of the service economy as opposed to agriculture explains why its agglomeration has been missed by analysis of bigger geographical scales.
In other words, big cities are specialising in knowledge-intensive service sectors – becoming larger and attracting skilled and unskilled workers from smaller cities. As a result, workers from small cities are abandoning their hometowns in fear of becoming part of the rural US. County inequality is increasing, although big metropolitan areas in the upper-tail of the distribution are becoming more equal among themselves (Desmet and Fafchamps 2005).
The results of this thorough investigation show market size as a cause of localisation of any non-agricultural activity. The market effect is greater for services than for manufacturing, and it doubles for knowledge services. Meanwhile, natural endowments are most significant for agricultural production and seem to prevent the creation of big markets. This way, urban areas devoted to knowledge-based services enter a virtuous circle of growth, to the detriment of small cities and natural resource-endowed regions, which lack the effect of agglomeration economies. “In this context, initial advantages matter, and the future depends heavily on the past,” Moretti explains, “the success of a city fosters more success (…). Communities that fail to attract skilled workers lose further ground.” In other words, preconditions determine the localisation of industries, although American history has shown that economic policy can change the destiny of economies.
Policy responses to local economic decline
Industrial cities in the 1950s, like Detroit, Cleveland, and Akron, experienced an urban decay that led to the long-term slowdown of their economy. In contrast, cities like New York and San Francisco, whose markets were flooded with skilled labour, have remained prosperous and stayed at the head of the rankings of urbanisation. Big capitals offer spillovers and greater market potential, increasing the prospects of growth.
Past examples can bring hope of economic recovery to depressed areas. The state of Idaho – also known as ‘the Potato State’ – was one of the most important providers of agricultural crops of the country in the early decades of the 20th century; however average income was low and urban areas small. In the 1950s, profiting from the vast amount of unused land, the government built the National Reactor Testing Station in the nearby desert. This research centre became an international reference calling researchers to move to Idaho Falls. Average salaries rose with local demand and population. Without the government call for skilled workers to the area, Idaho Falls would have never become this prosperous.
Concluding remarks
In conclusion, knowledge services hold a self-sustaining value for the economy. Local policymakers can foster growth by attracting high-skilled workers to a region; the multiplier effect will eventually increase the local market. Nevertheless, urban prosperity creates inequality not only between urban clusters and less populated areas but also within cities. National policies could reduce the differential by reinforcing the labour market for the low skilled.
References
Broadberry, S (1998), “How did the United States and Germany overtake Britain? A sectoral analysis of comparative productivity levels, 1870-1990”, The Journal of Economic History, 58(2): 375–407.
Carter, S and R Sutch (2006), Historical statistics of the United States (Millennial Edition), Vol 2, Work and Welfare, Cambridge University Press.
Crafts, N and A Klein (2012), “Making sense of the manufacturing belt : Determinants of US industrial location, 1880-1920”, Journal of Economic Geography, 12(4): 775–807.
Ciarli, T, V Meliciani and M Savona (2012), “Knowledge dynamics, structural change and the geography of business services”, Journal of Economic Surveys, 26(3): 445–467.
Desmet, K and M Fafchamps (2005), “Changes in the spatial concentration of employment across US counties: A sectorial analysis 1972–2000”, Journal of Economic Geography, 5(3): 261-284.
Kim, S (1995), “Expansion of markets and the geographic distribution of economic activities: The trends in US regional manufacturing structure, 1860–1987”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110(4): 881–908.
Krugman, P R (1991), Geography and trade, MIT press.
Moretti, E (2010), “Local multipliers”, American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings, 100: 373-377
____________ (2013), The new geography of jobs, Houghton Mifflin Hartcourt Publishing Company, New York.
International Labour Organisation (ILO)
US Census Bureau (2010) American Community Survey, 5-Year Estimates.
_________________ Census of Population and Housing Decennial Records.Predator drones operated by Customs and Border Protection.
On our border with Mexico, both drug smugglers and the CBP use them.
As multi-billion-dollar international conglomerates intent on smuggling drugs, people, and other contraband across America’s southern border, drug cartels are always looking for the newest and best technology to help move their product. And the smugglers have come a long way from the days when border tunnels and small private planes were state-of-the-art. Their latest innovation: drones.
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Drones by definition do not need an on-board pilot. This means that drones can be far smaller than manned aircraft — and that in the case of a crash, there is no one on board to be killed, or captured and interrogated.
A recent incident on the Mexican side of the United States’ southern border has shed new light on how drones are being used by both sides in the War on Drugs. Late last month a drone overloaded with meth crash-landed in a supermarket parking lot in Tijuana, Mexico, less than half a mile from the border, and was recovered by Mexican law-enforcement officials. The drone’s existence provides a rare glimpse of the constantly evolving tactics of transnational smugglers, and it also raises questions about the U.S. federal government’s surveillance of the border. The U.S. law-enforcement agencies in charge of policing the border claim to be ready for any threat posed by drones. But they also operate a poorly managed drone program of their own that has drawn heavy criticism from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.
Special Agent Matt Barden of the Drug Enforcement Agency says the DEA does not take the proliferation of drones lightly; along with its counterparts in Mexico, the agency is studying the crashed-drone incident. However, Barden adds that this is not the first time the DEA has discovered that drones have been used to move drugs undetected. “This is something that’s not new,” he explains. “We’ve heard about this, but more prominently with people trying to get a small amount of drugs or contraband into a prison or some confines of a locked or guarded facility — trying to get stuff in or out.”
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The biggest concerns about cartel-operated drones, Barden says, have nothing to do with the actual movements of drugs. “Is it a good way to get some dope out of the woods or out of the jungle to a waiting car or vehicle? Yeah,” Barden says. “Better yet, to me personally, is it a better way to perform surveillance on law enforcement? Absolutely. That scares me a whole lot more than does the smuggling aspect of it.” He adds that if DEA agents encountered drones that could expose a confidential mission or jeopardize their safety, the agents would use discretion but would bring the drones down as swiftly as possible.
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The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, on the other hand, is downplaying concerns about the potential for growing use of unmanned aircraft at the border. “To date, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not intercepted any drones smuggling narcotics across the borders into the United States,” CBP spokesman Carlos Lazo said in a statement. “In collaboration with our federal, state, local and international law enforcement partners, CBP remains vigilant against emerging trends and ever-changing tactics employed by transnational criminal organizations behind illegal attempts to smuggle narcotics into the U.S.”
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Outwardly, the Border Patrol appears to be ready for drone-powered drug smugglers. Border Patrol agents would not comment on the counter-measures the agency might employ to combat drones that are threatening its agents or being used in the commission of crimes. But the Border Patrol has an arsenal of drones of its own. The agency’s Unmanned Aircraft System has a fleet of nine Predator B drones that can fly for 20 hours straight and travel at speeds up to 276 miles per hour to help secure the nation’s border. Predator B drones, which are also used by the military, are much more sophisticated and powerful than the drone that crashed in Mexico. The drug-smuggling drone was much smaller, slower, and less durable than the top-dollar equipment paid for by American taxpayers.
But while, on its face, the Border Patrol’s drone program gives the agency a firm technological advantage over the cartels, DHS’s inspector general recently concluded that the program has been poorly managed for several years. Near the end of last year, the IG issued a report saying that the Border Patrol could not prove that its program was effective, because the agency had failed over the last eight years to develop performance measures. The report revealed that the program cost nearly $10,000 more per hour of flying time than DHS claimed and that, while the Predator B drones were expected to fly over the border 16 hours a day, 365 days a year, the aircraft were actually airborne just over 3.5 hours a day on average. The Border Patrol agreed with the IG’s conclusions and recommendations in principle, but then issued its own report disagreeing with the findings.
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When drones become the subject of bad news, as with the crash in Tijuana, the fledgling commercial drone industry suffers. Brendan Schulman, an attorney who leads the commercial-drone division of the New York–based law firm of Kramer Levin, says he is worried that misconceptions about drones could lead to stifling regulations.
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“The use of drones by criminal enterprises is still a relatively new phenomenon, so while we’ve read the occasional story about drugs at the border or contraband being dropped behind prison walls, I think it’s still an unusual way to try to deliver contraband,” Schulman says. “This is still the early days of civilian drone technology and... what I hope we don’t see on a federal level is an overreaction.”
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How federal and local law-enforcement officers plan to incorporate drones into their daily activities remains to be seen, but drone technology appears poised to become an integral part of protecting the nation’s borders — if the Border Patrol cleans up its act.
— Ryan Lovelace is a William F. Buckley Jr. Fellow at National Review.FINANCIAL TIMES -- May 24 -- Toyboywarehouse.com is aimed at strong independent women who don't want a pipe and slippers man", said its founder Julia Macmillan. She came up with the idea for a more targeted site after seeing how many friends were dating or marrying younger men. The site, launched 18 months ago and has 10,000 registered members. Julia is keen to expand internationally, starting with a US launch in the autumn. Mark Brooks, a US-based dating consultant and blogger with Onlinepersonalswatch.com says this part of the market may have been overlooked: "There is not too much in the way of competition in the so-called cougar niche. There are few niches left in the online dating industry and this is one of them. It should do well." Hitwise says there are 1,368 UK dating sites, up from 1,123 a year ago, of which the top 5 (Plentyoffish.com, SexintheUK.com, Gaydar.co.uk, DatingDirect.com and Match.com) account for 37% of visitors. Mr Brooks says: "You'd have thought the big sites would be trouncing the niches but they're just not."
The full article was originally published at Financial Times, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: You would think that biggest is best, when if comes to internet dating sites. But many singles have a particular 'thing' that is extremely important for them. They might want to just date a christian, or an Asian, or someone who has kids, or someone who is into bondage. Internet dating sites have enabled singles to explore and discover and develop more specific preferences. There's a niche out there for most preferences these days. Many singles want to choose from more specialized pools of singles.via Shutterstock )” width=”637″ height=”424″ />(Image via Shutterstock )
The American economy is growing. It’s not roaring, but it’s growing, and at a good pace.
According to the latest figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, real US gross domestic product (GDP) rose at an annualized rate of 2.8% in the third quarter of 2013, which covered July through September.
For comparison, the long-term trend rate in US GDP growth is about 2% per year.
This year’s fast GDP growth underlines one of the great myths of economic statistics: the myth that growth benefits everyone, or at least most people.
Under the great economics assumption of “ceteris paribus” growth does benefit everyone. “Ceteris paribus” is Latin for “everything else the same.”
If the overall structure of the economy remains the same, then higher GDP means more income for everyone.
Unfortunately, the overall structure of the economy has been changing rapidly in recent years, and not for the better.
Corporate revenues may be increasing slowly as the economy grows by two or three percent per year, but corporate profits are exploding. So are executive salaries and bonuses.
We are witnessing a massive shift in the structure of the economy away from benefits for ordinary workers and retirees in favor of a small number of relatively rich and powerful people.
The latest economic statistics illustrate this. The Bureau of Economic Analysis doesn’t collect data on income distribution (why not?) but it does collect data on after-tax disposable income.
After-tax disposable income has been rising at a rate of around 4.5% this year, or about 3.5% after adjusting for inflation.
Yet we know from Census Bureau data that the median income — the income of the typical person — has not increased at all for several years. In fact, real median income is still more than 7% below 2007 levels. That’s despite the fact that the economy as a whole has now bounced back to well above 2007 output levels.
Economic growth? Yes. Ceteris paribus? No. Everything else has not remained the same. The economy is bigger than it was in 2007, but it’s a different economy.
And let’s remember: the 2007 economy was nothing to write home about. In fact, the 2000s were already one of the worst decades in economic history before the recession hit. We only forget that because the 2010s are shaping up to be even worse.
But the US economy is growing. It’s been growing all along. Growth is not the problem.
Economic structure is the problem. Or in a word: inequality. Ordinary Americans haven’t had a raise (in real, inflation-adjusted terms) since 1972. Instead, all of America’s economic growth for forty years has gone to an elite minority.
The myths of economic statistics all come down to the fact that the purpose of the economy isn’t to generate profit. The purpose of the economy is to serve the people who depend on it. When it doesn’t, maybe it’s time to consider a different kind of economy. One that works for everyone.Joel McIver, the U.K.-based author of biographies of METALLICA, SLAYER, BLACK SABBATH, QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE, MACHINE HEAD and many other artists, has released an unauthorized biography of Rob Zombie via Backbeat Books.
"Sinister Urge: The Life And Times Of Rob Zombie" is the first in-depth, career-spanning biography of heavy-metal musician and filmmaker Rob Zombie. Born Robert Cummings in 1965, Zombie is now as well known for his movies as he is for his music, which he has released and performed both as a solo artist and as part of his early band WHITE ZOMBIE. In both fields, he imbues his art with the vivid sense of macabre theater that has thrilled his millions of disciples since he and his band first emerged with "Soul-Crusher" in 1987.
Although he has sold millions of albums and generated many more millions of dollars at the box office, Zombie has never taken the easy option or the predictable route. Indeed, while the music industry — and many of his peers — have fallen to their knees in the last decade or so, Zombie has found a new edge, his work undiluted by success or middle age.
Drawing on original research and new interviews with bandmates and associates, "Sinister Urge" takes a detailed look at Zombie's challenging oeuvre, offering close analysis of his albums and films alongside tales of his life and work on and offstage.
McIver has also worked with musicians Max Cavalera (SOULFLY, CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, KILLER BE KILLED, SEPULTURA), David Ellefson (MEGADETH, METAL ALLEGIANCE) and Glenn Hughes (DEEP PURPLE, BLACK SABBATH, BLACK COUNTRY COMMUNION, CALIF |
to different bot systems. The originalRequest field contains the entire unparsed original message, so you can handle platform-specific requests and go beyond simple text.
For examples, check out:
Fact Bot, which looks up facts about topics on WikiData and creates Facebook Messenger menus.
Space Explorer Bot, A small FB Messenger chat bot using NASA API
Although it’s enough just to return a string value for simple cases, and the Bot Builder packages it correctly for individual bot engines, you can return a more complex object and get platform-specific features, for example, Facebook buttons. In that case, make sure to use the type field of the request to decide on additional features.
For asynchronous workflows, send back a Promise object, and resolve it with the response later. The convention is the same: if the promise gets resolved with a string, the Claudia Bot Builder automatically packages it into the correct template based on the bot endpoint that received a message. Reply with an object instead of a string, and the Bot Builder will not do any specific parsing, letting you take advantage of more advanced bot features for individual platforms. Remember to configure your Lambda function for longer execution if you plan to use asynchronous replies; by default, AWS limits this to 3 seconds.
Try it out live
You can see this bot in action and play with it live from the GitHub Claudia Examples repository.
More information
For more information on the Claudia Bot Builder, and some nice example projects, check out the Claudia Bot Builder GitHub project repository. For questions and suggestions, visit the Claudia project chat room on Gitter.Can YOU improve your dating life? The 3 basic checks.
You don’t want to get 5th place in your love life. I’m sure you don’t want 2nd place either, and unlike grade school, your dating life will not issue any trophies for “good effort”. If you dread the thought of settling you’ll want to read this article…
This post will give you insight on your likelihood of success. Are you spinning your wheels? Is your dating life or love life likely to change?!?
Can you improve your dating life? Truth be told, not everyone has what it takes to improve their dating life. Even many of the people that believe they can and are actually putting in a bit of effort, are simply spinning their wheels. Though that may be rough to read. I’d rather keep this post real, and in turn, actually helpful to you.
Do you stand for creating a more passionate love life for yourself and your partner?
Well if you say “YES! I do!” Then you better FAR exceed everyone around you in the follow 3 base level checks. Understand that just like most people don’t remove bad health habits, eat well and workout, yet they still believe they deserve great health… The common person has delusional expectations of attaining a great love life without having the BASICS required to earn it.
In each of the following areas, you need your friends to be able to say that you far exceed everyone in these categories. This is because we all tend to think we are better off than we really are, and being better than the common person isn’t saying much…
The most basic foundation for your growth comes down to C.I.P.
C : Curiosity
The common person is a skeptic. The wise and forever growing person has way more curiosity than they have skepticism.
As Einstein said: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” Are you looking for the right questions to ask prior to finding the right answers? Are you constantly coming up with new questions, or are you simply living life as a skeptic and know it all?
Rather than defending your ego and your current situation, work offensively to expand it in a honorable way.
For example: become the person that is always willing to ask the vulnerable questions that most people are not courageous or curious enough to ask. In relation to dating, love and understanding the opposite sex, this means talking to women about love, seduction, dating etc.
It means becoming a student of love, women and social patterns, rather than living as an observer at best.
Even to this day, I carry around with me a list of questions about multiple subjects that I have ready to ask. Even to this day I read books regularly on the subject of dating, love, passion, sex, emotional well being, manhood etc. (at least 60 a year).
Start becoming curious about the things you desire. Replace the resentments with a willingness to learn more. In time, your curiosities will bring you to the solutions that will drown out your resentments.
Want to learn more about the opposite sex and what they are attracted to? They can become some of your greatest teachers if you are simply willing to vulnerably ask hundreds of times.
Note: just like a good scientist, ask each question hundreds or thousands of times to many different people so you can uncover the deeper truths and rhythms. That is LITERALLY how Vimbasi Female Psyche Lessons have been created. I still to this day interview women.
I : Investment
Investment: Are you investing in your growth in the following ways?
Courage: aka taking action, actual experience, being vulnerable, being willing to struggle through your frustrations, facing the difficult truth, having the difficult conversations, willingness to fall in love again after falling out of it, trying new approaches after many “failures”, etc.
Time: aka not wasting time on dating apps, time studying, actually cutting out time and space in your life to go meet the people. If you’re in a relationship this would involve spending quality time with your lover.
Money: aka hiring mentors, purchasing books and programs, going to seminars, paying money to be able to get into the events and venues where you are most likely to meet the people you most want to date. If your fashion sense is horrible and you are out of shape are you investing in improving it? If you’re in a relationship this entails paying for the two of you to have an adventure from time to time, forking out some money to make a romantic date that much more amazing, etc.
Habit: aka making habits out your investments and efforts, working to become a better person and not just a better date.
Thought/Insight: This wraps back around to curiosity and it ties into the 3 part of C.I.P. Are you willing to be the This wraps back around to curiosity and it ties into the 3 part of C.I.P. Are you willing to be the curious student rather than the common skeptic?
Yourself as a person: The definition of Vimbase is about being a fully passionate person instead of being a person that’s begging lovers to bring them passion. Are you investing in yourself as a whole? People will not be very passionate about you if you aren’t passionate about yourself.
P : Perception
As David Foster Wallace points out in his speech This Is Water:
“There are these 2 young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way. Who nods at them and says “Morning boys. How’s the water?” and the 2 fish swim on for a bit and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water? The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious and important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”
You are the fish. Your limited perspectives, false beliefs, and current patterns are the water.
Do you have the ability to see women, yourself, your actions, lack of actions, results and lack of results clearly? Often times we are most blind to our own self and our own conditions.
If you think you know yourself completely then you most definitely do not. Remember that often times people outside yourself can reflect back to you some of what you are not seeing.
This is why being in our programs is so effective (we reflect the truth of your situation back to you). Perception is one of the hardest things to give to yourself when you are so immersed in what you are trying to see.
This is also why every Vimbasi Mentor also hires mentors and coaches himself/herself. Growth is incredibly difficult when you are living blind to your real problems and only focusing on some of your surface level symptoms.
This in itself is why we offer the Vimbasi Evaluation for people that cannot afford our more in depth programs. Simply to give perspectives that you likely to stay blind to.
Note:
Curiosity Investment & Perception isn’t only important for getting your ideal dating scenario or ideal relationship. C.I.P. is required for you to grow your relationship into much more profound levels. The moment you drop C.I.P. is the moment your relationship is guaranteed to stagnate and thus decay.
The moment Curiosity Investment & Perception is dropped, reasons for why your girlfriend or wife decides to leave you will build at an alarming rate. Prioritize forever expanding these 3 habits in your love life, and your love life will continue to expand.
If you’re a person that lives with Warrior Wisdom you might also realize that living with these 3 habits are beneficial to all areas of life. Make C.I.P. a core part of who you are.
From the man that likely has your back more than you do:
Ander Adams Seductive Integrity & Relationship Design Mentor of the Vimbasi Warriors
Fill out my online form
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Apply for The Vimbasi Path The Path of The Warrior ApplicationDuring the 2016 Olympic Trials, The University of Texas Longhorns had a standout meet. The women’s team made a 3 minute video on youtube that summarizes their accomplished, and enjoyable week.
The video is courtesy of Remedy Rule an upcoming sophomore.
Women in Omaha:
Two incoming freshman Claire Adams and Kaitlin Harty, who are arguably the top two incoming backstrokers for the 2016 freshman class.
Adams broke her hand a week before trials, but still swam and showed her desire to compete. Harty, who’s older brother swims for UT, enjoyed the moment and opportunity.
Madisyn Cox, a rising senior, placed 4th in the 400 IM and the 200 IM.
Rising senior Tasija Karosas and rising sophomre Quinn Carrozza, competed in semi finals of night 6 of the meet.
Men in Omaha:
The men had stepped up at Trials, sending four of their men (past and present athletes) to Rio.
Jack Conger will be swimming on the 4×200 Freestyle Relay along with teammates Clark Smith and Townley Haas. Haas will also be swimming the 200 Freestyle individually. Former Longhorn, Jimmy Feigen, will be swimming on the 4×100 freestyle relay.
Will Licon placed third in the mens 200 breasktroke, just missing the Olympic Roster.
The future of the Texas Longhorns looks fast competitive and fun, if it is anything like the video.Guest post by John de Herrera
Today, as happens once or twice a week, a blog post or news item appears on the Internet examining the Article V Convention. Below it are the same comments Americans have been making about a convention for over half a century: that it’s dangerous, that with the way politics are played today such an assembly would be nothing more than an exercise in special interests gutting protections originally put in place of, by, and for the people.
Many today understand the necessity for our society to build consensus about what’s wrong (in order to do something about it), but few understand the function and utility of a convention. Nothing stays perfect forever, politics are dynamic, things change, and a scan of political sites makes clear consensus is that governance is off track. The question is, how do we address it?
A quick read of Article V (a single sentence) shows that upon the application of 2/3 of the states Congress shall call “a convention for proposing amendments….”The leading national group Friends of the Article V Convention has done an audit of Congressional Records (themselves part of the Constitution, as the Constitution mandates that both houses keep records). They show that not only have 34 states cast the requisite number of applications to initiate the call, but indeed 49 have cast over 750 applications.
In other words the states have satisfied the clause. Congress simply ignores its obligation to count them, all the while two or three new ones arrive each new session.
The reason the 113th Congress is allowed to disobey the law is because the people are unaware and/or fear a convention. So long as this state of affairs exists, Congress can simply ignore the record while looking busy with a bunch of partisan and divisive nonsense, i.e. politics as usual.
90% Disapprove of Congress
What’s more powerful, the right to complain about government, or the right to reform it? Clearly one right is more powerful. Indeed it’s the right that makes an American citizen who and what they are – a member of a society with the power to alter or abolish what it dislikes about government. You’ll find very few Americans who want to abolish government, the three branches – legislative, executive, and judicial. No, the vast majority want to keep what we have, but address how it currently operates.
Opinion polls show that 90%+ of Americans disapprove of Congress, a statistic that’s been trending for over a decade. When the institution established to represent the will of the People is disapproved by 90%, it’s self-evident it’s time for them to exercise their right to alter what they dislike. History teaches that if not, forces of corruption will alter it against our wishes, and some argue that’s already occurring due to corporations acting as citizens. This status quo of politics has resulted in government drowned in private money, where laws/loopholes go to the highest bidders, written by lobbyists, signed off on by members of Congress, and disliked by the People.
The Provisions of Article V
In the event Congress becomes unresponsive to the needs of the people a convention of the states considers amendment proposals. Proposals voted up by 2/3 of state delegations are then sent back to the people at large for ratification by 3/4. In other words, the functions of proposal and ratification are two separate functions. The fear of a convention comes from the perception that proposal and ratification are both done at the convention, when the former is done by delegates, and the latter by the people.
Seventy-five percent of Americans today are not going to suggest we chuck the Constitution and try to start over. But they are highly like to support the reversal of Supreme Court doctrines regarding speech and personhood, even, perhaps, public financing of elections.
Forcing Congress to Act
There are a number of things about American history that politicians do not talk about, not because they don’t want to, but because they can’t, but because doing so would alter how we citizens see and think about our government. On the flip side, if enough of us become cognizant and desirous of reform, politicians will have no choice but to comply.
A paper put out by the Congressional Research Service (subsequently updated multiple times, most recently April 2014) says as much about the Article V Convention – that if enough Americans want it Congress will have to call one. That the paper has been updated since it was first delivered to Congress is significant: it means there is movement in the halls of power. Congress may not be talking about it, but they are clearly aware of growing interest in Article V. And the negative and false myths surrounding it.
American Citizen or Global Citizen
Even if you’re not American, it’s important to understand and educate yourself about this issue. Unless we start talking about a different Earth, a different global order, a different USA, and a different Constitution, there is no other way out for humanity. In this sense, an Article V Convention is unique. Once called, it sets off a natural progression of events that will deliver us from the inevitable catastrophe of corporate governance.
How’s that? Because a convention allows for humans to find common ground past the gridlock of corporate politicians. Believe it or not, the vast majority want to throw off this long train of abuse and ecological negligence. Everyone has an idea of what changes are necessary. Yet until we all come to the table, nobody is going anywhere.
It’s time to raise consciousness. It’s time for non-Americans call on Americans to exercise their right to a convention; it’s time Americans call on Congress to count the applications on record. Until the count is made nothing can happen. We don’t have all the time in the world to make it so.
Congressional Research Service: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42592.pdf
Friends of the Article V Convention: http://www.foavc.org
John De Herrera is a writer/artist/activist who lives and works in Santa Barbara, California. He is a former founding member of Friends of the Article Five Convention. You can email him at john@alipes.org.
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If the word circling through the Verizon IndyCar Series paddock about one hour before Sunday’s Kohler Grand Prix proves to be true, then Andretti Autosport may be leaving Honda for Chevrolet beginning in 2018.
Autoweek was told by a rival Honda team owner that the rumor is Andretti Autosport returning to Chevrolet after a four-year absence. Michael Andretti was a longtime Honda team owner when he joined the old Indy Racing League full time in 2003 but switched to Chevrolet for 2012 and 2013. One of Andretti’s drivers, Ryan Hunter-Reay, won the 2012 Verizon IndyCar Series championship with a Chevrolet.
The team moved back to Honda in 2014 and Hunter-Reay won the 98th Indianapolis 500 that year. Andretti’s cars have also won the Indy 500 with Alexander Rossi in 2016 and Takuma Sato this past May.
None of the major players in this, however, will confirm or deny this is happening. Of course, it would be way too early to complete such a contract if the two sides are talking.
So how did this all get started?
“I have no idea,” Andretti told Autoweek. “It’s fun to talk about rumors and to start rumors. But I have no comment.”
Mark Kent is the director of GM Racing and stated the company line regarding such a move.
“We don’t talk about contractual issues,” Kent told Autoweek. “That is our policy at Chevrolet. Our lineup right now is pretty strong. Every year we explore our options and opportunities but at this point we have nothing to say about it.”
Art St. Cyr is the president of Honda Performance Development (HPD) and said the first news he heard about it is when Honda team owner Bobby Rahal told him Sunday morning at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
“It would be news to me,” St. Cyr told Autoweek. “I heard the rumor this morning and that is all I’ve heard. Our contracts have varying lengths depending on who we are contracted with. But I’m not going to talk to you about contracts. I’m sorry about that.
“It’s news to me. I’ve had no indication of any of that stuff. I’m pretty confident with all of our teams and if you look at who has won for Honda this year, all of our teams have been successful.”
St. Cyr believes Honda and Andretti have been a great fit.
“We won the last two Indy 500s and three of the last four so that’s a pretty big one there,” St. Cyr said. “Of course, it would be a disappointment because we’ve had so much success together.”
Josh Freund is the chief mechanic for Ryan Hunter-Reay’s No. 28 team at Andretti Autosport and believes it’s too early for either direction to play itself out.
“It’s negotiations -- it’s how the game is played,” Freund told Autoweek. “And, it’s above my pay grade.”
Rob Edwards is chief operating officer at Andretti Autosport and admitted to Autoweek, “I keep hearing that. But there is nothing to it.”
It was at Road America last year when rumors began that Chip Ganassi Racing was leaving Chevrolet and would join Honda. Ultimately, that came true and put the balance of power in favor of Honda in 2017. Chevrolet, however, doesn’t like to lose in any racing series and by stealing away one of Honda’s “Power Teams” in 2018, it may shift the power back in Chevy’s direction.
This one promises to play out for the remainder of the season.Cognitive brain researchers have studied a magic trick filmed in magician duo Penn & Teller's theater in Las Vegas, to illuminate the neuroscience of illusion. Their results advance our understanding of how observers can be misdirected and will aid magicians as they work to improve their art.
The research team was led by Dr. Stephen Macknik, Director of the Laboratory of Behavioral Neurophysiology at Barrow Neurological Institute, in collaboration with fellow Barrow researchers Hector Rieiro and Dr. Susana Martinez-Conde, Director of the Laboratory of Visual Neuroscience. The study, titled "Perceptual elements in Penn and Teller's "Cups and Balls" magic trick" was published today, Feb 12th 2013, as part of the launch of PeerJ, a new peer reviewed open access journal in which all articles are freely available to everyone. "Cups and Balls," a magic illusion in which balls appear and disappear under the cover of cups, is one of the oldest magic tricks in history, with documented descriptions going back to Roman conjurors in 3 B.C. "But we still don't know how it really works in the brain," says Macknik, "because this is the first, long overdue, neuroscientific study of the trick."
The discovery concerns the way magicians manipulate human cognition and perception. The "Cups and Balls" trick has many variations, but the most common one uses three balls and three cups. The magician makes the balls pass through the bottom of cups, jump from cup to cup, disappear from a cup and turn up elsewhere, turn into other objects, and so on. The cups are usually opaque and the balls brightly colored. Penn & Teller's variant is performed with three opaque and then with three transparent cups. "The transparent cups mean that visual information about the loading of the balls is readily available to the brain, yet still the spectators cannot see how the trick is done!" said Martinez-Conde.
Magicians have performed and systematically developed the art and theory of this illusion for thousands of years, but each new generation of conjurers offers new insights and hypotheses about how and why it works for the audience. Here the scientists turned the power of the scientific method to the illusion. The experiments tracked when and where observers looked during video clips portraying specific element of the performance, filmed by a NOVA scienceNOW TV crew. By quantifying how well observers tracked the loading and unloading of balls with and without transparent cups, the scientists determined that some aspects of the illusion were even more powerful at controlling attention than aspects originally predicted by the magician.
The end result is that cognitive scientists now have an improved understanding of how (and by how much) observers can be misdirected. In addition, this knowledge can help magicians further hone their art.
Source: PeerJ♪ DOOT DOOT DOODOOT DOOT DOO ♪
♪ DOOT DOOT DOO ♪ DOOT DOOT DOO
♪ FOR HE IS LORDLORD LORD LORD ♪
WHERE ARE YOU FROM,LITTLE BOY?
DENVER.
AND GOD IS TELLING METHAT YOU HAVE...
BAD EYESIGHT,IS THAT IT?
YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT!
OOH!OOH!
WELL GOD IS GOING TOHEAL THOSE EYES
AND SAVE YOU FROMTHE DEVIL BE GONE-A!
HOORAY!HOORAY!
♪ FOR HE IS LORDLORD LORD LORD ♪
RIGHT HERE WE HAVEA LITTLE GIRL WHO ISVERY, VERY UGLY.
DO YOU BELIEVE HE'S GOING TOCURE YOUR FACE OF THE UGLIES?
YES!
HE'S GONNA TAKETHAT UGLY FACE
AND MAKE YOU REASONABLETO LOOK AT - BWAP!
WRRRRRRRR!
OH GOOD LORD,SOMEBODY SAY AMEN!
AMEN!AMEN!
♪ DOOT DOOT DOO
HI, HI, WELCOMETO HEAVEN, BROTHER!
YOU FOLLOWED THE MORMON FAITHAND SO YOU'VE BEEN LET IN!
UH, ACTUALLY,I'M JUST STOPPING BY.
WELL, YOU PICKEDA GREAT TIME!
WE'VE GOTCOOKIES AND PUNCH
AND WERE JUST ABOUT TOSTART PLAYING CHARADES!
HOORAY!HOORAY!
AND THEN BROTHER STEPHEN'SBROUGHT HIS GUITAR
SO WE CAN SING SONGS ABOUTHOW MUCH IT HURTS TO LIE!
OOOH!OOOH!
UH, LOOK, I JUST NEEDTO TALK WITH GOD.
IS HE AROUND?
SURE, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO ISSAY HIS NAME AND HE'S THERE.
I'M SO GRATEFUL FOR THAT.
ME TOO!ME TOO!
GREAT, THANKS.
UH, HELLO, GOD?
IT'S UH...SATAN.
YEA, LOOK UPON MEAND KNOW ME.
HI, GOD.
HELLO, SATAN.
IT'S BEENA LONG TIME.
YEAH.
WHAT BRINGS YOU HERE?
DO YOU WISH TO MOUNT YOURUNHOLY WAR AGAINST HEAVEN?
NO, I HAVE A PROBLEM ANDI NEED YOUR ADVICE.
YOU WANT TO RULEMORE THAN HELL?
YOU WANT TO DESTROYTHE EARTH?
NO, IT'S KIND OFA LONG STORY BUT...
WELL, IT ALL STARTEDWHEN THIS IRAQI DICTATOR,SADDAM HUSSEIN,
WAS KILLED BYA PACK OF WILD BOARS.
I REMEMBER WHEN I FIRSTMET HIM IN HELL,
IT WAS A LOVELY MORNINGIN APRIL AND...
♪ OH PRAISE THE LORD
AND NOW I AM RECEIVINGA MESSAGE DIRECTLY FROM GOD!
GOD IS TELLING ME...
THAT EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOUIS TO WALK UP TO THIS STAGE
AND GIVE ME ONE DOLLAR!
SO, I WANT EVERYONETO FEEL THE LOVE OF GODBY COMING ON UP HERE
AND PUTTING A DOLLARIN THE BOX-A!
COME ON, DON'T BE SHY,COME ON-A!
DUDE, THAT SEEMSKIND OF WEIRD.
YEAH, I DON'T REMEMBER HIMSAYING ANYTHING ABOUT THIS.
AND NOW CHRIS AND SADDAMJUST KEEP KILLING EACH OTHEROVER AND OVERWhat has happened to America? A cautionary tale that in many ways epitomizes the onetime greatest country in the world’s fall from grace degenerating into the world’s greatest single threat to life on planet earth is told in the story of Detroit. Michigan’s Motor City was once the wealthiest city in all of the nation, a proud hallmark of “Yankee ingenuity” leading to America’s other hallmark of upwardly mobile working class affluence.
Though he neither invented the automobile nor the modern assembly line, industrialist Henry Ford’s Ford Motor Company launched in 1903 and Model T created in 1908 became both America and Detroit’s world famous icon the American car, mass producing to make it available for America’s expanding middle class to afford. Indeed the rise of America, its cars and highway system mobility during the last century catapulted Detroit to industrial prominence and unparalleled prosperity as the largest US city adjacent Canada with a current metro area population of over five million people. From the end of World War II up to the war on poverty in 1964, America cut by half its number of citizens living in poverty.
However, Detroit in the twenty-first century has clearly fallen on very hard times, losing 25% of its population in just one decade from 2000 to 2010, falling from the tenth largest city in the nation to the eighteenth. The Motor City’s municipal population peaked at 1.8 million residents in postwar 1950 when America’s manufacturing base was at its glorious height. But just sixty years later the city’s size has plummeted to little more than 700,000 with a mass exodus of over 60% of the city’s population steadily leaving since 1950.
And now Detroit finds itself amidst a growing humanitarian crisis with 150,000 people currently living without any source of running water in their homes. And with upwards of 200-300,000 people possibly effected in the coming weeks and months, nearly half of Detroit residents could soon be without access to freshwater despite its front door on the Great Lakes being the largest freshwater system on earth. Since March this year the city’s water and sewerage company has made the coldhearted decision to simply start shutting off the water supply to any people in Detroit who cannot pay their water bill. At a rate of 3000 customers per week over the last several months, the city’s residents have been losing their source of running water in our nation’s poorest city with 42.3% of its inhabitants living under the poverty level.
A year ago last July Detroit became the first city of its size forced to file bankruptcy. The urban decline of the once greatness that was Detroit is also mirrored in America’s rural decline of the nearby Great Plains. But this lack of water issue for thousands of people carries implications of a serious human rights violation being committed in the richest nation on earth. This unfolding story is but yet another sad and disgraceful symptom of the country’s urban decay reflecting how rapid USA’s vapid freefall from greatness straight into Third World despair for America’s poor has actually become in 2014.
In 2010 the United Nations declared that water is a universal human right and that people denied access to lifesaving water clearly constitutes a serious human rights violation. Detroit families that have fallen on hard times, unable to keep up with two months of unpaid water bills as low as $150, for several months now have been forced to live without water. And now moving into the July heat of another long hot, global warming summer, the humanitarian crisis is about to boil over.
Try to imagine even for one day living your life without running water in your home. Attending the morning ritual of turning on the hot and cold water to take our daily warm shower is something that if we awake tomorrow and no water pours out of our faucet or shower head, it would be a shocking discovery and rudest of wake up calls to suddenly realize how much we Americans would be missing and taking our water for granted if our daily, seemingly endless supply of it was abruptly shut off and indefinitely gone.
In addition to our bathing, drinking, washing our hands, washing our produce clean, using water for preparing our meals, washing our dishes, doing our laundry, having water available to mop our floors and keep our house clean and even flush our toilets, all of these daily activities obviously require running water in our home. If one day we were suddenly forced to not have the convenience of our water with the turn of a knob available for all these must daily activities, our life would instantaneously be thrown into a virtual state of crisis. Feeling dirty, unshowered and unclean, most of us would not want to even leave the house or even face the day in that aversively uncomfortable state. Forced to eating dirty produce that increases health risks for potentially lethal bacterial infection, unable to prepare our regular meals, flush our wastes down the toilet, many of us would be in an instant panic and uproar suffering just one day without our constant, taken for granted need of our convenient running water supply.
Thousands of people in Detroit without water on tap are going very thirsty these days. Deprived of lifesaving water not only imposes unsanitary life conditions, less access to drinking water especially in hot weather can quickly become dangerously fatal with dehydration and heat stroke. Without water our daily lives would minimally be drastically inconvenienced in ways most of us have never even really known, imagined or experienced. Yet multitudes of our fellow Americans’ homes in Detroit along with places across America and even more so the world, unbeknownst to us who have taken water so much for granted all our lives, twenty-first century water has become the most precious and valuable natural resource on the entire planet.
Based on annual FBI database reports on violent crime, Forbes Magazine rated Detroit as the most dangerous US city(amongst populations of more than 200,000) for the fourth year in a row. The nearby smaller decimated city of Flint, also derailed by a downsized automated robotically operated auto industry, has the highest murder rate in the state. But with thousands upon thousands of abandoned homes left in ruin and chronically high unemployment rates – the highest among the largest US cities at 8.3% in May 2014, desperate impoverished Detroit citizens are vulnerably prone to gangs, drugs and crime.
What is happening in Detroit is happening in all of America’s cities. The war on poverty from the 1960’s has deteriorated into an all out war on the poor in twenty-first century America. The people of Detroit are metaphorically the canaries in the coal mine for the rest of us. The poor in this so called richest nation on earth have become the discard-able, disenfranchised class of Americans who are persona non grata in a country that appears to no longer care much about its less fortunate citizens when denied the human right of lifesaving water.
Privatization of such basic human rights as access to clean drinking water is rearing its ugly head all over the world, not just in far off lands like India and Equator or Africa. Pay or die has come home to roost here in America now too. The globalization and privatization of everything on earth has more and more of the world’s population sinking into highly impoverished, desperate lives where life is more than a daily struggle for survival.
In recent times the bottom has been falling out for many generations of middle class families that have become burdened paying a higher percentage of taxes per their income than the loop-holed upper class and especially the majority of the largest corporations that with offshore money laundering pay no income tax at all. The US federal government has forced middle class Americans against their will or choice to finance two very costly wars resulting in military defeats dragging on for more than a decade. Clearly also by design, the government’s priority to engage in perpetual Empire war around the world has been destroying America’s middle class. The manufactured false war on terror has bled them dry while straining and depleting an already shaky national economy still not recovering from the 2008 recession caused by greedy Wall Street and criminal banksters.
At the 2008 outset of the current recession, 53% of Americans still described themselves as middle class. In 2014 only 44% make that claim. Conversely, in 2008 only 25% of Americans considered themselves in the lower class while currently 40% now believe they are members of the lower class. What has been America’s traditional backbone, perennial strength and single greatest key to our nation’s success always rested squarely on the solid reliable shoulders of this country’s vibrant and robust middle class. But now it lies dead and dying, just like the beacon of light that America once was as the world’s greatest democracy.
Now America’s inner cities have become war zone ghettos where kids of color are killing other kids of color like there’s no tomorrow, because for too many of them, there literally is no tomorrow. Generations ago young residents from America’s poorest inner cities have been forced to give up on hope, forced to adapt to the gangland culture that offers the only way of getting ahead, even if it leads to only fleeting short lived success before a bullet in the head or a one way ticket to a lifelong prison sentence ends their lives. The lawlessness and desperate despair of such failed states created by American Empire in Libya is really no different from the US creation of the failed state that is right here in America’s urban war zones.
The war on poverty that began fifty years ago with President Lyndon Johnson’s state of the union address was lost before it ever got started. The economic deprivation created by the massive white flight movement to the suburbs starting back in the 1950’s has ever since left an empty vacuum in inner cities across urban America. And little to no concerted effort toward investment to restore economic prosperity in US cities has ever resulted. Instead, the federal government institutionalized a welfare state that has only widened the gap between the disenfranchised poor and the rest of America, only reactivating and reinforcing old racial stereotypes that unfairly and falsely believe African Americans are lazy and prefer to not seek gainful employment, a set-up whether intended or not for abysmal failure and racial re-polarization. If next to no jobs in inner cities were ever created due to lack of any actual job creation and business investment, and the created welfare system fostered inner city residents toward increased dependency in a no-win situation where opportunity toward financial independence is completely absent, the failed social engineering experiment went awry and only hurt America’s poor people far more than it ever helped.
LBJ stated his aim a half century ago, “to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities.” Though Johnson correctly identified the solution to the problem, like all US wars in the last fifty years, America lost its domestic war on poverty as well because it failed miserably in lifting the poor’s capacity to become independent. Without jobs and employment, there is no opportunity for progress in urban America.
US foreign policy has included criminal misappropriation and mismanagement of taxpayer revenue of six trillion dollars (and still rising) to finance imperialistic wars that have resulted in humiliating, costly US military defeats, US crimes against humanity, chaotic permanent failed states left in economic ruin, unspeakable tragic violence and human loss of life that still continue today with no end in sight. Strikingly similar, US domestic policy that has been the costly war on poverty squandering 20.7 trillion tax dollars has also been an enormous and disastrous failure in reducing poverty rates in America, which have remained unchanged at 15% since LBJ first launched his ambitiously doomed program a half century ago.
Another fifty year milestone this week is Johnson’s signing of the monumental Civil Rights Act. A number of courageous, mostly black Americans (though joined by white Americans as well) put their lives literally on the line protesting for racial equality during the 1950’s and early 60’s, culminating in legislation that outlawed discrimination ultimately aimed at equal protection of all groups, not only skin color but religion, age, gender and sexual persuasion as well. But let’s examine how African Americans have fared since legislation legally protecting them from unlawful prejudice and discrimination.
One potential barometer measuring African American progress since outlawing racial discrimination might be looking at the percentage of blacks currently living outside the legal system. And the fact that more young black men today are in prison than were slaves in 1850 speaks volumes, ushering in a new form of modern slavery in a new Jim Crowe era in America. Even way back in 1996, if you happen to be a 16-year old black male in America, |
325 329 321 312 306 294 297 289 -0.9 -7.4 -2.7 -10.8 Total (no.) 119,846 115,308 111,271 110,554 107,451 105,516 107,711 105,883 103,056 94,699 — — — —
TABLE 7. Reported abortions, by known weeks of gestation* and reporting area of occurrence — selected states,† United States, 2009 State/Area Weeks of gestation Total abortions reported by known gestational age ≤8 9–13 14–15 16–17 18–20 ≥21 No. % of all reported abortions¶ No. (%)§ No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) Alabama 6,569 (60.4) 3,336 (30.7) 423 (3.9) 281 (2.6) 246 (2.3) 12 (0.1) 10,867 (99.9) Alaska 1,184 (61.1) 732 (37.8) —** — 0 (0.0) — — 16 (0.8) 1,937 (99.9) Arizona 7,472 (74.4) 2,159 (21.5) 204 (2.0) 120 (1.2) 66 (0.7) 27 (0.3) 10,048 (97.8) Arkansas 2,792 (61.0) 1,236 (27.0) 204 (4.5) 156 (3.4) 192 (4.2) 0 (0.0) 4,580 (100.0) Colorado 8,068 (69.9) 2,709 (23.5) 342 (3.0) 189 (1.6) 128 (1.1) 102 (0.9) 11,538 (99.5) District of Columbia†† 1,729 (67.2) 483 (18.8) 118 (4.6) 158 (6.1) 86 (3.3) 0 (0.0) 2,574 (99.2) Georgia 18,793 (57.1) 10,150 (30.8) 1,360 (4.1) 776 (2.4) 851 (2.6) 995 (3.0) 32,925 (100.0) Hawaii 1,745 (52.8) 1,208 (36.5) 115 (3.5) 79 (2.4) 134 (4.1) 27 (0.8) 3,308 (99.0) Idaho 1,056 (64.0) 566 (34.3) 7 (0.4) 6 (0.4) 8 (0.5) 6 (0.4) 1,649 (99.9) Indiana 6,573 (62.3) 3,784 (35.9) 87 (0.8) 69 (0.7) 41 (0.4) 0 (0.0) 10,554 (100.0) Iowa 4,260 (73.3) 1,256 (21.6) 139 (2.4) 116 (2.0) — — — — 5,811 (99.8) Kansas 5,839 (62.1) 2,578 (27.4) 335 (3.6) 243 (2.6) 244 (2.6) 171 (1.8) 9,410 (100.0) Kentucky 2,589 (62.8) 1,098 (26.7) 175 (4.2) 99 (2.4) 111 (2.7) 48 (1.2) 4,120 (100.0) Louisiana 4,417 (54.6) 2,734 (33.8) 421 (5.2) 211 (2.6) 180 (2.2) 127 (1.6) 8,090 (99.1) Maine 1,613 (67.0) 761 (31.6) 20 (0.8) — — 7 (0.3) — — 2,407 (99.8) Michigan 13,977 (62.7) 6,400 (28.7) 904 (4.1) 458 (2.1) 372 (1.7) 183 (0.8) 22,294 (99.7) Minnesota 8,101 (65.4) 3,255 (26.3) 379 (3.1) 229 (1.8) 342 (2.8) 80 (0.6) 12,386 (100.0) Mississippi 1,206 (57.3) 860 (40.8) 30 (1.4) 8 (0.4) — — — — 2,106 (86.4) Missouri 3,697 (53.9) 2,518 (36.7) 266 (3.9) 184 (2.7) 148 (2.2) 43 (0.6) 6,856 (99.6) Montana 1,506 (67.8) 546 (24.6) 75 (3.4) 46 (2.1) 39 (1.8) 10 (0.5) 2,222 (100.0) Nevada 5,067 (61.2) 2,445 (29.6) 360 (4.4) 193 (2.3) 137 (1.7) 71 (0.9) 8,273 (86.7) New Jersey§§ 17,492 (61.4) 6,748 (23.7) 1,454 (5.1) 1,119 (3.9) 930 (3.3) 749 (2.6) 28,492 (99.9) New Mexico 3,280 (65.3) 1,101 (21.9) 173 (3.4) 113 (2.3) 111 (2.2) 244 (4.9) 5,022 (100.0) New York 68,024 (59.4) 34,232 (29.9) 3,914 (3.4) 2,718 (2.4) 2,988 (2.6) 2,615 (2.3) 114,491 (95.4) New York City 56,384 (65.4) 20,732 (24.0) 2,633 (3.1) 2,105 (2.4) 2,402 (2.8) 1,979 (2.3) 86,235 (98.8) New York State 11,640 (41.2) 13,500 (47.8) 1,281 (4.5) 613 (2.2) 586 (2.1) 636 (2.3) 28,256 (86.3) North Carolina 18,381 (65.3) 7,530 (26.8) 1,147 (4.1) 696 (2.5) — — — — 28,128 (91.9) North Dakota 851 (66.0) 403 (31.3) 33 (2.6) — — — — 0 (0.0) 1,289 (99.9) Ohio 16,264 (57.2) 9,165 (32.2) 1,265 (4.4) 721 (2.5) 550 (1.9) 480 (1.7) 28,445 (99.0) Oklahoma 4,256 (66.2) 1,693 (26.3) 303 (4.7) 124 (1.9) 37 (0.6) 17 (0.3) 6,430 (100.0) Oregon 6,711 (64.1) 2,746 (26.2) 300 (2.9) 256 (2.4) 284 (2.7) 179 (1.7) 10,476 (97.0) Rhode Island 2,963 (69.1) 1,042 (24.3) 126 (2.9) 92 (2.1) — — — — 4,285 (99.1) South Carolina 5,060 (73.3) 1,790 (25.9) 25 (0.4) — — — — 17 (0.2) 6,907 (99.9) South Dakota 444 (57.7) 310 (40.3) — — 0 (0.0) — — 10 (1.3) 769 (100.0) Tennessee 11,272 (65.5) 5,435 (31.6) 445 (2.6) 24 (0.1) — — — — 17,200 (98.4) Texas 57,072 (73.5) 16,647 (21.5) 2,649 (3.4) 259 (0.3) 541 (0.7) 435 (0.6) 77,603 (100.0) Utah 2,435 (67.3) 875 (24.2) 132 (3.7) 82 (2.3) 82 (2.3) 10 (0.3) 3,616 (98.7) Virginia 18,896 (69.2) 7,990 (29.2) 212 (0.8) 58 (0.2) 146 (0.5) 24 (0.1) 27,326 (99.6) Washington 14,887 (65.9) 5,645 (25.0) 644 (2.9) 447 (2.0) 499 (2.2) 465 (2.1) 22,587 (99.6) West Virginia 1,068 (60.3) 589 (33.3) 65 (3.7) 18 (1.0) 25 (1.4) 6 (0.3) 1,771 (99.9) Total 357,609 (64.0) 154,755 (27.7) 18,855 (3.4) 10,355 (1.9) 10,012 (1.8) 7,206 (1.3) 558,792 (98.0)
TABLE 8. Reported abortions, by known weeks of gestation and year — selected states,* United States, 2000–2009 Weeks of gestation Year % change 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2000 to 2004 2005 to 2009 2008 to 2009 2000 to 2009 ≤13 weeks' gestation (%) 90.8 91.1 91.2 91.0 91.5 91.5 91.6 91.6 91.5 91.9 0.8 0.4 0.4 1.2 ≤6–8 58.3 59.9 61.6 61.9 63.3 63.6 63.7 64.0 64.4 65.5 8.6 3.0 1.7 12.3 9–13 32.5 31.2 29.6 29.1 28.3 27.9 27.9 27.6 27.1 26.4 -12.9 -5.4 -2.6 -18.8 >13 weeks' gestation (%) 9.2 8.9 8.8 9.0 8.5 8.5 8.4 8.4 8.5 8.1 -7.6 -4.7 -4.7 -12.0 14–15 3.2 3.2 3.1 3.2 3.2 3.2 3.2 3.3 3.3 3.2 0.0 0.0 -3.0 0.0 16–17 2.2 2.1 2.1 2.1 1.8 1.9 1.8 1.8 1.9 1.8 -18.2 -5.3 -5.3 -18.2 18–20 2.3 2.1 2.2 2.2 1.9 2.0 1.9 1.9 1.9 1.8 -17.4 -10.0 -5.3 -21.7 ≥21 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.6 1.5 1.5 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.3 0.0 -13.3 -7.1 -13.3 Total (no.) 509,028 503,140 504,940 505,342 494,864 487,956 498,618 493,758 495,536 473,372 — — — —
TABLE 9. Reported abortions obtained at ≤13 weeks' gestation,* distribution by week at ≤13 weeks' gestation and by reporting area of occurrence — selected states,† United States, 2009 State/Area Week of gestation Total no. of abortions at ≤13 weeks ≤6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 No. (%)§ No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) Alabama 3,100 (31.3) 2,045 (20.6) 1,424 (14.4) 1,041 (10.5) 700 (7.1) 647 (6.5) 534 (5.4) 414 (4.2) 9,905 Alaska 586 (30.6) 306 (16.0) 292 (15.2) 236 (12.3) 160 (8.4) 131 (6.8) 95 (5.0) 110 (5.7) 1,916 Arizona 3,764 (39.1) 2,272 (23.6) 1,436 (14.9) 770 (8.0) 524 (5.4) 391 (4.1) 285 (3.0) 189 (2.0) 9,631 Arkansas 1,450 (36.0) 797 (19.8) 545 (13.5) 401 (10.0) 330 (8.2) 243 (6.0) 149 (3.7) 113 (2.8) 4,028 Colorado 4,461 (41.4) 1,998 (18.5) 1,609 (14.9) 1,040 (9.7) 539 (5.0) 475 (4.4) 353 (3.3) 302 (2.8) 10,777 District of Columbia¶ 1,029 (46.5) 451 (20.4) 249 (11.3) 161 (7.3) 106 (4.8) 111 (5.0) 50 (2.3) 55 (2.5) 2,212 Georgia 7,974 (27.6) 6,411 (22.2) 4,408 (15.2) 3,259 (11.3) 2,552 (8.8) 2,063 (7.1) 1,334 (4.6) 942 (3.3) 28,943 Hawaii 688 (23.3) 511 (17.3) 546 (18.5) 350 (11.9) 287 (9.7) 195 (6.6) 217 (7.3) 159 (5.4) 2,953 Idaho 447 (27.6) 328 (20.2) 281 (17.3) 178 (11.0) 131 (8.1) 102 (6.3) 97 (6.0) 58 (3.6) 1,622 Indiana 2,358 (22.8) 2,190 (21.1) 2,025 (19.6) 1,348 (13.0) 904 (8.7) 724 (7.0) 563 (5.4) 245 (2.4) 10,357 Iowa 2,468 (44.7) 905 (16.4) 887 (16.1) 399 (7.2) 337 (6.1) 279 (5.1) 164 (3.0) 77 (1.4) 5,516 Kansas 2,849 (33.8) 1,762 (20.9) 1,228 (14.6) 933 (11.1) 569 (6.8) 514 (6.1) 333 (4.0) 229 (2.7) 8,417 Kentucky 1,080 (29.3) 873 (23.7) 636 (17.3) 319 (8.7) 296 (8.0) 238 (6.5) 162 (4.4) 80 (2.2) 3,684 Louisiana 2,111 (29.5) 1,156 (16.2) 1,150 (16.1) 840 (11.7) 772 (10.8) 458 (6.4) 363 (5.1) 301 (4.2) 7,151 Maine 751 (31.6) 485 (20.4) 377 (15.9) 259 (10.9) 166 (7.0) 135 (5.7) 105 (4.4) 96 (4.0) 2,374 Michigan 6,994 (34.3) 3,890 (19.1) 3,093 (15.2) 2,259 (11.1) 1,354 (6.6) 1,195 (5.9) 880 (4.3) 712 (3.5) 20,377 Minnesota 3,839 (33.8) 2,510 (22.1) 1,752 (15.4) 1,241 (10.9) 686 (6.0) 575 (5.1) 384 (3.4) 369 (3.2) 11,356 Mississippi 369 (17.9) 412 (19.9) 425 (20.6) 312 (15.1) 244 (11.8) 175 (8.5) 75 (3.6) 54 (2.6) 2,066 Missouri 1,029 (16.6) 1,453 (23.4) 1,215 (19.5) 864 (13.9) 592 (9.5) 500 (8.0) 344 (5.5) 218 (3.5) 6,215 Montana 873 (42.5) 358 (17.4) 275 (13.4) 155 (7.6) 133 (6.5) 89 (4.3) 101 (4.9) 68 (3.3) 2,052 Nevada 2,023 (26.9) 1,605 (21.4) 1,439 (19.2) 1,017 (13.5) 512 (6.8) 402 (5.4) 322 (4.3) 192 (2.6) 7,512 New Jersey** 8,009 (33.0) 5,376 (22.2) 4,107 (16.9) 2,121 (8.8) 1,570 (6.5) 941 (3.9) 996 (4.1) 1120 (4.6) 24,240 New Mexico 1,948 (44.5) 746 (17.0) 586 (13.4) 384 (8.8) 258 (5.9) 156 (3.6) 165 (3.8) 138 (3.1) 4,381 New York 32,493 (18.9) 19,318 (18.9) 16,213 (15.9) 12,014 (11.7) 8,328 (8.1) 6,323 (6.2) 4,693 (4.6) 2,874 (2.8) 102,256 New York City 30,249 (39.2) 14,989 (19.4) 11,146 (14.5) 7,556 (9.8) 4,965 (6.4) 3,723 (4.8) 2,870 (3.7) 1,618 (2.1) 77,116 New York State 2,244 (8.9) 4,329 (17.2) 5,067 (20.2) 4,458 (17.7) 3,363 (13.4) 2,600 (10.3) 1,823 (7.3) 1,256 (5.0) 25,140 North Carolina 9,006 (34.8) 5,387 (20.8) 3,988 (15.4) 2,440 (9.4) 1,805 (7.0) 1,448 (5.6) 1,079 (4.2) 758 (2.9) 25,911 North Dakota 412 (32.9) 277 (22.1) 162 (12.9) 121 (9.6) 72 (5.7) 84 (6.7) 72 (5.7) 54 (4.3) 1,254 Ohio 7,278 (Union Law Minister DV Sadananda Gowda on Tuesday claimed that a journalist with a national daily newspaper apologised to him after misquoting him on gay rights issue in an article posted on its website earlier in the day.
The Economic Times had carried the article on Tuesday where Gowda was quoted as saying that India could look into scrapping the controversial Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises gay sex, and pave the way for recognition of homosexuals.
Hours after the article surfaced, Gowda claimed that he was misquoted and asked the ET to remove the story. The business daily was also quick to withdraw the article from its website.
"It is totally misquoted. When I was asked about the judgment that was given by the US court, I said that it is not an easy task in our country. So, the people of that country might have accepted it but here it has to be widely debated. Only then can something be done. Otherwise, it is not an easy task. So, we have no idea of scrapping or doing anything about [Section] 377," ANI quoted Gowda as saying.
The minister even claimed that the ET reporter, Sowmya Aji, sent him an SMS seeking his apology.
@ETPolitics @EconomicTimes why u r misquoting and misleading..I object this is wrong report. and u r reporter sent SMS to me saying sorry — Sadananda Gowda (@DVSBJP) June 30, 2015
@ETPolitics remove the wrong report immediately. Why r u misquoting. Your reporter Mrs Sowmya Aji sent sorry message — Sadananda Gowda (@DVSBJP) June 30, 2015
Swamy calls homosexuals as 'genetically handicapped'
Meanwhile, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy sparked another debate on the social media by calling the homosexuals "genetically handicapped".
Talking to ANI, Swamy said "homosexuality is a genetic disorder". This statement was posted as a tweet on ANI Twitter handle. Replying to another user's comment on the ANI post, Swamy said "Homos are genetically handicapped".
I think the law minister was misquoted,our party position has been that homosexuality is a genetic disorder-Subramanian Swamy,BJP — ANI (@ANI_news) June 30, 2015
@GentleGawker : Issue is not respect. We respect handicapped persons. Homos are genetically handicapped — Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) June 30, 2015
Responses to his remark started pouring in. Many mocked at him and his intellect.
He is an expert in the Vedas and Ramayana which are more scientific than science itself. :P @_TheTrollKiller @Swamy39 @GentleGawker — Satyapriyan T V (@Satyapriyan) June 30, 2015
@ANI_news @Swamy39 you claim to be well-read. How about picking up one of the many scientific studies that says it is just a variation? — Anuradha Santhanam (@anumccartney) June 30, 2015
@ANI_news @rohitagarwal86 Genetic disorder only means deviation from norm, meaning majority behaviour, which is neither a crime nor culpable — Gautam Sen (@gautamsen12) June 30, 2015
. @Swamy39 in science one needs to support his/her comment(s) with reference/source. What is your source for this? @ANI_news — Prateek Garg(प्रतीक) (@IndiaDawn) June 30, 2015
@ANI_news If @Swamy39 @BJP4India think homosexuality is genetic,whats the point in criminalising it or trying to change it.Playing God? — Anusha J (@Anushagjw) June 30, 2015
The Delhi High Court had in 2009 scrapped Section 377 and said it was unconstitutional. However, the Supreme Court in December 2013 overturned the high court order and once again made gay sex a punishable offence.That’s right, everyone from grunts in basic training to elite warrior units like the US Navy Seals have caught the yoga bug, and now some top commanders are planning to incorporate the ancient mind-body practice into the military’s official training. The US Training and Doctrine Command (Tradoc), which oversees instruction of soldiers in everything from how to salute to the right way to hold a rifle, is proposing the largest overhaul of military fitness training in more than 30 years – and for the first time, yoga, as well as Pilates and martial arts, are being highlighted.
US marines doing conventional fitness training on board the USS Austin in the Gulf,
Tradoc commanders, joined by military health experts, say that traditional exercise models may make soldiers “fit” in the sense of more muscular, but often leave them too bulked up and vulnerable to injuries that yoga, which emphasises flexibility, helps prevent. And yoga’s focus on meditation and maintaining calm, they say, fits perfectly with the military’s broad new emphasis on instilling “mental toughness”, as well as physical strength, to ensure that soldiers can succeed on the modern technology-intensive battlefield pursuing elusive and nerve-wracking adversaries.
But is it ethical for peace-loving yogis to help the Pentagon fight its nasty wars? Many yoga business owners, anxious to spread the yoga “gospel” far and wide, don’t much care who gets the message – or why – as long as the market expands. Stay out of “secular” controversies, they say.
And others yogis have questioned whether yoga’s traditional “do no harm” principle really means “don’t go to war” – or rather, “war if you must, but do it with restraint.” They point out that prior to Gandhi, who largely blessed yoga as a spiritual practice of “non-violence”, Indian leaders in ancient times used it much as the Pentagon wants to today – as a way of preparing mentally for battle.
Naturally, some aspects of the growing yoga-military connection are more controversial than others. At the Walter Reed Medical Centre Washington, DC, a group of yogis has pioneered the application of an esoteric yoga practice known as “yoga nidra” – literally, “sleep yoga” – which new research shows can measurably reduce the effects of PTSD on returning war veterans. The nidra practice actually differs from most other types of contemporary yoga because it doesn’t rely on physically challenging yoga “asanas” or poses to strengthen the body, but depends instead on meditation and relaxation techniques, with participants lying motionless on their backs.
Robin Carnes, a former corporate publicist who helped pioneer the yoga-military-PTSD connection, has even established a teacher-training programme for aspiring military yogis through her organisation, Warriors at Ease, which may soon become one the first officially recognised “yoga defence contractors”. Carnes, together with a Harvard-trained professor, Richard Miller, conducted one of the first formal studies that measured the effects of yoga nidra on soldiers who had been scarred mentally and emotionally by their wartime service, and military planners came away impressed with the results.
But not all yogis have agreed to restrict their yoga training to healing practices. A big stir was created in the yoga world in 2006 when it was revealed that US Navy Seals and other US military units were getting trained in yoga, because they saw its application to Seal operations where stealth and calm could make the difference between life and death. Some Seals went on to pioneer yoga hybrids like “combat yoga” or “warrior yoga”, and even set up their own yoga schools, blending the yoga training with martial arts, and special Seal combat techniques.
Developments like these have left many peace-loving yogis aghast. But after a decade of exponential growth – an estimated 1 in 10 adults now practises yoga regularly – the $6bn yoga industry still has no widely-accepted training guidelines, to say nothing of licensing programmes, to guide the estimated 70,000 yoga teachers in the US as they navigate the burgeoning yoga market, with all its temptations and possible pitfalls.
“The few, the proud, the brave,” say the Marines. For some, it’s a marriage made in Nirvana.
Source
Every 80 minutes a U-S veteran commits suicide. Every single day an active duty soldier takes his/her own life.Yoga Across America’s initiative, “Yoga for American Soldiers,” is saving lives and healing the wounds our soldiers are returning home with from war. YAA is sharing yoga, meditation and breathing exercises to active duty soldiers and veterans. We are reaching out to all branches of the military, teaching yoga to hundreds of troops.
“Yoga gave me faith that my body has more power than I believed it had.It gives me freedom to believe in myself,” states Tim Taylor, Army Specialist and Wounded Warrior, Afghanistan.Soldiers are experiencing healing, inspiration and possibility through practicing yoga with YAA. They tell us they enjoy the practice and would like more yoga in their lives.
“Yoga is one of the most powerful exercises I’ve ever done. I was afraid to do it the first time I did it. But after I finished, I was in such a relaxed state of mind that I didn’t want to quit. I wanted to just drift off into that moment, because I don’t get those moments very often,” says Sgt. Rob Boyce, Wounded Warrior Source
In India with Indian Army
Capt. Dan Digati, commander, Troop B, 2nd Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, “Strykehorse,” 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division takes breathing advice from Ram Dhani Bajpai, yoga instructor, during a yoga session at Camp Bundela in Babina, India,
Soldiers assigned to Troop B, 2nd Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, “Strykehorse,” 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division listen to a yoga instructor during their yoga session at Camp Bundela in Babina, India, Oct. 11. The instruction is part of a cultural exchange between the Indian Army and the U.S. Army.
Ram Dhani Bajpai, yoga instructor, leads Soldiers assigned to Troop B, 2nd Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, “Strykehorse,” 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division listen through pranayama, or breath control, exercises during their yoga session at Camp Bundela in Babina, India,
Sgt. Gurdev Singh, a Indian Army master physical fitness instructor, leads Soldiers from C Company, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, in a Yoga exercise during morning fitness training. C Company is in India participating in Exercise Yudh Abhyas
Sgt. 1st Class William Dressel, platoon sergeant, Troop B, 2nd Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, “Strykehorse,” 2nd Stryker
Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division takes breathing advice from Indian Army Naib Subedar Jasbir Singh during a yoga session at Camp Bundela in Babina, India
Indian army Junior Commissioned Officer Jasbir Singh, electronic mechanical engineer, 73rd Armor workshop practices a rotational yoga technique with Soldiers from Bravo Troop, 2nd squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, “Strykehorse,” 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, during Exercise Yudh Abhyas in Babina IndiCONAKRY: Clashes between protesters and security forces in a Guinean city at the epicenter of the west African Ebola outbreak have left at least 55 wounded, the local government said on Saturday.
A curfew was imposed in N’Zerekore, Guinea’s second-largest city, after two days of protests Thursday and Friday by market stall holders against a team of health workers sent, without notice, to spray their market with disinfectant.
Regional governor Lancei Conde said at least 27 law enforcement officers forces were among the wounded.
“In N’zerekore and elsewhere, there are two camps — those who believe in the existence of Ebola and those who think that the epidemic is imported. Investigations are ongoing,” he said.
City prefect Aboubacar M’bop Camara said protesters had “attacked the regional hospital’s ambulance, UNICEF vehicles, the vehicle of the cardiologist at the regional hospital (and) the car of a private individual.”
Local lawmaker Honomou Kourouma blamed the violence on former rebels, without specifying which groups he was referring to.
“If the turmoil has caused enormous damage, it is due to the presence of suspicious troops populating the city,” he told AFP.
“It’s no secret that former rebels are in N’zerekore. They are there in plain sight of everyone. They represent a threat to the city, the country and the region,” he said.
The population of N’zerekore has more than doubled to 300,000 in the last two decades, due largely to refugees escaping civil wars in neighboring Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Kourouma’s claim was dismissed by Camara, who nevertheless admitted that “security forces were targeted by gunfire.”
More than 1,500 people had been confirmed dead from Ebola in four countries — Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria, with Senegal announcing its first case on Friday.
In Guinea, where the virus emerged at the start of the year, 430 people have died.
[wpResize]A wife who dressed up as Catwoman in a bizarre attempt to murder her husband has gone on trial in France.
Laurence Honore, 49, donned tight-fitting black clothing, a black motorbike helmet and latex gloves then hid in bushes with a gun outside their luxury home near Paris.
But when local councillor Christian Honore returned home late from a council meeting, he'sensed a presence' in the garden and called police.
Laurence Honore told police she 'wrestled with her conscience' and then lost her resolve to shoot her husband
Christian Honore, a local councillor, arrived home from a council meeting but'sensed' a presence and called the police
Officers arrived to find the oddly-dressed Mrs Honore emerging from the undergrowth brandishing a.22 Long Rifle revolver.
She was arrested at the scene and later admitted to wanting to kill her husband, but said she 'wrestled with her conscience' before losing her resolve to shoot him.
The plot to kill Mr Honore was hatched after his bid to become mayor of the town of Valenton, east of the French capital, failed and ended in bitter family recrimination, she told police.
The mother-of-one, dubbed Catwoman by the French media, said she had originally asked a friend and former spy for the French intelligence agency, Jean-Noel Naturel, to hire a hitman, which he said could be done for 5,000 euros (£4,000).
She paid the cash, but later asked for it back and told him she would commit the murder herself, the court heard.
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poet Gail Mazur. Her lines are musical but informal, with a brio conveying that the Italian artist knew well enough that he and his work were great—but that he enjoyed vigorously lamenting his discomfort, pain, and inadequacy to the task. No wonder his artistic ideas are bizarre and no good, says Michelangelo: They must come through the medium of his body, that "crooked blowpipe" (Mazur's version of "cerbottana torta"). Great artist, great depression, great imaginative expression of it. This is a vibrant, comic, but heartfelt account of the artist's work:
Michelangelo: To Giovanni da Pistoia
"When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel"
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ —1509 I've already grown a goiter from this torture,
hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy
(or anywhere else where the stagnant water's poison).
My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's
pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket,
my breast twists like a harpy's. My brush,
above me all the time, dribbles paint
so my face makes a fine floor for droppings! My haunches are grinding into my guts,
my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,
every gesture I make is blind and aimless.
My skin hangs loose below me, my spine's
all knotted from folding over itself.
I'm bent taut as a Syrian bow. Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts
are crazy, perfidious tripe:
anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe. My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.
I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.
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Click the arrow on the audio player below to hear Robert Pinsky read "When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel." You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes.
He is "not a painter"! The hint of rhyme between "honor" and "painter" in Mazur's translation gives some suggestion of a clinching couplet. (The rhyme—onore/pittore—is much more distinct in the Italian original.) Although Michelangelo may, in part, have intended "I am really a sculptor—not a painter," despair is certainly there in his self-description. I like to imagine his friend Giovanni laughing out loud at his final "nè io pittore," as we—anyone who has had a hard time at work on a demanding project well worth doing—can add our own exclamation of astonishment, rue, and amusement.In a world of booking agent bidding wars, increasingly high demands from artists and ever-improving production quality from competitors, how does a small, beloved, crusty punk rock club—which arguably once owned the Austin music scene—stay relevant? By building a bigger, badder club that will attract those bigger, badder bands on a five-day-a-week basis, like Emo's East.
Since the 1990s, Emo’s Downtown has been a must-play venue for touring bands. But, over the past several years, it's become visibly outpaced by the remodeling and opening of new clubs like The Mohawk, The Parish, Austin Music Hall and, most significantly, The Moody Theater.
“We always want to be doing cutting edge music, and what's happened in the last four or five years is that the bigger bands, the more relevant bands, are bypassing us because of the facility. We are limited to what we can do in that confined space downtown,” says Frank Hendrix, Emo’s owner since 2000.
[Emo’s East] is something that, when a band rolls up, we'll be on par with any club in the country; we don't have to make any apologies for our green room or the production or anything.
In fact, the downtown venue was originally built in the 1870s; the outside stage served as a livery stable, while the inside stage was a carriage house. “It was never designed to do what we are doing with it. We made the best of what we've got.”
A year and a half ago, when Hendrix got word of an available space on East Riverside, the team decided to up the Emo’s ante. They quickly signed a lease and began renovating, setting them back several million in building costs—an expense they will have to recoup over the next 10 to 15 years. Tapping local architect “wizard”
“[Emo’s East] is something that, when a band rolls up, we'll be on par with any club in the country; we don't have to make any apologies for our green room or the production or anything,” Hendrix says. “The Moody Theater coming to town really raised the bar for everybody. Bands are wanting a little more these days, and we just didn't have all of the amenities we needed downtown.”
The team that books Emo’s will remain the same, a group that combines the powers of Austin’s
What the audience will pay for (and, hopefully, benefit from) includes elephant bark flooring (great for acoustics and soft on the feet), 100 tons of A/C, a group of tiled bathrooms, three large bars, double sheetrocked walls (again, for sound), a large outdoor smoking patio and 500-plus parking spots.
The bands will kick back in a green room with flat screen televisions, a washer and dryer (life on the road is tough) and shower facilities; and, of course, they'll have ample tour bus parking with a private back entrance. A year and a half ago, when Hendrix got word of an available space on East Riverside, the team decided to up the Emo’s ante. They quickly signed a lease and began renovating, setting them back several million in building costs—an expense they will have to recoup over the next 10 to 15 years. Tapping local architect “wizard” Michael Hsu to lead the build-out, Hendrix looked to three other clubs in the U.S. for inspration: the 9:30 Club in D.C., the Knitting Factory in New York and the Music Room in Las Vegas’ Hard Rock Hotel “[Emo’s East] is something that, when a band rolls up, we'll be on par with any club in the country; we don't have to make any apologies for our green room or the production or anything,” Hendrix says. “The Moody Theater coming to town really raised the bar for everybody. Bands are wanting a little more these days, and we just didn't have all of the amenities we needed downtown.”The team that books Emo’s will remain the same, a group that combines the powers of Austin’s C3 Presents, Denver's Soda Jerk, local agent Dan Holloway and a variety of outside promoters. But expect to see the ticket prices increase a bit; you’ll be upcharged for better amenities along with bigger name acts.What the audience will pay for (and, hopefully, benefit from) includes elephant bark flooring (great for acoustics and soft on the feet), 100 tons of A/C, a group of tiled bathrooms, three large bars, double sheetrocked walls (again, for sound), a large outdoor smoking patio and 500-plus parking spots.The bands will kick back in a green room with flat screen televisions, a washer and dryer (life on the road is tough) and shower facilities; and, of course, they'll have ample tour bus parking with a private back entrance.
There are also some people that compare our bathrooms to a bus station in Bhopal, India. It's got plusses and minuses... It's gritty, but it's uber gritty.
Great for both band and ticket-holders? A 48-foot ceiling that transitions back to a 12-foot height, meaning there is hardly a bad line of sight in the house—a far departure from Emo’s current outside stage, where you have to cram yourself against other sweaty bodies and crane your neck any which way to get a decent view.
So what about those who found the overflowing (used) toilets, intimidating bartenders and overall disrepair charming and authentic?
“Well, it's a double edged sword," Hendrix says. "There are also some people that compare our bathrooms to a bus station in Bhopal, India. It's got plusses and minuses... It's gritty, but it's uber gritty."
There are no firm plans to close or remodel the original venue downtown—it will remain booked through SXSW 2012, after which its fate will be determined. And though Hendrix has hired some big guns from Chicago, New York and San Francisco (like the Knitting Factory's Eddie Hudson), he will also be pulling over some employees from the downtown space so people will see a few familiar faces upon arrival (bartender with the long black beard, anyone?).
We will all have to trust Hendrix when he says Emo's will be sure to keep diverse genres, band-size representation and ticket prices in mind. For smaller acts, the 1,700 capacity room can be partitioned into one with an 800 cap, a feature borrowed from the 930 Club. (For comparison’s sake, Emo's downtown has a cap of 1,000 between both inside and outside stages; The Moody Theater sits at over 2,700; For now, there are 60 people onsite daily, working to complete the project that once had timeline of 18 months in an absurdly fast gestation period of nine months. The "hard" date on everyones mind is an opening on or before September 25th, when Queensryche is booked.We will all have to trust Hendrix when he says Emo's will be sure to keep diverse genres, band-size representation and ticket prices in mind. For smaller acts, the 1,700 capacity room can be partitioned into one with an 800 cap, a feature borrowed from the 930 Club. (For comparison’s sake, Emo's downtown has a cap of 1,000 between both inside and outside stages; The Moody Theater sits at over 2,700; Stubbs comes in at roughly 4,000.)
"Just like Emo's has always done, we understand that everybody's broke," Hendrix explains. "You're broke, I'm broke. It's a bad time in our country, and we work off of volume. I'd rather have someone come in three times a week and spend twenty bucks every time than come in one time, spend 100 dollars and leave pissed off. The key to our success has always been cheap shows and cheap beer."
Why not pay a few extra bucks and enjoy that cheap beer in an impeccably built facility? You may miss the nostalgia, but at least you won't be standing in a stranger's piss.
---
Emo's East is located at 2015 East Riverside Drive. Editor's Note: Location formerly the BackRoom.The search for two B.C. snowshoers missing near Cypress Mountain Resort has been called off.
West Vancouver Police said crews were told to stand down just before 4:30 p.m. on Friday.
"At this point, due to the weather and the amount of snow that has fallen in the area, we believe that searchers on the ground have covered all areas that can be safely searched and all areas by aerial search, as well," said Const. Jeff Palmer.
"We don't feel we can justify continued risk to volunteers when there's very little expectation of positive outcome," he added.
The officer said the families of Chun Sek Lam, 64, and Roy Tin Hou Lee, 43, have been notified. The pair had been missing since Christmas Day.
"It's a very difficult decision. It's not easily taken," Palmer said. "It's very difficult for the families. We wish we could've had a better outcome for them."
He said that the missing-persons file is still open and that future search operations could be a consideration.
Situation 'frustrating' for rescue crews
North Shore Rescue (NSR) spokesman Mike Danks said crews are disheartened.
"It's really frustrating because so much effort was put in [to searching] and I feel like a lot of this could've been prevented if a trip plan was in place," he said. "It doesn't help to reflect on that, but in future hopefully people will see that you absolutely have to be prepared and you have to tell people where you're going."
North Shore Rescue spokesman Mike Danks said rescue crews were plagued by poor weather as they searched for the missing hikers this week. (CBC)
Danks said a "huge accumulation" of snow and high avalanche risk made searching especially difficult.
"Our condolences go out to both the families, and I hope this doesn't happen again. It's a really tough thing to go through," he said.
Danks had previously said Friday would be a make-or-break day for rescue efforts, and that the priority was "to get as many crews in as we safely can and cover as much of some of that more heinous terrain by air."
Poor weather plagued the search for Lam and Lee since the two men went missing last week.
They went snowshoeing together on Dec. 25 and never returned. Rescuers were called after their vehicle was discovered in the Cypress parking lot.
Avid hikers
Man Ming Chan is friends with both Lam and Lee. He told CBC News the pair joined his hiking group in 2013.
"We love hiking so we just go together," Chan said. "Usually it's in a group of about 10 people."
He said the hikers in the group made a point of travelling "well-prepared and well-equipped," and usually left trip plans with family and friends.
Chan said he's often reminded Lam and Lee to do the same.
North Shore Rescue waited for the weather to improve before resuming the search for Lam and Lee at Cypress Mountain Resort. (North Shore Rescue/Facebook)
"I told them many times, even if you go by yourself, you should let the other people know where you're going."
Chan said he's spoken with people who were in contact with Lam and Lee the day they went missing, and said the pair weren't carrying equipment for an overnight trip.
"They likely packed light. No overnight gear, definitely no tent," he said. "I think they were just prepared for a day hike... six to seven hours at most — down the mountain before sunset."
'They're all terrain traps'
Danks said Friday's plan was to move search teams and equipment by helicopter into the steep slopes around upper north Strachan Creek, Lembke Creek and the Montizambert drainage — areas they hadn't been able to search thoroughly yet.
"The challenge is that they're all terrain traps," he said, noting about 20 NSR volunteers were out on Friday.
"You're basically funneled in to a very steep, narrow gully. So we want to be very careful putting any of our members in there. If something does go sideways we have access to the aircraft so we can long line our guys out, which is key," he said.
Danks said it was still possible the missing men have survived five frigid nights lost on the mountain.
"It really depends if somebody was injured, how high on the mountain they are and if they are in a safe area. There's a lot of variables and I think the key thing is that they need the will to survive," he said. "As rescuers, we need to stay positive."Both the Ukrainian government authorities and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine are holding civilians in prolonged arbitrary and sometimes secret detention and torturing them, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a joint report released today.
The report “‘You Don’t Exist.’ Arbitrary Detentions, Enforced Disappearances, and Torture in Eastern Ukraine,” is based on interviews with 40 victims of abuses, their family members, witnesses, victims’ lawyers, and other sources. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented nine cases of arbitrary, prolonged detention of civilians by the Ukrainian authorities, including some cases of enforced disappearances, in informal detention sites and nine cases of arbitrary, prolonged detention of civilians by Russia-backed separatists. Most of the cases detailed in the report took place in 2015 and the first half of 2016.
People in eastern Ukraine who are being seized and hidden away by the warring sides are at the mercy of their captors. Tanya Lokshina, Senior Researcher for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch Share this Twitter
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“People in eastern Ukraine who are being seized and hidden away by the warring sides are at the mercy of their captors,” said Tanya Lokshina, Senior Researcher for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch. “It is never legal or justified to seize people off the streets, cut them off from contact with family and lawyers, and beat and abuse them.”
“Torture and secret detention are not historical – or unknown – practices in Ukraine. They are taking place right now, on both sides of the conflict,” said Denis Krivosheev, Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International. “Those countries providing support – to whatever side - know this perfectly well. They must not continue to turn a blind-eye to these abhorrent abuses.”
Enforced Disappearances, Torture
The Ukrainian authorities and pro-Kiev paramilitary groups have detained civilians suspected of involvement with or supporting Russian-backed separatists, while the separatist forces have detained civilians suspected of supporting or spying for the Ukrainian government, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch found.
In one case, “Vadim,” 39, was detained and tortured first by one side, then the other. In April 2015, armed men seized him at a checkpoint manned by Ukrainian forces, pulled a bag over his head, and questioned him about his alleged connections with Russia-backed separatists. Vadim spent more than six weeks in captivity, most of the time in a facility apparently run by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) personnel. His interrogators tortured him with electric shocks, burned him with cigarettes, and beat him, demanding that he confess to working for Russia-backed separatists.
After they finally released him, Vadim returned to Donetsk and was immediately detained by the local de facto authorities, who suspected him of having been recruited by Ukraine’s Security Service during his time in captivity. He spent more than two months in incommunicado detention in an unofficial prison in central Donetsk, where his captors also beat and ill-treated him.
Torture and secret detention are not historical – or unknown – practices in Ukraine. They are taking place right now, on both sides of the conflict. Denis Krivosheev, Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International Share this Twitter
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Torturing detainees is always prohibited and always a crime, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said. Ukraine’s leadership and the de facto separatist authorities should both ensure that all forces under their control are aware of this and make it clear that ill-treatment of detainees won’t be tolerated.
In some cases, the detentions constituted enforced disappearances because the authorities refused to acknowledge that the person was being detained or refused to provide their relatives with any information on their whereabouts or fate. Most of those detained suffered torture or other forms of ill-treatment. Several who had been injured in detention were denied medical attention.
In almost all of the 18 cases investigated, the release of the civilian detainees was at some point discussed by the side holding them in the context of prisoner exchanges. This gives rise to serious concern that both sides may be detaining civilians to have “currency” for potential exchanges of prisoners, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said. Such detentions could constitute hostage taking, a war crime.
Secret Detention Facilities of Ukraine’s Security Service
In three of the cases of enforced disappearance in government-controlled territory, the people who had been detained said Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) held them in unacknowledged detention for periods ranging from 6 weeks to 15 months. One person was released in a prisoner exchange, and the other two were eventually released without trial.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch found that unlawful, unacknowledged detentions have taken place in the SBU’s premises in Kharkiv, Kramatorsk, Izyum, and Mariupol. A June 2016 UN report also noted the SBU compound in Kharkiv as an alleged place of unofficial detention.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have received information from a range of sources, including recently released detainees, that as many as 16 people may remain in secret detention on the SBU’s compound in Kharkiv. In a letter to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the SBU denied operating any detention facilities other than their only official temporary detention center in Kiev and denied having any information regarding the alleged Security Service abuses the groups documented.
The allegations of secret detention by Ukraine are compelling and serious, and they merit thorough investigation. Denis Krivosheev, Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International Share this Twitter
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“The allegations of secret detention by Ukraine are compelling and serious, and they merit thorough investigation. The Ukrainian government must come clean on this; and those countries lending international support should be forthright in their calls for an end to such practices,” said Krivosheev at Amnesty International.
Arbitrary detention in Areas controlled by Russia-backed separatists
In the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, local security services, which operate without any checks and balances, have arbitrarily detained civilians and in some cases tortured them. Residents of Donetsk and Luhansk described respective de facto state security ministries as the most powerful and the most feared organizations in the self-proclaimed republics.
“The vacuum of the rule of law in separatist-controlled areas deprives people who have been detained of their rights and basically leaves them helpless,” said Lokshina at Human Rights Watch.
The vacuum of the rule of law in separatist-controlled areas deprives people who have been detained of their rights and basically leaves them helpless. Tanya Lokshina, Senior Researcher for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch Share this Twitter
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People held by the warring sides in eastern Ukraine are protected under international human rights and international humanitarian law, which unequivocally ban arbitrary detention, torture, and other ill-treatment. International standards provide that allegations of torture and other ill-treatment should be investigated, and that, when the evidence warrants it, those responsible should be prosecuted. Detainees must be provided with adequate food, water, clothing, shelter, and medical care.
The Ukrainian government and the de facto authorities in self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk peoples’ republics should immediately end enforced disappearances and arbitrary and incommunicado detention, and put into effect zero-tolerance policies for torture and ill-treatment of detainees. All parties to the conflict need to ensure that all forces under their control are aware of the consequences of abusing detainees under international law, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said.
To download AV materials please click hereIn what's being described as a "radical shift" in its cloud strategy, the CIA has signed a reported $600 million, 10-year deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build a private cloud, according to a story in Federal Computer Week.
[ MORE NEWS: JPMorgan Chase customers see zero balances after technical glitch ]
Such a deal would be significant for multiple reasons. First, there are ongoing questions about whether cloud computing is an appropriate use case for important, mission-critical workloads and large enterprises. The CIA embracing the cloud to the tune of a $600 million contract could help dispel that somewhat.
In addition, the article reports that Amazon would likely build a private cloud for the government agency, meaning it would run, at least in part, on the CIA's own infrastructure, behind the CIA firewall, and not in Amazon-controlled public cloud data centers. That would be a radical shift for AWS, which does not have a private cloud offering for customers to run on their own premises.
The article reads: "While the full scope of its current contract with Amazon is not yet clear, it is likely this contract essentially brings a public cloud computing environment inside the secure firewalls of the intelligence community, thereby negating concerns of classified data being hosted in any public environment."
AWS has virtual private clouds (VPC), which are infrastructure as a service (IaaS) resources dedicated to specific customers, but it does not have a product for customers to deploy AWS-like clouds on customers own infrastructure. AWS partners such as Eucalyptus claim to fill this void. Some have questioned if private clouds are a business AWS may get into, but Bernard Golden, vice president of enterprise solutions at Enstratius, says building private clouds would not follow AWS's business model of high-volume, low-margin public cloud IaaS services.
Golden says the bigger takeaway from the CIA news is that a major government entity has chosen the AWS platform to mimic on its own premises, and not competing services from VMware or OpenStack, for example. "The CIA has access to a large amount of resources, they could have chosen any platform, and they decided this was the right architecture for their cloud," he says. "If the CIA is relying on Amazon's cloud, I think that means enterprises can be comfortable doing so."
As for AWS building what could be its first private cloud on a customer's premise, Golden says if the money is right, businesses are willing to work with clients. "If the CIA calls, you don't just hang up on them," he says.
AWS already has a stake in government cloud circles. The company has nine regions where customers can choose to deploy their IaaS services, including one in the Pacific Northwest only for government clients.
Mikhail Malamud, a former defense contractor who used to work with Amazon and founder of cloud gateway company CloudAware, which integrates with AWS IaaS Services, says he views this CIA deal as a beachhead for Amazon to expand its federal government customer base. If AWS can provide the CIA as a reference customer, it should be able to much more easily sign up other government clients.
A spokesperson for AWS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. FCW reported that neither AWS nor CIA officials would comment.The 37th International Conference on High Energy Physics just finished in Valencia, Spain. This year, no big surprises were announced: no new boson, no signs from new particles or clear phenomena revealing the nature of dark matter or new theories such as Supersymmetry. But as always, a few small anomalies were reported.
Looking for deviations from the theoretical predictions is precisely how experimentalists are trying to find a way to reveal “new physics”. It would help discover a more encompassing theory since everybody realises the current theoretical model, the Standard Model, has its limits and must be superseded by something else. However, all physicists know that small deviations often come and go. All measurements made in physics follow statistical laws. Therefore deviations from the expected value by one standard deviation occur in three measurements out of ten. Larger deviations are less common but still possible. A two standard deviation happens 5% of the time. Then there are systematic uncertainties that relate to the experimental equipment. These are not purely statistical, but can be improved with a better understanding of our detectors. The total experimental uncertainty quoted with each result corresponds to one standard variation. Here are two small anomalies reported at this conference that attracted attention this year.
The ATLAS Collaboration showed its preliminary result on the production of a pair of W bosons. Measuring this rate provides excellent checks of the Standard Model since theorists can predict how often pairs of W bosons are produced when protons collide in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The production rate depends on the energy released during these collisions. So far, two measurements can be made since the LHC operated at two different energies, namely 7 TeV and 8 TeV.
CMS and ATLAS had already released their results on their 7 TeV data. The measured rates exceeded slightly the theoretical prediction but were both well within their experimental error with a deviation of 1.0 and 1.4 standard deviation, respectively. CMS had also published results based on about 20% of all data collected at 8 TeV. It exceeded slightly the theoretical prediction by 1.7 standard deviation. The latest ATLAS result adds one more element to the picture. It is based on the full 8 TeV data sample. Now ATLAS reports a slightly stronger deviation for this rate at 8 TeV with 2.1 standard deviations from the theoretical prediction.
The four experimental measurements for the WW production rate (black dots) with the experimental uncertainty (horizontal bar) as well as the current theoretical prediction (blue triangle) with its own uncertainty (blue strip). One can see that all measurements are higher than the current prediction, indicating that the theoretical calculation fails to include everything.
The four individual measurements are each reasonably consistent with expectation, but the fact that all four measurements lie above the predictions becomes intriguing. Most likely, this means that theorists have not yet taken into account all the small corrections required by the Standard Model to precisely determine this rate. This would be like having forgotten a few small expenses in one’s budget, leading to an unexplained deficit at the end of the month. Moreover, there could be common factors in the experimental uncertainties, which would lower the overall significance of this anomaly. But if the theoretical predictions remain what they are even when adding all possible little corrections, it could indicate the existence of new phenomena, which would be exciting. It would then be something to watch for when the LHC resumes operation in 2015 at 13 TeV.
The CMS Collaboration presented another intriguing result. They found some events consistent with coming from a decay of a Higgs boson into a tau and a muon. Such decays are prohibited in the Standard Model since they violate lepton flavour conservation. There are three “flavours” or types of charged leptons (a category of fundamental particles): the electron, the muon and the tau. Each one comes with its own type of neutrinos. According to all observations made so far, leptons are always produced either with their own neutrino or with their antiparticle. Hence, the decay of a Higgs boson in leptons should always produce a charged lepton and its antiparticle, but never two charged leptons of different flavour. Violating a conservation laws in particle physics is simply not allowed.
This needs to be scrutinised with more data, which will be possible when the LHC resumes next year. Lepton flavour violation is allowed outside the Standard Model in various models such as models with more than one Higgs doublet or composite Higgs models or Randall-Sundrum models of extra dimensions for example. So if both ATLAS and CMS confirm this trend as a real effect, it would be a small revolution.
The results obtained by the CMS Collaboration showing that six different channels all give a non-zero value for the decay rate of Higgs boson into pairs of tau and muon.
Pauline Gagnon
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Tags: anomalies, ATLAS, CMS, ICHEP, new physics0 Just Between Friends co-founder donates kidney to man in need
BROKEN ARROW, Okla. - While many are out doing their Christmas shopping this week, a Broken Arrow woman is giving up a piece of herself so that someone else may live.
Shannon Wilburn is well-known throughout the Green Country community for being the co-founder of Just Between Friends, but now she is also a live organ donor.
"About a year ago, an announcement was made at our church that a gentleman at one of our branches was in dire need of a kidney," Wilburn said.
She said the Lord told her help him.
"I ignored it, and it seemed like every month I would get reminders," Wilburn said.
After several weeks, she finally decided that she needed to get tested to see if her kidney was compatible with the patient's.
"When I went to the transplant specialist, she said, 'Shannon, it will have to be God-ordained for you to be a match,' and I thought she shouldn't have said that because now it's going to happen," Wilburn said.
"I just felt in my spirit that I was supposed to do this," Wilburn said.
And she did it. The four hour transplant surgery was a success.
The man's wife, Kathy, said they are overjoyed with his second chance at life.
"We didn't know when, and if, it would happen, and because of Shannon and her great heart and listening to God's call, we got this gift today," she said.
Oklahoma has 4,585 patients on dialysis and 502 patients waiting for a kidney transplant.
"Praise the Lord, seriously, because this is not about me. Anyone with two kidneys can do it," Wilburn said.
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© 2019 Cox Media Group.This is what I ended up having for dinner last night and was completely surprised with myself. I was floating around the kitchen and pulling things out of my fridge drawers as if I actually knew what I was doing, hahaha.
I find having a set idea for meals to be rather stressful. I might realize later that I do not have an ingredient, I no longer want to eat that, etc.
First I made this wonderful soup! I had a lovely autumn warming theme going on with my dinner. I think my mood, atmosphere and energy ended up creating something completely beyond me.
Orange Fennel Carrot Soup
One Whole Orange
Water
Dill
Shredded Celery, Carrot, Parsnip & Fennel
Ginger
Turmeric
Orange Juice
Lemon Juice
This soup was thick, sweet, warm and sadly because I use my phone as a camera the color looks off in this photo but the soup was actually a vibrant orange color. The orange added a lovely sweetness that goes especially well with parsnip and fennel. By using a blender with such strong and healthy root vegetables my soup ended up feeling warm temperature wise. This totally beats dehydrating or using a stove!
I paired this with a Mustard Green, Cabbage, Fennel, Celery and Carrot salad with a warming orange sesame dressing.
I shredded a few leaves of mustard greens, which are spicy and savory. It was excellent with the kind of plain taste of green cabbage. I also shredded green cabbage, green onions and fennel with a knife. I used a vegetable peeler to shred some parsnip, carrot, and celery.
In the blender I made the dressing by shredding carrot, one small satsuma orange (these are very sweet once they are truly in season), water, dill, sesame seeds, and ginger. I gently mixed the dressing in and sprinkled a little more sesame seeds for appearance and an extra crunch 😉
Below is my complete warming November meal ❤ I enjoyed the sweet taste of parsnips, they remind me of carrots & celery. In my soup it really helped create a creamy thick texture while still keeping things very simple. Another ingredient that may be people do not use daily in their dishes is mustard greens. They have lots of flavor, heat and really do taste like a mustard green. This gave the dish an Asian flavored flare without having to use something expected like soy sauce or sesame oil.
I hope this gives you all some ideas on things to create these next few days, especially since it looks like in both California and in New England the weather has been very damp and chilly. Here is my previous post all about how to create your own lip smacking delicious living soup :D!
Thank you all for taking the time to stop by my site. Much love ❤ and raw power 😉Harry here. Driver safety is a real issue, especially for those of us who drive late at night. And even though the odds of something happening are low, since Uber does millions of trips a day, it’s always best to be prepared. Today, RSG contributor Will Preston recounts a recent ‘scary’ experience and what he could have done to handle it better.
Have you ever wondered what you would do, or what you should do, if a passenger sets off your Spidey sense? I had a situation last weekend that put me in this position. At the time I thought I handled it all right, but now I know I could’ve handled better. Worse, I almost handled it really poorly – based on what the sheriff’s department said when I spoke to them.
The Story
The ride started with three guys standing in front of a local strip club. Two of them got in my backseat and proceeded to argue to try to convince the third person to get in the vehicle with us. He was having none of it, so we pulled off.
The first thing I heard was, “I think this is his first time doing shrooms.” Perhaps I should’ve ended the ride right there, but I did not. They seemed coherent and not dangerous, so I continued driving. What I did do was listen very closely to what they were saying.
We’ll call the rider on my side of the vehicle Mark, and the other guy Steve. It became apparent that they met that day and Steve was the dealer from whom Mark had purchased the shrooms. It was also apparent that Steve was planning on selling Mark some additional drugs that evening. The deal was not going to go down in my car, because Mark did not have any additional money.
Steve was friendly until he found out that Mark had hit his daily maximum on – get this – his corporate debit card from his new job. He had already given $300 to Steve for the shrooms and had spent another $300 at the strip club. Suddenly Steve wasn’t talking anymore.
I didn’t hear much else until we got to Mark’s residence. Just before pulling up to his house, I heard Steve say “want a blast?” I didn’t know what that meant, but I soon found out. As soon as we pulled up to Mark’s residence, I heard the unmistakable sound of someone snorting something. I turned around to see Steve snorting coke off of his smart phone screen! And now my Spidey sense finally went off.
Although Mark asked me to take Steve to Steve’s residence, I told them that this was the end of the ride. I told Steve I wasn’t going to take him anywhere. He didn’t understand. Eventually he got out of my car, and I got out of there as quickly as possible.
The next day I spoke to a San Diego County Sheriff and asked him what he thought I should have done in this scenario. I learned several things in that conversation that I thought I’d share with you.
Be Prepared
There are a number of potential things that can happen in your car while rideshare driving that may scare you. I have just around 2,000 drives and encountered four ‘scary’ situations, but remember that I drive the late shift on Friday and Saturday nights. Remember I’m also the guy that had over 10 cleaning fees last year, so maybe I just have bad luck. It has never happened to me in the middle of the day. But when it does happen, your |
told the Independent.
Instead of the £770 a month he was promised, John is paid a basic salary of £129 plus a housing and transport allowance of £83, for a total of £212 a month. He said that some people earn less.
According to Human Rights Watch, payment is the biggest issue facing migrant workers in the UAE.
“Workers are not paid what they were promised,” Nicholas McGeehan, researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the Independent.
“Then you have this system of Kefala, which ties the workers to their employer so when things go wrong they can’t leave, they could be arrested for absconded. They may not have their passport. Add in recruitment fees. All of these measures in combination are toxic.”
A clause in John's contract means that workers have to pay their sponsor back if they want to get of their jobs before a six month “probation” is complete. He said he had made inquiries at the labour ministry about cancelling his contract and was told that he could only do so if his employer agreed.
"Many people are just stranded here, languishing," John said. "Many people (I included) left their jobs for a false promise of a lucrative job offers with mouth-watering remuneration only to meet a different story altogether and so going home becomes another nightmare."
If he cancelled the contract without consent, he would be sent home. This would be a disaster for John, who said that he cannot afford to return home. His only option is to try and get released from his contract so he can find work elsewhere in the kingdom.
The UAE doesn’t have an exit visa system and many migrant workers owe money to recruiters in their home countries. Some borrow money from a local loan shark to pay for the ticket over, putting their families at risk if they don’t earn the money that they need to pay back.
EllisDon, a Canadian construction services company, manages the contract for the Ansam residential project on Yas Island.
Wissam Ayoub, vice president of the Middle East region at EllisDon, said that it would review conditions for workers on the site.
“We believe in the fair treatment of all people involved in the projects we engage in,” Mr Ayoub said.
He said EllisDon would review the conditions of workers on the Ansam site “and take action as required to ensure that they are following the UAE's labour laws.”
The Independent has seen contracts and pay slips showing that workers were not offered more than they were paid by the construction company in the UAE. However John said that a third party in Nigeria had promised him higher wages.
The contractor said that overtime was also paid to staff.
The UAE has made some improvements to laws protecting migrant workers, but many of these aren’t enforced or don’t go far enough to protect the vulnerable, Human Rights Watch said.
Construction work in the gulf dropped off after the financial crisis. But the appetite for growth has returned and with it more migrants are being tempted by the promise of work.
“The gulf states shop around looking for a good deal: workers who are cheap and pliant and whose governments who are not going to kick up a fuss if their workers aren’t treated well,” McGeehan from Human Rights Watch said.
More of these workers are coming from African countries like Kenya and Uganda, he said, where originally they would have come from Asia.
Shape Created with Sketch. Business news: in pictures Show all 8 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Business news: in pictures 1/8 Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis 2/8 Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid £3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA 3/8 RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA 4/8 Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty 5/8 Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty 6/8 Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty 7/8 French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rue’s contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. 8/8 Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped £4m off of Flybe’s revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airline’s estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year. 1/8 Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis 2/8 Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid £3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA 3/8 RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA 4/8 Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty 5/8 Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty 6/8 Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty 7/8 French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rue’s contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. 8/8 Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped £4m off of Flybe’s revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airline’s estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year.
Once they arrive they are trapped: unable to buy their freedom and return home.
“Going home now for me is not an option because there will be no job for me and I spent all my savings to get here,” John said.
"The only way out for me is to find another job and that can only happen if my employer lets me go."
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe nowDescription:
A party isn't a party without balloons. Balloons not only entertain children, they can transform your home or party area quickly into an exciting party destination.
Main Features:
Nice gift: A cartoon balloon is great to be a children gift
Material: Made of high quality aluminum film, durable and can be reused
Automatic bonding design: With automatic bonding design, you can use it for times
Party / wedding decoration: It could also be a beautiful decoration of party and birthday
Fun: When you inflate normal air or helium, you will get a big balloon friend
This balloon will be popular with customers due to the novelty style
Inflated size: 80 x 47 cm / 31.5 x 18.5 inch
Warm Prompt: It's suitable for children above 3 years old.
Specification Basic Information Nature: Balloon
Materials: Aluminum Film
Appliable Crowd: Unisex
Specification: Europe and America Dimensions and Weight Product weight: 0.010 kg
Package weight: 0.037 kg
Package size: 20.00 x 15.00 x 10.00 cm / 7.87 x 5.91 x 3.94 inches Package Contents Package Contents: 1 x Cartoon Figure Balloon
Product Safety Disclaimer:
We do not accept any responsibility or liability for misuse of this or any other product. All our products are extensively tested to comply with rigorous and strict QC standards. For certain products (e.g. toys, knives, etc.), we recommend proper supervision as we cannot be held liable for misuse or accidents.
Disclaimer:
We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the incorrect purchase of our products. All of the products on the website are extensively tested to comply with rigorous and strict QC standards. For all of our clothing products, items and accessories, please take careful note of the precise measurements, mainly shown in centimeters (CM). As part of our company policy, we will not be able to accept returns or provide refunds for items which are the wrong size.The Wizards are coming off a pretty successful four game road trip, winning three away from home, but they lost Bradley Beal to injury last night in a blowout loss against the Minnesota Timberwolves. They’ll return home to the nation’s capital tonight to face the Detroit Pistons, who also suffered a blowout loss to the Orlando Magic last night, in their second game in as many nights. The game will tip off at 7:00 PM from the Verizon Center.
Key Match Up:
Washington’s bigs were completely dominated by Kevin Love and Nikola Pekovic last night, and it won’t get any easier for them tonight when matched up against Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond. Detroit has one of the biggest starting lineups in the league, since new head coach Mo Cheeks decided to start Josh Smith at small forward along side both Monroe and Drummond. Their frontcourt combined for just 8 for 21 shooting against the Magic last night, but they’ll certainly have an advantage against Trevor Booker/Nene and Marcin Gortat. Drummond is still relatively raw offensively, so Marcin Gortat has to do a good job taking him out of his comfort zone. Forcing Drummond out of the paint is no easy task, but if he could keep him off the glass, the Wizards should be able to compete in the rebounding category tonight.
With that said, Gortat has to be more assertive offensively. Pekovic got whatever he wanted from the Wizards last night, and if that happens tonight with Detroit’s bigs, tonight could be a long game for the Wizards. Gortat has gone through a string of games where he he’s been hesitant offensively, and that needs to change. He’s been one of the most consistent players on Washington’s roster, but he hasn’t looked comfortable as of late. John Wall should look to utilize him in the pick-and-roll early on in the game. Although the Pistons are considered the underdogs tonight, they have been good on the road this season and their size causes problems for virtually every team in the NBA. Washington has to find a way to compete on the glass tonight if they want to give themselves a chance to win.
Notes:
Bradley Beal’s X-ray results came back negative, but his MRI results should offer more detail. He probably won’t be available to play tonight, so expect Martell Webster to slide into the starting lineup.
Kevin Seraphin was also out last night with a sore knee. He’s questionable for tonight.
Detroit is 24th in the NBA in assists per game. Could this be considered the Josh Smith and Brandon Jennings effect?
The Pistons are the second worst three point shooting team in the NBA, shooting just 32.1% on the season.
Prediction:
Washington has struggled against the Pistons for the past few seasons, including a loss in Detroit to start this season. They’ve lost multiple games at home that playoff teams should win, and I think the Wizards have learned from their past mistakes at home and will sneak past the Pistons tonight.
Besides John Wall, no one on the Wizards roster played particularly well last night and I don’t see that continuing tonight at home. Wall should get the advantage over Brandon Jennings, and Martell Webster/Trevor Ariza should be able to light the Pistons up from three point territory.
If the Wizards could contain Josh Smith, and Greg Monroe/Andre Drummond on the glass, they should be able to get the victory. Washington has to find ways to win games at home against teams below.500, and although the Pistons might be more talented on paper, they haven’t been great in a lowly Eastern Conference either.+ 63
Architects dECOi Architects
Location Cambridge, MA, USA
Category Offices Interiors
Area 10000.0 ft2
Project Year 2009
Photographs Anton Grassl
Project Team Mark Goulthorpe, Raphael Crespin, Gabriel Blue Cira, Matt Trimble, Priyanka Shah
MIT Kaustuv de Biswas
Mathematics Prof Alex Scott (Oxford University)
Consultants Helen Heitman, Pablo Garcia (Gensler Associates)
General Contractor Paul Jacobson (Tricore)
Millwork Contractor Shawn Keller (CWKeller) More Specs Less Specs
Text description provided by the architects. The project was for the penthouse offices of an investment group in green building and clean energy technologies (CChange). The design drew from our prior sculpture, In the Shadow of Ledoux, 1993, and the Galerie Miran, 2003, proposing the milling of all elements of the interior from sustainably-forested spruce plywood using numeric command machines: information carves renewable carbon-absorbing resource.
The project essentially comprises two planes - the floor and ceiling, both of which are articulated as continuous surfaces inflected by function. The curvilinearity expresses both the digital genesis and the seamless fabrication logic, with the architect providing actual machining files to the fabricator. As far as possible, the ethos was to replace typical industrial components (such as vents, door handles, etc) with articulate milled timber, offering a radically streamlined protocol for delivery of a highly crafted interior.
The intention was to offer a reduced carbon footprint whilst celebrating both a new formal virtuosity and a radical level of detail finesse. Effectively this allows the architect to fully customize all elements of the building, placing material in space with full authorial control (for the first time since industrial components became standard). Other than sprinklers, lights, glass and hinges, the substance of the interior architecture was realized via this unitary material/fabrication logic, with a high degree of prefabrication.
The early sketch design grasped the potential for plastic control of the spatial and detail definition allowable within a fully CAD-CAM environment. The client asked that the work chairs be purchased for liability reasons, but all shelves, desks, benches, storage units, etc were accepted for direct fabrication in plylam via the same method.Ultimately we devised automated algorithms for generating actual milling files, passing from design to fabrication seamlessly and with high tolerances and extremely low percentages of error.
The developed design was nuanced parametrically in celebration of the indifference of the CNC machine to formal complexity. The entire project was nested onto 1200 4ft x 12ft plywood sheets, and milled using a small 3-axis CNC router, which effortlessly carved the ply sections according to our prescribed ‘weeping’ tool paths. Well over a million linear feet of cut were issued, yet the machinic process was essentially error-free and highly accurate. Assembly proved relatively straightforward given the accuracy of the milling, and we enjoyed the elegance of the emerging forms.
The project was nuanced down to the smallest detail, such as the ventilation grille for the computer boxes being inflected to provide a handle to open the door; or the milling of custom mathematical surfaces for each office; even the door handles were carved as customized elements, proving cheaper than stainless steel D- handles! We aimed at formal coherence at macro and micro scales, such that an inflection in the ceiling was echoed in the benches and carried down to the sinuous lines of the door handles.
Functional needs such as ventilation grilles and shrouds for the bright LED lights gave a detail finesse to the ceiling; whilst focal elements such as the conference table or directors’ desks were plastically formed to permit electrical data outlets in the spine, and were embellished mathematically according to parameters of ‘tension’ and ‘irony’. Quite literally, the material substance of each space was nuanced according to the character and mood of each client during the fabrication period!
Summary.
One Main uses sustainably forested Finnish spruce ply with non-toxic water-based glue. The 10,000sq ft (1000m2) project nested onto 1200 sheets of 1.5” thick 4ft x 12ft ply, milled locally by a single 3-axis milling machine. dECOi provided the actual tooling paths (over 1 million linear feet of cut), with no plans or sections, just 3D instructional files. Wastage was about 10%, pulped and recycled.In May 2015, LA City Councilmember Jose Huizar unveiled the DTLA Forward plan, a set of four City Council motions aimed at improving the pedestrian experience in Downtown Los Angeles. Earlier this month, DTLA Forward unveiled its first project, the installation of 15 "headstart crosswalks" that allow pedestrians to start crossing before traffic lights change, aimed at cutting down pedestrian/vehicle collisions. DTLA Forward's next goal is two major street reconfigurations that will bring protected bike lanes to two Downtown roads, reports KPCC.
Under the plan, protected bike lanes will be installed on Main and Spring streets, both spanning all the way from West Cesar E. Chavez Avenue at the northern end of DTLA to Olympic Boulevard at the southern end. These aren't just any protected bike lanes either. While many bike lanes rely on simply an unbroken line of paint to separate drivers and cyclists, the lanes Huizar has proposed will include a physical barrier between the two.
Though plans have not been finalized, a DTLA Forward press release hints that the Spring and Main bike lanes will run right along the curb, which would then push street parking over by a few feet and provide "a 'parked car' wall of protection" for cyclists. Huizar says funds are in place for the bike lanes, but a timeline has not yet been announced.
The City Council also voted Wednesday on DTLA Forward's Green Alleyway motion that aims to convert "blighted alleys into pedestrian destinations." The Council approved the motion to create green alley pilot programs in South Park, the Arts District, and the Harlem Place alley that runs in between Main and Spring in the Historic Core. The City Council will use these three alleys as a test run for future projects.Reviewed by Edgeville Buzz March 7, 2013. Alderman Harry Osterman held a community meeting yesterday at the 48th Ward office to discuss a potential development plan for the long vacant building at 5427 N Broadway and the neighboring building to the north that once housed Pepitone’s restaurant. Alderman Harry Osterman held a community meeting yesterday at the 48th Ward office to discuss a potential development plan for the long vacant building at 5427 N Broadway and the neighboring building to the north that once housed Pepitone’s restaurant. 0 Reviewed byonRating:
Potential development for long empty Broadway building / By Edgeville Buzz Alderman Harry Osterman held a community meeting yesterday at the 48th Ward office to discuss a potential development plan for the long vacant building at 5427 N Broadway and the neighboring building to the north that once housed Pepitone’s restaurant. Tags: Dan Luna, development, Osterman, Pepitone's, real estate, rental apartmentsI tend to drive on back roads. If there’s a main artery through the city and I know that I can move more quickly (or at least with less traffic congestion) on the next, smaller streets over I will most likely do it. I used to do this out of “necessity” in my drinking days (and believe me that’s not said with pride), but I realized that this is how I tend to live my creative life as well.
Hi, I’m Matt, and I’m a Cult Artist.
There are the artists that define and represent a genre in people’s minds. There are also the artists du jour, and then the second tier artists that eventually fall off the face of the earth from listener (or their own) apathy. Then there are the Weird Ones– the artists that stick around because of a relatively small group of diehards that, for some reason, glom onto them and follow them through thick and thin because even though they aren’t the first name that pops out of someone’s mouth when you are asking about artists in X-Genre, they’re mainstays. They’re doing something special that keeps the faithful coming back for more, and they’re doing it because they don’t know any other fucking way.
That’s the Dead Milkmen. That’s Saul Williams. That’s Billy Bragg. That’s Ani DiFranco. Hell, on the grandest scale that’s TOOL.
And that’s, to a much, much lesser level, Caustic.
I’ve taken a weird way to “success,” as I’m one of the predominant industrial artists that has, *GASP*, a sense of humor about industrial. Every song isn’t a stupid yuckfest (though some idiots seem to think I’m always joking. Yes, songs about alcoholism are HYSTERICAL. Shitheel.) I’m hardly the first, but I’m probably one of the loudest out there currently, and I may have more fans of ME due to that than my music, like Henry Rollins vs The Rollins Band. I’ve been written off for it by the majority of the industrial/ebm scene over the years, or at least the ones who have even heard of me. Most people only remember me for getting kicked off a KMFDM tour…in 2006. And no, I don’t feel like talking about that anymore. Not because it sucked, because it stopped mattering a few months after it happened. Move on.
But not everyone wrote me off. Some people “got” what I did. Some people realized I wasn’t just being a dick and there was some actual thought behind this stuff (well some of it…some was just pretty stupid), and that maybe…just maybe…industrial could be fun, too. Fortunately some of these people also booked shows or made music themselves, so by working my ass off getting my name out there I gained a following of similar-minded weirdos from all over the place. Most were rivetheads, but also punks, metalheads, and the occasional grandma got into my shit.
And when it came to labels I’ve always prided myself on being as DIY as possible. I’ve never “needed” a label. I’ve probably self-released nearly as much as I’ve put out on labels, and I’ve released a lot. A big part of my philosophy is also not taking money in advance and funding them without label help. In the early days when I did everything EXCEPT mastering my own stuff it wasn’t as costly, but when I started actually getting a larger following I started getting a little more professional, and that required more money…and honestly, money I didn’t have. Fans of music rarely seem to understand how little musicians make these days. Shows and merch only bring in so much, especially as a cult artist. Sure, I can play anywhere in the country to a small crowd, but I’m not selling out venues. This is just how it is, and how it is for most of us. We aren’t all Combichrist or VNV Nation.
But the internet has been great for cult artists like me, because I have fans all over the world. Maybe it’s only a handful in all of Australia or a few in Iceland, but the fact that anyone outside of my continent even knows what I do is mind blowing. I built this audience never relying on mainstream media (or even most of the scene-related media) to help me, because if I did I would be nothing but disappointed because not one single mainstream source has any interest in my music. So I took another path– social media. Being funny has its benefits, and the biggest one is if you can nail something on the head AND make people laugh…well that’s gold. People share that shit like wildfire.
I generally work with small labels too, and because I don’t want an advance (and, conversely, the labels couldn’t give me much to begin with) I use crowdfunding as a means to raise the necessary funds to finish my albums “properly”, as well as get the ball rolling in a promotional capacity, but most positively I use it as a means to connect with my cult (and I mean “cult” in the most loving, non-actual-culty way), as these people are the reason I’ve gotten anywhere. Having a cult is good that way, as they WANT to support you. I’ve backed plenty of campaigns for the simple reason that I BELIEVE in this artist and it makes me happy to see them succeed and keep putting their art out into the world the way we all want to hear/see/taste it. That’s beautiful to me.
Crowdfunding has it’s naysayers, but this is a modern solution to a modern problem for many of us. No money in releasing music? Go straight to the source and work for the money a different way, ideally with the backers getting great stuff exclusive to them for helping and saving your butt. I consider that win-win. It’s a way to sidestep the traditional music industry, and keeping in line with my original metaphor, it’s a creative side street. It’s also a comparatively easier way to achieve your goal if you aren’t averse to working your ass off to fulfill all of your obligations. And as an aside, anyone who sees crowdfunding as “begging” or “panhandling” hasn’t personally spent hundreds of hours making the art backers get and THEN dozens of hours signing and packaging premiums and coordinating a ton of special projects for people willing to shell out for your art. Begging is significantly easier, and honestly a little less costly on the ego if you don’t succeed.
There are obvious disadvantages of being a Cult Artist, chiefly that you’re never going to get rich off it and that you’re simply going to confuse people who have predetermined expectations for the style of music they like, but the benefits are far more pleasing. Cult Artists have a foundation built on something far more special than generated hype– it’s built on respect between the audience and your art. It’s SPECIFICALLY built on you being a unique snowflake and NOT being the artist du jour. It’s built on you being the weird kid at the party, because as much fun as the popular kids are, the weird kids are a lot less predictable and a whole lot more fun to watch sometimes.
Sometimes it sucks being the weird kid at the party, but often it makes you love the people who take the time to hang with you even more than if they just liked you because everyone else said to, so thanks to everyone who spreads the word on Cult Artists. You’re our lifeblood, and even though we’d be doing this without you because This is What We Do, I for one appreciate the hell out of anyone willing to enjoy the ride with me.Bill Clinton Met With Putin AT HIS HOUSE While Mueller’s FBI Knew About Bribery Scheme And Clinton Foundation Uranium Donors
The FBI uncovered a Russian bribery plot involving a U.S. uranium transport company before the Obama administration approved a deal granting Russia control over 20% of American uranium
The FBI knew about the donation of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation by Russian nuclear officials during the time Hillary Clinton’s State Department and a government body she headed approved the deal.
Bill Clinton asked Hillary Clinton’s State Department for permission to meet with 14 people in June of 2010, including a Russian nuclear official
The former President didn’t meet with any of the Russians on the list, however Clinton sat down with Vladimir Putin at his house the same day he gave a $500,000 speech to a Kremlin-linked bank which issued a ‘buy’ rating on Uranium One stock
A former Bush admin official and lobbyist for The Podesta Group represented Uranium One from 2010 – 2015
Two bombshell reports were published by John Solomon and Alison Spann of The Hill this week – the “boom” to Sean Hannity’s “tick tock” tweet on Monday, as well as President Trump’s statement to reporters that Uranium “is the real Russia story.”
The first article reveals that Obama’s FBI, headed by Robert Mueller, discovered that “Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow” – a deal which would grant the Kremlin control over 20 percent of America’s uranium supply, as detailed by author Peter Schweitzer’s book Clinton Cash and the New York Times in 2015.
The year after the first stage of the ’20 percent’ deal in which Russia took a majority ownership stake in mining company Uranium One, the Obama administration signed off on an agreement to let Russia sell American uranium back to U.S. nuclear power companies.
While Clinton’s defenders point to the fact that a government body ultimately approved the deal, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), is a rubber stamp factory – a joke:
“The committee almost never met, and when it deliberated it was usually at a fairly low bureaucratic level,” Richard Perle said. Perle, who has worked for the Reagan, Clinton and both Bush administrations added, “I think it’s a bit of a joke.” –CBS
Furthermore, Hillary Clinton headed and Attorney General Eric Holder served on the CFIUS when the deal was approved.
“Then-Attorney General Eric Holder was among the Obama administration officials joining Hillary Clinton on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States at the time the Uranium One deal was approved.” -The Hill
The Hill also reports that an FBI mole embedded in the Russian nuclear industry gathered extensive evidence that Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – a scheme of bribes and kickbacks to the company which would ostensibly transport the U.S. uranium sold in the ’20 percent’ deal.
“The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns. And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions,” a person who worked on the case told The Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by U.S. or Russian officials. –The Hill
Bill drops in on Vlad
The second article from The Hill reveals that Bill Clinton sought permission from Hillary Clinton’s state department in 2010 to meet with a Russian nuclear official, as well as fourteen other Russians. While the former U.S. President didn’t end up meting with any of the people on the list according to former aides to both Clintons, Bill Clinton sat down with Vladimir Putin at his “private homestead” in Russia right after Hillary Clinton’s State department approved the ’20 percent’ deal for Russian State Nuclear Agency, Rosatom, to take majority ownership in Uranium One. Later that day, Clinton collected $500,000 for a speech to a Kremlin-linked investment bank which was promoting Uranium One stock.
Of course, “Aides to the ex-president, Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation said Bill Clinton did not have any conversations about Rosatom or the Uranium One deal while in Russia, and that no one connected to the deal was involved in the trip.” –The Hill
The two undoubtedly talked about yoga and wedding plans.
Timeline:
Between 2008 – 2010, parties involved with Uranium One donated $145 Million to the Clinton Foundation. You can read more about the parties here, however
June 2009, Russian State Nuclear Agency Rosatom (through a subsidiary) takes a 17% stake in Uranium One.
June 2010, Rosatom takes majority (51%) ownership of Uranium One, granting the Kremlin control over 20 percent of U.S. uranium – which Hillary Clinton’s State Department signed off on. The FBI uncovers massive bribery scheme before CFIUS approves deal.
June 29th, 2010, Bill Clinton meets with Vladimir Putin at his home in Russia. Later that day Clinton earns $500,000 for a speech in Moscow to Kremlin-linked investment bank Renaissance Capital, which assigned a “buy” rating to Uranium One stock.
January 2013, Rosatom State Nuclear Agency acquires the remainder of Uranium one and takes it private.
No wonder Putin’s always smirking… it appears he bought his way into the U.S. atomic energy business using the same Clinton Foundation pay-for-play scheme used by 16 countries, including Saudi Arabia – which received a 143% increase in weapons sales after donating to the foundation. Greatly adding to Putin’s smirk must be the three ring circus conducted going on in the the U.S. House and Senate as they investigate ‘Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election,’ while the FBI’s Robert Mueller who knew about the Clinton Foundation donations is tasked with doing a deep dig into Trump’s alleged connections to Russia.
Podesta Group
What isn’t mentioned in The Hill articles is that the Podesta Group received $180,000 to lobby for Uranium One during the same period that the Clinton Foundation was receiving millions from U1 interests, and after Russia took majority ownership in the “20 percent” deal (source – you have to add up the years).
And who represented Uranium One before the Podesta Group? Stephen Rademaker, then of BGR Group and a former Bush admin official who drafted the legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security in 2002. Rademaker left BGR in 2011 to join the Podesta Group, resuming his representation of Uranium One in 2012 through 2015.
We’re not done…
Hillary Clinton campaign manager and presumed Secretary of State John Podesta also sat on the board of Massachusetts energy company called Joule Unlimited, along with senior Russian official Anatoly Chubais and Russian oligarch Ruben Vardanyan – who was appointed by Vladimir Putin to the Russian economic council.
Two months after Podesta joined the board, Joule managed to raise $35 million from Putin’s Kremlin-backed investment fund Rusnano.
Not only did John Podesta fail to properly disclose this relationship before joining the Clinton Campaign, he transferred 75,000 shares of Joule to his daughter through a shell company using her address.
In an interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartaromo, Podesta denied that he failed to disclose his ties, emphatically stating “Maria, that’s not true. I fully disclosed and was completely compliant,” adding “I didn’t have any stock in any Russian company!” in reference to Massachusetts based Joule Unlimited – with its two Russian dignitaries on the board board and a $35 million loan from a Russian investment fund founded by Vladimir Putin.
Let’s Review:
Jeff Sessions spoke with the Russian ambassador.
Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian attorney in a room full of other people in a meeting orchestrated by ‘Trump Dossier’ firm Fusion GPS.
Former Natl. Security Advisor Mike Flynn sat next to Vladimir Putin at a gala dinner, and was a paid analyst for the Russian owned RT television network.
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort lobbied on behalf of the Putin-friendly Ukrainian president’s party along with the Podesta group.
Donald Trump has zero claimed ties to Russian officials.
Vs.
The Clinton Foundation received $145 million from Uranium One interests – which owned the rights to 20 percent of America’s uranium that Russia bought. Hillary Clinton’s state department and a government body she headed then approved the sale of Uranium One to Russia, which the Obama administration then allowed to sell uranium back to the U.S. energy industry. To top it off, Bill Clinton met with Vladimir Putin at his house right before the ’20 percent’ deal the same day he gave a $500,000 speech to a Kremlin-linked investment bank which had issued a “buy” rating on U1 stock.
Layered in, a former Bush administration official working for the Podesta Group lobbied in Washington D.C. for Uranium One, after Russia bought their U1 stake in the ’20 percent’ deal.
Meanwhile John Podesta sat on the board of energy company Joule Unlimited alongside Russian government officials. Joule then received $35 million from a Kremlin-backed investment fund, and right before managing Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president, Podesta transferred his interest in Joule to his daughter using a shell company in her address.
One wonders why Russia would influence the 2016 election in Trump’s favor when they would have good friends in the White House under a Hillary Clinton presidency?
If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on TwitterUpdate: I'm no longer updating this post; more recent coverage can be found here. As of Sunday morning, Iceland's Meteorological Office reduced the aviation alert color code from red back down to orange. This reflects new observational data that indicates yesterday's suspected sub-glacial eruption did not happen and the seismic activity initially attributed to possible contact between lava and ice "has therefore other explanations." The below post originally reported the news of a sub-glacial eruption and has been updated throughout to reflect this new information.
While the threat of a volcanic eruption in Iceland interrupting air travel has been reduced as of Sunday morning, earthquake activity on the island has continued to increase and magma is still on the move under the surface of Iceland's huge Bardarbunga (Bárðarbunga) volcano, which itself is under Europe's largest glacier. On Sunday morning, scientists at Iceland's Meteorological Office said that their earlier suspicions of a sub-glacial eruption beginning beneath the ice on Saturday were incorrect, but the triple threat of earthquakes, eruptions and flooding from gl |
bars or to effectively monitor the most dangerous offenders released back into the community.
A review of hundreds of court cases and federal documents, as well as interviews with prosecutors, police, defense attorneys and criminal justice experts, shows that the District’s uniquely constructed criminal justice system often breaks down at the vulnerable point when offenders are leaving jail or prison and returning to the streets.
CSOSA (see-so-sa) does not automatically share details about its offenders’ absences with D.C. police, as many similar state or local agencies do with police in their jurisdictions, criminal justice experts say. And when offenders are caught in a serious violation, the agency has to petition the courts and the U.S. Parole Commission to revoke probation or parole, or to have a warrant issued for their arrest. Then, CSOSA must usually rely on a third federal agency, the U.S. Marshals Service, to get the offender back to the D.C. jail or prison.
‘It’s set up to fail’
About once a week, a D.C. offender under federal supervision ends up as either a victim or a suspect in a homicide investigation. Last year, nearly one out of four people charged with a killing in the District was under CSOSA supervision, while one out of five victims also was in its care, according to agency and police data.
Offenders under CSOSA’s supervision were charged with nearly 1,500 crimes of violence in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, according to documents submitted to Congress. In all of 2016, 836 individuals have been convicted of crimes, and that represents about 5 percent of the total under supervision, the agency said.
[Second-chance law puts violent offenders back on D.C. streets]
“It’s set up to fail people,” said Philip J. Fornaci, past director of the D.C. Prisoners’ Project, who now works to find jobs for returning inmates as head of the Employment Justice Center. “If it was actually a system that was geared toward rehabilitation, it wouldn’t be set up like this, and if public safety were a real concern, it wouldn’t be set up like this.”
Nancy M. Ware, director of CSOSA since 2012, said the agency first tries to give offenders every chance to succeed before it labels someone an absconder, potentially sending an offender back to jail or prison.
“Sometimes a person is in a loss of contact for several days because they have a death in their family, they have some issue with children. There are all kinds of reasons that we lose contact,” she said. “With our population, we want to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
Ware said CSOSA has made strides in coordinating with D.C. police and other law enforcement agencies, including joint home visits to high-risk offenders. She also stressed that the number of CSOSA clients linked to violent crimes in the District is a small fraction of the roughly 17,000 offenders who cycle through supervision in a given year.
Nancy M. Ware, right, director of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, during a panel on criminal justice last month in Washington. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Ware said that the agency conducts a “fatality review” of every killer or victim who was under CSOSA supervision but has not been able to discern a pattern to prevent future violence. She suggested that those who do return to violent crime — especially those who kill — are often beyond the help of any government agency.
“They go into a liquor store or get into an argument with somebody and, you know, take that person out,” she said. “Or they are in a crap game and get mad at each other, so they have an incident where it escalates to the point of violence.
“In some cases, it’s people who have had a history with that person and it goes way, way back,” Ware said. “Their pasts may have caught up with them.”
CSOSA did not respond to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Post seeking detailed data on recidivism.
The federal office has almost 900 employees and an annual budget of $182 million.
CSOSA was born almost two decades ago out of a dark moment in the District’s history, when the city under then-Mayor Marion Barry was tumbling toward bankruptcy. As a condition of a federal bailout, Congress took control of most of the District’s criminal justice system.
‘They don’t connect the dots’
Because it is a federal agency, CSOSA does not have to report to the District’s mayor or the D.C. Council. It also does not have to answer to the Justice Department. Its director is appointed by the president to a six-year term, and Congress, which has oversight, has not called a hearing on the agency in almost four years.
CSOSA’s unique position constrains its ability to help or monitor offenders. It lacks the resources of a state or local social services agency, such as the ability to provide short-term housing placements or care in long-term mental-health facilities for those too unstable to remain in the community. A new report from the nonprofit Council for Court Excellence said that almost half of all offenders returning to D.C. from federal prisons have been diagnosed with a mental health condition.
After 90 days under supervision of CSOSA, the report said, more than seven in 10 offenders capable of working had no job and nearly a third of those had no stable housing.
Fixing these problems is hard. It took years of lobbying, an act of Congress and the signature of President Obama this year to add two words — “and incentives” — in the agency’s federal charter. That insertion gives CSOSA the latitude to offer offenders not only punishments but also rewards for good behavior. The most-discussed incentive was $1.75 in D.C. bus fare to travel to job interviews.
It’s a stark contrast with rapid policy changes underway in states across the political spectrum, from Kansas to North Carolina, where in recent years officials have instituted programs that provide incentives but also, when offenders slip up, almost immediate overnight stays in jail.
In the District, court records show, it can take nearly two months for CSOSA officials to get a warrant approved and served.
Nardyne Jefferies, mother of Brishell Jones. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
“It’s really easy to see the next homicide coming, but they don’t connect the dots,” said Nardyne Jefferies, who has been advocating for policy changes in the District since 2010, when her 16-year-old daughter, Brishell, was among four people killed in a drive-by shooting carried out by several repeat offenders, including two under CSOSA supervision.
“Those who monitor these criminals have to do their jobs and be more proactive, because there is a lot of damage and destruction to families they are leaving behind out here,” Jefferies said. “It’s not like we’re flushing goldfish down the toilet — these were human beings. We had fed them and loved them.”
‘Not a deterrent’
In court documents, the limited effectiveness of the agency is perhaps best reflected in one of the few punishments that it can order: electronic monitoring. Each year, the agency affixes ankle bracelets equipped with Global Positioning System transmitters onto roughly 1,700 repeat, violent or sexual offenders.
Agency documents say the goals of the program are to allow CSOSA to track offenders’ compliance with curfews, and set up restricted areas — around known territories for gang members, or schools and parks for sexual predators.
In recent years, court records show that offenders who tampered with the devices routinely faced little to no jail time, even after disabling them again and again. In 2012, a convicted robber cut off his GPS bracelet and later challenged his conviction for doing so. He argued that it wasn’t a crime because a civilian agency, and not a judge or parole commissioner, had ordered it. The D.C. Court of Appeals sided with the offender, Jeffrey Hunt.
Early this year, CSOSA successfully sought a warrant for 23-year-old Deandre Providence, saying he had repeatedly tampered with his GPS device, including failing to charge it. CSOSA was unable to locate him more than 10 times between December 2015 and February this year, court records show.
Providence, who was on supervised release stemming from a gun charge from 2013, was charged with tampering with a detection device. Prosecutors in March offered him a plea bargain, which he accepted: one night in jail.
Providence has since been arrested on charges of selling synthetic drugs and has been released pending trial. His attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
The agency did not publicly push to close the GPS loophole until September, after The Post reported that a judge allowed a violent offender, Antwon Pitt, to remain free after being found with a substance that appeared to be synthetic marijuana and a disabled GPS monitoring device. Pitt raped and beat a college professor in her Hill East home days later.
The D.C. mayor and council responded this month, with the support of CSOSA, passing emergency legislation designed to make removal of any GPS device a crime.
A man walks past the offices of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency on Indiana Avenue NW. (J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post)
But CSOSA’s difficulties with electronic monitoring are not solved. It is not uncommon for offenders to commit new armed robberies, carjackings and even homicides while under GPS surveillance, according to a review of more than 200 Superior Court case files. The agency said 72 individuals under GPS monitoring were convicted of new crimes this year, which represents about 9 percent of the total convictions for those supervised by CSOSA.
Ware, the CSOSA director, acknowledged that GPS is not a magic bullet: “It’s definitely not a deterrent to crime, and I think that’s the misunderstanding sometimes about GPS,” she said.
Dalonte Weems, now in federal prison in Cumberland, Md., is among dozens of offenders who have brazenly — and repeatedly — committed crimes while under CSOSA monitoring.
In the fall of 2013, Weems had a bracelet on when he rang a doorbell and pointed a handgun at the man who answered. Weems, then 20, was under supervision for a previous conviction in his teens, and GPS data later showed Weems leaving his apartment, walking to the victim’s home and then departing. Through GPS, police tracked Weems to his apartment and found a loaded 9mm handgun in a closet, court records show.
Weems could have been sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison for carrying a firearm without a license, but under the District’s Youth Rehabilitation Act, he was given 20 months with all but 10 months suspended. The law allows young adult offenders younger than 22 to receive shorter sentences for some crimes and have their records sealed from public view.
[121 offenders sentenced under D.C.’s Youth Act later charged with homicide]
By April 2015, Weems had twice more been fitted with a GPS device, the last time a month before he committed three armed robberies of taxicab drivers in the District’s Brightwood and U Street neighborhoods, according to charging documents.
In the last of those robberies, in May, the driver told police that after he arrived at his passenger’s requested destination, near Fort Totten, he felt the barrel of a gun against the right side of his head. The driver claimed that Weems and another person took $120 from the driver’s pocket as well as his ID badge, cellphone and wallet, documents show.
It is unclear from court records whether Weems was still wearing the GPS device at the time. A cellphone he had when he was arrested had been used to summon two of the taxis, according to court records.
Weems pleaded guilty to two counts of robbery and is scheduled to be released from prison in 2020. Weems declined a request for an interview.
‘Who is your boss?’
As the District’s homicide tally was rising rapidly in the summer of 2015, during Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s first year in office, the tone was growing increasingly urgent at monthly closed-door meetings of the city’s local and federal law enforcement agencies.
Kevin Donahue, Bowser’s deputy mayor for public safety, wanted to know whom he could talk to about getting CSOSA to share more information with police. He had attended meetings with officials in Maryland and other states where chiefs of police and corrections were cabinet members, but in the District he was not sure who was ultimately in charge of probation and parole.
“Who is your boss?” Donahue asked, turning to Ware, the director of CSOSA. He expected, perhaps, that she would answer with the name of an assistant attorney general or a high-ranking official in the federal prison system whom he could get on the phone or drive across town to see.
Instead, Ware’s answer floored Donahue. “I report to the president of the United States,” she said.
Ware and Donahue both confirmed the exchange. Ware told The Post: “That doesn’t mean I don’t also report to Congress and I don’t also report to the people of the District of Columbia.”
Donahue said recently, “I think it illustrates the complexity of the system within which we operate.”
By August 2015, nearly half of the suspects that D.C. police were charging in killings were offenders under the supervision of CSOSA or were free pending trial, according to briefing documents prepared for city law enforcement leaders. Bowser’s administration pushed for CSOSA to more aggressively monitor offenders who had been convicted of a violent crime.
Bowser could not change CSOSA’s charter, but she could affect the conditions that D.C. inmates must agree to for release. She introduced a bill to require offenders who had been convicted of a violent felony to submit to random searches of their person and residence by CSOSA.
But the agency lobbied against a more hands-on role. Cedrick Hendricks, a top CSOSA official, testified before the D.C. Council. He read a letter from Ware that called the proposal “problematic” because it would authorize CSOSA officers to seize firearms or other dangerous weapons that they were not trained to handle.
The letter from Ware also warned that the searches would “undermine” the relationships its officers seek to build with clients, to intervene positively in their lives.
“Many of CSOSA’s supervised clients are plagued by limited education, unemployment, unstable housing, frayed family relationships, and, increasingly, mental health needs,” she said. “This proposal would undermine the successes we have realized to date.”
D.C. officials testified that police could not conduct the searches if CSOSA refused to do so because officers need probable cause.
Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5), chairman of the D.C. Council’s Judiciary Committee, said the proposal was unworkable and killed it.
McDuffie is among CSOSA’s many defenders in the city. He said CSOSA’s lack of transparency can undermine public confidence, but he believes the agency gets an outsize share of the blame for the failures of a confusing and inefficient system.
“They have an impossible job,” McDuffie said. “We need to start by doing a better job rehabilitating those who have been incarcerated before they are put back in the care of CSOSA and back into the community.”
[How an inmate who threatened to rape ended up on a bus back to D.C.]
Thomas H. Williams, who used to be in charge of all 500 probation and parole officers at the agency, said that during his years there that he tried unsuccessfully to get the Federal Bureau of Prisons to more deliberately match inmates with job training programs in prison so they could return with useful skills and ease the job of CSOSA.
“If a person wanted to have skills as an electrician, great, work on that while they’re inside,” Williams said. But years of meetings with federal prison officials, he said, led nowhere.
‘We have to be careful’
There are few national standards in parole and probation. Roughly 30 states have a centralized system for supervising former inmates. In the remainder, rules differ from place to place.
If there is one commonality, said Marshall Clement, director of state initiatives at the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center, it is that budget pressures and politics have forced every jurisdiction to search for more effective solutions.
CSOSA, however, operates in a realm unbound from such pressures, its budget requests largely fulfilled by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget and Congress. It is also insulated from the local political pressures that the District’s elected leaders face to keep crime down.
When Congress authorized the creation of CSOSA in 1997, it made the agency an independent entity under the executive branch. The agency promulgated its own rules for dealing with the offenders coming under its supervision. When CSOSA lost contact with an offender, its employees were supposed to immediately begin a search, make phone calls to the offender and send a certified letter to the offender’s last known address.
The agency gave itself 21 days to complete the process — 18 days to hear from the offender, and another three to file a report of the missing with a judge or the parole commission — to start the process of getting a warrant to pick someone up, according to agency policy.
Ware said officers can move more quickly than 21 days, if they determine it is warranted.
But Williams, the former head of probation and parole, said the certified letter process is an embarrassment for the agency. The time frame for getting a warrant, he said, can stretch to 51 days because it can take roughly 30 days to schedule a hearing before a judge.
“The timeline is just too long,” Williams said.
Before working for CSOSA, Williams led Maryland’s statewide parole and probation system. He said CSOSA does as well as or better than Maryland in identifying offenders who pose a risk to the community. But he said the neighboring jurisdictions could not be more different in terms of how quickly they move to get problem offenders off the street.
“If I have a high-risk individual, I could write the warrant, take it to the judge and that same day it could be out for service” in Maryland, he said. “That culture has existed in Maryland for decades, but it does not exist in the District.”
In the case of Steven Pugh, CSOSA did not file its first report to a judge about his behavior until April 2014, after 41 days of near constant probation violations. Pugh was under supervision after firing a gun outside his Southwest apartment and pleading guilty to a charge of carrying a firearm.
A month after Pugh failed drug tests and after three weeks without any contact with him, a CSOSA officer did not list him as being in loss-of-contact status but, instead, classified Pugh’s overall adjustment as “unsatisfactory” and recommended that a judge send him to CSOSA’s 30-day mental health and drug assessment center. CSOSA declined to discuss Pugh’s case.
Before he could appear before the judge, Pugh got into an altercation with his girlfriend “about him wanting her to give him money,” according to a police report.
Pugh slapped the woman with an open hand around her face and head, said “F--- you, b----, you work, you get money!” and dragged her on the floor, cutting her elbow.
He took the woman’s purse and Metro card and her son’s stroller and fled. Pugh was arrested that night and later released.
Two months later, in July 2014, he was picked up on a warrant for a previous robbery conviction in Maryland. Pugh pleaded guilty and served most of the next year in jail in Prince George’s County.
When he returned to the District after serving his time, he was once again put on probation, this time for assaulting his girlfriend. CSOSA recommended that his probation be revoked, but a judge ordered Pugh to undergo a mental health evaluation and drug treatment. He quickly began violating again. Pugh skipped drug tests on “6/2/2015, 6/10/2015, 6/16/2015, 7/14/2015, 7/21/2015, 8/4/2015, 9/1/2015 and 9/15/2015,” according to another CSOSA violation report.
At a court hearing near the end of this period, a CSOSA officer backtracked from the recommendation to have Pugh’s probation revoked. The officer said that while Pugh had missed appointments and walked out of a drug-treatment program, he had attended other meetings and passed a urine test for drug use. He was left on probation.
On Sept. 19, police responded to reports of gunfire in Southeast and found Marcellus Green with a gunshot wound to the chest. Green’s ex-wife told reporters that he had been talking to the couple’s 11-year-old son when a car drove up and people inside began shooting.
Pugh was caught after a high-speed chase and charged with first-degree murder. He admitted to being the driver and conspiring to shoot someone he had a “beef” with on the block where Green was killed, according to a police affidavit. Pugh agreed to a plea deal for second-degree murder. He is awaiting sentencing.
Pugh’s attorneys declined to comment for this article.
Court records show Pugh was among 149 of the most high-risk offenders who were out of contact at some point last year.
In Maryland and Virginia, where probation and parole officials have some law enforcement powers, the states maintain websites identifying parole or probation absconders.
But CSOSA General Counsel Sheila Stokes said her agency cannot publish or share information in the District that might be considered personal in nature about those it supervises, because CSOSA does not have law enforcement powers and must observe federal privacy laws.
“They have not been convicted of an additional crime,” she said, “so we have to be careful how we characterize individuals in the public.”
Previously in this series:
[Part I: How an accused rapist kept getting second chances in D.C. ]
[Part II: He threatened rape, but ended up on a bus back to D.C.]
[Part III: Second-chance law puts violent criminals back on D.C. streets ]
[Part IV: The crimes were terrifying, the D.C. justice system made it worse ]
[Part V: He robbed 100 times, could he have been stopped before he killed?]
Amy Brittain and Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.What a fall from grace that has occurred at The Clinton Foundation. They are hemorrhaging money.
This crooked organization has gone from being a shot caller to begging for buttermilk. I fully expect to see Hillary and Chelsea being pimped by Bill Clinton in the near future.
Van Jones said recently on CNN, the Clinton Era is over. As Heatstreet reports,
It will be interesting to see if past Clinton Foundation donors will continue their generous giving in the years to come. Hillary’s shocking defeat in the presidential election means that no member of the Clinton dynasty currently holds, or is running for, a powerful government position.
Because of demise of the Clinton brand, the Clinton Foundation resorts to bottom feeding, at least by their former fundraising standards.
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Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story?
Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? * Yes, they've gotten so much wrong recently that they're bound to be on their best behavior. No, they suffer from a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Jussie who?
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Trending: SCOTUS Justice Send Warning to FAKE NEWS Journalists
These people would have scoffed at such a small fundraiser only a few weeks ago. The Clinton Foundation’s donor list represented the Who’s Who of corporate elites, politicos, and countries.
Not anymore.
The New York Post reports that Clinton Foundation chairman Bruce Lindsey announced in an email to supporters recently that former President Bill Clinton would personally match donations up to $200,000 before the end of the year.
The actual solicitation read as follows:WATCH: 'The Democratic Party cannot continue to be run by the liberal elite' - Bernie Sanders on the Late Show
In the wake of last week's shock US presidential election results, the now independent Vermont senator took to the Late Show to express his ideas on the future of America.
As he walked on to the stage, Sanders was greeted with a chorus of "Bernie" chants from enthusiastic audience members, before lamenting that it had been a "tough week".
Sanders lost a hotly contested primary victory against Hillary Clinton to become the Democratic Party's presidential candidate. He then heavily endorsed Clinton during her campaign to keep Trump out of the White House.
But he explained that her loss to Trump signifies that the party needs to change, as it no longer resonates with middle and working class Americans.
“The Democratic Party cannot continue to be run by the liberal elite," he said.
"The party has got to transform itself to be a party which, first of all, opens the door, that is the party that feels the pain of working-class people, of the middle class, of low-income people, of young people. (A party that) brings people into the party."
He added: “The vast majority of the American people are on our side. Trump’s views are a minority. People do not think we should give tax breaks to billionaires. They do believe we should raise the minimum wage and have pay equity for women. They do believe we should make public colleges’ and universities’ tuition free. What you do now is get heavily involved in the political process. When millions of people stand up and fight back we will not be denied.”
Examining what helped Trump win the election, Sanders explained that the Republican representative was able to tap into the anger and frustration that many working class Americans have felt for a long time.
"A lot of people in this country who are suffering, who are hurting, who are scared to death about tomorrow for their kids and he tapped into that," he said.
“Trump was posing as a hero of the working class of America."
“The truth is, Democrats should not be losing to a candidate who insults so many people,” Sanders noted, adding that this result clearly implies that there's “something fundamentally wrong” with the Democratic Party.
Online EditorsThe term “useful idiot” has been attributed to the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, who toppled the czar in October, 1917.
Lenin’s exact word in Russian was “simpleton” to describe people in the West who served his purpose, but were neither truly aware of who was using them, nor the cause they served.
On Sunday, a blatant exhibition of “useful idiots” was on display at Toronto City Hall.
This time, they came not to serve Trotsky’s Fourth International, the Sandinistas or the Viet Cong.
This time they came to serve the cause of Islamofascism.
White youths in bandanas and facemasks roughed up Canadians, including their Muslim Canadian allies, who were protesting Liberal MP Iqra Khalid’s “Islamophobia” motion, M-103.
Among the bullied victims of the supposed anti-racist activists, who included communists and Arab Islamists, were Muslim Canadians who were pushed and kicked, their placards seized and torn, with close-up pictures of them taken by a counter protester.
“We fear our pictures were being taken to be passed on to the Pakistani Consulate in Toronto,” said Imtiaz Baloch, a small business owner who escaped Islamic tyranny three decades ago.
Said another protester named Ahmad: “I escaped Pakistan because of the jihadist threat there to liberal values. I never thought that the (jihadi) mindset I escaped, would chase me to Canada.”
Most media did not report on this bizarre nexus of communists working hand-in-hand with Arab Islamists and white anarchists.
Zaffar Jawaid, from Pakistan-occupied Balochistan said: “I have lived in peace in Canada for the last 20 years. All that changed for me on March 4, 2017 in Toronto when I decided to join the peaceful protest at the Toronto’s City Hall against Motion-103, to stop (it) from becoming a law in Canada.”
Jawaid says he had a placard that read “my fears are not irrational” when “suddenly I felt a shove on my back and was pulled back by a police officer.
“You can’t go in there” the officer said. “But that’s where I belong,” I replied.
Another Baloch protester against M-103 told me in an email: “My worst fears had come true. I was reliving the fearful days of the military-jihadist campaigns on the streets of Pakistan, and this time in Toronto.”
An Iranian who escaped the Islamist Ayatollah regime told Rebel Media:
“I am a political refugee from Iran. I’ve been to prison and I have lived under Islamic law and I know how it starts and I know how it ends. For some reason, it always starts with some unity between the left and Islamists and it scares me. I came here to be free. I chose Canada to live in a free country and I am beginning to feel scared.”
Khalid, who is the sponsor of M-103, has largely avoided the media, other than to say in Parliament that she has received Islamophobic, racist and threatening messages from opponents of M-103.
But where are the voices of Liberal Muslim MPs who know about the tyranny of Islamism, such as federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen and Liberal MP Ali Ehsassi?
Gentlemen, now is the time to show real character and integrity and to stand up against the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and Jihadi Islamism.Former Sydney Swans AFL player Tony Smith charged over alleged unlawful detention of bank executive
Updated
Former Sydney Swans AFL player Tony Smith has been granted bail after being charged over his alleged role in the unlawful detention of a bank executive.
Smith handed himself in to police this morning after authorities issued a warrant for his arrest.
He appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates Court charged with one count each of retaliation against a witness, attempting to pervert the course of justice and attempted fraud.
The 48-year-old was granted bail on a $250,000 bond and will be allowed to travel back to Bali, where he works, until his next court appearance later this month.
Last month Clive Palmer's media adviser Andrew Crook and former senior Queensland detective Mick Featherstone were charged in connection with the same incident after raids in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast.
Police allege the trio attempted to coerce the executive into falsifying evidence about a failed multi-million-dollar lawsuit against the National Australia Bank (NAB).
Officers have been investigating claims Crook and Smith lured the witness, an employee of the NAB, to Singapore and on to Batam Island in Indonesia in 2013 using the pretence of a possible job offer from Mr Palmer.
It will be alleged that once on Batam Island, the witness was strip-searched, threatened and forced to make a statement recanting his evidence.
Police said Mr Palmer had no knowledge of, or involvement, in the affair.
On Monday the ABC revealed that Queensland's fraud squad was first told about the alleged kidnap plot two years ago, but failed to act.
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, courts-and-trials, crime, qld, brisbane-4000, sydney-2000
First postedBy Elizabeth Johnson, CNN
Charlotte, North Carolina (CNN) - With 12 minutes left in the game, the Charlotte Eagles are losing 2-0. The North Carolina humidity hangs thick in the evening air. The home crowd becomes restless as the opposing team's goalie blocks kick after kick.
But the team gets a big break in the 78th minute and scores twice in two minutes against the Rochester Rhinos. This men’s soccer match ends in a tie.
Did God bless the Eagles with those goals?
“I don’t think God cares if we win or lose,” Eagles captain Josh Rife says, shrugging.
Coach Mark Steffens agrees: “Our No. 1 goal is not winning games. Our goal is to bring glory to God.”
It’s an unusual stance for a sports team, but the Eagles aren’t just any soccer squad. Members of the United Soccer Leagues’ 12-team professional division, they’re the only ones who say they care more about Christian values than about winning.
The team was established in 1993 after a “sports junkie fell in love with God,” Eagles co-founder Brian Davidson says. But if he was going to continue being involved in soccer - where he saw players cheating and sneaking fouls past referees - he needed to find a way to live out his faith on the field.
He had two goals for his ministry. First, teach men to live for God on the field by playing fair. The second: Send team members into the community - both locally and “to the ends of the earth” - to teach impoverished children and refugees about soccer and to use the sport to attract people who wouldn’t normally visit church.
Like any high-level competition team, the Eagles have regular practices. They sweat in the scorching heat. They win games. They miss goals. They hear lectures.
But the organization also focuses on character by investing in the players and the community.
Steffens, Eagles coach for 15 years, uses what he calls an “in-reach” plan, mentoring and building personal relationships with the 26 athletes on his squad and setting up accountability groups within the team.
“My ministry is to grow 26 guys into men,” Steffens says. “Men who do the right thing.”
That goes for both on and off the field.
On the field, the men are expected to be above reproach. They know better than to tug on an opponent’s jersey, run out the clock or take a dive to fake a foul. As Christians, they say they hold themselves to a high standard. They challenge each other to work harder and play better.
But is that enough?
Some observers say Christianity and sports are a questionable mix.
Shirl Hoffman, author of “Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sport,” says Christianity teaches “peace, humility, putting others before yourself,” while athletes are often more willing to cheat, hurt their opponents or take credit for their accomplishments.
“Sports don’t develop character,” Hoffman says. “They teach you to be selfish.”
Rife, 31, an Eagles captain and a midfielder for nine years, disagrees. He says there is a common misconception that Christians should be meek or passive. There were times when Jesus displayed meekness in his ministry, he says, but other times when he was confrontational.
Rife argues that sports are the “greatest teacher for wrestling with one’s faith.” Learning to strive together for excellence and unity in a competitive, challenging environment can help players grow and deepen their beliefs, he says.
As for whether God cares if a team wins or loses, he says that “isn’t a biblical view.” He cites the book of Job, in which God let a righteous man lose his family, livestock and health. God cares more about the bigger picture - the response of a man’s heart, as he did with Job - than he does about making sure they look good, Rife says.
Eagles co-founder Davidson says he realizes there may be few examples of godliness in professional sports. But like Rife, he says there are opportunities in a game when “we as Christians can live out our faith” - such as responding with grace to a ref’s bad call.
And when an Eagles player reacts to such a call with anger? Davidson knows it will be a learning moment and an opportunity for the player’s faith to grow. There’s a lot of grace and forgiveness in the Eagles’ locker room.
“We’re OK with failure,” Davidson says. “We just want to grow from it.”
Bob Schindler is a former pastor and current vice president of church mobilization for Church Sports Outreach, an organization that helps churches use sports as a tool for spreading the gospel. He believes the sports realm has strayed from God’s intended purpose, but that the problem is limited to selfishly motivated individuals. Competition itself is not the problem, he says.
A key question from the Christian perspective, Schindler says, is whether there was competition in the Garden of Eden.
If the answer is no, then sports are a result of sin, and Christians should not partake in competitive activities.
But if the answer is yes - as he believes it to be - then Christians can take part in competition if they use it for the glory of God.
“The whole point of sports is to draw the best out of your teammates and opponents,” Schindler says. “I see that as very compassionate and grace-filled.”
The word “competition” is derived from the Latin “competere,” which means “strive together,” Schindler says. But he says athletes are indoctrinated with a self-glorifying mindset that has corrupted the word's original meaning.
Aware of the problem, Steffens, the Eagles' coach, regularly talks to his team about it.
“Guys, it’s not about you,” Steffens tells his players. “It’s about putting God first.”
During one pregame chapel service - a regular feature in the team's locker room - speaker Sam Blumenthal, a local businessman, reminds the team of this principle: It’s about “scoring souls, not scoring goals,” he tells them.
Through prayer - before and after each game - the team refocuses its attention on God.
“I think most high-level athletes pray to God for good individual performances and for their team to win,” Steffens says. “Our main prayer before games is for God to grant us strength and wisdom to play fair and Christ-like."
After the game, the team prays for its opponents and thanks God for the results, regardless of the outcome.
“We honor God whether we win, lose or draw,” Steffens says.
His players feel called by God to play for this team and want to “keep the main thing the main thing,” Steffens says. “And the main thing isn’t winning.”
“Priorities are well set and kept,” says goalie Eric Reed, 27. “It’s about living the gospel in a broken world - like in any job.”
The Eagles’ ministry can be seen in various ways around Charlotte, through weekly soccer camps, church involvement and inner-city ministry - as well as in their overseas tours.
This year, six players will travel to Trinidad to play soccer and do service work in the community. The team traveled to Jamaica last year, playing high-level opponents as well as spending time at an orphanage and a delinquent center.
Other recent destinations include Nigeria, Ethiopia, Colombia, Laos and Thailand. The team members who travel each raise a couple thousand dollars for the trips, believing they are preaching sermons through the way they play soccer overseas.
Locally, four players and two staffers have moved |
Boom, & NXNE Presents: Of Sound Mind (Edward Day Gallery)
From 11am to 8pm on the last day of NXNE, the Festival Hub at Edward Day Gallery will host an all ages/licensed courtyard BBQ with records, labels, art, music and. Bands include Wish, Unfinished Business, Sonic Avenues, Young Mother, Greys, Carl Didur, Wizard Of.
Sunday, June 22 - Broken Pencil x NXNE Mini Zine Fair (25 Gould Street from 2:30pm to 6:00pm)
Spend your Sunday afternoon checking out Broken Pencil/NXNE's second annual mini zine/small press fair featuring Shameless magazine, Toronto Zine Library, Little Brother Magazine, Worn, Static Zine and much more.
Sunday, June 22 - NXNE's 8th Annual "Put The Boot In" Soccer Match (Lamport Stadium from 12-4pm)
Rockers vs. Rollers (aka music vs. media) face off in a soccer match to raise funds for Right to Play and DeRo Foundation and declare a winner for the "Put The Boot in" Cup. The bloodbath is free, but try to spare a ha'penny for the cause.
See also
Thanks to MiO for sponsoring our coverage of NXNE 2014
Photo from Young Lions Music Club
Writing by Wini Lo and Aubrey JaxTop Shelf Productions has revealed the cover to Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's next League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel.
O'Neill has provided the artwork for Nemo: River of Ghosts, the final book in the pair's latest trilogy.
Top Shelf/Knockabout
The comic continues the adventures of Captain Nemo's daughter and successor Janni Dakkar.
"In a world where all the fictions ever written coalesce into a rich mosaic, it's 1975," reads Top Shelf's description.
"Janni Dakkar, pirate queen of Lincoln Island and head of the fabled Nemo family, is eighty years old and beginning to display a tenuous grasp on reality. Pursuing shadows from her past - or her imagination - she embarks on what may be a final voyage down the vastness of the Amazon, a last attempt to put to rest the blood-drenched spectres of old.
"With allies and adversaries old and new, we accompany an ageing predator on her obsessive trek into the cultural landscape of a strange new continent, from the ruined city of Yu-Atlanchi to the fabulous plateau of Maple White Land.
"As the dark threads in her narrative are drawn into an inescapable web, Captain Nemo leads her hearse-black Nautilus in a desperate raid on horrors believed dead for decades."
The graphic novel follows Nemo: Heart of Ice and Nemo: Roses of Berlin. It will be published by Knockabout in the UK.
Nemo: River of Ghosts will be released in Spring 2015.The green zone represents the refinery – it was already heavily damaged during the fighting and the rubble as well as various industrial resources provides excellent cover for you to slug it out with the enemy at close range. Heavier and slower vehicles are advised to take this route rather than being caught in the open by enemy crossfire.
The red zones represent primary access between yours and enemy’s parts of the map. They form natural chokepoints, controlled by the team that occupies the refinery or the pumping station. All the red-marked zones can be advanced through using bushes and rocks as cover.
The blue zone represents another important location, the refinery pumping station. Enemies in cover can easily control large areas of the map and will be difficult to dislodge. Approach carefully.
The Roughneck map offers multiple directions of attack as well as plenty of cover should things go awry. You will be able to test it for yourselves during the Early Access phase of Armored Warfare.This article is about the novel. You may be looking for the comic "Apocalypse Endor". This article is about. You may be looking for
Perhaps the archives are incomplete. This article has an excess of redlinks in it.
Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse by Troy Denning is the ninth and final novel in the Fate of the Jedi series. It was released on March 13, 2012.[1] At the end of the book, it has an introduction to X-Wing: Mercy Kill and Scourge. The audio version is narrated by Marc Thompson. The paperback edition was released on January 29, 2013.[4]
Contents show]
Publisher's summary Edit
Hardcover Edit
Back cover Edit
There can be no surrender.
There will be no mercy.
It’s not just the future of the galaxy at stake—
It’s the destiny of the Force.
Internal flap Edit
In the stunning finale of the epic Fate of the Jedi series, Jedi and Sith face off—with Coruscant as their battlefield. For the Sith, it’s the chance to restore their dominance over the galaxy that forgot them for so long. For Abeloth, it’s a giant step in her quest to conquer all life everywhere. For Luke Skywalker, it’s a call to arms to eradicate the Sith and their monstrous new master once and for all.
In a planetwide strike, teams of Jedi Knights take the Sith infiltrators by swift and lethal surprise. But victory against the cunning and savage Abeloth, and the terrifying endgame she has planned, is anything but certain. And as Luke, Ben, Han, Leia, Jaina, Jag, and their allies close in, the devastating truth about the dark side incarnate will be exposed—and send shock waves through the Jedi Order, the galaxy, and the Force itself.[5]
Plot summary Edit
The novel begins on Coruscant where the Jedi begin their secret invasion of the planet in order to free it from the covert control of the Lost Tribe of the Sith. They enter the planet, with the likes of Jaina Solo and the Horn siblings, Valin and Jysella, getting past the security checks, which are led by undercover Sith. However, Yaqeel Saav'etu and Yantahar Bwua'tu get into a bit of trouble when they are sniffed out by a Sith, Captain Suhale, forcing one of their colleagues, Bazel Warv, who had arrived with Seff Hellin and Vaala Razelle, to pretend to be a spicer in order to save their lives, and then escape later. BAMR News cites this as the operations of a Jedi spice cartel afterwards.
Elsewhere on Coruscant, Luke Skywalker, his son Ben, and recently-defected Sith apprentice, and now current Jedi apprentice, Vestara Khai also run into a Galactic Alliance Security patrol, led by the Sith named Ruku Myal. But Luke manages to outwit Myal by dimming the lights of the spaceport they're in and forcing him to unleash his lightsaber. As Myal deflects the shots headed his way from his own men, who confused him for a Jedi, Vestara manages to kill the Sith by using the Force to plunge his own shikkar into his body. Luke uses the Force to make sure the shikkar kills Myal quickly before he, Ben, and Vestara leave during the confusion.
Since his capture by the Sith, Wynn Dorvan had been tortured for weeks by Abeloth, who, as a disguise, is leading the Galactic Alliance as the latest Chief of State, Rokari Kem, and who has so far been unable to coax any information from him regarding the Jedi Order's whereabouts. Regardless, she manages to slowly coerce him over to her side as she makes him her co-Chief of State; that way, he could provide advice on matters such as bringing Imperial Lieutenant Lydea Pagorski back into Imperial space. When Abeloth elects to do so, she absorbs Pagorski's being into herself.
Prior to their upcoming attack on Coruscant, the Jedi Order sends out a widespread message over the HoloNet, asking all Sith to surrender or die. Many Sith elect to fight, but they are quickly killed in the process. Examples include Jestat Vhool, who is killed by Corran Horn, and Kayala Fei, who is killed by Octa Ramis. Meanwhile, as Ben and Vestara are sent to distract Sith High Lord Ivaar Workan, who is posing as Senator Kameron Suldar, Vestara secretly gives out her identity to her fellow Sith just so that she and Ben can get closer to Workan. As a result, Ben and Vestara are held hostage while Luke and the other two Jedi in the strike team against Workan, Seha Dorvald and Doran Sarkin-Tainer, invade his office. In the ensuing battle, Vestara, not wanting Workan to be captured alive—since his continued existence would lead to an interrogation wherein he would reveal how he figured out that Ben and Vestara were spies, and thus reveal Vestara's true intentions—tricks the other Jedi into simply shooting Workan dead as he duels Luke. Ben is the one who kills Workan by shooting him in the head.
Elsewhere, at Ossus, Hapan Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo participates in a Hapan flotilla to help in the evacuation of Jedi from preying Sith who proceed to invade the planet. With Tenel Ka is her daughter, Allana, who was left in her care aboard the Dragon Queen II since her grandparents, Han and Leia, are now participating in the Jedi evacuation as well. Allana has a vision of the nests of the Barabel Jedi in the bowels of the New Jedi Temple being attacked, and she panics, wanting to save the Barabels' hatchlings. But she tries not to compromise her promise to Tesar Sebatyne and the other Barabel Jedi—Dordi, Wilyem, and Zal—to her mother regarding the secret of the hatchlings. Tenel Ka reminds her daughter that, in her desperate haste to act upon the visions she receives, she must remember that how she takes it is more important than the actions she actually takes, which reminds Allana of how her late father, Jacen Solo, failed to realize that. Tenel Ka promises her daughter that as soon as the evacuation is complete, they will inform Jedi Master Saba Sebatyne of the danger to the Barabels.
The evacuation of the Ossan students proceeds successfully, with one exception; one of the evacuation vessels is secretly boarded by Sith infiltrators. Thanks to quick thinking on Han Solo's part, he convinces Tenel Ka to have the ship captured, which forces it to elude the Hapan forces and destroy itself in a suicidal baradium blast. It becomes clear that it was an assassination attempt on the Queen Mother's life. Following this, Allana argues to come to Coruscant in order to talk to her friend, Bazel Warv, so that she can tell him to warn the Barabel Knights about the danger posed to their spawn—she informs her grandparents of this without spoiling the existence of the hatchlings, and only after Leia's attempt in contacting Saba (both via comlink and through the Force) fails. Regardless, Han and Leia refuse and apparently take off without her. Only when they arrive at Coruscant, as the battle between the Jedi and Sith rages, do they find out that she stowed away in order to accomplish her mission.
Meanwhile, Jedi Knights Raynar Thul, Lowbacca, Tekli, and their accompanying protocol droid C-3PO visit the Celestial Palace, located on an unnamed world within the Maraqoo sector, specifically in the Reo system. There, the Jedi and C-3PO meet with the Killik hive nest of the Thuruht in order to meet with its queen. They ask the queen what they know about Abeloth, as Thuruht seems to be connected with the ancient and mythical beings once known as the Celestials, which the Killiks claimed to have worked for eons earlier; the Thuruht nest had even imprisoned Abeloth on the unknown world themselves. When the queen asks why the Jedi want to know about Abeloth, Raynar informs her that Abeloth is on the loose in the galaxy and no one knows where to find her. The Thuruht nest then begin performing their duties in a rush, and C-3PO translates for the Jedi Knights that they are doing this because, according to the queen, the End of Time has come. Raynar takes advantage of Thuruht's panic in order to learn what they know about Abeloth even as he inadvertently slips back into the Killik hive mind. The Jedi learn that Abeloth once lived with the Ones, a group of Force entities who represented the Balance of the Force, consisting of the Son, Daughter, and Father. When she realized she starts aging unlike them, she secretly immersed herself with the Pool of Knowledge and drunk from Font of Power. Father realizing what Abeloth done, abandoned her and left with Son and Daughter. Lonely, desperate and changed by drinking from Fountain of Power and bathing in Pool of Knowledge, Abeloth became the Bringer of Chaos, an entity who promises to rise whenever the galaxy falls into such uncontrollable strife that she can cause a pan-galactic apocalypse that will renew the galaxy into a new peace, a cycle that repeats itself every several thousand years. The Thuruht's role in stopping Abeloth in preparation for a galaxy-wide apocalypse is a result of their call-to-arms by the Son and the Daughter, both of whom would team up to defeat Abeloth in order to protect what they cherish most. Unfortunately, it is soon discovered that the Ones had died decades earlier because of a visit made by Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi to the Ones' second homeworld of Mortis.
Wynn Dorvan convinces Abeloth that if she wants to defeat the Jedi, she will have to lure them over to the Jedi Temple, where the Sith can act as defenders and defeat the Jedi in a swift ambush. This, of course, is a ploy for the Jedi to wipe out the Sith in one swift stroke, which they plan to do with the help of Void Jumpers led by Admiral Nek Bwua'tu. A Jedi strike team consisting of the Skywalkers, Vestara, the Jedi Horn family members, Jaina Solo, her astromech droid Rowdy, and several others secretly enter the Temple in order to lower its shields, allow the commandos to storm in, and kill as many Sith as possible. However, because of Abeloth, the Sith prepare for this attack and they strike, killing many of the strike team's members. In the initial assault against the strike team, Vestara is separated from the rest of the Jedi. Fleeing for her life from a Sith team, she finds herself cornered at the slowly-opening entrance of the Temple's underground evacuation tunnel. This group reveals that they want to take her alive and torture her for information in order to find out what she revealed about them and/or their plans to the Jedi (they also reveal to Vestara that the late Grand Lord Darish Vol is no longer in control of the Lost Tribe, which arouses suspicion from Vestara over who is leading the Sith now). Vestara decides to save her own life by revealing that she knows who the Jedi queen is—Allana Solo, going by the false name of Amelia Solo under Han and Leia's supervision; Vestara had deduced this fact from several other pieces of information she became aware of. The leading Sith of the pact hunting her, Lady Sashal, gives her the opportunity to prove herself when the Solos, with Bazel Warv, appear in the evacuation tunnel after the entrance to it completely opens up for Vestara. She is quickly given a thermal detonator that she can use to assassinate Allana, but she deliberately misses and it blows off the forward part of the Millennium Falcon instead. In the ensuing conflict, as Vestara leaves, with her treachery now known by the Solos, Bazel is killed defending Allana just as the rest of the Solos, with R2-D2, run away and regroup with Zekk and other Hapan soldiers who finish off the rest of the pursuing Sith. The Barabel Jedi come along and help, allowing for the existence of their hatchlings to go out in the open, especially after hearing that Bazel died so that he could at least try to tell them that their spawn may be in danger.
Seeing how her avatar in Rokari Kem is dying because it cannot take her Force power, Abeloth tricks Wynn Dorvan into killing her so that she can transfer her consciousness into the Jedi Temple's computer core, where she can control its inner systems against the invading Jedi even as she combats them in one of her other avatars in Lady Korelei. The combat against Abeloth-Korelei elicits a certain amount of hopelessness that allows Luke to promote Jaina to the rank of Jedi Master. Meanwhile, as Luke, Jaina, and Corran Horn try to get the Temple's shields lowered, Ben, the Horn siblings, and Rowdy are sent off to deal with the computer core so that they can open the Temple's entrances to make an easier invasion for the Void Jumpers.
With Abeloth arriving in the Imperial Remnant as Lydea Pagorski, she allies with Admiral Natasi Daala to begin the first Imperial democratic electoral campaign against Head of State Jagged Fel. Just as Jag has his loyal Admiral Vitor Reige enter the vote against him in order to split the military vote against Daala, he and his bodyguard, Tahiri Veila, determine through some hard evidence that Pagorski is really Abeloth in disguise. So he sends Tahiri to Hagamoor 3, where Moff Tol Getelles's secret de-aging serum operation was previously in the works, after Tahiri finds a lead on Boba Fett there, which both she and Jag hypothesize could lead to Abeloth-Pagorski due to the latter's affiliation with Daala—since Daala is also affiliated with Fett, a connection between Fett and Abeloth may very well be possible. Sure enough, at Getelles's secret factory, Tahiri meets up with Fett, who is looking for the scientists who concocted the nanovirus that plagued his home world of Mandalore three years earlier, and they confront Abeloth-Pagorski. Though they kill her avatar, it occurs just before the orbital bombardment of the facility that Tahiri had previously ordered in the event that she wouldn't return from her mission in time. The bombardment results in the death of the two scientists, Drs. Jessal Yu and Frela Tarm, who Fett wanted to use in order to bring about a cure for his planet. He does manage to get data on the nanovirus itself so that a cure may be concocted elsewhere.
As Abeloth's avatar in Pagorski dies, it coincides with Abeloth's avatar in Lady Korelei suffering inexplicable pain, which has her depart unexpectedly from her fight with the Jedi. Luke, Jaina, and Corran Horn all take note of this. Meanwhile, as Abeloth controls the Jedi computer core, she manages to separate Ben Skywalker from the Horn siblings and Rowdy and brings him aboard the Sith Meditation Sphere known as Ship. There, as Abeloth begins bringing about Coruscant's apocalypse by commencing earthquakes and volcanic activity amidst the battle between the Jedi and the Sith, she abducts Vestara Khai with Ben and takes them back to her home world as Korelei. Elsewhere, as Luke, Jaina, and Corran succeed in their mission, and the Void Jumpers storm the Temple with their Jedi leaders, the surviving members of the strike team are quickly extracted, healed as quickly as possible to minimal shape, and they have a Council meeting with the other Masters on how to defeat Abeloth and the Sith once and for all. The raging apocalypse amidst the roaring battle only leads to a further sense of doubt and loss for the Jedi once Tekli and Lowbacca, absent Raynar Thul now that he's back with the Killiks, reveal what they know of Abeloth from the Histories of Thuruht. And with Ben and Vestara traveling back to Abeloth's planet under her hold, they all determine that Abeloth wants to recreate her family of the Ones, with Ben taking the Daughter's position in the light side and Vestara taking the Son's position in the dark side.
Because of the events on Hagamoor 3, Jag knows that he will not win the Imperial vote. So he signs out, much to Daala's shock, after he reveals that she was previously sponsoring Moff Getelles's droch de-aging serum program. Daala loses the campaign against Vitor Reige, and, as a result, Reige becomes the Imperial Head of State just as Jag and Tahiri depart for Coruscant in order to help their allies there. With Saba Sebatyne and several other Void Jumpers, led by Gef Olazon, they move in on the Temple to rescue the Solos, their surviving Hapan bodyguards, Zekk, the Barabels, and their hatchlings. Saba, Tahiri, and their contingent of Void Jumpers then proceed to carry out their mission of killing Abeloth's computer core avatar just as Tahiri is considered part of the Order again by Saba. Meanwhile, Luke and Jaina depart in the Rude Awakening to rescue Ben and Vestara. Along the way, Luke receives a message from the Solos, which tells him of Vestara's attempt on their lives. Luke then conveys this information to Jaina.
As the Rude Awakening approaches Abeloth's world, Jaina engages Ship in combat while Luke enters beyond shadows—where he sees the likes of the late Numa Rar, Ganner Rhysode, and Tresina Lobi—to find help from his late wife, Mara. But Mara tells him that she cannot help him, and his late, treacherous nephew, Jacen Solo, reminds him of this even as Luke scolds him on account of the fact that his actions in the Second Galactic Civil War were what allowed Abeloth to roam freely in the galaxy. Luke is soon joined by a mysterious Sith who agrees to help him defeat Abeloth, and they soon engage in combat against her. Meanwhile, Ben and Vestara are tempted by Abeloth to immerse themselves in the Font of Power in order to slake their physical thirst for water, but they manage to overcome their temptation and fight her off.
As the three battles against Abeloth commence—in the Jedi Temple, on her own world, and beyond shadows—Abeloth is steadily weakened and killed in each conflict. Beyond shadows, Luke and the mysterious Sith manage to drain Abeloth of her power, and she dies off there. Meanwhile, Saba is able to lure Abeloth out of her computer core avatar and then she kills her by chopping her head off with her fangs. And Ben and Vestara kill off her Korelei avatar after Ben uses the Sith's own shikkar against her, similar to what Vestara did to Ruku Myal, and then Abeloth-Korelei is finished off when she is then crushed by the fight's resultant debris.
Beyond shadows, Mara tells Luke that, in spite of the literal spiritual wounds that he and the Sith stranger have incurred in their fight against Abeloth, he must go on in life to lead the Jedi Order toward their future. Luke turns to Jacen and tells him that because of him and his change of the future, Abeloth was set free just so he could prevent the Sith stranger, who both Luke and Jacen recognize in their dreams nearly half a decade earlier, from sitting on the Throne of Balance. The stranger tells Luke not to be so confident in his theory that Jacen merely changed the future, for he could have only delayed it, and the stranger may yet sit on the Throne of Balance. He departs with that, and Jacen finally tells Luke why he didn't simply come to him in order to prevent his vision—Jacen's goal wasn't to stop the Sith from sitting on the Throne of Balance; he merely wanted to make sure that Allana wouldn't stand next to him when the stranger did, as he saw.
On Abeloth's world, with Vestara's treachery well known to the Jedi Order by now, Jaina prevents her from boarding the Rude Awakening and only allows for Ben to see Luke. After Ben sees a horrifying future of shadowy Sith over Coruscant as they wage a war against Allana, the foreseen queen of the Jedi, Jaina informs Ben of Vestara's assassination attempt on Allana. Ben then completely renounces his trust in the Sith girl before he and Jaina debark to confront her. Meanwhile, because of Jaina refusing to let her aboard, Vestara deduces that the Jedi have found out that she is still a Sith, and Jaina has told Ben of her attempt on Allana's life. She is soon assured by the approaching presence of Ship, no longer in Abeloth's control since her demise, that she will be accepted by other Sith who will find use in her because of what she knows of the Skywalkers and the Jedi overall. As Ship deigns Vestara to be a Sith Lord, she stalls off Ben and Jaina from capturing her long enough for Ship to rescue her and take her to the other Sith. She is saddened by what became of her relationship to Ben, but Ship reminds her that her love will only fuel her power in the dark side, thereby making her a stronger Sith for it.
Three months after Abeloth's deaths, the apocalypse of Coruscant has ceased, but the casualties for civilians alone range in the billions. Because of what happened, the majority of the populace blame the Jedi for what has occurred and they have voted for them to leave against their will. Luke agrees for the Order to leave voluntarily anyway, especially after they learn that, because of what the Histories of Thuruht have determined, Abeloth may return again in another time of great chaos. This is further proven after Sothais Saar and Avinoam Arelis were attacked by a random tentacle, which could only have belonged to Abeloth, that had appeared spontaneously from the Force, and which had disappeared just as quickly. Luke concludes that with the galaxy slipping into darkness and Abeloth's return all too likely, the Jedi and the Sith must become the Ones in order to ensure the Balance of the Force.
With the Sith survivors knowing full well who the Jedi queen is, Allana decides that it's time to drop the charade of her moniker of Amelia and fully embrace her role as heir to the Hapan throne, letting the galaxy know who she is. The Millennium Falcon's forward hull is soon patched up with replacement parts courtesy of Lando Calrissian. Wynn Dorvan is left as the temporary Chief of State before a new candidate can be properly elected (which would most likely be him, anyway). A Jedi team dubbed the Ten Knights is sent out to find the Mortis monolith, which is what will allow the Jedi to find the Dagger of Mortis, which, according to legend, is the only weapon that could kill Abeloth for good, in case she ever returns.
But in spite of the Jedi's knowledge that the galaxy is leaning to the side of darkness, the novel, and the series, ends on a lighter note as its final scene depicts Jaina Solo walking across the hangar deck of the Dragon Queen II, ready to marry Jagged Fel in their wedding. The final few lines depict an unknown woman, who may very well be the woman depicted in the first few lines of the series' opener, Fate of the Jedi: Outcast, lighting a candle against an all-encompassing darkness, symbolizing the glimmer of hope that the Jedi have for the future.
Appearances Edit
Behind the scenes Edit
Lucas Licensing suggested to Troy Denning that he use the Mortis backstory first seen in The Clone Wars third season as part of Abeloth's history.[3]
Continuity Edit
Wynn Dorvan states Senator Rokari Kem is from B'Nish instead of Qaras
There are numerous occurrences in this novel in which Tenel Ka Djo is mistakenly noted to having two hands, rather than one, which is canonically correct.
In chapter 29 Shyriiwook is mistakenly spelled Shryiiwook.
Cover gallery Edit
Notes and references EditSometimes, the best audio engineering job, like the best haircut, it the one that passes unnoticed. The result seems so well-suited and natural that you’re not quite sure if anything has been done at all. In the case of a haircut, this is often the result of asking the hairdresser to simply “take a little off the top (or sides, or back).”
For the Audio Engineer, often, this means setting the Compressor aside and reaching for the Limiter instead.
If the volume on your audio is generally within an acceptable range, but your peaks jump a bit higher than you would like, a Limiter (specifically a Hard Limiter or a Brick Wall Limiter) may be a more appropriate tool than a more generic Compressor.
In our fictitious example, lets assume that during some more exciting parts of your recording, your volume jumped up to about -1.0dB but didn’t actually peak (go above 0). You were asked to deliver a file with peaks no higher than -3.0dB.
You could try to fix this by Normalizing the entire file down to -3.0dB. If you did the entire file would get quieter by 2 decibels, and that is not the goal. The volume in most of the file feels perfect, you just need to control those peaks — “take a little bit off the top” — as it were. This is why you might want to use a Limiter.
By configuring a Limiter with both the Threshold and the Output set to -3.0dB, only the parts of your audio that exceed -3 will be affected at all. Since this leaves the bulk of your audio untouched, the result can be a lot more transparent and natural than other types of compression.
If your audio needs to be made slightly louder and have very specific peaks, you would move the Threshold down until it affects a bit more of your audio, maybe as low as -12.0dB. All of your audio below that line will remain unaffected while the parts above will be “teased up” a bit. Depending upon how agressive the Threshold you could go from adding a bit of body to a flat hairstyle to something that seems more like glam-rock or punk. So, be careful!
Two of my favorite Limiters are Event Horizon by Stillwell Audio and LoudMax by Thomas Mundt. Both are intuitive and can be incredibly transparent. Try them both out and see which one works better for you. Is there another Limiter that you think I should try, let me know?
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$5 • $10 • $15 • $20 • $25 • $50 A ridiculous amount of caffeine was consumed while researching.Add some fuel if you would like to help keep me going!
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Like this: Like Loading...When Motorola first revealed its #hellomotoworld event, the Lenovo subsidiary remained quiet about what would be shown off there. Motorola has since sent out official invites for the event, and though it remained quiet about the products, it gave us a good indication of what might be shown off.
Based on the image Motorola sent us, it wants us to “get ready to shatter your expectations.” This tagline pretty much confirms that the Moto Z2 Force will be announced during Motorola’s July 25 event, since the phone will be the successor to 2016’s shatterproof Moto Z Force Droid Edition.
Interestingly, the Moto Z2 Force is expected to not have a smaller, regular Moto Z2 alongside it. This might be because Motorola looks to have improved on the its ShatterShield technology. In other words, the Moto Z2 Force’s display is expected to feel like a regular glass display, a departure from the plastic layer that helped protect previous smartphones, but made the display feel cheap when using it.
As for what else will be shown at the #hellomotoworld event, Moto Mods are expected to make an appearance. More of a long shot is a Moto X4 announcement, with the phone rumored to be the first non-Google-made Project Fi-compatible phone.
Regardless of what is announced, we will be sure to cover Motorola’s #hellomotoworld event, which will take place in New York City on July 25 at 11:00 am EST.Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle, left, R-Wichita, confers with Sens. Julia Lynn, center, R-Olathe, and Ty Masterson, right, R-Andover, during a debate over a bill on banning concealed guns in hospitals, Tuesday, May 16, 2017, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. The Senate has returned the bill to committee for more work with current state law allowing concealed guns in public hospitals starting in July. (AP Photo/John Hanna) The Associated Press
By ALLISON KITE, Associated Press
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Senators on Tuesday backed away from a contentious floor debate on the state's concealed carry law, opting instead to send a bill back to committee that would allow several types of medical providers to ban guns in their facilities.
The measure would allow public hospitals and nursing homes, community mental health centers, low-income health clinics and the University of Kansas Hospital to ban guns in their facilities without having to place metal detectors and armed guards at each entrance. An amendment added on the floor would still allow people to carry if they had a concealed carry permit, but facilities would be able to prohibit gun owners that don't have permits. It would specifically prohibit patients at state hospitals for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled from carrying guns.
Under a 2013 law the bill would partially roll back, those public buildings and university campuses can't prohibit guns unless they allow for security measures.
Senate Ways and Means Committee Chair Sen. Carolyn McGinn said sending the bill back to her committee could allow for previously stalled compromise negations between the University of Kansas Hospital and the National Rifle Association. Those talks, she said, had stopped until Senate leaders scheduled Tuesday's debate.
Supporters of the 2013 law said it allows lawful gun owners to defend themselves. Opponents of the law contend it puts patients and students at risk of intentional and accidental shootings.
Some lawmakers have tried to roll back the policy for the health facilities and college campuses, but gun-rights groups have helped block them. The bill debated Tuesday still wouldn't allow universities to ban guns.
House and Senate budget committees rejected a request from GOP Gov. Sam Brownback's administration for $24 million over two years to pay for security equipment and personnel at the state-owned hospitals for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled.A leader of the "alt-right" appeared in an Albemarle County court Thursday morning.
Christopher Charles Cantwell of Keene, New Hampshire, went before a judge in Albemarle General District Court Thursday, August 24. He is charged with two counts of illegal use of tear gas, phosgene and other gases, and one count of malicious bodily injury by means of any caustic substance or agent or use of any explosive or fire.
According to Albemarle County Commonwealth's Attorney Robert Tracci, the judge denied bond during Thursday's hearing, but Cantwell can seek a bond hearing when counsel is appointed. Cantwell plans to hire his own attorney.
The charges stem from a torch-lit march around the University of Virginia held by members and supporters of the "alt-right" on Friday, August 11, a day before the Unite the Right rally in Emancipation Park.
Cantwell was also involved in an incident at the Walmart parking lot in Albemarle County that same Friday. Officers responded to the store around 12:20 p.m. after receiving a report that customers were concerned with a group of people pointing guns in the store's parking lot.
Police told NBC29 that Cantwell and his group left the parking lot without incident and no arrests were made.
Authorities said Cantwell himself in to the Lynchburg Police Department Wednesday, August 23. He was being held at Blue Ridge Regional Jail pending transport to Charlottesville.
Cantwell is now being held at Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail.
Tracci said a preliminary hearing is scheduled for October 12.
08/23/2017 Release from University of Virginia Police: The University of Virginia Police Department (UPD) was notified late this afternoon that Christopher Cantwell had turned himself in to the Lynchburg VA Police Department with regard to the warrants that UPD had on file for him.
Mr. Cantwell is currently being held at the Blue Ridge Regional Jail in Lynchburg pending transport to Charlottesville.There are four states in the country where you can have sex with a dead body, but you cannot give (or receive, sorry!) a blow job.
According to Gawker’s Adam Weinstein and his very helpful map, you may not have anal or oral sex of any sort — even if you are in a good, old fashioned, hetero marriage — but you may engage in sexual intercourse with a corpse in Louisiana and North Carolina.
Louisiana (whose politicians are ALWAYS pillars of the moral community) recently upheld its ban on sodomy, even though the law was ruled to be unconstitutional.
In Kansas and Kentucky, straight people can have oral sex as much as they please, but gay and lesbian couples may not — which sort of leaves out a lot on the homosexual sex spectrum. However, it’s totally cool if gay or straight people give the time to a dead person.
Godless heathens in states like New Mexico, Nebraska and Vermont are cool with just about everything: These states allow necrophilia and oral sex between whomever, so the next time you feel like doing whatever you want with a cadaver, start there!
Follow Taylor on TwitterJonas Crow and Rose Prairie: Against their better judgement
Jonas Crow (otherwise known as “The Undertaker”) is an amoral anti-hero with florid vocabulary. Rose Prairie (otherwise known as “Saint Rose”) is a puritanical English housekeeper with a penchant for measuring table settings. Crow for death, Rose for beauty. Yet another duo of opposites.
This unlikely pairing was created by the strange circumstances of the death of Rose’s employer, Joe Cusco. Crow (Cusco’s undertaker) wants what he’s owed, and Rose is honor-bound to stick by him to ensure that Cusco’s sordid dying wishes are carried out. They’re tied to each other, against their will, by the strength of their determination to achieve their respective ends.
The friction is palpable as our two protagonists enter a battle of wills, one moral and one mercenary. But this is a series about the appearances and contrasts that each hero/anti-hero represents. And, as we all know, appearances can be deceiving. Jonas Crow might seem like a brute, and he certainly knows how to handle a gun, but beneath his rough façade, he’s got |
President with facial hair.
Plus, there is now a group known as the Bearded Entrepreneurs for the Advancement of a Responsible Democracy who are trying to bring facial hair back into politics because it shows dedication, which they believe will replicate in their public service. This committee also provides financial support to political campaigns of those with beards. Awesome, right?
While we wait for the next one, let's check out the few historical Presidents of the USA who dared to abandon their razors for beards, mustaches, and mutton chops!
John Quincy Adams
The first President who was the son of a President is also our first president with real facial hair (sorry, sideburns don't count George Washington). After he and his mutton chops were not re-elected as President, they were both elected to serve in the House of Representatives until his death, when he had a stroke on the floor of the House.
Martin Van Buren
Van Buren was only around 5 feet 6 inches tall, but his mutton chops made him look much larger in stature. The "Little Magician" was not one of our better-known presidents but he did oppose the expansion of slavery, and because of that he blocked the annexation of Texas so that slave territory wouldn't increase. At least he did something positive during his term other than just looking awesome.
Abraham Lincoln
Honest Abe was an amazing man with an amazing beard. He grew up with little money and little education, and worked hard to further his education while being a farmhand, splitting logs for fences, and working as a shopkeeper. Even though his assassination was tragic, the words from his second inaugural address should live with us forever "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds." You're the man, Abe.
Ulysses S. Grant
After the embarrassment to the Union known as the Battle of Shiloh, there were a lot of people calling for the resignation of General Grant. Lincoln defended him by saying "I can't spare this man, he fights." He fought, he recovered, and helped lead the Union to victory. There's no doubt that his beard inspired his soldiers on at least some small scale. Also, he looked like Russell Crowe.
Rutherford B. Hayes
You thought the John Kerry - George W. Bush election was rough? Hayes went to bed thinking he had lost the 1876 election, and woke up with a popular vote that showed 4,300,000 votes for his opponent and 4,036,000 for Hayes. After months of debate over contested electoral votes, Congress created an Electoral Commission to decide who would be president. The commission had eight Republicans and seven Democrats, and Hayes won by a margin of (you guessed it) eight to seven. Also, he looks like the old-guy-neighbor from Home Alone.
James Garfield
President Garfield was in office for less than a year before he was shot by an assassins bullet. As a native of Cuyahoga County, Ohio he became the first of many Cleveland leaders who couldn't last through an entire contract.
(We would like to apologize to Cleveland Browns fans, Tim Couch, Kelly Holcomb, Jeff Garcia, Luke McCown, Trent Dilfer, Charlie Frye, Derek Anderson, Brady Quinn, Ken Dorsey, Bruce Gradkowski, Jake Delhomme, Seneca Wallace, Colt McCoy, Thad Lewis, Brandon Weeden, Brian Hoyer, Jason Campbell, and the descendants of James Garfield for that joke.)
Chester Arthur
As President, Arthur tried to lower the US tariff rates so that the Government (get this) would not be "embarrassed by annual surpluses of revenue." That's right folks, in the 1880's the government had to be careful not to have too much money left over at the end of the year. Oh, the good ol' days....
Grover Cleveland
Cleveland entered the White House as a bachelor. And, in June 1886 the 49-year-old Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom. He was only the second president married while in office, and the first who was married in the White House. Nice work, Grover - that mustache definitely helped. Also, he looks like Bill Murray's brother.
Benjamin Harrison
Harrison was another 5 foot 6 president, and another president who had to deal with the "treasury surplus." We just wanted to re-iterate that the US Government once had too much money. Fun Fact: Harrison is distantly related to the Harrison family from History Channel's Pawn Stars.
Theodore Roosevelt
Roosevelt liked to "speak softly and carry a big stick" and was lieutenant colonel of the Rough Rider Regiment. This tough president loved the outdoors, expanded our national forests, went on safaris, and even created a political ticket named the Bull Moose Party. He was a man's man, and wore a mustache worthy of his personality. You're the man, Teddy.
William Howard Taft
Taft was 5 foot 11 inches tall and weighed 340 pounds. The thing people most remember about him is that he (may have) been stuck in a bathtub at some point during his presidency. While that story remains an unconfirmed legend, the fact remains that Taft should be known for something completely different. He was the last US President to have any real facial hair. Based on the requirements of this article, Taft truly was the last manly president.
If you want more like this, you can check out our Beards of the Month here.Infographic by: Protect Your Home
The average American home is approximately 2,100 square feet in size. If this seems like a lot of space to you, think again. The number is nothing compared to the amount of space that exists in celebrity homes in the U.S. today. In the following infographic, we’re providing you with an inside look at some of the most ridiculous celebrity homes that can be found across the country.We’ll start with the home that Bill Gates lives in, where the gym alone is roughly 2,500 square feet. Next we’ll look at the home that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West live in, where Kanye can record music from the comfort of his own private studio. We’ll also feature the homes of Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Aniston, Rihanna, and Oprah.To see how elaborate each celebrity has made the place they call home, take a look below: -ISTANBUL, Turkey — In one of the latest trials targeting anti-government protesters, Turkish prosecutors are accusing an unlikely group of attempting to overthrow the government —soccer fans.
See also: Tensions rise in Turkey after bloody hostage standoff in Istanbul courthouse
The gray-haired dad who founded Carsi, a hardcore soccer group that played a prominent role in the so-called Gezi protests, faces up to 49 years in prison on charges of leading the attempted coup via text messages and tweets. Thirty-four other Carsi members are being tried as well.
Turkish soccer club Besiktas' firm 'Carsi' light flares during a rally against the government at Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey, 08 June 2013. Image: EPA/TOLGA BOZOGLU
Critics say the trial, which began in December and is scheduled to resume Thursday morning, is a sign of dangerous government pressure on prosecutors, who have hit scores of Gezi participants with serious criminal charges.
Cem Yakiskan, the alleged ringleader and father of two, has found some humor in his case, proclaiming in court that if Carsi was powerful enough to topple the government, they would have focused their efforts on making sure their beloved soccer team Besiktas became champions.
Soccer fan Cem Yakiskan who is accused of trying to overthrow the Turkish government, Istanbul, 2015.
Despite these attempts at humor, it's clear the trial has taken a toll on Yakiskan and his family. He believes the government is trying to silence critical voices and he fears the judiciary may not give him or his comrades a fair shake.
This case "will show whether the Turkish judicial system is impartial or not," said his lawyer, Sabit Inan Kaya, adding that he was not optimistic.
Over the last year and a half, hundreds tied to the Gezi protests have faced legal action, including doctors who treated injured protesters.
More than 200 others — many with connections to left-wing groups that also participated in the Gezi protests — have been prosecuted in just the last seven months for insulting the president, which is a criminal offense in Turkey.
Meanwhile, thousands of police officers, prosecutors and judges (including the original trio of judges assigned to the Carsi case) have been fired or reassigned as the government aims to purge the system of what it views as internal enemies.
As a result, confidence in the system is shaken, with politicians, lawyers and judges themselves expressing doubts about its impartiality.
Members of Turkish soccer club Besiktas' fan group 'Carsi' gather in front of a courthouse to protest against the trial of 35 'Carsi' fans who took part in mass anti-government protests in 2013, in Istanbul, Turkey, 16 December 2014. Image: EPA/SEDAT SUNA
It is against this backdrop that Yakiskan and his family confront the possibility that he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
On a recent evening, Yakiskan, 49, and his wife were bundled up outside a restaurant he runs in his team’s stronghold of Besiktas, still marveling over accusations that he is the leader of a terrorist organization that helped mastermind an attempted coup.
"Police don’t like us and we are not fond of them either. But we know our democratic rights," Yakiskan said, explaining that Carsi members are experienced protesters who know how far they can go.
A Fenerbahce football fan poses alongside rivals from the Besiktas Carsi club at Gezi Park Image: PHOTO BY JODI HILTON
The group is known for being defiant in the face of authority and proudly defending those who are oppressed such as victims of racism.
But it was Turkey’s Gezi protests where the group really found its calling. `
Tens of thousands of people, united in opposition to the government, took to the streets in the spring of 2013. And instead of cowering, it seemed that when police cracked down, Carsi thrived.
The soccer fans were old hands at the art of the protest and unfazed by walls of riot cops or tear gas and water fired at the crowds. Yakiskan spent those days marching through the streets of Istanbul like a teargas-soaked pied piper. "It was the best 15 days I ever had," he said.
Months later, his daughter wept as police led him out of their house, informing him that he was being detained for forming a criminal and terrorist organization. That organization, he found out, was Carsi, accused of attempting to violently seize control of the prime minister’s Istanbul office during the Gezi protests. Prosecutors claim Yakiskan was the ringleader, encouraging a coup through text messages and tweets.
Members of Turkish soccer club Besiktas' fan group 'Carsi' gather in front of a courthouse to protest against the trial of 35 'Carsi' fans who took part in mass anti-government protests in 2013, in Istanbul, Turkey, 16 December 2014. Image: EPA/SEDAT SUNA
As the trial resumes, his wife and two children are feeling the weight of the case.
"I’ve gone mad. My nerves have been broken," said his wife, Fatos Yakiskan. Since the Gezi protests, she said she has detected a "darkness" falling on Turkey. “We have been pressured and targeted on many fronts."
Fatos Yakiskan whose husband is accused of trying to overthrow the Turkish government, Istanbul. Image: Emily Feldman
Still, she tries to put on a brave face. As authorities led her husband out the door the day of his arrest, she followed them down the stairs, calling after him. "I’m proud of you."
Yakiskan is also proud of Carsi and his weeks of protest during Gezi.
"I have nothing to be ashamed of and can still look my children in the eye," he said. "It they take me in, I would be honored to go" to prison.Have you ever noticed that our country hasn't got a single written credible long-term plan for dealing with any of the biggest issues facing our nation today?
Today, there are no written long-term plans for reducing unemployment and growing our economy, stopping global warming, controlling health care costs, or fixing education. They are simply nowhere to be found. Not from Democrats. Not from Republicans.
In fact, there aren't even any committees of credible experts appointed by the President to create any of these plans.
Is this any way to run a country?
If the US were a business, no venture capitalist would fund us. We have no plan for growth, no credible plan for achieving profitability, and no credible plan for paying our debts.
If the US government walked into a bank asking for a loan, we'd be laughed out of the building. We are currently over $14 trillion dollars in debt and every day we spend $4 billion dollars more than we make. We don't even have a credible story for how we are going to change that. We don't have any story at all. Would you loan us money?
While I'm not suggesting that we should start running our country like a business, some basic principles like vision, long-term goals, strategic plans, and financial responsibility apply to both governments and business.
Wouldn't it be great if at the State of the Union speech, Obama announced that he would adopt the very successful planning methodology that President Kennedy and Johnson used for solving the nation's biggest problems? Not only did that planning methodology lead to the most successful legislative agenda in US history (a 96% passage rate), but the policies themselves also worked astonishingly well in achieving their objectives. Many are still being used today.
There is nothing keeping Obama from doing this. It isn't hard to do. No special interest can prevent it from being done. There are no excuses for not even attempting to create credible plans. All Obama has to do is make a decision to do it and then nothing can stop it from happening. But with the exception of Secretary Vilsack, nobody on Obama's team seems to have any interest in copying the successful long-term strategic planning strategies of previous Presidents. They seem quite content and happy doing the same old methods over and over and expecting a different result than they got in 2010.
For example, if Obama wanted to create a credible long-term comprehensive plan to solve global warming, he could pick up the phone, call Jim Hansen, and say, "Jim, global warming is a big issue and I know you are the leading world expert on this issue. I'd like you to select a committee of nine people you think would do the best job of coming up with a long term plan for dealing with this issue worldwide, and have them write a plan for me that is on my desk in 90 days? I'll then ask a dozen independent experts if the plan is credible, and if a bunch of of them tell me it is, I'll give it to another committee to strategize how to get it passed in Congress and implemented. It will be tough to do to get it passed with all the special interests that will be against it, but I'm going to give it everything I got. After all, that's what they elected me to do."
How hard is that? It's been done before by US Presidents. Successfully. That same approach created the most successful legislative agenda in US history.
What does a long-term plan look like? It is not a piece of legislation. It is not a policy or a set of policies. A long-term plan is a document that describes clear, measurable goals, and lays out the particular strategies that will be used to achieve those goals. The plan has major milestones, key strategic bets, a budget, a discussion of the risk factors, and how those risk factors will be mitigated. It describes what laws are required and what incentive policies need to be put in place so that everything works together to achieve the goals. There is a discussion of alternative paths and why the path chosen in the plan is preferred.
There are lots of excuses for inaction. Some people think you can't do this in a Democracy or that we have to change the political system to do it. Yet we know that isn't true since other US Presidents did it not that long ago.
A couple of people assured me that Obama must surely have such plans, but for strategic reasons he isn't telling anyone. That's wishful thinking. The reality is that some senior staff people inside the White House are as frustrated as I am about the lack of long-term strategic plans. People who have been in secret meetings with the Vice President also tell me there is no long-term strategy. Johnson's long-term strategic plans were all public. Not a single one needed to be secret. Finally, even if there were secret plans, you really can't keep any of them secret for very long if you plan on changing anything or win elections. They either have to be translated into an Executive Order or passed by Congress. If Obama expects to change anything during his term in office, if there were any plans, we'd have known by now.
Others say that there are no "truly independent experts to validate the plan." But the point of the experts is just to validate that the plans are credible. Universal agreement among experts is not required (and rare to achieve on anything). Agreement on which experts should be used to validate the plans isn't required either. There just needs to be credible validation by a reasonable number of credible experts. This sort of thing is done all the time in the scientific community where is known as "peer review." The point is that if you have a plan and ask 100 experts what they think and 99 experts say it is credible, and 1 does not, that is simply more likely to be a better plan than one in which 99 out of 100 experts say it is unworkable. We don't need the best possible plans. We just need solid plans that can work.
One person told me that you can't make any plans at all because the media and the opposition pounce on any idea for change and pick it apart. So for example, suppose Obama had a plan to reduce health care costs or a plan to make us energy independent so we don't have to send billions of dollars overseas buying foreign oil. I'm having a tough time imaging how people would be protesting against such plans. I'm sure some will. Nobody said it would be easy. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to get it done or that it is impossible to do.
Some people think that Obama can't create these plans because they think he is "controlled" or "in bed" with the special interests or corporations. As far as I know, very few, if any, special interests benefit from a lousy US economy. No large US corporation I know makes more money when the US economy tanks. I've never heard of any US CEO wish for lower US sales next quarter. When the US economy tanked in 2008, the earnings of the S&P 500 went negative in Q4; the first time this has ever happened. Every company I know of wants lower health care costs. So the "special interests" are not aligned to prevent our moving forward on creating plans that help our economy. They should all welcome such plans and push their lobbyists to get them passed in Congress.
To me, the lack of any independently validated written long-term plans for dealing with our top issues is the single biggest issue facing America today.
If the President and Democrats don't want to have long term plans for solving our biggest problems, what is keeping the Republicans from creating them? Republicans don't have any plans either that can be validated by independent third party subject matter experts. Their plans are equally lame. For example, the Republican health care plan is to repeal Obama's plan entirely. That's not a plan. That's stupid. As far as I know, there aren't any credible independent health care experts who say that the most important thing we can do right now to improve health care in the US is to completely repeal every single provision in the health care reform we just passed.
Most voters I've talked to see the problem clearly. Secretary Vilsack sees it clearly (not surprising since he was also outstanding for demanding solid goals and business plans for each department when he was governor of Iowa). But most other politicians I know don't see the problem at all.
My brother is a staunch Republican. I asked him recently, "If Obama had credible long term plans for dealing with our top issues that were validated by independent experts, would you vote for him in 2012?" His response was instant and emphatic, "Absolutely!"
Some people say that Obama has written plans for our top issues posted on his website.
I disagree. Here's what that site says about climate change: "We will invest in energy efficiency and conservation, two sure-fire ways to decrease deadly pollution and drive down demand. And we will hold special interests accountable as we finally work to address climate change and its potentially catastrophic effects." That's it.
That is not a plan for how we stay under 350ppm to avoid a climate disaster. Those are at best a few tactics that only work domestically and will have marginal impact even at that.
A real plan for climate change would say what the maximum allowable ppm goal is, set specific prices on carbon over the next 10 years (at least), and tell us specifically what the rebate to consumers is (will it be 100%? 0%? 50%?). It would talk about specific dollars we'd invest in each major carbon free power technology and when we'd make those investments. It would set goals for how many nuclear plants would be built in the US the next 10 years (10? 100? 1000?). It would lay out specific incentives for that to happen. It would have a credible strategy for getting the rest of the world to reduce their carbon emissions. For example, if we make massive investments in lowering the cost of nuclear to make it cheaper than coal and then help finance conversions of coal plants to carbon free nuclear plants worldwide, that is probably better than praying that other countries will implement carbon taxes or fee-and-dividend or cap-and-trade. It would talk about investing in fast nuclear and pyroprocessing and set specific aggressive target dates for operation and feasibility demonstrations for those technologies. It would talk about how we use fast reactors to completely get rid of all of the long term nuclear waste. You may not agree with me about nuclear, and you may not like my plan (and that certainly wasn't a complete plan which would be too large to fit here), but that isn't the point. That was just an example of some of the things a real plan might contain. Any credible long-term strategic plan would have things like I just mentioned in it: a comprehensive set of specific goals, key strategic bets, milestones, overall strategies, specific incentives, investment dollars, etc. which all work together and have a reasonable chance of hitting the overall goal and a way to measure whether you've achieved the goal. That would be a plan. Hoping that all of these things happen on their own or that global warming suddenly "goes away" is foolhardy. Hoping that some magic new technology is invented that saves the day is risky and irresponsible. We have the technology to address this problem now. We know what public policy to use (fee and rebate). The public policy is even politically popular in other countries. What we lack is political leadership to get it done here.
I find it amazing that both parties expect people to go to the polls and be energized about voting for people who have no credible plans for fixing the most important problems facing our nation today. The only reason the Tea Party got any traction in 2010 is because of a complete lack of a legislative agenda from either party that people could believe in and get excited about that had a realistic chance of solving our top problems.
Obama has very little time left to change that. He has my permission to start now.A successful demo-build video, in which a flat-pack gets turned into a driveable chassis in 41 minutes, has focussed attention on an open-source car project, OSVehicle.
The project, which first went public last October, has several aims: vehicle makers could build and ship the kit car as a flat pack with their own individual touches (such as bodywork), while the gifted enthusiast can simply download the designs and get to work on their own.
And, of course, OSVehicle wants third parties to contribute their own designs and tweaks back into the project design.
The plans, available for download here, are in FreeCAD format, while potential commercial can register to receive detailed 3D construction blueprints.
The company describes the designs as providing an “industrialisable, production ready, versatile, universal chassis” rather than a finished product, and while it says its second evolution, the Urban TABBY, is a “road legal” version, The Register assumes the vehicles would still require in-country homologation in the target markets.
OSVehicle says the road version is “compliant with all the regulations needed for the road legal approval” - rather than stating that it has jumped through the diverse regulatory hoops that exist around the world. That would presumably be one of the value-adds a commercial partner would bring.
OSVehicle hopes to ship kits this year for between 4,000 and 6,000 Euros. ®
Youtube VideoGaps and holes: How the Swiss cheese was made
When some things have holes in them, it’s a sign of decay, like a beam with termites. But some things are meant to have holes, like Swiss cheese. I agree with John’s view on “holes and gaps”, but as always, I tend to assign agency to the political system more than to the financial sector. Nearly all of those holes were intended to be there, and it was intended that the financial system used them. The process whereby the behaviour involved is redefined from acceptable deviancy to unacceptable is very interesting, like the last chapters of a John le Carre novel by way of Foucault. A few thoughts below, ranging in geopolitical scope from “vast” to “cosmic”, in a comment which grew into an alternative monetary history of the second half of the twentieth century.
Tax havens
Once upon a time, the United Kingdom decided it no longer wanted to have colonies in the Caribbean and elsewhere. So it started the process of giving independence to a lot of small islands which had very few export industries other than sugar cane. The ethical thing to do would have been to provide significant subsidies for the industrial development of these former colonies, but that was politically a difficult sell. After all, dismantling an Empire is psychologically difficult enough to begin with – to find out that doing so is going to cost money is surely a step too far.
However, it’s possible to do something which has a similar fiscal effect. And that was to “encourage the development of a financial services industry”, by allowing the former colonies to benefit from tax treaties with the United Kingdom (and thereby access to the global financial system), while making their own arrangements regarding the local taxation of offshore shell companies. Sometimes (insurance in Bermuda) it worked well in terms of seeding a genuine value-creating industry cluster. Sometimes (the British Virgin Islands) it didn’t. In either case, the economic effect was a steady and predictable leakage of tax from the British fisc, which subsidised a gain to the islands. One might say that this is an incredibly self-serving and inefficient way to hand out foreign aid. One might also say “compared to what?”. The British were the biggest users of this tactic of post-colonialism, by the way, rather than the only ones.
Secrecy
You don’t have to be a geopolitical genius to work out exactly why it was that so many people all over the world in the third quarter of the twentieth century were so keen on the idea of bank secrecy. Lots of them had been given a pretty harsh lesson about confiscation of assets, and millions more were living in the shadow of the Soviet Union. Bank secrecy was the default position.
And once more, the provision of secrecy jurisdictions for ill-gotten gains was very much supported by public policy, which during the Cold War was very much a driver of their ill-getting. If you are going to bribe a dictator, then he is going to want to put that bribe into a bank account, and he is understandably going to want to be sure that his bribe-taking account is not transparent. One of the most startling examples of the “Le Carre effect” that I’ve ever seen came shortly after the Tahrir Square protests, when the US State Department announced that they would be launching an inititative to find and prosecute the banks which had been handling the fortune of Hosni Mubarak. This initiative didn’t really go anywhere, because a number of people pointed out that the State Department had been writing cheques to Mubarak for the preceding forty years, and that it was consequently a bit late to complain that he was banking them.
Tax and secrecy…
So there were reasons why the tax holes were put there, and reasons why the secrecy holes were put there, and in both cases, the financial sector was using the postwar international structure as it was supposed to be used. (“Technically legal”, after all, is a phrase which means “legal”). The trouble, and the expansion of the financial sector into a machine based on regulatory and tax arbitrage, came when the secrecy holes and the tax holes matched up with one another, and both were turned into products aimed at the mass-affluent market. These arrangements had one major effect; they significantly lowered the effective tax rate on the very wealthy. That’s not good tax policy, but it needs to be looked at in political economy terms.
The post war social and economic settlement was a massive change from how things had been before. The UK built a National Health Service. Other countries built similarly massive systems based on a ratio of government expenditure (and therefore taxation) to national output which was wholly unprecedented. And this all happened, with basically no reactionary movement, no coups, hardly any resistance at all from the very wealthy, whose position in society went through a shock (described in detail in the relevant chapters of Thomas Piketty’s book) from which they have only comparatively recently recovered. How did it all happen so smoothly?
Well, one reason is that for very rich people who didn’t like the new economic and fiscal reality of “one for you, nineteen for me” (“Taxman” by the Beatles, accurately describing the top rate of marginal tax at the time), there was a choice between exit and voice. If you couldn’t live with 95% supertax, then you didn’t have to fight it; you could hire a good advisor and rearrange your fortune. The price of doing so, however, was a diminution in your political influence back home. Looked at this way, the holes in the system were a safety valve for upper class rage, during a period of social change which might have been expected to very much need such a safety valve.
And now here we are…
My story, as told above, ends in the late 1970s, some time between the oil shock and the Reagan revolution. The global upper class found out (the hard way) that inflation is the tax you can’t avoid, and their reaction to it was to reverse the exit-voice choices that they had made during the trentes glorieuses. Obviously, in an environment of rapidly falling top tax rates, the purpose of the tax holes was obsolete. And post the end of the Cold War, the secrecy holes were also largely obsolete. But they didn’t end, of course. And this was the period at which the financial sector’s use of tax and regulatory arbitrage become wholly pathological in the way John describes. We could have expected, with the perspective of a highly functionalist philosophy of history, that one of the stories of the following thirty years would be of rising onshore inequality, out-of-control financialisation and so on. And that it would end badly, and that in the aftermath, the “onshore” segment of the global elite would have little continuing use for the “offshore” segment. The winding up of the offshore centres is, really, just one of the later stages of the winding up of the whole post-war settlement.When it comes to the films of David Cronenberg, average movie-goers and critics alike either love him or hate him. There are tons of critics and censors out there that have dismissed Cronenberg’s films as “gross-out” cinema, purely created for shock value. Film critic, Roger Ebert, once referred to one of Cronenberg’s films as “reprehensible trash.” Sure, if one looks at his films on the surface, most can be repulsive, and some just downright disturbing. They are most certainly not suitable for everybody’s palette.
Cronenberg has crafted a vast assortment of films over the past three decades or so. His film catalog spans across most genres; horror, science fiction, drama, even some comedy. Some, if not most of his films are not even classifiable. Here are 10 films crafted by David Cronenberg that every celluloid enthusiast should view at least once in their lifetime.
10. eXistenZ (1999)
eXistenZ takes gaming to an entirely innovative, virtually grotesque level. This film begs to ask the questions of, “What exactly is our reality?” Personal, spinal “bio-ports” are used for gaming instead of gaming consoles. Lines are blurred between organic and mechanical material. Virtual reality blends seamlessly with the real world. Free will becomes a disorienting illusion. The line between human beings and the technology that they create becomes distorted.
David Cronenberg wrote an extremely clever script for this film. Another perfectly complimentary score by Howard Shore gives the film a haunting yet surreal feel to the film’s structure. The special effects and props created for this film visually give an organic, “fleshy” feel to the cold technology of video gaming.
Video game “pods” resemble exterior organs of the human body. They pulse. They wiggle. They even squeal. Also, Jennifer Jason Leigh is striking in the film as game designer Allegra Geller. She exudes a certain intelligent presence that is perfect for a Cronenberg heroine.
9. Dead Ringers (1988)
David Cronenberg and gynecology are two things that frighteningly go together all too well. The plot is based around Jeremy Irons two main characters, which he expertly plays. They are identical twin gynecologists, Beverly and Elliot Mantle. Elliot is a womanizer and fraternizes with the brothers’ gynecological clientel, giving Beverly is scraps, so to speak. That is, until Beverly falls in love with one of Elliot’s former conquests.
The usual gore associated with David Cronenberg becomes somewhat yielding in this film. It really didn’t warrant the massive amounts of blood and guts found in most other Cronenberg films. Of course, there are pieces of grotesque found throughout the film. For instance, Beverly has hallucinations of “altered” female reproductive organs after becoming addicted to drugs.
8. The Brood (1979)
The Brood is hard to explain. It’s almost like David Cronenberg was creating a fictional, parallel world to visually display a metaphor for the misfortune parents experience when they come to the realization that their bad habits and negative qualities are passed down to their children.
Cronenberg takes an issue as finite and harsh as that of a troubled marriage and broken family and creates a film that is upside down and is as disgusting as it is surreal, but to a point. Cronenberg himself was experiencing the demise of his own marriage and a harsh custody battle while he was writing the script for The Brood.
Maybe it was his way of publically debating the effects of psychotherapy, which was popular at the time? Maybe it was made for pure exploitation purposes, which would explain the far-out and extremely grotesque ending? The reasons behind David Cronenberg creating this film have pretty much been unnamed, although he has stated once that he wished for this film to be the “realistic Kramer vs. Kramer.”
7. The Fly (1986)
Sometimes, a remake is a good thing. Sometimes, filmmakers can take the premise of a classic film and spin it to where it becomes their own masterful creation. David Cronenberg did just that and more with The Fly. He created such a primal, almost gut-wrenching at times, atmosphere to this film that it evidently bypasses the camp of the original film and cut straight for visceral emotion involved in personal tragedy.
The casting of Jeff Goldblum as scientist Seth Brundle and Geena Davis as reporter Vernoica Quaife was truly ideal for this film as their on-screen chemistry and stellar performances made the film’s tragedy that much more genuine. The raw emotion between the two central characters during the visual undoing and ultimate demise of Seth Brundle is absolutely mesmerizing. It successfully captures the emotional parallels the witnessing of a loved one ailing of a fatal disease.
6. Rabid (1977)
Ex-porn star Marilyn Chambers stars in this grotesque science fiction/horror film, executively produced by none other than Ivan Reitman. After surgery following a motorcycle accident, she develops a hole underneath her arm which sprouts a stinger that she uses to feed off of other people’s blood. In turn, she infects those people with same rabid bloodlust. It’s like 70s exploitive sex film meets disease meets blood-crazed, sexually-transmitted zombies, STZs, if you will. What’s NOT to love?
While Rabid is not too far from being almost exactly like David Cronenberg’s Shivers, or They Came From Within, it brought to the screen an x-factor. The film’s style, its cool, Canadian charm, and the marginal but effective star power that Marilyn Chambers brought to the screen created a crafted, easy flowing fictional setting. This was missing from Cronenberg’s first attempt at a film of this nature with Shivers. There are also a few good scares to be found.Pictured here is a sporty version of Volkswagen’s Amarok pickup truck sold overseas. It is strictly a concept, though it confirms the German automaker has recognized the all around awesomeness of performance pickups like Ford’s F-150 SVT Raptor and is at least toying with the idea of building one of its own.
The new concept is called the Amarok R-Style and has been revealed today at the 2013 Wörthersee Tour tuning event taking place in Austria, the same event where a hardcore VW GTI concept and lightweight Audi TT were also shown.
It features 22-inch alloy wheels, lowered springs and a wide-body kit. There are also plenty of carbon fiber accents and a chunky sports bar running across the back of the cab.
The headlights have also been dressed up with LEDS and the |
well the best player in his country, but well along the path to becoming his country's greatest player and one of the greatest Counter-Strike players of all time.Sunde's time has passed and whiMp is off looking through his scrapbook in the CS retirement home, at the ripe old age of 22 mind, but trace's prime has only just arrived and so any and all championships Danish CS may acquire in the forseeable future will go through him. One of 2010's best individual players has improved his game and raised his performance level, as his team have simultaneously moved up a notch on the competitive rung. Now the CS world must watch in awe as the time of trace is upon us.trace in action in SK Gaming's "The best of trace":The primary quality of trace's game which jumps off the screen, so to speak, is the sheer precision of his aim and how unique it is in combination with his overall style. In the vast majority of cases where one is discussing players with incredible aim one is referring to the kind of player who best exemplifies an aggressively peeking, constantly moving and typically spray-heavy style with lots of flick shooting. That type of player is held up as the pinnacle of skill in modern competitive Counter-Strike and yet trace's style does not head in any of those directions.Where that kind of player aggressively pushes in to close the distance on his opponent and engage in a firefight where the opponent will be most uncomfortable trace holds back and forces his opponent to engage him at medium to long ranges when the Danish player is most comfortable. Where that kind of player gambles with his accurate aim by firing his first bullets in a fast flicking motion at the enemy trace patiently lines up his crosshair and then fires in a controlled fashion at a disciplined rate until the enemy is dead.Where that kind of player is anxious to move if he does not immediately kill the opponent upon first engagement trace is more than happy to remain immobile against a single opponent and put his trust in the pure consistency of his aim to neutralize the enemy before the same happens to him. Where that kind of player rushes to move his crosshair to the enemy trace positions himself so the enemy must move into his crosshair and can then be pinned down by his reaction time and stable mindstate.trace is unlike any other player in terms of both his style and how effective it is in proportion to how unique it is. No other player in the world aims in the way trace does or positions himself in the way the Dane does. The aforementioned mould of the incredible aimer has throughout history lead to players jokingly being compared to aimbots when their shots are hitting with startling frequency. In reality though those comparison are obviously done with a great deal of whimsy surrounding them. In trace's case it can be said that he aims like a aimbot without any need for exaggeration or amusement.trace's aiming process is reminiscent of those'mouse-over' aimbots which smoothly move onto the enemy and then fire when the opponent is within the crosshairs. trace's alias seems only too appropriate when one considers the flawlessly consistent manner in which he moves his crosshair onto his opponent in one motion and then fires once there. To say he has phenomenal technical skill in regards to tracking aim is an understatement, there may not be anyone better at it in the world right now. This alone would not bring him to the performance level he currently sits at though because pure tracking alone can be defeated a certain percentage of the time by flick shooting since the latter gambles on hitting faster but more sporadically while the former on hitting in a slightly delayed but more thorough fashion.What elevates trace's aim to an elite level is his combination, most effectively manifested in 2011, of his tracking aim with unshakeable confidence, unwavering technique and steadfast discipline. The trace of 2010 had good AWPing, very good pistols and could deliver astonishing initial rifle headshots but the trace of 2011 is much more effective and defined. The trace of 2011 has no rush to his game. The trace of 2011 aims with grace not haste. If trace knows an enemy's location behind an object he won't waste the positional advantage or element of surprise by firing excessive spam shots into the object. Rather he positions himself and patentiely waits for the opponent to engage.Where the trace of 2010 would sometimes gamble and begin to overspray if his initial shot didn't kill the enemy immediately the trace of 2011 has confidence that sticking with his technique will get him the desired result in the long term. When he moves to aim on an opponent the trace of 2011 moves in a seemless motion onto the enemy and then at long and medium ranges he taps, or occasionally bursts, until the enemy is dead. His incredible ability to stop precisely on the spot the enemy currently occupies and then unwaveringly hold his aim there to let off tapped shots pins down the enemy's movement and wears him down with repeated accurate shots. Most players are so reliant on spraying that at these distances they desparately want to get to at least medium range to make their style effective. trace purposely selects positions which allow him to fight at his preferred medium to long range where his style is the most effective and few can match his meld of technique and technical skill. Even at the close range, where he will spray much more often, once trace locks onto the enemy with his crosshair it is usually over as his spray shows an impressive propensity for lining bullets to the same position he has first locked onto as opposed to the style of moving the spray onto the opponent.Many players will move around a lot and repeatedly peek corners to actively prompt engagements with opposing players. trace waits for his enemy to step out, holding a tight angle on a wall/corner, so that he can make use of his fast reaction time and smothering firing consistency without even needing to track in some cases. An excellent example of this is the trace of 2011's approach to AWPing. As the primary AWPer of mTw, and one of the best in the world with that particular weapon, trace makes startlingly effective use of the tripwire method. For those unfamiliar with that terminology it refers to the style of holding a specific spot with the AWP crosshair and then waiting for the opponent to move onto the dot before firing, as opposed to moving the dot onto them, thus acting like a tripwire which triggers a trap when it is touched.trace has the best tripwire shots in the world and there is a certain degree of difficulty shot that he seemingly never misses. Think of the Dane holding the bomb train as CT on train and aiming towards the popdog 4 train outside, where the terrorists exit the same ladder from whitewalls. When they attempt to make the jump from the ladder room to the train or the train to the electrical box it is nearly always fade to black time if trace is in position before they move out. His consistency at hitting that shot which relies only on reaction speed is spectacular to watch and makes certain positions very difficult to attack for opponents. trace also combines his tracking with the tripwire method to get those kinds of shots off quickly by moving the crosshair to a spot slightly to the side of an opponent and then waiting for them to move into it.trace's defined technique and approach applies across all the weapons, and he is very good with all of them. With the USP and glock he firest constantly for the head and in a slow fashion unless pressured very closely and short on time. Even with the deagle, a weapon famous for people gambling by spamming at close distance, trace picks out his shots and if he misses, readjusts and then allows the required time to take the most accurate shot again.Like all the truly great individual players trace is good at all aspects of the game. He can get his team off on the right foot with his talent for pistol round kills. He can break open a site by taking on the first kill. He can secure rounds which heading the wrong way with clutch play despite a numbers disadvantage. He can delay the enemy with his AWP and he can pick apart an attack with a rifle. Most importantly he is very consistent, meaning he can put up two kill rounds over and over to repeatedly give his team a great chance to win a map.Put simply trace grinds the opponent down over the course of a match with an overwhelming mixture of disciplined technique and consistent accuracy. He doesn't act haphazardly, hoping the flow of the game will align conducively to his actions. Rather he forces the opponent to repeatedly engage him where his strengths lie and where over the long haul he will be the one to come out on top most frequently.Ever since joining mTw in September of 2009 trace has defied expectations each step of the way. He replaced a living legend, on a team which had already achieved more than most ever dream of, and the decision to recruit him has been more than vindicated. When Sunde went to South America for a few months to close out 2009 many expected mTw to flounder and struggle to place highly at the remaining tournaments. Switched into Sunde's roles trace not only was an adequate stand-in as the primary AWPer but blew many away with his amazing performances to lead the team to 2nd place finishes at DreamHack Winter and Arbalet Cup Europe.When Sunde returned to Europe he was supposed to reassert himself as the star player of mTw, taking over the primary AWPing position again. Even from a more restricted rifling position, often picking up AWPs to hand over to Sunde, trace established himself as the best player on mTw as well as one of the best in the world. When it seemed as though the key to mTw's success was reintegrating Sunde as the focal point it has turned out that their best chance for success lies in maximising trace's talents and focusing on playing to his strengths.Picking up ArcadioN might, though it's certainly open to debate, have improved mTw's already impressive strategical approach a little but it also removed one the firepower of one of their best players and put trace in the hot seat to carry the load. That kind of pressure could crush even a very good player flat, but that's also the kind of intense pressure required to make a diamond.There is a definite hierarchy in competitive Counter-Strike, from semi-pros to good players to very good players to great players to the greatest players. As one glances from one group to the next one notices how quickly the number of players thins out as the advance towards the greatest continues. By one reaches the highest echelons of the greatest players of all time the requirements are very strict and the number of players who can qualify are naturally, and by necessity, few. There are players who have won world championships who have never come close to being worthy of being considered amongst the greatest of all time. There are players who have displayed incredible skill and entertained tens of thousands yet who were not fit to put themselves alongside the demigods who occupy Counter-Strike's eternal Mount Olypmus.The greatest players possess incredible skill, have staggering accomplishments and over the course of their careers have impacted the game in a significant fashion. Put simply they have it all. With one or two of those three broad requirements a player can be considered very good or simply just great. To be discussed as one of the greatest though all three are a must. Right now trace is making good ground in each of those respects.Skillwise he asserted himself in 2010 as one of the best players in the world and now his skillset has been refined even further and combined with a level of discipline and dedication which threatens to make him the best player in the world if any of his very small handful of peers should falter and see their overall performance level drop.In terms of accomplishments trace needs some more help from his team-mates because he has already been delivering MVP worthy tournament performances for over a year yet the titles have not come. Part of that is thanks to mTw both having a style mismatch not in their favour against Na`Vi and the fact they have been matched up with Na`Vi over and over again in major tournaments. It is not unreasonable to suggest if tournament brackets had been drawn differently then at least once or twice Na`Vi may have fallen to a team like FX or fnatic in 2010 who mTw would then have been in good position to potentially beat to take down a major title.Nevertheless lack of accomplishments cannot be argued away or excuses made in place of them. When we're discussing the greatest of all time it's not enough to place top three a lot or get a nice slew of 2nds, first places are all that really count. Right now trace's resume lacks a multitude of 1st place finishes and in this respect his career still lacks for it to be considered one of the truly great careers. Then again the 20 year old has been playing on the very top level for less than two years and his team certainly look to have improved since last year. With a few titles this year trace will be well along the way, the bigger and more prestigious they are the faster he'll move up the rankings.Of course his relative freshness on the top level also will count against him initially since it is not enough to be really good for a year or two at most, were it then then likes of zet and Sunde could happily rub shoulders with the neo and f0rest. Rather sustained individual excellence and dominance are a key factor to ensuring one's spot on CS' Mount Rushmore. An even better 2011 will go a long way to helping secure that spot.Finally trace's impact on the game has already been impressive and looks set to become even more so. His 2010 as a whole might well be the best individual yearlong performance by a player who only won one or fewer international titles in that time period. Time and time again he graced the top spots in statistical evaluations of tournaments and in multiple categories. In breaking the mould of what a top individual player should and can be thanks to his style trace can go a long way to setting himself apart as a unique player in the game's history.After Arbalet Cup Dallas in 2010 I remember discussing the play of trace to that point in the year with a knowledgable individual in the Counter-Strike community. To emphasise how impressed I was with the Dane's level of play tournament in and tournament out I explained that if I was given the task of creating a new team today, language barriers aside, then the only currently active players I'd choose rather than trace as my foundation to build my team on would beneo ormarkeloff. Notf0rest, notGeT_RiGhT, notEdward and notGux. If neo and markeloff aren't available then I'll take trace and anyone else can pick from the remaining players.It's not even that trace is necessarily a lesser or less skilled player than either of those. Rather that in neo's case he has an impossibly high level skillset and a truly amazing list of accomplishments. While in markeloff's he has the most effective skillset in the world in relation to his team and an ever growing list of accomplishments which is already staggering without any addition needed. For those reasons I feel I have to pick those two over trace, but I hope my emphasis that there's nobody else, as of right now, that I'd take ahead of him fully expresses how impressive a player he is.One thing which makes trace's rise and performance level very intriguing for me, beyond their own obvious merits, is the fact he is Danish. While the Danish Counter-Strike scene has a solid record of high placings throughout history the underlying theme has always been one of excellent teamplay and tactical execution. When one looks back on the great Danish teams they often were very well balanced in terms of skill level and sharing the fragging load. It's rare that one particular player stood out from his team or deserved to be talked about amongst the elite players in the world, team accomplishments aside.In the early days there wasMuGGz (of SoA) who was often considered the most skilled player in the Danish scene. Later onVicoN had a spell as one of the world's elite AWP users. Realistically though it wasn't until the arrival of whiMp to the top level that Denmark has its first true superstar name. As a 15 year old whiMp stormed the scene in 2004 as he powered The-Titans to the ESWC title and a WCG silver medal. That his team were only able to achieve 6th place finishes at CPL Summer and Winter that year, where he was unable to play due to age restrictions, showed how immense his impact was on that team's level of play and ability to accomplish great things.whiMp was very much Denmark'selemeNt both in terms of the age at which he burst onto the scene as a CS prodigy and the stunningly intuitive feel he had for the game which allowed him to take teams to the next level over and over again. Like his Norwegian counterpart in this comparison whiMp didn't have the craziest aim or the most kills each map but he always seemed to be the missing piece which connected every other part of his team together and could make plays in the midst of a game that others could only dream of, being in the right place at the right time on cue as though he already knew the outcome.When Sunde came along it seemed for a time like perhaps whiMp would no longer be the sole Danish name to sit amongst the likes of Potti, neo, f0rest and the others in the pantheon of CS gods. As previously mentioned though Sunde, while a very good player, burned brightly but not for a sustained period of years. With whiMp exiting the scene and Sunde not as effective 2009 seemed like the time when Denmark would disappear into a dark age of little success. Perhaps it's fitting then that the moment whiMp stepped aside was the moment the next great Danish player entered the fray. His name is trace and his story is not yet fully written but the beginning was impressive, the middle part keeps getting better and the future is prime for an ending of epic proportions.Leading the Jets 7-0, the Cowboys defense played an integral role in giving the offense a chance to pad the lead. After Dallas scored on the game's opening possession, the defense forced a quick three and out. DeMarcus Ware abused Jets RT Wayne Hunter and administered a choke-slam-sack on the drive's first play, and got pressure on the subsequent plays. Ware was a force throughout the game, and looked to be in midseason form during the first week.
That was all to be expected. What the Cowboys didn't know to expect, was the breakout game of one Sean Lee. Lee was everything the Cowboys envisioned him to be when he was drafted in the 2010 draft's second round. We saw glimpses of his potential last season in the game against Indianapolis. Lee picked off Peyton Manning twice in that contest, returning one to the house for six. The ILB finished the 2010 season with a +9.4 cumulative grade from Pro Football Focus, on only 169 snaps, indicating that he was primed for a breakout season. If Sunday night's performance was any indication, we might be looking at a superstar in the making.
Much more...
The week one grades are in, and for what it's worth, Sean Lee was one of the best inside backers to step on the field. His overall grade for the game was a +1.4. Lee's run stopping was by far the best part of his repertoire Sunday night, as he set the pace for all NFL linebackers in run defense rating with a +2.9.
Surprisingly, his pass defense graded out poorly, despite his interception and near pick-six. Lee graded out at -1.4 in coverage, as Mark Sanchez targeted the underneath middle of the Cowboys defense repeatedly. Lee's area of coverage was targeted a league leading 10 times (next closest was AJ Hawk with 6), plenty more times than the other ILBs on the team that rotated throughout the game, Bradie James (2 targets) and Keith Brooking (none). Lee was on the field for 55 snaps, as compared to 53 total for Brooking and Bradie.
Out of the 10 targets, Lee allowed 9 completions, the lone Sanchez miss being the interception. Now, he was being targeted, but a closer looks show that the quantity might be skewing the grade. Sanchez only accrued a 61.3 QB Rating when targeting Lee, and the linebacker gave up a respectable 9.1 yards per completion (17th for ILBs). The touchdown to Dustin Keller was credited to Bradie James, per PFF.
Here's a look at all of the plays that Lee was involved in, as well as the return of the Screen Capture Captions.
1st Quarter - 1st Jets Drive
2nd and 15 from the 17
Jets go four wide, three to the right. Cowboys counter with a 3-3-5, Ware with hand down. Quick pass to Santonio Holmes from inside position, being bracketed by Scandrick and Lee. Both arrive to stop for a short five yard gain. In Lee's area, but not a negative play as his responsibility was clearly to keep play in front of him.
3rd and 10 from the 22
Lee is covering Keller, reads Mark Sanchez's eyes and releases Keller to come up and play Holmes. Pass to Holmes, tackled immediately for a gain of 5. A successful stop, but counted as a catch in Lee's coverage region. Forces a punt.
1st Quarter - 2nd Jets Drive The first LaDanian Tomlinson drive, one of the craftiest backs of this generation.
2nd and 6 from 36 -
Shotgun, Screen left to Greene. Lee does take a step back before attacking, then fights off LG block to make the tackle. First down Jets.
2nd and 9 from 45 -
Lee in coverage on LaDanian Tomlinson sprinting to the left flat. Lee keeps LDT towards the sidelines and knocks him OOB for a gain of 5.
1st and 10 from Cowboys 42 -
Sean Lee is keyed on LDT, and heat seeks his way to the opening of the line by the Jets blockers and meets him at the hole for a stop of 4.
3rd drive
1st n 10 from Cowboys
Lee blitzes up the middle and meets Ware at Sanchez, forcing a quick incompletion.
4th drive
Nothing
2nd Quarter - 5th drive (Jets TD drive)
1st n 10 from 30
Inside handoff to LDT, Lee crashes down and makes the tackle for a short 3 yard gain
2nd n 7
Lee starts on line over LT, then drops into middle zone coverage. Quick pass to Keller who was lined up next to RT, who puts a move on Sean Lee and gets pass the first down marker. Lee quickly changes direction, and when Keller spins out a Sensi tackle, Lee is there to finish the play. He strips Keller of the ball, but he was already down.
1st and 10 -
Lee in coverage on LDT who leaks out into the flat and and catches the pass in front of Lee for a gain of 9. I don't see much more Lee could have done based on the coverage here. It's one of those 'this will always work against that D' routes.
Lee wasn't involved in any additional plays on this drive. As noted before the jump, the TD pass to Keller was on Bradie James. On the big LDT screen for 45 yards, Lee had responsibilities to the opposite side of the field.
3rd Quarter - 6th drive
1st n 10 from 20
Jets fake a run right, but Lee reads the play immediately, avoids the linemen and zooms in past left guard to assist Jason Hatcher and stop LDT for a loss of two.
3rd Quarter - 7th Drive (Jet FG)
1st n 10 from Cowboys 47
Run play up the middle with Shonn Greene, Ware, Spears and Lee combine to stop for a short gain of 4. Lee fought off block by guard to get the assist.
Lee was substituted for on several plays this drive.
3rd quarter - 8th drive (Lee interception) Screen Caps courtesy of NFL Game Rewind (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
1st n 10 from Jets 10
Lee in zone stays in front of TE, pass over them to Plaxico for a gain of 18.
1st n 10 from Jets 28
Cowboys in a 3-3-5 with Spencer at DE, Lee on the line to his left, Ware opposite side, Bradie in the middle. We'll let the screen caps tell the rest of the story.
4th quarter - 9th drive (Jets TD Drive)
1st n 10 from Cowboys 44 -
Lee in zone coverage, doesn't recognize O linemen coming out on the screen and is late to react to it, as Sensi clearly has Keller checked. Lee comes in to make the tackle, but could have prevented the first down if he was up more.
1st n 10 from 33
Shotgun run left side. Pulling RT clears out Jason Hatcher. Lee is engaged by the C, but peels off enough to get armon LDT and makes stop with Brooking, gain of 7.
Jets score two plays later when Plaxico pushes off McCann and catches a back shoulder fade.
4th quarter - 10th drive
2nd n 10 from 35
Lee crashes down on the run play, despite getting shoved by LT Ferguson, pulls LDT down for a stop of no gain.
3rd n 10
Lee in coverage on Keller 6 yards deep. Sanchez pump fakes twice as the three man rush closes in (not quick enough) The second pump fools Lee, who loses track of Keller and allows the completion to the Cowboys 46.
1st n 10 from Cowboys 46
Rob Ryan brings the heat, sending seven including Lee and only dropping four into coverage. It's a double safety blitz, Church leaps up in the air to take away an option, and when Sanchez double clutches, McCray sacks him from behind forcing a fumble. Lee, who had peeled off from the RG block, sees the ball and makes a B-line to the bottom of the pile to recover the fumble.
4th Quarter - Jets 11th Drive
3rd and 8 from Jets 22
Lee is on LDT, comes up and engages at the line then released him. Sanchez avoids the rush then completes the ball to LDT on the run. Lee has a chance to wrap him up short of the first down but can't. LDT gets the first down. Big play at the time, but the Jets got no more yards on the drive and punt.
4th Quarter - Jets 12th Drive (Jets FG)
1st n 10 from Cowboys 34
Lee crashes in, peels off the block by the G and tackles Greene for a gain of 2.
The next play Alan Ball almost picks off Sanchez, but is yanked by Derrick Mason (another no call- this one would have pushed the Jets out of FG range) and can't close his hands around the pigskin. Incomplete pass next play, Folk FG on fourth.Disgraced former Federal Court Justice Robin Camp — who infamously asked a 19-year-old homeless woman why she didn’t keep her “knees together” in a 2014 rape trial — did unpaid work for Rebel Media earlier this year, CANADALAND has learned. Camp’s work included accompanying founder Ezra Levant on an overseas trip to train new UK hires, shortly after leaving the bench.
“Over several weeks,” Levant tells CANADALAND in an email, “we explored whether there could be a role for him at The Rebel.”
Camp resigned from the court last March, when the federal government, following a recommendation from the national disciplinary body for judges, moved to remove him from his post. According to two former Rebel employees who met with Camp three months later, he expressed no remorse for the remarks that led to his departure and felt the controversy was ridiculous.
Through his lawyer, Camp denies having said this.
Camp, originally from South Africa, appeared at a hearing before the Canadian Judicial Council in September 2016, during which he stated under oath that his comments to the woman at the rape trial were “unforgivable” and conceded that his knowledge of Canadian criminal law was “non-existent.” He said he was “deeply sorry” for comments he’d come to recognize as “hurtful” and “inappropriate.”
The hearing also revealed, through the trial transcript, that Camp had asked the female complainant “Why didn’t you just sink your bottom down into the basin so he couldn’t penetrate you?” and more than once mistakenly called her “the accused.” She told the hearing that Camp made her hate herself and feel like a “slut.”
The Council voted to oust Camp in November of 2016. He now seeks to return to practise as a lawyer, and the Law Society of Alberta has scheduled a public hearing for Tuesday, November 14, to consider his reinstatement. Camp’s lawyer, Alain Hepner, told the Calgary Sun the circumstances of his controversial resignation from the bench will be raised at the hearing.
But back in June of this year, Camp was working with Rebel Media, travelling with Levant and a producer to the UK on a business trip that included a legal orientation for Rebel employees based in that country.
According to ex-Rebel commentator Caolan Robertson, in a conversation he had with Camp during that trip, the former judge complained about the reaction to his comments in the 2014 rape trial. “He described the backlash as insane and the dismissal as unfair,” writes Robertson in a message, explaining that Camp felt this way “because what he said was true.”
George Llewelyn-John, Robertson’s boyfriend and an ex-Rebel cameraman, corroborates Robertson’s statement.
“He wasn’t remorseful,” Llewelyn-John tells CANADALAND in a message. “He pretty much said it was ridiculous everyone turned on him.”
Hepner, the lawyer representing Camp in the reinstatement proceedings, says that — given Camp’s statements under oath and the counselling he had received prior — such claims make “no sense” and that he denies them.
“I would say on his behalf, that he didn’t say what [Robertson and Llewelyn-John] are saying he said. Because, this was after he was dismissed, and after he told the Judicial Council or the committee about the counselling he had undertaken and all that, and he’s gonna go back and say, ‘No’? I don’t think so,” Hepner says. He also emphasizes that Camp’s relationship with The Rebel was “exploratory only.”
Asked if he recalled Camp ever making remarks along those lines, Levant calls it an “obvious fabrication by two former Rebel employees who were fired, who carry a grudge.”
Levant, who has questioned Robertson and Llewelyn-John’s credibility in the past, says, “Caolan and George did not know who Robin Camp was. They did not have a private conversation with him during the very brief trip. At no time did Camp discuss his background or his legal matters.”
Llewelyn-John says the conversation occurred during a car ride during which Levant was not present.
Robertson also provided CANADALAND with a picture from Rebel employee Lucy Brown’s private Instagram account that appears to show Camp with Kevin Carroll, former co-leader of the white nationalist English Defence League and cousin of Rebel personality Tommy Robinson. “Kev and Robin talking about war films,” she captioned the June 29 photo, adding the hashtag “#Guylove.”
Brown tells us in an email, “The only interaction I’ve ever had with Robin was one day spent together chatting casually and then going for dinner (where the picture was taken). I am in no way involved with any of his professional dealings, Rebel or otherwise.”
(Tommy Robinson, in reply to a message seeking comment, writes, “Fuck off mate.”)
“And in that time he went everywhere with us, like every journey up and down the UK,” Robertson says over the phone about the Rebel training week. “I didn’t know who he was until he told me the story about how he told some woman to keep her legs closed and got fired in disgrace… But I know that he was there, he was in the car with Ezra and Hannah [Vanderkooy, The Rebel’s managing producer], and they were all getting along.”
During the period Camp was working with The Rebel, Levant says, “Robin helped with some administrative work but did no legal work. We both agreed there was no role for Robin at The Rebel, and ultimately he was never employed by us.”
Camp also provided the UK Rebel staff with his personal phone number. CANADALAND’s attempts to reach him through it were unsuccessful.
“We had legal orientation at Kingsley Napley [The Rebel’s UK law firm]. Afterwards in the car, Robin gave me his number and said to call him if we needed anything. The gist seemed to be that we should go to him before trying to get in touch with the big expensive law firm, then he and Ezra would advise or decide if an issue was worth escalating,” explains Llewelyn-John.
“For the rest of the trip, I think Robin was there to acclimatize to what we were doing and offer Ezra advice on using lawyers in campaigns and so on. He came to the house [that served as The Rebel’s UK base], looked around, and there were lots of meetings going on that week about things like finding a permanent studio etc.,” he continues.
“He seemed new to it when we were there,” says Robertson. “It was the first time he met Tommy. He seemed very close with Ezra.”
“Robin did some work for me when he was a lawyer,” Levant writes, referring to the period before Camp became a judge in 2012.
Alberta Law Society spokesperson Colleen Brown tells CANADALAND that, “Generally speaking, a lawyer/member of the Law Society who is not active and not insured should not be giving legal advice.”
She also explains how reinstatement hearings work.
“During the public hearing, a panel will hear all of the factors and make a determination as to whether or not to reinstate,” writes Brown. “If the judge was removed (or resigned in the face of removal), the application falls into the general reinstatement application process.”
Among the factors considered are any “previous disciplinary proceedings or criminal convictions”; the panel can “refer the application to the Conduct Committee if such concerns are identified.” And if the CEO and executive director of the Law Society “is unsatisfied for any other reason,” he can refer the matter to the Practice Review Committee.
About a year after the 2014 trial, which was in Alberta Provincial Court, Camp was promoted by the Harper government to the Federal Court. According to a Globe and Mail report, then-Health Minister Rona Ambrose, then-Justice Minister Peter MacKay, and then-Defence Minister Jason Kenney (now leader of Alberta’s United Conservative Party) were all involved in appointing Camp to the federal bench. MacKay told the Globe nothing turned up during the screening process, despite the Crown appealing Camp’s ruling in the rape trial at the time of his appointment. Ambrose, while interim Conservative leader, put forward a bill last March that would make it mandatory for judges to undergo sexual-assault-law training. Alexander Scott Wagar would eventually be acquitted again in a retrial ordered after Camp’s original ruling was thrown out. Wagar is now facing seven unrelated charges relating to allegedly assaulting and choking a man.
With a report from Jonathan Goldsbie.New York City 1978
There were tall buildings and people-packed streets and avenues all around. By 7:00 am, droves of people had already spilled out of the Port Authority bus terminal and were rushing to their offices. Women in full dress and make-up, wearing track shoes for a quicker commute by foot, huffed by me... But what I was most struck by were the homeless people, dressed in multiple layers of discarded clothing, living in cardboard houses on the sidewalks. Some with eyes sewn shut; others unbathed, hungry and suffering from dementia, or at least massive confusion. I always spared them some change even though my native NY co-workers called me a sap...
Two years later, after moving back to Massachusetts, I woke in the middle of the night and scratched this out like it had been programmed into me by a higher power.
HOMELESS
No one knows your glory
No one knows your shame
No one's heard your story
And no one knows your name
No one's gonna ask you
No one will reply
No one's gonna hear your truth
And no one hears your lie
No one knows your troubles
No one feels your pains
No one feels your heartbeat
As the blood pumps through your veins-
Until the world feels compassion
For a life that's gone astray
Until giving is in fashion
There is no other way...
No one warms your blankets
No one draws your sheets
No one offers comfort
As you wander through the streets
It's not the life you've chosen
Or what you had in mind
To live amongst the homeless
And beg beside the blind
No one knows your glory
No one knows your shame
No one's heard your story
And no one knows your name-
Until the world feels compassion
For a life that's gone astray
Until giving is in fashion
There is no other way...Please enable Javascript to watch this video
MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. - A new ice complex will be built in Maryland Heights.
The Maryland Heights City Council unanimously voted Monday to approve the rink. The facility will be a four sheet, 3,500-seat facility at 750 Casino Center Drive, near the Hollywood Casino.
Patrick Quinn, the chairman of the St. Louis Legacy Ice Foundation, the nonprofit working to build this complex said this should bring regional tournaments to the area and will be used for all ice sports.
Quinn said the new location came about after talks with Hollywood Casino and people understanding this was the best area for the project.
He said people were already dropping athletes off along the Maryland Heights Expressway for other sports, so this location makes sense for everyone including restaurants and hotels.
Construction should begin in May 2018 and finish by summer 2019.
There was no one in opposition of the plan at the meeting because the location was not in a park.The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement began in 2013 with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media, after the acquittal of half-Latino George Zimmerman in the shooting death of black Trayvon Martin. In 2014, BLM attained national prominence for its violent street demonstrations and protests after the police-involved deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York City.
On July 7, 2016, reacting to the officer-involved deaths of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana, a black Army reservist named Micah Johnson shot 12 police officers in Dallas, killing 5 and wounding 7, as well as wounding 2 civilians. We are told |
same as my previous answer, Realmuto and Perez.
Josh: Castillo will likely be a catcher I’ll own plenty of shares of given my ranking for him. My only fear is defensive issues giving way to Caleb Joseph. I also like Mesoraco, Ramos and Zunino as end draft flyers. Ramos will miss the beginning of the season, but a place holder’s production along with Ramos will produce top-10 value. Mesoraco and Zunino are low-risk options that can be replaced in-season if they fail.
Mike: I think I will own a lot of Lucroy since I think he is the best catcher, and the recent mock drafts I’ve seen have him going in the 5th and 6th rounds.
Neil: While it may come at a higher price this season, I’ll stick to my 2015 strategy and grab as much of Realmuto as I can. Despite a lack of RBI opportunities, his average and stolen bases are enough, to provide a top-10 fantasy catcher floor for the young backstop.
Which catcher(s) do you plan on avoiding in the draft?
Jim: I’ll avoid Molina. If the average drops back to.270/.280 range his value is replacement level. I’ll also be avoiding d’Arnaud, Ramos and Mesoraco (injury concerns), Austin Hedges (unproven risk) and Zunino (can’t hit at the major league level).
Kevin: Wieters gets too much love after three years of under 450 AB. Murphy has a high-risk, high-reward profile for power, but the contact rate scares me too much to invest.
Ron: Mesoraco, Gomes, and d’Arnaud are at the top of my avoid list at the catcher position. Their injury histories make them too risky to rely on in deeper formats.
Andy: Russell Martin, he’s only getting older.
Josh: I’ll avoid Sanchez (46th overall) and Contreras (99th overall) based on their current NFBC ADP. I like both and believe they should put up solid numbers, but I could easily make a case for taking Yasmani Grandal 100 picks later.
Mike: I don’t want any part of Perez. He’s fine overall, but he slumps in the second half every year because of KC’s over-usage of him.
Neil: I like a lot about Contreras heading into 2017. However, like Gary Sanchez, many owners will likely overdraft the Cubs’ phenom. I have no problem skipping Contreras and grabbing a veteran backstop like Stephen Vogt or Francisco Cervelli at the tail-end of a draft.
Who is the lowest ranked catcher
you would feel comfortable with as your starter?
Jim: I have him ranked higher, but Rupp is the lowest ranked catcher I’d be happy with. He is perfectly capable of putting up a line similar to McCann or even Salvador Perez.
Kevin: In single catcher leagues, I can live with any of my top-13, no problem. Rupp (#13 for me) is going to surprise as a late-round purchase. For two catcher leagues, I still want one of my top-13, because the next batch of guys all have minor to major risks if they’re my primary guy. You can wait a bit, but don’t put it off till the end of the draft.
Ron: In a two-catcher format, the lowest ranked catcher I would consider as my starter is Austin Hedges. In a single catcher format, it would be Wieters or Vogt.
Andy: Austin Hedges. After Yadier it’s a mixed bag and I’m likely streaming. Still not sure what Hedges is, but the upside is a high average, high OPS, and surprising recent power surge.
Mike: The lowest I’d go as my first catcher in a 2 catcher league would be Norris. In a one catcher league I want Realmuto or better, otherwise I’ll just take one in the last round.
Neil:It depends how my team is constructed. If I have a lot of high-floor, limited upside guys I’m probably going Murphy who has the upside and plays half his games in Colorado. If I draft the opposite with a lot of high upside players with less established floors I would lean on Vogt who may struggle vs LHP but has decent offensive numbers for a catcher.
That Wraps up our catcher rankings. Check back next week as we bring you our Top 30 First Base options for the 2017 season.
2017 RANKINGS
First Base – Second Base – Third Base – Shortstop – Outfield – Starting Pitcher – Relievers – Top 250
Head on over to Fantasy Rundown for additional 2017 rankings and prospect rankings.It remains uncertain where the 10 unidentified prisoners, who have been allegedly pardoned and “temporarily” transferred to Oman from the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, will go afterwards.
According to the Times of Oman, a statement carried by the state-controlled Oman News Agency (ONA) on Monday, notes:
An official source at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said by following Royal Directive issued by His Majesty the Sultan to meet the American Government’s request to settle the cases of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, considering their humanitarian conditions, 10 people who have been pardoned arrived to the Sultanate for a temporary stay.
The statement emphasized that the 10 captives liberated from the Guantánamo prison, also known as Gitmo, will “temporarily” reside in Oman.
“There was no immediate explanation of the reference to their stay being temporary,” points out the Miami Herald. “But U.S. diplomats have in the past negotiated transfers to security arrangements that withhold travel documents from the freed captives for a specific time period, in some instances two years.”
The Pentagon has confirmed the release of the 10 detainees, which reduced the Gitmo population down to 45.
Obama, which vowed to shut down the facility during his election campaign in 2008, is expected to bring the number of detainees down to nearly 40 by the time incoming President Donald Trump takes over on Friday.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon has identified the 10 men as: Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani (Yemen); Mustafa Abd al-Qawi Abd al-Aziz al-Shamiri (Yemen); Karim Bostam (Af); Abdul Sahir (Afghanistan); Musab Omar Ali Al-Mudwani (Yemen); Hail Aziz Ahmed Al-Maythali (Yemen); Salman Yahya Hassan Mohammad Rabei’i (Yemen); Mohammed Al-Ansi (Yemen); Muhammad Ahmad Said Haider (Yemen): and Walid Said bin Said Zaid (Yemen).
Eight of the men are from Yemen and two from Afghanistan, both countries ravaged by ongoing wars.
A substantial portion of the jihadists who remain in Guantánamo are from Yemen.
“All the men sent to Oman earlier [before the recent transfer] were from neighboring Yemen,” reports the Miami Herald. “It is U.S. policy not to repatriate Yemeni detainees from Guantánamo to their turbulent, violence-plagued nation.”
Citing anonymous Western and Iranian officials late last year, Reuters noted that the Yemen-Oman border is porous, adding that “much of the recent [human and weapons] smuggling activity [into Yemen] has been through Oman.”
The recent transfer has transformed Oman into the largest Guantánamo resettlement nation.
According to the Miami Herald, “The sultanate, which is said to have a special rehabilitation and reintegration program, previously took in 20 captives from Guantánamo in three transfers of 10, four and six men in January 2016 and in 2015.”Get the biggest football stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Roberto Martinez is backing Everton's new No. 9, Arouna Kone, to rediscover his scoring touch, declaring "the goals will come."
The 29-year-old striker followed Martinez from Wigan Athletic in a £6 million move during the summer, but has since struggled to establish himself with the Toffees.
The 39-cap Ivory Coast international has made five Premier League appearances so far this season, but all of those have seen him step from the bench as he has thus far played second fiddle to Nikica Jelavic and loan star Romelu Lukaku.
As such Kone still hasn't found the target for his new club and mised a guilt-edged chance to net in the 2-1 win over Hull at the weekend.
And although Kone does have previous for goal droughts - 40 league appearances across four years with Sevilla saw him net just one goal following a £10.5 million move from PSV Eindhoven - the Everton boss is backing his man.
“The goals will come," said Martinez. "You’ll never see Arouna miss those chances again. He is adapting to life here after a difficult start.
“The good thing about him is that he’s an experienced player and he knows it’s not about missing chances it’s about creating chances.
"Coming on in the last period of the game he had two clear-cut chances (against Hull) and his hold up play was really good. I was pleased with his performance.
“I would rather see players get in the right positions and miss the chances than do OK and not get in the area you want a striker to be in. I was happy with his contribution.
“Scoring is a big part of a striker’s game and it’s important, but it’s not concerning me.
“I guarantee you if he gets two chances as clear cut as he did on Saturday in every game he will do well.”
While Kone has struggled in the early part of the season there have been mitigating factors - due to observing the Muslim holy month of Ramadan he had to play catch up in the fitness stakes after the season began, while a few niggling injuries have also played there part.
(Image: Getty)
However, the striker who netted 13 goals for Wigan during his debut season in the Premier League, having notched 17 for Spanish club Levante in 2011-12 - as they finished sixth in La Liga with a team comprising free transfers, loans and players unwanted elsewhere - retains the faith of his manager, who is backing him to get back to his best before too long.
“He is starting to have his own pre-season if you like'" continued Martinez.
"We have to remember that Arouna has had a few niggles that have stopped him from being himself. His work in the past three weeks has given him a great platform to start being himself.
"It won’t happen overnight but I know he’ll find home here.
“He will be important for us. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when and making sure he’s ready when he’s needed.
“I can see him starting to get at his best which is crucial.”Right to Work Protest.JPG
Thousands protested Right to Work before it was passed last year, but unions and Democrats have been very quiet since then.
(J. Scott Park | Mlive.com)
The Democrats got their butts kicked on Right to Work (RTW) last year.
It's true that once Gov. Rick Snyder and his Republican allies decided to ram the legislation through without hearings or public debate, there was no stopping it.
But the Democrats had options after Snyder signed the measure allowing workers to get the benefits of working under a union contract without paying dues.
They could have launched a ballot initiative to stop it. They could have tried to recall those who voted for it, although Republicans did change laws making it harder to do so. Their leaders could have refused to negotiate with the GOP on anything.
And they could have gone all Saul Alinsky and gotten in Republicans' faces in their districts -- organizing protests and haranguing politicians when they were just picking up tomatoes at the grocery store.
Instead, they filed a couple long-shot lawsuits and essentially decided to give up.
Fearful that membership would plummet, as it has in Wisconsin after anti-labor legislation was enacted, many unions' leadership battened down the hatches. They wanted to preserve jobs within the current union hierarchy instead of launching a counter-attack or trying to organize new workers.
Some notable exceptions include the Michigan Education Association (MEA), which has concentrated on membership retention and only lost 1 percent so far.
And the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has led the charge on hiking fast food workers' wages. If they can crack the code of organizing the service sector, there's hope for unions, after all.
Meanwhile, Democrats in the Legislature backed off, as well. Despite warnings that Dems wouldn't work with Republicans on anything (Rep. Doug Geiss (D-Taylor) unhelpfully declared, "There will be blood"), leaders tried to turn the page at the beginning of this session.
They even were willing to work with Snyder on his road-funding scheme, which would inevitably mean raising taxes -- a political disaster for Democrats. However, as Inside Michigan Politics reported Friday, that idea looks dead (again).
Why did Dems cave? For one thing, they got spooked by polling. Snyder took a hit in publicly released polls because of RTW, but Dems didn't capitalize on that fact. Instead, they decided that RTW wasn't a winning issue because of internal polling showing the public was split on it.
Rather than make the case and fight on RTW -- perhaps tying it to the very popular proposal to raise the minimum wage to boost its appeal -- Dems surrendered.
Republicans don't do that. Take Obamacare. Republicans have pushed back against popular ideas like expanding coverage to 30 million Americans and requiring insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions. Instead, they framed the issue as big government barreling in to make all your health care decisions.
And they've been very effective.
But that's an essential difference between the parties. No matter how unpopular their policies might be -- like fighting against contraception coverage when 90 percent of Americans support birth control -- the GOP will commit to it.
Democrats will fold on essential parts of their party platform if the polling looks bad or the fight seems too rough.
And that's a key reason why their party loses. Americans like fighters. They may not like all GOP ideas, but they know their candidates believe in something and will go to the wall for it.
Democrats will argue that they're committed to being the party of the middle class. Well, unions built the modern middle class, and thanks to RTW, they're under furious assault.
That would seem to be all the more reason to keep up the RTW fight.
Susan J. Demas is Publisher and Editor of Inside Michigan Politics, a nationally acclaimed, biweekly political newsletter. She can be reached at susan@sjdemas.com. Follow her on Twitter here.Like
Ne reculant devant aucune mission, Usbek & Rica analyse de temps en temps l'origine de mots étranges que les plus de 20 ans ne sont pas forcément en mesure de comprendre. C'est le cas, par exemple, du terme « blockchain ». Protocole cryptographique inviolable, base de données décentralisée et ouverte, système d’échange entre pairs garantissant l’intégrité des transactions virtuelles… Comment le concept geeko-nébuleux de la « chaîne de blocs » est-il devenu l’utopie concrète qui obsède les chantres de la disruption? Petite session de rattrapage à destination des curieux un peu largués.
Si la blockchain a dû attendre l’année 2015 pour devenir un phénomène médiatique, son acte de naissance remonte à 2008, avec la publication en ligne, par le mystérieux Satoshi Nakamoto, d’un livre blanc intitulé Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
Dans ce document de neuf pages, l’auteur décrit comment résoudre le problème de la « double dépense », qui freine à l’époque le développement des crypto-monnaies, ces devises virtuelles permettant aux particuliers d’envoyer et de recevoir des paiements sans passer par la case bancaire.
Mineurs contre pirates
Pour ceux qui ont réussi à suivre jusqu’ici, c’est le moment de prendre une profonde inspiration et de sauter gaiement dans l’abîme, tel l’ami Kierkegaard. La blockchain est une technologie de stockage et de transmission d’informations d’un genre particulier.
Elle repose sur l’initiative d’utilisateurs indépendants, appelés « mineurs », qui se servent de la puissance de calcul de leurs ordinateurs pour vérifier et archiver des transactions dans une base de données dématérialisée, semblable à un grand registre public. À chaque ligne de transactions couchée sur une nouvelle « page » du registre correspond un « bloc ». Pour que ce dernier soit entériné, il faut qu’un mineur en confirme l’authenticité.
Pour falsifier un bloc, il faudrait pouvoir pirater simultanément des dizaines de milliers de bases de données distinctes et autonomes… Autant dire le pire cauchemar du pirate malveillant
Dans le cas d’un transfert d’argent, il s’agit par exemple de s’assurer que l’émetteur dispose bien de la somme qu’il prétend détenir, en retraçant l’historique de ses transactions répertoriées dans les blocs précédents. Une fois que le mineur a établi la fiabilité du bloc, il génère automatiquement un code unique et inviolable qui en scelle définitivement le contenu. En effet, pour falsifier un bloc, il faudrait pouvoir pirater simultanément des dizaines de milliers de bases de données distinctes et autonomes… Autant dire le pire cauchemar du pirate malveillant.
De Wall Street aux partisans du bitcoin
Nakamoto pose ainsi les jalons d’un système de transactions où le contrat de confiance d’antan est remplacé par un protocole à la fiabilité absolue, qui permet à des personnes n’ayant a priori aucune raison de se faire confiance de mener toutes sortes d’échanges sans que n’intervienne le moindre organisme de contrôle.
Et c’est là que ça devient intéressant. Car si, aujourd’hui, la blockchain séduit indifféremment Wall Street, les partisans du peer to peer, les libertariens de tous bords et les altermondialistes, c’est précisément parce que le bitcoin n’est que l’une des innombrables applications possibles de ce protocole porteur d’une « révolution invisible », qui rend subitement bien fade la plupart des utopies numériques célébrées ces dernières années.
« De même qu’Internet a été à l’origine de bien d’autres inventions que l’e-mail, la blockchain donnera naissance à bien d’autres innovations qu’un simple réseau de paiement »
Selon Dom Steil, auteur de l’article de référence sur le sujet (« The Power of The Blockchain: Future Developments and Applications », paru en juin 2014 dans CryptoBiz Magazine), « de même qu’Internet a été à l’origine de bien d’autres inventions que l’e-mail, la blockchain donnera naissance à bien d’autres innovations qu’un simple réseau de paiement ».
De la certification de tous les types de contrats (actes de vente, diplômes, testaments, etc.) à la sécurisation du vote en ligne en passant par la désintégration de l’économie de plateforme (l’économiste Philippe Herlin, auteur de La Fin des banques? (Eyrolles, 2015), parle même d’« uberisation ultime »), la désintermédiation rendue possible par la blockchain supprime tout risque de hacking ou de corruption, ouvrant la voie à une nouvelle organisation de la société fondée sur l’horizontalité et la transparence.
En bref, une utopie séduisante, au potentiel presque infini, dont on perçoit déjà, malgré tout, certaines limites : les idéaux démocratiques et égalitaristes portés par la blockchain auront sans doute à affronter les conséquences d’une possible tyrannie de la transparence. Sans parler de la propension d’acteurs ultracapitalistes à tirer profit de cette toute nouvelle opportunité technologique.
SUR LE MÊME SUJET :
> La blockchain s'attaque au coton (avant d'envahir le monde)
> La blockchain au service des réfugiés
D'AUTRES MOTS EXPLIQUÉS PAR USBEK & RICA
> NTIC : retour sur l’histoire d’un mot déjà ringard
> Les bots, « première espèce indigène du cyberespace »
> Glitch Art, l'imperfection parfaite
> CreepyPasta : canulars d’épouvante crowdsourcé
Illustration de Une: hq-lawyerMaoist Communist Party of the Philippines supports state burial for Ferdinand Marcos
By Joseph Santolan
8 June 2016
Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte announced in the wake of his election in May that he intended to grant the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos a state burial in the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes Cemetery). Preparations are now being made for a state funeral on September 11, the 99th birth anniversary of the former president.
The Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has supported Duterte for years and their front organizations are now enthusiastically supporting his presidency. Three CPP selected candidates have been installed in Duterte’s cabinet, and the CPP itself is actively engaged in peace talks with the president. On June 4, Joma Sison, the head of the CPP, announced that he did not oppose Duterte’s intention to give Marcos a state burial.
In calling for a state burial for Marcos, Duterte is looking to close ranks with the influential Marcos political dynasty. The children of the late dictator, Imee and Bongbong Marcos, are the governor of Ilocos Norte and a Senator respectively. Bongbong Marcos narrowly lost the vice-presidency in the recently concluded election.
Duterte is doing more than securing the support of the Marcos dynasty, however. He is refurbishing the politics of the martial law dictator, as he himself prepares the instruments of police-state rule. Since his election, Duterte has been advancing a fascistic political agenda, promoting the use of death squads and police murder against alleged criminals.
Ferdinand Marcos ruled the Philippines for nearly 20 years. Elected to office in 1965 and re-elected in 1969, he retained his hold on power by declaring Martial Law in 1972 with full support from Washington. During his military dictatorship, he implemented a regime of arrest without warrant, of torture and extrajudicial murder.
A new word entered Filipino English during martial law—someone who was “salvaged” simply disappeared, suddenly taken by police, military or paramilitary forces. Their brutally tortured corpses would later be found in empty lots on the outskirts of Manila. The official tally of extra-judicial murders during the Martial Law regime is 3,257. The torturers and murderers of the Marcos’ dictatorship were trained by the CIA.
When Marcos fell from power in 1986, he was granted asylum by the United States where he lived in exile in Hawaii. He died in 1989 in Honolulu. In 1993, President Ramos allowed Marcos’s remains to be repatriated to the Philippines on the condition that he would not be allowed a state funeral in Libingan. The Marcos family, funded by its immense stolen wealth, rapidly recovered their prominence in Philippine politics. The late dictator’s waxy, embalmed corpse was put on display in a mausoleum in Batac, Ilocos, in the northern Philippines.
From 1993 until 2016, the CPP and its front organizations always denounced the idea of a state burial for Marcos. Joma Sison’s 2004 autobiography stated that “an enraged people refused to let his body have a state funeral or be buried, as Imelda [Marcos] wanted, in the Heroes’ Cemetery.” All of the representatives of the Makabayan Coalition, the political front organization of the CPP, introduced a resolution in Congress in 2011 describing the proposal to bury Marcos in Libingan as a “grave travesty of justice and monumental historical distortion tantamount to declaring hero a dictator who committed crimes against humanity.” Rafael Mariano, a signatory of this resolution, now heads Duterte’s Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).
In April 2011, Ang Bayan, the official paper of the CPP, denounced any attempt to bury Marcos in Libingan as an attempt to make him a “hero.”
The CPP is now entering an alliance with Duterte, and Joma Sison is changing his tune to match that of the incoming president. Neither Sison, nor any of the CPP installed members of Duterte’s cabinet have raised a word of objection to Duterte’s proposal to give Marcos a state burial.
Sison issued a press statement in which he stated that he was not opposed to the state burial of Marcos in the Heroes’ Cemetery. He justified this position with the most dishonest language. Sison stated that the burial was being carried out by the “president of the reactionary government.” This is the same man—Duterte—whom Sison is holding up as a “socialist” and a “progressive,” and in whose cabinet the CPP has now integrated itself. Sison’s duplicitous references to Duterte’s government as “reactionary” cannot cover up the ongoing support which the CPP is giving to the administration.
Sison then stated that the cemetery is not a burial ground of “heroes,” but of “reactionaries.” Marcos was entitled to a burial there, Sison argued, not as a hero, but as a former soldier. On this lying basis, Sison has given a green light to according a state burial to a murderous dictator. He reassured Duterte and the press that the decision to bury Marcos would not “upset peace negotiations” between the government and the CPP.
Among the “reactionaries” buried in Libingan, Sison listed “three puppet and corrupt former presidents.” The presidents buried in Libingan are Elpidio Quirino, Carlos Garcia and Diosdado Macapagal. These “reactionary,” “corrupt” presidents had been supported by the Communist Party.
The front organizations of the Stalinist Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP, Communist Party of the Philippines) actively campaigned to support the nationalist “Filipino First” policy of the Garcia presidency, 1957–61. This policy targeted businesses owned by Chinese Filipinos, and, under the rubric of “nationalization,” transferred private ownership to individuals of Filipino ancestry. The front organizations of the PKP worked to expand this policy to target Chinese immigrant labor, calling on Garcia to “nationalize labor” and take jobs away from Chinese Filipino workers and give them to workers of Filipino ancestry.
Sison entered the PKP in 1962 and was immediately thrust into its leadership. In 1963, Sison led the newly-formed Lapiang Manggagawa (Workers Party), which was under the leadership of the PKP, to enter a coalition government with Diosdado Macapagal. Sison hailed Macapagal as a “revolutionary” and wrote the handbook which was printed and distributed by the Macapagal administration in support of its land reform program.
In November 1964, Sison led the founding of the PKP’s youth wing, the Kabataan Makabayan (KM, Nationalist Youth). In 1965 they broke with Macapagal, and Sison began denouncing their erstwhile ally as a “reactionary.”
Sison and the KM supported Ferdinand Marcos and his Nacionalista Party for the presidency in 1965. Claiming that the Nacionalista Party represented the interests of “patriotic businessmen” and that Marcos would keep the Philippines out of the Vietnam War, Sison called for support for Marcos. Two weeks after his election, Marcos announced that he would be sending troops to Vietnam. Despite this, Sison wrote a supportive public letter to the Marcos government as late as November 1967, advising Marcos on what Sison argued was the “correct nationalist course.” The letter was signed “Very truly yours, Jose Ma. Sison.”
The reactionaries, whom Sison now denounces, including Marcos, were political figures that he led the Communist Party to support. He relies on decades of lies and a carefully cultivated historical amnesia within the CPP to cover up for the constant alterations in his political line.
In 1967, the PKP split into two parties. Both were Stalinist—opposed to the political independence of the working class, and looking to ally with a section of the bourgeoisie in the name of nationalism—but they were divided by loyalty to either Moscow or Beijing. Sison founded the new pro-Beijing party, the CPP. The CPP allied with the opposition to Marcos and began denouncing Marcos as a “fascist.” The PKP, seeing Marcos begin to open diplomatic and trade ties with the Soviet Union, moved to support him. In the wake of the declaration of Martial Law, the leadership of the PKP entered into an alliance with Marcos, murdering those of their members who opposed this policy.
Sison’s CPP had brought the mass opposition to Marcos under the leadership of his bourgeois rivals. With the declaration of Martial Law, the majority of the bourgeois opposition quietly acquiesced. The CPP channeled all residual resistance to the countryside. The Stalinist parties—PKP and CPP—were thus directly responsible for allowing Marcos to establish a police state.
As Duterte is moving rapidly to bring back the methods of dictatorial rule, the CPP is supporting him. In order to secure their place within his regime, Sison and the CPP are endorsing the state burial of Ferdinand Marcos.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The United States has been involved in and assisted in the overthrow of foreign governments (more recently termed "regime change") without the overt use of U.S. military force. Often, such operations are tasked to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Regime change has been attempted through direct involvement of U.S. operatives, the funding and training of insurgency groups within these countries, anti-regime propaganda campaigns, coups d'état, and other activities usually conducted as operations by the CIA. These actions were sometimes accompanied by direct military action, such as following the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 and the U.S.-led military invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Some argue that non-transparent United States government agencies working in secret sometimes mislead or do not fully implement the decisions of elected civilian leaders and that this has been an important component of many such operations,[1] Some contend that the U.S. has supported more coups against democracies that it perceived as communist, becoming communist, or pro-communist.[1]
During the Cold War [ edit ]
Syria 1949 [ edit ]
Syria became an independent republic in 1946, but the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état, led by Army Chief of Staff Husni al-Za'im, ended the initial period of civilian rule. Za'im met at least six times with CIA operatives in the months prior to the coup to discuss his plan to seize power. Za'im requested American funding or personnel, but it is not known whether this assistance was provided. Once in power, Za'im made several key decisions that benefited the United States. He approved the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (TAPLINE), an American project designed to transport Saudi Arabian oil to Mediterranean ports. Construction of TAPLINE had been delayed due to Syrian intransigence. Za'im also improved relations with two American allies in the region: Israel and Turkey. He signed an armistice in 1949 with Israel, formally ending the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and he renounced Syrian claims to Hatay Province, a major source of dispute between Syria and Turkey. Za'im also cracked down on local communists. However, Za'im's regime was short-lived. He was overthrown in August, just four and a half months after seizing power.[2][3][4][5]
Iran 1953 [ edit ]
In 1953, the CIA worked with the United Kingdom to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh who had attempted to nationalize Iran's petroleum industry, threatening the profits of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now known as BP.[6] Declassified CIA documents show that Britain was fearful of Iran's plans to nationalize its oil industry and pressed the U.S. to mount a joint operation to depose the prime minister and install a puppet regime.[7] In 1951 the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize the petroleum fields of the country.[7][8]
The coup was led by CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. (grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt). With help from British intelligence, the CIA planned, funded and implemented Operation Ajax.[9] In the months before the coup, the UK and U.S. imposed a boycott of the country, exerted other political pressures, and conducted a massive covert propaganda campaign to create the environment necessary for the coup. The CIA hired Iranian agents provocateurs who posed as communists, harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home to turn the Islamic religious community against the government. For the U.S. audience, the CIA hoped to plant articles in U.S. newspapers saying that Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi's return to govern Iran resulted from a homegrown revolt against what was being represented to the U.S. public as a communist-leaning government. The CIA successfully used its contacts at the Associated Press to put on the newswire in the U.S. a statement from Tehran about royal decrees that the CIA itself had written.[7]
The coup initially failed and the Shah fled the country. After four days of rioting, Shi'ite-sparked street protests backed by pro-Shah army units defeated Mossadeq's forces and the Shah returned to power.[10]
Supporters of the coup have argued that Mossadegh had become the de facto dictator of Iran, citing his dissolution of the Parliament and the Supreme Court, and his abolishment of free elections with a secret ballot, after he declared victory in a referendum where he claimed 99.9% of the vote.[11] Darioush Bayandor has argued that the CIA botched its coup attempt and that a popular uprising, instigated by top Shi'ite clerics such as Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi and Abol-Ghasem Kashani (who were certain that Mosaddegh was taking the nation toward religious indifference, and worried that he had banished the Shah), instigated street riots to return the Shah to power four days after the failed coup.[10] After the coup, the Shah introduced electoral reforms extending suffrage to all members of society, including women. This was part of a broader series of reforms dubbed the White Revolution.[12] However, the Shah also carried out at least 300 political executions, according to Amnesty International.[13]
The CIA subsequently used the apparent success of their Iranian coup project to bolster their image in American government circles. They expanded their reach into other countries, taking a greater portion of American intelligence assets based on their record in Iran.[10]
In August 2013 the CIA admitted that it was involved in both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda.[14][15] The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government."[16] The National Security Archive said it that while it "applauds the CIA’s decision to make these materials available, today’s posting shows clearly that these materials could have been safely declassified many years ago without risk of damage to national security."[14]
Guatemala 1954 [ edit ]
The Guatemalan Revolution of 1944-54 had overthrown the US backed dictator Jorge Ubico and brought a democratically elected government to power. The government began an ambitious agrarian reform program attempting to grant land to millions of landless peasants. This program threatened the land holdings of the United Fruit Company, who lobbied for a coup by portraying these reforms as communist. The CIA engineered the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jacobo Árbenz, and installed the military dictator Carlos Castillo Armas. A decades long civil war ensued in which some 200,000 people were killed, mostly by the US backed military.[17][18][19][20][21]
Tibet 1955–70s [ edit ]
The CIA armed an anti-Communist insurgency for decades in order to oppose the invasion of Tibet by Chinese forces and the subsequent control of Tibet by China. The program had a record of almost unmitigated failure.[23]
According to the 14th Dalai Lama, the CIA supported the Tibetan independence movement "not because they (the CIA) cared about Tibetan independence, but as part of their worldwide efforts to destabilize all communist governments".[22]
The budget figures for the CIA's Tibetan program were as follows:
Indonesia 1958 [ edit ]
The autocratic Indonesian government of Sukarno was faced with a major threat to its legitimacy beginning in 1956, when several regional commanders began to demand autonomy from Jakarta. After mediation failed, Sukarno took action to remove the dissident commanders. In February 1958, dissident military commanders in Central Sumatera (Colonel Ahmad Hussein) and North Sulawesi (Colonel Ventje Sumual) declared the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia-Permesta Movement aimed at overthrowing the Sukarno regime. They were joined by many civilian politicians from the Masyumi Party, such as Sjafruddin Prawiranegara, who were opposed to the growing influence of the communist Partai Komunis Indonesia party. Due to their anti-communist rhetoric, the rebels received arms, funding, and other covert aid from the CIA until Allen Lawrence Pope, an American pilot, was shot down after a bombing raid on government-held Ambon in April 1958. The central government responded by launching airborne and seaborne military invasions of rebel strongholds Padang and Manado. By the end of 1958, the rebels were militarily defeated, and the last remaining rebel guerilla bands surrendered by August 1961.[25] To make amends for CIA involvement |
ing at city hall, which has all but dismissed public comment – despite an ongoing Guardian investigation revealing at least 7,000 people held off-the-books there.
“It’s fallen to us to shine a light on dark places,” said the Cook County commissioner, Richard Boykin, who convened the group under the board’s human relations commission. “Homan Square is such a place.”
Boykin called for the extended inquiry hours after the city’s police chief was fired by the mayor this month, following protests in the wake of details about the death of a black teenager shot 16 times by a white police officer. Less than one week later, the nation’s top law enforcement agency said it had begun an inquiry into the patterns and practices of the city’s notoriously brutal police.
“The Justice Department’s investigation must take into account those systemic issues in the Chicago police department that go back decades,” Boykin said on Tuesday. “Homan Square is one of those systemic issues.”
US attorney general: Homan Square findings are 'extremely important' Read more
At a press conference announcing the federal inquiry into the department, the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, told the Guardian the “extremely important” issues at Homan Square would not be involved in her department’s inquiry to begin but that “we always reserve the right to expand it”.
Police department officials were invited to attend Tuesday’s hearing of the county commissioners. But seven people who were either detained or involved in exposing the detentions testified instead, for more than an hour of answers meant to push the city closer toward shuttering the west side facility.
Flint Taylor, the longtime civil rights attorney who helped press for a landmark reparations ordinance earlier this year and whose clients are suing the city for unconstitutional “widespread and interrelated Chicago police department patterns and practices” at Homan Square, gave a testimonial in front of the commission and sizable crowd of citizens who watched.
“Some of the activities in Homan Square fit into the definition of torture, internationally, under the UN’s definition,” Taylor said, “and Homan Square needs to be looked at under that light.”
He argued that allegations logged in lawsuits and a series of Guardian articles fit into a long history of police practices stemming from the police detective Jon Burge, who who tortured more than 200 Chicago citizens who were in police custody across two decades.
“I want to try and prevent anyone else to go through this situation,” said Kory Wright, who says he was held incommunicado at Homan Square and spoke out publicly for the first time since his February interview with the Guardian’s national security editor, Spencer Ackerman, who also testified at the hearing.
“It’s easy to assume we’re up to no good,” Wright said, referencing other poor, black people in his neighborhood who he says are targeted by Chicago police.
The hearing’s testimonies are now public record, which Boykin said he hoped would keep pressure on Washington to include Homan Square in the Justice Department’s investigation, since he had little faith that the mayor’s office would shut the site by itself.
“When we allow for people’s rights to be violated,” Boykin said, “we basically erode them as individuals.
“They feel like less of a citizen of America, and it erodes America in the process.”MONTREAL (Reuters) - Outside, the sun is shining, but it is dark in the production room where more than 150 Ubisoft artists, animators and engineers are racing to finish the latest edition of “Assassin’s Creed,” one of this holiday’s hotly anticipated games.
Chase Toole, a concept artist, works on art at THQ Inc., a developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software, in their Montreal office August 30, 2011. According to the economic development agency Invest Quebec, 86 companies and 8,236 jobs have migrated to Quebec as a result of a government program under which 37.5 percent of a video game company's payroll is subsidized by the majority French-speaking city in the form of a refundable tax credit. The incentives, which include extra credits for companies that make French versions of their games, have enticed heavyweights such as Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard to open major operations in Quebec. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi
They are working not from Ubisoft’s headquarters in Paris or California, but in Montreal, Quebec. And they aren’t alone. Quebec has become the preferred place for some of the biggest names in video games to set up shop.
According to the economic development agency Invest Quebec, 86 companies and 8,236 jobs have migrated to Quebec as a result of a government program under which 37.5 percent of a video game company’s payroll is subsidized by the majority French-speaking province in the form of a refundable tax credit.
Put another way, for every dollar a video game company spends on paying its development staff, it receives 37.5 cents from the Quebec government.
The incentives, which include extra credits for companies that make French versions of their games, have enticed heavyweights such as Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard to open major operations in Quebec.
“There’s a buzz right now, just like how Hollywood was the place to make movies in the 1920s,” said Charles Jolicoeur, a coordinator at Invest Quebec.
Last year, Quebec spent $100 million on the program, up from $83 million in 2009 and significantly more than some U.S. states with similar programs such as Texas and Louisiana.
The province first set aside money for video games in 1996 after starting a program to jumpstart the film industry a year earlier. According to Jolicoeur, the aim was to move Quebec from a manufacturing economy to a “new economy” by creating artistic jobs for young people.
Fifteen years later, the bet appears to have paid off.
“The incentives the government provided helped plant the seed, and now it’s big and everyone is hiring,” said Yanick Roy, studio director of Bioware, an Electronic Arts outfit.
THQ, the Southern-California based company that makes the popular “WWE Smackdown vs. Raw” video game, recently made Montreal its adopted home. After putting up disappointing results the last few quarters, CEO Brian Farrell told investors in July that THQ was moving most its resources to lower-cost areas, including Montreal, as part of its restructuring. Studios in New York and Phoenix shut down over the summer.
Since relocating, THQ has hired 145 employees for its new studio, housed in a converted newspaper printing press near the cobblestone streets of Old Montreal. The next step is for the company to hire 100 employees every year for the next five years until it reaches a staff of 500.
“When you look at our plan, it would be very difficult to do it in a lot of markets. But the right ingredients are in Montreal, with the tax incentives and the quantity and level of talent,” said Dave Gatchel, general manager of THQ Montreal.
This week, the Montreal newspaper La Presse reported that the Tokyo-based video game company, Square Enix, was going to double its staff and hire 350 developers to become the third-largest studio behind Ubisoft and EA.
COMPETING FOR THE FUTURE
Ubisoft, the leading video game employer in Montreal, plies its 2,100 game developers in Montreal with a full-time doctor on staff, an in-house gym with personal trainers and a rooftop bar area overlooking the city.
The company, which came to Montreal from France in 1997, helped put the city on the map as a video game center. It released top selling games such as “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell” and “Assassin’s Creed,” trained hundreds of developers and invested in programs at nearby universities.
But as new entrants such as THQ move into Montreal, the competition for top video game talent has intensified. Last year, THQ poached Patrice Desilets, the designer of “Assassin’s Creed,” which spurred a lawsuit between the companies.
“The energy is the same here at THQ as when I started at Ubisoft in 1997,” he said. “It’s a smaller place with less people, and there’s the feeling that we’re the underdogs.”
EA, the second-largest U.S. videogame company, came to Montreal in 2004. It has 750 employees on three floors of a downtown high-rise next to top-tier law and accounting firms.
EA plans to hire more people in mobile and social games. Playfish, the social games company that EA bought in 2009 in a deal worth roughly $400 million, has 30 employees in Montreal and plans to nearly double its staff by the end of the year.
The Quebec government is also pursuing its next big growth area — online games. Though the local industry is still big-budget console games, sales of these games are declining. Quebec is courting online gaming companies to ensure that jobs and growth stay in the province. Government representatives will attend G-Star, the video game show in South Korea in November, to attract Asian games companies to set up outposts or build data centers in Montreal.
“We are going to convince them to have a look at what’s going on in Montreal and to join the parade,” Jolicoeur said.
THQ’s Desilets, a lifelong Montreal resident who rose to fame with “Assassin’s Creed,” said the notorious winter weather should not deter game developers, even ones from California, from considering a move. He said they should focus on what the city offers, like affordable housing, culture and cuisine.
“You have winter, but then you realize it’s not that bad,” Desilets said. “I love it here. One of my dreams is to be the mayor of the city.”
(Editing by Peter Lauria and Robert MacMillan)“People get a little bolder and more wild in summer. You’ve got things going on kabobs, things cooking on the bone. There’s something about standing over a grill or outside with the family that inspires us.” ~Guy Fieri
Living in the middle of a desert, seafood isn’t always the best choice. Anytime I order fish or other seafood from a restaurant, I can almost taste the freezer burn. I can actually see it on the crab legs when I am at the grocery store. Don’t get me wrong, I still buy those crab legs and cook them up as a special treat every once in awhile, but I am still saying that in the middle of the desert, seafood is not like seafood you get other places.
That being said, oddly enough our little town has a sushi restaurant. If you had opened up a sushi restaurant in this simple little uranium mining town thirty years ago, you would have been laughed out of town. And most likely gone bankrupt, because I can’t imagine the tables would have been full. However, as the town has blossomed, or actually a better word is probably exploded, into a tourist destination quickly over the last ten years, the cuisine has evolved. There are several Thai restaurants, a handful of Mexican places, and even this sushi restaurant.
Anyway, for being a sushi restaurant sitting in a barren dust bowl of red blow sand, cactus, and sweltering heat, it is actually pretty good. The fish is flown in daily from Hawaii, and they try to source local ingredients for the rest of their ingredients, such as vegetables and fruits. I think the local produce is part of what appeals to me when I dine at the sushi place, and in particular I like their La Sal Roll. Named after the mountains to the west of the town, the La Sal Roll is a salmon based roll with asparagus, lime, cucumber, and avocado. The roll has a refreshing bite from the lime and cucumber, but is also hearty from the avocado.
This roll is the inspiration for this deer steak dish. With summer dragging in an extra long heat wave this year, eating has been…challenging. It feels so hot that steak sounds awful. But it is also summer, the season of grilling, which makes steak sound appealing. It’s a confusing state to live in. This deer steak is a great compromise. It takes the refreshing flavors of lime and cilantro and pairs it with the kick of jalapenos, creamy avocados, and a bit of spicy ginger.
For the steaks, I used deer backstrap and cut it into four medallions about three inches thick. It would also work great with tenderloin or another steak cut. Another substitution would be to use elk, moose, or pronghorn. I think this sauce would pair great with any of those steaks. Let the steaks rest at room temperature for ten to fifteen minutes. Then season them liberally with salt and pepper.
While the steaks are resting, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. On a rimmed cookie sheet or in a roasting pan, place some cherry tomatoes and asparagus. I usually do four to five cherry tomatoes and half a bundle of asparagus per person. Drizzle a little olive oil over everything, season with salt and pepper, give everything a quick mix using your hands, and throw those puppies in the oven. They should take about twelve to fifteen minutes to cook. You will know they are ready with the tomatoes are just starting to burst.
Next, prepare the sauce. To a large bowl, add two big handfuls of cilantro, just torn with your hands into chunks, one jalapeno sliced into rings (if you aren’t a fan of spicy, remove the seeds before you slice up the pepper), two teaspoons of grated fresh ginger root (which I suggest purchasing a microplane to use. They are the best, and can be used on cheese, garlic, nutmeg, or for zesting fruit), two cloves of garlic (which can also be grated on the microplane!), the juice of three limes, and four tablespoons of coconut aminos. I like to use coconut aminos for this recipe because it adds that salty soy sauce taste, but it also adds a hint of sweetness. If you don’t have coconut aminos you can always just substitute in soy sauce or tamari. Whisk everything together and set aside.
To cook the steaks, heat a skillet over medium high heat. Wait until the pan is good and hot before adding the steaks. This will create a really nice crust to the steaks. I like to actually time my steaks when cooking them. Since these steaks were fairly thick, I let them go for three minutes per side, for a total of six minutes cooking time. That resulted in a medium rare steak. If you are more of a medium person, add a minute. More of a rare person? Subtract a minute. If your steaks are thinner than three inches, subtract a minute.
Once you have cooked both sides, it is time to add the sauce. Leave the pan on medium high heat and slowly drizzly the sauce into the pan and over the steaks. The pan should be hot enough when the sauce hits the pan, it sizzles. You are almost caramelizing the sauce for a minute. Let it bubble around the steaks for about thirty seconds and then turn the heat off. Let the pan sit while you prepare the plates.
For plate preparation, dice up half an avocado per person. Make the pieces bite size chunks. Lay two medallions onto each plate. Place the roasted cherry tomatoes, asparagus, and avocado around the steak. Pour the sauce over everything and garnish with a little fresh cilantro.
So, if you are looking for fresh twist on steak, give this recipe a try. I love the heat you get from the jalapenos, the spicy little kick of the ginger, and the sweet hints from coconut aminos. Enjoy!
Happy Hunting!
Print Seared Deer Steaks in a Cilantro, Lime, Jalapeno Sauce: Kick Summer Up a Notch! Prep Time: 5 minutes Cook Time: 23 minutes Total Time: 28 minutes 2 Ingredients 4 deer steak medallions, about three inches thick
Cherry Tomatoes
Asparagus
2 tablespoons olive oil
Avocado Steak Sauce 2 handfuls torn cilantro
1 jalapeno, sliced
1 inch piece ginger, grated
2 cloves garlic, grated
3 limes, juiced
1/4 cup olive oil
4 tablespoons coconut aminos
salt and pepper Instructions Cut deer steaks into about three inch thick medallions. Allow to rest at room temperature for fifteen minutes. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Place tomatoes and asparagus on a rimmed cookie sheet, coat with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place to 400 degree preheated oven for fifteen minutes, or until tomatoes begin to burst. For the sauce, whisk together cilantro, jalapeno, ginger, garlic, limes, olive oil, and coconut aminos. Heat a pan over medium-high heat. Once the pan is preheated, place seasoned steaks down for three minutes per side. Pour sauce over cooked steaks, allow to come to a bubble for thirty seconds. Turn heat off. On a plate, set two steak medallions, four to five cherry tomatoes, asparagus, and diced avocado. Pour sauce over top and enjoy! Recipe Management Powered by Zip Recipes Plugin 5.0 http://huntingandcooking.com/seared-deer-steaks-in-a-cilantro-lime-jalapeno-sauce-kick-summer-up-a-notch/ All photos copyright of huntingandcooking.com
Share This:Hundreds thronging the RBI office to exchange old Rs 500 and 1,000 notes returned empty handed as the central bank is allowing the facility only for NRIs or those who were abroad during the 50-day demonetization period.People were seen arguing with security guards at designated RBI branch saying that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised that old notes could be exchanged till March 31 at RBI.
Even the RBI on November 8 statement said, "Any person who is unable to exchange or deposit the specified banknotes in their bank accounts on or before December 30, 2016 shall be given an opportunity to do so at specified offices of the Reserve Bank or such other facility until a later date as may be specified by the Reserve Bank."
The central bank on December 31 designated its five offices -- Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, and Nagpur -- to exchange defunct currency notes post 50-day demonetization period that ended on December 30.Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the nation on November 8 had said, "There may be some who for some reason, are not able to deposit their old 500 or 1,000 rupee notes by December 30, 2016.
"They can go to specified offices of the Reserve Bank of India up to March 31, 2017 and deposit the notes after submitting a declaration form."RBI has imposed conditions for availing extended facility for note exchanges. It had said that NRIs and Indians returning from abroad will have to physically show the junked 500 and 1,000 rupee notes to Customs officials at the airport and get a declaration form stamped before they can deposit the demonetised currency in RBI during the grace period.Indians who were abroad during November 9 to December 30 have been given a 3-month grace period till March 31 to deposit the junked notes, while for the NRIs, it is 6 months till June 30.
While there is no limit on deposit of defunct notes by an Indian national who was abroad when the 50-day window was in operation, NRIs can deposit only Rs 25,000 as per FEMA law restrictions.However, this facility is not available for Indian citizens resident in Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.The government had declared 500 and 1,000 denomination bank notes as illegal tender from November 9, 2016.Subsequently, the President approved the promulgation of the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Ordinance, 2016 on December 30.It makes holding, transfer and receiving of the demonetized notes a criminal offence, punishable with a fine of Rs 10,000 or five times the cash held, whichever is higher.Rex Features via AP Images Jeb Bush speaks at a 'Right To Rise PAC' event in Las Vegas on March 2, 2015.
In the midst of their wrangling this week with GOP leaders over a controversial spending bill rider to lift campaign-finance restrictions on political parties, members of the House’s far-right Freedom Caucus had a bright idea.
Why not compromise, Freedom Caucus members argued, by lifting the limits on outside groups as well as political parties? Conservatives had hated Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s first idea, which was to lift the cap on what parties may spend in coordination with candidates. That struck Tea Party lawmakers and activists as a power grab by the GOP establishment.
Under the right-wingers’ plan, non-party super PACs and politically active nonprofits would also be free to coordinate directly with candidates. As Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan declared at a “Conversations With Conservatives” event on Capitol Hill this week, freeing up the parties is “not the direction you need to go unless you’re going to free up restrictions on everyone.”
The proposed compromise drew instant fire from progressive activists. Unleashing super PACs and other non-party groups to work hand-in-hand with candidates directly contradicts the Supreme Court’s logic in its 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling to deregulate independent spending.
As Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority at the time: “By definition, an independent expenditure is political speech presented to the electorate that is not in coordination with a candidate.” Because the expenditures are independent, Kennedy concluded, they “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”
The Caucus’s proposal to allow coordination by outside groups “is the same as effectively allowing unlimited contributions to be given directly to a candidate,” warned a statement from Fred Wertheimer, president of the watchdog group Democracy 21. “In essence, the proposal would allow a candidate to completely bypass the $2,700 limit on the amount a donor can give to a candidate for an election.”
Progressive alarm over the conservative campaign-finance plan is probably overstated. Campaign financing is only one of several issues, from federal abortion funding to tax extenders, now bogging down the omnibus spending bill. If anything, conservatives may have done progressive advocates a favor by turning the spotlight on how meaningless the existing ban on candidate-super PAC coordination has become.
Super PACs have raised more than $314 million in this election so far, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, and the bulk of those receipts—$250 million—have gone to super PACs focused on electing a single candidate.
These single-candidate super PACs, which now number more than 100 and have rallied behind virtually evey presidential hopeful and a long list of Senate contenders, increasingly act as auxiliaries of the candidates’ campaigns. Run by close aides of the candidates, the single-candidate super PACs are doing everything from running ads to staging events, selling T-shirts and even handling campaign press inquiries.
The biggest of these is Right to Rise USA, the super PAC backing former GOP Governor Jeb Bush, which has amassed a record $103 million thanks to seven-figure contributions from CEOs, hedge fund managers, and other GOP mega-donors. Right to Rise recently rolled out a major ad campaign attacking businessman and GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. Bush went so far as to help launch the super PAC and raise money for it before he officially declared his candidacy, not even bothering to pretend that he and the group were operating at arm’s length.
Watchdog groups have complained to the Federal Election Commission about Right to Rise and several other super PACs associated with individual candidates. But don’t expect the FEC to take action. Just this week the commission, which is evenly divided between three Democratic and three Republican members, stalemated on a complaint alleging illegal coordination during the 2012 presidential campaign between former Senator Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the super PAC that backed him, the Red, White and Blue Fund.
“The FEC is clearly incapable of enforcing the campaign finance laws at this point,” said Lawrence Noble, general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, one of the groups lodging complaints against Santorum and other candidates with cozy super PAC ties.
All this begs the question why McConnell shouldn’t take up Tea Party conservatives on their suggestion, and just nix the coordination ban altogether. FEC regulations that define coordination are extremely narrow to begin with, allowing wide latitude for super PACs to share consultants and even ad footage. The commission stalemates so frequently that candidates openly flout the rules.
It’s probably only a matter of time before the Supreme Court, with its decided tilt toward deregulation, comes out and strikes the existing $2,700 limit on contributions to candidates in any case.
In the meantime, however, those limits remain the law of the land. The FEC may be doing little to enforce the election laws, but a federal court in June sentenced a Virginia political operative to two years in prison for running a super PAC that illegally coordinated with a congressional candidate, in a case brought by the Justice Department. Super PAC-candidate coordination is one are of campaign-finance law where both the Department and the FEC have considerable leeway to prosecute violations more aggressively, according to Noble. Instead of throwing the existing laws out the window, he argues, the government should be enforcing them.The flashing alert signs permeating from the higher education bubble should give people pause to the next flavor of the day bubble. This month information was released regarding consumer credit growth. Most of the headlines took this as positive economic news but digging deeper into the data we realize that the bulk of the growth came courtesy of exploding student debt. Even with the encyclopedia amount of data showing how horribly run many for-profit colleges are run, the government continues to back these risky endeavors while saddling young Americans with unrelenting levels of debt. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the predatory nature of these operations just like it was easy to see subprime loans were going to end badly. So why continue to allow this to go on? Why is the system so adamant on continuing to pour layer upon layer of student debt syrup onto the younger segment of our nation that is already struggling in the employment market?
The continuing expansion of student debt
Every month the student debt bubble gets bigger and bigger:
The figure above should shock you yet the student debt bubble simply continues to roll along. It was surprising to see the headlines this month regarding consumer credit growth. The headlines couched the growth as something positive but the underlying reality is that 58 percent of this growth came directly from expanding student debt:
Source: SoberLook
The 58 percent of growth from the Federal government is all student loans. Keep on fiddling while this unsustainable bubble keeps on growing and the longer this goes on the more painful the burst will be when it inevitably occurs.
This isn’t a new thing and the rate of growth for student debt is simply out of control:
Over the last 20+ years student debt has grown by over 17 percent annually based on only the government portion of data. The early 2000s saw a slight decline as the private market was eating up some of this debt as well. But look at what happened during and after the recession. Student debt at some points was growing at an annualized 80+ percent! This was for the government backed loans as the private market retreated from student debt (a common story with mortgage debt as well).
There is little justification for this astounding growth. Wages have not kept up to signify an underlying return on investment that makes up for this deep change in debt. We also realize that student debt is the fastest growing sector of debt in our economy:
This is really the elephant in the room right now for the economy. The fastest segment of debt growth right now is coming from student debt. We are well over $1 trillion now and this is now into a territory that is likely to cause a shock to the economy once it pops. What is the banking system and government doing about this? Not much really as we see from the latest data on consumer credit growth. Apparently saddling countless young Americans with suffocating student debt now passes for solid economic news.
If you enjoyed this post click here to subscribe to a complete feed and stay up to date with today’s challenging market!Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man who founded and chairs Dangote Cement, the continent’s largest cement producer is worth more than American President and business mogul Donald Trump and Celebrity businesswoman Oprah Winfrey.
Mr Dangote, who has vast investment interests in cement, sugar, flour and beverages was the first black man to attain a position among the world’s 25 richest people in 2014.
In an analysis careful drawn from the Forbes 2017 list, Mr. Dangote who is reputed to be the leader among 40 richest people in both Nigeria and Africa has a net worth of $11.7 billion which is almost twice as much as the recently elected American president’s ($3.7 billion) and Oprah’s ($3 billion).
However, it could be said that his net worth could have been much higher but for the recent drop in fortune that has seen him drop down on the list to 115th with a current net worth of $11.7 billion.
Despite a nearly $5 billion drop in his net worth for the second year in a row, the Nigerian cement tycoon remains the richest person in Africa for the sixth year running. He has an estimated net worth of $12.1 billion.
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PrintTSA tells UK airport security: confiscate broken and out-of-battery gadgets
The TSA has demanded that overseas airports, like London's Heathrow, should require travellers to turn on their electronics before flying to the USA, and ban any broken or out-of-power devices.
The announcement is apparently linked to Syrian and Yemeni bomb-makers believing that they can blow up airplanes with fake electronics. It's not clear from the announcement whether broken and/or out-of-power devices will be allowed in checked bags.
It's also not clear what "turning on" a device consists of. Will making the LED on a 2lb, external USB charger glow suffice? If so, how can they be sure that most of the volume of the device isn't contraband, with a tiny portion given over to a button cell and a LED light the size of a grain of rice?
It's easy to predict the ways that the War on Broken Electronics will screw stuff up. Holidays and battery-discharge go together like peanut butter and chocolate. How many parents use screens as a last-ditch measure to keep their kids from freaking out on the long voyage home, and how many kids will fail at managing their power consumption and keeping an eye on the battery on their game, tablet or phone during a delay, only to face having their property confiscated at the checkpoint?
And of course, travel affords lots of exciting opportunities to break your beloved electronic crap, from spills to drops. And what steps will airport security take to safeguard the data on travellers' devices? When you are forced to surrender the laptop or tablet or phone full of confidential employer data, trade secrets, personal photos, banking records, and photos of your kids in the bath, how will the G4S contractors at Heathrow assure you that these won't be used to rob you blind, get you fired, and embarrass and humiliate you?
In other words, this is a plan that bans flat batteries and broken screens at the place where they are most likely to occur, and singles out for punishment people who are already in extremis from tired kids and broken stuff. Visitors to America should be prepared for very, very long lines at security checkpoints as aghast and outraged travellers argue over the official theft of their valuable stuff.
US enhanced airport security checks target electronics
(Image: Broken Blackberry, Matthew Hurst, CC BY-SA)By examining historical data, statisticians in the College of Science at Virginia Tech have quantified biases that play a role in granting Division I at-large basketball teams inclusion in the NCAA March Madness Tournament.
Assistant professors Leanna House and Scotland Leman found that in addition to the standard Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) used by the 10-member selection committee, biases such as the the team's marquee and the strength of its schedule are also factors.
“We wanted to quantify how much bias there is for bubble teams,” Leman said. So-named “bubble teams” are those that do not have an automatic bid but are still considered potential teams to be invited to the tournament. Usually bout 30 teams fall into this category.
One bias for bubble teams, House and Leman found, was consideration of the marquee (or pedigree) of the team. For instance, a team that historically has an outstanding record and is usually included in the tournament has that fact in its favor.
“Having a rich history of a spot in the tournament will ‘break the tie,’” House said.
She and Leman found that inclusion probabilities were much higher for marquee teams. For example, in the 2009-10 season, the bias of not being a marquee team lowered Virginia Tech’s chances of receiving an at-large bid from 0.83 to 0.31. During the 1999-2000 season, the marquee bias increased the University of North Carolina’s chances from 0.32 to 0.85.
“UNC’s marquee status during that season had a substantial influence on the committee’s decision.” Leman said. “Of that, I'm sure."
The statisticians also explored the influence a team’s schedule has on its RPI in addition to its record. By using a hypothetical model Leman and House determined that the more powerhouse teams a bubble team plays in a season, regardless of whether they win or lose, will help them win a bid in the tournament.
“Of course scheduling is a complex process and involves a lot of negotiation,” Leman said. “But in cases where a coach is able to select to play a powerful team or a smaller, less powerful team, it is better to pick the power team. The rule of thumb is: the more powerhouse teams, the better.”
At the beginning of each March Madness decision-making process, the selection committee is provided documentation that contains season statistics and the RPI for each team. Other measures of team strength are excluded.
“The RPI accounts for known, quantitative biases in raw winning percentages that may impact their ratings, but it has been shown repeatedly that raw winning percentages per team are not adequate for ranking teams,” Leman said. “Tournament decisions made for teams with only moderately high RPIs (bubble teams),until now, were not clear.”
Leman and House say their research was motivated by a chance meeting with Virginia Tech head basketball coach Seth Greenberg in a restaurant in the spring of 2010. At that time, Virginia Tech had not won a bid for the tournament. Greenberg suggested that he would like to know how tournament decisions are made for at-large teams. The two statisticians, along with graduate assistants John Szarka and Hayley Nelson, stepped up to the challenge and have presented their conclusions just in time for this year’s March Madness to begin.
“We don’t want to create, improve, or validate a ranking system, House said. “Our goal was simply to evaluate how the selection committee has chosen teams for the tournament in the past.”Julian King | Photo credit: Press Association
Julian King, currently UK ambassador to France, was offered a job focused on counter-terrorism, a new brief created after Jonathan Hill resigned from the EU's executive arm last month following Britain's vote to leave the EU.
MEPs have been swift to respond, with S&D group leader Gianni Pittella saying, "Security is a vital topic for the EU and it is good that we will now have someone working specifically on coordinating the European agenda on security."
The Italian deputy added, "This is something European citizens have called for and something we fully support.
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"It is important that this work is done in support of home affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, and under the direction of first Vice-President Frans Timmermans. The approach of leading a task force of experts from existing departments and providing advice is the correct one.
"Before the appointment, we made clear to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that Julian King's role should not take away responsibility from any Commissioners from the Socialist family. We are pleased that this is the case.
"We now need to look at the exact details of what the role will entail but we are pleased that security and migration policy are kept separate, something our group has insisted on for a long time."
UK Conservative MEP Anthea McIntyre also welcomed the allocation of the new security brief to King, saying it showed that Juncker "acknowledged the UK's continuing lead role in security issues."
Juncker moved carefully to fill the spot in the college, even though Britain voted to leave the EU over the next few years.
King's new job will be subordinated to more high-profile posts, entailing coordination efforts to fight terrorism by tracking returning fighters from the Middle East, boosting intelligence sharing among member states and stemming radicalisation.
McIntyre, an ECR group deputy, said: "We face a global threat in terrorism and organised crime. The creation of this new Commission role and Sir Julian's appointment to it speaks volumes. It highlights Britain's expertise and clout.
"This leading contribution on security matters will continue to be important post-Brexit, not just across Europe but across the world.
"The director of Europol, Rob Wainwright, is British and Royal Navy officers are in command of the EU's anti-piracy patrols which have been so successful off the Horn of Africa.
"Sir Julian's himself has held senior posts at the UN Security Council, Nato and the EU's Political and Security Committee.
"I hope continued cooperation on security will be at the heart of the Brexit negotiation."
UK Prime Minister Theresa May's office welcomed Juncker's assignment, saying that Britain will remain an "active player" in EU affairs. "The UK will continue to fulfill our rights and obligations as a member state until we leave the EU," a spokesperson for the premier said in a statement.
King still has to be confirmed in the post at a hearing in Parliament in September.Barnaby Joyce launches what could be Australia's first medicinal cannabis farm in NSW
Updated
In an Australian first, a farm which has been earmarked for use to grow medicinal cannabis has officially been opened at an undisclosed location near Tamworth in northern New South Wales.
Key points Australia's first medicinal cannabis farm, near Tamworth, opened by Barnaby Joyce
Victoria the first state to pass legislation allowing medicinal cannabis
Federal Government working on framework for legislation to cultivate and supply
Acting Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce launched the 47-hectare property which has been named in honour of Dan Haslam, whose battle with cancer contributed to the push to legalise medicinal cannabis in Australia.
It comes just over a year after he died, and ahead of legislation yet to be passed, which will make the cultivation possible.
The Acting Prime Minister congratulated the Haslams on their efforts in bringing the project this far.
"Amongst your grief, which you will carry for a long time, you have managed to use that energy to do something in a positive way," Mr Joyce said.
"When you can find a use for any part of a plant that can assist people when they are ill, when they are in pain, you should |
es of the citizenry while we simply think the supernatural makes no sense, but why not throw the two in the same pile? How does he square creating this sometimes-irreverent space for Humanism while attending the Catholic mass intended to shame the Black Mass for its irreverence, which was its only transgression?
The fact that the broader community, including leaders of intellectual and nonreligious institutions, sided with the Catholics in this case, is the real shame of this story. You show solidarity to people who need it and deserve it, not to those who have every advantage and right in the world to do as they please. Show solidarity with at-risk youths being told their sexuality makes them unworthy to show their face in society. Show solidarity with Jews if Nazis show up in your town, with nonwhites if the Klan does, or with women if a men’s rights group appears. But to stand with a vast plurality of people who are completely safe from a small, intellectually curious minority? To go as a representative of Harvard or its Humanists to a mass where Catholics were literally trying to stave off the Devil, which I doubt Faust regards (and know Epstein does not regard) as a true and immediate risk? It makes me question how willing these leaders are to call into question religious traditions when doing so may be unpopular.
On the heels of the Hobby Lobby case making it clear that Catholics find their own religion threatened if others don’t follow it, and the Greece case making sure that officials can equate their local government with their religions, it seems only reasonable to fear that the Catholic Church is truly trying to make all institutions cater to its need to abolish dissent and irreverence. If that seems like a basic thing to say to this atheist audience, I must reveal my own personal backstory for a brief moment — I am from a highly liberal family that is secular and culturally Jewish, and my hometown also had more than a critical mass of liberals and secular Jews. Going from there to Harvard left me without a true immersion in a religious, intolerant community that would show me just how necessary religion can be for social acceptance.
Seeing Catholicism demolish its opposition at Harvard of all places was a blaring wake-up call for me. I hope that’s also true for others, who did not have to escape religiosity to discover their secular nature. We have been coddled relative to other atheists, and this story shows things may be worse than we thought. The fight is in our backyards, too.
…
Meryl Federman is a math and theater geek living in New York City. She was a Harvard Humanist member while on campus there, and ever since, has maintained an active interest, both academic and practical, in cultivating a secular worldview.
(Image via Shutterstock)A new billboard slamming Donald Trump is turning heads in Michigan.
“Trump can’t read this but he’s afraid of it,” the bizarre billboard reads.
And why would Trump be “afraid?” Because the sign is written in Arabic.
The billboard was the brainchild of Cards Against Humanity’s anti-Trump super PAC, the Daily Mail reported. The sign is located on I-94 between Dearborn and Detroit where there is a high Muslim population for maximum impact.
“We came up with it because we believe Trump’s hateful rhetoric is not based on reality, it’s based on fear,” the group’s spokeswoman, Melissa Harris said.
“And we think that irrational fear is what’s driving his anti-immigrant message.”
Harris vowed if Trump becomes president her committee will continue to attack him. But she had nothing but glowing things to say about Trump’s competition.
“We believe Hillary Clinton’s temperament is the definition of presidential.
“She’s thoughtful, knowledgeable, capable, experienced and dignified. We’re also proud she’s a trailblazer for women in this country,” she told the Mail.
What!? She’s also a proven thief, liar, and arguably, a criminal.
And it’s not just Trump who’s saying it.
#PodestaEmails10 show HRC kept 55K emails from Congress. How much more evidence does the govt need to press charges? pic.twitter.com/5Xdd1YYJKx — Dr. Jill Stein🌻 (@DrJillStein) October 18, 2016
If you’re not sure what Cards Against Humanity is, it’s a popular game where people draw cards and are encouraged to fill in politically incorrect answers. But it doesn’t take long to figure out the cards are extremely one-sided regarding the political realm.
Rush Limbaugh and the like are excoriated, while Hillary Clinton and other progressives… not so much.
Indoctrination from all sides, everywhere, all the time.
Wake up right! Receive our free morning news blast HEREWhat are the odds that the two biggest Black Lives Matter leaders in the “upstate” region of South Carolina would both be arrested over a two-day period? The second one literally being arrested after attended the bond hearing for the first one?
This is not a hoax. This is a thing that really happened.
Black Lives Matter leader Bruce Wilson was arrested yesterday and charged with kidnapping, domestic violence, and child neglect. Today he was released on a $50k bond. Derrick Lamar Quarles, another leader of the Black Lives Matter movement, attended Wilson’s bond hearing. After the hearing, Wilson was arrested on an outstanding warrant.
Wilson had been ordered to appear in court on April 4th for obtaining a signature under false pretense. He never showed up in court and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest.
Derrick Lamar Quarles also has a jury trial scheduled to start on June 29th. He faces three counts of creating a public nuisance for standing in Interstate 385 and blocking traffic in July of 2016.A group of traveling prostitutes suspected of settling in Spokane told police they were making good money here because the local competition is so ugly.
One woman is in custody and other arrests are possible as part of an ongoing investigation into a 36-year-old California man who investigators believe has been brokering sex deals while living out of motels in Portland, Seattle and Spokane. Two motel rooms in Spokane were searched this week.
Shaquisha L. Jenkins, 22, was arrested on a misdemeanor prostitution charge Tuesday when the Spokane Regional Gang Task Force searched rooms at the Stratford Suites, 11808 W. Centre Lane in Airway Heights, and the Bel Air Motel, 1303 E. Sprague Ave. in Spokane.
A Spokane police officer contacted Jenkins and an 18-year-old woman on East Sprague Avenue Jan. 31 and was told “that because there is a lack of attractive prostitutes in the area, they are able to make fairly good money,” according to court documents.
Other officers were familiar with Jenkins - one contacted her Jan. 2 as she stood on Sprague - an area notorious for prostitution - with two other women.
An officer said the women told him they were prostitutes from California who traveled to Spokane via Seattle. Then on Jan. 4, another officer responding to a report of possible prostitution near Sprague and Helena contacted one of the same women, who said she lived in Seattle but “was unable to provide a legitimate reason for being in Spokane,” documents say.
The same officer contacted Jenkins on Jan. 16 after observing her in the Sprague Avenue area for several weeks. He said Jenkins said she was working as a prostitute and had been in Spokane for about a month.
The case began to center on the motels when the owner of the Stratford Suites, Jack Grady, told Airway Heights police he suspected a group of long-term guests were involved with criminal activity. A detective searched the registered renter’s phone number on the Internet and discovered it had been used by female escort services in San Diego, Portland and Fresno.
Task force members started watching the Bel Air Motel and observed several incidents of suspected prostitution.
Then Airway Heights police contacted Jenkins, her suspected pimp and the 18-year-old woman while responding to a possible domestic violence call at the Stratford Suites Feb. 7 about 3 a.m. Officers said they found “crib notes for prostitution” that included phone numbers, names and suspected debt lists.
Hours later, a judge granted the task force permission to search the room and the suspects’ room at the Bel Air Motel.
Jenkins, who remained in jail on $500 bond Thursday, was the only suspect arrested; police say more arrests could occur as the investigation continues.Officials and aid agencies have been warning for months that the effort to dislodge Isis from their last major stronghold could have high humanitarian cost
Eight civilians from one family, three of them children, were killed by a US airstrike on their home a few kilometres outside Mosul, relatives, officials and Kurdish troops fighting in the area say.
The attack came after a week of heavy fighting in Fadhiliya village, where Iraqi and Kurdish forces backed by coalition airpower were battling Isis militants as part of the push to recapture Iraq’s second largest city.
Pictures showed villagers uncovering bodies from a pile of rubble that had been a home. The house was hit twice, and some of the rubble and shrapnel was thrown up to 300 metres.
“We know the difference between, airstrikes, artillery and mortars, we have lived for over two years surrounded by fighting,” said Qassim a brother of one of the dead, speaking by phone from the village. Troops fighting in the area and a local MP also said the deaths were caused by an airstrike.
The Iraqi air force apparently killed more than a dozen mourners gathered at a mosque last month, but the bombing in Fadhiliya appears to be the first time a western airstrike has killed civilians since the push for Mosul began.
The US says it did conduct strikes “in the area described in the allegation” on 22 October. “The Coalition takes all allegations of civilian casualties seriously and will further investigate this report to determine the facts,” a coalition spokesperson said in an email.
The deaths are intensifying concerns about risks to ordinary Iraqis now trapped in the city. Officials and aid agencies have been warning for months that the effort to dislodge Isis from their last major stronghold in Iraq could have a high humanitarian cost, both for hundreds of thousands of civilians expected to flee the fighting, and those unable to leave areas under the militants’ control.
Isis already has added to its two year tally of atrocities in the region. Fighters have herded tens of thousands of civilians into Mosul to use as human shields, seeded whole towns with homemade bombs including many aimed at children and other non-combatants, and are summarily executing hundreds of people they fear might rise up against them.
Kurdish and Iraqi forces and their backers have pledged to protect civilians and give captured fighters their legal rights. But rights groups and NGOs say the intensity of the fight and the nature of Isis tactics, scattering militants and military installations among ordinary homes, risks a rising toll of civilian deaths from airstrikes.
“So far reported civilian fatalities have been relatively light – mainly as the battle for Mosul is focused on clearing lightly populated villages around the city. Even so, at least 20 civilians have been credibly reported killed in supporting coalition airstrikes according to our researchers,” said Chris Wood, director of the Airwars project that monitors the toll from international airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.
“As the fight pushes in towards Mosul’s suburbs, we’re concerned that the civilians trapped in the city will increasingly be at risk.”
In Fadiliya village all the dead were from one family. Qaseem, his brother Saeed and Amer who was killed, are members of a Sunni minority. They decided to endure life under the Isis harsh rule rather than face destitution in a refugee camp, and until last weekend thought they had survived.
Why is the battle for Mosul significant? Mosul is Islamic State's last urban stronghold in Iraq, and the assault is the most critical challenge yet to the group's caliphate. Since Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the establishment of a caliphate from the city in June 2014, Mosul has been central to the group’s ambitions to spread its ruthless interpretation of Islamic law throughout the Arab world and beyond. Victory over Isis appears very likely, but there are concerns about what comes next: how to provide for up to 1.3 million refugees and how to re-establish governance in a city brutalised by tyranny.
Saeed was at home, saying his prayers and hoping the battle that had raged outside was nearly over when he heard a huge blast. When a neighbour shouted over that the bomb had landed near his brother’s home, half a kilometre away at the foot of Bashiqa mountain, he raced over to find his worst fears confirmed.
“I could just see part of my nephew’s body under the rubble,” says Saeed, sobbing on the phone at the memory. “All of them were dead.” His brother and brother’s wife, their three children, a daughter-in-law and two grandchildren had all been killed. Three of the victims were children, the oldest 55 and the youngest only two years old.
“What they did to my brother’s family was unjust, he was a olive farmer and had no connection with Daesh,” Saeed said, using the Arabic acronym for Isis. Three daughters who had fled to refugee camps with their husbands and a second wife who lives in Mosul survived.
Saeed and Qassim tried to recover the bodies for burial but the fighting was so intense they had to retreat into their homes, leaving their loved ones where they had died for several days.
There were multiple airstrikes around the town at the time, as the Kurdish peshmerga tried to clear nests of fighters, including one using a minaret as a sniper post.
“We won’t take any chances” said Erkan Harki a peshmerga officer, standing on the edge of an olive grove near near the village several days after the airstrike. “We have been hit by sniper fire and mortars from inside Fadhiliya.”
This is not the first time the coalition struck civilians in Fadhiliya and a Peshmerga officer tasked with providing coordinates for air strikes said the area should be clearly marked as sensitive on maps used to plan bombing raids, because of the number of civilians.
Slaughter of Iraqi family in suspected US-led air strike hints at cost of war Read more
The airstrike was likely to be American he added, as Canadians had ended airstrikes in the area in February, and “the Americans are in charge”, he said, asking not to be named as he did not have permission to speak to media. “I can say with 95% accuracy that this strike was carried out by the Americans,” he said.
Mala Salem Shabak, the Iraqi MP who represents Fadhiliya also confirmed the deaths, and said they were caused by air strikes, as did a local administrator who asked not to be named because he still has relatives inside the village and fears Isis have not been fully routed there.
“We call on the coalition to stop bombing the villages because they are many civilians in these areas,” says Shabak, the parliamentarian when the fighting was still raging. “The bodies are under the rubble, they should be allowed to give them a dignified burial.”
On Monday Iraqi forces breached the eastern districts of Mosul as a coalition including special forces units, tribal fighters and Kurdish paramilitaries pushed ahead with its offensive.
Inhabitants of the city said that Iraqi soldiers backed by airstrikes and artillery were advancing into the eastern-most neighbourhoods, despite stiff resistance from Isis fighters.In later afternoon breaking news, it appears as if Google has started rolling out a “Beta” column or section in Google Play under the “My apps & games” area. This section, as you can imagine, lists out all of the apps you are currently signed-up to beta test through Google Play. That’s awesome news and should help us all manage the apps we are helping test, something Google mentioned was in the works at Google I/O.
We first spotted a user with the new section over on reddit, but have since confirmed with a number of readers that this isn’t just an isolated appearance. At least three DL readers showed us on Twitter that they are also seeing the new “Beta” column.
Unfortunately for those of us not seeing it, but are a part of beta tests, it appears as if this is a server-side change coming from Google. Everyone we checked with is running Google Play version 6.7.13.
As we find out more, we’ll be sure to update this post.
UPDATE: The app listings for the beta apps you are testing now tell you that you are beta testing and let you opt-out too!
UPDATE 2: And you can opt-in to beta tests now from Google Play!
Cheers Thomas, Daryl, and Shelly!Newsarama has the first look at inked pages from Justice League #49, scheduled for release April 29. This comes just after the reveal of the new cover to Justice League #50 showing Lex Luthor in Superman armor.
JUSTICE LEAGUE #49
Written by GEOFF JOHNS
Art and cover by JASON FABOK
Variant cover by MATTEO SCALERA
On sale APRIL 29 • 32 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T
Retailers: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the order form for details.
In this, the penultimate chapter of the critically-acclaimed epic "Darkseid War," the fate of the Justice League and the entire universe is on the line! But can even the combined might of the Justice Gods contend with the secret machinations of Grail, the deadly daughter of Darkseid? Death, rebirth and the life of one of the members of the League changed forever!+1 Share Pocket WhatsApp 0 Shares
Our friend and productivity ninja from Think Productive, Graham Alcott, is on an experiment where he joins us to fast during the first three days of Ramadan. To know more about this experiment, you can read the introduction here. In this series, he shares his reflections regarding fasting and productivity based on this experience. (Read Fasting Experiment: Day 1 | Day 2)
Friday evening. The end of a long week and for me the end of my first ever days of fasting. Joining Muslims for the first few days of Ramadan has been a really memorable experience. I’ve been touched by the support and love I’ve had from so many Muslims, from all over the world, predominantly finding out about my experiment via our friends at the Productive Muslim site, who’ve been syndicating my blog there too each evening.
Before I started, Mohammed from Productive Muslim wanted me to come up with my productivity advice for Ramadan. So in this final post I’m going to reflect back on Friday (which was a bit of a breakthrough for me) and then give some more general reflections at the end.
Friday didn’t start as I’d planned. I woke at 8am. I realised immediately that my 1.30am alarm – designed to wake me so that I could eat again before the fast begins at 2.34am – had failed me. Damn complicated iPhone alarms! Before I slept I’d obviously eaten a meal, but I’d not gone crazy on the water and by 8am I was feeling marooned in a state of dehydration. Long busy day ahead. The hottest day of the year outside. Oh dear.
I spent the morning with a friend, working on a new business idea. I was dreading it because I expected to feel weak and off my game. She kept eating all morning too, which on Wednesday would have driven me nuts, but honestly, I don’t think I felt tempted or envious by her food even once. Maybe once by her cup of tea. It was a buzzy, ideas-driven three-hour session where we had a couple of big lightbulb moments and I was pretty impressed that I felt alert and on the ball, aside from my mouth being pretty dry and making it difficult to speak normally at times. Perhaps I’d crash and burn in the afternoon when the adrenaline wore off, I thought…
Then in the afternoon I was at home putting final touches to a really important contract (more news next week!) and prepping for a strategy session I’m delivering tomorrow for a board of trustees of a national charity. So I needed to be on the ball and I was expecting a massive struggle. But instead, I felt light, calm and motivated.
I don’t know what’s happened to me physically since Wednesday, but the hunger pangs have been much-reduced today (and this despite me eating much less last night) and I’ve had none of the headaches and shakiness that had me needing naps on the preceding afternoons. I feel as if my body has adjusted to my new metabolism somehow.
It took me 3 days to get to a stage where I wasn’t ever-so slightly panicky about whether I’d faint or whether I’d generally be OK. If you’re reading this as a Muslim who has fasted for years, you probably don’t remember that feeling of uncertainty when you fast for the first time? Or perhaps everyone gets it for the first day or so, every year? Maybe it was the release of that tiny anxiety that also helped me to relax and see fasting as a ‘normal’ state for me. Not just normal, but I’d even say comfortable, peaceful and centred.
So, what did I learn?
The final day was a breakthrough. I felt really alert and productive and actually the elimination of the hassle of thinking about food and drink far outweighed any inconvenience of having to think about it, crave it, prepare it or digest it! My mind felt less cluttered, sometimes a little ‘floaty’ (in a gentle and comfortable way) and really quite focussed.
So before I started, I was expecting to write a bunch of “surviving fasting” reflections or tips. When of course, that’s what Muslims do every single year for Ramadan! “Survival” is the wrong word entirely. So instead, these reflections are “for a successful fast”, because I’ve truly started to see the positives that can emerge from what on the surface is a deliberate sacrifice to create conditions of “adversity”, but is actually so much deeper than that.
My 5 reflections for a successful Ramadan fast:
1. When it comes to your calories and meals, it’s about quality not quantity
As the days went on, I gave up panicking about how many calories I was ‘under’ for the day and just made sure I was eating well and packing my foods with good nutrients and low-GI energy. I avoided sugar and high fats. My new brain fuel shake came in really handy and I started trying to drink a small one of those before my main evening meal, as well as one in the early hours.
2. You have to plan your days
One of the nice facets of fasting is that you plan carefully. Experience taught me to be kind to myself: too much time rushing around, getting stressed, getting hot on public transport or rushing in the sun takes its toll very quickly – but if you plan, it works well. This has a nice effect in that it can really boost your productivity, as it encourages the kind of daily review rituals that I talk about in my book. I found myself becoming more conscious of the importance of this – and even doing my daily review before I slept, knowing that as I was digesting food, it was a useful and peaceful time to set myself up for the day that lay ahead when I woke up again.
3. Eat that frog
The proactive attention needed to crack the most difficult work we do is often in shorter supply when fasting. So make sure you start your day by doing what Brian Tracy called ‘eating that frog’ (doing the hardest thing first). This is something that’s good to do every day of the year, as it makes the rest of your day easier and reduces anxiety, but Ramadan has certainly helped me back into the zone with that one.
4. Be vulnerable
You’ll feel irritable and grumpy and confused sometimes. Certainly our Western approach to such things is to deny this reality and… well, just leave people feeling that you’re irritated or confused by them! On the occasions this happened to me this week, I just ‘named’ it. “Oh sorry, I’ve lost my train of thought. It’s the fasting”. Or “sorry I snapped, I was thinking about muffins”. Learning to be vulnerable is the only way of inviting care and empathy into that situation. Pride goes out the window, and it’s freeing that way.
5. Change the view
Often when we’re stuck or feeling sluggish, we’ll grab a coffee or get a drink or a snack to shake things up, but the body and the brain’s performance is not exclusively linked to food. But likewise, fasting does bring periods of quite low attention, so you need to find some ways of ‘rebooting’ that work well for you. Mine were things like mini-meditations, stretching my body and shaking my arms and legs, splashing cold water on my face, brushing my teeth (I know, I looked this up and apparently as long as I don’t swallow the toothpaste or the water, it’s OK!), and breathing in some fresh air.
And finally…
And the final thing I want to say is something about the personal, not the productive. I was slightly nervous that I’d receive some criticism for doing this – I was all too aware that talking about religion and furthermore talking about your extremely limited experience of someone else’s religion can be a sensitive subject, even when your intentions are the right ones. But I’ve been genuinely touched and humbled by the incredible support I’ve had from Muslims and non-Muslims all around the world – in comments on my blog, on my twitter account and via email. I’ve felt a deep sense of connection from it.
It just goes to show that if we strip back or ignore all the hate and fear that our politicians and media trade on, if we approach the world with a sense of curiosity and adventure, if we seek understanding, empathy and acceptance and if we reject the narratives of absolute truth and superiority over others, then the world is full of as much love and community as I’ve experienced these last few days.
I’m quite sad that my 3-day Ramadan experience is now over and in the second half of July’s experiment I’ll be returning to playing around with the theme of ‘Fuel’ more generally. But I’ve seen enough already to change my opinion of fasting from thinking of it as a negative ‘denial’ to thinking of it more as a ‘shifting of state’. And I’ve seen enough to know that it certainly won’t be the last time I undertake fasting.
Ramadan Mubarak!Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
Professors at Eastern Michigan University are fighting to end the school’s connection to a highly controversial state school takeover district created by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder. The faculty members argue that they had no input in the way the Education Achievement Authority is run and that they oppose the way the EEA is being operated.
The EAA, one of a number of reforms pioneered by Snyder, was created in 2011 to take over and run schools whose standardized test scores are in the bottom five percent in the state and that are not making progress under an improvement plan or are under the control of an emergency manager. Snyder said the EAA was necessary to help improve long troubled schools.
Opponents have charged that the EAA is a miss. They say, among other things, that the EAA’s governance is secretive; that student and teacher turnover is excessive; that the EAA relies on young and inexperienced teachers, including many from Teach For America; that many teachers taught outside the areas for which they had certification; and that there has been an explosion of disciplinary reports but teachers have been encouraged not to report them.
Last May, the Detroit News wrote that EAA officials had “overstated” facts on an application for a $35.4 million federal grant:
The application to the U.S. Department of Education for a five-year teacher merit pay program claimed the reform district with 15 Detroit schools had legislative permission to grow to 60 schools in 10 urban districts by 2017, which it doesn’t. The grant application took liberties with other facts, claiming to be an IRS-authorized charitable organization and that EAA Chancellor John Covington “has been given the mandate and authority to take control of persistently poor performing schools throughout Michigan” – an issue still being debated in the Legislature. EAA spokesman Bob Berg said the inaccuracies were “screw-ups” in a hastily written application submitted in late July and approved in October.
The News further reported that it wasn’t the first time EAA had made the same kind of claims; a draft application for a federal Race to the Top grant had some of the same claims, but aides for the governor had them removed.
Eastern Michigan University is the only university in the state that signed on to partner with the EAA — without faculty input — and now its College of Education is being affected by a boycott of its student teachers in six public school districts as a protest against the university’s EAA affiliation. The Ann Arbor News reported that EMU faculty who have been trying to place student teachers into classrooms for the winter semester have found a lot of closed doors. Some faculty members have tried to persuade the university’s Board of Regents to sever the affiliation with the EAA, but nothing has happened. Now, members of the College of Education Council, representatives of the faculty of the college, have written a new letter about the issue. Here’s the text:
October 23,2013For Advanced Placement (AP) exams, 25,486 public school students took a total of 40,015 exams in 2013-14. In recent years, there has been a steady increase in the number of South Carolina public school students taking AP exams, the number of exams taken, and the number of students receiving a grade of three, four or five. Since 2010, the number of public school students in South Carolina taking AP exams has increased by approximately 7,000, the number of exams taken has increased by nearly 10,000, and the number of exams with a grade of three, four, or five has increased by approximately 6,000. Last year, the number of AP exams taken by public school students in the state increased by 7.6 percent, the number of students earning scores of 3 or higher increased by 7% and the number of African American students participating in the AP program increased by 7 percent, and the number of African American students participating in the AP program increased by 13 percent. Additionally, virtually every subgroup of students in South Carolina achieved increases in the number of AP exams taken and scores of 3 or higher.Russia has been plagued by racist attacks in recent years A group of racist skinheads who carried out 18 brutal murders in Russia's capital Moscow have been sentenced to jail terms of between six and 20 years. The gang of seven targeted non-Slavic migrants in the city between August 2006 and October 2007. Many of the attackers were minors at the time. Besides killing 18 people, they also tried to murder another 12, the court heard. The group posted video of some of their crimes on the internet. The heaviest jail term was handed to Roman Kuzin, who received 20 years in jail. Artur Ryno and his gang are the extreme, dangerous face of generation who have grown up in an ideological vacuum
James Rodgers' Moscow diary The two alleged ringleaders of the group, Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, were given 10-year sentences in a penal colony. Their sentences were the longest they could have received, as they were minors at the time. Four other members of the group received jail sentences of between six and 12 years. Plagued by attacks Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement The prosecution argued that the defendants had formed an organised group with the aim of murdering migrants from Asian and Caucasian regions of the former Soviet Union. In other words, they targeted people who did not look white, or Slavic, the BBC's James Rodgers in Moscow said. Even in a city frequently the scene of racist violence, this gang's crimes stood out, our correspondent said. Russia has been plagued by a series of racially motivated attacks, some of them fatal, in recent years. Between January and October this year 113 people were killed in racist attacks in Russia and 340 were wounded, according to the Moscow Human Rights Bureau.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionIn case you haven’t yet seen enough evidence that men are treated as the neutral category, and women as a sub-category, Arielle C. and Ellie B. sent in another example, found on Neatorama. Here we have two rulers that list some important scientists throughout history, helpfully separated into Rulers of Science and Great Women Rulers of Science:
The only full image I could find of them is small, but I do see Marie Curie listed on both rulers. I can’t make out any other women on the Rulers of Science, but the text is very small and blurry in the image.
The point here isn’t really about the rulers themselves. I’ll give the company credit for trying to create a product that highlights women’s contributions to scientific discovery, only one of which would apparently be considered important enough to get a mention if we didn’t get a whole ruler all to ourselves. What’s noteworthy is the cultural repetition, experienced over and over in myriad large and small ways, of the message that default humans are male unless specifically marked otherwise, and that women aren’t neutral humans.Since we’ve already told you the truth about employee satisfaction surveys and suggested a more effective means of achieving real employee feedback in real time, we decided to take a break from our focus on relentless improvement just in case our readers are looking for something different.
If your employees are truly satisfied, and you are satisfied with their level of satisfaction (and all of the happiness that comes with it)—we won’t judge you. Some leaders enjoy a cheerful, productive work environment and aren’t looking to change that. But if having an engaged team that is making you feel like less of a manager, by all means, keep reading.
Some managers miss perpetually putting out fires and settling petty squabbles that often go hand in hand with employee dissatisfaction. The tips in this article are guaranteed to suck the satisfaction out of even your most dedicated employees.
1. Learned Helplessness
Helplessness is the feeling that nothing one does matters, or that all their hard work is for nothing.
Yes, helplessness can be learned, and leaders are capable of both instilling this notion into their team, as well as creating an environment to help sustain it. If you want your employees to feel helpless, simply start by not acknowledging, appreciating or even respecting any of their efforts for trying to do a good job.
You know that employees learn best when they can build on the foundation of what they’re doing well already, and that most minor issues will simply dissipate with time.
You need to shake that foundation by critiquing as many things as you can, and making sure you are consistently giving them the impression you are never satisfied. You can even lie to them by telling them something like this is simply your way of getting them to improve. Of course, you will know all along you are merely disempowering them and creating a feeling of helplessness within them. You just need to make them believe that this is their fault, and not that they’re working for an unreasonable manager.
At the risk of over promising, we believe that if you follow this advice you can achieve learned helplessness across 80% of your staff in just a few months. Throw in some vague instructions for carrying out tasks, assign projects without offering the necessary training to complete them, break a few promises and top it off with an unrealistic goal calculated by confusing metrics and you can speed up the process even more.
2. Disconnection
Once you achieve Helplessness, some sense of Disconnection is likely to ensue, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait out the natural course of things and can’t help speed it along.
Your team may still communicate some real concerns to you, albeit they will not talk to you about the most important matters of the job like they used to. But you still cannot let them think there is any real importance to even the few concerns they might bring to your attention at this phase. This could make them feel somewhat connected to the company in some way, which could sustain any remaining satisfaction they feel. Sparse, non-meaningful discourse, on the other hand, will keep the wheels of dissatisfaction in motion.
3. Silent Hostility
By now you’ve probably managed to piss off some pretty good people. You probably even lost a few of the best members of your team to competitors, but that’s ok. That’s just job security for your HR recruiter. You will start to feel more like a manager again once you start spending several hours of each week interviewing new candidates.
You need to focus on your remaining team. New candidates entering into a pool of already dissatisfied staff members will save you the trouble of having to do this work all over again. Your existing team will help let your new hires know just how dissatisfied they should be right from day one.
You may be wondering why this phase is called Silent Hostility. If they are sharing their grievances with new hires, they are being anything but silent. But we mean Silent Hostility to leadership. Toward you. You won’t personally hear their complaints since you’ve done such an excellent job of training them not to talk to you, but they will complain amongst each other, and of course help facilitate the Dissatisfaction Orientation for any fresh blood entering your company or department.
The good news is that you won’t hear any of their complaints.
They probably can’t afford to take time off to look for other employment so they’ll be sticking around no matter how you treat them, or how disgruntled they become. Most of these guys have likely reached the phase of Silent Hostility. They are Passively Dissatisfied.
Next Steps
We know that there will always be dissatisfied employees regardless of how we treat them. Some people have already learned how to think like unhappy people before they even set foot into the workplace and will act accordingly. Nevertheless, we hope this article helps you understand just how much influence and power you have as a leader over the people in your workplace who might otherwise be satisfied hadn’t you deployed the methods mentioned above.
Now you can go back to interviewing new candidates and arbitrating the silly disputes that frequently arise between dissatisfied, disengaged employees that is often synonymous with management. If you want to.
That being said, you may one day find that you would like to have a team of engaged, productive employees where dissatisfaction is the exception, and not the norm. You may day decide that empowerment is preferable to helplessness. You might want to be more of a manager than a recruiter, more of a mentor than an arbiter. We believe we can help you achieve this goal as well. Just be the opposite of everything you’ve just read.
There’s one positive thing that can be said for Learned Helplessness; since it was learned, it can be unlearned.
And you can help facilitate the unlearning.
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by Corey and David via their media outlets. But there are also hitherto unrevealed nuggets of information for those who have been following this unfolding story, several of which I think are of key importance.This is the most well-rounded presentation of the Secret Space Program and history of the solar system that either of them has ever produced. It is an excellent place to start learning about what has apparently been happening under the cover of secrecy for eons.Here are some important points to consider.As some know, there has been a debate between various alliances negotiating for the freedom of the planet. Some of these groups want full disclosure and a complete release of advanced technology to, whereas others want a limited or partial disclosure, drawn out over 100 years.David and Corey produced the following presentation in an effort to 'blow the lid off' of the partial disclosure agenda. The data presented below is in harmony with a full disclosure effort, which, could make the partial disclosure agenda impossible to realize. David and Corey are making every effort to ensure full disclosure takes place, encouraging a grassroots effort from within the awakening community.In David's Saturday talk, he mentioned that the Sphere Being Alliance has been holding back the energetic ascension of the solar system to provide humanity more time to heal themselves and regain their freedoms, one of the well-known aspects of Corey's testimony. This is being made possible by thousands of massive spheres, cloaked throughout the solar system, here to dampen galactic energy waves which will one day cause a grand solar shift.Recently, Earth-based alliances have chosen to move forward with a partial disclosure agenda, one that will drag the whole process out over 100 years, as mentioned earlier., the Sphere Beings recently said that if a grassroots full disclosure effort is not successful in uniting the awakening community to demand the whole truth,. David speculated that this delay could be at least 100 years, or that it could be as long as 700, referencing a passage from the Law of One.partial disclosure iswhat the SSP Alliance or the Sphere Being Alliance want. And again, David and Corey are doing everything they can to stop this effort and ensure full disclosure takes place; this talk is part of that effort.I was personally taken aback by the notion the Sphere Beings would actually allow the partial disclosure plan to go through. But after some quiet contemplation, I realized that these beings are highly conscious of the laws of the universe, chiefly, free will and thatno matter how much they might want to. The Sphere beings have suggested in the past that full disclosure is the best option to give humanity a real chance at true freedom and prosperity. But the thing that has always held us back, now and in the deep past, is a consciousness of separation, hence their message of love, forgiveness and raising of our vibrations.The reality is, the truther or awakening community is heavily divided, rendered almost completely ineffective insofar as realizing meaningful change for the planet. We've allowed ourselves to focus on our differences instead of the common ground we each share. This is no surprise, as there are countless social programs of subliminal influencing, not to mention personality parasites that compel us to choose fear over love, hate over compassion, and half-truths over the whole truth.The good news is, the truth can be obscured, but never destroyed. We areone people, we area global family, we arepowerful co-creators able to affect great change. We can deny the realities of interconnectedness, but they continue to exist, and we continue to share the burden of this world as one people. We just have to acknowledge these truths and then ask ourselves what are we actually creating with our choices.These are the questions we each must face as we walk our path in life.Generally speaking, as individuals in the truther community, we've been trained through elaborate infiltration efforts, to attack, with prejudice, any point of view that doesn't agree with our own. In many cases, we agree that the cabal must be stopped, that food is being poisoned, that the environment is being destroyed, and that something needs to change, yet because of one divergent belief or another, one disagreement or another, no lasting cooperation can be realized. I've even seen some fight over what words are used to describe our current predicament, with some claiming we've been enslaved by evil humans, while others say it was the archons. And these small differences prevents otherwise cooperative people from working together for change.What I think we could benefit from is to practice open-mindedness and respect the fact that our knowledge is limited, that we don't know everything.Our fellows have a different point of view that can provide us insights into the truth, into who we are and what our purpose in life is, but only if we receive what is offered with child-like innocence. An open mind and heart, combined with an honest appraisal of oneself, helps us keep our'reality bubbles permeable,' as Corey has mentioned before.While I think unity is essential right now, absolute unity is not a realistic goal. Initially, we'll need to find a way toon any topic that would otherwise prevent cooperation. But common goals are what we can base a foundation of unity on, those being: the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; the desire for clean food and water, the desire for a sustainable society, free of toxic pollution, a world free of slavery and oppression, and so on.I think that all our seeming differences are an illusory slick atop an ocean of unacknowledged commonalities. In addition, we've been indoctrinated to believe we are fundamentally separate from each other, the universe and even the creator, all founded on false perspectives of reality. The only way for us to stay divided, to continue to see the world as separate, is if we focus on our differences, if we focus on untruth, instead of the seemingly infinite reasons to focus on what unites us.Often what holds us back is fear that what matters to us won't be acknowledged by another, that they won't care about what we do. And for those lost in separate self-consciousness, this may be true. In many cases, when we see that others believe something that, we immediately feel a barrier go up between us, and then through our choices we reinforce that feeling. But when we bravely pour out kindness and compassion from within, healing is radiated without, helping to create a space for cooperation.I think learning to develop the ability to listen to others compassionately, entertaining their ideas and beliefs,again with child-like innocence, is essential right now. In this way, a loving, cooperative, and accepting relationship can be developed, one that will allow us to share our most cherished ideas free of defensive reactions that maintain separation.It is fear, lack of empathy and close-mindedness that has kept humanity divided over the eons, therefore, only love, forgiveness and truth can restore universal consciousness.Thanks to a change in the way Blizzard’s WoW tokens work, players can now farm World of Warcraft gold and apply it towards credit for Overwatch loot boxes, Heroes of the Storm character unlocks and Hearthstone cards.
WoW Tokens are items introduced to World of Warcraft to give players a way to buy subscription time for in-game gold while giving others a legitimate alternative to purchasing gold from third-party websites. The player in need of World of Warcraft currency can buy a WoW Token for $20 in cash, then sell it for a fixed amount of gold in the game’s auction house (current asking price on North American servers is 62,393 gold). Players buying these tokens at the auction house would then redeem them for 30 days of game time.
Starting today, players can trade those tokens for $15 of Battle.net credit instead of game time (amounts may vary by region). Here’s a video explanation of how that works.
Depending on your World of Warcraft gold farming acumen, this could be a nice way to turn that lazy grinding time into extra in-game items or even full digital Blizzard games. Check out the WoW Token feature page for more info.Bishop John Magee's number two, Monsignor Denis O'Callaghan, has admitted he should have resigned as child protection delegate rather than continue in a job where he disagreed with the child protection guidelines he was supposed to enforce.
Msgr O'Callaghan came in for sharp criticism in the Cloyne Report for his role in failing to respond appropriately to abuse allegations.
In a letter published in The Irish Catholic newspaper, Msgr O'Callaghan, who had responsibility for child safeguarding in the diocese, insists that his primary focus was always on the pastoral care of 'everyone suffering the consequences of sex abuse, primarily the victim but also the transgressor.'
He wrote: 'Judge Yvonne Murphy was made aware of the Cloyne commitment to pastoral care but the commission focussed on its remit of reporting on whether or not procedures were fulfilled.'
He also appears to justify his non-acceptance of mandatory reporting to the civil authorities of abuse allegations insisting that 'for most of those priests accused in Cloyne the complaints alleged incidents dating back over 30 or 40 years.
'Of those priests some would now be terminally ill while others would be under constant medical care.
'The literal guidelines did not allow for any discretion to bishops and to their delegates. Reporting was to be made immediately. No exception was to be made even when an accused priest was on his death-bed,' he adds.
Church attacked by 'arrows of godless culture'
Bishop of Raphoe Dr Philip Boyce has said the Catholic Church is being 'attacked by the arrows of a secular and godless culture.'
Dr Boyce also said the church was rocked from the inside by the sins and crimes of priests and consecrated people.
An independent review of diocesan files relating to child abuse allegations against priests in the bishop's Donegal diocese is nearing completion.
He has promised to publish the findings of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church when he receives them, which is likely to be next month.
Bishop Boyce made his remarks last Saturday but they were not released to journalists until yesterday evening.
He told worshippers at the Novena at the Marian Shrine in Knock, Co Mayo, that they were living through a testing moment of history and a spiritual dark night now engulfs the church.
The bishop urged Catholics to act hopefully and with patience and predicted that the church would rise again.Radioactivity revolutionized the 20th century, not only through weapons, electrical generation, and medical applications, but also by shining a light into Earth’s dark prehistory. Geologists in Darwin’s time could only indirectly guess at the deep time they were studying. The advent of radiometric dating allowed us to measure the age of the Earth and assign dates to the events laid out in the rock record.
But the science of geochronology hasn’t packed up and called it a day, of course. There’s always more to discover and improve upon. A pair of papers published recently in Science present changes to a couple of geologic clocks that will tweak previously calculated dates.
A bad samarium
We start with an element that doesn’t come up too often in casual conversation—samarium. It has a number of isotopic flavors, several of which are radioactive. Samarium-146, which ultimately decays to neodymium-142, is used to date some events in the formation of the solar system. It’s especially useful for dating the differentiation of planetary bodies and asteroids, when denser elements separated from lighter ones.
It’s often not the only decay series used to date these events, and samarium-146 has commonly been found to yield dates that don’t quite fall in line with other series. Previous measurements (performed between the 1950s and 1980s) of the half-life of samarium-146 have ranged from 50 million up to 103 million years; the latter became the accepted value. A group of researchers have now used greatly-improved instruments to revisit the particularly tricky measurement, and report a significant revision. They put the half-life at 68 million years.
This does make for some interesting shake-ups in the chronology of Earth’s formation, at least for work that relied solely on the samarium-146 clock. Those dates will shift closer to the initiation of planet formation, with some moving as much as 80 million years. For the most part, though, this seems to be more about tidying up the books than reworking timelines. The updated half-life brings samarium-146 dates in line with other decay series. So for events that were dated using multiple series, this merely erases the question marks surrounding that discrepancy.
Shaking up uranium
The other clock getting a tune-up is the familiar family of uranium-lead series, which are used on a wide variety of events, including the age of the Earth. Here, the question is not about the half-life, but about the abundance of uranium-235 with respect to the most common isotope, uranium-238.
Both isotopes are used for radiometric dating, and serve as convenient cross-checks on ages due to the difference between their half-lives. Uranium-238 decays to lead-206 with a half-life of 4.47 billion years, and uranium-235 decays to lead-207 with a half-life of about 700 million years. The ratio of these radiogenic (created by radioactive decay) isotopes of lead to non-radiogenic lead can also be used to calculate ages. In fact, lead-lead dating was the technique used by Clair Patterson in 1953 to obtain the first definitive age of the Earth. (His difficulties in the lab resulted in the discovery of lead air pollution and, ultimately, to the creation of unleaded gasoline.)
Since over 99 percent of uranium comes in the 238 flavor, getting enough uranium-235 to calculate a proper date can sometimes be a challenge. It has been assumed that the uranium in the Earth was perfectly mixed, so that the ratio of 238U/235U was invariably 137.88. Because of this, the process is commonly simplified by measuring the more abundant 238U and calculating the amount of 235U using that ratio. In lead-lead dating, the ratio is actually built into the age equation.
Recent high-precision work has turned up some rebel values that called the invariability of that ratio into question, though. To get a handle on this, researchers from the British Geological Survey and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have carefully measured the 238U/235U ratio in a number of mineral specimens, including 44 zircon crystals, which are frequently used for this type of dating. They calculated an average ratio of 137.818 ±0.045. That may not sound like much of a difference, but it’s not to be ignored.
The impact of that change depends on the method used. For 235U-207Pb dates, the difference is greatest for older samples. Something previously dated as 4.5 billion years old would be off by about 400,000 years (a whopping 0.009% difference, to be fair). A similar 238U-206Pb date would have to move a little less than 30,000 years to fall in line.
The new uranium ratio has the biggest impact on lead-lead dating. In contrast to the other methods, the difference in dates actually decreases with the age of the sample, ranging from 700,000 to 1,000,000 years.
In the grand scheme, these updates obviously aren’t upsetting the apple cart. But they may upset an apple or two, and that’s enough to make scientists in a range of disciplines take notice.
Science, 2012. DOI: 10.1126/science.1215507 and 1010.1126/science.1215510 (About DOIs).Since last week, ransomware attacks on Elasticsearch have quadrupled. Just like the MongoDB ransomware assaults of several weeks ago, Elasticsearch incursions are accelerating at a rapid rate.
John Matherly
There are an estimated 35,000 Elasticsearch clusters open to attack. Of these, Niall Merrigan, a solution architect who has been reporting on the attack numbers on Twitter, states that over 4,600 of them have been compromised.
If your Elasticsearch server is hacked, you'll find your data indices gone and replaced with a single index warning. The first example read:
SEND 0.2 BTC TO THIS WALLET: 1DAsGY4Kt1a4LCTPMH5vm5PqX32eZmot4r IF YOU WANT RECOVER YOUR DATABASE! SEND TO THIS EMAIL YOUR SERVER IP AFTER SENDING THE BITCOINS...
In return for the.2 BitCoins (not quite $175), you might get your data back.
Elasticsearch is a popular, open-source distributed RESTful search engine. When used with the Lucene search-engine library, it's used by major websites such as Pandora, SoundCloud, and Wikipedia for search functionality. When used by amateurs without any security skills, it's simple to crack.
These wide-open to attack instances are typically being deployed without much on Amazon Web Services (AWS) clouds. Perhaps the people deploying them are under the illusion that AWS is protecting them. Wrong.
AWS does tell you how to protect your AWS Elasticsearch instances, but you still have to do the work. In short, RTFM.
The worst thing about this? Just like the MongoDB attacks, none of this would have happened if its programmers had protected its instances with basic, well-known security measures.
For starters, as Elasticsearch consultant Itamar Syn-Hershko explained in a blog on how to protect yourself against Elasticsearch attacks: "Whatever you do, never expose your cluster nodes to the web. This sounds obvious, but evidently this isn't done by all. Your cluster should never-ever be exposed to the public web."
In a word, "duh!"
Elasticsearch was never meant to be wide-open to internet users. Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, explained all this in 2013. This post is filled with such red-letter warnings as "Elasticsearch has no concept of a user." Essentially, anyone that can send arbitrary requests to your cluster is a "super user."
Does this sound like a system you should leave wide-open on the internet for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to play with? I don't think so!
So, what can you do? First, if you're using Elasticsearch for business, bite the bullet and get the commerical version of Elasticsearch. Then, add X-Pack Security to your setup and implement its security features.
By itself, Elasticsearch has no security. You must add it on.
If you're committed to doing it on your own, practice basic security. At a bare minimum this includes:
Don't run on internet-accessible servers.
If you make your Elasticsearch cluster internet accessible, restrict access to it via firewall, virtual private network (VPN), or a reverse proxy.
Perform backups of your data to a secure location and consider using Curator snapshots
In short, practice security 101, and don't be the fool who lets anyone invade their servers. After all, you could very well end up paying a lot more than just some petty-cash if a truly malicious hacker came by to raid your servers.
Related Stories:I brought four Legacy decks with me to Charlotte: Waterfalls (4-Color Cascade), Burn, Monowhite D&T, and Red Prison. I intended to play each deck for one challenge event, but ended up playing Red Prison in three of the four events since I enjoyed it so much. For those of you unfamiliar with the archetype, let’s look at my list to start things off:
Red Prison
I based the list I ran largely off PinkFrosting’s recent 5-0 list, just tweaking some sideboard cards slightly. This deck has been called “Dragon Stompy” quite a bit, but since this version doesn’t actually run any of the trademark dragons like Avaricious Dragon or Thunderbreak Regent, I’ve just been calling it Red Prison. The core of this deck is very powerful. Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, Blood Moon, and Magus of the Moon often effectively end the game on your first or second turn. Accordingly, you can mulligan very aggressively for powerful openers, especially if you know which pieces will cripple your opponent.
As an aside, I do mean that you can mulligan *very* aggressively. I took 17 mulligans with this deck over 12 rounds (plus a couple of playtesting games on the side) and still ended up with a game win percentage of ~60%. Honestly, if I could replay some of the games I lost, I would have mulliganed more. I kept many “reasonable” hands in my first event instead of trying to mulligan for stronger hands, and that may have cost me. Oddly enough, mulliganing makes your Ensnaring Bridge and Hazoret the Fervent better as well, which is an odd factor that I didn’t initially consider. This was my favorite example from the event of the power of good mulligan decisions: I mulled to four against an opponent, and my opponent said, “Oh man, I’m sorry. It’d be really impressive if you pulled off this win though…” Sure enough, my four card hand produced a Blood Moon, and my opponent flopped around while a Simian Spirit Guide beat him to death. Impressive indeed.
On that note, it doesn’t really matter what cards you choose to win with. The core shell of this deck is very good at crippling opponents, buying you time to win…somehow. The version I’m playing is pretty controlling, but it’s easy to get aggressive with things like Goblin Rabblemaster, Shaman of the Great Hunt, and Pia and Kiran Nalaar. I like the Ensnaring Bridge as a way to hate on Show and Tell, which is a rough matchup otherwise. Once you have a Bridge up, Chardra, Torch of Defiance and Sin Prodder will draw you cards and/or slowly bleed your opponent out. Both of those cards were so much better in practice than I imagined they would be. Sin Prodder is basically a color-shifted Dark Confidant, while Chandra is similar to Jace, the Mind Sculptor. While that’s slight hyperbole, the cards are very good at taking over games.
I did lose a few games to my own mistakes and poor sequencing, and I’ll be the first to admit that. This shell is extremely explosive, but that power does come at a price. Take Trinisphere, for example. Playing a turn one Trinisphere often feels like a double Time Walk for you…but it does make your future Chrome Mox feel terrible, and it does make your hand a bit harder to empty for Ensnaring Bridge. Ensnaring Bridge may protect you from opposing creatures, but it keeps your idiots form getting in damage as well. Sol lands and Simian Spirit Guide can power out an early threat, but they do make casting your double red cards a bit tricky sometimes.
Magus of the Moon and Blood Moon are simultaneously a combo and nonbo with your Sol lands. The obvious first level thought is that playing one of these cards leaves you effectively down a mana. In reality though, Moon is often (usually?) a good thing. A Moon will keep you from sacrificing City or taking damage off Tomb, both of which are very relevant as the games go long. Moon also helps you to get double red, which is more of a concern than you might think in the early turns of the game. It’s also an insurance policy against annoying lands like Rishadan Port and Wasteland that can really disrupt your gameplan. It also turns your colorless lands into Mountains for synergy with Koth of the Hammer.
Of the maindeck cards, I am 100% comfortable with 57 of them. Quicksmith Rebel, Koth of the Hammer, and Hazoret the Fervent are probably the three most questionable/replaceable cards in the maindeck. All of these cards serve a unique purpose and fill a niche role, but are perhaps not essential to the deck. The deck is a little glutted at the 4-drop slot, so I could see wanting a little more early interaction. I’ve seen Magma Jet floating around as an option that can snipe an early creature while also providing some card selection. I’m not too keen on that card personally due to its objectively low power level and upside, but I get it. I do also think that other four drops like Avaricious Dragon or Pia and Kiran Nalaar are worthy of consideration. I also would consider promoting Sudden Shock to the maindeck. I think that card is criminally underplayed for how good it is at wrecking Delvers and friends.
On the subject of four drops, Fiery Confluence is a stupid Magic card. Unlike other modal cards like Cryptic Command where you have to make a different choice for each mode, you are allowed to make the same choice multiple times with Fiery Confluence. That means that this is a split card that can: wipe the board, destroy a bunch of artifacts, dome your opponent for six, or some combination of those things. This card stabilizes the board, answers problem cards, and closes the game. That’s amazing flexibility, and I attribute many of my wins to savage blowouts with this card. “I’ll blow up your Vial and do two damage to each creature.” “I’ll blow up both of your Mox Diamond and do two to you.” You get the idea.
Red Prison Sideboard
Conceptually, I wanted to do four primary things in building the sideboard for the deck:
1. Deal with graveyards, an axis on which the deck has no other real ability to fight.
2. Deal with creatures, especially those of Delver and D&T.
3. Fill holes in a few other matchups of your choice.
4. Have seven “fair and reasonable” cards to bring in for matchups where Chalice and Trinisphere are bad.
Since this is a Chalice deck, Faerie Macabre and Leyline of the Void are the two primary options for strong grave hate. Faerie is a bit better with Ensnaring Bridge since you can discard it at any time, and is better if it is drawn after your opening hand. Leyline of the Void will be a more impactful card in most cases if it is in your opener and a more permanent hate card. I think both are very reasonable. I opted for Leyline given how willing I already am to mulligan looking for a good hand.
I’ve been really hot for Kozilek’s Return for ages. That card has crushed my dreams on so many occasions that I tend to throw it in most red decks I play. It dodges cards that otherwise might nullify red removal like Mother of Runes or Hydroblast due to its Devoid nature. It’s also an instant, meaning it can snag creatures in response to equipping or catch man lands like Mishra’s Factory. That being said, being Devoid is not necessarily a bonus when you are playing a set of Chrome Mox. Playing two was probably a mistake, and I’ll probably switch one to a Pyroclasm,Volcanic Fallout, Sudden Demise, or a second Pyrokinesis next time.
I see many people playing four Sulfur Elemental in the slots where I have sweepers, and I think that’s a mistake. I think the metagame is too wide open right now to be playing that specialized degree of hate, especially with Mentor Miracles being dead (or in a much worse state at the very least). It’s probably worth losing a few percentage points against D&T to pick up points against other creature decks like Elves with more generic sweepers. I also don’t think the D&T matchup is the worst thing in the world. This red deck certainly has more game against it than other iterations using the same shell. Fiery Confluence is a hell of a drug, and it will get out out of a surprisingly bad situation if you are able to cast it. Similarly, Ensnaring Bridge makes it very hard for your opponent to do anything productive unless they have a Flickerwisp.
I think the final few slots of the sideboard need to address general holes in your game. I opted to fight against combo decks and Burn with a set of Thorn of Amethyst. There’s probably an argument for these to be Sphere of Resistance to hate on Elves and Food Chain as well, but I liked the idea of curving Thorn into Sin Prodder or Magus too much to make that change. I’d probably consider playing three Thorns and a second Phyrexian Revoker next time though; Revoker is a great way to stop opposing planeswalkers, which are a big problem when you are stuck behind your own Ensnaring Bridge. I’ve seen people throwing in Zuran Orb for Burn or Karakas for Sneak and Show in these slots as well. I don’t like Zuran Orb in a land-light deck, and I’m not a fan of Karakas in a Blood Moon deck, but I understand the battles that are being fought with those cards.
I really enjoyed playing this deck, and I’ll probably mess around with it a bit more. Don’t worry, I’ll still be on D&T most of the time, but after spending weeks testing builds to varying degrees of success, I wanted a bit of a break. I’m still relatively new to this deck (I’ve probably played about 100 games), but I think I’m starting to get a good feel for the sequencing and boarding. For those of you who have been playing it for longer than I have, I’d love to hear your thoughts and advice!(ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV - Russia has deployed a large number of warplanes and missile batteries at Latakia in Syria, where Moscow is supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad, according to a series of satellite photographs to be shown Tuesday by the Israeli Fisher Institute at a conference on space research at Herzlyia.
The photos show S400 missile batteries alongside SA22 missile systems. There are also 30 warplanes on runways.
The Fisher Institute for strategic studies in the air and in space explained in a statement that the photographs it analysed were taken some days ago by the Israeli satellite Eros, which is managed by Isi (ImageSat International).
According to the director of the space research centre Tal Inbar, the S400 batteries are now operational and SA22 Pantsyr batteries have been installed next to them - a reinforcement of defence measures that the Institute speculates may have been arranged for fear of an eventual military escalation against Turkey.
On the day the photos were taken Russian warplanes on the Latakia airport runways included 11 Sukhoi 24 jets, 10 Sukhoi 25s, seven Sukhoi 34s and four Sukhoi 30s while other aircraft based at the facility may have been elsewhere on mission, the Insitute said. The Institute added that Sukhoi 24 engines that seized up during repeated attacks in Syria are having new engines installed at the facility.(ANSAmed).How much are nuclear weapons really worth? Is upgrading the US nuclear arsenal worth $1.2 trillion – in the hopes of never using it – when that money could be used to improve lives, create jobs, decrease taxes, or pay off debts? How far can $1.2 trillion go if it’s not all spent on nukes?
The application below helps answer those questions. Click on the icons on the left to ‘shop’ for items to add to your cart. See something you want to add? Just click on the title, and it will automatically be placed in your cart. To view your items or make changes, click on the shopping cart. From there, you can increase or decrease the amount of money allotted to each. If you want to maintain deterrence, but don’t support the whole upgrade, then just don’t spend all of the money – whatever is left over can be what you think nuclear upgrades are worth. When you’re done, click on the shopping cart, and share on social media to let your voice be heard!The RS-25 test team at Stennis Space Center hot-fired an untested flight engine on the A-1 Test Stand Thursday to help complete certification of design changes to fly on the Space Launch System (SLS). The test is another step towards the flagship test firing of all four engines on the B-2 Test Stand.
RS-25 Test:
Engine 2063 was assembled at Stennis from the hardware inventory inherited from the Space Shuttle Program.
It was installed in the A-1 test stand at the end of September to begin final preparations for the eight-minute long firing, which also serves as the acceptance test for the new engine.
The test marked one of the final requirements for certifying the SLS launch environment for the engines along with modern replacement computer hardware and software.
As adaptation of the former Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) design to the RS-25 is nearing completion, the four engines that will fly on the first SLS launch, Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), are assembled and ready for integration, hopefully sometime next year.
Accepting Engine 2063:
The test team of personnel from NASA, RS-25 prime contractor Aerojet Rocketdyne, and Stennis facilities contractor Syncom Space Services (S3) conducted the countdown and hot-fire.
The test team at Stennis was again using the more typical event-driven approach.
When all of the prerequisite steps prior to ignition are complete and the hardware and the people are ready, the test started.
“The test that we’re planning to run on Thursday is a 500-second duration test, which is typical of what we’ve done in the past, it’s representative of a nominal SLS profile,” Philip Benefield, Systems and Requirements Team Lead for the SLS Liquid Engines Office, said ahead of the test.
The firing took place at 2:55pm local Central Time.
E2063 is one of two unflown, untested flight units in the engine hardware inventory inherited by SLS from the Space Shuttle Program; the engine is currently assigned to fly on the second SLS Core Stage.
Primary objectives of the test-firing are to acceptance test the “new” engine and help certify the new engine control system by demonstrating that it works with a flight engine.
“In terms of what we’ve stated that we need to demonstrate on the ground, through our ground test program with the different development engines to certify the design is ready for SLS, Thursday’s test is it,” he noted.
Another primary goal is to acceptance test or “green run” several major engine components, including the FM8 engine controller unit (ECU), the engine nozzle, and both high-pressure turbopumps.
“We’re going to spend the majority of our time at 109 percent power, which is the nominal power level in flight for SLS. We’re [also] doing green runs of the turbo-machinery and so we make sure that we put the pumps through their paces, if you will. We pressurize the tanks [and] we vent the tanks to make sure that they go through a whole pressure profile.”
During the 500-second long test firing, the engine was throttled at thrust levels from 80 percent to 109 percent of rated power level (RPL). The engine was throttled at 109 percent RPL for 350 seconds, at 100 percent RPL for eight seconds, and at 80 percent RPL for 78 seconds.
Although the integrated engine is tested as a unit, the green run of the engine and the components are separate objectives in the test.
“The engine is made up of a lot of components; two of the primary components are the powerhead and the main [combustion] chamber,” Benefield explained.
“When we put those two components together we basically define that as ‘you’ve made an engine now.’ You can add a lot of LRUs (line-replaceable units) to it — different pumps, different valves, different ducts, and so forth, but that combination of a powerhead and a chamber really [defines] the engine and we want to measure the performance of that system.
“When we do the engine acceptance test, we’re really focused on measuring the key engine attributes, that being the thrust and the specific impulse of the engine.”
The last of the sixteen units to be completed, E2063 was assembled over an approximately three month period in Aerojet Rocketdyne’s facility in Building 9101 at Stennis, with major assembly completed in 2015. Although E2063 is not planned to fly until the second SLS launch, all four of those second-flight engines will also serve as spares for the EM-1 inaugural flight.
“We want to have them ready before EM-1 is ready to fly in case we have an issue on the pad and we have to change out engines and we have that set ready to go in,” Benefield noted.
Certifying the adaptation design:
The “heritage” SSME hardware and its Shuttle-era, reusable design was adapted for use in the SLS Core Stage. The resulting “adaptation” version of the engine, now going by its RS-25 designation, will fly a final launch in sets of four on the expendable launch vehicle.
Although largely the same engine design and hardware, the RS-25 adaptation engines integrated a new control system for use on SLS, which includes new engine controller hardware and software.
More than two and a half years of ground testing across seventeen hot-fire tests have helped demonstrate and qualify the new control system and have tested the engines under SLS flight conditions. For SLS, the engines operate at higher pressures and higher thrust than on Shuttle, and the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant is also fed to them at colder temperatures.
Integration of the engines with the SLS Core Stage and the overall launch vehicle, which also includes two solid rocket boosters larger than the ones used on Shuttle, will also bring other operational and environmental changes for the engines both before and during flight, including areas like ascent thermal heating and propellant management.
This eighteenth RS-25 hot-fire test for SLS was the second test of a flight SLS Core Stage engine; the first was performed on E2059 in March, 2016. The E2059 test in 2016 satisfied an earlier certification program objective of establishing run-time on a flight engine, although using an earlier engineering model of the ECU.
This second flight engine test serves as one of the final test objectives in the certification program for the planned adaptation engine flight design.
“The [engine] 2063 test is the last one required for us to get certification for first flight. Actually, honestly for the first four flights — [the certification] covers all the adaptation engines, which is the sixteen engines that we have for the first four flights,” Benefield said.
Shutdown from 80 percent:
Many of the recent hot-fire tests are using aspects of the throttle profile that is planned for the first SLS launches. During a recent interview, Benefield explained the throttle profile from a graph of the most recent hot-fire test on August 30.
“We start to 100 [percent RPL], we ramp up to 109, which is the same as we do in flight, then we have some time down at 80 percent, then back up to 109. Then we have this quick bucket here that mimics what’s done in flight around the |
other inherently wasteful programs that breed price-gouging.And Obamacare is only making matters worse by spiking many people's monthly premiums so dramatically that they're essentially being forced to seek out the lower cash rate. Some people are even ditching their plans entirely and just paying out of pocket rather than try to reach their ever-escalating deductible thresholds -- it's actually cheaper not to use one's government-mandated health insurance, in many cases!"This is one of the dirty little secrets of healthcare," Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, explained to the. "If your insurance has a high deductible, you should always ask for the cash price."The rationale seems to be that if an insurance company or the government is footing all or most of the bill anyway, then hospitals can charge whatever it wants for medical services. All of this gets thrown on its head, though, when real-life people are having to cover these costs directly."This just shows how screwed up the whole pricing system is," Glenn Melnick, a health economist at the University of Southern California (USC), added, making the case for a true, free-market healthcare system. "It absolutely makes sense to shop around for healthcare like you shop for everything else."In an ideal world, insurance companies would negotiate with hospitals and medical providers to get the best possible rates for policyholders. But so much has changed in recent years, especially with the government getting more involved in controlling the destiny of healthcare, that the gap between what medical services actually cost versus what patients are being asked to pay has only widened."Insurers aren't getting the best prices anymore," says Melnick. "Hospitals often charge whatever they want and have tremendous power over insurance plans."A colleague pointed me to this essay by an academic who mentioned in a submitted paper that the possibility of biological differences among human groups ought to be considered. His submission was firmly rejected in the face of “… expletives and exclamation points to give the most venomous and dismissive feedback I have ever encountered” from the reviewers. This essay ought to be read by anyone concerned about the sorry state of our social and behavioral sciences. The author also points us to a website at Heterodox Academy with useful comments and discussion.
Long ago when I was in graduate school I attended a “workshop” sponsored by an outfit called the “Foundations’ Fund for Research in Psychiatry.” The attendees were mostly chairs of Psychiatry at US and Canadian medical schools. Each had been invited to bring along a promising graduate student or postdoc, hence my presence. The meeting, to my innocent eyes, was hilarious. The opening session led by David Hamburg outlined the theme of the meeting, the movement to rid psychiatric education of analysis and all its baggage and to replace all of it with biological psychiatry. It was a carefully thought out session with a lot of emphasis on evidence and the scientific method.
The afternoon session featured the analysts and they completely torpedoed the meeting without providing a trace of substance. The talks were variants of “let us think about why you feel this way and understand the source of your antagonism”. They were a smooth talking lot and, sure enough, nothing at all was accomplished. I didn’t know much at that time but I knew enough to recognize a faith-based cult of true believers.
Our social and educational sciences are, much of them, in the hands of a cult like this, devout creationists all with their heads in the sand of social science as it was envisioned half a century ago. We recently had an experience much like Anomaly’s. Over a year ago Mike Weight (an undergraduate) and I posted a draft of a manuscript about using quantitative genetic theory to evaluate changes over time in traits. We had in mind a technology useful for distinguishing cultural from genetic transmission. Many readers of our blog made helpful comments and, to our shame, found a large number of typos. I shudder when I reread that old post. It was written shortly after I had my temporal lobe bleed and the whole part of my brain that was capable of proofreading seems to have been knocked out.
We thought we should submit it somewhere where social scientists would read it. We got back, from a succession of three journals, a stunning set of ignorant and irrelevant reviews. For example the first sentence of the first one we read said “this is really about race and it ought to be made clear”. Another said “they are trying to push genetics where it has no place”. The tone of all of them was like this, angry and scornful. One reviewer told us that our views were outdated and discredited since epigenetics had swept the field!
We had two and one half mildly sensible reviews, one about technical aspects of quantitative genetic theory and another by a reviewer unhappy with the level of detail and statistical aspects of the treatment of Amish test results. Since we regarded the Amish data as a toy set of data, we made no changes. The other reviewers were all hostile and angry at what we had written, several convinced that the paper must be racist but they didn’t quite understand how or why. We could only laugh at the collection of reviews because none of them had any idea what they were talking about. None made it so far as to read and understand the central point of the paper. With the exceptions mentioned above, they were pig ignorant and proud of it.
In a recent post here, Greg’s conclusion about the social sciences was that “they’re just no damn good”. It is easy to come up with social scientists who are excellent— Steve Pinker and Charles Murray and Dalton Conley and Jonathan Haidt pop to mind — but my sample of reviewers suggests that for most of them Greg is right on the money. We surrendered to the collective social science wisdom and submitted the paper to our friends at the Journal of Biosocial Science where it is in press, out any day now, as an open access article.
AdvertisementsThere's a food truck handing out free sweets in SF... if you can find it.
United Airlines is parking their food truck around San Francisco and handing out free food to promote their new route from SFO to Munich. United Airlines is parking their food truck around San Francisco and handing out free food to promote their new route from SFO to Munich. Photo: United Airlines Photo: United Airlines Image 1 of / 24 Caption Close There's a food truck handing out free sweets in SF... if you can find it. 1 / 24 Back to Gallery
San Franciscans love their food trucks. When the food is free, that's even better.
United Airlines is hoping to use that love to drum up interest in their new route from San Francisco to Munich.
Through August 13, United's food truck will be parked at one of three locations starting at 11 a.m. every day. You'll be able to find the truck in SoMa along Brannan Street, in the Financial District somewhere on Sansome Street, or in Mission Bay on Mission Bay Boulevard North.
The airline won't announce the food truck's exact location, so you'll have to be on the lookout in those neighborhoods if you're looking for a free bite to eat.
But don't come too hungry, the truck isn't serving up a full menu: They'll be handing out horseshoe almond and apple crumb cakes, to give people a taste of German desserts.
"It's a sweet way to give our customers a little insight into a cool destination, which will hopefully spark their interest to travel there," United spokesperson Maddie King told SFGATE.
San Francisco isn't the only place the airline is treating to free food. United also has a food truck roaming the streets of New York City. The truck there is serving rugelach and black and white cookies to promote a new route from Newark to Tel Aviv. That truck is also serving dulce de leche doughnuts and coconut cream pineapple doughnuts for a flight to Buenos Aires, and even more doughnuts (cherry and "yuzu" lemon zest flavors) celebrating the airline's flights to Tokyo, according to the Chicago Business Journal.
United's new seasonal route between SFO and Munich leaves daily on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner and is the first time the airline has flown nonstop between the two cities.
Read Alix Martichoux's latest stories and send her news tips at amartichoux@sfchronicle.com.The US will give Israel $38 billion in military aid over the next ten years under a landmark agreement which was signed on Wednesday.
The deal, the largest military aid package in U.S. history, was signed as planned by Israel’s national security advisor and a senior US diplomat.
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement after the signing, calling the deal “historic.”
The deal will require Israel to buy all weapons from US manufacturers, unlike previous aid packages which partially went to Israeli companies.
Middle East Eye reports:
Israel’s acting national security adviser Jacob Nagel and US Under-Secretary of State Tom Shannon signed the deal at the State Department, bringing to an end months of wrangling over the details of the package.
The deal prevents Israel from requesting additional aid from Congress over the next 10 years, and will also remove the previous arrangement which had allowed Israel to use up to 25 percent of the aid money on its own defence industry, instead requiring that all the aid is spent with US arms manufacturers.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu and I are confident that the new MOU will make a significant contribution to Israel’s security in what remains a dangerous neighbourhood,” US President Barack Obama said in a written statement.
“For as long as the state of Israel has existed, the United States has been Israel’s greatest friend and partner, a fact underscored again today,” Obama said.
“This commitment to Israel’s security has been unwavering and is based on a genuine and abiding concern for the welfare of the Israeli people and the future of the State of Israel.”
Obama has not had the warmest of relations with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Washington in recent weeks stepped up its criticism of Israeli settlement-building on occupied Palestinian land.
The deal covers the period from 2019 to 2028 and will see Israel receive about $3.3bn per year in foreign military financing – up from $3.1bn currently – and $500,000 in funding for missile defence.
Israel is already the biggest single recipient of US military aid from the State Department’s foreign military financing budget, and also receives some direct support from Pentagon funds for specific projects.How the Palestinian national football team beat the odds in battle to get to Asian Cup in Australia
Updated
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Palestinian footballers debate Israeli cameraman (ABC News)
Imagine, just for a moment, that the Socceroos, the Hockeyroos, the Wallabies or the Matildas are about to depart for the biggest sports match in Australian history.
But instead of waltzing through passport control and flying out of Sydney airport in first-class comfort, they have to go through three overland border crossings manned by the militaries of three different countries, with no guarantee they will be permitted to leave.
It is unimaginable — unless you are Palestinian.
While other teams competing at the 2015 Asian Cup in January arrived in Australia without issue, for the Palestinians, just making it out of their nascent state — which is not yet recognised by Australia — was a battle in itself.
With no international airport in the West Bank or Gaza, their football players faced a geopolitical steeplechase out of the Palestinian Territories, past Israeli and Jordanian border patrols at Allenby Bridge and on to Amman airport before the short haul to Dubai and then the long haul to Australia.
But the complicated journey, filmed by a team for the ABC's Foreign Correspondent program, was just one of the many hurdles faced by the footballers.
Assistant coach Saeb Jundiyeh lives in Shujaiyah, the area of Gaza which was hit worst during last year's bloody war between Israel and Hamas. The top two floors of his home were destroyed by Israeli air strikes.
While he has a wife and five kids, he also has another family — the Palestinian national team. His melancholy is self-evident, but he has a higher calling: to put a smile on the faces of the world's 12 million Palestinians.
"If you think you are only playing football, you are wrong," he instructs his players.
"You are the Palestinian ambassador to the world, just like a politician or a foreign minister."
Midfielder Abdelhamid Abu Habib was born in Khan Yunis refugee camp in Gaza. He moved to the West Bank to further his football career.
Ironically, it is now almost easier for him to travel to Australia than to go home to Gaza to see his mum.
"I miss him," his mother tells Foreign Correspondent.
"When I see him on TV I feel sad, because I can't touch him."
Then there is striker Sameh Maraaba, who was jailed last year for seven months. Israel says he conspired with the enemy, acting as a courier for Hamas.
Maraaba denied the allegations and maintained his innocence.
A spokesman for the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs, Paul Hirschon, said: "We had concrete information he was transferring or involved in the potential transfer of communications equipment and also of finance."
The Palestine Football Association said Maraaba was simply carrying money back to his football club on the West Bank on behalf of a man living in Qatar who had previously been jailed by Israel as a member of Hamas.
"He met an ex-colleague of the club, a player who donated some money to the club," Jibril Rajoub, the president of the Palestine Football Association, said.
"If someone from Hamas is going to make a donation to the association, what's the problem in that?"
Whatever the truth, Maraaba never made it to Australia. Detained at the last minute at Allenby Bridge, he was denied exit, blacklisted for his alleged link to Hamas.
Against this backdrop, the team's footballers are the ultimate underdogs. It was a miracle they made it into Asia's top 16 teams, especially considering what went on behind the scenes once they finally made it to Australia.
Well after midnight on the eve of the most important match in their history, a group of the players gathered inside a bathroom in a hotel room in Newcastle.
They were due to face Japan, the defending champions, the next day — but you would never know it.
While the Japanese were tucked up in bed in the very same hotel, the Palestinians were busy hamming it up for the cameras while getting haircuts and beard trims from a local Palestinian barber.
The twenty-somethings wanted to make sure they looked their best for a global TV audience of hundreds of millions.
If the Palestinian players were jubilant just to be here, their fans in Australia were ecstatic. Thousands flocked to the matches in Newcastle, Melbourne and Canberra.
For the three Odeh brothers from Melbourne, just witnessing their national anthem and their flag flying inside the stadium triggered a rush of raw emotion.
"Our flag is up; it's up there," one of the Odeh brothers screamed inside Melbourne's stadium.
The other brother replied: "We're recognised — that's what it's all about."
Ultimately, what happened on the pitch was nothing short of a disaster; three crushing defeats, 11 goals conceded, and one solitary goal scored.
But for so many Palestinians, the scores were irrelevant; what was relevant was their recognition in a country whose Government still does not recognise Palestine.
Foreign Correspondent: Pitch Battle airs on ABC TV at 8:00pm.
Dan Goldberg is an award winning film-maker and journalist. Code of Silence, co-produced with Danny Ben-Moshe, won the 2014 Walkley Award for Documentary and his series Brilliant Creatures has been nominated for a 2015 Logie Award.
Topics: world-politics, soccer, sport, palestinian-territory-occupied, australia
First postedTraining camp for the Houston Texans is underway, and on Monday the team will hit the practice field wearing pads. Well, most of them anyway.
Jadeveon Clowney is still recovering from a microfracture procedure to repair his knee and was placed on the preseason physically unable to perform (PUP) list. He'll join his teammates when cleared by the medical staff.
A few days ago, I heard an interesting question brought up on the air by Sean Pendergast, Ted Johnson and Rich Lord on Sports Radio 610. Paraphrasing here, but the question was basically, "What is the minimum number of productive years from Jadeveon Clowney (as a Houston Texan) you would equate to Clowney being a success for the Texans?"
It's a brilliant question, because it strikes right at the heart of the mixed emotions for fans who watched their beloved team invest the number one overall draft pick on a player in 2014, only to then see that player miss most of his rookie season due to: sports hernia surgery, a concussion in training camp, a torn lateral meniscus and then microfracture surgery.
Let's just come out and say it: We feel cheated by this situation. Clowney was supposed to be a "generational talent" and he was Houston's for the taking. It was a reward, of sorts, for enduring the misery of the disastrous 2013 season, where the back-to-back division champions of the AFC South followed Matt Schaub's unfortunate and complete demise.
Well, that's life, especially in the violent world of the NFL. Take, for instance, Brian Cushing. Had he not suffered two rare and highly unlikely season-ending injuries in 2012 and 2013, it is quite possible that people would be talking about his future induction into the Hall of Fame. He was one of the top linebackers in the NFL before he got hurt, and his absence made it clear how much more effective the overall defense was with him at the heart of it. Unfortunately, he lost two seasons during his prime years and is now clawing his way back. Injuries are part of this sport, and nothing is guaranteed.
Now lets look at another player. J.J. Watt was the 11th overall pick of the 2011 NFL Draft for the Texans, and many fans were scratching their heads about this selection. Clearly few people thought he would amount to more than a starter, but the universe chose to reward Houston with a true "generational talent" who is quickly becoming not only the face of the Texans, but the face of the league. We should count ourselves incredibly fortunate to have a player of this caliber and character on the team.
Let's be honest, though. We are not satisfied. We still want some type of value for that first overall pick from 2014, don't we? Through all the controversy surrounding Clowney leading up to that draft, there were a good amount of folks pulling for Teddy Bridgewater since the Texans still hadn't resolved the ever-critical quarterback position. Others were pining for Khalil Mack. Houston selected Clowney, and then our hearts sank with each report of how he would miss time due to injuries and recovery from procedures. So here we are, on the cusp of training camp for Clowney's second NFL season with no indication of when he'll actually be ready to deliver on the investment the organization made in him.
Say that Clowney does deliver on that investment, but his career is shortened by the wear-and-tear he has been through. Let's also suggest that he does perform at the "generational talent" level that we all hoped he would. How many years of that sort of production would you consider to be the minimum for the team's investment to be a success? What if one, or more, of those years led to a Super Bowl championship for the Texans?
Vote and chime in with your thoughts on this. Next week, the journey begins!For the first time, waves as tall as 16 feet have been recorded in Arctic waters. If these waves are speeding the breakup of the region's remaining ice, as oceanographers suspect, they could signal the birth of a feedback mechanism that will hasten the Arctic's march toward an ice-free summer.
Above: Ocean waters transition from solid to liquid in the Arctic summer | Photo Credit: Patrick Kelley, U.S. Coast Guard via USGS
One way to produce waves is to combine wind, time, and water. Wind that blows strong and long enough over a large enough surface of water can generate whitecaps, which give rise to small swells, which in turn consolidate into big, heavy waves.
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Back when Arctic sea ice receded as little as 100 miles every summer, there was little water to work with, when it came to generating waves. But in the warming North, sea ice is retreating. Meanwhile, regions of open water are expanding. In the summer of 2012, the Arctic surrendered more than 1,000 miles of coastal ice to liquid ocean. When it did, the region's persistent summertime winds gained a new and powerful purchase on the vast stretches of open water.
During a September 2012 storm, University of Washington Researcher Jim Thomson detected wind-generated waves as high as 5-meters tall. While researchers have known about Arctic melting for decades, Thomson says in a statement what we're seeing with waves of this size "is potentially a new process, a mechanical process, in which the waves can push and pull and crash to break up the ice." As he notes, in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters (emphasis added):
It is possible that the increased wave activity will be the feedback mechanism which drives the Arctic system toward an ice-free summer. This would be a remarkable departure from historical conditions in the Arctic, which potentially wide-ranging implications for the air-water-ice system and the humans attempting to operate there. The increasing wave climate will also have implications for the coasts, which are already eroding rapidly during summer months as a result of climate change and subsequent loss of permafrost.
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Thomson says that "at this point, we don't really know relative importance of these processes in future scenarios," so it's difficult to say what those implications are. Thomson and his colleagues hope to learn more this summer by deploying wave-sensing instruments like the one pictured here, all along Alaska's northern coast.
For those who measure Arctic Ocean waves, Thomson says "it's going to be a quantum leap in terms of the number of observations, the level of detail and the level of precision."
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Read Thomson's full study at Geophysical Research Letters.I wish I knew the amazing redditor who sent me this incredible gift. I don't think I actually wrote anything anywhere on my profile of my love for Calvin and Hobbes and I only ever told my best friend how much I even wanted a C/H inspired tattoo! Apart from the delivery guy dropping the box at my feet instead of passing it over to me.. which was weird.. I am completely floored by this gift.
My heart instantly burst when I opened the box to find the entire Calvin + Hobbes Collection! I grew up reading this comic and it was such a great companion to have as a child-now-man and I can't stop smiling. This is definitely a wonderful addition to my ever growing library.
Who ever you are, thank you. You've truly given such an honest and wonderful gift.Dakota Pipeline Protesters, Nearby Residents Brace For 2017
Enlarge this image toggle caption Amy Sisk/Inside Energy Amy Sisk/Inside Energy
Even though most of the protesters fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota have left, hundreds still remain here atop what is essentially a sheet of ice.
One group of campers say there's a change taking hold at camp, which was once overrun by thousands who felt a sense of excitement about the gathering.
Byron Shorty, who lives on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, says now that the Army Corps of Engineers is temporarily halting pipeline construction, the protest camp is calm.
"I want to be here to reflect, and I want to be here to help clean up our abandoned campsites that I still see," he says. "And we're in the process of cleaning those up and repurposing the things that people left behind."
Others, like Jacob Chamberlain, who came here from Scotland, are doing daily chores like chopping firewood.
"It's not about taking selfies and saying that you were out here anymore. At this point, it's about being hearty, surviving in the cold," Chamberlain says.
Earlier this month, the Army Corps said it would conduct a lengthy environmental review of this project, even as a fossil fuel-friendly administration is coming to Washington. Standing Rock council member Chad Harrison attended a recent meeting between tribes and the Trump transition team and was pleased that could even happen.
"My hope is that that's an indicator of how serious he'll be when it comes to Native American issues," he says.
But Doug Burgum, North Dakota's new governor, is urging President-elect Donald Trump to approve the project. He's doing that even as he recently met with Standing Rock leaders in an effort to rebuild frayed relationships.
toggle caption Amy Sisk/Inside Energy
A community divided
Demonstrations have caused gridlock, disrupted businesses and severely stretched police resources.
"It really kind of makes me sad when I see the picture that is being painted across the nation, this narrative that it's this bad cop thing happening. And that's not here in North Dakota. Not at all." says Shelle Aberle of Bismarck, N.D., who runs a Facebook page supporting law enforcement. "Our law enforcement are there to protect both sides."
Other residents back the pipeline opponents. The Unitarian Universalist congregation has supplied food to camp and shelter.
In this protest, both sides often seemed to speak right past each other. Minister Karen Van Fossan says that should be changing.
"We aren't often talking about the things that are on our minds, and now we really are," Van Fossan says.
Kay LaCoe hopes that's true. The Bismarck resident recently called on residents to support businesses targeted by protesters. But soon after, hateful messages flooded her Facebook. She even received death threats and just wants a final decision on the pipeline to end all this tension.
"Whatever the government and the tribe and the energy companies decide to do with that pipeline, I'm good with it. Just give me my hometown back," she says.
But the legal battle over the pipeline will likely continue to play out in 2017 as North Dakotans grapple both with the protesters and the fallout from their continued presence.
Amy Sisk reports for Prairie Public Broadcasting and for Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focused on America's energy issues.After months of development and testing, the Omni development team is proud to announce the first official release of Omni Wallet Desktop for Windows, based off of Omni Core build 0.0.9.1 (which is in turn based off of Bitcoin Core 0.9.3).
https://github.com/mastercoin-MSC/mastercore/releases
As a first release, this is for more technical users (you need to edit a conf file) who wish to manage their Omni assets locally and provide feedback to the developers. Please report bugs using the issue tracker at GitHub: https://github.com/mastercoin-MSC/mastercore/issues
The software also contains several utility panes, allowing the user to look up the assets on an address, or get detailed information about an asset on the Omni Layer.
This release comes after substantial progress on new protocol features, such as Send-to-Owners (proportional distribution) and the new Decentralized Exchange (so that users can exchange their Omni assets against one another without an intermediary). Send-to-Owners was released as part of 0.0.9, and DEx Phase II will be released as part of Omni Core 0.0.10.
The Mac OS X build of Omni Wallet Desktop will be available soon.
More and more projects are deploying their projects and assets on the Bitcoin Omni Layer, and this release of Omni Wallet Desktop for Windows opens the platform to users who wish to transact locally with their MSC, MaidSafeCoin, API Networks coin, CryptoNext Coin, La’Zooz, Synereo, HOPE Gold Coin, Tethers, and more.
Keep watching this space, as more and more integrations, assets and innovations are coming, and they are coming at an increasingly rapid pace. I would like to thank the Omni development team for their outstanding progress and efforts – it is a pleasure working with such a talented and driven group of innovators.
Craig Sellars
Technologist, OmniPhil Anselmo is the lead singer of the now-defunct heavy metal thrash group Pantera, and he might or might not be a racist. That’s depending on whether you believe his latest explanation for why he was giving the Nazi salute and yelling “white power” at a show last week to honor the memory of late Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell.
Here’s the video taken from the end of the show, which also featured Dave Grohl, Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, and former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo.
So, yeah, that doesn’t look good. But here was Anselmo’s explanation. Commenting on the YouTube video under the handle Housecore Records, Anselmo writes, “Ok folks, I’ll own this one, but dammit, I was joking, and the ‘inside joke of the night’ was because we were drinking fucking white wine, hahaha… Of all fucking things. Some of y’all need to thicken up your skin. There’s plenty of fuckers to pick on with a more realistic agenda. I fucking love everyone, I fucking loathe everyone, and that’s that. No apologies from me. PHA ’16 “
This isn’t the first time Anselmo, who’s currently the singer of the group Down, has been accused of racism.
(Sorry, this embed was not found.)
More from Metal Hammer:
In March 1995, during a Pantera show in Montreal, the then 26-year-old Anselmo told the crowd that while “Pantera are not a racist band” and that he and his bandmates had friends “of all colors and all kinds,” he had a problem with rap artists “pissing all over white culture.” Furthermore, Anselmo continued, pleas from the African-American community to end ‘Black on Black crime’ should be interpreted as “it’s okay to kill white people.” white people, the singer insisted, needed to take more pride in who they are. “Tonight,” Anselmo concluded, “is a white thing.” The singer later apologized for his rant, and the “harmful words that may have racially offended our audience,” but the controversy dogged him for years. In recent years, in his more reflective moments, Anselmo—a thoughtful man, for all his bullish, anti-intellectual John Doe bravado—was not slow to acknowledge the power of symbolism and speech to propagate hatred and division.
But Anselmo’s explanation isn’t good enough for Machine Head’s Robb Flynn, who posted his own video in response. Though he admits to throwing around the N-word in his past, Flynn eviscerates Anselmo.
Either way, here’s hoping Anselmo doesn’t make a spectacle of himself again and instead just focuses on selling the least heavy metal products he can possibly hawk.
H/T Classic Rock | Photo via MarkScottAustinTexas/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)For Rutherford B. Hayes, election evening of November 7, 1876, was shaping up to be any presidential candidate’s nightmare. Even though the first returns were just coming in by telegraph, newspapers were announcing that his opponent, the Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, had won. Hayes, a Republican, would indeed lose the popular vote by more than a quarter-million, but he had no way of knowing that as he prepared his concession speech. He went to bed a gloomy man and consoled his wife, Lucy Webb. “We soon fell into a refreshing sleep,” Hayes wrote in his diary, “and the affair seemed over.”
But the ugliest, most contentious and most controversial presidential election in U.S. history was far from over. Throughout the campaign, Tilden’s opposition had called him everything from a briber to a thief to a drunken syphilitic. Suspicion of voter fraud in Republican-controlled states was rampant, and heavily armed and marauding white supremacist Democrats had canvassed the South, preventing countless blacks from voting. As a result, Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina were deemed too close to call, and with those states still in question, Tilden remained one electoral vote short of the 185 required by the Constitution to win election. With 165 electoral votes tallied for Hayes, all he needed to do was capture the combined 20 electoral votes from those three contested states, and he’d win the presidency. The ensuing crisis took months to unfold, beginning with threats of another civil war and ending with an informal, behind-the-scenes deal—the Compromise of 1877—that gave Hayes the presidency in exchange for the removal of federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction.
For Samuel Tilden, the evening of November 7, 1876, was cause for celebration. He was on his way toward winning an absolute majority of votes cast (he would capture 51.5 percent to Hayes’s 48 percent) and gave newfound hope to Democrats, who had been largely shut out of the political process in the years following the Civil War.
Born in 1814 in New York State, Tilden studied at Yale and New York University. After being admitted to the bar in 1841, he made himself rich as a corporate lawyer, representing railroad companies and making real estate investments. After the Civil War, he built up a relationship with William M. “Boss” Tweed, the head of Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine that dominated New York politics in the 19th century. But when Tilden entered the New York State Assembly in 1872, he earned a reputation for stifling corruption, which put him at odds with the machine. He became governor of New York State in 1874, and gained a national reputation for his part in breaking up massive fraud in the construction and repair of the state’s canal system. His efforts gained him the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Tilden was attacked on everything from his chronic ill health and his connections to the railroad industry, widely viewed as rife with corporate corruption at the time. Sixty-two and a lifelong bachelor, he was respected for his commitment to political reform though considered dull. With corruption charges plaguing associates of the sitting president, Ulysses S. Grant, Tilden’s candidacy could not have been better timed for Democrats to regain national power.
Although he captured the popular vote, the newly “reconstructed” states of Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina, still under federal occupation, hung in the balance. The Republican Party, which controlled the canvassing boards, quickly challenged the legitimacy of those states’ votes, and on a recount, supposedly supervised by personal agents who were dispatched to these states by President Grant (along with federal troops), many of Tilden’s votes began to be disqualified for unspecified “irregularities.” Democrats had no doubts Republicans were stuffing ballot boxes and claimed there were places where the number of votes exceeded the population. Most egregious was Louisiana’s alleged offer by the Republican-controlled election board: For the sum of $1,000,000, it would certify that the vote had gone to the Democrats. The Democratic National Committee rejected the offer, but similar reports of corruption, on both sides, were reported in Florida and South Carolina.
After all three contested states submitted two sets of electoral ballots (one for each candidate), Congress established an electoral commission in January of 1877, made up of five senators, five Supreme Court justices and five members of the House of Representatives. The commission—seven Republicans, seven Democrats and one Independent—heard arguments from lawyers who represented both Hayes and Tilden. Associate Justice Joseph P. Bradley of New Jersey emerged as the swing vote in the decision to name the next president of the United States.
On the evening before the votes were to be cast, Democrats paid a visit to Bradley, who read his opinion, indicating that Florida’s three electoral votes would be awarded to Tilden, giving him enough to win. But later that evening, after Democratic representatives had left Bradley’s home, Republican Senator Frederick T. Frelinghuysen of New Jersey and George M. Robeson, Secretary of the Navy, arrived for some last-minute lobbying. Aided by Mary Hornblower Bradley, the Justice’s wife, the two Republicans managed to convince Bradley that a Democratic presidency would be a “national disaster.” The commission’s decision made the final electoral tally 185 to 184 for Hayes.
Democrats were not done fighting, however. The Constitution required a president to be named by March 4, otherwise an interregnum occurred, which opened up numerous possibilities for maneuvering and chaos. The Democrats threatened a filibuster, which would delay the completion of the election process and put the government in uncharted waters. The threat brought Republicans to the negotiating table, and over the next two days and nights, representatives from both parties hammered out a deal. The so-called Compromise of 1877, would remove federal troops from the South, a major campaign issue for Democrats, in exchange for the dropped filibuster.
The compromise enabled Democrats to establish a “Solid South.” With the federal government leaving the region, states were free to establish Jim Crow laws, which legally disenfranchised black citizens. Frederick Douglass observed that the freedmen were quickly turned over to the “rage of our infuriated former masters.” As a result, the 1876 presidential election provided the foundation for America’s political landscape, as well as race relations, for the next 100 years.
While Hayes and the Republicans presumptively claimed rights to victory, Tilden proved to be a timid fighter and discouraged his party from challenging the commission’s decision. Instead, he spent more than a month preparing a report on the history of electoral counts—which, in the end, had no effect on the outcome.
“I can retire to public life with the consciousness that I shall receive from posterity the credit of having been elected to the highest position in the gift of the people,” Tilden said after his defeat, “without any of the cares and responsibilities of the office.”
His health did indeed fail him shortly after the election. He died in 1886 a wealthy man, leaving $3 million to the New York Public Library.
Sources
Articles: ”The Election That Got Away,” by Louis W. Koenig, American Heritage, October, 1960. “Samuel J. Tilden, The Man Who Should Have Been President,” Great Lives in History, February 9, 2010, http://greatlivesinhistory.blogspot.com/2010/02/february-9-samuel-j-tilden-man-who.html ”Volusion Confusion: Tilden-Hayes,” Under the Sun, November 20, 2000, http://www.historyhouse.com/uts/tilden_hayes/
Books: Roy Morris, Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876, Simon & Schuster, 2003. John Bigelow and Nikki Oldaker, The Life of Samuel J. Tilden, Show Biz East Productions, 2009.Now that I’m out of the running for a billion dollars (thanks a lot, Dayton) and can |
azerx/). Weakness
Our weakness (let's say semi-weakness): gathering the cracked passwords. There was one member (Insidepro's admin) that was gathering every single cracked passwords. Our team members were posting like crazy (especially at the beginning of the contest) and it was almost not humanely possible to keep up with them. For that, I have great respect for the work of admin in that contest. This was even more true since as far as I could notice, there was never a real "down" time.
For efficiency since I was the member in charge of the communications with Korelogic and submitting the passwords, I took over admin's task in the last 30 minutes of the contest. I was NOT able to keep up with the posted passwords and was NOT able to submit everything that was cracked. Luckily, I submitted just enough so that we could win. I must say that those last 30 minutes were amongst the most stressful in my life but the result and happiness afterward was way worth the stress.
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[Back] Type Count CPU Cores 91 Amazon EC2 One Instance throughout; 2 more for the last 4 hours Nvidia 9800GT 1 Nvidia 9800GX2 1 Nvidia GTS250 4 Nvidia GTX260 1 Nvidia GTX275 3 Nvidia GTX285 1 Nvidia GTX295 3 Nvidia GTS450 1 Nvidia GTX460 3 Nvidia GTX470 2 Nvidia GTX480 1 Nvidia GTX580 1 Nvidia GTX590 1 ATI 3400 1 ATI 5750 2 ATI 5770 1 ATI 5850 1 ATI 5870 1 ATI 6990 22014 is moving right along, especially now that the album release schedule is more populated. And the month of May looks like a heavy, heavy month for new releases. With that in mind, we want to know which of May's new offerings you are most interesting in picking up.
The May release frenzy kicks off May 6 as Black Stone Cherry return with their 'Magic Mountain' album, Stryper's Michael Sweet goes solo for 'I'm Not Your Suicide' and heavier releases from Pet the Preacher ('The Cave & The Sunlight') and Xandria ('Sacrificum') also drop in stores.
On May 13, veteran bands like Down ('Down IV - Part Two'), Epica ('The Quantum Enigma'), Mushroomhead ('The Righteous & The Butterfly'), Prong ('Ruining Lives') and Sworn Enemy ('Living on Borrowed Time') populate the schedule. The supergroup Killer Be Killed issue their self-titled debut and up-and-comers like Agalloch ('The Serpent & The Sphere'), Avatar ('Hail the Apocalypse') and Crobot's self-titled disc round out the week's releases.
May 20 is a relatively light week, with Rob Zombie's concert DVD/Blu-Ray 'The Zombie Horror Picture Show' and the self-titled debut of the Glenn Hughes -led California Breed leading the way. And finally, on May 27, KISS celebrate their 40th anniversary with the 'KISS 40' collection. The South rises again with Crowbar's 'Symmetry in Black' and Eyehategod's self-titled disc leading the way. And there's also new albums from Black Anvil ('Hail Death'), Marty Friedman ('Inferno'), Misery Index ('Killing Gods'), Powerman 5000 ('Builders of the Future') and Sabaton ('Heroes').
So which new release most piques your interest? This poll will run through Wednesday, April 30 at 11:59 PM ET and you can vote up to once per hour. The new release with the most votes will then be featured in a special post on the Noisecreep website as the Release of the Month through the month of May. So get to voting in the poll below.He's known for playing the hard man - so there was no way Tom Hardy was letting an embarrassing reminder of his pre-fame past get to him.
The Mad Max: Fury Road actor turned a blind eye to the extra attention into his private affairs when he enjoyed a laidback stroll in London with wife Charlotte Riley.
Tom, 37, whose nearly-nude MySpace pictures went viral online last week, turned to 33-year-old Charlotte for some normality and the pair certainly looked grounded, making minimal effort for the outing.
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Relaxed: Tom Hardy turned a blind eye to viral pre-fame images that came from his old MySpace page last week, and enjoyed the company of his wife Charlotte Riley
Tom looked particularly rugged with his bearded appearance just peeping beneath a navy cap as he walked along with his hands in his trousers.
He wore trainers with loose jogging bottoms and a fleece; while his other half matched his casual appearance in loungewear and slouchy UGG-style boots.
Charlotte, who secretly tied the knot with the moviestar in 2014, went make-up free and scraped her hair into a high bun with a wide headband.
Just the two of us: The cute duo wore similarly laidback ensembles, making minimal effort for the outing
The brunette beauty - also an actor, most-recently seen in Peaky Blinders - exchanged vows with the hunk in July at the Chateau de Roussan in the South of France, keeping it a low-key affair with only a select number of friends.
Tom and Charlotte met on the ITV set of Wuthering Heights in 2009 and got engaged in 2010 but only drew attention to their nuptials when he let the reference to'my wife' slip in an April 2014 interview.
Family man Tom, who has a six-year-old son from a former relationship, has previously described himself as a real'softie' and far from the people he portrays.
Tom previously the star of Bronson and The Dark Knight Rises - suffered a mild misdemeanour last week when it was discovered that his old MySpace page was left 'public'.
As such, racy pictures from the site (one in which he is almost flashing his groin and multiple in his underwear) were picked up by frenzied fans who shared them via their own social media pages.
The actor's Hollywood star is continuing to rise but the blunder served as a sharp reminder from some darker days in Tom's past.
Immersed: The pair looked engaged in conversation as they shrugged off any embarrassment
Tom recently opened up about his destructive addiction to hard drugs, a habit which he kicked 10 years ago, saying that he was lucky to be alive.
Speaking to Yahoo! New Zealand at the Cannes Film Festival last month, Tom confessed: 'I would have sold my mother for a rock of crack. I was a shameful suburban statistic.
'I was told very clearly, "You go down that road, Tom, you won't come back. That's it. All you need to know." That message stayed with me clearly for the rest of my days. I am f***ing lucky to be here.'
Happy couple: Tom married Charlotte in a secret ceremony last year, keeping his wedding out of the spotlight
Happy together: A make-up free Charlotte looked smitten as she chatted away to her man
His characters took a similar turn and as he beat the substance abuse, he began to play darker movie characters.
Tom continued: 'People didn’t sit up and take any notice of me until I started putting on weight, kicking people and being aggressive'
Following the success of Mad Max, in which he played the titular role, Hardy is looking forward to the release of Legend later this year, when he will take on both Klay Twins Reggie and Ronnie.Bernie Sanders supporters have criticized Secretary of Labor Tom Perez’s bid for Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair, citing Perez’s initial support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) and his avid campaigning for Hillary Clinton during the democratic primaries. Perez has also favored corporations, big banks and wealthy donors over working and middle class Americans.
In 2014, the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies asked Perez’s Department of Labor for permission to use a 401(k) to invest in Medallion, a profitable fund set up by billionaire James Simons—who donated $11 million to pro-Clinton Super PAC Priorities USA during the 2016 presidential election. Bloomberg reported in 2015 that the exemption granted by Perez’s Labor Department was the second afforded to Medallion, enabling the fund to skirt millions of dollars in taxes on investments. The hedge fund is in fact notorious for its tax-evading practices: In 2014, Renaissance Technologies was criticized by a bipartisan senate committee for disguising short-term profits as long-term capital gains to avoid $6 billion in taxes.
Despite pleas from several leading Democrats in Congress, in 2015 the Department of Labor granted waivers to Credit Suisse to continue managing billions of dollars in pension fund assets. The waivers were required due to Credit Suisse pleading guilty to tax evasion. “When the Department simply waives the disqualification provisions on a seemingly automatic basis, it undermines firms’ incentives to obey the law,” wrote Reps. Maxine Waters, George Miller, and Stephen Lynch in a 2014 letter to Perez. In 2015, Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for public hearings on whether such waivers should be granted to big banks that violate the law. On December 21, the Department of Labor granted one-year exemptions for money managers from several big banks convicted of currency price fixing to continue serving their clients.
Even though several Democrats attacked the Department of Labor in 2014 and 2015 for automatically granting waivers to bankers after they were found guilty of financial crimes, they are now seriously considering placing the person who presided over this immunity for big banks in charge of the party.
Perez not only supported the TPP, but claimed that it deserved fast-tracking, and continued doubling down on his support for the agreement even after Clinton and most labor unions publicly opposed it.
Just a couple weeks after Perez officially announced his bid for DNC chair, his campaign is complicated by regulations under the Hatch Act, which limit the extent to which he can run while serving as secretary of labor until Obama’s administration officially ends in late January.
Perez serving as DNC chair would be a step backwards for the Democratic Party. They are in dire need of a leader who can bring in meaningful reforms without the same reliance on corporate and wealthy donors that former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Clinton’s presidential candidacy embodied.Rather than trying to count adults, another approach to estimating Midwest monarch production is to focus on the number of eggs and larvae found on milkweed plants. This requires monitoring many patches of milkweed in different habitats, including agricultural fields. Production can then be estimated from the average number of monarchs per plant in each habitat and the number of milkweeds in each habitat on the landscape. We have combined several existing data sets that provide this information. The MLMP (2011), which has been operational for over a decade, provides data on egg and larva density on milkweeds. MLMP volunteers are located throughout the monarch breeding range and monitor sites of their choosing weekly over the summer months, reporting the number of plants (stems) monitored and the number of eggs and larvae observed. They learn the procedures of the project through workshops, by reading directions on the project website ( MLMP, 2011 ) and via communication with the project managers ( Prysby & Oberhauser, 2004 ). The sites they monitor, however, are not in agricultural fields. But one of us (Pleasants) has monitored eggs and larvae on milkweeds in both agricultural fields and non‐agricultural habitats for several years in central Iowa and a study with larger spatial scale quantified monarch density in both agricultural and non‐agricultural habitats in 2000 ( Oberhauser et al., 2001 ). We will make the case that the relative use of milkweeds in agricultural and non‐agricultural habitats observed over those years can be extrapolated to provide data on monarch use of agricultural milkweeds in years where only MLMP data exist. There is a question of what aspect of production to use to estimate monarch population changes. The latest stage for which we have density data, and thus which is closest to actual production of adult monarchs, is the fifth instar (L5, the last larval instar). However, there are many factors that can affect survivorship from egg to L5 that have nothing to do with milkweed availability, such as predation and weather. Our goal was to examine the effect of milkweed resource limitation on monarch production. Consequently, we chose to focus on eggs per plant that represents potential production.
What is the significance of the loss of milkweeds in agricultural fields for monarchs? To address this issue, we need to estimate annual monarch production in the Midwest over the last decade to determine whether there has been a significant downward trend. Obtaining data to estimate production is difficult, despite the fact that the monarch butterfly is such a well‐studied species. One approach would be to use the number of migrants that come out of the Midwest at the end of the summer as a measure of production. A monarch tagging programme begun 20 years ago ( Monarch Watch, 2011 ) has been tracking migrating butterflies. The number of monarchs tagged shows a decline from 2004 to 2010 ( Brower et al., 2011a ). However, it is difficult to obtain accurate measures of production from this tagging programme because of the variability among the years in the number of person‐hours involved in capture and tagging, the fall conditions when tagging occured and the locations where tagging occured. Alternatively, one could use counts of the number of migrating monarchs passing particular locations where they tend to be funnelled because of passage over water or geography. Such counts have been made for over a decade in upper Michigan and New Jersey ( Davis, 2011 ) but these sites do not monitor monarchs from the Midwest.
The time period (1999–2009) over which the Iowa studies found a large reduction in A. syriaca in corn and soybean fields ( Hartzler & Buhler, 2000 ; Hartzler, 2010 ) is coincident with the period when use of glyphosate herbicide increased in conjunction with the increased adoption of glyphosate‐tolerant corn and soybeans. It is very probable that a similar milkweed reduction has occurred throughout the Midwest because adoption levels of herbicide‐tolerant crops are similar throughout this region ( USDA, Economic Research Service, 2011 ). How much milkweed loss does this represent on a landscape scale? To address this question, we need information on the density of milkweeds in different habitats and the landscape area covered by those habitats. Common milkweed tends to be found in habitats with a moderate degree of disturbance, including roadsides, pastures, old fields, prairies and agricultural fields ( Bhowmik, 1994 ). Multiple data sets provide information on the density of milkweeds in different habitats over the last decade. The studies by Hartzler and Buhler (2000) and Hartzler (2010) surveyed a number of milkweed habitats in Iowa, including agricultural fields. Additionally, a number of Midwest volunteers in the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project (2011), hereafter referred to as MLMP, measured milkweed density in their non‐agricultural observation patches over several consecutive years. Milkweed density data can be combined with published statewide land‐use data to estimate the number of milkweeds in different habitats. Some of the data sets we use come from Iowa because for some parameters only Iowa data are available. However, we use data from the Midwest as a whole whenever possible and make the case that the resulting estimates of monarch production are representative of the Midwest.
Milkweed in agricultural fields has long been a concern for farmers as its presence reduces yield ( Bhowmik, 1994 ). In the 1970s and 1980s, milkweed infestation in agricultural fields was viewed to be on the increase with 10.5 million ha infested in the north‐central states ( Martin & Burnside, 1980 ). Herbicides have been increasingly used to control weeds in row crops. Many of these herbicides produce only moderate control of milkweed, but glyphosate, often referred to as Roundup ™ (Monsanto, St. Louis, MO, USA), is more effective ( Bhowmik, 1994 ; Pline et al., 2000 ). However, it also has a detrimental effect on crop plants, so until the development of genetically modified (GM) glyphosate‐tolerant (Roundup Ready ™, Monsanto) crop plants, herbicides other than glyphosate were used to control weeds. Glyphosate‐tolerant soybeans were introduced in 1996 and had reached a 94% adoption level by 2011, and glyphosate‐tolerant corn was introduced in 1998 and had reached a 72% adoption level by 2011 ( USDA, Economic Research Service, 2011 ). Glyphosate use in soybeans went from 1.4 million kg in 1994 to 41.7 million kg in 2006 (the last year for which data are available and when adoption of glyphosate‐tolerant soybeans was 89%) and glyphosate use in corn went from 1.8 million kg in 2000 to 28.5 million kg in 2010 when the adoption level was 70% ( USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2011a,b ).
Annual counts of the size of the overwintering population in Mexico indicate that the monarch population has been declining over the last decade and a half ( Rendón‐Salinas et al., 2011 ; Brower et al., 2011b ). One possible explanation for this decline is that monarch production has been decreasing as a result of a reduction in the availability of the larval host plant. Monarch larvae feed primarily on milkweeds (genus Asclepias‐ Family Apocynaceae, subfamily Asclepiodeae ). On the basis of milkweed cardenolide fingerprints, it has been estimated that 92% of the monarchs wintering in Mexico had fed as larvae on the common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca ( Malcolm et al., 1993 ). Studies in Iowa found a large reduction in A. syriaca in corn (maize, Zea mays ) and soybean (soya, Glycine max ) fields from 1999 to 2009 ( Hartzler & Buhler, 2000 ; Hartzler, 2010 ). It is likely that a similar reduction has occurred throughout the region where corn and soybeans are predominantly grown. Eighty per cent of both corn and soybeans are grown in the Midwest ( USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2011c ), which is composed of the states of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. A study in 2000 ( Oberhauser et al., 2001 ) found that monarchs heavily used milkweeds in corn and soybean fields. On the basis of stable isotope analysis, Wassenaar and Hobson (1998) estimated that half of the monarchs overwintering in Mexico in 1997 came from the Midwest. Thus, the Midwestern United States is at the epicentre of a reduction in milkweeds in agricultural fields and is also an area that has in recent history contributed a large component of the monarch population. In this study, we estimate the magnitude of this milkweed loss and its consequences for monarch production.
Potential monarch production for any year is equal to the sum of egg production from two sources: non‐agricultural and agricultural milkweeds. To calculate production from non‐agricultural milkweeds, we first determined the number of milkweeds in non‐agricultural habitats. This is equal to the area occupied by each habitat type (CRP land, pasture and roadside) multiplied by the density of milkweeds in that habitat (see Table 1 ).We then multiplied the total number of non‐agricultural milkweeds by the average number of eggs per non‐agricultural milkweed plant for that year from the MLMP data (see Table 3 ). To calculate production from agricultural fields, we first determined the number of milkweeds in fields. This is equal to the area occupied by agricultural land multiplied by the milkweed density in fields (see Table 1 ). The number of agricultural milkweeds in each year was multiplied by the eggs per agricultural milkweed plant. For the years 2000–2003, we used Iowa data for the eggs per agricultural milkweed (from Table 2 ). For each of the other years, the egg density on agricultural milkweeds was taken to be 3.89 times the MLMP value for that year (see Table 3 ).
As described above, we used the maximum number of eggs per stem observed during the weekly censuses from July through August as the measure of production. Egg densities in different non‐agricultural habitat types were not statistically different, so they were combined into one category. Egg densities on milkweed in corn and soybean fields in any year were not statistically different from each other and were combined into a single category. The results are shown in Table 2. Egg densities on milkweeds in agricultural fields were significantly higher than on milkweeds in non‐agricultural habitats in each year by an average factor of 3.89.
Pleasants monitored milkweed populations and monarch activity in agricultural fields and non‐agricultural habitats in Iowa from 2000 to 2003. Initially six study sites were selected. Each site included a field planted to soybeans, another field adjacent or nearby that was planted to corn and a nearby non‐agricultural habitat. Non‐agricultural habitats included natural areas, pastures, old fields and roadsides. CRP land was not explicitly included as a habitat type but the non‐agricultural habitats selected are similar in vegetative characteristics to CRP land. Sites were all located within a 10 km radius of Ames, Iowa, except for one site located 40 km south of Ames. Over the years of study, a few sites were removed from monitoring for logistical reasons and a few others added but in all years, both agricultural and non‐agricultural plots were examined. Within each site, patches of milkweeds were marked (milkweed plots). These patches were relatively discrete units that ranged in area from 3 × 3 to 6 × 10 m and contained 10–150 milkweed stems. In each field, approximately 10 milkweed plots were chosen and mapped using a global positioning system device so they could be relocated in subsequent years. Sites were visited at weekly intervals: in 2000 from late May to late August; in 2001 from early July through late August; and in 2002 and 2003 from early June to late August. During each visit, every milkweed stem in each milkweed plot was inspected for monarch eggs and larvae.
For any site, the number of eggs per plant varies over the course of the season. However, there is a population build‐up during July and August when the second/third generation occurs ( MLMP, 2011 ). We used egg density at the peak of this build‐up as a metric of annual production. For each year, our estimate of production was based on the average maximum egg density over all MLMP sites. This metric does not include all of the annual production but does allow us to examine the relative differences in production among years.
To estimate monarch use of non‐agricultural milkweeds, we used data on the number of monarch eggs per milkweed stem from the MLMP. We examined MLMP data from 1999 to 2010 for sampling localities within the Midwest (eastern Kansas, eastern Nebraska, eastern North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and western Ohio). Sites were excluded in any given year if the average number of milkweeds monitored was <25 and if there were fewer than five sampling events in July and August. We also excluded garden sites because they represent a minor component of milkweeds on the landscape. Sites were excluded if volunteers observed more larvae than eggs because these volunteers may not have been able to discern monarch eggs accurately. We initially divided sites into two groups based on the habitats in which the milkweeds were found: ‘natural areas’ (prairies or nature preserves) and ‘other’ (pastures, old fields, roadsides and CRP land); there were no sites in agricultural fields. However, ‘natural areas’ and ‘other’ were not significantly different from each other in egg density and were combined in the analysis into a single ‘non‐agricultural’ category.
We obtained data on the acres occupied by roadsides and pastures on the Iowa landscape in 2002 from Lubowski et al. (2006) and, because no more recent data exist, we have assumed the acres in roadside and pasture have not changed substantially over the last decade. Data on the acres planted to corn or soybeans by year were obtained from Iowa State Agricultural Statistics (2010) and the amount of Iowa CRP land from the USDA Conservation Programs (2010).
Agricultural habitats. We have values for milkweed density in Iowa agricultural fields for 1999 and 2009 ( Hartzler & Buhler, 2000 ; Hartzler, 2010 ). To calculate milkweed density in fields for the intervening years, we have to make an assumption about the shape of the decline. Pleasants observed the change in the number of milkweeds in plots in seven agricultural fields in Iowa from 2000 to 2008 ( Fig. 1 ). The observed decline is best described by an exponential decay function. Such a function is also consistent with more acres of glyphosate‐tolerant corn and soybeans being planted each year over the last decade ( USDA, Economic Research Service, 2011 ). We have therefore assumed that milkweed density in fields decreased as an exponential decay function from its 1999 value to its 2009 value (see Table 1 ). This corresponds to a 14.2% decline per year ( Fig. 1 ). Other decline functions, ranging from a linear decline to a more precipitous exponential decay, had no significant effect on the overall results.
Decline of milkweeds in agricultural and non‐agricultural habitats. The line depicting the decline in non‐agricultural habitats is based on a regression using data from MLMP volunteers. The line depicting the decline in agricultural habitats is based on an exponential decay function connecting the 1999 and 2009 values from the Iowa surveys (see Methods ). Also shown is the proportional change in the number of milkweed stems in all monitored plots in seven agricultural fields in Iowa starting with 998 stems in 2000. The increase in milkweed stems observed in the agricultural sites in 2005 was attributed to the influence of fields where corn was planted 2 years in a row. Some agricultural fields received glyphosate herbicide treatment and others non‐glyphosate treatment. No observations were made in 2006.
For the data from the MLMP volunteers, we used log of milkweed density as the variate and used an SAS mixed model and restricted maximum likelihood estimation with fixed effects being ‘habitat’, ‘year’ and ‘habitat by year’. We did not find a ‘habitat by year’ effect so we reran the analysis with this removed. There was a significant ‘year’ effect ( F 1,85 = 9.35, P = 0.003). The slope of the regression (on a log scale) was −0.0536, which corresponds to a decline in density of 5.2% per year. We found no ‘habitat’ effect so we applied the same rate of decline to both CRP land and pastures ( Fig. 1 ).
Non‐agricultural habitats. For roadsides, there was little observed change in milkweed density in Iowa between 1999 and 2009 ( Hartzler, 2010 ) so we have assumed that milkweed density did not change in that habitat over the entire period of the analysis. Hartzler (2010) measured milkweed densities for CRP land and pastures in 1999 but not in 2009 so any change that may have occurred could not be determined from the Iowa data. However, a subset of MLMP volunteers ( n = 16) measured milkweed density at their sites (which included natural areas, CRP land, pastures and old fields) for at least 4 years over this period (97 total observations). Measurements by individual MLMP volunteers did not cover the entire period but there were sufficiently long and overlapping sequences to provide a complete picture. Volunteers either measured the area of their site and did a complete count of milkweed stems, or used a modified belt transect to sample milkweed density in 100 1 × 1 m plots. We have used those data to estimate the change in milkweed density in CRP land and pasture land over the last decade.
Habitats in which milkweeds are found include primarily roadsides, corn fields, soybean fields, pastures, old fields, and land set aside from farming and enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). CRP land is typically planted to a variety of cover plants including grasses and forbs. To estimate milkweed densities in these habitats, we used data from several sources: Iowa censuses carried out in 1999 and 2009 ( Hartzler & Buhler, 2000 ; Hartzler, 2010 ), and data from some MLMP volunteers who measured milkweed density at their sites in several Midwest states. To calculate monarch production for each year, it is necessary to know how milkweed densities have changed over the last decade in non‐agricultural and agricultural habitats.
Average maximum egg density (eggs per milkweed stem ± 1 SE) for July through August for non‐agricultural milkweeds at sites throughout the Midwest (from MLMP). Number of sites: 1999, 16; 2000, 41; 2001, 13; 2002, 25; 2003, 41; 2004, 46; 2005, 49; 2006, 57; 2007, 29; 2008, 29; 2009, 30; 2010, 21. Square symbols indicate the average value (±1 SE) for non‐agricultural sites in Iowa (from Table 2 ). The Iowa value for each year was not significantly different from the MLMP value.
There has been a significant decline in monarch egg production over the last decade ( Fig. 2 – linear regression F 1,11 = 13.7, P = 0.004, r 2 = 0.58). On the basis of regression equation for this decline ( y = 254.4 − 17.21 x, where x = 1 when the year is 1999), we estimate that between 1999 and 2010 monarch egg production in the Midwest was reduced 81%. This decline in production would not have occurred if monarchs had increased their use of the remaining milkweeds as agricultural milkweeds declined. However, egg density on non‐agricultural milkweeds from the MLMP data did not show a significant change over the years ( Fig. 3 ) (because of non‐normality, a Poisson regression was used; Wald χ 2 = 0.15; d.f. = 1; n = 398, NS). We also compared our estimate of potential monarch production in each summer with the size of the population that subsequently overwintered in Mexico ( Fig. 4 ). Yearly production values were positively correlated with the size of the overwintering population (linear regression F 1,11 = 8.97, P = 0.01, r 2 = 0.47).
Estimates of milkweed numbers on the Iowa landscape ( Table 1 ) show that milkweeds declined in both agricultural fields and non‐agricultural habitats from 1999 to 2010. There was a 31% decline for non‐agricultural milkweeds and an 81% decline for agricultural milkweeds with a 58% overall decline for total milkweeds. In 1999, milkweeds in agricultural fields constituted 53% of total milkweeds, but by 2010 were only 24% of the total. The 58% loss of milkweeds on the landscape actually underestimates the loss of resource for monarchs, because most of the loss was in agricultural fields and each agricultural milkweed represents 3.89 times more monarch eggs than a non‐agricultural milkweed ( Table 2 ). If the numbers of agricultural milkweeds in Table 1 are multiplied by 3.89 to convert them to their resource potential, the decline in the milkweed resource base is 72%. Of this potential resource lost, 92% comes from agricultural fields and 8% from non‐agricultural habitats. Table 3 shows the conversion of yearly milkweed numbers into monarch production. The relative contribution of agricultural milkweeds to total monarch production went from 82% in 1999 to 55% in 2010.
Discussion
Our estimate of monarch production decline in the Midwest was based in part on Iowa data. To what extent do Iowa data reflect the Midwest as a whole? We used Iowa data to estimate (i) the proportion of milkweed in various habitats, (ii) the density of milkweeds in each habitat, (iii) the decline in milkweeds in agricultural fields and (iv) the relatively higher egg density on agricultural milkweeds compared to non‐agricultural milkweeds. We examine each of these aspects of the data. (i) Data on land use for the Midwestern states (Lubowski et al., 2006) show that of the potential milkweed habitat 73% was in crop production and 27% in non‐agricultural habitats (6% in CRP land, 6% in cropland pastures, 11% in grassland and range pastures, and 4% in roadsides). This is similar to the 79% in crop production for the state of Iowa and 21% in non‐agricultural habitats (6% in CRP land, 5% in cropland pastures, 7% in grassland and range pastures and 3% in roadsides). Note that these values do not include forested land as this is not milkweed habitat. This comparison excluded the Northern Plains states (Kansas, Nebraska, N. and S. Dakota), which have extensive grasslands and rangeland in the western sections. If those states are included, the per cent of Midwest land in crops falls to 60% with 40% of land non‐agricultural. (ii) Iowa data were used to estimate milkweed densities for agricultural and roadside habitats; the change in milkweed density in other non‐agricultural habitats was based on Midwest MLMP data. There has not been a long‐term study of milkweed density in agricultural habitats outside of Iowa so the similarity between Iowa and the Midwest in this aspect can only be assumed. (iii) Other Midwest areas have seen a decline in milkweed density in agricultural fields over the past decade. Two of the Wisconsin fields originally surveyed by Oberhauser in 2000 (Oberhauser et al., 2001) were resurveyed in subsequent years. In 2000, these sites had an average of 0.28 milkweed stems m−2, and in 2002–2006, after the growers began to use glyphosate‐tolerant soybeans in 2001, no milkweeds were found. (iv) Higher egg densities on agricultural milkweeds were also observed in other states in the Midwest in 2000 (Oberhauser et al., 2001).
Further evidence suggesting that our approach, which combines data from Iowa and Midwest sources, does reflect production for the Midwest as a whole comes from the significant positive correlation between the annual estimate of monarch production and the size of the subsequent overwintering population (Fig. 4). Because the Midwest contributes about half of the individuals to the overwintering population (Wassenaar & Hobson, 1998), we would expect such a correlation if Midwest production were accurately estimated. We note, however, that the estimate of the Midwest contribution to the overwintering population was made before significant glyphosate use in row crops and only represents 1 year of data.
Although our estimates of annual Midwest monarch production were highly correlated with the size of the subsequent overwintering population, these estimates explained only 47% of the variation in the size of the overwintering population. In particular, our production value for 2003 underestimated the overwintering population size and our value for 2000 overestimated it. We suggest four possible reasons for such deviations. (i) Deviations may be due to the fact that we have used egg density as our measure of production, which is a measure of potential production, while actual production is adult butterflies. The relationship between potential and actual production will depend on survivorship from egg to adult, which may vary among years (J. M. Pleasants & K. S. Oberhauser, unpubl. data). (ii) The relative contribution of the Midwest to the population as a whole is likely to vary from year to year (K. S. Oberhauser, unpubl. data). (iii) The amount of mortality during the fall migration is likely to vary among years depending on conditions along the migratory route including nectar availability, temperature, weather events, drought conditions and wind conditions. (iv) We used a factor of 3.89, the average of 4 years of Iowa data, to convert agricultural milkweeds into their monarch egg production. The factor varies among years, as seen in Table 2, and may be somewhat different in other areas of the Midwest.
The differences between years in egg density per stem seen in the MLMP data (Fig. 3) are likely to be caused by factors in addition to the effect of resource availability. The MLMP egg densities we used came from the second and third generation of monarchs. The size of each generation will depend on the size of the previous generation, each of which will be influenced by the prevailing weather conditions during egg laying and larval development (Zalucki & Rochester, 2004). Although the overwintering population begins this sequence, we found no correlation between the size of the overwintering population and monarch production the following summer. This indicates that other factors, principally temperature and weather conditions, can erase the influence of the starting population. But environmental conditions alone do not govern population size. Even if |
.The Estonian cabinet today gave a green light to buy 44 CV90 infantry vehicles for the Estonian Defense Forces from the Netherlands, in what is the largest defense procurement project ever for the country.
Defense Minister Sven Mikser and his Dutch counterpart Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert signed a memorandum of joint intent with regard to using the CV90 vehicles, currently used by the Netherland’s armed forces, in the Estonian Defense Forces in October, but today it got the final approval. The contract will be signed on December 9 in Holland.
Previously, the largest Estonian defense procurement projects were the purchase of MBDA-made Mistral missiles for about $84.5 million in 2009, and three Sandown-class milehunter vessels from the UK Royal Navy for about $64 million in 2007.
“It is the largest procurement project ever for the Estonian Defense Forces. The infantry vehicles will take Estonian defense ability to a new level,” Mikser said, but refusing to disclose the cost before the signing of the contract.
The CV90s will enter the service from 2016 and are expected to remain in use for at least 20 years. The vehicles have been used by the Dutch, but are relatively new.
The CV90 infantry vehicle is produced since 1993 by Sweden-based BAE Systems Hägglunds AB and are in service with the Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swiss, Finnish, and Swedish defense forces. It has also seen service in Afghanistan.
The Dutch minister announced during her visit to Estonia in October that defense cooperation between the two countries will be strengthened. Among other things, Dutch troops will take part in the next Estonian Independence Day parade and hold joint exercises with the Scoutsbattalion.
Mikser said that the Netherlands had a clear desire to further strengthen defense cooperation with Estonia. Among other things, the Netherlands is contributing to Baltic Air Policing.
"Such cooperation has such a great political and practical importance – having common armoured vehicles, we can work closely with the Netherlands in maintaining, repairing and training for these vehicles," Mikser said.
Estonian-Dutch defense cooperation has mainly been focused on procurement. Since 2004, Estonia has acquired over 1,100 lightly used and well-maintained trucks and jeeps, some 500 trailers and staff containers and 81 SISU XA-188 armoured personnel carriers. Dutch F-16s have also taken part in Baltic Air Policing.Sometime in the next few years, if a memorandum signed by President Bush this month ever goes into effect, one government official talking to another about information on terrorists will have to begin by saying: "What I am about to tell you is controlled unclassified information enhanced with specified dissemination."
That would mean, according to the memo, that the information requires safeguarding because "the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure would create risk of substantial harm."
Bush's memorandum, signed on the eve of his daughter Jenna's wedding, introduced "Controlled Unclassified Information" as a new government category that will replace "Sensitive but Unclassified."
Such information -- though it does not merit the well-known national security classifications "confidential," "secret" or "top secret" -- is nonetheless "pertinent" to U.S. "national interests" or to "important interests of entities outside the federal government," the memo says.
The information could be, for example, the steps taken to protect power plants from terrorists, or which pipelines are most vulnerable to attack.
Left undefined are which laws or policies generated the requirement for protecting such information, and which interests are pertinent. But Bush's memo does refer to the "global nature of the threats facing the United States" and to the need to ensure that the "entire network of defenders be able to share information more rapidly" while protecting "sensitive information, information privacy, and other legal rights of Americans."
The president declared that the purpose of the new classification is "to standardize practices and thereby improve the sharing of information, not to classify or declassify new or additional information." But some critics described it as continuing an expansion of secrecy in government and a potential bureaucratic nightmare.
Michael Clark, a contributing editor to the blog Daily Kos, who first wrote about the Bush memorandum, said the White House "seems to have used the crafting of new rules as an opportunity to expand the range of government secrecy." Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, described it as a "not even half-baked" exercise in policymaking.
The new classification, like the old one, was created because of the need for people who handle terrorism information to share it not just within the federal government but also outside it. "The changes will make labeling and sharing information more effective," said an administration official, and do away with other government designations such as "For Official Use Only" and "Law Enforcement Sensitive."
The tough job of implementing the new system was assigned to the National Archives and Records Administration. The Archives, which oversees the current security classification system, was given five years to implement the program throughout federal, state and local governments as well as in "tribal, private sector and foreign partner entities."
The Controlled Unclassified Information designation was the product of a year-long government study of how to replace the "sensitive but unclassified" category. "Among the 20 departments and agencies... surveyed, there are at least 107 unique markings and more than 131 different labeling or handling processes and procedures for SBU information," Ted McNamara of the office of the director of national intelligence told the House Homeland Security Committee in April 2007.
The Archives was asked to create a single set of policies and procedures on the way materials should be marked, stored safely and disseminated. There are to be three categories of dissemination -- standard, specified and enhanced specified. The latter two require measures to reduce possible disclosure.
Designating information as CUI is left to the "head of the originating department or agency," based on "mission requirements, business prudence, legal privilege, the protection of personal or commercial rights, safety, or security."
The Archives will establish "enforcement mechanisms and penalties for improper handling of CUI." The "controlled" classification "may inform," but will not determine, whether information can be made public in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
All CUI information, either produced by or for the federal government, is to be marked "controlled," regardless of how it is conveyed. Bush's memo specifically requires that "oral communications should be prefaced with a statement describing the controls when necessary to ensure that recipients are aware of the information's status."
National security and intelligence reporter Walter Pincus pores over the speeches, reports, transcripts and other documents that flood Washington and every week uncovers the fine print that rarely makes headlines -- but should. If you have any items that fit the bill, please send them to fineprint@washpost.com.A British Airways Boeing 777-200 has recorded the fastest transatlantic crossing by a subsonic passenger plane after freak weather conditions helped it break the sound barrier, and travel at ground speeds of up to 745mph.
BA Flight 114 between New York and London "surfed" on an unusually fast jetstream to make the flight in just 5 hours 16 minutes on Wednesday, an hour-and-a-half ahead of schedule. The only plane to make the crossing quicker is Concorde, which made the journey in 2 hours 52 minutes in 1996.
It's just like surfing. It's extraordinary how fast you can go - former pilot Alastair Rosenschein
Eastbound flights often have up to an hour clipped by the jetstream, which is usually at a similar altitude to that of a cruising plane, but pilots must be skilled to ride them as they are usually 10 miles across and 2,000 feet in depth.
However, currently the jetstream is unusually wide as well as being much faster than usual – around 250mph compared to the norm of 100mph.
"It's just like surfing. It's extraordinary how fast you can go," said former BA pilot Alastair Rosenschein who regularly flew 747s on the same route.
"You try to sit in the core of the jet where it's not too turbulent and where you can pick up some free mileage. It's not unusual to get 100mph tailwinds, but they have got more than that. This must be a record."
Jetstreams are caused by the rotation of the earth and heat from the sun and global warming is thought to play a factor.
The unusually quick jetstream – which is also causing storms in the UK – is the result of freezing air in the US colliding with warmer air from the south.
Jetstreams often intensify in winter, with a corresponding impact on flight times.
Pilots stress that even at speeds approaching the speed of sound, modern jumbo jets can easily cope with the increased stress.
Planes flying west have to avoid the jetstreams, adding time to the journey towards the US.A new study has found that smarter people not only tend to stay up later, but also regularly engage in recreational sex and drug use.
According to Esquire magazine, English researchers recently discovered that students at prestigious schools like Oxford and Cambridge spend much more time having sex, smoking weed and staying up later than their peers at less reputable institutions.
The research was funded by sex toy retailer Lovehoney.co.uk, where Oxford and Cambridge students have spent a combined $31,461.
"The correlation probably has something to do with the open-mindedness that comes with intelligence," 23-year-old Annalisa Rose, an employee of high-end sex shop "Honey" in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, told Esquire. "I think that the ability to engage in an open sex life comes with the abilities of introspection and logical thought, and those require some level of intelligence. If we're talking about an open sex life that comes from an emotionally healthy place, sexual mores are mostly made up anyway and intelligent people can rationalize past them," she said.
Many previous studies have found that people with higher IQs, better jobs, or degrees from top-notch universities are more likely to smoke weed or even snort a few lines here and there.
Esquire reports that this is because these people tend to pursue insightful experiences involving adventure and mental expansion.
Smart people will indulge in most opportunities that could potentially broaden their minds.
They also more closely understand addiction and moderation and are therefore less fearful of engaging in drug use.
A 2010 study seen in Psychology Today showed that those with an IQ of 125 or higher are exponentially more likely to use drugs.
From the study:
"Net of sex, religion, religiosity, marital status, number of children, education, earnings, depression, satisfaction with life, social class at birth, mother’s education, and father’s education, British children who are more intelligent before the age of 16 are more likely to consume psychoactive drugs at age 42 than less intelligent children. "... there is a clear monotonic association between childhood general intelligence and adult consumption of psychoactive drugs. 'Very bright' individuals (with IQs above 125) are roughly three-tenths of a standard deviation more likely to consume psychoactive drugs than'very dull' individuals (with IQs below 75)."
The final element of our genius-trifecta is proven valid in an academic paper entitled "Why the Night Owl is More Intelligent," published in the journal Psychology and Individual Differences.
The paper, Esquire reports, highlights that for several millennia, humans have been conditioned to work during the day and sleep at night.
Those that break this cycle, the paper says, "may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences than less intelligent individuals."
The paper goes on to say that liberals who don't believe in God are more likely to be intelligent as well.
It seems that the gist here is that progressive thinkers who uphold adventure and experimentation over safety and tradition are the more intelligent beings.
So as Esquire says, "if you're getting laid at 3 am on Sunday morning and have a full bowl packed beside the bed and you aren't going to church the next day, you're probably a genius."
There you have it. Not only are those who rebel against conservatism sexier and much more fun to hang out with, but contrary to popular belief, they're also smarter and more groomed for success.
Oh, and we work our assess off too, so don't even think you've got that one on us.
Via: Esquire, Top Photo Courtesy: Wolf Of Wall StWhat would happen if we just gave people money? That’s the question I posed last week in an article about basic income, which led to a cascade of questions and comments from readers. To respond to those thoughts, I joined my colleague Ben Casselman, FiveThirtyEight’s chief economics writer, in a video chat this week.
Basic income is a simple but radical idea: The government would regularly write a check to each citizen with no conditions. Rich or poor, employed or not — everyone would get the same amount of money. Basic income has broad ideological support, intriguing progressives, libertarians and Silicon Valley techies. Switzerland will have a national referendum on basic income next month. Finland, Canada, the Netherlands and even the U.S. will be running basic income experiments in the next few years.
In the video, we discuss reader questions such as these:
How would a basic income program work with those who have special needs, such as the elderly and people with disabilities?
Would basic income really replace all social welfare programs?
social welfare programs? Isn’t it politically naive to think Social Security, Medicare or other popular government programs would be converted into a basic income?
What is the right level for a basic income?
Wouldn’t the program require a huge increase in government spending, and thus tax increases?
Wouldn’t basic income redistribute money from people who are near-poor to those who are truly poor?
Your comments and questions about the video or the original article are welcome on this page.Harry T. Hayward (c. 1865 – December 11, 1895) was an American socialite, gambler, arsonist, and murderer. Due to his ability to manipulate others, the newspapers of the era dubbed Hayward, "The Minneapolis Svengali," "the most cold-blooded murderer that ever walked God's footstool", and, "the most bloodthirsty soul ever to usurp the human frame."[1]
Hayward is best known as the mastermind of one of 19th-century America's most infamous crimes—the 1894 murder for hire of dressmaker Catherine "Kitty" Ging.
In the hours before his hanging at Hennepin County Jail in Minneapolis, Hayward gave a detailed interview to his cousin Edward Goodsell and a court reporter. He admitted to numerous arsons, assaults, swindles, and three unsolved murders.
Historian and true crime writer Jack El-Hai has written that, if Hayward's admissions are true, then he predates Dr. H. H. Holmes as America's first documented serial killer.[2]
Early life [ edit ]
Harry T. Hayward was born in Macoupin County, Illinois, the son of William and Lodusky Hayward, and was brought to Minneapolis at the age of one year. When he was about six years old, his family briefly returned to Illinois and stayed for about one year. Following his return to Minneapolis, Hayward "went to a private school conducted by Mrs. Lockwood on Sixth avenue north, and stayed there perhaps six months." Afterwards, he attended the Minneapolis public school system until graduating high school.[3]
According to 19th-century psychologist W.A. Jones, Hayward's boyhood, "shows marked characteristics. In early life he was recognized by his school fellows as a bully, brutal in his instincts, enjoying the sufferings of others, and delighting in the torture of domestic animals."[4]
According to Fr. James M. Cleary, a Roman Catholic priest who briefly served as his spiritual director,[5] Hayward, "received no positive religious instruction", beyond being, "taught the difference between right and wrong", and being encouraged, "to do the right and avoid the wrong". However, "no motive was assigned", as to, "why he should shun evil and do good. All was vague and shadowy."[6]
Upon graduating, Hayward became a clerk before beginning to gamble at the age of twenty. Hayward later stated that even before this, "my god was always money."[7]
According to Fr. Cleary, Hayward, after succumbing to what a later age would call gambling addiction, began "to quiet the stings of conscience" by carefully studying Atheist writings. He reportedly avoided writings critical of Atheism, "for he sought what he found in the ridicule of religion, encouragement for his disordered and deceitful life."[8]
Dr. Jones elaborates, "He seemed without a conscience and felt no more concern in planning or executing a criminal deed in manhood than, when a boy, he deliberately impaled a live cat on the side of a fence. He did not seem to realize the enormity of his acts and the influence they exerted on the community as everything he did builded and strengthened his personal egotism."[9]
Ging murder [ edit ]
In January 1894, Hayward met Katherine "Kitty" Ging, a tenant of his parents at the Ozark Flats building on Hennepin Avenue and Thirteenth Street. He persuaded her to front him large sums of money, which he used gambling. When Ging demanded the return of her money, Hayward paid her with counterfeit currency. Privately, however, he described her as, "an easy mark."
On December 3, 1894, Ging's body was found, shot behind the ear, on a road near Lake Calhoun. It was later revealed that Hayward had persuaded her to purchase a $10,000 life insurance policy which named him as sole beneficiary.
Trial [ edit ]
Harry Hayward's trial for first degree murder began, before Judge Seagrave Smith, on January 21, 1895. Hennepin County Attorney Frank M. Nye appeared for the prosecution.
Hayward's defense team included William Erwin, known as "The Tall Pine Tree of the Northwest",[10] and John Day Smith,[11] a Baptist Deacon, a Republican State Senator, and one of Minnesota's foremost death penalty abolitionists.[12]
The trial lasted, according to Walter Trenerry, a total of 46 days and consisted in the calling of 136 witnesses.[13]
The prosecution's main witnesses were triggerman Claus Blixt and Harry's older brother Adry Hayward. The defense unsuccessfully tried to have Adry Hayward's testimony ruled in-admissible, calling him insane on the subject". In overruling the objection, Judge Smith quipped, "Well, I don't see that he is any more insane at the present time than the attorney is."[14]
After the defense took over, Hayward took the stand himself and denied all allegations.
The case went to the jury on Friday March 8, 1895 at 11:30 AM. At 2:15 PM, the jury returned with the verdict, "We, the jury, find the defendant, Harry T. Hayward, guilty of murder in the first degree."[15]
On March 11, 1895, presiding Judge Smith sentenced Hayward to death by hanging.
Interview [ edit ]
Prior to his execution, Hayward gave a detailed series of interviews to his cousin Edward H. Goodsell. During this conversation, he admitted to numerous acts of illegal gambling, arson and three other murders. Transcripts were taken down by a court stenographer.
His victims included a twenty-year-old "sporting girl" whom he met in Pasadena, California. Hayward claimed to have lured her into a remote location in the Sierra Madre, shot her in the back of the head, and buried her in the woods. Hayward then made off with $7000 which she had carried in her wallet.[16]
Hayward also claimed to have fatally shot a "consumptive" near Long Branch, New Jersey, robbed him of $2000, and disposed of his body in the Shrewsbury River.
According to Harold Schechter, "His most brutal crime, however, was the slaying of a 'Chinaman' in a New York City gambling joint on Mulberry Street. Getting into an altercation over a card game, Harry, 'knocked the Chinaman down and kicked him in the stomach.' He then picked up a chair and jabbed the pointed end of one wooden leg into the man's eye. Then, while he was, 'down and howling," Harry sat down on the chair. 'His skull was kind of thin,' Harry related with a chuckle, 'and I heard the chair leg smash down through his skull.'"[17]
Hayward only admitted his involvement in Ging's murder, however, when it became clear that no reprieve was going to arrive from Minnesota Governor David Marston Clough.
At the end of the interview, Hayward quoted the poem, "Happy the man," by John Dryden, saying that it encompassed his philosophy of life.[18]
According to Harold Schechter, "Throughout the confession, Harry does in fact display many of the traits that we now know are typical of serial murderers: overweening narcissism, juvenile sadism... pyromania, a total lack of empathy for other human beings. Like other serial killers, he would experience his'murderous impulse' as a kind of autonomous'second self that would suddenly 'come over him.' Interestingly, he also seems to have suffered from convulsions as an adolescent, possibly as a result of a head injury -- a factor found in the background of many serial killers."[19]
Execution [ edit ]
On the early morning of December 11, 1895, Harry T. Hayward was hanged at Hennepin County Jail.
On the evening of December 10, he said, about members of the clergy, "I like these men and want to show them respectful consideration, but I do not care for religion. As a general thing, men in this sort of predicament get religious because they think it will brace them for the final ordeal. I do not need it. I am perfectly contented."[20]
At midnight on December 11, Hayward was visited by John Day Smith, who extracted from him a promise that he would publicly proclaim his faith in Jesus Christ from the scaffold.[21]
Moments later, Hayward was clothed in a black robe and cap and led to the gallows by Hennepin County Sheriff John Holmberg. As he ambled to the scaffold, Hayward cheerfully bade the spectators, "Good evening" a requested three cheers for himself.[22]
Upon being asked if he had any last words, Hayward gave a long and verbose speech and cracked so many jokes about his imminent death that one eyewitness later recalled that the spectators, "looked upon him almost as if he were a stage performer who would soon take his bow, receive his modicum of applause, and retire."[23]
Eventually, Hayward kept his promise to Smith, "He is a religious man and I told him I would pledge him what he asked of me to say. I pledged it to him, although if I honestly believed it, I would say it, and satisfy myself, and it was this: 'Oh, God, for Christ's sake, forgive me for my sins.'"[24]
Hayward also said of his brother Adry, "He has done me no wrong. I have done him a great injustice and wrong, and I have asked for his forgiveness and received it."[25]
Hayward's, "flippant monologue," continued until Sheriff Holmberg cut in and ordered him to, "Die like a man."
Hayward's arms and legs were then pinioned and the noose was thrown around his neck. He sneered and quipped, "Keep up your courage boys!"[26] Harry Hayward's last words were those of a gambler, "Pull her tight; I'll stand pat." The gallows trap swung open at 2:12 AM, but death was not merciful. The rope had been mis-measured and Hayward slowly strangled. He was finally pronounced dead at 2:25 AM December 11, 1895.[27]
Sheriff John Holmberg was paid $250 for his services.[28]
Burial [ edit ]
After being conveyed to the city morgue, Hayward's body was autopsied. His brain was removed and weighed in at 55 ounces. Measurements were also taken of his skull in accordance with the theories of Italian criminologist and physician Cesare Lombroso, who believed that criminals were a distinctive humanoid type. It was announced that Harry Hayward had possessed a "symmetry of skull, brain and face; the protrusion of the front teeth, and the narrow and arched palate". In conclusion, doctors ruled that Hayward was "a degenerate biological phenomenon somewhat below the savage and above the lunatic."[29]
Following a funeral ceremony at Lakewood Cemetery,[30] Harry T. Hayward was interred in a family plot at the Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery.
Serial killer? [ edit ]
In 2010, Minneapolis-based historian and true crime writer Jack El-Hai again brought the crimes of Harry Hayward to national attention. El-Hai had first learned of Hayward while writing an article for the 100th anniversary of the Kitty Ging murder in 1994. Deeply chilled by Hayward's cold-blooded nature, El-Hai continued his research on the case for decades. When Edward Goodsell's 1896 book about his cousin was digitized and put on Google Books, El-Hai read the transcript of Hayward's last interview for the first time and learned of his admission to 3 other unsolved murders. In a February 2010 article for Minnesota Monthly, El-Hai argued that if Hayward's claims are proved to be true, then his crimes predate those of H. H. Holmes and are contemporary with those of Jack the Ripper. El-Hai expressed hope that Hayward's other alleged victims would rise from obscurity, as no other justice for them is now possible. He argued that, if this ever happened, Harry Hayward would be proven to have been America's first serial killer.[31]
True crime author and historian Harold Schechter has written, "In the end, it is impossible to know whether Harry Hayward killed one victim or (as he claimed) four. All that can be said with certainty is that, as a case of criminal psychopathology -'moral insanity,' in the terms of his contemporaries - Harry Hayward was, as Goodsell and others saw it, one of the most remarkable specimens of his age."[32]
Conspiracy theory [ edit ]
According to Walter Trenerry, rumors soon spread that Hayward had been secretly resurrected by a secret society. When researching the Ging murder during the early 1960s, Trenerry heard claims that the Freemasons' Grand Lodge of Minnesota had resurrected him. Trenerry, however, expressed skepticism that Hayward could have survived both hanging and dissection.[33]
Ballad [ edit ]
The murder ballad The Fatal Ride describes Hayward's involvement in the Kitty Ging murder.[citation needed]
References [ edit ]Espresso-loving astronauts, rejoice! You may soon be able to enjoy your beloved beverage in space, thanks to a new cup designed specifically to defy the low-gravity environments encountered aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Italy is preparing to send an espresso machine to the ISS, and so a team of researchers crafted a special cup to allow astronauts to drink in space in a manner similar to the one experienced on Earth -- by replacing the role of gravity with the forces of surface tension. (Leave it to researchers in caffeine-loving Portland, Ore. to come up with that idea.)
During the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) Meeting, Nov. 23-25, 2014, in San Francisco, Calif., Nathan Ott, a high school student working with Mark Weislogel, a professor in the Thermal and Fluid Sciences Group at Portland State University, and Drew Wollman, a researcher within that same group, will describe studying and working with a variety of capillary fluidic effects to enable espresso in gravity-free environments.
Espresso, for those unfamiliar with it, is distinguished primarily by a complex low-density colloid of emulsified oils. And, due to gravity, these oils rise to the surface to form a foam lid called the "crema" -- the reliable production of which can make or break the reputations of baristas everywhere.
"Because the variety of espresso drinks is extensive, we made specific property measurements to assess the effects of wetting and surface tension for 'Italian' espresso, caffè latte and caffè Americano," explained Weislogel. "For some people, the texture and aromatics of the 'crema' play a critical role in the overall espresso experience. We show that in low-gravity environments this may not be possible, but suggest alternatives for enjoying espresso aboard spacecraft."
This quest for alternatives led to the design of the special 3-D printable "espresso space cup," which thankfully "fell from math."
"The shape of the container can passively migrate fluid to desired locations without moving parts -- using passive forces of wetting and surface tension," said Weislogel. "Its geometry is the'smart' part, which operate the fluids-control system without requiring pumps or centrifugal forces."
The primary challenge of the design, according to Weislogel, is making it work for a wide variety of poor wetting conditions which are typically associated with water-based beverages. "Fortunately, espresso is considered an oily drink, which means that it works nicely," he added.
Now that Weislogel and colleagues have demonstrated control guided by math, rapid 3-D printing and rapid drop tower tests to confirm the cup's performance in low-gravity environments, their methods will advance technology readiness levels for spacecraft -- while reducing the need for costly tests in space. "This process almost ensures desired performance the first time the device is used in space," he said.
Their work also has a much wider reach beyond espresso. "We're striving to use our new methods to reassess all fluid systems aboard spacecraft -- including cooling systems, fuel tanks, water processing equipment for life support, plant and animal habitats, medical fluids, foods, etc.," noted Weislogel.
It's an exciting time because tools are readily available now to design advanced equipment for use in space with far greater reliability than previously possible. "The era of the ISS is the perfect time to develop and demonstrate these tools as we continue to explore our solar system," Weislogel said.The design industry sees some crafty creations but this sustainable leather takes the cake
Handbags crafted from pineapples? Lamps shaped as bananas? Now we've really seen it all in the design world.
Designer Carmen Hijosa - CEO of her company Ananas Anam - has claimed the prize for Materials Innovation at the Arts Foundation awards, held in Notting Hill last night.
The material - labelled Piñatex - is crafted from pineapple leaf fibres, forming an alternative type of leather that is sustainable, natural and a nonwoven textile.
Range of fashion and accessory products made of Piñatex
The Spanish-born designer and creator of Piñatex sourced a way to use agricultural waste and turn it into an everyday accessory. Pineapple leaf fibres are a by-product of pineapple harvesting, a fact Hijosa discovered through spending time working with weavers in the Philippines.
Hijosa's previous work in the designing and manufacturing of leather goods shed light on the ecological damage caused by the tanning of leather.
When in the Philippines, Hijosa started to look for a substitute for leather, mulling over questions such as, 'what does the country have, what do the people have, and what can I use (to help the people)?'
Pineapple leaf fibres are one of the finest natural fibres you can use, and with a BA and MA in textile design from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin to back her ideas, Hijosa considered the concept of creating a mesh not unlike leather.
Left: pineapples. Top right: 'Piñatex PINUCKPUCK' has a patterned top coating, giving it a depth in colour and a variety of surface qualities. Bottom right: Piñatex™ ORIGINAL is the first industrialised version of Piñatex™ and is seen here in natural, it also comes in charcoal
Adopting a true Cradle to Cradle ethos, Hijosa developed the full supply chain for the Piñatex products from the farms in the Philippines to the finished product. While undertaking her PhD at the London RCA Hijosa completed several collaborations with big names such as Camper and Puma to create shoe prototypes, in addition to niche companies like Ally Capellino.
Clockwise from left: upholstery, leather backpack, and NAE Vegan (No Animal Exploitation) shoes, all made of Piñatex
Upon winning the award for Materials Innovation, supported by The Clothworkers' Foundation, Hijosa said it was, 'rather humbling', having been in the same artistic class as all the other designers, not to mention the tough competition from others shortlisted in her category. It is clear Hijosa is truly honoured by the accolade to receive recognition for her efforts and how far she has gone to support the eco-friendly textile.
Colour samples of Piñatex
Some nine years down the line and Hijosa's hard work, frustrations and perseverance has paid off, with the first production line occurring late in 2015. The products are now starting to sell and have already featured at The Future Fabrics Expo (24-27 January 2016) and are set to feature in more trade shows throughout the year, alongside generating a huge interest from further clients.
Main image: SmithMatthias bag made of PiñatexOh Sees—the band formerly known as Thee Oh Sees—recently announced their new album Orc. It’s out August 25 via John Dwyer’s label Castle Face Records. After sharing their new track “Static God,” they’ve shared another new one called “Animated Violence.” Listen below. The band are also auctioning off a series of test pressings hand-painted by Dwyer, and all the proceeds go to the Downtown Women’s Center in Los Angeles. Up for grabs are rarities by various Dwyer projects including Oh Sees, Coachwhips, and Damaged Bug. Bid here.
Oh Sees: “Animated Violence” (via SoundCloud)
Castle Face co-head Matt Jones shared a statement about the Downtown Women’s Center:
We here at Castle Face are committed to making positive change in our community, and the homelessness epidemic in downtown Los Angeles is a tragic and complex issue. Homeless women in particular are an especially vulnerable population and we are happy to help out in any way that we can to assist in permanent solutions for them and our community.
Watch Thee Oh Sees perform “The Dream” at Pitchfork Music Festival 2012:"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," said the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1967 when he spoke out against the Vietnam War. At the time, he was roundly criticized by friend and foe alike for speaking out on an issue considered outside the purview of civil rights' leaders. Dr. King understood better than most at the time the true cost of war -- in lives lost, in futures squandered, in dreams deferred and in misspent resources. Eventually, a majority of Americans came to agree with him about the war in Vietnam but he did not live long enough to see the shift in public opinion. His moral courage lay in speaking out in the face of disagreement, caring more about his integrity than popularity.
As leaders of the California NAACP, it is our mission to eradicate injustice and continue the fight for civil rights and social justice wherever and whenever we can. We are therefore compelled to speak out against another war, the so called "war on drugs." To be clear, this is not a war on the drug lords and violent cartels, this is a war that disproportionately affects young men and women and the latest tool for imposing Jim Crow justice on poor African-Americans.
We reject the oft-repeated but deceptive argument that there are only two choices for addressing drugs -- heavy handed law enforcement or total permissiveness. Substance abuse and addiction are American problems that affect every socioeconomic group, and meaningful public health and safety strategies are needed to address it. However, law enforcement strategies that target poor Blacks and Latinos and cause them to bear the burden and shame of arrest, prosecution and conviction for marijuana offenses must stop.
The report released this week by the Drug Policy Alliance confirmed that marijuana law enforcement in California disproportionately targets our youth. Despite consistent evidence that Black youth use marijuana at lower rates than Whites, in every one of the 25 largest counties in California, Blacks are arrested for marijuana possession at higher rates than Whites, typically at double, triple, or even quadruple the rate of Whites.
We believe whatever potential harms may be associated with using marijuana are more than outweighed by the immediate harms that derive from being caught up in the criminal justice system. Once a young person is arrested and brought under the justice system, he or she is more likely to get caught in the criminal justice system again. While most marijuana possession arrests do not result in long prison sentences, they almost all generate some entanglement in the net of the criminal justice system -- acquisition of arrest records, entry into criminal databases and the permanent stigmatization that arises from such involvement. A simple marijuana possession charge and $100 ticket starts a rap sheet that can leave an individual with a permanent record as a drug offender, which can easily be searched by employers, landlords, schools, credit agencies, licensing boards and banks.
Given the current economic crisis and high level of unemployment, particularly for Black men, do we really want to permanently handicap a person's ability to get an education, make a decent living and have a productive life because they used marijuana? Equally important -- is arresting people for possessing marijuana the best use of our scarce tax dollars? At a time when counties are laying off teachers, firefighters, child and senior care providers, can we justify wasting millions attempting to reduce demand for cannabis through law enforcement? How many more years should we wait before declaring that strategy a failure? Our recent history is filled with elected officials (including our current President), business leaders and others who have admitted using marijuana and were nonetheless able to lead productive lives. How many would have been able to do so if they were subjected to current law enforcement practices?In yet another set of survey results that surely tells us all we need to know about the state of our great nation, British youngsters innocently state that Sir Winston Churchill was the first man to walk on the moon, the Telegraph smirks.
Befuddled tykes, aged between four and ten, confused the iconic and eerily baby-faced WWII PM with the iconic and completely forgettable-faced Neil Armstrong, who did the lunar-shuffle four years after Churchill's death.
The results of the survey, commissioned by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment in cahoots with the rather more respectable Royal Astronomical Society, sadly suggest that primary school children are perhaps not getting the proper grounding in science they need.
Other sobering results included |
, a kind, thoughtful, loving and beautiful soul!
Always on our minds, forever in our hearts!
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Jacob Flores, born 28 May 1998, died 09 March 2015 in Meridian, Idaho
Our Remembrance
Miss you every day.
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Brian Lee Taylor, born 17 December 1988, died 22 November 2005 in Wyoming
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Christina LaPlante McKeehan, born 11 September 1989, died 25 June 2009 in Titusville, Florida
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We love and miss you dearly Christina - until the day we meet again
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Julian Garcia, born 07 October 1967, died 04 October 2015 in Panama City, Florida, USA
Our Remembrance
Gone but never forgotten, I will love and miss you forever. There is a void where you used to be that can't be filled.
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Lauren Gill, born 02 August 1988, died 06 December 2011 in Canton, Ohio
Our Remembrance
Our dear precious sister, a beloved daughter, granddaughter, niece, cousin and friend... She made the best of her 23 short years on this planet, Getting good grades, graduating from college, staying out of trouble, working hard and being independent. She accomplished much, and she touched all of the hearts of those who were lucky enough to know her and be around her. She loved animals, scary movies, surf n turf, swimming in the pool and the ocean, she loved all forms of art, travel, she loved her family, her friends, and she loved to laugh. She suffered from depression and battled it to the very end until it made her little spirit tired. So the Angels opened the door for her and she took their hand that night in December 2011. We all miss her. Until we meet again...
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Elizabeth Ann Hewitt, born 03 April 1988, died 17 August 2013 in San Jose, California
Our Remembrance
My Sweet Elizabeth Ann, I brought you into this world when I was 18 and I couldn't wait until you were older and I would still be young and we could go on adventures together for the rest of our lives. I've been with you longer than I had been alone when you chose to leave. You are the bravest person I've ever met. How hard it was day after day for you to watch yourself disintegrate into despair and slowly watch yourself die. I watched you fight and I watched you hold on,for me���It was an honor to know you. I will miss you every single minute until we find each other again�..I love you you so much. Mamma
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Joshua Michael Owens, born 15 March 1977, died 26 April 2007 in Maryland
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Matthew Comiskey, born 14 November 1975, died 30 August 2017 in Kalamath Falls, Oregon
Our Remembrance
He was my best friend in high school. The kindest person I ever knew. I loved him so much.
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Jonathan Owen Marks, born 09 March 1988, died 24 December 2012 in DeRidder, Louisiana
Our Remembrance
He was my heart and soul, he took it with him when he left this world.
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Alan Morton, born 17 June 1979, died 12 September 2009 in Bundaburg, Queensland, Australia
Our Remembrance
Brother to 5. Died like his dad who he missed so much.
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Stephen E. Dixon, born 16 March 1958, died 07 July 1986 in Los Angeles, California
Our Remembrance
Stephen, I refuse to remember you in any way other than the loving man you were to me. You were my first love, and they say you never forget your first. I'm so sorry for the way I was towards you, when you clearly loved me. I will never, ever forget you. Its been many years now since you've been gone, but you live on in my heart. I love you always Stephen Eric Dixon.
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Austin Taylor Young, born 28 July 1995, died 01 March 2014 in Zionsville, Indiana
Our Remembrance
It was a blessing to know Austin, even if it wasn't for as long as we wanted. We love you Austin, we think of you every day man. Fly high.
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Trent Daniel Jones, born 14 February 1990, died 31 March 2011 in Montana
Our Remembrance
To know my baby brother was to love him forever. He will forever be missed...
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Tracy Lee Wirtz, born 12 May 1970, died 05 November 2012 in Minnesota USA
Our Remembrance
A wonderful mother, daughter, sister and friend. Heaven is brighter with you in it. No one else had a bigger smile or better belly laugh. Your family and friends miss you terribly, but find comfort knowing you are finally at peace. You will be loved forever and ask you watch over us and we try to figure out how to live our lives without you.
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Alan Bergins, born 07 December 1983, died 06 November 2009 in Charlotte, North Carolina
Our Remembrance
We love and miss you with all of our heart.
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Michael Lance Blomquist, born 05 January 1967, died 29 May 2017 in Moorcroft, Wyoming
Our Remembrance
Michael was a generous and loving soul. He left behind 3 children and so many unanswered questions.
(Click to view)
Heather Elizabeth Applewhite, born 18 September 1990, died 23 August 2011 in Virginia, USA
Our Remembrance
My precious daughter, an exquisite creature, my heart.
(Click to view)
David Wayne Colvin, born 01 July 1976, died 28 July 2011 in Indiana, USA
Our Remembrance
The only man that was 100%..Everything i could ever want,best friend, soulmate,business partners,teacher/student, my mentor,my lover, my everything. our.love will never die.
(Click to view)
Franklin Kurt Mcgrew, born 11 December 1989, died 29 July 2015 in Arlington, Texas
Our Remembrance
My baby bro, u have no more pain. But I have no answers. I miss u dearly. One love bubba..
(Click to view)
Lori Jean Wright, born 28 December 1974, died 23 October 2009 in Washington, USA
(Click to view)
Gabriella Green, born 02 June 2005, died 10 January 2018 in Panama City Beach, Florida
Our Remembrance
Bullying consumed her innocence. Rest in Peace
(Click to view)
Clint Coonts, born 17 August 1965, died 01 May 2013 in Malden, Missouri
Our Remembrance
A beautiful husband, father, Pawpa, uncle and brother. You left us much to soon leaving a void that can never be filled. You are loved and missed by more than you will ever know, as our hearts break at you leaving. I hope and pray you have found peace that was lost to you here.. No more pain as you were welcomed home by the creator, family and friends that went before you..Keep your eye on your family as you always did, until we meet again.. My Lil Indian, I loved you yesterday, I loved you today, I will love you forever. Always, your Lil frog.
(Click to view)
James Douglas Wesley Bates, born 21 March 1999, died 21 November 2013 in Metropolis, Illinois, USA
Our Remembrance
Only 14 years and 8 months old. I wish I had gotten to see you grown into a man. You cared so much that it hurt and that took you away from me. I will forever love you son, I was privledged to have you call me Mom. I miss you SO MUCH!!
(Click to view)
John Miller, born 30 May 1986, died 26 June 2013 in Roseburg, Oregon
Our Remembrance
John was my fiance, my life, my soulmate. He will forever be in my heart and his son Ethans as well as friends and family. I love you.
(Click to view)
Samantha Wopat, born 13 October 1992, died 26 March 2012 in Santa Barbara, California
Our Remembrance
Mental Health in student-athletes need to be taken more seriously. Rest in Peace Sam
(Click to view)
Iris Chang, born 28 March 1968, died 09 November 2004 in Princeton, New Jersey And Los Gatos, California
Our Remembrance
Author of the Rape of Nanking. Ended up taking her life due to depression centered around her work.
(Click to view)
Charles Baxter, born 24 January 1961, died 07 November 2011 in Minnesota, USA
Our Remembrance
To the living, I am gone. To the sorrowful, I will never return. To the angry, I was cheated.
But to the happy, I am at peace. And to the faithful, I have never left. I cannot speak, but I can listen. I cannot be seen, but I can be heard.
So as you stand upon a shore gazing at a beautiful sea, As you look upon a flower and admire its simplicity, Remember me. Remember me in your heart, Your thoughts, and your memories, Of the times we loved, The times we cried, The times we fought, The times we laughed. For if you always think of me, I will never have gone.
(Click to view)
Tanner Ray French, born 18 July 1991, died 21 February 2011 in Breckenridge, Texas, USA
Our Remembrance
In memory of my sweet son who had a way of always making those around him laugh. His "dancing eyes" lit up any room he walked into. 19 years was just not enough time to have you here with us. Rest with the angels my sweet boy, you are missed and loved by so many.
(Click to view)
Shade Sanguis, born 03 November 1975, died 16 October 2018 in New Orleans, Louisana
Our Remembrance
I saw you in my dreams...
(Click to view)
James Powell, born 15 February 1963, died 05 August 2002 in Kingstree, South Carolina
Our Remembrance
You always told me the weight of the world is not mine to be carried on my shoulders. I wish I would have knew the weight you were carrying so I could have one more day with you. I always love you daddy.
Forever your “sweet pea”
Melissa
(Click to view)
Shayla Grayce Miller, born 07 October 1999, died 22 September 2014 in Cross Lanes, West Virginia, USA
Our Remembrance
My bestfriend took her own life by a shotgun. She was only 14 and a freshman at nitro high school.
(Click to view)
Braedan Belcourt, born 25 January 1995, died 15 June 2012 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Our Remembrance
A life he chose to end, I will never understand, I shall never ask why?
God gave me this child for a reason, as he also took him for a reason. I am on a journey to save a life. Life.....it is in YOU to live. Please watch my youtube honouring my Braedan "BraedansVoice" or "Jolene Moyan"
(Click to view)
Joey Allen Sayre, born 07 January 1995, died 30 June 2018 in Alliance, Ohio
(Click to view)
Cody Larsen, born 16 October 1993, died 07 February 2011 in Lena, Illinois
Our Remembrance
I\'m missing you, son. Love, Moth
(Click to view)
James Eric Vance, born 05 April 1983, died 16 October 2018 in New Albany, Mississippi
Our Remembrance
A Pastor, A Father, A brother, An Uncle and a friend who will be deeply missed. That smile was infectious. He will never know the legacy he left behind as well as how much everyone loved him. Yes we are hurt, but we are God's children. And we trust that He will give us divine strength during this hour.
(Click to view)
Tyler Williams, born 28 April 1992, died 22 June 2017 in Dallas, Georgia
Our Remembrance
Approved 2018. March 23 by Jean
(Click to view)
Presley Gainey, born 24 July 1951, died 17 September 2010 in North Carolina
Our Remembrance
Presley was quick witted and liked to make people laugh. We dated in high school, broke up, lived different lives, just reunited in September 2008. We were so happy to be reunited to live the last of our lives together. Then in February 2010, mental illness and cancer hit him hard and 6 months later he took his life. I am so grief stricken over what could have been the best years of our life together. I miss him so much! I love you Presley!
(Click to view)
Lance Christian Titus, born 09 March 1979, died 26 October 2006 in Ohio
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Ryan James Cummins, born 22 October 1993, died 09 November 2013 in Pennsylvania, USA
Our Remembrance
A kind gentle soul gone too soon.
Our shining light has gone out too fast.
Happiness is when what you think, what you say,
and what you do are in harmony. ~ Mahatma Ghandi
(Click to view)
Ronald Scott Prince, born 12 November 1968, died 17 July 2013 in Georgia, US
Our Remembrance
Scott, You are my best friend, my soul mate. I will always love you.
(Click to view)
Jenine Rachel Pretorius, born 26 December 1984, died 24 February 2005 in South Africa
(Click to view)
Linda Marie Jacob, born 30 October 1985, died 20 January 2012 in Austin, Texas
Our Remembrance
What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us. ~ Helen Keller
(Click to view)
Donny Hathaway, born 01-Oct-1945, died 13-Jan-1979 in Chicago, Illinois
Our Remembrance
Signed with Atlantic Records. Sung of the greatest Christmas songs ever: "This Christmas"
(Click to view)
John Aaron McMillan, born 04 June 1991, died 30 March 2018 in Peoria, Illinois
Our Remembrance
Miss you, buddy.
(Click to view)
Steve Brown, born 19 March 1981, died 11 October 2013 in Spokane, Washington
Our Remembrance
We miss you and love you, Steve.
(Click to view)
Jared Badger, born 03 February 1977, died 06 October 2014 in Midvale, Utah, USA
Our Remembrance
I'll love you forever. The day you were born was one of the best days of my life. I thought you were the most beautiful baby in the entire world. The day you took your own life, was one of the worst days of my life. I know you are back home now, safe, happy, and watching over us. Hardly a day goes by that I don't think of you or cry for missing you. Your smile could light up a room. I look forward to seeing you again along with all our relatives who have gone before. I am comforted thru the grace of our Heavenly Father. Thank you for being our guardian angel.
(Click to view)
Kraig Martin Cook, born 04 August 1965, died 12 July 2009 in Missouri, USA
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Maureen Yvonne O'Henly, born 24 March 1970, died 29 December 2017 in Jonestown, Texas
Our Remembrance
Intelligent, beautiful, artistic, and creative, Maureen had all of those attributes and more.
She enjoyed and was very good at photographing nature; the birds and flowers, the beach. But most of all she enjoyed photographing her loved ones and friends.
I was the happy recipient of so many of her creations; paintings, jewelry, and the most beautiful wall decoration I've ever seen. It will remain on my wall until after I've passed.
I was also the recipient of her love and affection. She was always my baby girl.
Love, miss and think of you forever.
(Click to view)
Rob Tepper, born 16 February 1971, died 05 June 2017 in Canton, Michigan
Our Remembrance
There isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss my brother. His unexpected death has forever changed my family and my life. I hope he has found his peace in heaven and watched down over us. He will forever be in my 💓 heart.
(Click to view)
Ronald Joseph Castaldo, born 24 July 1941, died 01 December 1976 in Flagstaff, Arizona
Our Remembrance
Hoping you found peace.
(Click to view)
Kenneth C. Dove, Jr., born 13 August 1956, died 12 August 2010 in Salt Lake City, Utah
Our Remembrance
\"Enjoy the ride dad, we will never forget you, we love you so much, r.i.p.\"
(Click to view)
Mark Edward Murphy, born 29 December 1977, died 30 August 2015 in Arizona
Our Remembrance
Another mother who lost their child to suicide
Remembrance : ~~FOREVER LOVED, FOREVER MISSED~~
(Click to view)
Holly Russ Irvin Snowburg III, born 21 August 1973, died 22 July 2013 in Pennsylvania, United States
Our Remembrance
For every breath I take, I take a breath for you...
In loving memory of a devoted father, a kind and thoughtful partner, and a true friend to many.
Too young to die yet lived more life than most who live to be old and gray.
You are greatly missed and always will be.
Until we meet again
(Click to view)
Timothy Cloniger, born 22 September 1970, died 20 June 1997 in Cherryville, North Carolina, USA
Our Remembrance
He earned his nickname "Klondyke" from being so big when he played football. He used his size to defend any and all that were being bullied. He was so very tender hearted, so funny, smart, and loved his family as much as they loved him, especially his little sister. I know without a doubt he is in a place now that is filled with love and the peace he so desperately needed for his soul to rest. He will always be missed, always be treasured, and forever loved.
(Click to view)
Donnie Carathers, born 02 November 1981, died 05 May 2016 in Nashville, Ohio, USA
Our Remembrance
My brother, Donnie, was the most gentle, funniest and caring man. I called him, Piglet and he called me, WeeWee. This man was my bestfriend and he will be missed dearly.
(Click to view)
Marsena Feathers Dixon, born 19 April 1972, died 12 May 2016 in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma
Our Remembrance
Marcy, my darling firstborn daughter, mother of Gabe, Ferron, Caleb, Sam, and Brock; Grandma to Casha, Elena, and Shana.
I'm so sorry. I wish i would have known how confused you were, i just didn't know, i didn't understand.
please forgive me.
I love you forever sweetheart.
mom
(Click to view)
Michael Raymond Riley, born 15 September 1979, died 30 November 2011 in Anchorage, Alaska
Our Remembrance
I am sorry you felt all this pain, my dearest little one. I cannot be in a world where you are gone. It is a cold, cruel place with you in it. Mom never knew the boy she loved is gone, and here I am, every day missing you. I wish you would call me and say sis the way you did...
(Click to view)
Nathan Kyle Johnson, born 09 August 1988, died 29 September 2007 in Colorado, USA
(Click to view)
Apostoli Mouras, born 14 November 1989, died 09 September 2015 in Freemansburg, Pennsylvania, USA
Our Remembrance
A loving, kind and gentle soul whom will be truly missed by everyone, especially his 3 amazing beautiful very young children.
-love you for eternity, baby brother
(Click to view)
Larry Kelley, born 30 May 1915, died 27 June 2000 in Conneaut, Ohio And Highstown, New Jersey
Our Remembrance
Heisman Trophy Winner and College football Hall of Famer. Yale End
(Click to view)
Ken Crumley, born 04 August 1969, died 15 February 2105 in Middletown, New York
Our Remembrance
We miss you so much... Not a day goes by without a thought of you in it.. Hoping you are at peace.
(Click to view)
Ron L. Wilson, born 23 November 1964, died 31 January 2017 in Nampa, Idaho, US
Our Remembrance
One of the greatest husbands, father, friend anyone could ever wish for. Sincere, loving, courageous and strong. He touched the lives of everyone who knew and loved him. He is greatly missed and will never be forgotten.
(Click to view)
Javie Garcia, born 12 April 1976, died 27 February 2009 in San Antonio, Texas
Our Remembrance
Gone way too soon but never forgotten..
(Click to view)
Austin Tyler George Geisler, born 15 September 1994, died 11 November 2011 in Kentucky
(Click to view)
Justin Kaminski, born 28 September 1990, died 18 July 2010 in Burbank, Illinois
Our Remembrance
Justin Kaminski, I love and miss you every single day. Love always mom
(Click to view)
Malisa Bookhardt, born 01 May 1978, died 04 January 1996 in Savanah, Georgia
Our Remembrance
So very missed and Loved. Can not wait till I can hold you again! Thank you for the little while and all the lessons you have taught me since!
(Click to view)
Daniel Michael Bowen, born 09 December 1977, died 26 January 2004 in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada
Our Remembrance
hat I would give if I could say...Hello Michael every day...to hear your voice to see your smile...to sit with you and chat awhile. So if you have a son...cherrish him with care....cause you never know the heart ache....to know he isn\\\'t there. I love and adore you my son....please rest in peace now Sweetheart. I love you forever...I\\\'ll love you for always....as long as you\\\'re with me...my baby you\\\'ll be!!!! xoxoxoxoxo Lovingly remembered and never forgotten.......Mom xoxoxoxoxoxo
(Click to view)
Zachary Evan Stayner, born 19 March 1995, died 26 November 2016 in Prospect, Ohio, USA
Our Remembrance
My beloved grandson, forever in my heart, never forgotten.
(Click to view)
Emily Rosaline, born 12 October 1999, died 15 March 2017 in Charlotte, North Carolina
Our Remembrance
We'll never forget you, Emily. I remember the day you were born, I looked you in the eye and promised myself that I would protect you with my life. I'll never completely understand why you took your own life, but I'm still unable to come to terms with it. Every morning I wake up and the first thing I think about is making you breakfast, and the last thing I do at night is think to myself, "Did I tell Em goodnight?". I remember you had the most beautiful smile, and no matter how rough things were you always had a smile, and a giggle to go along with it. Please forgive me for any mistakes I may have made along the way. We love you so very much, Em.
(Click to view)
Raymond Paul Houston, born 03 January 1949, died 14 September 1979 in Knoxville, Knox County, Tennessee
Our Remembrance
In loving memory of Raymond Paul Houston
(Click to view)
Ashlea Ruth Doty, born 01 July 1975, died 20 January 2010 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
Our Remembrance
In loving memory of my one-and-only, my precious Baby Girl, 34yo. Rest in peaceful slumber, Sweetie ღஜღ
(Click to view)
Steven Kyle Lowell Stewart, born 09 September 1990, died 02 February 2006 in Marysville, California
Our Remembrance
💔 Rock the after life son💔
🐦 ALWAYS MISSED NEVER FORGOTTEN 🐦
(Click to view)
Daniel Omar Martinez, born 08 September 1985, died 07 May 2012 in Davie, Florida
Our Remembrance
I\'ll love you forever, I\'ll like you for always, as long as I\'m living my baby you\'ll be. - Robert Munsch
(Click to view)
De'Shawn Williams, born 07 January 1974, died 14 October 2015 in Colorado Springs, Colorado
Our Remembrance
My wonderful brother! I love you so much. Not a day goes by that I dont wish I would have been there the moment you made this decision. I miss you more than words could ever express. I love you and I would do anything to see your face again. RIP Deuce
(Click to view)
Martin Godinez, born 03 November 1963, died 30 October 2002 in Chicago, Illinois
Our Remembrance
In loving memory of my husband. May we one day meet in heaven my love.
(Click to view)
Allison Goldstein, born 18 March 1984, died 28 June 2016 in Richmond, Virginia
Our Remembrance
Battled PostPartum Depression, ended her young life
(Click to view)
Everett Mello, born 30 May 1997, died 23 August 2010 in Rhode Island, United States
Our Remembrance
my son was 13 years old when he decided that he didn\'t want to live in this world anymore. He was a great kid always stood up for his friends. He was a great soccer player and loved school. He left behind his sister who he loved with all of his heart. When he left this world he left so many people heart broken and wondering why this has happened. Only he knows what he wanted. There isn\'t a day that goes by that i don\'t think of him and either laugh or cry. He will always be in my heart never forgotten and always remembered. I love you Everett and miss you every minute of everyday!!
(Click to view)
Christian Von Metzgar, born 04 September 1973, died 24 May 1993 in Ford City, Pennsylvania
Our Remembrance
In loving memory of Christian Von Metzgar
(Click to view)
Jessica Claire Fletcher, born 15 December 1982, died 26 April 2011 in England
Our Remembrance
My beautiful daughter Jessica, why were you so sad? I miss you so much my baby. I wish wish wish! Mum xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(Click to view)
Ryne Brock, born 10 September 1994, died 29 September 2012 in South Carolina
Our Remembrance
Ryne was a very loving person who suffered from Bi-polar for about 5 years. He took everyone\'s problems as his own. He loved and turned the other cheek (real man), Ryne was saved and sang in the church choir, but battle a forever ending depression. Ryne was a great son that would do anything for anyone.
(Click to view)
Philip Domingo, born 06 February 1977, died 07 December 2012 in San Diego, California
Our Remembrance
Remembering always my precious son, Philip who left us way too soon. I love him and miss him terribly. My gentle giant had a great big heart and smile to match. I never heard him say an unkind work about anyone. The world was a better place with him in it. Now he\\\'s gone....reunited with his older brother, Ralphie.
(Click to view)
Monty Brett Gilpin, born 28 September 1970, died 14 February 2008 in Leavenworth, Kansas, USA
(Click to view)
Caleb Sullivan, born 23 June 1999, died 18 September 2017 in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma
Our Remembrance
Caleb had a heart of gold. The humble and loving spirit he carried for 18 years now lives on through his family and friends, all of whom miss him infinitely.
(Click to view)
Bullard Bill, born 17 September 1933, died 25 June 1985 in Searcy, Arkansas
Our Remembrance
My Dad was a quiet, fun-loving individual. He was very tender-hearted and cared very much about people.
(Click to view)
Elizabeth Benge Sinner, born 18 June 1985, died 16 December 2017 in Richmond, Kentucky
Our Remembrance
You made such an impression on all of us. And you're so missed! Your smile, intelligence, strength, light, and love made the world a warmer place.
(Click to view)
Alan John Carlile, born 31 May 1987, died 06 June 2014 in Chesterfield, England
Our Remembrance
My beautiful baby brother, chose to become an angel xxx
(Click to view)
David Foster Wallace, born 21 February 1962, died 12 September 2008 in USA
(Click to view)
Michael Scott Allen, born 26 August 1988, died 15 June 2006 in Georgia, USA
(Click to view)
Patrizia Mercuri, born 03 October 1966, died 08 February 2013 in Quebec, Canada
Our Remembrance
God has you in His keeping I have you in my heart. Not a day goes by that I do not think of you. I miss you so much Patty!
(Click to view)
Eston William Nelson II, born 18 April 1996, died 16 November 2011 in West Virginia
Our Remembrance
Every time I hear your name, tears are brought to my eyes and the thought of it upsets me, because there were no goodbyes.
(Click to view)
Ibrah Hierholt, born 13 November 1986, died 12 May 2012 in California
Our Remembrance
Left a note for his mum
\"Forgive me, be strong and patient, I love you\"
... We loved you so much Ibrah, you couldn\'t have imagined how much people miss you and cry everyday for you. Rest in peace my brother, hope you are in peace now
(Click to view)
Julie Elizabeth Hollingshead, born 15 May 1992, died 05 August 2009 in Ontario, Canada
Our Remembrance
“If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together.. there is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. but the most important thing is, even if we're apart.. I'll always be with you.” Your MOMMY LOVES YOU ANGEL!!!!!!!!!
(Click to view)
Joseph Caleb Anderson, born 25 July 1976, died 07 October 2016 in San Marcos, Texas
Our Remembrance
Everyone knew Caleb to be a kind person who had passion about what was important to him, such as Star Wars, gaming, rules of said gaming, anime, the renaissance faire, and good food. He liked country music, which made for interesting debate with his metalhead wife. Caleb worked for Walmart for 22 years and cared about the customers he helped. He acted with integrity and believed in doing the right thing even if it wasn't popular. He marched to the beat of his own drummer and didn't worry all the time about what others thought. He was highly intelligent and knew facts about nearly every topic ever mentioned in his presence, and was very much a perfectionist. He was a beautiful yet complicated soul who will always be missed by all his friends and family.
(Click to view)
Michael Dwayn Stroud, born 10 June 1949, died 11 May 2015 in Willis Point, Texas, USA
Our Remembrance
My Love, My life, I miss you so much. Your wife, Tessie
(Click to view)
Samantha J. LaCount, born 22 February 1989, died 14 August 2007 in Wisconsin, USA
(Click to view)
Ceridwen Claire Allom, born 03 July 1996, died 11 November 2011 in New Zealand
Our Remembrance
I will miss you and love you forever my Ceriberry. Love Mama bear. xxxx
(Click to view)
Derrick Slade, born 08 June 1982, died 29 November 1999 in Ontario, Canada
Our Remembrance
FOREVER in our hearts
(Click to view)
Conor Paul O Brien, born 22 April 1977, died 26 February 2000 in Gates Mills, Ohio, USA
Our Remembrance
We love and miss you, Conor.
(Click to view)
Ashlyne Brook Whitton, born 16 June 1988, died 17 June 2011 in Mesa, Maricopa County, Arizona, USA
Our Remembrance
My beautiful baby I love you more than all the stars in the sky.
(Click to view)
Robert James Long, born 16 November 1938, died 19 April 2011 in British Columbia, Canada
Our Remembrance
My Dad, my friend ~ Missing you every moment of every single day...
(Click to view)
Nick Kinchloe, born 02 August 2000, died 15 November 2016 in Scottsdale, Arizona
Our Remembrance
Rest in peace Nick
(Click to view)
Ronnie Thompson, born 03 March 1960, died 15 June 2011 in Texas, USA
Our Remembrance
Ronnie Thompson, 51, a retired deputy constable, went home to be with his Lord and Savior, Wednesday, June 15, 2011. Celebration of life: 2 p.m. Monday at Retta Baptist Church, 13201 Rendon Road, Burleson. Visitation: 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday with Masonic service at 6 p.m. Sunday at Blessing Funeral Home. Ronnie was a member of the Kiwanis, board member of Windy Ryan Memorial Roping Association, chaplain for the Eastern Star, provost, Shriner, Fort Worth Masonic Lodge, and a volunteer for Officer McGruff, Mansfield Convalescent Hospital and Mansfield Activities Center. He was an avid Rangers fan, a caring friend to all and prided himself in being the best grandfather he could be. Ronnie was preceded in death by his mother, Jewel Thompson; grandmother, Iona Brumm; and brother, Kenneth Thompson. Survivors: Wife, Kinike Thompson; father, Tommy Thompson; brother, Steven Thompson; daughters, Amber Davis and husband, Audie, and Cindy Lewis and husband, Lance. He was Pawpaw
to granddaughters, Liliana, Jordyn and Reagan; and a loving uncle to Bobby, Kenneth, Steven and Melody.
Web Site :
(Click to view)
Donald Harman, born 08 May 1970, died 29 November 2011 in Kansas City, Missouri
(Click to view)
Bryce Stephen Harrison, born 12 January 1989, died 29 September 2004 in Arizona
Our Remembrance
Bryce,
17 years wasn\'t long enough. We miss you so much and will love you forever. Watch over your brother!
Mom
(Click to view)
Cesar Massaro Ito, born 26 March 1983, died 19 September 2014 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Our Remembrance
Cesar, son, brother, uncle, cousin, nephew, grandson, friend. we love you. you will be always with us in our hearts in our thoughts. we will remember your courage, your kindness, your love for your family. you will find peace now. we will miss you forever. see you.
(Click to view)
Hannah Bond, born 01 March 1994, died 22 September 2007 in Kent, England
Our Remembrance
I never knew you in person Hannah, but you're almost exactly like i was when i was a 13 year old girl. I'm sorry you were struggling, you didn't deserve that rest easy you beautiful girl.
(Click to view)
Nathanial Jacob Coward, born 23 April 2002, died 27 November 2018 in Lumberton, Texas, USA
Our Remembrance
Nate
(Click to view)
Richard Hatch, born 28 December 1986, died 23 July 2009 in Indiana
(Click to view)
Adam Dale Penland, born 13 December 1983, died 03 February 2008 in Missouri
(Click to view)
Brett Noel DeCouteau, born |
confirming the rumor that they paid for at least part of their signatures, which fell far below their 10 million target.
On the Death of Facts
For PR flacks like Romano whose job is spin and smoke and mirrors, our repeated requests for documents supporting his contentions gives offense.
"I thought this would be a normal conversation," he complains when I press for material to back up his claims. He doesn't seem to understand that a group with a website called PRWatch may not consider PR spokespeople a reliable source of information. CMD does not believe, to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, that the press should be stenographers of what spokespeople assert despite evidence to the contrary.
Unfortunately, few major news outlets in America consistently fact check; The Nation magazine and CMD are two that do. We never issue a report unless it is backed up by original source material and other reliable information, and so we rarely quote what a PR rep says versus documenting what an organization has actually done. Which is not to say we don't sometimes make mistakes.
Arguing that the group was not really a grassroots effort, we reported that Fix the Debt was "deploying" staff to 23 states, but Romano says they already have staff in all these states. Point to Romano. But Romano denies that Fix the Debt has used four PR firms as was reported more than once in the industry journal PR Week. Given that Fix the Debt appears to be hiring PR firms in many states, the point is ours I think.
Romano promised to release the organization's annual tax form to be filed with the IRS, which is unlikely to reveal its donors and prove his claims, so we are not holding our breath.
UPDATE AT 8:00 P.M. -- An astute reader points out that Romano told the Huffington Post in December 2012 that Peterson had given Fix the Debt "millions" -- upping the Pinocchio count substantially.What do Xu Zhipeng and Rick Bumgardener have in common?
Zhipeng, 23, a computer graphic designer in Shanghai, is 6-foot-2 and weighs 157 pounds. Bumgardener, 54, of Halls, Tenn., is a retired school-bus driver who's trying to shed 100 pounds so he'll be eligible for weight-loss surgery. At 5-foot-9, he weighs 468 pounds.
Each man eats about 1,600 calories a day.
Both are featured in the recently published book "What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets" (Material World), which documents in text by Faith D'Aluisio and photos by Peter Menzel the way 80 people from 30 countries eat. All the information I report here, including subjects' ages, is as it appears in the book. It's a gorgeous volume and, at 4 pounds 3 ounces by my kitchen scale, a weighty one.
I read an awful lot about nutrition and food, but never before have I seen such a broad and graphic demonstration of what real people put in their mouths. The book also drives home how directly our cultures and lifestyles are intertwined with the way we eat.
This latest book from Menzel and D'Aluisio (the California husband-and-wife team that gave us "Hungry Planet" in 2005) is organized according to the number of calories each of its subjects consumes in a given day. This became a useful lens through which to view menus that differ so markedly from one another, and from my own comparatively boring daily regimen. And it allows the authors a framework for introducing their subjects with respect and without judgment.
"What I Eat" presents a baffling array of body types, foodstuffs and dining habits. It begins with a profile of Noolkisaruni Tarakuai, a 5-foot-5 Maasai cattle herder in Kenya who, at age 38, weighs 103 pounds and ate only 800 calories on her depicted day. It ends with 31-year-old Jill McTighe of Willesden in northwest London, who is represented by a binge day that tallied an astounding 12,300 calories. McTighe, whose eating habits result in part from her past struggle with amphetamine abuse, is also 5-foot-5, but she weighs 230 pounds.
How to make sense of the disparities? For one thing, the calories listed are snapshots of a single day and may not be sustainable long-term. Beyond that, Menzel told me, "Most of the world is driven by economics. The choices they make are based on what they can afford. In the developing world, diets are grain-based, with less meat. That's a generally healthier way of eating."
But, he continues, "With more wealth, people add more things.... Sweets, fats, meat, milk. When people have more money, that's what they go for."
Extremes aside, the bulk of participants' calorie counts cluster closer to 2,000, the standard number on which U.S. federal dietary guidelines are based and around which Nutrition Facts panels are built.
And that's as it should be, suggests Susan Roberts, senior scientist and director of the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at Tufts University. Roberts hasn't read "What I Eat," but she gets the gist and is concerned that the extreme cases it presents might skew people's views of how many calories they need. Roberts says U.S. dietary guidelines take into account such factors as gender, age, height and activity level in assigning optimal calorie intakes, which generally range from 1,600 calories to 3,000 a day.
Roberts says that unless you're trying to lose or gain pounds, energy (or calorie) intake should equal energy expenditure.
In "What I Eat," that equation is not always clearly in play. Take Jeff Devine, a 39-year-old high-rise ironworker in Chicago, who is photographed on a beam 50 stories up, his day's repast spread before him. Except for a banana, it's all packaged, processed food, but mostly healthful stuff such as smoked salmon, cottage cheese and a fruit cup. Devine's spread also includes 10 bottled beverages of various sizes; six of those are diet sodas, and just three of those are little 12-ouncers. (D'Aluisio says that after overhearing people commenting on the amount of soda in that photo, Devine cut back.)
According to the book, the 6-foot-1 Devine weighs a reasonable 235 pounds despite consuming some 6,600 calories a day. (Readers of last week's column will recall that even the biggest, beefiest NFL football player doesn't need more than 6,000 calories to fuel his practice and play in-season.) It's hard to fathom that Devine's food adds up to that many calories, especially with all those diet sodas. And it's hard to see how he can burn it all off, even with a job and bodybuilding regimen that demand lots of fuel. (The book doesn't attempt to calculate the calories people burn.)
Menzel and D'Aluisio make plain that they are not nutrition experts (though they've included in the 340-page book essays and commentaries from dozens of experts, many with helpful nutrition info), so they've taken pains to explain in detail their methods for collecting, analyzing and presenting data.
And, in the spirit of fairness or perhaps of self-discovery, Menzel and D'Aluisio reveal their own daily diets and calorie intakes in the afterword. His calories: 2,800 per day. Hers: 1,500. Their meals are, predictably enough, full of fresh fruits and vegetables, yogurt, granola, organic peanut butter, with just enough butter (plus a Tootsie Roll Pop) to humanize the pair. Menzel, 61, is 6-foot-1 and weighs 168 pounds. D'Aluisio, 52, is 5-foot-8 and weighs 135 pounds.
In other words, they're the picture of health.Detroit Lions left tackle Taylor Decker has suffered a torn labrum during practice last week and is expected to miss 4-6 months.
The Lions 2016 first-round pick is coming off a stellar rookie campaign. Decker didn’t miss a single offensive snap and was able to handle some of the NFL’s best pass rushers. He gave up 4.5 sacks the whole season and was penalized just six times, three holding calls and three false starts.
Both Joe Dahl and Cornelius Lucas have been splitting first-team snaps at left tackle. Dahl played offensive tackle in college, but spent most of the 2016 season, his rookie season, at guard. Lucas, a true tackle, played in five games last season and saw limited snaps. Offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter said there isn’t a frontrunner to replace Decker.
“We are gonna get reps for everybody, everywhere..” said Cooter, “and really make sure we evaluate the situation pretty indepth… We are going to look into it and figure out the best plan”
Cooter wasn’t the only one unfazed with the loss of Decker. Head coach Jim Caldwell seemed to be in good spirits despite the loss of his stud left tackle.
“This is kind of the nature of our game,” said Caldwell, “You’ve got to adjust and that’s one of the things I think our personnel office does a great job of. I think our players do a tremendous job of. We’ll adjust and keep moving”
Caldwell also didn’t rule out bringing in outside help to shore up the left tackle position.
“We are always looking at options,” said Caldwell, “throughout the weeks, throughout the days to improve our team and we certainly don’t rule that out.”
The Lions did bring in Tony Hills who is entering his 12th season in the NFL. The Lions will be Hills’ 11th team. He has spent a majority of his career bouncing around on practice squads. He’s played in just 33 games in his career and only started one.
There is a strong chance that Decker will start the season on the physically unable to perform (PUP) list. If Decker is does end up on the PUP he will not be able to participate in practice until Week 7 at the earliest. The Lions will have a five week period to let Decker return to practice. Once he returns, the team has a 21-day window to decided to shut him down for the season or allow him to play.
In Decker’s absence the Lions will be taking on the Arizona Cardinals, the New York Giants, the Atlanta Falcons, the Minnesota Vikings, the Carolina Panthers and the New Orleans Saints. Of those six teams only the Giants (11-5), the Falcons (11-5) and the Vikings (8-8) were at, or above,.500 in 2016.
The Cardinals (48), Panthers (47) and Vikings (41) were ranked first, second and fifth in sacks last season. Not having Decker in those games will pose a huge challenge for the Lions. Whoever does end up replacing Decker, whether it’s Dahl, Lucas or someone else, will have their hands full during those games.
Caldwell said he doesn’t believe this is a season-ending injury, which is great news for the Lions and its fans. With the addition of guard T.J. Lang and offensive tackle Ricky Wagner this offseason to reinforce the offensive line, Decker’s injury isn’t going to ruin the Lions season, but this is still a huge loss. Dahl and Lucas are obviously not as great as Decker, but both can serve as great backups to keep the Lions 2017 playoff hopes alive.
If you would like to receive an email each time a new Detroit Lions article is published, fill out our email notification form.WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court's conservative majority expressed varying degrees of concern Wednesday over a civil rights case brought by 20 firefighters, most of them white, who claim reverse discrimination in promotions.
Recent case has Supreme Court justices deciding when race considerations are proper to ensure a diverse workplace.
The suit was filed in response to New Haven, Connecticut, officials' decision to throw out results of promotional exams that they said left too few minorities qualified.
At issue is whether the city intentionally discriminated, in violation of both federal law and the Constitution's equal protection clause.
The high court is being asked to decide whether there is a continued need for special treatment for minorities, or whether enough progress has been made to make existing laws obsolete, especially in a political atmosphere where an African-American occupies the White House. Watch why the plaintiffs are suing »
As is true in many hot-button social issues, Wednesday's arguments fell along familiar ideological lines, with most justices expressing clear views on when race considerations are proper to ensure a diverse workplace.
"It looked at the results and classified successful and unsuccessful applicants by race," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, head in hand. "And you (the city) want us to say this isn't race? I have trouble with this argument."
But a ruling against the city could leave New Haven officials stuck in a "damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't" situation, subject to lawsuits from both minority and majority employees, said Justice David Souter. It is a situation business groups and municipalities have long expressed concern about.
Key plaintiff Frank Ricci and others took promotional exams in 2003 for lieutenant and captain positions that had become available in New Haven, Connecticut's second-largest city. The personnel department contracted with a private firm to design an oral and written exam. When the results came back, city lawyers expressed concern about the results because none of the black firefighters and only one Latino who took the exam would have been promoted.
The New Haven corporation counsel refused to certify the test and no promotions were given. The record does not indicate how many firefighters took the two tests for promotion to captain and lieutenant. Watch why the lawsuit is so controversial »
The city said that under a federal civil rights law known as Title VII, employers must ban actions such as promotion tests that would have a "disparate impact" on a protected class, such as a specified race or gender.
But a group of firefighters sued, calling themselves the "New Haven 20." The plaintiffs, wearing their dress blue uniforms, posed on the high court steps after the 75-minute argument. Nineteen identify themselves as white while one says he is Hispanic-white.
Inside, conservatives on the high court questioned whether the city could throw out the results of the promotion exams after they were already given.
"You had some applicants who were winners and their promotion was set aside," said Justice Antonin Scalia.
Chief Justice John Roberts offered a hypothetical: "Jones, you don't get the promotion because you're white... and they go down the list and throw out everybody who took the test. That would be all right," he asked. "They get do-overs until it comes out right. Or throw out this test, they do another test. Oh, it's just as bad, throw that one out."
Christopher Meade, arguing for New Haven, said, "The city has a duty to ensure that its process is fair for all applicants, both black and white."
Justices on the left seemed to support that view.
Justice John Paul Stevens suggested that if there were a choice of two tests, one of which had a lesser "disparate impact" on minorities, "they could take that test, even though its sole purpose was to achieve racial proportionality in candidates selected."
The firefighters' attorney, Greg Coleman, countered by saying the city's action in this instance "violates the principle of individual dignity."
Kennedy's views could prove key. He appeared to oppose the city's dismissal of the test results and has traditionally been skeptical of many race-based decisions in education and the workplace. But his more moderate views could blunt the impact of any ruling by his more right-leaning colleagues.
In a key ruling three years ago that tossed out racial diversity plans in two public school districts, Kennedy took a more centrist view that held open the limited use of skin color when trying to achieve diversity in the classroom.
The Obama administration also has taken a nuanced position on the appeal. A Justice Department lawyer told the high court that while the federal government supports the city's discretion to nullify the test results, it believes the lawsuit should be allowed to proceed on a limited basis.
The case has attracted a broad range of interest from a variety of advocacy and business groups concerned about how far the high court would go to allow race to be used at all by government and the private sector in such areas as affirmative action, education, and contracting.
The case is Ricci v. DeStefano (07-1428), A ruling is expected in about two months.
All About Affirmative Action • U.S. Supreme Court • Employment DiscriminationPlease share this page:
Soviet era is known for its many bizarre instances of censorship. Vanishing of the commissars may be the most famous, and you can find more in the Wikipedia. However, that’s all about photographs, and I’d like to share with you a bookbinding-related story.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (GSE) had three editions from 1926 to 1978 and the last updates to the GSE in the form of Yearbook of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia were published in 1990, just a year before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
They started to publish the second edition of the GSE in 1949, four years after the World War II — many additions and corrections had to be made. Not only the country, but the whole world has changed along with many intergovernmental relations. The last volume was published in 1958, five years after the death of Josef Stalin and some of his comrades.
I’d like to tell you about the fifth volume of the Encyclopedia. It went to print in September 1950, but in the end of 1953, after conviction and execution of the former Minister of Internal Affairs Lavrentiy Beria, subscribers of the GSE received several new pages with a following note.
To the Subscriber of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia State Scientific Publishing House Great Soviet Encyclopedia recommends to decontaminate the fifth volume, pages 21, 22, 23 and 24, and the portrait pasted in between the pages 22 and 23. In exchange we provide you with new pages with a new text. You should cut the designated pages with scissors or a razor, keeping a margin, to which new pages should be pasted on. State Scientific Publishing House Great Soviet Encyclopedia
I love the style, how the publishing house officials offered an advice to the readers on how to proceed with simple bookbinding procedures to obscure some information not anymore considered being appropriate for a true soviet citizen. Naturally, pages 21, 22, 23 and 24 held an entry on Lavrentiy Beria, and the paste in between the pages 22 and 23 was his portrait. Accordingly, the entry on the Bering Sea received something like a ten-fold expansion with no less than four photographs.
Copies of the fifth volume with an entry on Lavrentiy Beria are considered collectibles today.
Please share this page:The prime minister is thought to be considering fighting the 2020 election on a platform of pulling out of the European Court of Human Rights Neil Hall/Getty Images
Theresa May has been warned she will face opposition from within her own party should she try to pull Britain out of the European Court of Human Rights after the next general election.
The move would mean that while Britain would keep the court’s principles in its own Bill of Rights, there would be no right of appeal to the court.
Mrs May was considering going further than David Cameron by ensuring that Britain’s Supreme Court becomes the overall arbiter of human rights rulings in the UK, The Daily Telegraph reported. It said that the prime minister would make pulling out of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) the centrepiece of her 2020 election campaign.
A government source told the paper: “We would have…Published online 28 September 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.499
News
Habitat loss is the biggest hazard to plant biodiversity.
Among the gymnosperms, the most at-risk plant group, over 75% of cycad species are threatened with extinction. RBG Kew
More than 20% of the world's 380,000 plant species are at risk of extinction, making plants more threatened than birds, according to the first global analysis of the status of plant biodiversity.
The risk assessment, called the Sampled Red List Index for Plants, was conducted by plant scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK, and is published today. It finds that gymnosperms — or seed-bearing plants — including conifers and cycads, are the most at-risk group of plants, with more than 75% of cycad species currently threatened with extinction.
Habitat loss, resulting from the conversion of natural habitats for agriculture and livestock grazing, is the biggest threat to plants' survival, the study concludes.
Existing indicators of biodiversity — such as the Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) — focus mainly on vertebrates, and have assessed only a handful of plants, says Eimear Nic Lughadha, a plant scientist at Kew and a lead researcher on the plant risk assessment.
"By bringing plants into the equation we hope to get a broader and more accurate picture of what is happening to the world's biodiversity," says Nic Lughadha.
Stephen Harris, curator of the Oxford University Herbaria, UK, agrees that conservation efforts have been one-sided. "When people think about what needs conserving, they rarely think about plants," he says.
Harris says he is not surprised that the study found cycads to be the most endangered group. "They have a very small population size, and very limited distribution."
Species head count
The researchers assessed a total of 7,000 plants species — including bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) and legumes (peas and beans) — from the five major plant groups. Examining more than 1 million herbarium specimens, the researchers looked at when and where a specimen was picked. This information was then fed into a computer-based geographical information system to produce a map of the different locations, or distribution, of the species worldwide, and also the size of the area or areas that they cover. Other information, such as habitat loss, collected from scientific literature and expert consultation, was also fed into the system to show whether the areas inhabited by particular species are under threat.
The study uses IUCN criteria to classify species as threatened. For example, a species is classified as 'critically endangered' if the area that it occupies covers less than 10 square kilometres and if the species is known to exist at only a single location.
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The researchers plan to reassess the threat status to plants in 2015. Using the data published today as a baseline, they will be able to gauge whether the risk to plants is growing with time.
Stephen Hopper, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, says that the assessment will help countries to measure progress towards new targets to halt loss of the world's biodiversity by 2020, which are due to be agreed when the countries that are signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity meet in Nagoya, Japan, in October.
"The 2020 biodiversity target that will be discussed in Nagoya is ambitious, but in a time of increasing loss of biodiversity it is entirely appropriate to scale up our efforts," says Hooper. "We need a renewed commitment to care for biodiversity."The rules are just as quirky. Shots from beyond halfcourt are worth 4 points, unless “the Official A.B.A. 3-D Light” is on, in which case those shots are worth 5. In fact, with the light on, a point is added to every field goal. The light goes on if the team with the ball loses it in the backcourt through either a turnover or a violation. If this all sounds a bit ridiculous, remember that the 3-point line was once seen as a gimmick, too.
“It’s the flexibility that’s the charm of the A.B.A., not the plague,” Newman said.
The N.B.A., which owns the trademark to the A.B.A., keeps the league at arm’s length, but has licensed the name to A.B.A. league officials, said Tim Frank, an N.B.A. spokesman.
Newman said that he did not know how many A.B.A. teams were profitable but that the league allowed a chance for nonbillionaires to own a sports team.
“Many owners would not have the opportunity to live out their dream,” he said. Still, the league has had trouble drawing fans or attention. OurSports Central, a Web site that monitors minor league sports, has stopped covering the A.B.A. because of “its inability to publish and play a schedule and the transitory nature of many of its teams,” according to a statement posted on the site.
A Rolling Front Office
The Lima Explosion, a team in the Mid-Central Division, finished the season at 14-8. They were started in 2011 by John Bell, a local businessman, with three partners who have since moved on, but the most important member of the organization is Lewis Shine, 33, the team’s general manager, coach, publicist and sometime point guard.
Shine corrals a network of volunteers, many of them friends from his church, to work the door at games, as well as the merchandise table and the scoreboard. Shine, himself a former A.B.A. player, also has occasionally thrown on a jersey and hit the court when the team was short of players.
He organizes practice at the Lima Central Catholic High School gym or a Methodist church gym. He also arranges travel, which usually means packing the team into a 12-passenger van on loan from a car dealership. But trips are always challenging — players cannot always get time off from their day jobs, and the league has a casual approach to scheduling.There are plenty of nerdy beers out there, like the Dogfishhead Oktoberfest brewed with real moon dust or Lost Rhino’s amber ale fermented with yeast collected from a 35-million-year-old whale fossil. But the newest brews by IntelligentX may be the geekiest of all: beer that is designed with input from artificial intelligence.
According to James Temperton at Wired UK, the project is a collaboration between the London machine learning company Intelligent Layer and the marketing firm 10x.
Starting with four basic beer recipes for a golden, amber, pale and black beers, the company includes a code on its bottles directing imbibers to a Facebook Messenger bot where they answer a series of yes or no and multiple choice questions. The answers are then fed into an AI algorithm dubbed ABI (Automatic Brewing Intelligence), which analyzes customer likes and dislikes.
With that feedback, the brewmaster is able to tweak the brews. So far, Temperton writes, the beer recipes changed 11 times over the last 12 months based on customer feedback during trials. Now, the beer is available to the public at UBrew in London and is being stocked at several tech startups.
“There’s a craft brewing revolution happening across the world right now. People’s tastes are changing faster than ever before as a result. And AI is the perfect way to respond,” IntelligentX co-founder Hew Leith and CEO of 10x says in a video.
“The AI is about putting all the customers in the same room as the brewer,” says Intelligent Layer Founder Rob McInerney.
Their ultimate goal, according to a press release, is for the algorithm to eventually win a major beer competition, such as the Campaign for Real Ale’s Champion Beer of Britain. It’s also a way for Leith to get publicity for his company: “This project demonstrates 10x’s ability to invent, create then launch the world’s most remarkable products,” according to the press release.
Not only are robots coming up with our beer recipes, they are also starting to do the brewing themselves. Over the last few years, several companies have designed self-contained brewing systems like BrewBot, the PicoBrew Zymatic and Brewie. And as long as brew-guzzling bots don’t drink up too much of the end product, these new products add an interesting twist to the beer market.Defense Secretary Robert Gates unveiled Monday a defense budget geared toward fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It proposes to end a controversial Air Force stealth-fighter program and to restructure a costly Army combat system while increasing spending on counterinsurgency and expanding the force.
The only Republican holdover from the Bush administration, Mr. Gates made bold proposals that are likely to run up against entrenched defense-industry interests and members of Congress alike, pushing to fundamentally reshape Pentagon spending, which he believes has been out of balance for many years.
"If approved, these recommendations will profoundly reform how this department does business," he said Monday at the Pentagon.
Gates will end the Air Force's F-22 Raptor program, leaving it with 187 airplanes that cost anywhere between $140 million a piece – and as much as $350 million when research and development is taken into account. The move was not unexpected, since Gates had hinted that the F-22, which has not been used in either Iraq or Afghanistan, is geared toward potential threats from a "near peer" adversary such as China rather than current needs.
Gates will also restructure the Army's Future Combat System, a $160 billion program of vehicle sensors and other equipment that has run over cost and has yet to fully prove itself useful in a counterinsurgency environment.
Gates also cancelled the $6.5 billion presidential helicopter program that would have bought 23 new helicopters for the president. That program, also over budget, was scrapped altogether. Gates said an effort to replace the fleet would start anew in 2011.
But the Pentagon's $534 billion budget for fiscal 2010 will contain billions in spending that is relevant to today's conflicts.
Gates announced $2 billion for remote-controlled aircraft and other intelligence assets to support troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, $500 million for more helicopters needed in both war theaters, and another $500 million to train and equip foreign militaries.
He is also proposing to expand Special Operations forces by about 5 percent to assist in counterinsurgency operations as well as some of the foreign-military training seen as key in the effort against extremism.
Gates also announced that he would end the Army's creation of more units called "brigade combat teams" – units more appropriate for conventional warfare. He said that if these units were allowed to expand further, they would leave the Army spread too thin.
In unveiling the entire budget all at once, Gates has taken an unorthodox approach to the Pentagon budget. In this case, he revealed his thinking on major defense programs ahead of President Obama's official, detailed budget that will be unveiled late this month or in early May in order to give the American public the context for understanding his proposals.
Gates acknowledged that his budget reflects a broad overhaul of defense acquisition and strategy.
"It is one thing to speak generally about the need for budget discipline and acquisition and contract reform," said Gates. "It is quite another to make tough choices about specific systems and defense priorities based solely on the national interest and then stick to those decisions over time."ANAHEIM >> Southern California leaders are anticipating a $2 billion windfall in transportation dollars from the state’s expanding cap-and-trade program that could be used for building more pay lanes or funding the county’s growing bus and rail system.
As dollars from the gasoline tax drop, transportation planners will turn to polluters — including oil companies — who will begin to pay into the state’s cap-and-trade program in 2015 set up in a market-based exchange.
The program was part of the state’s AB 32 laws passed in 2006 to substantially reduce greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
State officials predict the cap-and-trade fund will grow from about $1 billion to $5 billion next year, when oil companies begin to pay for carbon emissions. Of that, about 40 percent would flow to transportation for everything from a rail line into LAX, to light-rail across the foothills to Claremont to pay lanes on the 105, 134, 5 and 405 freeways.
“This is huge,” said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments. “This is the only new source of transportation funding we have.” Ikhrata was part of 1,000 leaders from seven Southern California counties who came here Friday to discuss transportation solutions as part of an annual Mobility 21 Summit.
“Traffic doesn’t care about borders, so we need to work together as a region to expand our transportation options and help people get around more easily,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a guest speaker.
“The regional approach is the only way for us to move forward. Traffic has never been worse. It is probably the No. 1 concern for all of our constituents,” said Garcetti.
The group calls Southern California one of the most congested regions in the country. Motorists driving in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Orange County region waste 502 million hours each year in traffic in total, or about 61 hours per year per automobile commuter. Drivers in the Inland Empire waste 51 million hours per year or 38 hours per automobile commuter, according to the Mobility 21 group.
To address basic needs, Southern California needs $26.6 billion to repair state highways, $44.3 billion for streets and $1.8 billion for local bridge work in the next 10 years, the group estimated.
When Garcetti was asked what projects Los Angeles would apply for under new cap and trade transportation funds, he answered: “It should not just be for capital projects. I would hope it is also for operational costs.”
Garcetti, who is also chairman of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority known as Metro, was referring to the giant agency’s $36 million operating deficit. Although the board voted to raise fares effective Sept. 15, it won’t be enough to lift the agency out of the red. Some have suggested raising fares again in 2015 or 2016.
“I want to keep those fares down,” he said.
About 60 percent of cap-and-trade funds will be reserved for transportation, including 25 percent for the California high-speed rail project. The remainder can be spent on local transportation projects and 5 percent can go toward ongoing transit operations, said Brian Kelly, secretary of the California State Transportation Agency, a luncheon speaker.
New monies — about $216 million — has been allotted for bicycle and pedestrian projects throughout the state, he said. Of the 148 projects funded, 82 of them were in Southern California, Kelly said.
Cap and trade remains controversial because it could translate into higher gasoline prices, many speakers said Friday. Another perhaps more touchy potential revenue source is a mileage-based tax on motorists, something Kelly said the state is exploring.
“We need a long-term funding source for California to meet our demands,” he said.The Indian middle class' love affair with shopping malls is on the wane, a survey by industry body Assocham has found. Footfalls in shopping malls are expected to see a sharp decline of 35-40 per cent, the survey said, which means that the festive season has failed to lure consumers to loosen their purse strings.
The reasons are not difficult to guess. Economic slowdown, high interest rates and job uncertainties have hurt consumer sentiments. The sharp depreciation in the rupee has also impacted consumer spending, especially for electronic goods, the survey found.
Poor revenue model, low footfalls-to-sales conversion and lack of special purpose malls have dented the "mall magic", retailers and consultants who participated in the survey said.
The survey found some malls are operating at 60 per cent occupancy, while others are struggling with less than 20 per cent. For 250-300 odd malls that have come up over the last two years, 70-80 per cent spaces were vacant, the survey found.
The Assocham survey supports a finding from a "Malls in India" report released by Images Research last month, which found that over 90 per cent of India's malls are struggling. (Failed malls in India point to soured retail boom)
In the two key cities of Delhi (including national capital region) and Mumbai, 55 per cent and 52 per cent malls were vacant, the Assocham survey found. It's not surprising then that these two cities have witnessed the sharpest decline in mall rentals.
Rising vacancy has forced many developers to waive off rent for up to six months. The ones that failed to attract large retail brands despite drastic measures are shutting down, the survey found.
The shutdown of malls is bad news, not only for realtors, but also for the retail industry, which has emerged as a big avenue for employment generation. According to the Images Research report said, India's retail sector is set to grow at an annual rate of 16 to 19 per cent, reaching Rs 56.8 lakh crore ($901 billion) in 2016.
Unbridled expansion and economic slowdown have hurt consumer spending, but a number of other reasons have also led to declining footfalls in malls, the Assocham survey found.
Some malls are struggling because of poor location; others have poor design and parking facilities. Multiple taxes, lack of clarity in policies and shortage of experts in areas such as supply chain and store management have also contributed to rising vacancy and falling footfalls, the survey found.
The Assocham survey was conducted among 650 leasing managers, representatives of malls' management, strategist, marketers and supervisors in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Chandigarh and Dehradun.The rise of dictators-in-waiting Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz has left political observers bewildered. How did the establishment wing of a dominant American political party end up with a radical extremist carrying the party's banner? Will the Republican Party split and die? More important, how will this crisis play out for the nation?
There is a precedent for the emergence of an extremist leader from the collapse of a dominant political party in America.
The leader was John C. Breckinridge. The party was the Democratic Party. The year was 1860.
In that year, the southern slave owners who had dominated the American government since the beginning felt their control over the nation slipping. While large planters made up only about 1 percent of the population, they were the wealthiest people in America. But their very success endangered them. They had promised poor white men that they, too, could rise to prosperity, then they had monopolized the land and the resources that made rising possible. Only rich families lived in fine houses, only rich sons got educations. When poor men called for the government to provide free Western land for farming, or for the government to dredge rivers to make it easier to transport goods to market, or even for schools, slave owners recoiled. Such projects would cost tax dollars, they complained, and thus would prevent them from accumulating the vast amounts of money that enabled them to direct society efficiently. Worse, if the government started doing anything to mess with the economy, it would only be a question of time until it started interfering with slavery. Any interference would |
is no allegation in the FIR that it was the accused (Amanutullah Khan) who abused her or gave any threats to her. "
"Complainant (woman) came to police station on July 26 and alleged she was being pressured to retract her earlier statement. She alleged she was getting calls from unknown numbers to withdraw the case or change her statement. The complainant has nowhere accused that it was the accused (Amanutullah Khan) who made calls to her…The accused was apprehended in the case on July 24."
DINESH MOHANIYA
Sangam Vihar Sangam Vihar FIR No. 535/16: June 23, 2016, Neb Sarai police station Arrested: June 25, 2016 Bail: June 29, 2016
Charged with: Molestation, threatening a woman Court observation: Police had competed investigation and so it would allow mail to the MLA.
JITENDER TOMAR
Trinagar Trinagar FIR No. 695/15: July 21, 2015, Hauz Khas police station Arrested: June 09, 2015
Bail: July 22, 2015
Police allegations: Accused him of submitting forged LLB and B SC degrees
Court observation: "It appears the substantial investigation is complete as he is in custody since June 09, including 12 days police custody remand."
GULAB SINGH
Matiala Matiala FIR No. 589/16: Sept 13, 2016, Bindapur police station Arrested: October 16, 2016 (in Gujarat) Bail: Produced before court on October 18 and bail granted on October 19
Court observation: "It is seen in case diary that non-bailable warrants were issued by the IO on October 13 for next date of hearing on October 28, 2016. It was well within the knowledge of the IO that accused Gulab Singh has been looking after the campaign work of Aam Aadmi Party in the coming elections in Gujarat and a rally was to be conveyed on October 16. But, the police for reasons best known to them, rushed to Gujarat by flight and arrested the accused from Gujarat."
"In the present application, the police is trying to spin the beans beyond the basket as according to the investigating officer, some other complainants have also come up against the present accused….However it is not permissible in law to join the subsequent complaints in the already registered FIR and the ongoing investigation."Jay Cutler wasn’t planning on playing in Week One of the 2017 season, and he didn’t. But not because he was retired, but because the Dolphins had their opening game canceled.
They’re now in California for an extended week of work in preparation for the first regular-season game to be played at the 27,000-seat StubHub Center. And Cutler was asked by reporters on Wednesday whether this has been the strangest start of a football season for him.
“Oh, it’s not even close,” Cutler said. “I mean, to come into camp halfway through training camp and then have to evacuate and come here and miss — having the first game cancelled. It’s been a wild ride.”
But Cutler has found a silver lining in the ability to spend more time with teammates he didn’t know until roughly a month ago.
“I mean it’s like training camp essentially,” Cutler said. “That’s kind of what our mindset is. Everyone is together. We meet together. We eat together. There’s nowhere for anyone really to go. So it’s a good experience for us.”
They’re using the Cowboys’ training facility in Oxnard as they prepare to face the Chargers.
“I think it’s a great setup for us right now,” Cutler said. “We’re living right here — the weight room, meetings, a great practice facility. So it is what it is. I mean there’s a little bit of a transition for guys, but I thought they battled today and we had a good practice, so we’ll continue to go on that.”
In a few days, the Dolphins finally will get a chance to play. And they’ll go from L.A. to New York and then to London as they play game after game for 16 weeks.Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
Microsoft today announced Age of Empires II HD Edition, a reimagining of the 1999 real-time strategy game. With Ensemble Studios closed, work on the updated version is being done by Hidden Path Entertainment (Defense Grid series, Counter Strike: Global Offensive).
Age of Empires II HD Edition will launch on April 9 exclusively through Steam across the world. Gamers won't need to wait that long to play, however, as those who prepurchase (at a 10 percent discount) will be able to jump in April 5.
Age of Empires II HD Edition includes every single-player campaign from the Age of Kings original and the Conquerors expansion, totaling 18 in all. In addition, gamers can challenge other Steam players through the game's online mode.
According to Microsoft, Age of Empires II HD Edition has been remastered for high-resolution displays at 1080p. It also includes an "enhanced visual engine" sporting improved textures for terrain, water and fire, and ambient lighting effects.
Steamworks features for Age of Empires II HD Edition include achievements, leaderboards, matchmaking, and cloud support. In addition, gamers can share user created content through the Steam Workshop.
Lastly, Microsoft revealed the minimum system requirements for Age of Empires II HD Edition today. They are listed below, along with the game's debut trailer.
Minimum System Requirements:
Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 Pro
Steam Software Platform
900x600 minimum display resolution
Direct X 9 Capable GPU
1.2GHz CPU
1GB RAM
2GB HDDWSGI and the Pluggable Pipe Dream
As a Python web developer you are at one point confronted with the term “WSGI” (which after 6 years of existence still does not have an official truncation. Some rhyme it with “Whisky”, others just pronounce the abbreviation, other's just call it by the pep number 333). WSGI when it was created was a pretty awesome thing. It made it possible to use any Python web application with any webserver by specifying a gateway layer.
In fact, it became so popular and well supported in the Python world that similar protocols were created for other languages as well. One of the first was Rack for Ruby, then came Jack/JSGI for JavaScript, PSGI/Plack for Perl and many others. And yet ever since WSGI became from a niche protocol nobody knew to the protocol for web applications people tried to change and replace it. Why is that and why does nobody succeed in replacing it?
WSGI stands for “Webserver Gateway Interface” and it really envisioned as this bridge between server and application. Additionally the PEP explained how you can use middlewares and this was the beginning of the end. The PEP also suggested that people would write their frameworks around WSGI which certainly many did. People tried to cram over the years more and more services into the WSGI layer with varying success. Session middlewares, authentication systems, caching layers etc. The vision of many people is or was to use the WSGI layer as a way to combine multiple applications together.
WebOb for instance went very far with that. For as long as all your applications are only using WebOb and nothing else you can “attach” a request object to a WSGI environment at any point in the WSGI chain and you are operating on basically the same request object with the same data behind. This however goes well beyond what WSGI specifies or encourages.
If you mix a WebOb application with Django, Werkzeug or anything your options of what is possible are greatly reduced.
Consider this post a personal brain dump. It might be unstructured and appear raw and there is a reason for this: it's one of the topic where the more you think about it, the more details jump into your mind. WSGI is such a simple specification but there is so much around it that it can really make your head hurt.
I rewrote parts of this now a couple of times and I am still unhappy with it, so please just take it for what it is.
What WSGI Broke If you look at APIs before WSGI or even at new frameworks that don't support WSGI, a common pattern is having a request object that not only gives access to the incoming data but also allows you to send data back to the client. For instance by having a write() method. WSGI broke with this convention early and this was a major step because it meant that you had to use buffering internally or change their API to use generators. The thing with Python is that you cannot stop execution in a frame by hand unless you are using greenlets which back in 2004 were not available. As such you could not transparently convert an API like this into WSGI: def my_view ( request ): request. start_response ( '200 OK' ) request. send_header ( 'Content-Type', 'text/plain' ) request. end_headers () request. write ( 'Hello World!' ) request. write ( 'Goodbye World!' ) request. end () The direct the entirely equivalent example would be this: def my_view ( environ, start_response ): def generate (): yield 'Hello World!' yield 'Goodbye World!' start_response ( '200 OK', [( 'Content-Type', 'text/plain' )]) return generate () While it is indeed now possible to utilize greenlets to convert multiple function calls into yields in a generator, it's still something you would not do. So you can imagine that when WSGI came out it was quite a challenge to convert to it. If you look at other protocols that are WSGI inspired you can see that the iterator concept was adapted and modified. In Python iteration works by calling a method on the iterator until it signals that it finished. In Ruby it's the other way round. You provide a function and pass it to the iterator which will then call the function until it exhausts. The Ruby way has the nice advantage that you don't need generators and can easily convert from this Rack interface to an old-school write + flush method pair. This is one of the things that some people are not happy with when they think about WSGI.
The WSGI Quirks When you ask people what their opinion on WSGI is, they will always tell you that the start_response() callable is just bad. And they are quite correct in saying that we can get rid of it. But before you blindly throw it away you have to understand why it was created in the first place. The common way to call start_response() with the status code as string + explanation and a list of key-value tuples which represent the headers. But what many people miss is that start_response() can do more than just that! First of all, remember when I said that you cannot generate response.write() calls transparently into yield statements. When the PEP was written it was quite obvious that this would be a problem for existing applications that need to stream out data via request.write(). And as such start_response() was given a return value which many developers don't know about. What start_response() returns is a function that directly writes into the client's stream. Surely that problem could have been solved in a different way, for instance by putting that function into the WSGI environment but the intention here was very simply that just the caller that starts the response gets this function. Have you ever used that direct write function? Me neither and for good reasons: It bypasses processing by middlewares since it directly goes to the output stream. But it set the path to WSGI acceptance as it was a simple way to WSGI-ify CGI scripts. For instance the mercurial hgweb interface was a prominent user of that write function. But that's not where start_response() ends. It has a third parameter that people commonly miss: exc_info. It's rarely used because error handling is typically handled at a higher level in the stack but the intention of course was to make the server aware of errors. Here is how it's supposed to work: You start the response and are about to send data but an error happens, you can change your mind and start the response a second time with the error information. You could also not have started the response before and directly inform it about the errors. Why is this? This comes in combination with another fact: headers are not sent, they are set.
The Async Nod WSGI as a protocol was designed to also support async applications in theory. When you start the response, you're not actually starting the response. You are informing the server about the headers you want to send but they are not actually sent until you yield a non empty string. This allows you to change from an already notified 200 OK to a 500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR until a later point. For instance this is perfectly valid WSGI code: def weird_app ( environ, start_response ): try : start_response ( '200 OK', [( 'Content-Type', 'text/plain' )]) yield '' yield '' raise Exception ( 'Something went wrong late' ) except Exception, e : start_response ( '500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR', [( 'Content-Type', 'text/plain' )], sys. exc_info ()) yield 'Application Failed' This is the extreme example which you will not see in practice. The server should attempt to change the headers if still not sent or recover in whatever way possible from that error condition. The “headers are sent when the first non empty string is yielded” rule is nothing more than a neat nod to async systems that can use this neat trick to yield empty strings to signal that they are not ready yet. I don't know if this was intentional behavior but the PEP is quite elaborate on mentioning that it's for async systems, so I suppose someone thought about it. Generally though you will never find this particular usage used in practice. It's just generally something that makes processing WSGI code harder than it needs to be.
Relaying and Proxying Where WSGI is annoying is relaying messages from one WSGI app to another. Let's assume for a moment WSGI would lack the start_response() callable and that empty string thing and a write callable. The canonical “Hello World” would probably look like this: def hello_world ( environ ): return '200 OK', [( 'Content-Type', 'text/plain' )], \ [ 'Hello World!' ] Simple and straightforward indeed, and it would be incredible easy to proxy these things. All you have to do would be to call that function, pass it an environment dictionary and then take the return value, work with it, and forward it. WSGI itself makes this really hard for a bunch of reasons: The return value of an application. When you have it, was start_response() already called or not? If you directly return a list it was called, if the whole function however has a yield in there anywhere the start_response() function will not be called until the first iteration on the return value. Does anyone at any point mix write() and an iterable return value? If yes how do they mix? You have to be careful that headers can change until a non empty string came back from the iterable. The iterator can have a close method which you are required to call. All in all this makes WSGI a terrible protocol for the simple case where you want to invoke another application, munch with the return value and then forward it. Why if that's so bad, why was it decided to work that way in the first place? Because obviously you will sacrifice something if you change that into a flat tuple as return value. For starters you lose: The ability to change a success response into an internal server error response. Async systems would need to come up with the result right away when you call the function or block (bad) until they know what to return. Everything has to be generator powered, no more response.write() unless you introduce greenlets.
Everybody wants a Revolution WSGI is far from being flawless. But the problem is that most of the time when people try to replace it they will also attempt to fix the other issues it has. So instead of a nice little step forward it's a completely new proposal. For instance my attempt to do that for Python 3 was so naively wrong that I like to think that I did not have my hands in such a WSGI replacement PEP in the first place. And I can tell you right away why a small evolving of WSGI is pointless and why a big step is even worse: Let's ask the question first: why would we want to improve WSGI? On the surface because there are a few things that don't work or are unnecessarily complex. And here comes the problem: for different reasons. Half the people just want the gory details improved to simplify implementations of servers and client libraries, others want it simplified and extended to support pluggable applications. And this is where it all falls apart. Let's look at what could be improved in WSGI itself: 'wsgi.input' is ill-specified but in practice it rarely causes troubles because a) half the servers are already extending WSGI and b) even though half the libraries are in violation it's only the edge cases that cause problems and those are rare. Headers cannot be streamed which might be a problem with responses that have a huge amount of headers. Trailers are not specified at all except for that “servers might do chunked responses” Chunked request data is totally unimplementable on top of the current specification due to the ill-specified WSGI input thing. WSGI can be hard to implement in an environment where you are running inside a server like Apache that is already doing request filtering that is outside of your control. WSGI assumes HTTP level access which inside a webserver you usually no longer have. WSGI extends CGI's environment and inherits the problem that paths are decoded which comes with loss of information. The start_response() machinery seems unnecessarily complex for the fact that barely anybody these days needs the exc_info or write() callable any more. The 'wsgi.file_wrapper' is complete garbage because it does not work in practice as soon as middlewares are involved that process responses. But you know what? WebOb, Werkzeug, Django and all the other frameworks out there learned to live with WSGI as it is and it works for us. There are some corner cases where we would love it to be improved like the input thing, but it's hardly something that's worth breaking API over. We already wrote the code and coming up with a new spec at that point mostly just supports the “the great thing about standards is that there are so many to chose from” sentiment. Especially now that WSGI was just extended to deal with Python 3's unicode behavior we have to be very careful not to force more complexity into everybody's code. On top of that however there is so stuff that is missing in WSGI that many want to see solved: Allowing an application to notify the server that it wants to be reloaded next request. Have a documented point in the application that is executed before the first request in the most efficient way possible but already with information at hand that would otherwise only be available during request (like: where the hell am I located? What's my base URL etc.) But here is the problem: Changing WSGI now would only mean that we would have to replace all our WSGI servers, WSGI client implementations, Framework bridges and whatnot. We would have to replace our middlewares that adopt to different server environments, work around browser bugs, that implement profiling and debugging functionality, that handle error logging and whatnot. We have a lot already that interfaces with WSGI and knows how to deal with the protocol. Of course if we could just come up with a new WSGI from ground up we would make it different. But would we make it more pluggable? Probably not, and here is why.
The Magic Plug I love small applications that work together. And the layer I let those applications work together is called HTTP. In fact, I will even have a talk about this at PyCodeConf. But what I do not believe in is that magical plug that is called “framework independent pluggable application”. I don't know where this idea came from that it might work, but it does not. The idea that you can reused code on top of WSGI to work with Framework 1 and Framework 2 is not working out. If they are truly divided of course, you can nicely use WSGI as a layer to speak to both apps depending on an HTTP request that came to a central dispatch point. If the user wanted to /app1 I can dispatch to application 1, if the user went to /app2 I just point them to application 2. But that's something I can already do. But that's now what this is about, is it? Commonly the idea is that you can take any return value from any WSGI application and then mangle it a bit so that it fits into your environment. The idea is that a middleware could look at submitted form data and do some processing on it or anything else that is currently not really possible with WSGI. What you need at that point is not a new WSGI: you need a whole new machinery that deals with so much more than just HTTP. Because we're doing so much more than we did a few years ago. If you want to replace WSGI, you would not replace it, you would put a new layer on top of it. One that has extensive knowledge about everything that happens. You would have a standardized request/response library that covers every single case that is currently needed and make it extensible enough to handle future cases as well. If we would have designed a request/response object in 2004 when WSGI was created, it would look vastly different from what we know about web applications today. Back then we would probably have supported URL encoded form data and XForms (since that was the latest hip thing), now we know nobody uses XForms but JSON encoded data is pretty damn common, both in incoming and outgoing direction. Then there is the general trend currently towards async servers and frameworks. That's pretty awesome, but all of them are considering WSGI to be a hurdle and are bypassing it. Which then again means that a layer on top of WSGI would not be that magic plug either since it would not work for non WSGI environments. If we want to step into that direction WSGI itself would need an update to make it work better with async environments.USA Today
A man who makes more money in one morning practice than most make in a calendar year is not underpaid, and there’s no arguing that this compensation is insufficient. But when it comes to value, the $5.5 million Nick Saban will receive for coaching Alabama in 2013 is indeed a bargain, as preposterous as that notion might seem.
Saban, a now yearly fixture at or near the top of USA Today's annual assessment of head coaching salaries, topped all other coaches yet again with a 2013 take-home of $5,545,852. Texas head coach Mack Brown wasn’t far behind with his $5,453,750 yearly compensation.
The rest of the top 10 is as follows:
Highest-Paid Coaches in 2013 Name School Salary Max Bonus Nick Saban Alabama $5,545,852 $700,000 Mack Brown Texas $5,453,750 $850,000 Bret Bielema Arkansas $5,158,863 $700,000 Butch Jones Tennessee $4,860,000 $1,000,000 Bob Stoops Oklahoma $4,773,167 $819,500 Urban Meyer Ohio State $4,608,000 $550,000 Les Miles LSU $4,459,363 $700,000 Brady Hoke Michigan $4,154,000 $550,000 Kirk Ferentz Iowa $3,985,000 $1,750,000 Charlie Strong Louisville $3,738,500 $808,333 USA Today
Of course, littered throughout this database are head coaches who are greatly outperforming their current contracts, warranting consideration as the nation’s most underpaid coach.
Fresno State’s Tim DeRuyter offers up tremendous value with a salary of $655,000. This should drastically change following the 2013 season, whether that comes from Fresno or another school interested in his services. The same could be said for fellow BCS-buster hopeful Roderick Carey of Northern Illinois. Carey will take home $376,000 this year.
Vanderbilt’s James Franklin has done wonders to the football program, and his $1,842,771 salary—while notable—will likely receive a substantial bump in the coming months. Oregon’s Mark Helfrich ($1,800,000), Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio ($1,959,744) and Boise State’s Chris Petersen ($2,151,500)—despite experiencing a down year by his enormous standards—provide tremendous bang for their respective university's bucks.
There is value in plenty of places, although it will soon reach fruition in the form of new contracts, or perhaps new jobs altogether. On the mature end of this cycle, there are coaches not living up to their robust annual salaries—the ones that were handed out back when they were deemed worthy.
At the top of the food chain, there is Saban, the one who is now setting the contract curve. He is the baseline for value, and all enormous contracts are judged based off of how they compare to that of the nation's premier coach. Of the coaches listed, only about 20 will make at least half of what Saban will make in 2013.
His salary is enormous, but is it enormous enough?
Since Saban touched down in Tuscaloosa, Alabama has an overall record of 77-13. Six of these losses—and four within the conference—came in his inaugural season. Excluding the getting-to-know-the-surroundings maiden voyage, Alabama is a jaw-dropping 44-6 against the SEC—the premier conference in the country—since 2008 (conference title and bowl games included).
With the overall production have come three BCS national championships—including three in the past four years. It looks so simple on paper, but the historical significance of this run is difficult to comprehend. There’s no ceiling in sight yet. And although this is still an open book, that hasn’t halted Alabama from constructing an enormous bronze Saban statue outside Bryant-Denny Stadium.
While the on-field results are jarring, the financial groundswell that has been generated with Saban on the sideline—a product of his team’s incredible run of dominance—justifies his overall influence and worth.
In 2012-13, Alabama generated $143.4 million in athletic revenue, a 16 percent bump from the previous year, according to Jon Solomon of AL.com. This latest increase isn’t necessarily a surprise, but rather the latest movement in the rapid ascent.
Alabama's revenue has increased by 43 percent since 2009, when it won the first of three football national championships under Nick Saban. Revenue is up 112 percent since 2006, Alabama's last year with Mike Shula as coach. Alabama has since expanded its football stadium and reaped the benefits of new SEC television deals.
The transformation of the football program is staggering. To steal one of Saban’s favorite terms, the “process” is still evolving. Alabama upgraded its weight room and locker room in the past year, pouring millions back into the program that has become a never-empty ATM.
And yes, these renovations include a waterfall, because of course they do.
The much talked about waterfall in the UA locker room @wvuatv pic.twitter.com/yn6PJCFu7T — Gary L. Harris (@GaryLHarris1) July 10, 2013
These improvements are a product of winning a lot of games—some more meaningful than others. Saban isn’t the sole reason Alabama football is thriving, but he’s the master puppeteer stringing together top recruiting classes year after year and turning these 5-star prospects into 5-star players.
It’s this combination of recruiting and crystal footballs that more than justifies the lofty salary. It is this that also begs the question: Is the nation’s highest-paid coach somehow outperforming an absurd contract that we could only dream of?
Absolutely.
As faint whispers of the Texas Longhorns' interest in Saban have grown louder—albeit with blatant denials of mutual interest from the head coach himself—we’re left wondering just what kind of contract Saban could land on the open market if someone were willing to pay.
Few teams have the luxury of handing over a blank check, and few coaches would warrant this kind of treatment. But what if Texas doubled Saban’s monstrous salary in an effort to lure him away? Better yet, what if Alabama matched this offer without thinking twice? It would be an absurd amount of money, but it would be money well spent by both parties.
These rumors, of course, are just that. Saban will not be changing addresses after this season. This brief stretch of manufactured Internet insanity, however, has allowed us the opportunity to assess Saban’s worth to his team, or a team in need of this kind of transformation.
$5.5 million is a number so sizable, it is difficult to process. But for Saban, the small fortune he takes home yearly is at the very least appropriate given his unprecedented success. It's not about the number and the dollar sign next to his name; it's about all the numbers and dollar signs to follow.
This is why his value is unmatched. And at this point, he’s worth every penny and more.On a map created by Frenchman Pierre Desceliers in 1546, a solitary white unicorn appeared situated between Penobscot Bay and Cape Cod. How did it get there?
Desceliers used place names on his map like “Saguenay” and “Gaspé” that suggest that he had read the writings that were created out of the voyages of Jean-Francois Roberval and Jacques Cartier. In 1542, Roberval attempted to establish a colony of 200 people at Charlesbourg Royal, Canada. The colony failed and was abandoned the following year. Roberval’s pilot, Jean Alfonse wrote a narrative about his experiences in North America.
The savages say there be unicorns…
all things above mentioned are true
When describing the area called Norumbega (present day New England and parts of Atlantic Canada), Alfonse recounted the various hardwoods, fruit trees, berries, birds, and mammals. He wrote, “there are goodly forests wherein men many hunt; and there are great store of stags, deer, porkespicks, and the savages say there be unicorns.” After mentioning unicorns, Alfonse continued by discussing the abundance of fowl including buzzards, geese, ravens, and turtle doves. He did not appear surprised that the Indians mentioned the existence of unicorns. Unicorns were just one of the many pieces of North American flora and fauna to be listed alongside walnut trees, gooseberries, deer, and cranes. Moreover, he ended the paragraph referring to unicorns with the statement, “all things above mentioned are true.” In the mind of Alfonse, it was possible for unicorns to run through the forests of Norumbega alongside deer and porcupines.
Perhaps Desceliers depicted a unicorn based on the testimony of Alfonse. Alongside the unicorn stood other animals of North America including porcupines, deer, and bears.
You can check out Pierre Desceliers’ map at this link. It is kept at the The University of Manchester Library, U.K.
Share this: TweetByron shire Cr Basil Cameron, also a TOOT spokesperson, and Jeff Johnson, Ballina shire councillor and Independent candidate for Ballina
The $50 million proposed by the coalition to rip up our rail line is unacceptable while the need for improved public transport grows.
I am 100 per cent against ripping up the rail line and replacing it with what is essentially an expensive bike/walking track.
We can have a rail service and walking/bike trail as happens in many parts of the world. I support investment in a commuter and tourist light rail service in the northern rivers.
The state government’s proposal to rip up the Casino to Murwillumbah rail line is a very short-sighted decision.
There are so many more positives for our community if the government invests in an integrated public transport system than there ever will be from an over priced bike track for tourists. It’s time the government had a long-term sustainable vision for our area instead of pushing for urban sprawl and increasing traffic congestion
The state government’s ‘scoping study’ was a con that greatly inflated the real cost of transforming the rail line (built for heavy rail) into a light rail line for commuters and tourists.
The Liberal/National government, if re-elected, is proposing to spend over $10 billion on motorways and new rail lines in Sydney, yet we have a rail line that remains idle.
In terms of funding, the state government’s proposed highway deviation through Ballina’s largest and most significant wildlife corridor will cost over $700 million.
If the existing highway corridor were used for the upgrade it would save approximately $300 million, avoid a nationally significant koala colony and over 30 other threatened or endangered species, and result in a highway that was 2.9km shorter.
If the money saved was reallocated to local infrastructure projects, such as restoring our rail line and developing an integrated public transport system, that would provide a huge boost to our area, relieve some of the traffic congestion, and allow those without a car to access services such as Southern Cross University, TAFE, Lismore Hospital, etc.
Extending the line to Coolangatta airport would allow the growing number of day-trippers from our north to leave their cars at home, and visa versa.
The government (federal and state) is spending the money in our region, except their vision is for more cars rather than investing in the infrastructure and services to cater for a growing and aging community.
Some facts:
* The northern rivers has a population of over 230,000 people and it is one of the fastest growing regions in the state.
* Over two million tourists visit our region every year.
* The Byron to Lismore road is already over crowded and dangerous
* Traffic congestion from SE Qld (Brisbane/Gold Coast) to the northern rivers will only increase
* The Qld government is extending the rail line from Varsity Lakes to Coolangatta
* The $50 million allocated to the ‘rail trail’ will predominantly be used to rip up the rail line and convert it into a bike track (rail trail)
* There is no funding for facilities such as toilets, tourist infrastructure, ongoing maintenance, etc.
* Local councils have not allocated any funds to provide the facilities that would be needed or ongoing maintenance.
* More tourists would visit the towns of Bangalow, Mullumbimby, and Lismore if there were a light rail service than they will via a bike track.
* There are plans and grants available for a coastal cycleway between Ballina and the Gold Coast and beyond that would promote ‘cycle’ tourism without ripping up the rail-line. Part of this cycleway has already been constructed.
Jeff Johnson, Independent candidate for Ballina.
photo – Basil Cameron – Byron Shire Councillor and TOOT spokesperson, and Jeff Johnson, Ballina Shire Councillor and Independent Candidate for BallinaTeacher kills herself day after being accused of 'inappropriate physical relationship' with student
A teacher took her own life a day after it was alleged that she had an inappropriate physical relationship with a young student.
Gretchen Krohnfeldt had been suspended from her job at the school in Denver, Colorado.
The following day, the 47-year-old mother of three took her own life in front of police officers who were approaching her home to question her as part of an investigation, CBS News reports.
Ms Krohnfeldt was reportedly suspended after a fellow member of staff reported witnessing an “inappropriate interaction” between her and a former student at the Drake Middle School.
Police were informed and launched an immediate and ongoing investigation.
"On Monday, May 8th, a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office School Resource Officer was made aware of a possible inappropriate relationship between a female employee at Drake Middle School and a male student," Arvada police said in a statement.
A spokesman added that the boy is now attending an Arvada high school, but had been in a physical relationship with the teacher since middle school.
Local media report the pair had met at Ms Krohnfeldt's home, and that an employee saw an inappropriate interaction between Ms Krohnfeldt and the student months ago but only reported it to authorities earlier this week.
Students who attend middle school in the United States are usually between the ages of 12 and 14.
Ms Krohnfeldt's death is being investigated by a coroner.
In a letter to parents and students, Drake Middle School said grief counsellors were available to see both students and staff upset by Ms Krohnfeldt's death.
"Our hearts go out to her family at this painful time," the letter said, "and I know many will feel this loss deeply," it said.Would love to see more of Stedman Bailey in the Rams' remaining games:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Small sample size but don't think it's overstating to say Bailey is most trustworthy Rams WR in terms of routes/hands on team right now.</p>— Nick Wagoner (@nwagoner) <a href="https://twitter.com/nwagoner/statuses/409816016743432192">December 8, 2013</a></blockquote>
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The Rams still have the number two overall pick in the draft after this weekends action:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Draft order via current SOS, per <a href="https://twitter.com/ESPNStatsInfo">@ESPNStatsInfo</a> 1. HOU, 2. STL (from WAS), 3. ATL, 4. MIN, 5. OAK, 6. JAX, 7. CLE, 8. BUF, 9. TB, 10. PIT.</p>— Kevin Seifert (@SeifertESPN) <a href="https://twitter.com/SeifertESPN/statuses/410032010132860930">December 9, 2013</a></blockquote>
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Those damn penalties:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Rams have committed 3rd-most penalties in NFL, w/100. And 6th most penalty yards w/807.</p |
, Council of Australian Humanist Societies
Suhana Zaman — Humanist, London
Sumon Nath — Blogger
Suraiya Rahman — Student, Dhaka
Suranjit Das — Activist; Business man
Susan Sackett — Vice-President, International Humanist and Ethical Union
Sushanta Das Gupta — Blogger
Swakkhar Shatabda — Teacher
Swami Manavatavadi, Sadhvi Asha Manav, and Dr. Sabita Mishra — Manavatavadi Vishwa Sansthan, The International School of Humanitarian Thoughts and Practice, Kurukshetra India
Syeda Najnin Sultana Shikha — Women’s Right Activist, Nari Chetona
Tahsin Tabbassum Kotha — Student, Govt. College of Commerce, Chittagong
Tanuja Bhattacharjee — Poet; Blogger; Engineer
Tarek Fatah — Author
Taslima Nasreen — Author; Physician; Blogger
Tasnim Hossain — Software Engineer
Tejmur Šihmamedov — President, The Secular Circle’
The Board of Directors of CFI Canada
The Board of Directors of Humanist Canada
Trisha Ahmed — Student, USA
Ulf Gustafsson — Blogger, Swedish Humanist Association
Unione degli Atei e degli Agnostici Razionalisti — NGO, Italy
Uttam Niraula — Executive Director, (Society for Humanism) SOCH Nepal
Valter Eriksson — Physiotherapist, Sweden
Veronica Abbass — Editor-in-Chief, Canadian Atheist
Vidya Bhushan Rawat — Social Development Foundation, Delhi
Vishwajeet Samuel Gain — Student, La Martiniere Calcutta, India
Yamen Hoque — Blogger; Humanist; State College, PA, USA
Zoe Hamilton — Atheist, USAThis morning, Samsung introduced its next flagship smartphone: the Galaxy A8. As previously teased by reliable sources, such as the biggest Twitter Samsung community SamMobile, the new mobile device will be available next year. More precisely, the UK release date is April 2018.
The Galaxy A8 will have a 5.6-inch Infinity Display, which is one of the customers’ favorite features, Samsung claims. An ergonomic curved glass on both the front and the back will support the large screen. The Korean brand promises that you will enjoy an ultimate cinematographic experience while benefiting from a comfortable grip.
The camera won’t let you down and you will take the best pictures with the 16MP F1.7 rear camera and the best selfies with the 16MP+8MP F1.9 Dual Front camera. What does F1.7/F1.9 mean? It defines the aperture and tells you how wide the camera’s sensor can open. The lower the aperture is, the wider the sensor will open, and the better your pictures will be. Indeed, more light can hit the sensor, allowing the camera to perform at its best even in low light conditions.
In comparison, the iPhone X features an F1.8 wide-angle rear camera and an F2.4 telephoto front camera. And you already know the newborn of the Apple family takes excellent pictures!
Why two front cameras, though? Samsung wants you to take the best selfies ever and will let you choose between two types: close-ups with a clear and crisp background or higher quality images with the Live Focus feature so you can adjust the bokeh effect – an aesthetic out-of-focus blurry background – before or after taking a picture.
According to SamMobile, the Galaxy A8 price tag will be 499 euros, and the Galaxy A8+ will be priced at 599 euros.
See the specs:
Source: Samsung
Turnkey Pro: PCBs Without the DistractionOWINGS MILLS, Md. -- Baltimore Ravens quarterback Josh Woodrum's four days with the Cleveland Browns last week weren't spent under a bright light while getting interrogated by coach Hue Jackson.
Woodrum, who starred in the preseason with the Ravens, was curiously picked up by Cleveland on waivers (even though the Browns already had three quarterbacks) and was waived by the Browns on Sept. 7.
When Woodrum returned to Baltimore's practice squad, his Ravens teammates had some fun with him, especially with the Browns playing at M&T Bank Stadium on Sunday.
"Everyone's like, 'Did you give them all our stuff? Did you give them all our plays?,'" Woodrum said. "I'm like, guys, come on. I'm ready for us to get this win this week and move on to next week."
So, did the Browns pick Woodrum's brain about the Ravens?
"Yeah, they did. That's part of football," Woodrum said. "[It was about] little tendencies and stuff everyone asks about. As soon I got back, the Ravens did the same thing."
Woodrum insisted he didn't give up any Ravens secrets to their AFC North rival.
"For me, a lot of that stuff was very general because I was only here for a very minimal time," Woodrum said. "Plus, during preseason, we dumbed a lot of stuff down. I think they were just double-checking on stuff they knew."
Woodrum was one of the bigger surprises of the preseason for Baltimore. Signed four days into training camp, Woodrum threw for a team-leading 321 yards in the preseason, passing for two touchdowns and running for two more.
The Ravens cut Woodrum when they had to get down to the 53-man roster, and he was claimed on waivers by the Browns just two weeks before the teams play each other. After getting released by Cleveland, Woodrum was offered a chance to join the Browns' practice squad but chose to return to Baltimore.
"I just felt like at this point in my career, this was the better place for me to develop and extend my career for the long run," Woodrum said.President Barack Obama's decision late Friday to suggest reforms to the government's surveillance programs caught many data protection and free speech advocates by surprise.
Is he serious about plans to check the government's massive spying operation and uphold the rights of everyday Americans?
EFF's Rainey Reitman responded with caution: "We take Obama's promises today with a healthy dose of skepticism... [T]he devil will be in the details when it comes to whether his proposals will be effective."
On Monday, one devilish detail emerged when the White House instructed James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, to form the "high-level group of outside experts," that President Obama had promised to Americans on Friday.
Clapper has been at the center of the NSA controversy for giving Congress false testimony about the full extent of the NSA's spying program in March.
His choice of Clapper to organize this "outside" group was deeply troubling to many. And for good reason. The group's purpose, according to President Obama, is "to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies." He added that it would be an "independent group" tasked with creating a report on the impact of surveillance technologies being used by the government.
"I naively believed 'outside' and 'independent' meant 'outside' and 'independent,'" Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel wrote on Monday. "It took exactly 72 hours for that good idea to fizzle into a navel gaze directed by the guy who lies to Congress."
And while the White House has since backed away from its decision to give Clapper too prominent a role, this does not bode well for the other reforms proposed by the president. These include a planned congressional review of Section 215 of the Patriot Act and of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts, which are supposed to provide oversight of government surveillance activities.
That's not quite broad enough. "The president made no mention of Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), a provision used by the government to conduct warrantless searches of Americans' communications," wrote the ACLU's Patrick C. Toomey, who added that FAA reforms were urgently needed as well.
There's much that Congress could accomplish through this process, but the public needs to be sure that supposed fixes are not merely designed to add another layer of protection and obscurity for programs that violate our First and Fourth Amendment rights.
Obama said he wants "greater oversight, greater transparency, and constraints" on vacuuming up data, and urged Americans to trust him that abuses of existing laws weren't occurring. But the president seems unable to grasp that Americans want more than accountability for the wholesale surveillance of our online lives. We want the government to stop it altogether. And it may take the independent investigatory committee that the StopWatchingUs coalition has called for, and a significant rewrite of several surveillance laws already on the books.
The NSA's dragnet collection of nearly all communications is a direct threat to our rights to connect and communicate in the digital age. Without stronger safeguards, the program will continue to have a chilling effect on our First and Fourth Amendment freedoms.Apple's control over the App Store—which seems arbitrary at times—still frustrates developers. That much isn't a surprise, but some developers have become frustrated to the point that they have decided to simply halt iPhone development altogether. Facebook's Joe Hewitt, Second Gear's Justin Williams, and long-time Mac software developer Rogue Amoeba have all recently decided that enough is enough, and the loss of these developers and others could spell a troubling future for the App Store. True, it has over 100,000 applications, but how many of them are created with the kind of care and passion we take for granted in the Mac software world?
Hewitt, a respected Web developer who previously worked on Firefox and its highly regarded developer plug-in Firebug, recently handed off responsibility for Facebook's successful iPhone app to another engineer at the company. Hewitt cited his frustration with Apple's approval process for the move:
My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple's policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.
Hewitt wasn't able to discuss specifics with us, but several sources contacted Ars and told us that his decision may have ultimately been prompted by an issue with Hewitt's Three20 framework instead of problems with the Facebook application itself.
Hewitt originally released Three20—a framework derived from the work he did to create the Facebook app (and named for the iPhone's 320-pixel-wide screen)—as open source in March of this year. Numerous iPhone developers use the framework, which gives developers drop-in support for several user interface enhancements in their own iPhone apps. However, Apple recently identified use of a private API call in apps that rely on the Three20 framework, and starting rejecting these applications.
Private API calls are a definite no-no according to the iPhone Developer Agreement, but since the app review process is so opaque, it took some time before it was determined that the problem was related to the Three20 framework itself. The consensus is that these rejections were likely what finally pushed Hewitt to take a break from iPhone development. Since Apple's policy on use of private APIs is clear, it may seem that Hewitt's complaints are without merit.
UPDATE: Joe Hewitt contacted us to let us know this particular thoery isn't accurate. "My decision to leave had nothing to do with the Three20-related rejections over private APIs," he told Ars. He acknowledged that the rejections were logical, and his decision was related to "another experience" which he is not at liberty to disclose details of publicly.
Unfortunately, Hewitt isn't alone in jumping ship. Earlier this year, developer Justin Williams wrote a screed noting his objections to the way the App Store is being managed, and the significant risks it entails for most developers. It was prompted by the rejection (or extended evaluation, if we are to believe Apple's statement on the matter) of Google Voice for iPhone.
"With the latest app rejection being Google Voice, I am one step closer to selling off my iPhone products and focusing entirely on the Mac once more," Williams wrote. "I can't help but feel that I've wasted the past 9 months of my life building on a platform that is so hostile and anti-developer. I no longer enjoy building software for the iPhone because of the bureaucracy and infrastructure that surrounds it."
xkcd #662 riffs on App Store rejections.
After expressing his displeasure, Williams was approached by another developer offering to buy his applications. This began a two-month-long process of transferring the applications to Patrick Burleson of BitBQ. Both Williams and Burleson worked with the Apple Developer Connection to have these applications transferred to Burleson's iTunes Connect account, to no avail. Ultimately, Williams had to delete his versions from the store, and Burleson had to upload his versions for review.
Both applications—FitnessTrack and Emergency Information—are stuck in Apple's review queue, meaning they aren't currently available. Meanwhile, customers that originally bought the applications from Williams will have to buy it again from Burleson if they want future updates. "It sucks because I feel bad for existing customers, but it just wasn't feasible to keep them under my name, bank accounts, and ADC account when I don't own or maintain the applications anymore," Williams told Ars. "We did everything we could, but once again Apple holds all the cards and left us in purgatory."
However, Williams is glad to be back focusing on just the Mac platform with his company Second Gear. "I made the decision that I'm not getting back on the App Store until Apple fixes its flaws," Williams explained. "Making 25 times more [money] on my Mac apps certainly made it easier, but the reason I got out was for the most part political, and part of me wanting to make a statement. I'm going to bitch about the store, Apple's faults, and all that until they do make it right. It's the only way to spread awareness and hopefully get stuff fixed."
"It's been almost two years and we developers have no better relationship with Apple than we did when this whole thing was announced," Williams told Ars. "That's unfortunate."
This is what the previous version of Airfoil Speakers Touch would show when connected to a Mac with audio coming from Safari.
Late last week, yet another respected developer threw in the towel after having issues with Apple's iPhone app review team. Rogue Amoeba, most well known for its Mac applications for working with audio, ran into an App Store approval nightmare with a minor bug fix to its Airfoil Speakers Touch app. The app connects to Macs running Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil software—used to send audio from any application to an Airport Express—and stream the audio to an iPhone or iPod touch.
The update merely improved the way audio was received, and in no way changed any functionality. Despite this, Apple roundly rejected it several times. It turns out that what was keeping the app from being approved was that it uses an image of the Mac that it's connected to, as well as an icon for the application that is sending audio, to display the current audio source to the user. Rogue Amoeba's Paul Kafasis pointed out that the original application, already approved and in the App Store, used this same mechanism, and that Apple provides developers a public API for accessing these images. However, Apple ultimately rejected the use, claiming it was an inappropriate use of "Apple-owned Graphic Symbols."
It could be argued that Rogue Amoeba should have seen this coming, or at least changed its app after the first rejection to comply with Apple's guidelines. However, it's not so cut-and-dried that the use actually violated any laws or rules, and the previous precedent that the app had been approved before with this functionality suggested otherwise. Further, removing the icons would actually affect the ease of use in a negative way. Rogue Amoeba made several attempts to persuade Apple that the use was legitimate and provided a better user experience, but it was finally forced to change the icons before Apple would approve the update.
The whole four-month ordeal left a sour taste in the company's collective mouth, and Rogue Amoeba is no longer pursuing any further iPhone development. "The way the App Store is set up, it's very difficult to invest the time to develop a deep application," Kafasis told Ars. "So, developers don't put any depth into their products; you get one-offs, a single feature essentially."
Like Second Gear, the company is once again focused on the Mac platform, where it's possible to build a sustainable business model. "On the Mac, you can build a software company; on the iPhone, you can win the lottery," Kafasis explained. "A few people do [win], and sell hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of software in a very short period. The top-selling and top-grossing apps are likely making more than most any Mac software.
"But as far as the long-term goes, where is it?" Kafasis said. "You don't know your customers—Apple doesn't tell you who they are—so how do you tell them about your second product? If you do tell them—with an annoying in-app ad, for instance—how do you give them a discount? You can't."
A handful of developers responsible for a handful of applications leaving the platform might not matter much in the long term. "For every dev that leaves iPhone in frustration, 1,000 new ones join up." Hewitt tweeted in frustration last week.
"To [Apple], it's a tempest in a teapot," Kafasis told Ars. "If they see it at all, they can look to the 25,000 other developers and say, 'Well they're happy.' This isn't affecting their bottom line in an obvious way. 'Sure, you're making $50 million in app sales, but you could be making $55 million, if you let developers ship what they wanted!'" he explained.
The problem might better be explained via an analogy posited by Instapaper developer (and creator of Tumblr) Marco Arment. Though Apple prides itself on providing customers a single, straightforward outlet for iPhone apps, there are functionally two App Stores: one for folks who will install any app for 99� and try it at least once, and one for folks who want great software and don't mind paying for it. Targeting the first app store is a lottery, as Kafasis described it. Targeting the second one is more like the model used by most Mac developers—build well-designed software, build relationships with your users, and slowly build success over time. However, the way the App Store is run by Apple, it's incredibly difficult for developers to thrive on these types of apps alone—especially when there is potentially 25 times more income on the Mac side.
Those 1,000 developers hoping to fill Hewitt's shoes will tend to be new developers attracted by stories of a developer striking it rich on the App Store—a story Apple is only too happy to promote—and tend to be inexperienced at creating useful interfaces and cohesive design. And, as we have come to learn, plenty of those 100,000 available from the App Store lack fit and finish. Clearly there are developers that aren't happy about this situation, but do we as customers want that to be the standard? So far, it seems that this is so.
Ultimately, it seems there are two basic routes Apple could take. Apple could merely check apps for technical errors and malware, and otherwise approve everything. Alternately, Apple could allow users to install iPhone apps from whomever they choose, and make the App Store a sort of collection of premium, vetted applications. "[Apple is] currently occupying this untenable middle ground, and it's benefiting no one," Kafasis told Ars.
While developers will continue to point out the problems, and App Store rejections will get some press, it doesn't seem like Apple is particularly motivated to change the status quo. iPhones are selling well—where the real money is for Apple—and the company is poised to be the number two smartphone vendor if current sales trends continue. It will be up to us—the iPhone users buying apps—to encourage Apple to change.
Further Reading:My Favorite Monsters is a showcase of some of the beautiful artwork Turbine has provided so that we have interesting things to kill.
I am strangely attracted to DDO’s pseudodragon. Something about it calls to me, or at least to the nub of a creative person that is buried somewhere deep inside me, surrounded by so much lack-of-talent.
I’ve tried to animate pseudodragons not just once, but twice. But I have never gotten it “right”, that tiny part of me that has an artistic aesthetic has never been satisfied.
And yet I am drawn back to it again. Although this time I am colorizing rather than animating. Because … tiny dragon. How can I resist?
A pseudodragon (sometimes referenced as “pseudo-dragon”) is just like a regular dragon except smaller. Much, much smaller. And apparently more likely to be Good-aligned; a pseudodragon is something people want to find. At least in regular D&D they are friendly. Not so much in DDO, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
I tried to do a bit of scholarly research on the little guys so I could share their history, but there isn’t any. As near as I can tell the pseudodragon was invented by Gary Gygax and his cohorts at TSR specifically so that they could be included in D&D.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. And conveniently, it means that the first edition AD&D Monster Manual is the definitive source regarding the creature. Checking there, we find that they are very rare, have a chameleon power that makes them 80% undetectable, are magic resistant, and have a poison sting that makes the victim catatonic and may even (25% chance) kill them outright.
But they are also described as neutral good, and able to become a companion of other creatures, with whom they communicate telepathically! Awesome! Who wouldn’t want a cute mini-dragon that blends in anywhere and talks in your head? Check out the pseudodragon image on the right, taken from the original first edition AD&D Monster Manual.
The concept is/was/became quite popular. People love the pseudodragon, even if they call it other things (Fairy Dragon seems particularly popular). And with popularity comes art. Lots and lots of pseudodragon art.
I found this cute one on a gamer website.
I think if I was to choose a familiar, I’d want a Liquor-Dragon too.
But one that prefers bourbon over cognac.
Here is a cuter one I found on a site in a foreign language, (sorry I have no idea what kind of site it is).
The cutest one of all. So cute!
Pseudodragons were very popular in-game too. Seemingly every wizard had one as a familiar, even though the Find Familiar spell allowed only a one-in-twenty chance of getting a pseudo-dragon. The vast majority of people should have had a black cat or a toad or weasel or some such. But no, somehow nearly everyone got the lucky roll and the much cooler familiar. Not that anyone ever remembered they even had a familiar until they wanted to use it to do something.
But I digress. This is not about cute art, nor players who cheat their die rolls, nor even about familiars in general. This is about pseudodragons and specifically, pseudodragons in DDO.
Now that you mention it, he doesn’t look very friendly, does he?
There’s one now, one that I took the liberty of coloring up a little for enhanced dramatic effect. Pretty fierce looking, eh?
In DDO pseudo dragons are not tiny. They are bigger than halflings, and while this is not a hard bar to clear, I think it means they would technically count as medium. Which is the same general size as humans. You definitely wouldn’t want one perched on your shoulder.
They are not familiars either. You can get them as companions, but this is purely cosmetic, they only add to your character’s cuteness. No telepathic conversations, no transmitted resistance to magic, none of that, just a big flappy thing that follows you wherever you go and hitches weirdly when you are in water or falling from a height.
Still cool though. Coin has one, and she likes it. Or at least, I imagine she would, it helps to make her look rich and connected and powerful. Coin’s is tan-striped, but since I don’t play Coin very often I don’t play the pseudodragon familiar either and I haven’t even come up with a good name for it yet.
I have a black-striped pseudodragon too, not sure how I acquired that one, but since I have the tan one already I haven’t yet assigned the newer one to a character. I probably will though, they really are cool even if a bit larger than I would like, and of course they are also useless.
The other format in which you may find a pseudodragon is as a monster. When you encounter them in-game they are invariably hostile, do not bother to camouflage or sting, instead breathing fireballs at you as fast as they can. There are random ones in the Storm Horns, and red-named ones in the quests The Trackers Trap, What Goes Up?, and in the Ruins of Thunderholme.
No special tactics are needed to defeat them other than fire resistance, they are really a pretty easy out, even when red-named.
Now that I’ve written that all out, I find that I liked them better in tabletop D&D than in DDO.
Because I like the thought of a tiny dragon, perched on my caster’s shoulder, nibbling at some cheese or a fieldmouse or some such, ready to fly off on secretive tasks or maybe spark up a conversation, an ally, the coolest-looking and most awesome familiar ever.
“Tiny dragon”. Of course they are amazing. What else do you need to even say?
🙂 😀 🙂Photo Gallery: Medieval boat found buried alongside Loddon’s River Chet
Archeologists at work on the ancient boat discovered by Environment Agency workers during the flood elevation project work at Loddon. PHOTO BY SIMON FINLAY Archant Norfolk
Diggers working on a stretch of floodbank along the River Chet found more than they bargained for when the remains of an ancient boat were uncovered in the peaty soil.
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Diggers working on a stretch of floodbank along the River Chet found more than they bargained for when the remains of an ancient boat were uncovered in the peaty soil.
An excavator driver spotted some timber remains in the ground during the excavation of a new drainage ditch, and work was suspended.
Archaeologists investigated and after examining the timber found it to be a boat between 400 and 600-years-old.
“This is an extremely rare and important find,” said Heather Wallis, an archaeologist working on the site.
“No boats of this date have previously been found in Norfolk, so this has been a unique opportunity to record and recover a vessel of this date and type.”
A team worked at the site for three weeks, uncovering the mysteries of the boat.
Jeremy Halls, environmental manager at Broadland Environmental Services, said: “It is a small six metre-long boat and it would have had a sail.
“It stands out because although it wasn’t the best quality timber, it was put together skilfully.”
Experts believe the boat’s thin planking and light frames suggest it could have carried light produce to market, such as butter, eggs, chickens and vegetables. Wooden pegs, iron nails, and copper alloy nails, as well as animal hair and tar used as waterproofing, were used in the construction of the boat. Ms Wallis said: “It is particularly significant being located within the Norfolk Broads. This area has had a strong reliance on water transport and related industries, particularly since the creation of the Broads by peat digging in the medieval period.
“We cannot be entirely sure how the boat was propelled, but it is likely to have been sailed and/or rowed or quanted down the river.”
The boat will be excavated in the next few days and removed to York or Peterborough where specialists will study the wood for more detailed research into the boat’s history.
The boat will be kept in wet storage to prevent the wood from deteriorating further, and samples of the timber sent for tree-ring dating, which could reveal when the trees used to construct the boat were felled.
Eventually, the piece of history will be preserved through a freeze drying process and placed on display in a Norfolk museum.
Paul Mitchelmore, the Environment Agency’s project manager said: “This is the latest of several interesting archaeological finds encountered during the Broadland Alleviation Project.
“We are very pleased to be helping to provide an insight into the history of the Broads at the same time as we are working for the future of the area through our flood defence works.”ES News Email Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account
It looks as if the Tories have the voters all wrapped up, and that’s true for now, but it could unravel in the future. Theresa May’s strength is based on the uncertainties of Brexit, but she needs to heed the rumblings on health.
YouGov’s recent polling shows the top issue for the public is Britain leaving the EU, but on 63 per cent it’s just a nose ahead of the health service on 61. That’s followed at a distance by immigration and the economy on 40 per cent and 38.
Having established what the voters care about, we asked them what they thought mattered most to the party leaders. It revealed big gaps on both sides: Theresa May is perceived as placing most importance on Brexit, but with health barely in her sights. Jeremy Corbyn is the reverse.
Labour supporters care most about the health service and Tory supporters care most about Brexit, so at first glance it looks as if the two leaders are well aligned with their voters. But it’s not so: Labour and Conservative voters put nearly equal emphasis on both issues so both leaders are out of touch.
None of this shakes the near-certainty of a Tory victory on June 8, but this disconnect could start to matter afterwards. If Brexit fails to deliver a stronger economy with better public services, the Tories will have five years to flounder with their big majority.
And what will happen to Labour? Most commentators treat the election as a one horse-race where all that matters is who will win, and dismiss Corbyn as a laughable loser.
But we know that important sections of the electorate really like him, and feel he speaks for them. One of these groups is the young — Corbyn leads easily among the under-25s not just on policy but on “best prime minister”. If the election were held only among the under-fifties, Corbyn could beat May. And Labour policies are supported across the whole electorate. Capping rents, nationalisation and abolishing tuition fees are popular policies, as indeed are most of Corbyn’s manifesto pledges.
Scorning Corbyn and his supporters could be perilous, because voter groups who feel marginalised have shown themselves capable of flexing their muscles and ending up on top. If Labour after this election ejects not only Corbyn but his mission, without a clear idea of embracing both the centre of politics and the frustrated margins, they could be even worse off. Party loyalties across the spectrum are weaker than ever, and there is no security for any of them.
Stephan Shakespeare is the chief executive and founder of YouGovADVERTISEMENT
Romney, in a July 2011 GOP primary debate, appeared to support giving FEMA's responsibilities to the states or the private sector. Democrats have seized on the comments and The New York Times blasted Romney in a Tuesday editorial, arguing that disaster response would be a mess without federal coordination.
The Washington Post reported that several reporters demanded Romney clarify his stance on Tuesday.
“Governor, you’ve been asked 14 times. Why are you refusing to answer the question?” one reporter asked, according to the report.
The liberal website The Huffington Post quoted a pool report:
“'Gov are you going to eliminate FEMA?' a print pooler shouted, receiving no response. Wires reporters asked more questions about FEMA that were ignored. Romney kept coming over near pool to pick up more water. He ignored these questions,” the pool report reads.
On Monday, his campaign clarified to The Hill that Romney supports more say for states, but envisions keeping FEMA.
Disaster aid has been a political football in the 112th Congress. House Republicans said that waste can be cut from the FEMA first responder grant program and they have reduced it by 43 percent since 2010. Democrats decried those cuts and spared some $300 million in cuts last year.
FEMA has enough funding for now to deal with Hurricane Sandy, congressional aides told The Hill on Tuesday.
Democrats argue that in order to enact the budget of GOP vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.), or Mitt Romney's own plan, which entails steeper cuts, FEMA would have to be reduced as well. Romney wants to balance the federal budget in eight years while Ryan sought to balance it by 2040 using $5 trillion in spending cuts in the first ten years.
Republicans and Democrats blame each other for the looming across-the-board sequester cuts coming in January, which would also hit FEMA to the tune of $882 million.
Those cuts are a result of the failed 2011 supercommittee process, and both sides say they want to replace the sequester. The standoff now is whether the replacement will include tax increases, as President Obama has demanded.Somebody stole the pizza, and all signs pointed to the new kid. Eight years ago, Michael Beasley was awkward and clumsy on the basketball...
Somebody stole the pizza, and all signs pointed to the new kid.
Eight years ago, Michael Beasley was awkward and clumsy on the basketball court. Everyone at the Seat Pleasant Activities Center just outside Washington, D.C., could see that he had raw talent, but he lacked focus. He was undisciplined and difficult to coach.
After his first few hours practicing with the boys’ team, Beasley was told to leave the gym and not return.
Before leaving, the new kid swiped a box of pizza the team had planned for lunch.
That was the first time Sonics rookie guard Kevin Durant met Beasley.
“We were 11 years old when we met,” Durant said. “We had a team and the guy that ran the organization (PK Martin) heard about him and brought him down to the rec center. Mike practiced with us one day, and he was awful. You could tell that he was good, but I guess he was nervous. He was lazy. He didn’t play like he wanted to.
“And when he left, he stole our pizza. Our big pizza. We had just ordered it, too.”
Some first impressions you never forget.
Durant can’t tell that story without laughing. But really, it’s all so absurd when you think about it.
Two friends would devote their lives to chasing a basketball dream. The older boy (Durant) would blaze a path that the younger one would follow.
In their freshman seasons, each would attend National Christian Academy in Fort Washington, Md. As juniors, they’d attend acclaimed Oak Hill Academy in Virginia, where they bolster their national reputation and become prominent collegiate recruits.
As seniors, they’d transfer to different high schools closer to home.
They’d win the MVP award of the McDonald’s All-America Game.
They’d attend Big 12 schools. Durant to Texas, Beasley to Kansas State.
They’d win the conference Freshman of the Year award.
They’d leave school after one year.
And they’d both become high lottery picks in the NBA draft. Durant was taken No. 2 overall last year by the Sonics and Beasley is considered by many to be top pick in the June 26 draft.
Who would believe that story?
Depending on what happens at Tuesday’s draft lottery, the Sonics may be in position to reunite the childhood friends.
Seattle finished with the second-worst record in the NBA, which gives it a 19.9 percent chance of landing the top spot. The team has an 18.8 percent chance of drafting No. 2, 17.1 percent chance of picking third, 31.9 percent chance of picking fourth and a 12.3 percent chance at the fifth choice. Lottery rules say the Sonics can fall no lower than fifth in the draft order.
Still, the odds of selecting two kids from nearby neighborhoods so high in the draft in consecutive years are infinitesimal.
Beasley remembers meeting Durant, and he also confessed to the pizza heist.
“Where I lived was not the best area to grow up in,” he said of his hometown of Upper Marlboro, Md. “I didn’t know when the next time I was going to eat.”
Even though Beasley stole the team’s lunch and was horrible in practice, Martin invited him back.
“From there, he was kind of the jokester of the team,” Durant said. “Everybody just kind of drew to Mike. He didn’t play that much early on, but one game we were in the championship and it went to like a triple overtime and he had 20 and 20 [points and rebounds].
“He was 12 years old. And all he was doing was tipping the ball to himself. He was almost dunking. His hands were so big. He was getting rebounds, and his hands were at the rim laying it in. After that he was a monster from then.”
Durant and Beasley became inseparable.
“He sort of lived with me almost,” Durant said. “He would come over before school, after school, stay late and then leave. [Our relationship] is very tight. We’re brothers. We tell each other we love each other. We’ve been through a lot. Almost the same things.”
Beasley’s mom was a single woman raising four kids. When the boys were teenagers, Beasley’s mother would drop him off at Durant’s home every day at 6:30 a.m. for breakfast. Durant and Beasley would ride the bus to school and play basketball in the evenings.
“He was a good kid,” Wanda Pratt, Durant’s mother, said of Beasley. “He was fun-loving. He liked to have a good time. His personality is not as serious as Kevin. He was always well-mannered. I never had a problem with Mike.”
Everyone calls him B-Easy, but his playful personality belies a fierce competitiveness on the court.
Much like Durant, Beasley is versatile. He’s a relentless scorer in the paint and a lethal perimeter shooter with three-point range. And his 6-foot-9, 235-pound frame is more suited for the rigors |
in Paris.
Federal prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt said that "no firearms or explosives were discovered" in the 22 raids — 19 in Brussels and the three in the city of Charleroi in the country's south.
"The investigation continues," he said. One of those detained was injured when a car he was in tried to
ram police during an attempted getaway.
Shortly before midnight, the country's public broadcaster said the law-enforcement operations had concluded.
Armed police mounted searches in several parts of the capital Sunday evening and cordoned off areas close to the city's main tourist attraction, the Grand Place around the town hall.
In another development, the Canadian government said its embassy in Brussels will be closed "until further notice" and will only be providing emergency consular services.
Canadians in Belgium have been advised to "exercise a high degree of caution due to the current elevated threat of terrorism."
<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Belgium?src=hash">#Belgium</a>: our embassy in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Brussels?src=hash">#Brussels</a> is closed until further notice and will only provide emergency consular services <a href="https://t.co/NFsFHHU5yF">https://t.co/NFsFHHU5yF</a> —@TravelGoC
Meanwhile, people in Brussels braced for widespread disruptions Monday with schools and the subway system closed — and with armed police and military personnel guarding landmarks including railway stations.
Government officials said they were working to return things to normal "as soon as possible" and said they will reassess the situation Monday afternoon.
This undated photo provided by French police shows 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French national who is wanted in connection with the attacks in Paris. (Police Nationale/Associated Press)
The city's streets remained relatively empty and subways were closed for a second day under the alert.
Belgium's national crisis centre, a body that advises the government on security measures, raised the threat alert in the Brussels region on Saturday to Level 4, which indicates a "serious and immediate threat" of an attack.
The rest of the country was on Level 3, meaning a possible and probable threat.
"Nobody is pleased with such a situation. Neither are we. But we have to take our responsibility," said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.
"The weekend is one thing, but moving into the work week is quite another," Georg Von Harrach, a freelance journalist in Brussels, told CBC News.
"Around 350,000 people commute into Brussels during the working week. It's going to cause huge disruptions to them – and also a lot of questions for families that have to look after their children," he said.
Along with subways, underground trams remained closed, along with malls and commercial centres, and officials recommended that sports competitions and all activities in public buildings should be cancelled.
'We fear an attack'
"We fear an attack like in Paris, with several individuals, perhaps in several places," Michel said.
The decision to raise the alert was taken "based on quite precise information about the risk of an attack like the one that happened in Paris," he said.
The move came as the manhunt continued for suspected militant Salah Abdeslam, 26, who slipped back home to Brussels from Paris shortly after the carnage in neighbouring France just over a week ago.
Two of the Paris suicide bombers, Salah's brother Brahim Abdeslam and Bilal Hadfi, had been living in Belgium.
'Threat is wider'
Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon on Sunday said "several suspects" tied to the Paris attacks could be at large in the country. Jambon told Flemish broadcaster VRT this is why Belgium has put so many security resources in place in the past few days.
Belgian soldiers patrol at Zaventem international airport near Brussels on Saturday as the city was on high alert of an impending attack. (Francois Lenoir/Reuters)
Jambon added that the threat facing Brussels wouldn't necessarily disappear if Abdeslam was found, because "unfortunately, the threat is wider than this [one] figure."
In light of events in France and Belgium, the 15 members of the UN Security Council quickly and unanimously passed a resolution on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Friday.
France has intensified its aerial bombing in Syria since ISIS militants attacked a concert hall, cafés, restaurants and a stadium in Paris, killing 130 people and wounding hundreds.
Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told French media on Sunday that ISIS must be destroyed at all costs.
On Sunday, French police issued a photo of one of the suspects involved in the attack outside the French national stadium just north of Paris and appealed for help in identifying him.
[<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Appel%C3%A0T%C3%A9moins?src=hash">#AppelàTémoins</a>] La <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PJ?src=hash">#PJ</a> cherche à identifier le 3ème auteur d'un des attentats du 13/11 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/StadeDeFrance?src=hash">#StadeDeFrance</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ParisAttacks?src=hash">#ParisAttacks</a> <a href="https://t.co/TZxieSUlyY">pic.twitter.com/TZxieSUlyY</a> —@PNationaleThe Delhi High Court has held that a document received as a WhatsApp forward does not even qualify as a document in terms of the Evidence Act, 1872, if neither the original nor the copy of the original has been produced.
Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva made the above observation while dismissing a petition filed by the National Lawyers Campaign for Judicial Transparency and Reforms and others seeking a direction to the State of Arunachal Pradesh, its police, Delhi Police, West Bengal Police and the Central Bureau of Investigation to register an FIR based on the allegations contained in the alleged suicide note of its late Chief Minister Kalikho Pul.
The alleged document, claimed in the petition to be a suicide note, is a typed copy of an English translation of a document stated to be in Hindi.
The court asked the petitioners as to what is the source of the alleged information, based on which the petition has been filed. The petitioners stated that the source of information is information circulated and received on social media WhatsApp platform. Neither was the name of the sender of the alleged WhatsApp post stated nor was it stated as to which of the petitioners received the WhatsApp post.
The petitioners’ submitted that in terms of Section 154 of the Code Criminal Procedure, 1973, any information, which is provided to the police, is sufficient to set the criminal process into motion.
Rejecting the submission, the court held: “I am unable to accept this contention, in as much as, in the present case, the petitioners very candidly admit that they are not privy to any information. What they believe to be information is a post circulated on WhatsApp platform or an alleged translation in a website. The alleged information is not claimed to be true to their knowledge. It is not even stated in the petition as to how the petitioners have formed a reasonable belief that the alleged post or the translation could be true or have any basis”.
“Annexure - A does not even qualify as a document in terms of the Evidence Act, 1872, in as much as, neither the original nor the copy of the original has been produced. It is an admitted position that the petitioners have not seen original and have had no occasion to even compare Annexure - A with the original.”
The court dismissed the writ petition with cost of Rs. 25,000 on each of the petitioners, since the petitioners had admittedly filed the petition without verifying or affirming any fact and without the formation of even a belief that what is stated in the petition has any iota of truth behind it.
Read Judgment HereCosmo Kramer thought up numerous ideas over the course of 9 seasons on ‘Seinfeld.’ Some which came to fruition and others which never made it off the drawing board. But his mind never stopped working – probably because he never had to work (other than his short stint at H&H Bagels). For the purpose of this article, I have chosen 5 of his very best inventions.
5. Ketchup & Mustard in the Same Bottle
We’re off to a solid start. This is something I would definitely purchase if I saw it on the shelves. It’d be a hit at summer barbecues for sure.
4. The Bro
Also known as the mansierre to Frank Constanza. Most likely provide psychological damage to George when he walked in on his father modeling one.
3. Oil Tanker Bladder
Glad to see Kramer is looking out for the well being of the environment.
2. Make Your Own Pizza
I’d try this.
1. The Coffee Table Book About Coffee Tables
It got Kramer an appearance on Regis and Kathy Lee where he showed off his wacky side to the country.
Honorable Mention: The Cologne That Smells like the Beach
And Then There Was Kramer’s Worst Idea…
Hey, he can’t knock every idea out of the park. This one is a total flop.
Let me know what you think of this list. Which ideas of Kramer’s are your favorite?The Air Force expects to certify SpaceX no later than June to compete for space launches, under an updated agreement that streamlines the certification process
Once certified, SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 launch vehicle, can compete for national security space launches against United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed Martin team that currently has a monopoly on Air Force launches.
The new agreement, announced May 8 by Air Force Space Command, clarifies that the commander of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center can certify SpaceX as long as the company has demonstrated its ability to design, produce, qualify and deliver the launch system. SpaceX must be able to provide future mission assurance support required to deliver national security payloads to specific orbits on schedule.
"I am very pleased with all we have accomplished," SMC Commander Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves said in a news release. "The updated [agreement] captures important lessons learned along the way about the process and allows the flexibility to certify SpaceX when ready, while maintaining our 'laser focus on mission success.' "
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told Congress on April 28 that she is confident the vehicle will be certified and be able to compete for two launches this year, along with seven more in 2016 and 2017. The company, founded by PayPal founder Elon Musk, has already carried multiple payloads for NASA.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement the new agreement is welcomed.
"We look forward to completing the certification process and competing for EELV [evolved expendable launch vehicle] missions," Shotwell said.
The move comes as the Air Force faces increasing pressure to open up its launches to new entrants, to break the monopoly that ULA has on the launches and ULA's reliance on a Russian-made rocket engine in its vehicles.The Taoiseach has outlined Ireland's role in the process of Britain leaving the European Union, noting that the stakes have always been higher for Ireland.
Speaking during a debate in the Dáil on the matter, Enda Kenny said there would be early bilateral discussions and a Government framework will centre on Northern Ireland, the border and the Common Travel Area.
The negotiations on withdrawal of Britain from the EU are unlikely to commence yet and will take time to complete, he added.
Mr Kenny also pointed out there is a two-year timeframe and he assured the Dáil that there will be no early change to the free flow of people, goods and services between the islands.
The Taoiseach said the Government will ensure the EU approach to negotiations will take account of Ireland's concerns and interests in relation to Northern Ireland.
He said the Government has already been engaging with its EU counterparts to make this clear and the impact on enterprise and trade in border counties will be monitored closely, he said.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny's statement to the Dáil on Brexit
Read the Taoiseach's statement in the Dáil
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said the referendum outcome was the result of a relentless campaign of attacks on Europe and the promotion of an anti-foreigner agenda.
Mr Martin said there had to be formal structures to assess the cross-border impact of Brexit and he denounced as cynical Sinn Féin's renewed call for a border poll in the wake of the vote.
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said an island-wide vision of the future is needed and there was a huge responsibility now on the Government to think nationally.
Labour leader Brendan Howlin urged the Government not to amend its spending plans as a result of Brexit, saying that an expansionary budget was needed.
He also told the Dáil that he did not think the time was right for a border poll and described the result of last week's referendum as "a tragedy."
Earlier, the Taoiseach said that Britain's decision to leave the EU should not have any impact on Budget 2017.
Speaking at the National Economic Dialogue in Dublin Castle, Mr Kenny said the objective now is "to protect and advance this country's interests."
Minister for Finance Michael Noonan, meanwhile, has said he does not see any threat to Ireland's low 12.5% corporate tax rate due to the UK leaving the European Union.
He said there is "no pressure" on Ireland to change its rate.
He also said the Norwegian precedent would suggest it is not possible for the UK to get full access to the Common Market without allowing full access to the labour market.
Also speaking at the National Economic Dialogue, Mr Noonan said the initial shock of Brexit for Ireland has been contained and the National Treasury Management Agency is happy it can fully fund the country.
He said "the stock market took a bit of a hit but in the normal rise and fall of stock markets." Irish exports continue to be strong and "people are going about their business," he said.
He continued: "it's very hard to say at this point what the ultimate effect of Brexit will be because it depends on what alternative arrangement is put in place."
In terms of foreign direct investment, Mr Noonan acknowledged that the UK is Ireland's "biggest rival" and "direct competitor."
Meanwhile, IDA Chief Executive Martin Shanahan has said Brexit is not something that the IDA felt would be good for the Irish economy.
Mr Shanahan said he believes there is some upside potential for Ireland but it is too early to size it up.
In the long term, he said, it would depend on Britain's future access to single European market.Mike Pence to give keynote speech for hate group’s anniversary celebration Jeff Taylor
Associated Press
Vice President Mike Pence will be delivering a keynote speech today to anti-LGBTQ organization Focus on the Family in honor of its 40 year anniversary.
The event will take place in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where the group is based.
Pence appeared on Focus on the Family founder James Dobson’s radio program during the campaign to promise that if Donald Trump were elected president, their administration would rescind protections for transgender students, as they did, and that he would appoint far-right judges. That promise has also been kept.
More recently, Focus on the Family was invited to a Father’s Day event hosted by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at the Department of Education building in Washington, D.C., along with another anti-LGBTQ group, the Family Research Council.
Related: Gay Men’s Choruses fight hate by serenading Focus on the Family
“Mike Pence has spent his career attacking and undermining LGBTQ people and our families, and now, as Vice President he’s continuing the crusade,” said JoDee Winterhof, Human Rights Campaign Senior Vice President for Policy and Political Affairs in a statement. “This is an extreme organization that promotes the dangerous and abusive practice of ‘conversion therapy,’ lobbies against allowing LGBTQ people to adopt children who need homes, and opposes anti-bullying efforts in schools. These views are not just antiquated — they are dangerous and wrong. And for the Vice President of the United States to lend credibility to them is beyond shocking.”
Pence will be met by protesters, including some dressed in the red dresses and white bonnets featured in The Handmaid’s Tale, reports Colorado Politics.
Related: In a sign of the times, dystopian fiction is flying off the shelves
The dystopian novel, turned Hulu series, tells the story of a fundamentalist society that has overthrown the U.S. government and subjugates women.
“It’s our way of making kind of a shocking statement,” said Ryan Barry of Unite Colorado Springs, one of the groups putting together the protest rally.
“It’s a way of showing that Focus on the Family and Mike Pence stand for very restrictive, ‘traditional’ gender roles, opposition to choice for women and anti-LGBTQ positions,” Barry added. “This is the way they see Focus, this backwards organization that’s promoting stuff that’s far beyond what most of us would consider applicable for modern society.”
You can watch the event via webcast if you are willing to provide them with your email address.Spring Framework 3.1 M2 has been released this week, marking the end of the 3.1 milestone phase. We are moving on to the release candidate phase now, preparing for a feature-complete RC1 in July and a GA release in September.
3.1 M2 completes the work on several major themes started in 3.1 M1 back in February:
We’ve stabilized our environment abstraction and the environment profile mechanism. If you haven’t given it a try already, now is a great time to check it out!
Our Java-based application configuration approach has changed from the @Feature approach in M1 to @Enable* annotations on regular @Configuration classes in M2.
The cache abstraction has been revised for delivering a minimal cache interaction SPI. Our declarative caching solution (@Cacheable etc) keeps sitting on top of it.
Furthermore, we added significant new features to the overall configuration arrangement:
Rich support for Servlet 3.0 based initializers : Our new WebApplicationInitializer approach allows for bootstrapping a Spring web application without web.xml!
A new “packagesToScan” feature for JPA, building a default persistence unit from a scan of specified base packages - without persistence.xml or other metadata files.
Our new RequestMappingHandlerAdapter in Spring @MVC: a customizable backend for MVC processing based on a flexible HandlerMethod abstraction.
Of course, there are plenty of other features to discover as well, for example:
Our new “c:” namespace for conveniently specifying constructor arguments by name in a concise inline style.
An overhaul of the TestContext framework with first-class testing support for @Configuration classes and environment profiles.
REST support refinements with respect to URI templates, path variable handling and content type specification in Spring MVC.
We will be publishing several blog posts on specific feature areas in the course of the next couple of days, starting with comprehensive coverage of our configuration enhancements in M2. Stay tuned! And let us know how it works for you…Late Thursday night, a draft of a US bill created to address the country's stance on encryption leaked online, and cryptography experts along with civil advocates reacted accordingly, calling it everything from stupid to technically illiterate.
The bill, which you can read for yourself below this article, was drafted by Senators Richard Burr (North Carolina) and Diane Feinstein (California).
The two were very critical of Apple because it refused to help the FBI hack the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, and have been quoted as saying that there's no company above the law when it comes to obeying court orders.
In order to make sure this doesn't happen ever again, the two have put together a bill that will force any US company to provide technical support for law enforcement if they ask for help in cracking encrypted data.
The bill basically asks companies to use weaker encryption which they could break whenever authorities get a court order and come calling for data.
Companies should provide technical assistance in decrypting data on demand
Practically, the two senators drafted a bill that the FBI and other totalitarian states would have loved. Notwithstanding the US' title of "land of the free," the bill looks something you would have expected China's leadership to approve. But there is good news.
"It's not hard to see why the White House declined to endorse Feinstein-Burr. They took a complex issue, arrived at the most naive solution," said Matthew Green, cryptography expert and Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University.
As it stands right now, the bill looks to face a lot of opposition from absolutely everyone that has an above-average IQ. Weakening encryption was a bad idea in the '90s when the Internet and cyber-threats were only taking their first steps, let alone now when the FBI has admitted that unknown hackers have been attacking the US for the past five years, but they only now found about it.
Below is the bill's draft, leaked online by Cory Bennett of The Hill.1981 studio album by Nazia Hassan & Zoheb Hassan
Disco Deewane is a 1981 Pakistani pop–disco album by the duo Nazia and Zoheb, consisting of Nazia Hassan and her brother Zoheb Hassan.[1] The music was composed by Zoheb with Indian producer Biddu.[2] It charted in fourteen countries worldwide and became the best-selling Asian pop record to-date.[3] It changed trends in music across South Asia, where it broke sales records. In India, it sold 100,000 records within a day of its release in Mumbai alone, went Platinum within three weeks,[4][5] and went Double-Platinum soon after.[6] Disco Deewane went on to sell 14 million units worldwide.[7]
In South Asia, where the music industry was previously dominated by filmi Bollywood soundtracks, Disco Deewaane was the first non-soundtrack album to become a major success across the region, paving the way for the emergence of independent Pakistani and Indian pop music scenes.[3][4] It was also the first South Asian pop album to top the charts in Brazil,[3] while also becoming a hit in Russia, South Africa, and Indonesia,[citation needed] and a success among the South Asian diaspora in regions such as Canada, the United Kingdom, United States, and West Indies.[5]
Track listing [ edit ]
Back cover of album "Disco Deewane"
Credits [ edit ]
Music directors [ edit ]
Lyricists [ edit ]
Cover versions [ edit ]
Dreamer Deewane [ edit ]
Nazia Hassan performed a remixed cover version of title track "Disco Deewane" in the English language, called "Dreamer Deewane" (1983), which was released as a single. It became the first single by a Pakistani singer to enter the UK pop charts.[8]
The Disco Song [ edit ]
In 2012, a revamped cover version of the title song "Disco Deewane" was incorporated into the Indian Bollywood film Student of the Year.[9] Called "The Disco Song", it incorporates Nazia Hassan's vocals, along with the vocals of Sunidhi Chauhan and Benny Dayal, while the music video features actress Alia Bhatt and actors Sidharth Malhotra and Varun Dhawan.
Karan Johar used the song in his 2012 film Student of the Year after licensing the song from Sa Re Ga Ma. It has been contested by Nazia Hassan's family, as they claim that HMV doesn't own the album because it was financed by them in London.After deep thought, debate, laughter, tears, and broken friendships the die has been cast, the 779 votes are in. This is our mission.
The Bisexual Agenda
“ Orgies for everyone” came in strong at 32.3%, followed closely by “ruining heterosexual and gay marriage simultaneously” at 29.1%. If we are efficient and fight hard we can achieve both of these dreams in the year of our lord 2015. I believe.
The people who prefer to keep the agenda on the down low with ” there is no bisexual agenda, we don’t exist” came in at 13.6% while fourth place was “spreading the gay to the straight population” at 12.9%, and contrary to popular belief “breaking lesbian hearts” came in dead last on the list of things bisexuals were concerned about at a meagre 7.2%
Notable suggestions from the masses to be voted on for next years agenda meeting (4.9%)
To change the color of the sky from purple to blue,
Overwhelming Tumblr servers,
Holding those “well everyone’s a little bit bi” people to their word,
Orgies but just for us!
Bisexuality is a legit and wonderful sexual orientation and not a joke thank you very much.
Gillian Anderson.
How We Prove Bisexuality Exists
This was a closest battle of them all but eventually “You can’t be friends with people of the same gender you are attracted to, so have no friends. Sit alone in the dark until you emerge for your next sexual conquest,” pulled ahead with 38.2% of the vote, narrowly beating out “Always appear in public with both a girlfriend and a boyfriend, give them the same exact amount of attention and PDA,” by a paltry fifteen votes. “Alternative sexes between sexual partners keeping it at a strict fifty/fifty, people who identify as agender or other are freebies” came in at 15.9% and “How can you prove something that doesn’t exist” at 8.8%.
Allies
90% of all biseuxals agreed that we are neither in league with the heteros( 1.9 %) or the homos (7.7 %) but instead shall play them against each other until only we survive and we shall rename the earth midlevel Kinsey and all shall prosper.
What Are You Personally Confused About?
44.7% of bisexuals are confused how people survive the boredom of liking one gender, 21.5% want to know why burritos are the best food in the universe, 13. 6% think that life may just be a dream, and 11.2 % really just want to know who A. Tomorrow I will be answering the some of the 8.9% of people who had more unique quandaries.
What is the proper response to anyone saying any version of “you’re either gay, straight, or lying”?
I learned that bisexuals are less bloodthirsty and motivated by revenge than I expected when “stare at them without blinking until they trail off into nervous laughter” won with a solid 37.7% followed by “smile and nod in the moment, and then sabotage their career and relationships over the rest of their life ensuring they die alone and miserable,” 35.35% with a mere 19.9 percent saying they would “ immediately punch them in the face and then continue the conversation as if nothing happened”.
Other suggestions (6.9%) included:
Gillian Anderson
Beat them into unconsciousness, then feed them to a sofabed. Since sofabeds are actually either sofas, beds, or lying (down), they can safely sleep off their concussion! – (Editor’s note: Please do not sleep with a concussion!)
Say “Why yes, I am a lion” then respond only in purrs, growls, and roars.
they obviously want to have sex with you
“makes you wonder what else I’ve lied about, doesn’t it?” accompanied by a slow, but altogether warm and sincere, smile.
Sleep with all of their parents
Only a sith deals in absolutes.
Is Bisexual an Okay Umbrella Term for All Nonmonosexual People or Do We Need a More Inclusive Word?
This results changed the most dramatically over the last few days. Originally close to 80% of people thought bisexual was an acceptable umbrella term, this number tanked over the last few days resulting in only 64.0% favoring bisexual as an umbrella term and 36.0 % of voters saying we needed a more inclusive word.
How Do We Feel About Pi?
The proposed inclusive of portmanteau of “Pi” because we are delicious, smart, and neverending received an 81.7% approval rating, but strong opinions were recorded on both sides.
Only if we can like exactly 3.14 genders
No, mathematics has no place in the bedroom
Gillian is my agenda
this question is irrational
I’m OLD and I’m tired of learning new terms for what I am, please to stop making them up, thank you and good night
Yes, but only if we change our label to ‘Pie-Sexual’
Well, you can’t have Pi without a pan
Team Tau: In the same way Tau exists only because having pis appear together in public is too scandalous, I too will be forever alone
Best Bedroom Skillz
The people have spoken. Men are the worst in bed with a paltry 5. 5 percent of the vote, followed by women with a 8.5%, other with a 13.4%, and “ Myself- all sexual partners are just vehicles for my amazing prowess” winning with a beautiful 72.7%. I think in our hearts we always knew this was true.
Our Mascot
This was a ping-pong ball of question, every time I logged in a different answer was winning, but after a week of battle the earth covering, fluid ocean pulled ahead of the traditional unicorn with a 51.5% win.
What’s Your Favorite Way to Explain Bisexuality?
“Some people don’t date people who like olives. Some people don’t date people who have freckles. Some people don’t date people who aren’t a certain gender. I am none of those people,” won with a respectable 29.1% followed closely by “I’m like an ethical HR person, I don’t discriminate based on gender, I only care about who will get the job done” at 25.0%. The arrogant jerks like myself who voted for ” What I’m trying to say is, you’re shall and I’m better than you. Bye” came in third at 21.2%, while Miley Cyrus fans who “Get the besst of both worlds” came in dead last with 19.2%, despite her recent disclosure of non heterosexuality
As always the people who voted other (5.2%) were filled with gems of wisdom including:
Sexual attraction isn’t limited to one gender. I like many genders. If you are genuinely interested here are some resources where you can read about human sexuality, then come back to me if you have any questions.
I just make a bunch of random sounds until they stop talking to me and google it.
Diagrams
I usually respond with “Wait, you can actually see me?”
If people don’t understand bisexuality by now, I don’t even bother.
how come you’re not bi? just look at all this beauty, wtf? what’s the matter with you?
Love knows no gender (and penises and vaginas are both fun to play with)
and of course
Ms. Anderson
This is the beginning of a brave new world people! I’ll see you six months for the bi-annual update.
*Note, if you are not going to put more than five minutes of work into your power point presentation than don’t have one. Please take inspiration from Cheryl’s meticulously organized, 100 slide presentation on Gillian Anderson.
** Cheryl, please try to stay on topic next time.Doctor Polaris is an alias used by two fictional characters, both supervillains appearing in comic books published by DC Comics.
Publication history [ edit ]
Created by John Broome and Gil Kane, the first Doctor Polaris, Neal Emerson, made his first appearance in Green Lantern #21 (June 1963)[1].
The second Dr. Polaris, John Nichol, first appeared off-panel in Justice League of America #11 (September 2007), before receiving a full introduction in Justice League of America vol. 2 #17, (March 2008). Nichol's origins in this issue were developed by Matthew Sturges and Andre Coelho.
Fictional character biography [ edit ]
Neal Emerson [ edit ]
Neal Emerson and his brother John were raised by an abusive father (although a later flashback shows him raised by an abusive aunt). This apparently drove Neal Emerson within himself and led to the creation of the personification of his own dark side.[2] Emerson left the United States for a year and returned to find he was an uncle. His brother John and sister-in-law Katherine had adopted a baby and named him Grant. Emerson was not around much for his nephew over the years, but he was quite fond of the boy.
As a medical student, Neal Emerson develops a fanatical interest in magnets, despite the teasing of his classmates. Emerson is convinced exposure to magnetic fields will give him more energy. He later holds crowd-drawing lectures on "Health via Magnetism." Due to his medical background and belief in magnetism, Emerson adopts the name "Doctor Polaris." He even designs a special costume and mask to wear for his public appearances.[2]
After time Emerson came to believe he had absorbed too much magnetic energy, and unsuccessfully tries to drain off the excess energy. In desperation, Emerson tries to make a public appeal at a charity event to Green Lantern, believing Green Lantern's power ring can help him. Unfortunately, putting on the costume causes the evil persona of Doctor Polaris to take over Emerson, and he robs the box office of the proceeds instead.[2] Polaris tries to draw a magnetic gun on Green Lantern, but is knocked unconscious by the Lantern instead. At the hospital, Green Lantern probes Polaris' mind, and learns of Emerson's evil side. Shortly thereafter, Polaris recovers and attacks Green Lantern from hiding with girders and other metal objects. The Green Lantern manages to draw Polaris out into the open and defeat him. Doctor Polaris is remanded to police custody; during that time, his "good self" resurfaces.
Doctor Polaris apparently returns to battle Green Lantern and the Justice League alongside Killer Moth, Dagon, the Mask and the Pied Piper, but it is later revealed the Demons Three, Abnegazar, Rath and Ghast, had created magical duplicates of the villains. The League even has to battle the villains' costumes before ultimately defeating the Demons Three.
Doctor Polaris was later released from imprisonment during one of his "good" periods. He attempted to discover the source of Green Lantern's power by kidnapping his friend, Tom Kalmaku. Polaris learned Green Lantern's power battery was hidden at Ferris Aircraft and was able to put a magnetic barrier around it, which prevented Green Lantern from fully charging his ring. The hero tracked Kalmaku to Polaris' lair as his power ring ran out of energy. Polaris turned his weapon on the Green Lantern, apparently killing him. The emerald gladiator's body disappeared.
What Doctor Polaris did not know was that Green Lantern was taken to Oa, home of the Guardians of the Universe, the masters of the Green Lantern Corps. Due to the magnetic effect of Polaris' weapon, they believed Jordan was dead. To complicate matters further, Jordan was taken into the 58th Century where he battled a threat to the Earth in the fictional identity of Pol Manning. Returning to the 20th Century, Green Lantern defeated Polaris. After reviving him, Jordan revealed to Kalmaku the "good" nature of Neal Emerson had lessened the effect of Doctor Polaris' weapon, thereby saving the ring wielder.
A reformed Emerson traveled to the Earth's magnetic North Pole to study it. Emerson was at the point where the lines of magnetic force converge when an earthquake plunged him into a deep crevice. At the bottom of the crevice lay a glowing blue blob. The radiation from the blob altered Emerson's perceptions, allowing him to understand the blob's intentions to dehydrate the entire Earth. Emerson was able to subconsciously influence Hal Jordan into becoming Green Lantern, but was unable to bring the Lantern to the North Pole. In desperation, Emerson created a mental duplicate of his evil alter ego. Doctor Polaris took advantage of the situation and attacked Green Lantern by blocking his power battery with a magnetic barrier. Doctor Polaris flew into Earth's orbit in order to increase the solar radiation reaching the planet. As he left the Earth's magnetic field, the barrier around the power ring faded, allowing Green Lantern to recover. Green Lantern managed to use micrometeorites to form an iron mask around Polaris' head, blocking off his vision. Back on Earth, Emerson was able to use telepathy to warn Green Lantern of the alien threat. Once Green Lantern disintegrated the blob, the mental image of the evil Doctor Polaris faded away.
Years later, Emerson's dark side returns. Returning to his old costume, Polaris takes the name of Baxter Timmons and moves to Metropolis' Suicide Slum, where he steals advanced technology from warehouses throughout the city. Polaris integrates the new magnetic circuits into his costume, as part of an attempt to gain revenge on Green Lantern. Polaris' plans are stopped through the efforts of the superhero Black Lightning.
Over the years, the Polaris and Emerson personalities fought for dominance, until Polaris was approached by the demon Neron. Polaris sold Neron Emerson's soul in exchange for greater power and being rid of the other, restraining side of his personality. Polaris was one of Neron's lieutenants before being betrayed by Lex Luthor and the Joker.
Polaris later attacks Steel in Washington D.C., seeking a weapon called the Annihilator that Steel had built. During the battle, Steel's grandmother attacks Polaris and is killed. Polaris is driven away after the Parasite attacks him. Parasite, afraid of absorbing Polaris's mind and not just his power, lets him go before killing him. Polaris flees to Keystone City.
Some time after that, Polaris shows up at Poseidonis in an attempt to seize control of the city, prompting a battle against Aquaman and his allies. At that same time, Maxima is in the city trying to force Aquaman to marry her. Using her powerful mental abilities, Maxima compels Polaris into believing that his alternate personality has reemerged, forcing him into a nearly catatonic state.
Under unknown circumstances, the catatonic Polaris ends up being held in Iraq, but he is rescued by Hatchet, Heat Wave and Sonar. The trio planned to carry him to the Aurora Borealis in the magnetic North Pole for recharge, thinking that he would be thankful to them and would lead them. They fought The Flash, Green Arrow and Green Lantern. When Polaris recovers, the Flash gives him a bit of his speed, which has the same effect as applying kinetic energy to a magnet; Doctor Polaris' body attracts the remains of the sunken Aurora Borealis, containing him. (Green Lantern #96, Green Arrow #130 and Flash |
14 15 16 17 18 class Customer { public string FirstName { get ; set ; } public string LastName { get ; set ; } public string Email { get ; set ; } public int age { get ; set ; } static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { // In Visual Studio 2013 Customer cus = new Customer ( ) ; cus. FirstName = "Lana" ; cus. LastName = "Leonard" ; cus. Email = [email protected]" ; cus. age = 31 ; Console. WriteLine ( "Name : " + cus. FirstName + " " + cus. LastName + "
Email : " + cus. Email ) ; Console. ReadLine ( ) ; } }
Using String.Format method:
class Customer { public string FirstName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } public string Email { get; set; } public int age{ get; set; } static void Main(string[] args) { // In Visual Studio 2013 Customer cus = new Customer(); cus.FirstName = "Lana"; cus.LastName = "Leonard"; cus.Email = "Lana.Leonard@Csharpstar.com"; cus.age = 31; Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Name : {0} {1}
Email : {2}", cus.FirstName, cus.LastName, cus.Email)); Console.ReadLine(); } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 class Customer { public string FirstName { get ; set ; } public string LastName { get ; set ; } public string Email { get ; set ; } public int age { get ; set ; } static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { // In Visual Studio 2013 Customer cus = new Customer ( ) ; cus. FirstName = "Lana" ; cus. LastName = "Leonard" ; cus. Email = [email protected]" ; cus. age = 31 ; Console. WriteLine ( string. Format ( "Name : {0} {1}
Email : {2}", cus. FirstName, cus. LastName, cus. Email ) ) ; Console. ReadLine ( ) ; } }
New ways of String Concatenation in C#6.0
using static System.Console; namespace CSharpStar { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { string firstName = "Lana"; string lastName = "Leonard"; WriteLine($"{firstName} {lastName} is my name!"); ReadLine(); } } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 using static System. Console ; namespace CSharpStar { class Program { static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { string firstName = "Lana" ; string lastName = "Leonard" ; WriteLine ( $ "{firstName} {lastName} is my name!" ) ; ReadLine ( ) ; } } }
The output for this program will be:
Lana Leonard is my name! 1 Lana Leonard is my name!
3. Exception Filters:
Earlier Exception filters were supported in Visual Basic but not in C#. They allow you to specify a condition for a catch block.
using System; using static System.Console; namespace CSharpStar { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var httpStatusCode = 404; Write("HTTP Error: "); try { throw new Exception(httpStatusCode.ToString()); } catch (Exception ex) { if (ex.Message.Equals("500")) Write("Bad Request"); else if (ex.Message.Equals("401")) Write("Unauthorized"); else if (ex.Message.Equals("402")) Write("Exception Occurred"); else if (ex.Message.Equals("403")) Write("Forbidden"); else if (ex.Message.Equals("404")) Write("Not Found"); } ReadLine(); } } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 using System ; using static System. Console ; namespace CSharpStar { class Program { static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { var httpStatusCode = 404 ; Write ( "HTTP Error: " ) ; try { throw new Exception ( httpStatusCode. ToString ( ) ) ; } catch ( Exception ex ) { if ( ex. Message. Equals ( "500" ) ) Write ( "Bad Request" ) ; else if ( ex. Message. Equals ( "401" ) ) Write ( "Unauthorized" ) ; else if ( ex. Message. Equals ( "402" ) ) Write ( "Exception Occurred" ) ; else if ( ex. Message. Equals ( "403" ) ) Write ( "Forbidden" ) ; else if ( ex. Message. Equals ( "404" ) ) Write ( "Not Found" ) ; } ReadLine ( ) ; } } }
In C#6.0, without entering the catch block, you can check to see which condition met your exception.
using System; using static System.Console; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var httpStatusCode = 404; Write("HTTP Error: "); try { throw new Exception(httpStatusCode.ToString()); } catch (Exception ex) when (ex.Message.Equals("400")) { Write("Bad Request"); ReadLine(); } catch (Exception ex) when (ex.Message.Equals("401")) { Write("Unauthorized"); ReadLine(); } catch (Exception ex) when (ex.Message.Equals("402")) { Write("Exception Occurred "); ReadLine(); } catch (Exception ex) when (ex.Message.Equals("403")) { Write("Forbidden"); ReadLine(); } catch (Exception ex) when (ex.Message.Equals("404")) { Write("Not Found"); ReadLine(); } ReadLine(); } } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 using System ; using static System. Console ; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { var httpStatusCode = 404 ; Write ( "HTTP Error: " ) ; try { throw new Exception ( httpStatusCode. ToString ( ) ) ; } catch ( Exception ex ) when ( ex. Message. Equals ( "400" ) ) { Write ( "Bad Request" ) ; ReadLine ( ) ; } catch ( Exception ex ) when ( ex. Message. Equals ( "401" ) ) { Write ( "Unauthorized" ) ; ReadLine ( ) ; } catch ( Exception ex ) when ( ex. Message. Equals ( "402" ) ) { Write ( "Exception Occurred " ) ; ReadLine ( ) ; } catch ( Exception ex ) when ( ex. Message. Equals ( "403" ) ) { Write ( "Forbidden" ) ; ReadLine ( ) ; } catch ( Exception ex ) when ( ex. Message. Equals ( "404" ) ) { Write ( "Not Found" ) ; ReadLine ( ) ; } ReadLine ( ) ; } } }
4. Await in a Catch and Finally Block:
In C# 6, now you can write asynchronous code inside a catch/finally block. This will help you to log exceptions to a file or database without blocking the current thread. Let’s look at below example:
using System; using System.Net.Http; using System.Threading.Tasks; using static System.Console; namespace CSharpStar { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Task.Factory.StartNew(() => GetSite()); ReadLine(); } private async static Task GetSite() { HttpClient client = new HttpClient(); try { var result = await client.GetStringAsync ("http://www.CsharpStar.com"); WriteLine(result); } catch (Exception exception) { try { //This asynchronous request will invoked // if the first request is failed. var result = await client.GetStringAsync ("http://www.easywcf.com"); WriteLine(result); } catch { WriteLine("Entered Catch Block"); } finally { WriteLine("Entered Finally Block"); } } } } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 using System ; using System. Net. Http ; using System. Threading. Tasks ; using static System. Console ; namespace CSharpStar { class Program { static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { Task. Factory. StartNew ( ( ) = > GetSite ( ) ) ; ReadLine ( ) ; } private async static Task GetSite ( ) { HttpClient client = new HttpClient ( ) ; try { var result = await client. GetStringAsync ( "http://www.CsharpStar.com" ) ; WriteLine ( result ) ; } catch ( Exception exception ) { try { //This asynchronous request will invoked // if the first request is failed. var result = await client. GetStringAsync ( "http://www.easywcf.com" ) ; WriteLine ( result ) ; } catch { WriteLine ( "Entered Catch Block" ) ; } finally { WriteLine ( "Entered Finally Block" ) ; } } } } }
5. Null Conditional Operator:
Most of us do not like NullReferenceException. Let’s look at below example, on how to handle NullReferenceException prior to C#6.0.
using System; using static System.Console; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Employee Emp = new Employee(); if (Emp.Name == String.Empty) { Emp = null; } WriteLine(Emp!= null? Emp.Name : "Field is null."); ReadLine(); } } public class Employee { public string Name { get; set; } = ""; } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 using System ; using static System. Console ; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { Employee Emp = new Employee ( ) ; if ( Emp. Name == String. Empty ) { Emp = null ; } WriteLine ( Emp!= null? Emp. Name : "Field is null." ) ; ReadLine ( ) ; } } public class Employee { public string Name { get ; set ; } = "" ; } }
If you enter some data into name, then the console prints out that name else this returns “Field is null”.
New ways to handle NullReferenceException in C#6.0:
In C# 6.0, you can use?. to check if an instance is null or not. Let’s look at below example to see how it works in C#6.0.
using System; using static System.Console; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Employee Emp = new Employee(); if (Emp.Name == String.Empty) { Emp = null; } WriteLine(Emp?.Name?? "Field is null."); ReadLine(); } } public class Employee { public string Name { get; set; } = ""; } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 using System ; using static System. Console ; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { Employee Emp = new Employee ( ) ; if ( Emp. Name == String. Empty ) { Emp = null ; } WriteLine ( Emp?. Name?? "Field is null." ) ; ReadLine ( ) ; } } public class Employee { public string Name { get ; set ; } = "" ; } }
6. Auto Property Initializer:
Prior to C#6.0, we were using constructor to initialize the auto properties to non-default value.
using System; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Employee Emp = new Employee(); Console.WriteLine(Emp. EmployeeID); Console.ReadLine(); } } public class Employee { public Employee() { Employee ID = Guid.NewGuid(); } public Guid EmployeeID{ get; set; } } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 using System ; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { Employee Emp = new Employee ( ) ; Console. WriteLine ( Emp. EmployeeID ) ; Console. ReadLine ( ) ; } } public class Employee { public Employee ( ) { Employee ID = Guid. NewGuid ( ) ; } public Guid EmployeeID { get ; set ; } } }
In C#6.0, you can modify the Employee class and populate the property called EmployeeID with inline initialization.
using System; using static System.Console; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Employee Emp = new Employee(); WriteLine(Emp.EmployeeID); ReadLine(); } } public class Employee { public Guid EmployeeID { get; set; } = Guid.NewGuid(); } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 using System ; using static System. Console ; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { Employee Emp = new Employee ( ) ; WriteLine ( Emp. EmployeeID ) ; ReadLine ( ) ; } } public class Employee { public Guid EmployeeID { get ; set ; } = Guid. NewGuid ( ) ; } }
The output for this sample will be a random guid generated by the system.
7. Dictionary Initializers:
In C# 5, you would initialize the Dictionary with a {“Key”, “Value”} Pair. Let’s look at below example to understand it better.
using System.Collections.Generic; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var Books = new Dictionary<int, string> () { { 1, "ASP.net" }, { 2, "C#" }, { 3, "ASP.net MVC5" } }; foreach (KeyValuePair<int, string> keyValuePair in Books) { Console.WriteLine(keyValuePair.Key + ": " + keyValuePair.Value + "
"); } Console.ReadLine(); } } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 using System. Collections. Generic ; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { var Books = new Dictionary < int, string > ( ) { { 1, "ASP.net" }, { 2, "C#" }, { 3, "ASP.net MVC5" } } ; foreach ( KeyValuePair < int, string > keyValuePair in Books ) { Console. WriteLine ( keyValuePair. Key + ": " + keyValuePair. Value + "
" ) ; } Console. ReadLine ( ) ; } } }
In C# 6, you can place the key between two square brackets [“Key”] and then set the value of the key [“Key”] = “value”.
using System.Collections.Generic; using static System.Console; namespace Csharpstar { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var Books = new Dictionary<int, string> () { [1] = "ASP.net", [2] = "C#", [3] = "ASP.net MVC5" }; foreach (KeyValuePair<int, string> keyValuePair in Books) { WriteLine(keyValuePair.Key + ": " + keyValuePair.Value + "
"); } ReadLine(); } } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 using System. Collections. Generic ; using static System. Console ; namespace Csharpstar { class Program { static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { var Books = new Dictionary < int, string > ( ) { [ 1 ] = "ASP.net", [ 2 ] = "C#", [ 3 ] = "ASP.net MVC5" } ; foreach ( KeyValuePair < int, string > keyValuePair in Books ) { WriteLine ( keyValuePair. Key + ": " + keyValuePair. Value + "
" ) ; } ReadLine ( ) ; } } }
8.Expression Bodied Function & Property:
Expression Bodied Functions are functions with no statement body. Instead, you implement them with an expression following the function declaration
using static System.Console; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { private static double AddNumbers (double num1, double num2) => num1 + num2; static void Main(string[] args) { double num1 = 3; double num2 = 7; WriteLine(AddNumbers(num1, num2)); ReadLine(); } } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 using static System. Console ; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { private static double AddNumbers ( double num1, double num2 ) = > num1 + num2 ; static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { double num1 = 3 ; double num2 = 7 ; WriteLine ( AddNumbers ( num1, num2 ) ) ; ReadLine ( ) ; } } }
The result of the above program would be 10.
9. Getter-only Auto Properties:
When you use auto implemented properties in C# 5 and lower, you must provide a get and set. If you want the property value to be immutable, you can use the private accessor on the setter. With C# 6, you can now omit the set accessor to achieve true readonly auto implemented properties:
public DateTime BirthDate { get; } 1 public DateTime BirthDate { get ; }
10. NameOf Expression:
Name of Expression is a new feature introduced in C#6.0.In Enterprise level applications, we handle exceptions at different levels.Showing a specific type name with an error message can be an easy way to find the code block where the exception just occurred. But by adding this we can’t show it to user because the type name can be changed anytime while refactoring but hard coded string won’t change accordingly.
Before C# 6.0 :
using System; using static System.Console; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { DoWork("Hello World!!"); ReadLine(); } public static void DoWork (string Title) { if (Title == null) throw new Exception("Title is null"); } } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 using System ; using static System. Console ; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { DoWork ( "Hello World!!" ) ; ReadLine ( ) ; } public static void DoWork ( string Title ) { if ( Title == null ) throw new Exception ( "Title is null" ) ; } } }
What happens if someone changes the Title variable to newTitle? Since we hard-coded the “Title is null” error, that is what will appear to the end-user. We would rather it now say, “newTitle is null”, but the compiler cannot recognize this.
In C# 6.0, we can refactor our code to remove the string literals and use the nameof expression.
using System; using static System.Console; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { DoWork("Hello World!!"); ReadLine(); } public static void DoWork(string newTitle) { if (newTitle == null) throw new Exception(nameof(newTitle) + " is null"); } } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 using System ; using static System. Console ; namespace CsharpStar { class Program { static void Main ( string [ ] args ) { DoWork ( "Hello World!!" ) ; ReadLine ( ) ; } public static void DoWork ( string newTitle ) { if ( newTitle == null ) throw new Exception ( nameof ( newTitle ) + " is null" ) ; } } }
Summary:
In this article, we have discussed top 10 new features introduced in C# 6.0.
– Auto Property Initializer
– Await in a Catch and Finally Block in C#6.0
– Dictionary Initializers in C# 6.0
– Exception Filters in C#6.0
– Expression Bodied Function & Property in C#6.0
– Getter-only Auto Properties in C#6.0
– NameOf Expression in C#6.0
– Null Conditional Operator in C#6.0
– Static Using Syntax in C#6.0
– String Interpolation in C#6.0
Thanks For visiting!!
© 2016, Csharp Star. All rights reserved.Review by: Xlira
Mount & Blade – What We Think:
Mount & Blade released by Paradox Interactive from developer Taleworlds – both established and reliable names in the independent game world – has become my favorite new indie game. I began playing this game to spend my leisure time but it has since evolved into a hobby. The game has great graphics, an oddly engaging musical score and compelling features, all of which can be easily adjusted by the user. There are a lot of customization options, in the vein of Oblivion or The Sims wherein the user can adjust the length and breadth of a character’s forehead, the size of its jaw, height, complexion and color of dress and so on.
Mount & Blade features a user-friendly design and provides complete entertainment to the user by taking him into its dynamic and imaginative world. NPC’s have a rather detailed AI set, and battles between factions and groups may rage on regardless of whether you are present – all of which enriches the sense of immersion in the world of Caladria. Moreover, the various quests and journeys are fairly well-paced (when you can actually figure out what to do in this sandbox) the world is quite massive, veering dangerously close to the same problem that plagues the ill-fated XBOX 360 Steampunk release “Damnation”, but at least the game-play reins this title back towards the fun side whereas Damnation just straight failed at making things fun in spite of its exhaustive scope.
Combat is one of the highlights of the game; there are no “health potions” and a few well landed blows will take you down. What may set Mount & Blade apart most, however, is it mounted combat, using a rather deep physics engine to tackle the idiosyncrasies of mounted combat. These are not auto-pilot type skirmishes – the player is pushed to really dig in to the tactical maneuvers available to pull of these bold encounters.
Little bugs do creep in here and there, but for the innovative streak introduced with this title, they can ultimately be forgiven.
Mount & Blade is a bold new indie title, recommended for anyone looking for a solid new role-playing adventure with a refreshing new take at the combat action level.
Mount & Blade is available via Steam.
Rating:These days, it seems like you need some kind of password or login information to visit practically every website. It is hard to keep track of all of those logins, not to mention recalling your credit card numbers and expiration dates when you are making purchases online at websites that don't have Apple Pay support. iCloud Keychain makes it possible for you to create and save all of your logins and passwords, as well as store your credit card details and personal information, like your home address and phone number, so you can quickly add them to fill-in forms without having to type the information out every time.
Consider a password manager, too
It is important to note that while iCloud Keychain is a fantastic program for storing your login and password information, you should always have a secondary way to back up your passwords in case something should go wrong. If you are unable to access your iCloud account, having a backup password manager will save you much time and suffering.
How to enable iCloud Keychain on iPhone and iPad
You can use iCloud Keychain to access your stored logins and passwords, credit card details, and personal information, but in order to use it across all of your devices, you'll need to enable it.
Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap your Apple ID banner. Tap iCloud. Scroll down and tap Keychain. Toggle the iCloud Keychain switch on. Enter your Apple ID password if prompted.
If you've set up an iCloud Keychain password before, you will be asked to enter your existing password after enabling iCloud Keychain. If not, you will be asked to create a password. You also have the option to verify with another device. However you decide to finalize your account, you'll be ready to store important info more securely on your iPhone or iPad.
How to disable iCloud Keychain on iPhone and iPad
If you don't want iCloud Keychain to store your logins and passwords, credit card details, or personal information, you can disable it.
Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap your Apple ID banner. Tap iCloud. Scroll down and tap Keychain. Toggle the iCloud Keychain switch off. When asked whether you want to turn off Safari AutoFill, select Delete from my iPhone to store it only in iCloud, or Keep on my iPhone to store the data on your iPhone. Enter your Apple ID password if prompted.
How to create a pseudo-random password using iCloud Keychain on iPhone and iPad
You should never use the same password for more than one website login. Unfortunately, that means you might have dozens (or in my case, hundreds) of passwords across all of your accounts. Instead of trying to think up the most unique passwords possible from your own brain, let iCloud Keychain think them up for you.
Launch Safari from your iPhone or iPad. Navigate to the website for which you want to create a login. Select the Password field of the account creation form. Tap Suggest Password just above the keyboard. When the pseudo-randomly generated password appears, tap Use Suggested Password.
How to manually add your personal information to iCloud Keychain on iPhone and iPad
You can set up iCloud Keychain to autofill your contact information. First, you'll need to create a contact card with your personal information, including your address, email, and phone number.
Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap Safari. Tap AutoFill. Tap My Info. Select your Contact Card from the list of contacts.
The information that is available for AutoFill will be updated whenever you update your contact card.
How to manually add your credit card information to iCloud Keychain on iPhone and iPad
iCloud Keychain also includes an autofill feature for your credit cards, which stores your card number and expiration date. You can manually add your credit cards to iCloud Keychain and access them across all of your devices.
Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap Safari. Tap AutoFill. Tap Saved Credit Cards. Use Touch ID if prompted to sign in to see your saved credit cards. Tap Add Credit Card. Enter your credit card information.You can also use your iPhone or iPad camera to capture your credit card information. Tap Done in the top right corner when you are finished.
Your credit card information will be available across all of your devices.
How to access passwords in iCloud Keychain on iPhone and iPad
If you are unable to use your iPhone's handy dandy autofill to fill out a password (some websites don't support the feature), you can still access your login information from the Settings app.
Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap Accounts & Passwords. Tap App & Website Passwords. Use Touch ID if prompted to sign in to see your passwords. Tap the login details for the website for which you want the password. Long press on the password to call up the copy options. Tap Copy to copy the password.
If you have a really long list of passwords, like I do, you can search for the one you are looking for by typing the name into the search field at the top of the Passwords page.
How to delete saved passwords and credit cards for iCloud Keychain for iPhone and iPad
If for some reason, you don't want to keep a password or credit card number in iCloud Keychain, you can manually delete it.
How to delete a saved credit card from iCloud Keychain on iPhone and iPad
Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap Safari. Tap AutoFill. Tap Saved Credit Cards. Use Touch ID if prompted to sign in to see your saved credit cards. Tap a credit card you want to remove. Tap Edit in the top right corner. Tap Delete Credit Card. When prompted to confirm, tap Delete.
The credit card will be removed from iCloud Keychain and will no longer be accessible when you access your saved credit cards.
How to delete a saved password from iCloud Keychain on iPhone and iPad
Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap Accounts & Passwords. Tap App & Website Passwords. Use Touch ID if prompted to sign in to see your passwords. Tap the login details for the website for which you want to remove the password. Tap Edit in the top right corner. Tap to select the password(s) you want to delete. Tap Delete in the upper left hand corner.
The password will be removed from iCloud Keychain and will no longer be accessible when you access the website associated with it.
How to stop Safari from auto filling passwords and credit cards in iCloud Keychain on your iPhone and iPad
If you are letting someone else use your iPhone to browse the internet, it might be a good idea to disable iCloud Keychain's AutoFill feature temporarily. If for some reason, you don't want iCloud Keychain to automatically save password logins or autofill forms, you can disable it without removing it from your iPhone or iPad entirely.
Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap Safari. Tap AutoFill. Toggle the Use Contact Info off to disable autofill for your contact information. Toggle the Names and Passwords switch off to disable autofill for account login details. Toggle the Credit Cards switch off to disable autofill for credit card information.
You will no longer see the option to autofill your contact, password, or credit card information while using Safari, but iCloud Keychain will remain on your device.
Any questions?
Do you have any questions about setting up and using iCloud Keychain on your iPhone and iPad? Put them in the comments and we'll help you out.VirgilSC2 Profile Blog Joined June 2011 United States 5748 Posts #1
As the first season of the 2012 GSL draws to a close, so does the first season of the E-Sports Weekly Match. Four weeks have passed, 4 players have fought to the top of a bracket packed with talent to qualify for the finals event, eyes set firmly on the minimap prize. Four clearly talented players, however only one of them can walk away with a Code A seed for GSL Season 2. For the finals event, their last test before one of them sits into the GSL booth next season, we'll be broadcasting the matches LIVE from Seoul Korea, Monday, Mar 05 5:00am GMT (GMT+00:00)
Our four players will face off at the Intel e-Stadium at Technomart 3rd Floor, Sindorim, Seoul, Korea. Matches will be broadcast via the EWM stream on TwitchTV, with Wolf.
In addition to the four players facing off for their Code A seed, we'll be bringing you a special treat for our first live event. Prior to the main event we'll have a showmatch between two of the best players in the world currently: MvPGenius and MvPDongRaeGu. Be sure to tune in early so you don't miss a moment of the action!
Just who are the four players facing off for the Code A seed? Let's take a look at them, and their path through the EWM to get here.
Week 1
MvPNoblesse
As a former Code S player, Noblesse is a stranger to few. Having had quite a bit of experience at live events, Noblesse may have an edge over his opponents in that regard. Showcasing his talent that got him there in the first place, Noblesse marched through his bracket with ease, only dropping a single game during his entire run. Will he unleash this same ruthless fury on his competitors in the finals?'
Week 2
FXOTear
Cast in the looming shadow of his teammates Oz, Leenock, and GuMiho, Tear has large shoes to fill when it comes down to playing for FXO. Like Noblesse before him, Tear tore through his bracket, only dropping a single game in (arguably) the easiest match-up to do so in. With teammates like those mentioned previously, you can bet he's training hard for his first live broadcast event.
Week 3
MvPTAiLS
Having made quite the name for himself already, TAiLS is another player that came into the EWM with a reputation to uphold. Having taken down MVP and NesTea back to back in the 2011 GSTL Season 1 play-offs, in possibly one of the greatest moments in Team League history, TAiLS had already shown he could beat the best of the best. He then traveled to the UK for Multiplay's Insomnia 44 event, and the IPL 4 Qualifier within, where he took second place (against the already qualified Stephano) and earned himself a trip to the US coming up soon. Will he be able to attend IPL 4 as a Code A level player?
Week 4
As the Week 4 matches have not been aired yet, we cannot divulge the spoilers quite yet, but I can guarantee that he will definitely be able to hold his own against his equally fearsome opponents! Make sure to tune into our Week 4 broadcasts this week to see who the final qualified player will be!
Rest assured that, like all other EWM events, this will be free to watch in High Definition! We're hard at work to make sure that our first finals is the best it can be, be sure to tune in and see who the first player seeded into the next round of Code A is!
As the first season of the 2012 GSL draws to a close, so does the first season of the E-Sports Weekly Match. Four weeks have passed, 4 players have fought to the top of a bracket packed with talent to qualify for the finals event, eyes set firmly on theprize. Four clearly talented players, however only one of them can walk away with a Code A seed for GSL Season 2. For the finals event, their last test before one of them sits into the GSL booth next season, we'll be broadcasting the matches LIVE from Seoul Korea,Our four players will face off at the Intel e-Stadium at Technomart 3rd Floor, Sindorim, Seoul, Korea. Matches will be broadcast via the EWM stream on TwitchTV, with Wolf.In addition to the four players facing off for their Code A seed, we'll be bringing you a special treat for our first live event. Prior to the main event we'll have a showmatch between two of the best players in the world currently: MvPGenius and MvPDongRaeGu. Be sure to tune in early so you don't miss a moment of the action!Just who are the four players facing off for the Code A seed? Let's take a look at them, and their path through the EWM to get here.As a former Code S player, Noblesse is a stranger to few. Having had quite a bit of experience at live events, Noblesse may have an edge over his opponents in that regard. Showcasing his talent that got him there in the first place, Noblesse marched through his bracket with ease, only dropping a single game during his entire run. Will he unleash this same ruthless fury on his competitors in the finals?'Cast in the looming shadow of his teammates Oz, Leenock, and GuMiho, Tear has large shoes to fill when it comes down to playing for FXO. Like Noblesse before him, Tear tore through his bracket, only dropping a single game in (arguably) the easiest match-up to do so in. With teammates like those mentioned previously, you can bet he's training hard for his first live broadcast event.Having made quite the name for himself already, TAiLS is another player that came into the EWM with a reputation to uphold. Having taken down MVP and NesTea back to back in the 2011 GSTL Season 1 play-offs, in possibly one of the greatest moments in Team League history, TAiLS had already shown he could beat the best of the best. He then traveled to the UK for Multiplay's Insomnia 44 event, and the IPL 4 Qualifier within, where he took second place (against the already qualified Stephano) and earned himself a trip to the US coming up soon. Will he be able to attend IPL 4 as a Code A level player?As the Week 4 matches have not been aired yet, we cannot divulge the spoilers quite yet, but I can guarantee that he will definitely be able to hold his own against his equally fearsome opponents! Make sure to tune into our Week 4 broadcasts this week to see who the final qualified player will be!Rest assured that, like all other EWM events, this will be free to watch in High Definition! We're hard at work to make sure that our first finals is the best it can be, be sure to tune in and see who the first player seeded into the next round of Code A is! Clarity Gaming # |
President Obama condemned the attacks and offered condolences to the Norwegian people, our colleagues at The Oval tell us.
Update at 4:02 p.m. ET: Oslo police report nine or 10 deaths from the shooting attack at the Labor Party youth camp on the island of Utoya. The gunman was seen in Oslo before the bomb blast.
By Douglas Stanglin
USA TODAY
Update at 3:14 p.m. ET: The New York Times quotes a terrorism expert as saying the terror group Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or the Helpers of the Global Jihad, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack. The newspaper quotes Will McCants, a terrorism analyst at CNA, a research institute that studies terrorism, as saying the group called the attacks a response to Norwegian forces' presence in Afghanistan and to unspecified insults to the prophet Mohammed. The statement said, "There is more to come." The Times notes that the claim could not be confirmed.
Update at 2:38 p.m. ET: An eyewitness tells Norway's NRK broadcaster he saw more than 20 bodies at the youth camp shooting, the Associated Press reports.
Update at 2:35 p.m. ET: Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg urges Norwegians not to give in to fear in response to the bombing in central Oslo and the shootings at a youth camp outside the capital. The prime minister told Norwegian broadcaster NRK, "Co-workers have lost their lives today. … It's frightening. That's not how we want things in our country. But it's important that we don't let ourselves be scared because the purpose of that kind of violence is to create fear."
He says he's received unconfirmed reports of dead and injured at the camp shooting but details were sketchy.
Update at 2:26 p.m. ET: The BBC reports that Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg called an emergency crisis meeting of his government tonight.
Update at 2:01 p.m. ET: Police say at least seven people were killed in the blast in central Oslo, the Associated Press reports.
Update at 1:56 p.m. ET: There are conflicting reports on casualties at the youth camp shooting outside Oslo. Reuters initially quoted TV2 as saying several people were killed on the island of Utoya, where the shooting occurred. Reuters now quotes police as saying they cannot confirm deaths in the shootings.
Update at 1:46 p.m. ET: CNN quotes NRK state TV as saying police have "good reason" to believe that the bombing in central Oslo and the shooting at the youth camp are linked.
Update at 1:42 p.m. ET: A spokesperson for one Oslo hospital tells the BBC that 11 "heavily injured" people, suffering head and chest wounds, have been hospitalized and that at least 100 people have been treated for lesser injuries.
Update at 1:39 p.m. ET: Reuters quotes Norwegian police as saying they fear there may be explosives at a Labor Party youth camp where a gunman wearing a police uniform opened fire.
Update at 1:11 p.m. ET: NRK state TV reports that one person has been arrested at a Labor Party youth camp outside Oslo where at least five people were injured when a man wearing a police uniform opened fire.
Update at 12:54 p.m. ET: The French news agency AFP quotes a police office in Oslo as saying, "It is necessary to avoid big gatherings, to go back home. It is wise to stay at home."
Update at 12:46 p.m. ET: NRK state TV reports that five people were injured in the shooting at the youth camp run by the Labor Party on an island outside Oslo.
Update at 12:44 p.m. ET: The BBC reports that anti-terrorist police have been dispatched to an island about 40 minutes from Oslo where a man disguised as a policeman reportedly fired at a youth camp operated by the Labor Party. The BBC says Prime Minister Stoltenberg had been scheduled to address the gathering Saturday and was not there at the time of the shooting.
Update at 12:37 p.m. ET: In a separate incident that may be related, a Norwegian newspaper reports that a man in a police uniform fired at a youth camp outside Oslo. The BBC says Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg had been scheduled at speak at the camp.
Update at 12:34 p.m. ET: The AP reports that at least 15 people were injured in the blast. Neither Prime Minster Jens Stoltenberg nor any government ministers were among the injured, the AP reports.
Update at 12:28 p.m. ET: Oslo police say the office of broadcaster TV2 has been sealed off because of a suspicious package, the AP reports.
Update at 11:13 a.m. ET: NRK state TV reports two people were killed in the explosion.
Update at 11:08 a.m. ET: The Norwegian newspaper VG says police confirm that several people were killed in the blast. Police say the explosion was the result of a bomb, VG reports.
Update at 10:56 a.m. ET: NRK state TV reports one person has been confirmed dead in the blast. Although the cause of the blast is unclear, NRK video shows a blackened car lying on its side amid the debris.
Update at 10:45 a.m. ET: Witness Ole Tommy Pedersen tells the AP that the blast shattered almost all the windows in a multistory highrise, sending a cloud of smoke billowing from the lower floors.
"I saw three or four injured people being carried out of the building a few minutes later," Pedersen says.
The AP reports that a Norwegian prosecutor filed terror charges this week against an Iraqi-born cleric for threatening Norwegian politicians with death if he is deported from the country. The indictment centered on statements that Mullah Krekar — the founder of the Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam — made to various media, including the American network NBC.
Update at 10:31 a.m. ET: Aftenposten reports that people warn there could be other bombs in the area.
Update at 10:28 a.m. ET: Aftenposten reports that most of the injuries were caused by shards of glass that struck people in the street when the explosion occurred around 3:30 p.m. local time.
Update at 10:22 a.m. ET: A video of the aftermath of the blast shows rubble covers several blocks in front of the buillding in downtown Oslo.
Update at 10:14 a.m. ET: Although the source of the blast is unclear, Al-Jazeera TV notes that Norwegian prosecutors on Tuesday filed a terrorism charge against Mullah Krekar, founder of the Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam. Mullah Krekar is accused of threatening a former minister, Erna Solberg, with death, Al-Jazeera says.
Update at 10:12 a.m. ET: Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is safe, the Norwegian news agency NTB reports, according to the Associated Press.
Update at 10:09 a.m. ET: Reuters says PM Stoltenberg is safe after a blast that rocked central Oslo and knocked out windows in government buildings.
Update at 10:03 a.m. ET: Reuters reports at least eight people were injured in an explosion that knocked out most of the windows in a 17-story building where Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's office is located. The nearby oil ministry is reportedly on fire.
Update at 9:57 a.m. ET: A photograph of the scene on the Aftenposten website shows several blocks strewn with rubble and almost all the windows of one building shattered.
Update at 9:52 a.m. ET: The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten quotes witnesses as saying Oslo's Market Street is "full of chaos" with people "running around bewildered," some with blood on their faces and hands. "You can smell the sulfur fumes," the newspaper's reporter says.
Update at 9:44 a.m. ET: The Associated Press reports that an explosion has damaged buildings in downtown Oslo; offices are being evacuated.
Original post: An explosion in Oslo today has blown out most of the windows of a government building housing the Norwegian prime minister's office, according to a witness, Reuters reports.
The news agency says several people have been injured.The age-old practice of exorcism is getting updated thanks to the use of modern technology by a reverend in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Reverend Bob Larsonclaims he has performed more than 20,000 exorcisms in the past four decades.
Now he is giving possessed people the option of having their demons banished from their bodies via Skype.
A 60-minute Skype exorcism costs $295, and is considered a tax-deductible donation to the International Missions Program.
Skype's cheap rates allow Larson to connect with allegedly possessed people from all over the world, including one of his most recent clients, a Norwegian man named David, who supposedly had four demons inside him.
During one encounter filmed by ABC15.com, one of the demons mocked Larson by asking, "Are you Bob the Builder," followed by a maniacal cackle straight out of the "Tales From The Crypt" TV show.
Larson has numerous exorcism videos on YouTube, including this one where he claims to exorcise a gay demon.
Some skeptics think the over-the-top antics by the allegedly possessed souls are a sign that it's all just a show, but Larson denies those allegations.
“It’s real,” Larson told the station. “There would be no reason to theatrically stage this for any reason. Why would anybody do that? I have no idea.”
However, Larson's Skype exorcisms are making other religious leaders cross.
Reverend Isaac Kramer, the director of the International Catholic Association of Exorcists, an organization that trains and ordains new exorcists, says exorcisms can't be done over the Internet.Open Beta Goes Live! And It's Free!
The Day has finally come. As hulking machines of war march upon the eastern lands and brave warriors meet them astride ferocious creatures, heroes of intricate inventions and spellbinding sorcery can wait no longer.
The Black Gold Online Open Beta has officially commenced! As of 2pm June 20th, PDT, the War has Begun.
Open Beta will feature a more refined, patched version compared to CB. Enjoy revamped Battle Carrier System, battlegrounds and matching systems. And what's more, it's FREE-TO-PLAY!
Ride the Gears of War
Black Gold Online has revolutionized mounted combat in MMORPGs. Develop over 100 customizable Battle Carriers in Black Gold Online: pilot gigantic walking tanks, shaking the ground beneath their feet, or take the reins of thundering beasts whose roars echo across the land. Summon your personal ride of destruction anytime, anywhere.
The World will Never Be the Same
The two major alignments vy for control of the continent, tearing the world apart. Forge your allegiances and spare no cost to see your flags fly high over the Energy Wells of Montel. There is no corner of the continent that has not been touched by the conflict.
Open Beta Events:
As the drums of war sound the preparations get underway, the team at Black Gold Online has provided our loyal players with a multitude of in-game events as the Open Beta commences. Earn unique rewards and discover new ways to enjoy the world of Steam and Magic.
Learn about EVENTS right this second!
Conqueror’s Edition Now Available
Looking for more? Don’t miss out on our exclusive Conqueror’s Edition, along with a plethora of virtual goodies to get your saga underway. The Conqueror’s Edition is now available at GameStop, Amazon, BestBuy, Wal-Mart and Fred Meyer for $19.99.
http://bg.snailgame.com/static/conquerors/
Enter Our Official Open Beta Test Forum HERE
Follow more news on the Open Beta, new game content, and more on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. Connect with the BGO community right this day!Though the PC Beta was recently announced to be released today to all those who have pre-ordered Battlefield: Bad Company 2 at participating retailers, EA DICE made a surprise-release of the multiplayer demo for the Xbox 360 today as well.
Apparently, the demo was supposed to be released on February 4th, a full week away, but due to unspecified reasons, the demo was released earlier today. EA DICE later confirmed the news via Twitter, by posting “Surprise Reveal: Xbox 360 Battlefield Bad Company 2 MP Demo is live on Xbox Marketplace! Go get it!!!!!!!”.
The multiplayer beta has been available on the Playstation 3 since November 19th. The Playstation 3 will also receive the multiplayer demo, though it is unclear whether it will be available on February 4th as initially planned, or if it will also receive an earlier release. The full game will release on March 2nd in the United States, and March 5th in Europe.
Those who wish to add the Xbox 360 demo to their download queue can go here.The United States Congress is a quarterly gathering of two rival groups of 11-year-olds that determines the fate of the United States for the next 3 months by quibbling over minute details, throwing spitballs and paper airplanes, and ridiculing the other group. This organization has somehow gained complete control over almost all aspects of American life. During major televised national events such as the State of the Union Address and lunch in the cafeteria, the kids are given assigned seats by the President of the United States in a vague attempt to discourage them from taking sides. The ones who misbehaved during session are given candy and ice cream and sent home until the next field trip to Washington, D.C.
Contents show]
History Edit
Founding Edit
The stated intention of the Congress was to bring peace to the newly formed land of America. It was originally named the United States Progress but seeing the original results, the Founders replaced pro with con.
The original membership consisted of 6 people; Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Manson, King George III, George Harrison, J. T. Ripper, and Bear Grylls. They met one day in a bar on the border of Canada and Mexico and then proceeded to make history. They did not gain official recognition by the government or the public for several years, until the establishment of the Constitution of the United States. As the name implies, Congress' intended purpose is to oppose Progress. Oh and to borrow money. That body has been admirably successful at both tasks.
Major Events through History Edit
After gaining power and prestige (not to mention total control) through the Constitution, they decided to expand their power base through utilising an aura of mysticism and elitist attitude. (See Membership).
After the Constitution, they created the Total Power Act, which declared that every major act by the new government must be ratified by them during the next appropriate meeting.
They also crafted the Historic Preservation Act, which states that they have final control over all content in history books and public school lunches.
A particularly sinister bill was the Bill for the Promotion and Protection of Idiots, which clearly delineated the maximum education that any person may attain, as well as outlining punishments for huffing too many kittens.
Later they published the controversial Emancipation Proclamation which said that too many slaves were gaining freedom due to death, and made necromancy upon slave corpse mandatory, so that the slave can continue to serve its master even after death. Recently, the Austrian ex-terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, lobbied to remove this restriction on slaves, as he confused necromancy with necrophilia, his personal fetish. Can't blame that old chap, he too busy estahblishing his mahnhood to learn to speak die englische Sprache proper, you economic girly men.
A later law disbanded the class system, meaning no more rich/poor people. Everybody is considered equal, and all wages are collected by the state and distributed evenly between all citizens.
Recent Years Edit
Due to the recent election and raising power of the Liberator Obama, the United States Congress has been steadily losing power, first having the number of aspirants and hopefuls for membership sharply fall off, followed by the forced re-writing of the Constitution and major laws to be "more humane".
Now Congress is hunted by most of the American people, and all of the International Community for crimes against humanity, both current and historic, including singing karaoke off-key in public.
There is currently a 15 Million Zenny reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of any member or supporter of Congress.
How to Become a Member Edit
Historically the US Congress protected itself by cultivating an aura of Mystery and elitist practices. They made it seem that to be a member of Congress was a privilege and the highest honour one could attain.
To become a member:
First one must be convicted of crimes in at least 75% of the states in the Union and 50% of the Civilized World.
One must be no less then 95 years of age.
One must be a member in good standing of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy.
One must have no fewer than twenty relatives who are either lawyers or judges.
One must have killed at least as many people as populate the barren city of New York. One of those killings must have involved driving some unfortunate woman into the water and swimming away.
One must be sponsored by at least half of the current members, but can not be supported by all of the current members.
One must be quoted in his life of having said, "Let the good times roll!" at least once.
Finally one must go through the Trial.
The Trial Edit
The Trial consists of several parts, each one determined by a current member. Traditionally there are 5 members, though there have been as few as 3 and as many as 7 members. The trials one must go through are:
Trial of Personal Suffering. This is possibly the hardest of the trials, and must be performed once for each sponsor that the applicant currently enjoys. The applicant must kill a person they actually love for each instance of the trial. Several members have failed at this stage because they do not love that many people and had to commit suicide, since naturally they love themselves. Suicide is acceptable though, if it is for the final kill in the series, as it was in the case of Walt Disney
Trial of Sadism. The applicant must cause personal suffering to each and every current government employee. This one many members do just for sport even after they gain membership.
Trial of Impossibility. This trial is determined by all members who did not sponsor the applicant; they set the applicant to seemingly impossible (or actually impossible) tasks.
Successful completion of the trials grants membership.
Other things of Note Edit
Congress has enjoyed both great powers and incredible longevity. The power seems to have been obtained through personal effort of each of the members themselves, though the longevity seems to be granted after they gain admittance. It is possible it is a secret only shared with members of this group.
Congress has no known ties to any of the groups, and has even been known to thwart the United Spades of Amerika at times, seemingly to be immune to its retribution. It is unknown whether Congress will prove as resistant to Bush's efforts.
Congress has been increasingly seen as outdated and unnecessary, as the Supreme Court ruled that it was the legislative branch of the United States and Congress only the advisors. This was made law in 1803 with the famous Mayberry vs Madison ruling.I'm old enough to remember a few dudes in the NHL who played without a helmet. Dinosaurs of an earlier age like Brad Marsh and Greg Smyth Craig MacTavish were grandfathered in, showing what was left of their mullets and their intelligence while substituting machismo for brains (or the prospect of having a working one in the future).
Twenty years later, NHL players still flaunt protection in favor of comfort (or, for brawlers, that same machismo). Despite numerous gruesome facial injuries in the past few years, a quarter of NHL players eschew the visor. Maybe that will change after what happened tonight at Madison Square Garden, as Rangers defenseman Marc Staal took a puck to the eye, leaving a pool of blood on the ice and Staal's body writhing in visible pain.
It was audible pain, too, as is apparent to eagle-eared TV listeners. But we're more interested in promoting mandatory visor use, mostly because we like pro hockey players and would prefer their careers last as long as possible. So here's every angle of the gruesome injury Staal took against the Flyers tonight, and when we get an update on his condition we'll be sure to provide you with it. [MSG, Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia, NBC Sports Net]I PARKED IN A BIKE LANE stickers
By purchasing and using these stickers, you agree that #IParkedInABikeLane assumes no responsibility or liability due to altercation, injury, damages, legal issues, etc due to individual use of these stickers, and your actions are of your own accord.
CES-goer says his camera was killed by a self-driving car's LIDAR Jit Ray Chowdhury attended CES in his capacity as an autonomous vehicle engineer, and while there, snapped a picture of a self-driving car equipped with a LIDAR system from Aeye; he says the LIDAR's laser lanced through his camera's aperture and zapped its optical sensor, burning a permanent spot into it and ruining the camera […] READ THE REST
Arizona: People are violently attacking driverless cars from Google/Alphabet's Waymo People like this guy waving his gun at a driverless Waymo van in Arizona are attacking self-driving vehicles with rocks, knives, and *their own cars*, sending a message to tech companies like Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet (Google’s parent company). That message is, please go experiment with artificial intelligence in somebody else’s neighborhood. READ THE REST
This piano learning technique gets you playing right away If you gave up on playing the piano as a kid, don’t despair. Things have come a long way since those drills that had you playing “Chopsticks” endlessly. Take Pianoforall, for instance. This innovative new system lets students play keys right away, learning the structure of the music by playing rhythm-style hits. The 10-hour course […] READ THE REST
Get certified online in machine learning and data science As big companies wrangle an ever-increasing amount of data, the applications for deep learning grow – and so do the job opportunities. If you’ve got a working knowledge of Python, all you need are the tools to start making data work for you. Get up to speed on the science and code behind the field […] READ THE RESTBuilding an effective anarchist movement in Australia
This post- Melbourne Anarchist bookfair conversation took place in the Melbourne Anarchist Club (MAC) which has a history stretching back to the 1890s. While visiting the premises which contains a library, meeting space and infoshop I caught up with Brendan and Ben two active members of the collective and Kieran from Anarchist Affinity which is seeking to build a similar organisation to the WSM, based on theoretical and tactical unity and collective responsibility. [ Português]
Building an effective anarchist movement in Australia
This post- Melbourne Anarchist bookfair conversation took place in the Melbourne Anarchist Club (MAC) which has a history stretching back to the 1890s. While visiting the premises which contains a library, meeting space and infoshop I caught up with Brendan and Ben, two active members of the collective, and Kieran from Anarchist Affinity, which is seeking to build a similar organisation to the WSM, based on theoretical and tactical unity and collective responsibility.Topics discussed included the history of MAC, opinions on the third Melbourne bookfair, struggles engaged in by anarchists, and the potential for building a viable anarchist movement in Australia.A couple of hundred people attended the Anarchist Bookfair this year in Melbourne. Stalls ranged from a variety of anarchist groups and other campaigns including animal rights, prisoner support and unions.People came from across Australia and beyond. Meetings ranged from fighting neo-liberalism to sexuality, "witchcraft", fighting austerity and resistance across the globe.I contributed to a panel discussion on austerity in Ireland with a live link-up with Turkish anarchists discussing the recent rising there.
The Melbourne Anarchist Club was officially founded on 1 May 1886 by David Andrade and others breaking away from the Australasian Secular Association of Joseph Symes, the journal "Honesty" being the anarchist club's official organ, and anarchism became a significant minor current on the Australian left. The current included a diversity of views on economics, ranging from an individualism influenced by Benjamin Tucker to the anarchist communism of J. A. Andrews. All regarded themselves as broadly "socialist" however.
The Anarchists mixed with the seminal literary figures Henry Lawson and Mary Gilmore and the labour journalist and utopian socialist William Lane. The most dramatic event associated with this early Australian anarchism was perhaps the bombing of the "non-union" ship SS Aramac on 27 July 1893 by Australian anarchist and union organiser Larrie Petrie. This incident occurred in the highly charged atmosphere following the defeat of the 1890 Australian maritime dispute and the 1891 Australian shearers' strike, an atmosphere which also produced the Sydney-based direct action group the "Active Service Brigade". Petrie was arrested for attempted murder but charges were dropped after a few months. He later joined Lane's "New Australia" utopian experiment in Paraguay.'
MAC website: http://mac.anarchobase.com/
Building an effective anarchist movement in Australia - discussion after anarchist bookfair by Workers Solidarity on MixcloudThe details for the 68th edition of the Tour de Romandie have been announced with a time trial around Ascona to kick-off proceedings in Switzerland. The race will then conclude five days later in Neuchâtel with another test against the clock. Stage three from Le Bouveret to Aigle is the queen stage with the peloton to tackle over three and half kilometers of climbing in just over 180km. Related Articles Snow forces changes to Tour de Romandie queen stage
Froome wins Tour de Romandie
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In 2013, Chris Froome led for the entirety of the race as Team Sky also took out the team classification. Sharing the podium with Froome this year were Simon Spilak and Rui Costa.
The race has proven to be a barometer for the Tour de France with the last three yellow jersey winners having tasted success in the Swiss event before triumphing in Paris. A stellar field is once again expected to contest the WorldTour event as it is an important cog in preparing for the Tour.
To begin the 2014 edition, riders will tackle a 5km prologue around Ascona. The following day will also begin in Ascona and will finish in Sion 203km later having crossed over French territory with a breakaway likely to have been in the lead.
Stage two from Sion to Montreux is one for the sprinters while stage three offers several possibilities of a winner with the overall set to become clear. Stage four takes the riders in a loop around Fribourg for 174km before the race heads slightly north for the final day and could throw up a surprise winner on the day
The final time trial over 18.5km around Neuchâtel is likely to decide the 2014 winner or cement the victors superiority over their rivals. Stages three and six will keep the gc riders on their toes but the possibility of escapees snaring the win along with largely short distances should ensure exciting and suspenseful racing.
At the launch of the race route in Fribourg, the organisers announced that the team presentation would take place the day before the prologue in Ascona.
Tour de Romandie 2014
Prologue: Ascona - Ascona, 5.57 km
Stage 1: Ascona - Sion, 203.6 km
Stage 2: Sion - Montreux, 166.5 km
Stage 3: Le Bouveret - Aigle, 180.2 km
Stage 4: Fribourg - Fribourg, 174 km
Stage 5: Neuchâtel - Neuchâtel, 18.5 km161205-N-AI605-394 PEARL HARBOR (Dec. 5, 2016) Peter B. Dupre’, a World War II veteran, plays “America the Beautiful” at the USS Arizona Memorial during a World War II veterans harbor tour of Pearl Harbor. Dec. 7, 2016, marks the 75th anniversary of the attacks on Pearl Harbor and Oahu. As a Pacific nation, the U.S. is committed to continue its responsibility of protecting the Pacific sea-lanes, advancing international ideals and relationships, well as delivering security, influence, and responsiveness in the region. (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Rebecca Wolfbrandt)
IMAGE INFO Date Taken: 12.05.2016 Date Posted: 12.06.2016 01:44 Photo ID: 3035589 VIRIN: 161205-N-AI605-394 Resolution: 4928x3280 Size: 1.07 MB Location: PEARL HARBOR, HI, US Web Views: 478 Downloads: 13 Podcast Hits: 0 PUBLIC DOMAIN This work, WWII Veterans, Pearl Harbor Survivors Tour USS Arizona Memorial during Pearl Harbor 75th Commemoration [Image 11 of 11], by PO1 Rebecca Wolfbrandt, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.What is a yeti? Is it a bhoot, is it a janwar?
Maybe it’s a legend. But then again, legends don’t make footprints!
It is a question that has troubled mountaineers, explorers, scientists and believers for years: is the yeti for real? Many cultures around the world tell stories of their own yeti—from Bigfoot or Sasquatch in North America, to the bun manchi in Nepal and me tay in Tibet... to Tintin comics.
Each had their own explanation, each culture as convinced as the other of its existence. Here was a savage creature that roamed the high mountains, in the realm of ice and snow, always elusive but appearing just often enough to keep its legend alive.
On a rainy day in July 1956, Daniel C. Taylor—then a restless 11-year-old—sought to pocket a cake on the sly from his grandmother’s kitchen cabinet. As he sneaked past the living room in their home at Mussoorie, he came across a photograph in the Kolkata edition of The Statesman.
This was the iconic image shot by British explorer Eric Shipton five years earlier, which is today an integral part of the “yeti files". It showed a giant footprint in the snow, about 13 inches in length measured by the head of an ice axe. The cake was soon forgotten.
It piqued the curiosity of a child, which soon transformed into a fascination that Taylor passionately chased for the next 27 years. The account is now a part of his latest book, Yeti: The Ecology of a Mystery, published by the Oxford University Press a few months ago.
At the heart of the book is an account of Taylor’s deep affair with the wilderness that started right outside his home—the last bungalow on top of a hill in the verdant environs of Mussoorie.
“It was an hour-long walk from the road ahead to reach this home. To enter the jungle, all I had to do was step outside my home," Taylor said during a visit in May to Woodstock School in Landour, Uttarakhand, where he had studied until fourth standard.
“It’s just the way we had been brought up. My grandparents were cowboys in Kansas. After they got their medical education, they came to India in 1914 and used to travel through the jungles in bail gadis (bullock carts), until they reached the next community. At each site, they camped, treated the villagers; then packed their things and moved on."
“Six weeks later, they returned to where they started. They told me stories about how my father was picked up from the tent by a she-wolf once, just like Mowgli’s story from The Jungle Book, until the ayah (maid) raised an alarm."
Taylor too led a similar lifestyle, when he started travelling across the country with his father, Dr Carl E. Taylor. The jungle then became a classroom of sorts as the family continued their travels for science and medicine.
Carl E. Taylor was born in Landour, India, an outpost in the western Himalaya, his parents Presbyterian medical missionaries from the US. He was later the founding chairman of the department of international health at John Hopkins University.
“We cultivated a scientific, scholarly thinking at our dinner table. If you had an opinion, my parents would say prove it—what’s the evidence, back it up. So when I saw the footprint at age 11, I knew that it was evidence. Just like that, I had a new challenge on hand," Daniel Taylor says, smiling.
This was at a time when parties still frequently set out to explore the Himalayas. According to Taylor, the earliest account of a yeti spotting dates back to 1889, when Major L.A.Waddell, a British army physician, saw strange footprints during a hunt in the high Himalayas.
More stories of such spottings emerged, some perhaps from those who were a part of an unsuccessful mountaineering attempt, all too desperate to come back with a good story to tell.
Soon there were focused expeditions, which set out for the sole purpose of discovering a yeti such as the 1954 Daily Mail expedition. During this journey led by John Angelo Jackson, the members trekked from Everest to Kanchenjunga, photographing yeti evidence en route—from paintings in various villages to footprints in the snow. The team is also said to have found two yeti scalps at Buddhist monasteries in Nepal. The yeti was becoming something of a pop culture obsession.
In the 1961 edition of The Himalayan Journal, author H.B.Gurung wrote on the lore of this shaggy beast that had captured the imagination of men.
“Himalayan wanderers have found the Yeti to be their Achilles’ heel, causing distraction in camp and during the climb," the article said. “Climbers need not read The Hound of the Baskervilles to be convinced, when alone in a flapping tent, of the Yeti’s eerie whistle down the wind. Leaving apart the few high-altitude Sherpas, the natives believe that the Sahibs are also scared of the Yeti: otherwise why should they be carrying such lethal weapons as ice-axes and crampons?"
In the meantime, Taylor had charted out his own course of action. The early journeys were to the local bookstore and the library in Mussoorie, while keenly observing the ways of the jungle during his long walks. It armed him with the ability to function with few scholarly resources on hand and a keen sense of observation, knowing what to look out for during each of the forays.
This early foundation helped him at a later stage during gruelling expeditions while exploring passes and valleys of the Indian Himalayas from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh.
A yak caravan crossing the pass where the 1921 Everest reconnaissance ‘saw the yeti’. Photo: Daniel C. Taylor
“I was a boy who wanted adventure. Since I was poor, I couldn’t afford much, so I had to carefully pick my escapades. But then I managed to get the resources and grades, and hence landed up at the prestigious Harvard University," Taylor said.
From 1968 to 1972, while getting a doctorate in planning education and development at Harvard, he studied alongside the then-crown prince of Nepal, Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev. Taylor’s knowledge of the Himalayas made them thick friends.
Once he became King Birendra of Nepal immediately after, he told Taylor that if there was really a yeti, surely he needed a place to hide. There was no jungle denser than that of the Barun Valley that lay in the shadow of Makalu—the fifth-highest mountain in the world.
By then, Taylor was an expert of sorts on Nepal, having explored many regions as part of the Family Planning Program. “I knew the Himalayas and spoke the languages (Hindi, Nepali and some Tibetan). The Family Planning Program had plenty of money in Nepal then, as it did in India with Indira Gandhi, and I had access to a helicopter. It’s a nice thing to have when you want to explore the Himalayas. So I could schedule vasectomies in some remote valley, just because I wanted to explore it. That’s where I got talking to villagers and heard their stories," he said.
Daniel Taylor during one of his yeti hunts in Nepal. Photo: Daniel C. Taylor
“But I realized that there was no visible evidence of a yeti. If a shepherd boy went back and said a leopard had killed his goat, he would be beaten. But if he said it was the bun manchi, it changed the plot. How could a boy possible battle a spirit? Such stories over a period of time gave credibility to the existence of a yeti," he added.
After years of wandering and studying his findings, in 1983, Taylor would finally prove that the yeti was actually a black bear (known by the scientific name Ursus actos thibetanus) that lived in the trees.
The foot of the bear that Taylor claims made the yeti footprint. Photo: Daniel C. Taylor
It had been a relentless effort but instead of sitting back and finally breathing easy, Taylor was inspired to take on his next assignment.
Photo: Daniel C. Taylor
“Once I knew it was a bear, I realized that either I was going to become a yeti myself by just talking about the bear story, which people didn’t want to hear. Or I could do something that was a lot more meaningful because I loved the jungle and tried to protect it. So I put together scholars, politicians, donors and villagers into a partnership," said Taylor, who now lives in Franklin, West Virginia.
In the next few years, Taylor and his team were instrumental in establishing protected wilderness areas in Nepal and Tibet. What stood out as part of their efforts was that these conservation projects involved local communities, rather than paid guards hired to protect the area.
“We began to create a series of national parks to preserve the habitat. The first one was the Makalu-Barun National Park, which is to the east of Everest—contiguous to the Sagarmatha National Park. It was the first protected area in the Himalayan region in 1982 to use a participatory approach with the local communities," Taylor said. He began in 1984 on the Makalu-Barun National Park and worked steadily through |
to have adventures that they can have fully as kids, instead of stunted versions of adult plots. I keep being disappointed when I pop into the YA section in the bookstore and have trouble finding stories that aren’t driven by romance. I don’t read the Young Wizard series and get distracted from the wizardly battles fought for the sake of an entire world or an entire person and think if only there were more scenes with kissing and prom worries. No one would fault Nesbit or Eager for leaving out kiddie romance.
Leaving out romantic and sexual love doesn’t mean crippling the emotional resonance of a story. Children are fiercely loyal and equally fierce when loyalty is betrayed. You can get pretty far on friendship and parent/mentor/hero relationships, and those are relationships a young person can be wholly invested in. And adults can be invested in them, too! The romcoms where the protagonists appear to have no friendships, only sidekicks, are scary.
I’ve been noodling this over since I read Gilbert’s comment, and here are the unresolved questions I’d particularly like your thoughts on.
If this style of telling romantic stories is incomplete, what problems do you expect to see in a society that’s accepted it as a cached thought? Any romances (book, movie, or show) from, say, the last 50 years, that you feel go against this grain in a really satisfying way?
A few bonus notes:
– It was only with great strength of will that I resisted titling this post “Careful the tale you tell, that is the spell.” Forbearing drained my willpower reserves, so I’ve still stuck it down here in a note.
– I think it’s worth noting that, in Company, Bobby doesn’t even get up to the clinch. He’s committed to being committed to someone, but hasn’t had to accommodate himself to a particular someone yet. That’s why I like pairing this show with Passion where the protagonist does find someone “to crowd me with love” and doesn’t like it for most of the show.
– Follies also deals with relationships without discussing the children involved, one of the mentions in passing is achingly, deliberately sad because it’s tossed into a patter-y song and is jarring. From “Country House” where a couple is running through options to patch up their marriage:
How about a St. Bernard?
What?
We could adopt a St. Bernard.
In New York? Are you serious? A St. Bernard?
Or a child.
Ah. the child …
All right. why?
Why not?
Why now?
We need something we can share.
We need air.
We need something-
We need something if it’s real.
Best to watch the video, though, in my favorite recording of this song, there’s a bit more of a startled pause when the child is mentioned and a little more urgency in the quickness of the lyrics that follow.Resolution of the Town of New Shoreham
A Resolution declaring the Town Council of the Town of New Shoreham in affirmation of, belief in, and support for the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and for the rights guaranteed therein to citizens and others.
WHEREAS, the United States of America, the State of Rhode Island, and the documents creating and limiting their governments, were conceived in the wake of conflicts whose oppressions were yet fresh in the minds of the people, the sovereign creators of all governments; and
WHEREAS, the majority of the original thirteen independent states, rightfully jealous of their newly won liberty and sovereignty, at the time of their adoption of the "Constitution for the United States," in order to prevent any misconstruction, abuse, or expansion of the proposed federal government's newly created powers, expressed a clear desire that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added to the Constitution in the form of a Bill of Rights; and,
WHEREAS, Article VI of the Constitution of the United States clearly states that only laws and treaties "made in pursuance" or in conformity with said Constitution shall be the "supreme law of the land"; and,
WHEREAS, in 1803 AD, the Supreme Court ruled in Marbury v. Madison, that "a law repugnant to the Constitution is void" from its inception; and,
WHEREAS, certain recent acts of the Congress including the USA Patriot Act, in part, and the acts of certain officials of the federal government have openly or covertly contradicted the sovereign rights reserved by and for the citizens in both State and Federal Constitutions and other founding documents; then,
Now, Therefore, be it resolved by the Town Council of the Town of New Shoreham that:
Section 1. The Town of New Shoreham supports all lawful and constitutional efforts to prevent and investigate terrorist or other criminal acts and to prosecute their perpetrators.
Section 2. The Town of New Shoreham believes that sufficient constitutionally acceptable tools existed, prior to the passage of the "USA Patriot Act" or other such restrictive acts, for law enforcement officers to accomplish their intended lawful purposes.
Section 3. The Town of New Shoreham believes that any act, enactment, order, or legislation, etc. that dilutes, weakens, or denies the State and/or Federal Constitutionally guaranteed rights of the citizens is void from its inception, is unenforceable in our jurisdiction, and should be quashed, repealed or found by a court of jurisdiction to be unconstitutional in part or in full, as appropriate, in order to protect the rights and freedom of the citizenry.
Section 4. The New Shoreham Town Council strongly encourages all citizens, organizations, and governmental legislative bodies to study the State and Federal Constitutions and their history, and especially the Bill of Rights and its history, so that they can recognize and resist attempts to undermine our constitutional republics and the system of government that has brought our civilization so much success.
Section 5. The Town of New Shoreham believes it is the duty of every citizen to protect and defend the State and Federal Constitutions from all enemies -foreign and domestic- and to demonstrate respect for the rights that have been paid for with the blood and sweat of the people of the United States throughout our history.Coping with Homesickness
A half-empty glass problem
With the arrival of a new school year, many college students, especially new ones, must contend with a common malady: homesickness. It’s a problem I dealt with rather poorly when I went off to college. I wish I’d had the understanding and perspective that I’ve since gained. Well, it’s too late for me, but at least I can now share what I’ve learned and potentially help others cope.
Simply put, homesickness is akin to seeing a glass half empty instead of half full. In the worst case, where the new place is devoid of familiar faces and things, the glass appears totally empty. You look around and see all the people and places that aren’t there, the ones that home offers.
What to do? The obvious answer—the one that brings the quickest relief—may ultimately be the wrong answer. If you can’t be home, the caring people you miss will bring home to you. They will send you things from home to make you more comfortable. They’ll connect with you by phone and internet, updating you on the latest happenings, to help you feel that you’re still with them.
But does that really fix the problem? Or does it only increase the longing for home by reinforcing your focus on what’s missing? This is not to say that a phone call from mom and dad is harmful, but as comforting as it may be, it’s certainly no cure for homesickness.
So your task is to see what’s in the glass and ideally fill it further. How? Think like a tourist. It sounds simple but unfortunately for me, this was a mentality I hadn’t acquired as a teenager in a family that rarely traveled.
What do tourists do? They look for new and interesting sights and experiences. That would include museums, entertainment venues, sports and cultural events, nightlife, and maybe some local cuisine. And of course there’s my favorite: parks with natural wonders. A tourist would be drawn to things that are unavailable at home. That’s important because those things make the new place special, and they are what fills the glass.
Now, you can sightsee on your own, but it’s often easier and more fun when you have some company. That’s an opportunity to make new friends, maybe some locals who can show you around. Asking for advice about what to see and do in a new area is an easy way to gain a buddy. Or you might seek others in the same boat as you, people eager to make the best of being away from home. And if those new friendships develop, they will further fill the glass since they are directly tied to the new place.
Of course if you’re away at school, you have work to do; it’s not a vacation. On the other hand, you’ll be there longer than a week or two, so over the course of months, you ought to be able to find some free time to be a tourist and explore your new surroundings. And the positive impact on your well-being, which affects your work, shouldn’t be overlooked.
There’s no place like home, so don’t expect to completely eliminate your feelings of homesickness, which are entirely normal. But those yearnings shouldn’t be so overwhelming that they blind you to the opportunities to enjoy life in your new place. You’ll know you’re on the right track when you go home and start to miss the new people and things you’ve discovered. In the end, you may even welcome the chance to show visiting family or friends the place that has become your second home.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s newly sworn-in government has vowed billions in infrastructure spending, but if the CEO of VIA Rail has his way, that plan won’t include high-speed rail.
Yves Desjardins-Siciliano is instead pushing the new Liberal government to fund a $4-billion project to create a dedicated regular-speed passenger rail corridor between Toronto and Montreal, which he says would speed up and increase the frequency of service.
“Back in 2012, there was a report published that pegged the cost of high-speed rail between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal at $10 billion, and for $10 billion it would get you 10 million customers,” he said, as quoted at the Financial Post.
But the dedicated passenger corridor would cost $3 billion ($4 billion if the track is electrified) and attract an estimated 7 million passengers, “so it’s a third of the cost for two-thirds of the benefit,” Desjardins-Siciliano says.
It isn’t the first time the CEO of Canada’s Crown corporation passenger rail service has said high-speed rail is wrong for Canada. He has argued previously that half of VIA’s customers travel to and from points outside large cities, so a high speed rail network between Toronto and Montreal wouldn’t be of use to them. And “going at 300 kilometres an hour (for shorter trips) does not warrant the investment,” he said, as quoted at the Windsor Star.
VIA says a dedicated rail track would allow its trains to travel at a "higher conventional speed" of 177 km/h, up from 100 km.h today.
"The lower-cost dedicated track project can be introduced quickly and affordably and set the stage for... an increase in speeds of trains, over time, as passenger traffic grows across the Quebec-Windsor network," a VIA spokesperson said in an email.
Supporters of high-speed rail say it has many economic benefits, from reducing a country’s dependence on fossil fuels to revitalizing communities near high-speed rail stations.
High speed rail “links cities together into integrated regions that can then function as a single stronger economy,” the U.S. High Speed Rail Association says. It “broadens labour markets and offers workers a wider network of employers to choose from. … [It] also expands visitor markets and tourism while increasing visitor spending.”
Backers of high-speed rail also point out that North America has fallen behind other parts of the world, particularly Europe and Asia, in developing the infrastructure.
But many experts argue out that high-speed rail requires a high degree of population density that even the Toronto-Montreal corridor may be lacking.
And Tim Keith, CEO of a company that has proposed building a high-speed rail connection between the Texas cities of Dallas and Houston, says public resistance is also a concern.
“It’s not easy to create a high-speed-rail system in an economy that doesn’t accept high-speed rail as a mode of transport,” Keith told a recent infrastructure conference in Toronto.
High-Speed Rail In North America
Amtrak's Acela is the only high-speed train operating in North America today.
Currently, the only operating high-speed train in North America is Amtrak’s Acela, which runs in the Boston-Washington corridor. But it doesn’t have its own dedicated track, meaning it can’t run at top speed. Though it reaches 240 km/h on some stretches, its average speed is 105 km/h.
Amtrak says it has a plan to get the trains running at full speed by 2040.
California put shovels in the ground this year on a US$68.4-billion high-speed rail project that will connect Los Angeles with San Francisco by 2029. The train will have a top speed of 350 km/h.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority estimates the line will generate US$2.23 billion in revenue annually once it’s up and running and will create 450,000 permanent jobs. It also estimates the rail will decrease carbon emissions equivalent to taking 17,000 to 53,000 cars off the road.
VIA Seeks To End The Bleeding
VIA Rail has seen its public subsidy cut repeatedly under the previous Harper government, resulting in reduced service and some communities losing VIA Rail service altogether.
That has had an impact on its passenger numbers, which were down to 3.8 million in 2014, from 4.2 million in 2010, though the company expects growth of 100,000 passengers this year, thanks to additional stops on routes and extra cars on busy trains.
The Crown corporation recorded a $320-million loss last year.
“That’s why we’ve got to be very responsible in how we [use] your money by investing it wisely,” Desjardins-Siciliano said.
He told the Toronto Star he plans to present the new Liberal government with a $3- or $4-billion proposal to build a dedicated Toronto-Montreal passenger corridor within months of the new government’s swearing-in.
Of that, $2 billion would be spent on rail construction, $1 billion on new trains and stations and an optional $1 billion would go to electrifying the tracks.
Currently VIA uses a CN Rail track between Toronto and Montreal, and passenger trains often find themselves in bottlenecks. Trains are getting slower, with a Toronto-Montreal trip taking more than five hours today, compared to some four hours a decade ago.
A dedicated track would reduce a Toronto-Montreal trip to just 3 ½ hours, Desjardins-Siciliano says. The increase in passengers would make the service pay for itself, he adds.
“We’re satisfied that the case is built and now it’s just really a matter of waiting for the government to consider it,” he said, as quoted at the Star.These last 5-6 months have been the most eventful and involved I’ve had in a project since I started programming (which is a good thing), and I wanted to share a bunch of statistics with you all about my game. I’d like to cover all forms of statistics – traffic, code, and actual game-related statistics.
Lets start with the most relevant stuff: Player Statistics (realtime). A brief note: this only counts the players who are currently or recently active, and the actual numbers will be much, much higher!
Players have found 248,447,694 gold, and lost 25,873,067 gold.
Players have changed class 787 times, and have found every class in the game, so far.
Players have killed bosses 2187 times. Those poor bosses didn’t see it coming.
One player, Farthl, has hit for 122,995 damage. That’s a lot of overkill!
, has hit for 122,995 damage. That’s a lot of overkill! Players have equipped 23,351 items, and sold 1,336,037 items. Clearly, players are pretty picky about their gear!
Players have gained 1,834,719,523 XP. That’s enough xp to get 46 players from level 1 to 100.
players from level 1 to 100. Players have gone up and down stairs a total of 24240 times. Talk about exercise!
Players have walked into walls 2,356,918 times. I’m sorry for those dungeons, but at least something funny came out of it.
Players have achieved 5750 achievements. There’s a lot to achieve!
A total of 3336 players are in the database. Very few players have multiple characters, so this number is relatively accurate.
There are a total of 1650 item entries in the database spread across items, modifiers, and monsters.
There are a total of 381 events that happen to players a lot. Poor players, getting acid poured on them by an old lady.
IdleLands is on 6 IRC servers. Thanks, everyone, for hosting my game on your servers!
Next up, lets cover some code statistics. I’ve been using OpenHub to aggregate my project information roughly since I started working on it, and I’ll mostly be summarizing the information found on OpenHub, but patching in more up-to-date information from GitHub.
IdleLands has 1756 commits spread across 22 contributors, with the original commit being made on June 12, 2014.
IdleLands has 10312 lines of code, with 4047 lines of comments and 3665 blank lines.
Apparently, there has been a total 3 years worth of effort put in over the last 5-6 months.
There have been at least 200 commits per month, with a max of about 330.
These statistics only count the IdleLands project, not the other two primary clients – WebFE and DesktopFE.
Finally, some statistics that more folks might be interested in: google analytics. I’ll start first with the idle.land statistics, since that was around longer.
Here’s the data from September (when I first started working on idle.land) until this past December:
As you can see, growth was pretty steady. It slowed down a bit this past month because I was more focused on development than advertisement, but if you’re seeing this post, you’ve probably also seen the patch notes, so welcome back!
There are a total of 53 unique languages that dropped by idle.land, most of which I suspect came from reddit. Here are the top 10:
People came from all across the world, too. I don’t want to take too much space up with charts, but the game has been visited from pretty much everywhere except many parts of Africa. Okay, no, I want to show you that too, check it out:
Here’s a more technical statistics, and very likely one that most developers of the incremental genre would like to see – browsers:
The (not set) was most likely me cURLing the webserver from my servers, but the rest are good metrics to take into consideration. And thanks, audience, for not using Internet Explorer, it really does make my life easier.
I won’t show nearly as many statistics for WebFE (in fact, I only have one chart I want to share), but I think this statistic is an important one – it kinda shows “the reddit effect” in play:
I first released WebFE around early november, and it got a lot of traffic – lots of interest, and lots of views. It steadily went down from there, as one would expect. You might notice another slight bump – much smaller, but still present. That was when I posted my brief “IdleLands is back up!” post to /r/incremental_games. That was just me letting people know the game was up for those poor souls who stuck with me during that week when the game was down.
All in all, I hope you folks enjoyed the miscellaneous data, and for you developers out there, I wish you the best of luck in the new year. If you’d like to contact me for another other statistics, I’d be happy to share them with you – I just wanted to cover what I felt was the most important few.At this stage the Bitcoin scaling debate is not about scaling. It's all about coffee.
Many in the community just want their coffee and don't care if it's on-chain or off-chain.
On-Chain Coffee Lovers at Risk of Attack
To highlight the severity of the debate, we'll start off by showing the dangers of showing your support for either side.
Yours developer Ryan X. Charles risked his life when he publicly admitted to liking his coffee ON-CHAIN! For the rest of his life, the small block, off-chain coffee extremists may attack or DDOS him.
I have to say it: I want to buy coffee on-chain. *prepares for DDoS, defamation, & hacking from small block extremists* — Ryan X. Charles (@ryanxcharles) March 23, 2017
Ryan, if you need protection please get in touch. We have prepared $100 million USD to kill off any attacking small-blockers.
The Early Warning Signs
Back in 2015, Roger Ver made a 100% accurate tweet about coffee and the free market vs government programs.
If I don't like @starbucks I'm free to buy coffee somewhere else. If I don't like @socialsecurity I'll go to prison if I save somewhere else — Roger Ver (@rogerkver) June 7, 2015
Apparently, this was at a time when Roger was still able to buy his coffee on-chain. He was not outraged about coffee at this point, but it was a sign of things to come.
In June 2016, Roger made a post titled "Why Bitcoin Block Space is like Starbucks Coffee".
Perhaps this line of thinking is what's driving his support for on-chain coffee solutions like Bitcoin Unlimited.
Although most of the debate is about whether coffee should be purchased using on-chain or off-chain Bitcoin transactions, Roger is also now concerned over whether coffee purchases are defined as micro-transactions or not.
"Buying a cup of coffee is not a micro transaction" — Roger Ver (@rogerkver) April 7, 2017
Satoshi Wanted His Coffee On-Chain and Off-Chain
Satoshi's whitepaper is like the Bible in the Bitcoin Coffee Debate. We must follow it to a point.
The problem?
Satoshi never mentioned coffee in the whitepaper. This has left it up for debate whether or not Satoshi liked his coffee on-chain or off-chain.
According to Charlie Shrem, Satoshi liked off-chain coffee!
Those claiming to "follow Satoshi's vision" ignore that even he said #Bitcoin wasn't practical for cup of coffee on-chain. 2nd layer #SegWit pic.twitter.com/uovdoZpK14 — Charlie Shrem (@CharlieShrem) March 29, 2017
Lamassu Bitcoin ATM founder Josh Harvey, however, believes Satoshi preferred on-chain coffee:
@Jim_Harper Here in Sofia, a coffee+cookie is $0.50. I think Satoshi would still want to buy it on-chain. Off-chain is sensitive subject :P — Josh Harvey (@joshmh) March 30, 2017
Do Prominent Bitcoin Figures Like Their Coffee On or Off-Chain?
Litecoin creator Charlie Lee personally prefers his coffee on-chain, although it's not clear whether Charlie has ever taste tested off-chain coffee.
@ShitcoinJesus Yes, you can! And coffee taste better when bought on-chain. — Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) April 16, 2017
While it's not clear if Charlie Shrem has actually taste tested on-chain vs. off-chain coffee, he clearly believes Segwit is the best solution for all those on-chain coffee lovers:
If you want to buy coffee on-chain, activate #SegWit (tested, vetted, ready). There is no better scaling solution. Others are just theory. — Charlie Shrem (@CharlieShrem) April 16, 2017
Like Charlie Shrem, Oleg Andreev has not made it clear whether he has tried both on-chain and off-chain coffee. But it looks like he's had an opinion in this coffee debate since 2014, when he claimed that, unfortunately, all coffee transactions may need to be off-chain.
We'll need off-chain clearing network with IOUs protected by bilateral deposits on blockchain anyway — for micropayments and coffee. — Oleg Andreev (@oleganza) October 16, 2014
Well-respected cryptographer Nick Szabo has even weighed in on the debate. While not mentioned directly, it appears Szabo would also prefer his coffees off-chain.
When buying a coffee, security is not a high priority. Do not store your savings on CoffeeChain(tm). — Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4) April 13, 2017
Bruce Fenton used to think coffee was Bitcoin's killer app, but as of March 29, 2017 his opinion has changed.
Yrs ago we had grand visions of everyone buying coffee w Bitcoin.
Personally my vision has changed & I don’t now see coffee as a killer app — Bruce Fenton (@brucefenton) March 28, 2017
Famous Twitter personality WhalePanda also believes Bitcoin coffee payments are meant to be off-chain.
@edbwt Bitcoin is digital gold and store of value, it isn't made to buy your coffee with it. — WhalePanda (@WhalePanda) April 2, 2017
Dan Held, the founder of ZeroBlock and former Blockchain.info employee, also agrees with WhalePanda:
Value prop for #bitcoin is gold 2.0. Consumers aren't seeking alt currency transactions for coffee/sandwiches. — Dan Held (@danheld) March 30, 2017
BitPremier founder Alan Silbert also wants to see coffee transactions off-chain on Lightning.
Alan, why haven't you listed premium coffee on BitPremier? It would be a bestseller!
You can have your coffee and drink it too. SegWit --> Lightning#makecoffeegreatagain #bitcoin — Alan Silbert (@alansilbert) March 29, 2017
If I'm missing any more opinions on the coffee debate, please reach out to me on Twitter.
Does On-Chain Coffee Even Exist?
Twitter user Arno Laeven makes a good point:
Since baristas are not embedded into the Bitcoin blockchain, an off-chain barista will ALWAYS be making your coffee. So, regardless, technically all coffees are still off-chain.
@steve_lockstep @wmougayar you cannot pay a coffee with btc without an off-chain barista making the actual coffee either — Arno Laeven (@alaeven) February 6, 2017
Off-Chain Coffee is Better For the Environment
According to Mandrik, User Ops Manager at Blockchain.info, off-chain coffee is better for the environment because it may push people to make coffee at home instead. Drinking coffee at home prevents the need to make both an on-chain or off-chain transaction.
@keonne @fonebtc This is why off-chain coffee solutions are better. Make your coffee at home and re-use cups, people! — Mandrik (@Mandrik) March 30, 2017
As if we needed another Blockstream conspiracy, Keonne Rodriguez, former Product Lead at Blockchain.info, makes a great point:
Perhaps BlockstreamCore just wants it to be MUCH harder for people to buy coffee at all so less plastic and waste goes into landfills?
Blockstream Core don't want 25k tonnes of coffee on chain. Satoshi did! Larger coffee capacity now! #rogervertweets @fonebtc https://t.co/VGrTLDqsTR — Keonne Rodriguez (@keonne) March 30, 2017
Blockstream / Starbucks Partnership
Blockstream, the evil company that contributes more to Bitcoin development than any company, even formed an exclusive partnership to sell coffee ON-CHAIN to the world's 7 billion people. Remember this despite claims that Blockstream is trying to push all of the world's coffees off-chain.
Blockstream is excited to announce a partnership with @Starbucks to sell coffee on-chain to all 7-billion people worldwide! pic.twitter.com/wMchwDWcOs — Blockstream (@Blockstream) April 2, 2017
In one of the few things Blockstream and Roger Ver agree on, both REALLY like Starbucks coffee. Most mentions of coffee by both also include a reference to Starbucks.
Thinking blocks should always be full is analogous to thinking Starbucks should always be sold out of coffee. https://t.co/yrvl2jN4xO — Roger Ver (@rogerkver) June 27, 2016
The Unnecessary Samson Mow vs Roger Ver Debate
On April 11, 2017, Roger Ver challenged Samson Mow, Chief Strategy Officer at Blockstream, to a scaling debate:
I hear Samson is in town again. Let's have a public debate on why he wants to deviate so substantially from Bitcoin's original road map. pic.twitter.com/lPcwWpASwF — Roger Ver (@rogerkver) April 11, 2017
The reality is this debate doesn't need to happen, since Samson already agrees with Roger that Bitcoin Unlimited would be a GREAT way to buy coffee on-chain.
The first thing I'm going to do with my BTU coins is spend 1,000 of them to buy coffee on-chain. #celebrate #unlimited — Samson Mow (@Excellion) March 14, 2017
The Most Famous Bitcoin Coffee Latte Tweet Ever
Congrats to Keonne Rodriguez for making the most famous Bitcoin Coffee Debate tweet ever! It generated 314 retweets and 390 likes. Remarkably, he did not even have to use the word coffee but used the world latte instead!
Bitcoin isn't about buying a latte with your mobile phone, it is about making the transactions that they say you can't make. — Keonne Rodriguez (@keonne) December 9, 2015
The Real Satoshi
During my research for this site, I believe I found the real Satoshi.
Let's forget Dorian Nakamoto. If he was the real Satoshi he would have asked for free coffee instead of free lunch.
We don't even need to mention Craig Wright. He would have proved he was Satoshi by buying an on-chain coffee with coins from the first block.
This guy must be Satoshi. Since it's his name, and he LOVES coffee.
Newsweek, please contact me and I can give you the full list of tweets.
coffee time! — Marrian 🐝 (@onoe_satoshi) February 18, 2017
Your mind is buzzing as if your morning coffee was extra stron... More for Aquarius https://t.co/oom36BNuWT — Marrian 🐝 (@onoe_satoshi) February 21, 2017
when you want to drink a hot coffee during night but ugh — Marrian 🐝 (@onoe_satoshi) March 1, 2017
coffee plus softdrink is one hella wanting to kill my stomach with full acid bye guys rip me — Marrian 🐝 (@onoe_satoshi) March 28, 2017
i want coffee omgsh why — Marrian 🐝 (@onoe_satoshi) April 1, 2017
i thought coffee is the substance which activated ur brain but wtf i feel sleepy — Marrian 🐝 (@onoe_satoshi) April 4, 2017
Bitmain's Next Product
After the ASICBOOST controversy, Bitmain may need to come up with some sort of ASIC technology advantage to keep their dominance. Unfortunately, CoffeeBoost is already used online and likely can't be patented.
My Personal Taste
Dear Bitcoin community,
If you want some damn coffee so bad, buy a coffee maker, and a damn bag of coffee. — Demetrick Ferguson (@Fergulati) April 8, 2017
I've mostly tried to stay out of the scaling debate. But after buying coffee both on-chain and off-chain, the taste is the same.
I just want to use my bitcoins to buy some damn coffee.
Site by Jordan Tuwiner
This site is meant as a joke. We also take coffee very seriously and hope this debate resolved soon so we can get started drinking coffee again instead of talking about it.I came across this idea because there is a problem in the company that I work for. There is a remote office that has only a few people working a few hours a day. For these people computers are still a “complicated” object. We have internet and a VPN there. We also have e-mail and a server for remote backups. However something was missing. We need an easy way to transfer paper documents to our headquarters instantly.
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To Buy a network scanner was too expensive; to buy a simple scanner and attach it to a computer was not a solution either, because there are 3 computers to 3 people. Despite that, it will not be would be an easy task to use this software due to people lack of knowledge.
The solution: an old scanner and a Raspberry Pi.
I assume that you may have some network background for setting up an email server and Bind so you can configure your operating system to send email to any email account.
In this solution I used Raspbian for the OS, Sendmail, Bind, Python, Bash, Sane, Imagemagick and Mutt. I’ll skip the Sendmail and Bind details.
The idea is: atach an old USB scanner (must be compatible with Sane) to the Raspberry Pi, push a button to initiate the scanning process and a script is launched so the scanned image would be automatically sent to a predefined email address.
We have 2 leds for system status; I’ll be on headquarters and if the system fails, someone has to describe me, by phone what they see in the Raspberry Pi box.
So, let’s start by hardware: we will need 3 pins; one pin for the push button and two others for system status with leds.
System busy:
Pin 18 (RED) will be used to show that the system is performing is main task since the moment we’ll push the button to the moment that the image is processed, converted and sent.
Push button:
The button to trigger all the action. It will be conected to Pin 18 and a 10.000 omh resistor.
System status:
Pin 14 (GREEN) will be used to show the healthy system status by blinking twice every 5 seconds.
For that, I’ve used a simple Bash script that is called from /etc/rc.local on system boot.
rc.local
#initiate PINS 14 and 18 on GPIO
echo 14 > /sys/class/gpio/export
echo out > /sys/class/gpio/gpio14/direction
echo 18 > /sys/class/gpio/export
echo out > /sys/class/gpio/gpio18/direction
#turns leds 14 and 18 off
echo 0 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio14/value
echo 0 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio18/value
#bash script to initiate blinking status
/root/scripts/blinking.sh &
# python script to listen for the push button
/root/scripts/script_listen_for_scan.py &
/root/scripts/blinking.sh
#!/bin/bash
while true; do
echo 1 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio14/value
sleep 0.05
echo 0 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio14/value
sleep 0.09
echo 1 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio14/value
sleep 0.05
echo 0 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio14/value
sleep 5
done
/root/scripts/script_listen_for_scan.py
#!/usr/bin/env python
from time import sleep
import os
import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setup(23, GPIO.IN)
GPIO.setup(24, GPIO.IN)
while True:
if ( GPIO.input(23) == True ):
os.system(‘/root/scripts/scan.sh &’)
sleep(1);
/root/scripts/scan.sh (this script will make all the job, and is called trough the loop of script_listen_for_scan.py)
#!/bin/bash
cd /root
rm -rf /root/sent.lock # to ensure that if something goes wrong, next time system will not hang up because of this
echo 1 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio18/value # process initiated – let’s turn led RED on
scanimage –resolution 100 > /root/scan_job.pnm # scan and save the file
convert /root/scan_job.pnm /root/scan_job.jpg # convert to JPG
cd /root # ensure to run as root to avoid the mutt to not send the file
sudo mutt -s “Scan from Remote Office” -a /root/scan_job.jpg -c email@mydomain.com < /root/MSG # MSG contains a simple message.
echo 0 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio18/value # job completed – Turn RED led off.
Video:More than 500 years after the first Swiss men stepped inside the Vatican walls as "Defenders of the Church's freedom", David Geisser donned his robes as a Swiss Guard.
“My father was a Swiss Guard and when I was little he told me a lot about it. We came to Rome often and I really like Italian culture,” the 24-year-old tells The Local.
But despite being the son of a guard, Geisser still had to go through military school in Switzerland before being able to apply to work at the Vatican. He also needed to fulfill other strict requirements which, aside from education, cover everything from height to marital status and morals.
Geisser passed all the tests and joined the Vatican ranks in February 2013, just weeks before Pope Benedict XVI made his shock resignation and Pope Francis was elected as the pontiff’s successor.
Aside from his military background, the young guard is also a trained chef and made headlines last week when he published a cookbook filled with recipes favoured by popes.
“The head of the Swiss Guard asked me if I could write another book; I said yes because I love to cook,” says Geisser, who spent three years studying to be a chef and has already authored two other recipe books.
Geisser wrote “Bon Appetit, Swiss Guard” in his free time and requested Pope Francis’ menu from the pontiff’s secretary, including the sweet Argentine dessert "Dulche de Leche".
Although originally published in German, the cookbook will soon be available in other languages including English and Italian.
But as one of just 110 guards - the world’s smallest military - Geisser had no time to neglect his duty as the Pope’s protector.
“The Swiss Guards are always close to him, we’re responsible |
services they have used. You’d usually ask your friends and they would tell you what were their impressions from the different service centres, but that takes a lot of time.
Imagine you have a listing with everything you used, with recommendations and opinions how well it helped you solve your problems. So instead of asking your friends were to change your tires, you will click twice and you will see the recommendations from your friends or their trusted influencers and friends. They also would be able to see your recommendations, if you are willing to share them with them.
You could share what kind of cosmetics you purchase for yourself or for your dog, or what kind of services you used for renovating your house. Everything you use would be described in your personal directory and the brands will try to make it easier. This way if you refer something really great, your friend would know it immediately from you. This will allow you to make some decent amount of money from affiliates because the brands would be happy to be referred from loyal customers as they really know how important the word-of-mouth is.
Every single recommendation, which is honest and every single opinion would rate the brands and the products higher amongst other brands. This would be really great way to share experience and contribute to the growth of the good brands and products.
The people, similarly with the personal product directories, will have directories with their wish lists. Let’s say you wish to buy something but you still don’t know what brand you’d prefer or you need concrete product and you still wait for the next version or you just don’t have the money or need some personal references. In these cases you will be able to select what kind of things you wish to buy and if they are real products, this will allow the creators of the products to know how many people wish to buy the product, so they could estimate better the market and eventually send you discounts or copies to review of their product. They will be able to ask you to do paid surveys, too.
So this basically will allow the brands to communicate with the customers better on pre-release and release stage.
Another directory all we will have is the directory with our needs and problems, which will act as incredible source for marketing research.
Imagine the brands want to know who actually needs their product. They always spend a lot of time assuming what the people want, how exactly they prefer the product, and how deep they recognize a problem. The brands need usually to iterate many times about that.
So let’s imagine you have some need which is not solved yet, for example to have a robot augmenting your movements when you cook and then making you soup, sandwich or juice. I’d love having such robot at home. I can’t express now my needs in a way that every single manufacturer could find me quickly and alert me when they need my opinion.
I want to share every single problem I have, which is potentially product or service related and I’d like all the companies interested to solve my problem to target me at the moment they have solution, or want me to share opinions about the solution.
There are plenty of products which I want to buy and I have to wait a lot for them.
I’ll give an example from my practice: Few years ago and about two years before DropBox to achieve its huge success I approached a friend of mine, who is successful co-founder of small hosting company and I asked him to recommend me or provide me a service, which will allow me to store all my files remotely and access them from everywhere. I just wanted to drop my files and to forget about using hard disks anymore. I needed remote access and easy sharing of important files. I assured him I am ready to pay for this service.
We started musing how I could get eventually such service. I asked could we actually adapt a hosting plan to fit my needs and could there be any customized plans for people like me.
He didn’t believe there would be so many people who would be willing seriously to pay for this. He didn’t believe the idea is generally worth investing. Now, as I have already what I want, I use DropBox and many similar products, but I’m still sorry that my friend couldn’t check instantly how many people like me would want the product and create it earlier.
Generally, I think it happens too often with many ideas we have – we find somebody who thought about the same, but we cannot gather to implement them together, because we didn’t have mechanism how to find each other.
Also sometimes we see the products we need, implemented on the other side of the world and we have to wait months or years before they come on our local markets. All this process is very slow and I’d prefer it organized better and more efficient.
I have personally a lot of ideas which I find viable and I’d love implementing them. I want to organize around them crowdsourced process with people like me who would share their views and contribute. This will attract investors, companies and clients who would co-invent. A process like this will create flat structure of not hiring and firing, but shared contribution and profit.
3) the brands and products
The brands would be able to communicate with their clients much better in much more decentralized way, gathering much more information from the clients, depending of course of their preferences how much info they want to share with the brand. The clients could decide to share with the brands their needs and problems and the brands eventually could react with another product or with improvement of the current products. The brands and the clients would communicate much more intensively and in advanced way. All the people will be able to like a product and to rate a product or to add comments about the product depending of their experience with it.
The people will be able to register with their real names and verified identities everywhere and also their wishes and preferences could be followed by another people. If a person likes something, or shares some need or problem, this could be liked and commented from his friends, and also his friends could follow the same need or problem, which would mean that they legally declare they have the same problem or are interested to see how this problem is solved. They could also be targeted by the brands.
This way every single need or problem could be spread and communicated among the communities of people who could form around a brand much quicker. So basically the brand managers won’t have this duty to create the communities from scratch, but they would assist them in their creation. The people also could choose nicknames which they could use when they register somewhere. The anonymity in Internet would be protected if the people want to play anonymous somewhere, but the nicknames would be verifiable for any legal purposes. This won’t allow creating fake profiles because the nicknamed profiles would be verifiable, but the people would be able to choose more artistic nicknames, if they want so.
4) the causes
The same way as the people share problems, needs and wish lists, they will be able to support and share causes. Every single cause will be like a problem or idea you want to engage followers to. The causes basically would live like the brands and they would have the same mechanisms for engaging the crowd. All the people around the world would have legal profiles from which they would be able to raise causes, raise donations, find support for some problems, or find publicity. They would be targeted by charity organizations who want to detect quicker who needs help and donation.
5) the knowledge sharing process
The knowledge sharing process would work like something as easy as now posting a status on Facebook. The people haven’t dreamt about Facebook ten years ago but now they see everyday how powerfully it’s transforming how we communicate.
It’s very essential for us to make the brain dump and content creation process quicker, because the people used to have a lot to do and the knowledge sharing process becomes difficult. For all the people who have serious expertise, the brain dump should be as easy as a conversation.
The knowledge sharing process will transform totally the education system and once we decentralize the knowledge sharing, every single brand will accumulate followers by the knowledge it shares. Listen Pat Flynn‘s Brand Loyalty and a 19th Century Strategy You Can Use to Get it and see how he personally uses it, and you will understand how it works.
It would be kind of charity from the brand and also proof of their expertise for the clients. Every single person will be able to gain knowledge from every single brand or influencer just by following him.
The typical following model will involve reading and listening brain dumps, commenting, interacting with the influencer, exchanging ideas with other like minded people, following idea contests and also job boards.
Every single brand and every single influencer would have job boards, where they would refer positions opened in their business and also jobs which are opened currently from treir trusted contacts and brands. This will shorten the distance between the universities and the business tremendously and will help the best and most-familiar with the brand people to take the job positions from it.
II. The social media decentralization from technical point of view:
1) the profile based on WordPress
The profiles I propose to be based on WordPress, because WordPress is under GPLv2 license from the Free Software Foundation and all the social media decentralization platforms must comply with the free software values.
WordPress is already used by 60 million+ people worldwide, and it’s the most preferred platform for blogging. It could scale really fast as a social network, as it has great accessibility and usability, made for people with different levels of computer skills.
It’s very easy for both professionals and nonprofessionals to extend it, as it has active community providing help for everybody willing to learn something new.
The easy customization allows thousands of volunteers and commercial organizations to create design and functional customizations via plugins, design themes and even whole specialized commercial frameworks. The active community and great support contributes a lot for the quick iteration of new ideas.
One of the problems all centralized social networks like Facebook have is that they are trying to create one-size-fits-all solution, with very minimal options for customizations. Here we can overcome that and create adjustable solution which everybody could customize according his own preferences.
2) the social browser
What I think about the social browser is that it will become reality when we decentralize our social media properly. The social browser will come as coverage “interface” to the social media and if we create our social media formats properly we would be able to aggregate them and manage them in much better way. The social browser would look like a tool which will have functionality like browsing profiles, instant messaging, observing and organizing groups of people, organizing and analyzing data.
The social browser, similar to the social profile, would have core and extendable features, so it won’t be one-size-fits-all.
The first type of plugins, developed for the social browser I think would be the aggregation and search plug-ins. The search plug-ins would search for people and information and would be developed by different companies like Google or Yahoo are Bing and the purpose of the plug-ins would be the best possible search in certain area like the best possible search for movies, images, videos. The aggregation plugins will aggregate regularly information regarding some topics or social models. The concepts of the plugins will be iterated and extended depending on the demand of social media analysis and there will be involved volunteers and commercial organizations.
3) the contacts management with functionality like a CRM
The contact management of every single profile would look more like a CRM. It would be equipped with functionality not available now any social media. It would be simple, but upgreadable so the people who want more advanced options would be able to upgrade with plug-ins and analytics options. The people would be able to create campaigns, look at statistics, save more information about their contacts, for example personal information they shared with them via other medias.
4) the business intelligence we will have and which will be extended as much as we need to
What would be very specific about the decentralized web is that the business intelligence that is currently created on the basis of our profiles and social contacts, won’t be available only to the big corporations like Facebook, LinkedIn, but to us, also. Every single social network now has serious business intelligence layer above the information we share and once we decentralize the web we will be able to use also such, based on our networks.
The privacy of our business intelligence layer is very essential, and now we have almost no control on it. Only the few corporations who maintain our profiles have it
5) the privacy of the data we set
The privacy of the data everybody sets would be really advanced and it would come with features which the community selects, so there won’t be options for example like now to have mandatory common contacts shown between you and your acquaintances or unknown people, if you don’t want to. Now you cannot disable it on Facebook or LinkedIn or if you want some privacy setting which is not available, you cannot vote for its creation. Everything the people have as a data would come with all the possible settings to share it or not.
6) the hosting we will support by providing personal clouds and forming decentralized cloud
The hosting in terms of social media decentralization would look like a cloud which we will support by sharing resources of our private servers. I believe one day everybody would have his own private server and we would be able to share the free resources of our servers anytime flexibly. This way if eventually something happens on one server, and our data is lost there, it would be recoverable from another server without problems.
———
There are much more ideas to be added here. I’ll leave the outline for now as version 1.0 and it will be its first iteration. I’ll extend all the ideas when I get feedback and questions from you, which I’ll really appreciate. I think about creating mind-maps, or some project tree, let me know what do you think about this.
Please feel free to share your feedback in a comment below, or using my contact form.
—
¹ monetization – to utilize (something of value) as a source of profit
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monetizeWhat sort of reaction would you expect from the international community if more than a thousand people belonging to a particular ethnic group were targeted for violent attacks within the span of a few months? Would it bring the international upholders of peace and harmony to the region? Would it spark a mass public awareness campaign for the rights of those targeted? Well if it were the Hazara people in Baluchistan, it apparently would do nothing of the kind.
In the most recent incident, an Imam Bargah (a place of worship for Hazara Shiite Muslims) in the Aliabad area of Hazara Town in Quetta was targeted last Sunday in an attack that left almost 28 dead and over 60 injured. The attack was carried out by a suicide bomber and was followed by gunfire in the nearby area. It was not the first: two horrific incidents in January and February 2013 left nearly 200 dead and over 450 injured in the Hazara Town area of Quetta, Baluchistan.
The civil war-ridden, mineral-rich province of Baluchistan – already a target for all kinds of physical and social abuse – has long been known for military atrocities against the Baluch separatists. The increasing number of missing Baluch people has prompted their families to launch campaigns against the government of Pakistan on both national and international fronts. But now something more powerful and more damaging to the government has emerged: the Hazara genocide and the conspiracy theories that surround it.
The persecution of Hazaras is not a new phenomenon. Hazaras are historically residents of Afghanistan, where they form almost 19 percent of the population. Nearly one million Hazaras live in Iran, while more than 650,000 reside in Pakistan, mostly in Quetta. Almost all Hazaras belong to the Shiite Muslim community. Shiites form the majority in Iran but are amongst the minorities in Sunni-majority Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now the Hazara Shiite community find themselves at the center of an extremely volatile region, where the extremist Taliban and other fundamentalist sectarian terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Sipah-e-Sihaba were already quite active.
Hazaras have also been a target of ethnic cleansing, targeted killing and genocide in Afghanistan. The Afshar Operation, Mazar-i-Sharif massacre, the Robatak Pass massacre and the Yakawlang massacre of Hazara community in Afghanistan by the Taliban represent just a small slice of the historic ethnic grudge against the Hazara community.
Theories suggest the persecution of Hazaras in Quetta and Baluchistan are a continuation of these extremist sentiments, given that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), the group claiming responsibility for most of the attacks on Hazara community, has had strong ties with al-Qaeda. Moreover Lashkar-e- Jhangvi (LeJ), though considered a terrorist organization by the Pakistan and U.S. governments, is believed to have some support among right-wing political parties in Pakistan. The support may also extend to Pakistan’s military, which has not taken any strong action against the terrorist groups and is rather busy with its own covert operations in Baluchistan.
Yet another aspect of the issue is the regional importance of Baluchistan for India, the U.S., Iran and Afghanistan. RAND scholar Christine Fair, a leading American expert on South Asia, said in a recent discussion carried by American journal Foreign Affairs that Pakistan has legitimate concerns about India’s involvement in initiating unrest in Baluchistan. She further contended that “Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan. Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border Roads Organization to build sensitive parts of the Ring Road and use the Indo-Tibetan police force for security. It is also building schools on a sensitive part of the border in Kunar — across from Bajaur. Kabul’s motivations for encouraging these activities are as obvious as India’s interest in engaging in them.”
India’s vested interests in Baluchistan are no secret, given its historically tense relations with Pakistan. But why the sectarian tinge? The persecution or alleged genocide of Hazara people in Baluchistan has the potential to not only stir internal tensions but create international pressure on the Pakistan government. In 2012, for instance, a U.S. congressman moved for a House resolution on Baluchistan’s right to self-determination, angering Pakistan’s leadership.
Ultimately, any of the theories could prove correct, but what matters is the plight of the Hazara community in Baluchistan and the humanitarian crisis they face. Without appropriate action for the stakeholders, the crisis will only get worse.
Malik Ayub Sumbal is an award-winning journalist based in Islamabad. He tweets @ayubsumbalMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Cheaper petrol was offset by a reduced seasonal drop in air fares, according to the ONS's Philip Gooding
The UK's inflation rate, as measured by the consumer prices index (CPI), remained unchanged in September.
Petrol and diesel prices fell, but this was offset by upward pressure from air fares, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
It means prices are still rising faster than wages, which rose by 1.1% on average over the same period.
The retail prices index (RPI) measure of inflation fell slightly to 3.2% from 3.3% in August.
Air fares fell 18.7% in the year to September, the ONS said, but this was smaller than the 25.2% decrease seen a year ago and so had an upward impact on the inflation rate.
September's CPI figure is used to set the rate for some benefits, including the state pension and those for disabled people and carers.
The Bank targets CPI inflation of 2%, but is currently holding off raising interest rates to control inflation because the unemployment rate is too high.
Under the Bank's policy of forward guidance, it has said it will not consider raising interest rates until the unemployment rate has fallen to 7% or below.
However, the Bank has said it could choose to raise rates if it thinks inflation will still be above 2.5% in 18 months to two years' time.
Food price rise
The ONS numbers showed that food inflation stood at around 4.8%, little changed on last month.
The price of fruit and vegetables rose slightly, driven by an increase in the cost of plums and organic apples, as well as cauliflowers, onions and premium potato crisps.
However, a drop in the price of other foods including bread and cereals, fish, jam and chocolate had a downward effect.
"The disconnect between wages and prices continues apace and following news from the service industry that consumer facing companies are struggling will cast further doubt on a consumer-driven recovery," said Jeremy Cook, chief economist at the currency brokers World First.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption "Everything's going up apart from salaries" - why are wages lagging behind inflation?
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said September's RPI figure would be used to calculate next year's increase in business rates meaning the jump would hurt High Street shops.
The BRC said the increase would mean retailers would now pay £3.44 in business rates for every £1 they pay in corporation tax in 2014.
"Across the country today, retailers are adding up what this increase in the RPI will mean for the cost of their business rates next year. Many will be wondering whether they will be able to stay open," said Helen Dickinson, director general at the BRC.Calgary police are again asking the public to help identify numerous men who were involved in an exchange of gunfire in the northeast community of Saddle Ridge two months ago.
The shooting happened around 5:40 p.m. on March 17 and involved about eight people in total.
Police said two groups of men met near the intersection of Saddlecrest Park and Saddlecrest Boulevard N.E. and began shooting at each other.
Police believe several of the men had guns and at least six shots were fired.
Two bullets were recovered from homes in the area.
It's not clear if anyone was hit by gunfire. No one sought medical attention after the shooting.
Everyone involved fled before police arrived but officers found two men a short while later hiding in a residential area.
One man, 21-year-old Jasdeep Brar, was charged with weapons offences in connection with the incident.
Insp. Mike Bossley said Brar has not been cooperative with investigators.
Insp. Mike Bossley said police are hoping an image from a CCTV camera will help lead to tips from the public about the shooting. (Justin Pennell/CBC)
On Thursday, police released an image of the incident captured by a nearby security camera.
"What we're really looking for is the public's assistance now to help us identify who all the individuals were that were involved in the shooting and what their motive might have been," Bossley said.
Police are also seeking information about two vehicles that were seen speeding away from the area — a white, four-door 2007 Honda Civic and a white, four-door 2015 Honda Accord.
"While details about the case remain limited, it is believed the incident stems from an ongoing dispute between two groups of men in their early 20s, within the South Asian community," police said in a release.
"Officers have been working with community leaders in hopes of finding a peaceful solution to the ongoing disagreement."
Several of those community leaders stood next to police at a press conference Thursday, including Riyaz Khawaja with the Saddle Ridge Community Association.
Riyaz Khawaja with the Saddle Ridge Community Association said community members are working with police to curb crime in their neighbourhoods. (Justin Pennell/CBC)
The shooting was "really shocking to the whole community," Khawaja said.
"There are concerns for the safety of our kids and families," he said.
He also urged area residents to come forward with information if they have it.
"They can report that to Crime Stoppers and law enforcement," he said. "That's the only way we can keep our community safe."
Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call police at 403-266-1234 or contact Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-8477 or www.calgarycrimestoppers.org.You often hear about visual effects artists 'doing their research' in order to achieve the most photorealistic shots possible. But in the case of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, the Double Negative team - aided by the film's scientific adviser Kip Thorne - really did. Now they've published a paper entitled Gravitational Lensing by Spinning Black Holes in Astrophysics, and in the Movie Interstellar, and it's freely available to read, along with images and videos.
The full citation is:
Gravitational Lensing by Spinning Black Holes in Astrophysics, and in the Movie Interstellar
Published by IoP in Classical and Quantum Gravity
James O, von Tunzelmann E, Franklin P and Thorne K S
2015 Class. Quantum Grav. 32 065001
Download it here.
- Starfield under the influence of gravitational lensing 1 - a video from the paper 'Gravitational Lensing by Spinning Black Holes in Astrophysics, and in the Movie Interstellar'.
Another complementary paper, Visualizing Interstellar’s Wormhole, will be downloadable on arXiv and published in American Journal of Physics.
Check out Dneg's Black hole site here, and the Visualizing Interstellar’s Wormhole page dedicated to the other paper.
And don't forget to check out fxguide's coverage of the film:
Interstellar: inside the black art
fxpodcast #286: Paul Franklin on Interstellar
Real and raw: the miniature fx behind InterstellarThis is from the April 3, 2013 Nook Press Terms and Conditions:
And trust me, you are going to want to read this bad boy yourself.
But I’ll comment here. My highlights of my excerpts of their text are bold, my personal comments are indented italic.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I am not a lawyer. I am a writer who reads the damned contract, and over the last 22 years, I’ve developed some skill in spotting bad clauses. But I would LOVE to have a lawyer’s take on this.
I’ve skipped a lot of minor evil, and am taking you straight to the bits about the money.
5. Pricing
A. List Prices. When you submit your eBook to us, you will provide a list price for your eBook in one or more currencies in accordance with the then current procedures listed in the Service Polices for list price submission (“List Price”). You will adjust the List Price as required to ensure that, at all times that the eBook is available for sale through NOOK Press, the List Price does not exceed the maximum list price or go below the minimum list price permitted in our Pricing and Payment Terms.
Okay. So far, this is within reason, though no link exists to let you see what current “List Price” is, or how you determine where your work will fit in their policy.
We will use commercially reasonable efforts to effect any change in List Price you provide to us within twenty (20) days following the date on which you submit it. We may provide other requirements for List Prices in the Service Policies which your eBooks must meet in order to be accepted and remain on NOOK Press, in addition to the requirements provided in the Pricing and Payment Terms. The List Price you provide will be exclusive of any applicable value added, goods and services or similar taxes (“VAT”). If we display a List Price to customers, we may add applicable VAT to the List Price you provide to determine the List Price that we display. If we offer your eBook for sale in a different currency than a currency in which you set your List Price (“Sale Currency”), we may convert the List Price to the Sale Currency at an exchange rate we determine. We may periodically update the converted List Price in order to reflect current exchange rates. If we convert your List Price to another Sale Currency, the converted List Price in the Sale Currency will be your List Price with respect to the offer and sale of your eBook in the Sale Currency for all purposes under this Agreement. For example, your Royalties (as defined below) will be calculated based on the converted List Price in the Sale Currency.
Do note that they don’t say they’ll change their price. They use legalese, and say they’ll “try.” This clause supports the one with big bad teeth further down. Beyond that “we’ll try to change your price” bit, though, nothing outside the bounds of the acceptable here, either. They gotta charge tax for places that collect them, they’re going to add the tax to the price rather than taking it out of your end. That’s how taxes work.
B. Customer Prices. We have sole and complete discretion to set the Retail Price at which your eBooks are sold to the customer. We or our third party retailers, partners or contractors are solely responsible for processing payments, payment collection, requests for refunds and related customer service.
This, however, is Bastion of Evil #1. When a retailer discounts a commercially published print book, the retailer has paid for that book, and any losses he takes for discounting the product will be HIS. When a retailer discounts an ebook, he is not taking a small loss to move product, because he has paid NOTHING to have that book in his inventory. (If you’re screaming about website maintenance and setting up ebook delivery systems, knock it off. When you own a business, building your damn website is a Cost of Doing Business, it’s deductible, and you already have to do that to sell the rest of the products you offer. Ask me how I know.) So when a retailer discounts your ebook and you don’t sell enough extra copies to make up the difference, he is giving you an arbitrary pay cut. When he raises your set price and cuts your sellthrough to the point that you’re only selling a few copies, again the loss of sales is exclusively yours. He loses NOTHING because he paid nothing to begin with. Anything he does, no matter how much it hurts the sale of your book or you personally, is free to him. But the retailer wants to make as much money as possible, so he would never do this, right? What is Barnes & Noble? It’s a brick-and-mortar chain with a non-stellar online presence. It has a massive, vested interest in keeping print books at the top of the reading food chain, just as commercial publishers do. Commercial publishers have moved the price of ebooks upward to be the same as or higher than their mass market or trade paper versions. Why? For the publicly stated purpose of SLOWING DOWN EBOOK SALES. Is it possible that Barnes & Noble, hoping to keep its stores open, might work to make the ebooks in its product line less appealing? Okay, at this point, I know I sound a bit paranoid—but they do state that, no matter what you suggest for your price, they have no obligation whatsoever to honor it. Keep that in mind as we move forward. And remember, ANY legally binding clauses in contracts do not exist just for funsies. Beyond that, this is the pricing clause, and there’s nothing in here at all about minimum or maximum prices. Not a word. Anyway, now we get to “your royalties, as defined below.”
6. Payments
A. Royalty. If you are not in breach of any of your obligations under this Agreement, for each eBook sold to a customer through NOOK Press, Barnes & Noble will pay you the applicable “Royalty” defined and set forth in the Pricing and Payment Terms, net of refunds, chargebacks, bad debt and any applicable taxes charged to a customer or applied with respect to sales to a customer (including without limitation any VAT or sales taxes).
Okay. So you’re to get a royalty, after everything else has been subtracted out. Payment terms are next, where you’ll find out what your royalty is. Read this next bit twice. Better yet, print it off, and read it three times.
B. Payment Terms. Barnes & Noble will pay or cause to be paid your Royalties on sales of your eBook approximately sixty (60) days following the end of the calendar month during which it is sold. At the time of payment, we will make available to you an online report detailing sales of eBooks and corresponding Royalties. All payments will be made via electronic transfer payments or other method we designate in the Service Policies in the Sale Currency or other payment currency we provide for in the Service Policies. If we give you the option to change your payment currency and you select that option using our then-current procedures, unless otherwise noted the change will be effective on the first day of the calendar month following the calendar month in which you make the change. If we pay you in a currency other than the Sale Currency, we will convert the Royalties due from the Sale Currency to the payment currency at an exchange rate we determine, which will be inclusive of all fees and charges for the conversion. We may require you to register in your account a valid bank account for receiving EFT payments that is in compliance with the then-current Service Policies, in which case we will not be obligated to make payments of Royalties to you unless you do so. We are entitled to accrue and withhold payments until the total amount due is at least Ten U.S. Dollars ($10) or for payments in other currencies, at least those amounts we set forth in the Service Policies. You may not maintain any action or proceeding against us in respect of any statement unless you commence that action or suit within six (6) months after the date the statement is rendered. Any such action or proceeding shall be limited to a determination of the amount of monies, if any, payable by us to you for the accounting periods in question, and your sole remedy shall be the recovery of those monies with no interest thereon. If we pay you a Royalty on a sale and later issue a refund, return, or credit for such sale, we may offset the amount of the Royalty previously paid for the sale against future Royalties, or require you to remit that amount to us. Negative balances can occur when the value of all refunds of your eBook during a given payment period exceeds that value of orders for your eBook. If you have a negative balance on your payment date, the negative balance may be offset from future Royalty payments to you. If a third party asserts that you did not have all rights required to make your eBook available on NOOK Press, or if we believe that you may be in breach of your representations and warranties in this Agreement, we will be entitled to hold all Royalties due until we determine that the validity of the third party claim, that you were not in breach or have fully remedied your breach, as applicable. Upon termination of this Agreement, we may withhold all Royalties due for a period of three (3) months from the date they would otherwise be payable in order to ensure our ability to offset any refunds or other offsets we are entitled to take against the Royalties.
That’s it, Bob. That is the WHOLE ENTIRE DAMNED payments clause, and nowhere in this agreement that you must sign is there one word about what your royalty will be. The old agreement had it in there, nice and plain. Here? Well…this is what we call “signing a blank check” and THIS is why I keep saying READ THE DAMN CONTRACT. Throw in the fact that B&N reserves the right to change your cover art without warning and with no redress possible from you (hey, you signed the contract), that you are required to make 100% of your book available for free to anyone reading on a Nook in one of their stores (no time limits or restrictions are mentioned, and if it’s not in the contract, it doesn’t exist,) and what you have here is the single worst contract I have ever seen in my life. And I’ve seen some real stinkers.
So will I be transferring my existing list of books from the existing PubIt program.
No. I’ll be pulling everything down from Barnes & Noble before their cutoff date.
ADDED LATER:
I have now had to spam a couple of comments. This blog has rules for commenters. READ THEM if you don’t already know them. I don’t mind if you disagree with me, but if you do, BACK IT UP WITH FACTS. Snarky asides with no useful information, and personal attacks on me or the other commenters will get you marked as a spammer.
ADDED APRIL 11:
It comes down to this: If you read the clauses that are not appended to the contract, it is somewhat worse than Amazon’s contract. Not a lot. Just somewhat.
I have a file cabinet full of contracts, however, and all of them INCLUDE ALL THE PARTS of the contract right IN the contract. You can read the whole twenty-plus page agreement, and it is set in stone. The terms are the terms, printed out there right in front of you. You read them, and then you sign them, and both you and your publisher are bound by them. No part of them can be changed without you rereading and re-signing the whole thing.
The Amazon contract is a one-piece beast. Every time they change the terms, you have to read through and re-sign the whole thing. THIS IS A GOOD THING.
The Nook Press contract is like a publisher who left all the parts of the agreement that protect you in his other pants.
Sure, he has them, and you can take his word for it that he’s looking out for your interests too. But if you cannot read those clauses right in your contract, and they do not exist in the copy of the contract you print out, you are ONLY signing what’s contained on the piece of paper in your hand. Contract evil does not necessarily arise out of bad intent or a genuine attempt to defraud. Sometimes it just arises out of stupidity.
Neither option, however, makes a great recommendation for Barnes & Noble or Nook Press as a promising business partner in the future.'Pup play': the fetish scene is the focus of a new British Channel 4 documentary. Photo: Channel 4
I was gonna say, "So here's the oddest thing you'll see today...", but I don't know your life, so let's just dive in, okay?
That wonderful picture up there, that's part of a fetish scene called 'pup play', that sees grown men dress up like dogs, bark, pretend pee on sidewalks, chew on rubber toys, and go wacko for Schmackos (I assume). I'm not sure if they'd fetch your slippers for you, but you could always ask.
It's the subject of a new Channel 4 documentary in Britain, titled Secret Life Of The Human Pups, which The Guardian describes as a "sympathetic look" at the movement, which "grew out of the BDSM community and has exploded in the last 15 years".
Advertisement
According to the pup-playing subjects of the doco - awesomely named Spot, Bootbrush, Kaz, and, uh, David - it's not necessarily a sexual thing but more a way of finding their identity. The scene's largely made up of gay men with a love of latex, who are in relationships with their 'handlers', The Guardian notes.
"It's pre-rational, pre-conscious. It's an instinctive, emotional space. But within every puppy is a person," David told The Guardian. "This is part of my identity, but it's only part. I'm also a vegetarian, play the piano; I have a parrot. |
am not putting lambdas into an auto variable and then calling them. Instead, I am calling them directly.
Example 4:
int nSum = [a,b] { return a+b; }(); std::cout << " Sum: " << nSum;
As shown in example 4, we can specify multiple capture specifications in a lambda-introducer (the [] operator). Let's take another example, where the sum of all three ( a, b, c ) would be stored into the nSum variable.
Example 5:
[=, &nSum] { nSum = a+b+c; }();
In the above example, the capture-all-by-value (i.e., = operator) specifies the default capture mode, and the &nSum expression overrides that. Note that the default capture mode, which specifies all-capture, must appear before other captures. Thus, = or & must appear before other specifications. The following causes an error:
[&nSum,=]{} [a,b,c,&]{}
A few more examples:
[&, b]{}; [=, &b]{}; [b,c, &nSum]; [=]( int a){} [&, a,c,nSum]{}; [b, &a, &c, &nSum]{} [=, &]{} [&nSum, =]{} [a,b,c, &]{}
As you can see, there are multiple combinations to capture the same set of variables. We can extend the capture-specification syntax by adding:
[&,var] - Capture all by reference, except var, which is by value.
- Capture all by reference, except, which is by value. [=, &var] - Capture all by value, except var, which is by reference.
- Capture all by value, except, which is by reference. [var1, var2] - Capture var1, var2 by value.
- Capture, by value. [&var1, &var2] - Capture var1, var2 by reference.
- Capture, by reference. [var1, &var2] - Capture var1 by value, var2 by reference.
Till now, we have seen that we can prevent some variables from being captured, capture by-value const, and capture by reference non-const. Thus, we have covered 1, 2, and 4 of the capture-categories (see above). Capturing const reference is not possible (i.e., [const &a] ). We will now look into the last one - capturing in call-by-value mode.
The'mutable' specification
Just after the parentheses of a parameter-specification, we specify the mutable keyword. With this keyword, we put all by-value captured variables into call-by-value mode. If you do not put the mutable keyword, all by-value variables are constant, you cannot modify them in lambda. Putting mutable enforces the compiler to create copies of all variables which are being captured by-value. You can then modify all by-value captures. There is no method to selectively capture const and non-const by-value. Or simply, you can think of them being passed to the lambda as an argument.
Example:
int x= 0,y= 0,z= 0 ; [=]() mutable ->void { x++; }();
After the lambda-call, the value of'x'remains zero. Since only a copy of x is modified, not the reference. It is also interesting to know that the compiler raises a warning only for y and z, and not the previously defined ( a, b, c...) variables. However, it doesn't complain if you use previously defined variables. Smart compiler - I cannot speak more on it!
How are lambdas different from function-pointers or function-objects?
Function-pointers do not maintain state. Lambdas do. With by-reference captures, lambdas can maintain their state between calls. Functions cannot. Function pointers are not type safe, they are prone to errors, we must mangle with calling-conventions, and requires complicated syntax.
Function-objects do maintain states very well. But even for a small routine, you must write a class, place some variables into it, and overload the () operator. Importantly, you must do this outside the function block so that the other function, which is supposed to call the operator() for this class, must know it. This breaks the flow of the code.
What is the type of lambda?
Lambdas are actually classes. You can store them in a function class object. This class, for lambdas, is defined in the std::tr1 namespace. Let's look at an example:
#include < functional >.... std::tr1::function<bool( int )>s IsEven = []( int n)->bool { return n%2 == 0 ;};... IsEven( 23 );
The tr1 namespace is for Technical Report 1, which is used by the C++0x committee members. Please search by yourself for more information. <bool(int)> expresses the templates parameter for the function class, which says: the function returns a bool and takes an argument int. Depending on the lambda being put into the function object, you must typecast it properly; otherwise, the compiler would emit an error or warning for type-mismatch. But, as you can see, using the auto keyword is much more convenient.
There are cases, however, where you must use a function - when you need to pass lambdas across function calls. For example:
using namespace std::tr1; void TakeLambda(function<void( int )> lambda) { lambda( 32 ); } TakeLambda(DisplayIfEven);
The DisplayIfEven lambda (or function!) takes int, and returns nothing. The function class is used the same way as the argument in TakeLambda. Further, it calls the lambda, which eventually calls the DisplayIfEven lambda.
I have simplified TakeLamba, which should have been (shown incrementally):
void TakeLambda(function< void ( int ) > & lambda); void TakeLambda( const function< void ( int ) > & lambda); void TakeLambda( const std::tr1::function< void ( int ) > & lambda);
What is the whole purpose of introducing lambdas in C++?
Lambdas are very useful for many STL functions - functions that require function-pointers or function-objects (with operator() overloaded). In short, lambdas are useful for those routines that demand callback functions. Initially, I will not cover the STL functions, but explain the usability of lambdas in a simpler and understandable form. The non-STL examples may be superfluous and nonsense, but quite capable of clearing out this topic.
For example, the following function requires a function to be passed. It will call the passed function. The function-pointer, function-object, or the lambda should be of a type that returns void and takes an int as the sole argument.
void CallbackSomething( int nNumber, function<void( int )> callback_function) { callback_function(nNumber); }
Here, I call the CallbackSomething function in three different ways:
void IsEven( int n) { std::cout << ((n%2 == 0 )? " Yes" : " No" ); } class Callback { public : void operator ()( int n) { if (n<10) std::cout << " Less than 10" ; else std::cout << " More than 10" ; } }; int main() { CallbackSomething( 10, IsEven); CallbackSomething( 23, Callback()); Callback obj; CallbackSomething( 44, obj); CallbackSomething( 59, []( int n) { std::cout << " Half: " << n/2;} ); }
Okay! Now I want that the Callback class can display if a number is greater than some N number (instead of a constant 10). We can do it this way:
class Callback { int Predicate; public : Callback( int nPredicate) : Predicate(nPredicate) {} void operator ()( int n) { if ( n < Predicate) std::cout << " Less than " << Predicate; else std::cout << " More than " << Predicate; } };
In order to make this callable, we just need to construct it with some integer constant. The original CallbackSomething need not be changed - it still can call a routine with an integer argument! This is how we do it:
CallbackSomething( 23, Callback( 24 )); Callback obj( 99 ); CallbackSomething( 44, obj);
This way, we made the Callback class capable of maintaining its state. Remember, as long as the object remains, its state remains. Thus, if you pass an obj object into multiple calls of CallbackSomething (or any other similar function), it will have the same Predicate (state). As you know, this is not possible with function pointers - unless we introduce another argument to the function. But doing so breaks the entire program structure. If a particular function is demanding a callable function, with a specific type, we need to pass a function of that type only. Function pointers are unable to maintain state, and thus are unusable in these kind of scenarios.
Is this possible with lambdas? As mentioned previously, lambdas can maintain state through capture specification. So, yes, it is possible with lambdas to achieve this stateful functionality. Here is the modified lambda, being stored in an auto variable:
int Predicate = 40 ; auto stateful = [Predicate]( int n) { if ( n < Predicate) std::cout << " Less than " << Predicate; else std::cout << " More than " << Predicate; }; CallbackSomething( 59, stateful ); Predicate= 1000 ; CallbackSomething( 100, stateful);
The stateful lambda is locally defined in a function, is concise than a function-object, and cleaner than a function pointer. Also, it now has its state. Thus, it will print "More than 40" for the first call, and the same thing for the second call as well.
Note that Predicate is passed as by-value (non-mutable also), so modifying the original variable will not affect its state in lambda. To reflect the predicate-modification in lambda, we just need to capture this variable by reference. When we change the lambda as follows, the second call will print "Less than 1000".
auto stateful = [&Predicate]( int n)
This is similar to adding a method like SetPredicate in a class that would modify the predicate (state). Please see the VC++ blog, linked below, for a discussion on lambda - class mapping (the blogger calls it mental translation).
With STL
The for_each STL function calls the specified function for each element in the range/collection. Since it uses a template, it can take any type of data-type as its argument. We will use this as an example for lambdas. For simplicity, I would use plain arrays, instead of vectors or lists. For example:
using namespace std; int Array[ 10 ] = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 }; for_each(Array, &Array[ 10 ], IsEven); for_each(Array, Array+10, []( int n){ std::cout << n << std::endl;});
The first call calls the IsEven function, and the second call calls the lambda, defined within the for_each function. It calls both of the functions 10 times, since the range contains/specifies 10 elements in it. I need not repeat that the second argument to for_each is exactly same (oh! but I repeated!).
This was a very simple example, where for_each and lambdas can be utilized to display values without needing to write a function or class. For sure, a lambda can be extended further to perform extra work - like displaying if a number is prime or not, or calculating the sum (use reference-by-capture), or to modify (say, multiply by 4) the element of a range.
Modify the lambda argument?
Well, yes! You can do that. For long, I talked about taking captures by references and making modifications, but did not cover modifying the argument itself. The need did not arise till now. To do this, just take the lambda's parameter by reference (or pointer):
for_each(Array, Array+10, [](int& n){ n *= 4 ; });
The above for_each call multiplies each element of Array by 4.
Like I explained how to utilize lambdas with the for_each function, you can use it with other <algorithm> functions like transform, generate, remove_if, etc. Lambdas are not just limited to STL algorithms, they can also be efficiently used wherever a function-object is required. You need to make sure it takes the proper number and type of arguments, and check if it needs argument modifications and things like that. Since this article is not about STL or templates, I will not discuss this further.
A lambda cannot be used as a function-pointer
Yes, quite disappointing and confusing, but true! You cannot use a lambda as an argument to a function that requires a function-pointer. Through sample code, let me first express what I am trying to say:
typedef void (*DISPLAY_ROUTINE)( int ); void CalculateSum( int a, int b, DISPLAY_ROUTINE pfDisplayRoutine) { pfDisplayRoutine(a+b); }
CalculateSum takes a function-pointer of type DISPLAY_ROUTINE. The following code would work, as we are supplying a function-pointer:
void Print( int x) { std::cout << " Sum is: " << x; } int main() { CalculateSum( 500, 300, Print); }
But the following call will not:
CalculateSum ( 10, 20, []( int n) {std::cout<< " sum is: " <<n;} );
Why? Because lambdas are object-oriented, they are actually classes. The compiler internally generates a class-model for the lambdas. That internally generated class has operator () overloaded; and has some data members (inferred via capture-specification and mutable-specification) - those may be const, reference, or normal member variables and classic stuff like that. That class cannot be downgraded to a normal function-pointer.
How did the previous examples run?
Well, because of the smart class named std::function! See (above) that CallbackSomething is actually taking function as an argument, not a function-pointer.
As with for_each - this function doesn't take std::function, but uses a template instead. It directly calls the passed argument with parenthesis. Carefully understand the simplified implementation:
template <class Iteartor, class Function> void for_each(Iteartor first, Iterator, Function func) { func(first); }
Likewise, other STL functions, like find, count_if etc., would work will all three cases: function-pointers, function-objects, and lambdas.
Thus, if you plan to use lambdas in APIs like SetTimer, EnumFontFamilies, etc. - unplan it! Even with forceful typecasting the lambda (by taking its address), it won't work. The program will crash at runtime.
External references
Trailing return types
Let's start with a simple example. Following is a function whose return type is long. This is not a lambda, but a function.
auto GetCPUSpeedInHertz() -> long { return 1234567890 ; }
It returns a long, as you can see. It uses the new syntax of specifying a return type, known as Trailing Return Type. The keyword auto on the left is just a placeholder, the actual type is specified after the -> operator. One more example:
auto GetPI() -> decltype ( 3. 14 ) { return 3. 14159 ; }
Where the return type is deduced from the expression. Please re-read about the decltype keyword above, to recollect. For both of the functions given above, you obviously need not use this feature!
Where to actually use it?
Consider the template function:
template <typename FirstType, typename SecondType> AddThem(FirstType t1, SecondType t2) { return t1 + t2; }
The function adds two arbitrary values, and returns it. Now, if I pass an int and a double as the first and second arguments, respectively, what should the return type be? You'd say double. Does that mean we should make SecondType the return type of the function?
template <typename FirstType, typename SecondType> SecondType AddThem(FirstType t1, SecondType t2);
Actually, we cannot. For the obvious reason that this function may be called with any type of argument on the left or right side, and either type can be of a higher magnitude. For example:
AddThem( 10. 0,'A' ); AddThem( " CodeProject", ".com" ); AddThem( " C++",'X' ); AddThem(vector_object, list_object);
Also, the operator + (in the function) may call another overloaded function that may return a third type. The solution is to use the following:
template <typename FirstType, typename SecondType><typename /> auto AddThem(FirstType t1, SecondType t2) -> decltype (t1 + t2) { return t1 + t2; }
As mentioned in decltype's explanation, that type is determined though the expression; the actual type of t1+t2 is determined that way. If the compiler can upgrade the type, it will (like int, double upgrades to double ). If type/types are of class(es), and + leads an overloaded operator to be called, the return type of that overloaded + operator would be the return type. If types are not native, and no overload could be found, the compiler would raise an error. It is important to note that the type deduction will only take place when you instantiate the template function with some data-types. Before that, the compiler won't bother checking anything (same rules as with normal template functions).
R-Value references
I assume that you know what call-by-value, by reference, and by constant reference mean. I further assume that you know what L-value and R-value mean. Now, let's take an example where R-value references would make sense:
class Simple {}; Simple GetSimple() { return Simple(); } void SetSimple( const Simple&) { } int main() { SetSimple( GetSimple() ); }
Here, you can see that the GetSimple method returns a Simple object. And, SetSimple takes a Simple object by reference. In a call to SetSimple, we are passing GetSimple - as you can see, the returned object is about to be destroyed, as soon as SetSimple returns. Let's extend SetSimple :
void SetSimple( const Simple& rSimple) { Simple object (rSimple); }
Kindly ignore the missing copy constructor, we are using the default copy constructor. For understanding, assume the copy constructor (or a normal constructor) is allocating some amount of memory, say 100 bytes. The destructor is supposed to destroy 100 bytes. Don't get the problem in here? Okay, let me explain. Two objects are being created (one in GetSimple, one in SetSimple ), and both are allocating 100 bytes of memory. Right? This is like copying a file/folder to another location. But as you can see from the example code, only'object'is being utilized. Then, why should we allocate 100 bytes twice? Why cannot we use the 100 bytes allocated by the first Simple object construction? In earlier versions of C++, there was no simple way, unless we wrote our own memory/object management routines (like the MFC/ATL CString class does). In C++0x, we can do that. Thus, in short, we'll optimize the routine this way:
The first object is created, and it allocates memory. It is about to be destroyed. Before it gets destroyed, we attach the memory of the first object to the second object. We detach the memory from the first object (like, setting the pointer to null ). We use the second object. The second object gets destroyed, which eventually de-allocates the memory originally allocated by the first object.
By this, we save 100 bytes! Not a big amount, though. But if this feature is used in larger containers like strings, vectors, list, it would save huge amounts of memory, and time, both! Thus, it would improve the overall application performance. Though the problem and solution is available in the form of RVO and NRVO (Named Return Value Optimization), in Visual C++ 2005 and later versions, it is not as efficient and meaningful. For this, we use a new operator introduced: R-value Reference Declarator: &&. Basic syntax: Type&& identifier. Now we modify the above code, step by step:
void SetSimple(Simple&& rSimple) { Simple object; object.Memory = rSimple.Memory; rSimple.Memory = nullptr ; delete []object.Memory; }
The above code is for moving the content from the old object to the new object. This is very similar to moving a file/folder. Note that the const has been removed, since we also need to reset (detach) the memory originally allocated by the first object. The class and GetSimple are modified as mentioned below. The class now has a memory-pointer (say, void* ) named Memory. The default constructor sets it as null. This member is made public for simplifying the topic.
class Simple { public : void * Memory; Simple() { Memory = nullptr ; } Simple( int nBytes) { Memory = new char [nBytes]; } }; Simple GetSimple() { Simple sObj( 10 ); return sObj; }
What if you make a call like this:
Simple x; SetSimple(x);
It would result in an error since the compiler cannot convert Simple to Simple&&. The variable'x'is not temporary, and cannot behave like an R-value reference. For this, we may provide an overloaded SetSimple function that takes Simple, Simple&, or const Simple&. Thus, you know by now that temporary objects are actually R-value references. With R-values, you achieve what is known as move semantics. Move semantics enables you to write code that transfers resources (such as dynamically allocated memory) from one object to another. To implement move semantics, we need to provide a move constructor, and optionally a move assignment operator ( operator = ), to the class.
The move constructor
Let's implement moving the object within the class itself with the help of a move constructor. As you know, a copy constructor would have a signature like:
Simple( const Simple&);
The move-constructor would be very similar - just one more ampersand:
Simple(Simple&&);
But as you can see, the move-constructor is non-const. Like a copy constructor can take a non-const object (thus modify the source!), the move-constructor can also take const; nothing prevents this - but doing so forfeits the whole purpose of writing a move-constructor. Why? If you understood correctly, we are detaching the resource ownership from the original source (the argument of the move-constructor). Before I write more words to confuse you, let's take an example where the so-called move-constructor may be called:
Simple GetSimple() { Simple sObj( 10 ); return sObj; }
Why? The object sObj has been created on the stack. The return type is Simple, which would mean the copy-constructor (if provided; otherwise, the default compiler provided) would be called. Further, the destructor for sObj would be called. Now, assume the move-constructor is available. In that case, the compiler knows the object is being moved (ownership transfer), and it would call the move-constructor instead of the copy-constructor.
Unlike the copy-constructor, the compiler does not provide a default move-constructor; you must write it yourself.
Here is the updated Simple class implementation:
class Simple { void * Memory; public : Simple() { Memory = nullptr ; } Simple(Simple&& sObj) { Memory = sObj.Memory; sObj.Memory = nullptr ; } Simple( int nBytes) { Memory = new char [nBytes]; } ~Simple() { if (Memory!= nullptr ) delete []Memory; } };
Here is what happens when you call the GetSimple function:
The program control enters the GetSimple function, allocates a new Simple object on stack. Calls the (creation) constructor of class Simple. The constructor allocates the desired number of bytes (the resource). The return statement is ready to convert the stack object sObj to a returnable object. Here, the smart compiler finds that the object is actually being moved; and finds that the move-constructor is available, it calls the MC. The move constructor ( Simple(Simple&&) ) now takes the Memory content (instead of allocating again, as the copy-constructor would have done). Then it sets the original object's Memory to be null. It does not allocate and copy the memory! Control comes back to return-point. Now the original sObj is to be destroyed. Destructor for sObj is called ( ~Simple() ), which sees that Memory is null - does nothing!
It is important to note, and understand clearly:
The MC is called only because it is available; otherwise, CC would have been called (default or user-defined).
Returning an object by value (i.e., Simple, not Simple& or Simple* ) causes the copy-constructor or move-constructor to be called. This point is very important to understand!
, not or ) causes the copy-constructor or move-constructor to be called. This point is very important to understand! Move-constructor detaches the object knowing what the destructor is actually doing. In this case, we are setting Memory to null, so that DTOR doesn't delete it.
to, so that doesn't delete it. Checking if a pointer is null ( Memory!=nullptr ) is not required as per C++ standards, but is mentioned for clarity. On your classes, you must design MC and DTOR so that they have a similar protocol.
We see that we moved the original data to the new object. This way, we saved memory and processing time. As mentioned earlier, this saving is negligent - but when it is employed in larger data structures, and/or when temporary-objects are created and destroyed a lot, the saving is paramount!
The move assignment-operator
Understand the following code:
Simple obj1( 40 ); Simple obj2, obj3; obj2 = obj1; obj3 = GetSimple();
As you know, obj2 = obj1 would call the assignment-operator, there is no ownership transfer. The contents of obj2 are replaced with contents of obj1. If we don't provide an assignment operator, the compiler would provide the default assignment operator (and would copy byte-by-byte). The object on the right side remains unchanged.
The compiler does not provide the default move assignment-operator, unlike the default (copy) assignment operator.
The signature of the user-defined operator can be:
void operator =( const Simple&);
What about the statement: obj3 = GetSimple()? The object returned by GetSimple is temporary, as you should clearly know by now. Thus, we can (and we should) utilize what is known as Move- Semantics (we've used the same concept in the move-constructor also!). Here is a simplified move assignment-operator:
void operator =(Simple&&);
And here is the modified Simple class (previous code omitted for brevity). Self assignment is not taken care of:
class Simple {... void operator = ( const Simple& sOther) { delete [] Memory; } void operator = (Simple&& sOther) { delete [] Memory; Memory = sOther.Memory; sOther.Memory = nullptr ; } };
Thus, in the case of the obj3 = GetSimple() statement, the following things are happening:
The GetSimple function is being called, which returns a temporary object. Now, the special function, move assignment-operator, is to be called. Since the compiler identifies that the argument to this special-function is temporary, it calls the assignment-operator which takes the R-value reference. This case is the same as the SetSimple mentioned above. The move-assignment-operator takes the ownership, and detaches the ownership from the so-called temporary object/R-value reference. The destructor of the temporary-object gets called, which identifies that the object doesn't own any resource - it does nothing.
Just like the move-constructor, the move-assignment operator, and the destructor (in short, all three) must agree with the same protocol for resource allocation/deallocation.
Another example (cascading)
Assume the Simple class we have been working on is some data container; like string, date/time, array, or anything you prefer. That data container is supposed to allow the following, with the help of operator overloading:
Simple obj1( 10 ), obj2( 20 ), obj3, obj4; obj3 = obj1 + obj2; obj2 = GetSimple() + obj1; obj4 = obj2 + obj1 + obj3;
You can simply say, "Provide the plus (+) operator in the class". Okay, we provide an operator+ in our Simple class:
Simple operator+( const Simple&) { Simple sObj; return sObj; }
Now, as you can see, a temporary object is created and is being returned from operator+, which would eventually cause a call to the move-assignment operator (for the obj3 = obj1 + obj2 expression), and the resource is preserved - fair enough! (I hope you understand it fully before you move to the next paragraph.) For the next statement ( obj2 = GetSimple() + obj1 ), the object on the left itself is temporary. Note that in SetSimple and in the move special-functions, the argument is temporary, not in this. There is no technique (at least in my knowledge) to make this a temporary object. Okay, okay, I am not Bjarne Stroustrup; here is the solution:
class Simple {... friend Simple operator+(Simple&& left, const Simple& right); }; Simple operator+(Simple&& left, const Simple& right) { Simple newObj; newObj.Memory = left.Memory; left.Memory = nullptr ; return newObj; }
Explanation about the code:
The non-class version of operator+ is taking an R-value reference as its left argument; the right side argument is an ordinary constant reference of the object.
is taking reference as its left argument; the right side argument is an ordinary constant reference of the object. The function/overloaded-operator is just attaching the ownership to the new object and detaching the ownership from the 'left' (the temporary) object. Since it is just a simulated version, 'right' is not used. In an actual container-class, you'd, however, do it.
Returns a Simple object, which has just snatched ownership from a temporary object.
What about the last statement ( obj4 = obj2 + obj1 + obj3 )?
First, the normal class version of operator+ is called (for obj2 + obj1 ). It returns a new Simple object, we call it t1.
is called (for ). It returns a new object, we call it. Now with t1 (the outcome of obj2+obj1 ), which is a temporary object, operator+ gets called again ( t1+obj3 ) - the out-of-class version of operator+ is called, which takes ownership from t1.
(the outcome of ), which is a, gets called again ( ) - the out-of-class version of is called, which takes ownership from. The global operator+ returns another (presumably the binary plus) object. We call the returnable object as t2.
returns another (presumably the binary plus) object. We call the returnable object as. Now, t2 is to be assigned to obj4, and since it is also a temporary object, the move-assignment operator gets called.
Here it goes in a more simplified, non-verbal form (italic is the call being made):
obj4 = obj2 + obj1 + obj3
obj4 = t1 + obj3
+ obj3 obj4 = t2
External references
Other language features
This section lists the C++ features that were not added into the C++0x standard, but were added in VC8/VC9 compilers. They are now part of the C++0x standard.
1. Strongly typed enums
What is the sizeof enum? Four bytes? Well, depending on the compiler you choose, the size could vary. Does sizeof an enum matter? Yes, if you put the enum as a member in a class/struct. The sizeof class/struct changes, which makes the code less portable. Also, if struct is to be stored in a file or transferred, the problem is further compounded. Strongly typed enums enforce type, thus save from any bug creeping in. They make the code more portable within the software system. The solution is to specify the base-type of an enum:
enum Priority : BYTE { VeryLow = 0, Low, Medium, High, VeryHigh };
Which results in sizeof(Priority) to be 1 byte. Likewise, you can have any integral type as the base-type for an enum:
enum ByteUnit : unsigned __int64 { Byte = 1, KiloByte = 1024, MegaByte = 1024L * 1024, GigaByte = ( unsigned __int64 ) 1 << 30, TeraByte = ( unsigned __int64 ) 1 << 40, PetaByte = ( unsigned __int64 ) 1 << 50 };
The sizeof this enum becomes 8-bytes, since the base-type is unsigned __int64. If you do not specify the base-type, in this case, the compiler would warn you for putting an out of range value in the enum. Note: the Microsoft C/C++ compiler implements this feature only partially.
External reference: Proposal N2347.
2. Right angle brackets
When you declare templates of templates, like in the example below, you need to put extra white-space between the consecutive right angles (greater-than sign):
vector<list<int> > ListVector;
Otherwise, the compiler would emit an error, since >> is a valid C++ token (bitwise right shift). Other than multiple templates, this operator might appear when you typecast to a template, using the static_cast operator:
static_cast<vector<int>>(expression);
With the new C++0x standard, you can use consecutive right-angle brackets (more than twice also), like:
vector <vector<vector<int>>> ComplexVector;
External reference: Proposal N1757
3. Extern templates
I failed to find the exact purpose and meaning of extern templates. Anyway, I am sharing what I discovered with this term. True, that I might be wrong - and expect you to share your knowledge, so that I could update this section. This is what I ascertained:
Different instantiation of a template for the same type results in object code duplication. With extern templates, we can let only one translation unit generate the appropriate code. You can forward declare template-instantiation(s), rather than delay it when you actually instantiate in code. This way, the template-class along with the specified type is verified well in advance.
Explicating point 1 clearly is out of my comprehension - the details available are vague and overlapping, so I am not discussing point (1). For example, you have a class:
template <typename T> class Number { T data; public : Number() { data = 0 ; } Number(T t) { data = t; } T Add(T t) { return data + t; } T Randomize(T t) { return data % t; } };
Now, before you actually instantiate the template for some data-type, you want to make sure that the class compiles for that data type. That is, for this example, the type should support the + and % operators. Thus, you can specify the template instantiation in advance:
template Number<int>; template Number<float>;
which would raise an error for the second specification, since operator % is not valid for float. Likewise, when you specify a template argument that doesn't support the operation the template class might need, the compiler would complain. For this template class, the template-type must support assignment to zero, assignment operator, operator +, and operator %. Note that we did not actually instantiate the template-class. This is just like declaring a function, and specifying the argument and return type. The function is externally defined somewhere else.
External reference: Proposal N1987.
External references for C++0x features
Article follow ups:
Conclusion
Though this article is almost complete, there are may be a few glitches, spelling/grammatical mistakes, small mistakes in code etc. Please let me know of them. For the downloadable code - I am wondering if this content requires some code?
HistoryIn an recently launched series, Videogame Tourism looks at the mutual influence between movies and games. But of course, film is not the only medium that sees itself confronted, influenced and, vice versa, used as a source of inspiration by the new medium. The link to the the written word is almost as old as the videogame itself, and recent developments both on the side of literature and the videogame have shown that the relationship between the two media is as vital and strong as ever. Ample reason then to launch WORD/PLAY, a series that sheds light on interesting works that go beyond what our first interview partner Robert Sherman describes as the "trendy fusing of two media, one that is much younger and more vital and one that is much older and more respected."
According to publishing giant Random House, the future of literature is plagued by abscesses, furuncles and various other diseases of the skin and mind. It is also financed by a sleazy millionaire with sadistic tendencies. At least that’s one way of looking at the unlikely genesis of Black Crown, a peculiar hybrid between literature and videogame.
The story goes a little something like this: Fresh out of university, writer Robert Sherman went door-to-door with the final project he did for his course: Not a mere document, but a suitcase filled with strange objects and writings that provided an insight into a dark storyworld which Sherman wished to develop further. Luck was on his side: Random House, always on the lookout for options to expand the increasingly difficult core business of selling paperbound books, found itself flush with cash from the unexpected success of Fifty Shades of Grey. In fact, the publisher had already cast an eye on another peculiar success story, Failbetter Game’s Free2Play-storygame Fallen London, and its underlying platform. And so, the doors opened wide for Sherman, whose project was to be named Black Crown and built in Failbetter’s microtransaction-driven StoryNexus-engine.
However, Black Crown would be unusual even in a more traditional format: Its narrative about an enigmatic institution, so oppressive that it gives both Aperture Science and Kafka’s bureaucratic machinery a run for its money, makes not exactly for leisure reading. The feeling of uneasiness is only amplified by Sherman’s fascination for the macabre, the sick and the deformed, and his willingness to make the reader/player’s character a victim of all of this, a miserable, isolated being that has to endure constant hardship and pain… and ultimately grows stronger doing so. The world of Black Crown is highly original and bitterly dark, but not |
employment as mercenaries for some foreign prince. Word of this meeting reached the young Publius Cornelius Scipio who, with only a few followers, strode to where the discussion was underway and burst into the chamber holding his naked sword over their heads. Before the wavering men Scipio is reported to have cried,
I swear with all the passion in my heart that I will never desert our homeland, or permit any other citizen of Rome to leave her in the lurch. If I willfully break my oath may Jupiter, Greatest and Best, bring me to a shameful death, with my house, my family, and all I possess! Swear the same oath, Caecilius! And the rest of you, swear it too. If anyone refuse, against him this sword is drawn.[83]
Following the battle, the commander of the Numidian cavalry, Maharbal, urged Hannibal to seize the opportunity and march immediately on Rome. It is told that the latter's refusal caused Maharbal's exclamation: "Of a truth the gods have not bestowed all things upon the same person. You know how to conquer, Hannibal; but you do not know how to make use of your victory."[65] Hannibal had good reasons to judge the strategic situation after the battle differently from Maharbal. As the historian Hans Delbrück pointed out, due to the high numbers of killed and wounded among its ranks, the Punic army was not in a condition to perform a direct assault on Rome. It would have been a fruitless demonstration that would have nullified the psychological effect of Cannae on the Roman allies. Even if his army was at full strength, a successful siege of Rome would have required Hannibal to subdue a considerable part of the hinterland to cut the enemy's supplies and secure his own. Even after the tremendous losses suffered at Cannae and the defection of a number of her allies, Rome still had abundant manpower to prevent this and maintain considerable forces in Iberia, Sicily, Sardinia and elsewhere despite Hannibal's presence in Italy. Hannibal's conduct after the victories at Trasimene (217 BC) and Cannae, and the fact that he first attacked Rome only five years later, in 211 BC, suggests that his strategic aim was not the destruction of his foe but to dishearten the Romans by carnage on the battlefield and to wear them down to a moderate peace agreement by stripping them of their allies.
Immediately after Cannae, Hannibal sent a delegation led by Carthalo to negotiate a peace treaty with the Senate on moderate terms. Despite the multiple catastrophes Rome had suffered, the Senate refused to parley. Instead, they redoubled their efforts, declaring full mobilization of the male Roman population, and raised new legions, enlisting landless peasants and even slaves.[88] So firm were these measures that the word "peace" was prohibited, mourning was limited to only 30 days, and public tears were prohibited even to women.[42]:386 For the remainder of the war in Italy, they did not amass such large forces under one command against Hannibal; they used several independent armies, still outnumbering the Punic forces in numbers of armies and soldiers. The war still had occasional battles, but was focused on taking strongpoints and constant fighting according to the Fabian strategy. This finally forced Hannibal with his shortage of manpower to retreat to Croton from where he was called to Africa for the battle of Zama, ending the war with a complete Roman victory.[citation needed]
Historical significance [ edit ]
Effects on Roman military doctrine [ edit ]
Shield of Henry II of France depicting Hannibal's victory at Cannae, an allusion to France's conflict with the Holy Roman Empire during the 16th century.
Cannae played a major role in shaping the military structure and tactical organization of the Roman Republican army. At Cannae, the Roman infantry assumed a formation similar to the Greek phalanx. This left them vulnerable to Hannibal's tactic of double envelopment since their inability to maneuver independently from the mass of the army made it impossible for them to counter the strategic encirclement used by the Carthaginian cavalry. The laws of the Roman state requiring command to alternate between the two consuls restricted strategic consistency.[citation needed]
In the years following Cannae, striking reforms were introduced to address these deficiencies. First, the Romans "articulated the phalanx, then divided it into columns, and finally split it up into a great number of small tactical bodies that were capable, now of closing together in a compact impenetrable union, now of changing the pattern with consummate flexibility, of separating one from the other and turning in this or that direction."[89] For instance, at Ilipa and Zama, the principes were formed up well to the rear of the hastati—a deployment that allowed a greater degree of mobility and maneuverability. The culminating result of this change marked the transition from the traditional manipular system to the cohort under Gaius Marius, as the basic infantry unit of the Roman army.[citation needed]
In addition, a unified command came to be seen as a necessity. After various political experiments, Scipio Africanus was made general-in-chief of the Roman armies in Africa, and was assured this role for the duration of the war. This appointment may have violated the constitutional laws of the Roman Republic but, as Delbrück wrote, it "effected an internal transformation that increased her military potentiality enormously" while foreshadowing the decline of the Republic's political institutions. Furthermore, the battle exposed the limits of a citizen-militia army. Following Cannae, the Roman army gradually developed into a professional force: the nucleus of Scipio's army at Zama was composed of veterans who had been fighting the Carthaginians in Hispania for nearly sixteen years, and had been moulded into a superb fighting force.[citation needed]
Status in military history [ edit ]
Cannae is as famous for Hannibal's tactics as it is for the role it played in Roman history. Not only did Hannibal inflict a defeat on the Roman Republic in a manner unrepeated for over a century until the lesser-known Battle of Arausio, the battle has acquired a significant reputation in military history. As military historian Theodore Ayrault Dodge wrote:
Few battles of ancient times are more marked by ability... than the battle of Cannae. The position was such as to place every advantage on Hannibal's side. The manner in which the far from perfect Hispanic and Gallic foot was advanced in a wedge in echelon... was first held there and then withdrawn step by step, until it had the reached the converse position... is a simple masterpiece of battle tactics. The advance at the proper moment of the African infantry, and its wheel right and left upon the flanks of the disordered and crowded Roman legionaries, is far beyond praise. The whole battle, from the Carthaginian standpoint, is a consummate piece of art, having no superior, few equal, examples in the history of war.[90]
As Will Durant wrote, "It was a supreme example of generalship, never bettered in history... and it set the lines of military tactics for 2,000 years".[91]
Hannibal's double envelopment at Cannae is often viewed as one of the greatest battlefield maneuvers in history, and is cited as the first successful use of the pincer movement within the Western world to be recorded in detail.[92]
Apart from being one of the greatest defeats inflicted on Roman arms, Cannae represents the archetypal battle of annihilation, a strategy whose successful implementation has been rare in modern history. As Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in World War II, wrote, "Every ground commander seeks the battle of annihilation; so far as conditions permit, he tries to duplicate in modern war the classic example of Cannae". Furthermore, the totality of Hannibal's victory has made the name "Cannae" a byword for military success, and is studied in detail in military academies around the world. The notion that an entire army could be encircled and annihilated within a single stroke led to a fascination among Western generals for centuries (including Frederick the Great and Helmuth von Moltke), who attempted to emulate its tactical paradigm of envelopment and re-create their own "Cannae".[66] Delbrück's seminal study of the battle had a profound influence on German military theorists, in particular the Chief of the German General Staff, Alfred von Schlieffen, whose eponymous "Schlieffen Plan" was inspired by Hannibal's double envelopment maneuver. Schlieffen taught that the "Cannae model" would continue to be applicable in maneuver warfare throughout the 20th century:
A battle of annihilation can be carried out today according to the same plan devised by Hannibal in long forgotten times. The enemy front is not the goal of the principal attack. The mass of the troops and the reserves should not be concentrated against the enemy front; the essential is that the flanks be crushed. The wings should not be sought at the advanced points of the front but rather along the entire depth and extension of the enemy formation. The annihilation is completed through an attack against the enemy's rear... To bring about a decisive and annihilating victory requires an attack against the front and against one or both flanks...
Schlieffen later developed his own operational doctrine in a series of articles, many of which were translated and published in a work entitled Cannae.[citation needed]
In 1991, general Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., commander of Coalition forces in the Gulf War, cited Hannibal's triumph at Cannae as inspiration for the rapid and successful Coalition operations during the conflict.
Historical sources [ edit ]
Medieval representation of the battle of Cannae
There are three main accounts of the battle, none of them contemporary. The closest is Polybius, who wrote his account 50 years after the battle. Livy wrote in the time of Augustus, and Appian later still. Appian's account describes events that have no relation with those of Livy and Polybius. Polybius portrays the battle as the ultimate nadir of Roman fortunes, functioning as a literary device such that the subsequent Roman recovery is more dramatic. For example, some argue that his casualty figures are exaggerated—"more symbolic than factual". Livy portrays the Senate in the role of hero and hence assigns blame for the Roman defeat to the low-born Varro. Blaming Varro also serves to lift blame from the Roman soldiers, whom Livy has a tendency to idealize. Scholars tend to discount Appian's account. The verdict of Philip Sabin—"a worthless farrago"—is typical.[97]
Historian Martin Samuels has questioned whether it was in fact Varro in command on the day on the grounds that Paullus may have been in command on the right. The warm reception that Varro received after the battle from the Senate was in striking contrast to the savage criticism meted out to other commanders. Samuels doubts whether Varro would have been received with such warmth had he been in command. Gregory Daly notes that, in the Roman military, the right was always the place of command. He suggests that at the Battle of Zama Hannibal was quoted saying that he had fought Paullus at Cannae and concludes that it is impossible to be sure who was in command on the day.
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Ancient sources [ edit ]Last updated at 23:19 22 January 2007
Erin Pizzey, founder of the battered wives' refuge, on how militant feminists - with the collusion of Labour's leading women - hijacked her cause and used it to try to demonise all men.
During 1970, I was a young housewife with a husband, two children, two dogs and a cat. We lived in Hammersmith, West London, and I didn't see much of my husband because he worked for TV's Nationwide. I was lonely and isolated, and longed for something other than the usual cooking, cleaning and housework to enter my life.
By the early Seventies, a new movement for women - demanding equality and rights - began to make headlines in the daily newspapers. Among the jargon, I read the words "solidarity" and "support". I passionately believed that women would no longer find themselves isolated from each other, and in the future could unite to change our society for the better.
Within a few days I had the address of a local group in Chiswick, and I was on my way to join the Women's Liberation Movement. I was asked to pay £3 and ten shillings as a joining fee, told to call other women "sisters" and that our meetings were to be called "collectives".
My fascination with this new movement lasted only a few months. At the huge "collectives", I heard shrill women preaching hatred of the family. They said the family was not a safe place for women and children. I was horrified at their virulence and violent tendencies. I stood on the same platforms trying to reason with the leading lights of this new organisation.
I ended up being thrown out by the movement. My crime was to warn some of the women working in the Women's Liberation Movement office off Shaftesbury Avenue that if it persisted in cooperating with a plan to bomb Biba, a fashionable clothes shop in Kensington, I would call the police.
Biba was bombed because the women's movement thought it was a capitalist enterprise devoted to sexualising women's bodies.
I decided that I was wasting my time trying to influence what, to my mind, was a Marxist/ feminist movement touting for money from gullible women like myself.
By that time, I'd met a small group of women in my area who agreed with me. We persuaded Hounslow council to give us a tiny house in Belmont Terrace in Chiswick. We had two rooms upstairs, two rooms downstairs, a kitchen and an outside lavatory. We installed a telephone and typewriter, and we were in business.
Every day after dropping my children at school, I went to our little house, which we called the Women's Aid. Soon women from all over Chiswick were coming to ask for help. At last we had somewhere women could meet each other and bring their children. My long, lonely days were over.
But then something happened that made me understand that our role was going to be more than just a forum where women could exchange ideas. One day, a lady came in to see us. She took off her jersey, and we saw that she was bruised and swollen across her breasts and back. Her husband had taken a chair leg to her. She looked at me and said: "No one will help me."
For a moment I was somersaulted back in time. I was six years old, standing in front of a teacher at school. My legs were striped and bleeding from a whipping I had received from an ironing cord. "My mother did this to me last night," I said. "No wonder," replied the teacher. "'You're a dreadful child."
No one would help me then and nobody would ever imagine that my beautiful, rich mother - who was married to a diplomat - could be a violent abuser.
Until that moment 35 years later, I had buried my past and assumed that because we had social workers, probation officers, doctors, hospitals and solicitors, victims of violence had enough help.
I quickly discovered, as battered women with their children poured into the house, that whatever was going on behind other people's front doors was seen as nobody else's business.
If someone was beaten up on the street, it was a criminal offence; the same beating behind a closed door was called "a domestic"' and the police had no rights or power to interfere.
The shocking fact for me was that there had been a deafening silence on the subject of domestic violence.
All the social agencies knew about domestic violence, but nobody talked about it. I searched for literature to help me understand this epidemic, but there was nothing to read except a few articles on child abuse in medical journals.
So in 1974 I decided to write Scream Quietly Or The Neighbours Will Hear, the first book in the world on domestic violence. I revealed that women and children were being abused in their own homes and they couldn't escape because the law wouldn't protect them.
If a husband claimed he would have his wife back, she couldn't claim any money from the Department of Health and Social Security, and social services could only offer to take the children into care.
Meanwhile, our little house was packed with women fleeing their violent partners - sometimes as many as 56 mothers and children in four rooms. All had terrible stories, but I recognised almost immediately that not all the women were innocent. Some were as violent as the men, and violent towards their children.
The social workers involved with these women told me I was wasting my time because the women would only return to their partners.
I was determined to try to break the chain of violence. But as the local newspaper picked up the story of our house, I grew worried about a very different threat.
I knew that the radical feminist movement was running out of national support because more sensible women had shunned their anti-male, anti-family agenda. Not only were they looking for a cause, they also wanted money.
In 1974, the women living in my refuge organised a meeting in our local church hall to encourage other groups to open refuges across the country.
We were astonished and frightened that many of the radical lesbian and feminist activists that I had seen in the collectives attended. They began to vote themselves into a national movement across the country.
After a stormy argument, I left the hall with my abused mothers - and what I had most feared happened.
In a matter of months, the feminist movement hijacked the domestic violence movement, not just in Britain, but internationally.
Our grant was given to them and they had a legitimate reason to hate and blame all men. They came out with sweeping statements which were as biased as they were ignorant. "All women are innocent victims of men's violence," they declared.
They opened most of the refuges in the country and banned men from working in them or sitting on their governing committees.
Women with alcohol or drug problems were refused admittance, as were boys over 12 years old. Refuges that let men work there were refused affiliation.
Our group in Chiswick worked with as many refuges as we could. Good, caring women still work in refuges across the country, but many women working in the feminist refuges, about 350, admit they are failing women who most need them.
With the first donation we received in 1972, we employed a male playgroup leader because we felt our children needed the experience of good, gentle men. We devised a treatment programme for women who recognised that they, too, were violent and dysfunctional. And we concentrated on children hurt by violence and sexual abuse.
Yet the feminist refuges continued to create training programmes that described only male violence against women. Slowly, the police and other organisations were brainwashed into ignoring the research that was proving men could also be victims.
Despite attacks in the Press from feminist journalists and threatening anonymous telephone calls, I continued to argue that violence was a learned pattern of behaviour from early childhood.
When, in the mid-Eighties, I published Prone To Violence, about my work with violence-prone women and their children, I was picketed by hundreds of women from feminist refuges, holding placards which read: "All men are bastards" and "All men are rapists".
Because of violent threats, I had to have a police escort around the country.
It was bad enough that this relatively small group of women was influencing social workers and police. But I became aware of a far more insidious development in the form of public policy-making by powerful women, which was creating a poisonous attitude towards men.
In 1990, Harriet Harman (who became a Cabinet minister), Anna Coote (who became an adviser to Labour's Minister for Women) and Patricia Hewitt (yes, she's in the Labour Cabinet, too!) expressed their beliefs in a social policy paper called The Family Way.
It said: "It cannot be assumed that men are bound to be an asset to family life, or that the presence of fathers in families is necessarily a means to social harmony and cohesion."
It was a staggering attack on men and their role in modern life.
Hewitt, in a book by Geoff Dench called Transforming Men published in 1995, said: "But if we want fathers to play a full role in their children's lives, then we need to bring men into the playgroups and nurseries and the schools. And here, of course, we hit the immediate difficulty of whether we can trust men with children."
In 1998, however, the Home Office published a historic study which stipulated that men as well as women could be victims of domestic violence.
With that report in my hand, I tried to reason with Joan Ruddock, who was then Minister for Women. The figures for battered men were "minuscule" she insisted and she continued to refer to men only as "perpetrators".
For nearly four decades, these pernicious attitudes towards family life, fathers and boys have permeated the thinking of our society to such an extent that male teachers and carers are now afraid to touch or cuddle children.
Men can be accused of violence towards their partners and sexual abuse without evidence. Courts discriminate against fathers and refuse to allow them access to their children on the whims of vicious partners.
Of course, there are dangerous men who manipulate the court systems and social services to persecute their partners and children. But by blaming all men, we have diluted the focus on this minority of men and pushed aside the many men who would be willing to work with women towards solutions.
I believe that the feminist movement envisaged a new Utopia that depended upon destroying family life. In the new century, so their credo ran, the family unit will consist of only women and their children. Fathers are dispensable. And all that was yoked - unforgivably - to the debate about domestic violence.
To my mind, it has never been a gender issue - those exposed to violence in early childhood often grow up to repeat what they have learned, regardless of whether they are girls or boys.
I look back with sadness to my young self and my vision that there could be places where people - men, women and children who have suffered physical and sexual abuse - could find help, and if they were violent could be given a second chance to learn to live peacefully.
I believe that vision was hijacked by vengeful women who have ghetto-ised the refuge movement and used it to persecute men. Surely the time has come to challenge this evil ideology and insist that men take their rightful place in the refuge movement.
We need an inclusive movement that offers support to everyone that needs it. As for me - I will always continue to work with anyone who needs my help or can help others - and yes, that includes men.Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is planning to vote against the Republican tax bill unless the child tax credit is expanded.
Rubio, along with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), has been pushing hard for a larger child tax credit for weeks, but GOP leadership opposed their plan and it was voted down in the most recent version of the bill.
According to a report by the Washington Post, Rubio informed Senate GOP leadership of his plan today, and has been negotiating with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who has been tapped to help reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill.
Currently, Republicans control 52 out of the 100 seats in the Senate, meaning they must have at least 50 Senators on board in order to pass the bill. (In the case of a tie, Vice President Mike Pence would cast the tiebreaker vote, and has given no indication he would not support the bill).
As I noted yesterday, the election of Democrat Doug Jones to the Alabama Senate seat has put pressure on Congressional Republicans to get the tax bill passed before Jones is sworn into office at the end of the month. Once that happens, just one Republican defector will be enough to kill the bill.
With the rapidly approaching Christmas holidays and the need to pass the bill through both the House and the Senate, there are only a few days remaining, and barely one day left to resolve this in the Senate and still expect to finish in time.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) already has said he opposes the bill due to its effect on the federal deficit. A spokesman for Lee told the Washington Post that the Utah Senator is still undecided. If Lee joins Rubio, that will be enough to hold the bill hostage.
Essentially, the Rubio-Lee plan would expand the child tax credit to allow millions of families to claim the credit who pay payroll taxes even if they don’t earn enough to pay income taxes. They planned to pay for this increased credit by slightly shrinking the tax bill’s proposed cut to the corporate tax rate. Currently, the corporate tax rate is 35 percent, and the bill cuts that to 20 percent. The Rubio-Lee plan would trim that slightly, cutting it to 21 percent.
Senate leadership seems to be amenable to some expansion, but not as large a scale as Rubio wanted. The latest version of the bill increases the child tax credit to $2,000 per child, up from the current $1,000.
I’m on the email list for Rubio’s Senate office, and they have been sending out press releases on a seemingly daily basis pushing his child tax credit plan, and his social media feed is full of content promoting it as well. A significant amount of the criticism of the GOP tax bill has been that it offers too generous tax cuts to the upper brackets, while not doing enough for the working class. Rubio, along with Lee, are at least attempting to address that.
A Slap in the Face to Families | National Review – https://t.co/4DJhh8yepQ https://t.co/22YLsULbyj — Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 13, 2017
20.94% Corp. rate to pay for tax cut for working family making $40k was anti-growth but 21% to cut tax for couples making $1million is fine? — Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 12, 2017
Rubio deserves credit for fighting for this child tax credit he has spent so much energy promoting, and he’ll come out of this looking like he fought for working families as long as he either successfully gets the expanded child tax credit he wants, or follows through and votes against the bill.
Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter: @rumpfshaker.
This post has been cross-posted at The Capitolist.Written by Scotty Keister
Next to the Kardashians, the Kennedy’s are probably the best-known family in the U.S. or at least they were for a good thirty years, anyway. One could argue they’re the closest thing to a royal family we’ve ever had, and for a long time they inspired an equivalent kind of obsession in the American psyche. The many tragedies the Kennedy’s suffered left some deeply felt scars in that same psyche. Wendy MacLeod’s clever and funny play, The House of Yes, explores the myth of the Kennedy’s some twenty years after JFK’s murder. The Stages Theatre production, directed by Jack Millis, gets a lot of the dark laughs yet leaves many questions about the Kennedy legend unanswered.
Millis has assembled a thoroughly entertaining and skilled cast who nail the jokes and get the satiric tone just right. The actual story concerns the Pascal family, who live in a well-to-do Virginia suburb somewhat near the Kennedy clan, and who have been grievously scarred by the Kennedy tragedies. Jackie O, the Pascal’s adult daughter, has never gotten over JFK’s assassination and still wears her hair and dresses like her namesake. Stages veteran Darri Kristin plays her as caustic, funny, and batshit crazy. Equally funny and crazy is Jill Cary Martin’s portrayal of the family matriarch, Mr. Pascal. Martin gets some of the best joke lines in the show: “I’m going to the kitchen to baste the turkey and hide all the sharp objects,” or “People raise cattle; children just happen.” Adam Evans does eccentric comedic work playing younger brother, Anthony.
On the occasion of a very stormy Thanksgiving night, Jackie O’s twin brother Marty comes home from N.Y. with his surprise fiancé, Lesly. This throws Jackie O off the deep end. Recently returned from a mental hospital and still heavily medicated, Jackie has had a lifelong obsession with her brother, a seriously questionable obsession as we will soon learn. The more young & innocent Lesly (the fiancé) learns about the Pascals, the more she wants to get the hell out, hurricane be damned. Aaron McGee’s Marty, is the one unfunny role in the show, but McGee does a fine job playing a character torn between wanting to escape the family and being inextricably sucked back in. Kelsey Arnold charmingly plays the unfortunate Lesly, who is bewildered but still outspoken.
See, Mrs. Pascal is all about keeping the family intact and at home, ALL her children, and will stop at nothing to see it done. She indulges Jackie, giving her anything she wants, hence the title House of Yes. There is even a suggestion this led to the former Mr. Pascal being buried in the back yard. One could easily read this as a stinging satire of the self-indulgent and slightly incestuous rich man’s culture in the U.S., emblematic of the Kennedy’s, who were never brought down by the justice system, but still remained subject to the whims of fate. And soon we realize, the Pascals are no strangers to tragedy either. It all sounds kind of heavy, but really the story is played for laughs all along, albeit some very dark laughs. Millis does a great job of keeping the tone light and breezy. MacLeod’s dialog is smart and witty, and the brisk pace brings the play to a conclusion in a scant 70 minutes.
On the surface it comes off as a deadly satire, served with a generous helping of laughs. It was only after I walked out of the theater that I started asking myself all the questions MacLeod left buried beneath the laughs: What does this say about us as a people? Will we ever get over the Kennedy’s? Should crazy people keep guns in the house?
The House of Yes runs Saturdays and Sundays at 5:00 through June 13.
8/10DreamHack Winter decklists, facts and class stats
As is traditional after a big tournament, we have the decklists from all 32 players for you to try out in the new ladder season. Not only that, but we have class stats, facts from the tournament and all the other information you need.
After Kolento triumphed in the most stacked Hearthstone tournament to date and the dust has settled, the time has come to take a closer look at the deck tech on display. Given that not all games were streamed live, for many of these decks it will be the first time they have been seen - for example we didn't get to see Thalai's Freeze Mage or the Paladin decks of Darkwonyx and Hosty.
Warlock and Hunter were, unsurprisingly, the most popular line-up choices. Hyped was the only player to come in to the tournament without a Warlock deck, and of those thirty-one decks the split was twenty for Handlock and eleven for Zoo. Darkwonyx, Dog, Hosty, Maverick, Marzito and champion Kolento were the six players not to bring Hunter to the tournament - a decision which seemed to be a questionable one for everyone except the guy who won the title!
Obviously due to the number of unstreamed games our class stats data is incomplete, but Druid topped the winrate charts in streamed games with 65%.
For the full decklists, click the name of a player to see their four DreamHack Winter decklists.
Amaz
Cipher
Darkwonyx
Dog
ek0p
Esosek
Faramir
Firebat
Forsen
Gaara
Greensheep
Hosty
Hyped
Kaldi
Kolento
Lifecoach
Lothar
Marzito
Maverick
Mirrari
Neirea
Numberguy
Origin
Powder
Rdu
Reynad
Savjz
StrifeCro
Thalai
ThijsNL
TidesofTime
XixoA simple chart created by the American Enterprise Institute demonstrates how incredible the cost of attending college has become.
In the past 20 years, prices have inflated by 55 percent overall. But inflation hasn’t been evenly distributed. Prices of consumer goods, like cars, phones, clothes, and televisions, have remained stagnant or have even declined, providing a boon to consumers. Other products, like food and housing, have risen in price in lockstep with inflation. Health care and childcare have surged ahead, more than doubling in price and handily outpacing inflation.
But education puts them all to shame. Since 1996, college tuition has almost tripled in price, drastically outpacing inflation and putting a substantial burden on many American households. One of the only things that can compete with tuition in terms of growth are college textbooks, which have surged in price even more. In real terms, both goods cost twice as much as they did in 1996, even after accounting for inflation.
The exact reason prices have increased so much has been hotly debated, but one critical factor at most schools is administrative bloat. While student to faculty ratios have remained relatively steady over time, the number of administrators and other non-teaching staff has exploded at schools across the country.
A bigger root cause may also be the ready availability of federally-backed student loans. Research by the Federal Reserve in 2015 found strong evidence that each increase in federal student aid is simply being gobbled up by schools in the form of increased spending and a subsequent rise in tuition.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.The Boy Scouts of America has known for nearly a century that scout leaders were preying on boys under the its protection. Yet for most of those long years, it kept what it knew about scout leaders who were sexual predators locked away in secret “perversion files.”
The Scouts’ excuse was that the files, compiled at least since the 1920s, were a system of internal controls, to ensure that known abusers could not rejoin scouting. No doubt this helped to protect many boys, but in many other instances the system failed, and it kept failing. The Scouts had no right to protect these criminals from the police, from parents and even from many troop leaders. They serve as yet another example of the disaster of institutional secrecy, of the danger when officials decide that an organization deserves protecting more than a child.
Now a light is finally being shined on the Boy Scouts’ failure — not because the institution had a change of heart, but because of orders from judges. In the latest case, in Portland, Ore., a law firm that won an $18.5 million civil judgment in an abuse case fought all the way to the Oregon Supreme Court to make public the “perversion files,” also known as the “ineligible volunteer” files.
It posted a cache of them online on Thursday. The files cover the period from 1965 to 1985, more than 15,000 pages detailing accusations against 1,247 scout leaders. In a separate case dating to the 1980s, a Sacramento lawyer persuaded a judge to order the release of another trove of files; an index of those cases, involving nearly 1,900 accused abusers from 1971 to 1991, was shared with The Los Angeles Times last year and has also been posted online.
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Some of the records seem to show scouting officials trying to rid themselves of abusers. But others, as Kirk Johnson of The Times reported on Friday, betray secretiveness and negligence. “I would like to let this case drop,” one executive said. “My personal opinion in this particular case is, ‘If it don’t stink, don’t stir it.’” Still others show that the “ineligible volunteer” file system could be ineffective, if not useless. In 1981, a Colorado man who had three sons in scouting warned that a scoutmaster named Joe, who had abused his sons and others, had re-emerged at a Boy Scout jamboree. “Your assurances that Joe was out of scouting and would have no further contact with scouting have just become meaningless,” he wrote.
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The Boy Scouts say they have adopted many strong reforms and are now a model for effectiveness in protecting children, which may be true. But for that, parents and scouts can thank the courage of victims and the persistence of lawyers and journalists, not the goodwill of an organization that minimized the problem and fought tenaciously for decades to keep its secrets hidden.
The files are surely the tip of an iceberg, says Gilion Dumas, a lawyer with the firm that posted the Oregon files, because the Boy Scouts kept no records on how many files were created or lost and because many cases were never reported, since most families, troops and sponsoring organizations had no idea the files existed, or how to use them.Game of Thrones will more than likely end as number one on this list but I want to see how the show ends. We have 2 more seasons to go before that is official though. GoT is simply put genius. It encapsulates everything I love about TV. It's gruesome, bloody, sad, heartbreaking, funny at times, and even rewarding if you pick the right character. George R.R. Martin is the author of the books that this show is based on and he is a genius. All I can say is do not get attached to many characters. More than likely they will die at some point and that is why this show is amazing. It is unpredictable. And another reason its great are the characters. According to Tech Insider there are more than 500 characters in this show. It is a lot to remember and thats intimidating but it is worth it because this show is so good. Its beautifully shot and the soundtrack is amazing. Not to mention the acting also. The actors and actresses in this show are amazing. In my opinion is it hard to find something wrong with |
't have the right equipment and their equipment is old. I used it; I talked about it at every stop. Depleted, it's depleted — it won't be depleted for long. And I think one of the reason I'm standing here instead of other people is that frankly, I talked about we have to have a strong military.
We have to have a strong law enforcement also. So we do not go abroad in search of war, we really are searching for peace, but it's peace through strength. At home, we have begun the monumental task of returning the government back to the people on a scale not seen in many, many years. In each of these actions, I'm keeping my promises to the American people. These are campaign promises.
Some people are so surprised that we're having strong borders. Well, that's what I've been talking about for a year and a half, strong borders. They're so surprised, oh, he having strong borders, well that's what I've been talking about to the press and to everybody else. One promise after another, after years of politicians lying to you to get elected. They lied to the American people in order to get elected. Some of the things I'm doing probably aren't popular but they're necessary for security and for other reasons.
And then coming to Washington and pursuing their own interests which is more important to many politicians. I'm here following through on what I pledged to do. That's all I'm doing. I put it out before the American people, got 306 electoral college votes. I wasn't supposed to get 222. They said there's no way to get 222, 230 is impossible.
270 which you need, that was laughable. We got 306 because people came out and voted like they've never [done] before, so that's the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan. In other words, the media's trying to attack our administration because they know we are following through on pledges that we made, and they're not happy about it for whatever reason.
And — but a lot of people are happy about it. In fact, I'll be in Melbourne, Florida, five o'clock on Saturday and I heard — just heard that the crowds are massive that want to be there. I turn on the TV, open the newspapers, and I see stories of chaos. Chaos. Yet, it is the exact opposite. This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine, despite the fact that I can't get my Cabinet approved.
And they're outstanding people like Sen. Dan Coats who's there, one of the most respected men of the Senate. He can't get approved [for director of National Intelligence]. How do you not approve him? He's been a colleague — highly respected. Brilliant guy, great guy, everybody knows it. We're waiting for approval. So we have a wonderful group of people that's working very hard, that's being very much misrepresented about, and we can't let that happen.
So, if the Democrats who have — all you have to do is look at where they are right now. The only thing they can do is delay because they screwed things up royally, believe me. Let me list to you some of the things that we've done in just a short period of time. I just got here. And I got here with no Cabinet. Again, each of these actions is a promise I made to the American people.
I'll go over just some of them, and we have a lot happening next week and in the weeks — in the weeks coming. We've withdrawn from the job-killing disaster known as Trans Pacific Partnership. We're going to make trade deals but we're going to have one-on-one deals, bilateral. We're going to have one-on-one deals.
We've directed the elimination of regulations that undermine manufacturing and call for expedited approval of the permits needed for America and American infrastructure and that means plant, equipment, roads, bridges, factories. People take 10, 15, 20 years to get disapproved for a factory. They go in for a permit, it's many, many years. And then at the end of the process — they spend tens of millions of dollars on nonsense and at the end of the process, they get rejected.
Now, they may be rejected with me, but it's going to be a quick rejection. Not going to take years. But mostly it's going to be an acceptance. We want plants built, and we want factories built, and we want the jobs. We don't want the jobs going to other countries. We've imposed a hiring freeze on nonessential federal workers. We've imposed a temporary moratorium on new federal regulations.
We've issued a game-changing new rule that says for each one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated. Makes sense. Nobody's ever seen regulations like we have. You go to other countries and you look at indexes they have, and you say “let me see your regulations,” and they're fraction, just a tiny fraction of what we have. And I want regulations because I want safety, I want environmental — all environmental situations to be taken properly care of. It's very important to me. But you don't need four or five or six regulations to take care of the same thing.
We've stood up for the men and women of law enforcement, directing federal agencies to ensure they are protected from crimes of violence. We've directed the creation of a task force for reducing violent crime in America, including the horrendous situation — take a look at Chicago and others, taking place right now in our inner cities. Horrible.
We've ordered the Department of Homeland Security and Justice to coordinate on a plan to destroy criminal cartels coming into the United States with drugs. We're becoming a drug infested nation. Drugs are becoming cheaper than candy bars. We are not going to let it happen any longer.
We've undertaken the most substantial border security measures in a generation to keep our nation and our tax dollars safe. And are now in the process of beginning to build a promised wall on the southern border, met with general — now [Homeland Security] Secretary [John] Kelly yesterday, and we're starting that process. And the wall is going to be a great wall, and it's going to be a wall negotiated by me. The price is going to come down just like it has on everything else I've negotiated for the government. And we are going to have a wall that works, not gonna have a wall like they have now which is either nonexistent or a joke.
We've ordered a crackdown on sanctuary cities that refuse to comply with federal law and that harbor criminal aliens, and we have ordered an end to the policy of catch and release on the border. No more release. No matter who you are, release. We have begun a nationwide effort to remove criminal aliens, gang members, drug dealers and others who pose a threat to public safety. We are saving American lives every single day.
The court system has not made it easy for us. And are even creating a new office in Homeland Security dedicated to the forgotten American victims of illegal immigrant violence, of which there are many. We have taken decisive action to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of our country. No parts [that] are necessary and constitutional actions were blocked by judges, in my opinion, incorrect, and unsafe ruling. Our administration is working night and day to keep you safe, including reporters safe. And is vigorously defending this lawful order.
I will not back down from defending our country. I got elected on defense of our country. I keep my campaign promises, and our citizens will be very happy when they see the result. They already are, I can tell you that. Extreme vetting will be put in place, and it already is in place in many places.
In fact, we had to go quicker than we thought because of the bad decision we received from a circuit [court] that has been overturned at a record number. I have heard 80 percent, I find that hard to believe, that is just a number I heard, that they are overturned 80 percent of the time. I think that circuit is — that circuit is in chaos and that circuit is frankly in turmoil. But we are appealing that, and we are going further.
We're issuing a new executive action next week that will comprehensively protect our country. So we'll be going along the one path and hopefully winning that, at the same time we will be issuing a new and very comprehensive order to protect our people. That will be done sometime next week, toward the beginning or middle at the latest part.
We have also taken steps to begin construction of the Keystone Pipeline and Dakota Access Pipeline. Thousands and thousands of jobs, and put new American measures in place to require American steel for American pipelines. In other words, they build a pipeline in this country, and we use the powers of government to make that pipeline happen, we want them to use American steel. And they are willing to do that, but nobody ever asked before I came along. Even this order was drawn, and they didn't say that. And I'm reading the order, I'm saying, why aren't we using American steel? And they said, that's a good idea, we put it in.
To drain the swamp of corruption in Washington, D.C., I've started by imposing a five-year lobbying ban on White House officials and a lifetime ban on lobbying for a foreign government.
We've begun preparing to repeal and replace Obamacare. Obamacare is a disaster, folks. It it's disaster. I know you can say, oh, Obamacare. I mean, they fill up our alleys with people that you wonder how they get there, but they are not the Republican people that our representatives are representing.
So we've begun preparing to repeal and replace Obamacare and are deep in the midst of negotiations on a very historic tax reform to bring our jobs back, to bring our jobs back to this country. Big league. It's already happening. But big league.
I've also worked to install a Cabinet over the delays and obstruction of Senate Democrats. You've seen what they've done over the last long number of years. That will be one of the great Cabinets ever assembled in American history.
You look at [Secretary of State] Rex Tillerson. He's out there negotiating right now. General Mattis I mentioned before, General Kelly. We have great, great people. Mick is with us now. We have great people.
Among their responsibilities will be ending the bleeding of jobs from our country and negotiating fair trade deals for our citizens.
Now look, fair trade. Not free, fair. If a country is taking advantage of us, not going to let that happen anymore. Every country takes advantage of us almost. I may be able to find a couple that don't. But for the most part, that would be a very tough job for me to do.
Jobs have already started to surge. Since my election, Ford announced it will abandon its plans to build a new factory in Mexico, and will instead invest $700 million in Michigan, creating many, many jobs.
Fiat Chrysler announced it will invest $1 billion in Ohio and Michigan, creating 2,000 new American jobs. They were with me a week ago. You know you were here.
General Motors, likewise, committed to invest billions of dollars in its American manufacturing operation, keeping many jobs here that were going to leave. And if I didn't get elected, believe me, they would have left. And these jobs and these things that I'm announcing would never have come here.
Intel just announced that it will move ahead with a new plant in Arizona that [they] probably were never going to move ahead with. And that will result in at least 10,000 American jobs.
Walmart announced it will create 10,000 jobs in the United States just this year because of our various plans and initiatives. There will be many, many more, many more, these are a few that we're naming.
Other countries have been taking advantage of us for decades — decades, and decades, and decades, folks. And we're not going to let that happen anymore. Not going to let it happen.
And one more thing, I have kept my promise to the American people by nominating a justice of the United States Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, who is from my list of 20, and who will be a true defender of our laws and our Constitution, highly respected, should get the votes from the Democrats. You may not see that. But he'll get there one way or the other. But he should get there the old-fashioned way, and he should get those votes.
This last month has represented an unprecedented degree of action on behalf of the great citizens of our country. Again, I say it. There has never been a presidency that's done so much in such a short period of time. And we have not even started the big work yet. That starts early next week.
Some very big things are going to be announced next week. So we are just getting started. We will be giving a speech, as I said, in Melbourne, Florida, at 5 p.m. I hope to see you there.
And with that, I just say, God bless America, and let's take some questions.
Mara, Mara, go ahead. You were cut off pretty violently at our last news conference.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
TRUMP: Mike Flynn is a fine person, and I asked for his resignation. He respectfully gave it. He is a man who there was a certain amount of information given to Vice President Pence, who is with us today. And I was not happy with the way that information was given.
He didn't have to do that, because what he did wasn't wrong — what he did in terms of the information he saw. What was wrong was the way that other people, including yourselves in this room, were given that information, because that was classified information that was given illegally. That's the real problem.
And, you know, you can talk all you want about Russia, which was all a, you know, fake news, fabricated deal, to try and make up for the loss of the Democrats and the press plays right into it. In fact, I saw a couple of the people that were supposedly involved with all of this — that they know nothing about it; they weren't in Russia; they never made a phone call to Russia; they never received a phone call.
It's all fake news. It's all fake news. The nice thing is, I see it starting to turn, where people are now looking at the illegal — I think it's very important — the illegal, giving out classified information. It was — and let me just tell you, it was given out like so much.
I'll give you an example. I called, as you know, Mexico. It was a very, very confidential, classified call. But I called Mexico. And in calling Mexico, I figured, oh, well that's — I spoke to the president of Mexico; I had a good call. All of a sudden, it's out there for the world to see. It's supposed to be secret. It's supposed to be either confidential or classified, in that case.
Same thing with Australia. All of a sudden, people are finding out exactly what took place. The same thing happened with respect to General Flynn. Everybody saw this. And I'm saying — the first thing I thought of when I heard about it is: How does the press get this information that's classified? How do they do it?
You know why? Because it's an illegal process, and the press should be ashamed of themselves. But more importantly, the people that gave out the information to the press should be ashamed of themselves, really ashamed.
Yes, go ahead.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
TRUMP: Because when I looked at the information, I said, “I don't think he did anything wrong; if anything, he did something right.” He was coming into office. He looked at the information. He said, “Huh, that's fine.” That's what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to — he didn't just call Russia. He called and spoke to both ways, I think there were 30-some-odd countries. He's doing the job.
You know, he was doing his job. The thing is, he didn't tell our vice president properly, and then he said he didn't remember. So either way, it wasn't very satisfactory to me. And I have somebody that I think will be outstanding for the position. And that also helps, I think, in the making of my decision.
But he didn't tell the vice president of the United States the facts. And then he didn't remember. And that just wasn't acceptable to me.
Yes?
QUESTION: (inaudible) clarification here. During your campaign, did anyone from your team (inaudible) Russian government or Russian intelligence? And if so, what was the nature of those conversations (inaudible)?
TRUMP: The failing New York Times wrote a big, long front-page story yesterday. And it was very much discredited, as you know. It was — it's a joke. And the people mentioned in the story, I notice they were on television today saying they never even spoke to Russia. They weren't even a part, really — I mean, they were such a minor part. They — I hadn't spoken to them.
I think the one person — I don't think I've ever spoken to him. I don't think I've ever met him. And he actually said he was a very low-level member of, I think, a committee for a short period of time. I don't think I ever met him. Now, it's possible that I walked into a room, and he was sitting there, but I don't think I ever met him. I didn't talk to him ever. And he thought it was a joke.
The other person said he never spoke to Russia; never received a call. Look at his phone records, et cetera, et cetera. And the other person, people knew that he represented various countries, but I don't think he represented Russia, but knew that he represented various countries. That's what he does. I mean, people know that.
That's Mr. [Paul] Manafort, who's — by the way, who's by the way a respected man. He's a respected man. But I think he represented the Ukraine or Ukraine government or somebody, but everybody — people knew that. Everybody knew that.
So, these people — and he said that he has absolutely nothing to do and never has with Russia. And he said that very forcefully. I saw his statement. He said it very forcefully. Most of the papers don't print it because that's not good for their stories.
So the three people that they talked about all totally deny it. And I can tell you, speaking for myself, I own nothing in Russia. I have no loans in Russia. I don't have any deals in Russia. President [Vladimir] Putin called me up very nicely to congratulate me on the win of the election.
He then, called me up extremely nicely to congratulate me on the inauguration, which was terrific. But so did many other leaders, almost all other leaders from almost all of the countries. So that's the extent.
Russia is fake news. Russia — this is fake news put out by the media. The real news is the fact that people, probably from the Obama administration because they're there, because we have our new people going in place, right now.
As you know, Mike Pompeo has — has now taken control of the CIA, James Comey at FBI, Dan Coats is waiting to be approved, I mean he is a senator and a highly respected one, and he's still waiting to be approved. But our new people are going in.
And just while you're at it, because you mentioned this, Wall Street Journal did a story today that was almost as disgraceful as the failing New York Times' story, yesterday. And it talked about — these are front page.
So director of national intelligence just put out, acting a statement, any suggestion that the United States intelligence community, this was just given to us, is withholding information and not providing the best possible intelligence to the president and his national security team is not true.
So they took this front page story out of the Wall Street Journal top, and they just wrote the story that is not true. And I'll tell you something, I'll be honest, because I sort of enjoy this back and forth that I guess I have all my life but I've never seen more dishonest media than frankly, the political media. I thought the financial media was much better, much more honest.
But I will say that, I never get phone calls from the media. How did they write a story like that in the Wall Street Journal without asking me or how did they write a story in the New York Times, put it on front page?
That was like the story they wrote about the women and me, front page, big massive story. And it was nasty and then they called, they said we never said that, we like Mr. Trump. They called up my office, we like Mr. Trump, we never said that.
And it was totally — they totally misrepresented those very wonderful women, I have to tell you, totally misrepresented. I said give us the retraction. They never gave us a retraction and frankly, I then went on to other things.
Okay, go ahead.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) said today that you have big intellectual margins (inaudible) 300 or more, or 350 electoral votes. President Obama about 365 (OFF-MIKE).
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Yeah.
QUESTION: Obama (OFF-MIKE) 426 on (OFF-MIKE). So why should Americans …
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: … I'm skipping that information, I don't know, I was just given, we had a very, very big margin.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) why should Americans trust you (OFF-MIKE) the information (OFF-MIKE)?
TRUMP: Well, I don't know, I was given that information. I was given — I actually, I've seen that information around. But it was a very substantial victory, do you agree with that? Okay, thank you, that's …
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Go ahead, sir, yes?
QUESTION: Can you tell us in determining that Lieutenant General Flynn did — whether there was no wrongdoing in your mind, what evidence was weighed? Did you ask for transcripts of these telephone intercepts with Russian officials, particularly the [Russian] Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, who he was communicating with?
What — what evidence did you weigh to determine that there was no wrongdoing? Further to that, sir, you said on a couple of occasions this morning, you are going to aggressively pursue the source of these leaks.
TRUMP: We are.
QUESTION: Can we ask what you're going to do and also, we've heard about a — a review of the intelligence community headed up by Steven Feinberg, what can you tell us about that?
TRUMP: Well, first of all about that, we now have Dan Coats, hopefully soon, Mike Pompeo and James Comey, and they're in position, so I hope that we'll be able to straighten that out without using anybody else.
The gentleman you mentioned is a very talented man, very successful man, and he's offered his services, and you know, it's something we may take advantage of. But I don't think we will need that at all because of the fact that you know, I think that we are gonna be able to straighten it out very easily on its own.
As far as the general's concerned, when I first heard about it, I said huh, that doesn't sound wrong. My counsel came, Don McGahn, White House Counsel, and he told me, and I asked him, he can speak very well for himself. He said he doesn't think anything is wrong, you know, really didn't think.
It was really, what happened after that, but he didn't think anything was done wrong. I didn't either because I waited a period of time, and I started to think about it, I said “well I don't see" -- to me, he was doing the job.
The information was provided by — who I don't know, Sally Yates. And I was a little surprised because I said “doesn't sound like he did anything wrong there.” But he did something wrong with respect to the vice president, and I thought that was not acceptable. As far as — as far as the actual making the call, fact I've watched various programs, and I've read various articles where he was just doing his job.
That was very normal. You know, first everybody got excited because they thought he did something wrong. After they thought about it, it turned out he was just doing his job. So — and I do. And by the way, with all of that being said, I do think he's a fine man.
QUESTION: Sir, if I could, on the leaks — on the leaks, sir …
TRUMP: … Go ahead. Finish off then I'll get you.
QUESTION: I'm sorry. What will you do on the leaks? You've said twice today …
TRUMP: … Yes, we're looking at them very — very, very serious. I've gone to all of the folks in charge of the various agencies, and we're — I've actually called the Justice Department to look into the leaks. Those are criminal leaks. They're put out by people either in agencies — I think you'll see it stopping because now we have our people in. You know, again, we don't have our people in because we can't get them approved by the Senate.
We just had Jeff Sessions approved. In Justice, as an example. So, we are looking into that very seriously. It's a criminal act. You know what I say, when I — when I was called out on Mexico, I was shocked because all this equipment, all this incredible phone equipment — when I was called out on Mexico, I was — honestly, I was really, really surprised.
But I said 'you know, it doesn't make sense. That won't happen,' but that wasn't that important a call, it was fine, I could show it to the world, and he could show it to the world, the president who's a very fine man, by the way. Same thing with Australia. I said “that's terrible that it was leaked,” but it wasn't that important. But then I said to myself “what happens when I'm dealing with the problem of North Korea?”
What happens when I'm dealing with the problems in the Middle East? Are you folks going to be reporting all of that very, very confidential information, very important, very — you know, I mean at the highest level? Are you going to be reporting about that, too? So, I don't want classified information getting out to the public, and in a way that was almost a test.
So I'm dealing with Mexico, I'm dealing with Argentina, we were dealing on this case with Mike Flynn. All this information gets put into The Washington Post and gets put into the New York Times, and I'm saying 'what's going to happen when I'm dealing on the Middle East? What's going to happen when I'm dealing with really, really important subjects like North Korea?'
We got to stop it. That's why it's a criminal penalty.
QUESTION: I just want to get you to clarify this very important point. Can you say definitively that nobody on your campaign had any contacts with the Russians during the campaign? And on the leaks, is it fake news or are these real leaks?
TRUMP: Well the leaks are real. You're the one that wrote about them and reported them, I mean the leaks are real. You know what they said, you saw it, and the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake. So one thing that I felt it was very important to do — and I hope we can correct it. Because there's nobody I have more respect for — well, maybe a little bit but the reporters, good reporters.
It's very important to me and especially in this position. It's very important. I don't mind bad stories. I can handle a bad story better than anybody as long as it's true and, you know, over a course of time, I'll make mistakes, and you'll write badly and I'm okay with that. But I'm not okay when it is fake. I mean, I watch CNN, it's so much anger and hatred and just the hatred.
I don't watch it any more because it's very good — he's saying no. It's okay, Jim. It's okay, Jim, you'll have your chance. But I watch others, too. You're not the only one so don't feel badly. But I think it should be straight. I think it should be — I think it would be frankly more interesting. I know how good everybody's ratings are right now but I think that actually — I think that'd actually be better.
People — I mean, you have a lower approval rate than Congress. I think that's right. I don't know, Peter, is that one, right? Because you know I think they have lower — I heard lower than Congress. But honestly, the public would appreciate it, I'd appreciate it — again, I don't mind bad stories when it's true, but we have an administration where the Democrats are making it very difficult.
I think we're setting a record or close to a record in the time of approval of a Cabinet. I mean, the numbers are crazy. When I'm looking, some of them had them approved immediately.
I'm going forever, and I still have a lot of people that we're waiting for. And that's all they're doing, is delaying. And you look at [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer and the mess that he's got over there, and they have nothing going. The only thing they can do is delay. And, you know, I think that they'd be better served by, you know, approving and making sure that they're happy, and everybody's good.
And sometimes — I mean, I know President [Barack] Obama lost three or four, and you lose them on the way, and that's okay. That's fine. But I think it would — I think they would be much better served, John, if they just went through the process quickly. This is pure delay tactics.
And they say it, and everybody understands it. Yeah, go ahead, Jimmy.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
TRUMP: Well, I had nothing to do with it. I have nothing to do with Russia. I told you, I have no deals there, I have no anything. Now, when WikiLeaks, which I had nothing to do with, comes out and happens to give, they're not giving classified information. They're giving stuff — what was said at an office about Hillary [Clinton] cheating on the debates.
Which, by the way, nobody mentions. Nobody mentions that Hillary received the questions to the debates. Can you imagine — seriously — can you imagine if I received the questions? It would be the electric chair. Okay, he should be put in the electric — you would even call for the reinstitution of the death penalty, okay. Maybe not you, John. Yes? We'll do you next, Jim, I do you next.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) clarify —
TRUMP: Yes, yes, sure
QUESTION: Did you direct Mike Flynn to discuss sanctions with the Russian ambassador —
TRUMP: No, I didn't.
QUESTION: — prior to your — TRUMP: No, I didn't.
QUESTION: — inauguration.
TRUMP: No, I didn't.
QUESTION: And then fired him —
TRUMP: Excuse me.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
TRUMP: No, I fired him because of what he said to Mike Pence. Very simple. Mike was doing his job. He was calling countries and his counterparts. So, it certainly would have been okay with me if he did it. I would have directed him to do it if I thought he wasn't doing it.
I didn't direct him, but I would have directed him because that's his job. And it came out that way — and in all fairness, I watched Dr. Charles Krauthammer the other night say he was doing his job, and I agreed with him. And since then, I've watched many other people say that.
No, I didn't direct him, but I would have directed him if he didn't do it. Okay? Jim?
QUESTION: Thank you very much, and just for the record, we don't hate you. I don't hate you.
TRUMP: Okay.
QUESTION: So, pass that along —
TRUMP: Ask — ask Jeff Zucker how he got his job. Okay?
QUESTION: If I may follow up on some of the questions that have taken place so far here, sir —
TRUMP: Well, that's — well, you know, we do have other people. You do have other people, and your ratings aren't as good as some of the other people that are waiting.
QUESTION: It's pretty good right now, actually.
TRUMP: Okay, go ahead, John.
QUESTION: If I may ask, sir, you said earlier that WikiLeaks was revealing information about the Hillary Clinton campaign during the election cycle. You welcomed that. At one time —
TRUMP: I was okay with it.
QUESTION: -- you said — you said that you loved WikiLeaks. At another campaign news conference you called on the Russians to find the missing 30,000 emails. I'm wondering, sir, if you —
TRUMP: Well, she was actually missing 33 and then that got extended with a pile after that.
QUESTION: Then …, your … numbers … were off, too.
TRUMP: No — no, but I did say 30. But it was actually higher than that.
QUESTION: If — if I may ask you, sir, it — it sounds as though you do not have much credibility here when it comes to leaking if that is something that you encouraged during the campaign —
TRUMP: Okay, fair question. Ready?
QUESTION: Well, if I may ask you that —
TRUMP: No — no, but let me do one at a time.
QUESTION: If I may as a follow up?
TRUMP: Do you mind?
QUESTION: Yes, sir.
TRUMP: All right. So, in one case, you're talking about highly classified information. In the other case, you're talking about John Podesta saying bad things about the boss. I will say this, if John Podesta said that about me, and he was working for me, I would have fired him so fast, your head would have spun.
He said terrible things about her. But it wasn't classified information. But in one case, you're talking about classified — regardless, if you look at the RNC, we had a very strong — at my suggestion — and I give Reince [Preibus] great credit for this — at my suggestion, because I know something about this world, I said I want a very strong defensive mechanism.
I don't want to be hacked. And we did that. And you have seen that they tried to hack us, and they failed. The DNC did not do that. And if they did it, they could not have been hacked. But they were hacked, and terrible things came in. And, you know, the only thing that I do think is unfair is some of the things were so — they were — when I heard some of those things I picked up the papers the next morning and said, oh, this is going to be front page, it wasn't even in the papers.
Again, if I had that happen to me, it would be the biggest story in the history of publishing or the head of newspapers. I would have been headline in every newspaper. I mean, think of it. They gave her the questions to a debate, and she — and she should have reported herself.
Why did Hillary Clinton announce that, “I'm sorry, but I have been given the questions to a debate or a town hall, and I feel that it's inappropriate, and I want to turn in CNN for not doing a good job.”
QUESTION: And if I may follow up on that, just something that Jonathan Karl was asking you about. You said that the leaks are real, but the news is fake. I guess I don't understand. It seems that there's a disconnect there. If the information coming from those leaks is real, then how can the stories be fake?
TRUMP: The reporting is fake. Look, look …
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: You know what it is? Here's the thing. The public isn't — you know, they read newspapers, they see television, they watch. They don't know if it's true or false because they're not involved. I'm involved. I've been involved with this stuff all my life. But I'm involved. So I know when you're telling the truth or when you're not. I just see many, many untruthful things.
And I'll tell you what else I see. I see tone. You know the word “tone.” The tone is such hatred. I'm really not a bad person, by the way. No, but the tone is such — I do get good ratings, you have to admit that — the tone is such hatred.
I watched this morning a couple of the networks. And I have to say, Fox & Friends in the morning, they're very honorable people. They're very — not because they're good, because they hit me also when I do something wrong. But they have the most honest morning show. That's all I can say. It's the most honest.
But the tone, Jim. If you look — the hatred. The, I mean, sometimes — sometimes somebody gets …
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Well, you look at your show that goes on at 10 o'clock in the evening. You just take a look at that show. That is a constant hit. The panel is almost always exclusive anti-Trump. The good news is he doesn't have good ratings. But the panel is almost exclusive anti-Trump. And the hatred and venom coming from his mouth; the hatred coming from other people on your network.
Now, I will say this. I watch it. I see it. I'm amazed by it. And I just think you'd be a lot better off, I honestly do. The public gets it, you know. Look, when I go to rallies, they turn around, they start screaming at CNN. They want to throw their placards at CNN. You know.
I — I think you would do much better by being different. But you just take a look. Take a look at some of your shows in the morning and the evening. If a guest comes out and says something positive about me, it's — it's brutal.
Now, they'll take this news conference — I'm actually having a very good time, okay? But they'll take this news conference — don't forget, that's the way I won. Remember, I used |
be able to continue to do this. And it’s not appropriate for public funding to be used to indoctrinate students in one direction.”
Loesch pressed on: “I just worry whether or not the pendulum would swing the other way and we would see sort of like monitoring of political speech for conservatives.”
“I think we would have to put in very strict guidelines for the way that that was done,” Carson explained. “And that’s why I used the word ‘extreme.’ I didn’t just say ‘political bias,’ I said ‘extreme political biases.’”CHICAGO -- We're just one game into the Western Conference finals, but the more you are around both the Chicago Blackhawks and the Los Angeles Kings, the more you realize this really is a clash of the titans.
It is not just based on the teams' performances this season -- although that in and of itself would qualify both in "titan" class -- but historically what they have achieved.
Here's a look at seven reasons this series has serious juice:
1. Pain means gain
Every spring it seems there's a story of one player (or more) continuing to soldier on through excruciating pain and/or significant injury. Remember when Blackhawks defenseman Duncan Keith showed up for the 2010 Stanley Cup finals having eaten a handful of his own teeth in the previous series? Listening Monday morning to Chicago defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson speak for the first time since taking a puck to the throat in Game 2 against Minnesota, it reaffirmed that the sport simply breeds a different type of athlete. Hjalmarsson left the ice briefly but continued to play in the game. The only acknowledgment of his injury was that doctors told him to rest his vocal cords for two weeks and that he shouldn't talk, "unless it makes you money," Hjalmarsson said. The hardworking defenseman didn't miss a game and, in fact, continues to play significant minutes with partner Johnny Oduya -- the pair are tasked with shutting down the Kings' top unit of Marian Gaborik, Anze Kopitar and Dustin Brown, who were held off the score sheet in Sunday's 3-1 Chicago victory.
"Yeah, it was pretty tough in the beginning," Hjalmarsson told reporters Monday. "I'm a guy that usually talks a lot on the ice, especially with my D partner, screaming at him and screaming at my teammates sometimes, too. I think for some of the forwards, they were pretty happy with me not being able to talk for some time."
Teammate Brandon Saad quipped later that he only hears Hjalmarsson screaming in Swedish on the ice, so he's not sure if there was much missed communication when Hjalmarsson was silenced the past couple of weeks.
Easy to have a couple of chuckles about it now, but at the time it was scary.
"It was tough to breathe there for a couple minutes," said Hjalmarsson, who was a part of Sweden's silver-medal effort in Sochi, Russia, where he also played with Oduya as his defense partner. "I was just glad that I recovered quickly and once I figured out that I'm able to breathe, it was a big relief. Yeah, I guess I was pretty lucky and I'm just glad to be able to talk again and can't wait to get rid of that neck guard that I'm still wearing."
2. Battle of the big lines
Speaking of the Kings' top line, one of the early interesting dynamics will be the battle royale between the Kopitar line and the Blackhawks' talented trio of captain Jonathan Toews, Marian Hossa and Bryan Bickell. Hossa is once again quietly enjoying a stellar postseason and said that, while producing offense is nice, there is also a great challenge in disrupting opposing teams' top players.
"Scoring goals, it's great. Getting points, great. But getting that challenge when you've got top players, you can steal the puck from them, that's kind of a challenge for me and I enjoy to do it," Hossa said. "And obviously you've got games when you're on top of your game. There's some games where they're a little bit better. You feel like you can do the little things to help your team. That's a great challenge for me and our line."
Hossa had two assists in Game 1 and has 13 points in 13 postseason games this spring, tops among all Blackhawks.
3. Smooth as Selke
Synthesize the battle between the top lines even further and what you have is a terrific test of will between two of the game's most complete players in Kopitar and Toews. The Chicago captain is the defending Frank J. Selke Trophy winner as the game's best two-way forward and was the runner-up for the award in 2011. Kopitar, meanwhile, is a finalist for the award this year (as is Toews) and currently leads all playoff performers with 19 points. Kings head coach Darryl Sutter figures guys such as Toews and Kopitar are just meant to play at this level.
"If you're just talking about those two kids, they've both played on big stages," Sutter said. "Probably I'm going to say the process that those guys go through their whole lives, they are dominant players at their age group their whole way up; whether they're 12, 14, 16, all the way up they are dominant players, which means that they're always ready for this stage when they get there.
"I think at the end of the day, those guys are special players because there's something special there."
4. Gaborik is finding his range
The battle of the top lines has the potential to tip the scales in the series. That it should come to this is a bit of a surprise to us. We'll be the first to admit we weren't at all sure that Gaborik, tied for second in the playoffs with 15 points and the goal-scoring leader with nine, would be a good fit in Los Angeles given his lack of recent playoff productivity and lack of durability. (OK, maybe Kings fans might have been the first to point that out, but why quibble.) But his teammates have universally praised Gaborik's ability to fit in seamlessly with their tight-knit group.
"I believe Marian's skill set speaks for itself on the ice," explained winger Justin Williams, who has at times played with Gaborik and Kopitar. "But fitting in with a hockey team isn't just going out there and playing the game. To be part of a team, you want to be part of a team on the ice and off the ice.
"Marian's fit in quite easily, whereas, looking at his stats, he could be kind of a pompous jerk, but he's really a nice guy," joked Williams, who happened to be sitting next to Gaborik when he was asked about his new teammate. "He's fit in real nicely with us and I think that's why he's had a lot of success on the ice as well because everybody's taken to him."
Gaborik said one of the things that helped was a road trip to Canada shortly after the deal that helped accelerate the transition to a new team. There's an interesting parallel between what Gaborik has accomplished -- having been acquired from Columbus at the trade deadline this season -- and teammate Jeff Carter, who was also dealt from Columbus to the Kings at the 2012 trade deadline and was a key part of the Kings' run to the Cup that spring.
"It is an easy group to come into," Carter said. "There's great guys in this room. They welcome you with open arms. That's a big thing when you're coming to a new team, especially late in the year. You need to fit into that room real quick. With a guy like [Gaborik], he's got all the skill in the world and you put him with a guy like [Kopitar] and the on-ice stuff comes pretty quick. The main thing is just getting comfortable with yourself in the room."
5. Carter's line is cranking
For the most part, Sutter has entrusted the big center Carter with helping two dynamic young wingers in Tyler Toffoli, who had the Kings' lone goal in Game 1 Sunday, and Tanner Pearson. Both have been solid contributors this spring, even though Carter might suddenly feel like the old man among the group at just 29 years of age.
"I'm sure I am, but you'll have to ask them," Carter said. "It goes quick when you're in this league. It seems like yesterday that I was a young guy just going out there and wheeling around and playing hockey and having fun.
"You can definitely see that in them. When they get the puck, they create chances and they put the puck in the net. Tyler scores last night and you see them just laughing at each other. They have a blast out there and it is a lot of fun."
Carter has 12 points this spring, including three power-play goals.
Whether Corey Crawford can win the battle of the goalies is a juicy storyline in the series. Bill Smith/Getty Images
6. D-men, goalies fighting it out
If the battle of the top lines isn't compelling enough, how about a battle between two Canadian Olympians and Norris Trophy-worthy defenders in Drew Doughty and Duncan Keith? Keith's hard, deflected bouncing shot ultimately turned out to be the winner in Game 1. Meanwhile, Doughty led all players in Game 1 with 26:20 in ice time and was likewise the leader for both teams with 3:18 in power-play time.
Go one more step, and the battle lines have also been clearly drawn between two top netminders: Jonathan Quick, who has already earned the accolades and established himself as one of the best money goalies in the world, and Corey Crawford, who continues to work to emerge from the shadows cast by guys such as Quick. Crawford was especially strong during the second period of Game 1's 3-1 victory, stopping 16 of 17 shots.
"I think he's so strong mentally, he's become one of the top goalies in the league," Hossa said. "He was not just good, but he was unbelievable last year in the playoffs. This year I think he's even better than last year. That's just great for our team. We try to help him. He makes really big saves for us. Somebody chanting his name in different buildings, seems like it doesn't bother him at all."
7. Dynasties?
There is a tremendous sense of ease around both teams in this series, a sense of self and, of course, a sense of purpose. That's what happens when you have a Kings team now in its third straight Western Conference finals and a team that won its first Stanley Cup in 2012 facing a Blackhawks team looking to become the first team since the 1997-98 Detroit Red Wings to repeat as champions. Since 2009 Chicago has won two Stanley Cups and appeared in another West finals.
"I think you have to adjust to the way the game is changing and playing. I think you have to adjust to different lineups as you go forward," Kings coach Sutter said in explaining the ability of these two franchises to succeed in the NHL salary-cap world.
"I think Chicago, they won it last year. If you look at the last time they won it, the massive overhaul on their team, probably other than their young stars. If you look at them, you still have to be able to do that. You have to be able to adjust to the game, adjust to the rules, adjust to the style.
"I think that's a big reason why we're both in the conference finals again. Whether we can adjust enough to beat the Stanley Cup champions, I don't know."
Both Sutter and his counterpart, Joel Quenneville of Chicago, played in the league when the word "dynasty" was real and referred to the Montreal Canadiens, New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers. Now, the Blackhawks and Kings have a chance to make that moniker apply in an era when it wasn't supposed to be possible.
"Well, it's been a real nice situation here," Quenneville said. "I think we're very excited. We look back to 2010, we had a real young team. The growth of these young players has been the core of our team since then. They're competitive guys. Our team has been built around these guys. Our success is attributed to their competitiveness, their consistency, their will to be as good as they can be on a regular basis.
"I think finding a way to win is what it's all about in today's game. Our guys are really diligent of doing the little things particularly that some nights give you an edge."In 2011, then-Dolphins receiver Brandon Marshall announced he was diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder. Since then, he has been an advocate for mental health, and has tried to spread awareness and get rid of the stigma attached to it. In his continuing efforts to do that, he and his wife launched Project 375.
Helping him in that project is Texans running back Arian Foster, who recently accepted a role in the project's Founder's Circle. Marshall describes the group as "high-profile individuals across entertainment, sports, politics and business willing to stand up, speak out, and start a conversation that encourages others to recognize symptoms and seek help."
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Marshall and Foster got the ball rolling on that conversation in an interview that was uploaded Tuesday. In the video, Foster gets emotional talking about his past mistakes and his sister, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and other mental health topics.
"I've been through a lot in my life," Foster said. "I went through a lot off the field, finding myself. Trying to live up to the expectations of what I thought a man was. What I thought a professional athlete was, what I thought a son was, what I thought a father was. You know, a lot of the times we are too egotistical to ask for help from anybody."
He added that people are often scared to seek help when they're suffering.
"Whatever's on your heart, don't be afraid to talk about it. Don't be afraid to open up about it. Because odds are, somebody out there is going through it, just like you, and you can go get help. And that's what I did," he said. "I finally dropped my ego and I said, 'Man, I need help.' Because emotionally, I was down."
Foster would later delve into what was causing him pain.
"I grew up in a domestically violent household, didn't have food, just the whole struggle you've seen your whole life as well. All of that, and then all of a sudden, bam, you're a multimillion dollar athlete. You have everybody coming at you that you have no idea what their intentions are. All of a sudden you're supposed to know how to manage millions of dollars. You're supposed to know about the stock market," he said. "You're the bread-winner in your family and it's just so much pressure and nobody tells you how to deal with it because they put you on this pedestal, and you're not. You're just like them, you're just really good at what you do.
"It had just been building up to the point where I was self-medicating. I was drinking heavily. I'm not proud of it, but it was something that helped me because it was numbing. But what I found out was the emotions that you numb, you can't be selective with. So everything that you numb, that you try to numb, you're also numbing everything good. So I was blocking out a lot of love. I was blocking out a lot of the person I wanted to be and that I know that I am. It just got to a point where I threw my hands in the air and was like, 'This is going to kill me.'"
He added that getting help was the "best decision I ever made."
Marshall asked Foster about his "rock bottom" moment, and he said it was the moment his wife told him they were going to get a divorce. He admitted he was "not the best husband" and his emotions got so out of control that he didn't know what to do. The injuries he suffered this season also added to his struggles.
Foster was most emotional when speaking about his sister. Marshall asked him, "If you could grant her one wish, what would it be?"
"For all my people, and especially her because of all the things she's going through," he said, fighting back tears. "I just really want her to find her happiness."
The entire video is 30 minutes in length and is worth watching if you get the time. You can view it below.Reading Hu Jintao’s mind
Hu Jintao is simultaneously President of China, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, and chairman of China’s Central Military Commission. Last year Newsweek labeled him the “second most powerful man in the world,” and he has undoubtedly watched the events of the past few years with keen interest and no small amount of satisfaction. Here’s what I imagine he’s thinking these days…
“We are realists here in the People’s Republic, and in a sense we have been for centuries. Even during the most radical phases of our history — such as the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution — our foreign policy was prudent and keenly attuned to the balance of power.
The United States has had the world’s largest economy for more than a century, and despite some self-inflicted wounds, it is still the world’s most powerful country. We recognize this fact, and our current strategy of “peaceful rise” reflects what we have learned by studying the U.S. experience. America became a great world power by remaining aloof from the quarrels of the other major powers and letting them destroy each other in ruinous wars, while it built its own economic strength and gradually established itself as the dominant power in its own region. When it did fight wars, it picked weak and easily defeated opponents or it waited until the last minute to get involved in wars with other great powers. The United States was the last major power to enter both World War I and World War II, and it made sure that other states bore the heaviest burdens during the fighting. As a result, both wars ended with the United States in the strongest position.
Our strategy of “peaceful rise” reflects a similar set of calculations. We want to stay out of pointless quarrels with others and avoid costly military commitments, at least until our economic strength equals that of America. For this reason, we are happy to let the United States take the lead in troubled regions like the Middle East or Central Asia. Why shouldn’t we want them to squander their strength trying to fix intractable global problems, while we retain good relations with all parties? It just makes sense.
I do miss President George W. Bush, of course. We had good relations with the United States while he was president, and he even came to visit us during our Olympics. I probably should have thanked him personally for all the foolish things he did, like letting Bin Laden and the Taliban slip through his fingers in Afghanistan and then invading Iraq in 2003. He did cultivate closer ties with India and that development didn’t make me happy, but on the whole, his threats and bluster frightened many U.S. allies and made U.S. relations with states like Iran even worse than they were before. Needless to say, these policies created valuable opportunities for China, and we’ve been quick to take advantage of them. While America was distracted and wasting hundreds of billions occupying hostile countries — we were establishing profitable commercial ties in the oil-rich Persian Gulf and quietly expanding our influence in our own Asian backyard.
President Bush also helped us by presiding over scandals such as Abu Ghraib, Hurricane Katrina, and the treatment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo. To be frank, I never understood why some Americans are so obsessed with protecting “rights.” In fact, I was pleased to discover that former Vice President Cheney agrees with me; he understands how a strong executive deals with potential troublemakers! I sometimes think he’d make a good Vice President here.
Anyway, the good news for us is that these events made the United States look both incompetent and hypocritical and made it harder for Washington to criticize my own domestic policies. I owe former president Bush a real debt of gratitude; I should probably call him and say thanks.
I confess that I wanted John McCain to win the 2008 election, because I thought he would keep America on the same failed course. And having someone like Governor Palin as Vice President was almost too much to hope for. So naturally I was worried when Barack Obama got elected; he seemed smart and level-headed and is obviously a gifted politician. He’s much more charismatic than Bush and to be frank, he’s a lot more charismatic than I am. So I asked myself: Would he be able reverse America’s recent missteps and restore its international reputation? And at first, it seemed like he might do just that.
But now I’m not so concerned. President Obama may have good instincts and intentions, but his aides don’t seem to be giving him very good advice. He is going to get most U.S. troops out of Iraq (a smart move for him, but not so good for me) but he’s getting a lot of pressure to put more troops and money into Afghanistan. I hope he does, because that will leave the United States with fewer resources to devote to containing China. Moreover, President Obama doesn’t seem to be making any headway with Iran or the Middle East peace process, and failure there will make that big speech in Cairo look rather silly. Obama also wants China and India and other developing countries to make big concessions on greenhouse gas emissions, but he’s having trouble getting his own Congress to adopt a serious program and I doubt we’ll face much genuine pressure at the upcoming summit in Copenhagen. That’s a relief.
And I can’t help smiling to myself whenever I think about America’s domestic political system. Americans like to lecture China about the importance of “free speech” and other quaint Western concepts, but at least I don’t have to deal with madmen spouting nonsense on television and radio and special interest groups making it impossible to enact reforms that the nation as a whole badly needs. I may have some minor problems in Xinjiang, but I hear states like California are rapidly becoming ungovernable and that the universities we used to envy are losing their edge. I even hear that Harvard isn’t so rich anymore. This makes me smile too, because a well-educated population is the key to future power and a society that is content to be ignorant cannot remain a world power for long.
Meanwhile, my economy is beginning to grow rapidly again, while the United States piles up debt and lots of people there are looking for work. I do like that nice young Treasury Secretary; he understands that he needs my help to keep the world economy afloat and he isn’t going to try to browbeat us very much. The silly new tariff on imported tires is annoying and we will of course issue a loud protest, but even that reactionary magazine The Economist said it was “bad politics, bad economics, bad diplomacy, and hurts America.”
So from where I sit, the view looks pretty good. America likes to say that it is the “leader of the free world” and I’m happy to let them have that title — for now — provided they stay focused on other issues and let China’s peaceful rise continue. The more “global leadership” they insist upon taking, the more resources they will expend, the faster they will decline, and the sooner we will be in a position to supplant them.
I do have one lingering concern, however. America’s leaders may come to their senses, and go back to the unsentimental realism that guided their rise to greatness in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They might discover what Sun Tzu taught — “There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare” — and stop insisting on bearing all the world’s burdens themselves. But then I remember what their foreign policy “debate” is like, and I recall that both Democrats and Republicans seem equally eager to interfere all over the world, and suddenly that danger doesn’t seem very great. In fact, the future looks bright.”
MAYELA LOPEZ/AFP/Getty ImagesI had a discussion that made me ask a disconcerting question: how will I be viewed after I die? I like to think of myself as someone who is ethical, productive and essentially decent. But perhaps I won’t always be perceived that way. Perhaps none of us will.
No matter how benevolent the intention, what we assume is good, right or acceptable in society may change. From slavery to sexism, there’s plenty we find distasteful about the past. Yet while each generation congratulates itself for moving on from the darker days of its parents and ancestors, that can be a kind of myopia.
I was swapping ideas about this with Tom Standage, author and digital editor of The Economist. Our starting point was those popular television shows from the 1970s that contained views or language so outmoded they probably couldn’t be aired today. But, as he put it to me: “how easy it is to be self-congratulatory about how much less prejudiced we are than previous generations”. This form of hindsight can be dangerously smug. It can become both a way of praising ourselves for progress rather than looking for it to continue, and of distracting ourselves from uncomfortable aspects of the present.
Far more interesting, we felt, is this question: how will our generation be looked back on? What will our own descendants deplore about us that we take for granted?
Some possibilities are more obvious than others. Eating meat and factory farming may move towards the margins of acceptability, given the intensive use of resources and cruelty they represent. Another kind of profligacy the future might regret is the over-prescription of antibiotics. In terms of prejudice, meanwhile, our descendants may – hopefully – wonder how still-marginalised groups like transgender people ever faced intolerance; let alone how some parts of the world continued to criminalise homosexuality, reject equal rights for women, or hold some groups of workers in modern slavery.
All this, of course, is really about what we ought to deal with right now; about those wishes we desperately hope to see fulfilled, and the kind of world we hope to leave behind. What, I wondered, would some of today’s most influential thinkers make of my question?
Since our handling of the environment is perhaps the most vital legacy we’ll leave our children, I made my first approach to the founder of one of the most influential of all modern environmental ideas: James Lovelock, the British scientist behind Gaia theory. He seemed an appropriate first port of call as his Gaia theory proposes that the Earth itself can be seen as a self-regulating system, and that the changes brought by humanity will have profound consequences for its ability to sustain life and civilisation as we know it.
Born in 1919, Lovelock has already lived through more profound global transformations in social norms than most of us will ever experience. In answering my question, however, he took a personal view, considering how his own children might look back on the present in years to come. “With four children, nine grandchildren and at the latest count seven great grandchildren,” he explained, “I feel fairly qualified to answer.”
His actual living descendants, he says, appear to be less angry about the present than might be expected. “They seem to take the present era for granted and only deplore specifics, such as tribal wars.” It’s the generation still unborn that will be maddened by the consequences of today’s environmental profligacy.
“Were I still reproducing,” Lovelock told me, “I suppose my children born recently would in a decade or so begin to deplore the failure of our governments (irrespective of political colour) to keep [the UK] habitable. Have we forgotten that we nearly starved in World War Two? We need energy also to survive…” – and this, at anything like our present level of comfort and development, is far from assured.
For many people I know, there’s something existentially paralysing about climate change: a disbelieving horror matched to feelings of impotence, denial or despair. Yet our descendants may feel quite differently, argued my next expert – Kate Raworth, an economist at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute, who specialises in “the rewriting of economics to make it a fit tool for addressing the 21st Century’s social and ecological challenges”.
Raworth believes that our children will “deplore our persistently linear thinking and doing”. In other words, the way we tackle problems like climate change in isolation. Over time a different way of seeing the world according to “systems thinking” will emerge. The trouble is, she explains, we tend to treat fields like education, economic growth and environmental impact as if they are not related, but they’re all interconnected – we just don’t fully understand how yet. “The economy is nested within society which is nested within the planet, and these systems are all interacting with each other.”
It’s a hopeful thought to set alongside Lovelock’s prognosis. A future society will have “a far wiser understanding of how the planet functions, how our pressure on it threatens our own well being, and how our economic mindset needs to reflect that,” says Raworth. And this wisdom should bring profound changes to the way we live and think about our world.
One contemporary tenet that Raworth believes will soon become archaic is the insistence that evaluating anything from health to nature means quantifying its market value. “From the impact of HIV/AIDS to climate change, if you want your issue heard, get an economist to put a price on it… Future generations will be amazed that we were still putting GDP at the centre of national economic policy,” she told me, “even while we knew we were running down the very social and environmental wealth on which it was all based. Rather than asking what is really going on, we’re happy to pretend that something doesn’t count if we don’t care to count it.
For thinkers like Raworth, a hopeful vision of the late 21st Century is one in which “material metrics” play a larger part than mere finance in judging the success of societies. She sees it as a world where “our carbon, land, nitrogen and water footprints will be part of our own ways of monitoring our personal and national lifestyles, alongside our health and sense of wellbeing”.
Raworth’s insistence on re-thinking the present was a vision that, in a different sense, the author and Financial Times columnist Tim Harford echoed when I spoke to him. For Harford, one great short-sightedness in our current measuring of the world is national border controls – and the way in which global migration is assessed in terms of value, costs and benefits.
“We allow ourselves such freedoms in the developed world, and we like to tout our concern for the very poor,” he explained. “Yet we think it's natural that someone born in, say, Somalia, must stay in Somalia and not come to Europe or America – and that if that person has a hard life, the fault is with Somalia and not with our border guards. When we argue about the costs and benefits of immigration, the fact that immigration might be of some benefit to the person migrating is rarely discussed.”
It’s an idea that begs some fundamental questions. Will where someone is born still dictate their prospects through the coming centuries? In what sense can we hope to measure the flourishing of individuals across the world as a metric of human progress, rather than the productivity of nations?
From indexes of development and human rights to those of quality-of-life and health, the world already bristles with attempts to move forward on these fronts. A more radical answer, however, is that the most meaningful way of bettering our future is not simply to seek enhancements, but rather to focus on lessening the suffering of the poorest and most vulnerable.
For the philosopher Peter Singer, this lessening of suffering is a moral imperative more urgent than any other – and one that should not be restricted to the human race. As he bluntly replied when I put my question to him, “the way so many of us wallow in our affluence while doing very little to help those in extreme poverty” is one clear flaw that the future ought to deplore, alongside our treatment of animals, which “will (I hope) seem to [our descendants] as barbarous as the Roman circuses now seem to us”.
Singer backs his polemical work with practical advocacy. His website The Life You Can Save provides a framework for lessening suffering. On the site, he ranks 10 carefully selected charities to whom you can give money today.
It’s a sentiment I found echoed by Roman Krznaric, cultural thinker and author of the book Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution. “The biggest future crisis our children (and their children) will have to face is declining social cohesion,” he told me. “Communities are being fractured by growing urbanisation, and an overdose of free-market culture has ratcheted up levels of narcissism to record levels.”
As an antidote to this narcissism, Krznaric recommends a new form of emphasis on empathy as a fundamental human value: on promoting “the ability to step into the shoes of other people and look at the world from their perspective” as the ultimate social glue. Only through building empathy, he argues, can we hope to thrive together in a future of increasingly scarce resources and escalating competition – something for which his work sets out a detailed practical programme.
At the other end of the scale, another apathetic act that we may one day regret is our attitude to the risks of major catastrophe. If you take a long enough view, it’s fairly certain that one day humanity will face a threat or disaster that will kill whole swathes of Earth’s population – or even bring us to the brink of extinction. And how we prepare for that day will define us in the eyes of the survivors.
This is the terrain of Nick Bostrom, the founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford, and a thinker who has made it his business to weigh and measure worst conceivable futures. "If humans are still around after a massive catastrophe," Bostrom told me, “they may look back and think it a grave dereliction that we did not do more to reduce existential risk. But if humanity is gone, and there is nobody left to deplore our era, that doesn't make us any less deplorable.”
Bostrom has a list of potential “game over” scenarios that includes global pandemics, nuclear weapons, nanotechnology (highly destructive miniscule machines self-reproducing and destroying life as we know it), synthetic biology (artificially-created organisms able to infect, kill or take over the world’s ecosystems) or artificial intelligence (super-intelligent machines that decide they’re not interested in the continuation of human life).
For Bostrom, the question is not simply how we deal with obvious threats; it’s whether we should take seriously even the slight chance of something happening that could end human life as we know it – a question he and his colleagues answer with a resounding “yes”. And it is far worse if we are fully aware and do not act. “The harms that are most obvious,” he told me, “are the ones for which we may carry the heaviest moral responsibility.”
For Steven Pinker, there’s one risk above all on Bostrom’s list that nobody can ignore: nuclear weapons. The professor of psychology at Harvard and prolific author has recently explored the place of violence in modern societies. His 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Naturemakes the case that violence has actually declined over time. When it comes to nuclear war, however, a shattering possibility still hangs over us.
As he put it to me, nuclear weapons “violate every norm of civilised warfare… disproportionate to any threat, indiscriminate in killing civilians in inconceivable numbers and in poisoning the environment. They are useless as an ordinary weapon in war, and their effectiveness as a deterrent depends entirely on the willingness of leaders to murder millions of innocent civilians”. And, most alarmingly, “though the taboo against using them has held for two thirds of a century, the probability of use through an accident or in the hands of a fanatic is not zero”.
So what happens if the worst case scenario arrives, and something like a nuclear war devastates the planet? For Nick Bostrom’s colleague at the Future of Humanity Institute, the philosopher Stuart Armstrong, our responsibilities to prepare for existential risk are not only about prevention – but also about how we prepare our descendants for possible aftermaths.
“One thing we are interested in,” he told me, “is whether the Industrial Revolution can be repeated. After most disasters there would be some survivors. Would they be able to rebuild technological civilisation? And what could we do that might enable or help them to rebuild?”
It’s a chilling thought. If a catastrophic event undoes much of the last few thousand years of development, will our descendants be able to rebuild industrial civilisation – and is there anything we can do to help them? Put like this, almost everything we’re doing today can feel extraordinarily short-sighted.
“If there is a disaster,” Armstrong argues, “our descendants will resent us for not preparing resources to help them. We are bad at keeping records.” Our generation stores its most vital information on CDs, hard drives or in the digital cloud, assuming that we will always have the means to power and decode these. If the future loses this technology, much of their past and its achievements will effectively cease to exist.
What can we learn from all this? As I digested the responses I have heard, it became clear that speculating about future disapproval is a sobering existential process: an attempt to see the peculiar circumstances of our own time through more impartial eyes – and to admit just how peculiar we are.
Hopefully, the future will be too busy getting on with its present to spend much time looking backwards. But while the early 21st Century belongs to us, one imperative is clear: we must try to stretch our imaginations beyond present concerns. As a final conversation with the science fiction author Greg Bear brought home to me, our capacity to think about the future is one of our species’ most remarkable talents. The power of great science fiction, Bear argued, is that it does not so much predict the future, as shape it. “Good books change the way we think,” he says, “and thus, their futures can’t come true—not completely.”
The truth is we will never escape some measure of disapproval from our descendants. If, though, we can grasp their possible futures with sufficient faith and rigour, we may achieve the best anyone can hope for: averting the worst, aspiring toward the best, and handing on a culture (if not a planet) in better shape than the one we inherited.
What do you think future generations will deplore about our behaviour today? Let us know onour Facebook or Google+ page, or message us on Twitter.EXCLUSIVE
KEY members of the Independent Group of international aviation and data experts who advised Australian authorities in the hunt for MH370 say crucial data that could help find the plane is being withheld.
The underwater search for the Malaysia Airlines jet |
key committee members such as, Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp and Financial Services Committee members Patrick McHenry and Steve Stivers.
Already in 2011 coalition members are increasing their lobbying presence as the campaign against the debit fee rules ramps up. The major coalition partners hired twenty-four lobbying firms in 2010 that listed lobbying on the interchange fee rule in their disclosure forms. Eighteen of those firms were registered with the two major credit network companies, MasterCard and Visa.
These firms include some of the biggest in Washington including Akin Gump, Ogilvy Government Relations, Quinn Gillespie, Sidley Austin, and Williams and Jensen.
Sixty-eight of the seventy-nine lobbyists for these eighteen firms registered with Visa or MasterCard previously worked in government, according to data obtained from the Center for Responsive Politics.
Former Reps. Dick Gephardt, Donald Sundquist, and Robert Walker are all registered with Visa. MasterCard retains the law firm of Clark Lytle & Geduldig, which is also registered to lobby for the Electronic Payments Association, the American Bankers Association, and the Financial Services Roundtable. One of the firm’s partners, Sam Geduldig, is a former senior staffer on the House Financial Services Committee.
Visa has continued to beef up their lobbying practice with two new registrations this year. The company hired FIRST Group in January and Hollier & Associates on the first of April.
The Federal Reserve stated recently that it will fail to meet the April 21 deadline to issue the new rules due to the 11,000 comments from the public on the rules.Support us AD-FREE Producing content you read on this website takes a lot of time, effort, and hard work. If you value what we do here, please consider subscribing today. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
A new study argues that eruption of the Chilean volcano Calbuco on April 22, 2015 stretched the Antarctic Ozone Hole, the thinnest portion of the ozone shell that shields Earth from harmful radiation, to a record size nearly as large as Africa. It did so by ejecting millions of tiny particles that eat away at the Earth’s ozone layer.
The new study, published in AGU's Geophysical Research Letters, strongly supports a previous study identifying Calbuco as the likely driver of the expansion, said Diane Ivy, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lead author of the new study.
“The results between the two studies are similar, suggesting that chemical ozone depletion from Calbuco’s eruption led to the record ozone hole in 2015,” she said.
Credit: Timestorm Films
Researchers have tracked the ozone hole’s waxing and waning since its discovery in the 1980s. The hole was linked to the widespread use of ozone-depleting substances, and its discovery eventually sparked worldwide restrictions of such chemicals.
Researchers expected the hole, which forms in late September, to eventually shrink. But, instead, the ozone hole grew by 4.5 million square kilometers (1.7 million square miles) in October 2015, comparable to India swelling roughly to the size of Australia.
To know the cause behind the expansion, it’s important to understand Calbuco’s contribution, Ivy said.
“Understanding what caused the ozone hole to grow to such a large size is imperative to knowing whether it is recovering,” she said.
Researchers from the World Meteorological Organization originally suggested colder temperatures and reduced atmospheric circulation drove the expansion of the ozone hole in October 2015. But Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and leader of the first research to describe the chemical mechanism behind anthropogenic ozone depletion, pointed to a different culprit: Calbuco’s massive 2015 eruption.
Solomon authored a 2016 study published in Science suggesting Calbuco’s volcanic aerosols — tiny airborne particles formed by eruptions — had eaten away at the ozone layer.
When volcanos erupt, they spew clouds containing sulfur dioxide into the sky. The sulfur dioxide then condenses into particles, which dissipate and drift through the atmosphere. These particles tend to congregate back into clouds that hover over polar areas. The clouds provide a surface where chemical reactions ensue and ultimately deplete portions of the ozone layer.
But the new study, co-authored by Solomon, accounts for those changing conditions.
The new research models Earth’s ozone layer and its response to a sudden injection of volcanic aerosols, similar to those emitted by Calbuco. The simulations relied upon records of ozone-depleting substances and greenhouse gases from 1979 to 2015. The study’s authors ran two types of simulations: one with the injection of volcanic aerosols and another without the contribution of those particles.
The study’s authors found that, indeed, a sudden increase in volcanic aerosols could have depleted the ozone layer, strongly suggesting Calbuco was the cause of the ozone hole expansion.
Credit: Rodrigo Barrera
Despite Calbuco’s contribution, the ozone hole does appear to be shrinking, Ivy said.
“We see signs of recovery when the ozone hole first starts to form in September,” she said.
Reference:
"The influence of the Calbuco eruption on the 2015 Antarctic ozone hole in a fully coupled chemistry-climate model" - Diane J. Ivy, Susan Solomon, Doug Kinnison, Michael J. Mills, Anja Schmidt, Ryan R. Neely III - Geophysical Research Letters / AGU - March 5, 2017 - DOI: 10.1002/2016GL071925
Featured image: The eruption of Calbuco on April 22, 2015. Credit: Rodrigo Barrera
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Real Madrid hold the record of La Liga and Champions League titles, having won 32 national championships and 11 European cups. Also, Real Madrid share the record of winning the Intercontinental cup as they managed to grab the title 3 times.
Real Madrid have been recognized as the best club of the XX century as they received the most votes in FIFA voting. FIFA presented the honor to the Spanish side in December, 2000, making Real Madrid the only club to have won the Club of the Century award.
Today marks the 115th year since the formation of the club, and Real Madrid look forward to expanding their trophy cabinet and winning more and more titles.Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews wants to streamline welfare payments
Updated
Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews has signalled he wants to streamline welfare payments, describing the structure of the current system as being as complicated as a "bird's nest".
In the next couple of weeks Mr Andrews is set to release the first report from a review into the welfare system, conducted by former Mission Australia head Patrick McClure.
Both men spoke this morning at the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) national conference, where Mr McClure revealed some of the review's proposals.
"What we will be proposing in the interim report is a simpler architecture with fewer payments and supplements," he said.
"Across this system there would be an employment focus that encourages people to work who have got the capacity to work."
Mr McClure said there would be "rewards" for work, listing more consistent rules for income tests, taper rates for benefits and "better integration" of the tax system.
"Also another principle would be that there would be adequate support for people who can't work," Mr McClure said.
The proposals are likely to be welcomed by Mr Andrews, who today noted the complexity of the current round of payments.
"The reality of our welfare system in Australia is that we've got dozens of payments, supplements and allowances," Mr Andrews said.
"If you draw a diagram of the welfare system it looks like a bird's nest and it's difficult to understand from that and it must be difficult to understand for lots of people who are participants in the welfare system."
He said years of often ad-hoc decisions to introduce new payments has prompted him to ask how it can be reined in.
"Can we simplify the system? Can we redesign it so it's established on some understood, reasonable principles but constructed in a simple way?," he put to the conference.
"Could we have four, five or six payments rather than the dozens we have at the present time?"
Opposition spokeswoman Jenny Macklin says the review is "secretive" and is masking a Coalition attack on the nation's social safety net.
"Kevin Andrews' new'simplification' agenda is simply code for another round of savage cuts," she told ABC News Online.
"Labor will fight tooth and nail to stop this Government from dismantling the safety net that Australia has spent generations building."
Expert panel to advise on early intervention measures
The minister has also announced he will set up an expert panel in the next month to advise him on early intervention measures to prevent "the dysfunction which occurs in individuals and communities".
Mr McClure's review was commissioned in January with an emphasis on unemployment benefits and the disability support pension.
According to information tabled by the Department of Social Service to a Senate committee, the review has as its top guiding principles that changes provide "incentives to work" and "adequately" supports those who are "genuinely not able to work".
Mr McClure conducted a similar review for the Howard government in 2000 and recommended in what became known simply as the McClure Report that all welfare payments be replaced by a single base rate with additional supplements to address individual circumstances.
Speaking after Mr Andrews at the ACOSS conference, Mr McClure said "the combination of 20 payments and over 50 supplements leads to many possible packages but also lots of inconsistencies in terms of income tests, means tests and taper rates and so on".
He said the system is currently "not flexible".
"We need to develop a simpler and sustainable income support system but in doing that we also need to build capability in individuals and families," he said.
Mr McClure said the Government needed to engage business more to ensure jobs were available for people who had been successfully trained.
His final report for the Abbott Government was initially due in the middle of the year, but Mr Andrews says it has been pushed back to September or October.
Topics: welfare, community-and-society, federal-government, unemployment, disabilities, budget, australia
First postedA tourist walks towards a “Canada 150” sign in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, on June 21. (Brent Lewin/Bloomberg)
When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called his country the world’s “first post-national state” with no “core identity” or “mainstream,” he was offering a prescription, not a description. As Canada celebrates its 150th birthday this week and stares into the uncertain future ahead, his words may prove little more than an opening bid as the country negotiates its 21st-century purpose.
Trudeau’s rhetoric alludes to a goal, popular in center-left circles, of a Canada that has reached an almost transcendent level of multicultural democracy, in which all historically restrictive conceptions of nationalism — race, religion, language, culture — are vanquished in favor of an inclusive citizenship based on simple acknowledgment of shared humanity. Immigration can and should remain high (Canada’s rates are already among the highest, per capita, on Earth) and assimilation discouraged, lest the majority population attempt to enforce a “mainstream.” Even the notion of shared Canadian values becomes taboo to partisans of this school of thought, as seen in the relentless scorn heaped upon failed Conservative Party leadership candidate Kellie Leitch. Leitch proposed a Canadian values test for immigrants and was mocked not for any definitions she offered but for simply implying Canadian values could be defined at all.
On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest many post-national advocates, including Trudeau himself, aren’t really interested in going as far as their generous language suggests. Many in the Canadian elite left seem to actually desire something closer to a managed post-modernist state, in which a decidedly modernist hierarchy of political power at the top is deemed necessary to maintain an inclusive, diverse citizenry below.
The status of French Canadians as the first among equals in Canada’s multicultural mosaic is not generally contested by even the farthest-left members of the Canadian political class, for instance, nor is the existence of two official Canadian languages and a disproportionate share of political power reserved for the 17.5 percent of Canadians who can speak both. Loyalty to the old-world customs of the British parliamentary system is still fierce, as is the retention of the British queen as Canada’s legal head of state.
These hypocrisies are justified on the basis that they help produce favorable outcomes. Canada is what it is today because of them, after all, so why raise protest? Yet the obviously exclusive nature of things such as linguistic power barriers, exaggerated loyalty to English institutions and undue attention to French grievances will inevitably face pushback from an ever-more-diverse society as it becomes more glaring whose influences they deny and whose interests they promote.
Most challenging of all, however, is finding a place for rising aboriginal-Canadian nationalism in a post-national society. Recent years have seen increasing demands to make white colonization and conquest of Indian nations the central fact of Canada — a conception that forces the country’s national identity away from something nonjudgmental and color-blind, and closer to the narrative of somewhere like post-apartheid South Africa, where the historical suffering of one racialized group at the hands of another requires ongoing acknowledgment and atonement at the highest levels.
Already, Ottawa has engaged in numerous acts of acknowledgement of this sort — the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian residential schools, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, hints at reparations for the so-called “Sixties Scoop.” Atonement, meanwhile, takes the form of political speeches conceding “traditional lands,” restorations of aboriginal place names, new self-government treaties and even aboriginal languages in Parliament. Should trends continue, Canada may wind up less a post-national state than a binational one like New Zealand, which has, in recent decades, come to emphasize its indigenous heritage to the point where even saying the country’s name without adding the Maori name “Aotearoa” is seen as impolitic.
Trekking backward — though it seems implausible from here — is always possible, of course. There has never been much hard evidence to indicate that the existential path Canada’s currently on is broadly popular — Trudeau certainly wasn’t elected promising a “post-national state” — and polls suggest high immigration, weakening assimilation and unqualified aboriginal conciliation generate skeptical public reception. My own theory is that Canada’s political institutions are less democratic, and thus less receptive to an old nationalism populist backlash, than has been seen elsewhere in the West, though stranger things have obviously happened.
When Canada celebrated its 100th birthday in 1967, there was some ambiguity regarding the sort of future that awaited, but recent events such as a native-born governor-general, a new flag, single-payer health-care legislation, the empowering “quiet revolution” in Quebec and rising rates of immigration from the global south still made the trend lines broadly obvious: Canada would be less colonial politically, less English culturally, less white racially and more comfortable with activist government ideologically. Today’s lines are just as easy to observe, but where they lead is much harder to imagine, promising, as they do, to steer the country not merely from one identity to another, but away from identity itself.Green Bay Packers President Mark Murphy walks off the field after the NFL pre-season game between the Green Bay Packers and Indianapolis Colts was cancelled. Poor field conditions, especially near the painted logo on the field caused a safety concern leading officials to cancel the pre-season NFL game between the Green Bay Packers and Indianapolis Colts, Sunday, August 7, 2016, in Canton, Ohio. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel photo by Rick Wood/RWOOD@JOURNALSENTINEL.COM (Photo: Rick Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
If you’ve been reading and hearing about what ails the Green Bay Packers, you’ve probably come across this one:
They don’t have a majority owner who can shake things up and put fear into everyone in the organization by walking into the building and firing someone on the football staff in midseason.
Anyone who believes that’s the Packers’ problem this season has a fundamental misunderstanding of the hierarchy and management structure that has made them the NFL’s second-winningest franchise since 1992. Their.631 winning percentage is behind only New England’s.650 in that time.
For starters, the Packers have a definitive hierarchy even if they don’t have a single owner.
The team’s president and CEO, Mark Murphy, operates as the owner in most respects. He represents the club at NFL meetings, has the final say on all corporate business and ultimately is responsible for the performance of the team on the field.
The organization’s by-laws are designed for a strong president even though it also calls for a seven-person executive committee that represents the larger board of directors in the month-to-month administration of the team. The title actually is president, CEO and chairman, and the person in that position can act unilaterally to make any move in football that he wants. Now, whether he’d be smart to make a major decision without consulting the executive committee, no. But the president has the power, and his job is to lead the committee, not vice versa.
However, outside of the bylaws, the Packers have been a model franchise since the 1990s because of the way their presidents have delineated authority over football operations. The key move was in November 1991, when Bob Harlan, current Chairman Emeritus and at the time team president, fired Tom Braatz as general manager and hired Ron Wolf to replace him.
Up to that time, for the 20-plus years since Vince Lombardi had left the organization, the executive committee had had a strong voice in football, most especially in the hiring and firing of the head coach. And try to wrap your head around this: For a time during his tenure as coach, Bart Starr had to meet with the committee every Monday to go over the previous day’s game. Can you imagine a worse use of the coach’s time?
And how did that work out? From 1969, which was the first season after Lombardi left as GM to coach Washington, through 1991, the Packers’.421 winning percentage was fourth worst in the league. And how’s this for context? The only three teams with worse records were the most recent expansion franchises: Atlanta (.409), New Orleans (.395) and Tampa Bay (.293).
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Harlan’s crucial decision was to draw a sharp line between football and administration. In order to get Wolf to agree to become GM, Harlan had to put in writing that Wolf would have final say over all football decisions, including hiring and firing the head coach.
Harlan has told me numerous times over the years that Wolf always ran major decisions by him – the firing of Lindy Infante as coach after the ’91 season; trading a first-round pick for Brett Favre in ’92; and pursuing Reggie White in free agency in ’93 – but that it was a formality. He already had permission.
Mike Sherman had the same arrangement when GM was added to his coaching title in 2001, and current GM Ted Thompson has it now.
The arrangement has served two critical purposes.
Most importantly, it puts football decisions in the hands of people trained in football. The GM sinks or swims based on the team’s performance, and the hierarchy is clearly defined: The president hires and fires the GM, and the GM hires and fires the coach.
The president's and executive committee’s expertise is in the business world, or in Murphy’s case athletics administration and NFL business matters, not in building a football team. They don’t tell the GM how to run the club. If the president doesn’t like the way football is going, he can fire the GM. But he and the committee are not involved in actual football decisions, and rightly so.
The separation of authority also has served a second purpose: It has made the Packers’ GM job – and by extension, coaching and scouting in the organization – one of the most attractive in the league.
If you’re the Packers’ GM, you can run the organization your way, with minimal interference from your boss. You succeed or fail based on your decisions, not decisions forced on you from above. And because the team doesn’t have an owner siphoning off profits for his own enrichment, all the money the franchise makes goes back into football. The Packers are among the best-resourced teams in the league.
This hierarchy fostered a climate where Thompson could draft Aaron Rodgers at No. 24 overall in 2005 even though Brett Favre was still going strong. Would a Dan Snyder or Jimmy Haslam, thinking only of the Super Bowl in the upcoming season or two, have stood for that? Would a head coach have gone to the owner to nix the possibility?
So yeah, after back-to-back losses like the Packers suffered at Tennessee and Washington, another team might have had an owner angrily fire Mike McCarthy or Dom Capers or Ron Zook, just to put everyone else on notice. But is that really how you should operate an NFL team? Do you want a Snyder or a Haslam making those kind of decisions?
Look at the most stable franchises in the league: New England, Pittsburgh and the Packers. The Packers and Patriots, as noted earlier, have the best records in the NFL since ’92. And who’s third? The Steelers at.627 percent.
The Patriots might be a one-off, because of the singular ability of coach Bill Belichick, who’s in his 17th season with the team. Replacing him will be next to impossible.
But the Steelers have had only three coaches since 1969, and sticking with coaches despite multiple bad seasons has been a hallmark of the Rooney family that owns the franchise. Current coach Mike Tomlin missed the playoffs in back-to-back 8-8 seasons in the middle of his tenure (2012 and ’13) but remains on the job. His predecessor, Bill Cowher, missed the playoffs three straight seasons in the middle of his time there but later won a Super Bowl and retired by his own accord after 15 seasons.
So teams with a majority owner can be patient, even if it’s the exception, not the rule. And it’s worth noting that the Rooneys are among the few owners in the league whose primary business is football.
As for the Packers, Wolf or Thompson has been the GM for 21 of the last 25 seasons. Their scouting system and staff have been stable, and they’ve had only four head coaches over that time.
To be clear, this isn’t an argument for the Packers to do nothing this offseason. The season needs to play out before we weigh in on that.
But the Packers have a structure in place to make changes. McCarthy can fire any assistant coach at any time. Thompson can fire McCarthy at any time. And ditto for Murphy with Thompson.
That power has been exercised in the past. Harlan did it – during the season, mind you – in ’91 when he fired Braatz and hired Wolf. Wolf did it in 1999 when he fired Ray Rhodes only hours after the finale of Rhodes' first season as coach. Harlan did it again in ’05, when he stripped Sherman of GM duties and hired Thompson. And Thompson did it after the '05 season when he fired Sherman and hired McCarthy.
If there’s one thing that absolutely, positively doesn’t ail the 4-6 Packers, it’s an organizational model that clearly separates football from administration. In fact, it's the best thing they have going for them.My name is Jarrin Williams and I do not like kids.
That's not something coaches of high school sports say, but that used to be my thought process. My go-to line. Really, it was more of a mental defense mechanism. I would tell people early on that the reason I didn't coach, or teach, was because I didn't like kids. In reality, I didn't want anyone thinking I was any kind of predator.
Back in the mid-’90s, I thought most people would equate LGBT coaches of youth and scholastic sports with pedophilia. I wouldn't go into a locker room for fear of someone thinking I had ulterior motives. I didn't realize when I started coaching in 1997, I would have come out again and in the process, deal with layers of internalized homophobia.
Growing up, I always knew I was gay but I felt so alone. There was no Internet. There was no Outsports. To my knowledge, there were no other gay people — certainly no other out gay black men — in my hometown of Rock Island, Illinois. There were, of course, but the stereotypes were bad. I tried to keep my sexuality to myself, which is tough because I have always been outgoing. I was also never interested in pretending to be interested in females.
Since I didn't have a confidant for my junior high and most of my high school years, I kept a journal in high school. I was outed when I was a junior in high school. People in my neighborhood were mostly nasty to me. I often had suicidal thoughts. The thing that kept me from following through was my mind — I thought too much. I considered all of the ways I would suffer more from failed attempts at suicide. I was one of those kids who really needed to see and hear a gay adult say it would get better.
My junior year of high school, I also found success as a member of my high school's track and field team, eventually qualifying for the Illinois High School Association track and field meet in the 110-meter hurdles and 4x400 relay. It was cool being on the team that won the Illinois AA team title that year and most of my teammates are still some of my close friends to this day. I wasn't out to them then, but I'm out to pretty much all of them now, and am thankful for not only their lasting friendships but also for the awesome memories.
One cool thing that happened to me that junior year? The nasty rumors and teasing stopped. Seriously, I am thankful for some people's ignorance. There was no way I could be gay and good at sports. Perhaps some of those who teased me didn't want to admit that a "sissy" could beat them into submission on the track.
The feelings of isolation and loneliness continued on at the collegiate level. In fact, during my first two years at Southern Illinois University, when I was experiencing most of my athletic success, I was the most alone. Have you ever been in a room filled with people and still felt like you're all alone? I had few friends I could genuinely and totally be myself around. The culture of my team was extremely hetero. Males were essentially celebrated for their conquests. I couldn't believe how much sex my teammates were having. I lived in the dorms for three years and couldn't get over how much several of my floormates were having sex.
Imagine being around so many physically fit specimens on a daily basis, either at practice or at competitions (OMG). I don't necessarily wish I was having that much sex, but I had serious crushes on a couple of guys and would've been happy just dating. I usually got the object of my desire's attention because of my success as a track athlete.
I never had the nerve to kiss any of my crushes. Once, I had a guy I had come out to come onto me, but that situation was entirely awkward. When I came out to him, he went straight to religious reasons for why homosexuality was wrong. He remained friendly with me, which was nice. One night sometime later, he shared with me that he was conflicted because his faith was strong but he couldn't deny his attraction to me in that moment. Needless to say, I got away from him as soon as I was able and never spoke to him again.
I came out to my three closest friends during my sophomore year of college. And they saved my life. To this day, I make sure each is aware that I am thankful for them saving my life. Words never seem like enough but I am fortunate they were placed in my life. Many people today marvel at how positive I am. I reply that it's easy for me to spread positivity when I have so much love in my own life.
When I finished competing, I figured my future would be spent as a fan who was fortunate enough to have competed against Olympians and world champions. A friend who was one of my high school teammates asked me to coach at the school where he was teaching and coaching. My initial reaction was, "No, thanks. I don't like kids!" I told that friend, Erik, that I was gay before I started coaching and told him that if he thought I shouldn't coach as a result, I would understand. I am not sure what his expectations of me were beyond helping kids learn the hurdle events. I certainly didn't expect much from the experience myself. Interestingly enough, not only did I enjoy coaching, it proved good for me.
I was immediately struck at how natural I was at coaching and I attribute this to the awesome coaches I had in junior high and high school.
I was immediately struck at how natural I was at coaching and I attribute this to the awesome coaches I had in junior high and high school. These coaches were so encouraging and positive. They had a knack for making every member of the team feel important, regardless of ability and talent. Those experiences and memories came back to me almost immediately.
I enjoy getting to know young people and as I get to know them, finding those key words and phrases that help them find their untapped potential. Helping them realize they could perform in ways they didn't know they could previously. That's what my coaches did for me, so I figured it was what I was supposed to do for the kids I was tasked to help.
I didn't realize I had all of this pent up self-loathing, this internalized homophobia, inside of me.
As I was falling in love with coaching, I was faced with some decisions. What was I going to do that would allow me to continue coaching? It was obvious that I should get into the classroom. The thought of teaching and coaching made me happy. The thoughts I started having about people finding out I was gay made me sad. I knew I would need to be honest about who I was because I was out in my personal life and didn't want to start living dishonestly. I didn't realize I had all of this pent up self-loathing, this internalized homophobia, inside of me.
When I returned to school to pursue my English education degree, I realized I had to come out all over again. And in many instances, more than once. I had to address ignorance and stereotypes in class discussions. As a result of one such conversation, a professor invited me to another of her classes to facilitate a discussion about labels and stereotypes.
As I relive these important memories, I want to add my face and voice to those many of you have heard before: It can and does get better. If you are not out, consider coming out. You don't have to come out to a room full of people. Think of that one friend or family member you are most comfortable around.
If you are in high school or college, find an LGBTQIA+ support group. I found one such group on my campus and I remember how much courage it took to approach the office. I didn't want anyone to see me going in or out of the office. On my third or fourth visit, I saw some students down the hall who saw me. One gave me a quizzical look. I didn't pause too long and we both kept it moving. I never heard about it from anyone else so he either kept it to himself or whoever he told didn't care.
I love seeing stories on Outsports about athletes at all levels who are coming out and I applaud them. These stories, these names, these faces will give hope to those who are yet to come out. Hopefully those who don't believe they can come out just yet will see these stories and realize they are not alone in the world. Hopefully these stories will keep you from making really poor choices and jeopardizing your health because you think you aren't worthy of love or have limited options.
In the end, coming out has been good for me but not necessarily easy. And once you come out as a coach, it feels like you will have to come out several times again during the course of your career, especially to those who don’t know you well personally or those who choose to remain ignorant.
I think this is truer for coaches than athletes since we have influence over those we are tasked to teach. Those who know me know why I coach. I coach because I have a wealth of experience and knowledge acquired from my days as an athlete, from my early years of coaching, and from several outstanding coaching clinics. I also hope my being a coach, and visible, provides the supportive presence all young people need, especially those who identify as LGBT+.
Jarrin Williams, 45, is an 8th Grade English teacher at Washington Junior High School in Rock Island, Illinois. He is the head boys' cross country running coach and assistant track and field coach at Rock Island High School in Rock Island, Illinois. Jarrin can be reached at coachjw1@hotmail.com, @williamsjarrin on Instagram, @coachjw on Twitter, and Jarrin Williams on Facebook.
Check out Jarrin’s short film from his time at the Outsports Reunion in Denver in June.Honokiol and magnolol are the main constituents simultaneously identified in the barks of Magnolia officinalis, which have been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat a variety of mental disorders including depression. In the present study, we reported on the antidepressant-like effects of oral administration of the mixture of honokiol and magnolol in well-validated models of depression in rodents: forced swimming test (FST), tail suspension test (TST) and chronic mild stress (CMS) model. The mixture of honokiol and magnolol significantly decreased immobility time in the mouse FST and TST, and reversed CMS-induced reduction in sucrose consumption to prevent anhedonia in rats. However, this mixture was unable to affect ambulatory or rearing behavior in the mouse open-field test. CMS induced alterations in 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) and its metabolite 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA) levels in various brain regions of rats. An increase in serum corticosterone concentrations and a reduction in platelet adenylyl cyclase (AC) activity were simultaneously found in the CMS rats. The mixture of honokiol and magnolol at 20 and 40 mg/kg significantly attenuated CMS-induced decreases of 5-HT levels in frontal cortex, hippocampus, striatum, hypothalamus and nucleus accumbens. And it markedly increased 5-HIAA levels in frontal cortex, striatum and nucleus accumbens at 40 mg/kg and in frontal cortex at 20 mg/kg in the CMS rats. A subsequent reduction in 5-HIAA/5-HT ratio was found in hippocampus and nucleus accumbens in the CMS rats receiving this mixture. Furthermore, the mixture of honokiol and magnolol reduced elevated corticosterone concentrations in serum to normalize the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) hyperactivity in the CMS rats. It also reversed CMS-induced reduction in platelet AC activity, via upregulating the cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) pathway. These results suggested that the mixture of honokiol and magnolol possessed potent antidepressant-like properties in behaviors involved in normalization of biochemical abnormalities in brain 5-HT and 5-HIAA, serum corticosterone levels and platelet AC activity in the CMS rats. Our findings could provide a basis for examining directly the interaction of the serotonergic system, the HPA axis and AC-cAMP pathway underlying the link between depression and treatment with the mixture of honokiol and magnolol.So, you’ve finished a few Rails tutorials. You might have taken a class or two or watched some screencasts. You’ve followed along and built a copy of some tutorial apps. It’s pretty clear that it’s time to move to the next level in your Rails development.
Somehow, though, you’re stuck. There are tons of books, classes, and videos for people just starting out. But where are all the tutorials for intermediate Rails devs?
It’s not like it was before
Once you pass the beginner, “building baseline knowledge” stage of being a Rails developer, the resources dry up. Why is that?
Becoming an intermediate Rails developer is nothing like being a beginner. It might seem like it’s just a little different, with some more complicated stuff to learn. But passing through the intermediate stage of learning is a totally separate process.
Don’t think of it as, “A beginner knows this stuff. An intermediate developer knows all that stuff a little better, plus some extra things off to the sides.” For an intermediate developer, learning is more focused. Instead of knowing a little about a lot, you’ll learn a lot about a little.
Find a few areas to focus on. Learn more details about testing and TDD. Learn a few of the design patterns that Rails encourages, in depth. Learn about how you should design a great data model. But don’t learn it all at once. Learn one thing at a time, and learn it really well.
Once you understand the Rails basics, you’ll know enough to read API documentation, even if you don’t understand all of it yet. You could read the best books on TDD, even if they’re not written specifically for Rails. After you’ve seen enough examples of Ruby code, you can go source-diving and understand parts of Rails at a level that few others do.
When you concentrate on learning one thing well, there are many more resources to learn from. And each thing you learn will make every other thing easier to learn.
(If it seems easy for people to pick up their third or fourth language, this is one reason for it. A lot of the core concepts stay the same, which means there’s a lot less you have to learn to travel through the intermediate stage in a new language).
How do you choose what to play with next?
If you’re going to learn one thing at a time |
group’s lead singer, Brittany Howard, 27, a former U.S. Postal Service mail carrier, may or may not have borrowed a dress from our photo shoot to wear at the awards ceremony.
From left:
Whitney Wolfe (in Alexander McQueen)
Is it ironic that a Tinder cofounder ended up suing the company for sexual harassment? Perhaps. But it’s positively fitting that Whitney Wolfe, 26, would go on to found Bumble, a “female-first” dating app, aiming to beat Tinder at its own game.
Abraham Attah
Ghanaian actor Abraham Attah beat out more than 1,000 others to land the starring role opposite Idris Elba in Cary Joji Fukunaga’s African war tale, Beasts of No Nation. And while an Anne Hathaway film is already on his horizon, the 15-year-old still lives at home.
Montego Glover (in Dolce & Gabbana)
Currently starring as Fantine in the latest revival of Les Misérables, Broadway baby Montego Glover, 41, is gearing up for Marco Ramirez’s The Royale at Lincoln Center, opening in March.
Kacy Hill (in Erdem)
Arizona native Kacy Hill, 21, moved to Los Angeles before joining Kanye West’s Yeezus tour as one of performance artist and Yeezus choreographer Vanessa Beecroft’s dancers. West caught wind of Hill’s single, “Experience,” and signed her to his label, G.O.O.D. Music, backstage after one of their shows. Her debut album is expected this spring.
Khris Davis
Not to be confused with the Milwaukee Brewers left fielder, actor Khris Davis, 30, is set to make his New York stage debut opposite Montego Glover in The Royale at Lincoln Center this March.
Hudson Kroenig
The only 7-year-old we know of to be profiled by the late Ingrid Sischy for Vanity Fair, Hudson Kroenig is the son of Karl Lagerfeld favorite Brad Kroenig, and a miniature modeling force to be reckoned with.
Karlie Kloss (in Calvin Klein Collection)
Not satisfied with being her generation’s most bona fide supermodel, Karlie Kloss, 23, enrolled at NYU—and has studied coding at the Flatiron School.
From left:
Taylor Hill (in Valentino)
Momentum continues for Taylor Hill, who at 19 is the youngest of the Victoria’s Secret Angels—with one of the largest social media followings.
Zendaya (in Givenchy)
Zendaya has the kind of supermodern career that defies genre. Whether acting, singer, modeling, or documenting those activities via social media, the 19-year-old is taking the fashion landscape by storm.
Imaan Hammam (in a Schott NYC jacket and a Burberry dress)
An in-demand Dutch model of Moroccan and Egyptian descent, Imaan Hammam, 19, is a Vogue girl for the future.
Nieves Zuberbühler (in Pallas Paris)
An associate producer at 60 Minutes and a native Argentine, Nieves Zuberbühler, 28, is an emerging journalist with old-school instincts who is carrying on the storytelling tradition of TV’s foremost news magazine.
Justine Skye (in Balenciaga)
Known as Purple Unicorn to Snapchat users everywhere, musician, Brooklynite, and Kylie Jenner BFF Justine Skye, 20, is a post-Rihanna star on the rise.
Lorde (in Marques ‘ Almeida)
The phenomenal success (read: two Grammys) of this 19-year-old Kiwi superstar is just the preamble of the long career she is bound to have. With a much-anticipated sophomore album on the horizon, Lorde’s second chapter is soon to begin.
From left:
Hari Nef (in Marc Jacobs)
The first trans woman signed to IMG Worldwide, actress and model Hari Nef, 23, is again changing that narrative with a role in Amazon’s Emmy-winning Transparent.
Jemima Kirke (in Rochas)
One of New York’s four favorite hometown Girls, Kirke remains the indignant lifeblood of the hit HBO series, which will return this spring.
Xin Li (in a Miu Miu coat and Altuzarra skirt)
A former professional basketball player and runway model, the future Mrs. Lyor Cohen, and currently the deputy chairman of Christie’s Asia Pacific, Xin Li, 39, bridges the Western art world and the Chinese market in a way that could make her the modern-day Duveen.
Jennifer Hudson (in Carolina Herrera)
An American Idol star with an Oscar and a Grammy to her name, Jennifer Hudson, 34, is enjoying rave reviews for her role in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple.
Matt Harvey
The 26-year-old starting pitcher for the New York Mets has played all his professional baseball games with the same lucky Nike glove.
Lola Kirke (in Proenza Schouler)
Lola Kirke’s acting career has been defined by roles small but poignant. How to forget her tattooed thief in Gone Girl or her soon-to-be stepsister of Greta Gerwig in Mistress America? Now Kirke, 25, every bit as real as her older sister, has been cast opposite Tom Cruise and Domhnall Gleeson in the newest Doug Liman film.
Fashion Editor: Camilla Nickerson
Hair: Shay Ashual
Set Design: Nicholas Des Jardins for Mary Howard Studio
Menswear Editor: Michael Philouze
On set DJ: Isaac Likes JennyBy Agence France-Presse
At least 109 people died when fire swept through a factory in the worst-ever blaze to hit Bangladesh’s garment industry, officials said Sunday, as witnesses told of desperate workers jumping from upper floors.
Firefighters battled for several hours to contain the blaze, which broke out on the ground floor of the nine-storey Tazreen Fashion plant 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the capital Dhaka late on Saturday.
Survivors told how panicked staff, most of them women, tried to escape the burning factory, which made clothes for international brands including the European chain C&A and the Hong Kong-based Li & Fung company.
“I smelt smoke and ran downstairs and found that the place was already full with black fumes,” Rabiul Islam told AFP as he surveyed the gutted ruins of the building where many of his colleagues had died.
“With another worker, I broke open an exhaust fan in the second floor and jumped to the roof of a shed next to the factory,” he said. “I broke my hand but survived somehow.”
Bangladesh is a global centre for clothes manufacturing due to cheap labour, with many popular brands using huge factories to produce items for export to Western markets. But work conditions are often basic and safety standards low.
Dhaka district commissioner Yusuf Harun told AFP the death toll was 109, including several workers who died while jumping from windows or the roof. About 100 people were injured.
“We laid the bodies out in the grounds of a nearby school and have now started handing them over to relatives,” Harun said.
The director of the fire brigade, Major Mahbub, who uses one name, said many victims died of suffocation as the blaze started in the ground-floor warehouse, trapping staff working on the night shift.
“The factory had three exits but since the fire was on the ground floor, workers could not come downstairs,” he said, adding that most victims were women.
Kalpona Akter, director of the Bangladesh Centre for Workers Solidarity, said the blaze was the worst that the nation’s garment industry had ever suffered.
The owner of the factory, Delwar Hossain, told AFP by telephone the cause of the fire was not yet known but he denied his premises were unsafe.
“It is a huge loss for my staff and my factory. This is the first time we have ever had a fire at one of my seven factories,” he said, confirming that the plant made clothes for C&A and Li & Fung.
Thorsten Rolfes, C&A spokesman in Berlin, said the company had commissioned the factory to make 220,000 sweaters to be delivered to Brazil.
“The victims and their families are in our thoughts and prayers,” he said.
Li & Fung was not immediately available for comment.
Tuba Group, the parent company of Tazreen Fashion, said on its website that the factory opened in 2009 and employed 1,630 workers making polo shirts, T-shirts and jackets.
It also said its factories make clothes for Walmart, Carrefour and IKEA, and added that the Tazreen plant had 60 smoke detectors and more than 200 fire extinguishers.
Relatives of the workers made phone calls to those inside the factory as it burned, local residents told AFP, and one witness said firefighters were helpless as the blaze took hold.
“I came to the factory premises and found workers crying for help,” Mohammad Ratan said. “I saw many jumping from windows.”
A police investigation was underway and no cause had been identified, but fires as a result of short-circuits and shoddy electrical wiring are common in South Asian factories.
A blaze in a Pakistan garment factory in September killed 289 workers and injured 110 more. Two of the owners are facing murder charges.
According to the Clean Clothes Campaign, a Amsterdam-based textile rights group, at least 500 Bangladeshi garment workers have died since 2006 in factory fires.
“These brands have known for years that many of the factories they choose to work with are death traps,” said its spokeswoman Ineke Zeldenrust. “Their failure to take action amounts to criminal negligence.”
Bangladesh has recently emerged as the world’s second-largest clothes exporter with overseas garment sales topping $19 billion last year, or 80 percent of national exports.
The sector is the mainstay of the poverty-stricken country’s economy, employing 40 percent of its industrial workforce.
From The Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/25/garment-factory-blaze-kills-109-in-bangladesh/What’s the only room with no walls? If you guessed a MUSHROOM – you’re right! Architect David Benjamin is flipping the script on that old joke with some incredible mycotecture built from mushroom bricks! The architect and his firm, The Living, are pushing the boundaries of design by experimenting with biotecture, blurring the lines between biology and built environments. Their latest efforts have culminated in the world’s first tower made from fungus, which debuted at MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York last week. We recently had the chance to pick Benjamin’s brain about the future of mycotecture (mushroom architecture), the benefits of biological buildings and what inspired this innovative new Hy-Fi tower in Queens. Read on to see what the biotect, innovator and director of the “Living Architecture Lab” at GSAPP has to say.
INHABITAT: Your awesome experimental mushroom-brick Hy Fy towers just opened at the MoMA’s PS1 museum in New York City. Is this the first large structure that you know of to be built almost entirely out of fungus?
DAVID: As far as we know, this is the first large structure made of agricultural byproducts and a mushroom root—or fungus—called mycelium. The project tests the viability of this new building material.
INHABITAT: How do you feel about the towers now that they are up?
DAVID: Great! We always imagined this project as an open-ended experiment, and we are already learning from it.
INHABITAT: How did you come up with the idea to use self-assembling bricks made of mycelium for the Hy-Fi tower?
DAVID: For a few years, we have been exploring the intersection of biology, design, and computing. And we have also been interested in buildings as complex ecosystems of ideas, materials, environments, technologies, and cultures. We have experimented with a variety of ways in which living biological systems can be used as bio computers or bio factories. Materials made from mycelium are a great, immediate example of all of these things—including the use of an organism to manufacture building materials, and the capacity of these building materials to engage the earth’s carbon cycle in a healthy way.
INHABITAT: Can you explain the process used to make the mycelium bricks? Are the only ingredients corn crop waste and mushroom roots or are there other substances added? How long does it take for one brick to form?
DAVID: We worked with the incredible start-up company Ecovative to produce mycelium bricks that are strong, durable, and water-resistant. The ingredients of the bricks are chopped-up corn stalks, hemp, and mycelium. They grow into solid objects in about five days with no added energy, and they can be composted at the end of the installation.
INHABITAT: Could this type of brick be used for more permanent structures as well, or is it best suited for temporary structures? Do you anticipate any issues with smell, moisture or degradation of the material over time?
DAVID: It’s possible to dial in different material properties of the bricks by changing variables like the ratio of ingredients, the growing time. This is the first large-scale outdoor structure made of this new material, and it will last for about three months. But it should be straightforward to tune the material for permanent structures.
INHABITAT: You run a design firm called “The Living”, which is really all about the intersection between biology and design. How did you get your start with this idea, creating what is essentially a new field of “Living Architecture”?
DAVID: We think buildings and cities are living, breathing organisms—and it makes sense for design to take advantage of this. We started by bringing architecture to life through digital sensors and actuators, but we are increasingly using biological technologies as well as digital technologies.
INHABITAT: What ideas can “Living Architecture” bring to the conservative and traditional building industry? Do you see any of your experimental ideas getting mainstream acceptance and widespread use in more traditional buildings like residences?
DAVID: I think the building industry is just about ready for these ideas. The benefits and possibilities are hard to resist.
INHABITAT: What are some of the advantages of using biological architecture techniques and building using organic substances and structures?
DAVID: Biological systems have amazing properties like adaptation, self-organization, self-healing, and regeneration. Imagine our buildings having the same properties. This would radically change the way we live.
INHABITAT: What can we expect from The Living in the near future?
DAVID: More experiments.
+ The LivingIf Jeremy Corbyn wants to know what Labour voters think of his approach to Brexit he could do worse than visit the unpretentious residential road that bears his name in the heart of his constituency. Everyone, it seems, has a view about Corbyn and Brexit along Corbyn Street, London, N4.
This after all is metropolitan, cosmopolitan, strongly Labour supporting Islington. Corbyn has been the MP here since 1983 and was returned with a hefty majority of more than 21,000 at the general election in 2015.
When they talk about Corbyn the MP, as opposed to Corbyn the leader, in this part of north London, people laud his decency, values and hard work. The views given are uniformly positive.
But when it comes to his stance on Europe and his leadership on Brexit, Corbyn Street – like the parliamentary Labour party and the activist base – now splits down the middle. Neighbour disagrees with neighbour. Find a Corbyn loyalist on one doorstep, and on the next will be a newfound doubter.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hora den Dulk, who runs a building firm, says he was impressed with Corbyn to begin with but has lost faith with him over Brexit. Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer
Hora den Dulk, who runs his own building firm, admits that Corbyn is in “one hell of a bind” and realises that there is no neat answer. He appreciates that while Labour is a pro-European party it cannot just ignore the result of the referendum on 23 June last year to leave the EU. But he has lost faith in Corbyn because he tried to force his MPs to vote to trigger article 50 and go against the internationalist views that many in the parliamentary party, and their constituents, hold very dear.
“I was very impressed with him to begin with,” den Dulk says. “But I think he is wrong on this. I think he should have allowed MPs to vote with their consciences.”
Corbyn, he adds, has given mixed messages on Europe too often, allowing a lack of clarity to prevail that satisfies neither pro-EU Labour voters in the “metro” south or the pro-Brexit ones who voted to leave in large numbers in the midlands and north.
“They will all vote Ukip,” he predicts. “He will be crucified in the north. So it is not working however you look at it.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Student Eli Bellezza says he is foursquare behind the Labour leader on Brexit. Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer
Living directly opposite den Dulk, 20-year-old Eli Bellezza, a student at University College London, emerges from his home and immediately volunteers the counter view. He is a Labour member and foursquare behind Corbyn over Brexit, if not his leadership overall. “It is futile to try to stop the Brexit process,” he says. “He is absolutely right to say MPs must back article 50. I don’t necessarily think he is doing a good job as leader but on Brexit he has got it completely right.”
That line is echoed a few doors down. Huseyin Yusuf, an administrative assistant, has no doubt that the Brexit route he did not want the country to take must now be followed, like it or not. “We have to go ahead with Brexit now. I voted Remain but Corbyn is right. You just can’t try to stop it. The vote went for Leave.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joann Jackson says that if the Lib Dems had a stronger leader she would desert to them. “I think I have lost the plot with Labour,” she says. Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer
Walk on and Joann Jackson, a retired principal of a further education college is, like den Dulk, fast going off Corbyn because she is not clear what he is about any more. She says he should not have gone against the party’s longheld view on Europe and should have maintained its opposition to Brexit.
If the Lib Dems had a stronger leader she would desert to them, she says: “I think I have finally lost the plot with Labour this time.”
Europe used to be the issue that divided Conservatives far more than Labour. But last year’s referendum vote, which saw two-thirds of Labour constituencies vote Leave but two-thirds of Labour voters overall vote Remain, has changed all that.
Theresa May and her ministers may be the ones who have to deliver an exit deal, with all its complexities and accompanying dangers to the economy and wider national interest, but it is Labour that is suffering politically as she presses on.
Amid the Brexit turmoil Corbyn, himself the most disloyal MP and serial rebel during his backbench years of obscurity, is left trying to forge some semblance of party unity over the defining issue of this parliament, but from the weakest of positions imaginable. Last week a fifth of Labour MPs defied his three-line whip to vote against the bill to trigger article 50. “What Corbyn says won’t stop us. He is irrelevant and is the last person able to tell us what to do,” said one former minister before the vote.
Many rebels were from Remain constituencies and said they voted out of deep-held beliefs, as genuinely held as those of their leader on other matters. Three members of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet have quit so far in the latest crisis to beset his leadership. The rebellion has spread to the whips office, the keepers of party discipline, and threatens to widen in days to come.
One senior party source said there was as yet no clear line on whether whips or other frontbench rebels would be punished if they defy him again at next week’s third reading vote on The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill.
Not only is there a rebellion but no backlash against the rebels. “You can’t sack all the rebels as you would not have enough Corbyn people left to man the frontbench if you did.
“But on the other hand surely you can’t let whips defy the whip they are supposed to administer and police, and survive,” said the party official. “We are certainly in a pretty much impossible position now.”
Even at the Labour grassroots, from where Corbyn drew most of his support until recently, the split is widening and weakening his power base. Last weekend 5,000 Labour activists – many of whom had backed Corbyn as leader last September and the September before – signed an open letter to him within the space of 48 hours, complaining that he had betrayed the party’s values by three-line whipping article 50. After two days the organisers stopped collecting signatures, saying they had made their point and could not keep up.
The party’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer is now trying to find a way forward to steady the ship. He will try to rally all-party support behind amendments to the Brexit bill that would force the prime minister to commit to a “meaningful vote” in parliament to approve the final Brexit deal, before the EU council and European parliament sign it off.
This vote, he says, should take place with enough time to spare to allow the UK government and EU negotiators to try again for a better deal if MPs reject the original one. Starmer also wants an unconditional guarantee to be given before article 50 is triggered, stating that EU citizens in the UK will have the right to stay.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sue Crockford and her daughter Sky are just as admiring of Corbyn as they were when Sue joined the party because of him last year. Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer
But it is unlikely the amendments will pass and if they don’t it seems Corbyn will apply another three-line whip to get the bill through. More Labour MPs may join the ranks of the rebels.
With Corbyn facing two difficult by-elections this month in Copeland, Cumbria, and Stoke-on-Trent Central, where Ukip threatens an upset – the party’s leader Paul Nuttall is its candidate in Stoke – the official Labour line is that the party “will not obstruct Brexit”. Labour has to be seen to be backing Brexit now, for the sake of holding seats in its heartlands.
Back in Corbyn Street most Labour-supporting residents realise Corbyn has no easy way out, and sympathise. They say “he’s damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t” and qualify any criticism with recognition that “he’s between a rock and a hard place”. Further down the street, Sue Crockford and her daughter Sky are just as admiring of Corbyn as they were when Sue joined the party because of him last year. Corbyn has no option on Brexit, she says. “I hate the Brexit thing. But this at least gives him the leverage to try to influence Theresa May from now on. If he hadn’t done the three-line whip he would have had no credibility.”
Corbyn’s problem is that a few doors away another Labour voter will say pretty much precisely the opposite.Cash, that most basic element of our economy, can be in abysmally short supply for new young families scraping by on marginal jobs.
Sustainable housebuilding may not be foremost in their minds.
But one young couple in Wales managing on an annual income of just $10,000 went ahead and built their own cheap home anyway, sustainably, mostly out of materials from “a rubbish pile somewhere.”
They had wanted to spend as much time as possible at home while their two children were young. Their nearby woodlands ecological management work would have been impractical if they were paying a mortgage.
So they enlisted some help from family, and sometimes just from people passing by, and from any of their friends who stopped by to visit:
The result was their very low impact homemade house. A hand built unique setting for a charmed life for their two young toddlers. I’ll bet they’ll remember this first home for the rest of their lives.
Four months of hard work and they were all 4 moved in and cozy.
Total expenditure? $5,000. Tools? A chisel, a chainsaw and a hammer. Building expertise? Simon Dale says:
“My experience is only having a go at one similar house 2yrs before and a bit of mucking around in-between. This kind of building is accessible to anyone. My main relevant skills were being able bodied, having self belief and perseverance and a mate or two to give a lift now and again.”
Sustainable design and construction:
Dug into hillside for low visual impact and shelter Stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc. Frame constructed of fallen trees from surrounding woodland Reciprocal roof rafters are structurally very easy to do Straw bales in floor, walls and roof for super-insulation and easy building Plastic sheet and mud/turf roof for low impact and ease Lime plaster on walls is breathable and low energy to manufacture compared to cement Reclaimed (scrap) wood for floors and fittings Other items were reclaimed from “a rubbish pile somewhere”: windows, wiring, plumbing
(Maybe there should be a new LEED rating just for building so inexpensively: Sustainable Financing. This is one mortgage bill that’s not going to be haunting their mum and dad for years.) Inside there’s a wood-burner for heating – waste wood in the old-growth forest is locally plentiful.To get the most of the heat, the flue goes through a big stone/plaster lump to retain and slowly releases the warmth.
There are just a couple of solar panels – just enough for for lighting, music and computing. It’s a simple life. A skylight in the roof lets in enough natural feeling light, and water is fed by gravity downhill from a nearby spring. There’s a compost toilet. Roof water collects in a pond for gardening
Says Simon: “Our house is unusual but the aesthetic appeals to lots of people and perhaps touches something innate in us that evolved in forests.”
Want to try making one too? Simon will show you how or check out other metal homes for more ideas and inspiration like this post on building a cob house.
Images: www.SimonDale.net
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Hard Lessons in Sustainable LivingPrize fights are a big deal in Las Vegas, so perhaps there is no better location for the first Democratic presidential debate than in the heart of Sin City.
The much-anticipated faceoff between main rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on Oct. 13 at the Wynn Las Vegas casino in Nevada could be a watershed event in the 2016 presidential campaign.
The stakes couldn’t be higher for Sanders, who is gaining in national polls, but remains a relative unknown to much of the general electorate. At the Las Vegas debate Sanders has a chance to introduce himself — and his policies — to an audience of millions.
However, Sanders, who has largely honed his debate skills in local contests, isn’t spending a lot of time on debate prep, according to his campaign — even though Clinton comes to the primary bout with more presidential debate experience.
Still, former rivals say the Vermont senator could be a formidable challenger in ring.
“He delivers his message so well that when he debates Hillary, he will kill her,” said Rich Tarrant, a Republican who ran an unsuccessful senatorial campaign against Sanders in 2006. “She doesn’t think on her feet at all, but he does.”
Tarrant was among 10 people VTDigger interviewed who have squared off against Sanders in debates that date as far back as Sanders’ unsuccessful run for governor in 1972 to his most recent Senate campaign in 2012.
While some of his former rivals believe Sanders has a fighting chance against Clinton, others think the junior senator from Vermont will have a hard time breaking free from the provincial echo chamber of Green Mountain politics.
But there is one thing the also-rans agree on: Sanders’ fluency and rhetorical consistency will be a major strength on stage.
Finding his inconsistencies
Judy Stephany, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully against Sanders in 1983 when he was elected mayor of Burlington, says Sanders views himself as “the Messenger.”
“My sense of him has always been that he is a politician who puts belief in policy and desire to make policy change at the forefront of what he does,” Stephany says.
Because Sanders is supremely confident in his message, he doesn’t need to exhaustively prepare for the Las Vegas debate, according to Michael Briggs, communications director for the campaign.
Briggs says Sanders won’t practice against a Clinton surrogate, for example. The campaign, however, hasn’t ruled out the possibility of holding some sort of mock debate.
“Some candidates want you to rebuild the entire set so they can feel exactly like they are going to feel in real life,” Briggs said. “I don’t think Bernie needs that kind of over-the-top preparation for this.”
One of the remarkable features of Sanders’ four decades in politics is just how little his stances on issues have changed. While other politicians shift positions over time to accommodate constituencies, lobbyists and funders, Sanders tends to stubbornly stick to policy decisions — regardless of whether they are popular or not.
Reforming campaign finance laws, for example, has been a feature of his congressional campaigns for decades, and it is a cornerstone of his presidential platform. Sanders began railing about the corrosive effects of corporate money in politics after he lost the 1986 Vermont gubernatorial race, and the points he makes on the issue are virtually unchanged today. If anything, his rhetoric intensified after the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case, which allowed unlimited spending on behalf of candidates.
Sanders has called on the court to overturn the ruling, and has criticized other candidates, including Hillary Clinton, who rely on wealthy donors to fund their campaigns. Sanders himself has eschewed money from corporations, PACs and the super wealthy.
His signature issue — income inequality — is a drum he’s been beating since his early days as a Liberty Union candidate, and later as mayor of Burlington, where he talked about the disenfranchised, “the poor, the working class and the elderly.” Sanders put the needs of regular people first, political observers say, and over time he has simply changed the numbers he uses to illustrate his point that “the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.”
In a 1998 House debate, he talked about how the richest 1 percent in the United States had more wealth than 100 million Americans. He now says the richest one-tenth of 1 percent have as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.
Sanders has also long been a proponent of raising the minimum wage. Back in 1993, in an aggressive House floor speech, he proposed a $5.50 an hour base hourly wage for all Americans. Now he wants a $15-an-hour minimum wage.
While his messaging on the economy has been consistent, Sanders has a mixed record on gun control and the arming of Israel.
As Politico and others have reported, Sanders was helped by attack ads aired against incumbent Peter Smith in the 1990 House election, which Sanders won.
Smith said he remains proud he took a stand against the sale of assault weapons during the 1990 election, but that he could have maneuvered better politically in his race against Sanders.
“Whatever other issues were in the race, there’s no doubt the NRA’s support of Bernie was a turning point in the campaign,” Smith said. “The attack ads against me gave Bernie a big boost.”
Sanders’ mixed gun record includes voting against legislation requiring more comprehensive background checks while voting to allow firearms on Amtrak. He has also voted for an assault weapons ban and universal background checks.
On Israel, Sanders said that Israel should not be armed by the U.S. early in his career, according to archives from the Vermont Cynic.
“He stood up and said no more guns for Israel in 1972,” said Peter Diamondstone, a longtime Liberty Union candidate who has debated Sanders in seven elections. “That’s certainly not his position now. That’s seriously changed.”
Sanders has said on the campaign trail this summer that he believes Palestinians are entitled to a state of their own, but also expressed support for Israel’s right to defend itself.On the one hand, it’s possible to look at all these Republicans distancing themselves from Grover Norquist and his famous pledge as an encouraging sign that they can read and understand election results. On the other, let’s not get carried away. The “compromise” they are offering is no compromise at all, really. And what they want in return from Democrats—which they are keeping intentionally vague—shows very clearly that they haven’t yet quite accepted the idea that elections have consequences.
It’s nice to see Norquist’s Maginot Line holding about as well as the real one did. It’s been a long time coming. But let’s break down what this really amounts to, because it’s not something to be celebrated in and of itself just yet.
Norquist’s anti-tax position all these years has been so totalizing that he has counted lots of things as tax increases that aren’t explicitly tax increases. You may remember the tiff he got into with Oklahoma GOP Senator Tom Coburn over oil-and-gas subsidies. Coburn, who is retiring, was willing to end those subsidies, which amount to a few billion dollars a year. To Norquist, this was a tax increase on oil companies. I can see the logic in a way, but if you’re going to go down that road, then you are taking loads of policy options off the table.
It’s an extreme definition, and it’s the very fact that it’s an extreme definition that allows Republicans breaking from it to appear to be taking a bold position while they are in fact doing nothing of the sort. Because under the big headlines about Breaking From Grover, the actual news content is that they will consider increased revenue but not increased rates. The vehicle of choice right now seems to be a limit on deductions, of maybe $40,000, which would reduce the amount rich people can deduct and, in effect, raise their taxes and bring in more revenue.
That’s fine as far as it goes. But it’s not enough. Barack Obama ran on raising rates on dollars earned above $250,000 from 35 to 39.6 percent. He said it a thousand times. The other guy said the opposite a thousand times. Obama won a clear victory. It was a victory for raising tax rates, period. But Republicans won’t grant that they lost and their pet position lost. And just you watch—even as they give a little temporary ground on this deduction limit business, they’ll continue to push for Simpson-Bowles-ish lower overall rates in the long term, rates closer to what Mitt Romney was proposing, which were resoundingly rejected on Election Day.
So all in all, that’s a pretty lame olive branch. As I said, it looks semi-reasonable only because the opening position, the position they’ve held for 20 years, was so utterly unreasonable. So that’s what they’re offering. Actually, it’s what a few of them are offering—no sign from Mitch McConnell yet that he’s offering anything like this. But let’s move on from that and now discuss what they want in return, which is even worse.
They haven’t really said it, but they want Obama and the Democrats to agree to sizeable cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Now, here again, we had an election. The stakes could scarcely have been clearer. One side said, basically, we will protect Medicare and Medicaid. The other side said, we will go after them. It was a little more complicated than that, but that was roughly the size of it. The side that said we will protect them won.
So now, having won, the Democrats are supposed to cave in? Sure, they’ll have to play a little ball. That’s politics. But the party that lost the election—lost the presidency, lost Senate seats, and yes, held on to the House, but lost seats there too—doesn’t get to dictate terms.
And most appallingly of all, how in the world is Social Security getting dragged into this? Social Security is the one thing that wasn’t debated at all during the campaign. Even the Ryan Budget didn’t touch Social Security. And now Republicans like Bob Corker of Tennessee think they can come along after an election in which they didn’t even put Social Security on the table and now do so, in such a way that will cut benefits dramatically for people who commit the error of living into their 80s and 90s? Yes, I know: establishment panjandrums want the entitlement “crisis” solved. But does it not strike you as maybe a little odd that only weeks after an election in which both parties vowed not to touch Social Security, they would agree to cut benefits?
Obama will have to give to get. That’s how it goes. But he’d better not forget, and he’d better not let the Republicans forget, that he just won an election in which the American people were given a clear choice—and they made it. Republicans walking away from Norquist deserve a few brownie points for coming back to planet Earth, but that sure doesn’t entitle them to start calling any shots.With all the devastating news coming out of Saturday's terrorist attacks in London, one photo shared on Twitter offered inspiration instead.
In a photo apparently taken from video footage aired on Sky News, people are shown being evacuated after the two terrorist attacks in England that left at least seven people dead. Some people are running, some are walking, but one man wearing a red shirt drew the attention of social media. He's evacuating, sure, apparently from a pub, but he hasn't gone alone -- he's taken his pint of beer along with him.
Man pictured fleeing London terror with pint still in hand https://t.co/WostxkpEW4 — The Independent (@Independent) June 4, 2017
The photo was seen by many on Twitter as a symbol of the indefatigable spirit of Londoners, famed for their "Keep calm and carry on" slogan from World War II. And the man's not alone -- though the screenshot is blurry from motion, it appears that other people in the shot took their drinks along too -- the woman next to him seems to be holding a bottle. As many pointed out, drink prices in this part of the city aren't cheap.
People fleeing #LondonBridge but the bloke on the right isn't spilling a drop. God Bless the Brits! pic.twitter.com/ceeaH0XxeX — Howard Mannella (@hmannella) June 3, 2017
It's London bridge ffs he's paid £5.50 for that pint — m i l l e r (@DrCMiller) June 4, 2017
British as children taught to run while balancing an egg on a wooden spoon... Gives us the skills required for times like this — Göönerjay (@Goonerjay86) June 4, 2017
Why ISIS |
adena speaks about his time in Black Flag. "After a year of being the singer, I wasn't totally happy. It was a hard thing. I was on the fence. Here I was in my favorite band, loved the music, the guys and everything, but I wasn't happy. I don't know if you have to be a certain personality to be a singer. It had to do with me wanting to play the instrument of my passion. We tried a bunch of things before we got Henry. We even switched. One rehearsal, I even played bass and Chuck was on vocals. He put so much energy into it, and he was so nervous, that he ended up breaking the microphone and the mic stand."
He continues, "After about a year, it wasn't like they wanted to kick me out of the band or I wanted to quit the band. They said, 'if we find a singer, and we gave you a guitar, how would you feel about that?' 'Pretty cool!' So I did."
As is the pattern, like Morris and Dukowski, Cadena's personality radiates. But unlike Morris' frantic energy and Dukowski's measured, tactical response, Cadena is laid back. His deep voice is tinged with sides of smokiness, which gives his words a friendly dress, sort of like the voiceovers used in commercials for necessities. Like Morris, he does wander across a conversation without a clear trajectory, but unlike Morris, the frantic energy is replaced by an appreciation for the verbal walk itself. But, the fire in his belly, which explodes across the Louie, Louie single, does come out when he references Black Flag.
When Cadena refers to Black Flag, he treats it more like a course than a group of guys touring the country. "Black Flag was my learning experience. I was always into music and I always knew I wanted to play music. Black Flag happened for me right when the period of time when most people are trying to start a career or going to college," he says. "I had played in bands before Black Flag, but Black Flag taught me a lot of things. In its own way, it was a lot different than the way other bands were trying to run themselves. Black Flag was a do-it-yourself situation, and it was almost like a commune. Everybody quit their jobs just to do this thing. It taught me about being in a serious band that wanted to travel, wanted to put its own records out, wanted to do everything itself. We didn't care if we slept on the floor or in the tour bus, or on people's floors, or some punk rock house, and it was definitely my learning experience for the beginning of my musical life, as an adult."
Cadena holds a unique spot in FLAG for at least two reasons. For one thing, he is the only member of Black Flag to occupy two separate positions in the band. The contrast between being the band's focal point as vocalist, and the man propping up the frantic guitar lines of Greg Ginn as second guitarist, seems to have given Cadena an objective perspective on the band. "When they asked me to sing, it was because I was me. They liked me," he says. "They asked me if I wanted to try out to be singer or even at the same time, 'Can you play guitar and sing?' At that time I couldn't. Things might have been different if I could."
But also, Cadena is the only person in the entire world that has played in FLAG, Black Flag during the band's original run and Black Flag during the disastrous 2003 "reunion" which featured only him, Ginn, Robo and C'el Revuelta from the original band, as well as several stand-ins.
Morris commented on almost joining the 2003 reunion last year, "The reunion was stupid and depressing. It was so bad that I couldn't be a part of it. When my heart was telling me, 'Keith, you have got to do this,' I was like, 'Keith, don't be an idiot!'"
Morris continues, "One day, while the whole reunion was getting put together, Duff McKagan of Guns N' Roses walks up to me and asks me if I'm going to be a part of the Black Flag reunion because he was asked to play bass. I say, 'Pfftâ?¦ yeah I'm going to be a part of the Black Flag reunion!' But, I knew at that time something was strange."
By contrast, Cadena seems more genteel about the whole matter. He says, "Well, the Black Flag 2003 reunion and FLAG are a little bit different. Anything I approach, having to do with Black Flag, I try to put what I believe in the spirit of the music into it, on my end. I believe everybody I know, whatever project it is, would approach whatever they're doing in the same fashion."
Indeed, as an example of Cadena's good nature, he seems rather proud that for the most part, he gets along well with everyone in the band. "I left Black Flag on good terms also," he says. "That was one of the other things that I am pretty proud of, actually. Black Flag have a little bit of a torrid history as far as that is concerned. As far as my behalf, I was able to hold my own there."
July 22, 1979 - The Polliwog Park show a.k.a. "The Sandwich Assault"
A notable Black Flag show was the Polliwog Park gig in July 1979, where the band played a set to families and park-goers under the guise of being a jazz group. Keith Morris recollects the show and resulting fallout, "It was a picnic on a Sunday afternoon in a beautiful park in Manhattan Beach, and the Director of Parks and Recreation had the Air Force big band/jazz band cancel a couple of weeks before the show. Apparently, there was an outbreak of the flu'when you have a big group, all of sudden those people pass it on to five people and those five who pass it onto five people who pass it on to 20 people."
"Greg Ginn had managed to lie to the director of Parks and Recreation and told them we were a Fleetwood Mac cover band that also played jazz. The director of Parks and Recreations was excited by that and he allowed us to put together a bill that included Eddie and the Subtitles, who were actually the headlining act, who didn't play because Black Flag created the riotous atmosphere."
"Maybe 60 seconds into the first song, it began to rain food. Sandwiches, half-eaten drumsticks, watermelon, cantaloupe rinds, banana peels. We tried to dodge it. I remember seeing Chuck Dukowski pick a sandwich up off the stage and eat it."
IT WAS THE TIME OF MY LIFE
Although the members of FLAG come across as generally nice guys, you can tell that they are tough dudes. And not just "tough," but tough as galvanized nails. I'm talking tough, baby. These are guys that went without food so the tour van could run. These are guys that had to resort to eating hot dogs rolled up in Wonder Bread due to lack of cash. These are guys that literally fought with the LAPD at a time when cracking someone over the head with a nightstick for no real reason was good for a laugh back at the station and not a nationally televised and scrutinized incident. This was a time when the police would throw you up against the wall and call you a "faggot" for simply having an unusual haircut. This was a time when the police would actually spy on and monitor bands, hoping to catch them doing subversive acts as if they were the KGB.
"We wouldn't back down. We called them out for their bullshit," says Dukowski. "When they purposefully invaded our shows, when they set up encampments before our shows had even started, we talked about it. We told the media about it. We refused to stop playing when they told us to stop. We played "Police Story" instead of stopping. We made fun of them in our radio ads. We mocked them for their corruption and stupidity. We hated them and they hated us."
Dukowski's mere existence in 2013 shows that if a force opposes him, he strikes back twice as hard, no matter how bad the beating may be, until finally, the aggressor gives up out of exhaustion. Meanwhile, you better believe that if Morris is challenged, he'll swipe back twice as hard and twice as fast.
That's why drummer Bill Stevenson is such an enigma. The mythos surrounding Black Flag is one of non-stop hardship and battles with authority figures, which in turn, made the people in the band grow that much meaner. But, when speaking to Stevenson, he doesn't come off as forged-in-fire agitator, but rather, as the nice boy who lives next door.
It might be somewhat reductive (or even insulting) to compare a grown man in his late 40s that has a mortgage and kids to Richie Cunningham. But, between his bright voice, youthful energy and enthusiasm for pretty much everything, it's hard to not feel as though Stevenson is still, in some ways, that nice little guy who looked up to Keith Morris at the fishing store.
"I was a fishing fanatic ever since I was six," says Stevenson. "Down at the Hermosa pier, right at the foot of the pier, there's a fishing tackle store called Hermosa Tackle Box. Keith's dad, Jerry, owned Hermosa Tackle Box. Keith worked there right out of junior high. I would go in there to buy fishing tackle and that's how I met Keith. It was actually Keith, who was a little bit older than me - he turned me on to things that were like pre-punk or pre-new wave. Punk rock was beginning to blossom. So I took a lot of musical cues from him. I remember him telling me that he had this band 'Panic.' [Panic was Black Flag's earliest incarnation.] I remember that Panic played our high school Spanish club party. That didn't end so well. I just think there were a lot of confused people with the profanity and all. Keith called me Billy and he still does. He's one of the only people that still calls me Billy, like, my sister calls me Billy."
"I've known Billy since he was, probably when I met him, 11 or 12, he could have been a little bit younger," says Morris. "Billy worked for my dad. Billy would come into my dad's store and I'd have the radio on and somebody would be blaring and blasting and he'd ask me 'Keith, I don't really listen to a lot of music. Who should I listen to?' Of course, I'd say Ted Nugent and Aerosmith and Cheap Trick. There was a local band called The Last. I suggested The Last and The Dogs'The Detroit Dogs who were a big influence on Greg Ginn and I. So, I've known Billy before he even thought of playing in a band." In fact, Black Flag led directly to creation of Stevenson's band Descendents, who many would even place on the same tier as Black Flag.
Like Cadena, Stevenson became a member of Black Flag simply because he was hanging around at the right place at the right time. "My tenure with Black Flag is a complicated one," says Stevenson. "I began filling in for Robo, for this or that or the other reason'the main reason is that he would get deported back to Colombia. So I filled in. I played on a lot of the Damaged tour. They got Emil, and I filled in. They got Chuck Biscuits, I filled in. At a certain point, I was like, 'Well maybe I should just put everybody out of their misery and join full-time.' I actually joined the band full-time, in really late '82 or early '83."
Over the years, journalists and academics have painted Black Flag as this volatile band in which everyone hated each other. Evidence for such a perception is found throughout the Black Flag discography. On the compilation Everything Went Black, Morris is credited under a fake name. Ron Reyes is credited under a bastardized Latin for "child molester." On Family Man, it seemed that the band hated each other so much that side A was just Henry Rollins without any music except for the last track. Meanwhile, side B is entirely instrumental without input from Rollins.
But, directly in line with his warm personality, Stevenson paints an entirely different picture of Black Flag, directly in opposition to the mural of constant conflict found in so many books. "I have to say, I don't really recall the hostile environment," he says. "It was the time of my life. We all lived together there in office spaces that we rented and we would sleep next to our instruments or under our desks that we used for mail order. We were like peas and carrots. We were a happy family. Mugger [SST Records employee] and Spot [SST producer] were with us. Maybe other people had a different experience, [maybe] it was hostile for them."
Further proving that history isn't always accurate, Stephen Egerton shadows Stevenson's account. Egerton says, "Well you know, when I saw Black Flag, there would have been nothing to lead one to believe there was disharmony in the band at all, at any time. The first time I saw them was with Dez singing. Oddly enough, that was the very last show with Dez singing. They were all friends, that I could tell as a kid from the audience. Then, when we were opening for them in '84, then again in '85, at no time did I sense any disharmony with the band. We were always really good friends. That was true through the end, as far as I know."
Stevenson states that Black Flag operated as a surrogate family for him, teaching him what a young man needs to know. He explains, "It was so nurturing. I looked up to Chuck and Greg as father figures. I don't mean that to say they are terribly old. I was born when my father was 50. So put me at 18 years of age, my father was 68, so I really had a grandpa at my house. But, Chuck and Greg, they were closer to what would be a father's age, or advanced big brother age. So they taught me things that I needed to know, things that my father didn't teach me because of the generation gap. Those were the people that helped me find myself."
When considering what Stevenson has been through, his positive attitude and general warmness either makes perfect sense or is completely perplexing. In 2008, Stevenson developed a tumor in his brain that grew to the size of a grapefruit, and at one point, was literally pushing his eyes out of his head. The tumor caused Stevenson severe medical complications (aside from the life-threatening tumor itself) including a blood-clot that almost caused a heart attack and a complete loss of energy. In fact, Stevenson only found out about the tumor when he went to an eye doctor. Shocked at the advanced stage of the growth, the eye doctor immediately sent Stevenson to the emergency ward, where he would soon find out that, quite simply, he could have died at any minute.
Yet after the tumor was removed, Stevenson recuperated at a rate that astounded his doctors. He says, "I'm fully, fully recovered. I'm out playing Descendents shows all the time. I've recorded a new Only Crime record and was working on a new Descendents record. I'm beyond recovered. I haven't been this able and agile and limber and quick and strong on my drums or in life since 2003."
The confrontation with death has caused Stevenson to see things from a new perspective. "Just getting the brain tumor out of my head, it sent me back to old Bill. Bill who drinks too much coffee and goes for All. That guy is back. I had sort of turned into a bit of a zombie. It was like magic. Once they took it out of there it was like, game on. If I had to describe myself, I'm the Bill Stevenson from 1988."
THE DOUBLE WHAMMY SMACK ATTACK
But, despite the sheer talent and pedigree behind Morris, Dukowski, Cadena and Stevenson, in many ways all eyes are on Egerton. Depending on how you look at it, he's either got the best job in world (playing guitar next to Morris, Dukowski, Cadena and Stevenson) or the worst job in the world (standing in the spot once occupied by Greg Ginn).
Black Flag certainly wasn't the result of any one individual. Every one of the unique, eccentric, and genius personalities in the band played a large part in shaping Black Flag into what it was. But still, Greg Ginn, who co-founded the band along with Morris, was the band's only member to be in every incarnation of the band. On top of that, Greg Ginn is a genius. Since the demise of Black Flag, stories about Ginn being hard to deal with, being a terrible bookkeeper for the bands on SST, and generally being out to lunch have abounded. But even if all that is true, you can't deny the fact that he changed what the guitar meant to rock music.
Black Flag's sound was based in Ginn's frantic guitar lines. A series of smashing riffs that would explode at the end like dynamite, Ginn's guitar introduced a more berserk, frantic and complex rhythm into punk rock. While other bands were still copying Johnny Ramone, Ginn was introducing free association jazz techniques into his string slamming. Black Flag's guitar lines were constantly shifting so that just after they exploded, they would suddenly strike back from a completely unknown spot'a tiger in the form of chords, if you will. Black Flag's guitar lines are invigorating, but also dangerous.
And that's the job that Egerton has signed up for. But, really, if there is a man for the job, it's him. For one thing, he has a long history with Black Flag. "I knew Bill Stevenson from Karl Alvarez, bass player in Descendents," says Egerton. "Karl and I had a band growing up in Salt Lake City called The Massacre Guys that were around for a long time, and we opened for Black Flag several times over the years, in varying lineups. That's where I first met Bill, when he first started touring with Black Flag. Karl and I had been huge Descendents fans, so we thought that was the coolest. That's where we actually met. [Then a] funny turn of events happened and Karl and I were in the Descendents."
Like Stevenson, Egerton grew close to the Black Flag family by playing in the Descendents. He says, "I'm a little bit distanced from it, having sort of been friends with everybody. I knew Chuck through the label. I knew Dez when Karl and I joined the Descendents. The first record we did was Descendents' All. We asked Dez to sing some backing vocals. Keith was a friend to Bill when Bill was first picking up the drums. From Bill's and my perspective, these were guys that we really looked up to. They were a little bit older than us. They were a huge part of our musical upbringing. They were extremely important to us."
Talking to Egerton presents an interesting view into his music. Like Stevenson, Egerton seems to be a generally good-natured guy. Perhaps having children has tempered him, but he speaks earnestly, without giving up any dirt. He's honest, but maintains a respect for other people's feelings. And although his contribution to punk is usually ranked pretty high, he maintains a genuine modesty about his music. When I ask why bands bring him into their folds to juice them back up, he replies, "It really isn't that so much. In the case of this, Bill and I have developed a very strong communication musically over [the past] 25 years, because we've spent so many hours working on Descendents music and even Black Flag songs in the practice room for fun. We've developed a very longstanding musical language. We understand how each other is going to play. I think from the perspective from the rest of the guys, they were just like, 'Stephen knows all this stuff. He plays with Bill all the time.' It's a known quantity with Bill and I. I think it just kind of made sense."
But, really, Egerton isn't handling guitar duties in FLAG because he knows the band or "is a cool guy," Egerton is manning the guitar because he is a goddamn guitar maniac. Indeed, in the mid 80s, Egerton was brought into the Descendents to fire up the band after previous guitarist Ray Cooper left. Egerton's guitar work is fast, loose and wild. But where many punk rockers allow that combination to descend into a bland mishmash of generic anger, Egerton is able to maintain speed and ferocity while retaining a feeling in string striking. His music isn't just rage (though that's in there, too); it also contains that rare essence of feeling that suggests something deeper than teenage angst. In his strings are emotions and textures that can't be summed up by a single adjective.
While Egerton might be a little reluctant to trumpet his skills, Morris is quick to jump in and back up his guitar playing. Morris says, "Let me clarify something about Stephen. He's certainly no slouch when it comes to playing guitar. If you want to witness and hear what Stephen is about, you can watch the Golden Voice show on YouTube. You'll see what I'm talking about. I don't even need to say it. On top of that, you've got to take into consideration that we also have another guy in our band, a guy named Dez, who played guitar in Black Flag, so now, we've got the double whammy smack attack!"
July 4, 1981- Dez Cadena's Last Show as Vocalist a.k.a. a young Henry Rollins in Training
The July 4, 1981 Black Flag show was particularly notable because not only was it Dez Cadena's last show as vocalist, but it was also one of the first shows featuring a young Henry Rollins. Egerton, who was there, recalls the show. "That show was at the Salt Lake Indian Center. Henry was actually in town with them, moving gear around. I actually have a great picture of them sound checking. The band is kind of a little blurry and Henry is sitting on the side of the stage, watching Dez. It's a great picture."
"For us in Salt Lake, this was a monumental," he continues. "It was the first all-ages punk rock show in Salt Lake where someone rented a hall and found a PA and put the whole thing together. That was the kind of show it was. It was the first of that kind. We were painting Black Flag bars all over the city in anticipation of the show. There were about 500 people there, which was a lot for a town of this size. The band played absolutely fantastic. It was just an exploding show. That's the only way I could describe it. Chuck with manic energy. Robo was just completely crazy with his unusual way of playing the drums. Greg was at the stacks. Dez was just sounding amazing. My biggest memory of the show is really the next day of me and my friends just being a big pile of bruises. We laid around the whole next day and just went 'uggghhh.'"
NEVER DO THAT, IT MIGHT GET YOU IN TROUBLE
Of course, there is an elephant in the room. Obviously, the name FLAG was carefully chosen. For some reason or another, modern music listeners have decided that reunions harm a band's cultural relevance. It might be a jaded view, but it's what seems to stick. By choosing the name FLAG and not just using the Black Flag name, the members seem to say in essence that they're not claiming to be a reunion, but rather, just a bunch of legendary guys that were in a legendary band playing some legendary music. No matter what happens, they can't harm Black Flag's legacy, because they're not Black Flag, if you will.
Meanwhile, just as FLAG have risen, Greg Ginn and Ron Reyes have reunited and are touring as Black Flag. What that means is that in 2013, two bands with a Black Flag pedigree are on the circuit. The timing does seem coincidental, causing a lot of listeners to pit the two bands against each other: Which will be better live? Which has a more proper name? Which is the real deal and which is the cash grab?
But, it seems that no members of band are interested in the conflict and even see said conflict as detrimental. Perhaps the simultaneous reunions really were coincidental. Certainly it's possible.
In a March 2013 interview with Punknews, Reyes commented on the situation directly. He said, "In some ways, it's unfortunate because a few so-called 'fans' like to stir up a lot of heat. I don't want to get involved in that. I love all [the guys in Flag]. I wish them all the best." As to whether he has any ill will towards any members in Flag, Reyes adamantly replied, "Oh, no! Hell no! God, no. No, no, no, no, no. Absolutely not. Not at all."
Members of FLAG seem to find this accord satisfactory. Egerton seems to see both bands through eyes of a fan, suggesting that we would even go see the Greg Ginn iteration of Black Flag. He says, "I don't know the full details of what Greg and Ron are doing. I think what was happening there was that they were already kind of talking about doing music together and were going to call it Black Flag. I don't know if that was in response to what we were going to do. The way I look at the situation arising is just that as a fan, now there's twice as much opportunity to see something related to this great music. So if I get a chance to see Ginn's Black Flag, I'll definitely do it, for sure."
Morris echoes the sentimentâ?¦ mostly. "I believe that it's a coincidence and that's all good. It's a party. Everybody gets to bring their flavor to the party. You know with Black Flag, all of the vocalists, all of the guys, and all of the drummers, it's not just about one guy. You might get all of these naysayers and all of these people with their mega-do-goody-thing, 'Greg Ginn is not part of this, so it's not Black Flag,' or 'Henry Rollins isn't the vocalist so it's not Black Flag.' You know what, that's all good. That's fine, and we appreciate all of those people. They're allowed to say whatever they want to say and it's a beautiful thing. My opinion is, the more the merrier. I want to say a lot of bad, negative things towards one of the members of the other musical organizations, but I don't have to. it's not healthy. I think what I'll do instead is go and throw a brick through the plate glass window of the LA police stationâ?¦ I'm just kidding. Never do that, it might get you in trouble."
RIGHTEOUS
So, the pieces are now set. FLAG has pretty much as dynamic a line-up as one could hope: Morris. Dukowski. Cadena. Stevenson. Egerton. Perhaps the most powerful five piece lineup possible and without question, the most explosive one'as if the combination of Morris and Dukowski could be anything less than musical nitroglycerine.
But of course, it's all just a preamble. FLAG can't go out there and just do a "pretty good job." FLAG will not be able to float by on goodwill or nice memories. FLAG is going to have to destroy. FLAG is going to have to level the house. FLAG is going to have to do these songs'the songs that are Holy Scripture to so many'absolute justice.
"We gotta go out and play!" Morris chomps at the bit. "We've only done the one show and we only played the first EP. See, when I left Black Flag, there was a lot of negativity happening. There was a lot of finger pointing. There were a few things that happened that I will raise my hand and say I am wholeheartedly responsible for. There were also some things that I learned that if I didn't quit, I would have been kicked out of the band. But, it's all good. We're gonna have fun. We're gonna go out there and let everybody know that we should be playing these songs. See, we do get all these naysayers. Well, the fact is we were all part of Black Flag and we deserve and have earned the right to call our band whatever we want and to fly whatever flag that we want to fly. We're gonna have fun!"
Stevenson seems primed for what will be an event that goes down in punk rock history. "I think the material can largely dictate what it will be. It's certainly a goal of mine to be very faithful to the original material. There is a really heavy leaning on the first four years and Damaged because that's the stuff we all have the most commonality in. So, we're just going to play that stuff the way it's supposed to be played."
Even Egerton, who to some degree has all eyes focused on him, seems eager to prove himself. "I'm absolutely rearing to go with it. I have so many, many hours playing along to that music through my life. Still for me to get up there and play that stuff is awesome with those guys."
Dukowski, of course, puts it best. He doesn't blow his own trumpet, nor does he create a false veil of modestly. He doesn't offer a suggestion, but instead, states a cold, hard fact, "I feel honored and glad that people still care about music I made in the past and the music I make now with my family in Chuck Dukowski Sextet. Come check out the FLAG shows. They will be righteous."0 Pittsburgh police chief supports refiling of charges against officer involved in Heinz Field arrest
PITTSBURGH - Pittsburgh Police Chief Cameron McLay told Target 11 Wednesday that he supports the refilling of charges against a police officer accused of using excessive force during an arrest at Heinz Field.
Pittsburgh police Sgt. Stephen Matakovich, who has been on the Pittsburgh police force for more than 20 years, was charged with one count of simple assault and one count of official oppression.
A judge dropped all of the charges Monday, but McLay believes they should be refiled.
“In my opinion, yes, (excessive force was used), but again, the courts will do what they need to do,” McLay said.
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Sources told Target 11 that Matakovich was off duty but working a security detail at Heinz Field on Nov. 28 when he encountered an intoxicated fan, Gabriel Despres, and arrested him.
The incident was captured on the stadium’s surveillance cameras. The video shows Matakovich pushing and then repeatedly punching Despres. Matakovich claimed during his hearing that he took the actions because he felt threatened.
McLay declined to discuss the judge’s decision to dismiss charges but said he stands by the investigation.
“Our responsibility is to conduct investigations, and when there are apparent violations of the law, we have an ethical responsibility, regardless of who the actor is, to run that same course of conduct through exactly the same steps as if it was you who was caught on that video tape,” McLay said.
He added that he’s not surprised that the FBI has decided to review the case, and he said he hopes the district attorney will take another look at it.
“I know the District Attorney’s Office is contemplating refiling, and I think that's a good thing,” McLay said.
The chief also said an internal investigation is now underway, and the officer may face disciplinary action.
“I will let the integrity of the investigation inform my opinion about how significant and how serious the issue is and try to come to a determination on whether I’m looking at misconduct or a mistake,” McLay said.
Matakovich remains on paid leave from the Pittsburgh police force.
Despres is still facing charges of trespassing and underage drinking. His hearing is set for March.Berlusconi has been a staunch supporter of Bush's war in Iraq
The White House has apologised to Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi for a briefing describing him as a political "amateur" who is "hated by many".
The "insulting" biography was included in a press kit distributed to reporters travelling with President George W Bush to a meeting of world leaders in Japan.
He was "one of the most controversial leaders" of a country "known for governmental corruption and vice".
Only last month, Mr Bush visited his old ally, calling him a "good friend".
The four-page description of Mr Berlusconi had been taken from the Encyclopedia of World Biography.
It refers to the Italian prime minister as a man "hated by many but respected by all at least for his bella figura (personal style) and the sheer force of his will".
It says Mr Berlusconi was said to be "regarded by many as a political dilettante (amateur) who gained his high office only through use of his considerable influence on the national media".
Acknowledging the error, White House spokesman Tony Fratto issued an apology.
"A biography of Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi included in the press package used language that is insulting both to Prime Minister Berlusconi and to the Italian people," Mr Fratto said in a statement.
"We apologise to Italy and to the prime minister for this very unfortunate mistake.
"The sentiments expressed in the biography do not represent the views of President Bush, the American government, or the American people," he said.
Mr Berlusconi was a key supporter of the US-led war in Iraq.
During Mr Bush's farewell tour of Europe last month, Mr Berlusconi called the US leader "a personal friend of mine and also a great friend of Italy".
To which Mr Bush responded: "You're right. We're good friends."There has been no known link between diabetes and vitamin A -- until now. A new study suggests that the vitamin improves the insulin producing β-cell´s function.
The researchers initially discovered that insulin-producing beta-cells contain a large quantity of a cell surface receptor for vitamin A.
"There are no unnecessary surface receptors in human cells. They all serve a purpose but which, in many cases, is still unknown and because of that they are called "orphan" receptors. When we discovered that insulin cells have a cell surface expressed receptor for vitamin A, we thought it was important to find out why and what the purpose is of a cell surface receptor interacting with vitamin A mediating a rapid response to vitamin A," explains Albert Salehi, senior researcher at the Lund University Diabetes Centre in Sweden.
The researchers believe that the purpose, in this particular case, is that vitamin A plays an important role for the development of beta-cells in the early stages of life, but also for a proper function during the remaining life especially during pathophysiological conditions, i.e some inflammatory conditions.
Albert Salehi and his research team, together with their colleagues at the University of Gothenburg, King's College (London) and the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, have mapped 220 different receptors on the surface of the beta cell, whose features are still not fully known. One of the findings is the cell surface expressed receptor for vitamin A.
In order to study the role of the vitamin in cases of diabetes, the researchers worked with insulin cells from mice and non-diabetic and type 2 diabetic donors. By partially blocking the vitamin A receptor and challenging the cells with sugar, they could see that the cells' ability to secrete insulin deteriorated.
"We saw close to a 30 per cent reduction," says Albert Salehi, adding that impaired cell survival and insulin secretion are key causes of type 2 diabetes.
The same tendency could be seen when comparing insulin cells from type 2 diabetic donors. Cells from patients with type 2 diabetes were less capable of insulin secretion compared with cells from people without diabetes.
The researchers also saw that the beta-cells' resistance to inflammation decreases in the absence of vitamin A. In case of a complete deficiency, the cells die. The discovery may also be significant for certain types of type 1 diabetes when the beta-cells are not sufficiently developed during the early stages of life.
"In animal experiments it is known that newborn mice need vitamin A to develop their beta-cells in a normal way. Most likely, the same applies to human beings. Children must absorb a sufficient amount of vitamin A through their diet," says Albert Salehi.
Vitamin A is found mainly in offal and dairy products. In Sweden, milk is enriched with vitamin A. There appears to be no vitamin A deficiency in Sweden in people who eat a standard variety of food, but vegetarians perhaps need to be aware of the problem.
Too much vitamin A is harmful and can lead to osteoporosis. However, there is no risk of excessive intake through food -- the risk lies in taking dietary supplements. Defects associated with vitamin A deficiency are, among other things, impaired night vision and reduced elasticity in the skin and mucous membranes.
In the event of a diabetes treatment based on the newly found cell surface receptor for vitamin A, Albert Salehi believes that the risk of excessive intake makes the vitamin A itself inappropriate.
"But we're trying to find substances such as small molecules or peptides that are similar to the vitamin A could activate the newly found receptor while lacking the unwanted effects" of vitamin A," he concludes.DAYTONA BEACH, FL—Having secured pole position at the 55th Annual Daytona 500 this Sunday, stock car racer Danica Patrick reportedly has drawn universal praise for smashing social barriers on behalf of stunningly beautiful women everywhere. “In reaching this latest milestone, Danica has once more shown that no challenge is too great for a young, gorgeous female,” said ESPN racing columnist David Newton of the winsome, well-proportioned NASCAR driver, who in addition to her feats on the racetrack is widely regarded as one of the most alluring women in professional sports. “Demonstrating that she can both compete with and even surpass her male peers, Danica is living proof that there is no obstacle a good-looking woman cannot overcome. Her continued success sends an important message to little girls around the world that, provided they believe in themselves and are gorgeous, they can achieve their dreams.” Newton confirmed that if Patrick takes the checkered flag at Daytona, it would be the most significant symbolic victory since 2004, when Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s win at the race proved once and for all that privileged white men who come from NASCAR families can do anything.
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way to be green in the PC market. It says 10 monitors, mice and keyboards on a single computer reduces CO2 emissions by up to 15 tones per year per system. According to the company, in the last year their software has saved more than 13,250 tons of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of taking 2,300 cars off the road. In addition, it also saves you money because using one physical computer (rather than two) cuts down on your electricity bill, and it reduces hardware and support cost. A group of kids laugh and pose for a photo beside a network that employs Userful software, allowing one computer to be turned into 10. Userful is also helping out in another green space, as its software cuts back on computer waste: With an estimated 20 million PCs becoming obsolete in the U.S. each year, Userful says e-waste contains lead, mercury, cadmium, and many other toxic and bio-accumulative compounds that can compromise water and air quality. By sharing the same box, Desktop Multiplier reduces electronic waste by up to 80 per cent. The current promotion comes with free two-user licences, so all you need is an extra video card (or a card that enables two monitors to be plugged in), a USB keyboard and a mouse. The company says the download will not affect any software on your hard disk. So why is the company giving its software away for free? Rousseau told DigitalJournal.com: "We are giving this software away for personal use only because it is our hope that people will realise what an amazing product it is and recommended the commercial version to their workplace. It is free forever, enjoy!" To download the software free, Digital Journal -- Canadian company Userful is now giving away its Desktop Multiplier software to anyone who wants an extra PC free.The software turns one computer into many, allowing a single computer box to support multiple users at the same time. All you need to do is connect an extra monitor, USB keyboard and mouse to your run-of-the-mill computer box, and the Desktop Multiplier software will make it possible for two people to work on the same PC at the same time.The reason Userful is giving away its software is to prove an environmental point and show just how much "un-tapped value lies hidden in today's desktop PCs," as their company press release reads.In an email interview with DigitalJournal.com, Userful's marketing and PR manager, Sean Rousseau, said, "Desktop multiplier works so efficiently because it only copies the necessary portions of the operating system while sharing the rest between each user. However from a user's perspective it appears that both have their own independent PC since their actions and files are completely private and separate from each other."As for the legality of splitting the operating system to work with multiple users, Rousseau also noted Userful's Desktop Multiplier runs on the open source Linux operating system, so turning one computer into two is perfectly legal.In fact, Userful's software will allow you to create up to 10 independent workstations from a single physical computer tower. The software is currently used around the world in schools, libraries, hotels, and other businesses. The software manages up to 10 PCs through a central Web portal. For a detailed diagram of how it works, click here "Most of what happens in an office -- word processing, internet, spreadsheets, etc. --- uses very little of the computing power of modern PC's," said Rousseau. "We figured there must be a more efficient way to use our computers and so we developed the technology to have up to 10 of our employees working from a single computer simultaneously. It worked so well that we decided to share it with the world."The company was founded in 1999 and is currently privately held. Userful was named Alberta's 10th fastest growing company earning under $20 million in revenue.Userful says its software has led to "huge savings" for businesses and individuals by reducing the number of PCs one needs to purchase. The company says turning one computer into 10 can cut as much as 70 per cent from a business's hardware investment. The company says : "Over a 3-year lifecycle on a 100-user deployment, Userful's Desktop Multiplier approach can save as much as $90,000 in hardware acquisition; $90,000 on software acquisition; and $100,000 to $200,000 per year in reduced software support and maintenance costs."The idea of splitting a computer between multiple people certainly sounds great for IT departments everywhere, so we wondered if the system would be bogged down by up to 10 people using a single computer's processing power."How much it slows down your computer depends largely on how fast your computer is and what you plan on using the computer for," said Rousseau. "For an example of what you can do we recently tried overloading one of our 10 user stations just to see if we could. All 10 had office programs and email open, they each had multiple YouTube videos playing, and six of them were playing RuneScape all at the same time without any slowdowns at all."In addition to cost savings, Userful is also finding an innovative way to be green in the PC market. It says 10 monitors, mice and keyboards on a single computer reduces CO2 emissions by up to 15 tones per year per system. According to the company, in the last year their software has saved more than 13,250 tons of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of taking 2,300 cars off the road.In addition, it also saves you money because using one physical computer (rather than two) cuts down on your electricity bill, and it reduces hardware and support cost.Userful is also helping out in another green space, as its software cuts back on computer waste: With an estimated 20 million PCs becoming obsolete in the U.S. each year, Userful says e-waste contains lead, mercury, cadmium, and many other toxic and bio-accumulative compounds that can compromise water and air quality. By sharing the same box, Desktop Multiplier reduces electronic waste by up to 80 per cent.The current promotion comes with free two-user licences, so all you need is an extra video card (or a card that enables two monitors to be plugged in), a USB keyboard and a mouse. The company says the download will not affect any software on your hard disk.So why is the company giving its software away for free? Rousseau told DigitalJournal.com: "We are giving this software away for personal use only because it is our hope that people will realise what an amazing product it is and recommended the commercial version to their workplace. It is free forever, enjoy!"To download the software free, visit Userful's website More about Userful, Computers, Software userful computers softwareBreaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Dec. 24, 2017, 12:33 AM GMT / Updated Dec. 24, 2017, 1:31 AM GMT / Source: Associated Press
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump reacted to reports Saturday about the coming retirement of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who has been buffeted by attacks from the president and his Republican allies over alleged anti-Trump bias in the agency, by repeating falsehoods about McCabe's wife.
"How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin' James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife's campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?" Trump tweeted.
Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe appears before the Senate Select Committee on May 11, 2017. Michael Reynolds / EPA
McCabe spent hours behind closed doors on Capitol Hill this week being grilled by lawmakers on two separate committees as part of a new investigation of the FBI and its 2016 inquiry into Clinton's email practices when she was secretary of state. His role supervising the email investigation has come under renewed scrutiny.
But Trump's tweet is incorrect. McCabe's wife, Jill, did not get $700,000 in donations from Clinton for a Virginia state Senate race in 2015.
The money came from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe's political action committee and the Virginia Democratic Party and was donated before McCabe was promoted to deputy director and assumed a supervisory role in the Clinton email investigation. McAuliffe is a longtime supporter of Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
McCabe became acting FBI director in May after Trump fired James Comey, who was overseeing the bureau's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Trump maintains there was no collusion between his campaign and the Russian government, and has blasted the investigation as a "witch hunt.
From his South Florida home, where he is spending the holidays, Trump also tweeted that McCabe "is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!"
In another tweet early Sunday morning, the president again assailed McCabe.
.@FoxNews-FBI’s Andrew McCabe, “in addition to his wife getting all of this money from M (Clinton Puppet), he was using, allegedly, his FBI Official Email Account to promote her campaign. You obviously cannot do this. These were the people who were investigating Hillary Clinton.” — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2017
McCabe plans to retire in about 90 days, when he becomes fully eligible for pension benefits, The Washington Post reported Saturday, citing people familiar with the situation. Trump and his Republican allies have made it clear that they want McCabe out of the FBI. But McCabe is a civil service employee who cannot be fired without clear evidence of wrongdoing.
Ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in a tweet that it would "set a dangerous precedent" if the FBI fired McCabe under pressure from the president.
FBI would set a dangerous precedent if it forced out dedicated career public servants in capitulation to Trump and WH pressure. President has already removed one top FBI leader — Comey — over Russia; McCabe would be another. https://t.co/3txhTds3vA — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 23, 2017
McCabe was among the candidates Trump interviewed for the FBI director's job after he dismissed Comey. He also has been a focus of Trump's ire for some time.
Trump originally sent the incorrect tweet about McCabe's wife's campaign in July. In a second tweet that month, the president asked "why didn't A.G. Sessions replace Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a Comey friend who was in charge of Clinton investigation," referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The FBI declined to comment on reports about retirement by McCabe, who was summoned to Capitol Hill this week and grilled for hours by two congressional committees.
Related: Trump tweet suggests he knew Flynn had lied to FBI at time of firing
Republicans charge that an anti-Trump bias exists in the bureau's ranks, citing the campaign donations to McCabe's wife and, more recently, the release of hundreds of text messages between FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page. Strzok and Page used words like "idiot" and "loathsome human" to describe Trump during the campaign.
Strzok was removed the team of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the Russia investigation, over the summer after the text messages surfaced.
Democrats accuse the GOP of diversionary tactics and say their criticism could embolden Trump to take steps to fire Mueller.
Trump said earlier this week that he's not considering firing Mueller.It's a sunny Friday afternoon, and 10-year-old T.J. McGibbon is doing homework on her family's front porch in Kirkendall.
She's polite and cheerful. She's surrounded by books. She's eager to talk about Hamilton, and her favourite vintage clothing store, and how much she wants the city to build a light rail transit system.
It's almost like T.J. isn't starring in the week's biggest blockbuster movie, X-Men: Apocalypse. But she is.
T.J. plays Nina, the daughter of Magneto, in the film released Friday.
He was a very giving person. He answered all her questions, because she usually has about a million. - Kimberley McGibbon on Michael Fassbender
She thinks it's exciting too, even though she wasn't sure what she was auditioning for at first. At one audition, she had to speak Polish.
"Even just to audition, I was really excited," she said. "But when I got the role, it was amazing. That's a pretty big set and I got to meet a lot of really cool people."
Acting isn't new to T.J., who started she was five and able to read her own scripts.
She comes from a family with creative roots, her mom Kimberley said. It's filled with directors and actors and artists and musicians. Her father, Jason, is a musician and local pastor. Her three siblings are creative too.
In five years, T.J. has accumulated a long list of credits. She's been a regular on three TV series: Odd Squad, Super Why! and Lucky 7. In 2013, she played Rick Mercer's daughter on an episode of The Rick Mercer Report.
With all this work, T.J. is home schooled. Kimberley regularly shuttles her back and forth to auditions in Toronto. On one trip, she unknowingly ended up at an audition for X-Men: Apocalypse.
T.J. McGibbon hangs out on set with Michael Fassbender, her co-star in X-Men: Apocalypse. (Kimberley McGibbon)
She didn't know that at the time, Kimberley said. They sent her "sides" – dialogue to prepare ahead of the audition – but the movie had a dummy name, and the lines didn't appear to have anything to do with X-Men.
By the second and third audition, she knew. T.J., who had seen all the X-Men movies, was just happy for a chance. She got the part, and last May, headed to Montreal to film.
Even while filming, she had to keep the details top secret. "This is the first movie we've ever let her do where we hadn't read the script," Kimberley said. "We knew her part but that was it."
Much of her time was spent with Michael Fassbender, who plays Magneto. Fassbender is "just a really great human being," Kimberley said.
"He was a very giving person. He answered all her questions, because she usually has about a million."
Even as T.J.'s star rises, she has no plans to leave Hamilton. She has friends here, and dance classes, and her favourite parks and places on Locke Street. She went to a special cast and crew screening of the X-Men movie in Montreal this week. But her second viewing was at Jackson Square with some of her Hamilton friends.
Her next role, in fact, is Lily in a production of The Beauty and the Beast at the Staircase Theatre on June 3.
And as T.J. does her homework on a sunny Friday afternoon, she wears a shirt that says "Hamilton is Home." It's not just for the camera. She wears it all the time.
"People say, 'When are you moving to L.A.?'" T.J. said. But "Hamilton is like the coolest place on Earth."This page is about the game. For an overview of our Van Buren-related articles, see Portal:Van Buren.
Game Van Buren developer Black Isle Studios publisher Interplay Entertainment release date Canceled on December 8th, 2003 genre Role-Playing Game modes Single player
Co-op multiplayer rating None platforms Windows
Van Buren was the project name Black Isle Studios assigned to their version of Fallout 3.
The game was going to use an engine that Black Isle had made for Baldur's Gate 3, commonly referred to as the Jefferson Engine. It was a fully 3D engine, but was never used.
Black Isle Studios planned to include a dual-combat system in the game that allowed for the player to choose real-time (like Fallout 3 or Fallout Tactics) or turn-based combat (like Fallout 1 & 2), but real-time was only included due to Interplay's demands.[1] Nonetheless, Joshua Sawyer had stated that the emphasis would be on the turn-based version. Co-operative multiplayer was also going to be included in the game, again because of publisher requirements.[1]
In 2003, the game was canceled due to financial difficulties.
Contents show]
Setting
Van Buren would have taken place in the American southwest (Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Utah). The westernmost sites on the game map are the easternmost borders of New California Republic. According to the design documents, it was to be set in the year 2253.
Some places that appeared in Van Buren:
Places cut from the final version of the game:
Plot
Van Buren and has not been confirmed by The following is based onand has not been confirmed by canon sources.
The Prisoner
The game would have begun with the player character in a prison cell. Because of this, the player was given a choice. The prisoner could be an innocent that was imprisoned because of some misunderstanding, or they could choose to be a criminal and take bonus traits that would bolster some of their skills.
The player would awaken in a prison cell, but not the one they remembered falling asleep in. Suddenly, the floor rocks violently from an explosion and the player is knocked unconscious. When they awaken, they find their cell door open and a hole in the wall leading outside. Leaving the prison, the character is under attack by some unknown assailant. Deciding that discretion is the better part of valor, the player flees into the night to explore this new world.
Unfortunately, this newfound freedom may be short lived. The player is relentlessly pursued by robots who want to return them to the prison. As they explore the world and try to outwit their pursuers, they begin to uncover an underlying plot. Why was the character in a different prison than the one they fell asleep in? Why can't they remember being transferred? What was the attack on the prison about in the first place? Then they find out about NCR's problems, and a few things don't add up....
Just like all the titles in the Fallout series, the story ends with multiple different endings for every community and faction that you interacted with. Their outcome depends on your actions.
Presper's plan
Eventually, the player would discover the true reason behind the prison and the attack on it. It turns out that, through extensive research, the mad scientist called Presper, disgusted with what the world turned into after the War, discovered the history of New Plague, the virus that FEV was initially created to cure, and its genocidal potency, and also discovered a viable means to cleanse the world. Using ODYSSEUS, the quarantine prison, and a ballistic satellite known as B.O.M.B.-001, the way to human planetary domination and order became clear. He needed to get to B.O.M.B.-001 and use the nuclear weapons to clean the filth and wretch that currently have occupied the surface.
Presper and his followers released the New Plague virus in the remote areas near Boulder and Denver. It was close enough to the quarantine prison to spur ULYSSES into action, but not near enough to cause huge populations to start a general panic. Once enough people were infected and ULYSSES “arrested” enough people to just about fill up the prison, Presper’s men would stage an attack on the prison which would allow everyone to escape. This event would start a countdown of sorts for missile launch on B.O.M.B.-001. ULYSSES would assess the viral spread, try to gather up the escaped prisoners, and, once 90% of the prisoners had been retrieved, launch nuclear missiles to “clean & prevent” any further infection. By the time this happened, Presper had planned to be on, and in full control of, B.O.M.B.-001 and reprogramming targeting solutions to clean the areas he wanted. Humans of his choosing would wait out the second nuclear holocaust in the Boulder Dome, until the day came where he declared the Earth safe for pure blood humans once more.
Tech demo
A tech demo of Van Buren was created during the game's development. When asked about it, Bethesda's Pete Hines replied: "(...) releasing someone else's unfinished product, or assets from it, is not something we intend to do." Several screenshots and one video of the tech demo were released at No Mutants Allowed on April 30, 2007, followed by the tech demo itself on May 2.
The plot of the tech demo is not connected to the main storyline and was going to be included in the finished game as a tutorial. It takes place in the United States during the Great War, somewhere in the Great Midwest Commonwealth or the Pacific Time Zone[2]. The player character in the demo is referred to only as Citizen (even though the Citizen uses the Prisoner's model). The Citizen's parents were reduced to ash, as they didn't believe the government's bombing raid sirens. The Citizen made his way to the relocation center and was escorted to a Vault by Corporal Armstrong of the 4th or 13th Armored Infantry Division. To reach the Vault, they must fight communist insurgents. After they enter the Vault, the Citizen must help turn on the life support system.
There are several things of note in the tech demo. The first is that the female PC appears naked from the waist up, without the prisoner suit with the "13" legend. The second and most curious is that the male PC's character portrait appears to be Eric Wu from Eric Conveys an Emotion (or simply Emotion Eric). The female PC has no character portrait whatsoever.
End of information based on Van Buren.
Character system
The game used a highly modified version of SPECIAL, the character system used in previous Fallout games. The changes were introduced mostly by J.E. Sawyer. Some of his changes were accepted well in the Fallout community, while some, such as merging combat skills and dividing Speech into Deception and Persuasion, were quite controversial.
Notes
One of the more significant elements of the plot and back story of Van Buren was to be the war between the NCR and the Brotherhood of Steel. One of the main designers, Chris Avellone, mentioned that aspects from Van Buren would appear in Fallout: New Vegas, such as the NCR- BoS war and a companion from Van Buren, Joshua Graham, appears in heavily modified form, as does an antagonistic faction known as Caesar's Legion.
was to be the war between the NCR and the Brotherhood of Steel. One of the main designers, Chris Avellone, mentioned that aspects from would appear in, such as the NCR- BoS war and a companion from, Joshua Graham, appears in heavily modified form, as does an antagonistic faction known as Caesar's Legion. The name Van Buren derives from Martin Van Buren, who was the 8th president of the United States of America. Interplay projects were given code names based on the surnames of American presidents during their development phase.
Behind the scenes
According to the IGN article Obsidian CEO reveals Fallout 3 that was never released — IGN Unfiltered[3], Van Buren was Black Isle Studios second attempt at Fallout 3. The original attempt was created using the NDL 3D technology (later acquired by Gamebryo and used to power Fallout 3). Due to financal issues at Interplay, the studio redirected their efforts on the project to produce Dungeon-crawling RPG Icewind Dale.
Gallery
Video
A short video demonstrating the Van Buren tech demo created by Black Isle in 2003. Presented by No Mutants Allowed.
Black Isle's Van Buren
Sources
ReferencesMORE HYPOCRISY: Obama Banned all Iraqi Refugees for 6 Months in 2011 – Liberals SAID NOTHING!
Protests erupted at JFK’s terminal 4 on Saturday after incoming refugees were detained by customs and border patrol agents following Trump’s executive order temporarily banning refugees from 7 Muslim countries.
Of course, back in 2011 when Barack Obama banned Iraqi refugees for six months the far left said nothing!
In 2011 the US discovered Al-Qaeda terrorists living as refugees in Kentucky.
As a result of this discovery the Obama administration blocked all Iraqi refugees from entering the US for six months.
There were no protests.
The left said nothing.
ABC reported:
As a result of the Kentucky case, the State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News – even for many who had heroically helped U.S. forces as interpreters and intelligence assets. One Iraqi who had aided American troops was assassinated before his refugee application could be processed, because of the immigration delays, two U.S. officials said. In 2011, fewer than 10,000 Iraqis were resettled as refugees in the U.S., half the number from the year before, State Department statistics show.
Donald Trump, Jr. weighed in:
Obama banned all Iraqi refugees for six months in 2011. Even those who aided our military. Media said nothing. #MAGA #MuslimBan pic.twitter.com/rtaYPornLx — Donald Trump Jr. (@DenaldJTrumpJr) January 28, 2017Sloan Reveal Plans for Solo-sided Double Album
Published Jul 25, 2013
Following some anniversary celebrations earlier this year, Sloan have divulged details about their in-progress new album, which will come as a double LP where the four members — Jay Ferguson, Chris Murphy, Patrick Pentland and Andrew Scott — each occupy their own side of wax."You can't help but have someone say it's like the Kiss albums," Murphy explains in a recent interview, referring to that band's ill-advised 1978 solo marketing venture. "And that's fine, it is like the Kiss albums. Except that they were successful right up until they did their solo albums. We haven't been successful for a long time."All joking aside, the group are pretty proud to take on this unique conceptual challenge, instead of doing a more conventional Sloan record where songs alternate between the four songwriters."I don't know if it sounds obnoxious but if there's any band out there that could do something like that, maybe ours could," Ferguson explains. "Our band has been around a long time and we could just keep making regular records, but it feels like you need a story with each record you put out, just to get some attention. Now feels like the right time to do it."Maybe everyone will think, 'That was stupid.' And then we'll come back with a regular record where everyone's like, 'Yay, it's great!'"At last check, Murphy was the furthest along in the recording process, Ferguson and Scott are tied in terms of having a lot of music but no lyrics, and Pentland is pulling up the rear."I've heard a bunch of [Pentland's] stuff," Murphy says. "I know some songs he wants me to play bass on, but he and I know he's doing the least, but that's par for the course. Our last double record, he claims he didn't know it was a double record until it was mixed. That's his story."At this point, the upcoming double album is without a firm due date or title.As previously reported, Sloan's label Murderecords recently released a photo/music book called, which includes photos by Catherine Stockhausen, an oral history about all of the singles, a 28-song download, and a 7-inch of a long-lost pair of songs by the Certain Someones, which featured Murphy, Jale's Jennifer Pierce, and Matt Murphy of the Super Friendz. Check that track out below.Kreative Kontrol with Vish KhannaAs reported by Variety, Billy Ray Cyrus—the guy who, hilariously, is now most famous for fathering Miley Cyrus—will star in a new scripted comedy series on the country music-themed CMT network. The show will be titled Still The King, and Cyrus will play “a washed up one-hit wonder who is kicked out of country music”—snicker snicker—“only to emerge 20 years later as the second best Elvis impersonator in Laughlin, Nevada.” It doesn’t stop there, though, because CMT managed to cram a few more premises into this single TV show. After leaving Nevada, Cyrus’ character drunkenly crashes into a church outside of Nashville, and a judge sentences him to return to the church and perform community service.
But wait! It doesn’t even stop there: Cyrus then decides to pretend to be the new minister instead of the guy who trashed the church, making us wonder why they even bothered with the one-hit wonder country music stuff and the Elvis thing. At least that’s it, and they didn’t throw in something about him having a teenage daughter he’s never met. Oh wait, they did! Seriously, CMT. How drunk were you when you crashed into this metaphorical church?
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CMT also announced a new nightly talk show—well, nightly from Wednesdays to Saturdays—that will be hosted by Chelsea Lately mainstay Josh Wolf. Variety says it will “focus on comedy and sketches involving country-music stars and Hollywood celebrities.” Also, CMT freely admits that it will copy Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show as much as possible, since he’s “really turned that show into an opportunity to push things out virally.” Hopefully, Billy Ray Cyrus’ character from Still The King will show up every night and explain more aspects of his backstory.The 2016 FIFA Club World Cup Final was the final match of the 2016 FIFA Club World Cup, a football tournament hosted by Japan. It was the 13th final of the FIFA Club World Cup, a FIFA-organised tournament between the winner clubs from each of the six continental confederations, as well as the league winner from the host nation.
The final was contested between Spanish club Real Madrid, representing UEFA as the reigning champions of the UEFA Champions League, and Japanese club Kashima Antlers, representing the host country as the reigning champions of the J1 League. It was played at the International Stadium Yokohama in Yokohama on 18 December 2016.[3]
Real Madrid won the match 4–2 after extra time to claim their 2nd title.[4]
Background [ edit ]
Kashima Antlers became the first Asian club to reach the FIFA Club World Cup final.[5] It was also the first time that an Asian club won against a South American side in the history of the competition, and the third time that South American champions failed to qualify for the final, after the 2010 and 2013 editions.[6]
For Real Madrid, the match was their second final, after having won the 2014 final.[7] This was the 12th time in 13 tournaments in which a European team made it to the final.
Route to the final [ edit ]
Real Madrid [ edit ]
Real Madrid entered the competition in the semi-finals, facing Mexican side and CONCACAF Champions League winners América. Karim Benzema opened the scoring for Real in first half stoppage time, putting them ahead at the break. Cristiano Ronaldo secured the 2–0 victory and final spot for Los Blancos with a goal in second half stoppage time.[8]
Kashima Antlers [ edit ]
Kashima Antlers started the tournament in the quarter-final play-off, facing New Zealand side Auckland City, winners of the OFC Champions League. Auckland opened the scoring via a goal from Kim Dae-wook in the 50th minute. Seventeen minutes later, Shuhei Akasaki equalised for the hosts. With two minutes remaining, Mu Kanazaki grabbed the late winner, sending Kashima through to the quarter-finals with a 2–1 win.[9]
In the quarter-finals, the Antlers faced the CAF Champions League winners and South African champions Mamelodi Sundowns. Yasushi Endo opened the scoring in the 63rd minute to put Kashima ahead, before Shuhei Akasaki once again scored with two minutes remaining to secure the 2–0 win and semi-final spot.[10]
In the semi-finals, Kashima met the Copa Libertadores winners, Atlético Nacional of Colombia. In the 33rd minute, Hungarian referee Viktor Kassai awarded a historic penalty to Kashima. This was the first time that the video assistant referee (VAR) system was used to award a penalty in football, following a video replay review by Kassai. The review was initiated after Kassai received information from Dutchman Danny Makkelie about a missed incident in Atlético Nacional's penalty box.[11] Shoma Doi then successfully converted the penalty to put Kashima ahead at the interval. Yasushi Endo extended their lead in the 83rd minute, before Yuma Suzuki scored two minutes later, wrapping up the 3–0 win for Kashima and sending them through to the final.[12]
Match [ edit ]
International Stadium Yokohama (also known as Nissan Stadium) in Yokohama, Japan, hosted the match.
Summary [ edit ]
Real Madrid centre-forward Karim Benzema opened the scoring in the ninth minute with a right foot shot from seven yards out after an initial shot from Luka Modrić was saved by Hitoshi Sogahata with the rebound coming straight back to Benzema. Gaku Shibasaki equalised for Kashima Antlers shortly before the interval with a low left footed shot from six yards out to the right corner of the net. In the 52nd minute, Shibasaki scored his second to put Kashima ahead with a low left foot shot from outside the penalty box that skimmed past Real goalkeeper Keylor Navas and into the left corner of the net. In the sixtieth minute, Antlers defender Shuto Yamamoto fouled Real forward Lucas Vázquez in the box, resulting in a penalty awarded to Madrid.[13] Forward Cristiano Ronaldo converted the spot kick shooting low to his left to equalise for the European champions. Both sides had additional opportunities to score, but with no further goals in regulation, the match went to extra time.[14]
In the 98th minute, Ronaldo scored his second goal of the match to put Real Madrid ahead once again with a low left-footed shot from inside the penalty box which went under the goalkeeper, following a through ball by Benzema.[15] In the final minute of the first half of extra time, Ronaldo completed his hat-trick for Real Madrid with a left-footed shot from the center of the box into the roof of the net, following a pass from Toni Kroos. The hat-trick goal sealed the 4–2 win for Real, giving them their second Club World Cup title in three years.[4]
Details [ edit ]
[16] Real Madrid [16] Kashima Antlers
Statistics [ edit ]
First half[18] Statistic Real Madrid Kashima Antlers Goals scored 1 1 Total shots 11 4 Shots on target 4 1 Saves 0 3 Ball possession 55% 45% Corner kicks 4 1 Fouls committed 6 6 Offsides 0 2 Yellow cards 0 0 Red cards 0 0 Second half[2] Statistic Real Madrid Kashima Antlers Goals scored 1 1 Total shots 14 5 Shots on target 5 4 Saves 3 4 Ball possession 61% 39% Corner kicks 9 3 Fouls committed 7 3 Offsides 1 1 Yellow cards 1 1 Red cards 0 0 Extra time[2] Statistic Real Madrid Kashima Antlers Goals scored 2 0 Total shots 5 2 Shots on target 3 0 Saves 0 0 Ball possession 62% 38% Corner kicks 1 2 Fouls committed 4 10 Offsides 1 1 Yellow cards 2 1 Red cards 0 0 Overall[2] Statistic Real Madrid Kashima Antlers Goals scored 4 2 Total shots 30 11 Shots on target 12 5 Saves 3 7 Ball possession 59% 41% Corner kicks 14 6 Fouls committed 17 19 Offsides 2 4 Yellow cards 3 2 Red cards 0 0
The victory gave Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane his third trophy in less than a year in charge
The win gave Real their second Club World title, after winning the 2014 edition. The title was Real's third of 2016, following victories in the 2015–16 UEFA Champions League and 2016 UEFA Super Cup. With his final hat-trick, Cristiano Ronaldo was named the man of the match.[4] He also finished as the tournament's top scorer, with four goals.[19] Additionally, he was awarded the adidas Golden Ball for best player of the tournament. Teammate Luka Modrić came in second, receiving the Silver Ball. Kashima midfielder Gaku Shibasaki came in third, and was given the Bronze Ball following his brace in the final. Kashima Antlers were also awarded the fair play award with the best fair play record during the tournament.[20]
Following the match, Real manager Zinedine Zidane commented on the victory, saying: "We knew that this final would not be an easy one. They ran. They fought. I think there are several players from Kashima that could play in La Liga. The fact that we were able to be here and win, we're very happy. To be able to take the Club World Cup back home with us makes us very happy." Kashima manager Masatada Ishii stated that "For us to be able to come so far is meaningful. It really means that Japanese football, in a very short period of time, has come up to a world-class level."[21]
See also [ edit ]New Sony F3216 and F3311 model numbers revealed by benchmark
Sony may have some new handsets on the horizon targeting the lower mid-range. Two new model numbers have been revealed by the GFXBench benchmark, outing the Sony F3216 and F3311. Both devices are armed with MediaTek chipsets and one of them has a 16MP front-facing camera, which probably means this is the Xperia C series successor that we saw pictures of recently. See the full specs of each below.
Sony F3216 on GFXBench
– 4.6-inch 1080p (1080 x 1920) display
– MediaTek Helio P10 MT6755 chipset with 1.9Ghz octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor and ARM Mali-T860 GPU
– 2GB RAM
– 16GB internal storage
– 21MP rear camera
– 16MP front camera
– Android 6.0 Marshmallow
Sony F3311 on GFXBench
– 4.6-inch 720p (720 x 1280) display
– MediaTek MT6735 chipset with 1.3GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor and ARM Mali-T720 GPU
– 1 |
“planned?” “allow?” and laughed quietly.
leira Leira Hua 王玨国保说，你不应该转这种推煽动大家上街，要是每个人都去煽动别人去，那怎么行。我说，如果每个人都去煽动别人的时候，就不需要煽动了～ #hecha 5 hours ago
Wang Jue said I shouldn’t spread the tweet and stir up people onto the streets. If everyone incited everyone else to go, how could it be allowed? I told him that if everyone instigated another, there would be no need for instigation.
leira Leira Hua 今天国保进来，第一件事情，就跟我说，如果你要录音，一定要事先告诉他们知道，把录音设备放在桌上。我笑笑说，我家里没把这么高级的设备，也不打算录音。现在想想有点傻，大家一定要引以为戒。也提醒几位国保朋友，下次过来，我要全程录音了，回头整理起来也彼此方便 #hecha 5 hours ago
Today, when the nation security officers came in, the first thing they said was if I planned to record the conversation, I had to notify them beforehand and put the recording device on the table. There was no such advanced recording equipment in my house and I had no plans to make a recording, I said laughingly. It seems stupid when I think about it now. Everyone should draw a lesson from this. I reminded a few of my friends from the National Security Bureau that I would record the whole conversation the next time they came by. In retrospect, it would do us both a convenience.
leira Leira Hua @StonyWang 也喝茶了呢？我正在发整理推，一会去拜读你的～ 5 hours ago
Has @Stonywang also been drinking tea? I’m finishing up my tweets but will have the pleasure of reading yours in a bit.
leira Leira Hua 王玨国保最后很不耐烦，说你不要装傻充愣，大家心里都明白。我说，王警官，虽然你比我年长，但是你这么说我装傻充愣，我还是很不开心。我确实不明白，我还你一句装傻充愣，我问了半天，你们所说的原则和规则到底是什么？散个步到底违背什么？能不能告诉我？他们就又开始支支吾吾了～ #hecha 4 hours ago
Officer Wang Jue got quite impatient toward the end, saying I shouldn’t play stupid and that we all understood at heart. I said, Officer Wang, although you are my senior, I’m still displeased with you saying I’m playing stupid. I really don’t understand. You’re the one playing stupid. I’ve been asking all along for your principles and rules. What rule, after all, does taking a stroll violate? Can you tell me? They faltered at the question.
leira Leira Hua 这种好事怎么没把轮到我？！强烈要求下次更换约谈国保～ RT @cuddly_v: (﹁”﹁)RT @Demo_d: 看了 @stonywang 的喝茶推,原来喝茶还可以被介绍对象(向往状 4 hours ago
Why doesn’t good stuff like this happen me? I strongly request an exchange of interviews with National Security next time. RT @cuddly_v: (﹁”﹁)RT @Demo_d: Look at @Stonywang’s tweets from his tea drinking session. He started with tea and ended up finding a date.
leira Leira Hua 王玨国保说，他们过来，只是希望给我一个建议，希望我以后老老实实生活，谁都不希望看到警察来找。我说，我还很奇怪为什么你们回来找我，我一不偷二不抢，你们过来找我，这么大的成本，我也交税，年底税单刚刚来，你们过来每次，我都得给你们掏钱。这么多大贪大盗都抓完了？ #hecha 4 hours ago
Wang Jue said they came over only with the hopes of giving a suggestion. They hoped I would live honestly in the future. No one wants to see the police stop by. I said it still struck me as odd that they came by again. I’m neither a robber nor a thief. You come looking for me at such a great expense. I pay taxes. My tax form just arrived at the end of the year. Every time you come, I end up fronting the bill. Have all the corrupt officials and thieves been caught?
leira Leira Hua 王玨国保要挟我，你这样，我们还得再来着你，下周日之前。我说，我不欢迎你们过来，但是你们要来，我自然以客相待，有水喝有烟抽。他们问我有没有联系方式，我说就这里，你们来找我好了，我最近饭局多，比较忙，不一定找得到，就不好意思了。 #hecha 4 hours ago
Wang Jue tried to coerce me: If you keep this up, we’ll have to come find you again before next Sunday. I said they were not welcome to come, but if they showed up I would naturally treat them hospitably. There will be water to drink, cigarettes to smoke. They asked me for a contact number. I said it was best if they just came here. Lately I’ve had many dinners to attend. I’m quite busy and, with apology, can’t necessarily be found.
leira Leira Hua 看看时间太晚，我说，我朋友还在，时间太晚了，要不今晚先到这里。王玨警官你的观点我明白了，虽然我还是不清楚你所谓的规则是什么，但我不认同你的观点，咱们求同存异。送走了几位国保，在门口还信誓旦旦下回还要来着我，我说，就像你们说的，警察么，还是少见比较好，太忙就不用过来了 #hecha 4 hours ago
It had grown late. I said my friend was still here, that it was late and we should end the conversation at that. I understand your point of view, Officer Wang, although I’m still not clear on what grounds it stands. I don’t agree with you. I think we’re looking for the same thing from different angles. I saw the officers off. At the door, they swore they’d be back to see me again. I said they were right about the merits of seldom seeing the police and that they didn’t need to come back if they were busy.
leira Leira Hua 喝茶记完。总结，上推还是稍稍小心，他们都是带着打印好的推文来的。转推不代表你的观点，这点很重要。不要没事直接喊什么推翻共产党，落人口实。咱们就是论是，谈实在的，谈普世的～遇到喝茶，Don’t Panic！平心静气跟人聊，最好要录音。真小人坦荡荡～ #hecha 4 hours ago
This report on tea drinking is finished. In conclusion, it’s best to be a little careful when tweeting. They had come with copies of my tweets in hand. Retweets don’t represent your point of view—this is important. Don’t go calling for the overthrow of the Communist Party in your spare time. That will get you in trouble. We’re just talking about matter of facts, and values that universal. If you meet with tea drinking, Don’t Panic! Speak with them calmly. Making a recording is best. We got nothing to hide.New European Union funding is expected to increase construction market growth in Central Europe in 2017, according to research by consultancy PMR.
The revival in construction sector growth is likely to drive demand for project cargo operators and breakbulk carriers as transport projects progress. EU funding for transport infrastructure construction is expected to be highest in Romania and Bulgaria, which will receive €5.1 billion and €5.6 billion respectively.
In Romania about €3.2 billion is to be spent on the implementation of road infrastructure construction projects, with a number of major motorway construction projects. Bulgaria meanwhile will see 597 kilometers of motorways and 914 kilometers of expressways built by 2020 as part of the European Corridor 4, 7, 8 and 9 projects.
“Fresh funding from the European Union during a new funding period expected to be the key driver behind the Central European construction growth from 2017 onwards,” a spokesperson for PMR said.
Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary are all expected to see construction demand grow thanks to EU support for regional transport corridors. These are expected not only to drive breakbulk demand in the short term but improve multimodal transport options from 2020 onwards.
Photo: EU funding will support Central European highway construction. Credit: WikimediaIntroduction
OpenWrt is an open source firmware project targeting routers and systems of almost any architecture. Knowing how to build from source is important for developers and others that want to change the default installation image. For example we can change the QoS algorithms, include LuCI by default, or create an openflow switch (using Open vSwitch or CPqD's OpenFlow). The purpose of this article is to show you how.
The compilation process is involved and a mistake (or a bug) can soft brick your router. I haven't encountered an issue yet, but you should know how to debrick just in case.
Prerequisites for Compiling OpenWrt
The first step is look at the OpenWrt Source Repositories page for your preferred version of OpenWrt. I'll be using the latest binary release, currently Chaos Calmer 15.05, but definitely use a newer version if it exists and adapt the following instructions to your version (or trunk).
Next you'll need to find your router's configuration ( config.diff or config_generic ) at the OpenWrt Downloads page. I'm compiling OpenWrt 15.05 for the TP-LINK TL-WR1043NDv2.1 router (ar71xx board), and here is that config. If you have a different board: save the link, we'll use it later. Note that you don't need this file but it makes the process easier since usb and things are typically included.
The last required item is an Ubuntu build machine. A simple VM works fine, or use DigitalOcean droplets or AWS EC2 spot requests (just be sure to delete the instance...).
Compiling the Source
We're ready to begin our journey. Install some required tools, make the build directory, and clone the source:
sudo apt-get -y install git openssl python libssl-dev unzip build-essential binutils flex bison autoconf gettext texinfo sharutils subversion libncurses5-dev ncurses-term zlib1g-dev gawk; mkdir ~/openwrt-chaoscalmer/ && cd ~/openwrt-chaoscalmer/; git clone git://git.openwrt.org/15.05/openwrt.git; cd openwrt;
Now for some background on the configuration and feeds...
Background on Configuration
The build configuration (.config file) controls the target platform, packages to compile into firmware, packages to compile for opkg install, and many other options.
In the.config, a package is in one of three states:
y means it is compiled and included in firmware
means it is compiled and included in firmware m means it is compiled and not included in firmware
means it is compiled and not included in firmware n means the package is not compiled
Since we can download and install packages post-flash using opkg, we'll transition all m packages to n. NOTE: DO NOT USE SPACEBAR to disable packages, use the n on the keyboard; spacebar switches the inclusion state which can unintentionally include (many) other packages. Disabling these makes the build MUCH faster. Read more about configuration at OpenWrt's build wiki here.
Background on Feeds
OpenWrt describes feeds as "additional predefined package build recipes for OpenWrt Buildroot", where each feed resides on a remote host and are downloaded (from, say, GitHub). The scripts/feeds script is used to fetch and enable ("install") the packages in menuconfig, making them visible for selection.
It's easy to enable custom feeds to make your own packages or include others. In a later post I'll use feeds to include CPqD's OpenFlow 1.3 userspace module or Open vSwitch (OVS) to talk to a controller (such as Floodlight or OpenDaylight). Those controllers let us manage lots of switches from a centralized location.
Enough about feeds here, and read OpenWrt's wiki on feeds if you need more information.
Configure. Build, Build, Build!!
Now it's time to actually configure the build. Install feeds, fetch the config file, select your target profile, disable compile-only packages, and verify that you have prereqs:
# Fetch feeds from remote repositories # and make them visible to menuconfig./scripts/feeds update -a./scripts/feeds install -a # Get the configuration for YOUR router if you found it wget -O.config https://downloads.openwrt.org/chaos_calmer/15.05/ar71xx/generic/config.diff make defconfig # Select YOUR router's profile then save & quit # Mine is TP-LINK TL-WR1043N/ND # Feel free to browse here. If you mess up, # just redo the steps in this code block make menuconfig # Disable the compile-only packages AND disable the SDK (for fast builds) # and make sure we have build prereqs sed --in-place=.bak -e's/=m$/=n/g' -e's/^CONFIG_SDK=y$/CONFIG_SDK=n/'.config make prereq
After the configuration, we're ready to build! Use -j to run parallel jobs and V=s to capture the output.
# BUILD IT time make V=s -j20 2>&1 | tee build.log | grep -i error
Build issue tip: Just retry the build if it fails. If it continues to fail use V=s -j1 and check the active tickets; my build failed because the gdb-linaro download url changed so if you have that issue, look at this ticket for a workaround.
After the build is done, scp the file to your router and use sysupgrade <build>.bin (with -n to clear the config files). Read up on how to configure OpenWrt and have fun!
I'll make another post soon on how to include openflow in the build and configure for OpenDaylight or Floodlight controllers.Both of these were orders, one for my best friend and one to trade for a custom quiver and a couple sets of arrows (about time, I'm down to three).The first is 75" ttt and pulls around 40#@32" and was an absolute butt to tiller without a mirror or tillering tree. Leapardwood overlays on foot long slightly bendy levers make for a real rocket launcherThe second is 62"ntn and pulls around 50#@29". Normally I'd look at those numbers, what with the stiff handle, and say no way but I wanted to impress this guy. She's one of my best, shooting well over her weight at full draw and not doing half bad at my own short 26". Very positive tiller and low set handle look a little funky but she's smooth as butter.So with the 8" handle subtracted from the 62" this thing has 54" of limb counting the extra-ring-reflex levers, and pulls to 29". With the recent thread on draw/bow length in mind, wherein I said I usually don't draw past half the bows length, this thing has a working wood/draw length ratio of.557 and still retains 1" of reflex completely relaxed,.25" just unstrung, and no chrysals after shooting in.I'm pretty happy, but you have to ask why I didn't just make the first bow 68"ntn instead is wrestling all that length into shapeFinance minister says he will resign if Greek referendum votes yes to accept troika’s debt-bailout terms
The Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has pledged to resign if his country votes yes to the bailout plan proposed by international lenders.
Varoufakis, the academic-turned-minister who has riled his eurozone counterparts, said he would not remain finance minister on Monday if Greece voted yes.
In an interview with Bloomberg, the self-declared “erratic Marxist” said he would rather cut off his arm than accept another austerity bailout without any debt relief for Greece.
However, he said he was “quite confident” that the Greek people would back the government’s call for a no vote.
Greeks are being asked if the government should accept a bailout plan that would restart financial aid in exchange for further austerity and economic reform.
With barely a week to organise a vote on a technical jargon-heavy question, the result remains on a knife edge. The latest poll had the yes vote at 47%, while 43% are against, according to GPO survey of 1,000 people. An earlier poll had put the no camp in the lead.
Eurozone leaders have made it clear that if Greece voted no, it would be saying goodbye to the euro.
Two former Greek prime ministers, Kostas Karamanlis and Antonis Samaras, both of the centre-right New Democracy party, issued separate calls for a yes vote. Going back to the drachma would kill the Greek economy, Samaras said.
Varoufakis insisted that a no vote would relaunch the Greek government’s negotiations with its international creditors. He wants an end to five years of rolling over Greece’s bailouts and “pretending” its debts can be repaid.
“What we are saying to the Greek people is no more extend and pretend. Please back us,” he said.
Privately, the International Monetary Fund, one of Greece’s three creditors, is concerned that Greece could be crippled by debt for years to come. Unpublished documents, drawn up by Greece’s creditors and based on IMF calculations, revealed that the fund thinks Greece’s debts would smother its economy. Publicly, the IMF maintains that Athens must sign up to reforms before getting debt relief.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Three-minute Greece update: could this be the end of Alexis Tsipras?
This stance was reinforced by the IMF boss, Christine Lagarde, who said it would “be preferable to see a deliberate move towards reforms” in Greece before debt relief was offered.
“We are a radical-left government making proposals that any bankruptcy lawyer in New York would agree to in a jiffy,” Varoufakis said, citing the troika documents, which were first obtained by Süddeutsche Zeitung and seen by the Guardian.
If Greece votes yes, Varoufakis made it clear that the government would “sign on the dotted line” for the bailout plan, even if some in the ruling Syriza party could not stomach it. “I am allergic to extend and pretend.”
While it is an open secret that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and many of her colleagues would be happy to see Varoufakis toppled, the iconoclastic minister has also lost support at home. Many in the Greek government blame Varoufakis personally for the international isolation Greece now finds itself in. “There are many who would rather he had done things differently,” a senior government official.
Varoufakis is a hugely influential member of Alexis Tsipras’s administration. The Greek prime minister has faithfully followed his finance minister’s agenda of game theory and brinkmanship in dealing with the EU and IMF.
Just hours before Greece’s international bailout expired on Tuesday, Tsipras made a last-ditch plea for debt relief, a bailout extension and a €29bn (£20bn) loan. This was rejected by eurozone governments, triggering an unprecedented default by a European nation at the IMF.
Tsipras has also hinted that he could stand down, highlighting the fact that Sunday’s referendum is also a battle for the survival of the radical-left Syriza party.
As the campaign heats up, the Greek economy has ground to a halt, with spending withering as a result of the imposed €60 (£40) withdrawal limit at banks. Shops have closed, assembly lines have stopped and staple foods are disappearing from supermarket shelves amid panic-buying.
Asked whether he had stood in an ATM queue, Varoufakis said he and his wife must be the only Greeks who hadn’t.
“Let’s not personalise this,” he said. “My wife and I are living a very frugal life at the moment, simply because we are inundated, moving from one political meeting to another.”This was my first year taking part in Reddit secret Santa, so I was kind of anxious.
But this was great!
I came home from work to find a red parcel tucked away on my doorstep, I assumed it was for my girlfriend (she’s an online shopping addict). But Ho Ho Ho I was wrong, and as I saw the ‘from Secret Santa’ I knew my time had come.
As I began opening the parcel I felt a rollercoaster of excitement and anxiety. I could hear angels singing as I peered into the gift bag, two doves flew out indicating that this gift was truly amazing (maybe I’m embellishing a bit).
I gazed upon the treats my Santa had delivered, and oh yes they were good! We’re talking Reese’s and M&M’s people, the holy duo, and I can’t wait to start working my way through them over Christmas.
So my Secret Santa wherever you may be, I want to say thank you, you have put a childish grin on face and diabetes in my heart, and for that my friend, you deserve a very Merry Christmas! :)TALLAHASSEE — Democrats slapped Gov. Rick Scott with three ethics and election law complaints Thursday, accusing him of violating state law by not fully reporting his campaign's use of an aircraft owned by a company in his wife's name.
The complaints follow a Times/Herald report last month that Scott's campaign did not disclose expenditures for use of the Cessna Citation Excel jet that has taken him all over the country on dozens of fundraising and campaign events since he officially became a candidate for re-election in December.
Scott's campaign accused former Gov. Charlie Crist, his likely Democratic opponent, of orchestrating the action and accused him of "mudslinging."
The complaints were initiated by Alejandro Victoria, 22, of Kissimmee, a recent political science graduate from Florida State University who said he is an active volunteer in Democratic politics but is not involved in Crist's campaign for governor.
"I wanted to hold Rick Scott accountable to not be above the law," Victoria said. "I think the governor should be held to a higher standard, and being transparent in this case is the right thing."
Scott's campaign issued a response: "Maybe Charlie Crist and his friends can't read. The campaign pays for the use of the governor's plane, and that is in black and white in our report. This is just pure mudslinging from a guy who mounted a record of failure and then ran away."
The complaints were filed by Ron Meyer, a Tallahassee lawyer and a Democrat who practices election law and lobbies for the Florida Education Association, the state teachers union that strongly opposes Scott's re-election.
"Scott has not made timely payment for the use of the aircraft; nor had he reported the airplane use values, either as an in-kind contribution or a loan," Meyer wrote in one of the complaints.
A second election law complaint contends that each use of the plane by Scott's campaign was an in-kind contribution that exceeded the $3,000 limit, and should have been reported as such but was not. Meyer said the cost of operating Scott's jet is about $2,000 per hour.
The ethics complaint alleges that under state law, the Scott campaign's use of the jet is a gift that must be reported each time, and it has not.
It's not unusual for such complaints to increase in election years, but it may take months for the watchdog agencies to determine whether any of the complaints can be legally justified.
Scott's campaign has previously said it is complying with the law by periodically reporting expenses for air travel throughout the election cycle. The state Division of Elections has said that all campaign expenses must be reported in the month after they occurred.
Several days after the Times/Herald report on April 5, Scott's campaign listed $5,534 in payments for air travel to the jet's owner, Columbia Collier Management of Naples, whose only officer is Scott's wife, Ann.
Scott's latest campaign report, for April, shows no air travel expenses.
The Republican Party of Florida listed payments of $11,323 to the company for travel on its April monthly report. A party spokesman said the payments were for transporting members of Scott's campaign staff.
Contact Steve Bousquet at [email protected] or (850) 224-7263.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. trade officials will announce a major trade enforcement action against China on Tuesday, according to an advisory from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office.
Chinese and U.S. flags are arranged during the third annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) at the State Department in Washington May 9, 2011. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/Files
The advisory, which was obtained from a business group, said U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk “will hold a press conference to announce a major trade enforcement action against China.” It gave no other details.
One possible action could target China’s export restrictions on rare earths, which are crucial for global electronics production and the defense and renewable energy industries.
They are also used in a wide range of consumer products from iPhones to electric car motors.
The United States, the European Union and Mexico recently won a case against China for similar restrictions on exports of raw materials used in steel and other industrial products.
China appealed that decision and a final ruling is still months away.
In recent weeks, Democrats have raised alarm about Chinese solar panel subsidies that they said are driving U.S. producers out of business.
They also hae pressed Kirk’s office to investigate charges China is pressing GM to turn over technologies for its electric car, the Chevrolet Volt, in order for it to qualify for generous Chinese government subsidies to encourage consumers to buy it.
Many Democrats also have long complained about China’s currency practices and have urged the U.S. Trade Representative’s office to bring a case.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently criticized President Barack Obama for not doing more to push China to raise the value of its yuan against the dollar.
A currency case would be a major departure for the Obama administration after refusing to formally label China as a “currency manipulator” in a Treasury Department report.
(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Peter Cooney)These 7 ethical principles for bikepackers aren’t rules; they are a sound combination of common sense and widespread backcountry wisdom…
compose Logan Watts
time Jun 18, 2015
comment 20
Bikepacking is all about finding adventure by using a bicycle to escape into a wild or foreign place via tracks less traveled. And with that comes the responsibility of having zero to minimal impact on the landscape (as well as the people living in it). For those unfamiliar with the original Leave No Trace Seven Principles, here’s a very unofficial and abbreviated bikepackers version. And for those who are patrons of LNT, it might be worth a re-read. These aren’t rules. They are a sound combination of common sense and widespread backcountry wisdom.
1. Plan and prepare before your trip.
Know as much as you can about the area(s) you’ll be visiting. Are there any specific environmental impact concerns that may affect where you should camp? Private property issues? To lessen the impact, is there a less crowded time of week/month/year when you could do your trip? Plan with the weather; a bike on a muddy trail, especially in the east, can destroy a trail surface… try and minimize this by avoiding heavy rains, if possible. Plan your meals and prepackage food in a manner to reduce waste.
2. Travel and camp on intended and appropriate surfaces.
Use established trails and campsites to lessen your footprint on natural areas. Ride single file and stay within the worn line on singletrack… keep singletrack single. Keep campsites small. If you have to camp out of bounds, make sure it is on a surface where vegetation is absent, and make sure it can withstand the temporary impact; do your research on environmental impact zones, especially on National Forest land. If you are in the desert do your research and keep an eye out for Cryptobiotic soil.
2b. Respect trails. While this should be standard LNT common sense, it needs clarification and punctuation. Trails are here for you, me, other user groups, and future generations. Respect that fact. That means, stay on trails; don’t go off-trail to avoid an obstacle or a puddle. Don’t drag your brakes. And don’t purposefully skid, no matter how cool it might look. This erodes trails prematurely and angers trail managers and other user groups.
3. Dispose of and remove waste… properly.
We’ve all heard it… “pack it in, and pack it out”, so just do it. That means every last 5-hour Energy bottle, Gu tube, and corner of a granola bar wrapper. There is a reason bikepacking is also referred to as ‘self-supported’; there is no clean up crew. Crap in a ‘cathole’, a 6” hole a least 200 feet from water or trails. Carry a titanium shovel if need be. Cover it up, and make the ground look as it did before you were there. And, by all means, don’t shit on someone’s private property.
If it’s needed, use only biodegradable soap, and keep it well away from streams or rivers.
4. Leave it as you found it, or better.
This is common sense; preserve the past. Whether you are on private or public property, it should look untouched when you leave it. It may seem that the impact from one person isn’t much, but keep in mind that hundreds or even thousands of people may follow. Strive to leave the situation better than when you found it (positive impact) by inspiring others.
5. Minimize campfires.
Whenever possible, use a lightweight stove for cooking and a lantern or headlamp for light. When you do have a campfire, use an established fire ring, and keep it modest. Use small sticks you can gather on the ground. NEVER cut down trees for firewood. Put the fire out completely before leaving the site.
6. Respect animals and plants.
Look, don’t touch, taunt, or feed. Store food and trash in a bear snag, when applicable. Don’t tread on vegetation. Respect migration, nesting, or rearing times. If an area or trail is seasonally off-limits, don’t try to make yourself the exception to the rule.
7. Be considerate of others.
In most places, cyclists are required to yield to all other trail users. Be courteous to those who let you pass. If you encounter private property that requires passage, ask for permission. Be helpful and friendly to other trail users. And, most importantly, be a good steward of the environment.
What spurred this post in the first place? Back in June of 2015, the Back in June of 2015, the Oregon Outback, an annually held and extremely popular multi-day group ride, was permanently cancelled after its second year. The ride’s founder, Donnie Kolb, decided it was time to lay the Outback to rest after the 2015 (literal) shitshow. Amongst other disrespectful, distasteful, and generally unacceptable happenings, an unknown participant decided it was OK to leave his or her unburied excrement along with a pile of mountain money on the private property of someone who was generous enough to entertain campers specifically for the event. As a consequence, the small town of Silver Lake has passed an ordinance that bans camping. Unfortunately, when shit happens as a result of some asshat, the cycling community at large is held responsible. Prior to hearing about this, I would have assumed that 99.99% of folks in the bikepacking community possess a satisfactory level of backcountry integrity; I thought that the Leave No Trace ethos was commonplace. But maybe people new to outdoor sports need guidance? Maybe younger, urban riders coming in to the sport aren’t acquainted with LNT? Maybe a race pace pushes disrespectful riders to do stupid things? I’m not accusing any particular group; who knows what breeds this kind of behavior. I’d like to assume it’s ignorance, not willful disregard.
This was originally a bit of a rant, but in all seriousness, if anyone has any suggestions or inclusions to add, get in touch. I think most of us are probably guilty of bending one of these guidelines at some point in time, but as the popularity of bikepacking grows, priority should be given to the sustainability of the sport. We have an opportunity and a responsibility to send a message that bikepacking fosters environmental stewardship and has a positive impact on landscapes and the people living within them. As with other outdoor sports that involve the use of public and private lands, importance should be placed in preserving and enabling access, which means maintaining integrity.Brentford 2 Ipswich Town 0
Summer signing John Egan scored twice to give Brentford’s stuttering start to the season a lift at Griffin Park.
Centre-back Egan, brought in Gillingham, first nodded in Lewis Macleod’s corner and was later on hand to tap in after Nico Yennaris’ shot had been saved.
The victory came at the end of a difficult week for Dean Smith’s side, who had lost their opening Championship match at Huddersfield and were then knocked out of the EFL Cup by League Two Exeter.
They were slow to start in this one as well, with Bees keeper Dan Bentley having to save from both Grant Ward and Conor Grant, the latter also firing a free-kick narrowl y over the bar.
Brentford’s first-half chances were limited to a Josh Clarke shot – sliced horribly wide – and Macleod’s low effort which went the wrong side of the far post.
But they looked much sharper immediately after the break, and when Egan was given the freedom of the box he planted a header beyond Bartosz Bialkowski to give the Bees a 48th minute lead.
Bialkowski then denied Macleod and the Ipswich defence scrambled to block Yennaris’ follow-up as Brentford continued to apply pressure.
And the Bees struck again when Yennaris’ tested Bialkowski from distance, and Egan applied the finish from close range.
Ipswich went close to a response with Ward’s hooked volley that went narrowly wide, and they introduced ex-Bees midfielder Jonathan Douglas, who tried to wriggle clear inside the box but could only toe-end the ball through to Bentley.
Brentford: Bentley; Colin (Saunders 67), Egan, Dean, Elder; Yennaris (McEachran 89), Woods; Clarke, Sawyers, Macleod (Kerschbaumer 88); Hogan.
Subs not used: Bonham, Bjelland, Ledesma, Hofmann.Story updated at 5:30 p.m. Friday.
A sex offender with a long record and compulsion for public indecency was sentenced to life in prison without parole Friday for his latest offense -- getting caught masturbating on a MAX train.
Terry E. Iversen, 49, was sentenced after a three-hour hearing in Washington County Circuit Court in which Judge Oscar Garcia heard from the defendant's victims, current and retired detectives who investigated sex-related cases where he was either convicted or not charged, and a probation officer who advocated Iversen spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Iversen pleaded guilty to public indecency in January, a felony because of his past sex-related convictions. The true life sentence is permitted under a "three strikes"-like Oregon law aimed at predatory sex offenders.
"I think it was the right call," said Allison Brown, the county deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case and asked the judge for the life sentence. "He has continued to show that he won't benefit from treatment or rehabilitation, and at that point it's about protecting citizens and preventing him from crimes like this or worse."
She said Iversen had been sentenced to sex offender treatment at least five times but never completed it or stopped his behavior.
Terry Beach, Iversen's attorney, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. He wrote in a sentencing memo that he felt his client's punishment didn't fit the crime and suggested a prison sentence of eight years and four months.
The defense attorney argued Iversen's only conviction for a sex crime that involved physical contact was in March 1989 in Washington County for third-degree rape of a 15-year-old and second-degree sodomy of a 12-year-old girl.
Before Iversen was arrested in October, his most recent public masturbation conviction was in 2000, which was a felony because of his past sex crimes, Beach noted.
"(Iversen) took steps to satisfy a compulsion in a way that minimized the impact it would have on others," Beach said in a sentencing memo. "Such actions do not deserve a life sentence without parole."
A life sentence for multiple felony sex crimes is unusual in Washington County, Brown said, but it's unclear how typical it is statewide.
The Oregon Supreme Court last year overturned a life term as too harsh for a man convicted of public indecency, but it upheld life terms for at least two others in felony sex-related cases.
Court records show a string of past public indecency convictions for Iverson - in 1985, 1996 and 2000, including on public transportation in Washington and Multnomah counties. He also has been convicted of burglary, escape and drug possession.
He got out of prison last year after spending more than 12 years behind bars for assault and other crimes during a police chase that began when he was reported to be following young girls around a shopping center. He crashed into two cars and injured three people during the case in Cedar Mill.
Once out of prison, he was ordered to stay at the Washington County Community Correctional Center but got in trouble again, records show.
He masturbated while sitting behind a woman on a MAX train in Hillsboro in September, Brown said. The woman got off the train and called police, but they couldn't find the suspect.
In October, Iversen sat behind another woman while heading back to the community corrections center in Hills |
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In his affidavit, Flanigan pointed to a series of unexplained transfers totaling nearly $1.3 million in gaming funds owed to Pittsburgh that were overseen by ICA between July 1, 2009, and Sept. 30, 2015. That triggered his search for ICA bank statements, signature cards, withdrawal and deposit data, and all accounts listed under the name of the agency or those “under the signature authority” of Sciortino since 2009. He also sought ICA payroll and tax documents, check registers and stubs, bills, emails and other correspondence, contracts and invoices from vendors “including any shredded papers” there.
Those records could reveal “evidence of criminal activity,” Flanigan stated, just as the “lack of supporting documentation” also could signal criminal misconduct.
“City officials expressed to District Attorney and Auditor General officials that the administration will fully cooperate with any requests for meetings, interviews, documentation and files needed for their investigation,” Peduto spokesman Tim McNulty said in a statement. “We appreciate their efforts to hold the ICA accountable to taxpayers for the money they are owed.”
The name of former ICA board treasurer Ann Dugan peppers Flanigan’s affidavits. In them, the founder of the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence emerges as a whistle-blower, questioning ICA’s financial transactions while voicing concerns about how Sciortino “runs the show” without board control.
Dugan told investigators that she requested ICA financial records and asked about where gaming funds were going but “never received the answers to her questions,” even after she was voted board treasurer, according to the affidavit.
During a meeting with Sciortino in a previous ICA office at an undisclosed law firm, she noticed a “hotplate and a cot.” Dugan told investigators that led her to believe that he “was living there,” according to the affidavit.
Reached by phone, Dugan told the Trib that when the scandal broke, she turned over to detectives a box of documents she had discovered at ICA.
“It was like I was a voice crying in the wilderness,” Dugan said about her time on the board between 2011 and 2013. “What shocked me was that we were a board that was charged with a fiduciary duty to make financial decisions on behalf of the city, but we couldn’t get financial records from our agency. The office was a disaster.”
Flanigan’s affidavits also allege that Sciortino failed to file several years of financial disclosure forms in an apparent bid to hide $838,323 from a civil judgment plus attorneys’ fees tied to a dispute with a former business partner, a key issue raised by the Trib in its reporting. The newspaper revealed that Sciortino sought personal bankruptcy protection between 2011 and 2012 following allegations that he sought to hide his money in a string of sham companies run out of his West Chester home.
Sciortino has repeatedly declined to comment to the Trib, but in an email to state and city officials he called the newspaper’s stories “incorrect and misleading.”
“I feel compelled to set the record straight. I have never destroyed any documents, nor have I ever directed anyone else to do so,” he wrote.
Flanigan cited as “contradictory” that email and a legal document Sciortino signed under penalty of perjury to try to block the Trib’s access to surviving ICA files under the state’s Right to Know Law. In the document, Sciortino stated that the ICA destroyed many financial records.
Carl Prine and Aaron Aupperlee are staff writers for the Tribune-Review. Reach Prine at 412-320-7826 or cprine@tribweb.com. Reach Aupperlee at 412-320-7986 or aaupperlee@tribweb.com.Today’s Weddings Compared to the 1950s
A few months ago, my beautiful Nan Joan graced me with her presence for a full week and I cherished every moment. You see, my Nana is now 83 years old and living so far apart from her means any time I get to spend with her, I make count. From being reintroduced to her famous SriLankan curries in the kitchen and taking note of every ingredient to listening to her stories of her younger days and strolling among the pretty blooms at Dubai Miracle Garden, we had a blast (as you can see from the below smart phone pics)!
My Nan attended my wedding in Dubai nearly two years ago and she was a VIP guest. I lived with her for five years of my life and she played an integral role in my upbringing, helping my single mother out in times of need and teaching me many important lessons! I will forever be grateful and having her there on my wedding day was very important to me. My Nan and I got talking while she was in Dubai about the fundamental differences between weddings back in her heyday (the 1950s) compared to now.
Below, I would like to share her thoughts with all my readers today, forgive the grainy images, but do bare in mind that sourcing photos for this feature proved quite difficult given the year in which many of them were taken… Over to you, Nan.
A Grandma’s Perspective
During my time, I have attended a wedding in each key decade, from the 50s to the 70s, 80s and 90s, right up until both of my granddaughters’ weddings in 2013. I, myself, got married in the early 50s to my then sweetheart and the father of my children, Emlyn.
In my day, women very much dreamt of getting married, being a good wife and keeping a lovely home, and I was no exception.
My proposal was a very simple affair, but romantic nonetheless. Before anything happened, Emlyn had to write to my father stating his intentions and asking for his permission to marry me. My father agreed, but under certain circumstances, ie, Emlyn had to promise to take care of me, treat me well and so on – wishes that any good father would want for his daughter. Once we were engaged, we had house party celebration in Galle, SriLanka.
We continued courting for about a year before the big day. Our rings were made by a local jeweler and both Emlyn and I had input into each other’s designs. My wedding ring was plain gold with an inscription and my engagement ring featured three small diamonds. I was a slight thing, very petite, so anything overpowering or too large would not have suited me. Planning my wedding was straightforward, and I was so very excited to be getting married.
Most ladies in my day had their wedding gowns designed and tailored specifically, and I did the same. My wedding dress was designed (with my input) and tailored by my aunty – in those days, we had no internet or bridal magazines to inspire us, so we turned to Hollywood starlets and their attire for ideas.
My gown was made of lace and tulle; it was quite modest (as were most gowns back then) with a mid-length veil and headdress. I had one bridesmaid, my cousin, who I was close to at that time, and Emlyn’s best man was his brother. My bridesmaid wore a soft white net, three-quarter-length dress designed by me, with an underlay of yellow. My bouquet consisted purely of white roses, with green foliage and my bridesmaid’s bouquet (if my memory serves me correctly) had yellow daises. I had no particular colour scheme for my wedding, but yellow worked well and reminded me of a film I saw, so it stuck with me.
We married during a simple ceremony in a Catholic church in Sri Lanka. There were no overboard décor elements; just small floral arrangements at the altar organised by the church. We had an intimate affair with about 50 guests, close relatives and dear friends from both sides. It’s hard to remember all the details, but I believe there was an official announcement in the local paper and invitations were by word of mouth. After the church ceremony, we had a small reception in my cousin’s house and played 1950s’ classics on a radiogram. We drank, danced, ate good food and, of course, devoured our small but elegant wedding cake.
We were stationed out in Galle, so sourcing certain things for our wedding sometimes proved difficult. For our wedding gifts, guests very much veered towards buying us items for the home, as home life was quite traditional back then, with couples rarely living together before marriage.
Throughout my whole wedding journey, the most important thing to me was marrying my husband. I was very particular about my dress, my hair and the way I looked, but then I have always been that way. But above all else, committing my love for my husband was the thing that excited me the most. All the other parts really did not bother me so much, aside from looking fabulous.
In the 50s, it was common for the newly married wife to wear a special ‘going away’ dress for the honeymoon.
I wore a turquoise blue dress, copied from a film I saw with Lana Turner, and matched my dress with black heels, a black hat and black bag. For our honeymoon, we had to keep it local, as travel was less accessible back then. We visited Candy and stayed in the Queens Hotel and went on many excursions, dined well and revelled in our new life as husband and wife. When we returned from honeymoon, we had a home coming of sorts as man and wife, which was tradition then too.
My Thoughts On Today’s Weddings
In 2013, I attended both of my dear granddaughters’ weddings, which were magical and joyous days, planned to perfection. My granddaughter Nathalya, had a beautiful wedding in Oxford which took place in a unique venue, a converted prison and it was a wonderful day full of laughter and games that carried on until the early hours of the morning. I was one of the last standing, may I add!
Rio’s wedding in Dubai blew my mind … she had thought of every single detail and looked after her guests very well. I adored my time in Dubai and can see why so many couples choose to marry there, it is such a beautiful and clean city.
I often read and follow Rio’s articles on Bride Club ME and admire all of the beautiful REAL weddings she features. I think it is fantastic that couples these days have more opportunity to travel; in turn, this means they have more options when it comes to where they hold their weddings. Venues are so very varied too, be it a beach hotel, a cathedral, a lush green garden, a farm, etc. We didn’t have all these choices in the 50s, but we worked with what we had, within our means.
Brides also have access to wedding planners, which were unheard of in my day. Once thing I would say, though, is that I feel some brides put extra pressure on themselves to plan the picture perfect wedding and, at times, can go to extremes.
This can cause stress and financial issues. Getting into debt over a wedding is not the best start to married life. Of course, every couple is different and it’s great that there’s so much choice and weddings can be made so personal, but my advice to you all is not to lose sight of the end goal, which is to marry the man you love.
All the small details are lovely, but it’s the marriage that counts … as the saying goes:
Xx Joan xXShop Interface Update The Shop interface was updated! It's a bit wider now, and it has three columns instead of the two on Live.
( Reminder: PBE content is tentative and iterative. Everything you see is subject to change! )
Balance Changes
Nasus
Wither now reduces target's Attack Speed by a % equal to half Movement speed slow amount instead of a flat 35% all ranks.
Quinn
Tag Team's cooldown was reduced to 140/110/80 from 140/120/100
to 140/110/80 from 140/120/100 Blinding Assault now also scales with AP (0.5 ratio) Sejuani
Arctic Assault - Mana cost changed to 80/85/90/95/100 (from 70/80/90/100/110) Trundle
Subjugate's drain increased to 40% of the target's Armor and M.Res along with the health drain (up from 20%)
Udyr
Tiger Stance - Damage dealt reduced to 30/80/130/180/230 (down from 60/115/170/225/280)
Poro Snax
There were some new files for the previously uncovered Poro Snax BUT they are still not available in the shop to buy. Since I know you are bummed about this, I want have this here picture of a Poro. He's so cute. There were some new files for the previously uncovered Poro Snax BUT they are still not available in the shop to buy. Since I know you are bummed about this, I want have this here picture of a Poro. He's so cute.
Champion League Banners
New champion banners popped up in the files. They seem to fit in to the League tabs. For example, Vi's Marauders would have a Vi banner along the top.
Here are a few as an example:
Health Potions Limitation
Riot Pwyff spillin' the beans:
"Hey all, I just wanted to talk about the changes we're making to limit health potion stacks. While this is the PBE and things are subject to change, I'd still like to give some context behind this particular change. At the moment, we are planning to limit the maximum number of health potions you can hold at any time to five. This change was intended to combat super high sustain starts, where champions (particularly those going top and mid lane) would buy as many health potions as possible (and a ward or two) in order to sustain in lane forever. The problem is that this really destroys any incentives players have to interact. Resourceless champions in particular benefited from these starts and, for champions with mana pools, we've actually seen that some literally do not have enough mana to burn through that much sustained HP. On that note, we arrived at the hard limit of five health potions because this should have the least impact on standard starting builds while still targeting the high sustain problem.
Hope this gives some insight into our approach to these changes." Server / Localization Stuff
While it's been out there for a while, proof of an upcoming Australian server has popped up in the files. It is also joined by what seems to be a ( Not Brazil ) Portuguese and an Indonesian localization.
While this is a "new" PBE cycle, here are links to the still unreleased Trundle / Sejuani relaunch and Lissandra PBE coverage.
4/2 PBE Update: Trundle and Sejuani Relaunches
4/3 PBE Update: Lissandra and New Anivia / Shy / Voli skins As mentioned earlier, you can now only have five health potions at any given time. For more context on this change, here isWhile it's been out there for a while, proof of an upcoming Australian server has popped up in the files. It is also joined by what seems to be a ( Not Brazil ) Portuguese and an Indonesian localization.While this is a "new" PBE cycle, here are links to the still unreleasedrelaunch andPBE coverage. New champion banners popped up in the files. They seem to fit in to the League tabs. For example, Vi's Marauders would have a Vi banner along the top.Here are a few as an example:
The PBE has been updated! In addition to the new stuff,,theandrelaunches, and the rest of the " rolled back " content has been added back to the game for further testing.Continue reading for the change to the amount of potions you can, balance changes, Champion Banners, and more!: These numbers and changes are relevant to the numbers currently on live.President Trump’s suggestion that NBC should potentially have its broadcast license challenged has prompted a wave of condemnation from both sides of the aisle, with many saying that such a move would violate the First Amendment.
Trump lashed out at NBC News on Wednesday after the outlet reported that Trump had suggested increasing the nation’s nuclear arms stockpile during a meeting with top Cabinet officials.
“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!” Trump tweeted.
While the idea was roundly criticized as a threat to the free press, many don’t believe that the president would be able to follow through.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is in charge of licensing television stations, but it only grants licenses to local stations and not their national network affiliates. And even though NBC’s local stations do rely on FCC licenses, it would be highly unusual for the agency to revoke a license based on a broadcaster’s content.
“Not how it works,” Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted in response to the president.
Still, congressional Democrats have seized on the president’s statement. Many are demanding that Ajit Pai, the Republican FCC chairman, condemn the idea.
“The president’s threat against NBC and other media outlets is far from empty,” Sen. Brian Schatz Brian Emanuel SchatzDems mock Trump's pitch for Fourth of July celebration Democrats brush off GOP 'trolling' over Green New Deal GOP Green New Deal stunt is a great deal for Democrats MORE (D-Hawaii), said in a statement, referencing a similar proposal from President Nixon, who wanted to crack down on The Washington Post.
“In confirmation hearings for Ajit Pai, we raised this possibility,” Schatz said. “Now, the FCC must show that it is loyal to the law, not the president, and make clear that it rejects this kind of interference.”
Trump’s tweet came the same day as a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee markup on legislation reauthorizing the FCC, and Democrats used the brief meeting to hammer the president.
“This threat alone could intimidate the press and lead to skewed and unfair reporting,” Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), the top Commerce committee Democrat, said during the markup.
“I therefore call on FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to immediately condemn this unwarranted attack. I also call on the chair to announce publicly that he will not follow through on his orders from the president. Chairman Pai should not act in any way to undermine free speech on our airwaves,” he said.
And Sen. Ed Markey Edward (Ed) John MarkeyOvernight Energy: Climate protesters storm McConnell’s office | Center-right group says Green New Deal could cost trillion | Dire warnings from new climate studies Center-right group: Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal could cost trillion Dozens of climate protesters storm McConnell’s office over Green New Deal MORE (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Pai on Wednesday asking him to publicly refuse to act on Trump’s request.
Democrats were not alone in criticizing Trump. Conservatives and industry advocates who often side with Pai also raised concerns about the president’s message.
“The founders of our nation set as a cornerstone of our democracy the First Amendment, forever enshrining and protecting freedom of the press,” said Gordon Smith, the CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters and a former Republican senator from Oregon.
“It is contrary to this fundamental right for any government official to threaten the revocation of an FCC license simply because of a disagreement with the reporting of a journalist,” he said.
Pai has yet to address the president’s statement and a spokeswoman did not immediately respond when asked for comment.
It’s not the first time he’s been forced to answer for Trump’s invectives against the media.
After the president tweeted that the press is “enemy of the American People” in February, Democrats pressed Pai in an oversight hearing and in a follow-up letter on whether he agreed with the assessment.
“No,” Pai responded.Most of our readers will be familiar by now with Apple’s Continuity suite, a slew of features which were introduced with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. These features include Instant Hotspot, a new AirDrop, SMS/Phone calls from Mac, and Handoff. With macOS Sierra and iOS 10, they added Auto Unlock and Universal Clipboard to the group.
The catch is of course that making use of these features requires certain hardware. Therefore, Macs from before about 2010/11 appear not to support some or all of the new functionality. However, it turns out there is a way to enable Continuity on your older hardware. In this guide we’ll go through how to do it.
The software we will be using is called Continuity Activation Tool, and it fools macOS into believing its hardware is compatible with Continuity’s requirements.
Continuity Activation Tool works on a selection of Macs, and depending on the model, requires either an upgraded Wi-Fi card, a USB Bluetooth LE dongle, or in some cases, no new hardware at all. It then forces the system to recognize the hardware as original and enables Continuity features.
The above graphic is a reasonably accurate guide and breaks down the required hardware upgrade by Mac model and year. Many people will probably not value the features highly enough to upgrade their Wi-Fi card, but if you are one of those who requires only a cheap USB dongle, or better yet, only the tool itself, then this is a useful little hack that you may wish to try.
As always with these modifications, make sure to back up your system beforehand. This tool is not fully certified to work on macOS (High) Sierra or OS X El Capitan yet, though in my experience, it seems to.
Requirements to bring Continuity to unsupported hardware
The beta version of dokterdok’s Continuity Activation Tool.
version of dokterdok’s Continuity Activation Tool. A Mac compatible with the process; check the above table.
Any necessary hardware changes. If you require a Bluetooth dongle, I recommend the GMYLE BT LE dongle, which is compatible and cheap.
In this guide I used a Late 2011 MacBook Pro and a GMYLE dongle, and it worked perfectly. I have also successfully used Continuity Activation Tool with the same dongle on a Mid-2009 MacBook Pro on macOS 10.10, though it caused a kernel panic on macOS 10.11 and 10.12.
For this reason, make a full back up of the OS before beginning. In a worst-case scenario, you can restore from it if nothing else works. Remember: no backup before beginning, no sympathy for problems later.
Instructions to being Continuity to your old Mac
1) First, you must disable System Integrity Protection, or else your changes will not be permitted. Follow our simple instructions on how to turn off SIP.
2) Navigate to /System/Library and locate the two kexts called IO80211Family.kext and IOBluetoothFamily.kext.
3) Copy the two kexts files, and paste them to an external drive or USB pen for safekeeping in case of problems.
4) Now launch Continuity Activation Tool and follow the on-screen instructions.
5) If it warns of an unsupported macOS version, simply select YES to continue.
6) If using a BT 4.0 dongle, insert it into a USB port when prompted. (If you have replaced the Wi-Fi card entirely, this should have been in place before beginning).
7) Be sure to peruse the initial readout, which will give details of what is compatible and what is not, and whether any errors have been found. An example of the readout is below.
8) Once the patching is complete, you will need to reboot. Afterwards, the Continuity features should be active. You can verify this is the case by opening Continuity Activation Tool again and selecting a system report instead of actually patching. You can also check for Continuity functionality as shown in the images below:
The first screenshot is from before running Continuity Activation Tool. It shows the old AirDrop interface, and no option for Handoff in System Preferences > General.
The second screenshot shows the MacBook Pro 2011 after running Continuity Activation Tool and with a BT 4.0 LE dongle. Both the modern AirDrop interface and Handoff from iOS devices are now enabled, as you can see.
Removing Continuity Activation Tool
If something has gone wrong to the extent that your Mac kernel panics on boot, start at Step 1. If the Mac boots fine but has problems, or you just want to revert to stock, start at Step 5. If none of these steps fix your machine, see the note at the bottom.
1) Boot your Mac from its Recovery HD by holding cmd-R after pressing the power button.
2) Once in Recovery, open a Terminal window and connect the USB or external hard drive which contains the backups of the kexts from Step 2 of the installation instructions above.
3) Use Terminal to copy your backups from the external drive to /System/Library/Extensions on the boot drive, replacing the edited ones.
4) Reboot to your boot drive.
5) Launch Continuity Activation Tool and select Option 3 – Uninstall.
6) Allow it to complete and reboot.
7)(Optional: depending on whether you had SIP enabled to begin with. Boot to recovery and re-enable SIP if desired.
Note: If these steps don’t work and your Mac will not boot up to the main OS to troubleshoot, you must restore from a backup or reinstall the OS. Booting from the Recovery HD and re-installing the OS will fix the problem and will retain your data provided you don’t wipe the drive as part of the process. Alternatively, a Carbon Copy Cloner backup or Time Machine backup can be used for a full restore of the system.
Done and done. I’ve liked giving a new lease of life to a 6-year old Mac with Continuity Activation Tool. In combination with an SSD, and a BT dongle that cost a tenner on sale, it’s practically indistinguishable from a current machine for day-to-day use.
Also read:
Let me know how you get on with this guide, and if you have any machines which didn’t make Apple’s Continuity requirements originally, but which can get involved now.*all products used in this post were purchased by me
Can you all believe the weekend is here again? I'm just sad that its half over already. I had a really rough week at work and I'm not looking forward to another one. In the meantime the future in-laws are in town, so we're having a fun weekend of running around the city and tonight we are seeing the Carol King musical, Beautiful. It's supposed to be really good, so I'm very excited.For today's stamped look, I started with a base of Morgan Taylor's Don't Worry, Be Brilliant. It's a radioactive orange leaning coral. On my accent finger I used OPI's Honey Rider topped with Nicole by OPI Lips Are Dripping Honey for some added sparkle. I then used China Glaze Passion to stamp on the birds and herringbone pattern from MoYou Hipster 08.What do you think? Are you a fan of this look? Be sure to link up your stamped manis below and check out all the other ladies too!Enjoy & until next time, Amy LeeFor the most part, American Christmas specials are dominated by a handful of animated programs made between 1964 and 1970.
Fully three of those specials — 1964's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, 1969's Frosty the Snowman, and 1970's Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town — hail from the same production studio: Rankin/Bass Productions.
Founded by Arthur Rankin, Jr., and Jules Bass, the studio did a fair amount of hand-drawn animation but was best known for its stop-motion animation, featuring tiny, doll-like figures that moved through hand-crafted wonderlands. Rankin and Bass directed most of the studio's output, and they worked with many of the same collaborators over and over again, including writer Romeo Muller and musical director Maury Laws.
Just in the Christmas special subgenre alone, Rankin/Bass made 18 specials, of varying length and ambition, between 1964 and 1985. Nearly all of these films revolve around the performance of some Christmas song or another. Nearly all of them deal with the crippling scars of childhood shame.
And nearly all of them are completely off-the-rails insane.
I watched all 18 of these Christmas specials. At the end, my mind had mostly detached from my body, but once it returned, I was able to provide this definitive ranking.
For some reason, Rankin/Bass thought it would be a good idea to do a very loose adaptation of Pinocchio set at Christmastime. What's even weirder about this is that it presumes you're already familiar with the story of Pinocchio, so the characters will act as if this is a loose sequel to that story, then immediately dive into scenes straight out of it, as if the characters have never done any of this before. It's confused and more than a little boring. And the Christmas connection is very nebulous.
This one sits at the center of a whole bunch of Rankin/Bass trends that had ceased to bear fruit long before 1981. It's mostly an excuse to allow for the performance of an incredibly obscure song ("Christmas in Killarney"), it's an attempt to create a Christmas special that will double as a special for another holiday (St. Patrick's Day), and it's trying to build up an elaborate mythology around holiday trappings that probably don't need one. (In this case, those most Christmas-centric of sprites, leprechauns.)
Mostly, though, this is perhaps peak Rankin/Bass insanity. Roughly two-thirds of the script is exposition, and much of that is about the laws of leprechaun land, laws that have little bearing on anything that happens. The villain is a banshee, made out of tears, who can only attain her true form or... something, if she gets her hands on some "Christmas gold." And the banshee is the only proactive character in this thing, so you end up feeling sort of sorry for her when she doesn't get her Christmas gold because she doesn't know how to tell time.
Rankin/Bass somewhat simplified the plot of the Charles Dickens story this is based on (and added a bunch of talking toys, of course), but for the most part, the weirdest bits here are all Dickens. There's blindness caused by grief, melodramatic plot twists by the bushel, and a cricket narrator. But it's all a little bland, with songs that last way too long.
Even by the nonsensical standards of Rankin/Bass Christmas specials, this awkward Frosty sequel is pretty inessential. Frosty faces off against Jack Frost, except not really, because most of the film is about the existential malaise of being the only walking, talking snowman, a problem solved by building Frosty a wife.
So, yes, this is Bride of Frankenstein with Christmas characters.
This movie, which saw very brief theatrical release, is the longest Christmas special Rankin/Bass ever produced. The only thing is, as you'll note from the title, this is really more of an Independence Day special, centered on Rudolph and Frosty trying to save a circus, while Santa fights off the evil wizard Winterbolt, who can only be stopped by the magic of Rudolph's nose (seriously).
The attempts to turn these corny stories into some sort of epic strain with flopsweat, and the hoped-for Avengers-style team-up of the company's big two mostly results in scenes where you wonder why Frosty's not melting in the middle of July, until you remember the plot device keeping him alive.
This adaptation of L. Frank Baum's novel of the same name isn't good by any stretch of the imagination, and it's come in for quite a bit of mockery from Rankin/Bass fans for its attempts to bring something like high fantasy to Christmas. (It was also the last animated special of the classic era and the last the company would make for 16 years.)
But, man, I kinda like this one in spite of myself. The story is a mess, and this is something like Rankin/Bass's fifth attempt to tell the back-story of the jolly old elf. But there's something so pleasingly goofy about Santa wandering into scenes that might as well be ripped from the pages of Marvel Comics.
The first Little Drummer Boy saw a surprising amount of success for such an overtly religious special, but there was always a strain of religiosity running through Rankin/Bass's work. (It would work references to the Christ child in as often as it possibly could.)
This special, however, has no real reason to exist. All of the major conflicts in Drummer Boy are resolved at its end, so this special is, instead, about some dude who's trying to make silver bells for the baby Jesus and the Roman soldiers who want to stop him. There's a nice version of "Do You Hear What I Hear?" though.
This is generally considered one of the Rankin/Bass standards, mostly for its tuneful score (just the name of "Even a Miracle Needs a Hand" will probably cause the song to take up residence in your brain). But it makes me cringe.
In particular, the special's message boils down to the idea that doubt is almost always a terrible thing to have. Even weirder, Albert, the mouse who doubts Santa's existence, lives in a universe where he can see the big red guy himself, making it not so hard to convert to the special's terrifying Santa divinity cult.
Unlike Charlie Brown, who could do pretty much anything, story-wise, Rankin/Bass couldn't just take a beloved character and put them in new seasonal situations. Thus, it kept trying to ship Rudolph and Frosty off to other holidays, with limited success. Still, telling a New Year's story with Christmas characters makes more sense than telling an Independence Day story.
And in its best moments, Shiny New Year lives up to the howling madness at the center of all Rankin/Bass. There are sequences here, where Rudolph searches the past for Baby New Year, that are essentially the True Detective "time is a flat circle" monologue re-imagined as a stop-motion children's musical.
Turning the donkey that carried Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem into the Christian Rudolph makes a certain amount of sense. But the song Nestor is built around never caught on because it had, conservatively, 400 verses. So this is more curiosity than must-see.
But, man, there's something sad and pure at the heart of this one. When Nestor's mom dies, it's maudlin, to be sure, but Muller's script is willing to go for the jugular in terms of pathos. Plus, watching this one lets you realize how much terror of being made fun of as a child animates Rankin/Bass. There's a whole song here about how you should never laugh at someone, because you might make them cry, complete with giant puddles of tears.
Yeah, this is one of the Rankin/Bass big three, but even as a kid, I could tell its story was lacking. There's this pitfall so many of these specials fall into, where the story basically amounts to a kid sitting down with you and saying, "And then this happened! And this happened!" This is by far one of the biggest offenders. It earns points, though, for Jimmy Durante's performance of the title song and Jackie Vernon's hyper-earnest portrayal of the lead.
Here's a special to show your kids if you want to teach them life is full of crushing disappointments. The central conflict between Jack Frost and a robot army (no, really) doesn't really work, and the whole "here's a crazy mythology about how winter happens" feels especially superfluous. But this is a love story that ends with the hero not winning the heart of the woman he loves, and that's rare for a kids story. That gives this... well, not a "hard edge," but a kind of edge. (Also, the climax of this story is built around Groundhog Day instead of Christmas, which is a weird holiday to build toward.)
This feels like cheating, since it's based on a superb musical version of A Christmas Carol from the early days of television. But it's still a superb version of a very good story, with some terrific songs. The special loses something by condensing the story as much as it does, but it's hard to go wrong with Dickens in song.
We're getting into the very small portion of the list that consists of genuine recommendations, beginning with this one. This doesn't get shown as much on TV anymore, probably due to some borderline racist caricatures on the film's sidelines, but there's something very moving about its climax, in which the drummer boy drums right in the baby Jesus' face and has his lamb healed as reward.
Plus, before he meets the baby Jesus, the drummer boy is a misanthrope who hates all of humanity, which makes for a surprisingly entertaining character to follow around. Rankin/Bass was terrified of playing up the darker sides of its characters. It shouldn't have been.
This is, like, 15 different specials awkwardly stitched together. That's normally a bad look for Rankin/Bass, but it works here, where the battles of the Miser brothers play nicely off Mrs. Claus's attempts to save the holiday, which dovetail perfectly with Santa's crisis of confidence. Sure, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but this is the studio at the peak of its imaginative powers.
The overly redundant title is the worst thing about this one, which features Angela Lansbury as a nun who takes a young shepherd struck blind by lightning under her wing as Christmas rolls around. What the special loses because of its melodramatic climax it gains from sheer simplicity. Instead of trying to graft a whole bunch of ideas together, this tells one small story, and it's all the better for it.
I used to maintain this special was overrated as Christmas specials go. I no longer do so after having watched Rankin/Bass's entire output.
Everything Rankin/Bass did works perfectly here. The guest voice (Fred Astaire) is dead on. The filling in of mythology around a holiday figure is just great. And even the song the special builds toward is one of the better Santa Claus songs out there. In a way, most of the specials after this one were Rankin/Bass's attempts to remake something that had been so good from the first.
The studio should have quit while it was ahead.Overview
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in an inning; no major leaguer had done that since 1890. More starts produced more wild pitches. He was never the same.
Rick Ankiel wrote about his mental health struggles in his book, "The Phenomenon: Pressure, the Yips, and the Pitch that Changed My Life."
(Photo: Doug Benc, Getty Images)
Baseball people said he had the yips — jitters that make it nearly impossible for an athlete to throw a strike or sink a putt — though in his case severe anxiety was at the root of it.
“For anyone who hasn’t had it happen to them, they don’t understand how deep and how dark it is," he says. "It consumes you. It’s not just on the field. It never goes away. … It’s this ongoing battle with your own brain. You know what you want to do — in your heart. But your body and brain won’t let you do it.”
Ankiel would eventually have to give up his pitching career. Remarkably, he would come back years later as an outfielder. He is one of two players in major league history who have started a postseason game as a pitcher and hit a home run in the postseason as a position player. (The other? Some fellow by the name of Babe Ruth.)
Anxiety on the mound led to obsessive thoughts in his daily routine. TV analysts called him weak. They said he lacked mental toughness.
“I can’t imagine how bad it’d be with social media nowadays,” he says. “There’s such a stigma, especially with men, that you can’t falter, and that you shouldn’t get help.”
Ankiel found himself envious of players who had physical injuries that rehab could fix. He turned to therapy, breathing exercises and different medications — mostly to no avail.
A prodigy pitcher, Rick Ankiel had to reinvent his baseball career as an outfielder.
(Photo: Chris Lee, AP)
“Nobody really had any answer,” he says. “There’s no remedy or cure.”
Ankiel was USA TODAY Sports’ high school baseball player of the year in 1997. Some touted him as the second coming of Sandy Koufax. And then, poof, it was gone.
“It was beyond frightening and scary," he says. "We’re getting paid millions, but that doesn’t mean we’re immune to inner pain and torture.”
Ankiel wrote about all of this in The Phenomenon: Pressure, the Yips and the Pitch that Changed My Life, which came out this year. It tells of how he tried vodka and marijuana to calm himself. Nothing worked. Enter Harvey Dorfman, the late sports psychologist, who became a father figure in Ankiel’s darkest hours and helped “save my life” as his pitching career unraveled. Dorfman, who wrote The Mental Game of Baseball, helped Ankiel face his abusive childhood.
“For athletes, you want to try to turn over every stone possible to be at the best of your ability,” Ankiel says. “So if there’s a doctor or counselor who can help you, why not turn over that stone? Having a culture conducive to mental health is big. I think we’re getting there. Just about every (MLB) team has a psychology department. I’m glad we’re starting to understand. We’re all human, and I think the more we talk about mental health, the better.”
Royce White 'Bigger than diagnosis and labels'
Royce White left the NBA three years ago amid demands for a better mental health initiative from the league. Today, playing basketball in Canada, he speaks bluntly about mental illness and salts his conversation with colorful metaphors and off-color language.
Royce White left the NBA and took time off before reviving his career with the London (Ont.) Lightning last season. The 6-8 forward has been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.
(Photo: Photo courtesy of the London (Ont.) Lightning)
“It’s not about the NBA,” he says. “If (expletive) WalMart didn’t have a (reasonable mental health) policy, I would have done the same thing there, too.”
He grew up in Minneapolis, largely raised by a single mother and grandmother. Speaking his mind always came naturally.
“I didn’t have men around me growing up who saw having anxiety as weak or not tough enough,” White says. “I grew up with a lot of diversity. Instead of having that traditional one-male role model, I was allowed to have many. And maybe it’s just where I’m from, but that whole masculinity (stereotype) — men can’t show weakness (crap) — wasn’t around.”
One of White’s male role models was his fiery high school coach, Dave Thorson, now an assistant coach at Drake, who led White to therapy. An in-school family practitioner ultimately diagnosed him with generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. Since, he’s embraced his illnesses rather than hide them in silence.
Royce White, shown here at a speaking engagement in 2013, believes the public perception of mental health is not broad enough yet also feels the taboo topic is lacking necessary exposure and definition.
(Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY Sports)
“The million dollar question is, ‘Does what you go through make you better or worse?’ I actually look at my anxiety as a blessing,” says White, who was an All-America under Fred Hoiberg at Iowa State in 2011-12.
White, the Houston Rockets’ first-round draft choice (16th pick overall) in 2012, says the headlines that surfaced in 2013 — referencing the panic attacks and anxiety he experiences on planes — were blown out of proportion and misleading because his overall message was calling for a more prudent mental health policy and better understanding. White flew 20 times at Iowa State and now flies with his team in Canada.
“It’s been painted as me wanting special treatment because of anxiety,” White says. “No, I’m saying I need the same type of support as anyone who is struggling. Call it whatever the hell you want to call it. There are specific injury doctors for players” with bum knees and sprained ankles.
White says when he requested an individual doctor, NBA officials then told him if they made an accommodation for him they’d have to do it for 450 players. He played in just three NBA games — zero points and seven personal fouls for the Sacramento Kings — as he bounced around the NBA and its developmental league for several seasons.
Royce White, shown here with now Chicago Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg, was an All-American at Iowa State. He then had a public dispute with the Houston Rockets in 2013 over his mental health and the panic attacks he suffered from on airplanes.
(Photo: Rodney White, The Des Moines Register)
Kathy Behrens, NBA president of social responsibility and player programs, offered no comment on White’s case specifically other than to say the league has “great respect for Royce speaking about his struggles.” She says the NBA is not new to the issue but has “a growing understanding of the importance of the subject.” She says players currently have access to mental health professionals through the player assistance program, and that the NBA is in the process of finalizing a refined mental health policy for the new collective bargaining agreement.
Last season White played for the London (Ont.) Lightning of the National Basketball League of Canada, where he is the reigning league MVP and the Lightning are the reigning champion. His last affiliation with the NBA was the Los Angeles Clippers’ summer league team in 2015.
“It's not about me in the NBA,” White says. “You hear all the time about mental health stigma and people being ashamed. Well, there are people across the country who need help, say they need help, and aren’t getting it. We should be talking about them, too.
"Mental health is bigger than diagnosis and labels."
Allison Schmitt 'Therapy is the best tool '
Swimmer Allison Schmitt executed a flip turn, as she’d done many thousands of times before, as she competed in an event in Austin, Texas, in 2015. And then, out of nowhere, midway through the 400-meter freestyle, she quit.
“That last 200 meters I was like, (expletive) this,” she says. “I knew I gave up, but I didn’t know why.”
U.S. Olympics swimmer Allison Schmitt celebrates after winning the 200m freestyle gold medal at the London Olympics Games in 2012.
(Photo: Rob Schumacher, USA TODAY Sports)
The answer, as it turned out, was what she calls “the invisible illness” — depression.
Michael Phelps, her friend and frequent training partner — was at the meet. Months earlier, Phelps and Schmit sat in a burrito restaurant and discussed the suicide that week of actor Robin Williams. Schmitt had said she could understand why he did it. At that point, Schmitt says, “Michael knew something was up.”
Schmitt had contemplated suicide herself. She’d thought about driving off the road on a snowy night to make it appear as accident.
Phelps approached her on the pool deck after she quit on that 400 free. Bob Bowman, who coached them both, also arrived. And Schmitt’s pain soon came pouring out — the tears, the sadness, the emptiness. Schmitt says she began seeing a psychologist soon after. Therapy, she says, “makes training for the Olympics seem easy.”
She found it difficult to be vulnerable and talk about her weaknesses. She’d been taught all her life to rush through, persevere and come out stronger. She felt embarrassed and ashamed.
“For a lot of athletes, their arena is their sanctuary. But for a lot of struggling people in society, the therapy room is a place of peace they can’t find anywhere else” Allison Schmitt, eight-time Olympic medalist
“But now, therapy is the best tool I’ve encountered in this life,” Schmitt says. “For a lot of athletes, their arena is their sanctuary. But for a lot of struggling people in society, the therapy room is a place of peace they can't find anywhere else."
Not long after her tearful epiphany on the pool deck, Schmitt found out her 17-year-old cousin in Pennsylvania had committed suicide. Schmitt says this promising basketball player “had it all going for her. She was the life of the party, always making people laugh.” Schmitt pauses. “But, no one knew how dark of a place she was in.”
Allison Schmitt, second from left, celebrates her gold medal victory with her 4x200-meter freestyle relay teammates at the Rio Olympic Games in 2016.
(Photo: Jack Gruber, USA TODAY Sports)
This galvanized Schmitt. “In sports, you get second chances,” she says. “In life, you don’t always get a second chance.”
This, Schmitt says, is why she is pursuing her master’s degree at Arizona State to become a licensed clinical social worker and counselor. (She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Georgia in psychology.) She realized after her cousin’s suicide that mental health struggles should not be hidden.
“Depression is something that’s in you,” she says. “It’s not wanting to get out of bed, continuously feeling sad and down on yourself. It’s not wanting to exist, sometimes. There’s no on-and-off light switch. When I hear coaches, athletes telling people to ‘snap’ out of it, it makes me mad. Because you could be pushing them down that dark hole further.”
Brandon Marshall 'My purpose on this planet'
Brandon Marshall remembers a group therapy session when he noticed the scars on the wrists of the woman sitting next to him.
New York Giants wide receiver Brandon Marshall is on his fifth NFL team, having played for the Broncos, Dolphins, Bears and Jets in previous seasons.
(Photo: Julio Cortez, AP)
“I was just like, damn, this (expletive) is real,” Marshall says. “Here I am, this big macho football player, and these people were fighting for their lives. That was when I truly realized what being tough meant.
“I realized that someone needs to stand up for these people. This has become my purpose on this planet. Football is just my platform.”
This was during Marshall’s three-month stay in 2011 at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric hospital and affiliate of Harvard Medical School, where he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. That was the first time he had a name for the illness that had led him to run-ins with the law and light-switch behavior he never understood. He says his diagnosis had a salutary effect on his family, including his mother, Diane Bolden. Marshall says she was able to confront her own depression and is now five years sober.
“I made everyone around me healthy,” he says.
“(The NFL) is America’s sport, so whenever we’re able to take our masks off — to 90 million people, avid football fans — it provides the ability to move culture.” Brandon Marshall, Giants wide receiver
Marshall and his wife Michi founded Project 375, an organization dedicated to eradicating the stigma surrounding mental health by raising awareness.
“Where we are now with mental health is where cancer and HIV were 20 years ago,” Marshall says. “It’s extremely important for us to have this conversation not just in sports, but in society. It’s important for us to change the narrative.
"There are over 100 million people living with some type of mental illness and those people then touch so many people in their lives.”
Brandon Marshall, shown here at a mental health event in Chicago in 2014, founded Project 375 with his wife, Michi (left). The organization aims to destigmatize mental health.
(Photo: Tasos Katopodis, Getty Images)
Marshall says borderline personality disorder has many variations but is typically marked by impulsive behavior and a lack of the skills to self-regulate emotions.
“It’s a lot of preventative work,” he says. “I know when my most stressful times are, and so I plan for it. During the season, it’s very stressful. So I have to be proactive. BPD can be different from one person to the next. For me, I don’t use medication. I consult my doctor on FaceTime or Skype when needed. I meditate. I use my Christian faith to hold me accountable.”
NFL players are seen as gladiators who can fight through anything, Marshall says.
“Well, we can do that — by being honest and vulnerable,” he says. “This is America’s sport, so whenever we’re able to take our masks off — to 90 million people, avid football fans — it provides the ability to move culture.”
Jerry West The dark place that 'doesn’t go away'
Jerry West is Mr. Clutch. He’s The Logo. He’s a master architect, building teams behind the scenes.
He’s also, at 79, a lifelong sufferer of depression. Or, as he calls it, the dark place.
Jerry West helped guide the Los Angeles Lakers to six championships as an executive before helping the Golden State Warriors win two.
(Photo: Damian Dovarganes, AP)
“This is something that doesn’t go away, this depression,” West says. “When I go through it, it’s almost always based on my (low) self-worth and self-esteem.”
West sees his suffering less as an illness and more as a product of a tormented childhood of abuse at the hands of his father. That’s part of why West turned to basketball as a scrawny kid — a “misfit with no confidence,” in his words — in West Virginia. It was a safe haven where he could build confidence.
“Everyone is driven by different things in life,” West says. “To some degree, based on some of the things I saw growing up, I was looking for an escape. I was just looking for something that I’d be appreciated for. I guess I was looking for a sanctuary.”
Sometimes he played all by himself in a fantasy world where he always splashed a game-winning buzzer-beater. “For anyone who saw me,” he says, “they probably said, ‘My God, this kid is crazy.’ ”
He emerged from childhood sanctuary to be one of the greatest players in history. The darkness never left him, though. “I feel that same sadness at times now,” he says.
He took his West Virginia Mountaineers to the championship game of the NCAA tournament, where they lost. His Los Angeles Lakers made the NBA Finals nine times — and lost eight.
The glitz and the glamour have never filled a void of sadness for Hall of Famer Jerry West (now a member of the Los Angeles Clippers front office) who has battled depression his whole life.
(Photo: Jayne Kamin-Oncea, USA TODAY Sports)
“I’ve learned way more in my life through failure than I ever did from success,” he says. He didn’t feel the elation he thought he would when the Lakers won the NBA title at last in 1972. “All I could do right then,” he says, “was go back to the other losses.”
Team camaraderie buoyed him during his playing days. As a team executive — with the Lakers, Memphis Grizzlies, Golden State Warriors and, newly, the Los Angeles Clippers — he’s often alone in his day-to-day operations. “You’re the judge, jury and executioner,” he says.
The kid who wanted to be a hero, sinking all those game-winners in imaginary games, says he never wanted credit for his successes as an executive, though he helped to build dynasties with the Lakers and the Warriors.
“You’ll never see me on a (championship) podium or in a picture,” West notes. “It was never about me. Yet, on the other hand, there are times when I’d be down and out and you feel like you’d want someone to come up and say, ‘Hey, you’re pretty good at what you’re doing.’ That’s when the (depression) kicks in.”
West says he thinks he’s able to see talent and character through a different lens than other executives.
“Some of these kids, these players, they’re survivors,” he says. “In many cases I thought I was a survivor. That’s who I’m attracted to. Someone who’s been through something. And I always want to know, who was the person who made you feel? Or when was the moment when you felt like you belonged? Instead of going inward.”
Freud theorized that pain turned inward becomes depression. “It’s got to go somewhere,” West says.
For a long time, he had no idea why he felt the way he felt.
“I thought this was how all people felt,” he says. “I’ve always been different. But I like to think I’m different in a good way.”
Michael Phelps All that glitters isn't gold
For most of his solid-gold life, Michael Phelps saw himself in much the same way as the outside world did.
Michael Phelps waves goodbye at the Rio Olympic Games as the curtains closed on his decorated swimming career that saw him win 23 Olympic gold medals.
(Photo: Rob Schumacher, USA TODAY Sports)
“I saw myself as a swimmer and nothing else,” he says. “I didn’t know who I really was. And neither did anybody else. At the age of 30, I found myself. And I decided I wanted to show the world not Michael Phelps the swimmer, but who I really was.”
Phelps is 32 now and he wants the world to see him as husband, father and, yes, history’s most decorated Olympian — but also as a depression sufferer.
“It’s good for athletes to be open about who they are and for people to see we’re far from perfect,” Phelps says. “We’re not gods. I’m human like everybody else.”
When Phelps opened up about his difficulties he found he could help others while helping himself.
“We’re not gods. I’m human like everybody else.” Michael Phelps, Olympic swimming legend
“Once I started talking about my struggles outside the pool, the healthier I felt,” he says. “Now I have kids and adults come up to me and say they were able to open up because I was open about my life.”
Phelps retired after the 2012 Summer Games in London — or so he said — but ended up coming back for a last hurrah in Rio in 2016, this time with his infant son Boomer and newlywed wife Nicole to cheer him on. Now he swears he’s really retired. And he doesn’t have to worry about what’s next; his calling as an advocate for mental health found him.
Michael Phelps says swimming will always be a passion, but now his next chapter is centered on mental health advocacy.
(Photo: Michael Madrid, USA TODAY Sports)
“My talent was in the swimming pool, but it’s led me to something else in life,” Phelps says. “It’s a duty. It’s an honor to talk about mental health. But I’m really just being my authentic self, sharing my story.”
That story of mental anguish includes ongoing “depression spells.” He remembers they’d often come after his Olympic highs. All that glitters isn’t gold.
“You’re at the highest level of sport you can possibly get,” he says. “Then you’ll want to do something new, something crazy. That high to low can put you in a dark spot."
Sometimes that darkness was consuming.
“Isolation can be crippling,” Phelps says. “When I’d see my therapist, I remember beforehand how much I hated going. Then every time after I’d walk out the door, I felt like a million bucks.”
Now he says he has the tools to get through the dark times and “I’m able to be a better husband, a better father, a better son, a better friend.”California budget crisis and financial woes as told by several individuals and families, including Los Angeles County and their Fire Department. Briefly mentioned was the illegal immigration problem as causation for the housing market crash and industry decline.
Sad to see some of these people have to compete and work with illegal aliens. The producers could have brought this out more to report what the issues really are. Instead there was an illegal alien ex-con gang member with a strong hispanic accent who was the only one on film employed. Even tho he was in prison for theft his dad had the nerve to say his son was a victim and lost his youth in prison unjustly.
Ia_orig__runtime 49 minutes 29 seconds Identifier DocumentaryCaliforniaDreaming2010 Run time 49:29 Sound soundAt 32, the former World Player of the Year has made his second return to the Selecao, and this time he's intent on sticking around
World Champion | A 20-year-old Kaka (left) celebrates Brazil's 2002 World Cup victory
Top of the World | Kaka was named Fifa World Player of the Year in 2007
Back for Good? | At 32 Kaka has targeted a permanent role in Dunga's Brazil
The headlines surrounding Dunga’s Brazil squad for the Gillette Brasil Global Tour of Asia this month were undoubtedly dominated by Kaka, who returned to the Brazil squad after 18 months away from international football.The former Fifa World Player of the Year is now 32 and brings with him the experience of three World Cup campaigns. As the Selecao begin a new era following the disappointment of a semi-final exit to Germany earlier this year, the technical staff are intent on finding the right blend of youth and experience.It had appeared as if Kaka was not on Dunga’s radar – at least not until last week, when he made a shock return as a late replacement for injured Cruzeiro forward Ricardo Goulart. Not that token return is not enough for Kaka, who instantly signaled his intent to stick around long-term."I am aiming to continue to play well, fit in and consistently find myself as part of the squad. The call-ups [under Dunga] have been consistent and if I fit in and serve the group then that would be very welcome,” he said upon his arrival in China.“To represent Brazil is always a pleasure, a privilege, a prize. This has happened at a time when I've been playing well for Sao Paulo, playing regular games.”Kaka's international return has arrived just months after he decided to call time on a nine-year stay in European football, where he rose to the top of the sport for AC Milan before a record-breaking transfer to Real Madrid.He won the World Cup with Luiz Felipe Scolari’s Brazil in 2002 and was named as Fifa’s World Player of the year in 2007 after leading Milan to a Champions League title. He was also a key member of the Selecao’s 2006 and 2010 World Cup squads.“Kaka has always been an idol to me, and it's good to see that he is back in the national team. He’s a guy that everybody admires off the field, and we expect him to be a huge help to all of us,” said Oscar this week.A large part of that admiration stems from Kaka's devotion to his faith. A devout Evangelical Christian, time and again he has celebrated the biggest moments of his career by lifting his shirt to reveal the slogan "I belong to Jesus.""In my whole life, Jesus is in first place," he said earlier this year in a video entitled 'I am Second'. "That's why I put that inside my cleats because that is how I think."An idol, a reference - words most frequently used to describe Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, who earned his nickname from his infant brother’s mispronunciation of his Christian name.He signed for soon-to-be MLS side Orlando City in June but has returned to home to Sao Paulo until the end of the year while he awaits the start of his American adventure.And he has been one of the stars of the Brasileirao starred after helping Muricy Ramalho’s side through a stumbling start, forming the fulcrum of a fluid and rampant frontline alongside Alan Kardec and former Selecao stars Alexandre Pato and Paulo Henrique Ganso.Kaka made his international debut back in 2002 against Bolivia and was drafted into Scolari’s World Cup squad, his sole appearance in the competition arriving when he replaced Rivaldo in Brazil’s 5-2 victory over Costa Rica.He displayed his leadership qualities the following year as he led Brazil’s Under-23 to a runners-up medal in the CONCACAF Gold Cup. Come Germany 2006 he had established himself as a Brazil regular and formed part of Carlos Alberto Parreira’s ‘Magic Square’ alongside Ronaldinho, Adriano and Ronaldo, but an imbalanced Selecao would suffer a quarter-final exit.His best international football was undoubtedly played during Dunga’s first spell in charge of the side, between 2006 and 2010. Kaka became emblematic of the ruthless, dynamic counterattack that led to so much success until a shock defeat to Nertherlands ensured another quarter-final exit.Mano Menezes replaced Dunga as boss and Kaka was left out in the cold as the new man looked to lead Brazil’s transition into a more possession-based side, introducing the new generation led by Neymar.Kaka would have to wait two years to represent the Selecao again, as he suffered a loss of form and an unfortunate spate of injuries following his move to Real Madrid.Menezes gave him his chance against Iraq in a striker-less attack similar to the one currently being implemented by Dunga. Kaka scored in a 6-0 victory and followed it up with another in a win over Japan – Brazil’s opponents on Tuesday.But Mano's dismissal soon after appeared to have ended Kaka’s Selecao career for good as Scolari could find no room for him as Brazil prepared for World Cup 2014.But now he has returned once more. And, at 32, he believes he is stronger than ever. "I'm much better, physically, technically and tactically,” Kaka told the press at the Intercontinental Hotel in Beijing.“Today I can read the game much better on the field, and I have the maturity and experience that I have and did not have before.”Now he must prove it. He’s done it before. And if there’s one thing Kaka doesn’t lack, it’s faith.Sometimes rumors that come out feel more like a puzzle that was put together. Such is the one thrown out there today by Sirius XM's Ed Borsilli who says he's 'heard' the Raiders would be interested in trading for Eagles running back DeMarco Murray for a low draft pick.
I've heard the Raiders would be interested again, in DeMarco Murray at the right price. I.E a low draft pick — Eddie Borsilli (@Borsilli) March 7, 2016
You might remember this time last year, the Raiders were in the mix to sign Murray who was the Cowboys reigning NFL leading rusher with 1845 rushing yards and 13 touchdowns. The Cowboys couldn't (and wouldn't) meet his hefty price tag, so the Eagles swooped in and signed him, even though they had already signed Ryan Mathews.
Murray had a terrible season in the Eagles' offense under Chip Kelly compared to contract expectations. He started 8 games and ran for 702 yards averaging just 3.6 yards per carry. And he wasn't at all happy about it.
This offseason, Kelly was fired, and hired by the 49ers. Now the Eagles are doing a little housecleaning, agreeing to terms to send Byron Maxwell and Kiko Alonso to the Dolphins in a trade. Should they be able to move Murray as well, they would be rid of two of the top five cap hits for next season. So, it makes sense that they would look to do that.
As far as the Raiders interest, they, of course, have the cap space, and were interested before, so it seems they would naturally be mentioned as a potential trade partner. How much genuine interest is there in taking on Murray's sizable contract is debatable. It has four years and $31 million remaining with $7 million of his $8 million 2016 salary fully guaranteed.
They would also be pairing up Murrays in their backfield with Latavius Murray already in Oakland, both big bruising backs, so neither would be the 'change of pace'. Latavius was the AFC's second leading rusher, gaining 1066 yards and six touchdowns, making the Pro Bowl as an alternate.
It's an interesting thought. That's why they're called rumors.
UPDATE: The Eagles were shopping Murray and whether the Raiders were interested or not, he is headed to the Titans, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter.
Follow @LeviDamienThe European Hot 100 Singles was compiled by Billboard and Music & Media magazine from March 1984 until December 2010. The chart was based on national singles sales charts in 16 European countries: Austria, Belgium (separately for Flanders and Wallonia), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
By the issue dated/week ending November 13, 2010, the European Hot 100 had accumulated 400 number one hits. The final chart was published on December 11, 2010, following the news of Billboard closing their London office and letting their UK-based staff go.[1] The final number one single on the chart was "Only Girl (in the World)" by Rihanna. Currently, Nielsen SoundScan International-based Euro Digital Songs and Euro Digital Tracks are the only pan-European music charts that Billboard is publishing.
History [ edit ]
Europarade Top 40 [ edit ]
The first attempt at a Europe-wide chart was the Europarade, which was started in early 1976 by the Dutch TROS radio network. The chart initially consisted of only six countries: the Netherlands, UK, France, Germany, Belgium and Spain. In 1979 Italy and Denmark were added and during 1980, Austria and Switzerland were included. Ireland was added as the eleventh country in October 1983. The compilers collected the top 15 records from each country and then awarded corresponding points, depending which positions between 1 and 15 each record stood at. The "Europarade" was published in Music Week and the Dutch magazine Hitkrant.
Euro Hot 100 [ edit ]
In March 1984, Music & Media magazine in Amsterdam started their own singles chart, "The Eurochart Hot 100", which they published as a Euro Tip sheet for the first two years. The chart was based on national singles sales charts in sixteen European countries: Austria, Belgium (separately for Flanders and Wallonia), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. This chart was accumulated by taking the chart positions in each country combined with the national sales percentage of records in that particular country.
In 1986–87, the official Eurochart also became a music TV show on Music Box with Dutch presenter Erik de Zwart. A syndicated radio show, 'The Coca-Cola Eurochart Hot 100' was also introduced on UK commercial radio and was definitely being broadcast as of January to April 1991 however, its precise start and end dates are not known. Hosted by Pat Sharp, it was broadcast on a number of stations including Radio Trent, BRMB, Viking FM and GWR FM. The Eurochart quickly gained momentum, as it started to include more countries. In January 1986, Music & Media who published the chart became a Billboard publication. Since November 1986, the Music & Media's Eurochart Top 100 was used as basis when Billboard itself started publishing the European Hot 100 Singles chart.
Chart achievements [ edit ]
Artists achievements [ edit ]
Most number-one singles [ edit ]
Self-replacement at number-one [ edit ]
Simultaneously occupying the top of the singles and albums charts [ edit ]
Madonna is the artist which has scored the most simultaneous number-ones with seven singles and six albums, followed by Michael Jackson with five singles and three albums and Lady Gaga with three singles and one album.
Songs achievements [ edit ]
Entered at number-one [ edit ]
Most weeks at number-one [ edit ]
Non-English language number-ones [ edit ]
These songs are partly in English, but also partly another language.Government officials in India are taking extraordinary measures to combat the country’s rape problem with a new rule that will require mobile phone makers to manufacture phones equipped with panic buttons. Indeed, India’s rape problem is extraordinary — according to a report in Bloomberg, the country averages one rape every four hours. Exacerbating the problem is the country’s dismal police-to-citizen ratio, which is one of the lowest in the world. The new mandate was announced late Monday by the telecommunications ministry in New Delhi and it will require all mobile phones — even those made by the world’s largest manufacturers like Apple and Samsung — to be compliant by January 2018. The panic button feature would be activated by the user pressing a designated key on a smartphone or, on older flip-phone models, holding down the numbers 5 or 9 on the keypad. “Technology is solely meant to make human life better and what better than using it for the security of women,” Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a statement.
Violent rapes have been a topic of national discussion in India in recent years following the high-profile gang rape, beating, and death of a girl on a public bus in Delhi in 2012. India strengthened its laws around rape in response to the incident, but just this year several brutal sexual attacks have been carried out against women and Girls. Many in the country have said the culture must change its attitudes toward to more directly deal with the problem.
Read the full story at Bloomberg.
Related:
Hindu leader in India claims allowing women in temple would increase rapes
15-year-old Indian girl raped, beaten, and set on fire by stalker
Woman in India hacks off brother-in-law’s penis after she claims he raped her
Three Indian men sentenced to death for role in gang rape that sparked outrageOn Monday, the extermination company Orkin announced that DC is the third rattiest city in the US based on the number of times we called Orkin for help. In 2014, when the company compiled the same list, DC was also ranked third. Clearly, asking the Orkin Man isn’t getting it done.
Other cities agree and are taking tactical measures. In Chicago, mayor Rahm Emanuel is throwing dry ice down the rats’ burrows in Washington Square Park, an idea he cribbed from Boston. If it works there, Emanuel says, he’s going to do it everywhere.
Rooting out these scurrying plague-gerbils where they make their home is fine, but these burrows are shockingly small and hard to find. Because of rats’ unsettling, flexible body shape, they can wriggle through spaces half their size, like in this found-footage of the Rat King, freed from the sewers and surprising the humans who used to be in charge above-ground.
And therein lies the problem. We can’t fight a war on rodents on the rodents’ turf. We need to fight it up here, on the streets we call home, where everything we’re striving to protect is within sight. And we won’t wage this war with dry ice or chemicals we can’t pronounce, but with man’s best friend right where he should be, right by our side.
The rat terrier is possibly the cutest, most unfortunately named weapon we have in the fight against the rats. Don’t believe me? Check out a whole slideshow of these adorable vermin-chasers with hearts of gold.
But don’t be seduced by their cuddlesome exteriors–these farm dogs have been protecting their humans from pizza-snatching tramps since the days of yore, when sailors took them aboard big Tudor ships to sniff out the rats above deck. And while our roving parade of urban rat terriers will need to be bigger and thus cuter than anything the world has yet to see, it can certainly be done.
So are you ready to join the battle for Adams Morgan, where rats outnumber sober people on a Friday night? Do you want to walk the swampy Georgetown streets at 3AM without fear? Do you want to live in a city where you can drop your jumbo slice on U Street and know it will still be there when you look down? The solution is not to call the exterminator. The solution is to adopt the exterminator (which you can do here and here.) Let’s teach those rats what Splinter should have suggested from the beginning. We don’t fight rats with turtles. We fight rats with pets.MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — This wasn’t the team everyone was expecting to see Monday night.
Not on offense, at least. The defense, despite all the hype following a solid preseason performance, looked much the same. Big plays, not enough pressure, points on the scoreboard. All the hallmarks of the New Orleans Saints defense were on display, and the assignment errors that plagued this team before Dennis Allen took over as defensive coordinator reared their head at times against the Vikings during the 29-19 loss.
But this probably wasn’t the offense anyone was expecting to see. When |
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